Education: Victorian Headmaster

One of the few things which Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Chicago Tribune's Colonel Robert R. McCormick have in common is their headmaster. As prep-school boys both stood—and perhaps still stand, a little—in awe of the most famed U.S. headmaster of his generation: the founder of small, ultra-swank Groton School. Endicott Peabody, a living legend at 87, retired from Groton's headmastership in 1940—to a new house just off the campus. Last week he received his first full-length biography, Peabody of Groton (Coward McCann; $5), based in large part on his persistent and prodigious...