Moving Lessons: Margaret H'Doubler and the Beginning of Dance in American Education

5. Margaret H’Doubler and the Liberty of Thought

5 Margaret H'Doubler and the Liberty ofThought To preserve individuality and save it from herd-like conformity is one of education's most important challenges. Margaret H'Doubler, no source, undated Those who deal with institutions are situated very differently from those who deal with ideas. The latter should insist on the liberty of thought and keep the horizon clear; the former must accept the material most immediately applicable to purposes of support and construction. John Bascom, president of the University of Wisconsin, I874-87 WHEN BLANCHE TRILLING MADE TWENTY-SEVEN-YEAR-OLD MARgaret H'Doubler her emissary to the world of New York dance studios in the autumn of 19I 6, neither she nor H'Doubler could have foreseen how fortuitous this selection would prove to be. Initially, their roles were simple: Trilling was an administrator, desirous of expanding her curriculum, and H'Doubler was a young instructor, eager to please but with a firm sense of standards concerning what she thought was educationally meritorious (figure 18). Trilling knew H'Doubler as an enthusiastic and inspirational physical educator. The students adored H'Doubler and worked hard for her, almost regardless, it seemed, of the sport she was teaching. Under her instruction hundreds of University of Wisconsin women each year took active part in basketball classes, intramurals, and tournaments that she organized.I According to H'Doubler, Trilling's reason for connecting her with dance probably stemmed from a silly skit in the year-end faculty show in May 1915, when Trilling had chosen the tall and stately H'Doubler as her partner. In the early days, when Miss Trilling came, it was the policy of the department every year to give some kind of entertainment for the students. This one year Miss 103 Figure 18. An official faculty portrait ()f Blanche Trilling (State Historical Society of Wisconsin . WHi (X3) :z.8939) I04 Margaret H'Doubler and the Liberty ofThought Trilling and I did a dance-she taught the dancing when she came. Our stunt was we did some kind of a skit, and I don't know why she thought I might be able to do some dancing. That's how she happened to ask me. I had forgotten that, that's very important.> A dated and labeled torn photograph of what was likely this event is preserved in a Women's Physical Education Department scrapbook (figure 19) in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives. Above the caption "Miss Trilling and Miss H'Doubler" is a photo of Trilling, en travesti, as a Dutch boy in pants and a short straight wig, gazing admiringly at H'Doubler, who wears a flowing full-length gown. H'Doubler curtsies deeply and demurely, her face all but hidden by a coiled blond wig and a large fan. From this photograph it is difficult to assess what it might have been about H'Doubler's dancing ability that impressed Trilling. What does show through readily, however, is how comfortably H'Doubler acts the subservient role. Her bow reveals homage as much as greeting. MARGARET H'DOUBLER'S EARLY YEARS Much more than obedience, however, made H'Doubler the right person to be Trilling's emissary (figure 20). H'Doubler was as fiercely loyal to principles ofeducation, and to what she saw as situations that fostered the spiritual growth of the mind, as she was to physical activity for all women. It helped considerably that she had been raised in a family climate of methodical and orderly invention. Born April 26, 1889, in Beloit, Kansas, to Charles and Sarah H'Doubler (the H-apostrophe-Doubler is an Americanized version of the original Swiss family name Hougen-Doubler), Margaret Newell H'Doubler was the second daughter and the third and last child of this prominent Swiss immigrant family, which also included her older sister, Pearl, born in 1885 and her brother, Frances Todd, born in 1887.3 The Hougen-Doublers' relatives had arrived in the United States in the early 1700S and had resided primarily in Illinois and Pennsylvania.4 H'Doubler's father, Charles, was born in 1859 in Warren, Illinois, where he was known as "a man of many and pronounced talents," including artistic photography, often of his daughters) H'Doubler's early experience with having her image recorded and then publicly displayed, at a time when having one's photograph taken was a rare and infrequent occurrence for most...