ROSE JEFFRIES PEEBLES
1870 - 1952
Rose Jeffries Peebles came to Vassar College
in 1909 as Instructor in English. She had
graduated from Mississippi State College for
Women, and had taught there as well as in
preparatory school and in junior colleges in
Arkansas and Kentucky. At that time she was
completing her doctorate at Bryn Mawr.
Twenty—nine years later, in 1938, she retired
from the college as Professor of English and,
for the five preceding years, Chairman of the
Department.
Her field of special scholarly interest was
prose fiction, medieval or modern. Her doctor's
dissertation on the romance of Longinus was
part of the wide-spread work of interpretation
of Arthurian legend which went on in the first
quarter of this century, and remains the
authoritative study on its subject. Her work
on the romance cycles never ceased, and
occasional articles - A Note on Hamlet, 1916,
The Children in the Tree, 1927 - found their
way into print. Others were written and never
published.
The real outlet for Miss Peebles' scholarship
was the classroom. There her activity as scholar
and teacher, through three decades, brought
into existence our present courses in prose
fiction and together with her wide European
contacts supported the interest in comparative
literary studies which her colleagues Professor
Marian P. Whitney and Professor Winifred Smith
were developing in their fields of German and
Drama.
Even her first years of teaching at Vassar were
notable. The richness of her inquiring and fear-
less mind, and the unique balance of warmth and
detachment, serious grace and humor in her per-
sonality brought new life to basic required
courses. In 1912-13 she first offered a course
in "English Metrical Romances, especially those
of Germanic origin, and the development of the
Arthurian legend". This course changed gradually
first into "The Romance in English Literature
ROSE JEFFRIES PEEBLES (Continued)
from its beginnings to the present time",
then into "The Romance..with emphasis on its
importance in the development of the novel".
By 1923-24 three courses had grown from the
original stock: "The English Novel from its
Beginning to George Eliot", "Prose Fiction" -
an advanced course, and a seminar: "Studies
in English Romance". Alumnae of the mid-
twenties remember with excitement the sense
of independent adventure and creation which
radiated from these courses. The seminar
especially represented Miss Peebles' deep con-
viction of the rightness of sustained, advanced,
independent work for all students, the plodding
as well as the brilliant. From the belief in
this kind of work throughout the college, and
from the students’ response to it, came the
incentive for the publication of the Vassar
Journal of Undergraduate Studies; from it too
came in part the plans for the new curriculum
of 1928 with its assumption of the students‘
maturity and readiness to carry on specialized
study with a background of adequate knowledge.
Miss Peebles' interest in romances and novels
and in her students‘ responses to them and to
life was not a secondary, trained and academic
matter but a primary and temperamental taste.
All human activity - thoughts, feelings, doings -
absorbed her. Everybody's story, anybody's story,
received her sympathetic scrutiny; her patience
with student-problems and story-problems alike
seemed endless, in spite of the incisive
criticism with which she could, when she cared to,
terminate stupid or egotistic talk. But those
who worked with her knew that much of her
tolerance was simply one aspect of her irre-
pressible zest to "explore further", no matter
what the fatigue or the disagreeable results
of that exploration might be. She gave no
impression of physical daring or of unusual
energy, but her appetite for experience, direct
or vicarious, her delight in life and her power
to receive it through her senses and imagination
was inexhaustible.
Her classroom connections with her students and
colleagues were only a small part of her relations
with them. She gave them hospitality with unlimited
ROSE JEFFRIES PEEBIES (Continued)
generosity; the house at 123 College Avenue
where she and Professor Edith Fahnestock kept
open house for successive college generations
of Vassar students and teachers stands for an
often neglected aspect of the academic life -
the illustration of the intellectual life as
a way-of-existence, rather than the precept
alone. There was good fortune in that house, to
be sure; but there was also knowledge of the
world, and involvement in many kinds of non-
academic work; there were people comin back
with the results of their lives‘ joys and sor-
rows, and there was always harty and profound
laughter to set the perspective right. These
friends lived so that it was plain to see how
the academic life, lived with eager minds and
rich sympathies, makes its followers deeply
human, fruitful, and satisfied. At the end of
her life, after fourteen years of retirement,
Miss Peebles was able to say clearly that her
life had been happy, that she had done what she
wanted to do. This ripeness it has been Vassar's
privilege to share in.
Respectfully submitted,
Helen Lockwood
Mary Sague
Barbara Swain
XIII - 306-307