The Nabob

True-blue Elihu, We named Yale

after you

Soon as you came through upon a

handsome scale.

What a lot of light and verity

He bequeathed to all posterity! . . .

--Yale song

The life that plump, periwigged and pecunious Elihu Yale had lived by the time (1718) he dispatched a gift of -L-562 worth of goods to the struggling colonial college in New Haven, Conn, was not by any means all light and verity. Yalemen have long suspected this about the onetime Governor of Madras. But being pretty true blue themselves, most have followed the advice of Historian Robert Dudley French, '10, that "loyal sons of Yale . . . not question too closely the sources of this nabob's wealth." Last week, from Warwick, England came word that someone was not only questioning, but had found several decidedly blue answers.

The investigator was none other than Warwick's Mayor George Tibbits. A | tweedy man of 51 with a taste for musty documents and authentic Chippendale. Tibbits first started poking into Elihu's past when a local firm of solicitors that once handled the affairs of some Yale descendants began clearing out their files. Some of the firm's papers were more than 600 years old, and Amateur Historian Tibbits asked permission to examine them at home. Some of the boola-boola he has since discovered:

P: Documents indicating that to avoid the conflict of interests involved in a governor's engaging directly in business, Yale carried on a healthy diamond trade in Madras through an agent named Mrs. Catherine Nicks.

P: Evidence that 1) Yale was sacked as governor because he used his position for excessive private profit, and 2) after he had seen his wife off alone for England, he lived in the same house with Mrs. Nicks and a Portuguese mistress, Hieronima de Paivia, who bore him a son.

P: Papers showing that when Yale returned to England, he brought along four of Mrs. Nicks's offspring as his godchildren. One of these was named Elihu. After Yale died in 1721, the young Nickses sued his widow for a portion of his estate that would in any age far exceed the normal expectations of mere godchildren. "Without wishing to cast aspersions on the character of the founder [sic] of Yale University," says Mayor Tibbits, "I cannot help wondering what the real relationship was between him and Mrs. Nicks."

Mayor Tibbits hopes to deposit his discoveries in the proper place. Taking "some of my most obvious gems with me," he is leaving England this week for a civic visit to Warwick, R.I., intends to stop off at Yale. "It would be a great pleasure," says he, "if the authorities of Yale should ask me to undertake further research on the history of their founder." If not, there is always Harvard.

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