ALICE DOROTHEA SNYDER
1887 - 1943
The Faculty of Vassar College wish today to express
their profound sorrow and sense of irreparable loss
in the untimely death on February 17 of Alice Doro-
thea Snyder, their friend and colleague for thirty
years. The facts of her distinguished career as stu-
dent, teacher, critic, and widely recognized authority
in the difficult field of Coleridge scholarship have
been published and will be preserved in the Faculty
records. Vassar College is proud of her achievement.
But our words today are in commemoration of her place
in our hearts.
Most of all we shall remember her as a person of com-
plete integrity, who said what she meant and meant
what she said. Her intense mental life never sepa-
rated her from other people, for her thought and her
feeling had united in a sincere conviction that the
duty of the American scholar was, in the words of
Emerson, to "put forth his total strength in fit
actions”, although her path to that conviction was
not Emersonian or mystic, for her personal philosophy
was founded on that of John Dewey. In action, she
was not rash or extreme, but always prompt, steady,
undiscouraged and unwearied. A great part of her time
outside the classroom went into arduous committee work
in the interests of better education, social justice,
and good government. For a person of such swift and
brilliant intellect, she had unusual patience with
the slow and often wasteful procedures of democracy.
Since she had a gift for clarifying confused issues
and could be trusted to give fair-minded consideration
to views opposed to her own, both students and col-
leagues came to value highly her opinion on contro-
versial subjects.
Her students, who sometimes began by being in awe of
her, learned very soon that her interest in them was
genuine and always kind. In every class there were
always some who gave her their affection and lasting
friendship.
Those friends who had been with her in the place she
loved best, her summer home in Greensboro, Vermont,
who had driven with her over the Vermont roads, had
ALICE DOROTHEA SNYDER (Continued)
helped her sail a boat or paddle a canoe, saw her
perhaps at her most characteristic. Relaxed and
happy in the beauty of mountains, valleys and
streams, familiar with farm and village life, full
of pungent talk, shrewd observation and humorous
anecdote, she was a delightful companion.
One of her students wrote in the Miscellany News of
February 20, "To have had a class with Miss Snyder
was one of the greatest privileges." And the feel-
ing of teachers of English in other colleges is per-
haps best expressed in a letter from Mt. Holyoke:
"To lose Alice Snyder out of our world now, seems so
disastrous that words can only suggest the distress
of the members of our department here. She has done
much, in all the professional groups in which we
have known her, to make our common effort energetic,
discriminating and humane. Her wisdom will be
deeply missed.
In recognition of the rare value of her unique per-
sonality, we move that this appreciation be included
in the Minutes of our Faculty, and a copy sent to
the members of her family.
Mary L. Sague
Constance Ellis
XI - 1