Dartmouth College

After completing high school in 1883, Wentworth entered the Chandler Scientific Department of Dartmouth College. Wentworth enrolled in the Chandler Scientific Department in 1893 during an era when Dartmouth was in the early stages of a transition from a regional school of around a thousand students, training “preachers and teachers” to a “University fitted into a College” that would emerge as one of the nation’s best known and most highly regarded institutions. During Wentworth’s era, the college consisted of a dozen or so buildings surrounded Hanover’s Green in a classic New Hampshire setting.

Wentworth Thesis for Chapter House 1887

When Wentworth arrived in the mid 1880s, Dartmouth was changed by the economic prosperity that took shook the nation in the years after the Civil War. The Chandler school itself and its approach to education was at the forefront of that change. The transformation from a small church oriented college was underway and was necessary if the institution was to survive. Dartmouth in the 1880s was no longer the isolated, local communal institution that was a reflection of the needs and interests of northern New England. First of all, the small towns that surrounded Hanover were losing population to the larger towns and cities of the East Coast and to western migration. It had a new type of student body – “younger, more cosmopolitan, and from a higher socioeconomic background. And it had a different relation to the local community and region, now perceived as a special place apart.” The school was becoming more professionally oriented, more fragmented along disciplinary and communities of interest.

The Casque and Gauntlet Society

The emphasis on collegiality and group identity was so important that for students at several colleges, being in a fraternity alone was not enough. As fraternities became widespread, they did not alone provide enough exclusivity or specialized group identity. At several schools, “Senior Societies”, invitation only organizations based on themes and interests, were coming into being. As fraternities proliferated, their prestige and exclusivity were limited. However, being selected by classmates to become part of senior society was seen as evidence of being among the most likable, the most idealistic, the most sporting, or the wealthiest undergraduates at the college. The best known were the senior societies at Yale, where new members were "tapped" into "Skull and Bones" or "Scroll and Key" near the end of their junior year by the membership preceding them, and these organizations served as models for several other colleges. At Harvard, the Porcellian Club indicated social acceptance for young members of leading families. Unlike fraternities, Senior societies were unique to themselves in type and theme and didn’t seek other chapters at other colleges. They varied in success and longevity and didn’t always achieve the social prominence they sought out, but their existence was certainly in keeping with the times.

Casque & Gauntlet Pin

Senior societies at Dartmouth differed from those at Harvard and Yale in that there was less emphasis on strict class divisions and the intense competition for senior societies. However, the demand for associational involvement and being somehow “distinct and separate” from the rest of the crowd was in very much in vogue. At Dartmouth, an unusual senior society developed and Fred Wesley Wentworth was among its founding members.

The Casque and Gauntlet Society is a senior society that remains a fixture at Dartmouth to this day that bears the stamp of the times in general and seems to the Wentworth personality in particular. The organization is based on King Arthur and the Round Table – the ultimate legend in fraternal camaraderie.   Dartmouth graduate and C & G member when a Dartmouth senior, Professor Jonathan Good of the University of Minnesota has written about medievalism in American culture and the advent of the Casque and Gauntlet Society in particular:

In the C &G tradition, each of the members assumed a name and identity based on the Arthurian lore and traditions of chivalry in medieval England. Professor Good described the influence of medievalism on a group of college students looking to distinguish their organization from the fraternities, clubs and college students notes:

Professor Good notes that the C&G, while drawing on the Arthurian notion differs from European social organizations that attempted that were revivals of the Round Table organizations. The Dartmouth college revival was not based on birth or wealth, although many of the early members came from well known or established families. However, the defining virtues were sociability, accomplishment and character. If you had those characteristics, you could be considered for inclusion. Without them, no matter your station, you were not C&G material. It was a very appealing notion to Dartmouth students and especially to Fred Wesley Wentworth. Nothing would find greater meaning in Wentworth’s lifetime than his involvement in the Casque and Gauntlet. Wentworth, known as “Bill” to his Dartmouth classmates, would maintain friendships that spanned his entire lifetime from this era.

Unlike other secret senior societies at Dartmouth and Yale where new buildings were constructed to house the organization, the Casque and Gauntlet society began in rented rooms near camps, eventually purchasing the building adapting it to its needs. Wentworth was deeply involved in setting up the organization, and designed the “pin” that is the symbol of fraternal life and later in his career supervised an expansion of the Casque and Gauntlet building in 1905. He lent financial support to Casque and Gauntlet Society and his will forgave an outstanding mortgage loan. This is the only organization or charity that was even mentioned in the Wentworth will, clearly reflecting his affection and affinity to the club. Wentworth maintained C & G friendships at reunions throughout the rest of his life and more importantly, the ethos of the organization, that there were “men of character” who were worthy of a seat at the Round Table as equals to others of character and virtue. A founding member reminiscing about the early days of the society some fifty years later found that it had been "a great idea to conceive and to plan the application to college life of the ideals of Arthurian chivalry and the fellowship of the Table Round, 'whereat no Baron might sit above his fellows.'"

The ethos of the Casque and Gauntlet society touched something in Wentworth’s heart and stayed with him throughout his life.

Socially, Wentworth was well connected to college friends with whom he would remain in contact throughout his life. His affection for the fellowship of the Casque and Gauntlet society would remain as a bond to his friends and seems to have shaped some personal ideals. Throughout his life and career would seek clubs and organizations to make friendships, peers and associates. While Wentworth sought fellowship and comradarie in his clubs and associations, the Casque and Gauntlet was more complex. Wentworth would come to incorporate the meaning of the Round Table as an attempt to associate with men of character and worth who may come from any background. In fact, photographs of Wentworth, taken twenty years later, show him wearing the C&G pin – it was an organization that would define his values for the remainder of his life.