THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 26, 1995 TAG: 9502220387
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BILL RUEHLMANN
LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines
THE ADMIRING LETTER to long-running Virginian-Pilot columnist George Holbert Tucker came from Virginia E. Hudgins, 80, of Frisco, N.C.:
``Loved your article about dueling in Sunday's paper. What a huge amount of research you went to to come up with this delightful account.
``And I must tell you that every Sunday, I thumb through the paper until I get to your article in Commentary. I check to see what `George has written about today.' On occasion, when your byline is missing, the thought - unbidden - goes through my head GEORGE IS DEAD and it is with considerable relief to find that NO, HE'S ALIVE when I see your article the following week.''
Tucker, 85, being one part literary lion and at least one part the jungle variety, roared his approval.
``I may have one foot in the grave,'' the writer observed, ``but I'm doing a jig with the other.''
An enduringly agile display, to be sure. Tucker wrote his first piece for The Virginian-Pilot in 1947. He retired from the newspaper in 1974 - for three months.
Since, Tucker has been the astringent source for hundreds of weekly insights on the past, signed with his name and illuminated by his bespectacled kisser, which resembles a bemused Howland Owl.
``It's not the money I get from the column that motivates me,'' said Tucker, relaxing in his book-packed Norfolk apartment. ``At my age, people tend to withdraw. The column is an iron in the fire for me; it's my hot line, a point of contact.''
So yes, Virginia, George is alive - and sporting a bright blue T-shirt with white letters that read, triumphantly: ``AGED TO PERFECTION.''
Tucker is also author of nine books, the most recent being Jane Austen the Woman: Some Biographical Insights (St. Martin's Press, 268 pp., $23.95). Last May, Old Dominion University English professor Jeffrey H. Richards reviewed the volume in these pages, calling its author a ``quiet corrector of the record.'' Publishers Weekly pronounced the book ``prodigiously researched.''
The Christian Science Monitor said it was ``an important, even necessary, contribution to Austeniana.''
But now the British edition has earned Tucker full critical ears and tail. Former New Statesman editor Paul Johnson, writing in the (London) Sunday Telegraph, declared: ``I thought I knew virtually all there is to be known about Austen, but I found fresh and often startling information about her on almost every page. This is the kind of book I most admire, with a high factual content and everything fully documented.''
Tucker, who has been an aficionado of Austen since he was a Maury High School student in the 1920s, appreciates the praise. His goal was not to set down the definitive biography of the English novelist but to supply a little animating color to what had been a traditionally staid, monochromatic portrait. Tucker demonstrated that Austen (1775-1817) was not a demure old maid but a hip, even exuberant, woman of the world.
Tucker ``rattles, in every chapter, the bones of yesterday's Austen scholarship,'' chortled John McAleer, a professor of English at Boston College, in his learned introduction.
It figures. Tucker has been routinely finding the resident juice in what has been predominantly dry material to others for decades. Virginius Dabney once termed him ``the Sherlock Holmes of Virginia history.''
``I've gotten enough of the world's glory, such as it is,'' said Tucker of his complimentary clippings. ``It's just nice to know that I've accomplished what I set out to do. Now I can rest on my oars.''
Tucker dedicated the book to the memory of his beloved wife of 36 years, Elizabeth, who died in 1993.
``There are plenty of good stories out there, if you look for them,'' he said. ``That's another thing that keeps me going.''
None of us knows what the future holds, Tucker notes. But we're relatively certain about the day ahead. So live it to the hilt.
``It's later than you think,'' the columnist said. ``And one other thing. Just remember that when the game is over, the kings and the pawns go back in the same box.'' MEMO: Bill Ruehlmann is a mass communication professor at Virginia Wesleyan
College. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
George Tucker has been winning accolades for his book ``Jane Austen
the Woman.'' by CNB