Edward Elbridge Salisbury and the AOS Roberta L Dougherty, Yale University

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From the SelectedWorks of Roberta L. Dougherty

Spring March 17, 2017

AOS 2017: Edward Elbridge Salisbury and the AOS Roberta L Dougherty, Yale University

Available at: https://works.bepress.com/bintalbalad/23/ [SLIDE] An American Orientalist: Edward Elbridge Salisbury and the AOS

AOS members probably know the subject of my paper this afternoon as one of the society’s prominent officers during its first half-century, having served as its

Corresponding Secretary (1846-1857), President (twice, in 1863-1866, and again from

1873-1880),1 and, at various times, as member of the Board of Directors, a Vice

President, and for his service on the publications committee of the Journal. The members may be less familiar with the fact that his appointment at Yale College as professor of

Arabic and Sanskrit language and literature in 1841 was the first such professorship in the Americas--and in fact the first university professorship of any kind in the Americas.2

They may also be unaware of the extent to which Salisbury supported the early establishment of the Society not only with his time, but his means.

Part of the AOS lore regarding Salisbury is that he was present at the society’s founding in 1842, but this was not actually the case. Although his name was indeed on the list of members first elected to the society after its founding, he may have remained unaware of his election for over a year. He was with some effort persuaded to serve as its

Corresponding Secretary, and with even more difficulty persuaded to become its

President. But Salisbury energetically supported both the organization and its journal from its earliest years and in the most minute of its affairs. Salisbury’s money purchased the fonts in Oriental languages that enabled scholarly communication through the JAOS, and subsidized its publication for several decades. He also groomed his most famous student, William Dwight Whitney (eventually president of the AOS), to replace him as AOS librarian and on its publications committee.

1 E. Washburn Hopkins, “Edward Elbridge Salisbury,” in India Old and New, with a Memorial Address (ed. E. Washburn Hopkins, New York: Scribner’s, 1901), p. [2]. 2 Hopkins, “Memorial Address in Honor of Professor Salisbury,” in ibid., p. 6.

How did Salisbury come to be so sought after by the Society?

[SLIDE] I’ll briefly go back to his early life & development as a student, before returning to the topic of his relationship to the AOS.

Salisbury graduated from Yale College in 1832 and, after a year’s hiatus, returned to study theology in its Divinity School.

[SLIDE] There he would have come under the influence of two persons. The first of these was Josiah Gibbs,3 with whom Salisbury would have studied theology and

Hebrew. In the autobiography he wrote towards the end of his life (published in the

JAOS in 1944),4 Salisbury indicated that it was Gibbs’ enthusiasm for the new science of comparative philology that first planted the seed in Salisbury’s mind to pursue the study of Sanskrit and to leave theology behind. However the evidence of Salisbury’s own letters & journals held in the Yale MSSA shows quite clearly that another strong influence would have been Theodore Woolsey, Yale professor of Greek and, eventually, also Salisbury’s brother-in-law. Salisbury would have studied Greek with Woolsey as a

Yale undergraduate. Later, when he returned to New Haven as a student in the Divinity

School, Salisbury lived for a time with the newlywed Woolseys. Theodore Woolsey was one of the very few Americans who had at that point ventured to France & Germany to study Oriental languages—indeed, Americans had to go abroad to study such subjects.

Woolsey was known to have studied Arabic in Paris in the 1820s5 and it would be

3 Josiah Willard Gibbs, Sr. (1790-1861), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_Willard_Gibbs_Sr. 4 Franklin Edgerton & E.E. Salisbury, “A Salisbury Letter” (JAOS vol 64, no. 2 (1944), p. 60. 5 Hopkins, “Memorial Address…,” p. 4. letters of introduction from Woolsey that would give Salisbury the necessary entrée to the great European Orientalists later on.

[SLIDE] After completing his theological education and reaching his majority, Salisbury came into his inheritance from his wealthy merchant father. He married his cousin

Abigail, who had considerable wealth of her own.

[SLIDE] In 1836 the two set off to Europe on a three-year honeymoon, --as Salisbury wrote later in his autobiography, “We chose to go abroad for travel and self- improvement … we threw ourselves with all the abandon of inexperience in the ways of the world upon the wide ocean and the wider expanse of a new life in foreign climes.”6—but this was not just a honeymoon; the journey pushed Salisbury towards a new purpose, which in his autobiography he described as “a turning point.”7 During this journey Salisbury & Abby not only partook of the usual delights of the Grand Tour but also diligently applied themselves to the study of German and French.

[SLIDE] The acquisition of these languages, plus Woolsey’s letters of introduction, made it possible in 1837-38 for Salisbury to study Arabic, Persian, & Hindustani in Paris with the great scholars Silvestre de Sacy & Garcin de Tassy,

[SLIDE] and in the winter of 1838 to begin Sanskrit in Berlin, with Franz Bopp.

Salisbury was in constant communication with Woolsey during this three-year period, and even purchased books on Woolsey’s behalf to send back to America before his return.

6 “A Salisbury Letter,” pp. 59-60. 7 Ibid., p. 60.

[SLIDE] At the same time, Salisbury was also building up his own personal library of texts, dictionaries, and grammars. His wife Abby wrote to her mother-in-law describing

Salisbury’s drive to build his book collection thus: “Edward almost begrudges the time he is obliged to spend in buying books, but is very necessary to be done, for upon this much of his future usefulness depends.”8 Indeed, Salisbury even borrowed $1000 from his mother to buy a collection of Sanskrit books published in India.9 Towards the end of his last year in Europe, EES conceived the notion that his ultimate purpose would be to obtain a post at Yale where he could provide instruction in the languages he had spent much time, energy, and expense to acquire, and he gently hinted this idea in a letter home to his brother-in-law Woolsey.10

In his autobiography he noted that his return to New Haven with this library in 1839 created quite a stir among the local academics, who would never in their lives have seen such a large collection of publications in Oriental languages.11

[SLIDE] The fact that such a collection was now located in New Haven, plus the inarguable fact that Salisbury was now the only American with advanced academic training in Arabic & Sanskrit, set in motion the creation of a professorship of Arabic and

Sanskrit at Yale. BIL Woolsey also knew very well that Salisbury, being a man of independent means, did not need to work for a living, and when in 1841 Yale appointed him Professor of Arabic & Sanskrit Language and Literature, it was without pay.

8 Salisbury Family Papers / MS429 / Series III / Box 11 / Folder no. 45a / [18381122] Abigail Phillips Salisbury to her MIL, Abigail Breese Salisbury, from Berlin 9 [NOTE: this is a GREAT DEAL OF MONEY for the time! Poss. $25K!!] 10 CITATION NEEDED 11 “A Salisbury Letter,” p. 60.

After his appointment Salisbury felt the need to sort of “top up” his Sanskrit studies, and in May 1842 he headed back to Europe—to Bonn this time—to study with Christian

Lassen, George Freytag, and others.

[SLIDE] This meant that by the time the famous “few gentlemen interested in Oriental literature” founded the American Oriental Society in Boston in September 1842,12

Salisbury had been away from New Haven for months. He would have been an obvious choice to these “gentlemen” because of the uniqueness & prestige of his position at

Yale, and because of the well-known value of his personal library, and his name was listed in the minutes of the AOS Board among those of the very first members elected to membership of the AOS on 7 September 1842.13 This notification was sent to Salisbury by mail, but either he overlooked it after he returned from Europe in the spring of 1843, or he decided—possibly for reasons of modesty—to ignore the notification.

[SLIDE] Upon returning from Europe and as a preface to taking up his new teaching duties at Yale, Salisbury delivered an inaugural discourse at Yale College in August

1843. In it, he surveyed for his audience the entire history of Arabic and Sanskrit literature (and the state of the art in their study), concluding his address with these poignant words:

You perceive, gentlemen, that my field of study is broad and requires much

minuteness of research in order to know it thoroughly. I profess only to have set

12 “Extract from the report of a committee of the American Oriental Society,” in JAOS vol. 1, no. 1 (1843), p. ii.

13 AOS archives, CITATION NEEDED. foot upon it… and to do what may be in my power to attract others into it,

though I am aware I must expect to labor, for a time, almost alone…. I shall

eagerly seek to add brightness to my flickering lamp from the shining lights

about me.

The words are poignant in themselves but even more so knowing that in fact a group of people in Boston shared his interests and were even at that moment actively seeking his partnership in developing the field of the study of Oriental languages in America.

[SLIDE] In the AOS archives I found a letter from then-secretary William W.

Greenough dated December 1843,14 sent along with a copy of the first issue of the JAOS, to inquire whether Salisbury knew that he had been elected to membership?

Salisbury did finally respond to the invitation to join the AOS but would prove similarly recalcitrant when offered the position of Corresponding Secretary in 1846.

[SLIDE] The AOS archives contain a letter from Rufus Anderson (who was described by AOS President W. Hayes Ward in 1893 as “the most distinguished director of missionary work that this country has ever seen”)15 practically begging Salisbury to take on this duty, and emphasizing that it would be mutually beneficial:

All things considered, the office of Corres. Secy. belongs to you. You are devoted to Oriental subjects & pursuits, have made yourself an Oriental scholar, & are giving your whole time & energies to the very objects, for which the Society was formed & exists. And the Society is an

14 AOS archives, “Letters to Salisbury 1838-1878,” Greenough to EES 18431228. 15 “Proceedings of the American Oriental Society, at its Meeting in New York, N.Y., March 29th, 30th, and 31st, 1894,” in JAOS vol. 16 (1896), p. lx. instrument which you may use to great advantage, (as we believe,) by prosecuting its objects, in promoting, at the same time, your own usefulness in the department of your choice.16

Between his duties as Corresponding Secretary and his work on the Publications

Committee of the AOS, Salisbury threw himself into the work of building up & promoting the society’s aims, and actively contributed to building up the reputation of this young American society among European scholars. Salisbury contributed tirelessly to the JAOS on a broad range of topics, including Buddhism, Islam, Arabic manuscripts, ancient Persian cuneiform, Jews of China, Assyrian cylinder seals, and Japanese botany.

[SLIDE] I have only a little time to briefly discuss Salisbury’s acquisition of the fonts used for printing Oriental languages in the JAOS. During his three-year sojourn in

Europe, Salisbury had the opportunity to meet the American missionary and famous

Arabist Eli Smith at the typefounder’s in Leipzig where Smith was supervising the casting of one of his earliest attempts at an improved Arabic typeface. It is possibly from this meeting that Salisbury came to realize the importance of being able to print non-Western languages in fonts appealing to native speakers, even when presented in

Western-language publications. Although the American Board of Commissioners for

Foreign Missions squelched his later attempt to purchase a set of Japanese type for use in printing the JAOS, he eventually succeeded in obtaining sets of type from European sources.

Here you see two examples of the type for Arabic and Sanskrit languages obtained by

Salisbury from the Prussian Academy of Sciences and cast by German typefounders.

The type cost just over £80 (more than $10,000 in today’s dollars). It was acquired with

16 AOS archives, “Letters to Salisbury 1838-1878,” Rufus Anderson to EES 18460623. the help of William Dwight Whitney, whom Salisbury sent to Berlin to study Sanskrit upon realizing that his pupil had outstripped his own abilities. Whitney was more than happy to act on Salisbury’s behalf in this regard, and wrote home to him saying: “You do not need to be assured that I am more than ready to do my best to help the introduction of the first Sanskrit type into America: no one could be more rejoiced than

I that such a thing is going to happen.”

As an aside, Salisbury paid for the fonts and they were kept in the basement of the Yale

College Library at the disposal of the AOS—however he never actually GAVE the fonts to the Society. Salisbury’s will of 1900 stipulated that they were still at the Society’s disposal, and that they were at that time still located in the basement of the library. But now—they no longer exist.

[SLIDE] Salisbury’s work for the AOS, plus his mentorship of his two brilliant students

James Hadley & William Dwight Whitney (both of whom also eventually served as presidents of the AOS), contributed to creating an American community of like-minded individuals that he correctly described as lacking when he gave his inaugural discourse in 1843. But when the time came for him to be re-elected to the position of

Corresponding Secretary in 1857, he would not hear his colleagues’ entreaties.

[SLIDE] In fact, by that time he had also abruptly resigned from his post at Yale, and retreated to Europe on a year-long vacation with his wife Abby, their daughter Mary, and a niece, Woolsey’s daughter Agnes.17

17 Described in Too Young to Travel Abroad: Journal of a Year of European Travel in 1856-7 (Portsmouth, NH: Randall, 1995). Though he very reluctantly agreed to serve as AOS president from 1863-1866, and even more reluctantly served again from 1873-1880, Salisbury published nothing more on

“Oriental” topics after 1874.

[SLIDE] His first wife Abby had died in 1869 and Salisbury was joyously remarried to an energetic (and wealthy) Evelyn MacCurdy of Lyme, CT, with whom he spent many happy years researching and publishing their mutual genealogical histories. He donated his entire Oriental library to Yale College in 1870, making that the best library in the country for these topics, and remained involved in Yale & AOS affairs as a benefactor and committee member.

CONCLUSION

[SLIDE] In his brief autobiography, written at the request of his adopted son George

Grant MacCurdy in 1894 but not made available to AOS members for another 50 years, when it was published in the JAOS in 1944, Salisbury bluntly reflected on his life’s work and his regrets:

In 1841 I was made Professor of Arabic and Sanskrit at Yale—an absurdly named

professorship, for to worthily cover such a broad field, one must have mastered

all languages of civilized man… The pretension implied in my professional title,

I think, discouraged me from the first; … I never advanced much beyond the

position where I stood at the start, and not being able to keep the sources filled

up I never really welcomed any aspirants to take from me what little I knew.”

When summing up his life in this autobiography, Salisbury concluded, “As concerns personal achievement … my life has been a failure,” regretting his choice to give up the life of a minister of God to pursue the pathways of Arabic and Sanskrit study. I only wish he could have known where his “absurdly named professorship” would lead.

[SLIDE] THANK YOU VERY MUCH! Additional notes not used in talk

But within a few years after his return to NH, various contemporary accounts indicate that he was losing his spark. FIX CHRONOLOGY HERE His student James Hadley, who was professor of Greek at Yale (and later also president of the AOS) described him at that time as “morbidly modest, and this plays the mischief with him.”18 From this and other traces of evidence it is possible to see that Salisbury was clearly overwhelmed by a profound feeling of not being up to the task he’d undertaken. Although he was by then deeply involved in the affairs of the still-young AOS (of which he was one of the earliest members), he had at that point no students and no seeming purpose.

Never confident in his own abilities as an instructor, he attempted to resign his professorship in 1848, writing to the Yale Corporation:19

One who pursues oriental studies … can not at present have, in this country, that

sympathy & cooperation of others engaged in the same pursuit, which even the

orientalist of Europe feels constantly the need of, in order to overcome the

obstructions in a field comparatively so little explored. 20

18 CITATION NEEDED

19 Letter from E.E. Salisbury on the south shore of Long Island to the President and Fellows of Yale College. August 4, 1848. Sterling Memorial Library, Manuscripts & Archives, RU 164 Accn 1993-A-083, box 2, “Salisbury letters”

20 In JAOS vol. 1, no. 4, Salisbury (as corresponding sec’y) presented this Annual Report of the Directors in the proceedings for 1847-8: “It seems evident that it must be some time, before there will be any considerable number of persons, in this country, who apply themselves specifically to oriental studies; not only because these studies want the attractiveness which general appreciation gives to an object, and the means of prosecuting them exist to a very limited extent, among us; but also because the oriental student in this country finds little sympathy, at present, between himself and the community of literary men, at large, around him, and is obliged to

--Somehow, his colleagues convinced him to remain.

William Dwight Whitney (1827-1894) began studying Sanskrit with Salisbury in 1849. In

1850 he left New Haven, provided with letters of introduction from Salisbury, to pursue advanced studies in Sanskrit with Salisbury’s former professor Franz Bopp in Berlin.

Whitney remained there three years, studying with other German Indologists including

Albrecht Weber (1825-1901) and Rudolph von Roth (1821-1895, professor at Tubingen).̈

During this time he also acted on Salisbury’s behalf to purchase Sanskrit and Arabic type for use in printing the newly established Journal of the American Oriental Society.

Salisbury’s 1848 letter of resignation is displayed to the right. He would find the intellectual environment he craved when Hadley and Whitney became his students from 1848-1850, along with the stimulation provided by his devotion to the affairs of the

AOS (which he served as corresponding secretary from 1846-1857, and two terms as its

depend almost solely upon the close atmosphere of the narrow circle of personal activity, for the sustenance of intellectual life. But our Society may do much to correct this state of things, by contributing to the naturalization of oriental studies in this western clime; and we think it has advanced, during the past year, a few steps in the direction proper to be given to its operations for this end.

“One thing which, almost more than any other, we consider as auguring favorably for its usefulness, is its having begun to place itself in the right position with respect to the already numerous and constantly increasing body of intelligent and educated Americans resident in various countries of the East, chiefly missionaries, who have it in their power to open the field of oriental learning, in an interesting manner, to those who are strangers to it, as well as to afford important materials to others, by communicating personal observations and the fruits of familiar knowledge.” (p. xlviii) president). Salisbury contributed tirelessly to the JAOS on a broad range of topics, including Buddhism, Islam, Arabic manuscripts, ancient Persian cuneiform, Jews of

China, Assyrian cylinder seals, and Japanese botany.

Two examples of the beautiful type for Arabic and Sanskrit languages purchased by

Salisbury from German typefounders for use in AOS publications. The type cost just over £80 (more than $10,000 in today’s dollars)—Salisbury supported the society not only through the gifts of his time and energy, but also with his personal means.

With Salisbury’s blessing and letters of introduction, Whitney left New Haven in 1850 for Berlin, and remained in Europe three years, studying with other German Indologists including Albrecht Weber (1825-1901) and Rudolph von Roth (1821-1895, professor at

Tubingen).̈ During this time he also acted on Salisbury’s behalf to purchase Sanskrit and

Arabic type for use in printing the newly established Journal of the American Oriental

Society (examples in the exhibit), writing home to Salisbury: “You do not need to be assured that I am more than ready to do my best to help the introduction of the first

Sanskrit type into America: no one could be more rejoiced than I that such a thing is going to happen.”21

Whitney also managed the AOS library (deposited at Yale in 1855) and assisted

Salisbury with editing and publishing the JAOS.

21 Letter from William Dwight Whitney (1827-1894), in Berlin, to E.E. Salisbury, in New Haven. February 9, 1852. Sterling Memorial Library, Manuscripts & Archives, MS 429, box 4, folder 215

Whitney would go on to a distinguished career as Yale professor of comparative philology, president of the AOS (from 1884), founder of the American Philological

Association, and editor of the Century Dictionary.

Later that year he attracted his first known student for Sanskrit, James Hadley (1821-

1872), and in the following year William Dwight Whitney (1827-1894), whom Salisbury groomed as his successor for the instruction of Sanskrit at Yale (and who eventually became a famous linguist in his own right). Hadley described in his diary how the two students relied upon one another rather than upon their professor: Salisbury seemed uninterested in hearing their recitations, and told them outright to go on by themselves if they preferred. At the same time Hadley was filled with compassion for Salisbury’s apparent discouragement:

It gives body to his department, and actual active existence, making it a concrete

somewhat and not a mere name or abstraction, as some are apt enough to

suppose of a Sanskrit and Arabic professorship. It lays a foundation for future

effort of the same kind, presenting an example of regular and thorough

instruction in these subjects which may not be without influence on others who

feel a vocation for similar studies….

SLIDE: 1850-1871: Niagara Falls!

In 1856 Salisbury went to Niagara Falls, from whence he sent another letter of resignation to the Yale Corporation:

Being convinced of the propriety of terminating all my official relations—

inasmuch as, for various reasons, having reference to my family and myself, they

must be merely nominal, and consequently neither useful, reputable nor agreeable, I hereby respectfully resign my place in Yale College, and desire it to

be distinctly understood that no consideration will induce me to retain it. I

express myself so decidedly because on a previous occasion my wishes to the

same effect were over-ruled by mistaken kindness, and it must not be so again.

This time, no one tried to convince him to remain. He continued to be active in Yale’s

Library Committee and the Committee for the new School of Fine Arts (and in the AOS and several other academic societies), but he would never teach again.

Though he served a second term as AOS president (1873-1880) and on several other academic societies, Salisbury published nothing more on “Oriental” topics after 1874.

He remained involved in Yale affairs, serving on the library committee (1872-1899)22 and on the advisory board for the School of Fine Arts (1865-1901). He would never teach again, but his generous bequests continue to benefit Yale to this day.

In his brief autobiography, written at the request of his adopted son George Grant

MacCurdy in 1894 and published in the JAOS in 1944, Salisbury poignantly reflected on his life’s work and his regrets: