Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?

I have been reading the life of Sergeiy Diaghilev, the man who created the Ballets Russes and otherwise was enormously instrumental in advancing the cause of modern art in the early twentieth century.  One of the features of his tempestuous life was the constant need for money.  Diaghilev was not a government functionary but an entrepreneur who found his funding where he could.  He started with his contacts in the Russian Imperial Court, but as time went on he was at first estranged from this source and then of course with the Bolshevik revolution the source disappeared.  In the west he relied on millionaires, such as in Paris the American Singer Sewing Machine heiress, the Princess Polignac, or as in London Thomas Beecham who got his millions from the family's pharmaceutical enterprises.  Everywhere Diaghilev turned he was dependent upon rich people since he was determined to maintain a standard of novelty and aesthetics for which he could never be certain of audience enthusiasm.  He was that thrilling kind of genius who will insist upon standards to which he will bring his audiences over time, but never hesitant at the moment of introducing them.  This takes money and more money and importuning, and seducing, and never slacking.  Having taught at private universities for most of my career I am well aware of the incessant search for financial security.  I was part of the faculty team that went out to speak to alumni groups when Stanford set out to raise one hundred million in 1960, starting Friday evenings, continuing on Saturday, luncheon speeches, cocktail speeches, after dinner speeches; strange as it may seem, a young woman working in the alumni office had a small airplane in which she flew me from speech to speech.  The sum we were trying to get seems paltry now when Harvard University trumpets the billions they seem to raise effortlessly almost every two or three years.  When the downturn came in 2008 Harvard abandoned its plans for a new campus across the river as though the university were about to go on the dole.  Nowadays we read in the Times that the Metropolitan Museum announces that it is running short, although at the same time the papers are full of admiring accounts of their new success, The Met Breuer building over on 75th.  What do all these institutions do with the endowment?  It is never to be spent, just built upon?  Harvard, especially, for what are they growing and growing their endowment?  We all know the old Boston joke of the down and out debutante who was seen in Scollay Square selling herself, and shocked amazement was met with "but she never dipped into capital."  I studied at the State University of Iowa and got graduate degrees at Harvard.  The classics department's sherry parties were my first experience of luxury in higher education.  I have spent my life in an enterprise that is never going to be a draw for the common man; even with all the hoopla and advertising the arts, the humanities are not going to become popular, and classical literature least of all. I can sympathize completely with Diaghilev.  As Blanche Dubois said about depending upon the kindness of strangers with all the attendant ironies and sadness in that observation,  I can, as they say, relate.