Letters Home
by Ginger Cain
Students beginning their college careers at Emory this year bring to mind a collection of letters in the archives written by a student who began his own career a century ago last fall, September 1908.
Students entering the College that year paid tuition of $30 per term. Board, consisting of “good and wholesome food,” cost $9 per month, and room, including fuel and light, cost $11. Freshmen were required to study biblical literature, European history, rhetoric and composition, Latin, Greek, French or German, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, botany, and physical education, then known as “physical culture.” The freshman class consisted of seventy students, all men since Emory College did not become coeducational until 1953. Sixty-six of them hailed from the state of Georgia, with two from Alabama and one each from Florida and Louisiana.
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William Lyle Bryan, known as Lyle to his family and friends, was born in Dalton, Georgia, and wrote home regularly during his four years in the College. He was interested in all the usual things that concern college students: grades, sports, roommates, social life, friendship. Throughout his freshman year Lyle was worried about his grades, and in April he revealed his strategy for helping keep those grades up:
Dear Mamma,
[1909—before Apr 18]
I send you my composition which I want you please to correct and return at your earliest convenience.
The following week he confessed his growing obsession about making not just good grades, but the best possible:
Dear Mamma,
[1909 Apr 18]
I got my composition alright and send many thanks for the corrections of same. I copied it again and handed it in. I hope it will get a good mark. Marks are my fetish.
When he was a junior, Lyle developed a sudden and nearly allconsuming interest in campus activities:
Dear Mamma,
[1911 Mar 19]
The student body has gotten up a new system of government. They are to have a student body government and have a president and everything done by committees . . . I am anxious to get into politics and be a leader of men. I crave power . . . I am going to use that same degree of skill to land what I want in politics that I have used to lead my class in marks. Sometimes I get so wrapped up [with] ambition that I [can] hardly sit still. I just feel I have got to do something.
So far, our student of 100 years ago has revealed that grades are his fetish and that he craves political power. He also writes occasionally of his social life, or lack thereof:
Dear Mamma
[1908 Nov 15]
Tell Papa that I said that college life wasn’t what it was made out to be. It is a great deal of hard work and very little pleasure. I haven’t been to anything since I have been here and haven’t spoken to a lady except the [college] matron since I have been here. One has to study out of self defense from loneliness.
In perhaps the most poignant series of letters, Lyle reflects on the larger meaning of his college experience:
Dear Mamma,
[1909 May 17]
What do you think of this question. . . . Do you think that to win [the highest honors] it [is] worth it to relinquish all hopes of debating honors [and] athletic honors and confine oneself to that one pursuit. I contend that it is and I believe that I would make nearly any sacrifice to get it and be the fourth man to ever make it, but lots of the boys say that it is better to make a lower grade and take part in everything. . . . My ambition [and] pride tell me to sacrifice all and make first honor while the boys say to be more of an all-round man. But I believe that there is nothing to equal the idea of graduating with [highest honors] written on your diploma and to have all the underclassmen during your senior year to look upon you as one grand [fellow].
By his junior year, perhaps because he had those high marks well in hand and perhaps because he was beginning to realize that he was indeed missing something, he wrote:
Dear Mamma,
[1911 Mar 19]
There is something else in college life besides marks and that something I have missed to a large degree. I am finding it a hard row to try for highest honors. I made the mistake that a fellow [doesn’t] need many friends . . . but this year I have been trying to become more popular. Boys like a fellow better who takes more interest in their sports [and] now that I have time, I want to do it.
William Lyle Bryan compiled quite a college record. He was a member of the Few Literary Society, its champion debater and president; a member of the Alpha Epsilon Upsilon honor society and on the Honor Roll every year; a commencement speaker as a junior and senior; winner of the physics medal as a sophomore and the mathematics medal as a junior; editor-in-chief of the Emory Campus yearbook as a senior; a basketball team member every year and a relay race team member for two years.
It is reassuring to know that he did seem to find some meaningful balance in his college experience, making excellent grades while also excelling in sports, debate, and campus life. Lyle Bryan graduated from Emory College in 1912, taught school, served in the military, attended law school, practiced law, and founded a life insurance company.
Though his letters are a century old, many of the things he wrote about must be similar to what today’s students communicate by email, text message, Facebook, and cell phone. Lyle’s recognition that there must be something to college life besides grades points to the transformative nature of his four years here. His letters link our time at Emory to his own and reinforce the idea that the college experience is not just about school but also about service, not just about intellect but also about imagination, not just about the mind but also about the heart.
Ginger Cain is Emory University archivist.