The earliest edition of Don Quixote de la Mancha in the Peabody Library belonged to Severn Teackle Wallis, a Baltimore lawyer, who was born on September 8, 1816. His maternal grandfather was Severn Teackle (after whom he was named) of Talbot County, Maryland. His paternal grandfather, Samuel Wallis, settled with his family in Kent County in the early eighteenth century. His father, Philip Wallis, married Elizabeth Custis Teackle, and moved from Easton to Baltimore in 1816, where all his children-- four sons and three daughters-- were born, and where he lived in a house on Charles Street almost opposite the Cathedral.
Mr. Wallis spent his life in Baltimore--with the exception of several visits abroad and the period of his imprisonment during the civil war--where he conducted a thriving law practice at his residence at 215 St. Paul Street. His father had a considerable influence on Mr. Wallis's early education. Severn enrolled at St. Mary's College (later, St. Mary's Seminary), an institution founded in Baltimore in the latter part of the 18th century by members of the Society of St. Sulpice. Many of its students came from Canada, Mexico and South America.
Mr. Wallis's interest in Spanish language and literature began at St. Mary's. The college had hired Mariano Cubí y Soler as a Spanish teacher in the 1820s, and there seems to be little doubt that when Severn attended St. Mary's some years later, he used Cubí y Soler's anthology of Spanish literature to perfect his knowledge of Spanish classics. Cubí y Soler's Extractos de los Más Célebres Escritores y Poetas Españoles was first printed in Baltimore in 1822, specifically to be used as the standard textbook by St. Mary's students. Severn was able to read selections from Don Quixote in the original Spanish.
Mr. Wallis began to form his own Spanish library during these years. In 1835, he purchased a copy of the works of the Spanish political and moral philosopher, Diego de Saavedra Faxardo.
His favorite Spanish teacher at St. Mary's College was Don José Antonio Pizarro, for many years the Spanish Vice-Consul at Baltimore. Mr. Wallis spent some hours everyday with Mr. Pizarro, speaking Spanish with him and perfecting his knowledge of literature and history. It was also through Mr. Pizarro that Mr.Wallis became fascinated with the Vulgate translation of the Bible, an interest that lasted him his entire life.
In 1847 Wallis, never a healthy man, decided to travel abroad to regain his strength. He chose to spend several months in Spain, and as a result, wrote about his experiences in Glimpses of Spain; Or, Notes of an Unfinished Tour in 1847. In 1849, he revisited Spain, commissioned by the Secretary of the Interior of the United States to examine and report on the title to public lands in Florida, as affected by Spanish grants made during negotiations in 1819 between the two countries. This second journey produced a second book, Spain; Her Institutions, Politics and Public Men, which at the time of its publication was one of the most insightful portrayals of Spain in the English language.
In 1843, four years before his first visit to Spain, Mr. Wallis acquired a rare edition of Cervantes's masterpiece printed in Belgium in 1616-1617, which he presented to the Peabody Library on January 17, 1877. In 1844 his expertise and reputation in Spanish letters had gained him the honor of being elected a corresponding member of the Royal Academy of History at Madrid.
Mr. Wallis was a friend of The Johns Hopkins University from its founding in 1876. He delivered a speech in celebration of the university's seventh anniversary on February 22, 1883 and spoke on what is still a timely topic, "The Johns Hopkins University in its Relations to Baltimore," emphasizing the special "reason for rejoicing in the standards and methods which this university will establish and maintain among us, and in all our institutions of learning, by the authority of its example and position, and by the sheer and downright force of its intellectual preponderance."
Both the city of Baltimore and The Johns Hopkins University would later
celebrate the
"authority" of Mr. Wallis' own "example": At his
death on April 11, 1894,
he bequeathed several of his rare Spanish books to the university library,
many of which are still consulted by students and faculty in the Milton S.
Eisenhower Library at Homewood and in the Peabody
Library. Baltimore, for
its part, honored his exemplary citizenship by erecting a statue which
still stands at the east end of Mount Vernon Place.
