| Show r parson weems washington myth maker by y ELMO SCOTT WATSON 22 is near at hand which means that we shall soon be honoring again the memory of t george washington As usual a part of the annual it washington birthday celebration will consist 1 I of tributes to his greatness as a soldier and a statesman as the leader in the american struggle lor for liberty and as the first president of the new 4 nation it is certain too that there will be a repetition ts of many of the familiar stories about washington ek the man and washington the human beg zit to and it is inevitable that in retelling those stories fact id fancy will be mixed myth and legend will be recited once ore re and the real washington the washington which you d I 1 and our friends and associates in everyday life can der stand will still elude us why is it that george washington h sh ington seems destined w ways ays to be a remote shad lot I 1 vy w y figure in our minds mind s hy must he remain a gode ile personality aloof from mankind a marble statue ta a man who never once ps down from his pedestal walk the earth like other ten n one of t the c reasons is is ta at the myth makers went dour work early in the history our nation and one in par jular lar seized upon george L is hington as the subject r fashioning legendary ies es his name was mas mason on acke acke weems and he more can an any other man is re Tion sible for what millions of think they know it i out george washington 0 so o it seems appropriate to 1 l at this time the story of It parson larson weems and his caf 1 1 er and not the least of to e interest in that story is are fact that he himself is most as shadowy a figure ithe the minds of most amer ins ns as is the washington lap ch he helped create for am iem an n october 1 1759 a son was rn to david weems a farmer alanne lanne arundel county in the lovince ro ov ince vince of maryland and his tie hester hill weems evi atly aly there was no danger race suicide in the weems ily for this was their adl the boy was given the rne of mason locke weems cd when he grew up was sent I 1 1 gkent y kent county school at ches latown li town lim the age of fourteen young oems lems went to england to study dicine and follow in the fo foot ot ps of a great uncle dr W wil tira mm locke for whom he had an en named after graduating aim im the university of edin young weems served for ame m e as a surgeon on a british p then in 1776 he re boned ned to america 8 0 apparently weems took no part I 1 the ithe fight for liberty and during last part of the war he seems have had some association th rev william smith an en betic churchman who had tak over weems alma mater pt county college and was ye loping it into the present hington ashington college out of that ocia tion grew weems decin m to become a minister after ne difficulty in overcoming the I 1 eucide eucide of high episcopal v REV MASON L officials in england ainest citizens of a rebel coly weems was finally or ined in 1784 and for the next ie e years served as rector of I 1 hallows church in maryland during this time his income s meager and he eked it out conducting conduct mg a school tor for girls so 0 o during this time he was ving ming other difficulties he found myself unpopular with the con dative members of the parish cause he was too willing to each if requested to method a who had recently split off eig in the established church too jh ailing g to exhort in ballrooms 4 other ither ungodly places and charitable tiari table in extending is instruction to negroes long them his own slaves whom he had freed several years before lie he leaves the ministry in 1790 weems was without a charge and during the next two years he presided occasionally over the neighboring parish of westminster finally feeling that lie was a failure as a minister he decided to turn his talents to other work during his service as a preacher he was a strong advocate of temperance and showed other signs of becoming a reformer in that character he reprinted from the english original a popular medical pamphlet the nature of which gave it a wide sale but scandalized some of the conservative churchmen this not only hastened his decision to leave the ministry but pointed the way to another career that of becoming a publisher and bookseller back in 1784 an irishman named mathew carey had come to philadelphia and established a newspaper to which venture he soon added the publication of books and magazines in 1793 weems met carey and formed a business association with him which continued for more than three decades so parson weems became an itinerant bookseller and soon his travels were taking him all along the atlantic seaboard moreover moreon er he was making more money in this business than he had ever made before so in 1795 when he married fanny ewall the daughter of col jesse ewall a prosperous planter near the potomac river port of dumfries va he was able to install her in a comfortable home which he had bought in dumfries after the death of his father in law lavai weems and his wife moved into belair bel air the ewall mansion and there he made his home what time he was not out on his book peddling trips important to this story are the facts that the dewalls were closely related to the balls the family George of mother that colonel ekau dewalls sister married dr craik personal physician and that washington himself occasionally visited colonel ewall at bel air which was only 18 miles from mount vernon but more important still is the fact that from a seller of books weems ambition led him to become a writer of books or more accurately of pamphlets indorsement endorsement Indor his first venture in that field was taken about a year after his marriage he collected a symposium of the utterances of benjamin franklin and other exponents of the homely virtues of life which he published under the title of the immortal mentor or mans unerring guide to a healthy wealthy and happy life washington because of his friendship for the ewall family wrote an indorsement endorsement indor of the book more than that he permitted weems to display this indorsement endorsement indor on the title page of the pamphlet and the magic of approval by the father of his country had much to do with the successful sale of weems little book when washington retired from the presidency weems put out another book it was called the philanthropist or a good awen ty five cents worth of political love P powder for honest adams ites and Jefferso and it was a protest against the partisan political spirit which was dividing the country along with weems plea for harmony among the citizens of the country in this book were sketches of the nations fighting men during the revolution designed to stir up patriotic sentiments sentiment in his readers because of the double purpose of this book washington indorsed endorsed indor sed it also with these words much indeed is it to be wished that the sentiments contained in your pamphlets and the doctrine it endeavors to inculcate were more prevalent happy would it be for this country at least if they were so this was in august 1799 within four months washington lay dead at mount vernon in january 1800 weems wrote to his friend and business associate carey as follows ive something to whisper la in TV RR 1 11 1 old woodcut from the looking glass of the mind blind illustrating the fruitful vine from which weems got his idea for the washington cherry tree story y your 0 u r lug washington you yon know is gone millions are gaping to read something about him I 1 am very nearly frimd and cockle for lem em so within a few months there appeared an 80 page pamphlet bearing the title of A history of the life and death virtues and exploits of general ington dedicated to mrs washington by the rev M L weems of dumfries its author was quite correct in believing that millions are gaping to read something about him for the first edition of the pamphlet was soon sold out and a second edition followed quickly in this edition the author added a line to the title faithfully taken from authentic documents probably because some skeptic had questioned some of his statements the book grows but the public seemed willing to accept what he had written about the great washington unquestioningly the book was selling so fast that it was difficult to keep up with the demand for it A new edition appeared every year and each successive edition was larger than the previous one by the time the fifth edition was published in 1806 the 80 pages had grown to and its title now read the life of george washington with curious anecdotes cle GEORGE washington picture used as the frontispiece in weems biography equally honorable to himself and exemplary to his young countrymen also the author now described himself on the title page as the former rector of mt vernon parish despite the fact that there was no mount vernon parish in virginia any more than he was as he described himself in later editions former rector of general parish the buyers of weems book however apparently concerned about the accuracy of the authors description of himself anymore than they were concerned about the accuracy of some of his curious anecdotes they literally swallowed them whole they told them to their children who in turn told these tales to theirs thus did some of the legends about george washington become deeply rooted in american belief chief among these legends is the familiar cherry cherrytree tree story weems declared that this story was told to him by an aged lady connected with the household of the elder washington but he took care never to tell her name the same anonymous lady is also the authority for the story of how father tried to startle george into a lively sense of his maker this story while not so well known as the cherry tree story is equally interesting te in it weems has the ington tracing georges name in the earth in his garden patch and planting it with cabbage seed A little later the boy is shown what is apparently a miracle his name george washington spelled out in green shoots coming up from the ground when young george runs to his father for an explanation the parent makes his little trick an excuse for a sermon on the workings of omniscience the origins of his tales if there was ever the slightest bit of evidence to support either story historians who presumably have dug up every possible bit of information that has a bearing on early life have never been able to discover it what they have discovered however is this back in 1797 john bioren of philadelphia published a book called the looking glass for the mind or the juvenile friend later editions of this same book were brought out by T B jansen and company of new york in them appeared a story called the fruitful vine in which a father moralizes moralizer mora lizes to his son much as the elder washington moralizes moralizer mora lizes to young george in the cherry tree story since the cherry tree story did not appear in the earlier editions of weems biography but in later ones after the publication of the looking glass for the mind scholars are that the parson based ills his cherry tree story on the vine story similarly an anecdote invented by an english squire long before time to impress his son with the greatness of god gave weems the idea tor for his cabbage seed story although the origin of some of the other stories which weems included in his book are not so easily detected there is little doubt in the minds of historians that they are pure inventions by the parson with only the slightest if indeed any at all foundation in fact all of them of course were highly moral and all tended to paint the youthful washington as nearly perfect as a boy could be about a decade ago biographer was himself the subject of a biography it was parson weems of the cherry tree written by harold kellock and published by t the he century company in this book kellock commenting upon the fact that weems originated so many washington legends says he washington was first in manly games the fastest runner the best jumper and could throw farthest in fact this young admirable crichton was the hero of a literary artist who knew the commercial value of laying on virtue with the heay heavy trowel in these and other fables of a similar character scattered through the book weems created a washington that all the study and research of the scholars have been unable to erase it is the Weems ian washington that persists in the school readers and in in the popular imagination a figure of truly terrifying and incredible perfections and as mr albert J beveridge remarks in his life of john marshall an impossible and intolerable prig an early best seller be that as it may the american people of the nineteenth century evidently wanted their heroes pious to the point of priggishness gish ness for they accepted parson weems portrait of washington as an authentic one and handed it down to us before weems death in 1825 he wrote many other books most of them moral tracts such as 94 the drunkards lookingglass gods revenge against murder gods revenge against gambling etc undoubtedly they were popular in their day but that day soon passed more enduring was his masterpiece even though it was a masterpiece of mixed fiction and fact for his life of washington that paradox of a book filled with untruths un truths about a man whom he painted as the paragon of truthfulness I 1 is more than an early best seller it is a monument to a master myth maker who gave a nation legend and convinced them that it was history dd 4 western union |
