Such intellectual niceties as spelling were no prerequisite to being accepted as a gentleman in those days in the South, and George was a naturally friendly and popular person. The phrenologist was probably right who said that he was ambitious to excel and liked to be commended “if done genteely.”137 There is in his letters, however, no sign of the sort of sensitivity one might have expected would appeal to Mary, none of the intellectual sensibility that had marked Albert.138 It may have been the very fact that he was a normal, healthy, well-adjusted young man which attracted Mary—the appeal the ordinary has for the extraordinary.139
That George Glover had the power of inspiring both admiration and devotion in his friends is indicated by a letter sent to him in May, 1844, by a French friend on leaving America:
Je pars mais mon seul regret est de m’éloigner de vous! Que j’admire cette sincérité! cette franchise! qui font l’ornement de votre âme! oui! je me trouve heureux d’avoir eu un ami, un frère tel que vous; mais malheureux mille fois encore de me trouver dans la nécessité de vous abandonner! car le devoir d’un père de famille m’appelle; & je vous quitte avec le coeur rempli d’amertume!
(I take my leave, but my only regret is departing from you! I so admire your honesty! your straightforwardness! they are the crown and jewel of your soul! yes! it fills me with joy to have a friend, a brother like you; but it makes it a thousand times worse to find myself forced to abandon you! alas, family demands are calling; & I say goodbye with a heavy heart.)140
137 William P. Hebard, “Phrenological Character & Talents of Mr George W Glover as given on January 27 1841 By Wm P Hebard Charleston,” Keith McNeil collection.
138 Mrs. Glover was later to express regret that he had no appreciation of poetry (cf. Daniel Patterson to Mary Baker Glover, c. 1853 [Peel’s estimate: May 1853], L16244, MBEL; quoted in part, on p. 155). His portrait, however, does give a hint of sensitiveness not evident in his letters.
139 This is the paradox of which Thomas Mann has given a classic statement in “Tonio Kröger.” [Thomas Mann, “Tonio Kröger,” in Stories of Three Decades, trans. H. T. Porter-Lowe (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1936), pp. 85–132.]
140 John Wame to George Washington Glover, 24 May 1844, Subject File, George Washington Glover - Correspondence, MBEL. In view of Glover’s business in Haiti (see pp. 97–98) it may be that the friend was a Haitian.