Barnard College - Mortarboard Yearbook (New York, NY)

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list of his writings (the entry in the last edition of WHO ' S WHO IN AMERICA lists some eighteen or twenty major titles) but, in a very general way, it may be noted that the bulk of his work falls into two groups; this is aside from a few miscellaneous CHARLES SEARS BALDWIN volumes of essays and the like. The first and earlier group contains a very substantial number of admirable text-books on rhetoric, of which A College Manual of Rhetoric (1902) was the most inclusive and was probably the most widely used; the last of this group was his College Composition (1917). Pro fessor Baldwin ' s interests becoming in the meanwhile increasingly historical, the second and later group con- sisted of a series of histories of the subject: the first of these, Ancient Rhetoric and Poetic (1924), was followed by Medieval Rhetoric and Poetic (1928). During the last years of his life he had been at work on the Rhetoric and Poetic of the Renaissance. In short, Professor Baldwin was not only an accomplished teacher and writer on the present practice of English Composition; he also knew the theory and the practice in all their historical aspects. Few scholars knew more about a subject the full treatment of which Professor Baldwin ' s death unhappily left incomplete. But even more than for his books, Barnard students will remember Charles Sears Baldwin because of his character; of that, though I knew him well for over forty years, I cannot adequately speak. I am sure that all his colleagues and every student whom he taught will go with me in recalling certain outstanding facts; everyone, from his own personal experience, will be able to add a varied and rich mass of detail. He was a fine and scrupulous scholar and, to an unusual degree, a teacher in the highest sense of the word. He was devoted to his profession, and by that I mean that he looked on his work as a calling worthy of his best effort and as something more important than any personal interest; to him teaching was a consecration, never a task, a job, or just another way of life. I think that his personal ambitions were at a human minimum; on the contrary, teaching was to him a ministry wherein he spent himself for truth and for the spiritual, as well as for the intellectual, good of his students. For them, Charles Baldwin had the love of a real priest; and who can doubt that his affection was warmly returned and that his example has been a source of inspiration and strength to the hundreds whom he taught? It is not a little thing to add that in my long acquaintance with him I never knew him to say an unkind, a malicious or a discourteous word; for above all else he was a truly devout man, who lived the beliefs that he held and the faith that he professed. Barnard College has lost a distinguished scholar and a teacher possessed of the highest sense of obligation to his profession and an unwearied love of it. His career as I think it over pictures itself as an extraordinarily high example. Every Barnard student whom he taught should, like his colleagues, be happy in the remembrance of it. William T. Brewster. Page 17

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CHARLES SEARS BALDWIN T is fitting that record should be made, for both Barnard undergraduates and graduates, of the work of Charles Sears Baldwin, in whose death, on October 23, 1935, Barnard College suffered a loss that cannot be made good. He was born in New York City on March 21, 1867. In 1884 he entered Columbia College, from which he was graduated in 1 888 with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. The following year he received his Master ' s degree and in 1894, also from Colum- bia University, the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. He was made honorary Master of Arts by Yale University in 1909 and at the Convocation of 1929 he received from Columbia University the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters. From 1891 until I 895 he was successively assistant tutor and instructor in English and instructor in Rhetoric and English Composition in Columbia College, and he also gave similar instruction in Barnard College. He was then made instructor in the same field at Yale College, where he became, successively, assistant professor in 1 89IB and pro- fessor in 1909. This position he held till 1911, when he returned to New York to be professor of Rhetoric and English Composition in Barnard Col- lege, at the same time also to take charge of his subject in the Graduate School. Aside from this subject, his students will recall his courses in medieval literature and his particular interest in Chaucer. In all this he was active up to February, 1935, when he was stricken with illness. He had sufficiently recovered to be able to resume two of his courses at the opening of the present academic year, and had conducted them for about three weeks before his fatal illness. Professor Baldwin was one of the foremost teachers of English Composition that this country has had, and his writings on the subject are authori- tative. It is unnecessary here to give a complete Page 16

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TRUSTEES CHAIRMAN JAMES R. SHEFFIELD 80 Maiden Lane VICE-CHAIRMAN MRS. OGDEN REID 15 East 84th Street CLERK LUCIUS H. BEERS 25 Broadway TREASURER GEORGE A. PLIMPTON 70 Fifth Avenue MRS. ALFRED MEYER 1225 Park Avenue GEORGE A. PLIMPTON 70 Fifth Avenue NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER Columbia University ALBERT G. MILBANK 15 Broad Street MRS. OGDEN REID 15 East 84th Street MISS MABEL CHOATE 770 Park Avenue JAMES R. SHEFFIELD 80 Maiden Lane LUCIUS H. BEERS 25 Broadway MRS. HENRY WISE MILLER 450 East 52nd Street GANO DUNN ....80 Broad Street MRS. ALFRED F. HESS 875 Park Avenue PIERRE JAY I Wall Street HARRY EMERSON FOSDICK, D.D 490 Riverside Drive WINTHROP W. ALDRICH 18 Pine Street FREDERIC RHINELANDER KING 18 East 48th Street F. BAYARD RIVES 3 I Nassau Street LINDSAY BRADFORD 22 William Street MRS. EUGENE MEYER 1624 Crescent Place, Washington, D. C. MRS. PAUL STRONG ACHILLES 520 East 86th Street (Alumnae Trustee 1933-1937) MISS MABLE PARSONS 230 Central Park West (Alumnae Trustee 1935-1939) Page 18