Word: finleyism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...read with interest your profile on Professor John Finley, and as one whom Mr. Reed (Eliot House, '69) consulted, I would like to correct a quotation which I myself gave him. As it appears in your Profile, Mr. Finley described a thesis as "the length and shadow of a temperament." What he in fact said was "the lengthened shadow of a temperament," a line which typifies hand-homely his well-known understanding of student efforts, besides being an extraordinarily elegant example of iambic pentameter...
There are numberless other inaccuracies in Mr. Reed's Profile, a few of which are the reference to Mr. Finley's white hair (which retains its usual youthful color), the diminished attendance in Humanities 2 (simply false), and the ungrammatical Latin attributed with great unlikelihood to a former student of Norden and Wilamowitz (I pass over the vulgar reply). These allegations need no refutation, but they do seem inappropriate in the year when Eliot House, as now a nationwide community, is celebrating Professor Finley's 25th anniversary as Master...
...hope that Mr. Reed will, when he next speaks of Mr. Finley, recall the benefits of a Master who knows, and cares for, every entrant's name. Cedric H. Whitman Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature
Cloistered Eliot House has only one entrance. The House Committee has to struggle each year to obtain Finley's permission to leave open a gate leading to Memorial Drive. The main archway is guarded, fittingly enough, by a superintendent in a three-piece suit with a gold watch fob. Within this protective and comfortable setting, Finley has become a self-conscious anachronism who, though he may sound like a broken gramaphone at times, serves an important and colorful function as a symbol of Harvard past. He enjoys the role. "I sometimes see myself as a tree under which the arcadia...
There is a story about Finley, probably apocryphal. Out for a brisk morning walk along the River Charles, the Master espied two Cantabridgian fisherman. Flinging his arm up in a classical pose, he saluted, "Salve pescatores." One of the unbelieving townies turned around and growled, "Screw you, Mac." But, after all, Eliot House is surrounded by walls and sheltered by tradition. There are no windmills in the courtyard and the archway is guarded. "He's a proud lion," says one Eliot House senior in a rare Harvardian burst of sentiment. "I respect...