Oral History Transcript - Rudolf Kirk - September 23, 1986
Interview with Dr. Rudolf Kirk
Interviewer: Diane C. Watts
Transcriber: Diane C. Watts
Date of Interview: September 23, 1986
Location: Dr. Kirk’s Home, Balcones Apt. #402, San Marcos, TX
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Begin Tape 1, Side 1
Diane C. Watts: This oral history project is done for the Southwest Texas State University honors history program. The date is September 23, 1986, and the interview is taking place at Dr. Kirk’s home in San Marcos. I, Diane Watts, will be interviewing Dr. Kirk, a former faculty member of Southwest Texas State University.
We can continue from here. So—(laughs) see, not really difficult huh? All right, so I guess we can start with your parents—who were they?
Rudolf Kirk: My father’s name was Charles Falkworth Kirk (laughs).
Watts: Charles Falkworth Kirk?
Kirk: Yes, and my mother’s name was Annie Brook Kirk. Brook, of course, was her maiden name.
Watts: Where were they from?
Kirk: From Almany, Montgomery County, Maryland.
Watts: Okay. What did your father do?
Kirk: My father was a farmer, a very excellent farmer. If he hadn’t been a good farmer, I wouldn’t be sitting here this minute. (Laughs)
Watts: In other words, he made money at it.
Kirk: My mother was an interesting combination; she was a hard-working farmer’s wife and, at the same time, a blue stocking.
Watts: A blue stocking!?
Kirk: Don’t you know what a blue stocking is?
Watts: I’m not sure—nobility or rich?
Kirk: A learned lady.
Watts: A learned lady; okay, that’s interesting. What type of education did she have?
Kirk: Well, she graduated from the local girl’s school, and I guess she was the brightest thing in their class. My father had practically no education except what he gave himself by extensive reading.
Watts: So he sort of taught himself?
Kirk: Yes. He was a tremendously hard-driving man.
Watts: So, where were you born and raised?
Kirk: Well, I was born in the Garfield Memorial Hospital in Washington D.C., but I was also an immediate citizen of Maryland since my father and mother were both old Marylanders.
Watts: Yes.
Kirk: Now this is a little interesting—
Pause in recording [Knock at the door and tape is stopped while the laundry is delivered]
Watts: Just your laundry—you get it delivered. Let’s see, where were we?
Kirk: I don’t know.
Watts: We were talking about something interesting about—
Kirk: Do you want some sherry?
Watts: Not right at the moment.
Kirk: All right.
Watts: We were talking about where you were born?
Kirk: I was born, as I said, at (together) Garfield Memorial Hospital in Washington D.C. The reason for that in those days was that my mother had a son born normally, [and] then she lost two babies stillborn. And then when I was coming along, my parents were desperate, so they took me into Washington where I was born.
Watts: So where were you raised?
Kirk: I was raised, really, on the farm in Maryland. On the other hand, I suffered severely from asthma.
Watts: Oh, really?
Kirk: It was so severe that I had to be sent away to go to school and that delayed my schooling a great deal. In fact, I went to a crack private school in Washington, Sidwell Friends School, and it was a wonderful school, and it still is.
Watts: What was it like going to school there?
Kirk: Well, I don’t know what you say what was it like. It was simply a very good school, a private school, and they had some magnificent teachers, Mary Sibley Evans was one, George H. Sensnore was another; they were grand people.
Watts: Well, how did you feel being sent away to school?
Kirk: I had to live with friends in Washington to get this. So, I didn’t graduate until I was twenty years old. But thanks to this school, I was able to enter Princeton University, which was very dear to my heart, though I had never seen it at that time. And I stayed at Princeton for the four-year course. And then in years later I took my master’s and doctorate’s degrees.
Watts: At Princeton?
Kirk: At Princeton.
Watts: What do you remember about going to school? What was it like going to school at the time?
Kirk: [Referring to the Sidwell Friends School] Oh, I can’t say—that is an impossible question to answer. It was a good school; they were very fine children in it.
Watts: And you enjoyed it?
Kirk: Oh, I enjoyed it very much. I just loved it. And due to this day, I’d liked to go back to—well, I did go to a reunion three years ago. It was a happy choice. It was my fiftieth reunion and the one hundredth anniversary of the school. And that is about all there is to say about that.
Watts: You were twenty when you went into Princeton?
Kirk: Twenty, and I graduated when I was twenty-four.
Watts: What was the date of your birth? I’m just curious.
Kirk: January 20, 1898; seems like medieval history to you.
Watts: (Laughs) Yes, it sort of does. So World War I was going on while you were going to school, wasn’t it?
Kirk: No! Well, now, wait a minute, yes. It started in 1914, and I went into the army when I entered Princeton in 1918. And it was a very short period of service because the war ended November 11, 1918.
[General confusion on what the interviewer wanted to ask. Dr. Kirk, hard of hearing is confused about what is being asked]
Watts: Prior to your going to Princeton, what were your feelings about World War I?
Kirk: Oh! Well, a certain amount of excitement.
Watts: Did you want to go off to war?
Kirk: Oh, yes! I went to college, and the war came on, or rather it had been going on for a while, and so we all went into the army. And stayed in the army from October 1, 1918, until we received our honorable discharge on December 10, 1918.
Watts: So what was life like in Princeton? After the war.
Kirk: Well, we lived in college dormitories, which we called barracks. We made out very well, and they fed us well, and that is very important!
Watts: Yes! What were your courses like?
Kirk: Well, just like all courses, some were superb—I did particularly well in my sophomore history and economics. I did particularly badly in French. I finally learned to read French when my mother said that we should read it together. She had forgotten her French, and I had never known it, so we started out about even.
Watts: Did your father support you in your going to school?
Kirk: Yes!
Watts: He wanted you to go?
Kirk: He supported me entirely.
Watts: Both morally and financially?
Kirk: Yes, financially entirely and morally too. Oh, yes.
Watts: What about your brother? What happened to him? Did he go to college?
Kirk: That was the first great tragedy in our family, when at Christmas time, December 27, 1918, he died of the Spanish Influenza.
Watts: What was your brother’s name?
Kirk: Donald.
Watts: Donald.
Kirk: And so my son is named Donald after him.
Watts: He didn’t go to war, did he?
Kirk: No, my brother Donald did not go to war. I was the one who did those things.
Watts: What made you decide to major in English?
Kirk: It was the thing that I was good at. Yes, I had a remarkable professor, Morris William Croll. And one night in April of my senior year, we had had an evening class, and after the class we were talking, and he asked me whether I would like to be recommended for a job at the state university of Iowa. He knew a man there, and so I went to the University of Iowa for my first teaching job and liked it immensely. I loved the University of Iowa.
Watts: So you got your BA, and you went to the University of Iowa?
Kirk: AB, we’ll call it.
Watts: AB (laughs). During the time period in which you were going to Princeton has been called “the Jazz Age.” I was just wondering what was going on on the campus of Princeton at this time.
Kirk: On the campus?
Watts: Yes, what was the campus life like?
Kirk: Well, I lived in the college dormitory the whole time. And we ate in Commons. And we were fed very well. And it was just a magnificent experience to go to Princeton. It was tough. I didn’t do outstanding work, but I managed to get along. And—what do you want me to say?
Watts: Anything you want to. What was that time period like for you?
Kirk: What time?
Watts: What years did you go to school?
Kirk: 1918 to 1922, I graduated from Princeton in June of 1922, and I’ve been glad that I had the opportunity to go to Princeton. It was then, and I hope still is, a magnificent school.
Watts: Wasn’t Prohibition going on at that time?
Kirk: What?
Watts: Not legal drinking or do I have my dates wrong?
Kirk: What was going on? I don’t get you?
Watts: Prohibition!
Kirk: Oh! This was just before Prohibition.
Watts: That is right. I have my dates crossed, I’m sorry.
Kirk: So, I regret to say, I’ve seen various classmates intoxicated.
Watts: (Laughs) You have talked about your first trip to Europe. [I talked to Dr. Kirk about his trip before this interview took place]
Kirk: Oh, well, that was years later. It was in my second year in college when a dear old family friend, close friend of the family long years before I was born, said to me, “You have never been abroad. I will give you $500 to a trip abroad.” Now, $500 would go further [then] than it goes now. And so I sailed from New York on the Majestic, one of the great ocean liners, and they are no longer in existence, you know.
Watts: Yes. Well, they still are, but most people travel by airplane.
Kirk: Do any go on the ocean liners?
Watts: Very few.
Kirk: Very few. Well, at any rate, I went on the Majestic. It was a grand trip. That summer was unforgettable ,except that I forget everything. I landed at South Hampton and then went by train to London and put up there. Then the darndest thing happened; I became ill with asthma. I could not live in England, I thought without—because of the asthma. However, I decided, Well, this is in the city. I will try the country. And so I got on a bus, I guess it was, and went out to Hampton Court. I went out there on the—bus—put up in a small hotel there and would then go into London into the city where I had the asthma each day, I would come out again by the evening, and that way I was able to salvage the summer. I was abroad until the middle of August.
Watts: Of 1929 right?
Kirk: Yes. It was 1929, and I went out to Oxford and to Cambridge, and those were grand sites to me.
Watts: Oh, I can imagine.
Kirk: It was all tremendously interesting. And I was a little country boy, I wasn’t use to all these great things.
Watts: (giggling)
Kirk: Saw the king too. He drove by in his limousine. (Laughs)
Watts: Were you still in school at this time? What were you studying? Were you getting your doctorate?
Kirk: I was getting my doctorate. I hadn’t quite finished it, and I was going to Oxford and Cambridge to use their great libraries. I was working on a sixteenth and seventeenth-century subject.
Watts: Oh! What was the subject of your paper? Dissertation?
Kirk: Well, it was an edition of the play The City Madam, a comedy by Philip Massinger. I have a copy of it in the next room.
Watts: Okay.
Kirk: Well, that was my introduction to scholarship.
Watts: You thought Europe was pretty great? Interesting?
Kirk: Oh! Splendidly so. Now, I broke the summer in London by spending one week in Paris. Now, that was great too. I enjoyed Paris. One thing was interesting to me. You know the English food is rather heavy. Well, the very first luncheon that I took in Paris was simply delicious.
Watts: The French have good food?
Kirk: Oh, the French do have good food.
Watts: The Depression hit soon after you came back.
Kirk: Now, the Depression is an interesting subject. I had a job, thank God. I then met my wife. The most attractive, most delightful person I’ve ever seen, and well—we just didn’t notice the Depression. She had a job, and I had a job.
Watts: Where did you two work?
Kirk: She worked as an assistant professor at Vassar College. And I worked as an assistant professor at Rutgers University. And the two salaries combined to make us very well off.
Watts: Especially during the Depression.
Kirk: Exactly. And thus we bridged the Depression without really noticing it seriously.
Watts: Well, how did it affect your family or any of your friends?
Kirk: Well, that’s hard to say. My mother—my father had left my mother comfortably situated. My father died back in 1923, but my mother was comfortably fixed. And I would go down and spend vacations with my mother in Maryland, and she and I read French together.
Watts: So, how did you meet your wife?
Kirk: Oh! The most conventional way you ever heard of in your life. We went to a teacher’s meeting; she representing Vassar, I representing Rutgers in Atlantic City.
Watts: (Laughs)
Kirk: I looked around the room, she was the best looking woman in it, so I married her. (Laughs)
Watts: When were you two married?
Kirk: There was no opposition.
Watts: When were you two married?
Kirk: On September 8, 1930.
Watts: What other universities have you taught at? Other than Rutgers and University of Iowa?
Kirk: Well, I taught at the state university of Iowa. And then I taught summer school sessions at the University of Missouri and one or two others.
[Checking tape]
Watts: Just checking the tape.
Kirk: You’re checking the tape?
Watts: Yes, just checking the tape. So your wife worked as well?
Kirk: She had a job, and the two salaries made us better off than we ever were in our lives—ever been in our lives.
Watts: So she was a professor of English as well?
Kirk: Yes. She wrote a distinguished doctoral dissertation, which was published and very well-reviewed.
Watts: What on?
Kirk: Sir William Campbell, a seventeenth-century libertine.
Watts: Okay.
Kirk: She read French fluently.
Watts: Did you have any children?
Kirk: We had four children. The first a beautiful little girl, I almost cry when I think of her. Killed in an accident at the age of two. And then we had lots of trouble with children. We had a mongolian boy. Do you know what mongolian is?
Watts: Isn’t that Down’s Syndrome? Retarded?
Kirk: Hopelessly retarded. He lived until he was six years old. He had to be sent away because my wife could not conceive while she was burdened with this child. As soon as we placed him in a home with some very nice people, she immediately conceived. Very interesting.
Watts: Yes. What brought you and Mrs. Kirk here to Southwest Texas?
Kirk: A job.
Watts: Well, you were previously teaching where?
Kirk: I had—well, this is great good luck—do you know Dr. Robert W. Walts?
Watts: Yes, I do.
Kirk: Well, he was a student in my classes, a graduate student at Rutgers. He took his master’s and doctor’s degrees under my direction. Then when he heard that I was going to retire, it was mandatory, he persuaded Dr. Houston and Dr. Flowers, the president, to invite me here. And so I came and been glad of it ever since.
Watts: Did your wife teach here as well?
Kirk: No, she never taught here, but she did extension work in Newark, New Jersey. She would go off once a week.
Watts: She would fly from Texas all the way up to Newark, New Jersey?
Kirk: No, no. We lived in Edison, New Jersey. She would take the train to Newark and teach two classes on afternoon a week. She was just wonderful about it. She was paid very badly for magnificent teaching. But it was a great help to us, for we didn’t have resources. We were pretty far down, and to have her extension money in addition to my salary was a great help.
Watts: At what time was this? What year?
Kirk: Now I have got to stop and think. Oh dear, I can’t remember. My memory is what I forget with.
Watts: That’s all right, is it not that important.
Kirk: I can’t remember the exact years, but made out very small that way. She was wonderful about going into Newark once a week for two classes.
Watts: You came down here to San Marcos, right?
Kirk: So it went along that way, and I had mandatory retirement from Rutgers.
Watts: Okay.
Kirk: Then Dr. Walts, who had been in my classes, and had written his master’s and doctor’s dissertation under my direction, worked on Dr. Houston and Dr. Flowers to invite me here. Now, my wife taught an extension here, but she never taught on the Hill.
Watts: Okay. Did you ever get involved in World War II?
Kirk: As an air raid warden, yes. I was an air raid warren and caught one of the finest colds of my life.
Watts: What were some of your experiences with being an air raid warden?
Kirk: Very little! Very little!
Watts: What would you do?
Kirk: We patrolled. We were right near the railroads we had to patrol.
Watts: Where was this?
Kirk: This was in Edison, New Jersey.
Watts: You would patrol railroads?
Kirk: We would patrol at night.
Watts: What for? What were you looking for?
Kirk: To see that nobody was lurking around who ought not to be.
Watts: Tampering with the railroad; were you afraid the railroad was going to be blown up or something?
Kirk: Nothing ever happened. But one night stands out in my memory. There was a great clanging of railroad bells and whistling of the train and so on. Now, we knew something was up, but we didn’t know what. It was the night that the first troops were sent off to France. That is an interesting thing to me; it is to be looked back on.
Watts: I don’t know what else to talk about.
Kirk: Well, Diane, I don’t think I’m a very interesting figure.
Watts: Well, that’s all in your point of view. I guess, I mean you’re how old?—Eighty-eight?
Kirk: I’m eighty-eight. My wife was exactly the same age as I was. She died when she was seventy-eight.
Watts: Then she died ten years ago.
Kirk: It’ll be ten years the second of October. [Long pause] I wish she were giving you this interview, for she was never at a loss for words. She was perfectly charming always. You would [have] had a grand tape.
Watts: Well, tell me more about her. What was she like?
Kirk: She was reasonably tall, about five foot-seven, something like that, and tremendous energy, vigor, and was extremely learned in not only English literature; she had read an enormous number of novels. But she had also read a good deal in French, and so she was a blue stocking.
Watts: A blue stocking like your mother?
Kirk: Yes, but she was a different character.
Watts: The other day, Bob Ugal was here, and he talked about how he and you and your wife—what was her name again?
Kirk: Clara.
Watts: Clara; what was her last name, her maiden name?
Kirk: Marbourg.
Watts: Marbourg.
Kirk: Clara Marbourg—M-A-R-B-O-U-R-G.
Watts: Anyway, he was talking about how you guys helped get up the University of Illinois; I believe—an extension, something like that?
Kirk: The University of Illinois at Chicago Circle. That is the big Chicago branch of the University of Illinois. What do you want to know about that?
Watts: Oh, I was just curious how did it start, how did you get involved in it?
Kirk: That was a strange thing. I was simply with some people from here in San Marcos and met a very nice interesting man who promptly asked me to take a job in the University of Illinois in Chicago Circle.
Watts: What year was this? Where were you living at the time, that is what I want to know?
Kirk: I was living in Edison, New Jersey.
Watts: Okay.
Kirk: Gosh, some things are so vivid in my memory, and it is hard to put them all together.
Watts: So, who was this man you met? Who offered you the job at Illinois?
Kirk: You’ll have to ask Dr. Houston for his name. He was a very nice man. We met, and he telephoned me in a day or two and asked me to take the job.
Watts: At Illinois.
Kirk: Right. My wife and I put our heads together and decided we would do it. Now, to come to here to San Marcos.
Watts: No, I’m talking about how you set up the University of Illinois?
Kirk: At Chicago Circle.
End of Tape 1, Side A. Begin Tape 1, Side B
Watts: We won’t be much longer.
Kirk: I’m in no hurry.
Watts: You and your wife helped set up the graduate program at the University of Illinois?
Kirk: As a matter of fact, that was more on paper than it was in reality. Though we did teach a graduate course or two in Chicago, the program was largely devised by Dr. Olgal, but we taught it, and we taught the same courses, and sometimes she would teach, sometimes I would, and we enjoyed it very much, but it was terribly difficult commuting.
Watts: I can imagine. Where were you living while you were teaching in Illinois?
Kirk: We were living in our home in Edison, New Jersey, a house we had bought.
Watts: So you were commuting all the way from there all the way out to—
Kirk: It wasn’t but thirty miles.
Watts: Okay, so is there anything else you would like to add?
Kirk: You’ll have drag things out of me. I don’t know what to say. If you were interviewing my wife, she would not hesitate for an instant.
Watts: (Laughs) Well, I’m interviewing you.
Kirk: And have been utterly charming.
Watts: (Laughs) I haven’t gotten quite the interview I was expecting, but it has been interesting.
Kirk: Well, I don’t know what you were expecting.
Watts: Neither did I. (Laughs) Not really. How do you see thing—
Kirk: What?
Watts: I’m trying to form a question. How do you see the modern day?
Kirk: What?
Watts: Today everything is a lot more modernized. Television and computers and such.
Kirk: Well, now really there hasn’t been so much change, since the time I’m speaking of—only a matter of some ten or twenty years, and that isn’t much.
Watts: No, but you have seen a lot of things change.
Kirk: Well, in a lifetime, yes.
Watts: Well, that is what I’m talking about.
Kirk: Well, airplanes are one of the big changes in life. I can remember when the Wright brothers were exhibiting their planes in, I guess it was Washington D.C., or maybe it was in Virginia. At any rate, it was advertised in the paper that if it were a very calm day, they would try to fly ten miles. I can remember that.
Watts: And nowadays—
Kirk: And nowadays it doesn’t have to be a calm day.
Watts: No, it definitely doesn’t.
Kirk: And they fly across the ocean. Now, I remember very well when Lindbergh first flew across the ocean. I was a graduate student at the time, and I was much more interested in my studies than I was in Lindbergh.
Watts: (Laughs) Well, good for you! That is what all good graduate students should do. In what way has teaching English enhanced your life?
Kirk: Well, it has been my life. My goodness. I’ve done nothing but teach English all my life, from the earliest period of teaching, and I’m sorry that I’m on the shelf now and can’t teach a class.
Watts: Well, you know what they say about old teachers: Old teachers never die; their classes just graduate. (Laughs)
Kirk: That’s pretty good.
Watts: So, you still would like to be teaching?
Kirk: Well, I would like to have a hand in it, but I know I am entirely too old. I don’t think I have the physical strength to do it now. You know it takes great deal of vigor to teach. I always would walk around the classroom and keep in close touch with the students.
Watts: How would you go about teaching a class?
Kirk: I don’t know what you mean by that.
Watts: Oh— how would you start a class off, first day of the semester, what would you come in and say?
Kirk: Well, let’s see—in the first place, Rutgers was entirely for men in those days; it has changed since. So I would go in and see the class of young fellows, eighteen to twenty years old, and they were fine young people, and I would just start off the subject whatever it was, if it was a play by Shakespeare, say Othello, I would think about Iago and so on.
Watts: How did you deal with student individually?
Kirk: Oh, that is a good question. I believe very much in personal interviews. I would have the class, the students, bring their papers in and read the papers to me right there.
Watts: Oh god! That’s cruel!
Kirk: No, it was good; we got to know one another.
Watts: Oh my!
Kirk: I would remark “Sp” [Spelling] in the margins. (Laughs) It worked out very well.
Watts: Saved you reading the paper.
Kirk: Oh, I read an unconscionable number of themes. As a matter of fact, I had my eyes once or twice give way on me. I had to knock off for a week or two until I recovered.
Watts: What did your students think of you, just out of curiosity?
Kirk: You’ll have to ask them.
Watts: You never heard it. I thought every professor knew their nickname behind their back.
Kirk: I’ll put it this way, you get along with some students and with other students you don’t. But I managed to keep control.
Watts: When Dr. Walts came into your office—
Kirk: That was a very strange thing, why should I remember it. Where this unknown young man who had just graduated from Rutgers, Newark, and wanted to sign up for graduate courses. Oddly enough, I can remember it, that first interview, and we sat down and talked about what courses he was to take, I was registering graduate students in English at that time. I registered him.
Watts: How did he strike you?
Kirk: Very good, I was trying to size him up, and he was trying to size me up.
Watts: So you two got along.
Kirk: We got along very well from the start, and then by and by he acquired a girl who happened to be a perfectly charming woman named Gloria, and he married her. And they have had a long marriage and children. The children are grown now.
Watts: Yes, I would suppose so.
Kirk: Oh, yes.
Watts: Well, I think that is about enough. Thank you very much.
Kirk: Thank you very much.
Watts: This was a pretty good interview, I think.
Kirk: I hope I haven’t bored you too much.
Watts: I don’t think so; let’s just hope future prosperity will be able to use this.
End of interview