At a meeting of the Sackville Alumni Club held in Centennial Hall on 26 February 1940, Professor Tweedie delivered an address entitled Some Records and Recollections of Mount Allison. [1] The speech offers a striking portrait of the Mount Allison institutions in their early days and of the changes that occurred on campus during the seven decades that Tweedie resided in Sackville. Most interesting, perhaps, are the details that he provides on the experiences of students living on campus in the late nineteenth century and his reflections on the ways relationships between men and women of Mount Allison have changed (or haven't changed) over the years. A transcription of the speech is included below.
by William Morley Tweedie [2]
I thought I had retired from this and other platforms. My presence tonight is due to the well-known persuasive powers of our President, Mr. Bennett, who, like Socrates of old, can “make the worse appear the better reason.” He thought it would be well to follow up the splendid views of the Mt. Allison buildings, campus and life of the present with some reference to the earlier days of Mount Allison, and I rather reluctantly consented to talk about these for a little. This is not a lecture of any formal sort, but a random talk which may be interrupted by questions or stopped at any point. At every point it is vulnerable, as the phrase is in some circles.
As far as I have any plan it is to give you some ideas of what preceded the MtA of the present, the changes and development in the area and buildings of Mt. Allison, and then to mention a few miscellaneous matters in reference to the life and customs of an earlier day.
We may perhaps begin with the room in which we are gathered. In the original plan of the building, this room was divided by a partition a little beyond this first window. The rear was the largest classroom in the building and was used for mathematics. In this part of the room I lived for several years after coming to teach at Mt. Allison, getting meals over in the Academy, as did all the college students. In those days any off corner of space that could be spared was used for lodgings. Upstairs in this building during all that time that I was here lived four students, two in a room on the back next [to] the Library, and two others in a room on the front next [to] the Chapel. This building had been built during the five years that I was away as a student studying in England and Germany. In the earlier days of college life at Mount Allison, one building, the old Lodge, as it came to be known for a time, contained the students’ rooms, the classrooms, the laboratory, the President’s office, the Library, and after the founding of the Eurhetorian Society, the special room set aside for its meetings. One might expect that such an omnium gatherum would be housed in a huge structure, but many of you will remember its modest dimensions. This building faced the driveway which leads up to the President’s cottage, its back would be close to the present end of the Library. Just behind it was a fence and the field which lay beyond that over to Salem Street and up to Cow Lane (York St.) did not belong to Mt. Allison until it was purchased shortly before this Centennial Hall was built in 1884 on a knoll in the upper part of it.
As the upper end of this old lone college building was a shed for wood and beyond it a roughish building called the gym, but used mainly for playing handball, then and long afterward a popular game with students and faculty. To reach this handball court one went round just in front of the big elm which stands on the right as you approach the Library, and which was just inside the fence I spoke of as running up along the hillside garden house. When this rear building was acquired and Centennial Hall was built, the old building still used for students’ rooms was moved back to the side beside Salem St. on which it stood when burned in 1933. In addition to changing its position, it had changed at various times in its interior and its use. When the first Residence was built in 1894, all college students were accommodated there, and this old building was used for Chemistry and Physics work. Later when the McClelan School of Engineering was begun it was re-modelled from the basement to the top floor to furnish the extra draughting, carpentry and forging rooms then necessary. When the Science building was built in 1931 the Chemistry and Biology departments were accommodated there, leaving the Physics and Engineering which were in possession at the time of the fire.
Along in the seventies and eighties as the number of students increased, some found rooms in the upper storey of the so-called “new building,” an adjunct to the Academy built in 1875 with a driveway between it and the west end of the main building. It was intended for classroom accommodation and to house an overflow of students of either Academy or College. When the second Academy was burned in 1882 this building was saved. It had later many narrow escapes. I recall that when I lived, as I said, in this room, I was roused several times in one winter by a student from this new building who announced that it was on fire. With more or less effort the fire, which was in the basement, was put out before great damage was done. There were traces of oil having been sprinkled over the flooring, and investigations were held. The faculty was in frequent session and strongly suspected a boy who was rather a mischief maker, but who denied knowing anything about the fire, and could not be convicted. Meanwhile, the fires continued to be set and the same student came regularly and roused me by throwing pebbles up at the window. After a while it dawned on us that this same student might always know of the fire because he had set it. And so it turned out, he was a mature theological student from the northern part of the province. His father came down and the whole matter was cleared up. We found that he had been suspected of setting fire to his county school house which had burned. He was withdrawn from college and went to the western States, continued in the ministry, and rose to be a dignified President Elder of some district. He had seemingly set the churches on fire to better purpose.
After its narrow escapes, this building continued to stand until moved up and incorporated with the new Academy in order to bring living quarters and school rooms under the same roof. It vanished from the campus when this Academy was burned, as many of you recall, in 1933.
The second Academy, the one that I had attended, was burned in 1882, early in January just after the Christmas holidays. It happened late on a cold night I remember that A.D. McCully, then a theological student, who died not long ago in Sussex, got a horse somewhere and started out as a sort of modern Paul Revere to rouse the sleeping village. On his tour, he fell from his horse on the Brunswick House hill and broke his leg. At the time of the fire, Dr. Paisley was the Principal. The students rendered homeless were located partly in the new Building, which I have just referred to, and partly in a house which stood upon the hill where Mr. [Marr?] now lives. That house was later moved and has changed its type of occupants for it is now the house of the nuns, opposite Prof. McKiel’s. The college students, who all got their meals in the Academy, were now to have them in the Ladies’ College. This prospect seemed like transference to the abodes of the blessed, but the reality was not so attractive, for providing two sets of good meals proved rather too much for the kitchens. By the next year the new Academy was ready and life went back to its old routine.
In 1890, the Conservatory of Music was opened with a bazaar and teas by the Alumnae Society, lasting three days and held in Beethoven Hall, the main assembly hall, which was thus introduced to students and public.
In 1894, the corner stone of the Owen’s Art Gallery was laid. Art had previously been looked after in rather inadequate quarters—a section of the South end of the fourth floor of the main old building of the Ladies’ College. A succession of teachers, mostly women, none of them with great training or prowess in art, had struggled for a generation or more with the teaching of drawing and painting. It was a great advance when a special building was provided with a collection of pictures removed from Saint John and with Prof. Hammond in charge.
In that same year, 1894, the new Residence was occupied. It was on the same site as the present one, and the same size on the ground, but very different in appearance and plan. It was built of brick with wide halls and many large stairways, so that it did not accommodate as many students as the present Residence. It had special heating systems—hot air; a large number of furnaces were scattered through the basement, and shafts were provided in the walls and between floors, making a splendid circulation of air—changing it several times an hour in each room. This was very fine for every day life, but when the building got on fire the air currents spread the flame to all parts of the building, so that it became an inferno in a very few minutes. No one could enter the main building and practically nothing of the contents was saved. My own rooms were on the second storey overlooking the football field, and not a single thing came out. The fire occurred early in June. I had just gone away for the holidays, taking a few summer things and a few books for summer use. All my personal effects and furniture, my winter clothes, my books, which I had gathered in second hand shops in old Holywell St in London and elsewhere, all my notes and memoranda, had gone up in smoke. It was rather a hard thing to face. To get my bearings again, I obtained leave of absence for a year which I spent in the Graduate School at Harvard. My work was carried on by Prof. Gottfried Hult from the University of Minnesota of whom I heard before and afterward in reports.
With the building of this Residence the university first crossed York St. (Cow Lane) and opened up that thoroughfare to the general use of students, who had only been permitted on it since the building of Centennial Hall. Previously it had been forbidden ground only to be used on the rare occasions when students were allowed to go home with the girls from some entertainment in the church or elsewhere downtown. Occasionally en route from some reception in the Academy some daring or ardent student thought the longest way round was the shortest way home and caught a dizzy rapture by taking the way down past the Anglican Church and around by Crane’s Corner. On one famous occasion all had to do this for the gates—those were the days of gates—giving access to the Ladies’ College grounds were all barred or chained. The next day everybody was talking of the episode and speculating about the culprits. In his Latin class, Dr. Smith, who kept much in touch with current events, said while selecting the most unlikely person for such an escapade, “Well Hedley, you fastened up those gates well last night.” Hedley flushed crimson, for it happened that he had really done the work single handed. Almost everybody was going to the special party. He never went to anything of the kind and had been persuaded by the rest to spend his evening in the open air making sure that no gates on that side of the L.C. could be passed through.
The building of the Residence was followed in a few years by the construction of a new football field. Previously the game had been played on makeshift fields—any piece of more or less level ground that was available. For some years the place chosen had been at the top of the hill on the College farm, near where Mr. Colpitts’ house now stands. This was inconvenient as rather far from the College and at best there was poor surface. Along in the later nineties a survey was made below the residence, some money collected and the task began for constructing the present field. It was a big piece of work, for the hill slopes off to a low level, so that much digging and filling up had to be done. A large number of men and horses and carts and scoops made the campus look for months as if a new railway was being put through. After the ground was levelled and drained, a turf had to be formed, so that it was not until the fall of 1900 that it was ready for play. Of course, there was great rejoicing and great expectations among the students and the football games of those months were awaited with great eagerness. It may be of interest to mention that in the first game, Frank Parker Day, who had recently arrived as a Freshie-Soph, and was a stalwart forward, made the first touchdown on the new field in a game with U.N.B. which Mount Allison won by a score of 9 to 0.
The football field reminds me of a building that should perhaps be referred to, Lingley Hall, which stood on its last days at the end of the field, and has become to many a [undecipherable]. It had been dedicated with impressive ceremony in the year after the opening of the Ladies’ College namely in 1855. It stood close to the main Ladies’ College building but not connected with it, on the side now occupied by Hart Hall. It was named after Mr. Bartlett Lingley of St. John, who was a prominent shipper of lumber from N.B. ports. He had subscribed £1000 toward the erection of the building but met with business reverses and was able to pay only about a quarter of the amount. A friend contributed an almost equal sum and the rest of the £1122 which the building cost was raised at the dedication exercises and later in various ways.
The building was a most useful addition to the Mount Allison plant. The main hall had a steeply sloping floor, and with a gallery over the main entrance, a large platform with elevated orchestra space in the rear, seated six or seven hundred. The rooms under the gallery on either side of the main entrance were for some years used as a Library and a museum. In 1857 a two-manual pipe organ was placed at the rear of the orchestra space facing those entering the building. This organ was built by C.L. Holbrook of East Medway, Massachusetts and cost £325. The money was raised through the exertion and generosity of the students and alumni of the Academies. Although not a powerful instrument it will be remembered by many on account of its pleasing, sweet tones. It was moved to the Charles Fawcett Memorial Hall when that was built and did service there until supplanted by the organ obtained from the Methodist Church.
At each side of this organ on the top of small side galleries stood the large oil paintings of the Rev. John Beecham D.D., and of Charles Frederick Allison, which were afterward placed in the Charles Fawcett Memorial Hall and now adorn the walls on either side of the stairway leading up to the Reading Room in the Memorial Library. They were painted in 1857 and 1858 respectively by the English artist William Gush who had many pictures accepted by the Royal Academy and are regarded as fine specimens of portrait painting. The pictures suffered somewhat in their first position. The side galleries were not supposed to be occupied, but the one next the Ladies’ College was a desirable [undecipherable] of vantage to new girls and somewhat accessible by the side door. Since the picture was somewhat of an interference, a slat had been removed from the back and small slits made in the canvas. Fortunately they were at the lower part, but although carefully repaired later I fancy that most of them could still be found.
Lingley Hall was the centre of the public life of Mount Allison for many years, just as its successor, the Charles Fawcett Memorial Hall, now is. The closing exercises were held there and frequent concerts and lectures. In the days after it was built, lectures were a more popular form of entertainment than now and courses were arranged to come weekly during the winter and spring months. The speakers were mainly members of the Faculty and people of local fame, but through the years many others of wider repute in political and professional life were seen and heard there. Among these may be mentioned Rev. Dr. Douglas, Dr. [P…?], L.A. Wilmot, Joseph Howe, Charles Tupper, Sir Albert Smith, and several of the lieutenant governors of the provinces, Elihu Burritt, the learned blacksmith, and Neal Dow, the prohibitionist of Maine.
In describing Lingley Hall and its part in Mount Allison life one should not omit a reference to the bell which hung in a small tower at the end. This bell was to some extent a sort of common time keeper, and was rung at stated intervals. Since the little tower was not closed in, the bell was exposed to the weather and to the pranks of students who rang it at unstated intervals at the midnight hours to celebrate some special victory or occurrence. These midnight tones were for a number of years a source of worry to the Faculty and to adjacent residents whose sleep was interrupted but were merely manifestations of vigor and spirit on the part of many who are now staid and dignified members of society.
On the building of Hart Hall in 1910, Lingley Hall was cut in two, moved to the end of the football field, enlarged and fitted up as a gymnasium. Its impressive front with its four Ionic pillars which had decorated the face of the hill for so many years stood in its more humble position until a fire destroyed the building in 1920 [Note: The fire was on 31 January 1921].
The only building which remains to be mentioned is the Ladies’ College—the large amorphous structure which occupies the most prominent place at the top of the Mount Allison hill. The old central portion was built in 1854, and is therefore the oldest building on campus. It had then a peaked roof, as can be seen in various old pictures. The present mansard roof with its cupola, adding an extra storey, was put on in 1875. It would take long and it is not necessary to refer to the various changes and accretions. Much of the barns and outbuildings and pig pens which for many years had stood at the rear about where the kitchens now are and distributed over the campus foul odours and wild shrieks of pigs in the moments of hilarity—or in their last agony. The removal of this eyesore—we seem to have no word for earsore—was the beginning of the care for beauty in buildings, trees, and lawns which is one of the glories of Dr. Trueman’s regime, and has made the attraction of the present Mount Allison campus known far and wide.
So much for the attempt to give you some idea of the way in which Mount Allison grounds and buildings have developed. First the 5 ½ acres on the north side of Main street purchased by Mr. Allison for the site of the Academy, then crossing the street to the hill-top for the School for Girls—the Female Branch, as it was called, and Lingley Hall, and later just opposite the Academy, the building of the President’s House and the College; later still the acquisition of the land on which Centennial Hall and the Library now stand, and finally the getting of the large tract across York Street down to the Brunswick House from Mr. George [Bowser?], whose father had occupied a brick house standing where the Residence now is, and who had built for himself the house where I am living. This shows great change and progress and gives Mount Allison a valuable property in the centre of the town.
Conditions of life in the early days were somewhat primitive and crude. In the Academy, New Building, and the Ladies’ College, there were furnaces of hot air which heated the rooms, but in the old Lodge there was no furnace for heating other than the halls and classrooms. Students had small square stoves in their rooms burning wood which they had to carry up and for a considerable time also to saw and split. Of course, stealing wood from each other developed into [undecipherable] a science, and the provident and industrious suffered frequently at the hands of marauding neighbours.
Before the day of electric lights, an oil lamp was provided for each student. At first the student was [undecipherable] to provide the oil from an adjacent shop. Later, lamps brought down to a table in the lower hall were filled by a janitor. They usually came down empty, for any oil left over was found useful in kindling the fire, [as the] wood was often far from dry.
Water was not laid on, but had to be carried in pitcher or pail from a spring on the slope below the Academy, halfway to the present site of the Central Heating plant. Since students, as I mentioned, until the building of the Residence, got their meals in the Academy dining room, the procession going over to supper was often a picturesque one, for many carried pitchers to avoid a special extra trip over to the spring. Of course, some resolved to make few such trips, and there naturally developed constant inroads on the drawers of water, as well as on the hewers of wood.
Such drawbacks and limited [undecipherable] were not felt to be the hardships that one might suppose, for people in general in their homes did not enjoy the comfort and conveniences of the present. In stormy and cold weather they caused some complaining, but in the main, then and later, the unpleasantness was pushed into the background by memories of the high spirits, with a fellowship of a swell group of healthy companions who gathered in each of their rooms for talk and feasts on boxes from home. These were, as Horace says, noctes [undecipherable but likely caenaeque] deorum. It is interesting to note that in Bliss Perry’s autobiography (“And Gladly Teach”), he gives a somewhat similar account of life in his undergraduate days in Williams College—an absence of luxuries and even comforts, and a demand for activity and personal initiative to keep warm and comfortable. He goes on to suggest that luxury is not necessary to study and “high thinking,” and comments on the contrast between the later Williams of Harvard and the earlier, not always to the advantage of the later.
Libraries are now enormously better and a much wider range of courses is offered. These are in themselves excellent things, but after all, much depends on the instructors and the students. Instructors are more numerous and have probably a more precise and thorough acquaintance with some special field of knowledge, but they may or may not have what many of the old teachers had, a broad and sane outlook on life, and the power of teaching students, as Bliss Perry says, “not so much facts about philosophy as to philosophize.” Students too are more numerous, but in these earlier days students were apt to be a small and select group, full of zeal and ambition. This would seem to be wise at Mount A, if we go over the first eight or ten classes that graduated and check up their later success and contribution to their community and country.
Expenses in these early days were small. The total cost of tuition, board and room and laundry was estimated at about $150 per year. After the opening of the Residence in 1894 the expenses rose somewhat, but down to the time of the Great War they were still little more than $200 a year. Probably nowhere else was education of the same grade provided so cheaply as in the Maritime Provinces. After the war with the increased cost of everything, with the fall in the value of money, and with the added facilities of laboratories and accommodation, expenses in general mounted somewhat rapidly to their present position of five to six hundred dollars a year, inclusive. Even this is a small sum for what is supplied in comparison with that demanded in most other parts of the world.
On account of the nearness of the Ladies’ Academy there was in these early days also opportunity to cultivate some of the social graces. Yet the relation between the sexes we should regard as of a limited and restricted sort in comparison with the “emancipated” present. The young women who first came to Mt.A were not allowed off their grounds except under strict supervision of teachers. Only once a week could they go shopping and then were under vigilant and watchful guardians. The daily walks were taken in large groups—the “procession,” as it was called here, the “school [‘croc’],” as the English say, with teachers in charge. For a time, young men were forbidden to take their walks in the direction of the procession, but must go up the road while the young women went down. Cow Lane was, as I mentioned, at all times forbidden territory to male students, as naturally also were the grounds and precincts of the building itself. A huge spruce hedge encircled for a long time the whole hill in front of the Ladies’ College, inside of which the young women could walk and sit as they no doubt reflected sadly in the greatest privacy.
Public reception, to which all students were invited, alternated on Saturday nights with “private” receptions when brothers could visit sisters, or cousins could see each other. Cousin acquired gradually a certain local interpretation for even somewhat remote affinity. The public receptions were somewhat stiff and humdrum affairs at which the entertainment for the couple of hours was conversation and promenading up and down the long, and in places rather narrow, hall which ran through the ground floor of the Ladies’ Academy. In spite of all regulations and restrictions, somewhat of the kind portrayed in Tennyson’s Princess, there was no doubt more intercourse between the two groups than the authorities permitted or suspected. Probably not many of you have reflected that with the dismantling of the old bridge the scene of many clandestine meetings, disappears an ancient centre of sentiment and romance. After a time the old circular rink was built in the hollow below the Anglican Church and rink days came to be looked forward to as allowing a freedom unknown to fall and spring. Still later came the annual sleigh drive which flourished for several years, when each student could hire a horse and sleigh and on a fine winter afternoon take his fair Dulcinea for a drive to Dorchester and Point de Bute. This rare privilege was, of course, highly appreciated and the country road was secured for equipages. Naturally, all were expected to keep in procession with the Principal as guide and chaperone. The return was to be before sunset, but usually some succeeded in staying off or missing the road and did not get back until after the appointed time. I remember hearing of one young lady whose sleigh had been so dilatory that the principal thought he must make of her a warning example, and send her home. She came to his office and pleaded, “O Doctor, do anything to me, scold me, but don’t send me home.” Difficulties and irregularities developed as the years went on, and as the student body became larger, so that Dr. Kennedy (the Principal) decided to have a sleigh drive without the complicating presence of boys. He got sleighs and drivers and took all the girls over to Dorchester. During the trail many of the drivers drank not wisely but too well, and were somewhat incompetent and hilarious on the way back. The whole matter was, of course, much talked about at the time and was made the subject of a long poem, “The Lost Tribe, an Indian Legend” by Scholastikos (S.D. Scott) published in the Argosy for February 1882.
There has been a progressive advance in the amenities of student life at Mount Allison. There has also been a notable increase in the number of students. The preparatory schools have with the development of provincial school systems not so large an attendance as at various times in the past, but the number seeking instruction of university grade has remarkably increased. This is partly due no doubt to the generally higher level of living and comfort in the Maritimes and to better means of communication and transport. But it also reflects the value placed on education by the descendants of the splendid pioneers who settled these provinces.
Nitor in adversum (I strive against difficulty) is not a bad motto, and is likely to develop in the one who lives up to it a fine self [undecipherable] and vigor. This is illustrated by the progress and splendid vitality which we are all proud to associate with Mount Allison.
Mount Allison University Archives. William Morley Tweedie sous-fonds, 5201/3/8/15
May only be reproduced with permission of the Mount Allison University Archives.