In my January post I explored the first term of Bert Hodge Hill’s long directorship (1906-1926) at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA or the School hereafter), which was the longest of any director. After a trial period with annual directors, the School introduced the five-year term with the possibility of one renewal. Rufus B. Richardson (1845-1914), Professor of Greek at Dartmouth, was the first director to serve two terms. He moved to Greece with his wife Alice Linden Bowen (1854-1948) and their two daughters, Lucy and Dorothy, setting up a bustling household and mingling with the local high society. The wedding of his oldest daughter Lucy to Arthur Morton Lythgoe (1868-1934), an American archaeologist working in Egypt, was the event of the year (1902) in Athens, attended by the Crown Prince and Crown Princess of Greece.
ASCSA members, 1898. Seated on the rug, Dorothy Richardson, unidentified man; first row (l-r): Harriet Boyd, Alice Richardson, Rufus Richardson, two unidentified women; second row (l-r): unidentified men; third row (l-r): unidentified, Lucy Richardson, three unidentified members. Source: ASCSA Archives.
For Richardson’s successor the School appointed a young, highly promising scholar, Theodore W. Heermance, whose untimely death two years later (1905) from typhoid fever left the School in shock. One wonders what would have been the course of the School had Heermance lived longer. His successor Bert Hodge Hill was the first director at the School who was not a professor or held a Ph.D. Hill’s first term (1906-1911) was a trying experience, but he seemed to be able to deal with the challenges of an overseas post. Knowing some of Hill’s weak points –the most conspicuous being his inability to turn in anything in time– James R. Wheeler (1859-1918), the Chair of the School’s Managing Committee and Professor of Greek Archaeology and Art at Columbia University, kept a close eye on him during this first term.
On February 13/26, 1909, William Kelly Prentice (1871-1964), Professor of Greek at Princeton and the Annual Professor of Greek at the School in 1908-09, sent Wheeler his own judgement of the situation in Athens. “The School is running well now. Elderkin is hard at work at vases, [John] Edwards at demes, [Walter] Westerwelt searching the earlier Greek Literature for material on the history of the Erechtheum. It does not seem to me however that [Herbert Percy] Arnold and Miss [Isabelle] Stone are making good use of their time” (ASCSA Archives, AdmRec 301/1, folder 5). George W. Elderkin, who held a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins, was a second-year fellow and Acting Secretary; he was not Hill’s first choice for the position but since the other candidate, Kendall K. Smith, had returned to America after a serious case of malaria, Elderkin was the next obvious person for the secretaryship.
According to that year’s Annual Report (1908-09), Arnold was studying proverbs in Plato and Miss Stone (who already held a doctorate degree from Cornell University) human sacrifice in Greece. I was able to locate the title of Stone’s dissertation “The Life of Simonides of Ceos, from the Sources” (Ph.D. thesis, Cornell University, 1908). The most interesting piece of information that I was able to gather about her was that in 1934 she established, in honor of her mother, the Mary Isabel Sibley Fellowship, which is still awarded alternately in the fields of French and Greek (as a recipient of this fellowship in 1989 I was able to study at the American School). For a recent criticism of the strange conditions of the fellowship, see James Panero, “Attention all Spinsters,” The New Criterium, 10.05. 2006.
Prentice had some good things to say about Hill. “I am doing and will do everything in my power to galvanize Hill into action. I have not become discouraged yet, for I see and appreciate his good qualities and his real power. The man has ideas and such men are too rare and valuable to neglect.” Prentice’s letter also reveals that Wheeler had submitted his resignation from the School’s chairmanship rather unexpectedly. Not understanding why, Prentice asked “whether your resignation was due in part to your relation to Hill, whether you thought there might have to be a new director and did not want to be in office when the matter came up,” implying that if Wheeler took Hill’s side he would be charged with favoritism, and if he did not support Hill for reappointment, the latter would hold a grudge against him.
The Procrastination – Anxiety Cycle
In addition to Prentice’s assessment of the situation in Athens, Wheeler also received a long letter from his friend and colleague at Columbia University Edward D. Perry, who was visiting Athens in the spring of 1909 and was there for the School’s Open Meeting (ASCSA Archives, AdmRec 310/1, folder 5, April 4, 1909). Hill read a paper on the Western Porch of the Erechtheum, and William B. Dinsmoor, the fellow in Architecture, spoke about the gables of the Propylaea. Perry described it as “a particularly strenuous week for him [Hill]” who “in his usual way postponed the working out of his paper till the last minute and then nearly killed himself to get it done. The result was a most interesting talk, ingenious to the last degree and very valuable […] but Hill was evidently completely exhausted and spoke with even more than his usual difficulty.” Perry further related physical symptoms such as “uncomfortable disturbances of heart-action” which Hill’s doctor diagnosed as “a severely nervous affection.” Hill was probably suffering from what today we call anxiety disorder.
Perry continued with the issue of the long-delayed Corinth Reports. “The Reports have been hanging over his head as a dreadful weight; he has known all the time that he could finish them and the accounts and the estimates [Perry is referring to the School’s plan to enlarge the building] with a few day’s steady work, but he hasn’t seemed to be able to force that steady work, though he could work well enough on other things.” Hill told Perry that “any kind of work where his hands were kept busy otherwise than in writing -as in measuring or photographing or drawing buildings- he could get along without difficulty, but before writing he recoiled every time.” Perry did not neglect to mention that Hill was most helpful to the students, “who according to the Prentices think all the world of him.” Nevertheless, Perry admitted that he found it “very difficult to write about him, at least to do him justice, and sometimes while talking with him I have been quite non-plussed.”
Bert Hodge Hill, 1909. ASCSA Archives, Bert H. Hill Papers
Criticized and Contested
A few months later, however, a letter from Elderkin to Wheeler raised further concerns about problems in Athens. Elderkin protested about unfair comments that someone made about him in the May Meeting of the Managing Committee: “[…] word came to me that there was some discussion of my ‘indifference’ toward the School” (ASCSA Archives, AdmRec 301/1 folder 2, June 20, 1909). Elderkin found it distressing since such a comment could create negative impressions among the members of the Committee and put at stake his future in academia. Nevertheless, in that May Meeting Elderkin was promoted to Secretary, with Wheeler advising him to help “Mr. Hill in his excellencies and in his defects” (quoted in Elderkin to Wheeler, Dec. 4, 1909).
Reading between the lines one could sense that there were issues of communication between Hill and Elderkin and that their relation was not as smooth as described in the Annual Report of 1909-10. The uneasiness between the two men comes up in another letter that Elderkin sent to Wheeler concerning the writing of the Corinth excavation reports. (Hill owed two seasons of reports, 1907 and 1908.) Instead of asking Elderkin, the School’s Secretary, to help him write the reports, Hill invited Kendall Smith, who was recovering in America from a serious case of typhoid fever, to return to Greece: “Mr. Smith in Harvard was asked to interrupt his studies, travel gratuitously to Greece, and help Mr. Hill on reports about excavations at which Mr. Smith and I had been present two seasons.” In Elderkin’s opinion, Hill’s proposal to Smith was “purposeless and condemned to nonfulfillment from the start because Mr. Smith had just recovered from typhoid in Athens and was then studying at Harvard for a doctor’s degree.” After Smith declined, Hill simply handed over his response to Elderkin. By so doing, Hill was not only passing the task of the reports to Elderkin but was also letting him know that he was not his first choice. The root of the problem in their relationship must have been their unequal academic status, with Elderkin holding a more advanced degree (Ph.D.) than Hill (M.A.).
Elderkin confided more grievances about Hill in his long letter to Wheeler. In the School’s administrative records, we have an undated pencil draft of Wheeler’s response, who stood by Hill, brushing off Elderkin’s complaints:
“I know very well how hard it is to keep small matters from obscuring greater ones, but it is what we all have to learn to do, if we are to avoid disappointment and unhappiness” (ASCSA Archives, AdmRec 301/1, folder 2).
George W. Elderkin, 1908. ASCSA Archives.
The enmity between Hill and Elderkin is echoed in another letter sent to Wheeler from Athens. Its author, W.A. Heidel (1868-1941), Professor of Greek at Wesleyan University and a member of the Managing Committee, reported criticism he had heard about both men: “I have heard no criticism of him [Hill] except from one quarter, where it was reported that he was of little service to the members of the School except as playing the part of Advocatus Diaboli, taking the opposite side and offering destructive criticism but without positive suggestions nor encouragement. I have also heard that Mr. Elderkin did not get on well with him and would retire from the secretaryship on that account. Personally I have the impression that Dr. Elderkin is himself not without fault in his relations with Mr. Hill, but I have so little basis for an opinion that I may be wrong.” Heidel continued by telling Wheeler how the directors of the other foreign schools, especially Wilhelm Dörpfeld and Georg Karo, and the Greek archaeologists trusted and respected Hill, consulting him frequently on archaeological questions (ASCSA Archives, AdmRec 310/3, folder 3, April 19, 1910).
The Shadowy Mr. Robinson
If Perry and Heidel were reserved in their criticism of Hill and willing to see beyond his defects, Thomas Dwight Goodell, Professor of Greek at Yale and a member of the Managing Committee, who was in Athens in the early summer of 1920, did not mince his words based on talks he had with Elderkin and David M. Robinson. Robinson, Professor of Greek at Johns Hopkins and Elderkin’s dissertation advisor, had been the Annual Professor at the School in 1909-10. (Robinson would later excavate ancient Olynthus in Chalkidike. For a recent critique of his methods, see Tales of Olynthus: Spoken and Unspoken; and The Modern Greek Exam, “Professor Blank’s” Method, and Other Stories from the 1930s.)
In a long letter to Wheeler, Goodell could not find a good thing to say about Hill, largely focusing on his inability to publish and run the School efficiently.
“Robinson must speak for himself, but he tells me that he cannot but agree with me so far. That Hill is a genius in his way, I do not doubt the value of what he has done, if he could only publish it […]. But what good does it do to see things and then keep them carefully buried in your own mind […]. That he knows more about the excavations at Corinth than anyone at present and ought to be the one to publish the bulletin […]. But what good does that do if he will never publish? And he never will” Goodell predicted. Goodell went as far as to propose a smooth way for Hill’s exit from the School’s directorship: “Hill be made Professor of Archaeology in the School for a year, relieved of all responsibility and authority as Director, the new Director of course taking charge of the house and all business […]. The title is honorable, and ought to be of real [illegible] to him in getting placed in America. He is not yet even Dr., much less Professor.”
Once again Wheeler stood by Hill, reproaching Goodell for putting too much faith in Elderkin’s judgement (ASCSA Archives, AdmRec Box 310/1, folder 4, July 10 and August 25, 1910)
Not everybody, however, was critical of Hill. Abby Leach, Professor of Greek at Vassar, shared with Wheeler “in confidence,” the opinion of Leslie Walker, a Vassar student enrolled in the School’s academic program in 1909-10: “She says Mr. Robinson has worked steadily against Mr. Hill […]. He has spent the whole year talking against Mr. Hill to anyone and everyone.” Walker found Mr. Robinson to be “a man of infinitely less ability and strength of character.” Walker singled out “the high opinion his pupils have of Mr. Hill and the fine impression he makes as an archaeologist” (ASCSA Archives, AdmRec 310/1, folder 5, Leach to Wheeler [1910]). (Leslie Walker would excavate Halae with Hetty Goldman in 1910; for more about her later life, An Unconventional Union: Mr. and Mrs. George Kosmopoulos.)
James Rignall Wheeler. Source: Lord 1947, 99.
Wheeler also solicited the opinion of Lacey D. Caskey, Assistant Curator of Ancient Art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and former Secretary of the School (1905-1908). Caskey praised Hill for raising the School’s profile among the other foreign institutions in Athens:
“… discovery after discovery made by him has given such striking proof of the keenness and originality of his mind […] and above all his remarkable power of getting people interested in archaeological problems and of training them in accurate and painstaking methods of work.”
He, too, commented on Hill’s “popularity among the members of the School and the Athenian Society, of his hardheaded, practical common sense and business ability.” Caskey wished to emphasize the latter because “of some astonishing remarks” that had reached him (ASCSA Archives, AdmRec 310/1, folder 1, Nov. 12, 1910).
Hill Reelected
Hill must have sensed that his reappointment for 1911-1916 was not certain. He sent a letter to Wheeler on May 3, 1910, marked “Personal.” “My own judgement – and I think you agree—is that it would be wise for me, personally, to continue in my present position. I should not however, of course, become an active candidate for reelection.” If the Committee chose somebody else, Hill would have no complaint, but he wanted to be informed early. Hill was aware that there were discussions for a plan B in case he was not reappointed: “You have suggested a possibility […] of my remaining in some capacity free of administration and household and social duties, so that my time could be given completely to investigation and lecturing. That would be very pleasant for me; but it would also certainly make a different situation for the new Director in spite of the best and good will on his part and on mine.” Instead, Hill proposed, if he were to continue as Director, that the School make the Secretaryship a more permanent position “of four or five years, and with a better salary. “A permanent Secretary might have, besides the care of the Library, responsibility for the house and grounds, for accounts, for much of the correspondence.” And if the Secretary was married and the Director not, even better for Hill: “housekeeping might be in the former’s hands.”
In answering Hill’s letter, Wheeler notified him about the appointment of a Special Committee of seven who would make their recommendation to the Managing Committee at Christmas time. “So you will know the action by Jan. 1. I cannot tell you how matters are likely to come out, for I do not know. I am sure your good work in certain directions is recognized […].” However, Wheeler warned Hill that his “inability to get matters ready for publications” would weigh against his reelection.
On December 31, 1910, Wheeler telegrammed Hill: “Reelected congratulations.”
Hill’s reappointment for a second term (1911-1916) was only the beginning of the longest directorship in the School’s history. Hill served the last year of his first term without a Secretary to help him. However, that year a bright young man from Yale University joined the regular program: Carl W. Blegen. He would become the School’s Secretary from 1912-1920; in 1920 he was promoted to Assistant Director. Hill found in Blegen a hard-working and reliable soul mate, who would make up for the Director’s defects. In 1916, “Mr. Hill, whose term had expired, was reelected Director without term [my emphasis]” (ASCSA Annual Report 1915-16, 8). By then, Europe was embroiled in one of the bloodiest wars in her history with Greece under pressure to join the war on the side of the Allies. With Hill and Blegen holding guard in a shutdown School, Wheeler and the rest of the Managing Committee were more than happy to have two people willing to remain indefinitely in Greece. Hill’s termless directorship ended abruptly in 1926 at the end of his “fourth term” creating a deep rift in the American School community. But this story has been told before.
Afterlives
Elderkin resigned from the Secretaryship in the summer of 1910 to join the faculty at Princeton University; he was part of the founding nucleus of the Art and Archaeology department (Lavin 1983). His first book, Problems in Periclean Buildings, was published in 1912. He published his second book, Kantharos: Studies in Dionysian and Kindred Cult in 1924. That same year he married Kate Denny McKnight (1897-1962), a Vassar graduate with a Ph.D. from Radcliffe. Kate was first cousin of Elizabeth Denny Pierce (1888-1966), who also married Carl Blegen in 1924.
From 1924 -1931, Elderkin edited the American Journal of Archaeology; he is credited for creating a regular book review department. Kate worked for a few years as an associate editor in the AJA, focusing on book reviews. In 1929, Edward Capps, Chair of the School’s Managing Committee and a colleague of Elderkin at Princeton (and the one who orchestrated Hill’s forced retirement in 1926), made the following comment to the then Director of the School, Rhys Carpenter: “Another matter that is being discussed pretty generally has to do with Mrs. Blegen’s News Items from Athens -her playing up to the Greeks in every possible way, her deliberate ignoring of American activities, etc. Elderkin is very much dissatisfied with this situation, but because of the strained relations of Mrs. B. and his wife [Kate McKnight] has hesitated to intervene. The last report in AJA has set up something like a scandal […].”
In the same letter Capps also added that he had information from Elderkin that “Hill’s friends are becoming active in promoting a scheme for the excavation of Antioch in Syria, under his direction, with Blegen a member of his staff […] It would take a very large amount of money, $25,000 as the minimum each year […]. I mention this simply as a matter of interest” (ASCSA Archives, AdmRec 318/2, folder 1, Jan. 2, 1929). But it was not Hill, but Elderkin who oversaw the Antioch excavations starting in 1932. Elderkin returned to the American School as Annual Professor in 1938-1939 to teach a class on Hellenistic Art and Culture.
Dunn Wood, George W. Elderkin, and Kendall K. Smith, ca. 1907. ASCSA Archives.
Of the other members of the 1907-1908 class, architect Henry Dunn Wood (1882-1940) went on to have a successful career in a large public utilities company, United Engineers, in Philadelphia. Paul Cret, his mentor, invited Wood to design the interior of the Central Heating Plant of Washington, D.C. in 1933.
Elizabeth Manning Gardiner (1879-1958), the only woman in that class, married in 1913 one of her fellow students, Charles Edward Whitmore (1887-1970), who obtained in 1915 a PhD from Harvard with a dissertation titled “The Supernatural in Tragedy.” In 1915, when Hill was considered for a third term at the School, Elizabeth signing as Mrs. C. E. Whitmore sent a long letter to Wheeler in support of Hill whose competency as director was being challenged once again; in addition, there were complaints that “he had failed to make the position of women students in Athens a comfortable one.” She described her experience with Hill as such: “With a newcomer he (quite deliberately, I think) allowed a certain amount of groping about, a certain sifting of ideas, during which he apparently ignored the student almost entirely. But the moment a student had any definite plan of work to offer, he was untiring in criticism and encouragement, and, if the work proved of any general interest, generous in giving it publicity at open meetings […].” The fact that Hill did not allow women to excavate at Corinth, she judged as a fair decision since American women had hard time establishing authority in a squad of workmen, “keep them on the job, settle disputes, and detect poor work.” Although Manning was not allowed to dig, she had “every opportunity to observe the excavations, discuss problems, and in general absorb as much of the method as could be needed for the preparation of the future classicist or museum official.” Manning concluded her letter noting that if life in Athens seemed challenging to American women, this was not due to Hill but “either to the financial status of the School [referring to the School’s inability to host women in its premises] or to social and physical conditions shared by Athens in common with all southern European countries” (ASCSA Archives, AdmRec 310/1, folder 7, Aug. 29, 1915).
Elizabeth Manning Gardiner (later Mrs. C. E. Whitmore), 1908. ASCSA Archives.
The last person to consider from the 1907-08 class is Kendall Kerfoot Smith (1882-1929), the student that Hill favored over Elderkin for the Secretary’s position. After returning to the States in 1908, Smith earned a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1909. In 1915 he was hired at Brown University where he became head of the Department of Greek and Latin. In 1918-1919 he returned to Greece representing the Y.M.C.A. and establishing “soldier huts” for the Greek army. Blegen noted in his diary on April 13, 1919: “We had 2 YMCA men and Kendall Smith for dinner. Smith is running the YMCA in Athens” (ASCSA Archives, Carl W. Blegen Papers, box 4). Smith served in the Managing Committee’s Executive Committee and the Fellowship Committee. Just before his death in 1929, Samuel Bassett, the Chairman of the Fellowship Committee wrote about Smith: “The Committee has sorely missed the always ready and conscientious assistance of one of its members, Professor Kendall K. Smith. Until the present year, when he has been incapacitated by illness, Professor Smith has always been prompt to give careful consideration to all the problems that confronted the Committee, and each year he has devoted many hours to a thorough reading of the examination papers. He has had no little part in shaping the policy of the Committee and in the selection of the Fellows (ASCSA Annual Report 48, 1928-29, 18-19).
Note: I don’t intend to follow up with Part III, at least in the near future. My next post will be about the 1960s / early 1970s in Greece and at the School.
M. Aronberg Lavin, 1983. The Eye of the Tiger: The Founding and Development of the Department of Art and Archaeology, 1883-1923, Princeton University L. E. Lord, 1947. A History of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 1882-1942, Cambridge, Mass.
The re-discovery of a small cache of old photos depicting students at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA or School hereafter) from 1907-08 inspired me to write about the first years of Bert Hodge Hill’s directorship at the School. [1]
The photos depict four men and one woman: George Wicker Elderkin (1879-1965), Kendall Kerfoot Smith (1882-1929), Charles Edward Whitmore (1887-1970), Henry Dunn Wood (1882-1940), and Elizabeth Manning Gardiner (1879-1958). Of the five, Elderkin, Smith, and Wood were second year students at the School. In 1908, Elderkin, who already held a PhD from Johns Hopkins (1906), succeeded Lacey D. Caskey as Secretary of the School, a position he held for two years (1908-10). Smith came to the School in 1906 holding the Charles Eliot Norton Fellowship, established by James Loeb in 1901 for Harvard or Radcliffe students. Wood, a trained architect with a BS in Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania, was the second recipient of the Fellowship in Architecture (1906-08) that was funded by the Carnegie Institution in Washington.
Henry Dunn Wood, George W. Elderkin, and Kendall K. Smith, ca. 1907. ASCSA Archives.
Of the new students, Whitmore, another Harvard man, was the Charles Eliot Norton Fellow for 1907, and Gardiner, the only woman in the photos, was a graduate of Radcliffe College (1901), with an MA from Wellesley (1906), and a recipient of the Alice Palmer Fellowship that supported female students.
Elizabeth Manning Gardiner with Kendall K. Smith (?), ca. 1907. ASCSA Archives.
An Untimely Death
Bert Hodge Hill (1874-1958), an Assistant Curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (MFA Boston), succeeded Theodore Woolsey Heermance in the School’s directorship after Heermance died unexpectedly in Athens in September 1905. Heermance, who held a PhD from Yale University, was about to start the third year of his directorship when he became sick with typhoid. Within a few days, the 33-year-old man was dead, leaving the academic community in shock. His body was shipped to his mother in America and buried with the rest of the Heermance family. (Heermance in the photo. ASCSA Archives, Theodore W. Heermance Papers)
The Annual Professor William N. Bates and the Secretary of the School Lacey D. Caskey assumed the duties of the directorship for 1905-06. At the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in December 1905, a special committee of the School’s Managing Committee was charged with the selection of the new director. In the Annual Report (1905-06) we read about the appointment of a young but promising scholar, Bert Hodge Hill. Hill had been a student and a Fellow of the School in 1900-03. James R. Wheeler, Chair of the Managing Committee, publicly praised Hill, despite his personal reservations.
Hill’s biggest supporter for the directorship, Samuel E. Bassett, Professor of Classics at the University of Vermont (the alma mater of Hill) highlighted the many positive features of the candidate (clear headed, independent thinker, thorough archaeological training, good reader of character), and downplayed his one negative trait (which ironically tortured Hill for the rest of his life and caused his dismissal from the School’s directorship twenty years later): Hill’s inability to deliver timely reports or to publish.
“His mental activities are so alert that he always sees something new in whatever he is studying, and the multiplication of these new subjects has so far prevented his publishing anything. He is too conscientious to publish anything before he has done all in it that he can, and so he has given the impression to some (Prof. Wheeler especially I fear) that he allows himself to be drawn off from the subject in hand […]. Hill does not always appreciate the need of promptness, it is true, and this way has contributed to the delay in bringing out what he has on hand.” Bassett found this defect a small matter which could be balanced by Hill’s other qualities (AdmRec 310/3 folder 3, Bassett to Wheeler, Oct. 22, 1905).
Other people’s opinions about Hill are preserved in the School’s Administrative Records. Angie Clara Chapin, Professor of Classics at Wellesley College, wrote to Wheeler: “A little informal inquiry from two or three who are competent to judge brings out the impression that he [Hill] is scholarly in his work and of agreeable personality and is highly thought of at the Museum in Boston as well as here [Wellesley]. He is, however, spoken of as ‘very boyish,’ and while not at all ungentlemanly, perhaps rather unconventional.” (Adm Rec 301/1 folder 1, Dec. 12, 1905).
Despite Wheeler’s and others’ reservations, Hill beat out other candidates such as Charles Weller and Walter Miller. Hill’s appointment was approved at the May meeting of the Managing Committee but with one condition: Hill would not maintain a formal connection with the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Hill could offer general advice and one month’s work during the summer but he could not keep his position or title as Curator. “The reason is this: During the years when the Museum bought Greek antiquities freely, various objects of value passed out of Greece and went eventually to the Museum. No suspicion, of course, then attached to the School and no blame to the Museum, but the Committee felt that, if an official connection were to exist publicly between the two institutions, it would be difficult to avoid creating a doubt in the minds of the Greek authorities, with whom it is of first importance for the School to be on friendly terms” wrote Wheeler to Hill on May 12, 1906 (ASCSA Archives, Bert H. Hill Papers, box 5, folder 1). [Bert H. Hill in the photo, ca. 1906. ASCSA Archives.]
Becoming Director
Hill arrived in Athens in September 1906 in the company of Caskey. He was 32 years old. Within days he called on the U.S. Minister, John Brinckerhoff Jackson, to ask his advice about the social duties of the School’s Director. Jackson had several years of experience in Greek matters (1902-07) and advised “formal calls on diplomats, ministers of education and foreign affairs, marshals of households of Crown Prince, Prince Nicholas and Prince Andrew, Greek archaeologists and chief ephors.” Georg Karo of the German Archaeological Institute should be called upon as well as Wilhelm Dörpfeld, “he [Karo] Dörpfeld’s colleague, not subordinate.” Following Jackson’s advice Hill shortly called upon Panayotis Kavvadias (1850-1928), the powerful Director General of Antiquities, who attempted to intimidate Hill by asking his age, implying that he was too young to head the American School (Bert H. Hill Papers, Diaries, entry for October 2, 1906). A day later Hill was lunching at the American Legation as a guest of Mr. Jackson together with the British Minister Sir Francis Elliot, the U.S. Consul General George Horton, Admiral Willard Brownson and a handful of other U.S. Captains who were with their ships in Piraeus, as part of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, and on their way to Egypt. Hill noted that the occasion required a frock and high hat which he must have brought with him from America.
The School officially opened on October 1. It was a full house with sixteen members: eleven men and five women. Hill proudly stated that the membership had “equaled the largest previous enrolment -that of 1900-1901,” including returning members such as Louis Francis Anderson, professor of Greek at Whitman College, and Minnie Bunker, a high school teacher in Oakland, who both had been students of the School in 1900-01; PhD holders such as Clarence Owen Harris, George W. Elderkin, and Albert Ten Eyck Olmstead; second year fellows such as Kendall K. Smith, the Charles Eliot Norton Fellow, and Henry Dunn Wood, recipient of the Carnegie Fellowship in Architecture, and a younger crowd such as Florence Mary Bennett, Eva Woodward Grey, James Samuel Martin, Louis Earle Rowe, and Raymond Henry White.
Charles E. Whitmore, Kendall K. Smith, George W. Elderkin, ca. 1907. ASCSA Archives.
In addition to being responsible for the School’s academic program, Hill inherited from Heermance two projects that the School’s Editorial Committee was anxious to see completed soon: the publication of the Erechtheum and a special Bulletin on the Excavations at Corinth (Annual Report 1904-05, 11). Taking advantage of scaffolding that architect Nikolaos Balanos had erected about different parts of the Erechtheum for its restoration, Heermance with the endorsement of James R. Wheeler received permission from the Ephor General of Antiquities to measure and study the building with a view to a new publication. The School assigned the task of drawing to Gorham P. Stevens, a graduate of MIT and the first recipient of the Fellowship in Architecture. (In 1903 the Carnegie Institution of Washington awarded the School an annual fellowship to support the production of architectural plans for Corinth and other School projects.)
The Erechtheum with scaffolding, ca. 1905. ASCSA Archives, Archaeological Photographic Collection (AK 266).
“The School has never entered upon a more useful and important undertaking than this. The book is sure not to be only a thing of beauty, but a matter of permanent scientific value” commented Wheeler in his report (Annual Report 1903-04, 13). According to the same report, Dörpfeld “put at Mr. Stevens’s disposal his entire store of knowledge of the Erechtheum and its problems” (Annual Report 1903-04, 22).
Heermance had planned to write most of the sections himself, except for the chapter on the sculpture which he entrusted to Harold N. Fowler. To facilitate the completion of the project after Heermance’s sudden death, the School’s Editorial Committee decided to go on with a collaborative publication (sections assigned to L. D. Caskey, H. N. Fowler, J. M. Paton, and G. P. Stevens) which did not appear, however, until two decades later (1927). Hill was not included in the publication even though its authors relied on him for new measurements and “whose suggestions have sometimes been adopted verbatim.”
Stevens’s measured drawings were exhibited at the School during the Archaeological Congress in the spring of 1905. From January until March 1906, they were on display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. “What shall be done with the drawings after March 1st, the date when the Museum exhibition of them closes?” asked J. R. Coolidge Jr., the interim director of the Museum (AdmRec 310/1 folder 1, Coolidge to Wheeler, Feb. 19, 1906). Shortly after, Coolidge offered $1,000 to buy the drawings and photos which had been exhibited at the Museum, and “if the drawings shall pass into the possession of the Museum before the book on the Erechtheum appears, the Museum shall allow no reproduction of them by anyone before the book is on the market or until the lapse of five years from this date.”[2]
One of Gorham P. Stevens’s drawings of the Erechtheum. ASCSA Archives, Archaeological Photographic Collection (AK 156).
The Bulletin on the Corinth excavations did not fare better than the Erechtheum publication. It was briefly replaced by plans for another publication, titled Papers on Corinth, which also never took off. The School continued its excavations at Corinth with Hill reporting on them at the School’s Open Meetings in Athens, and occasionally at the Annual Meetings of the Archaeological Institute of America, but almost never in writing.
Instead, the enlargement of the School’s building became the main topic of concern in the School’s Annual Reports after 1907. The School needed more library space, additional rooms for students (not to mention that there were no baths) and faculty, and a much-desired common room. The enlargement of the School was finally achieved in 1915, thanks to the generosity of James Loeb who funded half of the construction cost (AdmRec 310/2 folder 5, Wheeler to Hill, Dec. 9, 1907).
The ASCSA before 1915.The ASCSA after the addition of the new wing (visible on the left), ca. 1922. To the right, the British School of Archaeology. ASCSA Archives, Leicester B. Holland Papers.
Fighting Death in Athens
Living in Greece in the early years of the 20th century was not safe. Malaria and typhoid fever were almost endemic. In the winter of 1906, Hill, Caskey, Smith and Wood came down with malaria contracted on a trip to Phocis and Boeotia (Annual Report 1906-07, 12). In the fall of 1907 Elderkin succumbed to malaria, eventually becoming delirious from the high fever. Hill, however, was thankful that “it was rather malaria than something worse.” Within days, the Annual Professor Edward B. Clapp was also struck with fever. The School’s doctor, Dr. Makkas, managed to secure him a nurse from the Children’s Hospital, “one of the νέαι Αμερικανίδες” (Greek nurses who had just returned from four years’ training in American hospitals). Caskey, who was taking care of Elderkin, contracted malaria for a second time within a few months of the first incident. To fight malaria Hill proposed placing screens on the windows: “screens will be difficult to secure, well fitted, and we shall doubtless find them disagreeable when we have them; but I intend to try placing them in all the sleeping-room windows. Doubtless, I shall have my adventures as an inventor of window-screens here in a land where such things are quite unknown” Hill wrote to Wheeler (AdmRec 310/2 folder 5, Nov. 20, 1907).
In the spring of 1908, one of the five people in the cache of photos that inspired this essay, Kendall K. Smith, became sick with typhoid fever (AdmRec 310/2 folder 6, Hill to Wheeler, May 11, May 22, and May 26, 1908). Hill suspected that the infection had come from consuming lettuce “which we ate very freely in April. It will be forbidden hereafter.” For many days his temperature ranged from 102F to 106F. His case was so serious that his father had to rush to Greece. Soon after, Smith, who was Hill’s first choice to replace Caskey as the School’s Secretary, returned to America to convalesce at home. Hill settled on Elderkin for the Secretary’s position. Although a better qualified candidate, at least in paper, Elderkin was not Hill’s first choice.
Heermance’s death was followed by that of Eva Woodward Grey from acute uremia in March 1907. A graduate of Cornell University (1898) and a high-school teacher, “her coming to Greece had been the fulfillment of a long-cherished hope, and she was one of the most earnest and eagerly interested members of the School” Hill reported (Annual Report 1906-07). It must have been extremely stressful for Hill to have to deal with the death of one of the students within months of assuming the School’s directorship. After telegraphing Grey’s family and inventorying her personal things, “Mr. Horton and I ordered a coffin, with no word coming from America I took the responsibility of deciding that the body should not be embalmed, Mr. Horton strongly advising against embalming because of the great difficulties encountered two years ago” [Hill is referring to Heermance’s death]. Hill and Horton secured a burial permit and a plot in the First Cemetery “near the graves of Professors Merriam and Lolling.”
Hill acted fast because according to the Greek law the burial had to take place within twenty-four hours; in addition, he had not heard back from Grey’s father. Hill and Horton made the decision to spare the family the high cost of embalming “in view of what Miss Grey had said about her means” (AdmRec 310/2 folder 5, Hill to Wheeler, March 16, 1907]. At least Hill had the Consul General (Horton) advising him on such difficult matters. “The attendance at the church was large, and about fifty persons followed the body to the cemetery […]” Hill wrote. Soon after Grey had been buried, the family telegraphed asking that their daughter’s body be embalmed and placed in a sealed casket, to be shipped to America. It was too late, however. The Greek law did not allow exhumation until three years had passed after the burial.
With all this sickness, there was concern among the members of the Managing Committee that the School was not a safe place to send students. Hill tried to defend the School by explaining that “Miss Grey’s illness [uremia] had no possible connection with conditions in Greece. Malaria and influenza have been the only other maladies[…]. The malaria is Greek, I admit, but not due to the American School’s own local conditions” (AdmRec 310/2 folder 5, Hill to Wheeler, April 26 [1907]).
In October 1907, the archaeological community lamented one more death in Athens, that of German archaeologist Adolf Furtwängler. “Greece, apparently, cannot be blamed for Professor Furtwängler’s illness, at least not wholly; suffered from dysentery this summer before he came down here [Aegina]. In fact, his familiarity with the trouble seems to have made him underestimate the seriousness of this last attack. He kept at work and continued to eat local food in Aegina, until last Saturday. Then he consented to be brought here; but it was too late” (AdmRec 310/2 folder 5, Hill to Wheeler, Oct. 10, 1907).
The Mochlos Case: Treading on Thin Ice
In April 1907, Hill informed Wheeler that his report for the May Managing Committee meeting would be late because he was “so crowded with small time-consuming duties.” He also noted Seager’s visit. Richard Berry Seager (1882-1925), according to his biographers “one of the last of the wealthy ‘collector-excavator-historians’,” was excavating on the small island of Pseira on the north coast of Crete, with funding from the American Exploration Society in Philadelphia. [4] (Suggested reading: Phantom Threads of Mothers and Sons.)
Richard B. Seager, ca. 1907.
Back then, American museums and societies were eager to sponsor excavations on Crete, because it was an autonomous state (1898-1913), under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire and the supervision of the Great Powers; with its own archaeological law, the Cretan State was more “generous” in the matter of exporting antiquities. Because of problems between the Exploration Society and Seager, Hill conveyed to Wheeler Seager’s new idea: “There is another Cretan site which he regards as very promising and I have authorized him to apply for a permit in the name of the School -no obligation involved except that of being interested in his work” (AdmRec 310/2, folder 5, April 22, 1907).
The island of Mochlos, 1908. Source: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia.
Having secured a permit in the name of the ASCSA, Seager crossed over to the small island to do some testing in the summer of 1907: “… everything points to a good town site rather like the one I have been digging this season in Psyra [sic]. The earth is only 1 to 3 metres deep […] We found several vases in the two days we worked. The best one […] Mackenzie agrees with me… is the best LMI vase that has ever been found. It is of large size and is wonderfully preserved. […] If Mochlos continues as well as it has begun it ought to be a most valuable site and be worth at least two seasons work.” To entice the School’s interest in the site and knowing Hill’s past connection with the MFA Boston, Seager added: “Also as the Cretan museums get more and more crowded the more things they allow to leave the island. So there might be something really worth sending home […]” (AdmRec 310/2, folder 5, Hill to Wheeler, October 7, 1907).
Seager included a watercolor by Émile Gilliéron (1850-1924) of the LMI jar he found in 1907 in his article “Excavations on the Island of Mochlos, in 1908,” published in AJA 13, 1909, 280, pl. VI. Eighty years later while digging the Artisan’s Quarter at Mochlos, Jeffrey Soles and his team discovered another one of these large “lily jars,” a watercolor of which, this time by Doug Faulmann, featured as frontispiece in Mochlos IA. [4]
On the left, the lily jar found in 1907; on the right, the lily jar found in the 1990s.
Seager communicated through Hill that he could supply $1,000 himself but he needed the School to fund the remaining sum, from $500 to $800. However, confusion arose when Seager secured $600 from a Mrs. James Bowlker, who had a connection with the Egyptian Department of the MFA Boston (I remind you once again of Hill’s connection with that museum). Arthur Fairbanks, the new Director of the MFA, wrote to Hill: “I understand that officially you know nothing about our connection with the expedition and I am writing Mr. Seager as though we are dealing directly with him and not with him through you”(quoted in Hill to Wheeler, January 28, 1908, AdmRec 310/2, folder 6).
Aware of the MFA’s connection to the Mochlos excavation, Wheeler confirmed:
“Our situation therefore is that the School gets the concession, entrusts the work under it to Seager […], we leave the disposition of the finds entirely in his hands. If he arranges with the Cretan authorities that some of them go to Boston, it is none of our business. In any publication the School name should of course appear in some way […]. We may be skating on rather thin ice, but we shall have to trust to your discretion to make things appear in a proper light” (Bert H. Hill Papers, Box 5, folder 1, Wheeler to Hill, Jan. 24, 1908).
As Seager predicted, the excavation of Mochlos proved to be a success. In late June of 1908, Seager wrote: “I know you will be glad to hear that Mochlos as a dig has been a far greater success than I had dared to hope. […] The town site for the first month was singularly unproductive but our first stroke of luck was a horde of six bronze basins rather like those found at Knossos some years ago. There is a lot of pottery from the town houses none of it very striking but good of its kind. Perhaps it is a good thing as it won’t tempt the Cretan Museum and I may manage to persuade them to let me have a good lot for the Boston Museum. Towards the end of the season we found the early cemetery which was a very rich one quite the best I should say that has been found so far in Crete. There were five large tombs evidently of important families and about twenty smaller ones containing a number of bodies. One of the large tombs was literally filled with gold ornaments. Diadems, pins, chains, etc. You will realize the importance if this when I tell you that the graves are for the most part Early Minoan II and III. […] Last but not least are the stone vases which have been a revelation to everyone who has seen them. They are all in bright colored marbles, alabaster, breccia, various kinds of soapstone and what seems to be serpentine. The shapes are very graceful and there are in all at least 150. […] Mr. Evans came up from Knossos for a few days and said that he never could have believed that E.M. II and III could have produced such fine gold chains or such stone vases” (Bert H. Hill Papers, Box 4, folder 5, Seager to Hill, June 30, 1908). A few months later, Arthur Evans sent a letter to Wheeler praising Seager’s work at Mochlos as “thoroughly well done from the scientific point of view” but also criticizing the School for not having sufficiently backed him up with an architect or a surveyor” (AdmRec 310/1, folder 2, Sept. 20, 1908).
Some of the stone vases found at Mochlos, 1908. Source: R.B. Seager, Explorations in the Island of Mochlos, Boston 1912.
Seager continued: “I had almost forgotten the best single object of the whole season. Lying near the surface and badly destroyed lay a few Late Minoan I burials and from one of them comes a gold signet like those from Mycenae with a religious scene. A goddess in a serpent boat containing her sacred tress is arriving at a pillar shrine which stands on the shore. It is in perfect preservation and in the field are one or two curious symbols that I believe are new to this class of rings. It is one of the best of its kind and might well be said to be worth the whole expense of the dig (Bert H. Hill Papers, Box 4, folder 5, Seager to Hill, June 30, 1908).
Drawing of the gold ring found by Seager in 1908.
On August 14, 1908, Seager dispatched another letter from Herakleion stating that he had had a hard time in the matter of exporting antiquities from Crete. “They [the Cretan authorities] are keeping all the things for Greece as of course they now think annexation is very close. […] However truthfully, I can advise no one to subscribe money to Cretan excavations under the present circumstances unless they do it with no expectations as to the increasing of home collections”. Although the formal unification of Crete with Greece did not happen until 1913, 1908 marked the end of an era. The American museums could no longer fund excavations on Crete with the expectation of enriching their collections with new finds.
“Richard Seager may seem to be an anachronism, but he was a product of his time. Modern archaeology grew out of the collecting zeal and passion with history of nineteenth-century amateur antiquarians. […] In the final analysis, Seager remains an enigma. He pursued archaeology as an amateur with no formal training […]. By the time he was thirty, he was regarded as a major scholar by the leading men and women in his field. […] At his death, he was remembered for his excavations and publications, for his generous gifts, and for his friendships. However, there was no one to carry on his archaeological work in Crete. He had no students, no young assistants, and no professional associates,” concluded Marshall Becker and Phil Betancourt, Seager’s biographers. [4]
I would add that Hill was also a product of the same time. But Hill lived much longer than Seager, and by having a formal affiliation with a recognized institution he was forced to respond to the calls of the new era that condemned illegal exportation of antiquities. Hill’s directorship lasted twenty years, the longest in the School’s history. But back in 1910 his reappointment for a second five-year term was not as unanimous as the Annual Report of 1910-11 implied. I will be exploring the second half of Hill’s first term as well as the (after)lives of the five students featured in the photos in my next post.
Notes
[1] The photos in the envelope had been identified by their owner or creator, but there was no obvious connection with any of our collections. The envelope which was stored in a drawer with miscellaneous material carried the handwriting of my predecessor, Carol Zerner. They had either been sent to her by the descendants of one the people depicted in the photos, or, more likely, they had been removed from the papers of Bert Hodge Hill.
[2] In the Preface of the Erechtheum volume published in 1927, the editors noted that the “The original drawings are in the School of Applied Arts of the University of Cincinnati.” Stevens’s drawings are lost, despite the efforts of members of the UC Department of Classics to find out where the drawings ended up after the School of Applied Arts was dissolved. I do not know yet how they ended up in Cincinnati since the MFA Boston was ready to buy them.
[3] Soles, J.S. 2003. Mochlos IA: Period III. Neopalatial Settlement on the Coast. The Artisans’ Quarter and the Farmhouse at Chalinomouri, Philadelphia
[4] Becker, M. J. and P.P. Betancourt, 1996. Richard Berry Seager: Pioneer Archaeologist and Proper Gentleman, Philadelphia, 191-192.
The headquarters of the American Red Cross in Athens, 1918-1920. Source: Horace S. Oakley Papers, Newberry Library, Chicago.
This description of Athens was penned by A. Winsor Weld (1869-1956), one of the deputy commissioners of the American Red Cross Commission to Greece, a few days after his arrival in October 1918. Weld, an investment broker from Boston and a graduate of Harvard University (B.A. 1891), was one of a million Americans who responded to President Wilson’s call to provide military and civilian aid to many European countries at the end of WW I. The mission to Greece was organized in June and July of 1918 in response to an appeal from the Greek Red Cross (Capps 1919, 9).
There came from America to do the work 103 persons (60 men and 43 women), and several others were recruited in Europe. They enlisted in the service of the American Red Cross from all parts of the United States, and represented all manner of occupations and professions. There were business men, lawyers, bankers, physicians, preachers, teachers, farmers and mechanics, and among the women, trained nurses, stenographers and social workers. The authority of the Commission was vested in the Commissioner, who held the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, and seven Deputy Commissioners with the rank of Major.
From the Archivist's Notebook 