One morning last week an elderly man with wispy white hair mounted his platform in a Columbia University classroom and began his lecture as if it were to be just like any other. He did not appear to notice that his audience, even larger than usual, had filled every seat and lined the walls. Professor Carlton J. H. Hayes spoke as he always spoke, bringing his course in modern European history up to the minute. Just before the warning bell sounded for the end of class, he had come to 1950. "And there," said Carlton Hayes, "I leave you."
As every student in the hall knew, 67-year-old Historian Hayes was indeed leaving his class. As student and teacher, he had been at Columbia for exactly 50 years —"seven years listening to other people and 43 years with other people having to listen to me." Last week, at term's end, it was time for him to retire.
Boom, Pause, Boom. It was hard for Columbia to believe. In 50 years Carlton Hayes had become an almost legendary figure on Morningside Heights. He was the elder statesman with the courtly manners who could call a greying colleague "My dear boy . . ." and still make it sound quite proper. He taught history with an actor's skill. Looking majestically out into space, he would boom a few sentences, then pause, then boom out again. Sometimes he would wrap his double-breasted coat close around him as if it were a cloak and seem to become Disraeli, Metternich or Bismarck himself. Even his prolonged "Aahhs . . ." ("A miracle of breath control," one student called them) seemed dramatic. Once, in the midst of his pacings, he fell right off his platform. Nobody laughed, for fear of breaking his spell.
In time his fame spread beyond Columbia. He saw his subject as not just a chronicle of battles and politics, but a web of economics, of manners, morals, ideas and ideals as well. Each summer, working from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. each day, he labored on his own writings until he had authored or co-authored 23 books.
Change & Continuity. In 1942, Carlton Hayes uprooted himself from Columbia to become, for three wartime years, Franklin Roosevelt's ambassador to Spain. His mission: to help persuade Dictator Franco that there was no future for him in entering World War II on the side of the Axis. After V-E day he hurried back to teaching. "That," he explained, "is my life."
As that life ended, he admitted to his students that the world did not seem so bright to him as it had 43 years before. But, said he, "I don't want anybody to commit suicide over the fate of the world." He wanted his students to remember one thing: "History's continuity is greater and stronger than its changes." For Columbia, history without Carlton Hayes would be a change indeed.