Colleagues in Baton Rouge

SIMPSON: Robert Penn Warren was already at LSU when Voegelin came. So were such scholars as Cleanth Brooks, T. Harry Williams, Robert Heilman. Voegelin stepped into a situation where there was a marvelous group of peo­ple–most of them younger–at LSU. It was a pretty exciting time in a way, a Southern university acquiring a broad reputation almost overnight. It became internationally known even. The intellectual aspect of the university in the '30s and '40s was more impressive than it ever had been.

Robert Penn Warren

The intellectual liveliness of LSU in the early 1940s is not something I expected. How did this configuration of minds come together? Did they recruit one another? Was it purely good luck for the undergraduates?

ROBERT PASCAL: It was not good luck. This campus is the result of the efforts of Huey Long. Huey Long's idea was that this university was going to be one of the best universities, if not the best. Money was not an object for Huey Long; whatever the university needed, it got. Salaries for good people were high for the time.

The law school, for example: Huey wanted a law school that would teach the law of the world. He wanted a law school that would be able to teach European law, Latin American law, certainly Anglo-American law. He got a professor, then at Tulane, Frederick Butell, to head the LSU Law School. Butell was simply told by Huey Long that he should get the best peo­ple and pay them well. He did. To give you an idea, back in the '30s and early '40s, before World War II, salaries for some full professors at the law school were ten thousand dollars. That was a lot then. Butell managed to attract a great number of people to the LSU Law School.

Now, that's only the law school–I can't tell you very much about the other faculties, but I have no doubt that the law school was part and parcel of the same thing. While Huey was still alive, he told Butell that he was to build a building for a proper law school and a library building that would permit a collection of books that would exceed Harvard's collection in number and quality.

Cleanth Brooks

It was only after Huey died that the plans were toned down. But still: Heilman and people like that were brought here, the Southern poets were brought here, Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren, and other people. The Southern Review was founded then. It is still a very respectable review.

Did he ever talk to you about how he came to LSU and why he left Germany?

ERNEST J. WALTERS: Oh, no, although we knew he left Europe because of the Anschluss. He had friends where he was able to get into Switzerland, and then from Switzerland came to the United States. He taught at Harvard and at the University of Alabama, then he came to LSU. Then, when he gained such notoriety, they gave him one of these chairs.

There were three people who got those chairs: Voegelin was one of them, Harry Williams was one of them, and I don't remember the third person. But I do remember that Voegelin got a salary of eight thousand dollars a year and all of us thought, "Good heavens, how could anyone earn that much money?" So you see, this was a long time ago!

DONALD STANDFORD: I did not arrive on the scene for any length of time until 1953. At that time, I received my long-awaited doctorate degree from Stanford University, and with my new wife, I traveled out to Baton Rouge and we lived in Baton Rouge from 1953 on. I believe that that was the year Voegelin was made Boyd professor here. I heard about it soon after my arrival. He was a great scholar and a very erudite man.

SIMPSON: A Boyd professor is supposed to be, academically, the most presti­gious rank. They have established in recent years a number of professorships named for alumni, so it's not quite what it was. But when Voegelin was appointed, it was still supposed to be the highest academic ranking. Not a great many were appointed to that.

T. Harry Williams

But I think Voegelin was appointed first, then T. Harry Williams was probably the second. He had won the Pulitzer Prize for a long book called Lincoln and His Generals–that was the book that made Harry prominent. After he wrote Lincoln and His Generals, he wrote a biography of General Beauregard. He then spent many years working on Huey Long. And he won, I think, two Pulitzer Prizes.

PASCAL: Voegelin found some people on the faculty of interest to him, such as Heilman and Brooks. That's perfectly true. But I think what he liked about LSU was the fact that he was allowed to work as he pleased. He didn't lack anything by way of library resources or other such things. He would go off at times, in the summer, to other places and do some research–that's true. But he found it very comfortable here. Able to work peacefully.