302. THOMAS DAY⁸ SEYMOUR (Nathan Perkins⁷, Charles⁶, Charles⁵, Timothy⁴, John³, John², Richard¹), born at Hudson, Ohio, 1 Apr. 1848, died at New Haven, Conn., 31 Dec. 1907; married at Michigan City, Ind., 2 July 1874, SARAH MELISSA⁸ HITCHCOCK, born at Columbus, Ohio, 27 Sept. 1846, died 20 Mar. 1916, daughter of Rev. Dr. Henry Lawrence⁷ (Peter⁶, Valentine⁵, Peter⁴, John³, John², Matthias¹) and Clarissa Mary Sophia (Ford).

Hudson, Ohio, at the time of Seymour's birth, was intensely New England in its life, dominated by Western Reserve College, the “Yale of the West,” where his father was professor of Greek and Latin. The character of the boy developed under the influence of the finest of the Puritan characteristics: self- sacrifice, thrift, the dignity of unremitting labor, intense but reserved religious devotion. He was also subject to the intellectual and aesthetic atmosphere of the College. Brought up in the midst of books, for his father's library was at one time “distinctly the best library west of the Alleghanies,” a “great worker, with a passion for accuracy,” the youth early acquired a knowledge of the best literature. Studious and reserved in manner, he always longed for travel and new experience. At the age of sixteen he came to Hartford, Connecticut, to work on the Courant; too young for the army he joined the Christian Commission, was attached to Grant's victorious army and entered Richmond immediately after Lee's surrender. He returned to Hudson, entered Western Reserve in 1866, graduating four years later as valedictorian of his class. In college his social instincts expanded; he was a prominent member of the Glee Club and of Alpha Delta Phi.

The young Seymour hesitated between the ministry and a life of scholarship. His love of the classics decided the problem and led him to seek the best instruction then available in the world, in the German universities. After receiving an honorary B.A. from Yale, a rare distinction, he went to Leipzig in September, 1870, on to Berlin for the second semester, and back to Leipzig again in the autumn of 1871. He not merely studied under the greatest classical scholars of the day, but travelled afoot in the Black Forest and Switzerland, stayed in Paris, visited Italy, and in the spring of 1872 made his first trip through Greece. The adventures he and his friend D'Ooge experienced in the Greek interior, then infested with bandits, were such that the American minister regarded their safe return as an event of sufficient importance to be made the subject of a special despatch to his government.

In the autumn of 1872 Seymour returned to Hudson to be Professor of Greek, a position to which he had been elected two years previously and which he was to hold until 1880. He threw himself into the routine drudgery of the Western Reserve faculty with enthusiasm and at once captured the affection of his students. But he was by no means content to meet routine obligations in a narrow academic circle; he sought always the companionship of scholars throughout the nation. He became a member of the American Philological Association, attended its annual meetings with regularity. He thus formed close friendships with the leading classicists of America and began to exert marked influence upon philological studies. In 1880, at the age of 32, he was called to Yale as Professor of the Greek Language and Literature.

For the following twenty-seven years Seymour's life was bound up with that of Yale College. With the untimely death of Packard, in 1884, he became head of the Greek Department, and took an active part in faculty debates on the curriculum and on college management. He offered courses to seniors, juniors, and graduate students over a wide range of study: Homer, Pindar, Greek tragedy, Thucydides, Plato and Aristotle, Demosthenes and Isocrates, Theocritus, the Septuagint, the New Testament, Bacchylides, the Greek dialects. Plato was his constant companion. He carried some part of the text with him when he travelled, whether on the train or on the steamer, and reread it constantly. The Republic he made a practice of reading every summer as he did the entire Iliad and Odyssey. He was a constant student of the Greek Testament, which he knew almost by heart. “He was,” wrote the classical authority, John Williams White, “the best Homeric scholar that America has produced.” His contributions to the study and inter-pretations of Homer were numerous. In the last year of his life he published Life in the Homeric Age, his largest single contribution to knowledge and that upon which his fame as scholar chiefly rests.

Seymour taught continuously until his death in 1907 without taking an entire year's leave of absence; only twice did he allow himself to discontinue his teaching to go abroad in March. He carried a schedule which today would be regarded as impossible. One year he taught twenty-four hours a week, setting the hours for one of his graduate courses from ten in the evening until midnight. “I have always been impressed,” one of his colleagues wrote, “by his extraordinary industry, a capacity and passion for work, but this consecration to hard work was not at all slavish or mechanical. Into it he put discrimination and intelligent enthusiasm and buoyancy of spirit. This joyous industry was natural to him.” To his teaching duties he added a vast amount of administrative work, for in those days the Yale College faculty decided and administered its educational policy. It was said that he had never refused service upon a committee. For years he was chairman of the Committee on Admissions, and served as Yale representative on the larger New England Committee. He organized the Classical Club at Yale and was largely responsible for the growth of its library. His interests transcended his special field. Because of his love of music he worked with Dr. Stoeckel for the development of the college choir, was largely responsible for the organization of the School of Music and the choice of Horatio Parker as its first Dean. He assisted in the editing of the College Hymnal and served for a long time as chairman of the committee to choose college preachers.

His activities in the general world of classical scholarship were constant. He was one of the editors of the Classical Review, joined with Packard and White in editing the college series of Greek authors, and was influential in the founding of the American School at Athens. He was chairman of the managing committee of the School from 1887 to 1902, a period of rapid and successful development. In 1903 he became president of the Archaeological Institute of America, a position he held until his death. It is certain that his range of personal friendship with classical students, young and old, was wider than that of any other American. He gave summer courses in Chautauqua, Chicago, and California. Four summers and two half-years he spent in Europe, primarily as student rather than tourist, for he never took a vacation. He never lost his eagerness to learn. He loved to visit the foreign universities, talk with their professors, listen to their lectures. In Greece he visited the excavations and was never deterred by any hardships incidental to travel. In 1894 his alma mater, Western Reserve, gave him the degree of LL.D. The same degree was given him in 1901 by Glasgow University and in 1906 by Harvard.

Professor Seymour was delicate as a boy because of a severe attack of rheumatic fever. This he overcame so that in manhood he enjoyed a fine constitution, which made possible his prodigious industry. He was woefully near-sighted and thus prevented from playing ball or tennis or golf. Walking he enjoyed and always looked back to his early trips in the White Mountains and Switzerland as the recreation he enjoyed most. He stood six feet in his stockings, although at the end of his life he acquired the scholar's stoop, and weighed 175 pounds. By reason of his beard, which he wore long, and early greyness, he looked much older than his years, and took whimsical delight in posing as a patriarch. His health was such that he never missed a class exercise by reason of illness until his last. He was struck by grippe on Thanksgiving Day, 1907, just as his Life in the Homeric Age was published. He was unable to throw off the attack, which after four weeks developed into pneumonia. He died on December 31, 1907. His mind wandered during his last days and he imagined himself to be back in Athens in company with his friends of the Archaeological Institute, and almost his last words referred to the beauty of the Acropolis in the early morning light.

He was married July 2, 1874, to Sarah Melissa Hitchcock, daughter of President Hitchcock of Western Reserve. There existed between them an understanding so perfect that it was instinctive for the children to assume that no matter what the problem their parents looked at it in the same light.

Apart from the range and depth of his scholarship Professor Seymour's most striking trait was his love of human companionship and the vivid interest he took in the problems of those he met. He was not a ready “mixer,” did not enjoy casual club life, and when out of his habitual surroundings gave the appearance of reserve or shyness. But with his intimates and with those who he felt shared his own tastes he expanded into a beaming geniality illuminated by a keen sense of humor. He loved group games, group singing, general conversation. Human institutions were for him of vital importance, and of all the family was the most important. He came home regularly for three meals a day and every member of the family was expected to be prompt. Cheerfulness and interest in what the others were doing he took as a matter of course from each of his children. Sunday afternoons he read aloud regularly; as the children grew older the Greek New Testament, especially Acts and the Epistles, were read by the family, the children translating and he himself interpreting. Every Sunday evening he held regular family prayers where a psalm would be repeated in unison and three hymns sung in parts. Family festivals, such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, were carefully observed. He delighted in large family gatherings. Any cousins in Yale, no matter how distant, he invited to the house, some of them never failing to appear for Sunday dinner. Relatives and even friends of relatives were accepted at the house for long visits. Frequently his children would murmur among themselves, not caring for some of the visitors; but they were never allowed to express anything but pleasure when a visitor appeared. Foreign scholars frequently stayed at the house, on their visits to this country, and the guest book showed an extraordinary range of acquaintanceships. Students who could not go home for vacation, especially the poorer graduate students, would be brought in to family meals. Professor Seymour was able to live thus sociably and yet carry on his work through rare powers of concentration. His correspondence was large and he wrote his letters by hand. Regu-larly after a meal he would sit down in the library, entering into family conversation freely while at the same time he wrote his letters with lightning speed and clear chirography.

With strong likes and dislikes, Professor Seymour had absolute control of his temper and never permitted himself or anyone about him to impute unworthy motives to anyone else. His son, to the day of his father's death, never heard criticism of a man or woman, although the elder Seymour would at times criticize qualities in the abstract with vehemence. But generally he expressed himself by praise. His favorite character in Theophrastus was “The Magnanimous Man,” and his love of largeness of spirit was a salient trait.

The following reminiscences are provided by his daughter, Mrs. Angel:

He was devoted to the family, to his forbears and to all his own generation. The word “kinsman” as he used it was one of the most affectionate of titles. He welcomed cousins to his home with the greatest happiness; indeed the strongest reason for his rejoicing in the large house on Hillhouse Avenue was that he could ask relatives there freely. His children never heard adverse criticism of relatives, never the smallest hint even. This was characteristic of him in general, too, that he seldom expressed before his family any disapproval of others, whoever they were. We were told that he was known as “the peacemaker” on the Yale Faculty. He loved geniality, and it irked him to feel a lack of this in others. He kept himself to a routine of hard work, home for three meals a day, at work three sessions in college, in class or in his “college room,” which was first in North College, one of the old Brick Row, then in Phelps Hall. He would normally work there until ten o'clock at night, except when the “Old Gentleman's Club” had a meeting, or there was a concert to go to, or an occasional dinner party. He used to say that one had to run always in order not to drop behind. He took no regular exercise. He had enjoyed rowing, and used to take his children when they were small out on Lake Whitney. About 1898 or 1899 he bought a second hand bicycle, heavy with solid tires, and would take small rides on it before breakfast. He said it had to be at that hour because it shied at traffic. As a young man, he had been a good walker, and used to take his vacations from home in that way, walking with other Philologists in the White Mountains. He always walked to and from home to college, which amounted to about three miles a day in the last years of his life.

He had almost no relaxations—except concerts or evenings with friends occasionally. On his trips to Europe, particularly to Greece, he was always reading Greek on shipboard and in trains. Homer he read through every summer, one of his greatest pleasures.

Music was dear to him. In his early years at Yale, he sang with his wife in a choral society but by the time Horatio Parker was conducting his Oratorio Society, he said his voice was gone, and he was too busy. It is my impression that it was he chiefly who was responsible for bringing Chamber Concerts to New Haven (The Kneisel and the Beethoven Quartettes) in the North Sheffield Hall, and also that it was he who helped to start the Music department at Yale and to bring Horatio Parker there.

He loved to read aloud, translating Plato and Homer to his family. There was astonishment in our family once when the wife of a visiting Greek professor confessed that she did not know what Greek authors her husband loved most; this would have been impossible in our family.

He was always courteous even to bores. He was genuinely glad to see returning students and even let himself be imposed upon, as when a stranger, after breaking into a busy morning with an hour of purposeless talk, rose and said, “I really didn't know what to do with my time until I had to go to my train, but it has been very pleasant.”

He always liked old people, thoroughly enjoyed—and was amused, as his family were not—at being called “venerable” even before he was 50. He did not live to be 60, yet many think of him as having been a patriarch. At Commencement time he would often fall in line with the early graduates in the procession, and felt that they took him into their group as a contemporary.

We include herein a picture of Professor Seymour as a Senior at Western Reserve, also one from a painting owned by his son, showing him in his later years, as well as one taken in his study at Phelps Hall.

ELIZABETH DAY⁹ (SEYMOUR) ANGEL (1876–1942) at an early age displayed an interest in and rare capacity for the study of the Greek language and literature, obviously inherited from her father. She entered Bryn Mawr with the class of 1897 and graduated with high honors. Her interest in Greek was such that she completed the work for the M.A. during her senior year and took the degree at the same time with the B.A. She had her father's capacity for industry but lacked the physical stamina sufficient to work as hard as she wished. In 1905 she went out to Lake Erie College to teach classics. Her love for teaching was ineradicable. Her younger brother early discovered that he could bribe her to do anything he wanted merely by promising that he would let her help him in the preparation of his Greek lesson. Her health proved unequal to more than two years of this work. She continued her classical studies, travelled abroad, and in Greece met the English sculptor, John Angel, whom she married in 1914. They lived in England until after the War, when they moved to New York, where he was commissioned by Ralph Adams Cram to undertake sculptures on the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. When other commissions followed he became an American citizen and they made their permanent home in New York. In all respects she resembled her father more closely than the other children, not merely in her scholarly instincts but in her pleasure in group gatherings. Nothing is more remarkable than her capacity, having started from a strongly Puritan point of view, to mix with the variegated artistic circles into which her married life threw her. She writes of herself: “She always loved Greek language and literature, and got constant pleasure from it. The only reason this could come in as a characteristic point is that so far it represents the only classical inheritance from N. P. Seymour and T. D. Seymour, and that it took the place with her of an intense love of music in other members of the family.”

John Angel is a sculptor of distinction. An Englishman by birth, he was educated in Exeter, and in Lambeth and Royal Academy

Schools of Art, London. He won prizes and scholarships in the Royal Academy, and finally, in 1912, the Gold Medal travelling scholarship, which gave him a year's study in Greece, Italy, and France. Excepting the year 1912, he was assistant to Sir George Frampton from 1908 to 1914.

Work in England: Exeter War Memorial; Bridgewater War Memorial; Rotherham, Yorkshire, Memorial; Madonna for Pusey House College, Oxford; Madonna for St. Mary's, Beverley; various statuettes now in Glasgow Academy of Fine Arts, in Exeter Art Museum, and in private collections. Fellow of Royal Society of British Sculptors, member of Art Workers' Guild, of St. John's Wood Arts Club, etc.

He came to the United States, Nov. 1925, and March 1936 became an American citizen. Work in America: In Cathedral of St. John the Divine, eight statuettes in Baptistry; in North Tower portal, nine martyr saints, eight feet high, each with pedestal on which is relief with scenes from the saint's life, eight Sibyls, thirty angels; three tympana in high relief, representing the Crucifixion, Christ before Pilate, and Christ bearing His cross; above the portal, the large granite figure of Archangel Michael; in South Tower portal, St. Paul for trumeau, an angel, three tympana representing the Nativity, the Annunciation, and the Adoration of the Magi. In Princeton University, chapel, tympanum of Majestas, west portal, and tympanum of Annunciation, north portal. In Pittsburgh, East Liberty Presbyterian church, Last Supper, in marble, and four saints. In St. Louis, Mo., Desloges Hospital chapel, panel of Crucifixion. In St. Paul's School, Concord, N. H., panel of Christ among the doctors, and figure of St. Paul. Rice Institute, Texas, figure of William Marsh Rice. Vincennes, Ind., George Rogers Clark Memorial, granite figure of Francis Vigo. Chicago, Ill., twelve-foot figure of Alexander Hamilton. Austin, Texas, figure of Stephen F. Austin.

He received the honorary degree of Litt.D. from Columbia University, June 1936. Member of the Century Club, the Architectural League, the Sculptors' Society, Mediaeval Academy of America. Home, 468 Riverside Drive, New York City.

CLARA (SEYMOUR)⁹ ST. JOHN (1880– ), like her elder sister, went through school and college with the highest honors. She graduated from Bryn Mawr in 1900. She did not have the intense love of the classics of her sister but handled them, as she handled any intellectual subject, with rare ability. Her mind was sharp and clear, she had uncanny rapidity of apprehension, and she expressed herself in beautifully written English. Her Bryn Mawr professors said that she could have become a first-rate scholar in any subject she chose. Probably the most brilliant of any of the line of Charles Seymour of Hartford, not excepting her father, T. D. Seymour, she would have made a first-rate business executive or corporation lawyer. Instead she married George C. St. John in 1906, and with him set out to build up The Choate School in Wallingford. Its influence in the larger Eastern universities has become notable. In this process Mrs. St. John has naturally remained in the background; but her influence with the boys, with the faculty, and with the visiting parents is a matter of general knowledge.

George Clair St. John was a native of Simsbury, Connecticut, the son of Edward Francis St. John, a farmer, and Charlotte Elizabeth Cushman, and was born in the house where his father and grandfather had also been born. He is a descendant of Robert Cushman, who was business manager of the Mayflower Expedition, and of his son, the Ruling Elder, Thomas Cushman, who lived in the home of Governor Bradford, and his wife Mary Allerton, who lived to be the last survivor of the Mayflower. He was graduated from the Hartford High School in 1898, and from Harvard College in 1902. He taught English at the Hill School 1902-1903, the Adirondack-Florida School in 1903-1907, the Hackley School in 1907-1908; and since 1908 has been Headmaster of The Choate School, Wallingford, Connecticut. He was ordained Deacon in the Episcopal Church in 1926, and Priest in 1928; received the honorary degree of M.A. from Williams College in 1933, and of LL.D. from Pittsburgh University in 1933. He is a member of the National Institute of Social Sciences, of the Harvard Club of Boston, the Graduate Club of New Haven, and the Century Club of New York.

CHARLES⁹ SEYMOUR (1885– ), a native of New Haven, only son of the Greek scholar and head of the Yale Classical Department, Thomas Day Seymour, grandnephew of a president of Yale, and descendant of an earlier president, Thomas Clap, was reared in an atmosphere of learning. He prepared for college at Hillhouse High School, New Haven, and went from there to Kings College, Cam

bridge, England, from which he received the degree of B.A. in 1904 at the early age of nineteen. He then entered Yale (B.A., 1908), where he rowed on his class crew, was manager of the varsity crew, president of the City Government Club, and a member, like his father and grandfather, of Alpha Delta Phi. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and in senior year won the De Forest medal for oratory.

Following graduation Seymour travelled in Europe, studied history at the Sorbonne in Paris and in 1909 received his M.A. degree from Cambridge University. He returned to the Yale Graduate School to complete his historical studies and in 1911 was given his Ph.D. Appointed instructor in history at Yale in 1911, he was promoted to assistant professor in 1915 and professor in 1918. Later he received the honorary degree of Litt.D. from Western Reserve and from Columbia, and of LL.D. from Trinity, from Princeton, and from Harvard. In 1915 he published his first book, Electoral Reform in England and Wales and the following year The Diplomatic Background of the War. He was married May 4, 1911 to Gladys Marion Watkins, daughter of Thomas H. Watkins of Scranton, Pennsylvania, a well-known coal operator who had served on the Roosevelt Coal Commission.

After American intervention in the world war Seymour was appointed to the House Inquiry, to prepare studies for the peace conference and later appointed special assistant in the Department of State. After the Armistice he accompanied President Wilson to the conference as chief of the Austro-Hungarian Division of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace. Later he served as United States delegate on the Rumanian and Jugoslav and the Czechoslovak Territorial Commissions. In those capacities he came in close contact with European diplomatists and political leaders. He returned at the end of the conference to his professorship at Yale.

When in 1922 Colonel House presented his papers to Yale, Seymour was appointed Curator of the collection and thereafter for fifteen years devoted himself to the study of the foreign relations of the United States during the period of the world war, although his undergraduate lectures and his graduate seminars dealt with European diplomacy from 1871. In 1921 he published Woodrow Wilson and the World War and edited What Really Happened at Paris, the latter in collaboration with Colonel House. There followed The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, 4 vols. (1926-28) ; American Diplomacy during the World War (1933); and American Neutrality, 1914-1917 (1935). He published also papers and occasional articles on historical topics. An honorary fellow of King's College, Cambridge, fellow of the Royal Historical Society, fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he became a member of the board of editors of the American Historical Review and an advisory editor of Foreign Affairs. He is a member of the Century Club and an honorary member of the Society of the Cincinnati. He is also a director of the Second National Bank of New Haven.

In 1927 Seymour was appointed Provost of Yale University, in which position he was especially interested in the development of the undergraduate colleges established by the gift of Edward S. Harkness. Five years later he was appointed first master of Berkeley CoUege. On the retirement of President Angell he succeeded him, as fifteenth president of Yale, inaugurated October 8, 1937.

His son, Charles Seymour (1912– ), born in New Haven and schooled at Choate, was a student at King's College, Cambridge, for a year before entering Yale in 1931. He became a member of Zeta Psi, chairman of the board of editors of the Literary Magazine, president of Phi Beta Kappa, and was graduated, like his great-grand-father Nathan, who was also on the Lit. board, second in scholarship in his class. At Commencement he was awarded the Snow prize for outstanding distinction in scholarship, personality, and character. Appointed to a graduate travelling fellowship by Yale he spent the two following years in study in Paris under the mediaevalists Focillon and Aubert. He published in the Gazette des Beaux Arts and was commissioned by the French government to write the official history of the cathedral of Noyon. In 1937 he became an instructor in the history of art in the Yale School of Fine Arts. At the Yale Commencement of 1938, he received the Ph.D. degree, conferred by his father.

(<-- 301. William Henry(8) Seymour) (Back to Start) (303. Chester(8) Seymour -->)