"Kitty", Famed Shakespeare Scholar, Was Individualist

"Kitty", Professor George Lyman Kittredge, greatest of Harvard's English department greats, will never be known to the Class of '45.

The Shakespearian scholar, toughest and most beloved of professors, who for 40 years gave English 2 died on July 23 of a heart ailment at his summer home on Cape Cod.

The bearded old gentleman had not been teaching for the last five years, but he still spent much of his time walking around the Yard, talking to his old-time friends, and the present generation of Harvard students came to know him through seeing him pass by.

"Kitty" is one of the few men of Harvard to whom Harvard Square was no threat. He disdained automobile traffic as an intrusion into human existence, and he forced automobiles to yield to him. He crossed streets when he felt like it, not on the dictates of a traffic light.

Called Santa Claus

A famous story is told of a truck-driver, halted by an imperious wave of the Kittredge cane one morning who leaned out of his cab and shouted, "Hey, Santa Claus, where do you think you're going?"

Professor Kittredge's examinations became famous for their toughness and unpredictability. One commentator recalled from his own experience, "two score or more lines with the terse commands: 'Indicate context,' 'Summarize briefly,' or more unreasonable still, 'Quote remainder of speech.' The books come back bathed in red ink and trembling with neuroses."

He was never known to be late for a lecture in his "Six Plays of Shakespeare" by as much as a single second nor to continue his lecture for a second after the bell began to ring for the end of the hour. His lectures were so timed that he often walked down the aisle and out of the room as he delivered the last sentence a second or two before the end of the period.

Immaculately Dressed

Always in class he wore a light grey suit, immacuately pressed. It was "apparently the same, year after year". His long white beard made him a landmark on the Harvard scene.

He hated any disturbance in his class, and like his colleague, Charles Townsend Copeland, Boylston Professor of Oratory and Rhetoric, he was especially insulted by coughing. One morning he made a misstep as he hurled a threatening gesture at an offender. As he arose, completely himself, and adjusted his inevitable orange tie and wing collar, he snapped:

"At last I am on a level with my students."

Although he possessed honorary degrees for his scholarship from Universities the world over, there was no Ph.D. attached to his string of honors. He had a profound contempt for a degree with an oral examination tied to it.

"Who would examine me?" he used to ask.