Copey Moves Out

The word goes out: "Copey" will hold his Monday Evening on Wednesday instead of Thursday. Up swarm Harvard undergraduates to No. 15 on the top floor of antique Hollis Hall in the Yard. The room is not large; there is scuffling and grunting as places are found on furniture, windowsills and floor. Cigarets and pipes are lit. The small, bald Boylston Professor of Rhetoric & Oratory fidgets a hit, adjusts his spectacles. Some one coughs. He glares, fidgets some more, waits for silence. Then Charles Townsend Copeland begins to read aloud in a flexible voice, sympathetic with anything from Ring Lardner to Alfred Lord Tennyson.

"Copey's" Monday Evenings are never to be forgotten by those who have attended them, be he a plain Tom Jones or Bob Brown or one of the famed Copeyites who include Heywood Broun, Robert Benchley, Walter Lippmann, Conrad Aiken, Thomas Stearns Eliot, John Dos Passes, Robert Emmett Sherwood, the late John Reed, the late Alan Seeger, the late John Macy. There is a Charles Townsend Copeland Association, with members all over the world. Every year it brings "Copey" to the Harvard Club in Manhattan, where he reads to a group which may include John Pierpont Morgan, Thomas William Lamont, George Palmer Putnam, Owen Wister. Two years ago "Copey" retired as Professor Emeritus. In his wry, quavering, sprightly voice he spoke of a horse that was "old. lame, spavined, moth-eaten, blind in one eye, and with ears drooping. However, it seemed peaceful and contented. That horse, gentlemen, was Emeritus!" But Professor Emeritus Copeland went on giving readings in Hollis 15. . . .

Last week there was news for all Harvard men who had looked forward this autumn to climbing the creaking stairs to "Copey's" two small bachelor chambers. Vacationing in New Hampshire, he announced that he was moving out of Hollis 15, where he had lived for 20 years. The Harvard Corporation had promised him the rooms as long as he should want them. But "Copey" is 72 now, the Yard is noisy, the stairs harder to climb than they used to be. For the past two years his doctor has been urging him to move to an apartment where meals could be prepared for him under his own roof.

Sad as Harvard felt over "Copey's" change of residence, there seemed in it a larger significance. It marked the passing of a style. A newer generation of pedagogs, at Harvard as elsewhere, has eschewed picturesqueness for briskness, practicality and scholarship. Younger savants have degrees aplenty. Charles Townsend Copeland did not bother; the A. B. he earned in 1882 was enough for him. It was fun to be cantankerous and crotchety, teaching Harvard men to write good prose, scaring them when they were late or noisy. The scaring sometimes stuck, too. Shambling Heywood Broun once went. up to Cambridge to report a game. He planned to leave directly afterward to get his copy back to New York. He wished to visit "Copey" so he went to Hollis 15 in the morning. His old Professor waved him out querulously: "Go away, Heywood. Come back at 5:30 this afternoon." Said meek Reporter Broun, "Yes, sir," and lumbered downstairs reflecting glumly that he would have to spend the night in Cambridge, telegraph his copy to New York.

Many a non-Harvardite visited Hollis 15: John Barrymore, Christopher Morley, Alexander Woollcott, Henry Major Tomlinson. Henry Van Dyke, and the late Mrs. Fiske who received a famed note, "Minnie: Come to Copey's" and came forthwith. To young fellows "Copey" could be crushing. Two years ago saucy Tom Prideaux, editor of the Yale Literary Magazine, went up to look at Harvard. He visited "Copey," who stared at him and said: "Young man, I trust you are not planning to write any sketches." To an impertinent youth who suggested a headline to describe a fire : "Hollis a Holo caust, Copey a Crisp," he countered, "Nonsense ! 'Copey Crisper Than Ever.' " Once Professor Copeland was nearly at a loss. It was discovered that an old Harvard rule permitted the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric & Oratory to keep a cow in the yard. Young Harvard whooped, dashed out to buy "Copey" a cow, was with difficulty restrained.

Copey" likes Palestrina, New England, mustard-colored suits, Kipling, Dickens. He envies Manoel Garcia, who taught singing until his 100th year and then became a cigar. Copey phobias are drafts, coughing, lateness, being photographed, being asked to write prefaces to books by former pupils, and fire. He always swore that Hollis was a fire trap.

But in all his 20 years there "Copey" would let no electricity be installed. Nor would he permit the ceiling to be repainted; candle and lamp smoke had given it such a fine patina. In later years "Copey" found it difficult to get the right sort of lamp chimneys, but he never gave in, and it was always by lamplight that he said, punctually at 11 p. m.: "Good night, good night, please come again."

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