George Lyman Kittredge - Biography

Biography

Kittredge was born in Boston in 1860. His father, Edward "Kit" Kittredge, had participated in the California Gold Rush of 1849, been shipwrecked, and had walked 700 miles across the desert before returning to Boston to marry a widow, Mrs. Deborah Lewis Benson, and start a family. Their precocious and bookish son George attended The Roxbury Latin School, which then had about 100 pupils. George consistently led his class in marks and won a scholarship to Harvard, which he entered in 1878. To save money he walked to Harvard every day from his home in Boston across the Charles River to Cambridge. In his Freshman year, Kittredge came in second in his class of 181 to mathematician Frank Nelson Cole, but in Sophomore, Junior, and Senior years he was first, garnering highest honors in his chosen field of classics.

While at Harvard Kittredge also joined several clubs and societies, wrote light verse, and won numerous consecutive Bowdoin prizes for his essays and translations, including one from English into Attic Greek. He also became a member of the editorial board of the Harvard Advocate. In 1881 Kittredge was the prompter and pronunciation coach in a celebrated theatrical performance by undergraduates of Sophocles's Oedipus the King in the original Greek that was attended by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Julia Ward Howe, William Dean Howells, Charles Eliot Norton, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and classicist B. L. Gildersleeve of Johns Hopkins University among other luminaries. As an undergraduate, Kittredge also read widely outside of class, became known as a witty after dinner speaker. In 1882, he was elected Ivy Orator (chosen to deliver a humorous speech) of his graduating class. Graduating with Kittredge that year was Owen Wister, author of the first Western novel, The Virginian.

Lack of money prevented Kittredge from immediately pursuing graduate studies. From 1883 to 1887 he taught Latin at Phillips Exeter Academy. About six feet tall and, at 140 pounds, slightly built, Kittredge impressed his prep-school students with his exacting standards, sense of humor, and apparent ability to converse fluently in Latin.

In 1886 Kittredge married Frances Gordon, the daughter of a prominent lawyer and philanthropist who had served as president of the New Hampshire Senate and was also a deacon in the Second Church (Congregational) of Exeter. The couple honeymooned in Europe, remaining for a year in Germany, which at that time was regarded as the best center of graduate studies and the mother of distinguished philologists and folklorists. Kittredge already knew German quite well and, although not formally matriculated, attended courses at the universities of Leipzig and Tübingen, in, among other things Old Icelandic. In 1887 he contributed an article for "a learned German periodical" on "A Point In Beowulf."