A Gift from Spain

NARRATOR: In the summer of 1787, a group of delegates from each state except Rhode Island huddled together in the sweltering Philadelphia heat. Their task is simple, to determine a new model of government. Leading the effort is George Washington, considered by many to be the most trustworthy person in the young nation. Their work concludes on September 17, 1787, when 39 of the 55 delegates officially sign the Constitution of the United States. Now relieved of his momentous duty, Washington marks the occasion with a visit to a bookshop. He purchases a four-volume set of the celebrated Spanish novel, Don Quixote. 

This book is more than just a reward for a job well done, for Washington wasn't the only person with Don Quixote on his mind. Just a few months later, another copy of Don Quixote would arrive at Mount Vernon. This one, a gift from the Spanish ambassador. So why Don Quixote? What does the classic Spanish story about a knight-errant have to say about Washington as a leader? In this episode of Secrets of Washington's Archives, we'll introduce you to one of the most valuable items in our book collection. The magnificent edition of Don Quixote, that even Benjamin Franklin considered one of the finest books ever made. 

And now, your host, Dr. Anne Fertig.

ANNE FERTIG: Welcome to the Secrets of Washington's Archives. In this podcast and video series, we're taking you inside the vault at the Mars Rare Books and Manuscripts Suite at the George Washington Presidential Library. Today, we're talking about a very special book, indeed, a very valuable book in its own right, but a book that is deeply entwined with a story about George Washington, his relationship with the Spanish, and the Constitutional Convention. Here today to discuss this magnificent treasure kept here at the George Washington Presidential Library is none other than Dr. Douglas Bradburn. Dr. Bradburn is the president and CEO here at Mount Vernon, but he was also the founding director of the George Washington Presidential Library. So I can think of no better person to bring here today to talk about Don Quixote, George Washington, and the significance of collecting his library. So welcome Dr. Bradburn. 

DOUGLAS BRADBURN: Great to be here and excited to talk about one of my favorite books in the collection. 

FERTIG: So before we begin, can you tell us a little bit about your history here at Mount Vernon? 

BRADBURN: I came to Mount Vernon in 2013 as the founding director of the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington. As we call it, the Washington Library, the George Washington Presidential Library. And at the time, it was just an empty building. It had been built over a few years, part of a capital campaign of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association, saying that George Washington needed his own presidential library. And I left academia to come here. I was a history professor at SUNY Binghamton in upstate New York. And it was an exciting time, because I had to learn a lot about George Washington and his library, and I think that it's an incredible way to get at this ubiquitous man, is through his education. 

FERTIG: We were certainly glad that you decided to come here. It's been 10 years now, hasn't it, since the library opened? 

BRADBURN: That's right. It opened on September 27, 2013, and this year we've spent the year thinking about ways to celebrate our accomplishments in this past decade and really looking forward to the next.

FERTIG: So one of the missions of the George Washington Presidential Library is to recreate the library of George Washington, both by collecting the books that he owned, but also by collecting matching editions of books that he owned as well. So can you tell us a little bit about what the significance of this project is? Why is it so important to recreate the library? 

BRADBURN: The matching editions project and the effort to create and bring back his actual library is a wonderful initiative here at Mount Vernon. And I think it's critical to remember that George Washington is self-educated in the context of this library. He doesn't inherit a large part of somebody's library. He doesn't purchase somebody else's library. Every book he has was acquired in a particular moment in time, sometimes as a gift, sometimes out of his own curiosity, sometimes out of a need that he felt like he needed to fulfill. And they all tell us a little bit about the way he thought and learned. Washington comes down to us oftentimes as the active man of the founding period. He's surrounded by the erudite James Madison and the polymath Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson's notable for his learning. And Washington is not thought of necessarily as that, but the reality is when you look in his library and you look at the way he purchased books and read books and used books throughout his life, you see a man who was curious throughout his life, who certainly gives us a great lesson about lifelong learning and its importance, and also that he was a man of the Enlightenment. He was like those of his peers, interested in the way that human beings could improve the world that they inherited. When you boil it down, it's a fundamental idea is that through learning, through sharing knowledge, and through reason, human beings could improve upon what they had. We weren't destined to do the same thing, the same way that our ancestors had done it. And that's exciting to see George Washington as a part of that founding milieu. 

FERTIG: One of my favorite things that we've really had a chance to explore in this series so far is just how eclectic the collection could be, right? We often think of, yes, agriculture and military as being his great interests. But as we've featured in this series, we've shown off all sorts of wonderful types of literatures and texts that he collected. So that brings us, of course, to the Don Quixote, one of the star items of our collection. And this is really, really interesting because we actually have two Don Quixotes in our collection, one that is in English and one that is in Spanish. 

BRADBURN: When you walk into the vault at Mount Vernon and you tell the story from there, oftentimes I point to the Don Quixotes and say, well, you have these two incredible Don Quixotes. Now, one of those, the English language, Tobias Smollett edition, London 1783, it's in four small volumes. George Washington purchased that on the same day that he signed the U.S. Constitution. So that right there opens up a question, wow, I mean, that's really cool. They just finished many months in Philadelphia wrangling over the new form of government. And as Washington finishes that work, the next thing he does is go out and buys this copy of Don Quixote. So that's kind of intriguing in and of itself. And then the other version we have, which is a beautiful 1780 Madrid-made edition of Don Quixote, four volumes in leather, just gorgeous books. And these arrived a few months later at Mount Vernon. And so right there you have the elements of a great tale. Like Washington acquires these within months of each other and they're related in that fundamental way. 

FERTIG: Just to give listeners an idea of just how spectacular the Spanish Don Quixote is. It's a very large book. I think it's the first thing that strikes you. It's huge compared to the other books in his collection and certainly compared to the Tobias Smollett Don Quixote. The Smollett is meant for reading. The Spanish version is really meant for seeing. It has these beautiful prints throughout the book. They're just stunning. It was a really special edition too because the Spanish created it as the ultimate edition of Don Quixote. It starts off with this very long dissertation. It contains ornamentations in each chapter. It's really meant to be a special book. And the way that Washington acquired it is pretty special in its own right because this book was a gift to George Washington from the Spanish. 

BRADBURN: That's right. So, Gardoqui, the original ambassador from the Spanish to the United States who had become friendly with George Washington and had seen him in Philadelphia, mails him that edition of the book. Gardoqui knew Benjamin Franklin, socialized with many of the founders. At some point in Philadelphia, George Washington visits the house of Benjamin Franklin to have a dinner, to view a new machine that presses linens. And in the course of that evening, Franklin shows Washington this incredible edition of Don Quixote, raving about its print, raving about its glorious production, the illustrations, extraordinary paper quality, and praising it as one of the finest books available. And so what happened, so at some point, people started talking about Cervantes, Don Quixote. George Washington didn't know Cervantes, and clearly made that apparent to everybody there, but he would go out.

And on the day he signed the Constitution, he would purchase this English language version of Don Quixote. And then a few months later, he received from the Spanish ambassador this incredible four-volume Madrid edition of Cervantes. And in the letter, he basically writes to George Washington, I remember when we were together at Dr. Franklin's house and you mentioned you had not seen the Don Quixote. Well, I enclose for you this incredible edition, all of which was made in Spain. I only wish it was in English so you can enjoy it more.

That's a paraphrase, but it's essentially the point, and it's really telling to me because Washington obviously had already gone out and purchased the Smollett edition. And so clearly that visit to Franklin's house was an event in which Franklin was showing off this extraordinary edition, probably showing off the fine character of the print, certainly with the wonderful approval of the Spanish ambassador who was right there with him. And so we get a real sense of that life going on in Philadelphia at the time of the Constitutional Convention.

FERTIG: That's actually one of my favorite details is that we know of letters from people who had visited Franklin before and had talked about Franklin showing off the same exact edition of Don Quixote and how apparently Franklin thought it was one of the best examples of a printed book anywhere in the world. So we have this long history attached to it with Franklin. He's showing it off to everyone who will know about it. And then we also have in Washington's diary, on September 3rd, 1787, this visit to Franklin to view a mangle, which is a machine, I believe, that is used to press linens. 

BRADBURN: Yes, that's right. It was an effort to try to speed up the process of what we would think of ironing linens. You could do it in one big sheet. 

FERTIG: So it's just delightful, this idea of, you know, they're already going to Franklin's house. Franklin's already showing off one of his machines, and he shows off this book. And the Spanish ambassador, his name was… Diego Maria de Gardoqui, he was actually known to the Founding Fathers, I think, as James Gardoqui. He took this opportunity. 

BRADBURN: Jim Gardoqui, yeah. 

FERTIG: But he takes this opportunity. And why might have Gardoqui wanted to impress Washington with this spectacular book? 

BRADBURN: Gardoqui was sent to, well, really was empowered by the Spanish court to encourage the Americans to give up navigation of the Mississippi River. This was not settled in the Treaty of Paris. The Spanish also didn't agree with everything that was agreed to at the Treaty of Paris between the French and the British and the United States, including a lot of how to deal with what we think of now as the southeast of the United States. The Spanish really thought the Creek Confederacy had much more authority over the land there than the Americans did. And the navigation of the Mississippi was a critical, critical aspect of the way to govern the interior of the continent because of course the main port is at New Orleans. New Orleans at the time was in Spanish control. And the problem for the Americans is that all the settlers that are rushing over the Appalachian Mountains, all those rivers in the Ohio Valley and the Kentuckies and other places, they flow to the west. They flow away from the major seat of power and settlement of the new United States and end up in New Orleans. 

So if the Americans couldn't get navigation rights to that river, they might lose control of the western half of their country, essentially. And so, Gardoqui certainly wants Washington to think favorably of him, and he does write him about this issue. And Washington, of course, is a private citizen at the time. He's not the head of state. He's not really anything official. He's the president of essentially what some could consider an illegal constitutional convention at the time. And so, Gardoqui knows, however, that Washington is the most important man in the new United States, that if they do centralize power, Washington will be a political figure. 

FERTIG: I believe that Gardoqui wrote back to Spain at one point predicting too that if they were going to elect anyone, it would have been George Washington. So, it really seems like he was just laying his ducks in a row and trying to get an early influence perhaps on this important issue? 

BRADBURN: Yeah, Gardoqui clearly was attuned to what was going on in Philadelphia. The convention itself kept everything secret, but the conversations out of doors and amongst people not only there but in New York and other places, people knew the general tenor that the Articles of Confederation was going to be thrown out entirely, they were going to try to create a new government which would have an executive power, it might be an elected head of state of some kind. And Gardoqui very clearly predicted that Washington, if they were going to put anybody in that role, he would be the one to do it. He knew the right places to push on the levers, but he had no influence on Washington. Washington, a, would have had no interest in giving up navigational control of the Mississippi River. He himself had land interests out in Kentucky and beyond and had been oriented to the West and understood the challenges there. And that's why he was in the process of building the Potomac Navigation Company to try to solve that problem through a canal system.  But yeah, Washington was also very scrupulous and incorruptible in this case. 

FERTIG: Yeah, because this is just one of many gifts that the Spanish gave him. 

BRADBURN: It's fascinating, the relationship actually, because the Spanish of course never formally recognized the independence of the United States until the Treaty of Paris. They did however, and were however at war with the British throughout. They had the Bourbon family compact with the French. They ended up paying a lot of the French bills. They were supplying a lot of arms and uniforms. In fact, Gardoqui was involved in getting Spanish uniforms sent to the troops during the American Revolution itself. And Washington had learned about some aspects of Spanish agriculture through some of his contacts during that war. Don Juan de Morales was an ambassador from the court sent unofficially to visit Washington at Morristown and he came with the French minister and he actually died there. But Washington learned about this giant jack stock in Spain. So the jack stock is what we use rather than jackass because that's what they were known as. But jack stock is, the current usage today is mammoth jack stock. So this giant jack stock existed in Spain. Washington was himself an agricultural innovator, really interested in trying to improve husbandry and agricultural practice in the United States, and really was dedicated to that after the American War. 

And the Spanish King made it possible for two of these beasts to be sent to George Washington. One survived called Royal Gift, which George Washington put out to stud, not only at Mount Vernon, but really all over the southern part of the United States to create mules. And that incredible gift had a major impact on American agriculture going forward. Washington also received some pequina wool from South America. Both of these gifts required royal approval to be sent outside of the Spanish Empire. And so it shows an awareness, obviously, of Washington's importance, but also, I think, a very friendly relationship between Gardoqui and Washington. 

FERTIG: Yeah, there definitely seemed to be a friendship there. Gardoqui was writing to Washington, was asking Washington to dinner. And we see in Washington's diary, right, he is writing about his visits with Gardoqui. At the same time, there's of course that formal diplomatic relationship too. So it always amazes me how Washington is able to navigate both and with such grace in his letters, especially when he refuses to intervene on the Mississippi issue. 

BRADBURN: Washington also, I think, is really astute about the politically possible. And so he can often come away in an agreeable way with people knowing that there's very little that can be done. And so not putting himself out there in areas where it's unlikely for there to be any success. So in this case, it aligns both with his personal beliefs, probably as well as his interest not to try to get involved with the Mississippi crisis, despite being given a beautiful book, which as persuasive as that can be, I mean, that's not exactly a chest of gold either. 

FERTIG: But at the same time, that conversation was convincing enough to coax Washington into buying his own copy of Don Quixote in English. Washington famously, of course, did not speak any other language but English. So he's obviously wanting to read it. 

BRADBURN: Yeah, I think that's an important part that needs to be remembered here, is that there's a couple ways to understand Gardoqui’s note there. He says, you mentioned you did not see Don Quixote, meaning you had not seen this edition, maybe. But also it might be a broader sense that he didn't really know Cervantes. And I like to think, I mean, this is one of those occasions. We're often at dinner parties where people mention books that you haven't read and you've got a couple options. You know, you can kind of bluff your way through and change the subject. You can admit, I haven't read this classic that everybody who's an educated person should have read. In my mind, I imagine a scenario in which Franklin, who as you know, is obsessed with publishing. I mean, he owns booksellers, he owns newspapers still. He would have known about the new Smollett edition, was  fairly new, it's London 1786, so it's basically the year before, and he would have known where they were being sold, and he might have said, well, Your Excellency George, you can go down to such and such a bookshop and pick up this new edition. And Washington did. 

Washington always wants to know what he's supposed to know, and he fills those gaps in practical ways, you see it, but also in these more general educational ways. And it speaks a little bit, I think, to his curiosity and his character.

FERTIG: What I also love about this particular edition, it is by Tobias Smollett. Washington is not often characterized as a heavy novel reader, but of the novels that we know that he owned and that he possibly read, several of them are by Tobias Smollett, who was known for writing these very humorous adventure novels like Humphrey Clinker, Washington owned that book, Peregrine Pickle, and Smollett was also a translator as well. And so, to me, it's very interesting. I don't know if that's just a coincidence or if Washington recognized the name. There were other editions of Don Quixote at the time that he chose to purchase this. And I really like that too, because getting into Washington, what does he enjoy? Who is he as a human? What's his sense of humor? That gives us another little peek. He does enjoy these novels from time to time. 

FERTIG: Those picaresque novels, the period, they align well with a lot of his early reading, a lot of travel logs, a lot of travel journeys. Obviously Don Quixote fits the bill. Gilles Blas is also sort of an adventures of a person and misadventures. And so they do have that character. Yeah, he may have recognized Smollett in that sense. There's another weird connection with Smollett. He was imprisoned in jail in Spain at the Battle of Cartagena, where Lawrence Washington, his brother, had served. Smollett learned Spanish in a Spanish prison. And so his ability to translate into Spanish, Don Quixote came out of the same failed misadventure that got Mount Vernon its name. 

FERTIG: Well, that's fascinating. I don't think I've ever realized that before. Truly global connections there. 

BRADBURN: Absolutely right. It all comes back to Smollett for sure. 

FERTIG: And I believe he was actually also reading Smollett's history of England. So just a lot of different variety. So it shows, I think, a little bit of a preference for one particular author. At least that's my theory. 

So we've talked a bit about this marvelous, marvelous story right and we get a little bit of everything with it. We get a little bit of Washington social life, we get to see Washington interacting with Franklin and Gardoqui, we get to see if Washington maybe as a reader or as a collector or as a politician. Overall, what do you say this incident tells us about Washington as a person whether that's about him as a reader or him? 

BRADBURN: Within these wider socio-political networks. It's a great question. Again, I go back to this idea of a man that's trying to fill in gaps in his education, a man who's willing to admit when he doesn't know something, even if it might be embarrassing and then fix that issue. He'd been obsessed with self-improvement from being a young boy. I mean, you read his journal when he goes over the mountains when he's 16 years old and he tells a story when he went into bed and he took off his clothes and he slept in a bed that was filled with fleas and ticks and nasty vermin and he immediately went out and slept like the others were outside by the fire.

Him not being as good of a woodsman as the men that he was with. And you could see the embarrassment on this 16-year-old who was traveling with older men. They're probably laughing about, well, George is going to go in there and take his clothes off in this nasty bed because that's what he was used to doing. 

And he wrote in his diary, and you will see I would never do that again. So he's got this sort of self-improving streak that isn't something you can teach. People either have it or they don't. And I think his whole library tells that story. And the Don Quixote he touches, it's a small story. But he becomes such a big personality, it's these little windows, I think, which give us a sense of the man. And I think when you take a step back and you look at the geopolitical, you know, he's at Dr. Franklin's house, he's got the Spanish ambassador there. It's just extraordinary. I mean, he is at the center of everything. And a critical part of the way we can tell that, understand the story of the founding, the framing and early international affairs, he's going to be the moving figure in the presidency and this little story helps touch on so many elements. 

FERTIG: So we have this book being given to George Washington. How popular, how well known would Don Quixote have been at the time? It is the great classic of Spanish literature.

BRADBURN: Both Don Quixote and his servant, Sancho Ponzo, are really characters invented by Cervantes that become crucial in Western literature. So it is the book for the Spanish. 

FERTIG: So we see Washington occasionally reading some of these novels by Smollett, some of these picaresque novels, which as you say, might have appealed to him because of their travel narratives or perhaps because of their humor. By and large, what do you think people like Washington or perhaps even other founding fathers were taken away from novels like this. Maybe not their political texts, but what inspiration or what appeal is there to the novel? 

BRADBURN: Don Quixote at a fundamental level is the story of a man who's confused about where he is in time and place and often believing things are happening that aren't there. I mean, the notion of knight's errant is something that comes up in Washington's letters quite a bit in the sense that we have to abandon older ideals of chivalry. Now they're used for humorous purposes throughout Cervantes. Older ideals and older enemies and really find ways to work together. There's a great letter Washington writes to Chastellux about this, so you know that only knights errant want war and that what we really want is commerce, and commerce will bring us together and we'll be able to share and learn about each other in mutually useful ways. 

And that's a very much kind of a high enlightenment notion, idealistic in its own way, but a rejection of sort of the chivalric glory tradition, which Cervantes himself is criticizing in the book. So I think in that sense, it speaks to them very powerfully that they are representing the future and they get the humor very powerfully, I think, in Don Quixote.

FERTIG: I think back earlier in this series we talked about Martha's novel reading and the kind of lessons that the novel would pass down to her granddaughters. And I see this in sort of the same way, they're picking up on these lessons of the novel, the follies of the knight errant. So even though it is humorous and even though it is very absurd, the phrase tilting at windmills comes from Don Quixote, the idea of chasing after monsters where they don't exist. They're funny, but they also do kind of pass on important lessons and important warnings. 

BRADBURN: Yeah, it's a critique of an older Europe that they believe they're replacing with their own vision of trying to organize the world around reason rather than glory. At least that's Washington's point of view. And I do think that comes through. And ultimately, though, these are rip-roaring tales. They're entertainment. They can't just sit down and stream Netflix all night long. They got to have some entertainment as well. These are great stories and ultimately there's an enjoyment factor in any novel reading. 

FERTIG: So if Washington wasn't reading a ton of novels, what other sources of entertainment did he find? He loved to dance. He loved going to the theater, for sure. He loved to hunt. He loved to fox hunt. His diary in the 1780s is filled with fox hunting, which is clearly enjoyable. He enjoyed that physicality, the exercise. In fact, he went stir crazy when he was president in New York. He had to get out and walk. He was always frustrated whenever he couldn't get out and do things. And he clearly also enjoyed being with his family in the evenings socializing. 

He didn't love big parties with a bunch of strangers, particularly as he became more and more famous. He had more people wanting to watch him perform and he was not that type. He was not a person who needed to be the smartest person in the room or the most vivacious or the one telling wonderful anecdotes. His enjoyment seems to be more in the quiet pursuits of agriculture. He was obsessed and passionate about trying to find a better way to do things in the Chesapeake, reading all the latest literature there. You know, we think about entertainment as connected with leisure. I think he got a lot of pleasure out of that effort of improving his own estates, the work of his mind and the estate itself.

FERTIG: Well, thank you Dr. Bradburn for joining us today. And for all of our listeners out there, I'd like to remind you that this Don Quixote is the one that Ben Franklin thought was the best example of a print book available anywhere in the world at the time. So you should definitely check out the video companion for the Don Quixote, also titled The Secrets of Washington's Archives. You can find that on the Mount Vernon YouTube page or by going to georgewashingtonpodcast.com. The book featured in this podcast was Elginioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes Salvador, which was purchased in 2012 by the Mount Vernon Ladies Association. It also featured the English translation Don Quixote, translated by Tobias Smollett, which was a gift from the Randolph William Hearst Foundation in 1983.

Did you know Mount Vernon members get new episodes of Secrets of Washington's Archives two weeks early? And that's not the only benefit. Members can enjoy other exclusive bonuses, including bonus episodes, members-only events, and a subscription to Mount Vernon Magazine, full of articles about George Washington and early American history. To learn more, go to georgewashingtonpodcast.com and click Members. The Secrets of Washington's Archives is a production of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association and CD Squared. Hosted by Dr. Anne Fertig. Researched by Dr. Fertig and Dr. Douglas Bradburn. Narration and audio production by Curt Dahl at CD Squared. The music featured in this podcast is from the album No Kissing Allowed in School produced by the Colonial Music Institute. You can listen to more from this album and other productions of the Colonial Music Institute on Spotify.