"Grand Old Man" Passes On

EDWARD TUCK '62, POWERFUL FACTOR IN MODERN DARTMOUTH,WAS GREATEST BENEFACTOR OF THE COLLEGE

DARTMOUTH college AND the City of Paris shared a common grief on April go when Edward Tuck '62, the "Grand Old Man" of both, died of bronchitis after a full and useful life of 95 years. An almost legendary figure in Dartmouth history of the past 40 years, Mr. Tuck at the time of his death was the senior graduate of the College and by virtue of gifts totaling more than $4,500,000 was the greatest benefactor that Dartmouth has ever had.

"Mr. Tuck's gifts to Dartmouth have been so closely intertwined with its life and progress that it is not possible to discuss one or the other without emphasizing his generosity and thoughtfulness," President Hopkins declared in the tribute published in the special edition of The Dartmouth which announced Mr. Tuck's death to the campus. "But no mere recital of major benefactions suffices to pay him the tribute which all Dartmouth men feel is his due. The story of his devotion to the College and its high ideals could be told without mentioning a single gift. For his love for Dartmouth and the love which Dartmouth bore him transcended material things to the point of spiritual relationship that is as near eternal glory as may be achieved by mortal man."

The end came to the "Grand Old Man of Dartmouth" after an illness of only three days at his Riviera residence in Monte Carlo. A cold brought on a recurrence of an old chest ailment and the severe bronchitis which rapidly developed proved fatal despite the ministrations of Paris doctors. With the highest national and municipal honors, Mr. Tuck was buried in Paris on May 6, in the family vault at St. Germain-en-Laye where his wife was buried ten years ago. His nearest relatives are two nieces, Lady Cheylesmore of London and Mrs. Paul Fitzsimons of Newport, R. 1., and a nephew, Amos Tuck French of New York. William H. Vanderbilt of Newport is a grandnephew.

HONORARY CITIZEN OF PARIS

Dean of the American colony in France and one of that nation's greatest foreign benefactors, Mr. Tuck had received more honors from the French people than any other American. He was an honorary citizen of Paris and was the ninth American ever to receive the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor. The greatest single gift which Mr. Tuck made during his life was that of the collection of art treasures valued at more than $5,000,000 and now housed in the Tuck Gallery of the Petit Palais in Paris.

Soon after his graduation from Dartmouth in 1862, Mr. Tuck sent the College a contribution of $1.00 "for unrestricted use," the first of a long list of gifts which were later to mount up to millions of dollars. Subsequently, when the Dartmouth presidency was assumed by William

liam Jewett Tucker, with whom he had roomed as an undergraduate, Mr. Tuck definitely became interested in the College in a material way and assumed the role of Dartmouth's greatest benefactor. Since 1899, when the Edward Tuck Endowment Fund was inaugurated with a gift of $300,000 for the raising of faculty salaries, he has given the College $3,500,000 for endowment and nearly $1,000,000 for construction and other purposes.

Aside from their considerable amount, Mr. Tuck's gifts have been extremely valuable in their timeliness and in their freedom from restriction. Each one was made voluntarily and at the psychological moment when it served to give tremendous impetus to the progress of the College. The spirit in which Mr. Tuck made his gifts to Dartmouth is best represented in his reply to a group of men who felt that the College was becoming too radical and who decided that the quickest way to halt this tendency was through Mr. Tuck. In a brief form letter to each man in the group Mr. Tuck replied, "I have given money to Dartmouth College in order to support the policies of the College, not to dictate them."

After Mr. Tuck's first major gift of $300,000 in 1899, President Tucker suggested that part of the income from the fund be used to establish a graduate school of business administration, and in 1900 the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration and Finance was founded as a memorial to Mr. Tuck's father, who had graduated from Dartmouth in 1835 and had served as a trustee of the College from 1857 to 1866. The Amos Tuck School was the first graduate school of business in the United States, antedating the Harvard school by eight years. The following year Mr. Tuck gave $125,000 for the erection of a Tuck School building, now known as McNutt Hall.

A gift of $500,000 was added to the Edward Tuck Endowment Fund during President Nichols's administration, the Edward Tuck Professorship of the French Language and Literature was endowed in

1913, and Tuck Drive was constructed from the campus to the Connecticut River. Mr. Tuck continued to add substantial sums to the endowment fund bearing his name, and many other gifts were made to the Alumni Fund and for special educational needs. In 1925 he contributed $132,000 to erect the President's House, and in 1928 he made available nearly a million dollars to finance the construction of the new Tuck School unit. The dining hall of the unit is named Stell Hall in honor of his wife, Julia Stell Tuck, who died in 1928. Income from the Edward Tuck Endowment Fund amounted to more than 1115,000 last year, and during the four decades since the fund was started has amounted to more than two million dollars.

Other benefactions in the State of New Hampshire have been made to Phillips Exeter Academy, from which Mr. Tuck

graduated in 1858; the Exeter Hospitalthe New Hampshire Historical Society which he founded and endowed at Concord; and the Memorial Park and Tuck Memorial Athletic Field at Hampton where his ancestor Robert Tuck first settled in 1638. Mr. Tuck had also been a great benefactor of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and of the New York Diet Kitchen Association.

Mr. Tuck's largest philanthropies were made to the city of Paris and to the French people, among whom he had resided since 1890. Outstanding among these were the $5,000,000 collection of tapestries, furniture, porcelains, paintings and statuary now housed in the Petit Palais in Paris; the Bois-Preau estate, presented to the French government as an addition to Malmaison, former residence of Napoleon and the Empress Josephine; the restoration of the Trophee des Alpes, built nearly two thousand years ago on the hill of La Turbie, behind Monte Carlo, in tribute to Augustus Caesar; the Stell Hospital in Reuil; and the School of Household Arts at Reuil, which was the special interest of Mrs. Tuck. Numerous other gifts were made to France and to the City of Paris, and in 1929 Mr. Tuck gave the $16,000 necessary to keep in France the famous

"Table of the Marshals" which an art dealer was attempting to purchase for William Randolph Hearst—an act which still further endeared him to the French people.

DONATE HOSPITAL TO POOR

At Reuil, where they had their VertMont estate, Mr. and Mrs. Tuck were regarded as fairy godparents. Finding no hospital facilities there, they built the Stell Hospital and donated it with an endowment of §200,000 to the poor of the Seineet-Oise. During the World War they maintained and operated the hospital at their own expense as Military Hospital No. 66. In addition to this Mrs. Tuck opened a school of household arts for the working girls of Reuil. It annually graduates about 45 students. The gratitude of the inhabitants is clearly attested in Square Tuck and Avenue Tuck-Stell in Reuil. Mr. Tuck's estate at Reuil will go to France to be added to Malmaison and Bois-Preau, thus nearly reconstituting the historic domain of the Empress Josephine.

Other beneficiaries of Mr. Tuck's generosity in France include the United States House at the Cite Universitaire, the American Hospital, the American Library, the Academy of Science, the Comite France-Amerique and its Institute of American Studies, the University of Paris, and the Maison Maternelle, housing nearly a thousand poor children. Untold aid was also given lay Mr. Tuck to struggling artists, authors and composers.

In return for his generosity to his adopted land, Mr. Tuck received from

France the highest honors which it was ssible for a private citizen to have. He was the ninth American ever to receive the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, the first non-French citizen to receive the Prix de Vertu of the French Academy, and the first person to be awarded the gold medal of the National Museums of France. He was made an honorary citizen of Paris in 1932, and was similarly honored by the city of Reuil. He was awarded the gold medal of the City of Paris and the Century Medal of the Bank of France.

FATHER WAS LINCOLN'S FRIEND

The man who received all these tributes from a grateful nation was born in the little town of Exeter, N. H., on August 24, 1842. His father Amos Tuck was a fearless pioneer in New England politics, who had organized the anti-slavery party in New Hampshire and had served two terms in Congress from 1847 to 1851. He was an intimate friend of Abraham Lincoln and was credited with coining the name of the Republican Party at the Philadelphia convention at which the party was founded.

Edward Tuck spent a cultured youth in Exeter, where he knew Whittier and Emerson as his father's friends. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy and entered Dartmouth in 1858. Four years later he graduated as Class Orator and as a Phi Beta Kappa student, ranking second in his class. He returned to Exeter to undertake the study of law, but his eyes failed him and he was sent to Switzerland to seek a cure at the hands of a famous specialist. Restored in sight, Edward Tuck was about to return home when the State Department in Washington instructed him to report to the American Consulate in Paris for an examination as consular clerk. After astounding his examiners by knowing the United States Constitution entirely by heart, he was appointed consular clerk by President Lincoln in 1865. Upon the promotion of the consul to minister, Mr. Tuck became vice-consul at 22 and for five months was acting consul in Paris.

CHANGES TO BANKING CAREER

Dissatisfied with the opportunities offered by a consular career, Mr. Tuck resigned his diplomatic commission and accepted a position with the banking firm of John Munroe and Company, then the only American bankers in Paris. He was* assigned to the New York office, of the firm, where from the very start he displayed a natural flair for banking and business affairs. His hard work and conscientious mastery of his field were rewarded in 1871 with a partnership in the firm. The following year he married Miss Julia Stell, whom he had met in the Paris home of one of the Munroe partners. He and his wife divided their time between New York and Paris until in 1889 they decided to make their permanent residence in France.

Mr. Tuck had retired from the firm of Muriroe and Company in 1881, having acquired an independent fortune during the ten years of his partnership. He continued

to be a banking power, however, and became a director of the Chase National Bank in 1886. He was associated with James J. Hill in the development of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railroads, and in these activities, coupled with others in copper and various fields, became a man of great wealth. Mr. Tuck's creed of business success is best expressed in'his own words: "Absolute devotion to the career which one selects, and to the interests of one's superiors or employers; the desire and determination to do more rather than less than one's required duties; perfect accuracy and promptness in all undertakings, an absence from one's vocabulary of the word forget; never to vary a hair's breadth from the truth nor from the path of strictest honesty and honor, with perfect confidence in the wisdom of doing right as the surest means of achieving success."

WANTED TO LIVE USEFULLY

Mr. Tuck always believed that money was a means to an end and, not an end in itself, and after he and Mrs. Tuck had taken up their residence permanently at 82 Avenue des Champs-Elysees they devoted themselves assiduously to philanthropic work in many fields. Mr. Tuck was a great admirer of Benjamin Franklin, and on the Tuck monument in the cemetery of St. Germain-en-Laye are engraved the words of Franklin: "The years roll by and the last will come, when I would rather

have it said, 'He lived usefully' than 'He died rich.'" Here, in this inscription and in the business creed quoted above, are the ideals by which Mr. Tuck guided his long and useful life.

His passing was mourned by a host of friends throughout the world, for Mr. Tuck was a generous and constant host, and his homes in Paris and Reuil were the gathering places of great and interesting personages from all lands. A dapper little man with long white mustachios and a batwing collar, he was a true cosmopolite, and delighted in the abundant life which he gathered about himself. The spirit in which he extended hospitality is well described in the tribute of Prof. Leon Burr Richardson '00:

"The death of Mr. Tuck comes as a personal bereavement to hosts of Dartmouth men. He was the greatest benefactor of the College, and as such deserves and has received the gratitude of all her sons. But it was in his personal relationships that those who had the privilege of his friendship will always remember him. Loving the College, his hospitality was always ready for those connected with its management. To them his splendid estate at Reuil, with its broad lawns, its charming gardens, its great expanse of greenhouses, was always open. Here the master received his guests with the gentle geniality so characteristic of the man. He was, indeed, a friendly and kindly soul, enjoying the light play of banter, conversation turning upon trivialities, jokes even at his own expense, but equally ready when the talk turned to serious topics upon which he had thought so deeply and so well. Toward his guests no barriers were raised which stood in the way of the quick attainment of intimacy and understanding. And so to men of the College, and to multitudes of others both in his adopted France and in his home land, his departure creates a void which it will be difficult to fill and a remembrance which will always be dear."

AWARDED LL.D. IN 1903

Dartmouth paid Mr. Tuck its highest academic honor in 1903 when it conferred upon him the honorary Doctorate of Laws, and in subsequent years the College made frequent expression of its gratitude and affection. Lasting friendships were cemented between Mr. Tuck and members of the official Dartmouth family, particularly President Hopkins, whom he greatly admired, and Lewis Parkhurst '78 and the late Henry B. Thayer '79 of the Trustees. Last June the 75th anniversary of his graduation was made a special occasion for honoring the "grand old man" of Dartmouth. But none of the honors which the official College delighted to confer upon Mr. Tuck could approach the tribute which all Dartmouth men paid him in their genuine affection and their solicitude for his health and happiness.

FROM A STUDENT SKETCH Portrait of Mr. Tuck in charcoal by VivianBruce '40.

RECENT PORTRAIT OF EDWARD TUCK, CLASS OF 1862 Painted by Philipe Alexius Laszlo de Lombos.

THE TUCK BURIAL LOT In the ancient cemetery of St. Germain.