Dreams of the Red Chamber

Dreams of the Red Chamber -- Encountering the Eliots

Ying QIAN

Encounters with historical persons, just like encounters in our present-day life, are often serendipities. My encounters with the Eliots happened just after I came back from China's summer to step into Boston's autumn. Boston's beautiful cityscape evoked wonder and reflection, for I could not help contrasting it with my recent memory of the pollution, disorder and lack of urban beauty in China's Luo-yang, where I spent part of the summer. I went to Luo-yang with a well of historical imagination inside me. It was the most ancient capital of China, where Confucius and Laozi conversed about philosophy, Sima Qian bid farewell to his dying father and promised to continue writing the grand history, and our poet prince Cao Zhi became enamored with the beautiful Luo river goddess. Yet I went only to discover that a city associated with so many beautiful moments in our early history is no longer beautiful.

Beauty is, however, a much contested concept. For one thing, it does not have practical use; for another, the standard of beauty changes with culture, fashion, concepts and the public media. To have a judgment concerning beauty is almost the same as to hold a prejudice inappropriate in today's multicultural world. Plus, some would argue, beauty is only a superficial problem. The real problem lies in economic inequality. Boston and Luo-yang are at two different stages of economic development. How could Luo-yang be beautiful if its economy did not allow for renovation and preservation, and the chief concern of its people is still to secure moderate material well-being? Beauty, impractical as it is, has to wait for economics.

This is all very well, but a mere second thought brings doubt to the above argument. First, beauty does not have to be a capital intensive product. It does not cost much, for instance, to change shop signs. Luo-yang is in my memory a city drown in a sea of ugly, big shop signs with careless handwriting. Signs indicating a noodle shop just fifty meters away cover not only blank walls but tree trunks and rocks. This explosion of signs in competition for their conspicuousness definitely dwells in a bad equilibrium. To change this chaotic scream to a more civilized and controlled chorus is doable even in a poor country like China. Second, beauty, useless as it may seem, might be one of the pre-conditions for economic success. The existence of a public space where one can retain historical imagination, can run into beauty when one turns at a corner, brings dignity. Beauty gives one a sense of conviction, and so pleasurable it is that one can labor, struggle, and wrestle with the harder, more suspicious aspects of life, all the while searching for ways to replicate this sense of conviction -- to find meaning and happiness. Development economics has in its textbook all sorts of multiple equilibria situations, where coordination failures among community members cause the economy to spiral down to a lower equilibrium. A community needs a common ground, a successful precedent of cooperation. A beautiful urban space testifies to people every day that the tragedy of the Commons could be solved somehow.

The problem then becomes, can we get the shop sign changed? It seems dictatorial at the first sight. Democracy and market economy are about decision-making individuals rather than a regulatory body, and there is tremendous value in giving this decision power to the individual. But at the same time the "public good" nature of initiating any social change means market and democracy are not enough. The initiation of an urban renewal project, for instance, is a public good, because it will benefit all members of the community without exclusion, but to initiate something means to say something extraordinary, to advocate for a new concept, and that often involves social and effort costs to its initiators and spokesmen.

So from the contested notion of beauty I am about to enter another contested notion -- "the elites." The ideal of democracy seems to be at odds with the existence of the elite class, for the government is supposedly of the people, for the people and by the people. But ruling by the people is sometimes problematic, just as the provision of public goods is sometimes problematic. The mass, observes C. Wright Mills, is atomized; they are not organized for concerted political action. Each individual lives his own private life, and the confines of such a life limit the individual's view. He lacks the vantage point from which to see the whole of the social system: its movements and interactions. Needless to say, the civil society, partial associations in forms of clubs, societies and interest groups, all help the individual to participate in political actions. Yet even these societies need a group of leaders who could transform an aggregation of isolated units into a solid unified group. Democracy does not preclude elites per se, though democratic ideals place some requirements on the character, formation, and inclusiveness of the elite group. We value social mobility and want an elite group that includes people from all backgrounds. How well our society does to a large extent depends on the mechanism that delivers the spokesmen and initiators, and the character of these activists determines how serious the agency problem inherent in delegating power is.

With concerns for beauty and for the elite group I turned to the history of Boston, hoping not only to find out how the design of the urban space was supported and carried out, but also to inquire what kind of persons constituted the elite class. It was after just a couple of pages of reading that the name Charles Eliot came up. There were, in fact, two men under the same name. Charles W. Eliot was the president of Harvard University between 1869 and 1909, during which he revolutionized the American higher education system. The old Harvard dwelled in a mimicry of European classical education, but Harvard under President Eliot became an American university delivering leaders in all worldly professions. His son, Charles Eliot, became landscape architect and initiator of the metropolitan park movement in Boston after graduating from Harvard. It was through reading their journals, biographies, and letters that I started to become familiar with the character and ambitions of the social elites in 19th century Boston. The character was transparent, optimistic and morally consistent; and the ambition was to be useful to their fellowmen. Though they certainly belonged to a privileged class and had opportunities that others could not have, they used their opportunities well, and their initiatives and public service contributed to America's advancement in many realms.

The Boston elites in the 19th century had the stigma of inherited aristocracy. They came from a small circle of families, and their last names indicated their linkage with both the old wealth of the mercantile families and the moral authority of the congregational clergy. But it would be wrong to think they were all wealthy and important. In the case of Charles W. Eliot, very few of his ancestors were office-holders and congregational ministers who constituted the colonial upper class. The family fortune was founded quite late by Charles' grandfather Samuel Eliot, and for that he deserves some mentioning. Samuel was born into a family of quite limited means, and the situation worsened when Samuel's father died, leaving almost nothing to the widow and four children. The mother, being a woman of unusual fortitude and wisdom, managed to raise and educate all four children. Samuel went on from the Boston Latin School to apprenticeship in a large mercantile house, and before he was thirty he already took over the retail branch, and started amassing his fortune in trade. Besides a successful businessman, Samuel Eliot did considerable amount of charity work, sometimes impulsive -- as when he redeemed the debt of everybody who was being held in the Debtors prison; and sometimes more far-seeing -- as when he gave twenty thousand dollars to Harvard College to establish a Greek professorship.

Charles' father, Samuel Atkins Eliot, was born in this new wealth. He entered Harvard College with the class of 1817, and also finished Divinity School, but instead of becoming a minister he went to Europe for two years of travel and study, during which he acquired much knowledge of music, skills in singing, and a great interest in gardens, parks and playgrounds. He then returned to Boston, entered into politics, served as the mayor of Boston between 1837 and 1839, and then went on to the State Legislature and to the Congress. At that time elective offices started to pass out of the control of people with inherited wealth and social position, so men of this class turned to the direction of charities and quasi-public institutions to make a social impact. Samuel A. Eliot succeeded in introducing music into the public schools of Boston -- probably the first American city to have that, and was at one point in charge of the "Prison Discipline Society," pressing for prison reform. He was the first president of the Boston Provident Association, one of the earliest lay organizations for visiting and relieving the poor.

Plato in his Republic predicted that moral degeneration would often happen to rich families, as the founding fathers diligence became dissipated in their progenies due to indulgence in luxury. This did not seem to be the case in the Eliot family. The sequence of the merchant grandfather, politician father, educator son, and architect grandson reflected the change in the character and vocation of the elite group, and pointed to virtues that transcended generations. Charles W. Eliot was born in 1834, carrying an ugly and unconcealable birth-mark on his face, a deformity that affected the boy quite a lot as he grew up, requiring him to have confidence and strong character. The boy nevertheless grew up happily, for the Boston in which he grew up was just in full swing of the so-called "New England renaissance." Bostonians believed in their own country and city, and instead of looking back to a lost golden age or looking forward to a better time, they lived in their own time and loved it. They had won their political independence, established republican institutions, and they had faith in them. The liberal doctrine of Unitarianism had established itself in most of the churches throughout eastern Massachusetts, in Harvard College and in good society. People believed the seed of divinity in each individual, and trusted that human nature was really endowed with potentialities of spiritual beauty. There was indeed this fascination about beauty, and with this conviction the soul-searchings and spiritual agonies that had been the essence of religious earnestness in other times and different societies were replaced in Boston by virtuous living and an eager practice of philanthropy. Born into all these, Charles W. Eliot shared with his day the moral consistency and public spirit. Graduating from Harvard with the class of 1853 at age 20, he chose a career as a teacher for science. In a letter to his mother, he justified his choice by writing about its usefulness to others as well as its joy to himself. Education was important to him--he believed that the very maintenance of the free republican institutions depended on the education of the people, and only the intellectual progress of the people could make safe the possession of national power and wealth, and contend against "the monstrous vices which follow in the train of liberty and luxury" (James, 1930, p. 65). He also envisioned the usefulness of science in developing the natural resources of the country.

Between 1849 and 1854 Charles was teacher of chemistry in Harvard College and the Lawrence Scientific School, the science division of Harvard. Harvard, like other American universities at that time, offered an education centered in the classics, religion, history and rhetorics. There were electives in modern languages, mathematics, and chemistry, but the number of such offerings was meager and the teaching elementary. Charles advocated for reform, especially in teaching of science, and drafted a plan for the Lawrence Scientific School, where he proposed a course of instruction comprising of a regular system of required recitations and exercises in mathematics, chemistry, physics, physiology, botany, zoology, physical geography, rhetoric, French, German and drawing. As such, students would be required to have a broader preparatory training before they specialized. Charles' proposal caused violent objections from the faculty, resulting in the denial of professorship to Charles. This incident shows the conservative atmosphere in American universities at that time. Charles left Harvard but he was resolved to continue as a teacher. He taught at MIT, for which he declined a good job offer in business -- the offer was so lucrative that his rejection of it became well-known. Many respected Charles for his devotion to teaching, and agreed with his reform ideas. In 1869 when the tide of reform in higher education started to turn, Charles was selected to become the President of Harvard University. He remained in this office until 1909. In these forty years he oversaw a complete transformation of the institution. Existing professional schools in law and medicine expanded enrollment tremendously, new professional schools were established, including the business school in 1907. Contents and methods of teaching were improved to encourage students' creativity rather than provide ready-made answers. The University stopped being a place for classical training and book learning. It led the development of science and applied science and trained students to become leaders in all professions.

The revolution in American higher education that happened in Charles W. Eliot's time had enormous consequences. The University became the power house for advancement in science, both social and natural, contributing to America's overall economic superiority. Needless to say, this movement was driven by the increasing demand of trained professionals in the labor force as the economy developed. But similar to the chicken and egg problem, the movement in education also drove technological advancement, thus creating more demand for educated professionals. Perhaps without Charles W. Eliot the movement would still have happened, but one thing was certain--that even if it were not Charles W. Eliot, it had to be someone like him, who understood the function of the University in delivering happy and useful people to the society, and was determined, passionate and eloquent to win the approval of the Board of Overseers and the faculty. In his "Harvard Memories," Charles wrote about the uncertainty and randomness with which reforms took place. The process could be disturbed very easily. But in his "Harvard Memories" he also wrote that the tradition of Harvard was a determined spirit of public service.

It was this spirit of public service that Charles Eliot, the landscape architect, inherited from both his father and his education at the Harvard class of 1882. And both father and son shared an unquestioned fascination with beauty. The father with the beauty of the reflective soul and knowledge, and while he justified the science curriculum by quoting its economic importance, he loved science not for its immediate use but to understand nature which, he believed, was a superb creation by God. The son besides all these had another fascination, that with the physical space enclosing our daily activities. Public squares, gardens and surrounding natural sceneries serve as places for enjoyment of the open air, for jovial social intercourse, and for mutual approachment of all classes. It was seen, in a republican light, as a beneficent and instructive gymnastic school for mind and body. The junior Charles Eliot believed in the importance of securing natural beauty for the generations to come. Starting his office for landscape design in 1886, by 1890 he already sought actively the means of preserving the natural sceneries through the work of the society. He proposed to establish an incorporated association, composed of citizens of all towns in Boston, and empowered by the State to hold small and well-distributed parcels of land free of taxes, just as the Public Library holds books and the Art Museum pictures. He wrote many letters to social organizations and important persons to advocate for this institution, and in these letters he wrote about the value to the people of beholding natural beauty, and the increasing need and difficulty for a city expanding in population and activity to preserve its natural environment. He observed that individuals and social organizations would probably be happy to purchase scenes of valuable character for dedication to the use and enjoyment of the public, provided that they were fully assured that their contributions could be properly used, and the lands presented by them be carefully preserved for the purpose. It was exactly for this reason that he called for the creation of a Board of Trustees of Public Reservations, and argued that the existence of such an organization, endowed with the power to hold real estate free of taxes in any part of the commonwealth, could stimulate individual contributions. With this mechanism of social accumulation, men who happened to own suitable lands could also occasionally pass them to the trustees by will. A public hearing was held on the proposed incorporating act before the Judiciary Committee of the Massachusetts Senate, on March 10, 1891. Due to Charles' advocacy, hundreds of people attended the hearing, and the speakers in favor of the act were numerous. The act passed both houses without difficulty, and when the standing committee of the Trustees of Public Reservations was established, Charles served on the committee.

New social mechanism has to be advocated by those who were passionately dissatisfied with how things are, and designed by those who could understand the true causes of the problem. Charles Eliot had both the passion and the insight. In 1892, Charles Eliot became the leader in the metropolitan park commission to draft a report on the preservation and development of Boston's pubic areas. A meticulous map was made by him and the team, covering every public area in need of preservation within ten miles from Boston. The plan was comprehensive and systematic, paving the way for the building of various city parks in later days. Boston was one of the first few cities in America that approached its cityscape with a systematic design.

Encountering Eliots was a beautiful detour for me. I intended to inquire about the system, instead I tapped into dreams and day-dreams of private individuals. And there is so much to read about. The Eliots, like many other men of letters at the turn of the century, wrote in volumes. They believed in the power of the written words, and showed their affection to friends through frequent correspondence. Perhaps there was a sense of "self-importance" in this drive to commit everything to writing, but this sense of "self-importance" certainly had benefited the society if feeling important meant wanting to take more responsibilities. After all democracy is about "self-importance," about individuals providing diverse services to the society. Perhaps the transparent, harmonious, and optimistic personality reflected in the writings of the Eliots would be considered unsophisticated and unrealistic, for today's world suffered two world wars and saw grave inequalities. Indeed the present day political science and economics analyze the role of elites as a "principal-agent" problem in which the demo, i.e. the principal, has to guard against the abuse of power by the ruling elite class, i.e. the agents. This approach is realistic to some extent, and it is self-fulfilling. The agents now could try to use their political and social power to advance their own interest without being blamed, for the system is supposed to prevent abuse from happening. But there is no complete principal-agent contract. The completion, instead, is found in private dreams, dreams that transcended Harvard's red chamber.

(The author is a Ph.D. candidate in the Economics Department of Harvard University.)

References:

1. Eliot, Charles W. Charles Eliot--Landscape Architect, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York, 1902.

2. Eliot, Charles W. Harvard Memories, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1923.

3. James, Henry. Charles W. Eliot--President of Harvard University, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York, 1930.