Harold deWolfe Fuller

Harold deWolf Fuller graduated from Harvard in 1898 and took his Ph.D. there in 1902. The next two years he spent as a travelling fellow from Harvard in Europe. He went to Germany, France, and England, and finally wound up at Leyden studying Netherland literature. During the year in Holland he acquired a ready command of the spoken language and considerable facility in reading seventeenth-century Dutch.

He came back to America and got a job as instructor in English and comparative literature at Harvard, and he also taught a course in Dutch on the side. He was exceedingly interested in Dutch; and he made and published a metrical translation into English of the early legend of Beatrice, the run-away nun who, forsaken by her faithless lover, returns to her convent and finds that she has never been missed: the Virgin Mary had, in her guise, performed her duties as sacristan to reward her for faithfully praying her daily Ave Marias.

Teaching, however—even the teaching of journalism—was not to Fuller’s liking; he craved the practice of it. He became editor of The Nation in 1914; but the war came along, and he fell out with Oswald Villard (like everyone else) and resigned. He edited several other periodicals, including the Weekly Review. He finally became executive director of the Netherland-America Foundation, an organization dedicated to deepening the friendship between the two countries. Here his administrative talents were exceedingly useful. Among other accomplishments, he succeeded in having the bronze statue of the old Dutch Governor erected in Stuyvesant Square; and there he stands, on his wooden leg, to this day.

Like Dean Swift, Fuller died from the top, and his last days were a sad anticlimax; but in his heyday he was a lively, responsible writer and editor and a very valuable citizen.

George W. Martin
1958 Century Association Yearbook