Special Tribute: Emmett and Mary Avery
As individuals come together in academia working toward a common goal and purpose, each leaves an indelible mark, a fingerprint of passing. For some, it is small, a whisper of time spent, a handful of hours or days. For some, though, the trail is wide, the influence deep and lasting, the legacy of a gift from a generous soul. Emmett L. Avery gave the WSU English Department just such a gift, the lasting imprint of his time and work that leaves an ongoing path for others to follow. He and his wife, Mary Williamson Avery, served the State of Washington for over half a century, contributing greatly to its body of scholarship and leading the way for other Washington State University (WSU) scholars, in turn, to leave their own marks behind.
Emmett L. Avery was born in Martinsville, Indiana, on August 20, 1903, and died in Spokane, Washington, on December 15, 1970. His life was dedicated to teaching, research, and publication. Emmett received a B.A. from Franklin College in Indiana in 1926, where he met Mary Williamson, who later became his wife. He then earned an M.A. in English from the University of Chicago in 1926, which led to a temporary position at Western Reserve College, where he found his scholarly passion, the London Stage. His association with Washington State College (WSC) as an instructor in the Department of English began in 1927 while Walter Peck was Chair. In 1929, Emmett resigned to return to graduate school at the University of Chicago. He received his Ph.D. in 1933 and taught for one year at Shurtleff College (1933-4) and one year at Elmhurst College (1934-5). In 1935, he was offered an instructorship at WSC after some negotiations about salary. A Wisconsin teachers' college had offered significantly more, but he did not want to go to a "teachers' college," and settled for a salary of $2000 to come to Pullman, where his first Chair was Murray Bundy. In 1938, Emmett Avery was promoted to Associate Professor.
Emmett's wife, Mary Williamson Avery was a scholar, writer, and historian in her own right. She served as Archivist for WSU Holland Library from 1957-1971 and was active in many organizations in Pullman - the League of Women Voters, Fortnightly, and others. At that time, spouses could not both teach on campus, so Mary began her WSU career by teaching Northwest history for WSC Extension Services and drove with other professors to Lewiston and Spokane to give evening classes. Mary Avery authored Washington: A History of the Evergreen State, which was widely used as a high school textbook throughout the state, and Government of the State of Washington, and the college textbook, History and Government of the State of Washington, all published by the University of Washington Press. She served on many committees and survey projects related to historical records and research projects, published articles, and hosted a weekly WSC radio program for many years on which she read from pioneers' diaries. Along with her library work, Mary also shared stories she gained by interviewing settlers, many who had traveled across the country in wagon trains.
The couple's first and only child, Charlotte, was born May 3, 1940 in Colfax, Washington. (Pullman did not have a hospital at that time). Charlotte recalls:
When I was growing up my parents and I spent many summers at our cabin at Beaver Creek on Priest Lake. I remember my parents spending hours on the cabin's front porch - my mother editing proofs and revising her books on Pacific NW History and Washington State government; my father working on his notes and the index for The London Stage.
During World War II, Emmett remained in Pullman and, in addition to his regular English classes, taught mathematics for Air Corps training. After the war, Emmett taught amputees to type with only two index fingers, a skill that he had perfected, in order to help them overcome their handicap of lost fingers. In 1946, he was promoted to Professor, and in 1963, he was appointed to replace Nelson Ault, who was ill, as Acting Chair. In 1964, Emmett was appointed Chair for a four-year term that culminated in his retirement in 1968. His career did not end in Pullman, however. From 1968 to 1970 he taught at the University of Washington, and in 1970, he moved to Eastern Washington State College for a final year of teaching.
Emmett was a prolific scholar who conducted his research mainly in London at the British Museum. He spent the summers of 1932 and 1938 in London, and in 1949-50 was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship that allowed him a year in London. He spent the summer of 1951 at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., on a fellowship, and returned again to London on sabbatical during spring semester of 1954. During these stays in London, Mary, already a well-known Pacific Northwest historian, worked in the archives of the Hudson's Bay Company while their daughter, Charlotte, attended boarding school in England.
Emmett's publication record reminds one of how great the giants were in the past. His first article appeared in Philological Quarterly in 1934, and by the end of his career thirty-six years later, he had published some seventy articles and two books: Congreve's Plays on the Eighteenth Century Stage (MLA, 1951), and his major achievement, The London Stage, 1660-1800. Emmett edited and wrote the critical introduction for Part 2 (1700-1729), which appeared in two volumes and was published in 1960, before release of Part 1. Indeed, Emmett did most of the work on Part 1 (1660-1700), which was published in 1965 with William Van Lennep's name on the title page, and wrote the introduction and calendar along with Arthur H. Scouten. Emmett also participated in the preparation of the remaining nine volumes published from 1961 to 1968. The London Stage has provided an exhaustive, accurate calendar of the drama as it was actually performed and has stood the test of time. It remains the basic tool in its field and has made possible later studies not only on the plays themselves, but also on the lives and careers of the actors who performed them. Robert D. Hume (Pennsylvania State University) wrote recently:
What the original editors set out to do, they did extremely well. By any standard, their calendar is close to exhaustive in its list of performances, and admirably accurate . . . in its presentation of casts. Box-receipts are faithfully reported when known. The introductions to each part (issued separately as paperback books) are wonderfully full, vivid, and detailed; they present a view of the London theatre by scholars who knew its nuts-and-bolts underside. What is perhaps best about The London Stage is simply that the user can see at a glance what plays were performed at each theatre on any given day. Consequently one can study competition and competitive devices as they evolved, day by day, week by week, month by month.
After Emmett passed away in 1970, following a long battle with cancer, Mary moved to Spokane where she could be close to her grandchildren. She was archivist for the Eastern Washington Historical Society in Spokane from 1971 until her death in 1975 from injuries sustained in an auto accident.
As a person, Emmett Avery was unassuming, modest, and exceptionally kind. He was never bored, never unoccupied. Emmett engaged with tasks that ranged from sharing with Mary all the duties in their home to memorizing all the train schedules in the United States and being able to tell colleagues exactly how they could take the train from Pullman to wherever they needed to go. He calculated mentally for everyone he knew, even for his colleagues in the Department of English, insurance company life expectancy rates according to tables he had created.
Few who knew Emmett would have guessed that he had an international reputation as one of the foremost scholars of eighteenth-century drama. One quotation in a letter he wrote on 17 May 1954 shows that life for a scholar in post-war London was not always pleasant:
Our stay in London has been very good -- except for the weather. It has been a very chilly spring, one of the coldest in recent years; and the lack of central heating catches every American in his aching muscles. Today, with the temperature at a maximum of about 52 degrees, there was no heat in either the main Reading Room or the Manuscript Room of the British Museum, and you can imagine that the indoor temperature was not far above that of the outdoors.
The Avery's daughter and grandchildren followed in Emmett's and Mary's footsteps, valuing education and service. Their daughter, Charlotte Avery Pearson, received her B.A. from the University of Washington and J.D. from Seattle University School of Law. Charlotte's three children followed suit: Bradford Avery Steiner became an attorney in Seattle; Douglas Avery Pearson, a corrections officer in Spokane; and Kimberly Cathcart, a first-grade teacher in Chula Vista, California. Charlotte remembers her parents with great fondness, writing:
I was extremely lucky to have two very intelligent, kind, dedicated, interesting and witty parents. I absolutely adored my father, as he did me. I was only 30 when my father died and 35 when my mother died. I wish I had appreciated my parents then as much as I do now. They were exceptional and I still miss them very much.
The words of friends and relatives of Emmett and Mary Avery perhaps say the most about their life achievements. John R. Elwood, a scholar and dear friend of Emmett, summed it up best in his Memoriam, read at Emmett Avery's funeral:
It would be nonsense to suggest, however, that all in life delighted Emmett Avery. Some men are fools, and Professor Avery suffered from the ability to see who they were. He succumbed no more than did Jonathan Swift to optimistic views about the nature and future of mankind; yet, again like Swift, he found that he liked well enough those people with whom he was associated. Certainly he had no faith in any theory of progress; nevertheless he committed his extraordinary energies to literature and to the improvement of his profession and his department.
No project devoted to literature or its criticism failed to get his support. No "little magazine" came to his attention that he did not buy and read, and we have already mentioned his vigorous support of Poe Newsletter. It should be noted that he was chairman of the Department of English only in the last four of his years at Washington State University, but those were the years in which that department made its most evident progress....
Though he is missed as a professional, his work makes the cliché true - he will live on in his scholarship. But it is as the wry and humorous man who rapped out letters to his friends (he never lost touch) without losing a beat in his work, and as the good guest and storyteller that he occupies our thoughts. Emmett Avery's colleagues all have their favorite anecdotes about the man, some illustrating his extraordinary interest in his undergraduate students' themes and some illustrating his remarkable energy. These stories and the many examples of his wit which are now current will probably pass into the kind of academic legend that eventually distorts the histories of men, turning them into jolly elves or unwrinkled paragons. But we who were lucky enough to have been friends of that complex and pleasant man know that Emmett Avery wouldn't care one whit how his legend developed, or if it did.
Thanks to Nick Kiessling for the body of this article and to Charlotte Avery Pearson and John R. Elwood for additional information