Underhill Moore

Abstract

My earliest recollection of Underhill Moore is of an occasion when he stopped me in the halls of Columbia, where I was on a visiting teaching assignment about a quarter century ago. I did not know then how piercing was his humor or how devastating his approach to all contemporaries. His purpose was to invite me out to his Englewood home to dinner. When I expressed regret because of a previous commitment to one of his colleagues, he said, "Oh, but that will be such a dull evening!" I was then young enough to find this departure from the usual law school chauvinism arresting. And, as I found, an evening with him and his most charming wife, who became in later years a dear family friend, was anything but dull. Later my first duty as prospective dean at Yale was to convince Moore that his seduction from Columbia by the youthful and dynamic Hutchins should still stand notwithstanding the latter's impending departure for Chicago. Just as soon as news of the change at Yale reached him, Moore came to New Haven for a thorough survey of the situation. As a matter of fact that daylong interview took place two months before I actually took office; but what a fine initiation into administrative machination it was! I shudder now to think of all the promises I then made, which Will properly never allowed me to forget. I believe I justified at once all that picture of degradation commonly associated with the transition from teacher to administrator.