Photo by, well, me, Manassas, Va. October 12, 2009.
"There is a fine library connected with the Academy from which cadets can get books to read in their quarters. I devoted more time to these, than to books relating to the course of studies. Much of the time, I am sorry to say, was devoted to novels, but not those of a trashy sort. I read all of Bulwer's then published, Cooper's, Marryat's, Scott's, Washington Irving's works, Lever's, and many others that I do not now remember." -Ulysses S. Grant, Personal MemoirsI drove out to Virginia yesterday because it was a holiday, and because I felt like I ought to do something other than hang about the house finishing up the first season of Spooks (Although, of course, I did that too. That scene in the last episode of the first season, when Tom and the Irish terrorist strip down, face-to-face, to prove that neither of them is armed and there to kill each other, is beautifully filmed.). So I braved the traffic, and picked a half-bushel of undersized, scrawny apples from stripped-down trees, and took 66 back through the suburbs, past a Kohls, until the fields were fenced with split rails and I turned into the parking lot on the land that was once First Manassas. I looped around the field, past a house occupied by an elderly woman who refused to leave her family's land and was killed by a shell during the battle, and settled in on the foundations of another house, the one owned by a free slave, who bought 170 acres from a man who bought 180 acres from that older woman. His house was damaged during the war, and Congress voted him compensation. But the house doesn't stand today, and I sat down on the stone borders of the old foundation to start reading Grant's memoirs.
Which are an unexpected delight. Grant is funny, and self-deprecating, willing to portray himself as easily swindled and a poor student. His courtship involves the lady in question thinking of him a friend and finding herself somewhat disconcerted when he absents himself. They wrote letters for four years while he was fighting the war in Mexico. He's frank about the fact that he's writing the book because he's broke. I don't have much more to say about the book than that, yet, since I'm not even closed to finish, but it's charming. And while Grant obviously wasn't at either First or Second Manassas, there was something nice about hearing his voice on the page for the first time on a field that was a stop on the way to his command. Much of American land is haunted. But at least yesterday, my ghost was a friendly one.