From The Biography of Frederick Gunn

To make the life and words of school founder Frederick Gunn more accessible to the community, the school reprinted The Master of The Gunnery in 2022. The new paperback edition, published under the title, The Biography of Frederick Gunn — Becoming a Force for Good: Character Education from Frederick Gunn’s Students, includes a new foreword by Head of School Peter Becker. What follows is an excerpt from the chapter, “The Home Life,” by James P. Platt, Class of 1868. Platt wrote about the life of the school in the early 1860s, and the “warm and welcoming home” that Frederick and Abigail Gunn provided every student. The building Platt described is the “old Gunnery,” which stood until 1928 on the site of the current Gunn House.

“ … Mr. and Mrs. Gunn both had the parental instinct so strong that they really took to their hearts each individual boy and brooded over him as if he were their own flesh and blood ... This all-embracing parental love was at the foundation of the home-life at the Gunnery.”

“ … There was the large family-room running through the house from east to west … There were the book-cases built into the walls round about, and filled to overflowing with well-thumbed volumes gathered from every branch of standard literature; and three or four large round tables were scattered over the room, each surrounded with boys of all ages, from seven to seventeen, occupied with studies, or reading, or games, each in its hour and place.

What a picture of joyous family life that old room presented in the long winter evenings! … During the hour devoted to study silence prevailed, but when the clock chimed the hour of eight, books were shoved into the center of the table; cards, backgammon, and chess-boards came out, and a chattering, happy hour was passed. A space was cleared away at the western end of the room; some musical brother or sister ground out a lively tune upon the piano, and an impromptu dance began …. At the stroke of nine, the dancing and games and reading ceased as if by magic; there was a grand rush after Mr. and Mrs. Gunn to give and receive the goodnight kiss, and then the crowd of contented boys melted away into the sleeping-rooms above. A delightful memory of the days when the family was small and manageable is connected with those winter evenings — Saturdays especially — when Mrs. Gunn read to the assembled youngsters from ‘Oliver Twist’ and other good books, while the boys departed in pairs for their hot bath in the wash-house, returning half ready for bed, to get in whispers what they had lost of the story, and cuddle up in a warm corner with a pet kitten until the reading was over.

On the right of the hall, as one entered the house, was the dining-room with its long tables always bounteously laden with wholesome food. Then there were the little tête-à-tête tables in the corners, each accommodating two boys. How we used to strive to become worthy of a seat in those corners; for to each of them was brought a heaping plate of pancakes, such as at the larger tables was made to suffice for some half-dozen eager eyed gourmands.”

“ … The sleeping-rooms above in the main house were of all sizes, shapes, and descriptions, and into them, as the fame of the school grew, the boys were stuffed like herrings in a box. To such refinement was this stuffing process carried that one intelligent observer was heard to express his surprise because he did not see a pair of legs sticking out of every chimney-top. For economy of room, Mrs. Gunn invented the ‘double-decker’ bed, built upon the principle of berths in a ship or sleeping-car …”

“One of the most charming recollections of life at the Gunnery is of the almost nightly pilgrimages made by Mr. Gunn through the dormitories. Soon after the boys had retired to their rooms, he would come upstairs carrying a lamp which, shedding its light before him, heralded his approach … In these visits by night his intuitive knowledge of boys’ hearts and characters shone forth with particular luster.”