CODLINE’S CHILD—WILBERT SNOW

By Sally Rowe Joy

As a member of the Maine Poets Society, it was recently my pleasure and privilege to retype and help update the organization’s promotional brochure. I discovered in the previous version the names of several (mostly deceased) poets named as “honorary members” of the society. I was not familiar with three of
them: Wilber Snow, Harold Vinal, and Harold Trowbridge Pulsifer.

Checking URSUS online to see what the State Library had by or about these men, I learned, first of all, that Mr. Snow’s name was not “Wilber” but “Wilbert.” Actually, it was “Charles Wilbert Snow,” but he went by and wrote under the name “Wilbert Snow.” I wondered if this was a proofing error last time around or if perhaps those working on the last version of the brochure had also been unfamiliar with the man and his work. The state library has several books of his poems. I opted to borrow his Collected Poems, which includes most of the work that is in the others, and one of their three copies of his autobiography, Codline’s Child. The autobiography is a thick book (489 pages), but the time I invested in reading it was time well spent.

Published by Wesleyan University Press, it was written at the request of the Wesleyan Class of 1927. At their fortieth class reunion in 1967, they voted to give their Alumni Fund contribution that year to Mr. Snow to be used to write his life story and to pay for clerical help to get it ready for publication. He indicates in the foreword it was expected to be a one-year assignment, but it had actually taken him several years to prepare. URSUS lists the copyright date as 1974.

Charles Wilbert Snow was born on White Head Island, which he describes as being “at the western entrance of Penobscot Bay in the state of Maine.” The date of his birth was April 16 of either 1883 or 1884. He believed it to have been ’84. His father was unwilling to call for the doctor when Wilbert was born, because he hadn’t yet paid him for “the last time.” That is why a local midwife, whose name was Codline Foster, attended the birth. The only reference to “Codline” in the book is the brief passage telling of her assistance at his entrance into the world.

Wilbert’s father was an avid reader with a preference for history, biography, and economics. He believed that dinnertime should be used for discussions of politics and current events. This was part of Wilbert’s life for as far back as he could remember. His father “started out as staunch Republican” but in his later years had great interest in Eugene Debs and Socialism. Wilbert’s own political affiliation was with the Democratic Party.

When Wilbert was seven, his family moved to Spruce Head so that the children who were old enough could attend school. His interest in poetry began there, when he discovered in the attic of the family’s home a book entitled Swinton’s Sixth Reader. This was a book filled with biographical sketches of American poets, each one followed by examples of the poet’s works. On rainy days, Wilbert used to go up to the attic and read the poems aloud. The poets included Bryant, Poe, Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, and Lowell. After a time, he began to try writing poems of his own, a “resolve” that he carried out for the rest of his life. The primary focus of his poetry was the Maine coast and its people. He made a conscious decision not to use dialect in his poems, observing that writing in dialect too often reduces “character to caricature.”

When Wilbert was in his teens, his mother decided to stay three-quarters of the year with her mother in Thomaston so that her children could have access to better schooling. Wilbert and his brother Frank started high school there. Frank was more interested in socializing than studying and didn’t stay in school long. Wilbert, however, stuck it out and reported that he was the first person from Spruce Head to graduate from high school. Several friends and family members rented a hay wagon drawn by two horses in order to attend his graduation.

That summer he worked boxing stone at the Spruce Head Island Quarry. He, and the others doing the same work, received $1.35 for a nine-hour workday. When he questioned why the stonecutters were paid $2.80 for an eight-hour day, he was told it was because they had a union. He suggested the laborers organize a union of their own. He was quickly told by those in charge that his services would no longer be needed.

His next job was teaching school for $6 a week in a school that was a three-mile walk from his family’s home. After that, he taught at a school in Owl’s Head, where his pay was $7 a week, but he had to pay $3 per week for board.

The following summer, he attended a National Education Association meeting in Boston. On his way, he stopped at Bowdoin College and took the entrance exam. It was a rash move, considering that he had no money; but he was determined to further his education.

Tuition to Bowdoin at that time was $75 a year. When he arrived on campus the next fall, he had $100, $50 of which he had saved from his jobs and $50 that his father had given him, even though the family could ill afford for him to do so. By the time Wilbert had paid half his tuition and bought his books, his finances were essentially depleted. He was able to work while attending school. Even so, during the second semester, he was very concerned that he would not have enough money to complete the school year.

He accepted a job teaching high school in South Thomaston with the stipulation that he be allowed time off to take his final exams in June. He passed them all. He did not expect to be able to go back for his second semester the next fall but intended to work and save enough money to return later.

While he held this teaching job, he attended a Maine teachers’ convention in Bangor where he heard a speech by William DeWitt Hyde, the president of Bowdoin, which impressed him greatly. On his train trip home, he discovered Dr. Hyde was in the same car and sitting alone. He worked up his courage to go to him and tell him how much he had enjoyed his speech. In the conversation that followed, Wilbert was asked about himself. He said he had completed his freshman year at Bowdoin and was working to earn money enough to continue his studies there. Dr. Hyde asked him about his grades. Five days later, Wilbert received a letter from Dr. Hyde, telling him to come back to the college where he would have a scholarship that would “take care of a good share” of his expenses for the next three years.

He was later awarded the very first Longfellow Fellowship and attended Columbia University for graduate study.

He had a lifelong interest in politics. He spoke out in favor of a minimum wage law and federal insurance for deposits before our country had either. He sincerely believed that government should always be about the business of making life better for its citizenry.

He taught school most of his adult life, almost exclusively at the college level as soon as he was qualified to do so. The list of schools includes New York University, Bowdoin College, Williams College, Reed College, the University of Utah, and Indiana University. He was dismissed from at least two colleges because his political views and his interest in local issues made him controversial. The schools were concerned that financial support might be adversely affected by his presence. These same traits, however, made him an excellent coach for the schools’ debating teams. He attempted to teach those he coached that facts were more important than eloquence.

He was fired from one position before his first semester had officially begun. The President of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, asked him to report ten days early to “settle in.” At the end of the ten days, he was offered $80 to “pack up and go home.” The president was new to his position and concerned that Wilbert was going to be “a boat rocker.” Wilbert accepted the $80, feeling hurt and confused.

As he started to leave the room, the president called him back and asked him if he would use the school’s recording equipment to “read onto a record” his poem “which begins ‘The leaves are dead.’” The president said he liked it and thought he might “like to turn it on and listen to it now and then.” He had the equipment in his office and produced it as soon as Wilbert agreed to do what he asked. This seems to me a very gracious concession on Wilbert’s part.

He headed east, unsure of what he would do next. A short time later, he received a telegram from his sister, telling him that he had been invited to go to Alaska as a teacher and a reindeer agent—a rather odd combination. He accepted the position and was there a little over a year, teaching at an ungraded school for Alaskan children. There were twelve students when he started, but as the seasons changed and more families moved into town for the winter, the number grew to thirty-eight.

Back from Alaska, he taught at Indiana University, leaving there to serve as a U.S. Army artillery captain during World War I.

In 1921, he was employed by Wesleyan University. He taught there for thirty-one years, until he reached “mandatory retirement age” (sixty-eight). For a long time, however, the school renewed his contract for only a year at a time—again because of his political views and interests.

He was a member of Middletown Connecticut’s Democratic Town Committee for fifteen years and a member of the school board there for more than thirty years. An elementary school, still in operation there, bears his name. He also served nearly a full term as Lieutenant Governor of the State of Connecticut—the last three weeks serving as Governor when the incumbent left to begin a term in the U.S. Senate.

In many ways, he can be seen as a “late bloomer.” He was approaching his thirty-eighth birthday when he got married. He does not indicate whether or not his wife was close to his own age. They had five sons and lost one to a brain tumor, but he does not say when the boy died or at what age. He also does not give a clue as to whether his wife was still living while he was writing the book. These seem like significant omissions in an autobiography.

In 1937, he had a sabbatical leave and was offered an opportunity to go to China to give a series of lectures on American life and literature at a university in Chongqing. Although he knew it was something he would very much enjoy doing, he and his wife decided he should decline. Instead they bought a trailer and made a cross-country trip with their children. Not long after that, they purchased land on Spruce Island (Maine) and spent summers there. The first of these summers, they lived in a tent. Before long, however, they had reasonable living quarters, and he had a separate small building to serve as his office. He spent the early morning hours there each day working on his poetry, but the rest of the day belonged to his family—this long before “quality time with family” had become a catch phrase in our society.
Wilbert Snow died at Spruce Head Island on September 28, 1977, at the age of ninety-six.

His name does not appear in the updated version of the Maine Poets Society brochure. The decision was made to eliminate the names of those (mostly deceased) honorary members (Laura Richards, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Robert P. Tristram Coffin, Wilbert Snow, Harold Vinal, Harold Trowbridge Pulsifer, and William Cohen) in favor of some well-known current members of the society. Robert Chute, Herb Coursen, Arnold Perrin, Baron Wormser, and Annie Finch have graciously given us permission to use their names. I was totally in favor of adding them but the last one to agree to the elimination of the others, several of which have pleasant associations for me. And I’m really pleased to have been nudged to seek out information on Wilbert Snow. It has been a most enjoyable pursuit.

(The content of this essay relies mainly on Codline’s Child: The Autobiography of Wilbert Snow. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, c1974.)

Copies of the Maine Poets Society brochure with membership application are available from Sally Joy, P.O. Box 2194, Augusta, ME 04338-2194.  

 

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