Rev. Jonathan Boucher: “I did know Mr. Washington well”
“I never did in my Life know a Youth so exceedingly indolent, or so surprizingly voluptuous: one wd suppose Nature had intended Him for some Asiatic Prince,” Boucher wrote to the teenager’s stepfather, a Virginia planter named George Washington.
Boucher supported the royal government in the political arguments of the early 1770s, at one point carrying pistols to his pulpit to defend himself.
He reported seeing Washington for the last time on a ferry as the Virginian headed to the Second Continental Congress in 1775, where he would accept the position of commander-in-chief of a rebel army.
Years later, in his memoirs, Boucher described Washington this way:
I did know Mr. Washington well; and tho’ occasions may call forth traits of character that never would have been discovered in the more sequestered scenes of life, I cannot conceive how he could, otherwise than through the interested representations of party, have ever been spoken of as a great man.In 1876 Boucher’s grandson published this and other extracts of his memoir in the London magazine Notes and Queries. Americans, in the midst of the Colonial Revival, disliked that description of the first President. But half a century later, an American press published Boucher’s memoir in full.
He is shy, silent, stern, slow and cautious, but has no quickness of parts, extraordinary penetration, nor an elevated style of thinking. In his moral character he is regular, temperate, strictly just and honest (excepting that as a Virginian, he has lately found out that there is no moral turpitude in not paying what he confesses he owes to a British creditor) and, as I always thought, religious: having heretofore been pretty constant, and even exemplary, in his attendance on public worship in the Church of England. But he seems to have nothing generous or affectionate in his nature.
3 comments:
Interesting, that Washington was described as religious. Most accounts I have read of him, esp. lately, James Gaines' "For Liberty and Glory: Washington, Lafayette, and Their Revolutions" describe him as barely religious at all, except for continuous references by him orally and in letters to "Providence".
I was struck by Boucher’s statement that Washington was “pretty constant, and even exemplary, in his attendance on public worship.” We know from Washington’s own diaries that he attended church only intermittently while at home, spending a lot of Sundays hunting instead. I can think of three reasons for the discrepancy:
1) Boucher’s claim to have known Washington, who was famous by the time he wrote, looked better if they’d spent more time together.
2) Washington attended formal services more often when he was traveling and wanted to make a good impression on people, so he might have gone to more services when Boucher saw him.
3) Compared to other Virginia planters of his class, Washington might indeed have been “exemplary” in attending services as much as he did.
I think it’s also noteworthy that Boucher’s measure of Washington being “religious” was attending Anglican services rather than, say, praying for guidance and help in difficult times or trying to live according to moral tenets.
Good point, #3 above: behaving "as one ought" to appear is not the same as seeking direction for the path which helps others and, perhaps, oneself --
Post a Comment