“Where else but Harvard would you find the grandson of Matisse, the grandson of Joyce, and the great-great-grandson of God?”

John Finley’s offhand remark to a New York Times reporter in the 1950s brought to public attention the considerable glamour of Eliot House, the dormitory that was already known as “more Harvard than Harvard itself.” He was describing the suite with Paul Matisse, Stephen Joyce, and Sadruddin Aga Khan, a lineal descendant of the prophet Mohammed.

Eliot House celebrates the life and legacy of a remarkable figure who would be described as “a living embodiment of Harvard.” As a professor, he transformed philistines into philhellenes through his approach to the classics. But as the master of Eliot House, he selected and stewarded the careers of his residents. His letters of recommendation were legendary for the opportunities they created; under Finley, Eliot House received more Rhodes scholarships that most colleges. Many knew his public persona, but few knew the story of how Finley became this figure – and what he gave up in order to do so.

Finley’s Eliot House brings together a cast of characters that would be improbable in a work of fiction. Ben Bradlee, Archibald Cox, Leonard Bernstein; Frank O’Hara roomed with Edward Gorey, and played Leonard Bernstein’s piano with John Ashbery. Other Houses had Pulitzer prizewinners; Eliot House had Joseph Pulitzer, Jr. himself. James Laughlin launched New Directions publishing from his dorm room here, while Tk The Paris Review, as well. In the dining hall, you might find young Malcolm X, and [equally young] William S. Burroughs and John Updike, and burlesque dancer Irma the Body. As well as T.S. Eliot himself. Perhaps the least likely residents of Eliot House were the student who would become the Unabomber, and the Beat poet Gregory Corso – who slept in a tent and wasn’t even enrolled in Harvard.

As TK, Finley reshaped American education after the second World War in order to unify an increasingly diverse United States by offering a shared narrative, and to inoculate the country against the rise of authoritarianism from within. His lessons feels all the more relevant today.

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