Interpreting the past

To the Editor:

Mr. Joseph J. Ellis’ amiable review of my “Inventing a Nation” [Nov. 16] is troubling, if only as an example of current bookchat. He tells us right off that there are “a boatload of factual errors (the claim for instance that Washington was broke in 1786).” Although I am writing straight history, I don’t use footnotes, but whenever I make a statement about Washington’s finances, say, I follow it up with evidence; in this case, from Washington himself. “My living under the best economy I can use must unavoidably be expensive.” He refers to Mount Vernon as a “well-resorted tavern” where the tavern keeper picks up the tab for curious strangers. He complains of the poor soil of his Mount Vernon farms. He wanted to be Midas-like, “one who can convert everything he touches into manure as the first transmutation towards gold.”

I suspect that short as my book is Mr. Ellis seems to have skipped the next pages where the subject of Washington’s broke-ness is spelled out to his mother. She has asked him for 15 guineas, all the cash that he has on hand. “It is really hard upon me,” he writes, “when you have taken everything you wanted from the plantation, by which money could be raised, when I have not received one farthing directly nor indirectly from the place for more than twelve years, if ever, and when in that time, I have paid (during my absence) two hundred and sixty odd pounds, and by my own account fifty odd pounds out of my own pocket to you, besides (if I am rightly informed) everything that has been raised on the crops of the plantation.”

He is broke; worse, dare I whisper it, he did not much care for his mother (let the 10,000 celebrations of the love between mother and son remain decently locked up in a thousand portmanteaus). Mr. Ellis finds no other “factual error.” Even so, it is dismaying that no matter how short and clearly written a book may be, few reviewers can resist guessing at its contents rather than actually reading it. I was also not surprised that your heading for the review was of a piece with the text: “The Right Men, but Not the Real Story.” Since “Inventing a Nation” is indeed the “real” story (as far as we can begin to know it), I would suggest that in an era when a secretive government spins ever more intricate lies about their doings that you set aside a by now all-too-familiar malice in order to acknowledge that you are dealing with a careful narrative, much of it told in the actual recorded words of the principals.

Gore Vidal

Los Angeles

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Joseph J. Ellis replies:

Oh my. Three points: first, like Vidal, I did not cotton to the title the paper’s copy desk gave to my review; second, while George Washington did have cash flow problems on occasion, in his will he valued his net assets at $530,000, making him one of the richest men in America at the time; third, as my review tried to suggest, I regard Vidal as a national treasure and remain so inclined.