The Forgotten Founding Father- Noah Webster (41 page)

At the trustees’ meeting the next day, Pastor Parsons resigned as president and Webster was elected to replace him. His charge was to step up fund-raising. But just as his repeated efforts to gain more subscribers for his dictionary flopped, so, too, did his outreach to potential donors. But once again, the fierce community spirit saved the day. Volunteers continued to make unexpected contributions. Esq. Fowler, for example, both lent his own horses and provided laborers, whom he boarded in his home. Webster later recalled, “And such were the exertions of the Board, the committee and the friends of the Institution that on the ninetieth day from the laying of the corner-stone, the roof timbers were erected on the building.” In the words of Heman Humphrey, a future president of the college, “It seemed more like magic than the work of the craftsmen.” After a year, the building was completed, with Webster, as board president, racking up only thirteen hundred dollars in unpaid bills.

On Sunday, September 18, 1821, at the parish church, Webster presided over the induction ceremony of the college’s first president, Zephaniah S. Moore, whom he had recruited from Williams, and its first two professors. “So it is peculiarly proper,” Webster declared, “that at an undertaking having for its special object the promotion of the religion of Christ should be commended to the favor and protection of the great Head of the Church.”

The following day, the college was up and running. A total of forty-seven students enrolled, fifteen of whom, like the president, were Williams transplants; they would all reside in the four-story South College, which also contained the seven-hundred-volume library, the dining hall and the classrooms. That same day, Dr. Moore replaced Webster as president of the board. “The business of founding this Institution,” Webster later wrote in his diary, “has been very laborious and perplexing. . . . As soon as I was satisfied the Institution was well established by the Induction of Officers, I resigned my seat in the Board of Trustees.”

Noah Webster remains a formidable presence on the Amherst College campus. Today, a massive bronze and granite statue of a likeness—sporting a toga and sandals like a Roman statesman—sits behind the main library. A gift from alumnus Richard Billings, it was erected about a century after Webster’s famous speech at South College. Webster’s combination of moral and intellectual rigor reminded Billings of his father, the industrialist Fredric Billings. A forgotten founder of the University of California, the elder Billings had first suggested that the northern Californian school be named after the Irish philosopher, Bishop Berkeley. Said Richard Billings, “The thing I had always wished some one would do for my father, I determined to do for Noah Webster.”

In his memoir, Webster wrote, “The principal event which took place while NW resided in Amherst, and in which he was concerned as an actor, was the establishment of a college in that town.”

 

 

ON NOVEMBER 7, 1821, just as Webster was turning his attention from the college’s financial future back to his own, he heard from his onetime Federalist Party colleague John Jay. In a brief letter, Jay, who had retired to his Westchester farm after stepping down as governor of New York two decades earlier, asked about the progress of the “great work.” He also enclosed a hundred-dollar donation for two additional subscriptions for his two sons; the former chief justice had ordered one for himself back in 1813.

Webster was very moved that Jay had offered to help “without solicitation.” He wrote back right away and supplied a brief overview of his
Synopsis,
of which he boasted, “the discoveries, proceeding from this investigation will be quite important and as
new
in Europe as in America.” Noting that he was “engaged in the letter H,” Webster also updated Jay on the new financial obstacles to completing the dictionary: “I cannot revise and complete the work without the help of men and books, which I cannot have in
the country,
and my income will not maintain my family in one of our large towns.”

Amherst was no longer suiting Webster’s purposes. Fifteen years into his magnum opus, he lacked access both to rare books and to fellow scholars to examine his manuscript. In addition, under a new state law, the stock that he owned in the Hartford Bank, upon which he was already paying Connecticut taxes, was now also subject to taxes in Massachusetts. By early 1822, Webster was convinced that he had to move to “give the work the correctness and perfection desired.” And for the Webster family, the needs of the dictionary would continue to reign supreme.

That summer, the Websters headed back to New Haven. With the waterfront now a business district, Webster chose to live near the Yale campus. Temporarily renting a small house at the corner of Wall and College streets, he commissioned the well-known Connecticut architect David Hoadley to build a permanent home on Temple Street. Webster himself supervised the building of this commodious neoclassical structure. (In 1938, Henry Ford had this slice of Americana transported to his museum in Dearborn, Michigan, where it still stands.) The downstairs featured a formal drawing room and a parlor, for Rebecca to do her needlework and the children to play the piano. To prevent distractions, Webster had double walls installed in his second-floor study, where he would both conduct his literary activity and sleep on a narrow mattress. Just a few houses down on Temple Street lived his daughter Julia and her husband, Chauncey Goodrich, then a professor of rhetoric at Yale. In 1822, the Webster household included fourteen-year-old Louisa and three-year-old Mary Southgate (who would call Webster and his wife “father” and “mother”) as well as eighteen-year-old Eliza and twenty-five-year-old Harriet, who were both about to start families of their own. In 1825, Eliza would move to New Britain with her new husband, Henry Jones, a pastor. That same year, the widowed Harriet married William Fowler, who would soon land a teaching job at Middlebury College. Prone to drinking bouts, William Webster continued to flounder. In the fall of 1820, he enrolled at Yale, but he never graduated. Though William was an able classicist and a talented flutist, he lacked the very quality that defined his father—perseverance. Webster would repeatedly strategize about how to set up his son in a profession.

By the end of 1823, when Webster had reached R, the end of the dictionary was in sight. On December 12, he wrote his longtime friend Dr. Samuel Latham Mitchill, “In order to give my work all the completeness of which it is susceptible, I purpose to go to England the next summer, if life and health permit, and there finish and publish it. I want some aid in books and knowledge, which I cannot obtain in this country.” To cover his travel expenses, Webster hoped to raise two thousand dollars from a few wealthy donors. But he was unwilling to promise to repay the advance. After a decade of rejection, Webster had lost his characteristic self-confidence. As he also told Mitchill, “I am apprehensive that any applications I might make for this object would be unsuccessful . . . and if I fail, I shall be left in reduced circumstances.” The benefactors never materialized. Webster instead relied on a thousand-dollar loan from his daughter Harriet (which he wouldn’t be able to pay back for six years) and the sale of some books in his private library. The following spring, he added Paris to his itinerary; he also planned to visit the acclaimed Royal Library, then the world’s largest with some one million books and eighty thousand manuscripts.

As Webster prepared to set sail for Europe, he was a celebrity in his home country, but not a celebrated lexicographer. While his speller was about to reach the unheard-of five million mark in total sales, his proposed complete dictionary was still an object of ridicule. On April 14, 1824,
The New London Gazette
carried this brief item: “It is said that Noah Webster is about to proceed to England to publish
there
his large Dictionary, promised to the public eighteen years ago in the preface to his small one. If he executes this plan, (says the statesman) he will succeed in one sense at least, in making an English Dictionary.” In fact, as papers across New England reported two months later, Webster himself had already reversed course. He no longer intended to publish an expanded version of his small American dictionary. Instead of trying to unite Americans through a distinct American language, he now planned to unite Americans with their English brethren through a new international form of English. Retitled
The Universal Dictionary,
his book would, like Johnson’s dictionary, now emanate from London and shape language use on both sides of the Atlantic.

The sixty-six-year-old wordsmith now felt less connected to America than to Europe, which as a young man he had derided as “grown old in folly, corruption and tyranny.”

 

 

AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK on the morning of Tuesday, June 15, 1824, the
Edward Quesnel,
buoyed by a fair northwest wind, set off from New York. The spanking new ship was bound for Le Havre.

On board were twenty-one passengers, hailing mostly from Europe, attended to by a crew of twenty. In addition to the ten French travelers were an English couple with their son and female servant, plus a German, a Swede and a Canadian. Webster and his son, William, whom he brought along as his transcriber, were among the four Americans. The company, Webster wrote to Rebecca, was actually a mix of bipeds and quadrupeds, as it also included geese, fowl, turkeys, pigs and sheep. However, the animals were less of a presence the closer the ship got to Europe; most were consumed during the sumptuous three o’clock dinners.

Just three days into the trip, a severe gale rattled the passengers. With the howling winds causing the ocean to foam and roar, few ventured on deck. That first Friday aboard the ship, William stepped out of his berth just once. Observing all the tossing and tumbling, he blurted out, “I had no idea of this,” before rushing back below. William was particularly apprehensive because the
Edward Quesnel
was on its maiden voyage and “unused to the perils of the deep.” The one notable exception was Webster, whose stomach “was not in the least disturbed.” Struck by the stark contrast between his constitution and his father’s, William observed in his diary, “It is rather singular that while poor I am suffering what would at once have released the Israelites from captivity had the curse of seasickness been Pharaoh’s first plague, my father remains perfectly well. During the most tremendous swell of the sea, he is not in the least possible degree affected. A fact that astonishes even himself.” Webster’s nervous system didn’t work quite the same way as anybody else’s. While everyday social encounters could make him anxious, the prospect of imminent danger didn’t faze him at all.

Throughout the monthlong journey, Webster was in an uncharacteristically placid state of mind. While even the slightest noise from the children would upset him at home, on the high seas he was unflappable. To Rebecca, he wrote, “Indeed we have a great variety of music & discords. The squealing of the pigs, the bleating of the sheep and goats, the crowing of the cocks, and the squalling of the Englishman’s child, alternately or jointly salute our ears. These with the jabbering of the Frenchmen and with their humming and whistling give us no little amusement.” However, Webster was annoyed that there was “no appearance of religion among the passengers,” who failed to distinguish between Sundays and other days, playing whist on both.

At Webster’s insistence, those aboard the ship celebrated Independence Day on Monday, July 5, rather than on the Sabbath. As the Americans were a distinct minority, the morning was ushered in without the firing of a single gun or the ringing of a solitary bell—just the animating cry, “Ho heave yoe,” of the seamen. At three, a splendid repast was served. Afterward, the accomplished July Fourth orator requested to give a brief address. With Webster now intending to erase the divisions between American and British English, his remarks had a surprising new twist; he dwelled chiefly on the advantages that had accrued to both England and France since America’s separation from the old country. He then led his fellow passengers in nine toasts. While the first four covered familiar ground—saluting the day, the United States, its Constitution and its president—number six was one this veteran of the American Revolution had never before uttered: “Great Britain, Great and free in herself, may her power be exerted to defend the freedom of other nations.”

A second round of thirteen additional toasts would follow, each one given by a different member of the dining party. Captain Hawkins hailed “the ladies and gentlemen on board the Edward Quesnel.” Going around the table, a Monsieur Sournalet of France added, “The sage of Monticello,” leading Webster to grimace. When it came William’s turn, he exclaimed, “Washington and Lafayette, strangers in birth, but brothers by affection.” (Upon their arrival in Le Havre a week later, Webster and his son, who had his boots cleaned for the occasion, were supposed to spend an evening with the Marquis, but they just missed “Washington’s brother,” who had already set off on his voyage back to America.) Webster himself raised a glass for the thirteenth and final toast, “Our families and the friends we love.”