President Garfield: Friend of Jane
Alert Janeite Lisa spotted a USAToday article with a reference to President James Garfield’s affection for our favorite authoress.
“After college, Garfield briefly taught classical languages. Books remained a favorite refuge whenever politics became unbearable. He was particularly fond of Jane Austen. During his short stay in the White House, Garfield installed a library with 3,000 volumes. Given his distaste for the modern literature of his day — ‘highly spiced with sensation,’ he called it — his students could expect a large dose of Miss Austen and her peers.”
Sounds good to us!
September 11th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Not all Presidents had such an appreciation of Jane Austen. Here’s what Teddy Roosevelt says in his Autobiography: “[I]f I finish anything by Miss Austen I have a feeling that duty performed is a rainbow to the soul. But other booklovers who are very close kin to me, and whose taste I know to be better than mine, read Miss Austen all the time—and, moreover, they are very kind, and never pity me in too offensive a manner for not reading her myself.”
(I have a special personal fondness for James Garfield because my father-in-law edited the correspondence between Garfield and his wife Lucretia, published by Michigan State University Press.)