University of Virginia Library

3. HISTORY OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

3. THIRD PERIOD

THE BUILDING OF THE UNIVERSITY

XIX. The English Professors Arrive

When the report ran over the United States that numerous
English professors were to be brought in by Jefferson
to fill the different chairs in his recently finished
university, it was received in some quarters with acrid and
satiric comments. The Boston Courier had been catholic
enough in sentiment and sufficiently independent in spirit
to say that the whole country would be profited by the
addition to its citizenship of this group of foreign scholars
and scientists. Not so the Journal, of Connecticut.
The favorable remarks of its contemporary in the neighboring
State seemed to churn up all its provincial bile.
"What American," it exclaimed with unrepressed bitterness,
"can read the above notice without indignation?
Mr. Jefferson might as well have said that his taverns
and dormitories should not be built with American brick,
and sent to Europe for them, as to import a group of professors.
... Mr. Gilmer could have fully discharged
his mission, with half the trouble and expense, by a short
trip to New England." The Journal, it would seem, was
not aware that definite offers of chairs had been made to
Ticknor, of Boston, and Bowditch, of Salem, by the

Board of Visitors, at Jefferson's suggestion, and that both
had declined to accept them. The Gazette, a newspaper
published in Philadelphia, also averred that its own community
had been as much slighted as New England by this
patronage of Oxford and Cambridge Universities. Why
did not Mr. Gilmer come to the Quaker City before going
to London? Why did he not seek among its cultured
people for what he put himself to such irksome and costly
inconvenience to find among the Englishmen? "There
could be but one explanation: as Pennsylvania was barren
in stump orators and Presidents, the Virginians must have
inferred that nothing of value was brought forth on its
soil. And yet all men must know that the first physicians,
philosophers, historians, and astronomers, and
printers in American annals, had been citizens of this
State." The Gazette, in conclusion, gave further vent
to its ruffled feelings by summarily asserting that the
University of Virginia, in sending an agent to England
to obtain professors, had been guilty of one of the "greatest
insults which the American people had ever received."

As a matter of fact, the Gazette was running upon as
false a scent as the Journal, for the second professor contracted
with by the University was Dr. Cooper, who had
resided so many years in Pennsylvania that he had become
as much a congenial and loyal son of that Commonwealth
as the mayor of Philadelphia himself. It is interesting,
in further contravention, to point out that the
man invited by the Board of Visitors, at a later date,
to fill the first vacancy that occurred in the Faculty was
Dr. R. M. Patterson of that city. It is as clear as noonday
that political hostility tinged these unreasonably
adverse comments on Jefferson's choice, with its own jaundice;
but it is, however, creditable to contemporary journalism
to find that the Boston Courier was not the only

newspaper to discard party feeling. "We have heard
with pleasure," reported the New York American, "of
the arrival of Messrs. Long and Blaettermann, the professors
of ancient and modern languages in the University
of Virginia. They are well-known and highly esteemed
in England. Their talents and acquirements will, doubtless,
be highly advantageous to the cause of public instruction
in the country."

Anticipating the early arrival of the English professors,
Jefferson had, with characteristic consciousness of
small details, been uneasy on account of the very meagre
arrangements which had been made for their comfort.
He was apprehensive lest they should, in the beginning,
be forced to look for food and shelter to the coarse local
taverns, and he, therefore, endeavored to persuade one of
the persons who had rented a University hotel to move
into it at once, so as to be ready to supply the strangers
with their daily meals until they could hire cooks for
service under their own roofs. The pavilions were now
fully completed; but they were still bare of all furniture
—a deficiency that would seem to demonstrate neglect
on the part of the committee of superintendence itself,
for how could a half dozen professors, just from Europe,
be expected to acquire such indispensable articles
with any approach to the necessary dispatch? Jefferson
himself acknowledged that they could not, on the instant,
obtain "in a place of so little resource as Charlottesville
even those things that they could not a day do without,
to wit, a bed, table, and chairs." Why had not such
necessary furniture been purchased by the proctor several
weeks before their arrival? Jefferson had more
than once dwelt with complacency upon the exhilarating
influence which the University's classical architecture
would quickly throw over the minds of the foreigners;

but it might easily have been anticipated that the impressions
of beauty and nobility which that architecture was
so well calculated to produce, would be driven from their
heads as they inspected the naked walls and vacant floors
of their pavilions. It is even possible that, for the moment
at least, they would have preferred those barns
which he had deprecated so earnestly, had they but contained
a few comfortable chairs, tables, and beds. While
the pavilions and dormitories were in a finished state at
the beginning of the winter of 1824, the Rotunda was not;
and there must have been perceptible in the general aspect
of Lawn and buildings, at that time, the repelling bareness
of excessive newness, accentuated by the presence of
so few inhabitants in such extensive and imposing precincts.

Long, who was accompanied by Blaettermann, seems
to have been detained in New York, after his arrival,
by the fatigue of his voyage, although it does not appear
to have been exceptionally protracted or tempestuous.
Having brought with him letters of introduction to persons
of distinction residing in that city, he beguiled his
time very pleasantly in the society of his new acquaintances.
From that place, he dispatched his numerous
packages of books by water to Richmond, and engaged a
seat for himself in the stage for Washington. Passing
through the Capital without stopping, he halted for a
night in Fredericksburg, and while seated in the public
room of the tavern there, was spoken to by a gentleman
who resided in the town, who hospitably invited him to
his house. There, Long made his first acquaintance with
two products of Old Virginia which appear, by his own
subsequent actions, to have left a permanent impression
on his tastes,—young ladies and corn-bread. He found
the indigenous corn-cake so good that,—as he wrote his

friend and pupil, Professor Tutwiler, half a century afterwards,
—he continued to use it regularly until his return
to England, thus exhibiting a difference in palate from
his fellow aliens, who could never become sufficiently accustomed
to its flavor to eat it. The young ladies were
described by him as charming. As he carried back to
his English home a Virginian wife, the quality of the
womanhood of Fredericksburg, like that of its corn-bread,
must have been found by him, in his later observations,
to be thoroughly representative.

His journey southward over the rude, neglected roads
of the country districts caused him many painful and
jarring sensations. They were, at this season, at the
zenith of their imperfection; and the jolts which he had
to endure were recalled by him after an interval of fifty
years. He described the inns as mean in their accommodations,
and the company as congenial in quality with such
crude surroundings. The dirt, drinking, and tobacco-spitting
that degraded so many of these roadside taverns,
during that period, naturally enough were revolting to
the tastes of a refined and sensitive foreigner like the
scholarly Long.

On his arrival at the University, he drew pavilion v by
lot; and having no family, was soon able to adjust himself
to the numerous inconveniences of the place, which, at
that time, as he said, "was without inhabitants, and
looked like a deserted city." He described himself as a
man "who had a capacity to make himself happy" in any
situation,—a Virginian tavern obviously excepted,—and
it was now again searchingly tested, for he was the only
professor who was present continuously within the precincts
during the months of December, 1824, and January,
1825, and a part of the following February. With
justifiable complacency, not devoid of humor, he mentions

the fact that, when his English colleagues arrived, they
found him "eating corn-bread, and a Virginian in tastes
and habits." The subtlest proof of the truth of this
complacent assertion was that, within a few months, he
had come to be known about the University as "The
Colonel." His dependence for daily companionship
seems to have been confined at first to the families of Mr.
Brockenbrough, the proctor, and Mr. Gray, who had
rented one of the hotels. Among the members of the
latter circle was Harriet, the sister of Mrs. Brockenbrough,
and the widow of Judge Selden, of Arkansas, who
had been shot in one of the bloody duels then so common
in the social life of the South. Mrs. Selden was a
comely woman of many charming qualities, and as Long
breakfasted, dined, and supped under the Grays' roof,
he was early brought under the spell of her fascinations,
fell in love with her, and ultimately married her. The
interest which the two felt for each other was well known
to the students in attendance during the first session.
Long was light in weight and short in stature, and this
gave additional point to the couplet which the youthful
wags filched from Goldsmith to repeat in the hearing of
the embarrassed couple:

In the beginning, pavilion v, where Long found shelter,
must have offered a very slim prospect of accommodating
more than one. So extravagantly high, according to his
own description, did he discover the prices of Charlottesville
to be, that he refused to diminish the amount of his
already slender purse by purchasing many articles of furniture
there. Fortunately, he was able to procure beds,
dressing tables, and screens, by an order which he sent
to Richmond to be filled under the supervision of Colonel
Peyton. When winter had fully set in, there came on
a heavy fall of snow, which, during several weeks, cut
him off from all associations, except with his "black
friend," his faithful servant Jacob, and the family of the
Grays at his hotel. So soon as his books arrived, they
gave him occupation in the way of study and recreation
alike, during the repeated intervals of his detention within
doors by the rigorous weather. He had been hoping that
Gilmer, who was then residing in Richmond, would be
able to spend the holidays in Albemarle. The two
young men, so congenial in their natural and cultivated
tastes, seemed to have been frequently exchanging letters.
"Coming into a new country," Long wrote in January,
"and being, in some measure, unacquainted with
the customs of the place, I experienced at first some difficulties,
which you will be glad to hear are now removed.
I have been busily employed in arranging my pavilion and
making preparations for my professional duties. I am
sorry that the effects of your illness have prevented you
from coming amongst us this Christmas. Your company
would have been a valuable addition to our limited society."

Long had not been settled at the University many days
before he visited Monticello to make Jefferson's acquaintance
in person. Shown into the drawing-room by one
of the servants of the household,—no doubt with all
the elaborate politeness that distinguished the highly
trained negro butler of those times,—he had only a few
minutes to himself to examine the interesting portraits
and furniture in the apartment, before a "tall, dignified
old gentleman" entered, who, pausing an instant, looked
at the small and youthful Englishman with unconcealed
surprise. "Are you," he said, "the new professor of
ancient languages?" "I am, sir," was the reply.
"You are very young." "I shall grow older, sir."
This quiet answer caused Jefferson to say with a smile,
"That is true." They at once fell into a brisk talk on
a variety of topics, and Long was cordially invited to
dinner. Throughout the visit, Jefferson did not relax
from his habitual gravity, not to say coldness of manner,
but he treated his guest with the most friendly politeness.
"I was pleased with his simple Virginia dress," says
Long, "and with his conversation free from affectation."
This first call was several times repeated, and in the end,
as Long himself has recorded with pleasant brevity, "he
became, I thought, better satisfied with his boy professor."
And this impression was correct, for, within a few
weeks, Jefferson wrote of him to Cabell, "He appears
to be a most amiable man, of fine understanding, well
qualified for his department, and acquiring esteem as fast
as he is known."

There is no reference in Long's written recollections of
these early months to the presence of Professor Blaettermann
at the University. He seems, however, to have
been within its precincts during January,—for a few days,
perhaps; but no association between him and the young

Englishman has been traced. This may have been due
to the prejudice against Continental foreigners, or, more
probable still, to those personal qualities of this instructor,
which, throughout his sojourn in Virginia, deprived
him of even a moderate degree of influence and popularity.

As the winter of 1824–5 drew towards February without
information of the whereabouts of Key, Dunglison,
and Bonnycastle, who had sailed from London on October
26, a sharp alarm began to be felt in Virginia for
their safety. Long alone failed to share this sense of
uneasiness, although he regretted, on account of the University
and his own comfort alike, that they should have
consented to set out on their voyage in what he contemptuously
described as an "old log." This old log was the
ship Competitor. He complained that the people of
Charlottesville, "having nothing better to concern themselves
with, invented stories on this unfortunate subject."
The delay in the arrival of the Competitor was really due
to the headwinds and gales which had prevented her from
dropping from the English coast and sailing straight out
into the ocean. As late as December 5, forty days after
she had swung loose from the wharf in London, she was
still tied up in the harbour of Plymouth. This information
found its way into a newspaper published in Norfolk,
and was brought to Jefferson's attention by Cabell, who
had happened to read the item. "That they (the professors)
are safe," he replied, "raises me from the dead."
He was not only solicitous for the personal well-being of
the voyagers, but he was chafing with disappointment over
the prospect of serious delay in the inauguration of the
lectures. The enemies of the institution had already begun
to whisper in public places that this dilatoriness would
be certain to damage its hope of permanent success; and

Jefferson himself feared the same result. "We apprehend,"
he wrote Cabell in January (1825), "that the
idea of our opening on February 1 prevails so much
abroad,—although we have always mentioned it doubtfully,
—that students will assemble on that day without
the further notice promised. To send them back will be
discouraging, and to open the University without mathematics
and natural philosophy would bring on us ridicule
and disgrace."

Eight weeks had passed since December 5, the date on
which the presence of the Competitor in Plymouth harbour
was reported, and unless the voyage had been disastrous,
the ship should soon arrive in American waters.
Jefferson, aware of this, was, in consequence, kept in a
state of daily suspense. During the protracted interval
of silence, the vessel had really gone through many perils
of the seas. After it left the mouth of the Thames, a
cyclone had blown its sails to ribbons, and had they not
been rotten from long exposure to wind and water, the
terrific impact would have turned the ship over, and no
human hands could have prevented it from sinking, with
every person on board. The captain, Godby by name,
seems to have been worthy of so untrustworthy a vessel.
"Let every soul of you come on deck instantly,"
he called down to the wretched passengers, "we are all
going to the bottom." A feud soon arose between this
man and the professors. "It is a lucky thing for you,"
remarked Key to him, "that you are not in the Royal
Navy. You would have been shot long ago." Mrs.
Key, being desperately seasick, begged Godby to send the
doctor to her at once. "He can't come," was the false
reply. "He is setting Mr. Key's leg, which he has
broken by a fall."

Key and Bonnycastle, who were both deeply versed in

every branch of mathematics, were dubious about the
captain's capacity as a seaman, and in an interval of quiet
sailing, amused themselves with a trick that demonstrated
his ignorance as well as their own idleness. One day,
they asked the mate to let them know the degrees of latitude
and longitude which the ship had reached. "The
captain has ordered me not to tell you," was the reply,
"but I have not been forbidden to chalk them up." Having
thus obtained the information wanted, the two practical
jokers took a long syringe, which they had picked up
in the ship, and held it up mysteriously towards the sun,
aware all the time that the captain was intently observing
them from a distance. Lowering the syringe after a few
minutes of apparent observation, they went to the cabin
and on a table that stood directly under the skylight,
they spread out a large sheet of paper, which they began
at once to cover with columns of meaningless figures.
They noted on the sheet, as the result of their pretended
calculations, that the vessel, on that date, had arrived
at such and such latitude and longitude, a mere repetition
of what the mate had told them; and they followed this
up with the memorandum that the conclusions were
reached "in accord with Dr. Barlow's new method."
While this solemn farce was in progress, the two conspirators
were conscious that Godby had been looking
down on them suspiciously through the skylight. The
paper was left on the table, and a short time afterwards,
the captain was seen examining the figures with the closest
scrutiny. When Key and Bonnycastle inspected the log
for that day they found, to their merriment, that the
longitude and latitude of the ship's location was entered
as the mate had stated them, but with the addendum,
"calculated by me by Dr. Barlow's new method."

Beguiling the tedium of the protracted voyage with

such boyish pranks as these, which would probably have
jarred upon Jefferson's conception of professorial dignity
as much as Long's youthful appearance had done,
the three young men finally arrived at Norfolk on Thursday,
February 10 (1825), three months and a half after
the "old log" in which they sailed had dropped down the
Thames. Dunglison and Key were accompanied by their
brides; and both couples must have passed through very
tumultuous honeymoons in so rough and perilous a voyage
as the one which had just closed. The packet for Richmond
left Norfolk the next day, but the travellers, perhaps
in consequence of their recent tossings on the sea,
were unable to continue the journey so soon; and it was
not until the ensuing Tuesday that they were ready to
depart. They were met at the wharf in Richmond by
Thomas Mann Randolph, and his son, Thomas J. Randolph,
the son-in-law and grandson of Jefferson, and by
them were carried off to the home of Chapman Johnson,
a member of the Board of Visitors.

Before the party left for the University, a large number
of the principal citizens of the town were invited to
meet them at a formal reception. Though Richmond, at
that time, was a small community, it possessed, as the
capital of the State, a society of unusual culture and refinement,
which embraced the families of the most distinguished
public officials, lawyers, physicians, and merchants
in the Commonwealth. There were persons present
who had not attended such an occasion in the memory
of the younger generation. "The grave," remarked
Maria Randolph, in her lively description of the packed
assemblage, "seemed to have given up the dead, for
there came ladies whom I have never heard of being
out before for years to see the English people." Having
met Long and Blaettermann, she said that they were

inferior in attractiveness to Key, Bonnycastle and Dunglison.
Her astonishment, not to say disgust, was without
bounds when Mrs. Key and Mrs. Dunglison,—whom she
found "genteel, sensible, and quite pretty,"—confessed
that they had never heard of Byron or Scott, a statement
so incredible that it may have been intended as a gentle
British snub to the Virginian girl's enthusiasm for those
two writers of universal fame. It was a period, however,
in which the average English woman was more remarkable
for her ignorance than for her knowledge. Among
the guests at the reception was Jarvis, a painter of distinction
in those times, and he appears to have furnished
the chief amusement for the company, and in a form so
characteristic of English social entertainments, that the
English couples present must have felt very much at
home. A whisper ran through the room that Jarvis
would dance a hornpipe on the top of the piano, and the
ladies at once drew together in a crowd about the instrument.
With his brush, he had made a sailor boy
of one of his hands,—the fingers were painted to represent
a pair of loose white pantaloons, and the back, the
body of the figure; and "really," says Miss Randolph,
"the most elegant hornpipe and jig I ever saw he danced.
... to the boisterous mirth of the whole company; and
these scientific, philosophical strangers were more amused
than any one else. You see we are nothing more at last
than full-grown children."

Cabell visited the professors and their wives the second
day after their arrival in Richmond, and wrote to Cocke
of the pleasant impression which he had received of their
personalities. Colonel Peyton, in a letter to the proctor,
mentioned that this favorable impression was shared by
everybody. He promptly sent their luggage on to the
University by wagon; and as it comprised numerous boxes

as well as trunks, it is probable that they had brought
over at least a part of their libraries. Bonnycastle, the
only member of the party who was unmarried, consigned
as many as ten boxes to his care, and the others in a
smaller proportion. The reputation for good breeding
and high attainments which the three men had won in
Richmond was confirmed after their arrival at the University
and their assumption of the duties of their several
chairs. "Your professors," wrote Brockenbrough to
Gilmer,—and he included Long in the compliment,—
"do you much honor as well as themselves. I apprehend
that those solicited by the Board of Visitors will hardly
give the same eclat." Jefferson, who was always cautious
in expressing an opinion unless confident that he had
arrived at a just conclusion, also wrote that the University
had been most fortunate in enlisting the services of
the foreigners. "A finer selection," he said in a letter
to W. B. Giles, December 26, 1825, "could not have
been made. Besides their being of a grade of science
that has left little superior behind, the correctness of
their moral character, their accommodating disposition,
and zeal for the prosperity of the institution, leaves
nothing more to ask."

XX. The Three American Professors

We have seen how insuperable were the obstacles which
Gilmer, though assisted by English and Scotch scientists
of influence, had to overcome in his endeavor to secure a
professor of natural history in the British universities.
On his return to the United States without success in obtaining
one, he offered, at Monroe's suggestion apparently,
the professorship to Torrey, of West Point Academy,
afterwards the distinguished incumbent of the chair

of botany and chemistry in the famous College of Physicians
and Surgeons, situated in New York City. Torrey
was unwilling to accept it, but recommended Dr. John
Patton Emmet, whose "talents as chemist and scholar
and standing as a gentleman, were," he said, "of the first
rank. I know him well and know none before him."
The interview between Gilmer and Emmet which followed
led ultimately to his selection to fill the vacant professorship.

Emmet was a nephew of the famous Irish patriot of the
same patronymic, and had first opened his eyes upon the
world in a house in Dublin. He was too young at the
time of his father's emigration to have acquired many
Celtic traits by actual personal intercourse with his fellow
Irishmen, but those characteristics in their finest aspects
had been inherited by him with his blood.[2] He was
eight years of age when, coming up from the sea, he saw
the Battery at New York for the first time. As soon as
eligible, he had succeeded in obtaining an appointment to
West Point Academy as a cadet, and before he left that
institution, had won so much reputation by his acquirements
as to be chosen an assistant instructor in mathematics.
His health had been permanently debilitated by
one attack after another of smallpox, measles, and whooping
cough, and in the hope of throwing off the physical
infirmity that resulted, he spent a year in the mild climate
of Naples; and while at leisure there, amused himself
with the study of Italian, and also of music, sculpture,
and painting. After his return to New York, so delicate
were his lungs still, that, during the harsh months of
winter, he kept closely under the roof of his own home.
When it was safe to go out of doors, he attended lectures

in the College of Physicians and Surgeons; and graduating
from that institution, received the degree of a
doctor of medicine. In the meanwhile, his inquiring and
speculative mind was very deeply interested in researches
in the science of chemistry. Setting up a laboratory in
his father's house, he pursued, with ardor, a line of experiments
that looked to the creation of highly valued
articles out of very ordinary materials,—such, for instance,
as the conversion of cheap wines into costly Madeira
and the like.

Hoping that a warmer climate would give a lasting
good turn to his health, which was still uncertain, he
settled in Charleston, in 1822, with the intention of residing
there permanently as a practitioner of medicine.
A course of lectures on the sciences which he delivered in
that city was received with popular applause; and this,
with his record at West Point Academy, led Professor
Torrey to recommend him to Gilmer for the chair of natural
history, when he himself was unable to accept it.

Like Professor Long, Emmet called on Jefferson within
a few days after he reached the University. This visit
must have been made on foot, for he records somewhat
ruefully, after his return from the laborious tramp, that
he had found that, in reality, Monticello was not the little
mountain which its name suggested. "I have dined
several times in the family since my arrival," he wrote to
his father, "and would go oftener, notwithstanding the
distance and altitude, were it not for lectures, lectures,
lectures,—an extremely pleasant old man and hospitable
as can be. We all take the greatest delight in promoting
his views, and he has expressed himself as well pleased."

Although Emmet had spent his early life in communities
which had discarded the institution of African slavery,
and professed to abhor it, yet, in beginning housekeeping

in his pavilion, he was anxious to purchase a black
house-servant. "I have experienced nothing but disappointment
from the hired ones," he wrote Cocke, impatiently.
Would Cocke assist him in buying one? Very
much exasperated by the condition in which he found his
apartments, he wrote the proctor a hasty and uncivil
note; and he seems to have been drawn into further controversy
with the same official by his desire to obtain the
money required to build an addition of one room to the
main structure. While still a bachelor, he exhibited that
fondness for the society of animals which formed such
a delightful and amusing side of the daily life of the English
naturalist, Frank Buckland,—his intimate companions
under his own roof were numerous snakes, that slided
about at will in one of the chambers, a white owl, and a
very friendly bear, which, permitted to run at large in the
house and garden, had the bad habit of suddenly alarming
the visitors by appearing unexpectedly. Marriage put an
end to this primaeval affiliation; Mrs. Emmet is said to
have taken advantage of the softness of the honeymoon to
insist that the owl should be let loose in the woods, and
the snakes and bear killed. It was the fate of the unhappy
bear to be served up at table as a very rare dish.

Emmet's mind revealed its inventive and constructive
turn from the very beginning of his University career.
He had not long been associated with the institution when
he suggested that a vacuum of the air might be used to
generate propulsive power; and that chemistry could be
made very effective in forcing the growth of vegetables.
He proved that the kaolin in the contiguous soil offered
very good material for the manufacture of pottery and
porcelain vases; and he purchased ground and planted
the Chinese mulberry to carry on his experiments in the
nurture of the silk-worm. He built a house in which to

manipulate the silk itself, and manufactured his own dyes.
He also cultivated those kinds of grapes, from which, in
foreign countries, were expressed the most costly wines
and brandies, and produced the latter for his own enjoyment.[3]
He grew pyrocanthus hedges, set out rare fruit
trees, planted new species of esculents, and introduced
flowers unknown hitherto in our climate. He was interested
in domestic economy so far as to test various acids
for the best means of curing hams; and experimented at
length with steam for the generation of rotatory motion.
He could compose sonnets, fashion busts from the kaolin
dug up in his own fields, and throw off sketches, chiefly
comic, with ease. His generous disposition was swayed
by the impulsiveness of the Irish nature: it was said of
him that sudden and lively emotions prompted his likings
and distastes, and that he was keenly grateful for kindness,
and unreasonably resentful of supposed injuries.
"Disease, when he was in company," remarks Professor
Tucker, "could not overcome the warmth of his feelings,
cloud the cheerfulness of his temper, or dim the corruscations
of his wit."[4]

In a description of the University which was printed
in the columns of the Richmond Enquirer, in May, 1824,
General Cocke emphasized the intention of the Board of
Visitors to confine the selection of incumbents for the
chairs of ethics and law to American citizens. In harmony
with this pronouncement, George Tucker was invited to
accept the chair of ethics. Both Jefferson and Madison
had formed a very exalted estimate of his abilities and
accomplishments; and as they possessed the controlling
voice in the selection of the professors, they requested
Cabell to inform him of their decision in his favor.
Tucker, who was, at this time, a member of Congress
(1825), was in Washington, and so soon as the House
adjourned, he visited Monticello to find out from Jefferson
in person about the duties and emoluments of the
place; and above all, as to whether the tenure would be
temporary or permanent. There is no room for doubt
that he was influenced in abandoning public life by the
prospect of obtaining, in the new chair, the leisure which
was necessary for the full gratification of his taste for
literary composition. Although closely identified with
the public affairs of Virginia, he was not a native of the
State or even of the American continent. His birthplace
was on the island of Bermuda, where his family
had enjoyed a position of importance, both social and
political, during several generations. Trained to the
profession of law in the office of that island's principal
barrister, he debated, at the age of twenty, whether he
should emigrate to England or to the United States. He
finally determined to pursue a course of study in the College
of William and Mary, to which he was perhaps

drawn by the fact that his cousin, St. George Tucker,
now a distinguished judge, resided in Williamsburg. He
was soon congenially domiciled there, and has left a sympathetic
description of its pleasant social life. "Some
twelve or fifteen families," he said, "all in easy circumstances,
were constantly exchanging dinners and evening
parties, attended by visitors from a distance, and enlivened
by wit, intelligence, and abundant living."

Tucker filled up the intervals of relaxation from study
with writing didactic papers and memorial poetry. A
visit to Philadelphia and New York brought him into
the most conspicuous society of those cities. He was introduced
to Jay and Clinton; and was invited to a reception
given by President Washington, whose majestic
figure, dressed in black velvet, and whose imposing mien,
he never afterwards forgot. After one year spent in
Bermuda, Tucker returned to Virginia in 1800, with the
intention of becoming a member of the Richmond bar.
In that town, he at once entered the literary and political
circle that gave it so much charm and distinction during
that period,—was a friend of Wirt, Hay, Peyton,
Randolph, and Ritchie, and with them contributed to the
Enquirer, a famous journal of that and a later day.
Other papers and periodicals served as additional mediums
of publication for the numerous essays and poems
which he was now composing. His professional business
brought him into constant intercourse with John Marshall
and John Wickham,—the one, the foremost figure on the
bench; the other, at the bar. Having, in 1802, married
Maria Carter, the daughter of Charles Carter, of Blenheim,
and a great-niece of Washington, he found himself
united by the widest family ramifications with all that was
socially distinguished in his adopted State. A certain
prospect of a lucrative practice opening up in Pittsylvania

county, he made his home there in 1806; represented the
county in the General Assembly; and during ten years,
stood in the front rank of its learned and gifted bar.
In spite of his active calling and distance from libraries,
while a citizen of that community, he was able to write
an elaborate series of papers, which, under the title of
Thoughts of a Hermit, was published in the Philadelphia
Portfolio. In 1818, he removed to Lynchburg, a town
of three thousand people at this time; and the force of
his personal influence was now so dominant in the district,
that he was nominated and elected a member of Congress;
and again elected at the end of his first term.

A volume of essays which he issued during his tenure
of this office, impressed Mr. Madison so favorably that
it was the cause of his recommending him to Jefferson as
highly competent to fill the chair of ethics. He had
reached his fiftieth milestone when called to this chair,
and it was due to his greater maturity in years, his genial
disposition and popular manners, and his knowledge of
the world acquired from his association with the best society,
that he was selected as the first chairman of the
Faculty. "My colleagues," he records in his autobiography,
"were all agreeable, well-informed men; they
had all travelled quite extensively in foreign countries.
We were very sociable, often dining and passing the evening
together; and the life which we then led, though
seemingly monotonous and devoid of interest, has, no
doubt, appeared to all, in retrospect, as one of the happiest
portions of our lives."

Not long before his acceptance of the chair of ethics,
Tucker had written a novel entitled the Valley of the
Shenandoah. It was printed in the United States, but
not distributed, and a copy finding its way to London, led
to a second edition, which was afterwards translated into

German. He was now in the possession of greater leisure
for his literary ventures; these took most often the
form of transient articles for reviews and daily journals;
but there were separate volumes too, which reflected his
lighter as well as his more solid tastes: A Voyage to the
Moon; Rents, Wages and Profits; Progress of the United
States in Population and Wealth; Theory of Money and
Banks; the Life of Jefferson. The last work was too impartial
to please either the Federalists or the Republicans,
but it caused Brougham to remark that it had given him a
much juster conception of the merits of the former President
than he had had before. The volume on the different
phases of political economy, which were received
with so much approbation by serious students of the subject,
were the target of numerous jokes among his own
pupils. As the accomplished professor would ride by,
they would say, "Yonder goes dear old Tucker on Money
and Banks." It is a proof of his versatility that he could
compose a novel that would be thought worthy of translation
into a foreign language, and draw up a treatise that
would cause his election to membership in the Statistical
Society of Paris. When the Museum was first issued by
professors of the University, he suggested that he should
contribute a story to its pages. Dunglison, who made no
pretension to any literary culture beyond what was needed
by the scientist, was the editor of the periodical at that
time; and he was so unreasonably resentful of the proposition,
that he wrote in disgust to Cabell, "If there is
anything which has detracted more than another from the
reputation of Mr. Tucker, it is the fact of his having
written works of this character. Wherever I travel, I
hear this objected to him, and find him underrated, for
his merits are very far beyond his reputation. Of these
objections, he does not seem aware, although the want of
success in the production of what he has issued, ought to
have warned him of it."

It is to be inferred from this impatient comment that
Professor Tucker's colleagues had no admiration for his
imaginative faculty; and as neither his poems nor his
novels have survived in popular favor, it is quite probable
that their apparently severe judgment was correct.
His figure, from the literary point of view alone, seems
an incongruous one in the provincial Virginia of those
times, in spite of the success of the British Spy; there
was no encouragement then in the State for a literateur of
secondary merit, as Tucker unqestionably was; and he
would have found a more congenial and profitable atmosphere
in London for that side of his intellectual activities,
had he settled there, as he had thought of doing in early
manhood. It reveals his moderate opinion of Virginia as
a bookish community, that, when he resigned his chair
in 1845, in order to give up his entire life to literary pursuits,
he removed his home to Philadelphia, because he
was assured there of a larger reading public and of more
facilities for the gratification of his dominant literary
tastes. The intellectual energy of the man, as late as
his seventy-fifth year, was exhibited in his undertaking to
write, at that time of life, a voluminous history of the
United States; and other works, marked by pregnancy
of thought and wealth of learning, did not cease to drop
from his pen until he had passed his eighty-fifth birthday.
His last production was a characteristic series of verses
entitled, Pleasures Left to Old Age,—pleasures, which
so far as an industrious hand, a clear, contented, and
benignant mind could create them, continued to attend his
gentle decline until the end. Like so many of the members
of the distinguished family to which he belonged,
he possessed the clarifying quality of humor; and as that

quality is most often simply common sense in a scintillant
form, it will be seen that it helped him, as chairman of
the Faculty, to solve many serious problems in the government
of the students, with a sympathy and moderation
which were frequently lost sight of by the authorities of
the University in those turbulent times. As lawyer, congressman,
professor, and literateur, he exhibited talents
and accomplishments of a very high order; and in private
life, was beloved for his kind, genial, and winning traits.
That he had an invincible inclination for domesticity, and
was by nature hostile to race suicide, was disclosed in his
three successful marriages; and, in each instance, to a
woman of uncommon intelligence and charm.

Of all the professorships to which appointments had
to be made at the beginning, the most difficult was the
chair of law. This condition was not due to the rigid
Republican standard by which Jefferson had resolved to
test the political opinions of each candidate. As a matter
of fact, there was no disciple of John Marshall in
Virginia who would have had the temerity to offer testimonials
in support of his application for the position.
The promptness with which such a person would have
been turned down by Jefferson and Madison, had his
name been presented, would not have startled any of the
colleagues of the two former Presidents on the Board of
Visitors. But it was not necessary to look to the thin
ranks of the Federalists in the State, for there were too
many astute and learned members of its bar who were
fervently in sympathy with the political principles which
Jefferson had so long and so successfully advocated.

The first obstacle which had to be surmounted before
the chair could be filled properly was the small inducement
which its comparatively meagre salary offered to
men who were moving along on the crest of a lucrative

practice. The other chairs could be filled by calling to
them persons who had occupied similar professorships in
other colleges, where, perhaps, they had been receiving an
even lower rate of remuneration; but the number of lawyers
who had abandoned the bar and become instructors
in jurisprudence was too small to ensure an easy and early
selection among them, even by offering a higher income
than they were already earning. Of all the local colleges,
the College of William and Mary alone had employed a
regular lecturer in this department of study; and in 1824,
there were probably not more than three or four private
law schools in Virginia. On the other hand, the number
of capable barristers in proportion to the number of inhabitants
was never so great in the history of the same
community; and yet, as we shall see, the chair of law at
the University was only permanently filled after a monotonous
reception of somewhat mortifying declinations.
Gilmer, in a letter addressed to Cabell, mentions the
second reason which, with the first, fully explains the
unwillingness to accept this chair. "In Virginia," he
said, "law was the foremost profession, and leads to all
preferment." There was no man of prominence at the
bar who was not ambitious of rising ultimately to high
judicial or political office. Political honors especially
were keenly coveted, and few with capacity to acquire
them were ready to cut themselves off from their possession
by accepting a professorship in any seat of learning,
however great its importance. Nor would it have logically
followed that a very able lawyer at the bar of that
day would have been an equally able teacher of law in
the University lecture-room. The aptitudes demanded
in either calling were not then and still are not the same.
The history of the institution, during the first century of
its existence, has shown that the most competent instructors
who have filled its professorships of law, have
been men who were drawn away from the bar in early life
before rising to eminence, and who made a profession of
teaching law, as they had, at one time, intended to make a
profession of practising it.

The first appointment to the chair took place before
Central College was converted into the University.
Among the multitudinous subjects to be taught by Dr.
Cooper were the various branches of jurisprudence, and
he was supposed to have prepared himself for it by his
career at the bar and on the bench in Pennsylvania, and
by his authorship of at least one legal treatise of value.
In 1823, there seems to have been some expectation that
Chancellor Kent could be induced to take the position
which Cooper had been forced to resign by the outcry
against his religious creed. When the Board met in
April, 1824, they offered Gilmer the option of becoming
the professor either of law or of morals. From a letter
which he wrote Chapman Johnson from Edinburgh,
in the following August, it is patent that he had not
even then made up his mind to accept the chair of law,
the one which he preferred. "Long as I have delayed it,
I yet want the material for a final judgment," he remarked,
"but think it proper to say, that, considering
the immense labors thrown on one, the very short vacation,
and my prospects at the bar, a salary of two thousand
dollars is the least I could accept. With that beginning
in October, to enable me to prepare my course in
the winter, I believe I should accept it. But not knowing
that you will grant it on these terms, I think it best to
give you notice that you may look elsewhere in time. If
you would make me President or something, with the
privilege of residing anywhere within three miles of the

Rotunda, it would be a great inducement. But to put me
down in one of those pavilions is to serve me as an apothecary
would a lizard or beetle in a phial of whiskey set
in a window and corked tight. I could not for fifteen
hundred dollars endure this, even if I had no labor."

After Gilmer's arrival in New York from England, he
seems to have abandoned whatever intention he may have
had of accepting the chair of law, for we soon find him in
negotiation with Professor Kent, who was now delivering
at Columbia College a series of lectures which were afterwards
to be expanded into his well-known Commentaries.
So great was his fame already and so enormous would be
the distinction which he would give to the Law School,
should he consent to take charge of it, that Gilmer at least
appears to have been ready to sink all thought of his
political convictions. As the communication between the
two men was brief, and without result, it is not possible
to say how far Jefferson would have approved the appointment
of this political heretic, mild, and reasonable,
and academic as he was.

Gilmer himself having declined the chair for himself,
and having failed to secure the ripe learning of Kent, it
was decided, at the instance of Cabell, it would appear, to
offer the professorship to Henry St. George Tucker.
Tucker was the son of St. George Tucker, of Williamsburg,
who was a judge and lecturer of distinction, and
also a man of unusual literary culture. Henry St. George
was a half-brother of John Randolph of Roanoke and
was himself a man of uncommon talents, a lawyer of
extraordinary learning, and in disposition remarkable for
his genial qualities, sense of humor, pure spirit, and perfect
uprightness. He was now domiciled in Winchester,
where he was conducting a private law school, which enjoyed

the highest reputation among the members of the
Virginian bar. Tucker had a large family dependent
upon him for support, and, perhaps, for this reason principally,
he was unwilling to accept the law professorship,
as the salary was too small to afford him, at that time at
least, a comfortable subsistence. His family too were
attached to Winchester, where Mrs. Tucker's mother was
still living at an advanced age. An additional reason
was that he did not think himself competent to govern
so large a body of young men as would be assembled
under him at the University; and, moreover, he was distrustful
of his ability to teach the sciences of politics and
political economy.[5] Such fears were not shared by the
Board of Visitors.

P. P. Barbour was next invited. Barbour was a lawyer
of equal ability, and perhaps even greater distinction, if
not at this, at a subsequent period, for among the honors
which had adorned, or were still to adorn his career,
were the Speakership of the House of Representatives,
and a seat on the bench of the Supreme Court. Barbour
also declined the offer. In April, 1825, several weeks
after the University had opened its doors, and when every
other chair had been filled, Madison admitted in a letter
to Cocke that he had begun to look upon the vacancy in
the law professorship with a feeling almost of despair;
and as that professorship was still unoccupied at the close
of the first session in December of the same year, this
feeling had, doubtless, only increased in intensity. It
was fully justified, for, in addition to Gilmer, Tucker, and
Barbour, Judge Carr, a nephew of Jefferson, had refused
it, and also Judge Dade, a member of the Rockfish Gap
Commission. In January, 1826, Jefferson's hopes, in

spite of Gilmer's low condition, seem to have turned again
to him.[6] His health in August of the previous year was
apparently sufficiently restored by a visit to the Springs
to allow him to perform the quiet duties of the chair,
and it was thought that he would be able to do this with
the more cheerfulness because all expectation of a public
career had been abandoned as subjecting his remaining
strength to the stress of too many vicissitudes. Before,
however, he could make any preparation for beginning a
course of lectures, his former weakness returned, and he
was precipitated again upon the downward road which
was to end so soon in his death.

As late as March, 1826, when the second session was
fully underway, the vacant chair had not been filled.
Judge William H. Cabell now suggested the name of the
famous William Wirt. "If you can offer to give him
three thousand dollars, besides tuition fees," he wrote
his brother Joseph, "you might probably get him for
your professor of law. What a splendid professor he
would make, and what numbers he would attract to the
University! The qualifications necessary for a professor
of law enable its possessor to make so much money in
other ways, and to use such honorable professional rewards,
that you will try in vain to get a suitable man unless
you give him a greater fixed salary than you allow
to the other professors. But you say you cannot afford

it. Then make up your mind that the University is
neither to derive reputation or to confer benefits so far
as that professorship is concerned. ... Then you might
make him President for the present, and give him something
on that score; and then you may make his students
pay a little more than the others. By these means united,
I have strong hopes that you might give enough to attract
even such a man as Wirt. I have not heard from him
directly or indirectly on the subject. But I know the turn
of his mind: that is an offer which I verily feel he would
prefer to any other, provided that the emoluments could
come within the amount deemed sufficient."

It is particularly significant that both Gilmer and W.
H. Cabell, two lawyers who were familiar with the pecuniary
side of legal practice in Virginia, suggested the association
of the Presidency of the University with the professorship
of law; and that both had in mind simply the
most available means of increasing the salary of that
chair to a point that would assure its acceptance by some
man of the highest ability and learning. It was probably
recognized by the Board that jealousies would be aroused
in the ranks of the Faculty, should one of their number
be awarded a far greater remuneration for his lectures
and recitations than the rest. The value of the Presidency
as an executive office does not seem to have been
grasped at this time, in spite of the existence of that office
in every other prominent college in the United States.
The only question that interested the minds of the Visitors
in connection with its creation now was its possible
usefulness in aiding them to secure a competent instructor
without apparently breaking the rule that fixed the salaries
of all the members of the Faculty at the same definite
figure. How urgent, in the contemplation of the
Board, was the necessity of filling the vacant chair at once

is proven by their determination to disregard Jefferson's
energetic protest against the proposed innovation. It
was the only instance of an important action on their part
in which his wishes did not control their decision; and this
shows how much perplexed the Board was after a full
year of continuous effort to induce a lawyer of distinction
to accept the position. Perhaps Wirt was privately informed
of Jefferson's earnest opposition to the creation
of the new office; but whether this was so or not, he declined
the offer and remained in active practice until his
death.[7]

The first suggestion of the name of Lomax, a lawyer of
high standing in Fredericksburg, and a member of a respected
family that had long resided in that part of Virginia,
was made apparently by Geo. W. Spotswood in a
letter to Cabell in January, 1826. Spotswood was one
of the men, of excellent social connections, who had been
put in charge of the University hotels. "Have you
thought of Lomax?" he asked. "He is undoubtedly a
man of talents, and I should suppose would fill the place
ably. I once had some conversation with him on that
subject. He observed that, if it was offered to him, he
would not refuse it." The selection of Lomax seems to

have been made conditional upon Wirt's declination; and
when this event occurred, the appointment was offered to
him definitely, and was accepted. He was remarkable
for his warm benevolence and sensitive probity of character.
From the very start, he took a very lofty view of
the moral possibilities of the professorship which he was
called upon to occupy: he assured Cabell that he concurred
with him in looking upon his chair as "one of the
highest stations on earth." The important duties which
he had now to perform were not, in his eyes, personal to
himself and his students only,—he undertook them with
the primary intention of contributing directly to the
broadest welfare of his native State. The feeling of exaltation
with which he began continued throughout his
incumbency. When he resigned in 1830, he declared,
with transparent truthfulness, that only "apprehension on
account of his family had warned him to give up a station
which seldom offers itself more than once in a man's
life." The salary had proved inadequate for their support;
and when he was elected by the General Assembly to
a judgeship, he felt under compulsion to accept it.

By the late spring of 1826, the circle of the original
professors was finally and satisfactorily completed. Each
chair was now occupied, and omitting Dr. Blaettermann,
who showed a violent spleen at times, the incumbents
were remarkable, not only for their scholarly and scientific
acquirements, but also, as Jefferson had said, for
excellence of character and propriety of conduct. With
the exception of Tucker, they were young men; so young,
indeed, that, in several instances, they were just starting
upon their careers as teachers.

What was their appearance? Among the persons who
resided within the University precincts during the first
years was Mrs. Beirne, a niece of Mrs. Long, a lady of

lively talents and observant curiosity. We are indebted
to her for a brief account of her impressions of these
young men, most of whom had recently left their own
country to assist in setting the new institution in motion.
Dr. Emmet, she said, was not remarkable for good looks,
because his face was pitted with small pox, but he was
charming in his manners, and very interesting in conversation.
Long, who was described by one of his biographers
as "the essence of truth and honesty, and a hater of all
sham, social or intellectual," was small in figure, blond
in coloring, but delicate in appearance. Dr. Thomas
Brockenbrough said of him that he was so young looking
that he would have passed for a "bashful boy," had it
not been for the dignity of his bearing. Nevertheless,
he told a good story and enjoyed a hearty laugh. Key
escaped Mrs. Beirne's notice, but we learn from Burwell
Stark, a student during the first session, that he was nearly
six feet in height,—this tallness being accentuated by
slenderness,—and that, while his face was full of intelligence,
it was not conspicuous for comeliness. Bonnycastle,
who, at his death, was pronounced by the Faculty
to have possessed all the domestic virtues and a delicate
sense of honor, and who had the reputation of being a
man of such universal learning that he could fill any chair
in the University with ease, was not considered by Mrs.
Beirne to be handsome, but "amiable, gentlemanlike,
and charming in his manners." Dunglison was described
as "fine looking and agreeable." But the most popular
of all the professors was Tucker, the fountains of whose
geniality never ran dry, and who never failed to delight
with his keen sense of humor, his inexhaustible fund of
anecdotes, and his racy information on every subject that
arose in conversation. Blaettermann, who was soon
plunged in quarrels with members of his class, passed
without comment on his appearance or character. Lomax
was remarkable for the benevolence of his face; and
as was to be expected from his lofty attitude towards
the duties of his chair, he was looked upon by all, according
to the same lady, as "a lovely Christian gentleman."[8]

From the day that the lectures began, it was a topic for
comment that Long and Key, who were nearly of the
same age, and already ripe friends through their association
at college in England, showed little disposition to cultivate
the society of the other professors. With at least
one member of that circle, Key seems to have been on
terms of irritable, if not fierce, hostility. The professor
of mathematics,—so Mr. Wertenbaker has related,—
"once kicked at the professor of modern languages,
Blaettermann, under the faculty-table, and the latter told
him that he kicked like an ass." It may be inferred from
this scene that Key did not allow his new dignity to check,
even in the faculty-room, any returning desire to repeat
the rough horse-play with which he had dispersed the
tedium of his ocean passage. Cocke, like most of his
class in Virginia, was, perhaps, not fully in sympathy with
the importation of foreign instructors,[9] and this probably
explains the prejudiced tone of his allusion to Key
and Long on the occasion of a quarrel which had detached
them from their English colleague, Bonnycastle. "From
what I saw of the stuff of which these two savants are

composed," he wrote to Cabell, "I can well believe them
capable of a cross course."

Did the foreign professors find the strange and remote
community in which they were now secluded thoroughly
congenial to their tastes? It would have been extraordinary
had four Englishmen, of characteristic insular instincts,
and accustomed to the stately English colleges,
with their century-old buildings, and their traditions of
scholarship running back to the mediaeval age, been satisfied,
at first, in a University of red bricks too raw as yet
to be covered with ivy, or to possess a single memory of
achievement to spur emulation and excite the sense of
pride. Moreover, the confusion that resulted from the
loose regulations supposed to govern the students, was exasperating
to the tempers even of Emmet, Lomax, and
Tucker, who had been educated in American seats of
learning. "You know," wrote Tucker to Cabell, "that
of four English professors, three found the place not to
their taste, and have left it; and that the fourth does not
disguise the fact that he means to go as soon as he has
made enough to live in England." There is no record
independently of this to prove that Dunglison and Bonnycastle
at least were from the start displeased with their
surroundings at the University. It is true that one of the
two accepted a call to another institution; but the inducement,
in this instance, lay in the greater advantages of a
large city, and what was perhaps even more alluring, a
larger salary. Bonnycastle died at the University, and
his death was deeply lamented there.[10] Long, who was
married to an American woman, was, for that reason,
perhaps, better satisfied than Key, and the recollections
of his career in Virginia, which he committed to paper,

reveal the kindly feeling with which he looked back on his
sojourn in the State. There is no surviving minute of
any kind to prove that Key retained a pleasant impression
of his professorship. His wife was an English woman
of few intellectual resources,—if her ignorance of the
existence of Scott and Byron can be taken as a test,—
and very probably missed the society of her own circle
of kin, and the amusements she had been accustomed
to in her native land. If this was the case, it was natural
that she should have used her influence to diminish
her husband's sense of the value of his chair in a foreign
university. Key and herself returned to England before
the termination of his contract; and the main reason
which he seems to have given for the rupture of his relations
was that the climate of Virginia, even in the salubrious
Piedmont, was not congenial to his health, but as the
entire State had been originally settled by English people,
and his fellow English professors made no complaint of
its heats in summer or rigors in winter, it is possible that
this justification, however honestly put forward, was not
really the principal impulse of his unexpected departure.
His action was all the more open to comment because he
had expressed to Gilmer an intention to become a citizen
of the United States so soon as he should arrive at his
destination.[11]

XXI. The Library

Jefferson manifested as much solicitude about the acquisition
of a carefully chosen library as he did about the
employment of competent professors; and he foresaw,
from the start, that the books, like the men, would have
to be imported from foreign countries. He spoke of the

imposing building which occupied the centre of the northern
line more often as the Library than as the Rotunda;
and certainly among all the apartments to be found in the
numerous structures of the University group, the handsomest
and most spacious was the circular room, reaching
to the spreading dome, where, in alcove after alcove,
gallery upon gallery, the large collection of volumes was
to be arranged after his death. It was completed, in all
essential details, in time for his eyes to take in its noble
proportions; but he did not live to superintend the storage
of the books in cases and on shelves, within the
round of its lofty walls.

As far back as 1814, when Central College itself had
not been founded, he, in the confident expectation that a
great university would yet be built and equipped at the
expense of the State, remarked to Cooper that, when this
institution was set up, it might become a bidder for the
varied assortment of volumes belonging to Dr. Priestley,
in which Cooper was interested as Priestley's literary executor.
And this well selected store, he said, might be
further swelled in number and increased in value, by the
addition of the books at Monticello. The library belonging
to that mansion consisted of at least seven thousand
volumes; and Jefferson, perhaps, was not shooting
beyond the mark in describing it as the "best chosen collection
probably in America." It was singularly rich in
works relating to American history,—such works as could
only be gathered up elsewhere after a long and expensive
search; and he exhibited characteristic liberality when he
announced that he would be satisfied for the institution,
so soon as incorporated, to acquire the entire number on
such terms as should fall well within its ability to purchase.
After the building began, Jefferson caused notices
to be inserted in the Enquirer and Central Gazette, of

Richmond, in which it was stated that the University had
already received gifts of books from several munificent
citizens, such as Mr. Hansford, of King George county,
Bernard Moore Carter, a native of Virginia, but now a
resident of London, and Mr. Coolidge, of Boston. The
volumes presented by them, running up to five or six hundred
titles, contained sets of the choicest stamp. The
example offered by these men of benevolent temper, he
hoped, would be imitated by others, who were in a position
of equal ability to confer benefit upon the recently
established seat of learning.

During the winter of 1823–24, the General Assembly
authorized a conditional appropriation of fifty thousand
dollars for the purchase of a library and scientific apparatus.
Unfortunately, this appropriation was but another
form of the claim advanced by Virginia against
the Federal Government for interest on the amount borrowed
for local defense during the war of 1812–15, and,
therefore, could not be drawn upon until Congress had
passed favorably upon that claim and ordered its payment.
How necessary was economy in the expenditures
for the library was clearly brought out in Jefferson's letter
to Richard Rush in April, 1824, in which he stated
that the University could deposit in the hands of Gilmer,
—just about to set out for England,—only a moderate
sum; and that this had to be restricted to the purchase of
text-books, and such apparatus as was imperatively
called for at the start. As it was, the amount was obtained
only by diverting the larger part of the annuity
to this purpose, and deferring, until a later period, the
last touches to the internal finishing of the Rotunda.
Rush recommended Lockington to Jefferson as the stationer
most competent to supply the volumes needed, and
in his turn, Jefferson recommended Lockington to Gilmer.

Not long after his arrival in London, in June,
1824, Gilmer visited the shop occupied by Lockington's
successors, and impressed upon them the importance of
low prices in contracting for the books; but he finally decided
to enter into no specific arrangements with them
until he was assured of success in engaging professors.

It was about this time that he probably received Jefferson's
letter of June 5 informing him that the University
had failed to get "the contingent donation of fifty
thousand dollars" made by the last Assembly, since
Congress had passed by the claim, and as a consequence,
there was nothing more to be anticipated during the present
year for the purchase of either books or apparatus.
This, however, did not touch the sum which Gilmer then
had at disposal on deposit in London for that purpose.
He made good use of his brief visit to Dr. Parr, at Hatton,
during the following month, to obtain his assistance
in arranging a catalogue of classical works. In August,
Parr offered his library, but the sale was not to be consummated
until his death had occurred. The price set
upon the collection was so high that Gilmer was unwilling
to agree to the purchase, although the volumes were of
the rarest classical stamp, and their possession would have
been a badge of scholarly distinction for the infant university.

Major Cartwright, Jefferson's correspondent, a man
of superior literary attainments, showed his good will
by aiding Gilmer in the selection of books. At his request,
Mr. Harris, the former secretary of the Royal
Institution, submitted a list of editions suitable for the
proposed library and also obtained for him a catalogue
of Bentham's works. Gilmer had been looking forward
to the assistance of the newly chosen professors in buying
the books for their respective departments, but as the

hour for his sailing drew near, without his having an
opportunity to make use of their special knowledge, he
wrote down a list of such volumes as could not be dispensed
with, and placed the order for them, as well as
for the instruments also needed, in the hands of his
agent in London. This agent was Bohn, who was assisted
by Marx, the banker, whose firm had the keeping
of the University funds.

In the purchase of the theological works, a catalogue
drawn up by Madison was followed. He was not as
eminent an authority on that subject as he was on all the
great questions of constitutional interpretation, but his
Presbyterian training had probably familiarized him
with books of that general character.

Many of the volumes bought through Bohn arrived at
their destination by wagon in January, 1825. There
were eight large boxes, weighing nearly nine thousand
pounds, delivered during this month. During the session
of the General Assembly, in the winter of 1824–5, fifty
thousand dollars was appropriated for the University's
benefit at once; and of this sum, the proctor was, in May,
instructed to deposit eighteen thousand dollars in the
United States Bank in Philadelphia, subject to the order
of Hilliard, of Boston, who had been appointed the University's
agent in the purchase of books. Hilliard had
already paid out this amount on a large number of
volumes obtained directly from England, France, and
Germany. The Board of Visitors, at their meeting on
October 3, approved, not only this expenditure, but also
the deposit of $6,300 in the hands of Rufus King, in
London, for the acquisition of philosophical instruments,
and $3,157.50 for the purchase of the articles required
for use in the anatomical course. Five hundred dollars
was also set aside for the purchase of Dr. Emmet's chemical

utensils and collection of minerals. Including an appropriation
of six thousand dollars for finishing off the
library room, the cost of books and apparatus purchased
by Gilmer,—amounting to $7,677.81,—and also the
charges for transportation, the total expenditure reached
the sum of $41,980.50, which left unemployed a balance
of only $8,019.50 of the fifty thousand dollars advanced
by the General Assembly. Another large sum was still
required to complete the purchase of the original list of
volumes.

The anticipation that this would be appropriated by
the General Assembly in the winter of 1825–26, proved
to be delusive. "The vote of the House of Delegates,"
wrote Jefferson, in reply to a letter from Cabell, of the
date of February, 1826, "was too decisive to leave any
further expectation from that quarter, or doubt of the
necessity of winding up our affairs, and ascertaining their
ground. I went immediately to the University and advised
the proctor ... to reserve all his funds for the
book-room of the Rotunda and the anatomical theatre.
... We have now five boxes (of volumes) on hand
from Paris unopened; five more from the same place are
supposed to be arrived in Richmond; seven from London
are arrived at Boston; and a part of those from Germany
are now in Boston. All these and others still to
arrive, must remain unopened until the room is ready,
which, unfortunately, cannot be till the season will admit
of plastering, and the joiners' work goes on so slowly that
it is doubtful if that will be ready as soon. The arresting
of all avoidable expense is the more necessary as our
application to Congress for a remission of the interest
has passed the Committee of Claims by a majority of a
single vote only, and has still a long gauntlet to run."

The end of that gauntlet was not reached in the lifetime

of Jefferson, who died in July of the year in which
this letter was written. In the beginning, the first
pavilion erected for Central College seems to have been
used, in part at least, for the storage of the earliest
books to arrive; and it was largely Jefferson's interest in
their assortment which brought about his last visit to the
precincts. They remained under this roof until the
autumn of the same year.

XXII. Administrative Organization

There now remains but one aspect of the constructive
period in the University's history to be presented.
What was the nature of the administrative machinery
which was adopted, either before the lectures began, or
soon thereafter, for the direction and control of its
practical operation? The mainspring of the organization
was the Board of Visitors; the subordinate one, the
Faculty; their instruments, the executive committee of the
Board, the chairman of the Faculty, the proctor, the
patron, the bursar, and the janitor. The Board drafted
all the fundamental laws and instructions; to the Faculty
was delegated a limited power of the same character;
while the executive committee, the chairman, and the
other officers, were simply the responsible agents for carrying
out, within clearly and rigidly defined bounds, the
specific orders which they had received from the authority
above them, or for performing certain duties which had
been imposed upon them by the printed ordinances.[12]

There was nothing novel or original about the general
character of the Board of Visitors: it was essentially a

board of trustees, with all the functions that are usually
exercised by such a public body. A brief enumeration of
these functions was given on a previous page, in the analysis
of the Act of Incorporation passed by the Legislature
in 1819. A concise statement of their tenor as put
in practice in 1825 will now be sufficient. Broadly
speaking, the Board was charged with the oversight and
preservation of the property of the University, in whatever
form it might be; was impowered to diminish or increase
the number of schools; lay off the courses of instruction;
determine all the fees and rents; engage the
professors in the beginning; fill all subsequent vacancies
in the Faculty; remove any offender in that body by a
vote not to fall short of two-thirds of the Visitors; appoint
the different officers, agents, and servants, and
supervise them in a general way in the performance of
their duties. Finally, they were authorized to adopt
such regulations as they considered judicious for the discipline
and control of the students, and the general management
of the University. Severally, or all together,
they were required to make a personal inspection of the
actual working of each school at least once a year; and
as often, a report upon the scholastic and financial condition
of the institution had to be submitted by them to
the General Assembly.

All vacancies in the Board, whether caused by death,
or by resignation, could only be filled by the Governor's
appointment. The Visitors, however, had the right to
elect one of their own number to the office of rector, and
this rector and his associates formed a corporation that
possessed all the powers incident to such a body in the
eye of the law. As the residences of its members would
always be widely dispersed, the need of an executive
committee was perceived from the hour of organization.

We have seen how useful was the share which this committee
had in the building of the University; it was, in
reality, during that period, indispensable; and while its
importance was afterwards sensibly lessened by the
chairmanship of the Faculty, it still performed a necessary
part during the long intervals between the sessions
of the Visitors.

"The zeal of the Board," Madison wrote in November,
1827, to Cocke, "was often tried by the difficulty of
meeting at bad seasons of the year." Indeed, during
such seasons, it was usually impossible to get together a
quorum of the members; but there were often valid reasons
for their absence, apart from the rigorous weather
and the bottomless mud; thus, at the precise date of Madison's
letter, every one of them was kept away by some
form of infirmity or disability: Cabell and Loyall were
detained by their duties in the General Assembly; Breckinridge
was failing in health; and Johnson was buried in
his cases before the courts. Madison himself was steadily
growing so feeble that he declared that he would resign
the rectorship but for his anxiety to avoid taking
any step that might be maliciously interpreted as dictated
by a lack of concern for the institution.[13] Monroe's
interest in it had always been that of a political disciple
of Jefferson, who was disposed to do whatever
would be agreeable to his chief. He, too, when asked to
be present on this occasion, sent back an excuse.

Jefferson, so long as he was alive, remained a member

of the executive committee, and as he was always on the
ground, and Cocke, the other member, could be quickly
summoned, there was no need of calling together the
Board very often. It is probable that the latter body
convened as frequently as they did, because they were
aware that they would enjoy the comforts of his home,
and the charm of his company, while in session. "The
state of my health," he informed Cocke in September,
1825, "renders it perfectly certain that I shall not be
able to attend the next meeting of the Visitors (October
3), yet I think that there is no one but myself to whom
the matters to be acted on are sufficiently known for communication
to them. This adds a reason the more for inducing
the members to meet at Monticello the day before,
which has heretofore been found to facilitate and shorten
our business. If you could be here on Sunday to dinner,
that afternoon and evening, and the morning of Monday,
will suffice for all our business, and the Board will
only have to ride to the University pro forma for attending
the proceedings."

After Jefferson's death, the Visitors, whenever they
assembled at the University, were compelled to find temporary
lodgings in a pavilion,—a rather naked substitute
for the ease and charm of Monticello. In 1828,
two of the pavilions happened to be unoccupied, and at
Madison's suggestion, both were reserved by the proctor
for the accommodation of a very full Board. A few
years later (1833), all the rooms on the upper floor of
pavilion VII, the present Colonnade Club, were permanently
assigned to their use; sufficient furniture was
provided to make these apartments comfortable; and
they were ordered to be kept with scrupulous attention
to health and neatness. The proctor was required to
arrange with the nearest hotel for the supply of all

meals that would be needed by the Visitors, during their
stay, while shelter and fodder for their horses were provided
in the University stables.[14]

The only section of the administrative machinery which
bore the distinctive stamp of Jefferson's democratic
genius was the Faculty, and this only on the side of the
chairmanship. The Board of Visitors and the regular
officers of the institution followed, in their general character
and special functions, the lines customary with
trustees and agents. This was so too with the Faculty
in the larger duties which they discharged, as will be
discerned in a subsequent enumeration. From a broad
point of view, the relation of this body to the Board of
Visitors was simply that of a small wheel within a big
wheel, the small wheel revolving in the same direction as
the big, and absolutely controlled in its motion by its
greater fellow. It has been asserted[15] that, had Jefferson
caught his inspiration from Teutonic, and not
from French sources, he would perhaps have placed the
Faculty upon a coordinate footing with the Board of Visitors;
but this was hardly practicable as the University
was a State and not a private institution. Jefferson was
most solicitous that the Commonwealth's exclusive proprietorship
in it should be patent at every turn; and this
could only have been brought out most clearly by imposing
all the responsibilities of its general government on
one Board, and making that Board answerable to the
State. The complete subordination of the Faculty's

position is fully disclosed in the three great administrative
duties of its members as a body: (1) they enforced
the ordinances of the Visitors; (2) they recommended
such changes in these ordinances as their experience and
observation suggested as advisable; and (3) they
adopted, with the Board's approval and consent, such
by-laws as would enable them to carry out more successfully
the purposes which the fundamental laws had in
view.

The Board always exhibited jealousy of the smallest
attempt on the Faculty's part to infringe upon the sphere
of the larger wheel; and when they bestowed upon that
body the right to enact a particular by-law, they raised
around that right a spiked railing of the clearest and
most specific restrictions. Such, for instance, was the
character of their action in October, 1825, in authorizing
the Faculty to adopt such disciplinary regulations as the
alarming insubordination of the students at that time
called for at once. Imperative as these regulations were
certain to be under the like circumstances always, they
were only to become a part of the institution's permanent
laws, should they be approved by the Board at their next
meeting. A comparison of the respective records of
the Board and Faculty leads to the conclusion that the
Faculty was really in a better position to form a just conception
of what the University's welfare demanded than
the Board, for its members were on the ground; the
affairs of every department were always passing directly
under their vigilant eyes; and their solicitude that the
progress of the institution should not be obstructed, never
slackened. Moreover, they were far more frequently in
consultation, with its consequent clarifying influence on
their outlook. The Board was required by law to come
together only once a year, and its meeting rarely went

beyond two or three annually. On the other hand, the
Faculty held in 1825 alone as many as twenty-seven meetings,
although the session did not begin until March 7;
and in the years that followed, the number was often
even larger. It was through the Faculty that the Board
was able to get all its information; and, in most instances,
it adopted the Faculty's recommendations. It is quite
certain that the Visitors' point of view was, as a rule,
impartial and disinterested, and that their supervision
was generally valuable, and sometimes indispensable; but
many cases arose in which the institution would have been
served to more profit if the practical and discriminating
conclusions of the Faculty could have been the final word
in the decision.

The original provision for the chairmanship was precisely
such as to make the Faculty of the highest use to
the University. It illustrated, in the most conspicuous
way, the deeply discerning thought which Jefferson had
given to the working organization of the institution, and
also his determination to enforce equality of privileges
and responsibilities. By the rules of 1824, each member
of the Faculty was required to act as chairman in rotation;
but his term was not to run beyond the length of one
year. There were, in Jefferson's opinion, two benefits to
spring from this regulation: (1) the personal distinction
which would attend the incumbency of the office would
fall to each professor in turn; and (2) each in turn, also,
would be in a position to acquire that extraordinary
knowledge of the affairs of the University which its executive
guidance and control for one year would be sure
to impart. These advantages to accrue from the occupancy
of the chairmanship would have been fully shared
by all when all had once filled it; and the burden of its
duties could not fall too heavily on any one so long

as a single year was set as the period for their discharge.
The system was such as not only to perfect the Faculty's
information about the University's affairs, but also to
stimulate further their interest in those affairs, and to
plant in the breast of each chairman in succession a competitive
ambition to perform the duties in the most fruitful
manner. Had Jefferson survived, his influence,
which had created this system of rotation, would, doubtless,
have been used to retain it. But, unfortunately, perhaps,
it lasted only two years after his death.

Dr. Emmet, it will be remembered, in writing to his
father in 1824, declared that one word, repeated three
times; namely, "lectures, lectures, lectures," summed up
his daily life. Probably, in the beginning when the overcrowded
courses of instruction had to be relearned to
some degree by the several professors, the burden of
teaching was more irksome and engrossing than at a
later date when these courses had become more familiar
to them. The addition of the heavy responsibilities of
the chairmanship to this burden was indisputably a severe
tax on the professor's powers, and a strong disinclination
to assume them quickly showed itself when the controlling
hand of the first rector was permanently withdrawn.
As early as December, 1827, the Faculty requested that
the tenure of the office should be limited to three months;
and this, perhaps, led the Board, at their next meeting, to
decide that, after the expiration of the term of the chairman
then in office, the appointment should, for the future,
be indefinitely reserved to their own body. It is quite
possible that the superior qualifications of some members
of the Faculty to fulfil its duties, and the very small
qualifications of others, was early perceived by the Visitors,
and this was the chief reason that governed them in
making the change, for the onerousness of the chairmanship

would remain, whether the appointment came from
the Board or the Faculty. The difference between the
capacity of Professor Tucker and the capacity of Professor
Blaettermann, for instance, as presiding officers, was
too obvious to be overlooked.

But whether the chairmanship was filled by the action
of the Board or of the Faculty; whether it was held by
one professor for many years, or by a succession of professors
for one year in rotation, in harmony with the
original plan, the duties and responsibilities of the position
remained the same. The relations of the incumbent
with the other members of the Faculty were not altered.
He was still primus inter pares,—at once the head of the
body and its agent. The whole of the administrative
machinery was not monopolized by him. Each member
of the Faculty continued to feel that he shared in the
University's management; that the piloting of its destinies
lay still partly in his own hands; and that, as one
of its guardians, he must begrudge neither time nor labor
towards increasing its prosperity and enhancing its reputation.
He could only shirk or ignore his obligation by
running contrary to his sense of official duty.

It could not be said of the chairman, whether elected
by the professors or appointed by the Board, what can
be too often correctly asserted of a very able and zealous
president; namely, that he reduced the Faculty to the
status of cyphers, and took their place as the academic
body himself. What were his principal duties under the
original system? He was the spokesman of the Faculty
on both public and private occasions; he saw to the execution
of all laws adopted for the government of the institution;
overlooked the proctor, the hotel-keepers, and
all other subordinate agents; suspended, for a limited
time, all delinquent students, or inflicted on them the

minor punishments; sent out the monthly reports to their
parents; and, finally, impowered them to change their
boarding houses, or to use the public rooms. In relation
to the Faculty itself, he was authorized to convene
that body as often as the welfare of the University imperatively
required; he presided at its meetings, with the
right of voting once as a professor, and a second time, as
the chairman, should there arise a tie; and he brought to
its attention all matters bearing on the fundamental
government of the institution which required a decision.
In its turn, the Faculty could call on him for information
about any subject upon which they had a right to
deliberate.

It was one of his duties to keep a journal, in which all
offenses against discipline were to be recorded for the
information of the Board, at its next annual meeting; and
that body, whenever it wished, could put upon him some
task of an exceptional nature. Thus, under the enactments
of 1831, he was directed to submit, at the end of
every session, what was designated as a Consolidation
Report, which was a summary of all the weekly reports
that had been sent in by the professors during the previous
session. This all-embracing report described the
specific courses of instruction which had been given; how
often, if at all, each professor had failed to lecture or to
examine; how often too to make up his weekly report;
and the number of times each student had been absent
from his classroom. In the performance of this duty,
the chairman was dependent upon the cooperation of the
other members of the Faculty; and to an important degree,
he was also assisted by them in the detection of the
violation of the ordinances by the students. No such
offense could be punished by the Faculty unless he had
first brought their attention to it; but each member was

required to report to him all delinquencies that had fallen
under his own eyes.

In 1828, the dormitories were laid off into as many
districts as there were professors; and as far as practicable,
with an equal population of students. To each
professor, a district was assigned for supervision. It
was his duty to inspect its precincts from time to time; to
enforce a rigid discipline by suppressing all noises and disturbances;
to report the names of the incorrigible; to
listen to special complaints against the proctor and hotel-keepers,
and to protect the students in general in their
right to comforts and conveniences in their dormitories
and boarding-houses. This regulation was adopted under
the influence of the turbulence which then distracted
the University, and was suggested by the desire to lighten
the burden of the chairman, now so hard pressed by novel
additions to his ordinary functions. It turned out, however,
to be a temporary expedient.

XXIII. Administrative Organization, Continued

The chairman was not the only officer of the Faculty.
That body was also served by a secretary. At first, some
member kept the record, but, in 1826, William Wertenbaker
was appointed to the position,—which he, however,
filled only temporarily at first.

The Faculty held their meetings under numerous roofs:
in 1826, they convened in the library; in 1827, in the library
or pavilion VII; in 1828, in the home of either Tucker
or Lomax; in 1829, of Tucker or Emmet; and in subsequent
years, either in the library, a lecture-room, or the
residence of a professor. The customary hour of assembling
seems to have been half past four in the afternoon.

There were four officers subordinate to the Faculty:

the bursar, the proctor, the patron, and the janitor.
The duties of the bursar were those commonly incidental
to that important office and require no description.
This, however, was not true of the other three officers,
who played, in due proportion, a very conspicuous part in
the history of the institution.

Broadly described, the proctor was the master of police
and inspector of buildings, lands and other property
of the University. He was expected to visit all the dormitories
at least once a week, and all the hotels at least
once a month, and to draw up a report on their condition
for the information of the chairman. All fines imposed
on the occupants of these buildings for damage inflicted
by them were to be collected by him and deposited with
the bursar. He was impowered to employ laborers to
keep the entire area of the University in a sanitary state;
to head off trespasses, intrusions, and rows upon the
grounds; and to frustrate all other attempted violations
of the statutes. He was required to acquaint the chairman
with every breach of discipline that took place within
the limits, and to warn off former students who should return
after being expelled. It was his duty to communicate
to the proper law officer, when instructed by the Faculty,
all knowledge in his possession that would bring about the
prevention or punishment of such acts within the precincts
as the criminal court would take direct cognizance
of. It was his duty also to superintend all building operations
that were in progress; to frame the contracts necessary
to their right execution; to settle the accounts of
the undertakers, and to deliver to them drafts on the bursar
in payment of such balances as should be in their
favor. It was his further duty to collect all moneys,—
including the rents of the numerous dormitories and the
several hotels,—that were owing to the University. It

was also his duty to receive the students' complaints
touching their fare and report them to the chairman; to
find out the justice of these complaints by personal attendance
at meals; and to correct the shortcoming, if any, by
a warning to the hotel-keepers. In the same way, all
instances of neglect by these keepers in connection with
the servants, the furniture, or the fuel of the dormitories
were subject to his investigation and amendment. He
was responsible also for the purchase of the fagots and
lights which the students needed in their rooms.

At one time, a conflict of authority arose between the
proctor and the Faculty touching certain points upon
which the former asserted his right to exercise his own
private judgment and discretion: such points related
especially to health, the water supply, the state of the
walkways and alleys, and the preservation of the buildings
from destructive trespass. There was a divergence
of opinion as to the measures which should be adopted
to correct the unwholesome conditions that then prevailed
in these particulars, and the order in which they
should be carried out. The Faculty appealed to the
Board of Visitors for support in their contention, and
they were very properly confirmed in their superior authority.

The principal duty of the patron, so long as that office
was in existence, was to take the funds of the students
into his keeping so soon as they matriculated. These
funds were first subject to his commission of two per
cent. as his compensation for the responsibility of receiving
and holding them. By the authority of the proctor's
warrant, he paid to each professor the amount due
him as fees for tuition; to each hotel-keeper, at the expiration
of each month, the amount owed for the board

of the young men who obtained their meals at his tables;
to the bursar, all sums due by the students for the use
of the dormitories and public rooms, and by the hotel-keepers
for rent; and by the young men and hotel-keepers
alike, for all other charges against them. He was
required to pay the bills for books or clothes presented by
a merchant with the purchasing student's endorsement,
provided that they were legitimate; and also to cash all
drafts upon him by the young men for pocket-money not
in excess of a just proportion of the sum deposited for
that purpose; but he was impowered to refuse to honor
an order given by one student to another for an article
bought, unless the sale had been first approved in writing
by the chairman. He was also required, at the end of
the session, to return to each student the balance remaining
to his credit after all the proper deductions had been
made; and likewise if the student should leave the precincts
before the session closed, whether he had been expelled,
or had withdrawn for unexceptional reasons.
Finally, the patron cooperated with the proctor in enforcing
the police regulations so far as to give aid when called
on to prevent breaches of the ordinances; and he was expected
to report to that officer all offences that fell
within his personal observation. He assisted the proctor
also in making estimates, and in drafting contracts
for building and repairs, and in verifying the accounts
of undertakers. Like the proctor, he was entitled to a
house within the University precincts free of rent and all
other charges except for wear and tear. He was also
impowered to open a book-store in an apartment on the
grounds which had been specifically assigned to him for
that purpose. The prices of the text-books to be sold
by him, were, however, to be supervised by the Faculty;
and he was forbidden to fix them at more than fifteen per
cent. advance upon cost.[16]

The person who entered most directly and incessantly
into the daily lives of the students was the janitor, and
for that very reason, perhaps, he was the one who most
often was detested. In drafting the regulations of
March 4, 1824, the Visitors authorized the Faculty to
appoint some one who should be always near at hand
during the meetings of both the Board and the Faculty,
in order to perform such manual offices as might be called
for. He was at one time, also, expected to be close by
whenever a class was sitting, more especially in the
Schools of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry when apparatus
had to be handled; and also in the laboratory,
whenever his assistance was needed in the experiments.
It was he who was employed to run the lithographic
press, and to keep the philosophical and chemical instruments
in order; to wind up the clock; but above all, to
visit the dormitories in the morning to report every case
of violation of the ordinance that enforced early rising.
Not satisfied with this exhausting range of duties, the enactments
of 1831 required him to do such work as an
artisan as he should be competent to do, provided that it
was not in conflict with the discharge of the other claims
on his time. In return for this extraordinary variety of
services, he received two hundred dollars a year as wages,
and was granted a house and firewood at the expense of
the University.

The first janitor was William Spinner, a colored man,
an unfortunate selection for the session of 1825, as that
year was rendered very turbulent by the riotous spirit

of the students. It is probable that they would have
contemned the authority of a white janitor at that time,
but there was not the smallest likelihood of their being
overawed by the firmest and sternest negro. William
Brockman succeeded him. He too must have failed to
give satisfaction, for, in December, 1828, John Smith,
also a white man, took his place and remained in the University's
service until his death,—a practical proof of his
competency and fidelity. He was always addressed as
Doctor, a title derived from some slim pretentions to
knowledge of medicine. A son of Professor Davis, who
has recorded his recollections of the traditions of those
times, declares that he was, in reality, a quack,—not consciously
or dishonestly so in intention, but by the purely
empirical character of his medical advice. He was
superficially versed in other sciences, but was acknowledged
by every one to be a very skilful, diligent, and
conscientious officer. He had soon won the respect of
all, and in his blue broad-cloth coat, adorned with bright
brass buttons, and with a wide-brimmed white felt hat
resting on his head, he must have presented a very interesting,
if not imposing, appearance, as he walked, with
great dignity, down the arcades to inform some delinquent
student, with all the solemn authority of an English
beadle, that his presence was sternly desired in the
chairman's office. His own office was situated in the
basement of the Rotunda. He seems to have been popular
with the young men in spite of the persistence with
which he aroused the drowsy ones at dawn, and the number
of times he was compelled to carry disturbing messages
to their dormitories; and if his blue coat and felt
hat occasionally suffered from a douche of water, as he
opened a door, it appears to have shaken only temporarily
the amity which existed between him and the unruly
students.[17]