Practically a Frenchman

With a gleaming cylinder of silk hat balanced ceremoniously in his left hand, France's President Gaston Doumergue walked through the galleries of the Petit Palais on the Champs Elysees last week to open, dedicate and inspect the completed home of a collection appraised at $5,000,000 and offered to the city of Paris nine years ago. For nearly an hour he wandered through beautifully paneled rooms, expressing his presidential approval of cabinets of Sevres and Meissen ("Dresden") porcelain, jeweled watches, Battersea enamel, signed furniture from the great French ebenistes, a priceless series of tapestries from cartoons by Boucher, and the gem of the collection, "The Burgomaster's Daughter" by Lucas Cranach. Impulsively, M. le President rushed forward and wrung the hand of the spry little old gentleman who had given all this to France. "Monsieur Tuck," said M. Doumergue, "this visit has been a real joy to me. Your latest munificence will perpetuate your name in the memory of a grateful France. Monsieur Tuck, we practically consider you a Frenchman!" It was a heartfelt if somewhat startling compliment. As every French social ite knows, leaders of the U. S. colony in Paris are three elderly gentlemen: elegant, wasp-waisted Berry Wall, once New York's Best-Dressed Man; dignified Wil liam Nelson Cromwell, who has the curious distinction of being the financial angel of the Legion of Honor; and Art Benefactor and Philanthropist Edward Tuck. As a man and as a resident of Paris, Philanthropist Tuck, 88, is senior of the three. He first went to Paris in 1864 as vice-consul, appointed by Abraham Lincoln. His friends know that he is the least Parisian of the three, that he still looks and talks like a complete New Englander. Edward Tuck was born in Exeter, N. H., the son of Congressman-Banker Amos Tuck, traditionally the man who picked the name of the Republican Party. A member of the Class of 1862, Edward Tuck is to Dartmouth what the late loquacious Chauncey Mitchell Depew was to Yale--honorary Grand Old Man. Sent to Paris by his father's friend Mr. Lincoln, he returned to New York and in 1867 entered the banking house of Munroe & Co. He retired with an enormous fortune in 1881, went with his wife to spend the rest of their days in Paris. The field of art is only a part of the bounty of the Tucks. They liberally endowed Dartmouth College and the American Museum of Natural History (Manhattan). They built a children's hospital at Reuil, founded a French school for domestic science, supported throughout the War a whole section of the American Ambulance Service. France has been grateful. Shortly before her death Mrs. Tuck became an officer of the Legion of Honor in her own right. Edward Tuck wears the Grand Cross, France's highest decoration. Because of his interest in science, millions of miles from the earth a planetoid twinkles, known to all astronomers as TUCKIA.

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