27
JANE JENKINSON SWENARTON
1889 — 1965
Professor-emeritus Jane Jenkinson Swenarton, for twenty-eight
years associated with Vassar's Department of English, died in
Poughkeepsie on August 12, 1965.
Writers of memorial minutes tend to exaggerate the good qualities
and achievements of the dead and to forgive or forget the imper-
fections, if such there be. Lead is transmuted into gold, and
gold into the raiment of angels. Portraits emerge so distorted
that like some modern paintings the subject is not recognizable
except by those who have read the teacher's manual.
Jane Swenarton was not an angel. If the conceit may be forgiven,
like the rest of us, she was part this and part that; in short,
she was a human being.
Disliked heartily in some quarters, she disliked heartily in
return.
She could be short, sometimes rude, but never unconsciously rude,
and ready to take umbrage at the least offense, imagined or not.
She was not a rebel but she did believe in standing on her own
feet and being counted.
She never sought security in the protective coloration of those
in authority. She had nothing but contempt for a "you—don't-
know-on-which-side-your-bread—is-buttered" policy. She spurned
those who were silent until tenure freed their minds and loosened
their tongues.
She was a woman of convictions and looked down her nose at those
whose two-fisted resolution of issues was "On the one hand ---
Now, on the other hand."
Honest with herself and with others, jealous of her independence,
and willing to express her honest, independent thought, she devel-
oped to high degree the fine art of making enemies.
If Jane Swenarton was difficult with many of her contemporaries,
she was not so with her students. Here she was admired and
respected as she herself respected them. Her strength lay, not
only in her knowledge and in her capacity to communicate, but in
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JANE J. SWENARTON - continued
a genuine and abiding interest in these young women; and many
letters from old students who wrote to her at the time of her
retirement testify to her influence and to the quality of her
teaching as she led them to a critical appreciation of Shakes-
peare or James Joyce or Virginia Woolf.
At Skidmore College where Miss Swenarton taught before coming to
Vassar, the Class of 1923 dedicated its year-book to her. In
the course of a page-long appreciation it was said: "There is
no one more closely in touch with student interests and acti-
vities than she, and to no one do we owe more gratitude . . .
she has made English courses fascinating for even the least
literary of us."
Unable to go on to the Ph.D. because of limited financial
resources, Jane Swenarton finally received her doctor's degree
in the form of an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Wilson
College in 1956. Following her retirement here, she spent a year
in Europe, and upon her return, accepted a position at Wilson as
a John Hay Whitney Teaching Fellow. In awarding the honorary
degree it was said: "To the disciplines of mind which have made
her so perceptive a scholar and critic, she adds other qualities
even more invaluable to the creative teacher-—a refreshing sanity
of outlook, an engaging humor, imagination tipped with fancy, and
an enthusiasm which ranges with delight over a great many sub-
jects--including her students."
The affection in which the students at Vassar held Jane Swenarton
is suggested in a jingle (and this is one of many) composed in
the manner of A. A. Milne by the students in a Shakespeare class:
Jane, Jane, Swenarton, Swenarton,
What will you do to we?
The tales that we've heard,
The wails that we've heard,
Make us afraid of an E.
Jane, Jane, Swenarton, Swenarton,
Have mercy on such as we,
We’ve studied the bard
So long and so hard
That we need some sympathy.
JANE J. SWENARTON - continued
Jane, Jane, Swenarton, Swenarton,
Treat us as if you were we,
For after Miss Bacon
We may be vacatin
For all eternity.
Jane, Jane, Swenarton, Swenarton,
That Shakespeare is great we agree,
But our love for him wanes
When we think that it gains
Us only a D or an E.
Jane, Jane, Swenarton, Swenarton,
We ask it on bended knee;
Take a little for granted and
Know that we've panted
Over this poetry.
Jane, Jane, Swenarton, Swenarton,
Lend a willing ear to our plea.
Only one tiny line
And a second of time
Will turn an E to a B.
(And oh ! the difference to we !)
Again, difficult as she could be at times, Miss Swenarton
was not without close and devoted friends. Gathered from
Smith College where she was graduated with a Phi Beta Kappa
key in 1911; from Erie, Pennsylvania, where she taught school
for the first time; from Columbia where she received the
Master's degree; from Skidmore and Vassar, she knew these
friends, as they knew her, with confidence, intimacy, and
loyalty. It was friendship in the best sense of that word
and a relationship in which the foibles, strategems, and
poses of superficial social life had no place. There were
not many here who knew her intimately, but those who did
valued her for her integrity, her knowledge, her understand-
ing, and her forthrightness.
Jane Swenarton was widely read and had a fine knowledge of
English literature and the English theater; she was familiar
with the biographies or memoirs of many English and French
women of unusual character or achievement; and she read German
literature in German with ease and enjoyment. But she was
not a productive scholar in the sense that she wrote books
and contributed articles to the journals. She had once
aspired to the creative life and she wrote many poems and
short stories but none of these was ever published. She
30
JANE J. SWENARTON - continued
worked for years on the Journal of a great aunt who had made
the grand tour of Europe early in the 19th century; no pub-
lisher was willing to take it. Earlier, she had written
a play which was published by Samuel French; later she was
to wish that it had never seen the light of day.
The classroom was her forte. Here she was at ease, here she
was happy; here it was that she did her best work. Possessed
of a clear and penetrating mind and a wealth of knowledge,
versed in the techniques of scholarship, and skilled in the
use of the Socratic method, she was able to make of her
classes a true means to education. Aware that all education
is self-education, it was her desire, not to instruct, but
to lead her students to instruct themselves, and to know the
worth of that instruction.
For many years before Jane Swenarton retired from Vassar
College she suffered from arthritis. For years she lived a
life of pain. For years she sought relief from physicians
both at home and abroad, but to no avail. As her condition
deteriorated, it was clear that for her the test of courage
was not to die but to live. Bent and full of pain, she fought
against overwhelming odds to live a normal life, attending
lectures and concerts and the Experimental Theater's plays,
visiting friends, absorbed in her books, keeping her mind
sharp and shining.
Except for the passing of time itself, time heals most wounds;
but for her, time brought only an increase of pain, debilita-
tion, and despair. In the hospital for the last time, she
gave up, her courage gone, and knowing that the end was
iminent. The flame of determination was quenched and there
remained only helplessness, hopelessness, a loneliness which
nothing--no word, no act, no presence-—could assuage.
Mercy came, bringing death.
Christine Havelock
Helen Wheeler
C. Gordon Post, Chairman
XVI 261-263