Washington and Quixote

The list goes on. Richard Henry Lee, a signer from Virginia, read Don Quixote in Spanish. Patrick Henry read it in English. One evening while both men were serving in the Virginia legislature, Lee kept Henry and some other legislators up late extolling the genius of Cervantes. He drew several examples from Don Quixote to prove his point. Lee got so involved that he lost track of time, continuing his lengthy discourse into the small hours. Henry, the story goes, was the first to rise from his chair to interrupt Lee. Don Quixote is an excellent work of literature, Henry agreed, but Lee had overlooked one of the book’s finest parts. When Lee asked what that was, Henry told him it was “that divine exclamation of Sancho, ‘Blessed be the man that first invented sleep: it covers one all over, like a cloak.’”

The founding fathers, like other English speakers in the 18th century, pronounced the title of Cervantes’ masterpiece differently from the way the Spanish pronounced it, as Patrick Henry’s library catalog reveals. Inventorying a library typically required two people—one would read the spine titles aloud as the other recorded them. Apparently, the people recording the titles of Henry’s books had spotty knowledge of literary history, recording the title as “Don Quick Zotte.”

Daniel Parke Custis was another colonial Virginian with an English translation of Don Quixote in his personal library. After he died intestate in 1757, his wife Martha had to administer the estate, which would eventually descend to their son John Parke “Jacky” Custis, who was only three at the time of his father’s death. After Martha became Mrs. George Washington in 1759, her new husband became Jacky’s stepfather and had the Custis library shipped to Mount Vernon. In short, the library at Mount Vernon contained a copy of Don Quixote from 1759 until 1778, when Jacky Custis moved to Abingdon, his own estate on the Potomac.

Though the Custis copy of Don Quixote stood on the bookshelves of Mount Vernon for many years, there is no evidence that Washington read it. His surviving letters and journals of the period contain no allusions to Don Quixote. Of course, the absence of references in his correspondence does not prove he did not read it. Washington wore his learning lightly and seldom saw the need to boast about his knowledge by dropping literary allusions.

If Washington avoided Don Quixote during this time in his life, that behavior is consistent with his general reading patterns. Although he read some fiction as a young man, he grew to prefer practical works, like agricultural manuals, and informative works, like histories and travels. One fictional work from the Custis collection that he did read was Gulliver’s Travels, but the nominal status of Jonathan Swift’s masterpiece as travel literature let Washington read it in that mindset.

Letters Washington received during the Revolutionary War reminded him of gaps in his literary knowledge. In 1778, Patrick Henry wrote to him, forwarding an anonymous letter that criticized the depreciation of American currency. The letter said that the United States had been “distracted with the Don Quixotte attempts to regulate the prices of provisions.” Turning the name of Cervantes’s hero into an adjective, the letter writer demonstrated the word’s place in the vernacular. More common at that time than our present-day form of the word (“quixotic”), “Quixote”—also pronounced “quick zotte” in its adjective form—carries the same meaning. A Quixote person is foolhardy, no matter how idealistic or well-intended. Three years later, Richard Henry Lee wrote Washington a letter about General William Howe, the commander in chief of British forces during the Revolutionary War. Lee expressed hope that Howe would “repent the Quixote part that he has been acting in America.”

Explore the List of Books Owned By Washington

Whereas his acquisition of an English edition of Don Quixote reflects Washington’s desire to catch up his literary knowledge and align it with that of his peers, his acquisition of John Buncle shows him deepening his literary knowledge with another picaresque novel. This title was not nearly as well-known—rarely did 18th-century readers toss off allusions to John Buncle—meaning that with this purchase, Washington was going beyond the standard works to broaden his knowledge. More than any of the books he obtained in Philadelphia during the Constitutional Convention, John Buncle verifies Washington’s literary predilections. This fun-filled yet highfalutin work appeals to connoisseurs, those curious about new ideas and new ways to express them.

At around the same time, Washington acquired a third picaresque novel: Alain-René Lesage’s History of Gil Blas in Tobias Smollett’s four-volume translation. Since it does not appear in Washington’s financial accounts, precisely how he obtained this work is a mystery—it may have been a gift. However, its similarity to the other two works, and the quality of the edition, make it likely that this, too, dates to his time in Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention. Washington’s desire to read Gil Blas parallels his desire to read Don Quixote: it, too, was a work friends and fellow patriots knew well. A few years earlier, Thomas Jefferson had linked Gil Blas and Don Quixote, calling them “the best books of their class as far as I am acquainted with them.”

Allusions to picaresque novels occur frequently in early American literature. Once the Constitutional Convention had ended and the delegates had gone home, numerous essays for and against the Constitution appeared in newspapers throughout the nation. These essays sought to sway the opinions of those attending the state ratification conventions. One contributor to the Newport Herald asserted that Rhode Islanders disapproved of the Constitution, seeing it as a dangerous plot to curtail their freedom rather than a means to protect it. Refuting the absurdity of that position, another essayist drew parallels to the bizarre actions that Don Quixote performs in the name of Dulcinea del Toboso, a plain farm girl he has never met but whom he idealizes as the greatest beauty in the land. We have heard of a knight of a woeful countenance, who mistaking a dirty wench, for a beautiful damsel, fell so desperately in love with her, that for her sake, he sallied forth, his head covered with brass, and most magnanimously encountered windmills, murdered harmless sheep, and pierced whole skins of wine. When we consider these things,—when we seriously reflect upon the vagaries and incongruities of human nature, our astonishment will be lessened at the view of a certain description of men fishing for plots in a plan of government, devised by the strictest integrity and consummate wisdom, and sanctioned, after the severest examination, by a great number of states.