A Dartmouth Professor's Horror Story

In 1934, Alexander Laing (1903-1976), a former Dartmouth English professor and educational services director, co-authored and edited a Depression-era book of gothic horror titledThe Cadaver of Gideon Wyck. Incredibly, the book reimagines both the President and Head of the Medical School at a small rural New England college as corrupt practitioners of the occult who perform secret experiments on unsuspecting townspeople while attempting to convince the scientific community to accept their parapsychological delusions.

Set at the fictional "University of Maine," Laing makes no apologies about the book being inspired by his experiences as both a Dartmouth student and faculty member. Given Dartmouth's history, naturally there is also a subplot involving a state legislator threatening to defund the college. The January 21, 1934, New York Times book review called the work "gruesome," "shocking," "grisly," and an "enthralling mystery yarn told with the skill of a master." It reportedly sold 200,000 copies and was a bestseller. The late-stage-Art Deco frontispiece of The Cadaver of Gideon Wick is also remarkable. It is illustrated by Lynd Ward, who would go on to become well-known in his own right for The Biggest Bear, among other works. The details of the etching accurately depict events of the book.

In a March 1934 edition of The Plowshare, Laing described himself as a former poet whose "first post-college job, in Wall Street, lasted two weeks." "For four years… [he] has held a kind of roving commission on the Dartmouth faculty, teaching no classes, but working informally with undergraduates interested in the arts." He goes on to say "[p]oetry… is still his profession, despite the necessity for supporting his family by more remunerative avocations." Laing mentions nothing about the identity of his secretive co-author, and nothing more would be known for the next twenty-five years.

Upon the 1959 publication of an edited version of The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck the mystery author was revealed to be Dartmouth alum Dr. George Young McClure '25. He passed away December 18, 1960, in Fayetteville, N. C., where he was chief pathologist at the Veterans Administration Hospital. According to his obituary in the November 1961 issue of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, McClure felt that the nature of the books might hurt his medical career, which included researching polio with the New York Department of Public Health and cancer research at Memorial Hospital in New York City.

To see a first edition of The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck from 1934, come to Rauner and ask for Alumni L144c. We also have copies of the 1960 and 1962 editions as well as the Alexander Laing papers (ML-77). Box 43 in particular contains dust jackets and other ephemera related to Laing's writing career.

"Students Ducked at Hanover Fire"

At Rauner, we have some collections of letters that Dartmouth students wrote home from college over the years, and they give an interesting look into what was on the students’ minds in those times, including their perspective on events. One of these students, Frank Whitcomb, class of 1911, wrote to his sister Helen about a fire in Hanover and how he thought it had been misrepresented in the news.

On the night of October 13th, 1910, the Tavern Block on Main Street in Hanover caught on fire. The Hanover fire department rushed to fight the fire. Various Boston newspapers (the title of this post is the headline from the Boston Journal) reported that hundreds of students also rushed to the scene of the fire and fought to hold the nozzle of the fire hose, until the firefighters had enough of the interference and sprayed the students with the hose to keep them away. However, Frank Whitcomb (among other students) took issue with this account, explaining that the students who showed up at the fire were simply “too eager to assists the volunteers,” so the firefighters needed to use the hose to make more room. He also pointed out to Helen that “the hose which did the most of the work of putting the fire out was manned by two students.”

The events that unfolded should have been simple enough, but how the story was told depended on who was telling it. This event prompted The Dartmouth (whose account Whitcomb agreed with) to publish an article calling for a system to ensure truthful reporting of College news.

To read Whitcomb’s letters, come to Rauner and ask for MS-1438. (Or, ask about our other collections of student letters!)

The 1951 ‘Oedipus Mac’ article: A student response to the Korean War

If you had opened up a copy of The Dartmouth one afternoon on April 29th, 1951, you would’ve seen the headline “Oedipus Mac: A Modern Tragedy” in the editor’s section. But, the article wasn’t telling the story of the mythical Greek king of Thebes. Rather, you would know that the “Mac” in the title referred to General Douglas MacArthur, who had a hero’s homecoming the week before in New York as a beloved commander in World War II, but now more importantly in Korea. The article read like a satire and a personal attack on General MacArthur, scandalizing many of its readers and causing them to scrutinize the publication’s student Editor-in-Chief, who was also a veteran. While it was typical to adhere to the patriotic anti-communism of the 1950s, this student response to the Korean War reveals that at Dartmouth, Cold War language was used to interpret and describe issues beyond the ideological matter of communism, bringing seriousness and backlash within the campus discourse.

The Korean War is often historicized in terms of Cold War geopolitics and as an ideological confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States. However, there is growing literature on the fragmented reactions to the Korean War and the different versions of “anti-communism” that were becoming increasingly embedded in social norms, which heavily depended on the local contexts and memories of WWII. For instance, historian Masuda Hajimu has written about how the Korean War served as a catalyst for the materialization of the Cold War for millions of ordinary people while before, he argues, it was a genuinely imagined reality that only existed because people believed it did. Along these lines, what I’m interested in is how the local context of the U.S. university campus (Dartmouth’s in this case) responded to the Korean War as a site of overlapping intellectual and policy activity, which was typical of universities in the 1950s, in addition to being a site of student culture and dissent.

The sociopolitical atmosphere of the early 1950s makes the “Oedipus Mac” article — which was published under Editor-in-Chief Ted Laskin ‘51 — quite audacious in the context. In the satire, both MacArthur’s policies and character were criticized, at one point stating, “as long as he had command in Korea, the U.N. realized that there would never be peace, because MacArthur was the Far East Caesar who dreamed of empire from Hawaii to the Ryukyus Islands.” It went on to call out MacArthur’s belief in “the White Man’s burden and its corollary, the slave psychology of orientals” and referred to “the treatment of Negroes under his command,” citing Thurgood Marshall’s report for the NAACP. It’s clear that besides condemning the U.S’ involvement in Korea, the editor(s) of The D were more interested in critiquing General MacArthur as an individual, despite his national popularity. Furthermore, the references to MacArthur’s racist attitudes and discrimination in the U.S. military indicate that topics such as civil rights, which are often expressed as “domestic” issues and viewed as separate from Cold War thought, actually had much to do with this response to the war in Korea.

Certain alumni were outraged by the article, and many even decided to write to President Dickey complaining about it. One alum in the class of 1909 wrote a letter to the editor of the Alumni Magazine, expressing his “rage and disappointment” not only towards Ted Laskin, but also towards the college administration for failing to prevent the taint to Dartmouth’s name. He questioned, “can Dartmouth men take pride in recent news stories which indicate an active sympathy with Russian Communism?” This reaction is confusing at first as The D article didn’t reference “Russian Communism” at all. However, this alum’s response can be well-contextualized in the emerging notion of “common sense” in 1950s American society, which was that communists, socialists, and leftists were all under the control of Stalin; and with the onset of the Korean War, this perspective crystalized. The growing advocacy for civil rights and labor rights were also perceived to be destabilizing existing social norms and hierarchies, further inflaming and conflating American “anti-communism” (Masuda 2015). In this way, we can see how a critique of General MacArthur, during a time when the U.S. was at war in Korea, was reduced to a “sympathy for Russian Communism” through the logic of one reader. 

By examining this specific incident, it becomes clearer that we shouldn’t understand discourse on the Korean War simply in terms of Cold War geopolitics. One’s local environment and identity need to be considered when historicizing how the Korean War was “experienced”. For example, many African American veterans of WWII condemned the racism and inequality of the very institutions that individuals like General MacArthur defended (Suri 2009). Within the context of Dartmouth’s campus (and I suspect on more college campuses), responses to the Korean War were never about the mere question of condemning or supporting communism, despite the incredible effort by policymakers, administrators, and ordinary people to paint the issue as such. President Dickey ended up writing his own piece for the Alumni Magazine’s June 1951 issue in response to The D’s article and the alumni complaints. In response to that, Ted Laskin wrote a seven page letter directly to President Dickey. What I find fascinating is that this campus saga was ultimately triggered by a student response to the Korean War. And surprisingly, with each letter of criticism towards the student behind the article, it becomes increasingly clear that they did not quite stem from confidence in the American Cold War ideals, but more from an insecurity regarding the institution’s reputation and the ideology it claimed to uphold.

To read the original article and the documents surrounding this controversy, drop by Rauner to look at our copies of The Dartmouth and the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine and ask for DP-12, box 7110, "Criticisms and Suggestions - The Dartmouth."

Bibliography:

Hajimu, Masuda. Cold War Crucible : The Korean Conflict and the Postwar World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015. doi:10.4159/harvard.9780674735941.

Suri, Jeremi. Henry Kissinger and the American Century. Cumberland: Harvard University Press, 2009. doi:10.4159/9780674281943. 

Posted for Rachel Kahng '25, recipient of a Historical Accountability Student Research Fellowship for the 2024 Summer term. The Historical Accountability Student Research Program provides funding for Dartmouth students to conduct research with primary sources on a topic related to issues of inclusivity and diversity in the college's past. For more information, visit the program's website.

Rauner Exhibit: "Creating and Preserving Culture: The Evolution of African American Theater"

During the Spring term of 2024, Dr. Monica Ndounou, Associate Professor of Theater, taught the second iteration of her highly successful course, “Curating Black Theater” (THEA 10/AAAS 32). This class provided its students an opportunity to learn about Black theater history, scholarship and practice in the U.S. and abroad. In the process, students helped develop ideas and curated exhibits that represented a range of formats and platforms. As social media and academe become interdependent in the 21st-century digital era, the course enabled participants to imagine and implement exhibits for the museum as a digital and onsite space where national and international contributions to developing black theater can be shared with the larger public.

The current student-curated exhibit at Rauner Library is one facet of the experiential learning component of the class, which also included a visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., interactive engagement with the African American Museum of Performing Arts in Chicago, and a conversation with Sharon Washington, Tony-nominated playwright, actor, and member of Dartmouth’s Class of 1981. Sponsors of the course included: Rauner Special Collections Library; the Department of Theater, The African and African American Studies Program, the Dartmouth Center for Social Impact; the Division of Institutional Diversity and Equity; the Institute for Black Intellectual and Cultural Life, Dartmouth Libraries, and the Hopkins Center for the Arts.

This exhibit was curated by the members of Associate Professor Monica Ndounou’s “Curating Black Theater” class (THEA 10/AAAS 32) during the Spring 2024 term: Aidan Adams ‘24, Ivie Aiwuyo ‘26, Tamonie Brown ‘24, Julia Cappio ‘27, Makayla Charles ‘27, Godwin Kangor ‘27, Noah Martinez ‘27, Kambrian Winston ‘26, and Justine Zakayo ‘25. It will be on display in Rauner Special Collections Library's Class of 1965 Galleries from July 8th, 2024, through September 28, 2024. Learn more by visiting the exhibit website.

Rambling Boys and Ballads Migrant

In 1889, William Butler Yeats published his poem "Down by the Salley Gardens," based on a half-remembered song he'd heard sung by a woman in the village of Ballisodare, Ireland. The general consensus is that the song was probably the folk ballad "Rambling Boys of Pleasure" (Roud Index 386). The earliest identified versions of "Rambling Boys" in print are dated from the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century. However, our collections have a curious instance of this song that dates even earlier. 

Joseph Goffe was a New England minister and member of Dartmouth's Class of 1791. We have a few manuscripts connected with him -- primarily letters and sermons. We also have his 1783-85 notebook where young Goffe did some accounting for the labor and costs of building a new sawmill in Bedford, N.H. At the back of this notebook Goffe transcribed a few songs, one of which is "Rambling Boys." The manuscript is discussed by the Vermont-based ballad collectors Helen Hartness Flanders and Marguerite Olney in their 1953 book Ballads Migrant in New England, as well as in modern folk song indexes. As far as we can determine, Goffe's notebook represents the oldest surviving version of the song. 

The intentional collection and recording of folklore gained momentum in the 19th century, influenced in part by nationalism and concerns that the lore of rural people, passed along by oral tradition rather than in writing, would be corrupted or lost in a rapidly changing world. While this premise was flawed and led to a lot of questionable academic practices, it also led to a mass recording of beliefs, crafts, music, and other ways that people engaged with their world. Goffe recording "Rambling Boys" at the back of his sawmill ledger established a small fixed point -- how one version of this song went at this specific time, and that a teenage boy liked it well enough to write down the words. 

To see the manuscript, ask for Mss 783626. To see Ballads Migrant, ask for Alumni Alcove F9296bal.

John Locke Corrected

Independence Day seems like a good time to take a look at our first issues of John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. The Declaration of Independence is, after all, an attempt to actualize Locke's philosophy and turn it into a revolution. We have three variants of the first edition of Human Understanding--one printed with two upside down letters "S" on the title page. The "S" looks a little weird, but your brain can't quite figure out why until you look at the other variant and you realize an "S" isn't really symmetrical in most typefaces.

The really cool thing about the copy with the correct "S" orientations is that all of the errata have been carefully corrected in manuscript. Each mistake as identified on the errata sheet has been crossed out with a corresponding manuscript correction in the proper place in the book. Because these same corrections, in the same hand, appear in other copies in other libraries, we are pretty sure they were done by the original publisher. For the upside down S copy, there is one correction we believe to be in Locke's hand.

Now here is the weird thing--we didn't know we had the copy with all of the corrections. It showed up during a big shelf reading project we are doing. Somehow a lot of our "copy 2" books vanished from the catalog and we are (re)discovering treasures in our collections.

To see the corrected issue, ask for Val 121 L793eb copy 2. The upside down "S" issue is Val121 L793eba.

No Such "Thing" as a "Game"

The 1951 Dartmouth-Princeton football game was rough from the start. But its infamy didn't begin to cement until the second quarter, when the star quarterback of Princeton's undefeated team suffered a broken nose and a concussion. Later, a Dartmouth player's leg was broken. Players and spectators began accusing the other side of playing dirty well before the game had ended. Once the battle on the football field was over, it resumed in the media: The Dartmouth, the Daily Princetonian, even the New Yorker. No one could agree what had happened that day—but they had all seen the same game, hadn't they?

Psychology professors Albert Hastorf and Hadley Cantril, of Dartmouth and Princeton respectively, decided to test that very question. In what would become a classic study in social psychology, they showed a group of Dartmouth students and a separate group of Princeton students the same film of the game. Students were asked simply to note any infractions they observed. On average, Dartmouth students attributed approximately four infractions to each team. Princeton students agreed that their own team had committed about four infractions, but they saw Dartmouth make nearly ten. The study even mentions a Dartmouth alumnus who viewed a copy of the film and insisted parts must have been cut out, as he literally "couldn’t see the infractions he had heard publicized." From this, Hastorf and Cantril concluded that "there is no such 'thing' as a 'game' existing 'out there' in its own right which people merely 'observe.'" In other words, no, not everyone had seen the same game.

This was all very nice for Hastorf, Cantril, and the future of psychology, but not everyone enjoyed the aftermath of the game so much. Poor President Dickey, who was busy trying to recover from strep throat, received a deluge of angry, disappointed, supportive, and occasionally bewildered letters from alumni of Dartmouth and Princeton alike. Hiding in one of the two folders full of such letters, we have a familiar telegram from Norris E. Williamson '26:

Preview of Princeton movies indicates considerable cutting of important part please wire explanation and possible air mail missing part before showing scheduled for January 25 we have splicing equipment.

This is the very telegram Hastorf and Cantril quote in their study as "one of the most interesting examples" of the phenomenon they were studying! Williamson was planning to show the film to his fellow Denver alumni, at least one of whom was so distraught over the news of the game that he could not sleep at night. Executive Officer Edward Chamberlain was eager to oblige his friend "Norrie." At the bottom of the telegram is a scribbled reply to Williamson, which Chamberlain would later convey over the phone:

Print whole when sent from here to you via a Printing group—what parts do you think were cut. Can’t understand it. Eddie.

It appears Chamberlain was able to assure Williamson that the tape he had been sent was intact. Later, Williamson would write back to inform Chamberlain that "a good many experts" had viewed the film, and "they all agreed that it was a good game and not as reported in the papers." But whose perspective can we really trust?

To read more impassioned letters about this historic football game, visit Rauner Library and ask for DP-12, box 7114.