Webster, Clarence M.

Clarence Mertou Webster (1892-1959), professor of English, was born in Hampton, Connecticut, on September 16, 1892. He graduated from Clark University in 1915 and earned a master’s degree from the University of Michigan in 1916. He taught at a number of institutions before earning his Ph.D. at Brown in 1935. His field was 18th century English literature. He left the academic life for a time to pursue free-lance writing, and was a contributing editor of Yankee magazine. A confirmed New Englander himself, he produced two books on Yankee life, Puritans at Home in 1936, and Town Meeting Country in 1945. To help out during the Second World War, he returned to teaching as an instructor in English at Brown, and was promoted to assistant professor in 1946 and associate professor in 1949. He was to have been appointed full professor in 1959. He had suffered all his life from gassing during the First World War, and had elected to have a lung removed in hope of improving his condition. On January 24, 1959 he died after the operation. In the memorial minute read at the next faculty meeting Professor George K. Anderson praised his courage and said, “even when he was physically most wretched, his mind continued to reach out for something that would be interesting and challenging to his students – if I may quote his affectionate language, ‘something to make the little rascals think.’”