Messenger - Vol. 2, No. 3, Page 20 Summer 1993 Tales told out of school Yvonne Gause Shilling, Delaware '59, lives with her husband, Matthew, Delaware '57, in Providence, R.I., where she teaches advanced English as a second language to foreign graduate students at Brown University. President of the World Affairs Council of Rhode Island, she was recently named to the Executive Board of the National Council of World Affairs Organizations in Washington, D.C. She speaks seven languages, translates, interprets, participates in theatre groups and is an avid cyclist. A retired teacher, Matthew is a self-described "fanatical" sailor who haunts the Mediterranean and Caribbean and crewed on one of the Tall Ships last summer. By the time I entered the University of Delaware, I had pursued art and music studies, married, had a child and was at least five or six years older than my fellow freshmen. I nonetheless donned the A&S '59 dink, basked in the anonymity of a married name and planned to go my private way in spite of all sorts of illustrious relatives who preceded me at the U. of D. There was my mother, Catharine I. Dougherty (Gause) '25, first member of the Women's College to be awarded the French prize for further study at the Sorbonne and yearbook editor (later to be named Outstanding Alumna in 1975); my uncle, State Sen. Harry G. Lawson '06, author of the Delaware "Fight Song"; my mother's older brother, Paul R. Dougherty '16, a brilliant engineer and one of the youngest undergraduates on campus; and two other heady academics, cousin Zadoc A. Pool III '47, and my brother, F. Gregory Gause Jr. '51. I was duly instructed by all of the above to announce my connections and make contact with favorite professors of yore. Delaware was a small place then. My mother insisted I immediately seek out her good friend and contemporary, Dean Francis H. Squire, her fondest mentor; W. Owen Sypherd, English professor emeritus; and her beloved French teacher, George E. Brinton. This I had no desire to do and put off my mother for at least a year. At every opportunity, she asked if I had spoken with Dean Squire or Profs. Sypherd and Brinton, and I begged off, pleading time constraints, and promised to get to them soon. By then, I was doing fairly well on my own, making Dean's List with a 4.0 average each semester. I had won the freshman English prize, passed the reading knowledge test in three foreign languages, tutored the football team in English and revived the long-dormant Athenaean Literary Society, while holding forth with my coterie in The Scrounge for hours and co-authoring (with Rosemarie Battaglia, Delaware '58) the infamous Counterfeit Tales. A Chaucer remake, Counterfeit Tales cast "full nine-and-twenty" members of the English Department staff as hapless pilgrims "in Newarke at the Deere Parke as they lay." This gem later burst into song as The Chanterbury Tales and can be rendered by certain cognoscenti to this day. I had made my mark and could now approach the sages with impunity. Dean Squire I would definitely see next week. But The Review reported Squire was off to England for a semester of research. I had missed him by days, but assured my disappointed mother I would get to him immediately on his return. But Dean Squire never came back to Delaware. He was tragically struck down in mid-life while pursuing his studies in Great Britain. When this shock wave subsided, I set my sights on Prof. Sypherd, long familiar to me as a child, frequent guest in our home and popular speaker at my mother's AAUW meetings in Wilmington. But many years had passed and Sypherd to me was the Untouchable. One of the truly great masters of the English language and biblical scholarship, he was a mystical presence in the college library with eager students and young faculty constantly in his thrall. No way could I march up to him and say I was his favorite student's daughter. So what? You could set your watch by Sypherd. Just before 1 p.m., he would make his way through the west wing of Memorial Hall, a hectic time with everyone leaving lunch and heading for afternoon classes. This one day I rattled on too long in The Scrounge and found myself on a dead run through the library on my way to Prof. Clift's ancient history class in Hullihen Hall. I was late. So was Prof. Sypherd. The library corridors were virtually empty, and as we converged in the rotunda, I had Wilbur Owen Sypherd all to myself. Perfect time for the great talk. But, Prof. Clift would be starting her lecture, and anyone with his druthers knew that if you missed Evelyn Clift's lecture, one huge, inimitably delineated chunk of history was forever lost. It could never be regained, even if you repeated the whole course next year, because Eve Clift didn't repeat herself. Her lecture was fresh and fascinating each day and you could not afford to miss a minute of it. For a fleeting moment, Sypherd and I were eye to eye, and I almost launched into conversation. He smiled. I said, "Good afternoon, Dr. Sypherd," and flew off to join Eve Clift and her good friend, Assurbanipal the Second. Prof. Sypherd died peacefully in his sleep that night. My mother was devastated by Sypherd's death and reminded me for months that I never even told him who I was. To poor Prof. Brinton fell the unpleasant surprise of having me charge into his office early next semester and blurt out, "Prof. Brinton, I've got to talk to you before you drop dead!" He jumped up from his books and said, "Young lady, I don't know who you are, but let me be the first to tell you I have no intention of dropping dead, now or in the immediate, or even distant, future!" He was right. He had far too much work to do. Also a Slavic language expert, at the moment he was putting an English translation of Crime and Punishment back into Russian so he could see how close he came to the original text. He was delighted to know I was "Kitty's" daughter. He was even more delighted that he felt he was, indeed, capturing the Dostoyevsky spirit. We had a great conversation for hours, most of it in French. He told me how disappointed he was that my mother had not gone on to study in Paris. It was too much of a giant step for a woman in those days of 1925. She finally made it there on a U. of D. alumni trip in 1976. And I, many years later, tried to put a Lermontov poem back into Russian, inspired by G.E. Brinton and his ever-inquiring mind. They're all gone now-my mother, Dean Squire, Sypherd, Brinton and Clift, and just about all those wonderful English professors, having shuffled off to Canterbury once and for all. Anna Janney deArmond (who is still with us) was the "Wif of Bath." There were Madame "Weygantyne," the "manly-man to been Augustus Able," "no parfum swich as that of Rose-in-berry" (also still with us) and our Pulitzer Prize professor, Robert Hillyer, "in all his lyf, not bolde enought to show it, he was a verray parfit, gentil poet." I wish I had not been so young and brash, passing up the chance to relive my mother's sparkling Delaware days with Profs. Squire and Sypherd. I remember Prof. Brinton's parting shot as I left our first-and last-meeting and he exhorted me to come back again and often. "I will," I promised. He looked up from his books and smiled. "I won't stake my life on it," he said. -Yvonne Gause Shilling