Bishop Berkeley and His Plans for a Great American University.
The records of Yale College bear testimony to the beneficence and liberality of an Irish bishop who, early in the eighteenth century, gave proof of his zeal for learning by bestowing on that institution, then lately founded—its charter is dated 1701—the dwelling house and farm in Rhode Island which he had purchased and occupied during his strange visit and sojourn in America.
The bishop likewise gave to the college on his departure the best and largest collection of books—nearly one thousand volumes—that had ever up to that time been brought over. The catalogue, or list of these works, is preserved in the Yale College library. Harvard is likewise indebted to the same benefactor for a collection of textbooks.
Bishop George Berkeley was a remarkable character in his day. An account of his career cannot but possess a certain interest for the general reader. He was the friend and associate of many of the literary celebrities of the time, Dean Swift, Addison and Steele, who esteemed his friendship and appreciated his amiable character and qualities.
Berkeley was born in the County Kilkenny, Ireland, the same year that James II. succeeded to the British crown. His early education was acquired in the same school in Kilkenny which Dean Swift had attended, and his subsequent studies were pursued at Trinity College, Dublin. It was said of him while at college that he was regarded by some of his fellow students as the greatest dunce in the institution, while others thought him a prodigy of learning and goodness, but all agreed that he was full of simplicity and enthusiasm—indeed, these latter characteristics remained with him through life. The results of his application to study is shown by his college record. He was elected “scholar” in 1702, a B. A. in 1704, and obtained his master’s degree in 1707, and the same year was admitted to a fellowship. The drift of his mind and of his studies was shown in the formation of a college society “to promote investigations in the new philosophy of Boyle, Newton and Locke,” a subject upon which he wrote many papers.
Before leaving college to enter on his career in London, Berkeley had already acquired some reputation as a writer on philosophical subjects. It was Dean Swift who introduced his fellow countryman to the circles of influence in the British capital. In the “Journal to Stella,” the dean jots down under date of April 12, 1713: “I went to court today on purpose to present Mr. Berkeley, one of our fellows of Trinity College. This Mr. Berkeley is a very ingenious man and great philosopher, and I have mentioned him to all the ministers, and have given them some of his writings, and I will favor him as much as I can. This, I think, I am bound to—in honor and conscience to use all my little credit toward helping forward men of worth in the world.”
Swift introduced Berkeley to the Earl of Peterborough, then one of the most extraordinary characters in Europe. He had amazed the country a few years before by his wonderful achievements in Spain, during the war of the succession. Soldier, scholar and diplomatist, this singular man was eccentric in all his movements and actions—indeed, his career and character is still a favorite study and an enigma for the historian and biographer. The introduction obtained for Berkeley, the post of the chaplain and secretary to Peterborough, who had been appointed ambassador to the King of Sicily. It was little use the eccentric earl had for a chaplain, since he was himself a well-known skeptic and freethinker!
The post to which he had been appointed gave Berkeley the opportunity of making acquaintance with the continent—he had taken “orders” before Trinity College—and he now saw France and Italy for the first time. His letters describing his experience and observations in these countries are exceedingly interesting, but my limits will not admit of quotations. The death of Queen Anne during his sojourn abroad and the accession of George I. caused a change in his prospects and position. Peterborough was recalled by the new administration, and consequently Berkeley returned to England in August, 1714.
The change of administration in England blighted for a time Berkeley’s prospects of preferment. His friend, Dean Swift, was no longer in the ascendant, and his late patron, the Earl of Peterborough, had been deprived of place and influence. He was, nevertheless, a welcome guest and visitor in literary circles and in general society. He possessed a charm of address and manners that won friends to him on all sides. He shortly had the opportunity again to revisit the continent—this time as companion and tutor to the son of Sir George Ashe. While in Paris he had an interview and carried on a discussion with the celebrated Malebranche on points of philosophy and metaphysics which, it is said, became so animated and exciting that the Frenchman brought on himself a violent disorder which prostrated him and resulted in his death within a few days.
After an absence this time of five years Berkeley returned to England in 1720. He found the country in turmoil over the collapse of the South Sea bubble. The speculative mania which had spread widely in England led as usual to an era of extravagance and corruption. The disorders of society consequent on these conditions was general. Berkeley gave vent to his feelings on the situation by an essay that attracted wide attention, in which he sought to point out a remedy for the prevailing evils.
His suggestions may be briefly quoted as bearing equally on certain conditions not altogether unfamiliar to us in the United States. He argued that the persons who compose society must become individually industrious, frugal, public-spirited and religious. Sumptuary laws, he thought, might do something toward mitigating existing distress, and public amusements might be regulated, and masquerades prohibited. The drama, too, should be reformed. But the prime necessity was that sensuality must give way to religious love and reverence. “Let us be industrious, frugal and religious, if we are to be saved at all,” was his counsel.
In 1721 he returned to Ireland, from which he had been so long absent. He had retained all along his post in Trinity College, and was now shortly installed as chaplain to the Duke of Trafton, the viceroy.
There occurred in 1723 a curious and romantic incident in which Swift was concerned, or rather “Vanessa”—one of the two unhappy women whose passion for and devotion to the cynical dean have become familiar to all readers. Vanessa, like Stella, the other victim of unrequited affection, followed the dean to Dublin, and there learned of Swift’s connection with Stella—to whom he had been secretly married. Heart-crushed by the revelation, she revoked a will she had made in favor of the man she loved, and substituted Berkeley as the beneficiary and legatee. This is all the more curious and unaccountable as Vanessa (Esther Vanhumrigh) seems to have met Berkeley but once, and that only by chance. At all events he was the gainer by some 4,000 pounds.
Fortune had begun to favor him. He was appointed dean of Derry (Londonderry), an important ecclesiastical dignity in the Irish church, said to be worth £1,100 a year. While in possession of this lucrative position the project of the great university in the new world seems to have taken root in his mind, and quickly became a passionate enthusiasm. This is the project which links Berkeley’s name with America—indeed it was to recall his romantic initiative and devotion to this early scheme for higher education that I venture on this sketch.
Swift says the design had been long in Berkeley’s mind. His generous aim involved the surrender of his opulent position as dean, and the employment of his means, including the Vanessa legacy, in promoting this project, on which he had evidently set his heart, and it also necessitated other sacrifices as we shall see. Of course, it was not possible for him unaided to carry out or even to begin his undertaking. He relied on obtaining aid from sympathizers, and an indispensable charter from the king, George I.
It is a curious fact that he was indebted to a Catholic—the Abbe Gualteri, whom he had met in Italy—for the opportunity of making his application to the king under favorable conditions. The abbe was a distinguished Venetian scientist, who had the ear of court circles, and he interested himself warmly in Berkeley’s behalf, with the result that a charter was granted in June, 1725, for a college in the Island of Bermuda, and constituting “Dr. Berkeley, Dean of Londonderry, principal of said college.”
Berkeley’s enthusiasm and persuasive eloquence enlisted promise of support in other powerful quarters. The prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, promised a grant of £20,000; the private subscriptions seem to have aggregated about £5,000.
All this took time and extensive preparation. The doctor or dean had secured the co-operation of several of the Trinity College fellows, who agreed to go out with him, and there was to be another addition to the party who was to intimately share the principal’s life and fortunes thenceforth—Mrs. Berkeley!
He had married during the progress of his negotiations for the university scheme, a daughter of the speaker of the Irish house of commons. The marriage took place August 1, 1728. It was said of Mrs. Berkeley that “she shared his fortune when he was about to engage in one of the most romantic moral movements of modern times, and when, in love with an ideal academic life in the Bermudas, he prepared to surrender preferment and social position at home in order to devote the remainder of his life to the great continent of the West.”
In the fullest confidence that he would be able to carry out successfully his favorite designs, Berkeley, with his wife and college companions, set sail for the sunny isle in the golden West, of which he had so long dreamed. He was then in his forty-fourth year. The voyage occupied four months, and the landing was made at Newport, R. I., where he had planned to sojourn until he should receive from England the promised grant from the government. It was necessary also that the good will and practical interest of the New England colonies should be enlisted in his efforts.
The population of Newport at this time is said to have been curiously cosmopolitan. As religious freedom prevailed there, thanks to the Quaker, Roger Williams, and was unknown in the other New England colonies, religious refugees found an asylum, as they did in the Catholic colony of Maryland under Lord Baltimore. The merchants of Newport appear to have been active and successful in the slave trade, so we shall be less surprised at the statement that Berkeley purchased several for service on the farm which he speedily acquired and settled on for the time being.
Berkeley was quite in demand for sermons. He preached in Trinity Church, Newport, three days after his arrival, and many times afterward. The Rhode Island aristocracy of those days maintained, according to accounts, a good deal of the style and manner of life of the English gentry, and we can read of fox hunting, and races, and festivities of various kinds as commonly indulged in. The delays reported from London, in carrying out the promises of aid gave Berkeley many anxious hours in his new world home. He found it expedient to build a house on the farm in the interior, at Whitehall, which he continued to occupy with his family until he sailed back to England. His house became the resort of the ministers and gentry of Rhode Island, who delighted in the society and conversation of the accomplished Irish dean.
Nearly three years passed in waiting and in expectation of the promised means which never materialized, beyond the sum of private subscriptions—which he afterward scrupulously returned. Meantime two children were born to him; one of these, a girl, died and was buried in Trinity churchyard, Newport. Three of Berkeley’s slaves, according to the records of the same church—“Philip Berkeley, Anthony Berkeley and Agnes Berkeley, negroes, received into the church, June 11, 1731.”
All his plans for the utopia he had nourished in his imagination faded utterly when authoritative news from London convinced Berkeley that the project must be abandoned. The grant of £20,000 assured by Walpole, and other important concessions, could not be realized. The prime minister had given up the project, and employed the proposed grant and concessions for other purposes. So in the fall of 1731 the disappointed philanthropist bade farewell to the new world and sailed homeward.
Berkeley’s subsequent career must be briefly told. On his return to London he wrote a great deal on his favorite philosophical subjects. In 1734 he was appointed bishop of Cloyne, in Ireland, and there he spent the next eighteen years of his life. He gave much attention to the social condition of Ireland, attended to his episcopal duties and occasionally occupied his seat in the Irish house of lords. His benevolence to the poor in the dark days of famine and disease was said to be boundless. He certainly won the esteem and gratitude of the Catholics of Ireland by his liberality and his freedom from the spirit of cant and proselytizing, then unhappily widespread in that unfortunate country. His advocacy of tar water as a universal specific for the cure of disease will be remembered as an example of his amiable philanthropic enthusiasms. He publishes a poem in praise of his panacea. He was offered further promotion in the Irish church—even the primacy; but he put these allurements aside and refused. “For doing good to the world,” he declared, “I may upon the whole do as much in a lower station.”
In 1752 he decided to resign his bishopric and seek retirement at Oxford. The unusual proposal excited the curiosity of the King, George II., who declared, when the application was made to him, that Berkeley might live where he pleased but that he should die a bishop! So he was permitted to retire from his see, still retaining his Episcopal rank.
He did not long enjoy the change. He died in Oxford the 14th of January, 1753, and was buried in the university chapel of Christ Church. His widow survived him thirty-three years, dying in her 86th year. A son and a daughter were living at the time of his death. In his will he provided among other items—“that the expense of my funeral do not exceed £20, and that as much more be given to the poor of the parish where I die.” He left a very small estate. The well-known lines of his poem, in which he sought to depict the prospects of his utopian project, may fitly close this sketch of the amiable and benevolent Irish dean and bishop:
Westward, the course of empire takes its way,
The four first acts already past;
A fifth shall close the drama with the day,
Time’s noblest offspring is the last.