University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER VIII

THE FACULTY OF 1825

Long and Blaettermann were the first of the European
professors to arrive, reaching New York
while Gilmer was still the object of the kindness of
the Emmets. After paying their respects to the
young Virginian they proceeded to Richmond, and
thence to Charlottesville. In Richmond they saw
Senator Cabell, who was using his great powers of
persuasion to prevent the removal of William and
Mary to that city.

Key, Dunglison, and Bonnycastle were not so fortunate.
The English coast was swept by terrific
gales at the time they were expected to sail in the
Competitor, "an old log," and for a long time it was
feared they were lost. Cabell and Gilmer did all
they could to allay Mr. Jefferson's distress and to
conceal their own uneasiness. Late in January the
Senator saw in a Norfolk paper that the Competitor
was still in Plymouth Harbor on the 5th of December,
after the storm which it was feared had destroyed
her. He posted the news at once to Mr.
Jefferson, who replied: "That they were safe raises
me from the dead, for I was almost ready to give
up the ship." But the ship, which seems to have
been a wretched craft in which to tempt the sea,
reached Norfolk on the 10th of February, 1825, and

Gilmer sent the glad tidings to his venerable chief.
Dr. Dunglison also dispatched a letter to him as
soon as they had disembarked.

The Englishmen proceeded to Richmond by boat.
There they were welcomed by ex-Governor Thomas
Mann Randolph and his son (Mr. Jefferson's
grandson) Thomas Jefferson Randolph, who had
been sent down from Charlottesville to arrange for
the journey to the University. They were the
guests of the distinguished lawyer Chapman Johnson
for at least a part of their stay in the capital,
and a letter of the time, written in the freedom of
private correspondence, gives an interesting glimpse
of an evening at Mr. Johnson's. "In a short time
the rooms began to fill; we had quite a squeeze.
The grave seems to have given up the dead, for
there came ladies whom I have not heard of being
out before for years to see the English people."[1]
The cultivated Virginia ladies were amazed to find
that Mrs. Key and Mrs. Dunglison, fresh from England
less than a year after the death of Byron, had
not heard of him or Sir Walter Scott! Still, with
native good sense, they awarded to these young
English wives much credit—for being gentle, sensible,
and quite pretty.

They did not tarry long at Richmond, knowing
Mr. Jefferson was impatient for their arrival at
Charlottesville. Soon after that event the venerable
statesman presented himself and welcomed them
"with that dignity and kindness for which he was
celebrated." At the University they found Dr.
Blaettermann and Professor Long already domiciled—the
former in Pavilion IV, the second house
on East Lawn, and the latter in Pavilion V, the

third on West Lawn. Professor Key and his bride
began housekeeping in Pavilion VI, the third residence
on East Lawn, and Dr. and Mrs. Dunglison
—for the professor of medicine and anatomy also
brought out a bride—set up a happy establishment
in Pavilion X, at the southern end of East Lawn.
Mr. Bonnycastle, a diffident bachelor, lived in utter
loneliness in the Pavilion between them, No. VIII.
It has been inferred that Mr. Jefferson thought his
professors would remain single and occupy bachelor
apartments on the second floor of his pavilions, but
he probably confidently expected what happened,
for he was a very wise old gentleman. However
that may be, three of his five first professors moved
into the temples and theatres on the Lawn with
wives and the remaining ones—Long and Bonnycastle—brought
young Virginia brides to their firesides.
It was not long before these young matrons
had banished the classes from their homes, and converted
the large lecture-halls into drawing-rooms.

The first session began March 7, 1825, with the
following schools open on that day:

Ancient languages, Professor George Long.

Modern languages, Professor George Blaettermann.

Mathematics, Professor Thomas Hewitt Key.

Natural philosophy, Professor Charles Bonnycastle.

Anatomy and medicine, Professor Robley Dunglison.

Thus these foreigners were the only professors
present on the opening day of the first session, for
Dr. Emmet was not actually elected until March 4,
and Mr. Tucker was making a tour of the spring
courts in his district to announce to his constituents

his decision to withdraw from Congress and be a
professor in Mr. Jefferson's University. Mr. Gilmer,
professor of law, was sick in Richmond.

The first recorded official act of this faculty took
place at a meeting "holden at the house of Professor
Key" on the evening of April 12, when the members
present were Professors Dunglison, Bonnycastle,
Blaettermann, Long, and Key. These foreigners
gracefully elected Mr. Tucker to the highest executive
office, that of chairman of the faculty, and resolved
that until his arrival Dr. Emmet, the other
American member, who was daily expected, "be
chairman." As one looks back over the sometimes
terrible responsibility of that office one sees that the
reward of these bright young men was as certain as
if they had conferred their first honors in obedience
equally to a sense of what was appropriate and a
marvelous foresight of what they would escape.
Perhaps, after all, there had been an intimation
from Mr. Jefferson that Mr. Tucker's age—he was
fifty—and Mr. Emmet's experience as an acting assistant
professor in the great military academy at
West Point, indicated them as probably the best prepared
to assume successfully the discharge of the
difficult duties of chairman.

Did Mrs. Dunglison and Mrs. Blaettermann and
the Blaettermann children drop in to spend with
Mrs. Key the time their husbands were devoting to
University affairs in this first faculty meeting?
There was nobody, save servants, to leave them with
at home. It is easy to imagine the ladies having a
good talk about things at home in old England and
wondering whether the Tuckers and Dr. Emmet
would prove agreeable folk.

Who will say that this first winter in Virginia

was not a little monotonous even to those young
residents on the Lawn for whom the honeymoon was
still in full splendor? No doubt Mrs. Randolph descended
from Monticello to visit the young wives,
and the Carrs, Garretts, Southalls, Trists, and other
families in reach of the University contributed whatever
they could socially to their entertainment. But
Charlottesville was a mere village, huddled around
the court-house, which was as yet the only place of
worship; the market was poor, and the only considerable
town—Richmond—was nearly a hundred
miles away. The University itself was unpleasantly
new and smelling of paint, and its chief building,
the Rotunda, still unfinished. The grounds,
recently graded and parts of them doubtless still undergoing
change, were raw, treeless, and uninviting
to English eyes. And it would deprive the picture,
as it was presented to those people, of much of its
uninviting shadow if we were to overlook the fact
that long, weary weeks were required for a letter to
travel from London to Charlottesville.

Professor Long especially spent a dreary Christmas,
his case being worse than that of his colleague,
Dr. Blaetterman, the only other professor arrived at
that date, as he was wifeless and alone, with only
his black servant Jacob to look after his household.
"I dined with Mr. Jefferson last Monday," he wrote
Francis Gilmer. "He was in good health, but,
like all of us, very uneasy about the delay of our
friends. I do not yet, being acquainted more fully
with all the circumstances of the case, entertain any
apprehension about their safety, but I regret, both
for the University and my own personal comfort,
that they were so foolish as to embark in an old log.
The people in Charlottesville, having nothing better

to do, amuse themselves with inventing stories on
this unfortunate subject. Almost every day, from
undoubted authority, I am informed that the professors
have arrived; a few hours after I had received
your letter a man very gravely assured me
the professors were at that moment in Richmond."
To add to his discomfort, a heavy snow late in January
made it inconvenient to go abroad. His intercourse
was confined to the family of Mr. Gray, the
first occupant of the University hotel at the south
end of West Range, with whom he took his meals,
but even within this limit he found compensation.
In the ensuing session, the students who were
"dieted" at this hotel, and who liked the genial little
Englishman very much, were not slow to perceive
an interest in Mrs. Harriet Sheldon, Mr. Gray's
widowed daughter, and did not hesitate jestingly to
intimate that it was reciprocal. They soon conferred
on Professor Long the title of Colonel, probably
in jocund allusion to his stature, which was
below the medium, and they teased Mistress Harriet
by perverting the well-known couplet into

The Colonel led Mrs. Seldon to the altar, and it
gives us a pleasant glimpse of the early days of the
University to be told that when she descended to be
married she was "more beautiful than you can conceive,"
that she was dressed with simplicity and admirable
taste, that she behaved during the ceremony
and throughout the evening with the most becoming
dignity, and that the Colonel was matchless in
beauty and grace and engaging conversation.

Mr. Long remained at the University more than
three years, and was then released at the urgent appeal
of Lord Brougham in a letter to the rector,
James Madison. In that brief time he established
the school of ancient languages firmly in the confidence
and respect of the learned world, and won
from his pupils the highest tributes of admiration.
Among these is a balanced and judicial appreciation
by Dr. Gessner Harrison, one of his first students
and his successor, chosen upon his own urgent nomination:
A man of marked ability and attainments,
thoroughly trained in the system of his college, having
a mind far more than most men's scrupulously
demanding accuracy in the results of his inquiry,
and scouting mere pretension, he aimed and was
fitted to introduce something better than what then
passed current as classical learning. Although he
had as yet little knowledge of comparative philology,
and would hardly be said to have cultivated the
science of language with the enlarged spirit of philosophy
which pervades his writings, his uncompromising
exactness and his masterly knowledge of his
subject inspired his students with the highest conceptions
of a true scholarship.[2]

Dr. Harrison also spoke well of Professor Blaettermann
as giving proof of extensive acquirements
and of a mind of uncommon natural vigor and penetration.
In connection with the lessons in German
and Anglo-Saxon he afforded his students much
that was valuable in comparative philology also.
Dr. Blaettermann's accent betrayed his German
origin, but that, as Mr. Gilmer said, "we are obliged
to encounter every way, as there are no profound

English professors of modern languages." There
was no question of his accomplishments as a linguist,
and annually during his connection with the
University the catalogue announced: "The languages
taught in this school are the French, Spanish,
Italian, German, and Anglo-Saxon; and if desired
will also be taught the Danish, Swedish, Hollandish,
and Portuguese languages;" and this at a
time some years before any American university had
done more for a modern language than to license
an occasional itinerant French dancing-master to
give lessons in his native tongue. He won the admiration
of a distinguished member of the Board of
Visitors by his extensive knowledge of Anglo-Saxon,
that branch of English being a hobby with
the Visitor, as it had been with Mr. Jefferson.[3] Dr.
Blaettermann retired from his chair in 1840.[4]

Gilmer wrote and spoke of Thomas Hewitt Key
with more enthusiasm than of any other of the professors
he engaged in England. He met him under
pleasant auspices, in the room of the young poet
Praed at Cambridge, and was himself the first
American Key had ever known. The young master
of arts of Trinity held views on the sciences highly

satisfactory to Gilmer and his employer. "I have
already said," he wrote to his American friend,
"that I am fondly attached to the sciences, and the
strength of that attachment is proportional to each
as it appears to me calculated to advance the interests
of mankind. In the University of Cambridge
I have often thought that this object is too much lost
sight of; and that the great body of talent in that
seat of knowledge is frequently directed to points
of comparatively minor importance, and thus in a
great measure thrown away, whilst it might be employed
in a manner so highly beneficial both for
England and the whole world." This rings harmoniously
with Mr. Jefferson's keynote—"All the
branches of science useful to us and at this day."

Mr. Key was one of the party of three professors
who crossed in the Competitor. The tall, slender
Englishman, by his humor, seems to have enlivened
that monotonous voyage for all except the stupid
captain, one Godby, for whom the passengers had
a full measure of contempt, and whom he made the
butt of his jokes. At the University he speedily
won recognition for his talents and attainments, and
began the careful study of the Latin, which he continued
all his life, and through which he was destined
to win his chief distinction as a scholar.[5]
During Professor Long's return to England in the
summer of 1825 to receive his fellowship at Cambridge
he taught his classes in Latin and Greek in
addition to his own in mathematics. He was a
faithful and competent instructor, and the University
released him with deep regret in 1827 to return

to London, the climate of Virginia proving injurious
to his health.[6]

Charles Bonnycastle was the son of the self-taught
mathematician, John Bonnycastle, long a
master in that subject at the Royal Military Academy
at Woolwich, England, of whom Leigh Hunt
spoke with a characteristic blending of shrewd criticism
and amiable appreciation. Professor Bonnycastle's
biographers emphasize his reputation for
shyness and taciturnity beyond the truth, no doubt,
for his miscellaneous writings[7] indicate traces of a
genial humor, and Professor Key mentions him as
his abettor and assistant in the jokes played on the
sailor Godby. His intellectual eminence, like that
of all the foreigners in the faculty of 1825, was
never in dispute, and many of his pupils would have
contended that in the matter of mind he was pre-eminent
in that distinguished group of scholars. At
home and in society, however, his habits of deep
reflection gave ground for the belief in his taciturnity.
In moments of abstraction he was indifferent
to what was passing around him, and he would sit
in the midst of his playful children perfectly unconscious
of their bewitching gambols.[8]

Professor Bonnycastle died in 1840, greatly lamented,
if the contemporary notices of his death can
be relied on as correctly measuring the feeling extribute,

and the students, in resolutions passed at
a mass meeting, warmly eulogized his virtues.[9]

"The professor of anatomy, etc., is a very intelligent
and laborious gentleman, a Dr. Dunglison, now
of London, and a writer of considerable eminence
on various medical and anatomical subjects." In
this one sentence of his letter to Jefferson, in the fall
of 1824, Gilmer summed up the whole character of
Dr. Dunglison as well as any one could have done,
in like limits, after the doctor's life was rounded to
its close. His career as a medical writer, begun immediately
after his return to London with his degree
from Erlangen, he continued at the University of
Virginia, at the University of Maryland, and after
he had gone to Philadelphia as professor of the institutes
of medicine in Jefferson Medical College, so
industriously that he had published about twenty
volumes before his death in 1869. The works written
at the University of Virginia—his Human
Physiology and his Medical Dictionary—were the
most important and are still referred to with respect,
although necessarily much out of date.

Dr. Dunglison was engaged for the University at
a time when there was no intention to establish immediately
a school of medicine for the education and
training of physicians. The teaching of medicine
was to proceed on historical lines, with explanations
of its "successive theories" from Hippocrates down,
for the simple purpose of affording such information
as the mass of educated people would want for
the sake of culture. Mr. Jefferson seemed to think

The Lawn, showing southern half with pavilions (professors' residences) and dormitories on each side,
and the Rotunda closing the view

OPPOSITE P. 100

that the chief satisfaction to be derived from such a
medical education would be in the resulting ability
to estimate the extent and limits of the aid to human
life and health reasonably to be expected from the
art of healing.[10] Nevertheless, Dr. Dunglison impressed
him so favorably that he employed him as his
physician,[11] and submitted to his regimen without
murmuring at "suffering inflicted upon him for remedial
purposes."

Not counting Francis Gilmer, who never lectured,
two others were members of the faculty of 1825—
George Tucker and John Patten Emmet. Mr.
Tucker was the elder, being fifty, the only man past
middle life in the body at that time. Twenty years
later, at seventy, with more than fifteen years of life
yet before him, he resigned because the retirement
of his friend Henry St. George Tucker had left him
no intimate companions in the University, where all
his associates were much his junior. In the mean
time, Dr. Gessner Harrison, Professor Long's successor,
had married his daughter, and Professor
Tucker left his home in Philadelphia every summer
for a visit of several weeks at the University, where
he was always welcome, especially with his grandchildren.
Mr. Tucker, many years after his retirement
from his chair, bore testimony to the agreeable
social life in the early days of the University. Mr.
Jefferson and Mr. Madison held him in high esteem,
and respected him especially for his studies and informing

essays on sociological subjects. These
were widely read while he was in Congress, and it is
probable his appointment was due to the reputation
they won him. He wrote a life of Jefferson, an undertaking
for which he was well qualified, a history
of the United States, and many works which are a
monument to his industry and a proof of the breadth
and accuracy of his scholarship.

Dr. Emmet was probably bespoken as early as in
those November and December days which Gilmer
spent in New York recuperating from his voyage in
the Crisis, for he was in that city on a visit from
Charlestown, South Carolina, where he had established
himself for the practice of medicine. At that
time Professor Torrey endorsed him quite handsomely,
and Mr. Gilmer proposed him, but it was
not until March 4, 1825, that the appointment was
formally made. Dr. Emmet was soon at his post,
well impressed with his surroundings and especially
pleased with Mr. Jefferson. His lectures were popular,
and, like Mr. Bonnycastle's, attended by many
not entered in his school. Taking extreme pains
with all his lectures and experiments, he was severely
taxed with work, but found consolation in
his big violoncello Satan, which smothered "despair
and fury amid its roar," and in working in his garden.
Perhaps no other professor ever made so
many experiments in horticulture and floriculture.
At "Morea," the estate on the western confines of
the University to which he removed in 1834 or 1835,
he grew grapes from vines imported from Europe,
and produced various wines and brandies. He cultivated
the silkworm and carried the experiment to

the extent of producing silk, and in many other ways
indicated avenues to profitable industries.[12]

Dr. Emmet lived in the West Lawn pavilion nearest
to the Rotunda, and as professor of natural history
had domiciled in his bachelor mansion some
strange "exhibits" in his subject. In 1827 all this
was changed. He had met at Professor Tucker's,
at the opposite extremity of West Lawn, the professor's
attractive niece, Miss Mary Byrd Farley
Tucker of Bermuda, and in June of the same year
their engagement was announced. The marriage
soon followed and Dr. and Mrs. Emmet began housekeeping.
Then the exhibits came up for consideration
from the bride's point of view. One of the
largest and best rooms was devoted chiefly to a collection
of snakes, whose movements were somewhat
retarded by a waxed floor. A brown bear, which
had been raised from a cub, roamed at pleasure
through the house and garden. A large white owl
had full liberty of the house, and rested for a greater
part of the time in his master's room on the top of a
high four-post bedstead. The owl was soon allowed
to shift for himself, and, in time, the bear became
an addition to the larder, while the snakes
were banished in as summary a manner as if St.
Patrick had exercised his power to that end.[13]

These are the men who formed the active faculty
of 1825, and who lectured to the classes of the first
session which extended from March 7 to December
15. The official records, such as they are, remain,
but the period is gone, the conditions changed, and
we who would realize it all must out of the few elements

which time has not entirely destroyed reconstruct
as far as possible the University as it was socially
and otherwise in 1825.

Fortunately some very pleasant glimpses of Mr.
Jefferson in his relations to the professors and the
students remain, and they all tend to enhance admiration
of a character so strong in its ennobling simplicity.
"Mr. Jefferson is down with us almost
every day," wrote Dr. Emmet, "and as often invites
us to call without formality at his home. He is an
extremely pleasant old gentleman, and as hospitable
as man can be. We all take the greatest delight in
promoting his views, and he has expressed himself
as well pleased." The late Burwell Stark wrote in
1894, still vividly remembering the great man:
"While at the University I remember it was my
good fortune and great pleasure to dine several
times with ex-President Jefferson. It was his custom
to invite to dinner about a dozen pupils at one
time till all had visited him two or three times. His
hospitality and sociability made us free in his company,
and endeared him to all our hearts. As an
instance of the high estimation in which the students
held him, when they saw that he would pass on a
certain side of our grounds they would often go out
of their way in order to receive his recognition and
most courteous bow."

Dr. Henry Tutwiler was a fellow-student of Mr.
Stark's. He and Gessner Harrison came from
Rockingham County, Virginia, clad in homespun to
win their way at the University, and they did win
it, as all who are acquainted with the educational
history of Virginia and Alabama know full well.

Dr. Tutwiler's reminiscence[14] describes a day at
Monticello in the last years of its master, and it
should be preserved and repeated on all suitable occasions
as showing how kind and unaffected the
great may be: "I well remember the first time I saw
Mr. Jefferson. It was in 1825, in the proctor's office,[15]
whither I had gone with some students on
business. A tall, venerable gentleman, in plain but
neat attire, entered the room, and, bowing to the students,
took his seat quietly in one corner. One of
my friends privately gave me to understand that it
was Mr. Jefferson. I had come from a part of Virginia
where he was very popular, and which he used
to call his tenth legion, and his name was associated
with my earliest recollections. I was struck by his
plain appearance, and simple, unassuming manners.
When Mr. Brockenbrough was done with the students,
he looked up and recognized Mr. Jefferson,
who then came forward to greet him. We used to
see him afterwards as he passed our room on the
Eastern Range in his almost daily visits to the University.
He was now in his eighty-third year, and
this ride of eight or ten miles on horseback over a
rough mountain road showed the deep interest with
which he watched over this child of his old age, and
why he preferred the more endearing title of Father
to that of Founder. This is also shown in the frequent
intercourse which he kept up with the faculty
and the students. Two or three times a week the
former, often with their families, dined with him, by
invitation, and once a week he had the students. He
had a list of these, and through one of his grandsons,
then a student in the University, four or five
were invited to dine with him on the Sunday following.
This day was selected because it did not interfere
with the regular lectures. When he found that
some of the students declined the invitation from religious
convictions, he ascertained how many there
were of this class, and invited them on a week day.

"An account of one of these days by one who had
the honor of enjoying this privilege may not be
without interest. Mr. Jefferson had a wonderful
tact in interesting his youthful visitors, and making
even the most diffident feel at ease in his company.
He knew from what county each student came, and
being well acquainted with the most prominent men
in every part of the State he would draw out the
student by asking questions concerning them, or
about something remarkable in his neighborhood,
thus making one feel that he was giving instead of
receiving information; or he would ask about the
studies of the students, and make remarks about
them or the professors, for all of whom he had a
high admiration. He was thus careful to pay attention
to each individual student. He sat with us at
dinner where Mrs. Randolph presided, and related
anecdotes of distinguished persons whom he knew
abroad. I remember one particularly of Madame
de Stael, whose acquaintance he formed in Paris,
and whose talents and writings he greatly admired.
At table the conversation turned on novels, and Mrs.
Randolph spoke of her father's aversion to them.
She said that when Ivanhoe came out she induced
him to read it, with the hope and belief that it would
change his opinion. Mr. Jefferson smiled and said,
yes, he had tried to read it at her urgent request, but

he had found it the dullest and hardest task of the
kind he had ever undertaken. One of Mrs. Randolph's
remarks excited no little surprise in her
youthful guests: it was, that she had found Blackstone
as interesting as a novel. After dinner he
pointed out to us, among other paintings, one of
Washington on horseback, and said that though not
a handsome man he presented on horseback the most
splendid figure he had ever seen. Such is a brief
sketch of one day at Monticello, and every day was
like it, only frequently on a more enlarged scale."