Hale, Beatrice Forbes-Robertson, 1883-

William Gardner Hale (1849-1928) was a noted classical scholar and professor of Latin at the University of Chicago, best known for his work on the poet Catullus and Latin grammar.

Hale was born to a New England family in Savannah, Georgia in 1849. He earned his undergraduate degree at Harvard in 1870 and continued his philosophical education there and in Leipzig and Göttingen, Germany. He taught Latin at Cornell from 1880-1892, and then at the University of Chicago from 1892-1919, upon being recruited by President William Rainey Harper. Hale held the Latin Department Chair from 1894-1899. He was also one of the founders and, for a time, was director (1895-1896) of the American School of Classical Studies at Rome, now the American Academy at Rome.

Hale published many articles and texts on the syntax of Latin but made his life's work the publication of the Catullus Manuscript which he, himself, found in the Vatican. He was also highly involved in developing the pedagogy of Latin, producing two textbooks: Latin Grammar (in collaboration with Carl Darling Buck, 1903), and A First Latin Book (1907). He was highly involved in the Joint Committee on Grammatical Nomenclature, which sought to standardize how Latin grammar was taught in North America and Western Europe. Hale sat on the advisory board of the Loeb Classical Library, which produced translations of classical Greek and Latin texts for a broader, non-academic audience. He was also editor of the journal Classical Review 1885-1907 and became editor of The Classical Quarterly in 1914.

William Gardner Hale was in Europe when Germany invaded Belgium in 1914, cabling in an article to the New York Times in which he called for decisive action against Germany. He advocated a multi-lateral approach to the conflict, arguing that the United States should fight with the Allies on the basis that Germany had broken international law. In May 1916, Hale agreed to serve as an honorary vice president of the American Rights Committee during its Carnegie Hall memorial protest of the Lusitania sinking by a German Navy U-Boat. He donated money to various wartime causes, and corresponded with other intellectuals in Europe and the United States about the war. He was also a member of the New England Anti-Imperialist League, an organization that opposed the American annexation of the Philippines on the basis that it violated the credo of republicanism.

In 1883, Hale married Harriet Knowles Swinburne (1853-1928) of Newport, Rhode Island, a graduate of Vassar College and a proponent of women’s suffrage. Though William and Harriet owned a home in Hyde Park, they also retained a summer home, Aguiden Lodge, in Kineo, Maine and spent a great amount of time on the East Coast. The Hale family was listed in the Social Register and Who’s Who in America, the directories of names and addresses of prominent American families who formed the country’s social elite.

William and Harriet had four children together, all of whom pursued creative endeavors: Swinburne, Margaret, Virginia and Gardner. Swinburne Hale (1884-1937) graduated from Harvard and became a lawyer and socialist activist. He was involved in the Committee of Forty Eight’s Chicago convention, in which they tried to set up a major third party in American politics. He was also an aspiring poet, publishing The Demon’s Notebook in 1923. He was married for ten years to Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale, the stage actress turned feminist author and suffragist, then later, to the heiress Marie Tudor Garland, whom he divorced in 1924. Margaret Hale worked as the business manager for her artist husband, the printmaker Ralph M. Pearson, in New Mexico, with whom she launched a line of greeting cards based on his prints. Their third child, Virginia Hale (1887-1981), became an oil painter in California. The Hales’ youngest son, Gardner Hale (1900-1932), became a well-known mural painter and interior designer on the West coast, reviving the fresco technique in the United States. He was married to the socialite and aspiring actress Dorothy (Donovan) Hale.

William Gardner Hale eventually retired to Stamford, Connecticut in 1920, where he died in 1928.

The Hales’ home on Kimbark Avenue at 58th Street became the Graduate Club, while the second location of their home, 5727 S. University Avenue later became the Department of Music Building and the Statistics-Mathematics Building.

From the guide to the Hale, William Gardner. Papers, circa 1880-1928, (Special Collections Research Center University of Chicago Library 1100 East 57th Street Chicago, Illinois 60637 U.S.A.)