Wilson had signed his contract for Division and Reunion in 1889 while at Wesleyan but did not begin the book in earnest until 1891, his first winter at Princeton. It divided that sixty-year period of American history into five parts—thirteen chapters composed of 148 sections, which began with the inauguration of Andrew Jackson as President and concluded with the explosion of unprecedented wealth in the country—“seldom seen since the ancient days of Eastern luxury or Roman plunder.” Wilson believed this gave the nation new impetus and identity and suggested that “the century closed with a sense of preparation, a new seriousness, and a new hope.”
Division and Reunion remains a model of simplicity and clarity; and though it was intended as a textbook, it lacked neither drama nor original insights, especially in discussing the ramifications of slavery. Among other things, Wilson offered his lucid discussion of the different ways in which the North and South interpreted the Constitution. For the rest of his analysis of this “period of misunderstanding and of passion,” Wilson said he could not claim to have “judged rightly in all cases as between parties,” but he did claim “impartiality of judgment.”
Published in March 1893 in the small format of the rest of the Epochs of American History series—326 pages, with five foldout maps in color, all for $1.25—it was promptly adopted in courses taught at major universities, favorably reviewed, and repeatedly reprinted. Theodore Roosevelt, then a Civil Service Commissioner and author, praised the book in the Educational Journal. Historian Frederic Bancroft lauded Wilson’s precision of expression, writing, “No one has ever said so much about this epoch in so few words.” Frederick Jackson Turner said, “Some of the chapters are destined to live with the classics of our literature and history.” Should Wilson embark upon a full-scale study of the nation’s past, he believed it would be “the American history of our time.”
In fact, Wilson had already broken ground on such a project, a massive work that would become A History of the American People. It would be almost a decade in the making, as he had to write it piecemeal. By the spring of 1895, he shelved five hundred pages when the editor of Harper’s Magazine commissioned him to write six biographical essays on George Washington, pieces that would appear serially and then be reprinted in book form. The book contract offered a 15 percent royalty on top of the magazine fee.
During this fecund period, Wilson also delivered scores of speeches, usually on nonpartisan political themes. His reputation as an orator spread along the Eastern Seaboard, and then moved west—to Ohio and Chicago and Colorado Springs, where he delivered a highly regarded series of lectures on political science at Colorado College’s summer school. The trip west, especially, had expanded his horizons in ways he had not anticipated, opening his mind to the vastness of the country and its grandeur. The journey across “the most stupendous scenery I ever imagined” also made him realize that he had a deep need to widen his public—“such is your husband,” he confessed to Ellen, “—hungry—too hungry—for reputation and influence.”
Princeton hoped to exploit Wilson’s growing renown. In his first five years back on campus, the school recruited him more than a dozen times to address alumni associations. More often than Wilson wished, President Patton would drop out of an engagement, knowing he could dispatch Wilson as his emissary. “He is a rum President, to be sure!” Woodrow wrote Ellen in January 1894, on one such occasion. “And I, as usual, must make the speech for the college! I am getting very tired of this. It may be an honour; but it looks very much like being made a convenience of.” Even worse, it became an inconvenience, as he had a greater need just then for all the honoraria he could collect.
Ever since they had married, Woodrow and Ellen had dreamed of building their own house. In October 1894 they paid $3,000 (with one-third down) for the half acre next door to their rental on Library Place, which was bordered by meadows and surrounded by pines and oaks, with a huge sycamore on one side and a sprawling copper beech in the back. After imagining the house for so long, Woodrow could draw it in detail. Ellen actually sculpted a small clay maquette, which they presented to E. S. Child, a young New York architect.
The Tudor Revival—as designed in the half-timber and half-stucco style that had become popular in town—fell within Wilson’s budget of $7,000. With walls two feet thick, it offered seven bedrooms and three bathrooms. Fifty-nine diamond-patterned leaded windows complemented the diagonal timbers of the house’s façade. Apart from the capacious living and dining rooms, Wilson’s study was the most private chamber in the house. Whenever its connecting door was closed, Nell Wilson recalled, “no one must disturb him and everyone must speak softly.” Ellen provided its finishing touches by placing atop the bookcases pictures she had drawn of Gladstone, Bagehot, Burke, Webster, and the Reverend Joseph Wilson.
The house featured two novel elements that especially reflected the owner’s wishes. The most unusual was a sleeping porch, purportedly the only one in Princeton—a logical addition from a Southerner who had experienced the torpor of New Jersey summers. The second was a large foyer just beyond the vestibule—a library, in fact, a large wainscoted square room, with bookshelves and stained-glass pocket doors at the rear, which separated it from the dining room. Wilson intended to use this space for occasional seminars, with students sitting around a square table in the center. At the end of February 1896, the Wilsons moved in, the family kneeling together that night, while Woodrow’s father prayed for a blessing on the house.
Even as building costs mounted to almost $12,000, the Wilsons stayed the course. Dr. Wilson lent them $2,000; and reckoning Ellen’s power of economy alongside Woodrow’s industry, they cut few corners—investing $800 in the best cesspool system available, refusing to delete a ground-floor porch, and paying the extra $74 on the decorative shades to cover their windows. As a result, they got their dream house. But, Ellen said, “All who have any use whatever of tongue or pen are seized upon.” Woodrow had supplemented his salary each year at Princeton by earning $1,500 through his outside activities. During the year of construction, he reaped an additional $4,000. The extra income, Ellen noted, carried a heavy tax, as her husband “almost killed himself doing it!”
While writing a letter in 1891, Wilson had complained of difficulty in holding his pen. He thought little of it until late May 1896, when pain shot down his right arm, his hand froze, and some of his fingers became numb. He was alarmed enough to consult a doctor in Philadelphia. The physician, probably not fully apprised of the professional and financial pressures under which Wilson had been toiling, dismissed the condition as “writer’s cramp.” Looking back on Wilson’s medical history with a century of hindsight and knowledge, later experts would presume an occlusion of his left middle cerebral artery. In other words: Woodrow Wilson had evidently suffered a small stroke.
The doctor recommended giving Wilson’s hand, if not his entire body, a long recess. As it happened, that very remedy had been in the works. A wealthy and generous neighbor had taken a shine to the Wilsons and had recently asked if they might accept a gift from her—a trip to England at her expense. Woodrow naturally refused; Ellen only partially rejected the idea, insisting that she would not leave the children but that her husband must make the journey. “I am counting so much on the sea voyage, and after that on the mental refreshment, the rest without ennui, the complete change from all the trains of thought that have been making such exhausting demands upon you for so long,” Ellen told Woodrow. “I simply can’t have you give it up, darling.”
Jack Hibben helped plan the trip and accompanied his friend to New York harbor on May 30, 1896, as Wilson boarded the S.S. Ethiopia for Glasgow. The crossing took twelve days and its tedium alone proved tonic. His writing hand rested completely, as his ambidexterity allowed him to take up a pencil with his left. By the time he landed, his arm hardly troubled him. For nine weeks he explored Scotland and England by train and bicycle, transforming the holiday into a pilgrimage. After t
ouring Glasgow and Edinburgh, he wended south, stopping in Alloway to visit the birthplace of Robert Burns before pedaling on to Carlisle. While sorry not to find either his grandfather’s house or church, simply inhaling the Caledonian air, he said, was “exhilarating and entertaining.” And any disappointments paled the next day when he cycled into Cumbria—the Lake District. In Grasmere he found Wordsworth’s church, grave, and onetime home, Dove Cottage. Then Wilson rode to Rydal Mount, the poet’s primary residence. Because it was not open to the public, he approached a nearby wall and plucked a tiny flower as a keepsake, which he sent to Ellen. “I don’t know how I shall ever describe what I am seeing,” he wrote her. “One who knew nothing of the memories and the poems associated with these places might well bless the fortune that brought him to a region so complete, so various, so romantic, so irresistable [sic] in its beauty,—where the very houses seem suggested by Nature and built to add to her charm.” His reverie lingered as he journeyed into Shakespeare country, highlighted by his visit to Anne Hathaway’s cottage in Stratford.
The literary stops were but the prelude to his visit in early July to Oxford, which took his “heart by storm.” He toured Magdalen College and looked into several others. In each instance, Wilson marveled at the quadrangles, as he saw the effect a college’s architecture could impose upon the education within. Although Wilson said he had not seen a “prettier dwelling” in England than his in Princeton, he wrote Ellen that if there were a position for him at Oxford, America “would see me again only to sell the house and fetch you and the children.” Wilson’s aches and maladies subsided.
Except for Walter Bagehot’s birthplace and gravesite in Langport, Somerset, the rest of Wilson’s trip was anticlimactic. London was the greatest letdown, not for its lack of attractions but because it only reinforced Wilson’s aversion to big cities. None of the remaining stops on his itinerary—Beaconsfield (where he visited Edmund Burke’s grave), Tring, High Wycombe, Chester, Shrewsbury, Dover, Canterbury, Lincoln, Durham, and the towns of Derbyshire—was as satisfying as his hours spent cycling alone on the open roads. By August 24, Wilson was back in Scotland, where he wrote Ellen that his long absence had only drawn him closer to her, that he was coming to her “like a lover to whom has been revealed the full beauty and sanctity of love,—with new devotion, new joy, new passion.” Three days later, he boarded the S.S. Anchoria in Glasgow for New York.
• • •
Wilson returned to the most massive display of school spirit Princeton had ever experienced. For two years, the College of New Jersey had been planning its 150th anniversary celebration—the Sesquicentennial—and the festivities in October 1896 drew scholars and dignitaries from all over the country and Europe. More alumni flocked to Princeton than had ever “gone back” to Nassau Hall at one time.
The three-day celebration began on Tuesday the twentieth with the trustees and professors proceeding from the Marquand Chapel to Alexander Hall, the newest building on campus. It was a rough-stoned but fanciful Romanesque edifice, an ornate assembly hall that was something between a chapel and a castle, with its rose window, elaborate arches, and conical-capped turrets. Its pews could accommodate the 1,500 who were admitted that day for the religious service, welcoming speeches, and concert, which included Brahms’s Academic Festival Overture.
On Wednesday, the academicians in full regalia convened at the chapel and marched to Alexander Hall. The autumn foliage held its own among all the bunting and banners—orange and black draped alongside red, white, and blue. Months earlier, Professor Andrew Fleming West, the organizer of the Sesquicentennial, had asked Wilson—as both the official spokesman for Whig Hall and the most illustrious speaker on campus—to deliver the academic centerpiece of the jubilee. Fully revived, though not completely recovered, he titled his address “Princeton in the Nation’s Service.”
Composing the eight-thousand-word speech had been an ordeal. Wilson pounded out as much as he could on his Hammond typewriter with only his left hand. When that proved too onerous, he recruited Ellen and others to take dictation and type. None who heard the speech that day would suspect Wilson had experienced anything but joy in its making.
“We pause to look back upon our past today, not as an old man grown reminiscent,” Wilson told the packed crowd, “but as a prudent man still in his youth and lusty prime and at the threshold of new tasks.” After summoning the spirit of John Knox, he spent the first half of his address summarizing the early history of both the college and the country, explaining how the earliest presidents of the college had paved the way for Witherspoon, many of whose disciples had helped establish the United States. That first hour merely prefaced the points Wilson wished to make about the future, how “not all change is progress” and that they were perpetually running the “risk of newness.”
In an age of accelerating science, Wilson offered an admonition. “I have no laboratory but the world of books and men in which I live,” he said, “but I am much mistaken if the scientific spirit of the age is not doing us a great disservice, working in us a certain great degeneracy. Science has bred in us a spirit of experiment and a contempt for the past. It has made us credulous of quick improvement, hopeful of discovering panaceas, confident of success in every new thing.” Wilson sought no suppression of science. Instead, he said, “We must make the humanities human again; must recall what manner of men we are; must turn back once more to the region of practicable ideals.” In short, he explained, “I believe that the catholic study of the world’s literature as a record of spirit is the right preparation for leadership in the world’s affairs, if you undertake it like a man and not like a pedant.”
His speech expressed the need for Princeton to participate in public affairs, as he warned against universities becoming detached annexes of research, training scholars only in knowledge of the present. A decade before George Santayana would speak of those who would be doomed to repeat history, Wilson said, “The world’s memory must be kept alive, or we shall never see an end of its old mistakes.”
While composing the speech, Wilson had felt like a “mountebank,” failing to provide a definitive statement of purpose. As he did with all his writing, he had read it to Ellen, who offered praise but also criticism. “It does not end well,” she said. “It ends too abruptly. It needs something to lift it and to lift your audience up to the highest plane of vision.” She suggested a finale like that of Milton’s Areopagitica, a few soaring sentences in which the themes of his speech would all rise and meet.
Woodrow knew at once what she meant, and he composed a long final paragraph: “Of course, when all is said, it is not learning but the spirit of service that will give a college place in the public annals of the nation,” he said. “It is indispensable, it seems to me, if it is to do its right service, that the air of affairs should be admitted to all its class rooms.” He described a place of remove, where Science and Literature each had a place, where “windows open straight upon the street, where many stand and talk intent upon the world of men and business. A place where ideals are kept in heart in an air they can breathe; but no fool’s paradise. A place where to hear the truth about the past and hold debate about the affairs of the present, with knowledge and without passion.” The impassioned speech closed with a simple question: “Who shall show us the way to this place?”
The audience exploded into applause. Those closest to Wilson embraced him; some wept. Ellen wrote her cousin Mary Hoyt, “It was the most brilliant, dazzling, success from first to last. And such an ovation as Woodrow received! I never imagined anything like it”—especially as it came from what was being called the most distinguished gathering of minds ever to have assembled in America. Professor Edward Dowden of Dublin’s Trinity College said the speech was worthy of Burke.
The rest of the day was given to sport and celebration, with Princeton trouncing the University of Virginia in football—48 to 0. Beneath a full moon that night, undergraduates a
massed behind Nassau Hall and then marched for a mile through the town—eight hundred strong, each carrying a torch or lantern emitting orange light. Two thousand alumni, in class sections going back to 1839, fell in behind, each in costume—Professor Wilson among them. “He loved parades,” said his daughter Nell, who saw him take part in many. The revelers ended in front of the campus, where Chinese lanterns floated overhead and Nassau Hall glowed from thousands of orange electric lights that outlined the building and its windows all the way up to the crown of the cupola. And there in the reviewing stand, with the university hierarchs, stood the President of the United States himself, Grover Cleveland, just months away from completing his second term. The night ended with fireworks.
The next day, fifty-eight honorary degrees were conferred; President Cleveland delivered an address calling upon educated men to engage in public affairs; and, in the third year of a severe economic depression, President Patton announced that the school had raised $1.35 million for a new dormitory, a library, and several professorships. Finally, he announced that “what heretofore for one hundred fifty years has been known as the College of New Jersey shall in all future time be known as Princeton University.”
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