A Canterbury Tale

Most tony U. S. prep schools--such as Phillips Andover and Exeter, St. Paul's, Groton, Hotchkiss, Lawrenceville, Kent--are Protestant, in spirit if not by direct church affiliation. Twenty-five years ago a Jesuit-educated young man named Nelson Hume decided that this was unfair to Roman Catholic boys. In the hills of western Connecticut, not far from Hotchkiss and Kent, he started Canterbury School, where well-to-do Catholic boys, without neglecting their religious training, might prepare for Yale, Princeton, Harvard and Williams with the same swank as their Protestant contemporaries. Last week this Roman Catholic Groton celebrated the success of Nelson Hume's idea.

Dr. Hume had had no easy time. He first tried his idea in partnership with another Catholic educator named Jesse Locke. But Locke and Hume (not to be confused with the 17th-and 18th-Century British philosophers) failed to hit it off. Then Nelson Hume met Catholic Capitalists Henry O. Havemeyer (railroads) and the late Clarence Mackay (Postal Telegraph), got an $8,000 stake to start his school. He named it for his baptismal saint, Edmund of Canterbury.

Canterbury's boys were taught apologetics and Christian ethics by their headmaster. They also prayed daily to the "Canterbury saints." During the severe influenza epidemic of 1918, they offered special prayers to St. Michael, escaped without a single case of the flu. The school later installed a $7,500 stained-glass window in honor of St. Michael and the "Canterbury saints." For his "outstanding work in Catholic education" Pope Pius XI two years ago made Dr. Hume a Knight of the Order of St. Gregory the Great.

Otherwise, Canterburians (tuition and board: $1,500) lead a normal prep-school existence. On their campus are no priests or monks; 77% of them have gone on to non-Catholic colleges. Headmaster Hume (known to Canterburians as "the Doc") makes them study hard (eight classes a day). Each afternoon a Canterburian puts on a dark blue or grey suit, white shirt and black shoes (Eton collars and patent-leather pumps were discarded about ten years ago) for tea. Canterbury boys get no demerits, but for good behavior they get two extra days off at Christmas and Easter vacations. Few Canterburians misbehave, for few care to provoke Dr. Hume's anger, his great, booming voice.

"The Doc" is fat, has fabulous bushy red eyebrows. From his office window he keeps a sharp eye on the campus, often roars commands across the green at boisterous lower-formers. The story goes that only once did the Doc's roars fail to achieve their intended effect. A kitchen worker ran amok through the Middle House one morning, brandishing a cleaver. When the man paid no heed to the Doc's bellowing, Dr. Hume took off his coat, knocked the fellow down, sat on his chest and calmly told his pupils to call the police.

To Canterbury's 25th birthday dinner in Manhattan last week went rich and famous men: retired Steelman James A. Farrell and Railroader Henry Havemeyer, trustees of the school; 100-odd old boys, among them Philip Burnham, editor of the Catholic weekly Commonweal. Too busy to attend was old Canterburian Robert Sweeney of the American Eagle Squadron, training as air fighters in England. In jail in Italy was George Ehret, '29, accused of fooling around with Italian currency (TIME, Nov. 25). Classmates were not surprised, recalled that George once catapulted a butterball to the dining-room ceiling under the Doc's very nose, had to stand up and apologize.

Said the Doc last week: "Canterbury began on an $8,000 shoe string. Today it is a million-dollar educational plant devoted to the cause of Catholic Action . . . only school of its kind, really. . . . Sometimes I can hardly believe Canterbury is what it is today."

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