LITMIR.BIZ

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He had more privacy in the new home, but in some ways it was not as convenient as their former Philadelphia room, where a neighbor routinely took care of Frances so that Gertrude could get out during the day. Now Herbert babysat when Gertrude had errands or social engagements. Gertrude was not entirely shut in. During the evenings while Frances slept and Herbert studied, she enjoyed the cultural attractions of Philadelphia. She attended lectures and musicals at the Drexel Institute, only three blocks from their apartment.⁸² Nor had she forgotten her scholarly interests. At home she studied English Medieval history, perhaps as Herbert's study mate.

      Bolton plugged away “ under the lash ‘must’ ” in this crowded but companionable setting. “McMaster accepts all my ideas without much comment,” Herbert wrote. “I don't know whether that augurs well or ill. He may tear me to pieces at the end.” In December McMaster accepted Bolton's most recent “batch of ‘negroes’ with the comment that it was ‘ very good.’ ”⁸³ This was where matters stood at Christmas 1898.

      In January disaster struck the Boltons when Frances developed a fever and then severe convulsions. The frightened Boltons, who were loving but inexperienced parents, doused Frances with cold water and called for a doctor who decided that Frances's intestines were inflamed. After two days and nights of nursing, Frances's condition did not improve, although the doctor visited twice daily and Herbert got a woman in to help Gertrude during the day. Then Frances developed hives and a severe cold.⁸⁴ The cash-strapped Boltons hired a nurse. The doctor prepared them for the worst when he said that Frances was “desperately sick.”⁸⁵ Complications set in. Frances's bowels had stopped and poison was building up. Her abdomen, face, and limbs were bloated “fearfully” and her pulse ran at 150 beats per minute. It was “now a question of which way the tide goes.” “We only hope,” Herbert told his brother. “My faith in the result is weak.”⁸⁶

      With everything in the balance and the outlook bleak, on the last day of January the tide carried Frances back to the Boltons. The worst symptoms had abated and Herbert thought that she would survive, although the recovery period proved to be lengthy. It had been an expensive illness, but family members pitched in to defray expenses.⁸⁷

      Amidst the uncertainty and chaos of late winter, Herbert returned to his thesis. McMaster thought that it was better than the work he had seen from Harvard and that it should be published.⁸⁸ With the dissertation approved, Bolton still had to pass his examinations. “I do not see how they can pluck me,” he mused, “but they might.”89 It was not likely that the Penn faculty would “pluck” Herbert at this stage of the game. They had arranged for him to lecture on his thesis before the Professors’ History Club, a group of faculty from Penn and other Philadelphia colleges.⁹⁰

      If he won the degree, Herbert believed, his best opportunity for college teaching would be in a normal school. Sometimes he wished that he had taken pedagogy and psychology like his brother, because it would have given him “a pull” at the normal schools.⁹¹ If he could not get a normal school job, Herbert was willing, even anxious, to teach high school if the pay was good. He was tired of being poor, tired of annual searches for summer jobs, tired of subjecting his wife and child to the inconvenience and risk of a life without money to spare. And while he was sure that he was a good teacher, uncertainty about his other abilities dogged him. “I have never thought I am a whale at originality,” he explained to Fred, “but I always thought I could teach some.”92 Herbert's insecurity in the final stages of his graduate education was natural enough. Like many doctoral students, he had taken in a mass of data and detail and was uncertain about how to digest it. Nor did he know whether his work was worthwhile in the eyes of others. He thought it would take an additional year to turn it into a book, if that feat was even possible.

      Examinations still loomed. He was prepared, but no matter what he had accomplished thus far, a few professors could take it all away from him. Yet the preliminary signs were all there. Bolton had received nothing but praise and recognition at Penn—two prestigious fellowships with an even better one promised, an invited lecture, generous support from a nationally recognized mentor, an office in a national organization. Turner was still thinking about him too. In April Turner informed Herbert that he had put his name in for a position, but he did not tell him where.⁹³ Herbert should have gone into his exams with a high degree of confidence, but like virtually all well-prepared graduate students, he worried nonetheless.

      His anxiety was misplaced. Bolton passed written examinations in economics and European and American history in early May, days of “severe travail,” as he called the process.⁹⁴ The oral examination was the only hurdle that remained. Finally, Herbert could see the dawn coming. At Penn the orals were “supplementary ‘farces,’ ” he told Fred. “Unless I am inordinately asinine on Tuesday, I shall pull through.”⁹⁵ A few days later he reported that he had passed the orals “with no great honor and no bad scars or scares.” Now that the ordeal was over, he was glad that he was “no longer a school boy. That gives me more satisfaction than the degree, (which has depreciated much within 24 hours).”⁹⁶

      But would it pay? Bolton still did not have a professional position, although McMaster had promised him a postdoctoral fellowship at Penn if a job did not materialize. Bolton was understandably concerned about his professional prospects, but he was in a very strong position to compete for jobs. At Wisconsin and Penn he had studied with some of the country's most important historians, who showed confidence in him at every turn. In the early summer, however, Bolton returned to Wisconsin without a job.

      Bolton's fondest hope was that he would land a professorship with his brother at Wisconsin Normal. He expected Fred to help him get it, but there were no guarantees. He sent letters to high schools while teaching a summer institute for teachers in Appleton.⁹⁷ Then a job opened at Albion College, a Methodist school in Michigan. Herbert applied, hoping that his acquaintance with a prominent Methodist minister would help his cause.⁹⁸ Turner wrote for him too. Bolton's reliance on a church friend to vouch for him bordered on hypocrisy. He no longer belonged to the church. The word “church” appears only rarely in Herbert's correspondence with his brother; “prayer,” “god,” and “bible,” were never used. If he prayed for a good job, he never told his brother about it. Any appeals to god during his child's desperate illness likewise went unreported. Nevertheless, Albion called Herbert to Michigan for an interview. Methodist or not, Herbert was “elected OK ,” he wrote Fred. “You fix up the newspaper accts,” he added. “They are going to give me a column here, & [in] Detroit.”⁹⁹ Evidently Fred did more than fix up newspaper announcements, for soon Wisconsin Normal offered Herbert a position teaching economics and civics at $1,000 per year, $100 more than Albion, but $300 less than Herbert had hoped for. So much for Methodism at Albion; back to Wisconsin.¹⁰⁰

      And so it came to pass that the Bolton brothers engineered the perfect ending to their years of struggle. Herbert's salary was small but it was secure, and he hoped for raises. Living near his brother in Milwaukee gave him great personal satisfaction. The feeling was mutual. As Fred wrote many years later, “No two young couples ever experienced greater mutual enjoyment than we did that year.”¹⁰¹ Surely this happy ending foreshadowed many years of contentment for the brother professors in their alma mater. Some happy endings are not destined to last.

      T H R E E · Gone to Texas

      Life in Milwaukee was good, but despite Herbert's happiness in being with Fred, the reality of normal school teaching soon set in. Herbert's teaching load was heavy: four classes in three subjects, while more favored faculty taught only three classes in two subjects.¹ This was a matter of preferential treatment rather than merit, Herbert believed. He had little control over what he taught. “He had to teach what was handed to him at the opening of each term,” Fred explained; “mathematics, economics, ancient history, etc.” Herbert was rarely permitted to teach U.S. history in Milwaukee. He taught in a college, but his colleagues and administrators did not value his hard-earned PhD. What had the sacrifice been for? Institutional life at Normal was riven with pettiness, politics, and the narrowest sort of pedagogical cant, at least as far as Bolton's letters told the story.² Then there

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