William Henry Devereaux II’s Classroom Speechlessness and Return to Teaching

William Henry Devereaux, Sr.’s classroom speechlessness turns an illustrious scholar’s prestigious appointment into a public ordeal, then makes the threshold between hallway and classroom the unlikely key to his return to teaching. What begins as a baffling failure to speak becomes a recurring crisis of panic and disordered reading; what ends it is not a formal cure, but a practical change in how he enters the room and addresses his students.

Appointment and Expectations

After the death and burial of his son’s first dog, William Henry Devereaux, Sr. receives two attractive offers. Columbia University offers him a full professorship, which he accepts; a young woman from his D. H. Lawrence seminar offers a different kind of new beginning, and he settles down with her in New York. The university’s offer includes a luxurious apartment within walking distance of campus and a salary described as unheard of for the late 1960s. Its expectations of him in the classroom are modest.

His appointment rests on an already distinguished scholarly reputation. He has written five books of literary criticism, including one on politics and the novel that has become widely displayed and discussed despite, the narrator wryly suggests, not necessarily being read. At Columbia, he is nominal editor of a prestigious scholarly magazine and director of a special library collection. A research assistant handles many duties, including grading the papers for the single undergraduate class he teaches each year; Devereaux grades the small graduate seminar himself. For the university, he is chiefly an eminent scholar expected to keep writing. His inability to perform in the classroom is therefore unexpected even against the limited teaching demands of the post.

The Classroom Collapse

In September, Devereaux arrives at his first class, reads the students’ names from the roster, and opens his mouth to begin a lecture he has delivered many times before. His mind goes blank. He has not forgotten the lecture or its details; instead, he cannot produce a relevant word. Panic takes hold as he faces the students. He manages to excuse himself, leaves for the hallway, and gets a drink at the water fountain. There, in the dark corridor, the lecture returns intact.

The relief does not last. Hoping to guard against a repeat, he writes the first two sentences on a brown paper towel in the men’s room and carries it back to the lectern. But the words and their letters appear scrambled; understanding itself seems to have deserted him, and he cannot identify even the letter B. He pleads illness, cancels class, and tells the students to return on Thursday. By that afternoon, faculty gossip has spread a distorted account of the incident. At a department cocktail party, however, Devereaux is present, charming and eloquent as he turns the episode into a comic story. His fluency among colleagues briefly reassures him: he fears the problem may be stage fright, but the party feels to him a more demanding test than the undergraduate lecture.

Thursday brings a second collapse. After taking roll, he again finds the words and letters rearranging themselves. The roster becomes as unreadable as his notes; he knows the last student’s name is Miss Wainwright, but cannot make the letters resolve into it. Looking up at her, he fixates on her nose and ear as though they, too, might be letters. At the lectern his knees buckle, and he has to be helped to a nearby chair. He coos, “Wainwright,” at her nose. The incident is no longer an amusing story about one failed lecture.

Workarounds and Return

The affliction continues through the rest of September and most of October. Devereaux writes out his lectures in advance, but reading the roll still precedes the same panic. When it arrives, he hands the lectern to his research assistant, who reads the lecture while Devereaux waits outside, frightened and humiliated. From the hallway he hears the assistant’s wavering delivery and skewed emphasis. The experience sharpens his sense of the difference between conveying information and teaching: separated from his authoritative presence, even his most prized observations seem less profound. He thinks he will have to resign, although he can explain the situation to deans; it is the students he cannot address.

The change comes when he begins speaking before entering the classroom. Starting in the hallway with his hand on the doorknob, he continues his lecture as he crosses the threshold. The first success is a lecture on Charles Dickens, whose sentimentality and lack of dramatic subtlety Devereaux despises. His urbane contempt builds into a comic reading of Jo’s death scene in Bleak House. The class laughs until its members are on the floor, then rises to give him a standing ovation. For students and faculty alike, the performance reverses the fear that the celebrated professor cannot teach; the department, which had begun to doubt its supposedly powerful hire, hears that he has finally spoken in class.

The method proves useful rather than miraculous. In the next class, Devereaux feels the familiar dread halfway through roll call. He leaves during the M’s, begins his lecture in the hall, and reenters speaking about David Copperfield. He focuses his gaze high on the seminar-room windows, above the students’ heads, and continues without attending to raised hands. He realizes that he need not take roll or look directly at the expectant faces. Miss Wainwright has dropped the course after the earlier episode, a loss he regrets, but he is functioning again.

Significance and Ending

The recovery depends on altering the conditions of the classroom encounter rather than restoring the old routine. Roll call and the students’ waiting faces have become linked to panic; the hallway allows Devereaux to find his voice, and carrying a sentence across the doorway lets him begin teaching without first submitting to the moment that had repeatedly undone him. The threshold consequently marks both a practical boundary and a change in performance: he enters the classroom already speaking instead of standing silent before an audience.

The episode also unsettles the distinction between Devereaux’s prestige and his ability to teach. His titles and books have secured a comfortable appointment, but authority in the classroom cannot simply be assumed from scholarly reputation. When his assistant reads his prepared lecture, the words alone do not have the force he had thought they possessed; when Devereaux speaks in his own voice, even his attack on Dickens becomes a shared classroom event. The newspaper-column narrator presents the ending as an optimistic account of a complex problem met with a simple adjustment, while the abandoned course of Miss Wainwright quietly preserves the cost of the earlier failures. Devereaux is back, but his return depends on recognizing how the ordinary rituals of teaching had become obstacles and changing them.