History of Randolph-Macon College, Virginia Part 27

Great embarra.s.sment had been experienced on account of want of funds to meet promptly the salaries of the Faculty.

The appointment of a "fiscal executive officer, competent to execute the plans of the Board, and also to invent schemes of his own for obtaining funds," was strongly pressed. This recommendation was promptly adopted, and a committee appointed to define his duties and to nominate a suitable man for the place.

During the session this committee made report, defining the duties of the Financial Secretary, and placing all the business matters and financial interests in the hands of said officer. He was also to travel as much as practicable through the Conferences to influence patronage, secure donations and bequests, and also to encourage the Conference educational collections. The salary of the officer was fixed at $2,000 per annum.

[Ill.u.s.tration: REV. A. G. BROWN., D. D.]

To fill the office the committee nominated Rev. A. G. Brown, of the Virginia Conference. He was not a stranger to the College, having served as chaplain there in former years. He was duly elected, and a resolution adopted asking the Virginia Conference to a.s.sign him to this work.

This was a fortunate appointment. The Financial Secretary, after entering on his duties, proceeded promptly to adjust the matters of the College, and soon got them into manageable shape.

Prof. Thomas R. Price appeared before the Board and explained his views in regard to the "School of English."

On motion, it was--

_Resolved_, That the Faculty be, and they are hereby, authorized to establish, if they find it possible, "a School of English and Literature."

This most important move was on the same general plan adopted in 1835, and carried out for several years by Prof. E. D. Sims after his return from Europe, where he had spent several years studying Anglo-Saxon and other languages preparatory to this course.

It does not seem, however, that Prof. Price was aware that such a course had been previously established, and it was as original with him as it was with the first mover in it. Fortunately, in this second movement it became a permanent course, and the influence of the move has spread far and wide.

[Ill.u.s.tration: REV. W. W. ROYALL, D. D., (R. M. C., 1872-'75.) _Missionary to China. Member Virginia Conference, M. E. Church South._]

LETTER OF PROF. THOMAS R. PRICE, LL. D.

"COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK.

"_Capt. Richard Irby, Randolph-Macon College:_

"DEAR SIR,--The President and Trustees of Randolph-Macon College, in 1868-'70, deserve, I think, the credit of having made the boldest and wisest move in education that has taken place in my time. Dr. Duncan, above all, so great and wise in many directions, was, in my judgment, the most deeply devoted and the most far-sighted friend of collegiate education I have known. When made a member of his Faculty, in 1868, as Professor of Greek and Latin, I had, with my large cla.s.ses, to struggle against great difficulties and grave discouragements. Amid all I had his tender sympathy and wise and loving help. The fundamental difficulty of all soon revealed itself to me. I was seeking, as all instructors of Greek and Latin of that period were seeking, to give a knowledge of the ancient languages to boys and young men that knew not enough of their own language to receive it or apply it. It was irrational, absurd, almost criminal, for example, to expect, a young man, whose knowledge of English words and construction was scant and inexact, to put into English a difficult thought of Plato or an involved period of Cicero.

Dr. Duncan, to whom I imparted my conviction, shared with me the sense of the grave evil. Braver and more hopeful than I, he bade me not to despair, but to cut at the root of the trouble by introducing the study of English. His eloquence and radical good sense won the majority of the Trustees, and the English school was founded. I had the honor, which I prize highly, of having been made professor of English, giving up the Latin to Dr. James A. Harrison. I had the duty laid on me, by the Trustees, of drawing up the programme of the new course and of selecting text-books and supplementing text-books by lectures. My plan was, through the course of five years, to make the literary and historical study of our great language go forward evenly balanced. I began with the study of grammar and of easy texts in the preparatory section, and then, year after year, thus formed in succession the four college cla.s.ses up to the Senior and graduation. I cannot give you the exact dates. The struggle began, I think, in 1869, and it was carried on to full success by 1873-'74. The catalogues of the College will give the work and programme of each year.

"To Dr. Duncan, and to the good and wise men of the Trustees, I am profoundly grateful for having used me to carry out the bold and n.o.ble design. It was their own work--not suggested from the outside at all, imitating nothing that existed, springing from their clear perception of what education meant and from their sense of duty to their church and their people.

"Yours very truly. THOMAS R. PRICE."

RANDOLPH-MACON COLLEGE AND THE STUDY OF ENGLISH.

Prof. J. B. Henneman, of the University of Tennessee, writes as follows in the _Sewanee Review_. It is grat.i.tying that the good work done by Randolph-Macon is so freely acknowledged:

"It was Randolph-Macon College, rather than the State University of Virginia, though it was the work of one of her graduates, that was to have the distinction of creating a School of English in the South which should send forth apostles with all the fervor of converts and enthusiasts. Randolph-Macon College would have deserved notice for devoting a separate chair to English Literature as early as 1836, almost from its inception; and Edward Dromgoole Sims, a Master of Arts of the University of North Carolina, gave a course on Historical English in the year 1839. He was installed in that year as Professor of English, after a stay in Europe, where he heard lectures on Anglo-Saxon. Tradition tells how, having no text-books, he used the blackboards for his philological work. At the end of three years he removed to the University of Alabama in consequence of having contracted a marriage not then allowed under the laws of Virginia. He was preparing a series of text-books in Old English, tradition again says, when he died, in 1845.

Had he accomplished his purpose, these works would have preceded Klipstein's in point of time. (Other occupants of the chair of English at Randolph-Macon were William M. Wightman and David S. Doggett, both afterwards bishops in the Methodist Church, South.) It was again at Randolph-Macon College (though now removed from Mecklenburg to Hanover county) that, immediately after the war, there was founded a distinct school of English, based on historic and scientific principles, and productive of far-reaching results. I believe that I am but paying a worthy tribute to one whom all his pupils have found a helpful guide and inspiring instructor in making the statement that this movement was mainly due to the inspiration and effort of one man--Thomas R. Price.

"The suggestion of the course of English at Randolph-Macon College sprang from the study of the ancient languages. The feeling existed that it was impossible to expect appreciation of idioms in a foreign language when students knew nothing about those in their own tongue. To quote from Professor Price's own words at the time: 'It was irrational, absurd, almost criminal, for example, to expect a young man, whose knowledge of English words and constructions was scant and inexact, to put into English a difficult thought of Plato or an involved period of Cicero.' The course pursued in consequence was entirely original in its premises, and endeavored to meet these difficulties. Both the disease and remedy were brought out by the conditions present; and to this, I think, may be ascribed, in large measure, the success of the movement and its value as a stimulus. The end set was to place, in the ordinary college course, the study of English on an equal footing with that of Latin or Greek, giving it the same time and attention, aiming at the same thoroughness, and enforcing the same strictness of method. A knowledge of the early forms of English was demanded, not as philology pure and simple, const.i.tuting an end in itself, but as a means for acquiring a true, appreciative knowledge of the mother tongue, and thereby for understanding its literature and other literatures all the more. It now seems almost incredible that it required so great an effort at the time to take this step or that old traditions could become so firmly crystallized.

"Professor Price's efforts succeeded all the more easily in that they were seconded by his presiding officer, the Rev. Dr. James A. Duncan, a man of singular breadth and sympathy of mind, who had grouped about him, irrespective of church and denominational ties, a band of worthy a.s.sociates. Price, as Professor of Greek and Latin, gave up the latter to his colleague, James A. Harrison, who had charge of the modern languages, and taking control of the English, developed it side by side with his Greek, so as to cover a course through four continuous years.

This was the result of the work of two sessions, 1868-'70. The movement soon spread far and wide. Other inst.i.tutions, impelled by the same needs, either imitated it outright--some of them actually going so far as always to unite the English department with the Greek, as if there were some subtle virtue in the connection (building possibly even wiser than they knew)--or developed out of their own necessities similar arrangements.

"After the men at Randolph-Macon had been drilled in the rudiments and given their primary inspiration, many of them were dispatched to Europe for further training, and returned Doctors of Leipzig and fired with a new zeal. In mere appearances, it should seem as if this Randolph-Macon migration to Leipzig was the beginning of the attraction exerted by that University on young Southern scholars, an attraction which has been rivalled in recent years only by that of the neighboring Johns Hopkins.

The land lay open before these young men, and they proceeded to occupy it. Robert Sharp returned Doctor from Leipzig, and was soon called to Tulane; William M. Baskervill returned Doctor from Leipzig, and started an impulse at Wofford College, South Carolina, which he broadened and deepened after his transfer, in 1881, to Vanderbilt; Robert Emory Blackwell returned from Leipzig and succeeded Professor Price in his work at Randolph-Macon; Frank C. Woodward succeeded Baskervill at Wofford in 1881, and removed to the South Carolina College in 1887; W.

A. Frantz has built up a following in Central College, Missouri; John R.

Ficklen, having followed Dr. Price to the State University, has become a.s.sociated with Sharp at Tulane. The English fever at Randolph-Macon became epidemic. Dr. James A. Harrison accepted a call, in 1876, to Was.h.i.+ngton and Lee as Professor of Modern Languages, and formed a new Virginian centre for specialists. Even Price's successor in the Greek chair at Randolph-Macon, Charles Morris, soon resigned to go to the University of Georgia as Professor of English. Nor has the manufacture of Randolph-Macon professors of English ever entirely ceased. Howard Edwards, formerly of the University of Kansas; J. L. Armstrong, late of Trinity College, North Carolina, and now of the Randolph-Macon Woman's College; John D. Epes, of St. John's College, Maryland; John Lesslie Hall, Ph. D. (Johns Hopkins), of William and Mary, are later accessions to a list by no means complete.

"It is very curious to trace these various ramifications of mutual influences, and to see them acting and interacting, crossing and recrossing. Three main lines may be detected. Just as the University of Virginia, through its graduates, became the pattern for many, especially State inst.i.tutions, and Hampden-Sidney, Davidson, Central, and, particularly, Presbyterian colleges, felt the influence of the course at Was.h.i.+ngton and Lee; so Randolph-Macon affected, among others, Wofford, and then Vanderbilt, which, in turn, has become a new centre of activity.

"The transmission of this spirit to Wofford College, and thence to Vanderbilt University at Nashville, is peculiarly instructive. W. M.

Baskervill, trained under Price and Harrison, and in Leipzig, came to Wofford in 1876, where he met with a sympathetic circle. The president, Dr. James H. Carlisle, had always been interested in English work, and was a close student of the history and meaning of words. Charles Foster Smith was fellow-professor with Baskervill, and James H. Kirkland, first an appreciative pupil, was afterwards colleague as Smith's successor.

All three of these young scholars ultimately took their degrees in Leipzig, and were called to Vanderbilt University, of which Dr. Kirkland is the newly-elected Chancellor. The English language and letters have been steadily emphasized by the close sympathies uniting these three men in their common work in the department of languages. Kirkland's Leipzig dissertation was on an English subject, though he is now professor of Latin; Smith, the professor of Greek, has been a constant contributor on English points, and Baskervill is specifically professor in charge.

Through the standard which their fortunate circ.u.mstances allowed them to set, a new centre of influence has been formed in Nashville.

[Ill.u.s.tration: REV. JOHN HANNON, A. M., D. D., _Ukiah, California._]

"It was this Wofford influence, if I may be personal for a s.p.a.ce, that had much to do with sending me to the University of Virginia to hear Price in Greek. And I but echo the feeling of many in Professor Price's cla.s.s-room, that it was hard to know to which of the two languages his cla.s.s leaned the more, Greek or English, so intimately upon one another, especially in the work of translating, did the two depend. At any rate, it is singular that his pupils, stirred by the Greek, just as at Randolph-Macon, have used this cla.s.sical impulse to enter upon the keener study of their native language and literature. I was privileged to be in the last Greek cla.s.s which Professor Price taught at the University of Virginia; and contemporaneous with me at the University were other pupils: Charles W. Kent, Ph. D., of Leipzig, just returned to his _Alma Mater_ as Linden Kent Professor of English Literature; James Douglas Bruce, of Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and the editor of this _Review_. Eventually Professor Price's strong predilections for English, and the memory of the work wrought while at Randolph-Macon, led, in 1882, to his acceptance of a call to the chair of English in Columbia College, New York, a change which, in the face of all he had accomplished at the South, many of his old pupils were selfish enough to regard with regret."

On the recommendation of the Faculty, the degree of A. M. was conferred on John Hannon, of Alabama, and William Waugh Smith, of Virginia.

The vacant chair of Modern Languages was filled by the election of Mr.

James A. Harrison, of New Orleans. This officer proved to be a valuable accession to the Faculty, and his success at Randolph-Macon was the prophecy of further success at Was.h.i.+ngton and Lee University, and the University of Virginia, where he is at this writing.

In regard to the enterprise referred to at the last annual meeting, the Board adopted the following resolutions:

"Whereas suitable halls for the literary societies of this College are imperatively necessary in the work of this inst.i.tution; and whereas the Was.h.i.+ngton and Franklin Literary Societies have taken this enterprise in hand with commendable zeal and liberality: therefore,

"_Resolved_, I. That we gratefully recognize the efforts of the young gentlemen in projecting and prosecuting this enterprise.

"II. That we consider the success which has already attended their efforts as a gratifying evidence of the speedy completion of the work.

"III. That we commend this enterprise and the young gentlemen engaged in it to the liberality of all the friends of this College and the cause of liberal education.

"IV. That we pledge our hearty co-operation in this work in every way in our power."

[Ill.u.s.tration: PROF. J. A. HARRISON, M. A., LL. D.]

At the close of the college year ending June, 1872, the following items of interest were reported to the Board at the annual meeting:

The Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad Company conveyed to the Board of Trustees a tract of land lying on the south of the line of said railroad, near what was called the Club House, containing about twenty acres, "on condition that the Trustees erect on the said land permanent college buildings within fifteen years after the date of conveyance, and that the deed shall contain the _prohibition of the sale of ardent spirits without the written consent of said company_."

This was considered to have been a better location for college buildings than the first occupied, and the project might have been carried out but for want of means to erect the buildings.

The Financial Agent further reported the need of additional college buildings on account of increased attendance of students. The number in attendance the past session was 167, being 25 more than any previous session at Ashland. Amount of fees, $7,652.30; amount remitted to privileged students, $6,182.50; amount received from the Virginia and Baltimore Conferences, $2,682.33. This was a gratifying result.

Available a.s.sets, ... ... ... ... ... . $58,729 65 a.s.sets not now available, ... ... ... ... . 24,603 67 Total, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... . $83,333 32 Liabilities, ... ... ... ... ... ... . .23,216 49

Resolutions commending the Agent for his work were adopted, and pledging the support of the Board to him in his work.

The absence of the two oldest members of the Board, viz., Bishop John Early and D'Arcy Paul, Esq., on account of age and feebleness, were noted by suitable resolutions.