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When Dr. Richards completes her job, it is unlikely that future scholars will find much gleaning left to do. A slightly deaf, spinster Ph.D. of 62, she is a former history teacher at Wellesley. She dropped work on her own book, Confederate Women, to help Freeman, for whom she has tremendous respect as a historian. Her job is to find "every possible shred of evidence" about Washington, and so far, she and Freeman think, she has missed little. So jampacked with Washington documents is her room at Richmond's archaic Hotel Jefferson that she has "to go out in the hall to change my mind."
Balancing Time. Since 1926, Dr. Freeman has kept an "account book" in which his expenditures of time are recorded. When he wastes it, disgusted entries record the fact. When he uses it well, he enters exultant self-congratulations. Should he, for example, fail to do his daily stint on George Washington, he enters a debit of minutes and hours against himself. Every Saturday for 22 years he has cast up his accounts ; the books must balance.
His secretary, Henrietta Crump, who has worked for him for 30 years, has power of attorney to sign his checks, makes out his income tax and firmly defends him against interruptions. His wife, tall, poised and gracious, feels that her big job is to "keep the house quiet for him." She adds seriously: "It's a great privilege to be associated with him."
As Richmond's most famous living citizen, Freeman has an institutional character to live up to, and he seems to like to play the role. The boy who brings him his early morning A. P. wires is always "Professor" ("Mo'nin', Professor, whatchew got this nio'nin', Professor?"). Pretty or not, the girls around the office get their quota of Virginia gallantry as he passes by: "Mo'nin', beautiful, whatchew doin' lookin' so cold?" "Mo'nin', da'lin', how's yo' dea' fathuh?"
Homely Homilies. Some Richmonders privately refer to Freeman as a "fuddy-duddy." They poke fun at his air of paternalism and his habit of giving sententious advice ("The best thing about livin' is it gets better all the time"). His Sunday half-hour radio program, Lessons in Living, is a mixture of the shrewd and the banal. But many listeners find comfort in his homely homilies, write to tell him so and ask his advice on problems ranging from love to investments.
Freeman's editorials in the News Leader, fact-loaded and dogmatic, always get Richmond's serious attention. He generally sounds a cautious, middle-of-the-road note (in this year's election, he says, voters must "choose between two evils"—i.e., Truman and Dewey). He is fond of running a marathon series of editorials on subjects he thinks important. Once he wrote more than 600 consecutive editorials on postwar developments, did 60 on Henry Wallace and is now past number 35 on the Berlin crisis. He often had fault to find with the politics of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, but supported it. He refused to meet Roosevelt himself: ''Roosevelt's personality was so powerful, I was afraid he would influence me toward his way of thinkin'."