A Pair of Lawn Sleeves: A Biography of William Smith

by Thomas Firth Jones

Called bellicose, drunken, dirty, foul-mouthed, venal, niggardly, spiteful and mendacious, nevertheless William Smith, born in Scotland in 1727, has also been called one of the greatest, if not the greatest, educators of the eighteenth century. Smith had his first taste of academic life when he entered Kings College in Aberdeen as a charity student aiming for holy orders. He left without orders or degree. He then became an impoverished parochial schoolmaster, but it didn’t take the pugnacious and ambitious Mr. Smith long to make his way to London, Parliament and the Archbishop of Canterbury for a wage subsidy. The rest of this intriguing story is how Smith used situations and persons of his time to gain his ends after his arrival in America. Through a keen mind, a gift for oratory, sheer opportunism and unmitigated gall, he became the intimate of such as the Penn family, Benjamin Franklin, David Rittenhouse, and a persistent wooer of even the aloof George Washington’s favors. Founder and nurturer of colleges (the College of Philadelphia, which later became the University of Pennsylvania, and Washington College), a magnificent fund raiser and gifted preacher, Smith led a roller-coaster existence of accomplishment and defeat, alternating between being admired for his scholastic accomplishments and being despised for his unpleasant personal habits, particularly intemperance. Nevertheless, from a life of poverty and obscurity this man pulled himself up by the bootstraps to a life of recognition (if not admiration), considerable wealth and warm family relationships. Smith’s greatest ambition was to become the first Episcopal bishop in America. He was nominated, but before he could be consecrated, he was chairman of a church convention in New York and got so drunk that no one ever suggested him for the lawn sleeves again. He died a formidable old man, blindly fondling the deeds of his properties instead of the lawn sleeves he had so long desired and which had eluded him.

210 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1972