Dewey Uncovered!

As our readers know, the editors of this ‘zine will travel to the remotest corners of the globe in search of a philosophical landmark--especially if that landmark is in any way related to the life of either of the two philosophers who can legitimately lay claim to the title of most influential philosopher of the twentieth century. Their travels in Ireland in the summer of 1998 included a sidetrip to Connemara to look for the cottage where Wittgenstein had spent the summer before his death. On another trip, they visited the University of Vermont, and discovered the final resting place for the ashes of John Dewey.

This summer presented your editors--oh, for heaven’s sakes, us--with a golden opportunity, an opportunity to travel to Nova Scotia. (In point of fact, Nova Scotia was not our final destination; Newfoundland was. But that is a story for another day.) Why golden? Well, because Nova Scotia is home to the town of Hubbards, also known as the summer residence of Dewey Himself!

How, you may ask, did we know that Dewey summered in this small town on the southeastern shore of Nova Scotia? The answer, of course, is, "keen sleuthing skills on the part of a certain careful reader of the Dewey corpus had detected a number of references to Hubbards; return addresses on letters, mentions in biographies, etc." That, and a party conversation with Larry Hickman, director of the Center for Dewey Studies at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, who’d made a pilgrimage to Hubbards himself some years back.

Armed with a brief email from Larry sketching out his efforts to find Dewey’s cottage, we pointed our trusty Golf in the direction of Hubbards. Taking a leaf from Larry’s detective notebook (and thinking about where we’d start if we landed in our own small town), we started our search for Dewey at the local post office.

Larry’s message had warned us that Dewey’s cottage probably didn’t exist any more; when he’d visited the town, a young man had taken him to Sawler’s Lake, to the place where he said the cottage had once stood. But frankly, both Larry and we were hopeful that the young whippersnapper was talking out of turn, and that, upon our arrival, we’d find the Dewey family cottage still standing. Failing that, we hoped maybe to meet someone who might know something, about the man himself.

Upon arriving at the p.o., we found only one person in attendance--the postal clerk. But we were quick to draw a crowd--okay, one other person--who must have sensed that we were on an undercover philosophical investigation. We asked the assembled crowd if they had ever heard of John Dewey, and if not, did they know of anyone who might have been living in the 1920s and 30s who might have had contact with Dewey.

Talking it over between the two of them, the crowd hit on the name Roy Harnish. "He’s the man; if anyone in town knows anything about that time period, it would be Roy."

And then, the postal clerk did just what we would have done, had someone walked into our office in St. Peter and told us that someone famous had lived there, and could we help them find out more about them; she got on the phone and called Roy Harnish for us. And Roy Harnish was home--and said come on over, of course he’d heard of Dewey.

It was exciting to see our quirky search become theirs; they too became invested in finding out more about this philosopher who had lived in their town some seventy years ago. And it was absolutely astonishing to us that, in the span of ten minutes, two people and a telephone call put us in touch with someone who had known John Dewey. Never mind six degrees of separation; we were at the source!

Following the pastiche of directions--a combination of those from Mr. Harnish, the postal clerk, and the helpful citizen--we made our clumsy way to Mr. Harnish’s house, located on Hubbards Beach. All the while we were driving, we effused like high school girls standing in line to see the Beatles perform on the Ed Sullivan Show.

When we arrived, Mr. Harnish escorted us to his back porch, overlooking the ocean. "What can I do for you?" he asked. "Tell us everything you know about John Dewey," we said. And this is the story that Roy Harnish told:

In 1925, when Roy Harnish was an inquisitive eight year old, Hubbards, Nova Scotia was home to one A.W. Shatford, a major merchant who built a grand hotel for summer occupants. One of those occupants was Dr. Robert Norwood, a man born in Hubbards who went on to become the pastor of St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York City. Norwood was a very important and influential clergyman whose path crossed those of many New York literati, including Grossett (of Grossett and Dunlap fame) and...John Dewey.

Shatford owned property on Sawler’s Lake, and Norwood purchased land there to build a big log cottage for himself and his family. He persuaded Dewey and his other intellectual colleagues to do the same.

The Norwood-Dewey circle built cottages clustered around Sawler’s Lake--close, but not too close to each other. Their occupants formed a tight community, coming in to town to get the mail and the groceries, but mostly sticking to themselves. To young Roy Harnish, who saw the summer people in the drug store and the post office, Dewey cut a rather unimpressive figure. He used to come to town in his hang-around-the-house clothes, while Pastor Norwood was always well turned out in a proper suit.

But apparently there were occasions when neither of them was wearing much of anything. Mr. Harnish reports that Sawler’s Lake cottage owners--including one John Dewey--built high walkways extending from the second floors of their cottages out into Sawler’s Lake. And what was the purpose of these walkways? Mr. Harnish has it on reliable authority that they enabled cottage inhabitants to walk out into the lake and swim nude whenever they felt like it. Yes, dear readers; John Dewey swam naked.

Mr. Harnish didn’t know why or when the Dewey family stopped summering in Hubbards; he remembered that Norwood’s son, Ted, drowned at the lake, an event which led the family to build a new home on the ocean. Norwood himself died at the tragically young age of 33.

It is true that Dewey’s family cottage had been torn down; no part of it remains on the site at Sawler’s Lake. But we found something much more valuable in Mr. Roy Harnish; a masterful storyteller who showed us John Dewey through the eyes of a child.