A Lusty Virginia Gentleman
SCHLESINGER, THOMAS B.
A Lusty Virginia Gentleman William Byrd of Virginia: The London Diary and Other Writings. Ed. by Louis B. Wright & Marion Tinling. Oxford. 647 pp. $10.00. Reviewed by Thomas B....
...His routine of study also included art and readings in one or more of the modern languages, usually Italian or French...
...These revelations deal with the middle cycle, with William Byrd II in London, a 43-year-old widower chiefly concerned with pursuing heiresses by day and less honorable women by night...
...At the time, his various Virginia plantations and unimproved properties totaled 43,000 acres, and he was considered one of the wealthiest and most dazzling catches in the colonies...
...Thus, the value of a diary such as this lies not in its more sensational asides but in its disclosures of the manners and morals of the period as seen through the eyes of one of its most versatile and ornamental figures...
...Byrd was one of the most cultivated members of the Virginia aristocracy of his time, a group that generally accepted the dictum that privilege carried with it responsibility to society...
...The Byrds, as a family, represent to some extent the rise and fall of agrarian aristocracy in Virginia...
...Despite his confessed frailities of the flesh, he appears to have been sincerely religious, mentioning his morning and evening prayers and his contriteness when they are omitted...
...All entries are in an intricate cipher that was solved by co-editor Marion Tinlin, editor-transcriber of the National Historical Publications Committee, and were obviously never meant for eyes other than the writer's...
...Reviewed by Thomas B. Schlesinger Planning staff, Colonial Williamsburg...
...History, of course, has confirmed this contemporary judgment but one may suspect from reading the latest Byrd disclosures that Thacher was referring also to qualities other than statesmanship...
...This is the third volume of his disclosures in print, and covers the years 1717-21, setting down methodically his principal activities in London and Tunbridge Wells and his voyage home and readjustment to life in Virginia...
...However, Byrd was concerned chiefly with marrying a wealthy woman with a secondary goal of making the right political connections that would benefit both himself and the colony...
...His armours are reminiscent of Boswell's as disclosed in his London Journal...
...Included in this volume too are selections of Byrd's more formal writings, the best of which from a literary standpoint is "The History of the Dividing Line...
...It is fortunate that posterity will not judge Byrd solely on his diaries...
...He sought to satiate an almost incredible sexual thirst, a campaign described in such detail that co-editor Louis B. Wright points out that it would be "a considerable value as a case history for students of the psychology of sex.' It should be added that his "wenching" caused him occasional pangs of conscience as well as a case of gonorrhea, and that he periodically resolved to reform...
...Their first three generations demonstrated the full cycle from tradesman to aristocracy to spoiled degeneracy...
...It was a group that produced such leaders as Washington, Jefferson, Mason, Madison and Marshall...
...During most of his adult life, Byrd kept a shorthand diary of his daily routine, usually no more than a dozen lines...
...They are noble spirits...
...His amazing minutiae—the plays and farces he saw, the masquerades and balls he attended, the gossip' of the coffee houses and secret meetings with women of the town, the food he ate, the ills he suffered, the books he read, the people he met, the pleasures and frustrations he encountered—all provide valuable fabric for historians seeking to reconstruct the crudity and coarseness that characterized fashionable society at the time of George I. Byrd believed a gentleman should dissipate, but he also felt he should cultivate his mind, even at the cost of exertion, and he followed the custom of rising each day at 7 or so and reading Hebrew, Greek or Latin before his breakfast of boiled milk...
...It should be recalled that his library at Westover was one of the finest in the colonies, containing 3,600 items at his death...
...international relations department, College of William and Mary "Oh ! those Virginians are men," cried Bostonian Oxenbridge Thacher when he read the resolves of the Virginia Assembly on debating the Stamp Act...
...Morality was at a low ebb at that time, and Wright's most lucid introduction goes far toward placing in context the chronicles that follow...
Vol. 41 • May 1958 • No. 18
