The Education of John A. Lomax
by Maude Houston
The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol. 60, No. 2 (Oct., 1956), pp. 201-218
The Education of John A. Lomax
MAUDE HOUSTON
IN 1872, the James Lomaxes lived in a two-room log cabin two miles out of Meridian, county seat of Bosque County, Texas. Indians had roamed and attacked in the area only five years before, and herds of Longhorns passed within sight of the Lomax front door as they went north on the Chisholm Trail. John Avery Lomax, future collector of the cowboy songs he heard
on the trail, was starting school-was beginning the process of learning the three R's in a frontier state. Years later, in his autobiography, Adventures of a Ballad Hunter, John said he had no substantial education before going to the University of Texas, and even there he felt that he had learned little. He had some grounds for complaint. In his day "the community school" was all the public schooling provided. The residents of a community could support the school or not as they desired, and would provide for it only as much money as they felt they could spare from more practical pursuits. But some parents wanted their children to do better than they had. Some public-spirited teachers were willing to make the best of low pay and loose discipline. Private schools, both religious and secular, were active. And the University of Texas, which opened in 1883, was a great step forward. For many children like John Lomax, the frontier settlers of Texas provided the basis of a fruitful intellectual career.
There were ten in the Lomax family plus various orphans that the mother took over the job of raising with apparently inexhaustible affection. James Lomax had been a tanner and small farmer in Mississippi; he had come to Texas to farm in a more healthy climate. Susan, his wife, was also from Mississippi, where she had received the traditional female instruction. The family possessed two books, the Bible and Pilgrim's Progress, and took several newspapers. For at least a year James was one of the six trustees for the school in Meridian, and he made it a rule in the family that every child should go off to a private school for one year to complete what John called his "twenty-one years of service for the common good of the family." Every year, too, each child spent three or four months in the public school of Meridian.
According to Ed Nichols, John, like many other little boys of the time, visited school before he was old enough to attend. Ed
recalls in his autobiography, Ed Nichols Rode a Horse, that he would notice John, his brothers and sisters, and the neighbor
children "coming down the road in the morning, two and two, some of them barefoot, laughing, talking, a book satchel over one
shoulder, a dinner bucket in one hand." John would spend the day with the older children. Ed Nichols says, "He was a pretty,
fat little fellow four or five years old, and I can see him now as he
ran along by their side, sometimes holding his sister's hand, sometimes
holding to Richard's. On these days when Johnny came to
school, the pupils studied something like half the time and
watched him the other half. The little rascal was full of mischief."'
When John started school in earnest, he was at the top of his
class. Report cards for weeks in 1880 and 1881 show grades of 98
and loo. The aims of his teachers were, if nothing else, inclusive;
the subjects taught were spelling, reading, arithmetic, geography,
composition, history, algebra, geometry and trigonometry, surveying
and navigation, bookkeeping, astronomy, philosophy,
moral philosophy, mental philosophy, botany, physiology, geology,
Latin, Greek, French, drawing and painting, and music.3 Even
before he had mastered this curriculum, John was teaching the
children around him, among them his best friend the negro boy
Nat Blythe. In the Adventures John writes:
I found Nat resting under the mulberry tree studying a Webster's
'See her "A Trip to Texas," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, XLVIII, 254-261,
for proof of intelligence and nobility of character and a detailed account of the
rigors of frontier life.
2Ed Nichols, Ed Nichols Rode a Horse (Dallas, 1943), 56-57.
3John Lomax, School Papers (MS., Archives, University of Texas Library).
The Education of John A. Lomax 203
blue-backeds pelling book. He was as far as "Ba-be-bi-bo."H e became
my first pupil. During the long hot summer our mid-day sessions
lasted three or four hours under the shade of the mulberry tree.
Several neighbor children joined the Mulberry Academy, but Nat was
my star pupil. At the end of the final term of the three-year course he
was through the fifth reader, he had studied history and geography
and arithmetic, and he could write a good letter.4
In connection with this good letter John later wrote-when
tackling a college course in composition-that English in the
lower grades was merely a study of formal grammar and for
advanced students "an historical treatise, composed principally
of a catalogue of books and authors, interlarded with choice
critical phrases of some penny-a-liner"; while composition was
confined to Friday afternoons with a slate and pencil.5
From the time he was fifteen until he was twenty, John stayed
at home and worked on the farm and read. Of this period he afterwards
wrote to an early sweetheart: "George Munro was my
publisher, ... He sells paper backed classics, and some of them I
could faithfully produce were any fatality to deprive the world
of all printed copies."' At sixteen he was much impressed by The
Wandering Jew, which, according to his autobiography, was the
first novel he had read except a "Sunday School story about a prig
named Cyril, whom I despised."' When John was nearly twenty,
his father let him sow eleven acres of wheat to earn money for his
year of schooling away from home. The wheat flourished, growing
above his head. Then came the rain; the Bosque flooded the
field. When the grain was threshed, John had one hundred and
sixty bushels of mixed mud and wheat. With a sad heart he sold
his pony Selim to get enough cash for his school expenses. But
his farm chores were over, and he was off to Granbury and the
intellectual life he craved.
In the fall of 1887, when John arrived, the Methodist college
of Granbury in Hood County was in a flourishing condition.
Granbury College had been founded fourteen years before by the
4John Lomax, Adventures of a Ballad Hunter (New York, 1947), 9.
5John Lomax, School Papers, July 7, 1904 (MS., Archives, University of Texas
Library).
6John Lomax, Shirley Green Correspondence, April 7, 1900 (MS., Archives,
University of Texas Library).
7Lomax, Adventures of a Ballad Hunter, 21.
204 Southwestern Historical Quarterly
residents of the vicinity in a burst of religious and civic enthusiasm,
and just the preceding winter, when fire had ravaged the
building, the citizenry had subscribed to a new one before the
next morning. In 1887, what a local historian referred to as the
"magnificent edifice of three stories, 62x8o,"8 was ready for occupancy,
and though John recalls scant equipment and bare
library shelves, hopes were high. The guiding spirit behind the
institution was President D. S. Switzer, M.A., from the University
of Mississippi. The board of trustees of the Methodist church
set the policy. There were nine instructors and about three hundred
students, from children to young adults in their twenties.
Both boys and girls attended, yet, assured the catalogue, "While
the school admits both males and females, the care of the faculty
is such as to remove all fear from the mind of the parents in regard
to their daughters. Indeed, it is now acknowledged by the world
that the schools which admit both sexes are the only ones which
are educating according to nature."9
The intent of the school was to give moral as well as intellectual
instruction. For this reason the General Rules were definite.
Each student was "to refrain from attending balls, parties, shows
and all other places of dissipation, ... abstain from all intoxicating
drinks and games of chance, and from visiting drinking
or billiard saloons ... not to carry or have in possession any
deadly weapon ... abstain from the use of profane or indecent
language ... abstain from any private communication with any
one of the opposite sex who is not a near relative, except by the
consent of the teacher."'0
For intellectual training there were the Primary, Intermediate,
Preparatory, and Collegiate Departments. The Primary Department
took about two years' study; the Intermediate, one year;
the Preparatory, two years; and the Collegiate, four years. A student
who had passed through the complete course of instruction
would therefore have spent as much time in school as the average
eighth or tenth grade student has spent at the present. Degrees
8Thomas T. Ewell, A History of Hood County, Texas (Granbury, Texas, 1895),
122.
9Catalogue of the Officers and Members of Granbury College (Fort Worth, 1886),
2.
solbid., 21-22.
The Education of John A. Lomax 205
awarded were A.B., with the traditional liberal arts curriculum;
B.S., with Latin instead of Greek, and additional courses in descriptive
geometry and "Shades and Shadows"; and Ph.B., awarded
to those students, "especially young ladies," who did not wish to
study the languages or mathematics higher than analytical geometry.
A fourth course of study required only one year, a Normal
Course, which included "all those branches that are required in
order to obtain a first class certificate in any county of the State."l'
This last is the course John studied.
On the first of September, 1887, John swapped his flour for
part of his board, which ran from $2.50 to $3.00 a week, and
enrolled. Tuition had to be paid in advance with cash or a negotiable
note, $17.00 for the first term and $21.00ofoo r the second.
Room rent was about $1o.oo a month, and washing $i.oo. With
clothes, books, and school supplies to buy, John did not have
enough money. He borrowed what he needed, perhaps from his
father but more probably from his cousin Lon Cooper, a second
father to him and a devoted friend. The following year John made
a point of paying back all loans.
In school again, after five years, John was quite happy. He
writes, "However lacking in breadth of culture, the teachers were
earnest and kind ... I was like a fish that had escaped from a
shoally stream into a pool of clear, sunshiny water. I reveled in
'book learning,' and across the fifty-odd years I look back with
affection to this frontier college."12 He attended classes from morning
till night, sitting with the other upperclassmen in rows of
desks supervised by a monitor just as if they were first graders.
For his teaching certificate, John studied spelling, rhetoric, formal
grammar, elocution-in which he learned to recite "Lasca"-,
arithmetic, calisthenics, Latin, algebra, geometry, trigonometry,
history, and Steele's Fourteen Weeks in Physiology. He took comprehensive
examinations in every subject at the end of each term
and made 98 or ioo in all courses. In deportment and application
he received 1oo. He was apparently neither absent nor tardy.
Having been reared in the Methodist church, John was used to
fairly strict discipline. In Granbury he enjoyed the recreations
the church approved. While the weather was still warm, he went
l"Ibid., 15-17.
12Lomax, Adventures of a Ballad Hunter, g9.
2o6 Southwestern Historical Quarterly
to town for ice, soda water, and lemonade at Richey and Ewell's
drugstore. On Sunday he and almost every other member of the
college attended Sunday School and church; during the week he
probably joined in the activities of the young people's organization,
the Band of Hope. The Band of Hope boasted "... very
few of our students use tobacco now, though many were addicted
to the habit when they entered school."13 John must have belonged
to the Phaino Literary Society, which met weekly and
afforded "excellent training in declamation, essaying, elocution,
debate and other exercises" that enabled the members to "move
with ease and confidence in deliberative and other public
bodies.""1P4 erhaps he even engaged in a debate between Phaino
and Adelphian, the young ladies' organization. He read the
Collegian, the student magazine, but does not seem to have published
in it. At Christmas, he went home for a week to tell his
family about the college doings.
On April 21, Phaino celebrated its anniversary with "appropriate
exercises." Toward the end of May came commencement.
John had listened the Sunday before to a "sermon addressed to
the pupils by some distinguished minister." For the next few days
he had seen and taken part in "such exercises as will be of interest
to visitors, and show to the parents the progress of their children."
15 Then on the day itself, he was awarded the five-dollar
gold Capt Medal, founded by F. W. Capt of San Marcos, for being
the best speller in the college. He made a final oration similar
in style and content to one he had heard on "The Past and the
Present and Their Relation to the Future," but it did not win
the medal given to the best declaimer in the Collegiate Department.
Then, after one year at Granbury, John Lomax was through
for a while with being a student. He had to pay off his debts,
and besides, he was almost twenty-one, an age at which to be
earning a living in Texas at the turn of the century.
For the next seven years John taught school: one year in the
public school at Clifton, not far from his old home in Bosque
County, and the next six years as head of the Preparatory De-
13Catalogue of the Officers and Members of Granbury College, 25.
141bid., 223
15Ibid., 22-24.
The Education of John A. Lomax 207
partment at his alma mater Granbury College. But Granbury
had a different name and a different location when John returned
to it. After John had left Granbury, someone had foreclosed the
mortgage on the school; and so, the Methodist church had transferred
faculty and curriculum to the city of Weatherford, in
Parker County, and reopened the school as Weatherford College.
Switzer was still president and promised John time for studies of
his own, but after teaching twelve or fifteen classes a day, the
young instructor was too tired to study. He spent one summer
at the Eastman Business College in Poughkeepsie, New York, and
three at Chautauqua, where he took Latin, mathematics, and
English. But he wanted more. Also, his brother had failed to meet
a debt of several thousand dollars, and John felt obliged to pay it.
With his small salary, $75 per month, he could scarcely meet the
interest; he needed a better job and, to obtain this, better qualifications.
He read a catalogue of Vanderbilt University only to
discover that the specimen entrance examinations were much too
difficult for him, and though he was to find later that such standards
were unusually high, he was discouraged.
Then he heard of the University of Texas, which took hundreds
of students with as little background as he had and somehow
got them through an A.B. course. Cousin Lon would loan him
money to live on. So, in June, 1895, he boarded the afternoon
Santa Fe train with a glad heart for a new chance in the capital
of the state, Austin.
In 1895, Austin was a big city for Texas. It had i8,ooo inhabitants,
four times as many as Weatherford. More important for
John, its various private and state-supported schools, particularly
the University, boasted what John called "a few genuine scholars"
and an atmosphere of intellectual and religious tolerance that
gave the city a comparative cosmopolitan culture. Austin also
had more tangible advantages: electric street lights and trolleys,
the state capitol-seventh in size in the world-, and Lake McDonald
(present Lake Austin), one of the largest and most beautiful
in the state for sports, boat rides, and romantic rendezvous.
The University was looking its best when John arrived. The
weeds had just been cut in honor of commencement, and flowers
planted by the proctor's wife were still in bloom around the Main
20o8 Southwestern Historical Quarterly
Building. There were four buildings on "College Hill": Brackenridge
Hall, the boys' dormitory; the Chemical Building; the
Power House with its tall smokestack; and the Main Building,
centrally located on the hill with libraries, classrooms, and offices
for all departments-arts, sciences, engineering, and law. On the
perimeter of the campus were tennis courts and the baseball field.
John checked his trunk with Monroe Miller, the baggage agent,
and set out to find a room and someone to tell him how to get into
the University. He found a place to eat and sleep near the campus
at a cost of $15 to $2o a month and was directed by one of the
lingering University faculty to Miss Mignonette Carrington-John
called her "brilliant and fun-loving"-for instruction in enough
grammar, Greek, French, Latin, German, history, and mathematics
to enable him to enroll in the University the following
fall. Through Austin's debilitating summer heat he worked hard
with Miss Carrington. Evenings he spent with a group studying
Shakespeare; it was the first time he had read the dramatist. In
this group he met Leslie Waggener, president ad interim and professor
of English at the University. Waggener was so impressed
with John that he suggested the young man enter his senior
class in Shakespeare during the coming fall session.
Leslie Waggener was by far the most important man on the
campus. In addition to being professor of literature and history,
he had served as chairman of the faculty, a position roughly equal
to that of president, from 1884 to 1894 and was currently acting
president until a permanent man could be secured for the job.
In his efforts to reconcile regents, legislature, faculty, and students,
he had helped the University grow in size and prestige, but
in so doing he had lost his health. When John met him, he had
only one year to live. Other members of the faculty still well
remembered are the following (with a few qualitative judgments
from an informal student poll in the 1896 Cactus): George Bruce
Halsted in pure mathematics; George P. Garrison in history, the
"second most popular" professor on the campus; Thomas U.
Taylor in applied mathematics; Morgan Callaway, Jr., in English;
William James Battle in Greek; Sidney Edward Mezes in philosophy;
David F. Houston in political science, the "handsomest"
professor on the campus; Henry Winston Harper in chemistry;
The Education of John A. Lomax 209
Jessie Andrews in German; Robert S. Gould in law; Robert L.
Batts in law, the "third handsomest" professor "when fixed up";
Lady Assistant was Mrs. H. M. Kirby.16 Most of the professors
had Ph.D.'s, at this early date an indication of the institution's
high standards. Busiest and best loved person at the 'Varsity was
James B. Clark, the "Judge," who was proctor and, according to
T. U. Taylor, "the only man on the campus that had the full confidence
of the student body and Faculty, the public and the Regents.""
1T7 o every boy on the campus who needed him the Judge
was another father. And for the young women Mrs. Clark was an
understanding mother. She also assisted the Judge in the library,
planted the only flowers that then graced the campus, and acted
in her home as hostess on innumerable occasions to the boys and
girls who, away from their own homes, would otherwise have felt
neglected.
On September 23, 1895, his twenty-eighth birthday, John paid
the first installment of his $30 fees and enrolled in the Arts and
Sciences-Academic-Department. The degrees offered here were
Bachelor of Literature, Bachelor of Arts, and Bachelor of Sciences;
each course required twenty units of work. John took an examination
in English composition and grammar and did so well that
he was allowed to skip freshman English. He then started out
towards an A.B. degree, taking advanced English, mathematics,
beginners' Greek, freshman Latin, chemistry, history, and Anglo-
Saxon-twenty-three hours when the normal number was twelve
or fifteen. Much older than the average student and short of funds,
he was trying to complete the four-year course in two years. As a
country boy, he had worked most of his life at tasks for which he
had had little inclination. How much harder should he strive now
that he was doing something he really wanted to.
In President Waggener's senior class in Shakespeare, John
prepared an essay on Richard II which so impressed his teacher
that Waggener gave him credit for three courses in English.
John was also credited with one course in mathematics, thus
racking up immediately four of the twenty units required for
graduation. Before the first term was over, he was classified as a
16Cactus, 1896, p. 19.
'1Thomas U. Taylor, Fifty Years on Forty Acres (Austin, 1938), 96.
210 Southwestern Historical Quarterly
sophomore. The one-room school and Granbury College had evidently
done a little something for their pupil.
Now well on the way in his studies, John could take time to
look around at the other students. In the fall of 1895, 487 students
were enrolled at the 'Varsity, 343 of them in Academic, 144 in
Law. In arts and sciences courses, both men and women were
present, and, so the opinion went, to good effect. A writer for
the 1896 Cactus says:
The orderliness of our students, always remarked by those familiar
with other colleges, is generally attributed to the restraining presence
of the young ladies. Up the long corridor, circling the rotunda, and
back again so far as the back door of the History Room (so as to
avoid the line of vision from the girls' sitting-room, where dwells the
matron), turning and retracing the same round, the fair sophomore
listens to the modest junior, as he tells her-well, we leave the story
(sic?) to the constructive imagination of the reader.'8
And in this role one must picture John. Yet he was not a ladies'
man. He appealed chiefly to the intellectual type of woman, who
could discern the "gold beneath the dross," the intelligence and
sensibility beneath the farm boy's frequently uncouth manners
and untidy dress. At the University he found several such.
In the afternoon or evening he would call on the girl, probably
with a bouquet of flowers or a basket of fruit. If she would see
him-and occasionally the coy Victorian maiden refused a time or
two and left him to chat with her mother-he would spend an
hour or so in polite conversation with her and, if they happened
to be present, her parents, relatives, or friends. The topics discussed
were close to him: literature, religion, ethics, politics. Or
he would regale the group with a good story such as he became
noted for in his later years. In the course of the conversation, he
might suggest a row on Lake McDonald or a walk through the
woods or a particular social event-fraternity reception, excursion
on the Ben Hur (the lake steamer), group picnic at Zoo Park or
in a similar rustic spot; perhaps an entertainment at the University
or in town-minstrel show, stage play, or band concert. John's
favorite recreation was a tramp through the hills around Austin,
and for this pleasure he valued a girl he later described in a
IsCactus, 1896, p. i9.
The Education of John A. Lomax 211
letter as one who "walks well, never tires, or objects to a fast pace;
and, besides, preserves through it all a companionableness that
has its reciprocal influence."' A couple out alone was apparently
trusted, but all mixed group activities required a chaperon.
This sort of boy and girl relationship did not, however, imply
courtship or even romance. Though few young women on the
campus aspired to the ballot box, their intellectual attainments,
as well as the tacit agreement of both sexes that sex did not exist,
gave women a status which allowed them to associate with men on
almost equal terms. Men and women were distinguished from
each other only by the latter's fragile physical constitution and
circumscribed vocational choice-teacher or homemaker. Consequently,
boy and girl "pals" were common.
A tongue-in-cheek survey by the Cactus revealed that the average
male student at the University of Texas in 1896 was 21 years
5 months old, weighed 1481/2 pounds, was 5 feet io inches tall,
and wore a size 7 shoe. He parted his hair "almost" in the middle.
Thirty per cent of the men wore mustaches "visible to the naked
eye." Forty per cent were working their way through college; the
remainder had been sent by parents or guardians. Sixty per cent
admitted they "shuffled the papers" (played cards); 35 per cent
that they "rolled the bones." One half of them danced. Forty-three
per cent played pool. Fifty-eight per cent drank; 26 per cent were
"depraved teetotalers"; 23 per cent were for cocktails; 21 per cent
for beer; and 8 per cent for champagne. Fifty-three per cent had
never attended prayers in the chapel hour, "not even during examinations.'"
20
By the standards of Weatherford, such conduct was gross immorality.
The church schools, in fact, generally opposed the University.
They minded the secular emphasis and, even more, the
competition it gave them. Their representatives, and other Texans
who thought higher education an unnecessary luxury, fought
each attempt of the University to secure biennial appropriations.
As a result, the 'Varsity students took a keen interest in legislative
matters.
19Shirley Green Correspondence, December 6, 1gol (MS., Archives, University
of Texas Library).
20Cactus, 1896, pp. 165-167.
212 Southwestern Historical Quarterly
Football was the most powerful integrating factor in student
life and served also as a bond between the somewhat indifferent
taxpayers and their institution. But facilities for it, particularly
a gymnasium with lockers for the players, were a long time coming.
The main reason was the shortage of money, but also influential
was the argument that football was too dangerous. Opponents
of the game called forth statistics to show the number killed and
injured in it, and made dire predictions as to the expected fatalities
if the University fostered the sport. But the faculty in this,
as in other matters, was tolerant. If the students could get the
money for sports, that was fine. By November of 1895 the team
had a manager and, for a good start, soundly beat both Dallas
and Tulane. When the season ended in February, the future of
football was secure. Bob Harrison's Barber Palace advertised.
"Foot Ball. If you want to get your Hair Cut in the 'Varsity or
Foot Ball Style, go to Bob Harrison's .. ."21
John was not enthusiastic about football, nor about the social
activities of the fraternity he joined shortly after enrolling. But
Phi Delta Theta gave this ambitious newcomer a group of sympathetic
companions, and he was to make some of his best friends
there: Rhodes Baker, Eugene C. Barker, Roy Bedichek, Tom
Connally, and Ed Miller. John generally chose to devote his spare
moments to organizations with a serious purpose: the West Texas
Club; the Y.M.C.A., where he shortly obtained the offices of corresponding
secretary and chairman of the Educational Committee;
the Rusk Literary Society, which met Saturday nights on the
third floor of the Main Building to hear papers and debates.
Thanks to the attraction of football and the dullness of the general
run of papers, all three of the literary societies were rapidly
declining in importance when John entered the University, but
they still had a nominal prestige and joined in publishing a
monthly magazine, the Texas University. The Alcalde, the student
weekly, was independently sponsored, while the school annual,
the Cactus, was produced by the University as a whole. In the
second term of his first year, John had his first article published
in the Texas University, a four-page essay entitled "William Law-
21Alcalde, March 28, 1896, p. 2.
The Education of John A. Lomax 213
rence Chittenden-Poet Ranchman."22 The next month Rusk
elected John assistant editor of the magazine.
The state legislature convened in January of 1896, and Governor
Charles A. Culberson precipitated College Hill-Capitol conflict
by assuring the University that he would sign no bill to
increase its 15,ooo-volume library until the students read the
books they already had. The next move in this battle the Alcalde
wrote up under the caption "The Star Chamber Again." The
legislature suddenly abolished one whole department of the University-
the Department of Pedagogy-and dismissed a popular
physics professor. The legislature gave the reason in both cases as
economy, but everyone suspected personal enmity as the real
cause.23
The heavy mid-winter rains came and washed most of the gravel
off the walks so that it was particularly difficult for the young
ladies to get to class. At Millet's Opera House, Otis Skinner was
presenting "His Grace de Grammont" and "Villan, the Vagabond."
At Zoo Park there were bicycle races. Jan Ignace Paderewski
was coming to San Antonio and Houston. Robert G.
Ingersoll spoke at Millet's on "Liberty of Man, Woman and
Child," and drew harsh criticism from the Austin paper. The
Alcalde was above direct abuse of this sort: "However discordant
Mr. Ingersoll's views may be, there is a unanimity of opinion that
he is beyond and above the intellectual horizon of a little sheet
like the Austin Statesman."'" There was agitation for a cooperative
book store, to be located in the Main Building and operated
without profit. Dr. W. J. Battle was the chief instigator and
as usual worked efficiently.
At the end of the second term, the editor of the Texas University
became ill and resigned. To succeed him Rusk picked John
Lomax. In spite of his load of twenty-three hours, the young man
plunged eagerly into the job and hastened to editorialize on
several subjects about which he felt strongly: the pitiful encouragement
given by the South to scientists and men of letters;
the merits of the honor system; the evils of literary plagiarism;
22Texas University, XI (March, 1896), 209-214.
23Alcalde, March 21, 1896, p. 3.
241bid., February 15, 1896, p. 8.
214 Southwestern Historical Quarterly
and the unfortunate emphasis on football at the expense of literary
societies.
The last football game of the year was played on February 22,
and athletics pretty much languished after that. The baseball
field and tennis courts became overgrown with weeds, which
formed, according to the Alcalde, "such a jungle that when a ball
escapes the hands of a fielder, in nine cases out of ten it is irrevocably
lost."25 But with spring weather came a renewed interest.
On May 1, the University held its Field Day at the Driving
Park on East Second Street, with fourteen sports events. Then the
big surprise. The University at last saw how it might get a
gymnasium. The legislature, of course, had refused to appropriate
money for a separate building. The new plan was to deepen the
already existing basement under the north wing of the Main
Building, a project which would with gym equipment included,
cost only $500. The regents could not refuse so reasonable a
request. The students were delighted.
Final examinations for the third and last term of the year were
held, and on Sunday, June 14, Commencement exercises began.
After some learned addresses and what the Alcalde called "a
harvest of sophomoric orations," degrees were conferred. At 9:00
Thursday evening, the Final Ball and Reception took place. It
had been long awaited, and over a thousand students, faculty,
alumni, and friends were in the parlors of the Driskill Hotel,
chatting and listening to the music of the Fifth United States
Cavalry Band from Fort Sam Houston. At 11:oo the dining hall
and the ladies "ordinary," both lavishly decorated, were thrown
open for dancing. To John with his sentimental fondness for all
symbols of congeniality and good will, it was a magnificent occasion.
As the students were leaving for the summer, three important
developments took place: a president was chosen to relieve Dr.
Waggener, Dr. George T. Winston of the University of North
Carolina; the regents approved the gymnasium; and the University
book store became a reality.
The three summer months of 1896, John spent at the University
of Chicago. He doubled in Latin and Greek and began his
251bid., May 12, 1896, p. 5.
The Education of John A. Lomax 215
French. Like the German scholars, he studied sixteen hours a
day, as doggedly, he said, as he had grubbed around the pecan
stumps in the Bosque River bottom.
When John returned to the 'Varsity the following fall, he found
the buildings wired and aglow with electric lights. Classified as
a senior, he signed up for Latin, Greek, French, English, government,
history, and philosophy. In addition, he continued as editor
of the Texas University, which had been renamed the University
of Texas Magazine, and so improved its quality that it ranked with
some of the best college monthlies in the nation. He took on an
associate editorship of the Alcalde and started work on the Cactus.
He continued to serve the Y.M.C.A. as corresponding secretary
and that year became chairman of the Religious Meeting Committee.
In Phi Delta Theta he helped initiate the new members.
He debated and held office in Rusk. Judge James B. Clark afterwards
said of him, "He has been an active though prudent and
conservative leader in student life not connected with the class
room,-and you know how numerous and often how exciting such
matters are. ... He is one of the best men we ever had."26
In the fall of 1896, the new president of the University, George
Tayloe Winston, had started on his Texas career with a series of
aggressive if upsetting speeches and activities. He wanted to impress
the people of Texas with the importance of higher education
and the consequent necessity for supporting the State University.
At the University of North Carolina he had had phenomenal
success in this respect, but in Texas he failed to take into account
the fact that he was dealing with frontier folk. For this intellectual
who put schools before farms and this non-sectarian who thought
one creed not much better than another, the average Texan had
only mingled horror and animosity. But Winston's nonconformity
endeared him to the student body of the University. Few were
more ardent supporters than John, who said in the Magazine:
The doctor need not worry over his defense, though he has already
had enough of abuse to cause him to exclaim with the South's great
poet: "Opinion, damned intriguer, gray with guile, let me alone."
The students of the University, together with the friends and alumni
of the institution, propose to serve as a breakwater in this fight. Pro-
26John Lomax, General Correspondence, May, 1897 (MS., Archives, University
of Texas Library).
216 Southwestern Historical Quarterly
foundly convinced of the wisdom and ability of our helmsman, we
bid him, disregarding the cant and cry of the religious bigot, to work
his work with the consciousnesst hat every man with the true Christian
spirit is his friend and defender.27
More tangible evidences of the new administration were also
present. The new president planned immediately to erect the
long-needed east wing of the Main Building. And, to the immense
delight of the students, he believed heartily in football. His
encouragement and the new gymnasium helped start the season
in full swing.
John was, as usual, indifferent to the sports enthusiasts. He
worked hard on the Magazine, and it provoked much criticism,
which indicated that at least people were reading it. More concrete
results were an office for the staff and increased appropriations
from the three literary societies. In the Magazine John established
an Alumni Department to contain news of alumni of the
University and thus secure their support. He gave more space
to poetry and inserted a few fairly clever jokes. He included in
each issue one or two critical estimates of some major writer's
work. Surprisingly enough, he replaced the regional stories, which
had formerly appeared, with tales of the occult and mysterious.
Perhaps, in his attempt to produce a sophisticated periodical, he
was reflecting the then-current disdain for native American, and
particularly cowboy, tales. He was not to take an active interest in
the cowboy ballads, which were to win for him lasting renown,
until several years later. At mid-year, editors of the Magazine were
changed, as was customary, and though John remained on the
staff as assistant editor, his policies were no longer to govern it.
Under his successor, the publication deteriorated rapidly.
In January of i897, as in the previous winter, the most pressing
concern among the students was the reconvening legislature. The
Alcalde noted that many of the students were daily attendants at
the legislative sessions, "not in the role of lobbyists, though."2"
The governor was little more endearing than he had been a year
before. In his message to the legislature, he explained that the
University needed about $350,000 but that it was unconstitu-
27University of Texas Magazine, XXI (October, 1896), 31.
28Alcalde, January 2o, 1897, p. 7.
The Education of John A. Lomax 217
tional to give it so much. Undaunted, the students regaled the
legislators with an oyster roast, John probably assisting.
On January 28, Democratic Austin gave a warm welcome to
William Jennings Bryan and was inspired by his two addresses.
On February io, Dr. Winston was formally inaugurated with
great ceremony and many expressions of optimism. Already, however,
signs of his subsequent failure were becoming evident.
Among other blunders was his castigation of the popular editor
of the Alcalde as a "stupid ass." The students took sides. As before,
John maintained that the president was the main instrument in
advancing the University; without notice, he resigned his position
on the Alcalde and left with bitterness between himself and
his former associates. He had an opportunity to vindicate his
position in the Cactus, which contained as its introductory essay
his long eulogy of Dr. Winston.
As the end of the school year approached, John had even more
important concerns. He was graduating in June and did not have
a job. He located a temporary summer position at Miss Carrington's
school and made several applications, but by commencement
time he still did not know what he would do the following
year.
On the fifth of June examinations were held, and between
them, as always, students found rest and recreation: a baseball
game at the lake or perhaps one of the latest books: Richard
Harding Davis's Soldiers of Fortune; James Lane Allen's The
Choir Invisible; Du Maurier's The Martian; Frank Stockton's
A Story-Teller's Pack.
With commencement, the alumni converged on the 'Varsity.
The newly-organized Texas State Historical Association held its
first annual meeting. On the Class Day Program, John delivered
the Class Oration. The next day, the long-awaited degrees were
conferred, and John was at last an A.B. The Final Ball that night,
said the Alcalde, "surpassed in beauty anything of the kind ever
witnessed in Austin."29
John paused momentarily to review his University career. He
had, as he says in his autobiography, at least learned that he knew
the little he knew. Also, he had developed latent qualities of lead-
29Ibid., June 23, 1897, pp. 6-8.
218 Southwestern Historical Quarterly
ership. He had gained practice in forming and expressing his
opinions. He had met some kindred spirits and made a few warm
friends among them. The University had really done a great deal
for him.
As students and faculty departed the campus, Winston suddenly
discovered that he needed a registrar, and economically he
decided to combine that job with the one of private secretary to
himself. He had to have a man who would be loyal to him. So he
chose John, and the young man was overjoyed. He could start
work on an M.A.; he could now serve both University and President
by interpreting each to the other; but, most important, he
could let the people of Texas know what the University could do
for them. He had already encouraged many of his old friendslike
Charles Potts, later dean of the Southern Methodist University
law school-to come on to Austin; he would do this on a much
larger scale. The hundreds of students he subsequently inspired
and assisted in their careers at the University will testify that he
did just that.
From this job as registrar and secretary to the President, he
went on to that of instructor in English at the Agricultural and
Mechanical College of Texas. He received his M.A. from the
University of Texas in 1906. The following year he spent at Harvard
University, where, working under Professor George Lyman
Kittredge, he obtained a second M.A. in 1907; the North may
therefore claim some credit for his subsequent success. Later
positions he held were those of secretary to the University of
Texas Ex-Students' Association; bond salesman for Lee Higginson
and Company; vice-president of the Republic National Bank of
Dallas; and, as he is most remembered, collector of the American
folk ballads which have earned for him a permanent place in
American literary history. Such attainments surely indicate the
worth of his early Texas schooling and of the handicapped but
earnest teachers who guided him in it.