"George Washington: A Life in Books" with Kevin Hayes

welcome to the PA books podcast PA books is a production of PCN the Pennsylvania cable network this program features interviews with authors of books on Pennsylvania people history Sports business nature and politics while the focus is always on Pennsylvania topics like the Revolutionary War the Battle of Gettysburg the Industrial Revolution the coal and Steel Industries and authors like John Updike David McCulla and John Grogan have a universal appeal we hope you enjoy this [Music] podcast this week on PA books Kevin Hayes author of George Washington a life in books Kevin Hayes author of George Washington a life in books why'd you write the book well one of my specialties is the early American book culture and the intellectual life of uh people in America in colonial America and I had done an earlier book about Thomas Jefferson called the road to monello and that was all about Jefferson's uh books and and reading and intellectual life and uh after I finished that book I started searching on for a new project and I mean there's there's lots of people to write about uh and I started looking at all the different uh members of the Continental Congress and then suddenly it occurred to me well no one's ever done done this about George Washington uh and it seems it seems such an obvious thing but it's like uh people have you know a lot of George Washington Scholars have said well he wasn't an intellectual he didn't read and I thought I'd try and challenge that Association and see if I could prove that he did read and and he did have a good library and he learned a lot from his books and that they helped to shape uh the direction his career and his life took did you know how much of a reader he was before you started because people usually think of Thomas Jefferson and books but not George Washington um not really too much I mean I knew I'd read his Library catalog which uh lists over a thousand volumes in his library and so that would seem to indicate uh that uh he he was a reader but you know other people said well he was just a shelf filler I mean he just used books as furniture and uh and so um that's basically the what I knew when I first started out and so I I thought I would see and uh if I could find evidence that he was a reader and so I started looking through some of his surviving books now his books survive in different libraries around the country and the biggest concentration of them survives at the Boston ethum and the reason why uh they survived there is because in the 19th century when um George Washington's books were going up for sale there was a book dealer who was going to sell them to the British Museum and Americans just got what we're going to sell George Washington's book to his former enemy we can't do that and so uh they put together a subscription Fund in Boston to to buy the books and so they bought the books and then they put them in the Boston ethum and this was 1840s when they did this and they're they're still there today and so they have about 400 or so volumes of from George Washington's Library so it's the largest concentration of his books and so I went up there and I spent a month in Boston and doing some uh grunt work really I mean just because what you got to do is you pull down a book and you got to look at every page and see if you can find evidence that George Washington read those books because he didn't write about books very much and he didn't have a lot of marginalia like John Adams would John Adams wrote his books all the time but Washington was a perfectionist and he would make Corrections when he when he saw a typo he would correct it and uh you know I started seeing more and more evidence of these typos and you know after I looked at enough books and started to recognize his his handwriting and recognize his characteristic uh Corrections of mistakes then I could see that you know when he's making one correction on page 100 and another correction on page 200 and another correction on page 300 that shows to me that he was working through that book pretty carefully what kind of books well one of the my favorite ones that's in the Boston athum collection is uh a book of Daniel the fo's travels through Great Britain and this is one that I did find some Washington uh typographical Corrections in them but he also made a few other notes in him now Washington did not write very much in his notes beyond the corrections but in a couple places he made note of um a couple other books that he had read he he referenced uh Bernard mandal's Fable of the bees in on one page and he referenced another uh Paul rapan Doris's history of England which was a very influential history of England which Jefferson and Adams and other fing father read but Washington read it too he now he didn't have a copy in his library but the fact that he made reference to it in his copy of defo is an indication that he did read it he borrowed it from someone uh and that's something that has really escaped the the written record that the personal borrowing from one uh person in in colonial Virginia to another and this it went on all the time but we there's not much evidence of that so you're allowed to go to the library and say can I look at George Washington's books and you're allowed to touch them and open them yeah now they're very careful about that you you know you have to you have to apply for it and happily they gave me a fellowship to to do research there and uh but you know you you you fill out a you know there's no Open Stacks you don't just walk up and start pulling down books um but you know you fill in a call call slip and then they they bring it to you very carefully and then they give you a little know stand to put the rare books on and because these are all leather bomb books and the leather is always kind of kind of dried out and um very fragile but yeah once uh once you get the books then they let you touch them and and the paper uh you know the the bindings are are kind of fragile but the paper is much better quality because it was all cotton content I mean you look at a book from 1780 and it's in a lot better shape than a book from 1880 because 1880 what I call this the era of bad paper and the paper was made from wood pulp whereas in 1780 it was all made 100% cotton content so much better quality paperwise the books were back then so was it like to read a book that might not have been open for a hundred years well it's um I've read a lot of books that haven't been hoping for a hundred years but to read a book that George Washington read is I mean it gives it gives you Goosebumps I'm getting Goosebumps now just talking about it I mean so it's it's so exciting and you know this is experience I've had in my other um other research on other founding fathers U there was one book at the Library of Congress that was uh owned by Benjamin Frank and Thomas Jefferson bought it so here we have double provenant Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and you know that's something that's really exciting uh in Washington's books to you know to pick up Washington's copy of the Constitution uh and um you know there's that's an important thing and uh something that is you know it's it's fun to see a tangible object of you know because we think of you know the founding fathers and all these great ideas about Liberty and governing that they had and you when you see them written down in a book in a book that was was read and circulated at that time it really adds more meaning to it so did you come away from this with a different impression of George Washington than you started oh very much so I mean that it my my working thesis was let's let's set out and see if we can prove that Washington was a reader and he did learn from his books and I found enough books with enough of his marks on it and enough other evidence in his Diaries and his notebooks and uh his correspondence that indicates to me that he really was was a reader and and learned very much from his books what were books like in the 1700s I mean were there bookstores I mean how would you get one and how were they expensive well for people in colonial Virginia um most of the books came from uh London now uh that's I mean that's good and bad I mean good London London had had great uh there's a lot of great literature and great books that were being published in London uh but it took a long time to get here and often too the London book sellers uh would would fo off old additions on their colonial customers knowing full well that that a colonial customer is not going to take the trouble to send a book back to London for a refund and then wait to get it back again uh and Washington complained about this in his in his letters to his London agent because he had ordered a a copy of humfrey Bland's military manual which is one of the standard military manuals of the time period and at this time there was a the sixth edition out and the Book seller sent him the second edition and so Washington was a little ticked off about that was he in a family of readers when he grew up his his father and his uh older brothers were were well read and they they had a good education he U his two older brothers were sent to uh England for their education and George Washington would have been sent to England uh for an education but his father died uh before he reached the the age to go to school and so George Washington's mother wanted to keep understandably wanted to keep him close to home and so he was educated in Virginia so he didn't have nearly as good an education as his brothers did uh and it's something that he always regretted George Washington always I mean it's it's strange to think about this we think about George Washington the great man the man who could Bend people to his will but yet Washington was very self-conscious about the the gaps in his education and and when you're hanging out with Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and Benjamin Franklin it's understandable that you might feel a little self-conscious about your uh your lack of reading did those guys ever think of George Washington as kind of an intellectual lightweight Adams did Adams looked down his nose at Washington and made some some comments about that uh now again Washington did not wear his learning on his sleeve though I mean he didn't boast about it or or drop quotations from literature any every chance he could and so even what learning he did have he didn't uh didn't make it obvious what level of education did he have you know Washington's education is one of the most mysterious periods in his uh lifetime we don't really know very much about it now there's an indication that he went to school for for a time period and then he had a domestic tutor which was a live-in tutor you lived in your home and and and taught uh taught this the student now the biggest indication is his school notebooks that survive and those show that he was he kept studying until he was about 16 or so um and and so he had a basic uh a good education in in general subjects and uh but he never had a classical education that was common to Jefferson and Adams and others that read Latin or Greek like some of them other guys no I mean he he could pick up a few words in Latin but that was about it he never had a Latin education so what textbooks what kind of textbooks did he have well some of his textbooks survived I mean he had well probably the surveying handbook was one of the most important ones because that was his his first career as a surveyor and there's also um nav navigational textbooks I mean he had uh and mathematical books um and so those those I know that survived now there's one I remember the navigational book especially because uh there was the the author was figuring out some calculations about latitude and where the sun's position was and the author made a mathematical eror and Washington caught it and you know so this this goes beyond just catching a typo when you're reading I mean to to actually question the author's calculations and recalculate it yourself and recognize the author made a mistake I mean that that's a higher level of of correcting errors than just correcting typos I have to read the title of was it his first book that uh that he owned or first book that the oldest book that he had the first book that we know that he owned the sufficiency of a standing Revelation in general and of the scriptural Revelation in particular both as to the matter of it and as to the proof of it and that new Revelations cannot reasonably be desired and would probably be unsuccessful pretty Snappy title oh you left out the best part and that's the name of the author the Reverend Dr offspring blackle what's in that book did you read that book yeah um it's a collection of sermons and it's basically that talks about the um the idea of of revealed religion I mean how do we know uh that God is out there and and well he reveals it to us I mean that's that's how the argument goes now those uh that book was part of the boil lectures which was a series of lectures that was endowed by uh the the preacher and chemist Robert Bole and you know the whole purpose of the series was was to prove you know uh Christianity and and to give give support to that in this era of the Enlightenment when when deism and and and science was was making more inrs and people were starting to question uh their faith could you get insights into Washington's religious beliefs from the books um well with that one I mean I it's my theory now I can't prove this but I mean if you look at that book and that's another one that survives in Boston and there's two or three other names that are inscribed on the title page and so it was owned by someone uh beforeand one of the guys was only like two years older than Washington and Washington got this book when he was about 10 years old so I'm thinking that he was not reading these religious sermons when he was 10 years old and so I think his his friend just kind of condom and and sold him this book now uh what's interesting to me though is that Washington didn't just not read it I think that he looked at it and realized well this is over my head but he didn't just trade it off to another friend like uh but he put it on a shelf and just saved it until he was old enough to read it and again you look at this book and there's this is another one that it was very badly printed and so there's a lot of typles in it and Washington corrected him and so at some point in his life he even maybe didn't read it when he was 10 but when he when he was 12 or 15 he he went back to it and did read it so he kept that book through his entire life mhm and um one of the another piece of evidence is when Washington was still during the Revolutionary War he wrote back to uh lond Washington his Kinsman who was managing Mount Vernon and he asked lond to um inventory all the books at Mount Vernon and so lond made this list and lond Washington had never written a bibliography before a library catalog he wasn't very good at but at the end of lond list he says and a bunch of other religious books and that was this Dr Offspring black old sermons was one of those other religious books and it was important enough for Washington to keep it uh but lond didn't think it was very important and so I think that you know something else that's important to realize about books in early America and books today really is that they have um symbolic value it's not just a repository for uh for texts but it's also you know it's it's it's says something about a person in uh in their home when you go to somebody's uh house for the first time what do you do well you look at their book well that's what I do is that what doesn't everyone do that uh but I mean that's something that that interests me when I when I go to a person's house is to see what what kind of books they have on their shelves and and I think that Washington understood this as well and even from when he was a little kid that he recognized that books are uh symbols of refinement symbols of of class and so you know I think that all it's important to understand books not just as for the text that they contain but as symbolic objects as well were books expensive then I mean were they just for the elite they were pretty expensive uh like I said when you had to order them from London that that ain't cheap were the bookstores could you walk down the street and go in a bookstore and yeah now uh in Colonial Williamsburg there were uh bookstores and and they did their biggest business during the uh time when the uh House of Burgesses was in session and and so and these were the same times that the courts were in session and so lots of people came to Williamsburg and so you could buy books there at the uh Williamsburg book bookstore but for uh most plantation owners and and people who bought books in in Willi in colonial Virginia they ordered them through their London agents when I ask you you write senica's morals has been widely acknowledged for shaping how Washington understood the relationship between virtue and happiness who was senica and what was in the book well senica uh it was a ethical Treatise that published in ancient Roman times and uh one of the things that's interesting about that is I talk about the senica book in the same chapter in my opening chapter where I talk about other religious books and so even though senaka is writing in the time uh in pre-christian times he's still writing many of this the same kinds of things that that the the Christian writers of Washington's time were writing about uh how to how live a good life how to how to live a proper life and uh I think that the reason why I discuss senica's morals in the same chapter as some of the other devotional manuals that Washington owns is because there's a consistency to them and I think Washington himself recognized that how to uh how to live a good Christian Life and how to live a good life are not too different after all uh Washington kept a diary yes what's it read like it's kind of boring really he he really in his diary he did not reveal much of the inner man and you know when I first started reading the diary I was I was kind of hoping that I would see more of uh you know just references to books that he read or but there's there's very little of that probably my favorite reference now some of his Diaries he kept in his yearly almanacs now it was commonplace at that time to buy your Almanac with that was interleaved which meant that the the book binder would put a blank piece of paper between every other leaves in the almanac and so that you could take notes and Jefferson did this same thing too uh and so that's where some of J Washington's Diaries are are just in the published version they're just transcriptions of what he wrote on the blank pages in his in his Diaries and probably my favorite episode is when uh he he mentions uh markham's F fery and so this was a a horse manual and Washington had one of his favorite horses broke its leg and you know most people thought that breaking you know a horse breaks his leg it's that's a death sentence for the horse and WatchON H he just broke his heart to try have to kill the horse because if it had a broken leg and so he looked in he had just bought a brand new faer manual that didn't have anything about uh fixing the horse's leg it just you shoot the horse that's how what you do but this old book that he had uh said oh no here's how you here's what you have to do and it gave a a big lengthy description of how you can set the hor horse's leg and preserve it and and get the horse up and going again and so Washington tried this and it was a very complicated thing and and if you just think about it I mean you have to uh raise the horse in a kind of Sling and then you set its leg and then you wrap it up uh and then you have to the horse has to be in a sling for like 40 days and well he was hoping it was going to work but it just the horse struggled and and within about two days it it fell out of the sling and and so he had to destroy the horse and so it's a kind of sad story but it's um it's an indication that Washington was uh very much using his books I mean he followed that recipe as closely as he could he really did try to save that horse a lot of books about farming Washington had the greatest agricultural Library in colonial America books like what um well he had books on pretty much every different uh phase of uh farming now he was a great experimenter in farming and so he had books the latest books about um the use of fertilizers and the use of chemicals uh to to improve the fertilization process and you know in the 18th century Enlightenment people were experimenting with all different kinds of things and you know he was he was up on it he was a great experimenter on his farm and and he he kept up with all the latest literature to to follow the the new experiments could you tell if he read for pleasure like did he read fiction or was it all kind of learning um most of his books were were practical in nature now I think he did read for pleasure but he was not a big um novel reader he had a few novels like um Lawrence Sterns trist Shandy he had and uh fieldings Tom Jones The really the the greatest hits of the 18th century and donkey hot had uh but but not very many novels I think that in terms of pleasure reading his greatest Pleasures were travel reading and histories and they were I mean they were kind of like novels because I mean they told the story uh but yet they were true and so you could learn something from it I mean it was very much a part of the literary culture at this time period that a work of literature uh had to do more than just be pleasurable uh this whole notion of pleasure reading is largely the modern concept um but the the key phrase uh is one that goes back to to Horus back to ancient Roman times to delight and instruct and so a book had to do both a good book had to do both and so uh when Washington was reading history and when he was reading travels uh he could read books that were pleasurable to read but yet taught him about other other lands and other time periods and other cultures and so they were both they delighted and they instructed you would mentioned Daniel defoe's travel books and Daniel defo who wrote um Robinson Robinson cruso um and you said you presented a paper at a Daniel defo conference on George Washington first of all there's a Daniel defo conference yeah there uh pretty much in in Among Us English professors I mean there there are organizations for every major author in in English and and American literature so there's a Melville society and there's Edgar alen po society and there's a Daniel def society and it has a conference every two years and uh it just so happened that after I got back from my month in Boston at the Boston atam um there was a Daniel uh the F society meeting uh just 100 miles from my house and so I wrote to the conference organizer and said I got this great idea about how George Washington read Daniel the fo and he he really liked the idea and so he invited me to give a paper at the conference did he read U Pilgrims Progress was there a copy of that in his Library no I mean there not saying he had he didn't read it but to to my knowledge he didn't because that was one of those things that was sort of widely read at the time um George Washington was also a a best-selling author according to your book for his journal on his trip to Western Pennsylvania um well I don't know how how much of a bestseller who was I mean I I think he was he was a bestselling author for his Farewell Address uh that was probably his best seller but his journal was became a popular work of literature as well uh it was um reprinted in England and then it was reprinted in many newspapers excerpted it some newspapers reprinted the whole thing and I think it's really one of the neglected Classics of early American Travel literature I think it's just delightful writing what is it read like um it's it's the journal that he kept when he uh traveled uh from Williamsburg up to the the French camps you know traveled through Pennsylvania and up to onto Lake eruri and uh you know it's it's his day-by-day journal and it's not revised very much from from then but I think it's really makes for exciting reading you say in here uh the Journal of major George Washington and he was 22 23 years old at the time captured the public imagination newspapers up and down the East Coast republished it serially American editors and British Publishers recognized the work as a crucial document in the emerging conflict between Great Britain and France how is that not better known today well hopefully it will be after my people read my book because I think like I said I think it's one of the Lost Classics of early American Travel writing and when I when I was in graduate school and I took uh a couple courses in early American uh literature and and um my teacher Leo L really turned us on to all these different uh literary works I mean my attitude toward early American literat before graduate school was oh it's just all Puritan sermons I mean that's that was my preconception but Professor lame just taught us that oh there's all these wonderful poems and and body travel narratives out there that have have never been studied even one by someone as famous as George Washington has never really been studied very much as literature I mean the articles that have been written about it have analyzed it as as a kind of historical document but never have given it a literary appreciation is it enjoyable reading or is it kind of dry like his no I thought I think it's very enjoyable reading I mean you uh you've got you've got Wilderness you've got Indians you've got canoe trip I mean it's uh it's exciting Adventure I mean it's a story of Trail trailblazing through the American wilderness in the 1750s and so I think it makes for exciting read and it's even got the one of my favorite Parts is is the river crossing and and he George Washington and Christopher gist was who was the Explorer he was traveling with and they had to to cross the river but but and it was ice ice it was covered with big chunks of ice were were uh floating down it and so they had to try and crosses and it was very dangerous thing and I mentioned in my book that I compare it with uh the river crossing in Uncle Tom's Cabin and the river crossing in there's a d DW Griffith silent film with Lil Gish where she has to cross the river in the middle of winter and I think Washington uh recognized the dramatic possibilities of the of the river CR with the wintertime River Crossing with big chunks of ice in just the way that that uh Harriet beer sto and and DW Griffith recognized after him now not everyone appreciates that one of the uh outside readers for Oxford University of press told me to take that part out but I was I was keeping it in there I'm not taking that part out I really liked it if somebody wants to read that book where do they find it uh it's in U some of the collected one volume editions of George Washington's writings that's in there um you also say the Journal of major George Washington demonstrates how its author used his writing ability to present readers with a carefully crafted version of himself he was very image conscious that early in his life I think so uh now one of the other pieces of information that allows me to make a statement like that is that the guy he was traveling with Christopher gist also kept a diary and um just diary I mean it coincides with Washington in some things but it's it's different from Washington's in in others now one place where um there's a point where the French the French uh were going to accompany them for part of the way during the canoe trip uh on the way back toward Virginia and you know the French brought a bunch of rum and stuff with them and one one time the French canoe overset and it spilled all their rum and and so the French got mad and just makes fun of that and and laughs at the French for uh and Washington is totally silent about that and so Washington is not in the pages of his journal going to make fun of the French or laugh at them uh and so it it really shows a different perspective between Washington and gist uh now there's another thing that just says in his uh in his diary that he's wondering about Washington this this gentleman is GNA how can he travel this this far in these rugged conditions he'll never make it but Washton never complains in his journal he just just put on his his coat and and backpack and just traveled through the snow with just going step for step and never falling behind or complaining or anything he also write that French military commanders recognized that Washington's Journal contained useful information about their anglo-american enemy they sent manuscripts to Montreal where translators prepared at least two different French versions of the journal and scriveners made multiple copies to distribute to other Colonial officials so it was pretty widely read did Washington never followed it up with a a sequel I mean he never caught the writing bug no well I mean Washington um he wrote quite a lot in his life but uh he was a reluctant reluctantly wrote for publication I mean this journal I mean it was written as you know his travel journal and it was he he knew other people were going to read it because he had to present it to the governor of Virginia governor dwy but as soon as Governor dwy read it he said well we got to get this published because it's going to be interesting said more people are going to want this you know we need to get copies to you know the Virginia Council we need to send copies back to London and and so he gave Washington a couple days to revise it and Washington revised it uh but Washington was a reluctant writer writer for publication uh but you know if you look at the collected writings of George Washington I mean they they filled dozens of volumes I mean he was a prolific letter writer and and a very good letter writer too uh and I think that that's probably some of his best writing is are the letters he wrote you said that uh his letters to Congress during the Revolutionary War were published what do they like do you get any insight into what he was going through dealing with them they were um there there's comments about people who read them at the time now one of the letters he sent now this was after uh the The Siege of Boston when when uh they Colonial forces drove the uh British soldiers out of Boston and Washington described that to Landon Carter a friend of his in Virginia and and Carter just thought oh man this is this is just the greatest letter ever I mean just complimenting Washington's writing style because it was so concise and so exciting but yet so understated and so there there are all these these contemporary comments about the um quality of Washington's letter writing and then when when some of his letters were published they were uh red viewed in the journals in England and even Washington's old enemies had to admit that oh he's a he's a good letter writer how many of these books did you read to put this book together um probably about 50 or 60 how do they read do they hold up or are some of them deathly dull well I wouldn't want to have to read Dr Offspring blackle sermons again that's for sure read but but the uh the travel travel writing is I think holds up really well I I think it's it's still fun to read today and um some of the history some some of it the histories are are are more dated but I like some of the histories of the Time Parade as well how did George Washington learn to be a soldier well he got his first Knowledge from his uh older brother who was who was a professional Soldier and uh but then his his brother died young and so he didn't really learn have an opportunity to learn very much from him and so a lot of that came from his uh his reading when to go back to the George Washington's Journal one of the things that he does in the journal is that you know when he reached the French Fort they the French just let him alone for a couple hours and he took advantage of it he he paced off all the all the measurements counter how many canoes and how many BAU they had how many vessels how many horses uh he he made this detailed inventory of of all the different uh forces that they had um and I thought to myself well how how did he learn where did he learn how to do that and because he hadn't had any formal military training and and then I thought well maybe you got it from a book but he didn't if you look at the military books that he acquired he really only bought military books when he was when he was fighting or when he was getting ready to to fight so before the French and Indian War he bought some and then before the Revolutionary War he bought a bunch and then during the Revolutionary War he acquired a bunch more but at that time the time of the journal he really the only thing I could think of is that he he read Caesar's commentaries I think that's where he got it from Caesar's commentaries is a is a brilliant book but it's also uh can be read as a practical manual I even though you know it's a history history and biography but it also there's a lot of practical information practic information about the kind of stuff that Washington was recording like size up your enemy uh determine the strength of their forces and Caesar says things like that you also write about a book by someone named Turpin on The Art of War what was that about um one of the things that I didn't realize before I started looking at what military books George Washington had and how he read them were uh what kinds of what was the content of is there any consistencies among the military books and one thing that I noticed with Turpin and with some of the other military books that he had is he had a lot of uh books about LA or the little war in other words how you know a an underfunded under uh staffed Army can can still have a superior Force by going out and um starting these little fights little skirmishes and then you go out and and you have a little Skirmish and defeat your enemy and then you Retreat uh real quick before your enemy can gather their forces up and this is something that the Continental Army was very good at and it's something that Washington um didn't know much about it before the war but learned a lot about it and uh that's one of the consistencies I see among all of his military books is is he learned a lot more about uh those fighting these little little skirmishes the little wars did he ever write anything memorable about jumonville Glenn or the bradic Expedition well that's another Journal that he kept uh and that's one that they the French seized his journal and it was published in French first but published by a propagandist in French and who Washington's original diary doesn't survive and so really that that French version is is the closest we have to his original now there's the indication that the French translator was fairly accurate in his translation but he kind of undermined Washington's Journal by putting all these sarcastic footnotes to it oh look at this dumb Washington well look what he's doing here um but that's um he didn't write anything afterwards about that or not very much I mean I think it was um a very disturbing time in his military career um and so there's other than that journal there's not much that he wrote about it but he was pretty well known when he was very young 22 23 years old was there some indication in his book collection about when he started showing an interest in the revolution I mean did he read John Lock his um there's there's not much of an indication that he he read the philosophical background of of the Revolution you know like Adams and and Jefferson and Madison did uh so so to my knowledge there's there's not much of that and even one of the the formative um books there was a French writer named verto and he wrote a series of books uh called you know like the revolutions and and Sweden and the revolutions you know revolutions from different parts of of the world and now Washington had one of these verto Revolutions in his library because it came from books that his wife's um first husband had had in his library but there's no indication that Washington read any of vero's revolutions until after the Revolutionary War which is it's very revealing actually to see that know these were works that very much shaped other founding fathers but Washington although he had one in his Library there's no indication that he read it before the Revolution but after the revolution he he read a couple of them and it's almost Washington playing catchup or or really I mean that that sounds derogatory I didn't mean it to to sound that way but Washington recognizing that what he and and the Revolutionary Army and the Americans did was something very significant in terms of world history and starting to wonder how his actions and American's actions fit into the history of the world in reading his diary do you get any indication when he starts to tilt toward the Revolution being in favor of it not in his diary he doesn't reveal that much about him I me it's the diary is is much more practical information about how the the farm and and things like that uh now one one of the things that comments I make about uh his reading of defos um tour through Great Britain is that I mean that book was very attractive to Washington and when you read the fo's book and you can tell that Great Britain had a lot that about it about the country that Washington really liked and that he could identify with and so when he decided to rebel against Great Britain I mean that was a tough decision and that was something that he was rebelling against a lot that that that he liked uh and so I see little indications like that but but nothing major in in his personal writings you mentioned that you are a you're retired uh literature Professor what Drew you to that field well uh when I went to the graduate school at the University of Delaware I mentioned my teacher Leo L now he was the world's leading expert in early American literature and one of the things that appealed to me about the time period is that there's so much of the literature that uh remains unexplored I mean we we talked earlier about the George Washington no one no literary scholar has ever really written a critical appreciation of Washington's Journal until I I devoted a chapter to it in this book um and so there's there's just a ton of opportunities for Scholars to uh interpret literature and uh publish literature to edit literature there was one of uh a book that was in the Maryland historical society called the history of the Tuesday club and this is this wonderful uproarious hilarious uh mock history and it had been sitting in the Maryland Historical Society for for centuries until someone in fact one of Professor L's other former students edited it for publication and so those are the kinds of opportunities that I saw in early American literature that were less so with other literary figures who have been studied in much more detail already what is uh what books were popular then I mean You' had a bestseller list from the 1770s what would have been on it okay let me take a little thought for that uh because like I said that there were I mean there were some no there's some great novels published in uh the 18th century but those weren't uh really uh not many of them were bestsellers uh now we we mentioned Robinson cruso earlier now that one was I mean everybody read Robinson cruso Washington read Robinson cruso and so that was on uh bestsellers and Gulliver travels too I think is another one that fits in with that and that's uh another one that Washington read um but novels were less big sellers than than devotional manuals those those were more popular there was one that George Washington's mother had it was uh I'm draw a blank now um well there another one well this his mother didn't have this but another one Washton read was Thompson's the seasons now this was a a long philosophical poem and and that's when I tried to read and couldn't get through it uh I mean this was it was hugely popular in in the 18th century and you read it nowadays you think what what did they see in this I mean it so long I mean a 300 page philosophical poem um but for some reason this this caught the popular imagination Benjamin Franklin read it and he wrote to a correspondent oh I just love Thompson's uh the seasons he said I hadn't written read any poetry for for many years but as soon as I read this it brought tears to my eyes and I'm thinking why hard to understand so tastes were very different back then but um they didn't have TV though either was Washington a Bible reader not not so much a Bible reader if you look at his writings I don't I didn't see very many biblical references uh not nearly as many as say Benjamin Franklin Now Benjamin Franklin's lots of biblical references a lot of them are ironic or or satirical but um you Franklin knew his Bible I don't I mean I suspect he he read it and and there's evidence that his when he was a child his mother read in the Bible um but there's really not that much evidence of it in his uh writings when he uh when the war was over and he went back to Virginia did he keep on paying attention to the news yeah he subscribed to several newspapers uh back in Virginia you also mentioned a magazine um gentleman's magazine what was that what was a magazine like back then well the when he was a kid his father subscribed to the gentleman's magazine so there were copies in uh Washington home from when from Washington youth but it was really that was the beginnings of the history of magazines and they were uh very eclectic writings I mean there might be an uh essay about population in there and then there would be a some poems in there and then there would be a you know a travel narrative in in there and so it was very eclectic in terms of their uh overall contents of the magazines and after the war he joined a group called The Society of Cincinnati and you said that was controversial well it was very controversial because I mean the whole point one of the main points of of the Revolution was to to get rid of any Notions of aristocracy and when the former officers of the Revolution banded together to form the Society of Cincinnati uh they said that okay this is going to be a an inherited Society so the uh the membership will go to the uh the oldest son of the current member and Washington was really questioning the the wisdom of that because it it was against the the principles on which the American Revolution were founded now he Washington was much more diplomatic than Jefferson Jefferson was just totally up in arms about this but and so Washington consulted Jefferson and Washington really wanted to um he was going to threaten to disband the society before it really even got going uh but through circumstances because then they invited the French officers to come and join and so by the time that Washington could even give us he was invited to be give a speech at the first national meeting of the Society of the Cincinnati and the French had already found out about it and had already formed the French chapter of the Society of the Cincinnati so Washington couldn't just disband the society without offending his you know the French who had been so instrumental in in the success of the Revolution and so he worked out okay we're going to try and work out a compromise and so that we can keep this Society going and and it took a long time but but it worked in the society's a thriving organization today did Washington ever write about the Revolutionary War no um people encouraged him to uh one of the guests that at mon Vernon um was a British Merchant who was very very well read in history and and uh he washingon as him well um who who should write this history of the Revolution and his guest said well I only know one person who could write the history of the Revolution and and Washington oh who is that and the guy said well you know Caesar wrote his commentaries you know implying that Washington should be the one and Washington said oh no I you know I've I've seen too many horrors of War to to write it so he's very honest about that but he I mean he was very interested in how the war would be represented in history and he encouraged historians uh people who came to him and asked him for uh advice or asked him for documents or in correspondents to look at he was willing to share those but he wasn't going to write it himself now if you had visited George Washington in Philadelphia when he was president and you like you do you had looked along his bookshelves what would he have taken to had with him in Philadelphia as president well I don't know that he brought many books with him now there's uh of course when he was when he was first president it was in New York not not Philadelphia now there when I was during the time I was writing my book was a time when you know there was a sensational news story in in the New York papers about Washington had borrowed two books from the New York Historical Society and never returned them and now he owned he owed $300,000 worth fines if you figure it out till the present day and uh and so if we look at those those two books that he borrowed one was a book about um the British government proceedings in in Parliament during the war and so that's an indication that he was interested in reading more about uh the British background of the war and another one was a book on natural law now this is something that the ideas of natural law were very instrumental in in the uh ideas underlying the American Revolution so it's another indication that um Washington was interested were was was becoming more interested in the philosophical underpinnings of of America of the United States at that time period now I think that Hamilton recommended it to him um I suspect Washington didn't never finish reading either one of those because he never he never returned him when he was done his presidency and went back to Mount Vernon did he did he take up reading again or reading for pleasure or or um did he follow the news what kind of reading did he do well there's one letter that Washington wrote that says that well I plan to read a bunch after I retired from the presidency but uh I just haven't had time because the farm is taking so much work which is understandable I mean he he had neglected the farm for so many years during uh during the war and like that but um at the end of different time periods the his biggest book buying spree came first of all at the end of the Revolutionary War he bought a ton of books at the end of the war just before coming back to M Vernon and then uh when he was in Philadelphia for the Constitutional uh convention right at the end of the Constitutional Convention he bought a bunch of books and then he bought more books at the end of his presidency and so you know at at during those three times of anticipating retirement he expected to read a lot more after uh after he got home I have to ask you about this one you say in the 20th century George saintsbury would remark it may be doubted whether anybody really understands the 18th century as it was and as it might have been until he has read John bunkle what is John buncle John buncle is actually one of my um favorite books that survives from Washington's uh library now it was a novel it was one of the few novels that he bought and it's a it's similar to other novels it's it's like donkey hot it's a kind of a picaresque novel of Adventures um but what interests me about that book is not the contents of it but George Washington's copy of it which is another book that survives at the Boston ethum because it's a two volume novel and the book binder misbound it and so uh you know if you he's got part the first part of volume one and in the first volume and then it skips to the second part of volume two and then the first part of volume two and the second part of volume one and so it's all messed up uh what did Washington do I mean he could have sent it back to his book binder in Philadelphia and said well this is screwed up redo this uh and that's what a lot of people would have done I suppose but Washington was a good engineer and so he found a way to engineer around it and if you look at the copy when when the mistake begins Wason says okay now here is the where the binding era begins so what I want you to do is to go from this page to volume two in page 270 and then start reading from there and it's written in the book like that yeah in Washington's handwriting uh and then when you get to the end of that section now go back to volume one and start reading from page and so I mean it's very revealing one is that uh Washington when he when he's encountered a problem he he saw a way to to engineer around it to to fix that problem uh and again this is another it's like the typos he corrected it's it's a mistake of a bigger proportion than correcting a typo but it's a similar impulse to to see an error in a book and then correct it uh but something else that is indicated in his note is he said now whoever reads this book whether you know he or she who reads it and he he uses that double pronoun he or she and so it's an indication that Washington was not just buying these books to read himself that he was sharing them with others and also too that maybe he anticipated a time in the future when another generation would be reading this book as well um you uh mentioned his stepgrandson and how he was emphatic about education on that was that kind of an overcompensation thing well I mentioned earlier that Washington never got the classical education that his two older brothers got and he always regretted this and so when uh uh well both with both his his stepson and his stepgrandson uh he wanted to give them uh proper education and neither of them appreciated it and neither of them wanted a classical education like George Washington had hoped for them when did people start writing about George Washington well there's a a few bi brief biographies biographical essays that were written in his lifetime and now those uh to me those are most interesting because there may be some personal knowledge that that indicates and so when when people who are um who knew Washington personal are saying things about his education and about his reading then that's to me that has more Credence more weight than others who didn't know him personally now his um Aid to Camp David Humphrey started writing a biography of George Washington during Washington's Lifetime and he lived at Mount Vernon for a long time and so uh he never finished it his unfinished biography has been published and edited and published and it's uh got a lot of good stuff in there uh and so that's that's a good source but really it's you know in Washington's lifetime people start writing about it who was Parson weams Parson weams is a popular author uh who uh came up with the George Washington Cherry Street story that's where he's the one who invented that story and and many other Washington legends that have become part of the popular culture but that was a huge bestseller and Parson Williams uh he was also an itinerate book seller he would travel around the country selling his books and and that that as we all know that caught on and everyone knows the story of the of the cherry tree regardless of whether it's true or not does that make entertaining reading these days I think it's still fun to read I think Parson Williams is a good writer is John buncle worth reading no it's too long I mean maybe if the uh readers got digest version of it uh might be okay but it's it's really long well if people are watching this and they're curious about the books George Washington read can you what are some of your favorites that you came away from this with well I mentioned defos travels through Great Britain already that was the first one that comes to my mind also glier's travels is another one that I would mention uh so many of them are are the I mentioned the Practical handbooks the the agricultural textbooks and those are um may be interesting to to dip into but that's not something that if you wanted to try and I mean because it would be it would be really fun to just uh make an anthology of Washington of books from you know exerpts from uh books from Washington's uh Library I think that that would be really a fun project uh so that you could almost try and read like George Washington read and so I would include some of the histories that I mentioned uh I would include um some of the travel literature that was in Washington's Library as well I mean there's also you know all-time favorites like esup fables he he read that too when he was a when he was young um The Spectator essays is another one that he he read and and liked very much um and so there's a lot of uh great great works from the 18th century that Washington read what happened to his Library when he died well he um since the Washingtons didn't have any children themselves they uh the bulk of the library went to uh his nephew bushrod Washington and then some other nephews got some some other books and so it was not held together as as a whole now the um the biggest collection was held at Mount Vernon but then another nephew uh got many of the books and and he put those in storage and uh in in a house that he rented out and well his tenants said wow wow we got this nice Washington library nobody will missed missed this uh autograph I just clip it off the title page and and and so a lot of the books were uh or defaced uh and many of them were dispersed now there were several Washington Book Sales through the 19 century and so um the ones that didn't make it to Boston ethum uh went went up for auction and were really dispersed around the country if you could talk to George Washington what would you want to ask him about oh there's a good question uh you know I think I'd ask him about the other founding fathers um what you ask him about Thomas Jefferson what do you think about Thomas Jefferson or what you think about John Adams and he never wrote any of that opinions not very much it's in my uh both my Washington biography and also my work on Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson others it's uh frustrating sometimes that that people just didn't leave uh anecdotes now now Franklin's an exception I mean everyone left anecdotes about Benjamin Franklin and anyone who didn't leave him and made him up uh but but Jefferson is another case people would say things like oh Jefferson told the hilarious hilarious story tonight it's like we write it down help me out uh and and people would say what a good Storyteller was and how funny Jefferson was and and but they wouldn't write these things down and and in Jefferson scholarship anyways there have been all these Jefferson biographers who said he had no sense of humor and that's one of the things I tried to emphasize in in my work on Jefferson is that he did have a sense of humor just that nobody nobody wrote his jokes down and and so I think that that's something that really is has gotten lost is that so I I want to hear some anecdote George Washington tell me some anecdotes about all the other founding fathers well that'll have to be the last word we are out of time we've been speaking with Kevin Hayes he is the author of this book George Washington a life in books thank you very much thanks good to be here you've been listening to a podcast of PA books a production of PCN the Pennsylvania cable network we'd like to hear from you our email address is PA books pcntv.com like us on Facebook to learn more about PA books