University of Virginia Library

XV. Plans for Filling the Chairs

Jefferson was not one of that bigoted stamp, perhaps as numerous in his times as in our own, who honestly believe

that America is so faultless that it cannot be improved upon, -at least, not so from without. No one could surpass him in unselfish devotion to his own country; and yet no one was more candid in acknowledging its deficiencies, and more anxious to correct them, even if the only way was to introduce foreign substances, talents, and devices. Whether it was an Italian species of rice, or an English variety of vegetable or thorn for hedges; whether it was a Scotch threshing machine, or a French barometer; whether it was an English strain of rams, bulls, or boars, or the ward system of New England; whether it was a novel chemical discovery in a Parisian laboratory, or a serpentine wall noted in a casual stroll through an English garden; whether it was the entire faculty of a Swiss university, or the philologians, mathematicians, and scientists of Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh, -his inquisitive eyes looked abroad unerringly for the best in the practical or intellectual life of every foreign land in order to employ it for the betterment of his own. He was resolved to make the genius of every race contribute to the beauty, the commodiousness, and the enlightenment of the sphere in which his own people moved. In politics and ethics alone did he seem to feel that there was no need of foreign illumination and fortification.

Jefferson was a provincial in his intensely partisan interest in the welfare of his own country, but he was a cosmopolite in his discernment in recognizing what was most useful in alien lands, and in his solicitude to reproduce it on this side of the water. The spirit of his mission to France, apart from its purely diplomatic aspects, was summarized in the ever present thought: what advantages

to America in a scientific or scholarly way can I gather up here for the promotion of its wealth, its comfort, its moral and intellectual condition? There was no limit to the personal inconvenience which he was ready to defy to obtain information which he knew would be beneficial to the existing and the future generations.

Such was his mental attitude in considering the vital task of selecting the professors of the new university, when, after the completion of the buildings, and the adoption of the system of instruction, it became imperative to choose the entire number. He was fully determined to appoint only the most erudite, not only because his standard was as high in the respect of scholastic training as it was in all others, but because he was shrewdly aware that it was only the most shining acquirements that could give prestige to a seat of learning which was still in its infancy. The distinction of the teachers alone could overcome the absence of that glamour which tradition and a long history of achievement are so fecund in imparting. Without this distinction, the University could not only assert no superiority over its fellow institutions of older origin, -it could not even claim an equality with them. The first question, which, he said, should be asked of a candidate was: Is he highly qualified? Nor was he to be accepted as so qualified simply because he knew thoroughly his own topic. On the contrary, Jefferson insisted that "he should be educated as to the sciences generally; able to converse understandingly with the scientific men with whom he is associated; or to assist in the councils of the Faculty on any subject of science on which they may have occasion to deliberate. Without this, he will incur their contempt, and bring disrespect on the institution."

It is to be inferred from this expression of opinion, that

Jefferson was inclined to estimate breadth of acquirements more highly than mere specialism, however profound. Such amplitude of accomplishments were more common in his day than it is in our own, and the success of his original selection of professors was, in no one particular, more conspicuously illustrated than in the facility with which the majority of them could pass from the chair of languages to the chair of mathematics and from the chair of mathematics to the chair of natural philosophy. It was his conviction that something besides lucrative salaries and comfortable accommodations was needed to ensure the acquisition of a faculty of the highest reputation for talents and learning. He thought, with a just refinement of view, that scholars of extraordinary merit are influenced to accept a chair as much by the distinction of the university to which that chair belongs as by the actual emoluments that went with it. What was the only means by which this distinction could be created before professors of celebrity had been chosen? By the nobility of its architectural setting. No doubt, as we have pointed out, Jefferson found an acute satisfaction in stately edifices apart from their practical utility, but there is also reason to suppose that, in adopting the classical style in his own seat of learning, he also had before his mind's eye the reputation for imposing beauty which that style would give. Such a reputation was an important asset in itself. "Had we built a barn for a college and log-huts for accommodations," he said somewhat scornfully, "should we ever had the assurance to propose to a European professor of the first order? "

He knew from his own personal observation while abroad that, among the most splendid structures in Europe, were those that housed the ancient colleges and universities; and he could easily comprehend the feeling of

repulsion which the first view of the rude barracks even of great institutions like Princeton, Yale, and Harvard, would arouse in the breast of a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, or Trinity College, Cambridge. It was partly in order to create the deepest impression for beauty that he insisted that the University should remain shut up until the entire round of buildings had been completed, when alone the effect of the whole in its perfection could be fully taken in and discriminatingly relished. This seemed to him to be the more imperative because Charlottesville, at this time, was a small village, with no architectural charm and no social advantages; and while the surrounding country contained a large number of refined and well educated families, and many attractive homes, yet all of them were too dispersed to make the pleasing impression on cultivated and travelled strangers which they would have done, had they been closely and conveniently grouped.

Had Jefferson been able to go from one American seat of learning to another and pick out the very men whom he preferred, it is quite possible that he would not have directed his gaze so soon towards the universities of Europe. During the existence of Central College, as will be recalled, he turned first to Dr. Cooper, who, although of English birth, had resided long enough in Pennsylvania for his original democratical opinions to be confirmed. Dr. Knox was a citizen of the United States. Jefferson clearly perceived the practical advantage of employing instructors who were already in sympathy with American political principles and social customs, and who, he knew, would be satisfied with the still raw American environment because they were born to it. As early as March, 1819, the Board of Visitors, under the spur of his prompting, instructed the committee of superintendence to overlook

no opportunity of engaging for the University "American citizens of the first order of science in their respective lines"; and during the following year, both Mr. Bowditch and Mr. Ticknor, of Massachusetts, were approached with offers of definite professorships. Nathaniel Bowditch, who was famous as a self-taught mathematician and navigator, and as the translator of Laplace's Mechanique Celeste, had already declined to enter the faculty of either Harvard or West Point. Ticknor was, perhaps, the most accomplished man in the United States at that time; had travelled far and wide in the Old World; and was to win a great reputation as a teacher and as a writer. Each refused such liberal inducements to accept as a pavilion, an annual salary of two thousand dollars, and a fee of ten dollars for each student belonging to his class, with a total emolument of twenty-five hundred dollars specifically guaranteed.

The failure to secure these distinguished men seems to have discouraged Jefferson in his pursuit of American professors. "It was not probable," he concluded, "that they would leave the situation in which they were, even if it were honorable to seduce them from their stations." "It was easy enough," he added, "to fill the chairs with the employed secondary characters. But this would not have fulfilled the object or satisfied the expectation of our country in the institution." The impossibility of obtaining in the United States the teachers of the scholarship by him considered to be indispensable, fully justified him in deciding to look henceforward across the ocean for their counterparts. And he may have done this with the less hesitation because he was aware that a foreign professor was, at that time, certain to be invested with the greater prestige because he would he able to show a diploma from some one of the famous European universities;

or what was a still higher distinction, had even occupied a chair in one of them.

Naturally, Jefferson concentrated his earliest attention upon the country which spoke the same language and possessed the same points of view as Americans, and were of the same racial descent, political principles, and social instincts. He was too sensible to presume that an infant university seated in the far-off New World, as yet without reputation because still a pile of fresh bricks, and with no large endowment fund, would be able, by the few inducements that it could hold out, to draw to itself historical scholars like Robertson, or classical scholars like Porson and Parr, or scientists like Playfair. They, he said, "occupied positions which could not be bettered anywhere." It was upon the accomplished members of a younger generation that he cast his eyes, -the men who were already treading impatiently upon the heels of the veterans; and who, within a few years, would be usurping their shoes, and, as their successors, showing even higher qualifications than the veterans themselves had exhibited. The rivalry among these younger English scholars of equal claims to recognition, he knew, was sharp and unceasing; and he was sanguine that there would be found among them some, who, as he said, would prefer a comfortable certainty in Virginia to a precarious stipend in England. So universal and so relentless, indeed, was this competition in the strangle there for a moderate income, that he had been told, he added, that "it was deemed allowable in ethics for even the most honorable minds to give exaggerated recommendations and certificates to enable a friend or protégé to get into a livelihood."

Jefferson was well-informed as to the English universities which must be sounded by him in his search for the

competent professors who were needed: to Oxford, he must go for the classical scholar; to Cambridge for the mathematical; to Edinburgh, for the anatomical expert; and perhaps to that city also for the teacher of natural philosophy and natural history. The professor of modern languages should be procured from one of the continental seats of learning.

The first foreign instructor to send in his testimonials to the Board of Visitors was George Blaettermann, a German by birth and education, who had been recommended by George Ticknor and General Preston. This was in 1821. Again, in 1823, he applied by letter to Jefferson for the appointment, for which he had, in the interval, prepared himself by collecting, during a tour of France, Germany, and Holland, materials for a series of lectures to be delivered at the University. Richard Rush, the American minister to London, had been asked to inquire as to his character and qualifications. It is possible that, at one time, Jefferson was sanguine that all the professors could be selected through the intermediary offices of Rush; but this expectation, if ever nursed, was soon abandoned as impracticable.

It was natural and judicious that he, in casting about for an agent, should first think of Joseph C. Cabell, a man upon whose good sense he had always, as we have seen, relied implicitly, and who, by a previous visit to Europe, and by personal acquaintance with many distinguished persons there, seemed to be exceptionally fitted to carry out successfully the mission which was now to be performed. Cabell, asked for time to consider the request. "I cannot conceal," he wrote, "the gratification I feel at the confidence the proposition discovers." At the moment, he was debating in the closet of his own mind whether he should not resign his seat in the Senate, and withdraw

into private citizenship again; his affairs had begun to suffer alarmingly from the neglect that had followed his long absences from home; and he had also pleasing visions of devoting the leisure hours of his future plantation life to science and literature. The suggested visit to Europe would not be inconsistent with these agricultural and scholarly plans, for it would not absorb a longer period than six months at the most. Cabell, in the end, however, determined, with Jefferson's hearty approval, to remain in public office; and this decision, fortified, doubtless, by his constant anxiety about his health, caused him to decline the invitation to undertake the foreign mission.[56]

At the meeting of the Board of Visitors held on April 5 (1824), Francis Walker Gilmer was chosen in his stead. As Jefferson had known Gilmer intimately from boyhood, the selection was quite certainly the direct result of his advice. From every point of view, it was both a judicious and an interesting one. Gilmer belonged to the same caste in Virginia as Cabell, and had passed his early life in the midst of precisely similar social influences; indeed, the home of Dr. George Gilmer, the father of Francis Walker, was the exact counterpart in domestic refinement, elevated tastes, and simple occupations, of the home of Colonel Nicholas Cabell, the father of Joseph. The mould in which the characters of both young men had been shaped was the typical country-house of the Old Dominion, with its English traditions of manliness, uprightness, and culture of head and heart. Both were animated by the same lofty ideal of intellectual accomplishments and public services. Distinction in literature,

science or politics was the beckoning star of their aspirations; they had, from their earliest youth, nursed a generous ambition to win personal renown by such achievements in at least one of these walks as would be distinctly promotive of the happiness and prosperity of their fellow-men.

Cabell and Gilmer resembled each other even in their flaws of temperament: the one exhibited on the threshold of his active life, the other, throughout the whole of his shortened existence, a definite infirmity of will, which, by shifting their energies from one channel to another, created an impression of instability and inconstancy of character. Cabell, acquiring, by inheritance and marriage, a large fortune, was able in time to concentrate his powers in a brilliant political career, which he followed uninterruptedly until the verge of old age. Gilmer, as we shall see, wavered, not so much in his general spirit, as in his particular aims, and died while still young, leaving behind a memory that was held in all the more tenderness by his numerous friends because it was invested with the pathos of arrested achievement and unfulfilled promise. Both Cabell and Gilmer were sufferers from weakness of the lungs; and Gilmer succumbed to it before his powers had fully ripened. The capriciousness and fickleness which marked his conduct at times were probably due, in no small measure, to the haunting thought of this terrible disease, which naturally tended to confuse his plans for life and debilitate his will in their pursuit. The impression left by the study of his career is one of brilliance that bordered on futility, and of ambition of the noblest order that lacked the necessary fixity of purpose to blossom into full efflorescence.