Nineteen Hundred and Three: an insignificant year compared to others. Even the important headlines seemed, with a few exceptions, to be not awesomely significant: the Wright Brothers flew 120 feet; the Panama Canal was constructed; the Red Sox won the first World Series beating the Pirates; Henry Ford sent his first Model T down the assembly line; and telegraph messages were sent between San Francisco and Manila.
Far beyond our seemingly protective oceans, France and England signed the “Entente Cordiale”; the King and Queen of Serbia were assassinated by their own people; and in news sadly long forgotten, the Russian town of Kishinev was the scene of a massive pogrom against the Jews while at the same time thousands of Bulgarian men, women and children were killed by Turkish troops.
Terrorism was not conceived in our times.
Historians would later note the births of George Orwell and Bob Hope.
Unchanging into the late Spring, 1903 was by all accounts a pretty ordinary year at Fordham, a relatively small University in The Bronx, New York, then sixty-two years old, having adopted its name from a 17th century Dutch Plantation.
George A. Pettit, SJ, Rector of Fordham’s tree- lined Rose Hill Campus was preparing to dispatch a contingent of young men into society. Unquestionably they attended Mass at the University Chapel, beckoned daily to worship by the unchanged clarion that inspired Edgar Alan Poe to pen ‘The Bells” during his short tenure on campus.
Perhaps they thought of the football team coached by Harry Ely that had beaten Rutgers but was crushed by Lafayette. The following year they would go undefeated.
Perhaps some of the men let their thoughts return to April fifteenth, a Wednesday Evening spent at their Prom at the Waldorf Astoria. We know the names of the Chairman and Treasurer and the Members of the Executive, Reception and Floor Committees for that event and we know that there were 20 scheduled dances: eleven Two-Step’s; seven Waltzes’; and two Lancers’ and an evening-ending romantic waltz, Macy’s Good Night Little Girl, an 1898 hit.
We are denied the names of the young men who nattily attired in the Edwardian fashion of the day reveled that night in April. Those details are lost, important then, yes but now, a hundred years later, even knowing their names would probably be no more than that, names, like the lines from Gray’s Elegy Written In A Country Church-yard: “Full many a Flower is born to blush unseen”.
Obligingly the mists of history do allow us a brief glimpse of that evening: we know that for one man, a Miss Farrell was his partner for two dances and Misses Reilly and Butler for one each and that a certain Miss Hamilton was his partner for six, including the first and the afore-mentioned last waltz.
We know these things from his Dance Card, that anachronistic element of Victorian times, a survivor, perhaps the only one, of that night a century-ago. The gold embossed logo on the leather cover states Collegium Fordhamensis. Opening reveals a charming packet with an attached ivory colored – maroon tasseled—pencil. The pages are not as bright as that night one hundred years ago but the pictures they connote are of vibrancy and happiness, the exhilaration of a young man leaving the shelter of university, entering adulthood and, for that evening, dancing at the Waldorf.
The questions beg:
Who was he?
Was it simply an enjoyable evening?
Was she a sister of a classmate?
Did they meet again?
Perpetual questions.
Fittingly we are denied answers, for the shadows of a century ago stretch far and the riposte will not be found nor perhaps should it be.
What we appreciate is that he preserved the Dance Card and with it the memories it held for him. Perhaps it was that last waltz and then the carriage ride back to Rose Hill.
He has departed this life, though we know not when, and so did all his Fordham Class of ‘03 classmates and, at some time, Miss Hamilton.
Men of Fordham and their ladies - Rest in Peace
Far beyond our seemingly protective oceans, France and England signed the “Entente Cordiale”; the King and Queen of Serbia were assassinated by their own people; and in news sadly long forgotten, the Russian town of Kishinev was the scene of a massive pogrom against the Jews while at the same time thousands of Bulgarian men, women and children were killed by Turkish troops.
Terrorism was not conceived in our times.
Historians would later note the births of George Orwell and Bob Hope.
Unchanging into the late Spring, 1903 was by all accounts a pretty ordinary year at Fordham, a relatively small University in The Bronx, New York, then sixty-two years old, having adopted its name from a 17th century Dutch Plantation.
George A. Pettit, SJ, Rector of Fordham’s tree- lined Rose Hill Campus was preparing to dispatch a contingent of young men into society. Unquestionably they attended Mass at the University Chapel, beckoned daily to worship by the unchanged clarion that inspired Edgar Alan Poe to pen ‘The Bells” during his short tenure on campus.
Perhaps they thought of the football team coached by Harry Ely that had beaten Rutgers but was crushed by Lafayette. The following year they would go undefeated.
Perhaps some of the men let their thoughts return to April fifteenth, a Wednesday Evening spent at their Prom at the Waldorf Astoria. We know the names of the Chairman and Treasurer and the Members of the Executive, Reception and Floor Committees for that event and we know that there were 20 scheduled dances: eleven Two-Step’s; seven Waltzes’; and two Lancers’ and an evening-ending romantic waltz, Macy’s Good Night Little Girl, an 1898 hit.
We are denied the names of the young men who nattily attired in the Edwardian fashion of the day reveled that night in April. Those details are lost, important then, yes but now, a hundred years later, even knowing their names would probably be no more than that, names, like the lines from Gray’s Elegy Written In A Country Church-yard: “Full many a Flower is born to blush unseen”.
Obligingly the mists of history do allow us a brief glimpse of that evening: we know that for one man, a Miss Farrell was his partner for two dances and Misses Reilly and Butler for one each and that a certain Miss Hamilton was his partner for six, including the first and the afore-mentioned last waltz.
We know these things from his Dance Card, that anachronistic element of Victorian times, a survivor, perhaps the only one, of that night a century-ago. The gold embossed logo on the leather cover states Collegium Fordhamensis. Opening reveals a charming packet with an attached ivory colored – maroon tasseled—pencil. The pages are not as bright as that night one hundred years ago but the pictures they connote are of vibrancy and happiness, the exhilaration of a young man leaving the shelter of university, entering adulthood and, for that evening, dancing at the Waldorf.
The questions beg:
Who was he?
Was it simply an enjoyable evening?
Was she a sister of a classmate?
Did they meet again?
Perpetual questions.
Fittingly we are denied answers, for the shadows of a century ago stretch far and the riposte will not be found nor perhaps should it be.
What we appreciate is that he preserved the Dance Card and with it the memories it held for him. Perhaps it was that last waltz and then the carriage ride back to Rose Hill.
He has departed this life, though we know not when, and so did all his Fordham Class of ‘03 classmates and, at some time, Miss Hamilton.
Men of Fordham and their ladies - Rest in Peace
Postscript: I acquired the actual dance card some ten years ago and wrote and published this story originally for the hundredth anniversary of the prom, 2003.
Since then I have uncovered the name of the gentleman; he was a member of a prominent New Jersey political family. I know he married and fathered a number of children. I also know his first wife passed away at a young age. Was she one of the young ladies listed in the card?
Try as I might I have not answered that question.
Perhaps it is best not to.
Thomas I Hayes
2010
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