How has the Hotchkiss School managed to accommodate a hundred years of unprecedented change --- a century during which horse-and-buggy trails have become less familiar than the fiery trails of spacebound vehicles, and Victorian propriety has yielded to unabashed self-expression?
The short answer --- carefully; certainly not without considerable tension and the constant need to mediate between the forces of tradition and innovation. oh, yes, also by following the golden rule: do not disturb the cherished memories of alumni --- and, more recently, of alumnae as well.
In the splendor of its bucolic isolation in the northwest corner of Connecticut, Hotchkiss has always been selective about innovation. Some advances, to be sure, have been eagerly adopted. In the school's first catalogue, published in 1892, parents of prospective students were given a reassuring picture of the up-to-date facilities for the fifty boys who would each be paying $600 as boarders: "The buildings have a frontage of 325 feet, and are connected by a corridor which runs their entire length," boasted the modest square pamphlet with pale blue covers --- an obvious reference to the protection students would receive from colds and other boyhood diseases. Such ailments, according to the latest medical theory, were caused by venturing outside during the winter months into the microbe-laden air; hence classrooms, masters' rooms, offices, chapel, dining room, gymnasium, and other facilities would all be within this enclosed complex of buildings, where each boy would also have a separate room. "[The buildings] will be lighted by electricity, and will be abundantly supplied with pure water.... As the School site is on high ground, perfect drainage has been secured."
Before the first year of operation was over, a potentially intrusive innovation was causing excitement. On May 13, 1893, at a board of trustees meeting held at the Wononsco House in Lakeville, a short carriage ride downhill from the school, it was voted that "the executive committee be instructed to provide the School with a telephone."
Yet Hotchkiss was not about to succumb to every convenience dictated by the times. Even a casual glance through the minutes of those early board of trustees meetings reflects an abiding respect for tradition. The graying pages of the red leather-bound volume are filled with gracefully rounded letters inked by careful hands. Inserted in the front of the albumlike book are the Articles of Association. It is not too farfetched to note their formal resemblance to the Constitution of the United States. In subsequent pages, the painstaking penmanship creates the impression of a family journal or ledger and conveys the personal concern these original overseers had for the school.
The decision to record the trustees' minutes by hand, of course, may have been made partly because the typewriter was still at a rudimentary stage. If so, what started out as a temporary convenience acquired a momentum of its own. The quaint format continued through the retirement and death in 1904 of the personally impressive first headmaster, Edward G. Coy, who was responsible for transforming the newly erected buildings into a functioning school and who, with a do-it-or-I-shall-resign ultimatum to the trustees, expanded the faculty and facilities to accommodate some 150 boys. The handwritten format continued during the two decades when Hotchkiss doubled in size under the reign of Dr. Huber Gray Buehler, one of the original six faculty members of the school, whose honorary doctorate [D. Litt.] was supplemented by the more popular agnomen "the King." The same format continued during the brief interregnum of another seasoned master, Walter Hull Buell, inevitably nicknamed "the Bull" and immortalized by his ringing declaration in morning chapel after expelling a boy, "Hotchkiss will lower her standards for no one!" And it continued through the ascension in 1926 of George Van Santvoord, who had himself been graduated from Hotchkiss in 1908 and then, as headmaster, showed no hesitation in cracking down on hazing --- a practice which other eastern prep schools would tolerate well beyond the twenties.
The Crash of '29 likewise failed to affect the traditional recording by hand of the trustees' minutes. But the Depression did impose drastic adjustments on many Hotchkiss families. Previously affluent parents suddenly were hard pressed to pay the all-inclusive $1,500 fee. "My grandfather gave the first regulation pool in honor of my father," observes William L. Bryan '39. "When I came to Hotchkiss after the Depression, I was a full scholarship boy. That tells you something about American life and history." Another Hotchkiss graduate of that era, James A. Linen III '30, who later became president of the Hotchkiss board and publisher of Time, accepted a personal loan from George Van Santvoord to complete his studies at Williams. As an afterthought, the Duke inquired, "Are you still seeing that young lady you were so attached to?" When the young man nodded, his benefactor concluded, "Well, I'm going to give you a few hundred dollars so you can get a car and maintain the relationship, because she's probably the best thing that's happened to you in your life. " And indeed, that young lady, sister of William W. Scranton '35, would become James Linen's wife --- and mother of another Hotchkiss generation.
At last, on May 6, 1939, the final pen and ink entry was made. War was about to engulf the world for the second time since the founding of the school, and again Hotchkiss boys would die in action. Among them: short-statured Eugene C. Brewer '39, nicknamed "the Admiral," who had his classmates stretch him by tying his feet and arms to his bedposts for the night to help him qualify for naval officer training. The Admiral was destined to make it --- and lose his life when his navy fighter was shot down over Guadalcanal. Yet it was not the looming calamity of World War II that provided the symbolic marker for the switch to the typewriter, which by then had been in general use at Hotchkiss for several decades. The reason was that there were three hundred prenumbered pages in the first volume of the trustees' minutes, and when those pages were finally filled that was the signal to make the change. Rather than yielding to innovation, the trustees let a tradition simply exhaust itself.
Too bad there were not another hundred or so pages within the scuffed bindings of that daunting volume! From today's perspective, it certainly would have made sense. For the most prominent break in the school's history was not to come until the tenure of A. William Olsen, Jr. '39, who, as headmaster from 1960 to 1981, transformed Hotchkiss into a coeducational institution of more than five hundred students --- and otherwise responded to the realities of the world beyond the boundaries of the school.
A closer examination of those handwritten minutes begins to betray details missed at first glance. The impression of the family journal or ledger is partly dispelled by the realization that most of the entries were not personally penned by the trustees whose signatures they appear to bear, but by no less committed, though anonymous, hands. Then, as one continues to scan for content, various inconsistencies gradually crop up which hardly make sense yet cannot be ignored. Perhaps most puzzling: Why were the minutes of a board meeting held in 1896 sandwiched between two meetings held three years earlier? Were the minutes being adjusted or amended ex post facto --in other words, doctored? If so, to what purpose?
For nearly a century, the flowing artistry in that unique first volume has inadvertently helped to obscure some of the most dramatic events of the early years of the school. The handwritten minutes are a chore to read --- and discourage anything beyond a cursory examination whenever they are periodically dusted off. Moreover, the authors deliberately employed language which blunted any edges that could prove unnecessarily sharp. This often meant leaving out details of the most critical sort.
Yet the essential information is there; enough key pieces exist so that in juxtaposition with fragments from other sources a composite picture takes shape. It is a picture, alas, which may cause loyal alumni to wince the next time they sing "Fair Hotchkiss" in celebration of the school. Portraying the relationship between Maria Hotchkiss and the trustees, this composite shows hardly anything that can be construed as fair in the treatment of the benefactress of the school. That she also happened to be the only woman among the trustees adds a modern dimension which retrospectively puts to the test what it meant to be a gentleman in those days.
When Maria Hotchkiss signed the founding articles of association in 1891, her name headed a column of eleven trustees, among them two relatives from the Bissell side of the family and three prominent business leaders from the vicinity of the future school. Right beneath the endowing widow's name was that of Timothy Dwight, the president of Yale, followed by that of Frederick J. Kingsbury, a Connecticut banker from Waterbury. Though Kingsbury was elected to head the board, there was little doubt where the power lay. Five members of the board, besides Dwight, had graduated from Yale, including Kingsbury, who was a Yale trustee, and two professors who taught there. One of them, Andrew W. Phillips, an urbane, gentle mathematician with a flowing beard, would eventually succeed Kingsbury as president of the board; the other, Arthur Wheeler, a historian nicknamed "Waterloo" because of the rousing lecture he gave each year about Napoleon's decisive defeat, was the board's secretary. No college besides Yale was represented on the board, and most of the meetings during those early years were held neither in Lakeville nor at Kingsbury's Waterbury bank but in the office of the Yale president. Mrs. Hotchkiss at this time listed her residence as New York, and Timothy Dwight may have volunteered his New Haven office as a convenient place for her to reach by train. Whatever the pretext, the effect was the same. Surrounded by the trappings of his office and embodying an august family tradition, Timothy Dwight was in a unique position among the trustees to handle, in whatever subtle ways, the reputedly difficult woman whose intransigence vis-a-vis her late husband had recently been publicized in the Herald's scandalous revelations about Berk Hotchkiss's life.
From the start, the relationship between Mrs. Hotchkiss and the board was akin to another frustrating marriage, this one maintained for the sake of a child. (The Hotchkiss School would often be called "Son of a Gun," in jesting reference to the source of the founding widow's wealth.) Some of the tensions in this union were a reflection of the times: any woman in an influential position outside the home was likely to be looked at with reproach for forgetting her proper place. There seems to have also been an awareness of intellectual disparity on the board between the farmer's daughter, whose credentials amounted to one year at Amenia Academy, and the other trustees, all men of learning or business accomplishment. And beyond such estranging peripherals was a conflict of aims. As Stephen Birmingham has suggested, Mrs. Hotchkiss would have instinctively preferred a modest academy to prepare local youth for useful tasks in the surrounding communities. What Timothy Dwight and his cohorts had in mind was a substantial "feeder" school for Yale to prepare privileged young men from the Northeast --- and from throughout the United States --- for their inevitable leadership roles. If those concepts were to clash, Mrs. Hotchkiss could not automatically count on any block of votes --- not on the three trustees from the vicinity of the school, not even on her own Bissell relatives. One of them, a distant cousin, Dr. William Bissell, had graduated from Yale and might have understandably preferred to accommodate rather than oppose the president of his alma mater.(2)
In the minutes of the board's first meeting, held in Lakeville on August 11, 1891, a simple declarative statement would turn out to be the smoking gun several years hence in the final rift between Maria Hotchkiss and her namesake school. "It was voted to accept the deed," reads that innocuous phrase on top of page 2 of the handwritten first volume, "presented to the board by Mrs. Hotchkiss, of a tract of land for the use of the School." What could be more routine than that? Far more attention was devoted to the next order of business, whereby the board voted to accept "the gift of seventy-five thousand dollars for buildings, but with the understanding that . . . [this] deed of gift . . . be modified and perfected." Apparently Mrs. Hotchkiss had encumbered her gift with a far broader provision for tuition scholarships to local youth than the board was prepared to accept. On being "perfected" by the trustees, the scholarship clause set a limit on the "deserving boys" not to "exceed three in number . . . at any one time" from the town of Salisbury and the same number from Sharon. The most likely reason Mrs. Hotchkiss consented to this numerical limitation (rather than a percentage of the total number of students) was that she had been led to believe there would be no rapid or dramatic expansion in the size of the school. She also seemed to share at this stage her Yale-educated cousin's desire to cooperate.
Cooperation --- and more cooperation --- is what it would take. The original $75,000 gift proved inadequate even before construction began. At the next board meeting, held again in Lakeville less than two months later, "it being evident . . . that the cost of the plan adopted would exceed by at least $50,000 the sum already appropriated for buildings, Mrs. Hotchkiss was appealed to to make up the necessary sum, and she very generously consented to do so." She was not told at this time that related construction costs would still leave a shortfall of more than $20,000. Maybe the gentlemen on the board knew the limits of their sponsor's generosity. The bills would not be due for some time, and the next order of business was "to receive $200,000 in bonds from Mrs. Hotchkiss as an endowment fund for the School." A committee headed by Kingsbury subsequently traveled to New York, where the endowment transfer from the machine gun heiress was made.
With the school's construction well under way in the spring of 1892, the board placed Waterloo Wheeler in full charge of ensuring that the facilities would be ready for students that fall. Professor Wheeler's profile as a trustee and board secretary was thus visibly raised --- setting him up for an eventual Waterloo of his own. He was now also appointed, along with his Yale faculty colleague Phillips, to the committee for staffing the school, chaired by Timothy Dwight. Some of the personnel decisions about to be made --- without a hint of discord at this stage --- would play a pivotal role in the troubles ahead.
For headmaster, the committee proposed, "after a very careful and thorough search," just one candidate, Edward G. Coy. Head of the Greek department and second only to the principal at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, Coy was well known at Yale. Not only was Andover Yale's top feeder school; Greek was an entrance requirement which Yale often cited as evidence of its preeminence over Harvard. A Yale graduate himself, Coy had married a New Haven woman, and his wife's home often served as their second domicile. It seems likely that the prospective headmaster had known Dwight for years. The two might even have discussed the desirability of a new feeder school before the subject had ever been broached with Mrs. Hotchkiss. In a letter Coy wrote shortly after his appointment to Huber Gray Buehler, whom he was trying to recruit to teach English, he referred to Dwight as "one of our most valued trustees and a personal friend of myself. " In that era, one did not become "a personal friend" overnight.
Coy's official title at the school was then written as two words --- head master. His salary was set at $3,500 per year, plus "the use of a suitable house" and "the privilege for himself and his family" to eat in the school dining room "during term-time. " The candidate's one condition for accepting the position was that his colleague David Y. Comstock, head of the Latin department at Andover and the next most senior member of the faculty there after Coy, join him as associate master "in the conduct of the enterprise." Messrs. Coy and Comstock were both men of commanding presence, and together they had commitments from several Andover students to transfer with them to the new school. As associate master, Comstock would receive $2,500 and perks similar to Professor Coy's.
Also appointed by the Dwight committee at this time was the school's first master, Joe Garner Estill, a tall, ebullient Southerner with a boyishly wispy walrus mustache who had graduated from Yale the previous year. As a student Estill had heard of the prospective school from Professor Wheeler and then had trudged more than fifty miles along muddy roads to inspect the site of what was known as Yale junior. As teacher of mathematics and head of the department, he was to receive $1,500 with "board at the common table and the use of a furnished room free of charge."
The most routine appointment, or so it seemed, was that of the curator, who was essentially the school's bookkeeper. His name was W. W. Goss. He had previously managed a resort hotel in Vermont, where several Yale faculty members, including committee member Phillips, often spent the summer. Goss's salary was to start at $800, with annual raises to a maximum of $1,200, and he would be provided a "suitable house" and "free tuition" for his two boys when they became old enough --- "the understanding being that the incumbent may hold the position so long as he gives satisfaction."
Those would prove to be loaded words.
For a considerable time there is to be a rigid limitation of the number of pupils," the New York Weekly Post reported shortly after Coy's appointment, "who are not to exceed fifty boarders and a smaller number of 'day' scholars." According to the prospective headmaster, this limitation would make it possible to enforce "a high grade of scholarship" without being hampered by the bureaucracy and "old lines of instruction" which existed at larger institutions.
Despite such theorizing about limiting the school's size, the building expenses continued to mount. The first time Mrs. Hotchkiss balked at fully accommodating her colleagues on the board occurred as construction of the school was being completed, only days before students were due to arrive. "The cost of the school plant being considerably in excess of the sum already given by Mrs. Hotchkiss in 1892," reads the entry in the minutes of that early October meeting, held in Timothy Dwight's office at Yale, "this meeting was called mainly for the consideration of ways and means." In other words, how to pay the bills? Since providing the supplementary $50,000, Mrs. Hotchkiss had recently taken care of other outstanding bills, and the board had voted their thanks for this "very generous additional gift to the building fund." The bills still to be paid had been incurred partly by Professor Wheeler in his push to have the school finished as scheduled. (Even so, opening day had to be postponed by a week to October 19, 1892.) This time, Mrs. Hotchkiss declined to come across with more cash, as if to let her colleagues know that they had expanded the project beyond anything she had intended --- or beyond what they had originally represented to her. But she evidently did not want to create an impasse at this stage. By consenting to modify the deed to her $200,000 endowment in securities, she provided the necessary collateral to borrow "such sums of money as are needed to complete and pay for the school plant as now contemplated, but not to exceed in the aggregate the sum of $60,000. "
As her desire for accommodation wavered, was the wealthy widow becoming apprehensive, too? At the next board meeting some two months later, again held in President Dwight's office in New Haven, there was "some discussion of the rather loose financial management prevailing at the School," and the recently installed headmaster was directed to "make such arrangements as will keep the expenses within income." Minutes of future board meetings would provide ample evidence that the "discussion" could have been instigated only by Mrs. Hotchkiss.
As if heeding the signals of a distant storm, the gentlemen on the board took a precautionary step. The deed Mrs. Hotchkiss had presented to the board for the sixty-five-acre tract on which the school now stood either had been mislaid or perhaps had never been picked up from her. In any case, it had not been registered. So now, after more than a year of apparent unconcern, a committee was formed "to procure a deed" to this land and to "have the deed put on record."
Though the deed in the form of a quitclaim was obtained from Mrs. Hotchkiss within less than two months, it was not registered by the recipients for another two months. More pressing matters may have understandably taken precedence during this first year of running the school. When the entry was finally made in the official land records of Salisbury, there was reason to do so without further delay, for virtually on the same day notices were being mailed out from the school for a crucial board meeting at which Mrs. Hotchkiss would find herself thrust into a most uncomfortable position.
The trustees knew what was coming and, not surprisingly, did not want to be technically squatting on her land.
That meeting was held on April 15, 1893, once again in Timothy Dwight's office. The opening paragraph of the minutes indicates the magnitude of the problem: "The Head Master and Associate Master having presented to the President, sometime in February, a list of grievances, and having, early in April, sent to the Board letters of resignation. . . . "
What was going on? The promising team of Edward G. Coy and David Y. Comstock resigning even before giving the school a chance? And the problem was more extensive. According to the memoirs of J. G. Estill, written shortly after his retirement some forty years later, Coy and Comstock were supported by the entire faculty. "The young fry, of whom I was the oldest and ranking member," recalled Estill, or Uncle Joe, as he came to be known, "got together and voted to support our chiefs, informing them that if their resignations were accepted, ours ipso facto, should be too. Of course we did not consider ourselves of sufficient importance to submit our resignation to the Board."
Among the most vociferous of those "young fry" was Huber Gray Buehler, who had acceded to Coy's entreaties to join the faculty and now headed the English department. He had been promised "a cottage" in time for his forthcoming marriage in June, yet nothing had come of that promise. "For reasons which need not be mentioned here," Buehler wrote, in offering his resignation to Coy, "I find myself in spite of all my precautions and to my great mortification, in the position of a man about to assume the responsibility of a wife without knowing how he is to provide for her." Estill was also planning marriage and needed housing, and there had been grumblings throughout the school about such inadequacies as the much heralded supply of pure water" and "lighting by electricity." But all that was secondary to a far more fundamental problem which touched on the basic presuppositions about the school. As Joe Estill explained, "Mr. Coy and Mr. Comstock could not get the trustees to make provision for more boys, and they said they had not come down from Andover to run a school of 50."
The headmaster was, in effect, issuing an ultimatum: expand the size of the school or else! It was a step he had thought about long and carefully. "I am resolved on the course. . . which will bring matters to a crisis," Coy had written to Buehler, in response to his complaint, "because I am satisfied that nothing short of this can arouse the Board --- particularly madam."
The gravity of the situation could hardly have been lost on the trustees gathered in the office of the Yale president. According to the minutes, "There followed a general discussion of the situation, with special consideration of the probable additional cost of providing accommodation for, and maintaining, fifty more students." What was said by Timothy Dwight or anyone else on that occasion has not been recorded, but the scene can be readily imagined. It is unlikely that any of the gentlemen seated in the red leather upholstered chairs on either side of the massive table in the oak-paneled room offered much in the way of a solution. There were no alumni to appeal to, no devoted parents to solicit, no friends of the school to snag. As for the more prosperous of the trustees, they were pikers in comparison with Mrs. Hotchkiss. Besides, why should they or anyone else donate funds to a school bearing her name when she could very well do so herself? The entire board, including the petite "Madam" --- sitting beneath a Trumbull landscape at the other end from the lanky, black-frocked Timothy Dwight --- must have all along realized against whom the resignations were aimed. Again, in the words of the minutes, "After careful consideration of the situation, Mrs. Hotchkiss has expressed a willingness to consider the subject of a new dormitory and houses for the teachers, and of such changes . . . as the necessities of the case may demand." The trustees, in turn, expressed their confidence in the expected results of Mrs. Hotchkiss's "liberality," and the crisis was defused.
A logical question: To what extent did any of the gentlemen in that critical face-off, especially Timothy Dwight and Edward Coy, conspire to separate the reluctant Mrs. Hotchkiss from the necessary funds? The conspiracy need not have amounted to anything more than a tacit understanding between two colleagues of that era --- a gentleman's agreement sealed with a nod and a wink. Perhaps Messrs. Dwight and Coy had felt all along that fifty students were too few for the kind of influential and prosperous institution they had in mind, and they had been merely waiting for the right opportunity to make their move, just as had been done on three previous occasions in obtaining additional funds.
A brother of Mrs. Hotchkiss who was on the board, Charles A. Bissell, was appointed to a three-member committee for "getting [her] approval" on this latest move to expand. Was he there to protect her interests or because he was the one most likely to be able to handle her or both? When the trustees subsequently voted to name the new dormitory Bissell Hall, perhaps they had more in mind than merely honoring the donor's maiden name.
In the give-and-take between Mrs. Hotchkiss and the trustees, it had thus far been a one-way affair.
Now, expressing a willingness to accommodate her colleagues on the board once more, the school's benefactress clearly set down a quid pro quo. She did not make any demands to increase the number of local scholarships to correspond to the growth of the school; nor did she seek to influence the curriculum or in similar ways further her original views of the school. Keeping an agreement was a virtue that may have been no less important to her than the Yankee thrift she had acquired as a child.
What she now wanted in return was some degree of control over the additional money she felt she was repeatedly being compelled to spend. The minutes spelled it out: "Economy both in construction and administration, and that some arrangement be made for an efficient financial manager, to have general oversight under the trustees of all the business affairs of the school and to be its sole purchasing agent." What this meant was that Waterloo Wheeler, the Yale professor who had been in sole control of building operations, would have to resign. According to Estill, Mrs. Hotchkiss had become very much irritated with the professor, "and she was unwilling to give anything further to the school so long as he remained a member of the Board." Her implicit message in wanting "an efficient financial manager" was no less specific. That was the job now almost entirely performed by W. W. Goss in his expanded duties as curator.
"Goss suddenly blazed out as a star of the first magnitude in the way of target for the spite of . . . Mrs. Hotchkiss," wrote David Comstock several months later to the vacationing Buehler. "Since the term ended, Mrs. Hotchkiss, for some reason, has been in a most unpleasant frame of mind. She seemed to be all bristles and Bissells" --- an obvious reference to Bissell Hall, for which ground was soon to be broken. "She was suddenly seized with an idea that there was to be an enormous outlay of money for all sorts of things; conceived a suspicion of the architect's propositions; made all kinds of halts, advances, and retreats. "
No doubt with good reason, considering how she had been repeatedly maneuvered into a greater and greater outlay in financing the original school complex. Maria Hotchkiss had other charitable interests, including the Sharon library, which bears her name. If the estimate of her inheritance at $1 to $2 million is accurate, she may have felt her reserves were being unduly drained by the demands of the school. Yet relations between Mrs. Hotchkiss and the board were about to take a dramatic turn. What brought about the change of heart was a trustees' meeting held in Lakeville on July 25, 1893. By an act of the Connecticut state legislature, The Hotchkiss School Association had just been granted tax-exempt status, and in the process, become The Maria H. Hotchkiss School Association.(3) Of more relevance than any such personal recognition to the modest widow, however, was that the board accepted the resignation of the influential Professor Wheeler. In his place, Mrs. Hotchkiss nominated her Lakeville lawyer, Frank E. Randall, and "Mr. Randall was duly elected," assuring her of a reliable ally on the board. But Mrs. Hotchkiss was also unrelenting in wanting to have her "efficient financial manager." Here she found the board much less willing to yield. The meeting at that point was adjourned until after dinner, when "a conference was held between Mrs. Hotchkiss, Pres. Kingsbury and Professor Phillips." The result was a resolution which accommodated Mrs. Hotchkiss's concern and pointed directly at her target. "There seems to be a good deal of dissatisfaction with the Curator, Mr. Goss, in regard to his management of the School property," the resolution read, calling for obtaining not only "a suitable man," but also a "general financial manager for the affairs of the Corporation. "
Mrs. Hotchkiss had reason to believe she was at last being listened to. The resolution had spelled out what she wanted, and she seemed optimistic that she would soon have her way. "When we think how Mrs. H felt last July, and what she is now doing, the change in her is wonderful," observed Edward Coy in a letter apprising the vacationing and just-married Huber Gray Buehler of the cottage the board would build for him to share with the Estills. "Everybody congratulates us on the immediate outcome of the meeting . . . on the temper of Mrs. H's mind, on the general good feeling that seems to prevail, and on the prospects of the School from this day forth." Summarized David Comstock, "Mrs. Hotchkiss had been in a cloud as to many matters, and the outcome of the day's proceedings was a promising token of the future. "
The headmaster had personal reasons to be optimistic. He had just been elected a trustee and board secretary, thereby establishing a precedent which would automatically place all future headmasters on the board. He was a recognized insider now and at last in a position to take action on something that must have been gnawing at his self-respect for months. Turning back several pages in the minutes to the meeting which had referred to "the rather loose financial management at the School," the just-elected keeper of the record placed an asterisk by the word "loose" and at the bottom of the page noted in his stylish Spencerian hand, "The facts at no time warranted these words." Signed with his unmistakable flourish, the addendum seems to have been as much in defense of Curator Goss as of Mr. Coy's own pride.
The good feeling between Mrs. Hotchkiss and the board would not last. Almost a year after first agreeing to accede to Mrs. Hotchkiss on the matter of "an efficient financial manager" --- and more than nine months since the accusing finger had been pointed at Mr. Goss --- no action had been taken by the school or the board. Now, with Bissell Hall almost completed, a misunderstanding arose over the bill for $54,985; in the words of the minutes, "Mrs. Hotchkiss having been represented as ready to assume the entire cost of the building, whereas she had assumed responsibility for only $50,000." The difference between those figures was no trifle for a school whose total receipts from tuition in the first year were $29,106. With Mr. Buehler again growing restless about his promised cottage, the gentlemen on the board may well have commiserated with one another over Madam's intractability at this crucial stage.
Using the $5,000 misunderstanding over Bissell Hall as leverage, Mrs. Hotchkiss pressed for what she had every reason to feel was her proper due --- now overdue. At a board meeting held in Timothy Dwight's New Haven office on April 28, 1894, she agreed to cover the unpaid balance in return for a motion to hire "Mr. Frank Ingersoll, or some other suitable person" for the financial position she wanted filled. Yet, despite some convincing words of intent from the board, Mrs. Hotchkiss did not succeed in bringing that motion to a vote. Wanting to replace the curator was hardly the same as having Professor Wheeler resign from the board, which had in no way affected his tenure at Yale and doing his annual Waterloo bit. Dismissing Curator Goss would have imposed an economic hardship on one of the original members of the Hotchkiss community --already then characterized by an exceptionally strong sense of family. Besides, as the loyal lieutenant to Head Master Coy, Goss had merely been carrying out the policies of his chief.
Reconvening in President Dwight's office a week later, the board seemed no more ready to act. In fact, after numerous conferences which included Mrs. Hotchkiss and Mr. Coy, the board took a distinct step back --- dropping the specific mention of Mr. Ingersoll's name. But, as usual, there was no shortage of promises. The board resolved "that the Executive Committee, together with Mrs. Hotchkiss and Mr. Coy, be instructed to hire a bookkeeper for the Hotchkiss School, as soon as practicable, it being expected that he shall also fill the position of Treasurer and Curator, if in their judgment his experience and ability warrant it."
To think that the focus of this protracted and intensifying storm was "a bookkeeper" --- and that men of the stature of Dwight and Coy were putting forth their considerable efforts on an issue such as this to thwart the woman whose generosity had financed the school! To Mrs. Hotchkiss, the verbiage of her colleagues must have sounded frustratingly familiar, and in fact, that is still all it was, for the minutes state that "no action was taken on this motion." How tenaciously she then persisted to get the board to stop waffling can only be surmised. To speak up to these men could not have been easy for a woman in those days, especially for one with the retiring disposition ascribed to Mrs. Hotchkiss. Nevertheless, "it was subsequently" voted that the preceding motion be implemented "as soon as practicable," and to "notify Mr. Goss that his services will not be needed after October 1, 1894." In a gesture that was surely kindly but also lent credibility to the board's stated intention to fire Goss, the trustees voted that his son be permitted to complete Hotchkiss free of charge.
If Mrs. Hotchkiss was temporarily mollified, it did not take her long to conclude that all those resolutions were still just so many words. A month later, on June 9, 1894, a showdown of a different sort came about at yet another special meeting in Timothy Dwight's office. What had happened in the interim was that Mrs. Hotchkiss had hired her own financial man --- most likely, the aforementioned Frank Ingersoll --- whose household goods had already been shipped to the school. The result was that for the second time in a little over a year, Coy was putting his job on the line. The minutes describe the board's response: "In view of the serious injury likely to result from the resignation of the Head Master at this time, and after consultation by some members of the board with each other, and with Mr. Coy, the following votes are proposed ......"
When the votes passed, the headmaster was in sole charge of running the school --- with specific power "to employ a curator and other such servants as may be required." Though the votes also assigned financial prerogatives to the board, there was nary a word about Mrs. Hotchkiss. In fact, she may have been totally ignored. She certainly had ample reason to interpret the entire proceeding as a direct rebuff, if not a slap in the face. The financial man she had hired was promptly notified by Coy of the change of plans. His baggage was returned to him, accompanied by a generous check to cover the expenses and trouble he had incurred. As for Curator Goss, he would in due time receive a raise "to the maximum salary agreed upon" and. continue serving the school until his retirement in 1904.
In this ongoing strife between the founder and her namesake school, the personality of Edward G. Coy may have tipped more than once the balance of the scales. "[He] was handsome, distingué, and of a carriage so erect and proud as to seem almost haughty," noted his junior colleague Joe Estill.
"His resemblance to Kaiser William I was so striking as to make him rather decidedly the 'observed of all observers' when travelling in Germany, which was far from displeasing to him."
A kaiser look-alike who enjoyed that role would not be apt to look kindly on anyone crowding his terrain --- especially a woman. But Mrs. Hotchkiss was not the only one to transgress in that way. Stumbling into the headmaster's privileged path at this time was his own deputy, the associate Master David Y. Comstock. A glance at pictures of these two men makes it understandable how this could have come about.
Though radiating a far more approachable attitude than Coy, the associate master was no less magnificently bewhiskered and impressive in bearing. And he had attained an unusual popularity throughout the school and a reputation for excellence. "Mr. Comstock had one of the quickest minds, and was one of the best raconteurs, I ever knew," Estill wrote about him. "His old pupils, almost without exception, said, 'Commy never had an equal as a teacher of Latin.' "
If Messrs. Coy and Comstock had got along at Andover for years, it is well to remember that their relationship there had been one of independent department heads. Their coming to Hotchkiss to join in a common cause may have had an effect not unlike releasing two bulls into the same ring, especially on the headmaster in his dominant role. Yet that alone might not have been sufficient for them to lock horns, had it not been for Maria H. Hotchkiss. According to A Portrait, the history of the school published on its seventy-fifth anniversary, Comstock knew Mrs. Hotchkiss while he was still teaching at Andover, and she was the real reason he had been offered the new job. While none of that information can be confirmed, it appears that after coming to Hotchkiss, Comstock did gradually develop a unique relationship with the benefactress --- one which diverged from the adversarial sort she had with the headmaster and the board. According to Estill, Mrs. Hotchkiss personally turned over to the associate master the sum of $4,000 to purchase books for the library --- a task which Comstock carried out after consulting with other members of the faculty. Whether or not the headmaster felt slighted or bypassed can only be surmised. Far more revealing is that in submitting his resignation for the second time, Coy was not joined by Comstock, although once more the entire faculty stood by their chief. Why did the associate master's name not appear? Did he decide not to join in because he had become aware of the real facts of the situation and instead of assuming Mrs. Hotchkiss to be "in a cloud" now recognized the justice of her cause? Or was it perhaps the other way around? Did the headmaster feel secure enough and no longer wanted to share his status with David Comstock at the school --- not even in a letter of resignation? Or was it altogether something else? Whatever the case, Head Master Coy made his displeasure with the associate master widely known and did not shrink from passing out misleading information to buttress his own primacy at the school. "[Comstock] was Associate Master, which was interpreted by all at first as associate to, or with, the Head," observed Estill in his memoirs. "Certainly the younger men never thought of it as meaning their associate. Misunderstanding about this or 'incompatibility,' in spite of nineteen years of life with Mr. Coy at Andover, led to his resignation in 1895 --- a great blow to the school."
Whether or not Mrs. Hotchkiss felt further estranged from the school by Coy's treatment of her faculty friend remains a matter of conjecture. Even so, there is little doubt that she harbored deep-seated resentments against the board. She may have felt by now no less deceived in this relationship than she had been by her faithless husband in France. But she recognized the need to bide her time.
Only two board meetings were held in the next two years, one of which Mrs. Hotchkiss attended, with no evident participation reflected in the minutes. But as soon as the next meeting convened on April 25, 1896, in Timothy Dwight's office, she launched her counteroffensive. Flanked by Frank E. Randall, her Lakeville lawyer, she made the attack through him. The strategy was as subtle as it was complex, involving a long-written communication which "recited an outline of the history" of the board. This version of events from Mrs. Hotchkiss's point of view was marked by such phrases as "matters of vital importance . . . law applicable thereto ... existence and usefulness of this association. " It all sounded ominous, and the handwritten page in the minutes still looks that way today, bristling with a half-dozen underlined whereases and several resolveds.
Mrs. Hotchkiss, it turns out, may have wanted nothing short of getting "her money back."(4) And she was doing it by challenging the legal basis for the board's actions over the past three years. Her case rested on a technicality going back to 1893, when the original Hotchkiss School Association received its tax-exempt status and became the Maria H. Hotchkiss School Association. Claiming that the transfer of assets and authority between those similar but separate entities had not been properly carried out, Mrs. Hotchkiss wanted to have the board's actions for that period declared invalid. She seemed intent on turning back the clock and starting anew.
The effect of the salvo fired by the embittered widow and her lawyers, despite some of the bombastic rhetoric, was more like buckshot --- unpleasant but not particularly damaging. It sent the board scurrying for cover, though only under reams of paper. The administrative work needed to set the record straight was tedious and convoluted. One of the many steps in that process consisted of resurrecting for a single meeting the former Hotchkiss School Association --- which explains why those minutes from 1896 ended up so startlingly sandwiched between two meetings in 1893. A rash of legal jargon also appeared at this time. For the previous five years, the minutes had begun with the phrase, "The meeting was called to order by President Kingsbury, there being present . . ." Now, just getting to this stage required a lengthy preamble containing language like, "According to the provisions of the 2nd By-Law . . . a notice of which the foregoing is a copy was deposited in the post office at Lakeville as required by By-Law 3." Only upon Mrs, Hotchkiss's death would such legalese disappear from the minutes, just as noticeably as it had appeared.(5)
The gentlemen on the board thus were uncomfortably aware of having their every move legally scrutinized. That Mrs. Hotchkiss should resort to such harassment reflected the depth of frustration and animosity she felt --- almost as if she had been violated and was bent on taking revenge. Yet even at this irreconcilable stage one of her fellow trustees on the board managed to handle her sufficiently so that she ended up "concurring with the President that her communication in writing to the Board [which had formed the basis for this involved action] need not be copied into the records, provided it is placed on file." A thorough search of all possible repositories has failed to bring such a document to light. How instructive it might have been to examine Mrs. Hotchkiss's version of events in her "outline of the history" of the board!
That was the last meeting Mrs. Hotchkiss attended --- a decision which was interpreted by the trustees in their own peculiar way. According to Andrew Phillips, who was surely as kindly and understanding a man as any on the board, Mrs. Hotchkiss was upset at being only one of a number of trustees and, in her thwarted ambition to act as dictator, stayed away.
The most acrimonious exchange between Mrs. Hotchkiss and the board, however, was yet to come. The minutes of a meeting held on January 11, 1897, at the accustomed location, Timothy Dwight's office, provide an all-too-familiar prologue to the drama. "After Bissell Hall, erected by Mrs. Hotchkiss' order, had been turned over to the possession of the board, it was found that $10,000 were needed to settle unpaid bills incurred for its construction. The surprise and disappointment caused by this discovery were increased when it was learned that Mrs. Hotchkiss entertained decided objections against the sale of a piece of land, containing ten acres . . . from the proceeds of which --- $6,000 --it was planned to pay for Mr. Buehler's cottage. As the result of this combination of circumstances, the Board finds itself obliged to make extraordinary provision for raising immediately the sum of $16,500."
Although the "extraordinary provision" meant taking out a mortgage in place of the aborted sale --"upon Bissell Hall, the adjoining cottages, and a specified portion of the surrounding land" --- the situation provided the undeceived widow with a high-minded rationale to take an extraordinary step of her own. For it was only through her alacrity that she had staved off the sale of those ten acres, which represented an integral part of the school grounds (stretching from the boathouse on the lake to the Millerton Road). Now, she may well have considered the far more extensive mortgage --within the framework of her Yankee views --- tantamount to pledging one's soul to the devil for temporary gain. Accordingly, on May 21, 1897, Maria Hotchkiss had a new deed drawn up for the sixty-five-acre tract of land she had originally given to the school. In this deed, she acknowledged the quitclaim she had provided in 1893 after it was "represented to me" that the original deed of trust "after its delivery to and acceptance" by the board, "but before it had been put upon record, had been mislaid. " The purpose of the new deed was "to declare and put upon record the trusts and uses" which had been specified in that original deed "according to the true intent and meaning of the grantor." The bottom line? "That no lien shall be created upon said premises and said premises shall not be incumbered for any purpose, and shall not be conveyed or otherwise disposed of."
There, no more mortgages, no more attempted sales of land on which the Hotchkiss School was "forever to be maintained. " Mrs. Hotchkiss had the new deed promptly registered in the land records of Salisbury and notified the board by letter of what she had done.
Perhaps because they knew what was coming, both of her Bissell relatives as well as her lawyer, Randall, chose not to attend the meeting that was immediately called. The consternation of the trustees on this occasion thus comes through in the minutes undisguised. Referring to the document sarcastically as the "so-called deed," those in attendance barely stopped short of labeling the school's benefactress a liar. They repeatedly and vehemently denied the existence of any deed prior to the quitclaim of 1893, asserting that no one on the board had "seen such a deed, or that it was ever delivered to the Corporation, excepting that Mrs. Hotchkiss maintains such a belief." They voted to lodge a formal protest with the Town of Salisbury for having recorded the latest deed, declaring "that the statements contained therein are untrue. "
But were they?
"To impeach the integrity, high purpose, and honest judgment of such men," observed J. G. Estill, in assessing the credibility of the gentlemen on the board, "was out of the question." Yet should not the school's founder be accorded the same trust or at least the same benefit of doubt? If those overwrought gentlemen had paused to glance through the minutes, they would have found the evidence right there, in the official account of the first meeting on August 11, 1891, recorded at the very top of page 2 of the red leather-bound volume: "It was moved and voted to accept the deed, presented to the Board by Mrs. Hotchkiss, of a tract of land for the use of the School." The 1891 date would have irrefutably confirmed Maria Hotchkiss's claim that there indeed had been a deed prior to the 1893 quitclaim. Today, that sort of evidence would fall into the category of the smoking gun.
What a denouement between the benefactress and her namesake school! To have the Hotchkiss name bandied around town in such an unfavorable way by the public challenge of her deed! What exactly were her adversaries on the board whispering about this woman with her recently inherited wealth? Given every conceivable --- and even inconceivable --- benefit of the doubt, those trustees must have known perfectly well what the donor's intent concerning the land had been all along. How far would Timothy Dwight have got when he first approached Mrs. Hotchkiss with his idea for a school if he had insisted on reserving the right to sell or mortgage the land she might donate?
Still, the gentlemen on the board did not fully comprehend how Mrs. Hotchkiss felt. The evidence suggests that subsequent to this final encounter with the school's benefactress, they formed a committee to solicit her for more funds. Heading the deputation? Atholl McBean '00, then a mature, enthusiastic lower mid who went on to found the Stanford Research Institute and in 1968 received the Hotchkiss Man of the Year award. Fortunately, the school was on the verge of the sort of prosperity which would obviate the need for any further desperate measures to make ends meet.
As bequests and purchases started to expand the school's holdings to today's five-hundred-acre domain, the board periodically sought to establish an unrestricted title to the original sixty-five-acre tract. Among those involved in that endeavor was Morris W. Seymour, a lawyer and a trustee,(6) who also contributed his legal skills toward acquiring the land for Taylor Field and the forested area that would become the picturesque site of the ski jump. In 1906, Seymour reiterated the opinion of the former president of the board, Kingsbury: "He thinks the last deed was drawn by an attorney of Mrs. Hotchkiss at a time when she was particularly angry with all the trustees, and was a crafty effort on his part to import a trust into the matter, which never had existed nor would be allowed to exist." Ironically, at about the same time as such misconceptions about the founder of the school were being perpetuated, the board was unveiling a portrait in her memory.
The controversial deed not only survived Mr. Seymour's challenge, but in time came to articulate the school's own feeling about the inviolability of its site --- vindicating, in this case, the judgment of the farmer's daughter over that of her formally more accomplished colleagues.
This is not to diminish the achievements of the gentlemen on the board. Timothy Dwight, Edward Coy, and other trustees selflessly pursued what they saw as the best interests of the school. For that, future generations would bestow on them due praise. It should also be remembered that during the same contentious meetings involving Mrs. Hotchkiss, myriad other matters were taken care of. These ranged from hiring new masters to protecting the ecology of Lake Wononscopomuc (yes, way back then) and even handling such mundane details as providing slate for blackboards and improving seats in the chapel. Moreover, Edward Coy and other board members who authored those handwritten minutes of the early years deserve applause. Their obliquely presented record is startlingly frank when compared with the rest of the volume covering the next forty years; and even more so alongside the three thick, typewritten volumes covering the rest of the school's first century. Now, at the end of that century, those early minutes provide a glimpse of what the sombre woman whose portrait hangs in the dining room went through on her way to that prominent niche. Her family's motto, In Recto Decus, carved into the oak paneling just above the portrait becomes invested with meaning beyond the translation, "Glory consists in fair dealing."
What would she think of her school now? Perhaps the best evidence is that even in her day, Maria Hotchkiss held an affection for what it then was. "She was present at our baccalaureate exercises, and enjoyed them exceedingly," noted David Comstock at the completion of the school's first year in 1893. "She was also present on Monday, the 26th of June, at the boys' closing exercises, and enjoyed them immensely. She 'received' with us on Monday evening and had a royal time. Then came a sort of relapse, and we began to be alarmed." According to Comstock's account, this "relapse" had been brought on by the thought of still more financial demands about to be orchestrated by the trustees.
Mrs. Hotchkiss died in 1901 without leaving a will. It should by then have come as no surprise to anyone on the board that she had made no financial provisions for the school that bore her name.(7) The significance of the occasion was such that Timothy Dwight decided to handle Maria Hotchkiss personally this one final time. On the day of her burial, he inserted into the board of trustees' minutes a lengthy tribute to her and the school she had established "by her munificent gift . . . and generous endowment. It was evident that she had meditated long and seriously on the question as to the best means and manner of accomplishing her desire. The result . . . was dictated by wisdom as well as by generous sentiment." This was a grand tribute, since it revealed that he, for one, understood the thoughtful and logical nature of her acts. It cost him nothing to say so now and perhaps relieved his soul. Then, in what appeared to be a customary final refrain, the now-retired Yale president and erstwhile parson offered comfort to "those who are nearest to her in relationship and affections" and expressed the hope "that the thought of a happy reunion in the future life may be a delightful inspiration for their minds and hearts." Considering the relationship he and the trustees had experienced with Mrs. Hotchkiss in this life, it is understandable why Timothy Dwight pointedly failed to include himself in any such future reunion.
 |  with Walter Hull Buell, future headmaster of Hotchkiss |
Timothy Dwight died in 1916. Besides having provided the influential trappings of his office for so many meetings, what was the full extent of his contribution to Hotchkiss? There is surely far more to it than his own files reveal. Being a thrifty Yankee himself, he disposed of most of the letters he received by scribbling his responses in the margins or somewhere on the page and sending them back by the next mail. The most telling indication of how vast a role he played comes from the minutes of a board meeting held on June 3, 1916: "Resolved: That amidst the universal grief that the Educational world feels at the death of Dr. Dwight, this Institution, which in a large sense was the child of his creation, feels an especial loss, appreciating as it does that it was his wisdom that largely dominated its inception, creation and upbuilding. "