|
Kevin J. Hayes,
Professor of English at the University of Central Oklahoma,
will present the Eighth Annual Governor Henry Lectures at
Charlotte Court House on Saturday, May 3, and again at the
Library of Virginia on Monday, May 5, 2008. Professor Hayes is
among the nation’s preeminent experts on reading and libraries
in early American culture. A magna cum laude graduate of the
University of Toledo, he took his doctorate in English from
the University of Delaware.
Contrary to
accusations by some of his politic rivals, evidence of Henry’s
extensive reading illuminates Henry’s views and influence in the
American Revolution. Professor Hayes’s lecture will summarize
his forthcoming book The Mind of a Patriot: Patrick Henry and
the World of Ideas. An examination of Henry’s career in light of
the books in his personal library, The Mind of a Patriot will be
published by the University of Virginia Press later this year.
Professor Hayes’s many other published works include A Colonial
Woman’s Bookshelf (1996); books about Captain John Smith, Edgar
Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Stephen Crane, and the libraries of
William Byrd of Westover and Benjamin Franklin; and studies of
filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Charlie Chaplin.
Kevin Hayes’s
insights echo the genius of his subject. The Mind of a Patriot
work invites a fresh vision of Patrick Henry’s preparation for
the great challenges of American independence and
nation-building. Hayes’s interesting discoveries are based on
painstaking and ingenious scholarship to reconstruct the entire
catalogue of Patrick Henry’s personal library.
Although no man
of Patrick Henry’s gifts could be described as average, to a
remarkable degree Henry truly was a representative Virginian.
Despite talents and intelligence “far-soaring above those of
ordinary men,” Patrick Henry was always comfortable among
Virginians who, as an Anglican minister commented from Jamestown
in 1684, “for want of bookes read men the more.” In fact, of
course, they read both.
In a
revolutionary age marked by strident ideological dispute, Henry
approached the duties of legislator and governor as “a plain,
practical man, because he was emphatically one of the people,”
according to his jurist son-in-law Spencer Roane, “and because
he detested, as a statesman, the projects of theorists and
bookworms.”
Samuel Meredith,
a boyhood companion, recalled that “there was in early life
nothing for which [Henry] was remarkable except his invariable
habit of close and attentive observation.” Henry was “fond of
reading” but also “fond of society,” quiet and “inclined to be
thoughtful,” and always “an attentive observer of everything of
consequence that passed before him.”
By all credible
accounts, Henry’s temperament was that of an intensive rather
than an extensive reader. “The general character of Mr. Henry’s
library,” Judge Roane recalled, “consisted of odd volumes, etc.
but of good books.” Rather than acquiring and reading dozens of
new titles each year, Henry was inclined to read, re-read, and
reflect upon books of proven value and importance.
Patrick Henry
approached his favorite books as many people read the Bible or
treasured works of poetry or literature. He “read good books,”
Judge Roane concluded, “as it were for a text.” He combined the
contemplative temperament of a preacher preparing for a sermon
with the ample memory of an actor getting ready for the stage.
Henry’s special genius for the spoken word was readily
misunderstood by rivals whose eloquence required quill and
paper.
Whether the issue
at hand was the Parsons’ Cause or the Stamp Act, Independence or
the Constitution, Patrick Henry’s compelling oratory wrapped the
civic republican political philosophy of the Virginia gentry in
the rhetorical style popularized by evangelical preachers of the
Great Awakening. “The advantage of Mr. Henry’s education,” Judge
Roane concluded, rested upon “some reading which he never
forgot, and much observation and reflection.”
In this spirit,
Henry commended Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws as “a good book
for one traveling in a stage-coach” because one could “read as
much of it in half an hour as would serve you to reflect upon a
whole day.” In a similar spirit, Professor Kevin J. Hayes’s
exemplary scholarship invites a fresh appreciation of the
momentous achievements of Patrick Henry’s career. The Patrick
Henry Memorial Foundation and the Library of Virginia are
pleased to afford listeners an advance glimpse of these new
insights about the culture of eighteenth-century Virginia.
The annual
Governor Henry Lectures are jointly sponsored by the Patrick
Henry Memorial Foundation and the Library of Virginia. The
Patrick Henry Memorial Foundation owns and operates Red Hill,
the patriot’s last home and burial place in Charlotte County,
Virginia. The Library of Virginia holds the world's most
extensive collection of material about the Old Dominion and has
been a steward of the commonwealth's documentary and printed
heritage since 1823.
The Governor
Henry Lectures are open to the public at no charge. Free parking
is available at both locations.
|
