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James Thomas Flexner
James Thomas Flexner, author of a magnificent four-volume biography of George Washington, has died at 95 at his Manhattan home. Flexner is best known for a one-volume abridgement of his Washington biography subtitled “The Indispensable Man.” But the original four-volume work is truly the indispensable biography. Naturally, the New York Times obit makes it sound as though Flexner drags Washington down to common size, which is not at all the case. Flexner, like his subject, sought to embody the high ideals of our civilization while participating fully in the modern world. We will have more to say on Flexner’s Washingon in the near future. Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 17, 2003 04:41 PM | Send Comments
“Most important, [General Washington] refused the absolute power that was offered to him, which, as Mr. Flexner pointed out, other revolutionary leaders, from Napoleon to Lenin, did not.” Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, of course, did, and Washington in his day and ever after was revered as a second Cincinnatus, and rightly so. At the time, this act on Washington’s part caused many great men round the world to look up to him, in some cases with open-mouthed, almost stunned admiration. Either Percy Shelley or Lord Byron, I can’t remember which (both certainly were among the most cynical of observers, sort of the Christopher Hitchenses of their day and definitely NOT given to adulation of ANY political figure, for ANY reason) actually wrote a poem expressing deep admiration for Washington and this immortal gesture! The impression this gesture made on the world at that time was a deep one. “Mr. Flexner related that Washington was perplexed by a French sculptor’s decision to depict him in a toga.” The only Americans who ever lived whose exemplary, unwaveringly elevated conduct through life, whose virtue, “virtue” in the true sense of manly strength, courage, morality, and wisdom, and whose physical bearing and presence “in the flesh” as reported by those who actually saw them, made them fitting subjects to be represented wearing a Roman toga were George Washington and Robert E. Lee. No other great personage whom this country has produced (and no, not “the American Cæsar,” Douglas MacArthur) would qualify. That sculptor’s instinct was unerringly right and true. Posted by: Unadorned on February 17, 2003 10:47 PMI would add that Washington’s greatness was in more than the virtue of self-control. He did not simply refrain from doing things, but was incredibly enterprising and active. This side of him is often overlooked because many of his professional admirers, notwithstanding their professed desire to “see beyond the marble monument”—Richard Brookhiser is an example—nevertheless want Washington to be a virtuous man standing still, rather than a man of thought and action, which he was. Somehow modern people can only think of virtue as connected with the absence of power or the rejection of power, rather than in the virtuous and effective exercise of power. The poem Unadorned is thinking of is Byron’s “Ode To Napoleon Buonaparte” (I like Unadorned’s comparison to Christopher Hitchens), a long poem which decries Napoleon’s corruption by power, and at the end turns away from Napoleon to a better example of leadership: Where may the wearied eye repose http://www.darsie.net/library/byron.html |