Hiking in Australia's Blue Mountains, I remained convinced that I am right to have a new focus for my writing: my own little corner of the world. That's Andover, Massachusetts. Plenty here to contemplate, try to understand, put into words, stories. Phillips Academy headmaster Claude M. Fuess (1885-1963) liked to think and write about how closely the life of the school was bound up with that of our country. I would like to think and write about how closely it was bound up with that of our town. P.A. strove to "eradicate provincialism," Fuess wrote in An Old New England School (1917). A rare-book and print dealer who used to have a shop in Andover once complained to me that P.A., if searching for rare materials, never thought to consult with him. His interpretation: he was too local. Too provincial. In writing local, I am hoping not to make the same mistake: missing what's right under my nose. William Blake's "To see a World in a Grain of Sand" line comes to mind.
P.A. was concerned about provinciality from its start on April 30, 1778, the first day of class for its student body of thirteen boys, whose age range was six to nearly thirty. (Founder Samuel Phillips and the school's first principal, Eliphalet Pearson, were each age twenty-six.) "In order to guard against any tendency to allow it to degenerate into a local or provincial academy," Fuess wrote, "they ... provided that a major part of the Trustees should not be inhabitants of the town in which the institution was located..." That was easier said than done, however. Of the first board of trustees, six of the twelve were Andover residents. What is more, the boys lived in a system of boarding houses kept by private families in town. There would be no dorms for P.A.'s first fifty years.
To be continued.
P.A. was concerned about provinciality from its start on April 30, 1778, the first day of class for its student body of thirteen boys, whose age range was six to nearly thirty. (Founder Samuel Phillips and the school's first principal, Eliphalet Pearson, were each age twenty-six.) "In order to guard against any tendency to allow it to degenerate into a local or provincial academy," Fuess wrote, "they ... provided that a major part of the Trustees should not be inhabitants of the town in which the institution was located..." That was easier said than done, however. Of the first board of trustees, six of the twelve were Andover residents. What is more, the boys lived in a system of boarding houses kept by private families in town. There would be no dorms for P.A.'s first fifty years.
To be continued.