HIS LAST YEARS IN VIRGINIA
Maury arrived at New York on July 16, 1868, and was agreeably surprised
at his treatment there. “The custom house authorities”, he wrote,
“received me with marked consideration and passed all luggage without
difficulty”. Early in August he reached Richmond, much pleased with his
reception in his native state. “In the South”, he declared, “it’s been
a sort of ovation.... My coming home to share the hard lot of these
people instead of accepting French honors is looked upon as a high
display of patriotism”.
After spending a part of the summer at the White Sulphur Springs as a
guest of the proprietors, he was installed, on the 10th of September,
in his professorial chair at Virginia Military Institute. The
ceremonies were held in the open air on a temporary platform in front
of the Superintendent’s quarters. The faculty of Washington College, of
which General Robert E. Lee was then the Rector, were present, as well
as a large number of the citizens of Lexington. Superintendent Francis
H. Smith welcomed Maury on behalf of the Institute, and Governor
Letcher, as a representative of the Board of Governors of which he was
the president, also made an address of welcome. Maury gave an “extended
commentary” on the sciences, as the principal speech of the day. On
this occasion, according to one of his daughters, Maury wore his
foreign decorations, and “the cadets were mightily pleased and cheered
till their little throats were dry”.
[Illustration:
_Courtesy of “The Journal of American History,” Vol. IV, Number 3
(1910)._
PORTRAIT TAKEN DURING THE LAST YEARS OF MAURY, WHILE AT THE
VIRGINIA MILITARY INSTITUTE]
Maury did not take up his residence in Lexington until the following
year, on June 10, as his house there was not ready for his family until
that time. With Richmond as his home during the autumn and winter,
he was busily engaged in lecturing, in making preparations for the
physical survey of the material and mineral resources of Virginia, in
distributing cinchona seeds which had been sent to him from England,
in trying to arouse interest in the establishment of an agricultural
school in connection with the Virginia Military Institute, and in
working in the interest of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway and the
establishment of a direct line of steamers from Norfolk to Flushing.
The most important address that he delivered during this period was
given at the Staunton Fair on October 28, 1868. In this speech he
referred to the opinion which had gotten abroad in the North, and even
in England, that the South had become lacking in energy and enterprise,
and he advised that they make use of their water power, encourage
German and Dutch immigrants to come to Virginia, and begin to construct
better roads.
When Maury went with his family to Lexington to reside, he was greatly
pleased with his new home. “Here we are”, he wrote, “in our new home,
busy fixing up; and things begin to know their places. So we also
begin to have a home-feeling. People are very kind, the country is
beautiful, the views and the scenery lovely, and both climate and air
such that exercise is enjoyment”. In these congenial surroundings he
set to work with a will in the performance of his new duties, special
attention being given to the making of the physical survey of Virginia.
The object of this work was twofold; namely, to hasten the development
of all the state’s natural resources, agricultural and mineral, and
to remove prejudice against the South so that immigrants would be
attracted to the deserted farms. As in the old days at the Observatory,
when he was investigating the winds and currents, Maury brought into
play his power of inspiring others with enthusiastic coöperation, and
soon reports and communications came pouring into his office at the
Institute from all parts of the state. There was some rivalry, in the
matter of the survey, between Washington College and Virginia Military
Institute. Maury declared that the College tried to steal his thunder,
and that he published what was called a “Preliminary Report” in order
to “knock them on the head”. The complete survey was unfinished at the
time of his death; but a portion of it was published by his son Matthew
in 1878.
Maury also continued work on his geographical series, only the first
two books of which had been published before he left England. The
“Academic Geography” of the original plan was abandoned; but in
1871 his “Manual of Geography” appeared, and in 1873 his “Physical
Geography”. The first was very favorably received. One review dwelt
particularly on the author’s power of making a tedious and dry subject
interesting and agreeable, commended the illustrations, and declared
that the book would delight any schoolroom in which the teacher is not
hopelessly unfit to teach. “We are sure”, it continued, “that where it
is adopted the geography lesson will become suddenly and surprisingly
popular”. The preface to the edition, which was revised by Mytton
Maury and re-copyrighted in 1880 by the University Publishing Company,
stated, “Among the marked excellences of the early edition was its
presentation of geography in the character of a science rather than an
assemblage of disconnected facts. Land and air and ocean were treated
as parts of a grand mechanism; rivers were discussed not simply as
‘divisions of water’ but as having definite ‘offices’ to perform;
mountains were not merely masses of a certain altitude, but regulators
of rainfall. It was also carefully pointed out how the geographical
position and climate of a country determine its industries. Trade was
shown to be in a special manner under the influence of geographical
law”.
In a still later revision[25] the publishers called attention to the
fact that Maury’s text, wherever possible, was retained because it
was “so clear, simple, and attractive that it has won for the book
the uniform favor of the teachers using it. The original text makes
up so large a part of the book that it is essentially Maury’s work.
Maury’s Geographies never belonged to the old school, but rather to
the new. Being devoted to the study of physical geography, and father
of the science of ‘Physical Geography of the Sea’, he undertook the
preparation of his book originally with the intention and purpose
‘to redeem the most delightful of subjects from the bondage of dry
statistics on the one hand, and on the other, from the drudgery of
vague, general ideas’”.
Maury’s first book on physical geography was published in London
in 1864, while he was in England during the Civil War. It bore the
title, “Physical Geography for Schools and General Readers”, and was
translated into Dutch, French, and Russian. The book is said not to
have been very popular in England, because it presupposed an “extent
of knowledge among teachers in schools that seldom exists”. Maury
accordingly entirely rewrote it for his series; as he says in the
preface, it was begun in England in 1866 and was the joint work of
him, his wife, and his daughters. This book also was revised after
Maury’s death, and slightly abridged and re-arranged, though the charm
of the author’s style was retained. Later, it was revised and largely
re-written by Frederic William Simonds of the University of Texas, for
the American Book Company, in 1908, though in doing so the attempt was
made “to preserve as far as possible the plan of the older work—a plan
that has met the approval of a generation of teachers—and at the same
time to modernize the text thoroughly”.
In 1866, Maury began, under an agreement with his publisher Richardson,
another book, entitled “Practical Astronomy for Schools”, and this
was practically finished before he left England. But the work was
never published, though it reached the stage of galley proof, in which
condition it has been preserved among Maury’s papers. Its failure of
publication was probably due to financial embarrassment on the part
of the University Publishing Company, which became the firm name of
Richardson’s company on January 1, 1869. For several years this company
had a hard struggle and more than once was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Maury experienced difficulty in collecting money due him from the
company, and only the advice of his cousin Rutson kept him from
resorting to law to force payments.
But all these financial matters were adjusted eventually in an amicable
fashion, for the popularity of the geographical series brought in a
great deal of money to all concerned. In 1871, Maury wrote that the
geographies had already been adopted in more than 5000 schools in the
South, with an average of some forty books to each school. A little
afterwards he declared that the series had cleared during the year
1871 upwards of $30,000. Finally, on January 1, 1872, he sold all the
copyrights to Richardson under the following agreement: “I have sold
you the copyright _in this country_ to all the books, five in number,
and wall maps, eight in the series, and you have paid for them in full.
I am to revise and by new editions keep the said five books up to the
times, for five years for $1000 in gold a year, counting from January
15, 1870. Two of these annual instalments have become due, for each
of which I hold your note. The eight wall maps in place of the fourth
school geography originally contracted for, were to be published in
my name, but constructed at your expense and under my control so as
to justify me in claiming their authorship. Besides this you have
generously volunteered to pay me _during my life_ ten per cent upon the
copy money annually coming to you upon any and all of the books and
wall maps aforesaid”.
In 1870, Maury was offered the presidency of St. John’s College at
Annapolis, Maryland, at a salary of $3000 and quarters for his family;
but it was declined. He had come to believe that the winters, even of
Virginia, were too severe for his health, and spent a portion of the
winter of 1870–1871, with one of his daughters and his youngest son, at
the home of a sister, Mrs. Halland, at Holly Springs, Mississippi and
in New Orleans, Mobile, and Savannah.
Early in 1871, he was urged to become the President of the University
of Alabama at a salary of $3500 and home, and with the privilege of
selecting his faculty. The proposed salary was raised to $5000, so
anxious were the board to have him at the head of the institution, and
Maury finally accepted on July 30, 1871 by telegraph, “I will come”.
But on August 17, he resigned the position on the grounds that the
arrangements for funds for the University were unsatisfactory and not
in agreement with verbal statements made to him. He had gone so far as
to write out his inaugural address and send copies of it to various
Southern newspapers, and his “Manual of Geography”, which was published
at about this time, bore on its title page the statement that he was
the President of the University of Alabama.
It was then that Raphael Semmes, famous commander of the _Alabama_,
under the impression that Maury was soon to be at the head of the
university of his native Alabama, wrote a eulogy of his friend, which
appeared in the Montgomery _Advance_ of September 25, 1871. It closed
with the following estimate of Maury’s achievements: “Thou hast
revealed to us the secrets of the depths of the ocean, traced its
currents, discoursed to us of its storms and its calms, and taught
us which of its roads to travel and which to avoid. Every mariner,
for countless ages to come, as he takes down his charts to shape his
course across the seas, will think of thee! He will think of thee as
he casts his lead into the deep sea; he will think of thee as he draws
a bucket of water from it to examine its animalculæ; he will think of
thee as he sees the storm gathering thick and ominous; he will think
of thee as he approaches the calm-belts, and especially the calm-belts
of the equator, with its mysterious cloud rings; he will think of
thee as he is scudding before the ‘brave west winds’ of the Southern
hemisphere; in short, there is no phenomenon of the sea that will not
recall to him thine image. This is the living monument which thou hast
constructed for thyself”.
Maury had, by this time, become dissatisfied with his situation at
Lexington. “I shall not”, he wrote, “risk another winter here for two
reasons—one on the score of health. The other—I have worked out
Physical Survey as far as it can be worked out without money. And
I feel that I am not earning my salt. Though the Board of Visitors
and Faculty are kind enough to express quite a different opinion. So
after the swallows come I shall begin to inquire about lodgings in
Fredericksburg or Richmond. In all, except the salt-earning feature, my
situation here is as delightful as man can make it”. Somewhat later,
he declared, “They are sounding me about the University of Tennessee.
Remember Alabama; I shall look very closely—and not trust to verbal
statements—before I commit myself again. You know I intend to cut
out from here at the end of the term anyhow. My situation here is
charming and delightful as it can be. And though I may be rendering
the state service, the state butters me no parsnips. Virginia Military
Institute does that and though V. M. I. tries very kindly to persuade
me that it’s all the same, I can’t see it. And so I am quite ready for
Tennessee or anywhere else that will offer inducements sufficient”.
He, accordingly, handed in his resignation in May to take effect the
following September; but there were so many protests against his
action, from the Governor of the state all down the line, that he
reconsidered the matter and agreed, in July, to remain at V. M. I.
for the time being. After his resignation, he had been approached by
a member of the Board of Trustees of the Agricultural College near
Blacksburg, Virginia, who asked permission to propose Maury’s name as
their president, but he declined the proposal. Inquiry was also made of
him whether he would accept the presidency of a Polytechnic College to
be founded at New Orleans. This appealed to him, particularly on the
score of his health, but the project did not materialize.
In addition to his work on the “Physical Survey of Virginia” and his
geographical series, Maury spent considerable time upon the preparation
and delivery of lectures and addresses, not in great numbers during
his first two years at Lexington but with increasing frequency during
the last years of his life. Among the notable speeches he made during
1869 were an address to the graduating class of V. M. I., July 2, and
another before the Educational Association of Virginia, on December
16. In the former, he emphasized the fact that what they accomplished
in life would depend largely on their own ‘resolves’, that they had
not ‘finished’ their education but merely laid the foundation, that
they should desire to master the specialty they took up but not to
become narrow-minded, and that they should form the habit of observing
nature for there they would see God. In closing, he called upon them
to live up to their traditions. The later address is a plea for the
giving of more attention in the educational system to the study of the
physical sciences in view of the progress and development of physical
discoveries; it began with the statement that the study of science
should not make atheists, if the subject was rightly interpreted.
Maury often lectured to the students of Virginia Military Institute,
though he gave no regular courses of instruction; for example, in
1872 he gave a series of lectures to the cadets on “What We Owe
to Science”. The larger number of his addresses were delivered,
however, in the interest of the establishment of a system of universal
telegraphic meteorological observations and crop reports,—the plan
which he had urged for many years before the Civil War and which
that unhappy conflict had cut short. Not long after his return to
Virginia, he began to consider this cherished plan again. “You
remember before the war”, he wrote, “how hard I tried to get up a
Telegraphic Meteorological Bureau—writing and lecturing about it—now
as meteorology for the farmers, now as storm-signals combined with
crop statistics. When I was in England, during the war, I proposed
to Fitzroy, and after his death to his successor, Toynbee, a plan
for making, by means of an elastic cloth stretched over his map, a
caste of the atmosphere, so that he might take in his whole field of
observation at a single glance, and so predict with more certainty.
Suppose, for instance, with his map pasted on a table, he had bored
a hole through London, Liverpool, Portsmouth, etc., and stuck up in
each place a little rod graduated for the barometer; that his elastic
cloth was then fitted to a slide so that he could set it at the
height of the barometer at each of the stations. Fancy each rod to be
surmounted by a wind-vane which could be drawn out or shoved in, to
show the force of the wind at each place. Thus you would have a ‘caste
of the atmosphere’, and see all about it. Brooke—‘deep-sea lead’—has
suggested just such a plan to Myer (General Albert James Myer of the
Signal Bureau in Washington); and Myer, I have heard, has adopted it.
The idea, I think, was as original with Brooke as it was with me”.
The first address which Maury delivered on the plan for land
meteorological observations was at the fair of the Memphis
Agricultural and Mechanical Society, on October 17, 1871. In this
speech he said that he had dropped the subject at Brussels because the
Royal Society of London had advised against it, but that he had ever
since regretted this action because he had learned that all Europe had
been with him except Bavaria. He then showed how the machinery for
putting the scheme into operation in the United States already existed.
“You have your Signal Office”, he declared, “where weather reports are
continually received by telegraph, and whence telegraphic forecasts are
issued daily.... You have also the Agricultural Bureau, in the service
of which reports embodying many of the facts and observations required
are already made, or might be without any additional expense.... Do
you mean to say that amid all the mind, means, and appliances of the
age, the relations between the weather and the crops are past finding
out? If I could, with just such a system of researches for the sea, sit
down in my office and tell the navigator how he would find the wind,
at any season of the year, in any part of the ocean through which he
wished to sail, am I promising too much when I tell you that by the
plan I now propose the relation between the weather and the crops is
as capable of scientific development as were the relations between
sea-voyages and the winds twenty-five years ago?” At the close of the
address, resolutions were offered that the United States government be
petitioned through the State Department in favor of the establishment
through international coöperation of a plan of universal telegraphic
meteorological observations and crop reports, and that another
conference similar to that of Brussels in 1853 be called for that
purpose.
The different reaction of two of Maury’s friends to this speech is
interesting. Rutson Maury wrote, “A large part of your Memphis Address
that deals with mercantile matters is sheer nonsense.... You ought to
have some Sancho Panza to accompany you when you go a-tilting”. Being
a New Yorker, he would naturally not be in sympathy with an effort
to deflect even a small part of its trade from that metropolis. Dr.
Tremlett’s opinion of the speech was more complimentary. “I have”, he
wrote, “read your last ‘spread eagle’ at Memphis. Capital, clever,
business-like like everything you do; but unrealizable”.
The address was followed up by the sending of resolutions to various
state governors, and some attempts were made to gain the coöperation
of officials in Washington. In the latter quarter, however, no headway
was made, as indicated in the following communication to Maury from
Senator Johnston of Virginia: “I therefore called upon Mr. Watts, the
Commissioner of Agriculture, who scarcely had the civility to hear me.
He made the conversation very short, and said that he had just ordered
the meteorological reports which his predecessor had been collecting
and publishing to be discontinued. I ventured mildly to suggest that if
meteorology did not appertain to his Department, at least Agriculture
did. He gave this a qualified assent, but told me very positively that
he would have nothing to do with the proposed scheme. I met with the
same rebuff in other quarters and fancied that I saw a premeditated
and arranged plan of resistance. Under these circumstances it was
manifestly useless to move now, and so I have not offered the amendment
(to provide funds for delegates to the International Agricultural
Congress) and will not do so at this session. I am sorry indeed that a
scheme so useful should be so treated”.
Maury was undaunted by such rebuffs and continued his campaign. On
May 29, 1872 he addressed the National Agricultural Congress at St.
Louis, declaring that Europe was ripe for such a scheme and citing the
names of the following influential supporters of it abroad: Alexander
Buchan, Secretary of the Scottish Meteorological Society; Commodore
Jansen of Holland; Quetelet, Astronomer Royal and Perpetual Secretary
of the Academy of Sciences of Brussels; Marie Davy, Zurcher, and
Margolle, meteorologists and savants of France; and Father Secchi of
the Collegio Romano in Italy. The legislatures of Tennessee, Alabama,
Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, and Virginia, he declared, had
passed resolutions instructing Congress to support an international
conference; and he suggested that they bring further influence to
bear on Congress through state agricultural societies, agricultural
journals, and the general press of the country. He called attention to
the fact that his interest in the scheme was not a private one, since
he had no farm, and could not share in the honor of helping to organize
and carry out the plan for the government. He closed with an eloquent
plea, emphasizing the benefits to be derived, which he estimated would
be as great as those formerly bestowed upon commerce by the results of
the Brussels Conference.
On August 13 of the same year he spoke before the Agricultural
Convention of Georgia at Griffin. Here he covered about the same ground
that he had in his St. Louis speech, and used the same arguments,
though the language was different and it was not a mere repetition
of the former address. He also, in it, treated the question of
immigration, saying that the prejudice which had arisen abroad against
the South must be removed; and he once more touched upon the old
problem of better trade communications for that section. This latter
question had been in Maury’s mind for years, and he at this time
advanced bold and original ideas as to the best means of improving
conditions.
He declared in one of his letters to Dr. Tremlett that the seat of
empire was fast settling down in the Northwest States. “They already
give the Presidents”, he wrote, “and will soon dictate the foreign
policy of the country. They must have a better way to the sea. They
have been taught to believe—erroneously—that the best way lies
through Canada and the St. Lawrence. It does not; it lies through
Virginia. You will appreciate my feeling on this subject, when I remind
you that grain is sent around Cape Horn from California, and delivered
at the ports along the Atlantic seaboard at ten cents the bushel
cheaper than it can now be sent from Iowa and other Northwest States;
that the people throughout these states—and they are the grain-growing
states—know that, with a good highway to the Atlantic seaboard, the
value of their grain would be enhanced ten, twenty, even thirty cents
the bushel; and they think that Canada and the St. Lawrence can give
them such a way. The greatest difficulty in teaching these people that
their best way to the sea lies through Virginia, not through Canada, is
to get our people to raise funds for the gratuitous circulation of the
Reports (Preliminary Report on the Resources of Virginia) in sufficient
numbers between this and the next meeting of Congress in December. If
we can do that, the Northwest States will raise their voices in favor
of the Virginia route, and demand the money to open it. When that is
done, they will not want Canada, and we shall have peace. Thus you see,
my friend, I am aiming high and striking far. But with a few heads such
as yours to help, we would hit the mark as sure as a gun”. Not only in
his correspondence, but also in the press as well as in his speeches he
continued to advocate direct trade between the South and Europe through
the establishment of a Norfolk to Flushing line of steamers, which
would turn the tide of immigration toward the Southern States.
On the 18th of September, 1872, Maury spoke to the Farmers’ Club of
Norfolk, Massachusetts, near Boston. On this occasion, he made a very
tactful speech with happy references to his old friend John Quincy
Adams, and used only the portions of his previous speeches in favor of
meteorological and agricultural observations, that were best adapted
to a Northern audience. From here he traveled to St. Louis by way of
New York, Niagara Falls (Buffalo), Detroit, and Chicago. On October
9, before the St. Louis Agricultural and Mechanical Association at
its annual fair, he spoke as in the year previously on the plan of
international coöperation, using the same arguments but adding that at
the recent International Congress of Statisticians at St. Petersburg,
Russia his scheme had been cheered “by the huzzas of Russians, hochs
of Germans, vivas of Latin races, and the hurrahs of the English”, and
that a special committee had been appointed to further the movement.
Maury was so exhausted, however, by the time he reached St. Louis
and was so ill that he could hardly read his address in an audible
tone. As a matter of fact, in the summer preceding this lecture tour
he had been very ill of the gout and was for a time on crutches.
Consequently, when he reached home after spending some two weeks in St.
Louis, he was too ill to attend the first annual fair of the Seaboard
Agricultural Society, which he was to have addressed at Norfolk,
Virginia, on October 23. His address had already been prepared; and as
it turned out to be his last, its contents are of peculiar interest. He
appealed to the farmers in regard to the necessity of coöperation for
self-protection and redress against transportation monopolies and all
sources of oppression and discouragement; he contended that domestic
commerce should be attended to by Congress as carefully as foreign
trade, but that special legislation protected the latter while the
former was left to the tender mercies of great corporations; he touched
upon his favorite topic of weather observations and crop reports, and
many other questions such as tolls and tariffs, the government of
railroads, interior water lines and canal projects, the conjunction
of the Atlantic and the Mississippi River valley, east and west trunk
lines and branches and the ways and means of constructing them without
increase of taxation, the regulation of commerce between the states,
the naval establishment and wherein it needed reforms, immigration, and
labor and capital.
Maury was destined not to live to see the scheme of meteorological
observations and crop reports, upon which he had spent so much thought
and labor, in operation; but not long after his death a part of his
program was carried out when there was an international conference of
meteorologists at Vienna in 1873, the United States being represented
by General Albert James Myer of the Signal Service of the Army. There
are, indeed, those who would deny him any part in the establishment of
the present Weather Bureau. On the contrary, there are others who would
go to the opposite extreme and give him all the credit for bringing it
about. For example, Mr. E. P. Dorr, who was at one time an observer
for the Smithsonian and afterwards President of the Board of Lake
Underwriters, wrote to Mr. Thompson B. Maury, at that time (1873) in
the Signal Office, in Washington that Maury’s “intelligent, original
mind invented and suggested the present system of meteorological
observations; and the writer wishes this in some way to be put upon
record, to do justice to the dead Maury, a man whose name and memory
will live in all civilized countries on the globe, throughout all time,
as an original, great mind.... I could not rest unless I told some one
that the late M. F. Maury was the originator in design and detail, in
all its parts, of the present system of meteorological observations now
so generally taken all over the country”.
The question of due credit is a perplexing one; but certainly no one
could cavil at the modest claim made by Maury’s son Matthew in the
following letter: “In 1869, Abbé took the question up and began issuing
local forecasts from Cincinnati Observatory and out of his success here
and efforts in Washington grew the Weather Bureau in November, 1870,
with General Myer at its head, to whom belongs the credit of working
up all the details and putting the thing on such a practical footing.
Till now the Washington work is the admiration of all the world as its
daily charts and reports embrace not only the United States but the
whole of the northern hemisphere, Australia, and the Cape of Good Hope.
Now I think that any calm mind can only say for Father that he had
the clearness of foresight to foresee what could be done for the land
with the aid of regular stations and the telegraph, but we can’t in the
smallest degree say that its practical success is due to him. In the
future, General Myer will have that credit. Father’s reputation must
rest on his work at sea and a biography can only speak of other things
as indications of his clear and far-seeing mind. The world is full of
similar cases in all great improvements, and the world invariably gives
the credit not to the man who first thought of them but to the man who
puts the ideas into practise”.
When Maury was stricken with sickness on his last lecturing tour, he
seemed to realize that he would not recover, for when he arrived at
home and entered the house he said to his wife, “My dear, I am come
home to die”. He was immediately helped to his bed, though death did
not come until after four long months, during a portion of which time
he suffered extreme pain. When not suffering too much, he occupied
himself with a revision of his “Physical Geography”.
During his long illness, the strength of his Christian faith displayed
itself, and he became wholly resigned to the inevitable. Job had
always been his favorite book in the Bible; and the 130th Psalm, which
he called “De Profundis” and which was sung at Luther’s funeral amid
the tears of the people, was read to him, at his request, many times
during his last days. He was greatly comforted by a week’s visit which
his brother-in-law, Dr. Brodie S. Herndon of Savannah, made him in
the December preceding his death. And towards the end he sent sincere
farewell messages to Commodore Jansen in Holland, whom he had loved for
many years as a brother, and also to Dr. Tremlett who had brightened
with his friendship the desolate years of his exile in England and had
influenced him to enter the communion of the Church. A few days before
his death he dismissed his physicians, saying, “Don’t come to see me
any more; leave me to the great Physician”.
He derived his greatest consolation and satisfaction from having his
family about him, for whom he had always shown throughout his life the
tenderest affections of a devoted father and husband. As he talked to
them, there would come flashes of his quaint playful humor that had
always been so characteristic of him; and he requested that there be
no weeping in his presence. He rejoiced in being able to recognize all
his family to the end. “You see”, said he, “how God has answered my
prayers, for I know you every one.... I shall retain my senses to the
last. God has granted me that as a token of my acceptance. I have set
my house in order, my prayers have all been answered, my children are
gathered round my bed—and now Lord, what wait I for?” Then he would
repeat the prayer which he had composed thirty years before when his
leg was broken, and which he had repeated in his daily devotions ever
since: “Lord Jesus, thou Son of God and Redeemer of the world, have
mercy upon me! Pardon my offenses, and teach me the error of my ways;
give me a new heart and a right mind. Teach me and all mine to do Thy
will, and in all things to keep Thy law. Teach me also to ask those
things necessary for eternal life. Lord, pardon me for all my sins, for
Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, for ever and ever,
Amen”.
On the evening before his death, the family sang for him verses from
his favorite hymn, “Christ Is Risen”, which he called “Pass over
Jordan”, and also from “How Firm a Foundation”. After the singing
he said so that all could hear, “The peace of God which passeth all
understanding be with you all—all!” Toward the end he inquired of his
son Richard, “Are my feet growing cold? Do I drag my anchors?” Upon
receiving an affirmative answer, he said, “All’s well”. About fifteen
minutes before he died, his wife and daughters were requested by him to
leave the room, and he was left with his two sons and two sons-in-law.
At 12.40 P.M., on Saturday, February 1, 1873, his life came to a close.
The body lay in state in the hall of the Library of Virginia Military
Institute from four o’clock in the afternoon of Monday until Wednesday.
The gallery round the hall was festooned with black, a large anchor
and a cross of evergreens being placed at alternate angles; while
the columns were draped spirally. The wall was covered with maps
constructed under Maury’s supervision, and on opposite sides of the
gallery were placed two heavily draped flags, the one being that of
his native state Virginia, and the other that of his adopted state
Tennessee. In the center of the hall rested the bier, bearing his body,
with his breast covered with the foreign orders that had been conferred
upon him, and with a gentle smile on his face. Near the bier stood a
large globe bearing this appropriate inscription: “The whole world is
mourning for Maury”.
A funeral service was held in the hall on Wednesday about noon, by the
Reverend William Pendleton, D. D. of Grace Church, after which the
coffin, attended by the cadet battalion and the faculty of Virginia
Military Institute and the professors and students of Washington
and Lee University[26] and the citizens of Lexington, was conveyed
to the Gilham vault in the city cemetery, just opposite the tomb of
“Stonewall” Jackson. This, however, was only a temporary resting-place.
When, shortly before his death, his wife had requested of Maury that
she be permitted to bury him in Richmond, he had replied, “Very well,
my dear; then let my body remain here until the spring, and when you
take me through the Goshen Pass you must pluck the rhododendrons and
the mountain-ivy and lay them upon me”.
“Home, bear me home, at last”, he said,
“And lay me where your dead are lying;
But not while skies are overspread,
And mournful wintry winds are sighing!
Wait till the royal march of spring
Carpets the mountain fastness over—
Till chattering birds are on the wing,
And buzzing bees are in the clover.
Wait till the laurel bursts its buds,
And creeping ivy flings its graces
About the lichened rocks—and floods
Of sunshine fill the shady places.
Then, when the sky, the air, the grass,
Sweet nature all, is glad and tender—
Then bear me through the Goshen Pass,
Amid the hush of May-day splendor”.[27]
It was the following autumn, however, before Maury’s wishes could be
carried out. In bearing his remains to Richmond at that time, the
family were escorted as far as the river, about a mile from Lexington,
by the corps of cadets, the professors of the Institute, and a great
many other friends who thus wished to show their love and respect for
the great scientist. Some, among whom was Superintendent Francis H.
Smith of V. M. I., accompanied the cortege as far as Goshen Pass.
In going from Lexington to what was then the nearest station on the
Chesapeake and Ohio Railway, one passed through this lovely gorge where
the North Anna River forces its way through the mountains some fifteen
miles from Lexington. When the cortege reached the Pass, the carriages
were stopped and members of the family gathered branches of the
rhododendron and laurel and bright yellow maple, and decked the hearse
with them, as Maury had requested.
[Illustration:
_Courtesy of Governor Byrd and of the Virginia State Chamber of
Commerce._
MAURY MONUMENT IN THE BEAUTIFUL GOSHEN PASS, ON THE BANK OF THE
NORTH ANNA RIVER, ERECTED BY THE STATE OF VIRGINIA IN 1923
See page 246]
The bronze tablet on the monument shown on the opposite side of
this page bears the following inscription:
MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY
Pathfinder of the Seas
The Genius who first Snatched
From Ocean & Atmosphere
The Secret of their Laws.
Born January 14th, 1806
Died at Lexington, Va., February 1st, 1873
Carried through Goshen Pass To His Final
Resting Place in Richmond, Virginia.
Every Mariner
For Countless Ages
As he takes his Chart to Shape
His course across the Seas,
Will think of thee
His Inspiration Holy Writ
Psalms 8 & 107, Verses 8, 23, & 24
Ecclesiastes Chap. 1, Verse 8
A Tribute by his Native State
Virginia
1923
His Last Words
“Carry My Body Through The
Pass When the Rhododendron
is in Bloom.”]
They arrived in Richmond on Saturday, September 27. The burial in
Hollywood Cemetery was private, Maury’s last resting-place being
between the tombs of Ex-Presidents Monroe and Tyler, on a beautiful
knoll overlooking the James River. “The lot we have in Hollywood”,
wrote Maury’s son Matthew, “I like particularly because it faces the
bright green country and overlooks the rapids of the James River, the
sleeper there being always lulled by the murmur of running water,
a sound which he so loved to hear”. Maury’s monument in Hollywood
Cemetery bears the following inscription: In Memory of Matthew Fontaine
Maury—Born in Spottsylvania Co., Virginia January 14th, 1806—Died
in Lexington, Virginia February 1st, 1873—“All is well”, Maury. On
another side of the shaft are these words: Entered the Navy of the
United States 1825—That of the Confederate States 1861—Author of
“Maury’s Sailing Directions” and “The Physical Geography of the Sea”.