Secretary, American Scandinavian Foundation
Centurion, 1920–1970
Born 3 July 1880 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Died 11 November 1970 in New York (Manhattan), New York
Buried Cold Spring Presbyterian Cemetery
, Cape May, New Jersey
Proposed by Hamilton Holt and William Witherle Lawrence
Elected 7 February 1920 at age thirty-nine
Century Memorial
[Henry Goddard Leach] was a Centurion for fifty years, from 1920 until his death in 1970 at the age of ninety, and he epitomized those qualities which have given The Century its special character. Scholar with wide-ranging interests and knowledge, linguist extraordinary, poet, novelist, editor, foundation officer, his wit and humor adorned every conversation, and his love for the play of ideas guaranteed that he would be the center of lively debate.
Born in 1880, he worked his way through Princeton, graduating magna cum laude as class poet and commencement orator. He taught mathematics for two years at Groton, thereby proving to the great Dr. [Endicott] Peabody that a Princeton man could be both literate and educated. In turn, Peabody persuaded the young instructor to make a lifetime career out of his growing passion for Scandinavia. He went on to Harvard, receiving both the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Scandinavian literature. He spent the next two years in the Scandinavian countries as the holder of Harvard’s top traveling fellowship, served briefly as secretary to the U.S. Minister to Denmark, and returned to teach comparative literature at Harvard.
A man of many parts and interests, he served as president of the Poetry Society of America, and was at one time or another involved in the Irish Academy, Russian Refugee Relief, the Council on Religion and International Affairs, the New York State Judicial Council as well as many others. He will be remembered, however, chiefly for the two areas to which he devoted the major part of his life.
The first was the American-Scandinavian Foundation. Henry Leach became general secretary and executive officer of this newly founded organization in 1912 and continued in that post until 1921. From 1925 until 1947, he was its distinguished president, and for much of that time he was editor of its Review and other publications. In the words of one of his successors, “The story of the Foundation through more than half a century could not be written without the name of Henry Goddard Leach in every chapter and indeed on almost every page.” International recognition inevitably followed, and in addition to honorary degrees, he held decorations from Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland.
The second was the Forum, of which he was editor from 1923 until an accident forced him to resign in 1940. Already known as a magazine of ideas, it became under Leach’s editorship “a magazine of free and fast debate.” “In the time between the world wars,” wrote one of his associates, “Henry Goddard Leach at the Forum was a disturber of routine thinking and public complacency. Everyone either wrote for the Forum—that is, everyone who had something to say and could say it with some pungency and grace—or he wrote letters to the Forum to acclaim or to protest what others had written.”
Behind the play of ideas and concern for international affairs lay a deep love of nature that took him summer after summer to the heart of the Adirondacks. He was president of that remarkable organization known as the Adirondack Trail Improvement Society, climbed and blazed trails through the high-peak area.
He wrote an autobiography, My Last Seventy Years, which can be found in the library, and to which Centurions can turn for more details of the eventful life of their fellow member.
John W. Nason
1972 Century Association Yearbook
