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ARTISAN REVIEW
most residential areas of the city, one could walk about even at night
without fear of attack.
It
was not noisy and crowded as it is now. But it
was a neighborhood without hope; it promised no future. Our apartment
house was more solidly constructed than the building in which we had
lived on Bank Street - it was built in a more substantial era - but its blank
faryade was latticed with water stains and rusting fire escapes which were
an invitation to burglars. A few months after we moved into our fifth–
floor apartment, we were robbed of all the mementos of my younger life
which I had brought with me into marriage: my infant ring with its ruby
birthstone, my infant locket and chain, the green enamel lapel watch my
father had bought for me at the Paris Exposition of 1925, the old Russian
earrings which had once belonged to Lionel's father's grandmother,
which he had given me as an engagement present.
Hunter was not new to Lionel; he had been teaching there when we
met. At this period in the century it had a questionable reputation: ap–
pointments in the college were said to be in the gift of Tammany
Hall.
The night session in which Lionel was now teaching was even less self–
respecting than the day session. Most of the evening students had full–
time jobs and came to class weary and unprepared; they were in college
not to learn but in the vain hope that merely having a college degree
would give them the possibilities denied them in the life into which they
had been born. The college faculty was cynical and bored; working in an
atmosphere of political patronage, it had lost whatever intellectual energy
it might once have brought to the profession of teaching. Teaching in the
evening session, one was paid by the hour and not paid if one failed to
meet a class. If I remember correctly, Lionel's pay was $3.65 an hour for
his undergraduate class and a bit over $5 an hour for his graduate course–
graduate classes ran for an hour and a half Should an insufficient number
of students register for a course, the course was dropped. When it looked
as if Lionel's graduate course would be undersubscribed, I and two of our
friends registered for it; it was worth our investment of $45 to ensure that
the course was given. I have often been asked why I have never taught. I
did teach, for one evening at Hunter when Lionel was taken
ill;
we could
not afford to lose his evening's pay, and I taught in his stead. I had no
problem with his undergraduate course.
It
was a course in composition,
and I read aloud a story by Katherine Mansfield; then we briefly discussed
it. His graduate class was what ended my teaching career. The subject that
evening was Ruskin. As a student of art history, I had read one or two of
Ruskin's essays, but this had provided me with far from a sufficient
knowledge to teach him. I planned to read at least one other essay on my
ride downtown, but unfortunately I met an old friend on the bus and was
prevented from doing this preparation. There were only three students in
