The Road to Monticello

by Hayes, Kevin J. ;

  And give the word neologism to our language, as a root, and it should give us its fellow substantives, neology, neologist, neologisation; its adjectives neologous, neological, neologistical, its verb neologise, and adverb neologically. Dictionaries are but the depositories of words already legitimated by usage. Society is the work-shop in which new ones are elaborated. When an individual uses a new word, if illformed it is rejected in society, if wellformed, adopted, and, after due time, laid up in the depository of dictionaries. And if, in this process of sound neologisation, our transatlantic brethren shall not choose to accompany us, we may furnish, after the Ionians, a second example of a colonial dialect improving on its primitive.20

  Though Proceedings and Report established the general scheme for the University of Virginia, it still required legislative approval. Finally, on January 25, 1819, the Virginia legislature passed the university bill. Jefferson was officially appointed to the board of visitors the next month, and at the board’s first meeting the month after that, he was elected rector of the University of Virginia. He had won the war to establish his ideal university, but many skirmishes remained. While passing the university bill, the legislature still had not appropriated sufficient funds to complete construction, hire the necessary professors, or purchase books for the library. It was not until four years later, in March 1823, that Jefferson could order work on the Rotunda to begin. And not until near the end of 1823 did he receive sufficient financing to hire professors and purchase books.

  Jefferson had devoted much time and thought to the makeup of the University of Virginia faculty. He really wanted to hire professors from abroad, but he also knew that doing so would prompt criticism in the United States. Earlier, he had tentatively offered positions to some of the leading intellectuals in America. When Thomas Cooper was teaching chemistry and mineralogy at the University of Pennsylvania, Jefferson invited him to join the Virginia faculty. Cooper was interested in the position, but his radical philosophy and outspoken views against the church made him unwelcome in Virginia. Jefferson offered a professorship to George Ticknor, who turned the position down in favor of a Harvard professorship. He offered the mathematical chair to Nathaniel Bowditch, the Massachusetts astronomer and mathematician whose New American Practical Navigator had been recognized for its profound improvement over any similar work. He politely refused the position.21

  To obtain world-class professors from Great Britain, Jefferson knew he needed to send an agent there personally. He first asked Cabell, who turned down the opportunity. Subsequently, Jefferson asked Francis Walker Gilmer, a young man he had watched mature into a bright and ambitious attorney.

  The Gilmers lived in Albemarle County close to Monticello. Francis was born in 1790, but he was orphaned as a boy with the death of his father in 1795 and mother in 1800. He remained in Albemarle after his mother’s death, attending James Ogilvie’s school and studying French with the finest French teacher in the neighborhood, Martha Jefferson Randolph. Gilmer was an excellent student; his quest for knowledge was nearly insatiable. He attended William and Mary, graduating in 1810. He read law in Richmond under William Wirt and also became a protégé of the Abbé Jose Francisco Corrêa de Serra, the Portuguese philosopher and scientist who was a frequent guest at Monticello. Gilmer began practicing law and pursuing literary projects, as well, including an anthropological essay on the Cherokee, a geological essay on the Natural Bridge, a book titled Sketches of American Orators, and a new edition of Captain John Smith’s True Travels and his Generall Historie of Virginia.22

  On November 25, 1823, Jefferson drafted the formal letter asking Gilmer to undertake the mission to Great Britain on behalf of the University of Virginia. In this letter Jefferson also offered him the chair in law at the University of Virginia.23 It was not just Gilmer’s legal knowledge that qualified him for the position; his wide knowledge in other fields of study enhanced his qualifications. Reiterating the offer in a later letter, Jefferson emphasized that the range of Gilmer’s knowledge would help make him an excellent professor. “I abhor the idea of a mere Gothic lawyer,” Jefferson said, meaning a lawyer who was uncouth or unpolished, one who knew nothing out of Coke upon Littleton, “who would not be able to associate with his colleagues in conversation, or to utter to enquiring strangers a single academical idea.”24

  Jefferson demanded similar qualifications from all his professors. He wanted Gilmer to recruit men who were experts in their own field but who were knowledgeable in other disciplines. There were practical benefits in having professors with a wide range of knowledge: one professor could take over another’s class in a pinch. But Jefferson’s motivation was not merely practical—he was forming an intellectual circle, one that he could enjoy the rest of his life but that would survive beyond him and perpetuate itself. Furthermore, he recognized that the professors would be representatives of the university. When they spoke with others outside the school, he wanted them to hold their own in any intellectual conversation.

  As he knew he would, Jefferson came under fire for recruiting professors from Great Britain. Many newspaper columnists criticized him for not hiring American professors. Even John Adams criticized his decision to hire professors from abroad. Jefferson’s long-standing political animosity toward Great Britain was well known, as was his deep-seated American patriotism. But Jefferson understood that neither politics nor patriotism matters when it comes to hiring quality professors. Seeking to establish a high level of academic rigor, Jefferson looked beyond political borders. When it came to making the best possible university he could, Jefferson saw himself as a citizen of the Republic of Letters, a republic that transcended national boundaries.

  Gilmer hesitated to accept the chair in law, but in the spring of 1824, he accepted the responsibility of going to Great Britain to recruit professors for the University of Virginia. Jefferson gave him detailed instructions: Cambridge would be the best place to find experts in the fields of mathematics, natural philosophy, and natural history; Oxford would be better for finding an expert in ancient languages; and Edinburgh would be the best place to recruit a professor in anatomy and medicine. Gilmer was to make inquiries about the temper and sobriety of the candidates. Jefferson considered men with families to be acceptable, perhaps even be preferable—but no clergymen.25

  The first candidate Gilmer met in London was George Blaettermann, who had already taken the initiative and applied for the chair in modern languages on his own. Born in Saxony, Blaettermann had a remarkable capacity for languages, eventually learning Anglo-Saxon, Danish, Dutch, English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish. He was living in London when Gilmer arrived. He was forty-two, but Gilmer did not see his age as an obstacle. “Finding no specific objection, norindeed any objection, to Dr. Blaettermann,” Gilmer hired him for the chair in modern languages.26

  Recruiting the remaining professors would be more difficult. In late June he went to Cambridge but was disappointed to learn that students and professors alike had left on vacation. Gilmer dawdled there a few weeks but to no avail. Next he headed north to Edinburgh, where he fared no better. He reached a low point the second week of August, when he wrote Jefferson from Edinburgh that he might not return with any other professors besides Blaettermann. Jefferson had set extremely high standards, and Gilmer was having trouble finding candidates with the necessary qualifications.

  He left Edinburgh to give Cambridge another try. Toward the end of August he met Thomas Hewitt Key. At twenty-five, Key was “an intelligent and fine young man, distinguished even at Cambridge for his mathematical genius and attainments, and M.A. of that university.” He perfectly suited Jefferson’s requirement that the professors be experts in their own fields and qualified in others. Besides being a mathematician, Key had also studied medicine, and he was an expert Latinist—indeed, it was as a Latin scholar that Key ultimately established his lasting reputation. Gilmer hired him to fill the chair of pure mathematics.27

  From Gilmer’s perspective, Key offered
another advantage: he promised to help recruit more professors for the University of Virginia. Key introduced Gilmer to his friend George Long, the youngest of Gilmer’s recruits. Long was twenty-three and looked even younger than that. Though an excellent classical scholar, Long did not know Hebrew, which Jefferson wanted the professor of ancient languages to teach. Gilmer explained to him, “Oriental literature is very little esteemed in England, and we might seek a whole year, and perhaps not at last find a real scholar in Latin and Greek, who understands Hebrew.”28 The only way he could hire a Hebrew scholar was to violate the “no clergymen” rule. George Long was hired as chair of ancient languages.

  By mid-September, Gilmer had also recruited the chair of anatomy and medicine, Dr. Robley Dunglison. At twenty-six, Dunglison already had medical degrees from the Royal College of Surgeons and from the University of Erlangen. In 1824, Dunglison published his first major medical work, Commentaries of Diseases of the Stomach and Bowels of Children.29 Before the month was out, Gilmer had recruited Charles Bonnycastle as professor of natural philosophy. He, too, had expertise in many fields, having studied mathematics at the Royal Military Academy. As professor of natural philosophy, Bonnycastle would become a favorite among University of Virginia students. He emphasized the importance of laboratory work and introduced raised benches in the classroom to let students observe demonstrations.30

  Gilmer left London for New York in October, having filled five professorships. The chair in chemistry remained unfilled. Though Gilmer contracted a serious illness during the ocean crossing, from which he never fully recovered, he remained in New York to find a professor of chemistry. He eventually hired John Patton Emmett, who also excelled in botany, mathematics, and zoology.31

  The professor of moral philosophy and the professor of law Jefferson had always planned to hire locally. He found in George Tucker an excellent candidate for the chair in moral philosophy. Tucker, at forty-nine, was the oldest professor and became the first chairman of the faculty. Before joining the university, he had already distinguished himself in terms of both public service and publications. The Valley of Shenandoah, his 1824 novel, is considered the precursor to the plantation novels that would flourish in the antebellum South.32 His Essays on Various Subjects of Taste, Morals, and National Policy, published two years before, had more appeal to Jefferson. The chair in law, however, remained unfilled.

  By November 1824, the University of Virginia campus was ready to receive its professors. Construction was not completely finished, but it was finished enough that Jefferson would be able to open the university early next year as he had hoped. The dormitories and pavilions were completed. The Rotunda still lacked columns, but the dome itself and its interior were finished. In fact, the first week in November, the Rotunda became the site of a gala affair, a huge banquet in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette.

  Having arrived in New York several weeks earlier, Lafayette was on a triumphal tour through the United States. He was fêted wherever he went. The first week of November he reached Albemarle County. Naturally, he stayed with his old friend Thomas Jefferson. Their reunion on Thursday, November 4, proved to be warm and tenderhearted. The following day, an elaborate procession took them from Monticello to the Central Hotel in Charlottesville to the campus of the University of Virginia and up the steps of the Rotunda. Four hundred people gathered beneath the great dome, including many of the most influential men in Virginia. The banquet tables were set up in concentric circles: an appropriate formation. Like a pebble dropped in a pond, Jefferson’s mind affected those around him by creating a series of increasingly widening circles.

  South Elevation of the Rotunda (1823). (MSS 2332, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library)

  Once the tablecloths were removed after dinner, the toasts began. The toast to Lafayette, the Richmond Enquirer reported, “was received with enthusiastic cheering—the lofty dome of the Rotunda re-echoed back the sound—it rolled in billowy volumes around the spacious Hall, and sunk in the deep stillness of enthusiasm.” Jefferson himself was the object of the sixth toast: “Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence—Alike identified with the cause of liberty.”33

  Jefferson had written a prepared speech, but he did not deliver it himself. Instead, he gave it to the master of ceremonies for him to read. Though the ostensible purpose of this banquet was to honor Lafayette, Jefferson also saw it as a celebration of the opening of the University of Virginia. His speech shows that he was using the occasion to generate additional support for the university. He explained:

  My friends I am old, long in the disuse of making speeches, and without voice to utter them. In this feeble state, the exhausted powers of life leave little within my competence for your service. If, with the aid of my younger and abler co-adjutors, I can still contribute any thing to advance the Institution, within whose walls we are now mingling manifestations to this our guest, it will be, as it ever has been, cheerfully and zealously bestowed. And could I live to see it once enjoy the patronage and cherishment of our public authorities with undivided voice, I shall die without a doubt of the future fortunes of my native state, and in the consoling contemplation of the happy influence of this institution on its character, its virtue, its prosperity and safety.34

  Though the campus itself was ready to welcome the student body, Jefferson knew he could not open the university without professors. As winter approached, he grew anxious about them. By the end of November, Long had reached New York. So had Blaettermann and his family. Dunglison and Key were unmarried when Gilmer first met them, but both had wanted to stay in England to marry English wives before coming to America. (“Tho’ if they would take my advice,” Gilmer said, “they would prefer Virginians.”) Blaettermann called on Gilmer in New York to let him know that Bonnycastle, Dunglison, and Key would be sailing on the Competitor directly to Norfolk.35

  A few days after he arrived, Professor Long walked to Monticello to meet Jefferson. Long remembered the moment all his life.36 Once he was shown inside, he waited a few minutes before “a tall dignified old man” entered. Before saying anything, Jefferson took a moment to size him up.

  “Are you the new professor of antient languages?” Jefferson asked.

  Long said that he was.

  “You are very young,” Jefferson observed.

  “I shall grow older,” Long responded.

  Jefferson smiled.

  Despite his youthful appearance, Long greatly impressed Jefferson, who told Senator Cabell that he was “a most amiable man, of fine understanding, well qualified for his department, and acquiring esteem as fast as he becomes known.”37 Blaettermann was less impressive. Jefferson called him “rather a rough looking German, speaking English roughly, but of an excellent mind and high qualifications.”38 As the old year gave way to the new, there was still no sign of the other professors from England. Both Jefferson and Cabell feared the worst. There had been a terrible storm in October, and they worried that the Competitor had been lost at sea.

  Word had got around that the university would open on February 1. Jefferson was afraid that the students would arrive by then only to be disappointed. The first week of January he detailed their dilemma to Cabell. To send the students back would be discouraging, but to open the university without professors in either mathematics or natural philosophy would be ridiculous.39 At the end of January, Cabell read an item in the Norfolk press, which he quickly relayed to Jefferson. As of December 5, the Competitor was still at Plymouth. A combination of contrary winds, poor equipment, and mismanagement had kept the vessel there for weeks.40

  Disappointed that they were so far behind schedule, Jefferson was nonetheless relieved that they were alive. His response to Cabell, which incorporates a delightful double entendre, shows that he had retained his sense of humor through these times of uncertainty: “Although our professors were on the 5th of December still in an English port, that they were safe raises me from the dead; for I was almost ready to give up the ship.”41 U
pon receiving Cabell’s letter the first week of February, Jefferson did some quick calculations and figured that the professors would arrive any day. In fact, Bonnycastle, Dunglison, and Key reached Norfolk on February 10.

  The students moved in the first week of March. It rained the whole week, but the weather did little to dampen their spirits. Moving into a university dormitory for the first time, then as now, is a special experience, one simultaneously thrilling yet contemplative. Moving into a brand new university, a university designed, built, and administered by the author of the Declaration of Independence, was an unparalleled experience. When the University of Virginia officially opened on March 7, 1825, Jefferson realized his hopes and dreams for higher education.

  CHAPTER 42

  The Life and Soul of the University

  When the University of Virginia officially opened its doors the first week of March 1825, the same week John Quincy Adams was inaugurated president, the school’s library remained far from completion—but not from want of trying. Besides giving Francis Walker Gilmer the responsibility of recruiting professors in Great Britain, Jefferson had also assigned him the task of purchasing books for the university while there. He wrote Gilmer a letter of introduction to the distinguished critic and scholar Samuel Parr, asking for his help. And he recommended that Gilmer contact Lackington’s, the London bookseller who had supplied numerous books for his personal library in the past. Parr turned out to be a great help. With his advice, Gilmer put together an excellent catalogue of classical books for the university.1

  Gilmer delayed the purchase of many books until after he had recruited some of the professors, wisely thinking that they could help him choose the best works in the best editions at the best prices. He visited Lackington’s but discovered that the original bookshop of that name had long since gone out of business. There was still a shop called Lackington’s in Finsbury Square, but it was a shadow of its former self. Parr told Gilmer not to deal with the new Lackington’s at all. Bohn, a bookseller in Covent Garden, proved to be much better. He offered to underbid any other bookseller in London. Gilmer accepted the offer and was pleased with the results. Bohn partly filled his order from stock and special ordered many additional titles from the Continent.