American Philosophical Society
N none of his schemes and foundations did Dr. Franklin more signally display the breadth and catholicity of his mind than in his plan for the establishment, in the New World, of an association for the general diffusion of useful knowledge, to which the Old World should be tributary, and from which it should in time be recipient. With this end in view, he, in 1743, issued a proposal for the organization and government of an American Philosophical Society, whose object was to bring into correspondence with a central association in Philadelphia all scientists, philosophers, and inventors, on this continent and in Europe. Bold as was this scheme in its breadth and reach, in its smaller details it was marked by the practical characteristics of the projector. The Hamiltons and Franklins might “dream dreams and see visions” to the end of the chapter; but they would have framed no governments, or have founded no learned institutions destined to outlast the centuries, had not their ideality been well balanced by the strong common sense that Guizot calls “the genius of humanity.” It was this union of the ideal and the practical that caused Franklin to be so appreciated by the French. Mirabeau named him “the sage of two worlds,” with a larger grasp of thought than that of our own day, when he is still claimed, like the debatable baby brought to King Solomon, by two cities,—by Boston, in which he first saw the light, and by Philadelphia, in which he disseminated it so liberally.
Although there is a vast amount of documentary evidence to prove that the American Philosophical Society was the direct outcome of Franklin’s proposal of 1743, and that before the breaking out of the war with Great Britain it was an active and useful organization, having a large native and foreign membership, two of Dr. Franklin’s biographers have done but scant justice to his work in this direction. Professor McMaster, in his recent interesting life of Franklin as a man of letters, dismisses his proposal to establish such a society as a failure;[19] while Mr. Parton, after mentioning the fact of Franklin having founded the Philosophical Society, in accordance with his proposal of 1743, adds, “The society was formed, and continued in existence for some years. Nevertheless, its success was neither great nor permanent, for at that day the circle of men capable of taking much interest in science was too limited for the proper support of such an organization.”[20]
As both of these historians mention the Philosophical Society later, and Mr. Parton at some length in his Life of Jefferson, it is probable that they did not consider that this early society was identical with that which in 1767 took a fresh start, elected a number of influential members, and made for itself an enviable reputation in Europe and America, in the latter years of the century. Sparks and Bigelow, however, take what is, according to the historian of the society, Dr. Robert M. Patterson, a true view of the case, tracing it back, a continuous organization, to the proposal of Dr. Franklin issued in 1743. Indeed, they carry it back even further than this period, deriving it primarily from the old Junto of 1727. After describing the workings of the Junto, or Leather Apron Society, formed from among Franklin’s “ingenious acquaintance,” a sort of debating club of clever young men, Jared Sparks says, “Forty years after its establishment, it became the basis of the American Philosophical Society, of which Franklin was the first president, and the published Transactions of which have contributed to the advancement of science and the diffusion of valuable knowledge in the United States.”[21] As most of Franklin’s projects were discussed in the congenial circle that composed the Junto, this statement does not conflict with that of Dr. Patterson.
Dr. Franklin, in his proposal, gave a list of the subjects that were to claim the attention of these New World philosophers. It included “investigations in botany; in medicine; in mineralogy and mining; in chemistry; in mechanics; in arts, trades, and manufactures; in geography and topography; in agriculture;” and, lest something should have been left out of this rather comprehensive list of subjects, it was added that the association should “give its attention to all philosophical experiments that let light into the nature of things, tend to increase the power of man over matter, and multiply the conveniences or pleasures of life.” The duties of the secretary of the society were laid down, and were especially arduous, including much foreign correspondence, in addition to the correcting, abstracting, and methodizing of such papers as required it. This office Dr. Franklin took upon himself, saying, with a touch of modesty that seems a trifle strained, that he “would be secretary until they should be provided with one more capable.” He, however, tells us in the Autobiography that he one day added humility to his list of virtues at the suggestion of a Quaker friend, and this form of expression may have been one of his self-imposed exercises.
The Philosophical Society, once established, was destined to exert an important influence on American science, life, and letters. Among its members were literary men, statesmen, and artists, as well as scientists and inventors. Before its meetings were read learned papers on government, history, education, philanthropy, politics, religion, worship, above all, on common sense: these in addition to the numerous scientific papers, read and communicated, while among its eulogiums and oraisons funèbres, pronounced upon deceased members, are to be found compositions worthy of Bossuet.
As early as 1769, the society had members in the different colonies, in the Barbadoes, in Antigua, in Heidelberg and Stockholm; while in Edinburgh the distinguished Dr. William Cullen was a member, in London Dr. John Fothergill, and in Paris the learned Count de Buffon. At home it numbered such men as Francis Hopkinson, statesman and writer of prose and poetry; Dr. Phineas Bond and his brother Thomas, both original members; Dr. Adam Kuhn and Daniel Dulany, of Maryland. Upon these early lists we find Pierre Eugène du Simitière, who was one of the committee appointed to prepare a design for a national seal; Benjamin West; John Dickinson, who was writing his “Farmer’s Letters,” destined to make him known on both sides of the sea; and John Bartram, botanist to his majesty, who planted his celebrated botanical garden near Gray’s Ferry, and built with his own hands the house, above the study window of which is his devout confession of faith:
“’TIS GOD ALONE, ALMIGHTY LORD,
THE HOLY ONE, BY ME ADORED.
JOHN BARTRAM, 1770.”
A pioneer in this field, he is recognized as the greatest of American botanists, and, contrary to the rule generally proved by great men’s sons, had the satisfaction of seeing his studies successfully prosecuted by his son, William Bartram, who also contributed original papers to the society.
Writing in 1744 to the Honorable Cadwallader Colden, Lieutenant-Governor of New York, a distinguished scientist and original worker in certain lines, Dr. Franklin says,—
“Happening to be in this City about some particular Affairs, I have the Pleasure of receiving yours of the 28ᵗʰ past, here. And can now acquaint you, that a Society, as far as relates to Philadelphia, is actually formed, and has had several Meetings to mutual Satisfaction;—assoon [sic] as I get home, I shall send you a short Acct. of what has been done and proposed at these meetings.”
Here follows a list of members from Philadelphia, New York, and New Jersey, to which the writer adds,—
“Mr. Nicholls tells me of several other Gentlemen of this City [New York] that incline to encourage the Thing.—There are a Number of others in Virginia, Maryland, Carolina, and the New England States who we expect to join us assoon [sic] as they are acquainted that the Society has begun to form itself. I am, Sir, with much respect,
“Your most humᵉ sevᵗ
“B. FRANKLIN.”[22]
The Honorable Cadwallader Colden was one of the original members of the American Philosophical Society, and took an active interest in its establishment and advance. He and Dr. Franklin were intimate friends, and in the habit of communicating to each other their scientific discoveries. It was Dr. Colden who introduced into the study of botany in America the system of Linnæus.
One of the founders and the first president of this society was Mr. Thomas Hopkinson, whom Dr. Franklin called his “ingenious friend,” and to whom he acknowledges his indebtedness for demonstrating “the power of points to throw off the electrical fire.” Another “ingenious friend,” to whom he makes no profound acknowledgment, was the Rev. Ebenezer Kinnersley, a professor in the College of Philadelphia, to whom it is now generally conceded that Franklin owed much of his success in important electrical discoveries. Mr. Parton says that, in 1748, “Mr. Kinnersley contrived the amusing experiment of the magical picture. A figure of his majesty King George II. (‘God preserve him,’ says the loyal Franklin, in parenthesis, when telling the story) was so arranged that any one who attempted to take his crown from his head received a tremendous shock.” By this clever contrivance Mr. Kinnersley proves himself something of a prophet as well as a scientist, for notwithstanding the violent shock received by the friends of royalty in the colonies, a few years later, it was conclusively demonstrated that the crown could be taken off.
In drawing up rules for the government of the Philosophical Society, Dr. Franklin advises that correspondence be maintained not only between the central organization and its members in the different colonies, but with the Royal Society of London and the Dublin Society. Thus persons residing in remote districts of the United States would be placed in direct communication with the latest discoveries of Old World scientists in all their lines of work. What such correspondence meant to men of intelligence, living far from the centres of education and enlightenment, in those days of few books and fewer magazines and journals, it is impossible for us to imagine. Many years later, when the French botanist, André Michaux, was appointed by his government to examine the trees of this continent, with a view to their introduction into France, he carried letters from the Philosophical Society to one of its members, living in Lexington, Kentucky.
“During my stay at Lexington,” Michaux writes, “I frequently saw Dr. Samuel Brown, from Virginia, a physician of the College of Edinburgh, and a member of the Philosophical Society.... Receiving regularly the scientific journals from London, he is always in the channel of new discoveries, and turns them to the advantage of his fellow-citizens. It is to him that they are indebted for the introduction of the cow-pox. He had at that time inoculated upwards of five hundred persons in Kentucky, when they were making their first attempts in New York and Philadelphia.”
Agreeable as it must have been to Michaux to find flowers of science blooming in these western wilds, we can imagine the even greater delight that such a man as Dr. Brown must have experienced in meeting and conversing with this foreigner, fresh from Old World haunts of learning, with his interesting budget of news, political as well as scientific. Those were the exciting days of the Consulate in France, when Lord Nelson was gaining victories for England in the Northern seas; and we can picture to ourselves these two learned gentlemen, seated before a great fire of logs, with a steaming bowl of punch, made from the famous Kentucky apple-jack beside them, turning away from the paths of science to discuss Napoleon’s victories, the coalition against England, and the assassination of the Emperor Paul in Russia, which was followed by a treaty between his successor and the English sovereign.
American science must have been in a condition of encouraging activity between 1750 and 1767, for in those years there were no less than three societies in Philadelphia whose aims and pursuits were in the main identical,—the promotion of useful knowledge and the drawing together of its votaries. These societies were a second Junto, of which the indefatigable Dr. Franklin was a member, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Society. This division in the ranks of science probably arose from the feeling existing between the adherents of the Penn family and those averse to them; these parties being as violently opposed to each other as were, later, Federalist and Democratic-Republican; or, still later, the Whig and Democratic parties. Happily for the historian, who is sadly confused by Juntos and Juntolings, and by American Societies which were philosophical, and Philosophical Societies which were also American, these different bodies showed a disposition to unite, and in 1769 were incorporated into one society, under the title of American Philosophical Society, held at Philadelphia, for Promoting Useful Knowledge. This title proving a trifle “unhandy for every-day use,” to borrow the phraseology of a patriotic farmer’s wife, who bestowed upon one of her offspring the entire heading of the Republican ticket in 1860, “Abraham Lincoln Hannibal Hamlin,” it has gradually been abbreviated into the American Philosophical Society, there being now no other.
Of this united society Dr. Franklin was elected president, the first of an honorable line of presidents, whose portraits adorn the walls of the old rooms on Fifth Street, where the philosophers met more than a hundred years ago. The society obtained a grant of land from the State of Pennsylvania in 1785, and in 1787 its hall was completed, the one still used, in whose sunshiny rooms are now gathered the relics, the treasures, and the memories of a century. Here is the old chair on whose broad arm Jefferson wrote the Declaration, and here are autograph letters and autographs of such value as to fill the soul of the collector with “envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness.” On one side of the hall is the well-known and most characteristic portrait of Dr. Franklin,[23] in his blue coat, large wig, and spectacles, while near by is his marble effigy by Houdon, whose statue of Washington bears the proud inscription, “Fait par Houdon, citoyen Français.”
Dr. Franklin was annually elected president of the society, Dr. Thomas Cadwalader officiating during his residence abroad. Brissot de Warville, coming to Philadelphia in 1788, exclaims, with devoutness rare in a Frenchman, “Thanks be to God, he still exists! This great man, for so many years the preceptor of the Americans, who so gloriously contributed to their independence; death had threatened his days, but our fears are dissipated, and his health is restored.” Two years later the same chronicler records, “Franklin has enjoyed this year the blessing of death, for which he waited so long a time.”
As president of the Philosophical Society, he was succeeded, in 1791, by Dr. Rittenhouse, the greatest American astronomer, of whom Jefferson said, “We have supposed Rittenhouse second to no astronomer living; in genius he must be first, because he is self-taught.” It was he who contributed to the society the first purely scientific paper in its series of Transactions, a calculation on the transit of Venus. He also described a wonderful orrery, which represented the revolution of the heavenly bodies more completely than it had ever been done before, and which he had himself constructed at the age of twenty-three. In June, 1769, he made observations on the transit of Venus. “The whole horizon was without a cloud,” says Rittenhouse, in his report of this event; and so greatly excited was the young astronomer that, in the instant of one of the contacts of the planet with the sun, he actually fainted with emotion. Rittenhouse’s interesting report on this phenomenon, which had never been seen but twice before by any inhabitant of the earth, was received with satisfaction by learned and scientific men everywhere. Those who visit the hall of the society to-day may look out upon the State-House yard from the same window through which Rittenhouse made his observations, and note the passing hours upon the face of a clock constructed by his hands, which, the curator says, “still keeps good time.”
Prominent among the portraits of early officers is an interesting picture of Thomas Jefferson, who was third president of the Philosophical Society, as well as of the United States. This painting, which well portrays the intellectual and spirited face of the original, was executed at Monticello by Mr. Sully, who was invited there for this purpose. Jefferson, who would have been a great scientist had he not been called upon by his country to use his powers as a statesman, naturally took a warm interest in the Philosophical Society, and was a member long before he was made its president in 1797. While abroad he disputed the arguments of the learned Count de Buffon on the degeneracy of American animals, and finally made his position secure by sending the astonished Frenchman the bones, skin, and horns of an enormous New Hampshire moose. Equally convincing was this, and more agreeable than the manner in which Dr. Franklin answered a similar argument on the degeneracy of American men, by making all the Americans at table, and all the Frenchmen, stand up. As those of his compatriots present happened to be fine specimens physically, towering above the little Gauls, the good doctor had the argument all his own way.
It seemed, indeed, as if these two great men, who so harmoniously combined the ideal and the practical, were born to prove to the world that genius of the highest order, in science, letters, and statecraft, is not incompatible with the same sort of ability that is essential to the success of a Western farmer or a skilled mechanic. Hence, if Dr. Franklin employed his leisure hours in inventing an improved stove, or explaining to the Philosophical Society why certain chimneys smoked; Mr. Jefferson used his in designing a plough, for which he received a gold medal from France, and in calculating the number of bushels of wheat to the acre, at Monticello. One day, he is interesting himself in the importation of seed-rice from Italy, from the Levant, and from Egypt; while on another, he is helping the Philosophical Society to frame instructions for the guidance of André Michaux in his Western explorations. It was life that interested them both,—life in the smaller details that affect home comfort, as well as in the broader issues that bear upon the happiness of states and nations. In Mr. Jefferson’s minute directions regarding the education of his daughters, and in his grasp of the details of farming, we recognize the same sort of practical common sense that so eminently distinguished Dr. Franklin, of whom his latest biographer says, in his own forcible and epigrammatic style,—“Whatever he has said on domestic economy, or thrift, is sound and striking. No other writer has left so many just and original observations on success in life. No other writer has pointed out so clearly the way to obtain the greatest amount of comfort out of life. What Solomon did for the spiritual man, that did Franklin for the earthly man. The book of Proverbs is a collection of receipts for laying up treasure in heaven. ‘Poor Richard’ is a collection of receipts for laying up treasure on earth.”[24]
In addition to its regular meetings for business and for scientific purposes, the Philosophical Society had its gala days, its annual dinners, and its especial receptions and entertainments given to distinguished strangers. Hither, in 1794, came the Rev. Joseph Priestley, of Birmingham, counted in France too devout for a scientist, and in England too broad for the clergy. As the discoverer of oxygen, the friend of Franklin, whose experiments in electricity he had described, and a devotee to the cause of liberty, Dr. Priestley was warmly welcomed by the Philosophical Society, which not only received him into its own learned brotherhood, but adopted him into American citizenship. This first reception was followed by a dinner given by the learned coterie in honor of Dr. Priestley.
Many anecdotes of these old dinners have been handed down, showing that when the good philosophers put science aside they could be as lively raconteurs and bons vivants as the world has ever seen. On such festive occasions, the witty old Abbé Correa de Serra, Judge Peters, Mr. Du Ponceau, Dr. Caspar Wistar, Mr. John Vaughan, and later, Robert Walsh, LL.D., and the Honorable William Short of Virginia, both most delightful talkers, George Ord, William Strickland the architect, and the ever-ready wits Dr. Nathaniel Chapman and Nicholas Biddle, gathered around the board.
Of Judge Peters’s clever sayings we find numerous records. As he grew older, his sharp nose and chin approached each other closely. A friend observed to him, one day, that his nose and chin would soon be at loggerheads. “Very likely,” he replied, “for hard words often pass between them.” Once, while he was Speaker of the House of Assembly, one of the members, in crossing the room, tripped on the carpet and fell flat. The House burst into laughter, while the judge, with the utmost gravity, cried, “Order, order, gentlemen! Do you not see that a member is on the floor?” Unceremonious, communicative, friendly, Judge Peters was the life of every circle that he entered; correcting Mayor Wharton at a dinner when he called to the waiter, “John, more wine,” saying that it was a demijohn that he needed, while he himself “drank like a fish,” as he expressed it, from his goblet of water, requiring no artificial aid to brighten wits that were always keen and scintillating.
Mr. George Ord, who was a delightful raconteur as well as a learned naturalist, took great pleasure in relating a story of his friend Dr. Abercrombie, a fellow-member of the society. Dr. James Abercrombie, sometime rector of Christ and St. Peter’s Churches, was a divine of the old school, who despised not the good things of this lower world while engaged in preparation for those of the higher. Once, while on a pastoral visit to the small town of Shrewsbury, New Jersey, where an Episcopal church had been established, Dr. Abercrombie was regaled with some very fine old Madeira wine, which he drank with evident appreciation, and probably some surprise at finding anything so choice in that region of the country. The next day, according to Mr. Ord’s story, the good parson chose for his text that most appropriate verse from the Acts of the Apostles, in which St. Paul says, “And the barbarous people showed us no little kindness.”
Another clerical member of the learned fraternity was William White, one of our early American bishops, who was an ardent patriot and a genial companion, as well as the most devout of churchmen. A warm friend of Benjamin West, the artist, Bishop White was fond of telling how he helped West to secure his bride, Miss Betty Shewell. Mr. West was in England, and so busy painting for the court and royal family that he could not come over to America to marry his fiancée; but, as his father was about to sail for England, he wrote to Miss Shewell, begging her to join his father, and make the voyage with him. Miss Shewell’s brother, who was averse to the match, chiefly because West was an impecunious genius, put a stop to the proceedings by confining the fair bride-elect in an upper room. Bishop White, then a very young man, Dr. Franklin, and Mr. Francis Hopkinson determined to help on the “course of true love” by facilitating Miss Shewell’s escape to the ship, which was waiting for her at Chester. This they did by means of a romantic rope-ladder and a carriage around the corner. Miss Shewell with her maid reached the ship in good time, and a few weeks after was married to Benjamin West in the English chapel of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields. In telling this story, the kindly bishop was wont to add, gleefully, “Ben was a good fellow, and deserved a good wife, and I would do the same thing over again to-day,”—a sentiment, we may be sure, that was greeted with applause by the gravest of the philosophers, they being no exception to the rule that “all the world loves a lover.” An active member of the society, and for years one of its counsellors, Bishop White was present on all important occasions, grave or gay. Having known General Washington and the other great men of the Revolution, and met and conversed with Samuel Johnson while in England, his was one of the few familiar faces that greeted the Marquis de Lafayette when he revisited America in 1824.
Another face to be seen for many successive years at the meetings of the society, and at its annual dinners, was that of Peter S. Du Ponceau, the French lawyer and philologist, who lived here for so many years. He has left behind him pictures of some of his learned associates that prove to us that these gentlemen, whose faces look down upon us gravely from century-old portraits, were, on occasions, as full of quips and quirks and fun and frolic as the most jovial collegian of our day. Of his frequent journeys to Washington to attend the sessions of the Supreme Court of the United States, in company with Mr. Ingersoll, Mr. William Rawle, Mr. Lewis, and Mr. Edward Tilghman, he says,—
“As soon as we were out of the city and felt the flush of air, we were like school-boys in the playground on a holiday; and we began to kill time by all the means that our imagination could suggest. Flashes of wit shot their coruscations on all sides; puns of the genuine Philadelphia stamp were handed about; old college stories were revived; macaroni Latin was spoken with great purity; songs were sung,—even classical songs, among which I recollect the famous Bacchanalian of the Archdeacon of Oxford, Mihi est propositum in tabernâ mori; in short, we might have been taken for anything else but the grave counsellors of the celebrated bar of Philadelphia.”
Mr. Du Ponceau it is who is accredited with the well-known story of the lawyer whose client came in and deposed that “his brother had died and made a will.” A gentleman who read law with the facetious Frenchman relates that it was only when a fee was placed in Mr. Du Ponceau’s hand that he translated the phrase into, “Ah! you mean that your brother made a will and died.” We can imagine the laugh with which the philosophers would greet this most practical of jokes.
Quite as celebrated as the dinners of the society were Mr. John Vaughan’s breakfasts, which held the same prominence in the social life of the time as Dr. Wistar’s evening parties or as the Sunday afternoon vespers of Mr. Henry C. Carey, where, during the late war, and after its close, soldiers, politicians, statesmen, and civilians met together and discussed the great issues and events that shook the nation from 1860 to 1865. So at Mr. Vaughan’s breakfasts were discussed the agitating questions of the last decade of the century, Federalists and Democratic-Republicans, as they were beginning to be called, meeting together around his hospitable board. Mr. Vaughan himself was a Federalist, although not a violent partisan. Riding, one day, with Mr. Jefferson, his horse became unmanageable, disturbing somewhat Mr. Vaughan’s serenity, upon which the latter, gathering his reins firmly, muttered under his breath, “This horse—this horse is as bad as a Democrat!” “Oh, no,” replied the high-priest and leader of the party; “if he were a Democrat, he would have thrown you long ago.” Mr. Vaughan, for many years librarian and treasurer of the society, had his rooms in the building on Fifth Street, in one of which, before its generous old-fashioned fireplace and high carved mantel, Washington sat for his well-known portrait by the elder Peale. The general, whom Mr. Vaughan numbered among his friends, had already been elected a member of the society; but we find few records of his presence at its meetings or at the famous breakfasts. One of these breakfasts, given in the latter years of Mr. Vaughan’s life, is still remembered by Dr. William H. Furness, then a young man, recently come from New England to take charge of the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia. The breakfast lasted from nine until one. Whether the guests breakfasted upon roast peacocks and nightingales’ tongues, or upon plain beefsteak and chops, Dr. Furness does not remember; but he will never forget the circle gathered around that table. There were John Quincy Adams, Colonel Drayton of South Carolina, Mr. Du Ponceau, and Dr. Channing, who exercised such an influence on the religious thought of New England, and of whom the orthodox clergy were wont to say that his theology was “Calvinism with the bones taken out.” A goodly company of leading minds, “joined later,” says Dr. Furness, by Albert Gallatin and the Rev. William Ware, pastor of the First Unitarian Church in New York. Among other visitors of note entertained by Mr. Vaughan were Sir Charles Lyell, and George Robins Gliddon, the Egyptologist, who were both in this country about 1841.
Mr. John Vaughan, whose most distinguishing trait was love for his fellow-men, whom, it was said, he took more delight in serving than most men take in making and hoarding dollars, belonged to a family distinguished in statesmanship, letters, and affairs. The Vaughan brothers were of English birth, sons of Samuel Vaughan, a London merchant trading with America. The most prominent of this large family was Benjamin Vaughan, M.D., LL.D., sometime secretary to Lord Shelburne, and acting as confidential messenger in the peace negotiations between Great Britain and America in 1783. Deeply tinctured with the revolutionary spirit of the time, a liberal to the extent of admiring the system of the Directory in France, and writing in favor of it, Benjamin Vaughan finally found it expedient to quit the Old World for the more congenial political atmosphere of the New. He settled in Hallowell, Maine, as did his brother Charles, where descendants of the name still reside. The death of Dr. Benjamin Vaughan, of Hallowell, was announced to the society in 1836, and Mr. Merrick, his kinsman, was appointed to prepare a notice of him. Another brother, Samuel, settled in Jamaica; William, the successful banker of the family, remained in London; while John, one of the younger brothers, came to Philadelphia, where he established himself as a wine merchant, and a prominent member of the First Unitarian Church. Generous to a fault, “Johnny Vaughan,” as his intimates were wont to call him, seems to have objected to parting with but one single earthly possession,—his umbrella. A lady who knew Mr. Vaughan when he was a very old gentleman remembers one of flaming red, whose color should have insured its staying qualities. A story is also told of his having printed on the outside of another one in large characters, “This umbrella was stolen from John Vaughan.” One day a friend of Mr. Vaughan’s started off with this umbrella, and, quite unconscious of its equivocal inscription, hoisted it in broad day. Mr. Vaughan’s Portuguese office boy, who could speak or read no English, but who knew the umbrella, and what the printing stood for, chanced to meet the gentleman who carried it, and with speechless but entire devotion to his master’s interests followed it, and “froze on to it,” as the narrator expressed it, with such persistency that the holder was fain to relinquish it and make his escape from the jeers of the by-standers.
It was over such a circle of learned men and beaux-esprits that Mr. Jefferson was called to preside, when he came to Philadelphia, in 1797, to act as Vice-President of the United States in an uncongenial Federal administration. It is not strange that, with his scholarly and scientific tastes, he found in the rooms of the Philosophical Society a grateful retreat from political wrangling and the cares of state. Party feeling ran so high, at this period, that “social intercourse between members of the two parties ceased,” says Mr. Parton, “and old friends crossed the street to avoid saluting one another. Jefferson declined invitations to ordinary social gatherings, and spent his leisure hours in the circle that met in the rooms of the Philosophical Society.” Not that its membership was Republican, many of its prominent members being Federalists; notably, Dr. Benjamin Rush, Chief Justice Tilghman, Judge Peters, Jared Ingersoll, who was Federalist candidate for the Vice-Presidency of the United States in 1812, Dr. Robert Patterson, and Mr. Du Ponceau. This was a place, however, where science, art, and literature occupied the ground and where politics and party differences were forgotten in the discussion of some subject that touched the general weal, as when Dr. Caspar Wistar discovered a new bone; or Robert Patterson presented a paper on improved ship-pumps; or Jonathan Williams one on a new mode of refining sugar; or when John Fitch exhibited “the model, with a drawing and description, of a machine for working a boat against the stream by means of a steam-engine;” or, later, when Mr. Charles Goodyear was induced, by Franklin Peale, to demonstrate to the society that vulcanized rubber could be made from the juice of the cahuchu tree. And here, as if to prove that science and religion may be allied in closest union, came two distinguished Moravian divines, John Heckewelder and the Rev. Lewis D. de Schweinitz, the latter with his “Synopsis Fungorum in America.”
John Adams, the Federalist President, was a member of the Philosophical Society, and speaks of it with warm admiration. Comparing Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, he says, in one of his letters to his wife,—
“Particular gentlemen here [in Philadelphia], who have improved upon their education by travel, shine; but in general old Massachusetts outshines her younger sisters. Still, in several particulars they have more wit than we. They have societies, the Philosophical Society particularly, which excites a scientific emulation, and propagates their fame. If ever I get through this scene of politics and war, I will spend the remainder of my days in endeavoring to instruct my countrymen in the art of making the most of their abilities and virtues, an art which they have hitherto too much neglected. A philosophical society shall be established at Boston, if I have wit and address enough to accomplish it, some time or other. Pray, set Brother Cranch’s philosophical head plodding upon this project. Many of his lucubrations would have been published and preserved for the benefit of mankind, and for his honor, if such a club had existed.”
Mr. Madison, who was far more congenial to Mr. Jefferson, politically, than the sturdy New Englander, had been for years a member of the society; but he was out of office now, and living quietly at his rural home in Orange County, Virginia. It was during his residence here, in 1794, that the sprightly widow, who afterwards became his wife, writes of her first meeting with “the great little Madison.” She tells us, in her charming letters, that Aaron Burr brought him to see her. On this occasion she wore “a mulberry-colored satin, with a silk tulle kerchief over her neck, and on her head an exquisitely dainty little cap, from which an occasional uncropped curl would escape.”
These were still days of picturesque dressing, with both men and women. “Jeffersonian simplicity” had not yet come in, in full force. Watson, the annalist, describes Mr. Jefferson, a few years earlier, in “a long-waisted white cloth coat, scarlet breeches and vest, a cocked hat, shoes and buckles, and white silk hose,”—an elegant figure, the life and centre of the group of men gathered together in the society’s rooms on Fifth Street. The great Rittenhouse had, in 1797, set forth upon a wider range among the stars; but Dr. Benjamin Rush was there,—physician, scientist, philanthropist, and statesman, a host in himself. His kindly face and the recollections of his contemporaries tell us that he was a pleasant companion, with all his learning, which cannot always be said of the learned ones of the earth. There also was the Rev. William Smith, first provost of the University of Pennsylvania, a man of science as well as an able divine; Dr. Barton, nephew of Dr. Rittenhouse, an original worker, who contributed largely to the scientific literature of the day, and gave to Americans their first elementary treatise on botany; and Dr. Caspar Wistar, the learned physician and genial companion, who not only enriched the society by his own work and teachings, but by his correspondence with Humboldt and Soemmering in Germany, Camper in Holland, Sylvester in Geneva, Pole and Hope in Great Britain, and many more of that ilk, kept its members en rapport with scientific work abroad. Dr. Wistar succeeded Dr. Rush as President of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, which early uttered its protest against slavery. Nor was Dr. Wistar solely interested in the cause of the negro; that of the American Indian, which we are wont to regard as one of the latest fads in the philanthropic world, also engaged his attention at this early date.
Dr. Wistar was elected president of the Philosophical Society on the resignation of Mr. Jefferson, in 1815. Some years prior to this, Dr. Wistar introduced to its circle the Baron von Humboldt, whom he invited to that smaller coterie of learned men, at his own house, which composed the Wistar Club. A gala day it must have been at the Philosophical Society when it opened its doors to this greatest naturalist of his time, perhaps of any time. The Baron von Humboldt was returning from an extended tour in South America, Mexico, and the West Indies. His young friends Montufar and Bonpland were with him,—the same Bonpland who later gave the Empress Josephine flower-seeds from the West Indies to plant at Malmaison, who became her intendant there, and who stood by her bedside when she was dying.
Another attractive figure in this group of learned men is William Tilghman, Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, the sound lawyer, ripe scholar, and true gentleman, as his biographer calls him. Perhaps the highest praise we can award to him now is to record that, although Southern born and owning slaves, he expressed, with regard to slavery, a “fervent wish to see the evils of this institution mitigated, and if possible extinguished,” freeing his own slaves by a plan of gradual emancipation. Mr. Tilghman was connected through his mother, Anne Francis, with the supposed author of the Letters of Junius; and, curiously enough, the strongest evidence yet found that the letters were written by Sir Philip Francis has come through correspondence with his American relatives. Interesting as is all that relates to this literary puzzle of more than a century, the incident that led to the recent discoveries is like a conte de fées, turning upon some anonymous verses sent to a lady at Bath, in which she is told that
“In the School of the Graces, by Venus attended,
Belinda improves every hour.”
The fair “Belinda,” Miss Giles in every-day life, is quite sure that the clever verses came from Sir Philip Francis, who danced with her through a whole evening at Bath. In fact, she recognized the handwriting of some of Woodfall’s fac-similes of the letters of Junius. She has an anonymous note that accompanied the verses, which is, she thinks, very like the Junius handwriting. The investigation becomes exciting; the experts, Messrs. Chabot and Netherclift, study the note and verses profoundly, and finally come to the conclusion that Junius might have written the note, but not the verses. The Hon. Edward Twisleton is deeply interested in the search, and is loath to give up this promising leading, when lo! there comes from over the sea a letter, nearly a hundred years old, in which Richard Tilghman, in Philadelphia, writes to his cousin, Sir Philip Francis,—
“You are very tenacious of your epigram. I observe you contend for it, as if your reputation as a Poet depended on it. I did not condemn the Composition, I only said that it was not an Original, and I say so still; but yet I am ready to allow that you can weave Originals, because in the School of the Graces by Venus attended, Belinda improves every Hour.”
Was not this a coincidence? The Franciscans were delighted, especially as the experts were ready to affirm that the handwriting of the verses was that of Richard Tilghman, and that it was evident that he had copied the verses for Sir Philip. As if to make all complete, it was found that Richard Tilghman was at Bath, with his kinsman, at the time the verses were sent. Nothing, that has not been absolutely proven, has ever come closer to proof, and so it remains the Tantalus cup of the littérateur, although there are many who find the evidence quite conclusive that Francis and Junius were one and the same.
Charles Willson Peale, the artist, known as the elder Peale, was curator of the Philosophical Society for many years, and one of its most active members. He did good work in many lines, being a man of scientific tastes and large public spirit. The society owes him a debt of gratitude for handing down to this generation portraits of its most illustrious officers and members. Mr. Peale rented a number of rooms in the old house on Fifth Street, having his museum in the building, and bringing up there his family of artist children, Raphael, Rembrandt, Titian, Van-dyck, and Rubens,—names still known in American art, that of Rembrandt being the most distinguished. In 1796 Mr. Peale presented to the assembled philosophers a son four months and four days old, born in the building, requesting them to name him. The society, upon this, unanimously agreed that the child should be called Franklin, after their chief founder and first president. “Franklin Peale,” says his biographer, “did not disgrace his sponsors. He grew up thoughtful and philosophical.” His genius was in the mechanical line. He was one of the founders of the Franklin Institute, and for many years discharged with great ability the office of chief coiner at the United States Mint.
One of Mr. Peale’s friends, who became an active and valued member of the society, was the learned Abbé de Serra, Portuguese Minister to the United States. This reverend gentleman scandalized Mrs. Peale, whose neatness was phenomenal, by appearing at her door so dusty and shabby (he was not a handsome man at his best) that the dainty Quakeress waved him away from her spotless threshold, saying, “No, my good man, I have no time to attend to you now;” little thinking that the “good man” was the expected guest in whose honor she had donned her best satin gown, and prepared a savory repast, whose crowning triumph was a dish of asparagus from Mr. Peale’s garden, then a greater rarity than now. The Abbé had been on a geological tramp with Mr. Peale, and when that gentleman rallied his wife on treating his friend and guest like a beggar, the excellent lady justified herself by saying that, after all, he could not be much of a gentleman, as he “helped himself to the asparagus with his fingers;” eating it, of course, after the French fashion.
Another habitué of Mr. Peale’s house, and a frequent attendant at the meetings of the society, was Charles Lucien Bonaparte, Prince de Canino. He was the nephew and son-in-law of Joseph Bonaparte, ex-king of Spain, and while in America resided in a house on the estate of his uncle, near Bordentown, New Jersey. This young prince pursued his studies in ornithology in the United States, making important contributions to the works of Wilson. A man of wide scientific knowledge, and a member of nearly all the learned societies of Europe, the Prince de Canino gave a decided impulse to the study of natural history in Italy, which was his home, and while in Philadelphia was an active and interested member of the Philosophical Society, contributing original papers and making valuable donations of books to its library.
A few women of distinguished ability have been, early and late, members of the Philosophical Society: notably Mary Somerville, the English astronomer; Professor Maria Mitchell, of Vassar; Mrs. Louis Agassiz, and Madame Emma Seiler. The earliest woman member was the Russian Princess Daschkof, lady-in-waiting to the Empress Catherine II. A great traveller, for those days, the princess profited by all that she saw and heard in the countries which she visited. A student and an observer, the friend of Diderot in France, and associating in Edinburgh with such men as Dr. Blair, Adam Smith, and Ferguson, she returned to Russia to become director of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, and later to establish another academy for the improvement and cultivation of the Russian language. Of the manner in which the news of her election to the Philosophical Society reached her, the princess says,—
“I was at my country house, and was not a little surprised on hearing that a messenger from the council of state wished to see me. The case and letter were introduced, the former of which contained a large packet from Dr. Franklin, and the letter a very complimentary communication on the part of the Duke of Sudermania. These despatches,” says the princess, “were sent without any examination,” and it was necessary to explain their nature at once to the despotic Catherine. “Accordingly I drove to town,” adds the princess, “or rather straight to court; and on entering the Empress’s dressing-room I told the valet de chambre in waiting that if her majesty was not then engaged I should be happy in having permission to speak to her, and to show her some papers which I had that morning received. The Empress desired I might be shown into her bed-chamber, where I found her writing at a little table. Having delivered into her hands the letter of the Duke of Sudermania, ‘These others, madame,’ said I, ‘are from Dr. Franklin and from the secretary of the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, of which I have been admitted a most unworthy member.’” The Empress made no comment on this matter; but after reading the letter of the duke, desired the princess not to answer his grace’s complimentary effusion. She had no objection, it appears, to a correspondence between the princess and the octogenarian Franklin, on the other side of the sea; but with the Duke of Sudermania it was quite a different affair. The duke was a brother of the King of Sweden, there was a coolness between the courts of Russia and Sweden, and, to complicate matters, his grace had admired the princess at Aix and Spa, who, with all her vast experience of life and long years of widowhood, was only a little over forty, and speaks herself of her beaux yeux.
From the time of the election of the Princess Daschkof, in 1789, the society has always had a Russian membership, generally from among the members of the St. Petersburg Academy. In 1864 it was presented with a superb copy of the Codex Sinaiticus, published in St. Petersburg in 1862, from the parchment rolls found by Tischendorf in the monastery of St. Catharine on Mount Sinai.
A day never to be forgotten by the members of the Philosophical Society—and there are some persons living whose memory runs back to that period—was that upon which the Marquis de Lafayette was welcomed to its hall, on his return to America in 1824. No words can more fitly describe the emotions of the hour, certainly none can bring back more perfectly the aroma of that olden time adulation, than the address of welcome pronounced, on this occasion, by Mr. Charles J. Ingersoll:
“America does not forget the romantic forthcoming of the most generous, consistent, and heroic of the knights of the old world to the rescue of the new. She has always dwelt delighted on the constancy of the nobleman who could renounce titles and wealth for more historical and philanthropic honors; the commander renouncing power, who never shed a drop of blood for conquest or vainglory. She has often trembled, but never blushed, for her oriental champion, when tried by the alternate caresses and rage of the most terrific mobs, and imposing monarchs. She knows that his hospitable mansion was the shrine at which her citizens in France consecrated their faith in independence. Invited to revisit the scenes of his first eminence, the very idolatry of welcome abounds with redeeming characteristics of self-government.... They raise him before the world as its image, and bear him through illuminated cities and widely-cultivated regions, all redolent with festivity and every device of hospitality and entertainment, where, when their independence was declared, there was little else than wilderness and war.”
Could tongue or pen say more?
An old Philadelphia lady, who, in her youth, had the honor of walking to church with Lafayette, vividly recalls her keen disappointment when she first saw him,—short and stout, not by any means the typical hero of her romantic dreams. His son, George Washington Lafayette, was with him, and at a dinner given him, when called upon to respond to a toast, arose, and, struggling with his emotion and his feeble command of English, placed his hand upon his heart, and said, “I am zo happy to be ze son of my fadder!”—words which so touched the sympathetic chord in the hearts of all present that they felt that the entire vocabulary of the language could have furnished him with no more fitting phrase.
Among later members of the society have been such men as Noah Webster, Josiah Quincy, Washington Irving, Elisha Kent Kane, the Arctic explorer, the Count de Lesseps, Mr. Gladstone, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, George Bancroft, the historian, James Russell Lowell, and the two great naturalists, Louis Agassiz, and Joseph Leidy, both of whom, with their vast learning, retained through life a childlike frankness and simplicity that endeared them to all who approached them. Those who met Professor Agassiz by the sea, during his vacation seasons, and heard from his own lips of the wonders of the shore, and those who listened to a popular lecture of Dr. Leidy, in which he described the life and customs of the minute creatures to be found in a drop of pond water, will always rejoice that it was their privilege to journey even a little way into the fairy-land of science with such masters for their guides. Of the pleasure and profit of a more thorough penetration into its mysteries and enchantments under such preceptors, those who were fortunate enough to be numbered among the students of Agassiz and Leidy speak with enthusiasm.
The Philosophical Society, grown gray and venerable, now celebrates, May, 1893, its one hundred and fiftieth birthday. Although numbering a large corps of native and foreign members, working in various branches of knowledge, and contributing to its regularly issued publications valuable papers, the present fraternity feel that the society’s proudest claim to distinction lies in the fact that it fostered literature, science, and invention in the young nation, and thus became the alma mater of many institutions that have gone forth from its protecting arms to become, in their turn, centres of light and usefulness.
