University of Virginia Library

3. GIFTS AND THE STATUS QUO

The coming of war vitally changed the situation at the
University. The change was not as drastic as it had been
during the War of 1861–1865, for Virginia was not in the
region of the conflict. But attention was increasingly
diverted from purely academic matters; and when in 1917
the United States entered actively on the side of the Allies,
there were extensive enlistments by students and professors
in the armed forces of the United States, and the
reduced university community itself moved in the direction
of becoming a military training post. As in the previous
war, and as was again to happen in the second world war,
the contributions in patriotic service comprised noble
chapters in the University's history.

The reduction in student enrollment of course curtailed
the income of the University; and as usual the Library
proved to be a nerve center peculiarly sensitive to such
curtailment. Appropriations were cut, the evening hours
were discontinued, and there was a considerable decrease in
the purchase of books and periodicals. Moreover, circumstances

prolonged this library situation well beyond the
war years by concentrating attention on other than library
developments. The war had stimulated interest in scientific
progress, especially in the fields of Chemistry and Medicine,
and emphasis was naturally given to those subjects. Events
connected with the centennial celebration of the establishment
of the University and with a second endowment
campaign absorbed general interest. The celebration was
held, not in 1919, one hundred years after the granting of
the charter, but in connection with the final exercises of
the session of 1920–1921. Shortly afterwards there emerged
a severely agitating legislative controversy over the possible
removal of the Medical Department to Richmond. This
was settled in a manner satisfactory to the University, but
only after drawing all the forces of the University into an
exhausting maelstrom of effort. During the war and postwar
years the library services were steadily maintained, and
accessions by gift continued to be received. But it was not
until toward the close of the first hundred years, in 1925,
that the Library's needs were pushed into the foreground.

The accessions by gift had, as we have seen, been extraordinarily
numerous following the Rotunda disaster. The
inflow continued without abatement after the coming of
President Alderman. He was rarely gifted in understanding
what objects would appeal to individual donors; and he
was himself convinced that the Library was a worthy object.
As those donations were a distinguishing feature of this
whole period, we shall now supplement the illustrative list
of the 1895–1904 donations by a similar list for the years
1904 to 1925. Since the dates of the gifts are given, it will
be noted that the only break in the continuity was during
the years of acute concentration on the war.

The donations of books included one in 1906 by Grace
Dodge of New York City of approximately a thousand volumes
appropriate for the students' reading room in the

newly opened Madison Hall. In 1907 the gift of books on
Geology which had belonged to Jed Hotchkiss, the Virginia
geologist and topographer, led to the establishment of a
separate Geology Library in the Brooks Museum. This
donation came from his widow. Later the same year the
University received word of the bequest by Edward Wilson
James of Norfolk of his private library of some 12,000
volumes. The following year, 1908, the Law Library was
the recipient of a long run of the Reports of the English
Courts from Dean James Barr Ames of the Harvard Law
School. In 1910, the French Government, through Ambassador
Jusserand, presented a valuable set of works of the
art, history, and literature of France. By bequest of Judge
Lambert Tree of Chicago in 1911 the Law Library became
the possessor of his law books. To the Medical Library in
1912 came a donation of books and journals on Pediatrics
from William David Booker of Baltimore. In 1913 there
was an especially rich harvest. This included books from
the estate of Professor Harrison which met immediate needs
of curriculum courses and which supplemented the collection
on Southern authors which Professor Harrison had
been instrumental in starting. It also included the choice
library of Bennett Wood Green, who had been a resident
of the University at the time of his death, and whose
affection for his books gave them associative value to those
who had had the good fortune of knowing him. That year's
harvest likewise included the first consignment of the
private collection of Wilbur Phelps Morgan, a physician of
Baltimore and a bookman of catholic tastes. The Morgan
donations continued until his death in 1922, and reached a
total of well over 10,000 volumes. In 1915 came another
gift of both intrinsic and association values, in the books
of Andrew Stevenson, presented by his granddaughter.
Andrew Stevenson had been a member of the Board of
Visitors from 1845 to 1857 and its Rector from 1856 to
1857. Prior to those dates he had been a member and the
Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, a member and
the Speaker of the House of Representatives in Washington,
and Minister to England.

The tide of donations again reached the flood stage after
the first world war. In 1920 the working library of William
Harry Heck, Professor of Education from 1905 until his
death in 1919, was presented by his widow, Anna Tuttle
Heck, who had been Assistant Librarian from 1903 to 1911.
This led to the establishment in Peabody Hall of the Heck
Memorial Library in Education. Early in the following
year, 1921, the eminent international lawyer, John Bassett
Moore, announced his intention of presenting to the Law
Library his extensive collection of works on international
law. Portions continued to be received until after his death
in 1947, giving distinction to the University's holdings in
that subject. In 1922 there were received approximately
8,000 volumes from the private library of William Gordon
McCabe, educator and author of international reputation.
These volumes were presented by William Gordon McCabe,
Jr., as a memorial to his father and to his elder
brother. The father had been an officer in the Confederate
Army, the founder and head of the University School,
located at first at Petersburgh and later at Richmond, and
a member of the University of Virginia Board of Visitors
from 1887 to 1896. His wide acquaintance included such
English writers as Matthew Arnold, Browning, and Tennyson.
In that same year, 1922, the Law Library received
from Judge George Moffett Harrison of Staunton, Virginia,
approximately 600 volumes from his private library; and
the following year there was another notable donation to
the Law Library, this coming from Judge Legh Richmond
Watts of Portsmouth, Virginia, and consisting of some 1,400
volumes. In 1924 there came to the Chemistry Library over
1,000 books bequeathed by Charles Baskerville, a graduate

of the University of Virginia who had been Professor of
Chemistry at the College of the City of New York from
1904 until his death in 1924.

As yet there had been no systematic organization of a
rare book collection. Some rare items had been recognized
among the gifts and isolated for special protection. Several
rarities had been received as individual gifts. Such were
three items given in 1913 by Mrs. Martha Jefferson Trist
Burke of Alexandria, Virginia: a Bible which had been
presented by George Wythe to Thomas Jefferson, and the
two copies of the New Testament from which Jefferson
had clipped the portions used by him in preparing his
compilation known as The Life and Morals of Jesus of
Nazareth. Other Jefferson items were a copy of the first
American edition of the Notes on the State of Virginia,
given by Frank Pierce Brent of Christchurch, Virginia;
and a copy of Wythe's Virginia Reports, published in 1795,
a copy annotated both by George Wythe and by Thomas
Jefferson, which was presented by Jefferson Randolph Kean,
a grandson of John Vaughan Kean, the first Librarian, and,
on his mother's side, a great grandson of Jefferson.

For the Lee Papers and other manuscripts a special case
had been procured in 1913, and a number of pieces, chiefly
Jefferson letters, were added to the manuscript collection
during the years 1895 to 1925. Among the donors of manuscripts
were Mrs. Francis Eppes Shine of Los Angeles, California,
Mrs. Mary Madison McGuire of Washington, D.C.,
and William Andrews Clark, Jr., also of Los Angeles and
of Butte, Montana. Several years after the Rotunda fire
there was discovered a cache of papers which had apparently
been rescued on that October Sunday, tucked away for
safety, and then forgotten. There was a lighter side to this
treasure trove. Among the papers unearthed was a library
fine list for the second session in which was entered a charge
of sixty cents against Edgar Allan Poe for the late return

of a book, followed by a notation that fifty-eight cents had
been paid. This was of course grist for the news mill. Not
long after, a communication was received from the girl
students of the American Literature class of Virginia
Intermont College at Bristol in far southwest Virginia,
enclosing a two cent stamp to clear the poet's record!

An acquisition of source material on Poe, along with a
gratifying illustration of the cooperative spirit, came in
1921 through the efforts of Dr. James Southall Wilson, who
had in 1919 been appointed Edgar Allan Poe Professor of
English. The biographer John H. Ingram, an English
champion of Poe, had for over forty years been collecting
personal letters, pictures, rare editions, and miscellaneous
items concerning the poet's life. After Ingram's death in
1916, his sister Laura had offered to sell the bulk of the
collection (disposition had already been made of some of
the choice pieces) to the University of Virginia. Librarian
Patton had proposed that the material be shipped from
England to Charlottesville for examination, the transportation
charges to be paid by the University. However, the
dangers from German submarines during World War I
had made such transfer seem unwise, and further consideration
of the matter had lapsed. When the shipping lanes
again became safe, Miss Ingram passed on the offer of
purchase to the University of Texas. The response, written
by Professor Killis Campbell, had been that the University
of Texas would be interested, but it would be first wish
to have assurance that the University of Virginia had refused.
It was at this moment that Professor Wilson learned
of the situation. He persuaded President Alderman and the
Faculty Library Committee to draw from certain accumulated
funds, and the negotiations were successfully completed.
A real beginning of an important research collection
on Poe was thus achieved.

An unusual feature of the gifts during those years was

the donation by several authors of remainder stocks from
their works, with the privilege of profit to the Library by
sales. The works included the Word-Book of Virginia Folk-Speech
by Bennett Wood Green, the five volumes of the
quaint Lower Norfolk County Antiquary, edited and in
large part written by Edward Wilson James, and A Reprint
of Annual Reports and Other Papers on the Geology of
the Virginias by William Barton Rogers.

There was also a notable increase in library endowment
funds during the years of the Alderman administration to
1925, amounting to a principal of approximately $200,000.
About five-eights of this came in 1913 from the estate of
Bennett Wood Green. The other endowment funds were
established chronologically as follows: in 1909 the William
Whitehead Fuller Fund for the Law Library; in 1911 the
William Barton Rogers Fund for the Physics Library and
the Lambert Tree Fund for the General Library; in 1919
the Ferrell Dabney Minor, Jr., Memorial Fund for the Law
Library and the Isabel Mercein Tunstall Fund for books
of poetry for the General Library; in 1920 the James
Douglas Bruce Fund for English Literature, this being
chiefly used for the Graduate Library; in 1922 the Walter
H. Jones Fund for journals for the Engineering Library
and the Coolidge Fund, established for the Law Library in
memory of Thomas Jefferson by the Coolidge Family of
Boston; and in 1923 the Hamilton M. Barksdale Funds for
the Chemistry and Engineering Libraries. In addition
several thousand dollars were donated for immediate expenditure.
These gifts included one from Robert Baylor
Tunstall, Sr., in 1907 to establish the Isabel Mercein
Tunstall Collection of Poetry, for which, as stated above, an
endowment fund was later presented, one from Arthur
Curtiss James in 1912 for books on the Negro, one from
Paul Goodloe McIntire in 1919 for books and equipment
for the School of Fine Arts, one from Alfred William

Erickson in 1922 for the Education Library, and two in
1923, the first contributed by an anonymous donor for the
General Library, and the second raised by the members of
Minor Inn of Phi Delta Phi for the purchase of law books
in memory of Raleigh Colston Minor.

This was a truly remarkable outpouring of gifts; and
the Library's growth in size of collection maintained the
pace set in the first years after the Rotunda fire. It will be
recalled that on the afternoon of the disastrous day there
had remained 17,194 volumes as a nucleus for a new library
collection. It was a small nucleus for an institution seventy
years in being. But by June 1925, thirty years later, the
reported figure was 131,422, an increase of over sevenfold.
That was the reported figure. There doubtless were by that
time more books in the possession of the University. But
both lack of Staff and lack of shelf space were preventing
full use of the library resources. Given books as well as
purchased books require technical handling to render them
accessible. As early as 1914 Librarian Patton was making
an urgent plea for a larger Library Staff in order that the
accumulated work behind the scenes might be accomplished.
Between then and 1925 the situation at the
Rotunda steadily increased in complexity and confusion.
A natural result may readily be seen in the very listing of
the gifts. For a large proportion of the gifts were for separate
libraries. It was at least in part because of administrative
difficulties that the University Library became the
University Libraries.

The dispersion had started before 1895, when already
the inadequacy of the Rotunda was becoming recognized.
At that date there were four Libraries. There were also a
Mathematics Reading Room and reading rooms for students
and for professors. By 1925 the number of special
collections had grown to thirteen. The nine new ones were
the Classical Library in Cabell Hall, the Education Library

in Peabody Hall, the Engineering Library in the Mechanical
Laboratory, the Geology Library in the Brooks Museum,
the Graduate Library in the pavilion on West Lawn used
as an office for the Department of Graduate Studies, the
Mathematics Library in Cabell Hall, the Medical Library
in one of the oval rooms on the first floor of the Rotunda
which had been vacated by the Law Library when the
latter was moved to Minor Hall, the Physics Library in
the Rouss Physical Laboratory, and the Y.M.C.A. Library
in Madison Hall. All of these locations except that for the
Medical Library were outside of the Rotunda; and all
these libraries, including the Medical, were, to some degree
at least, independent organizations.

A word should be inserted about the collections which,
being outside of the Rotunda on 27 October 1895, had not
suffered from the fire. For one of them, the Chemistry
Library, that good fortune did not continue. For it was
totally destroyed in 1917 by the burning of the Chemical
Laboratory. A vigorous start was at once made on another
collection; and this was located in 1918 in the new Cobb
Chemical Laboratory. In this case, the availability of the
Barksdale Chemistry Fund after 1923 helped to make a
plan for systematic coverage of the subject possible, the
carrying out of the plan being entrusted to Professor John
Howe Yoe. The manna of special funds did not fall on the
Astronomy or Biology Libraries. But the annual effort to
solicit gifts and exchanges was patiently maintained by the
Faculty of the School of Astronomy; and an effort by Miss
Dinwiddie to catalogue the Biology collection was of assistance
towards the use of that Library.

Two of the three reading rooms were among the sufferers
at the time of the Rotunda fire. The mathematics
reading room had been in the Annex and the students'
reading room in the wing connecting the Rotunda with
West Lawn. Both of these made fresh starts as separate

library collections, and have been included in the list of
nine separate libraries, the Madison Hall Library continuing
the students' reading room. The faculty reading room
seems to have died a natural death. But the present-day
display of periodicals in the Colonnade Club may be a
reincarnation.

As for the Law Library, its record had been one of
notable good fortune. It is true that it was to the fated
Annex that its books were removed from the gallery of the
main library just prior to the fire. But that room in the
Annex was easily accessible, and from it the books, including
a number from Jefferson's original list, were salvaged
in the early minutes of the conflagration. Moreover in the
receipt of gifts of books and funds, it had been specially
favored. Its needs had also been given some recognition in
most of the annual budgets. Faculty awareness of its value
for legal training had led to careful planning for library
space and equipment in the new law building, Minor Hall.
To that building the Law Library was moved in 1911.
Beginning in 1896 student Law Librarians had annually
been appointed. In 1911 the position was made full time,
with Ella Watson Johnson as the first appointee. She was
followed in 1912 by Catherine Rebecca Lipop, who continued
as Law Librarian until her retirement in 1945, the
only change being one of name, since in 1925 she became
Mrs. Charles Alfred Graves—thus following Mrs. Anna
Tuttle Heck in acquiring faculty status not as a Librarian
but by marriage! By 1925 the Law Library contained more
than 20,000 volumes, and was by far the largest of the
separate collections.

The new home of the Law Library in Minor Hall was
to prove reasonably adequate for the next two decades. The
restored Rotunda, however, created growing pains for the
General Library almost from the start. Early in President
Alderman's administration something had been done

towards improving the attractiveness and the comfort of
the library room. But Librarian Patton was soon adding
lack of shelf space to lack of Staff in his enumeration of his
administrative difficulties. The early expressions were cautious
and somewhat vague. But by 1917 it was stated in his
annual report that “The truth is, the Rotunda is already
inadequate for the whole library, and another building,
planned and made to provide stackrooms, reading rooms,
office and other facilities necessary to modern library
development and administration is already a pressing need
—a need which touches more students than any other.”
This wording still did not suggest more than a college
library; and the plea, however justified, gained merely a
sympathetic hearing. But with the appointment of John
Calvin Metcalf as Chairman of the Faculty Library Committee
in 1918 and as Dean of the Department of Graduate
Studies in 1923, the cause of the Library was reinforced by
its relation to the University's responsibility for the means
of research. The new concept involved much more than a
building. But the building was the first essential.

Two events which occurred at this stage were revealing.
In the plans for the programme of the Centennial Celebration
there was included a banquet in the Rotunda for the
guests and participants. It will be recalled that in 1824,
before the Rotunda had been completed and before the
University had actually opened, there had been held in
that building a community banquet to Lafayette. It will be
recalled also that there had later been objection to the use
of the library room for other than library purposes—in
particular for dancing. There were therefore precedents
both for the action by John Lloyd Newcomb, Dean of the
Department of Engineering and the able General Chairman
of the Centennial Committee, in designating the Rotunda
as the place of this banquet; and for the action by Dean
Metcalf, Chairman of the Faculty Library Committee, in

warning of the damage that might result from such use of
the crowded library room. Here were two emergencies
meeting head on. The result was a compromise. It was
decided that the banquet should be held in the Rotunda,
and that the Centennial Committee should help out the
library situation by donating the cost of three bookcases.
This was admitted to be merely a temporary solution. Later
these two officers were to be leaders in the ultimate effort
to secure a new library building.

The three bookcases barely alleviated the Library's
shelving problem, and the second event was a further effort
to add to the book capacity of the Rotunda. The northeast
wing had been secured in 1914 for the housing of government
documents, and efforts were started towards having
history classes transferred from the northwest wing in order
to free it for use as a periodical stack and reading room.
Plans prepared by the Assistant Librarian, Miss Dinwiddie,
for a rearrangement of the equipment in the circular library
room were approved in 1921, and shelving was purchased
for the second gallery. In order to finance these latter
changes, the Faculty Library Committee was compelled to
take the drastic action of drawing from funds allocated for
the purchase of books. The added endowments had
increased the annual income. Nevertheless this equipment
expenditure had to be carried for several years as an overdraft,
with sharp limitation of book purchases and periodical
subscriptions. By January 1924 the Faculty Library
Committee, in discussing what had come to be a perennial
plea for small appropriations for equipment, decided to
call a halt to this piecemeal procedure and to throw its
whole weight behind the new building project. Its statement,
prepared by Chairman Metcalf for presentation to
President Alderman and, through him, to the Board of
Visitors, was the most definite and powerful that had yet
been made. It still had to be met with the response that no

funds were available. But the cogency and force of the
argument were not without effect. Three months later, in
his 1924 Founder's Day address, President Alderman, in a
summary beginning, “And now may I dream a few dreams,”
outlined his considered hopes for future development of the
University. Eight objects were specified, of which the first
was an endowment for research, and the third “a great new
library, costing a million dollars.”

The first hundred years of the University Library thus
ended. The burning of the Rotunda had sharply interrupted
continuity of the century's progress. That disaster
had well-nigh destroyed the library collection which had
been so nobly started by Thomas Jefferson. The thirty years
which followed brought the encouragement of the rapid
growth of a new collection, obtained mainly from generous
gifts. They brought also the discouragement of crowded,
scattered, and unworkable conditions. There seemed to be
a stalement. But there were also the beginnings of a new and
more adequate conception of a University Library.