All Scholars

[Numbers following quotations are from Time Remembered.]

Alston Hurd Chase’s paternal and maternal ancestors arrived in America in the early 1600s. He counts Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase among his family members. His father owned a hay and coal business for a time before working as a clerk for the Boston and Albany Railroad. Chase described himself as an “odd, solitary boy” whose home had no radio and whose father’s distrust of movies led Chase to the world of books. 

          After graduating from Andover, Chase entered Harvard, intending to be an English major, but the beginning Greek class Carl Newell Jackson (1875-1946) “determined my entire future.” (94) and steered him to Classics. It also began a somewhat fraught relationship with the man who was initially supportive. Of the Latinists, Chase took a Tacitus course from the “truly formidable” Albert Andrew Howard (1858-1925), who died the following summer. (91) Howard’s successor as Pope Professor of Latin was another Andover man, Clifford Herschel Moore (1866-1931), who was also dean of Arts and Sciences (1925-31), which compromised somewhat his teaching preparation but Moore recognized Chase’s energy and abilities.

          Following graduation, Chase exchanged one Cambridge for another. On a Lionel de Jersey Harvard Scholarship, he considered Cambridge University to be inferior to Harvard; only the historian Frank Ezra Adcock (1886-1968) seemed up to the standard of Harvard lecturers. He returned to Cambridge, MA, where his teachers included the young Mason Hammond (1903-2002), Milman Parry (1902-35), and John H. Finley (1904-95), just beginning their careers. At the conclusion of Chase’s coursework, Jackson suggested that he write his dissertation on the grammar of Thucydides. Chase rejected that suggestion and instead wrote on a topic suggested by the future European art historian Chandler Post (1881-1959), who was beginning his career as an assistant professor of Greek. Having completed all requirements in 1930, Chase became the youngest student up to that time to receive a Ph.D. in Classics. Jackson, for whom Chase had once been “a favorite” had turned bitterly against him and cast the sole vote against offering Chase a faculty position.  

      With Moore’s support, Chase was hired by the department as resident tutor at Leaverett, teaching 20 to 24 hours per week at Harvard and Radcliffe, a job he maintained until 1934. Among his Harvard students were the poet and translator Robert Fitzgerald (1910-85), the archaeologist Paul MacKendrick (1914-98), and the critic Harry Levin (1912-94). Though he had published two articles despite his huge teaching and service load, and the senior professors generally favored extending Chase’s employment, Jackson still opposed him on the basis that his “background and personality were not suitable for Harvard.” (149) Chase thought that scholarship was “boring” and when it was clear that he would not be kept on, he wrote a letter to the Harvard Crimson dated January 31, 1934, decrying president James B. Conant’s (1893-1978) emphasis on publication. “Scholarship pure and unapplied is the game of a certain class, and such scholarship in a faculty is of no more ultimate importance than the powers of the university football team.” (157)

Also facing joblessness was his colleague J.F.C. Richards (1897-1992), who had completed his term as tutor in 1936.  Richards had scheduled an interview at Andover and Chase asked to accompany him for a visit to his alma mater.  While there, Chase spoke briefly with Lionel Denis Peterkin (1888-1957), who had himself been released from Harvard two years earlier. Peterkin was now chair of the Latin Department at Andover and Chase remarked that if the school did not hire Richards, he would like to be considered for the job. When Peterkin told the new (1933) and “impulsive” headmaster Claude Moore Fuess (1885-1963), Chase instead of Richards.  

      Andover quite suited the conservative Chase, not only because he did not have to publish to keep his job, but because the students, nearly all from “good families,” were required to act at all times as gentlemen. Students were given a long leash for out-of-class time, but the rule was “freedom tempered by expulsion.” (168) In the coat-and-tie classrooms there was an inherent connection between dress and conduct. Chase felt it was his responsibility in addition to teaching the language to prepare students for the real hardships of life, his favorite being Aeschylus’ pathei mathes, by suffering comes knowledge. He compared his classrooms in Bishop Hall to Ithaca, “a rough land, but a goodly nurse of men.”

      Chase joined the Army Air Corps to aid in the war effort but was subsequently hobbled when he split his heel jumping off a truck. He passed his copious idle time translating Livy and Homer. 

      After the war he returned to the privileged gentlemanly world of Andover for the next 26 years. Chase was old school, complaining “I hate all change” (284), so the “strange aberration of the 60s” (168) in his view led to “our decadent society” (433).  He thought the present methods of dealing with student misbehavior “are producing a nation of self-pitying semi-psychopaths” (370). 

      Chase’s enduring contribution was his role in A New Introduction to Greek.  In the late 1930s, his nemesis Jackson approached him and his counterpart at Phillips Exeter, Henry Phillips, Jr (1903-90). Jackson had long intended to write an introductory Greek textbook but realized that his age (mid to late 50s) and other responsibilities would likely prevent him from following through. Moreover, Chase and Phillips had excellent laboratories for testing the value of anything they produced: What made the presentation “new” was the introduction of the so-called -μι verbs, few in number, but essential verbs meaning to be, to go, to say, to give, and so on.  Previous Greek textbooks had postponed these verbs to the last few lessons because of their irregular forms. A collateral issue was that the authors of these textbooks had to make up sentences using other often less common verbs, postponing real Greek sentences until the later chapters. Jackson’s scheme was to introduce these verbs early, which had the added advantage of allowing more readings from ancient authors earlier. As it happened, Phillips had already been collecting sentences from ancient authors that demonstrated various grammatical constructions. Chase was responsible for writing the grammatical exposition in each chapter (illustrations were subsequently added by Sterling Dow). They used their materials in class until they were ready for the first printing, which the authors paid for themselves. A second revised edition was published in the same way, but after five years of teaching, testing and proving they submitted the third edition to Harvard University Press in 1946. It became the standard introductory Greek test through to the end of the century. The two coauthors continually revised the book for the next 15 years. 

In the late 1940s Chase felt there was no version of the Iliad that was accessible to students. He and a former Harvard student, William Graves Perry, Jr. developed a plan: Chase would make a literal translation of the poem and Perry would peruse other translations and edit theirs for style. The result lost the majestic tone of Homer and was eclipsed by numerous translations in the 1960s. 

      With the success of what was universally known as “Chase & Phillips” it seemed appropriate to produce a second-year reader. A New Greek Reader was derived in part from Wilamowitz’s Griechisches Lesebuch (1902) in that it included readings from seldom read authors. Harvard Press agreed only to publish it in offset.

      Following the success of his Greek text, Chase decided to do the same for Latin on his own. He spent the summer of 1956 writing Latin text, grammar exercises and vocabulary. He distributed mimeographed copies in class, gave copies to colleagues to try, and revised accordingly. Unfortunately for Chase, another student of Jackson, Frederic Wheelock had been testing his own Latin exercises at Brooklyn College since 1950. His Latin: An Introduction Based on Ancient Authors appeared in 1956 and by the time Chase’s book appeared in 1959 Wheelock’s was already the most popular upper-level Latin introductory text in the country.

      Chase retired from a very different school than he had entered in 1934. He considered the 1960s “the most disgraceful chapter in American education” (438-9). The departure of his admired headmaster, Fuess, brought on John M. Kemper whom Chase despised for turning out spoiled narcissists instead of gentlemen and methods of dealing with problems “are producing a nation of self-pitying semi-psychopaths.” (370) His retirement must have come almost as a relief.