First of Men

by Ferling, John;

  Washington pieced together a small party that included his nephew Bushrod Washington and his old friend and neighbor Dr. Craik, as well as a bevy of servants, three of whom were to wait on him. His bags stocked with silver cups and spoons, two kegs of spirits, Madeira, Port, “cherry bounce” (cherries steeped in brandy and sugar), oil, vinegar, mustard, “Spices of all sorts,” tea, seven pounds of sugar, fishing equipment, canteens, bedding, and an assortment of pots, pans, and kettles, the party set out late in the summer of 1784. Within three days the expedition had reached what now is West Virginia, still a lush, green primitive region. There Washington paused to visit his brother Charles. Once the proprietor of the Rising Sun Tavern in Fredericksburg, Charles had headed west about 1780, moving into the Shenandoah Valley. Always the entrepreneur, he established a town, Charles Town, immodestly naming it for himself, and calling its streets after various members of the Washington clan. The general looked upon this stop as more than just a social call. While in town he called on several tenants who were in arrears in their obligations to him, netting £90 for his trouble. From this rustic village the party clambered up the road that Braddock’s men had opened in 1755, to and beyond Fort Cumberland, past the “shades of death,” gloomy, sunless mountain regions shielded behind the wilderness canopy, on to the Great Meadows, where Washington owned more than two hundred acres, and, finally, on the thirteenth day to Simpson’s place in southwestern Pennsylvania, rich and fertile lowland, a site known locally as “Washington’s bottom.”28

  The news in this quarter was not pleasant. The general discovered that Simpson owed him £600. He also learned that Simpson had only £30 in cash, although the mill manager was willing to throw in a female slave and a few bushels of wheat as a part payment on his debt. Washington took it all, only to learn a few weeks later that Simpson had deceived him on this trade too, for the “slave” he had acquired was legally a free person. While still with Simpson, moreover, he found that his mill had been so poorly maintained that it was not even operative. His investment of £1200 on this facility would continue to be worthless. Not surprisingly there were no takers when the auction was conducted.

  From Simpson’s homestead, Washington sped north to his lands at Miller’s Run on Chartier’s Creek, about twenty-five miles west of Fort Pitt. He doubtless was overjoyed at leaving Simpson’s company, but what he found in Washington County, as Pennsylvania had named the area in which his property was located, was just as disturbing, perhaps more so. He discovered squatters everywhere, families that had moved in and appropriated his lands. What ensued in the next day or two must have been quite a scene. His mood already black and surly after a couple of days in “Washington’s bottom,” Washington evidently had little difficulty working himself into one of his towering rages. At a general meeting he railed at these people, and they answered him in kind. Accustomed to deference, Washington must have been taken aback by their response. Of Scotch-Irish descent, these folk had pluck. They had cleared this land, lavishing love and labor on these rolling acres for the past several years; that should count for something, they reckoned. When Washington hauled out the papers that demonstrated his ownership of this domain, their bewilderment might have been excused. How, they might have wondered, could a people be asked to bleed in a war against British tyranny, yet now be asked to acquiesce in a land deed stamped in 1770 with the royal seal? Nevertheless, they offered to purchase the property they worked. At first he refused, then he relented. But he struck a hard bargain. He would not sell individual plots. The squatters could jointly purchase his entire claim for twenty-five shillings an acre, dividing it as they pleased, or each family could rent the parcel it inhabited. No! By God, he could sue them, they retorted. That was just what he would do—and just what he did, winning his suit two years later, then endeavoring to sell this domain as “improved Lands.”29

  From Chartier’s Creek Washington headed home, canceling a trip further west when he learned of Indian unrest on down the Ohio. But he returned to Mount Vernon along a new route. He dropped back into his native state near present-day Morgantown, West Virginia, just below the point where the Monongahela divided, one flank of that cool, green stream becoming the Cheat River. Washington’s object was to explore this meandering stream, as well as the rugged wilderness between it and the North Branch of the Potomac. He plunged into this gnarled landscape, conversing with the settlers he encountered, studying the river, slogging through the forests until, finally, he had an answer to what he was searching for: this was the best route to the Ohio for the Potomac Company to pursue. At last something had come of this desultory trip, and armed with that knowledge he hurried home, reaching his estate five weeks after he had set out.30

  Washington’s western excursion in 1784 was one of many journeys that he made during his initial years back from the war. He had been home less than four months before he returned to Philadephia to meet with some of his former officers, and before the year ended business had taken him to Richmond and Fredericksburg and Annapolis. Thereafter, however, with the exception of brief peregrinations to attend board meetings, he did not leave Mount Vernon for more than two years.

  Although seldom a day passed during which one or more guests were not housed at Mount Vernon, Washington did not permit their presence to interfere with his customary pursuits. A creature of habit, he soon fell into a daily routine not unlike that he had followed as a young planter. He arose about 5:00 A.M., and thereafter for an hour or so his correspondence—he wrote four to five letters each week on average—and his financial ledgers laid first claim to his attention. About 6:00 he shaved himself and donned the clothing a servant had laid out for him, rather plain work garments. Each morning before breakfast he looked in on his nearby stables, ascertaining that his favorite horses—at least two of whom had soldiered with him for the entirety of the war—were fine. Soon he returned for a light meal, usually Indian cakes, honey, and tea. About 7:30 or so he left his guests with books and papers, and rode off to look into his plantation’s myriad activities.

  For Washington the ride was an opportunity to combine business with his penchant for exercise. (In inclement weather he frequently substituted walks for these rides, each step of his hike taken under the shelter of his rear portico, pacing ninety feet to the north, then ninety feet to the south, on and on until in this tedious manner he had logged several miles.) He visited one field after another, often scrutinizing the work on all five farms on the same day, a circuit that required a ride of about fifteen miles. He rode unattended, in the warm weather sitting beneath an umbrella that he had attached to his saddle, while, for extra protection against the sun, he wore a broad-brimmed white hat. Frequently he stopped to question a worker or a supervisor, sometimes he dismounted and worked a bit himself, repairing a fence, toiling with livestock, whatever seemed to beckon. Shortly before 3:00 he returned home, changed to more formal attire, and attended the day’s principal meal, a sumptuous repast that he and Martha invariably took in the company of guests. Washington apparently liked almost every sort of food, but he was especially fond of fish, and on Sundays he demanded that salt codfish be served. He seldom ate desserts, but when engrossed by the dinner table conversation he was known to absent-mindedly nibble on walnuts and hazelnuts for as long as two hours at a stretch. Once the table was cleared Washington enjoyed sending “the bottle about pretty freely,” as a guest recalled, and he seems to have completed each meal with four or five glasses—and, at times, even as much as a pint—of Madeira.

  If his guests expected wit or wisdom at Washington’s table they were disappointed, as conversation during these meals seldom rose above the level of banality. Either the general said little, expressing himself only on the most “indifferent subjects,” as one visitor recalled, or, as another guest experienced, he droned on and on about some mundanity—mileage distances along the Potomac in this instance—that aroused only boredom. If it still was daylight when the meal was completed, Washington sometimes escorted his guests a
bout a part of his estate, and on occasion he even returned to the fields or the mill or the shops to look into the completion of some task. But usually he retired to his library, where he looked at the day’s mail, made his diary entries, perhaps read a bit, and tended whatever business matters might have arisen. In the early evening he reemerged to entertain his callers. A light supper was served; Washington seldom ate, though he sometimes drank tea and frequently he imbibed more wine. Once when an English diarist was present Washington drank several glasses of champagne and “got quite merry.” If there were no visitors—which was seldom, although the Washingtons discouraged company on Sundays—he read to his family, and especially to his grandchildren, from books and newspapers. Nothing was likely to keep him up very late, however, and precisely at 9:00 each evening he retired.31

  Washington must have found the nearly ceaseless appearance of visitors at his door to be terribly distracting. In eighteenth-century Virginia, rural and almost devoid of inns, planters were expected to take in travelers for a night or two, but in Washington’s case visitors came to the state especially to see him, anxious to reach Mount Vernon and to say they had met the great man, certain they could divine the qualities that separated the general from other men. “No pilgrim ever approached mecca with deeper enthusiasm,” one wayfarer noted of his ascent to Washington’s home, a sentiment that many other callers might have echoed. Many visitors were unknown to the Washingtons, and the host simply chronicled their visitations with diary entries that “a Mr. Clare,” “a Mr. Stephens,” “a Doctr. Graham here & stayed all Night”; his inscription for May 19, 1785, noted that “a Mr. Noah Webster came here,” and still others seemed to remain anonymous even to the general, as with his simple attestation that “two reverend Gentlemen . . . dined and lodged here.”32

  Other callers were connected to his business concerns, and many important figures in Virginia’s public life, men like Richard Henry Lee and James Madison and young James Monroe, also dropped in. Old wartime comrades showed up too, officers such as Benjamin Lincoln and John Cadwalader. Another guest was the Reverend William Gordon of Roxbury, Massachusetts. An early activist in the colonies’ protest movement, Gordon soon developed an itch to write a history of the rebellion; he began to collect documents almost as soon as the war broke out, and during the conflict he often wrote Washington about this or that point. After clearing matters, he came to Mount Vernon for two weeks in 1784, intent on digging through Washington’s papers, the first in a long line of historians to plumb this massive correspondence. His labors were rewarded, and four years later he published a four-volume study under the ponderous title, History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment of Independence of the United States of America33 Of course, neighbors such as George Mason or Robert Harrison, Washington’s former aide, often were invited to Mount Vernon, but the biggest commotion must have come when really special guests appeared.

  Undoubtedly Washington drew the greatest satisfaction from a visit by Lafayette. Having sailed home shortly after Yorktown, the young Frenchman returned to America in 1784 and almost immediately called on his friend. He tarried at Mount Vernon for two weeks, and still later in the year, when the general had completed his western tour, the two men—by prearrangement—met once again, this time in Richmond, where business matters had drawn Washington. It was a melancholy meeting. Lafayette was about to return home, and, although the Washingtons had spoken of a vacation in France, in his heart the general knew that he probably never again would see his friend. Reluctant to part company, Washington rode almost to Baltimore with him before, in the grip of an early winter storm, he bade farewell and turned toward his own home. “In the moment of our separation . . . and every hour since,” the general confessed in an epistle penned upon his return to Mount Vernon, “I felt all that love, respect and attachment for you, with which . . . your merits have inspired me.”34

  In mid-1785 he was honored by a very different kind of guest. Catherine Macaulay Graham, the English political activist and historian, and from the beginning of the late American protest a friend of the colonial Whigs, insisted on meeting Washington while she was visiting the states. Her political activities alone would have made men in the eighteenth century look upon her as an eccentric. Graham’s personal appearance and habits only confirmed that she marched to a different drummer, from her gaudy, overpainted exterior to the fact that while in her fifties she was married to a man not quite half her age. She talked loudly and nonstop, ideas gushing out in such full-throated sonority that listeners were frequently overwhelmed. But Washington could not have been more flattered by her visit. It was one thing to have the adulation of politicians and quite another to be sought out by a littérateur. He invited some neighbors over to meet his famous visitor, carefully, delicately, warning them of her maverick demeanor, and firmly explaining that he wished “to shew them [the Grahams] all the respect I can.”35 It is difficult to imagine two more different personalities than those of this shy, conventional man and this verbose, eccentric woman, yet they seemed to hit it off well enough, much as Washington and nonconformist Charles Lee got on until the latter was fancied to be a threat.

  Among the other visitors to Mount Vernon were at least one painter and two sculptors. The three artists arrived within a six-month period of one another in 1785, each hoping to capture the true essence of their famous subject. Seven members of the family sat for Robert Pine, an English portraitist whom Washington referred to as a “Historian Painter,” because much of his previous work had been renderings of epic events. His visit came on the heels of that of an obscure American sculptor, Joseph Wright, whose life mask of the general was marred because Washington laughed in the midst of the setting. The best-known artist to lug his tools to Mount Vernon was the French sculptor, Jean Antoine Houdon. Virginia had provided the money for his labors, and Jefferson and Franklin, diplomats in Paris, had undertaken to put him under contract to sculpt their famous countryman. To say that Houdon was excited at the prospect of interpreting Washington would be an understatement, for he turned down the opportunity to cast Catherine the Great—and for a higher fee—in order to come to Virginia. Not long before midnight one evening in the fall of 1785 he arrived and beat on the front door of Mount Vernon, rousing the master of the estate from a deep sleep. The next morning, aided by three Parisian assistants, he got right to work, and for the next two weeks he toiled assiduously at his trade, laboring to make a life mask and to complete what he could of two busts of the general while still on the Potomac, though it would require much work in France to finish the project.36

  Within a fortnight Houdon had concluded what he could and had set out for Philadelphia. The completion of his major enterprise, a life-size statue of Washington, was years away; it would not be put into stone for about five years, and a decade would pass before it would be erected in Richmond. However, he did execute a terra cotta bust of the general. Washington must have liked what he saw. He had hoped to be depicted in modern garments, not in the classical toga that many contemporary artists adopted for statesmen. He need not have worried. Houdon did not clothe Washington at all, so that the thick, muscular structure of the general’s neck and chest were apparent, more so than in any other representation of the man. Indeed, Houdon succeeded where almost every other artist failed, for his Washington was a sinewy man of action, a leader whose tough, resolute, indomitable appearance served as a clarion call to others to follow his command. The bust suggests the intrepidity of the man who fought Indians, gambled at Trenton, and lashed out at Monmouth, and the power of the personality that moved congressmen to appoint him to command in 1775, that reduced officers to tears at Newburgh in 1783.

  Among all the guests he entertained, Washington did not find the two people he would most have loved to see—George William and Sally Fairfax. During the war, correspondence between these old friends had declined, and in some years no letters were exchanged, though the lapses were due to logistical problems, not to altered feelings. When the wa
rtime obstacles to communication vanished, Washington once again wrote frequently, usually every three to four months, and he mildly scolded George William for not writing more often. Now that the war had ended he hoped the Fairfaxes would return to Virginia, and he looked forward to the two families becoming “intimate Companions of our old Age.” But George William and Sally were happy in England, something they could not count on in Virginia inasmuch as they would certainly be adjudged to have been Tories during the rebellion. Then, too, Belvoir no longer existed. It had been destroyed by fire in 1783, perhaps the target of vandals, but more likely the victim of lightning. As late as 1785 Washington still rode there from time to time, and always he was struck by the same soulful melancholy when he gazed upon the ruins. “I could not trace a room in the house (now all rubbish),” he wrote after one visit, “that did not bring to my mind the recollection of pleasing scenes.” The wistful sight, he went on, caused him to hurry home “with painful sensations, and sorrowing for the contrast.” Washington offered to house his former neighbors for as long as it took them to rebuild their plantation house, but George William declined.37 Virginia no longer offered him much, save an increasingly alien culture. The Fairfaxes never returned, not even for a visit, and the Washingtons never again saw their old friends.