Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, November 27, 1994                   TAG: 9411290019
SECTION: BOOKS                    PAGE: F6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY ROBERT HILLDRUP
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TWO BOOKS REVISE HISTORY BY EITHER FICTION OR 'FACT'

SOCIAL LIFE IN OLD VIRGINIA BEFORE THE WAR. By Thomas Nelson Page. Chapman Billies. (price not listed).

To the modern, discriminating reader, each of these entertaining books is worth a gentle laugh because each is a powerful piece of propaganda. Barbara Chase-Ribourd's novel shamefully distorts history in the name of political correctness while Thomas Nelson Page's nonfiction, first issued in 1892, simply attempts to romanticize it.

Barbara Chase-Ribourd, author of the fantasy novel "Sally Hemmings," continues her original saga down the largely discredited path leading from the accusation that Thomas Jefferson was the father of Hemmings' children.

This, of course, is the meat and marrow of the so-called "historical novel," but most novelists at least include a disclaimer where they have distorted history as maliciously as does Chase-Ribourd. This is particularly sad because legions of respected historians have examined her work and shown that it is based on the tale of a discredited office seeker, and that the real parent was probably a distant relative of the president.

Chase-Ribourd builds most of her story around Harriett, the daughter of the novel's title, and siblings Thomas, Beverly and Thenia. The author makes Harriett a spectator at many of the dramatic events of the 19th century, including Gettysburg, and never misses a chance to sprinkle distortion and disinformation along the way.

What could have been a book that more reasonably explored miscegenation (and the fact that it also came from the mating of black men with white women early in the nation's history as T.O. Madden Jr. points out in his family history, "We Were Always Free") thus becomes just an entertaining failure.

"The President's Daughter" will thus attract considerable attention and knee-jerk praise from the liberal revisionists - almost as much as Thomas Nelson Page's "Social Life in Old Virginia Before the War" did in 1892 with its romantic treatment of Virginia plantation life, a treatment that bred and reinforced the mentality that gave us "Gone With the Wind."

The white yeomanry, which provided the backbone of the Confederacy as well as its armies, gets nary a mention, as if the idea that it had any kind of social life was impossible to comprehend. Much more attention is given to black social life.

Not a bad word of the horrors of slavery is included. What it does say well is not just how the Southern patrician probably saw himself, but how Page and his generation wanted to make sure they were remembered. In that sense, the re-issue of his little book is highly valuable not just for the incomplete picture it gives of pre-Civil War life, but for the distortions Page and his generation perpetuated, knowingly or not.

Robert Hilldrup is a Richmond writer and former newspaperman.