President Garfield: Friend of Jane
Richard Norton Smith, writing for the Weekly Standard on presidential reading habits, reveals that President James Garfield was a Friend of Jane.
Garfield particularly enjoyed the novels of Jane Austen, which he pronounced superior in every way to current fiction. “The novel of today,” he declared with a censoriousness alien to Charlotte Simmons, “is highly spiced with sensation, and I suspect it results from the general tendency to fast living, increased nervousness, and the general spirit of rush that seems to pervade life and thought in our times.”
Garfield was shot July 2, 1881, only four months into his term. With physicians unable to find and remove the bullet, he lingered until September 19, finally dying from infection and internal bleeding. One hopes his favorite novels were read to him during those difficult months.
