"George Wythe Courts the Muses: In Which, to the Astonishment of Everyone, That Silent, Selfless Pedant Is Found to Have Had a Sense of Humor"
W. Edwin Hemphill, "George Wythe Courts the Muses," William and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser., 9, no. 3 (July 1952), 338-345.[1]
Contents
Article text, July 1952
Page 338
George Wythe Courts the Muses:
In Which, to the Astonishment of Everyone, That Silent, Selfless Pedant Is Found to Have Had a Sense of Humor
W. Edwin Hemphill*THE personality of a man can undergo an about-face as he grows older. The affable and extrovert may become silent and introvert. A serious outlook may replace lightheartedness. Gravity may supplant wit. Such a transformation seems to have occurred between the fiftieth and eightieth birthdays of George Wythe of Virginia.
During his last fifteen years this solitary old man, then a widower for the second time, lived with three freed Negro servants in a modest frame building. He had no really near neighbor. His house stood on a lot which constituted a quarter of a partially vacant block in what is now the teeming heart of Richmond's downtown shopping area. When he died under peculiarly tragic circumstances on June 6, 1806, [sic][2] this mellow but uncommunicative octogenarian was survived by no closer kinsmen than the grandchildren of his sister. Only a few intimates had in recent years years enjoyed his friendship, though he was admired by all who knew him personally or were acquainted with his reputation.
Tolerantly, even affectionately, people told of his idiosyncrasies in which, they felt, he had earned the right to be indulged. They spoke of his habit of ushering into his equity court's office without so much as a word for those who called on business, of how he received courteously but with nothing other a knowing and reassuring air the papers concerning their cases, and of how they were dismissed silently but with what Henry Clay described late in his life as the courtliest bow he had ever seen. Wythe's wordless visit to a Richmond bakery to purchase each time a single loaf of bread and the daily ritual at his backyard well of his early morning sponge bath, for which he stripped to his waist even in the coldest winter weather—these and other eccentricities had become legendary. They gave him a Quaker-like reputation for simplicity and austerity.
* Mr. Hemphill is editor of Virginia Cavalcade and a member of the staff of the Virginia State Library.
Page 339
But was there ever so selfless a public servant? Had he not been for more than half a century an honest lawyer and incorruptible judge, a progressive colonial and state legislator and a patriotic Congressman, a man of wealth whom the Revolution and the state's penurious salaries had impoverished? Nevertheless, had he not emancipated his slaves? Was he not the generous but secret benefactor of the needy and the young of both races? Had he not taught and befriended a whole generation of attorneys and statesmen ranging from Thomas Jefferson to Henry Clay? Surely, people had agreed, such an incomparable citizen was entitled to the peaceable practice of a few foibles in his still useful but inevitably few remaining years of slavish labor for the common weal!
These may have been some of the sad reflections which prompted the anonymous contributor of an Virginia Argus, 9 June 1806obituary portrait of George Wythe to honor him with what the writer undoubtedly considered to be a glowing tribute: "Wit he never aimed at, because he did not possess it; he had a turn of mind too lofty for humor."1
We can concede the good intentions of this admirer of "the American Aristides." But we must disagree with this portion of his eulogy of George Wythe. Charitably, we can suppose that he was a younger man who had not known the personality of the Wythe who had enjoyed a livelier, more sociable middle age. For in an obscure collection of old manuscripts, the Chamberlain Papers in the Boston Public Library, I have discovered (as, apparently no one else ever has) unexpected but undeniable proof in his own handwriting that the sedate and self-contained Wythe of eighty had earlier possessed an overflowing sense of humor. I shall let you see in this article some of this evidence of Wythe's hitherto unsuspected ability to extract fun from a dull situation. For your ease in reading this obsolete style of poetry, I shall condense it slightly, chiefly to omit various classical phrases and allusions, and shall modernize its spelling, capitalization, and punctuation.
The year 1776 brought to our forefathers times which, in Thomas Paine's oft-quoted phrase, "tried men's souls." We usually like to think of our statesmen's earnest seriousness and stolid defiance in facing the manifold problems of its hours of crisis. But we can take our patriots off their pedestals without disparagement to their cold, impersonal reputations as statesmen. If we do so, we're likely to find that they were warm,Anonymous, "Communication," Richmond Virginia Argus, June 9, 1806.
Page 340
See also
References
- ↑ W. Edwin Hemphill, "George Wythe Courts the Muses: In Which, to the Astonishment of Everyone, That Silent, Selfless Pedant Is Found to Have Had a Sense of Humor," William and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser., 9, no. 3 (July 1952), 338-345.
- ↑ According to William DuVal, George Wythe's friend and executor, Wythe died on Sunday, June 8, 1806.
External links
- Read these poems in the Internet Archive.
