Part 7

A few women of distinguished ability have been, early and late, members of the Philosophical Society: notably Mary Somerville, the English astronomer; Professor Maria Mitchell, of Vassar; Mrs. Louis Agassiz, and Madame Emma Seiler. The earliest woman member was the Russian Princess Daschkof, lady-in-waiting to the Empress Catherine II. A great traveller, for those days, the princess profited by all that she saw and heard in the countries which she visited. A student and an observer, the friend of Diderot in France, and associating in Edinburgh with such men as Dr. Blair, Adam Smith, and Ferguson, she returned to Russia to become director of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, and later to establish another academy for the improvement and cultivation of the Russian language. Of the manner in which the news of her election to the Philosophical Society reached her, the princess says,--

“I was at my country house, and was not a little surprised on hearing that a messenger from the council of state wished to see me. The case and letter were introduced, the former of which contained a large packet from Dr. Franklin, and the letter a very complimentary communication on the part of the Duke of Sudermania. These despatches,” says the princess, “were sent without any examination,” and it was necessary to explain their nature at once to the despotic Catherine. “Accordingly I drove to town,” adds the princess, “or rather straight to court; and on entering the Empress’s dressing-room I told the _valet de chambre_ in waiting that if her majesty was not then engaged I should be happy in having permission to speak to her, and to show her some papers which I had that morning received. The Empress desired I might be shown into her bed-chamber, where I found her writing at a little table. Having delivered into her hands the letter of the Duke of Sudermania, ‘These others, madame,’ said I, ‘are from Dr. Franklin and from the secretary of the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, of which I have been admitted a most unworthy member.’” The Empress made no comment on this matter; but after reading the letter of the duke, desired the princess not to answer his grace’s complimentary effusion. She had no objection, it appears, to a correspondence between the princess and the octogenarian Franklin, on the other side of the sea; but with the Duke of Sudermania it was quite a different affair. The duke was a brother of the King of Sweden, there was a coolness between the courts of Russia and Sweden, and, to complicate matters, his grace had admired the princess at Aix and Spa, who, with all her vast experience of life and long years of widowhood, was only a little over forty, and speaks herself of her _beaux yeux_.

From the time of the election of the Princess Daschkof, in 1789, the society has always had a Russian membership, generally from among the members of the St. Petersburg Academy. In 1864 it was presented with a superb copy of the Codex Sinaiticus, published in St. Petersburg in 1862, from the parchment rolls found by Tischendorf in the monastery of St. Catharine on Mount Sinai.

A day never to be forgotten by the members of the Philosophical Society--and there are some persons living whose memory runs back to that period--was that upon which the Marquis de Lafayette was welcomed to its hall, on his return to America in 1824. No words can more fitly describe the emotions of the hour, certainly none can bring back more perfectly the aroma of that olden time adulation, than the address of welcome pronounced, on this occasion, by Mr. Charles J. Ingersoll:

“America does not forget the romantic forthcoming of the most generous, consistent, and heroic of the knights of the old world to the rescue of the new. She has always dwelt delighted on the constancy of the nobleman who could renounce titles and wealth for more historical and philanthropic honors; the commander renouncing power, who never shed a drop of blood for conquest or vainglory. She has often trembled, but never blushed, for her oriental champion, when tried by the alternate caresses and rage of the most terrific mobs, and imposing monarchs. She knows that his hospitable mansion was the shrine at which her citizens in France consecrated their faith in independence. Invited to revisit the scenes of his first eminence, the very idolatry of welcome abounds with redeeming characteristics of self-government.... They raise him before the world as its image, and bear him through illuminated cities and widely-cultivated regions, all redolent with festivity and every device of hospitality and entertainment, where, when their independence was declared, there was little else than wilderness and war.”

Could tongue or pen say more?

An old Philadelphia lady, who, in her youth, had the honor of walking to church with Lafayette, vividly recalls her keen disappointment when she first saw him,--short and stout, not by any means the typical hero of her romantic dreams. His son, George Washington Lafayette, was with him, and at a dinner given him, when called upon to respond to a toast, arose, and, struggling with his emotion and his feeble command of English, placed his hand upon his heart, and said, “I am zo happy to be ze son of my fadder!”--words which so touched the sympathetic chord in the hearts of all present that they felt that the entire vocabulary of the language could have furnished him with no more fitting phrase.

Among later members of the society have been such men as Noah Webster, Josiah Quincy, Washington Irving, Elisha Kent Kane, the Arctic explorer, the Count de Lesseps, Mr. Gladstone, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, George Bancroft, the historian, James Russell Lowell, and the two great naturalists, Louis Agassiz, and Joseph Leidy, both of whom, with their vast learning, retained through life a childlike frankness and simplicity that endeared them to all who approached them. Those who met Professor Agassiz by the sea, during his vacation seasons, and heard from his own lips of the wonders of the shore, and those who listened to a popular lecture of Dr. Leidy, in which he described the life and customs of the minute creatures to be found in a drop of pond water, will always rejoice that it was their privilege to journey even a little way into the fairy-land of science with such masters for their guides. Of the pleasure and profit of a more thorough penetration into its mysteries and enchantments under such preceptors, those who were fortunate enough to be numbered among the students of Agassiz and Leidy speak with enthusiasm.

The Philosophical Society, grown gray and venerable, now celebrates, May, 1893, its one hundred and fiftieth birthday. Although numbering a large corps of native and foreign members, working in various branches of knowledge, and contributing to its regularly issued publications valuable papers, the present fraternity feel that the society’s proudest claim to distinction lies in the fact that it fostered literature, science, and invention in the young nation, and thus became the _alma mater_ of many institutions that have gone forth from its protecting arms to become, in their turn, centres of light and usefulness.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] Benjamin Franklin as a Man of Letters, by John Bach McMaster, p. 137.

[20] Life of Benjamin Franklin, by James Parton, vol. i. p. 263.

[21] Works of Franklin, by Jared Sparks, vol. ii. p. 9.

[22] Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, pp. 1, 2.

[23] Charles Willson Peale’s copy of Martin’s Franklin, the original of which is owned by Mr. Henry Pratt McKean.

[24] Benjamin Franklin as a Man of Letters, by John Bach McMaster, p. 277.

If the impulse towards learning early given by the American Philosophical Society has found expression in Philadelphia, and other cities, in historical societies, scientific schools, academies of natural science, and kindred institutions, its more genial and social side has long been represented in the city of its birth by the Wistar Parties.

As this old club has, within a few years, been reorganized, it may be interesting to turn back to the period of its inception, and even further back into the past century, when Dr. Caspar Wistar held, at his own house, those informal gatherings to which the Wistar Parties of to-day owe their name. How large a place this club filled in the social life of the period may be gathered from the fact that most Philadelphians of distinction, if not actual members, were its frequent guests, while all strangers of note were introduced into the circle of choice spirits,--choice in the full sense of the word, because chosen for particular gifts or attainments, the original Wistar Club being composed of members of the American Philosophical Society, a close organization that has ever striven to keep its eye single to the interests of science, literature, art, history, and the promotion of all useful knowledge. Although Silas Deane, the Marquis de Chastellux, and John Adams grow quite enthusiastic when describing the luxurious living prevalent among “the nobles of Pennsylvania,” the latter admits, with what in a New-Englander may be considered rare generosity, that there was something to be found here better than our high living, as he speaks of the “high thinking” of some of those old Philadelphians, in one of his charming letters to his wife which are only less charming than her own.

That John Adams does not mention Dr. Wistar’s hospitable house, and the company met there, is attributable to the fact that the seat of government, and with it John Adams as its head, removed from Philadelphia to Washington about the time that these receptions began.

The Wistar Parties have frequently been spoken of as first held on Sunday, which erroneous impression was probably due to the fact that Dr. Wistar’s family and friends were in the habit of dropping in upon him on Sunday evenings, knowing him to be more at leisure then than through the week. The following account, from the pen of Dr. Hugh L. Hodge, entirely disproves the Sunday origin of these parties, which were begun before Dr. Wistar’s second marriage:[25]

“His [Dr. Wistar’s] house had become the centre of the literary and scientific society of Philadelphia. He was in the habit of receiving his friends to a frugal entertainment every Saturday evening. To these reunions the most distinguished foreign visitors in the city brought introductions, and the most intellectual of the professional residents gathered.

“Mrs. Bache, a very superior and high-toned woman, had, previous to her marriage [in 1797], kept house for her brother for several years, during which time she, with her friend Miss Eddy, afterwards Mrs. Dr. Hosack, of New York, had the great pleasure and advantage of attending these remarkable Saturday evening meetings.”

These early reunions were informal, but as years rolled on a pleasant custom crystallized into an established usage, the same friends meeting, week after week, in Dr. Wistar’s house, at the southwest corner of Fourth and Prune Streets, whose beautiful garden extended to St. Mary’s church-yard. The entertainment was simple, as the host’s idea was an intellectual rather than a convivial gathering. Tea, coffee, and other light refreshments were offered to the guests; ice-creams, raisins, and almonds were later added to the regale. Even then the name of Sybarite could not be applied to those early convives: the terrapin and oyster decadence was of much later date. A table was seldom spread. The number of guests varied from ten to fifty, but usually included between fifteen and twenty-five persons. The invitations were commenced in October or November, and continued to March or April. During this period Dr. Wistar welcomed to his home, each week, his old friends and colleagues, and any strangers whom they chose to bring with them.

In 1804 Dr. Wistar issued an invitation to his friends to meet Baron von Humboldt, the great naturalist, and his young friend the botanist Bonpland, who stopped in Philadelphia on their return from a scientific expedition through Mexico and the West Indies. Here also was introduced the latest sensation, in the form of Captain Riley, long a prisoner among the Arabs; also the learned and eccentric Dr. Mitchill, first Surgeon-General of New York, later satirized by Halleck and Drake in “The Croakers:”

“We hail thee!--mammoth of the State, Steam frigate on the waves of physic, Equal in practice or debate To cure the nation or the phthisic!”

Dr. Hosack, of the same city, who was present at the fatal duel between Hamilton and Burr, was another early guest; while under the formal organization of 1818, and in a time nearer our own, England’s most brilliant novelist recalls an evening spent at what he is pleased to call a “Whister party.”

It is not strange that Philadelphians were glad to take the guests of the city to these parties, where was gathered together, both in the last century and in this, the best that our New World civilization could produce, whether of talent and learning or of courtly grace and good breeding, and here down all the varied years has flashed that genial flow of wit without which no social gathering is complete. Here, in early days, came the learned and witty Abbé Correa de Serra, Mr. Samuel Breck, of Boston, and Dr. John W. Francis, of New York, whose wit and social qualities were said to resemble those of the much-loved Lamb; and later came Robert Walsh and Joseph Hopkinson, both distinguished for their brilliant colloquial abilities, while Nicholas Biddle would save for the learned brotherhood his freshest _bon mot_, and Dr. Nathaniel Chapman would bring hither his most irresistible witticism.

If the older physicians, whose portraits were recently collected at the centenary of the College of Physicians, could step down from their frames, after the fashion of a scene in a well-known drama, we should have before us, _in propria persona_, a number of Dr. Wistar’s guests of the medical fraternity. Presumably among these was Dr. Benjamin Rush, who has been called the American Sydenham, but who combined so many gifts that, like certain plants of various characteristics, it is almost impossible to classify him. Perhaps in a larger sense than it can be said of most men, even of the good physician, he belonged to humanity.[26]

A frequent guest was Dr. Adam Kuhn, who studied in Edinburgh, and brought home treasures of learning as his contribution to this “feast of reason.” Here were also the Shippens, father and son,--both Williams, both practising at the same time, and both so eminent that they have frequently been confused by the historian. An honorable line of Shippens, in different callings, but notably in law and medicine, has come from that Edward Shippen of whom Boston was not worthy, and who, after being lashed and driven through the town at the cart’s tail, because, forsooth, good Puritans couldn’t abide good Quakers, came to Philadelphia in 1693, to be its first mayor and the founder of a distinguished family.[27] Here also shone the kindly face of Dr. Samuel Powel Griffitts, who seems to have brought with him, wherever he went, an atmosphere of “peace and good will to men.” And here, these gatherings being formed of men of various callings and professions, came such lawyers as William Rawle, who was ready to discuss theology as well as law,--perhaps a little readier to talk of the one than of the other. One day he is writing his notes on the Constitution of the United States, while upon another such subjects as Original Sin and the Evidences of Christianity engage his versatile pen.

Among legal gentlemen who were frequent guests of Dr. Wistar were William Tilghman, of Maryland, later Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, who in an interesting biographical sketch has embalmed the memory of his host; George Clymer, statesman and patriot, whose name is appended to the Declaration; and Peter Du Ponceau, who, although a Frenchman, had an ardent admiration for American institutions and the primitive simplicity that characterized the old Quaker _régime_ in Philadelphia. And that the cure of souls might not be neglected, we find here John Heckewelder, the Moravian missionary, an intimate of Wistar, and a correspondent of Du Ponceau, who later translated Heckewelder’s interesting work on Indian manners and customs into the French. Here also was John Vaughan, the Unitarian philanthropist, of whom it has been said that “he represented this city as faithfully as its own name ‘Brotherly Love.’” Did they meet and talk together, these two at the extreme poles of doctrine, the devout Moravian and the Arian whose life was consecrated to the service of his brother man? If they met, and in their discourse fell upon such subjects as engage the characters in “Paradise Lost” and the “Divina Commedia,” we may be sure that in their large mutual love for mankind they found abundant sympathy,

“Nor melted in the acid waters of a creed The Christian pearl of charity.”

A goodly company, among whose members there is no one more worthy to be remembered than the host, generally known as Dr. Caspar Wistar, Jr., being descended from another Caspar Wistar, who came to this country in 1717. We are informed by a German scholar and a genealogist that all the Wisters, whether _ter_ or _tar_, come from one common stock in Germany, where the name is written Wüster, and that Caspar, who came to Philadelphia in 1717, son of Hans Caspar and Anna Katerina Wüster or Wister, in having a deed of conveyance prepared was put down Wistar by the clerk. This mistake he did not take the trouble to correct, and from this first Caspar has come a line of _tars_, of which Dr. Caspar Wistar, Jr., was the most distinguished. A second son of old Hans Caspar Wister, of Hilsbach, Germany, coming over later, had his papers made out properly, according to the German orthography of the name, and thus established the Philadelphia line of _ters_. We venture to give this rather lengthy explanation in view of the fact that the spelling of Wister has been a fertile subject for discussion in the Quaker City for some years, and because it is a most reasonable one, as will be admitted by all who have studied the records of past generations. In old letters and papers of the last century it is not unusual to find a surname variously spelled in the same letter, or even on the same page. This is notably the case in the voluminous “Penn and Logan Correspondence,” where Jenings and Jennings, Ashton and Assheton, Blaithwaite and Blathwayt, used interchangeably, hopelessly confuse the reader.

A student of the schools of Edinburgh, Professor in the College of Philadelphia, and later in the University, Dr. Wistar has the honor of being the author of the first American treatise on anatomy. Eminent as a physician, teacher, and man of science, this large-brained and busy man found life incomplete without the cultivation of its social side.

It is to be regretted that Mr. Vaughan, Mr. Du Ponceau, or the learned Dr. Benjamin Rush, who at times used a pen with a humorous nib, or some of the other _habitués_ of these unique gatherings, have not left us pleasant and gossiping reminiscences of the Wistar Club, which would serve to render us as familiar with these old figures as contemporaneous writers have made us with the frequenters of the Kit-Cat Club, where the wits of Queen Anne’s time gathered, or that later circle at the Turk’s Head, dominated by the great burly figure of the dictionary-maker. Garrick, Reynolds, and all the rest are grouped about him; and Boswell is ever at hand, taking notes. Did humble Boswell realize that he was painting pictures for the future, as well as, even better than, the elegant Sir Joshua, who sat near him? Goldsmith was at it too, giving us life as it was, not some fanciful picture of it; and to them we owe it that these men live before us now. The following is the nearest approach that we can find to such a picture, and this, from the pen of the late Chief Justice Tilghman, gives us only one figure, when we would like to be presented to the whole company.

After dwelling upon the modest dignity and bland courtesy of Dr. Wistar’s bearing as President of the Philosophical Society, and the ardor with which he incited its members to diligence in collecting, before it should be too late, the perishing materials of American history, Mr. Tilghman says,--

“The meetings of this committee he [Dr. Wistar] regularly attended. It was their custom, after the business of the evening was concluded, to enter upon an unconstrained conversation on literary subjects. Then, without intending it, our lamented friend would insensibly take the lead; and so interesting were his anecdotes, and so just his remarks, that, drawing close to the dying embers, we often forgot the lapse of time, until warned by the unwelcome clock that we had entered on another day.”

Here is another pen-sketch from a writer signing himself “Antiquary,” which has a touch of life in it, and shows the good doctor’s ready tact in setting a _gauche_ stranger at his ease. Mr. John Vaughan introduced into the learned circle what the narrator is pleased to call “a living, live Yankee, a specimen of humanity more rare,” he says, “forty or fifty years ago than now.” It would appear that this compatriot was received into the company with emotions similar to those awakened, later, by the advent of the “American Cousin” in England.

“He was,” says the writer, “a man remarkable for his mechanical turn of mind, but entirely unused to society. No workshop could turn out a more uncouth individual. I was standing near the door when John Vaughan brought him in. Between the blaze of light, the hum of conversation, and the number of well-dressed men, he was completely overcome, and sank into the first chair he could reach. Mr. Vaughan could not coax him out of it, and I expected every minute the door opened that he would make a bolt for the street. Presently Dr. Wistar, who had the happy knack of suiting his conversation to all ages and classes, was introduced to the shy Yankee. Soon the ice was broken, and I saw the shy mechanic conversing freely with scientific men, explaining to them his views upon mechanism, etc.”

When, in 1818, the good old doctor went out to join “the innumerable company,” the little circle here, which he had drawn together, resolved to commemorate the pleasant meetings at his house, and to keep fresh his memory, by forming an organization called the Wistar Parties. This is, in brief, the _raison d’être_ of the association, as given by a subsequent member, Mr. Job R. Tyson, in his interesting paper entitled “Sketch of the Wistar Party,” read before that honorable society September 26, 1845. He says,--

“I have ascertained that the following gentlemen, in the autumn of the year 1818, formed themselves into an association and agreed to give three parties every year, during the season: William Tilghman, Robert M. Patterson, Peter S. Du Ponceau, John Vaughan, Reuben Haines, Robert Walsh, Jr., Zacheus Collins, and Thomas C. James.”

There were only eight to begin with; in 1821 the number had increased to sixteen, and in 1828 to twenty-four.

Mr. Tyson tells us that two essential laws of the existence of the organization were, “_first_, that no one is eligible to membership who is not a member of the American Philosophical Society; and, _second_, that unanimity is necessary to a choice.” Numerous regulations were added, “which,” he says, “with some modifications, have since been observed.”

The number of Philadelphians who could be invited to one party was twenty, and these it appears were picked citizens, selected rather for their attainments and attributes than for their “long descent.” With regard to the number of strangers invited, no limit was set.