University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER VII

GILMER'S MISSION TO EUROPE

At the meeting of the Visitors of the University
in March, 1819, a little more than a month after the
chartering of the institution, a standing order was
entered on the minutes in these words: "Considering
the importance and the difficulty also at this
time of procuring American citizens of the first order
of science in their respective lines to be professors
in the University, the committee of superintendence
are hereby jointly instructed and authorized,
should any such offer, not to lose the opportunity
of securing them to the University by any
provisional arangement they can make within the
limits of the salary and tuition fees before stated."
For more than five years Mr. Jefferson and his colleagues
had tried to find and engage American
scholars of "the first order of science," but few were
found, and none engaged. The hue and cry that
greeted the appointment of Dr. Cooper lost to the
University a man who proved a tower of strength to
the College of South Carolina. Mr. Ticknor was
not available, and Mr. Bowditch declined the honor
tendered him by Virginia, and also those offered by
Harvard and West Point; and so, when at last the
University was ready for its faculty, there were no
professors to fill its chairs. Constant vigilance having
failed to yield any in America, there was nothing

to do but send to Europe. Accordingly, on the
morning of May 8, 1824, Francis Walker Gilmer
sailed out of New York on the packet Cortes commissioned
to engage a certain number of professors
of the required eminence in science from among the
scholars of Oxford or Cambridge in England, or
from among those of Edinburgh in Scotland.

More than one newspaper denounced the proceeding
with unconcealed indignation: "Mr. Jefferson
might as well have said that his taverns and dormitories
should not be built with American bricks,"
said one, "and have 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."
"Or, we may be permitted to add, by a still
shorter trip to Philadelphia," said another, concluding:
"This sending of a commission to Europe to
engage professors for a new university is, we think,
one of the greatest insults the American people have
received."

Even John Adams disapproved: "Your University
is a noble employment in your old age, and your
ardor for its success does you honor; but I do not
approve of your sending to Europe for tutors and
professors. I do believe there are sufficient scholars
in America to fill your professorships and tutorships
with more active ingenuity and independent
minds than you can bring from Europe. The Europeans
are all deeply tainted with prejudices, both
ecclesiastical and temporal, which they can never
get rid of. They are all infected with Episcopal
and Presbyterian creeds and confessions of faith.
They all believe that great principle which has produced
this boundless universe, Newton's universe,

and Herschell's universe, came down to this little
ball to be spit upon by the Jews. And until this
awful blasphemy is gotten rid of there never will be
any liberal science in the world."[1]

General Samuel Blackburn, an old Federalist,
scarcely predisposed to favor any scheme of Mr.
Jefferson's except on its merits, defended the policy
of sending to Europe for professors, and his picture
of the educational conditions of that day is at least
informing: "From whence, then, are those professors
to be had? At home? Impossible! When
upon a late vacancy a president was wanted for
Princeton, one of the most venerable institutions in
the Union, with what difficulty was it filled! Was
it not offered to different gentlemen of our acquaintance
who appeared to have no very imposing
claims to such an appointment? Did not one of
those gentlemen refuse it, and afterwards accept the
direction of a college much nearer home, to be sure,
but much less distinguished in the United States for
antiquity or the number of great men formed
therein. Is it not also a fact well known that another
professorship in that distinguished institution,
long esteemed the cradle, the nurse of science in this
western world, now is, and for a considerable time
has been, filled by one of the alumni of Washington
Academy, now College, of very modern date. It
would seem, then, from these appointments that the
range of election in the United States had been
rather limited than extensive. But let me ask, sir,
will it follow that because we may be able to fill a few
professorships in some colleges in this and other of
the United States that we have material at home to
furnish ten professorships for the University of Virginia—and

those best qualified to establish the reputation
of the institution at home, and give it celebrity
and eclat throughout the Union and the world?
This cannot be asserted, will not be believed. Those
professors then, or a majority of them, must be obtained
from Europe, men who have spent, not some
five or six years only in the acquisition of knowledge,
probably at some country school, obscure
academy, or college, in the western wilderness, but
who, if not born to, have at last been brought up
and spent their lives in, deep retirement and profound
application. And yet I cannot conceal my
predilection for American teachers, and American
(especially Virginian) manners, and the fear that
foreign professors may introduce into our institution
foreign opinions and customs alien to the simplicity
of republican manners adopted by our government.
My only apology is the necessity of the
case, and a belief that perhaps a single importation
will be sufficient, and enable us in future, by proper
attention to domestic production, to depend for
further supplies on our own manufactories, relying,
too, on the native firmness and independence of the
American character, seldom disposed to sacrifice
convenience to show, or substance to shadow."[2]

Gilmer disembarked at Holyhead, and hurried
through Wales to Liverpool, where he arrived on
the 6th of June. Then began a very active itineration
about England and Scotland in an earnest effort
to discharge the mission entrusted to him.
Many accidents, as he wrote to Dabney Carr, conspired
to delay him. At that season of the year "no
man in England is where he ought to be except perhaps

those of the Fleet and of Newgate." Every
little country schoolmaster, "who never saw a
town," had gone to the country, that is, "to Scotland
to shoot grouse, to Doncaster to see a race, or to
Cheltenham to dose himself with that vile water."

From Liverpool he went to Hatton to call on Dr.
Samuel Parr, but the venerable friend of Christopher
North had gone to Shrewsbury. A later visit
was more successful, and Gilmer spent two days
with the old scholar, whom he described as "the
greatest now in existence." He took great interest
in the young lawyer's mission, and was socially exceedingly
obliging, going with him to visit Guy's
Cliff and Kenilworth, where they dined with a
friend of Dr. Parr's.

In London he presented his letter to Richard
Rush, United States minister, and through his good
offices was provided with letters from Lord Teignmouth
and Mr. Brougham to influential persons in
Cambridge, Oxford, and Edinburgh. In London,
too, he concluded an engagement with Dr. Blaettermann
in pursuance of instructions from Mr. Jefferson,
to whom Blaettermann had been strongly recommended
by George Ticknor. His visit to Oxford
and Cambridge seemed at the time unprofitable,
but at the latter place he met, in the rooms of the
poet Praed, Thomas Hewitt Key, a master of arts
of Trinity College, whom he afterwards engaged as
the first professor of mathematics. Gilmer spoke in
at least three letters of the cordial treatment he received
at Cambridge. The manner of his reception,
he said, had softened his profound respect and veneration
for the most renowned University in the
world into a warm esteem for all connected with it,
from Dr. Kay, then Bishop of Bristol, and Dr.

Davy, to whom he bore a letter from Brougham,
down to the undergraduates, all of whom vied with
each other in the profusion and delicacy of their civilities.
He dined half the days of his sojourn in the
Hall of Trinity College, the most famous of all, and
was delighted with the urbanity and good breeding
of the fellows.

Gilmer had some intention of going to Germany
to accomplish his mission, and thought favorably of
Gottingen, but postponed decision until he had visited
Edinburgh. His reception in the Scottish metropolis
was exceedingly flattering. More invitations
reached him than he could accept. He dined
with "the famous Professor Leslie, and he was surrounded
by his meteorological machines." John A.
Murray, the distinguished lawyer and associate editor
of the Edinburgh Review, showed him many
civilities, and he seems to have been thrown with
Jeffrey, and to have won the good opinion of his
American wife, who called him "the most popular
and attractive American ever seen in Edinburgh,"
although Washington Irving had been there just
seven years before.

Gilmer had gone to Scotland sanguine of getting
at least a professor of anatomy, and with some hope
of a professor of natural history and natural philosophy,
and he sought them with energy, but his diligence
went unrewarded. In three weeks he was
back in London. There Key brought to his attention
George Long of Liverpool, whom he had
known at Trinity, and a correspondence ensued.
Dr. Birkbeck[3] recommended for professor of anatomy

a young London physician, already favorably
known as a physician and as a writer on medical
subjects. This was Dr. Robley Dunglison, who
became the first professor in the medical department
of the University of Virginia, of which he is regarded
as the founder. Charles Bonnycastle, a son
of a distinguished English mathematician, engaged
for natural philosophy, thus completing the English
faculty which Mr. Gilmer induced to go to Virginia.

Gilmer was eager to get back to Virginia. "For
myself," he wrote to his friend Dabney Carr, "I
shall return to the bar with recruited health and redoubled
vigor. I shall study and work and speak
and do something at last that shall redound to the
honor of my country. My intercourse with professional
and literary men here has fired again all my
boyish enthusiasm, and I pant to be back and at
work. The library of the University and my intimacy
with the professors will now make even my
summer holidays a period of study." Another note
was struck in his next letter to Judge Carr, as we
shall see. He took passage from Cowes on the
packet Crisis, and five weeks later, in a letter from
New York to his "most dear friend," he gave a vivid
and, in view of the sequel, pathetic description of the
voyage:

"Having concluded all my arrangements in England
much to my satisfaction, I thought to return
with triumph to the light and bosom of my friends.
Fatal reverse of all my hopes! here am I chained
like Prometheus, after 35 days of anguish at sea,
such as man never endured. I hold seasickness
nothing, I laughed at it as I went over—but to have
added to it a raging and devouring fever aggravated
by want of medicine, of food, of rest, of attendance,

and the continued tossing of the `rude, imperious
surge,' form a combination of miseries not easily
imagined, and never before, I believe, exhibited. I
am reduced to a shadow, and disordered throughout
my whole system. My liver chiefly, it is
thought. Among other symptoms, while I was in
mid-ocean, a horrible impostumation, such as I supposed
only accompanied the plague, in the form of
anthrax or carbuncle, appeared on my left side, low
as I was. I neglected it until it was frightful—it
required lancing—but not a man could I get to do
it—some were sea-sick—others indifferent. I
called one who said he was a Doctor, and desired
him to cut it open—we had no lance, no scalpel, no
knife that was fit, and finding him a timid booby
whose hand shook, I took with my own hand a pair
of scissors I happened to have, and laid open my
own flesh. * * * We had no caustic, and I
had to apply bluestone, which was nearly the same
sort of dressing as the burning pitch to the bare
nerves of Ravaillac—yet I am no assassin. All the
way I repeated,

"I must turn this to some account. In this world
I cannot, but I `lay the flattering unction to my soul'
that he who suffers well never suffers in vain.
Such is the martyrdom I have been enduring for the
Old Dominion. She will never thank me for it,
but I will love and cherish her as if she did."