to join Fred at Wisconsin Normal in the fall. He had managed to save a hundred dollars from his York earnings, but he put this in the family common fund and so was not able to use that money to go to Milwaukee or to help Fred. But he was not the only Bolton who was banking on higher education to lift the family out of penury. Mrs. Bolton had mortgaged the farm to help the boys through college. Then she sold a horse for $85 and sent some money to Fred. To Herbert's great surprise and satisfaction, the family urged him to go to normal school immediately and provided money to do it. On March 1 he informed Fred that he would arrive in Milwaukee the next Monday on the midnight train.37
The budding scholar who had looked down on little York was now in Milwaukee, which was probably the first sizable city he had ever seen. With its bustling Lake Michigan port, burgeoning industry, and growing immigrant population Milwaukee must have been exciting and overwhelming at first.38 Wisconsin Normal was located near the heart of the city. Normal schools were meant to train professional teachers with a two-year college curriculum designed with pedagogy in mind.39 Professionalization was one of the watchwords of the late nineteenth century. Self-taught physicians and lawyers gave way to university-trained men (and a few women) who increasingly dominated their professional worlds. The time would soon pass away when a likely high school graduate, perhaps one who was big enough to “handle” the larger pupils, could find a job at a country school as the Bolton boys had done. Indeed, Fred and Herbert would eventually help hasten the day when college training was a prerequisite for school teaching at all levels. The brothers saw no irony in this development.
Herbert and Fred roomed together in the spring. With his brother's help Herbert adapted and prospered, in the personal sense if not financially. Still, scholastic success in this new and strange atmosphere was not guaranteed, and Herbert did not immediately impress Wisconsin Normal students as a comer. One of his friends later recalled that he was not sure if the green boy from Tomah would make it through Normal.40 He was well established at the school by the fall of 1890, when his brother, diploma in hand, departed for Fairchild to be principal of the high school there.41 Fred's new job was convincing evidence of the value of higher education. At age twenty-four, with less than two years’ teaching experience, Fred's normal school certificate made him a high school principal. Here was tangible proof that the Boltons’ faith in higher education was well placed. Fairchild was only a way station for Fred. He was headed to the state university in Madison eventually but needed to make money to finance Herbert as well as gain experience in the field. Fred was turning to education as his academic specialty. As a teacher of teachers he might land a job at one of the new normal schools that were being established in Wisconsin and elsewhere.
Wisconsin Normal offered college-level courses, but was by no means a comprehensive university. As its graduates were expected to teach many subjects, the curriculum was general. The normal school diploma was not a bachelor's degree, but a certification of the holder's competence to teach school in specific disciplines. Mastery of a textbook in the field seemed to be the common standard for each course. Herbert studied mathematics, grammar, political economy, history, rhetoric, science, Latin, modern languages, pedagogy, and practice teaching all crammed into a year and a half of intense study.42
Social life in Milwaukee was far more interesting than anything Herbert had experienced before. After Fred's departure Herbert roomed with other Normal students. Despite his sometimes cloistered study habits Herbert easily made friends among the students, men and women alike. Gertrude apparently slipped off of his list of preferred female companions. There was no lack of attractive young ladies to escort to dances, sleigh rides, and other entertainments at Wisconsin Normal. Besides, Gertrude was younger and still in Tunnel City.
Gertrude, perhaps sensing that Herbert was losing interest, then stunned him by announcing that she intended to teach. “She always swore against it,” he wrote his brother. “But so we do change. I think she will be a success with smaller children,” he added, not quite willing to grant Gertrude full credit for a career move that was identical to his own.43 Gertrude landed a job in suburban St. Paul, Minnesota.44 This was a bold move, revealing an unexpected streak of independence and drive in the small-town girl Herbert thought he knew. And she did not have to go to York to teach bumpkins, he no doubt noticed. His correspondence with Gertrude had dwindled (at least he seldom mentioned it to Fred), and he no longer regarded their relationship as a courtship, if he ever had. But Gertrude, well, Gertrude had other plans.
All the while, Herbert portrayed himself as a carefree youth playing the field. “Now I'm not in love—with anybody, but my Dutch and my Norwegian girls used to bother me somewhat, for I did not know which to please. I settled it by trying to please them both. Hope I succeeded.”45 One school incident hints that he was not quite the sophisticated lover that his letters made him out to be. Miss Faddis, an instructor at Normal, held regular classes in manners. Herbert attended infrequently, but decided to put in an appearance one day. He was the only man among fifteen young women for whom Miss Faddis was demonstrating the correct method of shaking hands, a procedure evidently more complicated in 1891 than it is today. Perhaps she failed to notice the lone gentleman in the room, or maybe she just forgot herself in the midst of a teachable moment. Whatever the case, in order to make clear the particularities of correct posture, she raised her dress “nearly up to her ___ ,” Herbert reported to Fred. This display of feminine pulchritude was too much for the blushing young brother, who left the room. He immediately reported the incident to Professor Mapel, but did not get the response that he expected. “ ‘Oh my dear boy!’ said he. ‘you don't like it because you are not interested. If Mr Gillan should give you the work you would do your best.’ ” Herbert evidently did not quite follow the gist of Mapel's remark. “I soon made him understand that he had told the truth for Gillan is a teacher, and Miss F. is not.”46 The boy from Tomah was not yet up to the droll humor of the urban sophisticates in Milwaukee.
The end of the spring semester 1891 found Herbert preparing for graduation and looking for employment. Fred was going to the University of Wisconsin in the fall, so Herbert needed a good job in order to support his brother's further education. The brothers put an amazing amount of time and energy into their search for employment. They seemed to know of openings in every school throughout the state and shared information about each place, who they knew there, and who could help them with a recommendation. Herbert's best chance for employment came from his brother's recommendation to replace him at Fairchild. He considered a position in Montello, but Professor Gillan thought it would go to a Catholic, so he advised Herbert to concentrate on Fairchild.47 Religious and ethnic prejudice worked both ways in the 1890s, as the Protestant Herbert learned.
With neither summer nor fall plans firmed up, Herbert looked forward to graduation. If not quite a lettered man, he at least would have a diploma that certified his professional standing among the ranks of Wisconsin teachers. He was relieved to pass this milestone in his diligent program of self-improvement and upward mobility.48
In July Fairchild finally decided to hire Herbert as principal at seventy dollars per month. At about the same time he learned about Fairchild, something else popped up. Gertrude, fresh from a year of teaching at St. Paul, wanted to study with him during the summer. He thought it would be a good idea, but the plan did not materialize as Gertrude had hoped.49 Herbert took a job as a traveling salesman of memberships in an association that sold books to members at discount prices. “Now if a man has time and wants a trip to California he can get there all right if he will work.”50 He liked the money, but selling on the road was not the path to status that he had in mind. A traveler did “not belong to any society, and of course” was “a fraud.”51 Herbert would find another way to get to California.
A letter from Gertrude found Herbert while he was on the road. She had heard about a teaching position at Fairchild and asked Herbert to help her get it. He was willing, but it turned out that the position had already been filled. Too bad, but Gertrude, a young woman of remarkable resilience, persistence, and determination, was not finished with Herbert yet.52
At
