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It was on this date in history — August 13, 1751 — that Samuel Davies (1723-1761) from Hanover County, Virginia wrote to his brother-in-law, John Holt, residing in Williamsburg, Virginia, a memorable summary of his feelings at that time.
Davies was then 27 years old. He had married his second wife Jane (his term of endearment for her was “Chara”) in 1748, and by this date they had two children, and another would be born the following year. A month before, in July 1751, Davies had lost his dear friend and mentor, Samuel Blair, of whom he wrote poetic tributes. In late June Davies had written a letter to Joseph Bellamy, a Congregational pastor residing in Bethlehem, Connecticut, which would later be published under the title The State of Religion Among the Protestant Dissenters in Virginia (1751) and then republished under a different title: An Account of a Remarkable Work of Grace, or, The Great Success of the Gospel in Virginia (1752). Though there were struggles and disappointments, yet, this was a period in Samuel Davies’ life that was filled with optimism and that is reflected in a poem he wrote, soon to be published in January 1752 within his collection of Miscellaneous Poems, titled Gratitude and Impotence, in which he pours out a desires to offer more praise to God than he thus does because he has so much for which to be thankful:
My Breast with warmer Zeal should burn,
With deeper tend’rer Sorrows mourn,
Than Gabriel that surrounds the Throne,
Than any Wretch beneath the Sun.
Imagine Davies, at home with his “Chara,” as well as with little William and Samuel, Jr., in his humble library, perhaps with Jonathan Edwards’ Life of David Brainerd (which he loaned to a friend in September 1751) on his desk; or the verse and prose of Joseph Addison, whom he described to John Holt in a letter a few days previously as “our favorite”; and perhaps extracts from Edward Young’s Night Thoughts, which he asked John to procure for him the following month, and of which he was to say, “of all the poetical Pieces I ever read, the Night thoughts, I think have been most serviceable to me; and I shall keep them as my companion, till I commence an Immortal.”
The memorable words which Davies wrote to Holt on August 13, 1751 are these:
I can tell you that I am as happy as perhaps Creation can make me: I enjoy all the Necessaries and most of the Conveniences of Life; I have a peaceful Study, as a Refuge from the Hurries and Noise of the World around me; the venerable Dead are waiting in my Library to entertain me, and relieve me from the Nonsense of surviving Mortals; I am peculiarly happy in my Relations, and Providence does not afflict me by afflicting them. In short, I have all a moderate Heart can wish; and I very much question if there be a more calm, placid and contented Mortal in Virginia.
Three years later, on July 21, 1754, while in England with Gilbert Tennent fundraising on behalf of the College of New Jersey (Princeton), that Davies wrote in his diary words that hearken back to that very special place and feeling described above: “How do I long for Retirement in my Study, and the Company of my Chara!”
