University of Virginia Library

BASIL LANNEAU
GILDERSLEEVE

Gildersleeve Hall and Gildersleeve
Wood (south of Oakhurst Circle) bear the
distinguished name of Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve,
who was Professor of Greek from
1856 to 1876 and also Professor of Latin
during the war years 1861 to 1866. He was
born 23 October 1831 in Charleston, South
Carolina, with descent on both sides from
Revolutionary patriots. First taught at
home, he had completed a year at the College
of Charleston, as a freshman of fourteen,
when his father moved to Richmond.
His education continued to be a record of
precocity. After a year at Jefferson College
in Washington, Pennsylvania (now Washington
and Jefferson College), he went on
to Princeton and graduated in his seventeenth
year with the class of 1849. There
followed a year of teaching in Richmond,
five years of study in Germany, with a
Ph.D. from Göttingen, and a further period
in Richmond of writing and of tutoring

in a private family. His appointment in
1856 to the chair of Greek at the University
of Virginia therefore came before his
twenty-fifth birthday.

During the score of years in Charlottesville,
this young Professor made a deep
impression upon the students who attended
his classes and also upon his associates in
the Faculty. Strict as a grammarian and
philologist, he was through all and above
all an inspiring exponent of the beauty and
aspiration of the Hellenic spirit. His
courses afforded a notably comprehensive
introduction to the Greek language and literature,
and they were taught with a vigor
that effectively separated the earnest students
from the apathetic. As a teacher his
appreciative encouragement could on occasion
be matched by biting censure. During
the war years Gildersleeve proved his patriotism
twofold. He carried the Latin classes
as well as the Greek, and in summer vacations
he served with the armed forces. In
1864 as an aide to General Gordon he suffered
a knee wound which resulted in a

lasting trace of lameness. After the war he
joined in a faculty project for preparing
textbooks for Southern schools, and his
Latin Grammar and his edition of Persius
were of such quality that they contributed
to the selection of Gildersleeve in 1876 to
the initial professorship of Greek in the
newly established Johns Hopkins University.

At the University of Virginia he lived in
Pavilion I. In 1866 he married Eliza Fisher
Colston, and there was a son, Raleigh Colston
Gildersleeve, and a daughter, Emma
Louise Gildersleeve, who became Mrs.
Gardner M. Lane, Jr.

The twenty years at the University of
Virginia formed a record of instruction of
college students by a teacher in his young
manhood. The wellnigh forty years (18761915)
at Johns Hopkins formed a record as
Mentor of graduate students by a scholar of
ripened intellectual powers and experience.
By his continued writings and as the
founder and first editor of the American
Journal of Philology he gained national

and international repute, as may be attested
by the honorary doctor's degrees
conferred upon him by the College of
William and Mary, by the University of the
South, by Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Pennsylvania,
and Chicago, and abroad by Cambridge
and Oxford.

Active teaching ended in 1915. Thereafter
declining health reduced his activities,
but his mental powers continued
unabated until his death on 9 January
1924. In accordance with his wish, he was
buried in the University of Virginia Cemetery.

His fealty to Virginia and the South was
abiding. His Creed of the Old South was
published in 1915, and he was the second
of the University of Virginia's Page-Barbour
lecturers, so that his Hellas and Hesperia
(1908) adorns the distinguished list
of publications of that lectureship. Professor
Thornton, who was Chairman of the
Faculty when the Rotunda was burned in
1895, records that the first letter of sympathy
and concern received following that

disaster was from Gildersleeve, and that it
enclosed a generous contribution. But
flashes of Gildersleeve's characteristic humor
also persisted, along with his affection
and compassion. Professor Thornton illustrates
this by the aged Gildersleeve's reply
to a query whether he really wished to be
buried at the University of Virginia. The
response, with an elfish gleam of merriment,
was, "Yes, you see I was buried there
before!" Esteem for his distinguished
services endures at the University of Virginia,
and even the inscription on his tombstone
has recently given occasion for a
lively controversy among scholars as to the
correctness of the Greek lettering of a
phrase from Aeschylus thereon, the apt
translation of which is "Life's bivouac is
o'er."