In Charles F. Dunbar’s third academic year of his professorship in political economy at Harvard [course offerings from the first half of the 1870s], a reshuffling of the required (i.e., non-elective) one semester course in political economy to the sophomore year meant that the course would have to be offered twice in 1873-74, once for juniors and once for sophomores. To handle the increased teaching load, Henry Howland (A.B. Harvard 1869) was appointed tutor in History and Political Economy in 1873-74, having worked as a tutor for German language courses. He had returned to Harvard in the fall term of 1872, after spending a year in France and two years in Germany, where he completed a doctorate in political economy at Heidelberg. Howland went on to Harvard Law School, receiving a law degree in 1878. There he was an instructor on tort law for the years 1879-1883.
Some further research into the life and career of Henry Howland revealed significant episodes of depression (and perhaps other mental illness) that required him to be placed temporarily under the guardianship of his brother.
I have not yet been able to confirm Howland’s Heidelberg advanced degree in political economy mentioned in the memoir of his classmate that was written shortly after his death following “acute melancholia”.
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From Harvard’s
Report of the President 1873-74
“The courses in Political Economy and the Constitution of the United States are found in both years [Sophomore and Junior classes], as these courses were, last year [1873-74], transferred from the Junior to the Sophomore course of study.”
Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard University 1873-74, p. 52.
* * * * * * * * * *
Required studies.
Sophomores.
Instructor: Mr. Howland
Subject: Political Economy
Text-Books: Elements of Political Economy. — Constitution of the United States.
Number of students: 170
Number of sections: 5
Exercises per week for students: 2
Exercises per week for Instructor: 10 (for a half-year)
Instructor: Mr. Howland
Subject: History
Text-Books: Outlines of General History.
Number of students: 170
Number of sections: 5
Exercises per week for students: 2
Exercises per week for Instructor: 10 (for a half-year)
Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard University 1873-74, p. 42.
* * * * * * * * * *
Required studies.
Juniors.
Instructor: Prof. Dunbar
Subject: Political Economy
Text-Books: Elements of Political Economy.— Constitution of the United States.
Number of students: 153
Number of sections: 3
Exercises per week for students: 2
Exercises per week for Instructor: 6 (for a half-year)
Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard University 1873-74, p. 44.
Elective studies.
Instructor: Prof. Dunbar
Subject: Philosophy 6
Text-Books: Political Economy. J. S. Mill’s Political Economy.— Bagehot’s Lombard Street. — Sumner’s History of American Currency.
Number of students: 1 Junior, 70 Seniors
Number of sections: 2
Exercises per week for students: 3
Exercises per week for Instructor: 6
Source: Harvard University. Report of the President of Harvard University 1873-74, p. 46.
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Obituary from
Boston Evening Transcript
(July 13, 1887)
Mr. Henry Howland, for a number of years a member of the Boston Bar, died in Somerville, Monday. He was born in Boston, Dec. 23, 1846, and was graduated at Harvard in the class of 1869, and at the Harvard Law School in 1878. From 1872 to 1874 he was a tutor at Harvard, taking charge of history and political economy classes. Mr. Howland also continued his studies abroad, obtaining at Heidelberg the degree of Ph.D. He practiced law in Boston until his health gave out, holding just before retirement a position in the United States district attorney’s office under Judge Sanger.
[Cf. the Death Registry of the City of Somerville gives “Acute Melancholia” as the “Disease, or Cause of Death”.]
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Henry Howland (see A.B. 1869), Tutor 1872-1874; Instr. in History and Political Economy 1872-1874; Instr. in Torts 1879-1883.
Source: Harvard University, Quinquennial Catalogue of the Officers and Graduates 1636-1930 (Cambridge, MA: 1930), p. 94.
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1888 Memoir of a Harvard Classmate
HENRY HOWLAND
Born in Boston, December 23, 1846. Son of David and Rebecca (Crocker) Howland.
Died July 11, 1887.The following Memoir, prepared by Henry W. [Ware] Putnam, was read at the Commencement Meeting of the Class, June, 1888:
Henry Howland, son of David and Rebecca Howland, born December 23, 1846, died July 11, 1887. We had hardly separated after our last Commencement reunion when we were startled with the announcement of another gap made in our ranks by the death of Henry Howland. We could hardly have been more unprepared for the death of any one of our number. It had not occurred to his most intimate friends that the disorder which had hung like a cloud over the last years of his life was likely to have any serious physical consequences, much less a fatal termination, and all had cherished the hope that after a while his fine mental powers would reassert themselves undimmed, and that a career which we had at graduation looked forward to as one of the most brilliant that the Class promised, would yet be achieved. But it was not to be, and on July 11, 1887, he died, at the age of forty, after a sudden illness of only a few days’ duration.
After graduating from College, Howland went abroad for purposes of study, intending to make teaching his profession, and spent one year in France and two in Germany. During this period he became a thorough French and German scholar, studied history and political economy at the Universities of Berlin and Heidelberg, taking the degree of Ph.D. at the latter university in political economy. One of the present professors at Harvard who made his acquaintance there, and who remained his devoted and intimate friend till his death, writes as follows of him at that time: “Henry was the first Harvard graduate whom I had ever known well, and from my first meeting with him in Berlin he filled me with admiration by reason of his zeal and enthusiasm in his studies. History was his subject at that time, and he attended the lectures of the university regularly, and had two ‘Docenten’ in addition who went to his room and lectured to him there. He was tireless in finding expedients for increasing his knowledge of German, and accomplished more, I think, in his eighteen months in Germany, than any man of my acquaintance… It was characteristic of Henry,” he continues, “that when he received in Berlin the offer of an appointment in German at Harvard, he came to me and said that he didn’t care for it and would try to get it for me. I knew that he did want it very much, and of course declined to consider the subject of an appointment at all until he had received his. He was appointed in History and German, and it was entirely through his efforts that I was appointed tutor in German. Henry was changed less by his stay in Europe than any American I knew. He absorbed all that was advantageous in his surroundings, and seemed to be affected not at all by that which was worthless or ignoble. Especially in his political and social views he remained a true and steadfast Democrat and high-minded American.”
Returning home in the fall of 1872, he taught for two years at Harvard with success, — the first year as a tutor in German, the second as instructor in History and Political Economy. One of our number who was intimately associated with him during these years, being an instructor in the University at the same time, writes as follows: “He was a close and conscientious student, and possessed a great fund of general information outside of his specialties; but he was always very deferential in making any statement either of fact or opinion even to those who, as he must have known, had but a tithe of his knowledge of the subject in question. He had a happy faculty of making a friend feel at ease while he was imparting to him good information, the faculty of not making an ignorant man feel his ignorance, a faculty which was possessed, as you will remember, in such a marked degree by Professor Gurney. In argument he was always calm and never loud, but very persistent and utterly imperturbable; he never allowed himself to be switched off, and moreover, he never allowed his opponent to jump the track and take to side issues, but held him to the main line of thought until one or the other got somewhere, generally Henry.” His reputation as a teacher at the University was steadily growing, and his outlook for a successful academic career was regarded as very promising by his associates and elders at Cambridge, when he was visited by an attack of mental derangement brought on by overwork in his regular classes and with private pupils, and by the late hours and irregular habits as to sleep and meals, which are apt to accompany excessive application to study. After recovering from this attack he gave up teaching, decided to study law, and entered the Law School in 1876, taking his degree in 1878.
It is not difficult for the rest of us to see now that it was a momentous, probably a mistaken, step to enter so late and so heavily handicapped upon a profession in which one can ill afford to lose any time or have any unnecessary odds against him; but we can also easily see that it was a very natural one under the unsettling and discouraging circumstances of the moment. His natural abilities for the law were indeed fine, lying especially in the direction of a studious and safe adviser in chambers rather than an advocate in court; and with an earlier start and an unobstructed course he would have succeeded in the race; but as it was, the chances were overwhelmingly against him, and the courage with which he entered upon the profession, the patient and unflagging determination with which he clung to it, were at once heroic and pathetic. After being admitted to practice, he gave courses of instruction in torts at the Law School, in addition to his office-work, for three years with great acceptance, and made some scholarly researches in the early literature of the law for one of the professors in the school. During the last of these years he held also the position of Assistant United States District Attorney. The exacting labors of this position, which were not especially adapted to his abilities, nor congenial to his natural tastes, added to his other work, proved too much for him, and in June, 1882, he succumbed to a second attack like the first, but returned to business in December of the same year. Still another slight one occurred in August, 1883, lasting till October of the same year. He then enjoyed entire immunity for three years, and although urged by his closest friends to give up all attempt to practise law and seek some occupation where he would have plenty of outdoor life and leisure for light literary work, he was unwilling to give up his chosen ambition. During this period he did some excellent professional work, chiefly in conveyancing, and in the preparation of briefs and summaries of the law on points placed in his hands by other counsel for his examination, and it seemed as if he might yet get established in the profession; but his father’s illness and death again broke him down in the summer of 1886, and, without again returning to work, and with only a brief interval of even measurably complete restoration to reason in the spring of 1887, he died from a sudden and very brief attack of physical exhaustion.
This long and losing twelve years’ struggle between the finest intellectual gifts and inexorable mental disease is too sad and too pathetic for us, who loved him, and confidently expected so much of him, to be able to dwell upon. As a Class, we can simply put upon our record an expression of our disappointment and grief at this untimely calamity, and then try to put it out of our mind forever. But his character and qualities we shall hold in affectionate and enduring remembrance as long as any of us survive to hold Class meetings. He was the most modest of men — modest to the extent of unjust depreciation of himself. His manners and personal bearing — at all times and in all company — were those of a perfect gentleman; marked as they were, not merely by the friendly good-will and sympathy of the good fellow who is everybody’s friend, but by a certain reserve and formality, not amounting to stiffness, but showing that he made a certain pronounced, though not obtrusive, courtesy of the old school one of the duties of his life never to be forgotten or neglected, even in the society of intimates; and his outward bearing thus never failed to express the real dignity of his character, even when his wit was keenest and his raillery most pungent. His unselfishness, his absolute self-effacement when there was a friend to serve or help in any way, was a part of his very nature, — deep-seated, spontaneous, sincere. Of that fine virtue which the ancients, whose best writings he seems to have absorbed into his very being, placed above all others and called piety, filial devotion, the love of parents, he was the most striking exemplar I have ever known, subordinating every interest of his own — pleasure, social recreation, professional ambition, health — to the unceasing care through long years of an invalid mother and of an aged father. When his love of society is considered, this self-denial — especially when the circumstances did not render it in any sense a necessity — becomes the more striking and admirable. His sense of duty in all the relations of life was so extreme as to be almost morbid, and had in it a touch of Puritanic rigor. His public spirit was strong and his sympathies in this direction broad, and he was active — though not radical or extreme — in all the duties of a citizen and in the movements of social and political reform in his neighborhood. His abilities were peculiarly of a literary kind. His literary taste was of the finest; he was a constant and appreciative reader of the best imaginative literature, a lover of music and the drama. If he could, or would, but have seen it, so rare a spirit was wasted in the study of the law, and would have been so, in a sense, even with health and professional success. The higher fields of literary and historic criticism and, perhaps, composition — of philosophic generalization on literary and particularly on historic subjects — were his true field, and it was only after his first illness had discouraged him somewhat, and perhaps impaired the soundness of his judgment, that he abandoned that career for another. In his death we all mourn a fine, scholarly, high-minded character and loyal classmate; many of us a sympathetic, affectionate, and deeply loved friend.
Source: Eleventh Report of the Class of 1869 of Harvard College. Fiftieth Anniversary (June 1919), pp. 149-154.
Image Source: Title page of the Annual Report of the President of Harvard College, 1876-1877.