Recently in history Category
So this is like the most charming art-history story ever. It seems the painter Gilbert Stuart—do I really need to link to the Wikipedia entry? He's the guy who did the portrait of George Washington, and if you need a link to find out who George Washington is then I just give up—anyway, he was a struggling artist before he painted this. The subject, a William Grant, showed up at his studio to have a portrait done one winter's day in 1782 or thereabouts. Grant remarked that it was a day better suited for skating than sitting for a portrait. And evidently they were both fairly free spirits, because that's what they did—they went skating. A portrait like this had never had action in it before, and for once it didn't create a big shocked scandal because this was the 18th century and people were pretty cool in the 18th century. The portrait made Stuart's reputation and assured his future, although he was kind of lax about money and got into debt a lot anyway.
Now, I'm not recommending that we all be free spirits and go skating when we ought to be working. Stuart actually was working while he was skating, when you think about it. At any rate, I love the painting and the story behind it too.
Afterthought update: You know, I looked this over and asked myself why I called the pre-"Skater" Stuart a "struggling artist," like that's a kind of species of person. Wasn't he more an artist who was struggling (to make a living, of course)? And then I decided not. A struggling artist often has characteristic traits—a perverse satisfaction in his or her financial embarrassment comes to mind—that a struggling regional sales manager, say, usually doesn't. If Stuart were really worried about money, he wouldn't have paid much attention to the skating idea. "Yeah, yeah, whatever," he'd have said. "Now siddown over there and let's do this thing—I got bills to pay, buddy." But he didn't. Bless his whimsical heart, he went skating.
Clearly there are some messages for which a certain medium is preferable. Years ago, working for a reading teachers' professional group, I wrote an article about calligraphy. I was inspired to do that because some weeks before I had been looking for something at the supermarket, and noticed there were calligraphy pens available there. Calligraphy pens! Evidently they were a commodity that people might want any day, like cornflakes or lightbulbs. Why?
Well, I soon found out that people used them for wedding invitations. And they used them to write mottos and sayings to frame and put on the wall. In short, people were using those calligraphy pens for messages they felt were important. And it dawned on me that we've seen a vast explosion in ways to communicate, but most of those new media are utterly ephemeral—the messages can go poof, just like that. Years ago, if someone wrote you a love letter, you could put it in a drawer, and if the house didn't burn down you would have it pretty much forever. An e-mail on a hard drive? Not the same at all.
The things we really think are important are literally written in stone, of course, or metal. Then there's print—less permanent, but at least concrete, and durable enough if treated well. And then you have the electronic media. For those of us who've adapted to the new media environment or never really knew the old one in the first place, the electronic media do fine most of the time. But Wednesday, as historian Simon Schama said in The Telegraph, people wanted a newspaper because "you can't frame a digital image and a printout doesn't say 'History' in the way a print headline does."
It's strange. I used to work for newspapers, and hated to watch them fade, but I'm used to it now. I don't get a newspaper at home, and only rarely buy them. I learn about the world beyond my senses via the Web. But we all wanted a paper Wednesday morning, to hold a tangible object in our hands and feel that in doing so we could slow time, we could linger over a moment that felt special and important. I know the daily newspaper is soon to be history itself, and I've embraced the new world of information management and the many, many benefits it offers. But once newspapers are gone, what will we do the next time we sense history in the making, and feel the impulse to go out and buy a paper? I honestly have no idea.
First the weather, chilly, overcast, raw, with incongruous great explosions of yellow, mauve, and other colors as the trees and bushes start to bloom. A perfect metaphor for my mood lately: bleak, but aware of blessings I should count. Could be worse.
But you find inspiration not only in places you don't expect, but in places where inspiration is so commonly sought that it's a cliché. I'm talking about a book about George Washington—Washington's Crossing, to be precise, by David Hackett Fischer. The man strove all his life to do things well, to be disciplined, to be fair and treat people properly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know about the slavery. I attribute that to peer pressure—all his friends had slaves, after all. I'd bet lots of people would like having slaves if they just tried it once. And for another thing, there are lots and lots of slaves today. Anybody who's all sniffy about George Washington might want to consider getting at least equally sniffy on behalf of people who are slaves right now.
But I digress. Washington, for all his qualities and accomplishments—he became President of a country that wouldn't have even existed without him in the first place—wasn't a whiz kid for whom everything always went right. The Revolutionary War was mostly disastrous setbacks that came about in part because he'd have poor intelligence and would guess wrong. After the Americans lost New York to the British, Washington was near despair, but he reached down inside himself and found the wherewithal to keep going. He also remembered that not everything was his fault. More than once, his troops would just run away when the British came. From the fifth chapter, "The Fall of New York," of the abovementioned:
Washington and his aides came galloping down from Harlem and arrived as the Connecticut militia were running for their lives, their officers among them. Washington was enraged. He "three times dashed his hat on the ground," and shouted, "Good God, have I got such troops as those!" Weedon wrote that "the general was so exasperated that he struck several officers in their flight. ... It was with difficulty his friends could get him to quit the field, so great was [sic] his emotions."
I don't know what sort of person is offered as an inspiring example to kids today. Probably not individuals at all, more like people working cooperatively in groups to accomplish things. But even when George was one of the dead white males we were encouraged to admire, they didn't focus on his bad days, or tell us that we'd have bad days too. All right, they did talk about the winter at Valley Forge, especially since we lived right near Valley Forge. But that was presented as a group misfortune, with everyone huddled around fires together. The teachers never told us that Washington's own compatriots would, at times, drive him nuts. The dude on the dollar bill, blowing his stack and throwing his hat on the ground! Just wonderful. I don't know if I actually love George Washington, but if I did, it would be for that.
What I was looking at was one of the hideouts of a famous highwayman named James Fitzpatrick. You could see that you might be able to survey the countryside and the road from it, especially if the the area around it had been cleared of trees, which was quite possible. It would also be difficult for pursuers to surprise anyone there. At any rate, it's quite an evocative spot. It happens I've been researching this fellow's life for a while now. He was an indentured servant, working in the fields and as a blacksmith. He joined up to march with the rebels in 1776 and fought in the disastrous Battle of Long Island. But after being whipped for some infraction, he decided he was a Tory after all, and after the British occupied Philadelphia he became a highwayman, harassing local Patriots. He never robbed Tories or the poor. (He was good to his mother, too.) And he was a bold devil of a guy—once he strolled into a tavern right uptown (it's a hair salon now) and ordered a drink, with militiamen all around. They only slowly realized who he was, and he pulled a pistol on them, backed out, and got away.
Eventually his luck ran out, and he was hanged. But they never found his reputed stores of treasure. I got talking to a postal carrier and a homeowner there, and they were telling me about how you could see holes in the boulders where people were going to put blasting powder. They tried that a few times, though, and found that they were making boulders roll down the hill in a dangerous way, and they gave up. This homeowner had a long beard, long hair, wallet on a chain, and huge gargoyles flanking his front door. He chuckled about the boulders and the failed attempts to find the treasure, and I did too. It's hardly a secret that when they're not directly harassing us, there's something about outlaws that people like. And it was fun to look up at those rocks with the car engine running, just stopped in the road, and imagine James ("Captain Fitz," as he styled himself) Fitzpatrick sitting there, rifle across his knees, brooding over his grievances with the rebels and planning his next robbery.
