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In 1882, after several months' study, he accepted a call to wild & woolly Tombstone, Ariz. Observed the Tombstone Epitaph: "Well, we've got a parson who doesn't flirt with the girls, who doesn't drink beer behind the door, and when it comes to baseball, he's a daisy."
Peabody soon returned East to re-enter the theological school, to marry his first cousin Fanny Peabody, and, with funds supplied by rich patrons, to found his school at Groton, Mass.
Incomprehensible Groton. In October, 1884, Brooks House, newly built in a fenceless hilltop meadow that looked northwest to the blue New Hampshire hills, was ready for its first students. The 27 boys who arrived for the first term faced a faculty of four. Two of the teachers (William Amory Gardner and Sherrard Billings, who with Peabody formed Groton's cherished, long-lived triumvirate) had about as much experience of the world and of the classroom as their eldest students.
Many years later Teacher "Billy Wag" Gardner wrote: "Groton School is per fectly incomprehensible to those who have not belonged to it; only partly comprehensible to those who have. ..." One reason was that Groton, unlike such colonial growths as William Penn Charter School or such 18th-Century endowments as Phillips Academy, was as much a Vic torian import as the Prince Albert coat.
Like the Prince Albert, it was tailored to the observance of a precise and ponderous ritual: a daily round of 6:45 bell, heavy breakfast, intense (almost neurotic) concentration on studies and sports; an annual round from First Day to Prize Day, with faculty teas and other protocol be tween, as fixed and formal as an Old Testament year.
In letter and in spirit, the pervasive influence in all this was the Rector's. He was not an outstandingly original teacher. But he was able to concentrate an empire-builder's vitality and single-mindedness on every detail of the school's daily round and yearly growth. During the term he lived for the school, from his muscularly Christian plunge at about 6 a.m. until he had observed the changeless ceremony of saying goodnight to each little, hair-brushed, white-collared, patent-leather shod Grottie. Gracious, friendly, athletic Mrs. Peabody, who defrosted her hus band's high-collar sociability with never-failing warmth and humor, was always with him as he sent the younger boys off to bed.
Religion, Scholarship, Soap. The Spartan ended as he began, with emphasis on the fundamentals: religion, scholarship, soap & water (cold, in tin basins), sports. On the fives court, he was a strong player of this English version of handball. He never hurried, never sauntered. "Move along, boy," was one of his favorite phrases. Once a young English teacher proposed to allow the boys to read Rabelais and Candide (Stalky & Co. had once been on the forbidden list). Said the Rector: "I prefer ... to keep away from dirtiness — keep away from mess . . . and I suggest that we will be better teachers and better men if we learn to keep our rifle and ourself just so." Returning from Bermuda in recent years he saw an old Grottie, ten years out, climb an ocean liner's davit to wave goodbyes. "Come down off that davit, F........," said the Rector. "Yes, sir," said the alumnus, scrambling down.