SOURCE: Siebert, Donald T., Jr. “William Byrd's Histories of the Line: The Fashioning of a Hero.” American Literature 47, no. 4 (January 1976): 535-51.

[In the following essay, Siebert argues that the portrait of Byrd painted by most critics fails to appreciate his complexities, and he examines Byrd's Histories of the Line to understand the contrast between the author's private and public personas and his struggle to present a heroic image of himself.]

Among colonial writers, William Byrd of Westover appears most deserving of lapidary inscription and idealizing portrait. He is the earliest and perhaps only American type of “the well-bred gentleman and polite companion,” as his epitaph itself would tell us. We see him now gazing out at us in the portrait hanging in Williamsburg, easy and confident, sprightly wit under the control of judgment, Restoration sensuality made over into Epicurean moderation. The impression is elegant and grand, an early pictorial anticipation of the version in marble over his grave, which concludes:

To all this were added a great elegance of taste and life,
The well-bred gentleman and polite companion,
The splendid economist and prudent father of a family,
With the constant enemy of all exorbitant power,
And hearty friend to the liberties of his country.

There is pride in this, indeed almost arrogance, curiously softened by a sincere yeoman satisfaction in modest things more than great. The effect is admirably calculated. It is no Ozymandias who trumpets forth vainglorious and empty boasts.

Such is our initial impression, and to a great extent such also is the William Byrd we have seen in his writings: graceful, confident, witty, wonderfully self-controlled. Even the sexual exploits recorded in his Diaries seem but amusing exercises in cavalier prowess. One, it seems worth noting, was indeed a “flourish” on the billiard table.¹ Surely this is the ultimate of sprezzatura. No matter where we look in his writings, we see only “the well-bred gentleman and polite companion,” as Byrd would no doubt have preferred. William Byrd the human being is encapsulated in an elegant pose.

Consider, for example, the observation of Pierre Marambaud:

With his aristocratic indifference to publication, his proud reluctance to print something that was not finished to his taste, and his numerous other occupations which came before writing, Byrd must be considered essentially an amateur. He appears one even in his sense of humor, which is partly the result of his detachment. It would be ungentlemanly to become impassioned over his own writings, or for that matter to take anything too seriously, even religion. … Byrd's humor generally comes from his indulgent awareness of discrepancy, a disparity between the ideal and the real, between what men profess and what they practise.²

Richard Beale Davis seconds this view:

For the master of Westover deviations from the middle way … were droll. For a talent nurtured in Queen Anne's London, incongruities must be shaped into congruity, or order, by the mightiest of weapons, wit. His observant eye caught everything in Williamsburg or Westover or the wilderness, and he usually found it out of proportion. He was quite aware that he was laughing at himself as he laughed at things around him in Virginia. His mood and his intention thus sprang from his rationalism.³

In a sense the man becomes a drawing-room satirist, as carefree as Horace, though somehow lacking the charm, warmth, sincerity of Horace. The “volleys of silvery laughter” which Davis so nicely imagines as the final effect of Byrd's art have at last a chilly, tinselly ring. No breathing, fallible man ever posed for the portrait, with its gleaming lacquered surface.

My purpose in this essay is to show that even in his most finished, artistic work it is possible—and desirable—to see a more human William Byrd, with passions not always under control, with fears and self-doubts, a man struggling to fashion himself in his own ideal image. In so doing I am not suggesting that the Byrd whom critics have described did not exist, but rather that it can be somewhat misleading to think of Byrd the man and the man of letters chiefly as a finished being, having sprung full-grown from the head of Zeus (or Momus?). By examining this other aspect of Byrd, we shall better understand his complicated personality. He may not emerge as humanly successful (and likable) as Franklin or as humanly feckless (and sometimes unlikable) as Boswell, but he will no longer remain quite so insensitive and superficial. We shall have a glimpse of why he strove to create that image which has so persistently clung to him, and this insight, besides revealing the artfulness of his writings, will shed light on the enigmas surrounding private works such as the Diaries.

The two Histories of the Line are well suited to a study such as this, for here we have two versions of the same experience: one essentially private and less guarded in its personal references, The Secret History of the Line (henceforth abbreviated Secret); and of course the more public History of the Dividing Line betwixt Virginia and North Carolina (henceforth, simply History), the one Byrd was polishing, presumably for publication. It is well to note, however, that neither account is purely public or private, that there is no neat contrast in tone or intention between them, as is often assumed. Although in general we may say that the often malicious gossip, crude humor and lubricity, the journalistic flavor of Secret become in History the dignified, though sufficiently mordant chronicle of a philosophical historian, this facile distinction blurs when the two are carefully compared. Byrd may have intended to create that kind of transmutation, but in fact he was more confused about his purpose in writing History than is sometimes realized. Usually, for example, Byrd's interest in fleshly pleasure, his eye for the often not so fair sex, in Secret, changes in History into a more seemly stance of amusement at the frailties of lesser men. But not always. Looking at the entries for April 7, we might be surprised to find that History is expanded mainly in the interest of lechery; History is what Secret normally is, portraying a Byrd who is decidedly attracted by the allurements of Indian maidens, despite his supercilious remark that it would require “a very strong Appetite to approach them.” It is no indifferent anthropologist who notices “their finery … thrown so Negligently about them, that their Mehogony Skins appear'd in Several Parts, like the Lacedaemonian Damsels of Old …,” and then adds, “We were unluckily so many, that they cou'd not well make us the Complement of Bed-Fellows …” (pp. 114-116).⁴ Nor is History always more polished. The entry for October 22 in History notes merely, “We pitcht our Tent on the Western Banks of the Mayo, for the Pleasure of being lull'd to Sleep by the Casquade” (p. 226), whereas in Secret the earlier version remembers wistfully “a Waterfall in the River just by our Camp, the Noise of which gave us Poetical Dreams, & made us say our Prayers in Metre when we awaked” (p. 227).⁵ As we proceed, I shall be insisting that this inconsistency is evidence of Byrd's own doubts concerning how best to portray himself. Without assuming that the Byrd of History is somehow superior to the Byrd of Secret, we can usefully play off one against the other.

Both versions share a fundamental purpose: to present their writer in a favorable light. This process is simply more patent in Secret, for it is here that we see Byrd worrying over his role, petulantly insisting on his superiority to everyone else, especially his rival for authority Firebrand (Richard FitzWilliam), styling himself “Steddy,” censuring himself for his occasional lapses (“I was weak enough to be as loud & Cholerick as [Firebrand],” p. 103), preening himself in his position as commander, with harangues to his men that pointedly call to mind Caesar addressing his favorite legion. There is no reason to doubt that he was deeply concerned about being a successful leader. Early in the account, we find him taking charge: “He drew them out to the number of 15, & finding their Arms in good Order, He caus'd them to be muster'd. … Here after drawing out this small Troop, Steddy made them the following Speech. … You will set the Carolina Men, whom we are to meet at Coratuck, a constant Pattern of Order, Industry & Obedience. Then he march'd his Men in good Order to Capricorn's Elegant Seat” (pp. 29, 31, my italics). It is significant that order is so highly prized. Even as his assumed name of Steddy would suggest, he himself will be the first pattern of order by which other men can be measured. He will be above ordinary men: “They perfumed the Tent with their Rum Punch, & hunted the poor Parson with their unseemly Jokes, which turn'd my Stomach as much as their Fragrant Liquor. I was grave & speechless the whole Evening, & retired early, by all which, I gave them to understand, I was not fond of the Conversation of those whose Wit, like the Commons at the University & Inns of Court is eternally the same” (p. 149).

That this is merely a stance by which Byrd hopes to convince himself of his own superiority should be obvious to any careful reader of Secret, for indeed Byrd frequently shows himself capable of fairly “low” raillery at the expense of the poor parson: “Our Chaplain attempted to climb a Tree, but before he got 6 Feet from the Ground, Fear made him cling closer to the Tree, than Love wou'd make him cling to a Mistress” (p. 237); or the frequent jests about the parson's fondness for bear meat, with its supposed aphrodisiac power. The point is that Byrd manifestly was trying to write himself a part as hero, forgetting himself now and then of course, because a hero's part is often dull and formal. We nearly feel pity for Byrd at those times when clearly his human qualities, like anger and jealous resentment, overpower his ability to be the man in control, the courtier, the hero: “For my part I was not Courtier enough to disguise the Sentiments I had of them & their Slavish proceeding, & therefore cou'd not smile upon those I despis'd. Nor cou'd I behave much better to Firebrand & his Eccho Orion, nevertheless I constrain'd myself to keep up a stiff Civility” (p. 145). It is clearly the picture of a man struggling self-consciously to be superior. We note that even the idealized epithet of “Steddy” is forgotten here, as it gradually tends to be as Secret unfolds and Byrd finds it harder than he imagined to create and maintain his heroic stance by a mere stroke of the pen.

Byrd's struggle to be Steddy is not so apparent in History, for in this more finished version he does succeed, at least to an appreciable extent, in giving an impression of ease, confidence and control, all necessary qualities of his idealized self-identity. By no means could Byrd allow any hint of possible weakness, in particular personal anxiety and petty resentment, to be transferred to History. Thus the rather lengthy entry in Secret of April 9 (especially pp. 125-141) has no place in History because its chief concern is to justify Byrd against the machinations of his arch-rival Firebrand. It is full of rather whining, backbiting gossip such as the aspersions on Firebrand's lineage: he “has no other Title to the Arms he bears, and the name he goes by, but the Courtesy of Ireland. And then for his Office, he is at most but a Publican & holds not his Commission from his Majesty, but from the Commissioners of the Customs” (pp. 131ff.); when Byrd carries the day and forces his enemy into submission, Byrd's elation—and relief—are transparent: “From whence we may fairly conclude, that Pride is not the Strongest of his Passions, tho' strong enough to make him both ridiculous & detestable” (p. 141). Byrd forgets that self-esteem has been the animus of his own justification. But he does not, of course, include that sort of material in History, or at least when he does, he usually manages to devastate his enemies with satire, not malicious gossip.

A good illustration is the transformation of the passage describing the departure of the North Carolina commissioners with their confederate, the hated Firebrand (October 5-7). There is little question that Secret is the livelier version, for the squabbling threatens to erupt into a brawl: “I must not forget that when Firebrand first began this Violence, I desir'd him to forbear, or I shou'd be obliged to take him in Arrest. But he telling me in a great Fury that I had no Authority, I call'd to the Men, & let him know, if he wou'd not be easy, I wou'd soon convince him of my Authority. The Men instantly gather'd about the Tent ready to execute my Orders, but we made a Shift to keep the Peace without coming to Extremitys …” (p. 173). In spite of Byrd's scorn, however, we can see throughout the entry in Secret that he is worried and unsure about the outcome. In History, on the other hand, Byrd assumes a voice of irony which masks his concern and suggests that he views the whole affair with amused, superior detachment. The spiteful slurs about the Carolinians' ignoring Sunday worship to hatch their plot, but later objecting to breaking the Sabbath by working, are those of a genuinely irritated Byrd. When he speaks of this matter in History, though, we see only controlled contempt: “Our pious Friends of Carolina assisted in this work with some Seeming Scruple, pretending it was a Violation of the Sabbath, which we were the more Surpriz'd at, because it happen'd to be the first Qualm of Conscience they had ever been troubled with dureing the whole journey” (p. 174). This effective mask of well-meaning puzzlement and ostensible surprise dispatches Firebrand quite deftly:

In the Afternoon, Mr. Fitz William, one of the Commissioners for Virginia, acquainted his Collegues it was his Opinion, that … they could not proceed farther on the Line, but in Conjunction with the Commissioners of Carolina; for which reason he intended to retire, the Next Morning, with those Gentlemen. This lookt a little odd in our Brother Commissioner; tho' in Justice to Him, as well as to our Carolina Friends, they stuck by us as long as our good Liquor lasted, and were so kind to us as to drink our good Journey to the Mountains in the last Bottle we had left.

(p. 174)

Here we see that Byrd has taken up the arms of wit to shrink his foes into insignificance. Instead of a dangerous Firebrand heading a mutinous faction, we have simply “Mr. Fitz William, one of the Commissioners from Virginia.” What stinging insult is conveyed by this modest identification (perhaps the reader may never have heard of this man)! How difficult it is to understand such erratic behavior in “our Brother Commissioner,” siding with the other party.

To put it as Dryden did so well, this is the “difference between the slovenly butchering of a man, and the fineness of a stroke that separates the head from the body, and leaves it standing in its place.” And this greater degree of control, the satirist's stance of smiling superiority, is what Byrd generally achieves in History. Indeed, as I have suggested before, Byrd is not so completely in command of his passions that he always succeeds in being satirist rather than butcher. Even in the section of History we have been considering, he tends to lose control toward the end (October 7) when he cannot resist including gossipy remarks on FitzWilliam's greedy motives (p. 176), though at least here he seems rather less concerned than in Secret. Still, for the most part in History Byrd does effectively use his style to enforce the desired impression of easy, confident control, of aloofness from the vagaries and vulgarity of human nature. In History he speaks as a philosopher, both natural and moral, who in looking about him notices and describes interesting things with amusement and understanding, but with utter detachment.

We encounter this pose at every turn—in his attitude toward religion, for example, with its enlightened toleration, yet the toleration of a man who can afford to be so, for he is interested only as a curious observer. There is salacious wit in the remark that “after all that can be said, a sprightly Lover is the most prevailing Missionary that can be sent amongst these, or any other Infidels” (pp. 3ff.), but it tends to imply that there can be nothing of truth or the spirit which will make men converts. Irony, as has been often observed, is the mode of noncommitment, for it protects its speaker from having to take sides. We see the speaker's superiority, intelligence, gracefulness, but never precisely where he stands. What does he sincerely believe?⁶ Byrd notes the dearth of ministers in North Carolina: “If a Parson come in their way, they will crave a Cast of his office, as they call it, else they are content their Offspring should remain as Arrant Pagans as themselves. They account it among their greatest advantages that they are not Priest-ridden, not remembering that the Clergy is rarely guilty of Bestriding such as have the misfortune to be poor” (p. 72). It is very amusing—sharp and discerning on its own terms—but it hides the speaker's opinions behind a smile. Because the remark is penetrating, it is justifiable, though we may suspect that the speaker is far removed from anything so common as fervent belief. It is the stance of a man who does not want to be too closely attached to anything, who wishes to insulate himself from the frustrations and weaknesses that being human involves.

It is my view, however, that Byrd is not entirely successful in reaching this state of grace, grace by the fiat of sprezzatura. It is obvious that he is trying too hard. Wit is piled too high; it is everywhere; it begins to sound more like the expression of desperation than of confidence. Byrd can scarcely so much as describe simple wolf-pits without attempting a sally: “when a Wolf is once tempted into them, he can no more Scramble out again, than a Husband who had taken the Leap can Scramble out of Matrimony” (p. 94). The suffering of uxorious men is indeed one of Byrd's favorite topics of raillery; yet this sort of thing grows wearisome when it occurs at every turn.⁷ Oftentimes Byrd's wit simply fails to give the impression of naturalness and ease. It lacks the warmth, the lightness of touch, the self-humor which truly disinterested, playful writers of burlesque convey: take Gay, Fielding, or Franklin. Byrd's is severe, relentless, monomaniacal, and at times rather heartless and cold. It reveals in fact the very kind of individual Byrd was hoping to demonstrate he was not: one beset with self-doubt and fears, one concerned that he might not measure up to his ideal self-identity.

It is interesting, at this point, to speculate on whether Byrd may have had a model for the kind of literary personality he was striving to present. Byrd's formative years in late seventeenth-century England would provide any number of possibilities. A typical model for many ambitious young men, Jonathan Swift included, would have been Sir William Temple, the titular head in England of the Ancients over the Moderns, the man whom Macaulay could still sketch more than a century later in the following striking manner: “… a man of the world among men of letters, a man of letters among men of the world. Mere scholars were dazzled by the Ambassador, and Cabinet councillor; mere politicians by the Essayist and Historian.”⁸ Indeed, Temple answers very precisely the description of Byrd's beau ideal: both man of action and of letters, with correspondence and intermingling between the two roles; a man who had participated with success in the affairs of state and the world, who retired later to a life of Epicurean content, of order in the hortus conclusus of his carefully planned and regulated estate at Sheen, and later at Moor Park. This is the man who would finish his essay Of Poetry—a rather comprehensive discussion, sometimes a bit too learned for a courtier—with the easy, offhand flourish: “When all is done, human life is, at the greatest and the best, but like a froward child, that must be played with and humoured a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over.”⁹ This is sprezzatura, if anything is. Wit and grace are redeemed from dour pedantry at last with a gesture both meaningful and polite. The slightly ruffled periwig is smoothed; a faint smile of disdain masks the being who might feel anguish or self-doubt. Although there is every reason to believe that Temple's personal life brought him disappointment, vexation, and even suffering, there is little hint of this facet of the man in the public writings.

Not only the manner and style but also the nature of Temple's works suggests parallels with Byrd's writings and concerns. Temple dabbled in the belletristic forms, and there is a strong interest in personal writing which justifies the man's life—letters and memoirs; nevertheless, Temple had the gentleman's reluctance to publish except when subject or occasion were significant enough to warrant such a venture. According to Swift, he and Temple carefully revised and prepared Temple's works for posthumous publication only. In Temple's lifetime, there appeared only works of great public or moral importance such as certain essays—Of Heroic Virtue, Of Poetry, An Essay Upon the Ancient and Modern Learning, and several others—and his politically important account, Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands (1673). Byrd, of course, would have been familiar with these as well as the works later published by Swift, Temple's literary executor, for Byrd owned copies of all works by Temple available in the early eighteenth century, in most cases copies of the same work in separate or overlapping editions.¹⁰

It is not surprising at all that Byrd would have collected Temple's works. Wherever one looks one sees the kind of mind which perfectly harmonizes with that of the would-be William Byrd of Westover. In a way, Temple's works might be thought of as a rather philosophical guidebook or courtesy-book for the honnête-homme. While Temple is skeptical and disenchanted, he nonetheless reveals a person searching for stability and self-esteem, for a manner of approaching life with courage, but never with the credulity and involvement which might imply vulnerability. It is significant that Temple everywhere emphasizes control—the ability of the gentleman to seek out the lessons of all men in all places and times and then to impose order and dignity upon unseemly chaos. Of Heroic Virtue—a title sufficiently revealing—makes this point for us, as it surely must have for Byrd:

Though it be easier to describe heroic virtue by the effects and examples than by causes or definitions, yet it may be said to arise from some great and native excellency of temper or genius transcending the common race of mankind in wisdom, goodness, and fortitude. These ingredients advantaged by birth, improved by education, and assisted by fortune, seem to make that noble composition which gives such a lustre to those who have possessed it as made them appear to common eyes something more than mortals, and to have been born of some mixture between divine and human race; to have been honoured and obeyed in their lives, and after their deaths bewailed and adored (Monk, p. 98). … And so I leave this crown of never-fading laurel, in full view of such great and noble spirits as shall deserve it in this or in succeeding ages. Let them win it and wear it.

(Monk, p. 166)

In particular, Temple's Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands offers some interesting glosses on Byrd's Histories of the Line. Even though Temple's Observations is not chronological in its organization, as is Byrd's History, the process which transformed Secret into History bears the mark of Temple's influence. In his book Temple views the Netherlands from the vantage point of a disinterested philosophical traveler, taking note of what social, cultural, and historical forces have shaped and cemented the Dutch into the nation they are and thereby making possible a moral commentary on human life within a social framework This is also the main purpose of History, and it is this purpose which so plainly distinguishes it from Secret. There is the addition in History of the lengthy outline of this new world's origins, with Byrd's attempt at great historical sweep, but with also his tendentious insistence on the harm done by religious enthusiasm, unrealistic expectations, greed, and indolence. Then, of course, at every opportunity during the journey itself Byrd displays an eagerness to step back and offer moral reflections on what he has just observed. In Secret he tells of a poor man named Keith who lived in squalor simply because he lacked the nails with which he could have built a solid shelter and then practiced his trade; Byrd “gave him a Note … for Nails for that purpose and so made a whole Family happy at a very small Expence” (p. 305). In History, however, it is more to Byrd's purpose to make Keith one more example of idleness, that moral disease eating away at the vitals of the body politic: “All his Wants proceeded from Indolence, and not from Misfortune [no mention of the nails!]. He had good Land, as well as good Health and good Limbs to work it, and, besides, had a Trade very useful to all the Inhabitants round about” (p. 304). Or in Secret the sarcastic mention in passing of a hermit who lived with “a Female Domestick as wild & dirty as himself” is expanded in History into a full commentary on Hobbesian man, full of judgment and pointed didacticism (see p. 46). Finally, in the observations on Norfolk, in which Secret's gossipy concerns become in History once again a chance for the philosophical traveler to learn and speculate, it is interesting here that Byrd's comparison is with Holland, in Temple's Observations the seat and norm of industry, frugality, and success within society: “it lies under the two great disadvantages that most of the Towns in Holland do, by having neither good Air nor good Water. The two Cardinal Vertues that make a Place thrive, Industry and Frugality, are seen here in Perfection; and so long as they can banish Luxury and Idleness, the Town will remain in a happy and flourishing Condition” (p. 36).

It is probably not going too far to suggest, as well, that the theoretical basis for Byrd's famous denigration of North Carolina as Lubberland comes from Temple, particularly his Observations. Temple's method of development, like the customary rhetoric of his age, depends upon antithesis: if the Netherlands is the center of prosperity in the face of adversity—for all the reasons of climate, geography, and history which Temple delights in marshalling—then what nation illustrates the reverse? Holland's superiority

cannot be better illustrated, than by its contrary, which appears no where more than in Ireland; Where by the largeness and plenty of the Soil, and scarcity of People, all things necessary to life are so cheap, that an industrious man, by two days labour, may gain enough to feed him the rest of the week; Which I take to be a very plain ground of the laziness attributed to the people: For men naturally prefer Ease before Labour, and will not take pains if they can live idle. …¹¹

Although this is hardly the Ireland that Temple's protégé Swift portrays in A Modest Proposal, it is nonetheless persuasive, considering that the Irish were never regarded as the type of heroic virtue in that age. And it is a similarly insulting label which Byrd wishes to pin on Carolinians.¹² Calling North Carolina “Lubberland” is Byrd's own touch, but his reasons for explaining North Carolina's marked contrast with Virginia are exactly the same as Temple's for the Ireland-Holland contrast: abundance of land, and food without labor (p. 92). In arguing for the superiority of Virginia over North Carolina, Byrd may also have in mind another of Temple's assumptions: that northern peoples are hardier, more energetic (though sometimes less imaginative artistically), and for the most part more successful than people to the south, enervated by a warm climate. Even though there is in fact no such drastic difference in climate between Virginia and North Carolina and though it sometimes happens that ne'er-do-well lovers of swine's flesh live north of the border (as Byrd occasionally admits), it is usually more to Byrd's propagandistic intention to ignore such difficulties. From reading Byrd's Histories of the Line, we imagine that in crossing the border we have suddenly entered a land of tropical somnolence and perpetual fruitfulness—the mythical Lubberland, with a strong admixture of Circe's island, where men are transformed into grunting swine. Byrd could certainly have created this picture independently of Temple's dichotomies—as indeed he did in individual details—but this is one more point of correspondence. Moreover, Temple was in fact the best-known source and exponent in his day for these climatological, geographical interpretations of cultural history.

Admittedly, while Byrd's indebtedness to the Observations as a theoretical source proves only that he did look up to Temple as an authority on sociological theory, as well as a model of gentlemanly control, Byrd may also have taken his public identity and role in the Histories of the Line from material in the Observations. If Holland is an example to play off against Ireland, as Virginia should be against North Carolina, and if Norfolk resembles a Dutch town in overcoming natural disadvantages by commerce and frugality, the Dutch character for Byrd might serve as a model to men who are by nature mercurial and unstable. This is without question the reason why Temple is so fascinated with the Dutch, spending a good deal of time analyzing their character. The Dutch are phlegmatic and dull, to be sure, but we ought not to dismiss them too hastily, Temple urges; for they exemplify a quality which successful men must somehow emulate. Temple clearly admires the Dutch and stresses their control and no-nonsense reliability, even in spite of their deficiency in charm:

In cold heads … Thought moves slower and heavier, but thereby the impressions of it are deeper, and last longer. … This makes duller men more constant and steddy, and quicker men more inconstant and uncertain; whereas the greatest ability in business, seems to be the steddy pursuit of some one thing till there is an end of it, with perpetual application and endeavour not to be diverted by every representation of new hopes or fears, of difficulty or danger, or of some better design. … And therefor one is for Adornment, and t'other for Use.

(pp. 69-70, my italics)

And Temple goes on to caution against the tyranny of the passions which threatens to hinder the success of “quicker men.” The italicized portion well describes the role that Byrd hoped to live up to in the two histories. “Steadiness” captures it in a word, a word that Temple uses repeatedly in identifying the most desirable qualities of government, indeed characterizing his ideal prince, William of Orange, in these terms:

Silent and thoughtful; Given to hear, and to enquire; Of a sound and steddy Understanding; Much firmness in what he once resolves, or once denies; Great Industry and application to his business; Little to his Pleasures: Piety in the Religion of his Countrey, but with Charity to others; Temperance unusual to his youth, and to the Climate; Frugal in the common management of his Fortuns, and yet magnificent upon occasion: Of great Spirit and Heart, aspiring to the glory of Military Actions: With strong ambition to grow Great, but rather by the Service than the Servitude of his Countrey. In short, a Prince of many Virtues, without any appearing mixture of Vice.

(p. 135)

What is this indeed but the portrait of William Byrd of Westover, created especially in writings like his History and his epitaph?

I am arguing, then, that Byrd saw himself as a “quicker man” who needed desperately to become “Steddy.” Take the early self-portrait Byrd drew in the character of “Inamorato L'Oiseaux.” The very qualities Byrd sees as barriers to his chances for worldly success are those Temple warns against. Byrd notes, doubtless with a combination of distress and pride:

Never did the sun shine upon a Swain who had more combustible matter in his constitution than the unfortunate Inamorato. … This Foible has been an unhappy Clogg to all his Fortunes, and hinder'd him From reaching that Eminence in the World, which his Friends and his Abilitys might possibly have advanct him to. … Diligence gives Wings to ambition by which it soars up to the highest pitch of advancement. These Wings Inamorato wanted, as he did constancy, which is another ingredient to raise a great Fortune.¹³

Professor Davis regards Byrd's fearful solicitude here as cryptic,¹⁴ but it is not so cryptic when we read it in the light of Byrd's struggles to be “Steddy.” It would seem that his fire and wit were ever matters of concern to Byrd; he records in his Commonplace Book: “Wit is a dangerous quality, both for the owner and everyone that has the misfortune to belong to him. He that is curst with wit has commonly too much fire to think, too much quickness to have any discretion. … Wit in a man, like beauty in a woman, may please and divert other people but never does its owner any good.”¹⁵ These fears in the self-portrait and the Commonplace Book tally exactly with Temple's remarks in Observations (see p. 70). In his struggles to achieve self-mastery and confidence, it is now more apparent why Byrd left off calling himself such modish names (and rather foppish, as well) as “Inamorato L'Oiseaux” and took to styling himself “Steddy.” It was his way of reminding and perhaps convincing himself as well that he had his combustibility well under control.

The metamorphosis of Inamorato into the rather well-behaved, solid figure of Steddy is amusing to watch in the pages of Secret and History. Byrd is really not sure how much lubricity Steddy should respond to, for one gathers that Steddy is thought of as solid, but surely not stolid. Certainly Steddy is permitted to have more fun than the abstracted, idealized narrator of History. Plainly, however, Byrd is inconsistent for the simple reason that Steddy is not the real Byrd but rather an assumed identity. We have already noted such inconsistencies in Byrd's self-portrayal, but they become especially revealing in regard to sexual pleasure. Sometimes Steddy is contemptuous of the low appetites of others, sometimes amused and tolerant, and sometimes even smitten himself with a touch of satyriasis: “When we saluted Mrs Hix, she bobb'd up her mouth with more than Ordinary Elasticity, and gave Us a good Opinion of her other Motions” (p. 313). More often, however, we can see a man who enjoys bawdiness but who is on guard against showing himself so. “The poor Chaplain was the common Butt at which all our Company aim'd their profane Wit, & gave him the Title of Dear Pipp, because instead of a Prick't Line, he had been so maidenly as to call it a Pipp't Line.” Then Byrd remembers his obligation to be Steddy and hastens to add, “I left the Company in good time, taking as little pleasure in their low Wit, as in their low liquor” (pp. 111, 113). Somehow, Byrd's gravity is not entirely convincing.

There is little need to multiply examples, even though Secret and History contain many delightful passages which bear out the argument. Rather let us inquire whether the findings of this study do not help us to understand Byrd the diarist, whose terse logbook omits so much that we wish he had commented on—as, for example, what he thought about when he read those weighty authors nearly every morning. Byrd's compulsion to write such a drab diary has never been satisfactorily accounted for, but perhaps we have failed to understand because we have been asking the wrong question: why should a polished and confident man like William Byrd write such a thing? In other words, if we take Byrd as he wished to be taken, seeing only “the well-bred gentleman and polite companion,” we puzzle over the private man, whose secret diary was, after all, not supposed to be considered in our assessment. Philosophical commentary and well-turned sallies are the characteristic utterance of History's narrator, not the private diarist. Manifestly Byrd did not write the Diary to reflect subjective opinions on paper (though occasionally he of course records opinions), but rather to give his life a shape and form, an order, an illusion of regularity. The kind of diary Byrd wrote allows a man to exercise a certain kind of control over his life. The refrain of “good health, good thoughts, and good humor, God be thanked” becomes at last ritual sinking into form, without meaning or substance in reality except that it suggests, and indeed demands, that things are so because they have taken substance as recorded fact—as the written word, and are therefore permanent, orderly, and understandable. It is not the diary of a confident man but rather of an unsure man. Thus in his Diary Byrd does not want to emphasize opinions, doubts, and fears; he wants to conjure them away by suppressing their mention on paper and creating in their place the stability and regularity of the Diary as we have it. This is the man he would be; this is the life he would lead; this is the diary of a Steddy. In a way it is like James Boswell's insistent self-admonition, “Be retenu, Be Johnson,” except that in this case there is no longer a need for admonition. Steadiness is a fait accompli. Byrd is Steddy by a fiat of the pen. He has created himself in his own ideal image.

By looking at the evidence in the Histories of the Line for a less self-assured Byrd, we have been able to appreciate their artistry—and their unevenness—because we have seen Byrd the artist—and the man. No one believes, anyway, that good art is ever in fact dashed off with cavalier indifference, and perhaps it is well, finally, to apply this principle to the writings of William Byrd. Critics recently have shown us the art and importance of Byrd. Professor Davis says it well:

“The History” is … a superior work of both intention and accomplishment. Here is the southern planter of the golden age seeing his native Virginia world through the eyes of European experience and education. He ornaments his picture with his learning and his knowledge of the world of men. Above all, he sees it as he should, as an actual journey which was also the symbolic progress of the American experience. As in Leatherstocking's gradual trek westward or Huck Finn's voyage down the Mississippi, the epic significance of the journey is largely implicit.¹⁶

I do not deny these epic dimensions which Davis identifies. I would note only that we ought to be aware as well of the struggle of Byrd to appear heroic, for the struggle is also part of the significance of heroic experience. Could this be that quality—Byrd's efforts to justify himself by his style, to prove himself, to find himself—which even the pigheaded Firebrand managed to perceive in Steddy's account when he objected that “it was too Poetical” (p. 129)?

Notes

1. See the Diary entry for July 30, 1710.

2. Pierre Marambaud, William Byrd of Westover, 1674-1744 (Charlottesville, Va., 1971), pp. 74-75.

3. “William Byrd,” in Major Writers of Early American Literature, ed. Everett Emerson (Madison, Wisc., 1972), p. 175.

4. Because my study demands constant comparison of the two versions, I have used the parallel-text edition of William K. Boyd and Percy G. Adams (New York, 1967), for my citations.

5. The finely turned observation made the next day which ends the entry in Secret, p. 229, is much flatter in History, p. 228.

6. The following remarks by Lionel Gossman are penetrating: “The predominantly ironical mode of eighteenth-century writing is in itself significant. Irony is preeminently an instrument of inclusion and exclusion, and its playful exterior disguises a certain repressiveness. As the Enlightened critic unmasks the religious enthusiast, the historical hero, the devoted spouse, the metaphysician, as he reveals what is ‘behind the back’ of the other's noble discourse, he is careful not to expose his own back. It often happens that irony in eighteenth-century French literature [and in English, too] does not point to a hidden sense which is the opposite of the manifest one—the traditional meaning of irony. It is infinitely receding, turning the reader back from every formulation of a position, so that the laws by which all others are judged—and condemned—are never enunciated. It both permits and requires the values, through which the initiated come together and recognize each other, to remain unspoken. These values are, indeed, what cannot and may not be openly said, for being said they would in turn lie open to criticism and question.” “Literary Scholarship and Popular History,” Eighteenth-Century Studies, VII (Winter, 1973/74), 139-140.

7. I will admit, however, that Byrd makes delightful use of the harpy-figure in his account of Bearskin's conception of purgatory (see pp. 200-201).

8. T. B. Macaulay, Essays, Critical and Miscellaneous (New York, 1873), VI, 324. Quoted by Clara Marburg, Sir William Temple: A Seventeenth Century “Libertin” (New Haven, Conn., 1932), p. xi.

9. Five Miscellaneous Essays by Sir William Temple, ed. Samuel Holt Monk (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1963), p. 203. Or consider the ending of Ancient and Modern Learning: “That among so many things as are by men possessed or pursued in the course of their lives, all the rest are baubles, besides old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to converse with, and old books to read” (p. 71).

10. See the “Catalogue of the Books in the Library at Westover,” in John Spencer Bassett, ed., The Writings of Col. Wm. Byrd of Westover in Virginia, Esq. (1901; rpt. New York, 1970), pp. 414-426.

11. Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands, ed. Sir George Clark (Oxford, 1972), p. 109.

12. Cf. Byrd's lumping of the lazy Indians with the Irish: “Like the wild Irish, they would rather want than Work, and are all men of Pleasure to whom every day is a day of rest” (p. 262).

13. Another Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover …, ed. Maude H. Woodfin (Richmond, Va., 1942), pp. 276-277.

14. Davis, “William Byrd,” p. 158.

15. Commonplace Book, Virginia Historical Society, pp. 91-92. Quoted in The Prose Works of William Byrd of Westover, ed. Louis B. Wright (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), p. 36.

16. Davis, “William Byrd,” p. 174.