University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XVIII

LITERATURE AND EDUCATION

The great changes that have taken place in every phase of
Virginia life since 1860 have just begun to be pictured in history
and in fiction. Ante-bellum literature was for the most
part political and religious in nature and reflects the controversional
nature of that period.

The Southern Literary Messenger, which was published in
Richmond, provided means for literary expression that attracted
wide attention. It ended its thirty years of existence
as a war victim in 1864. John R. Thompson, a Virginia poet
of high order, and at one time editor of the Messenger, gave
as the two chief causes for the lack of literary effort in ante-bellum
Virginia, the close touch with English literary classics
which inhibited the demand for native literature, and "the
morbid desire of her sons for political distinction."[1]

The neglect of popular education, the widely scattered
population, and the lack of cities also helped to make Virginia
a literary desert.

Virginia furnished to the Confederacy fully half of its
outstanding military leaders, the Confederate Capital, and
a great battle ground for its armies. It was but natural,
therefore, that the war and its leaders should have called
forth many writers to describe these great figures and
stirring scenes. The most noted contemporary history of the
war was E. A. Pollard's Southern History of the War.
Recollections and diaries followed in large numbers. Lee,
Jackson, Johnston, Stuart and Ashby had their biographers.

Edgar Allan Poe

Armistead C. Gordon

John R. Thompson

One young Virginian who fought by Stuart's side, John Esten
Cooke, had published before the war The Virginia Comedians
one of his best novels, it dealt with the Colonial period. His
close association with one of the most romantic and chivalrous
characters in American history throughout the war, gave
to him the plots for his later novels and the type for his
heroes. His Surry of Eagle's Nest and many other stirring
romances, received their inspiration from the scenes through
which he had passed. George Cary Eggleston, a brother of
Edward Eggleston of The Hoosier Schoolmaster fame, was
born in Indiana of Virginia parentage. Shortly before the
war he came to Richmond to practice law. In 1861, he chose
the gray and served throughout the war. His A Rebel's Recollections,
Master of Warlock, a novel, his essay in the Atlantic
Monthly,[2] The Old Regime in the Old Dominion and other
works protray the war and ante-bellum period. Mrs. Burton
Harrison, who lived in those days, pictures the life of the
women of that time. The Belhaven Tales are especially good.
Two short stories, the Crow's Nest and Una and King David
are among the best tales of the war. Thomas Nelson Page's
stories of the war, Marse Chan, Meh Lady, and others are
literary gems. They are written in the quaint Negro dialect
of middle Virginia and picture the plantation system of the
Black Belt at its best. Page was twelve years old at the end of
the war. He had seen the crumbling of the old regime and
grew into manhood during the grinding era of poverty and
humiliation. His memory of the old regime, bathed in all
the glory of youthful imagination, contrasted sharply with
the hard realities of his impressionable youth.

It was natural that ante-bellum Virginia home life and
plantation scenes should have been the inspiration of his short
stories of inimitable dialect, of his novels, and of his essays.
He vividly portrays the early transition stages from the old
regime to the new. It may be said that he introduced the romantic
period in Virginia fiction, a period in which Virginians

John Esten Cooke

Thomas Nelson Page

George W. Bagby

allowed their imaginations to wander in the golden past while
they kept their faces to the gray future, and put their hands to
the plow as, with stout hearts, they began to rebuild the Old
Commonwealth. The pictures which he painted are true of
the social order which he represents. They throw a flood of
light upon a people, simple in their living, cultured, hospitable,
kind and free from convention. It is true that his colors are
somewhat too brilliant at times, and that he portrays the ideal
conditions as he knew them as a boy—conditions which did
not always prevail. Other writers, following his lead, have
distorted the picture and have brought about a reaction
against the romantic point of view.

The chief among the poets of the war and early post-war
era was John R. Thompson. Among the best known of his
poems are Lee to the Rear, The Burial of Latané, Ashby, and
Music in Camp. Thompson deserves to be remembered as an
editor and a lecturer as well as a poet. Ill health followed
him throughout the later years of his life and struck him
down while literary editor of the New York Evening Post.
James Barron Hope, Mrs. Margaret J. Preston, Father
Abram J. Ryan and Father Tabb, also belong to this period.

Virginia owed much during her dark years of trouble to
Dr. George W. Bagby, a humorist of no mean ability, who, on
the platform and in the press, brought smiles that were as
rare as gold in those days.[3]

The romantic period in Virginia literature may be said to
have ended about 1900. Ellen Glasgow's first novel, The Descendant,
published in 1897, marked the beginning of the
change. A new Virginia had arisen, democratic, national,
and industrial in outlook, freed in part from poverty and debased
politics, progressive and confident of the future. Social
and economic problems enter into the plots of Miss Glasgow's

Ellen Glasgow

Mary Johnston

James Branch Cabell

books. The business man and the poor white come into their
own. Miss Mary Johnston, who had made colonial Virginia
a popular field for writers of fiction, turned to historical
novels relating to the Civil War which pictured war without its
romance. Thomas Nelson Page's later works show the same
influence. Since 1913, there has been a revolt against the old
regime. The spirit of that revolt may be seen in the later
writings of Miss Johnston and Miss Glasgow, Amélie Rives
(Princess Troubetzkoy) and James Branch Cabell. "There
is no established order; it is always upset in time, either for
good or evil. It never abides, for change is the law." These
words of one of Mr. Cabell's characters voices the restlessness
of a new era.

Philip Alexander Bruce, in an address in 1881 (The Social
History of Virginia) predicted a revival of literary effort,
and of the writing of history in the State, with the economic
revival of the country. His prophecy was realized. During
the '80s and '90s a revival in historical research came when
Alexander Brown published his Genesis of the United States
and The First Republic in America, and when Philip Alexander
Bruce began publishing his Economic, Institutional,
and Social Histories of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century,
which placed him in the first rank among economic historians.
Lyon G. Tyler has done excellent work in Virginia colonial
history. R. A. Brock, W. G. Stanard, Mrs. W. G. Stanard,
H. R. McIlwaine, H. J. Eckenrode, Earl G. Swem, Morgan P.
Robinson, D. R. Anderson, and other historical investigators,
have greatly broadened the field of historical knowledge of
Virginia.

This brief account includes only some of the more prominent
of Virginia authors and historical investigators. Many
others have written biographies, autobiographies, works of
fiction, and histories of real merit. Some, like Woodrow Wilson
and William P. Trent, have been adopted by other States.

There have also been natives of Virginia who have distinguished
themselves in other fields of endeavor both at

Lady Astor

home and abroad. Among these may be mentioned: Basil
L. Gildersleeve of the University of Virginia, and later of
Johns Hopkins University, known throughout the world as
a teacher and as a classical scholar; two sculptors of high
rank, Moses Ezekial and Edward Virginius Valentine; the
foremost American pianist and composer, John Powell, who
is preserving in his musical compositions the spirit of Old
Virginia; and the first woman to become a member of the
British Parliament, Nancy Langhorne, Lady Astor, a wise
and liberal statesman.

Another phase of the literary revival in Virginia has been
the revival of education after 1900. The movement began
with a series of educational conferences which led to the formation
in 1901 of the Southern Education Board. A campaign
of educational propaganda was organized. In 1903, the Cooperative
Education Association was proposed by five men
who met at Murphy's Hotel in Richmond, to plan a better
system of cooperation in educational affairs. They were,
Mr. J. D. Eggleston, of Prince Edward County, President
H. B. Frissell of Hampton Institute, Dr. S. C. Mitchell of Richmond
College, and Dr. Robert Frazer of Warrenton. The Association
was organized early in 1904, and in December of that
year a campaign in the interest of better education was
planned for May, 1905. Dr. Bruce R. Payne of the College of
William and Mary filled the papers with educational propaganda
and issued numerous pamphlets. One hundred of the
most influential men of the State, including Governor Montague,
made 300 addresses at 100 different meetings in ninety-four
counties. This "May Campaign" had a tremendous
effect in showing the people of the State their backwardness
in public education.[4] In 1906 the people elected as State
Superintendent of Public Instruction Joseph D. Eggleston,
the most efficient state superintendent since Ruffner. High
schools were established—there were only forty-eight in 1890
and seventy-three in 1900. Progress along all lines was rapid

and sure. Two new State Normal Schools were established,
one at Harrisonburg in 1909, and the other at Radford in
1912. Clubs were formed among boys and among girls to encourage
better crops, better poultry raising and better
methods of canning. Close cooperation has been secured between
the patrons and the teachers. Home economics is being
taught; agricultural high schools are being built in every
county; terms have been lengthened and standards have been
raised; schools are better graded and better teachers are
employed. Expansion in numbers has brought its perils, since
there is a constant pressure on teachers and executives in the
high schools to lower the grade of work to meet the standards
of many who are unprepared or careless, and this pressure is
reflected in the colleges. The great increase in the number of
high schools, and in the number of their graduates, have
in recent years taxed the resources of the colleges to the utmost.
President Chandler, of the College of William and
Mary, in an address before the Virginia Education Conference
of 1923, stated that during the previous twenty years, there
had been an increase of 50 per cent in the number of pupils
enrolled in the public schools, 1,000 per cent increase in the
value of school property, 66 per cent increase in the number
of teachers, and 250 per cent increase in high school enrollment.
High school enrollment had increased from almost
none to 10,000.

The colleges had grown in size and expanded in the scope
of their activities with equal rapidity. Randolph-Macon
Woman's College in Lynchburg, which opened its doors in
1893, has become one of the foremost women's colleges in the
South. West Hampton College for Women, a college for
women coordinate with Richmond College, was organized
in 1914.

The standards of the foremost colleges have been raised to
meet the requirements of such organizations as the Southern
Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools.

The University of Virginia, under the able leadership of its

J. H. C. Chandler

President William and Mary College

first president, Dr. Edwin A. Alderman, has since 1904 trebled
its corps of teachers. Its student body has grown from 662
to over 1,700. In 1919, an executive of unusual ability, Dr. J.
A. C. Chandler, became president of the ancient College of
William and Mary. In 1918, there were enrolled in the institution
107 men and twenty-four women (who were admitted
for the first time in 1918). Five years later (1923) 464 men
and 381 women had enrolled. In addition to these, there was
in 1923 an enrollment of 713 in the summer quarter, and 666
students in extension classes (organized for the first time in
Virginia at this College in 1919). Classes were being conducted
in seven localities outside of Williamsburg. During
those five years, the faculty had more than doubled. The
Marshall-Wythe School of Government and Citizenship was
organized in 1922 the better to promote ideals of public
service.

Yet all this growth has endangered the standards of the
colleges unless more funds are provided for their support.
The crisis in these institutions is well described in an editorial
of the Richmond News Leader of December 6, 1923, which
comments as follows on an address delivered by the President
of the University of Virginia:

"This," said President E. A. Alderman as he began his
address before the alumni council last evening, "this is the
only speech I propose to deliver during the next two years.
Wherever I speak, this will be my message. If I am compelled
to talk on Chinese porcelain, I shall say `Chinese porcelain is
a splendid adornment of any cultured home, but how can
there be cultured homes unless the colleges are supported
adequately?' and then I shall proceed with this same appeal.
Thereupon, as his audience laughed at his hyperbole, he began
a presentation that fairly staggered his hearers by the crisis
it revealed in the state colleges and normal schools.

"He showed that with Texas barred from the comparison
by its very bulk and wealth, and the eleven other Southern
States considered, Virginia is next to the bottom in the percentage

Edwin A. Alderman

President University of Virginia

of the tax dollar spent for higher education. Georgia,
the only state that spends relatively less than Virginia, is just
now debating very lage expenditures for the state colleges.
The Old Dominion devotes 6.2 cents of the tax dollar to higher
education. North Carolina allows 14.6 cents. South Carolina
appropriates 13.2 cents. There scarcely is a state college in
this Commonwealth that has dormitories or laboratory space
in any wise adequate to accommodate the students. At several
of the schools many of the buildings are close to dilapidation.
Yet the 39,000 students in the state colleges and institutions
for the training of teachers in the South, Virginia has
5,800—a larger number than any other Southern State has.

"First in enrollment, next to last in the percentage of
the tax-dollar devoted to higher education—could there be
stranger evidence that the crisis is upon the Commonwealth?
Could there be clearer proof that Virginia must maintain her
standards and enlarge the facilities of the state colleges or
else must reconcile herself to losing the primacy that was hers
for a century?"