Matthew Fontaine Maury, the Pathfinder of the Seas

by Charles Lee Lewis

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”.