563. Robert E. Lee by Roy Blount, 2003- Summary

563.  Robert E. Lee by Roy Blount, 2003.  This is a brief introduction to the life and character of Robert E. Lee.  His capacity as a commander is familiar to me but this book told me much about Lee’s sense of humor, his playful ways and his sensitivities.  It is interesting but each time I read about this man I admire him more and more.  Blount relates that D. Eisenhower once took Field Marshal Montgomery on a tour of Gettysburg battlefield.  Blount notes that Eisenhower thought much of Lee.  I did not know this, but I suspect that Eisenhower found even more to admire in Lee and imitate when he was Allied Commander in Europe.  I trust that Ike felt a strong kinship to Lee the more he became immersed in duties as Allied Commander.  Juggling the likes of Patton, Montgomery, DeGaul must have required much patience and craft on his part.  The same was required of Lee to handle his task as general of the Army of Northern Virginia.  Dealing with President Davis and the Confederate Congress must have vexed Lee more than his opponents on a number of occasions.  But I enjoyed the story about the time Lee, when President of Washington College, received a parcel from an admirer in Scotland.  In it he found a tea cozy and an afghan.  Mildred, his daughter, happened to be playing at the piano.  He put on the afghan and placed the tea cozy on his head and began to dance about in the parlor.  I cherish stories like these, as I do the story about Scipio Africanus, the great Roman general who snapped victory for the Romans from the eager hands of Hannibal during the 2nd Punic War.- he loved to trek to the beach near his home on the coast of Italy and in company with his friend Laelius revel in seeing who could collect the most interesting seashells.  Such stories animate marble and put flesh tones to the surface.  When Lee was entertaining guests at Arlington, in the morning he put out breakfast.  At each setting he had set a rose he picked from the garden for each lady and a rose bud for each young lady.  He was playful with his children.  He enjoyed the company of children.  He would often tell his children he would not read their bedtime story, until they had dutifully tickled his feet.  During the Civil War Lee, often received expensive wines and liqueurs.  In the winter of 1862 Lee received a demijohn.  His aides knew that Lee did not drink, thus with great expectation they waited to see what would develop, while they waited outside his tent.  Lunch time arrived and Lee came out and said, “Perhaps you gentlemen would like a glass of something?”  Trying to maintain their glee and keep their decorum, each aide tried not to rush to the mess tent.  As they sat down for their treat, each cup was filled with Lee’s favorite drink- buttermilk.  Lee traveled through much of the war with a pet hen in tow.  She apparently picked him.  She came along one day and in the early morning laid an egg at the entrance to his tent.  Soon she was in the tent and making a nuisance of herself.  But Lee was as always full of patience.  She even traveled to Gettysburg and after the disaster of the battle when his staff knew how distraught he was fell into a panic when they could not find the hen.  (They were in haste to leave in fear that General Meade would decent upon the Confederate army before it had time to retreat across the Rappahannock River to safety.)  His staff was in a frenzy, when Lee himself found her in her spot all nestled in ready to go in Lee’s wagon of personal belongings.  He was judicious with words and clever too.  When President of Washington College he said of a student:  “He is a very quiet, orderly young man, but seems very careful not to injure the health of his father’s son.  Now I do not want our young men to really injure their health, but I wish them to come as near as possible.”  This book just makes it plain to view that great people have so much to offer and part of their attraction lies in the fact that they are an enigma.  This leads me to my only criticism of the book.  However, I hurry to say that it is a characteristic of many modern analyses of the greats of history.  Blount uses Alice Miller’s The Drama of the Gifted Child as a means to examine Lee.  I agree that such modern work in psychology can contribute to an understanding of an individual.  “Some of the most extraordinarily accomplished people, Miller argues, have managed to survive childhood abuse by means of the gift of numbness that makes them capable of adapting to extreme pain.”  In spite of the fact that Lee was not abused, Blount insists on drawing the parallels needed.  Beside the fact that Lee only superficially fits the bill for this one, there is another problem with this approach.  I see it as need for modern people to make everyone fit a profile, just the way all of the rest of us fit a profile.  (To my deep irritation I see this happen in school- each kids must fit a profile.  This brings the great down to “our” level.  There is comfort in this.  For I think that great people make some people feel uncomfortable.  They did what most could never dream of doing.  If someone fits a profile, this makes them more tangible and puts them at eye level.)  Blount makes too much of this and tried to take it too far.  I think that in these matters historians would do well keep Quintilian in the back of their mind:  modeste tamen et circumspecto judicio de tantis viris pronunciandum est, ne, quod plerique accidit damnent quae non  intelligunt= with modesty and cautious judgment statements must be made concerning remarkable people, lest, what generally happens, [historians] condemn what they do not understand.