Washington: A Life (25 page)

While Washington cultivated friendships throughout his life, he didn’t have many true intimates and his relationships were seldom of the candid or confessional type. His reserve, if not impenetrable, was by no means lightly surrendered. He was habitually cautious with new people and only gradually opened up as they passed a series of loyalty tests. “Be courteous to all but intimate with few,” he advised his nephew, “and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth.”
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Because Washington never invited people readily into his confidence, it had a nearly irresistible appeal when he did. He tended to be much more conversational among those he trusted and taciturn with strangers.

In a world not far removed from the frontier, Washington’s physical strength and dexterity won many admirers. He knew that he was a physical prodigy and enjoyed displaying this with exhibitionistic flair. When he painted Washington in 1772, Charles Willson Peale observed an instance of Washington’s herculean strength that he never forgot:

A nice touch that he didn’t bother to take off his jacket, as if to underscore his effortless feat. While Washington never threw a silver dollar across the Potomac, as legend asserts, he did hurl a rock to the top of the Natural Bridge in the Blue Ridge Mountains, a height of 215 feet. Although boasting was always foreign to Washington’s nature, after the Revolution he confided to David Humphreys that “he never met any man who could throw a stone to so great a distance as himself.”
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In an age that gloried in horse racing and hunting as gentlemanly pursuits, Washington’s virtuosity with horses excited comment throughout his life. Thoroughbred horses were especially prized in Virginia, where they literally elevated masters above their slaves. Jefferson extolled Washington as “the best horseman of his age and the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback,” an appraisal echoed by many others.
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Ramrod straight and relaxed on horseback, he seemed taller in the saddle than anyone else, exhibiting perfect ease and projecting a magnetic air. Favored with long legs and broad, powerful hips, he could wrap himself around the smaller breeds of horses common in the eighteenth century. It is no coincidence that Washington has been commemorated by so many equestrian statues. “He is a very excellent and bold horseman,” noted a French admirer, the Chevalier de Chastellux, “leaping the highest fences and going extremely quickly without standing upon his stirrups, bearing on the bridle, or letting his horse run wild.”
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Chastellux said Washington rode fast even when he was in no special hurry—something that added dash and drama to his movements. He broke and trained his own horses and retained mastery over them. One witness recollected how when Washington dismounted, he “gave a cut of the whip to his horse, which went off by itself to the stable.”
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Washington wrote with affection about horses, and when one man agreed to sell him his favorite horse, he responded gratefully. “The attachment which one feels for a good horse that has … been considered as a favorite, I know is very great.”
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An avid hunter, Washington keenly stalked foxes, deer, ducks, quail, pheasant, and even occasional bears on his estate. He hunted in a handsome outfit, a blue riding frock and scarlet waistcoat threaded with gold lace and topped by a black velvet cap. He wore high boots and carried a smart-looking riding crop, decorated in a herringbone pattern. So much did Washington adore the sport that he papered his mansion with hunting prints. On hunting days, his ritual was to rise before sunrise, breakfast by candlelight, then ride off with his hounds while it was still dark outside. Invariably he was accompanied by Billy Lee, who got Washington to stop hunting black foxes and stick to gray ones after one black fox eluded them on an exhausting chase; Lee averred that there was something diabolical about the cunning black fox.

For a man of Washington’s stern work ethic, it is striking how much time he dedicated to hunting, even in the dead of winter. Though he enjoyed fishing, it never matched his consuming interest in chasing animals. In January 1769, for example, he went foxhunting eight times in a twelve-day period even though the ground was packed hard with frost. During the foxhunting season, certain favored guests turned into semipermanent residents of Mount Vernon, staying for weeks at a time.

A lusty hunter, Washington often recorded in his diary the length of the chase and a description of the fox. It was not unusual for the hunt to occupy an entire day. “Hunting again,” he wrote in March 1768, “and catched a fox with a bobbed tail and cut ears after 7 hours chase in w[hi]ch most of the dogs were worsted.”
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A month earlier, he recorded that he had killed five mallards and five bald eagles in one day—a curious triumph for the Father of His Country. Washington’s fierce, relentless energy, cloaked in social encounters, emerged clearly in warfare and hunting. He liked to ride up ahead with the hounds and be present for the kill. Washington kept his hounds kenneled down by the Potomac and developed a breed that became known as the American foxhound. Protective of his hunting grounds, he was implacable when dealing with poachers. One day when out riding, he encountered a poacher who was furtively slipping away in a canoe. “Raising his gun,” recounts a neighbor, the poacher “took deliberate aim at Washington, expecting to daunt him; but Washington dashed up to the culprit, and seizing his canoe, dragged it ashore. He then disarmed him and gave him a severe flogging, which effectually cured his thieving properties.”
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Another area where Washington demonstrated uncommon agility was in dancing. Because colonial social life revolved around fancy balls and assemblies, gentlemen were expected to master reels, jigs, and minuets. An exceptionally graceful dancer, Washington flourished in such society, not only because he presented an image of strength and poise on the dance floor—one lady recalled that he was “a ceremonious and grave” partner—but also because it allowed some harmless interactions with the ladies.
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It was the one venue where Martha permitted him to indulge his penchant for gallantry with younger women.

Among the chief diversions of Washington’s social life was the theater. During stays in Williamsburg, he attended everything from concerts to waxworks to puppet shows, though nothing matched his sheer delight in a good play. Many scholars have noted the abundant theatrical imagery in his writings, as when he advised a young relative that he was about to “enter upon the grand theater of life.”
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The recurrence of such metaphors says something not only about Washington’s love of theater but about his awareness of the dramatic nature of his life and the eventful times through which he passed. He would play many roles in his lifetime, always with consummate flair. That he turned to theater imagery when aiming at a high rhetorical pitch suggests that he saw himself as the protagonist of a great epic, dazzling an audience that had its eyes peeled on his every action.

Two touring companies, the American Company and the Virginia Company, performed at the Williamsburg theater and usually timed their visits to coincide with meetings of the burgesses. They offered surprisingly rich and varied fare, running the spectrum from Shakespeare to Restoration comedy to Augustan drama to contemporary plays. During one busy week in June 1770, Washington attended the theater five nights out of seven. The unremitting emphasis on Joseph Addison’s
Cato
as being Washington’s favorite play—partly because it was performed at Valley Forge, partly because it fit the stereotype of Washington as the stoic Roman—has obscured his love of many other plays, especially ribald and sophisticated comedies. The play that he probably saw and savored the most was Richard Sheridan’s racy
The School for Scandal.
He also quoted Shakespeare frequently, and his letters are filled with passing references to
Hamlet, Othello, The Merchant of Venice,
and
The Tempest.
Not surprisingly, in wartime, he plucked timely quotes from the Roman and history plays, including
Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra,
and
Henry V.

From Washington’s correspondence with his London factors, what emerges clearly is that he didn’t relegate social duties to his wife, but took an active part in ordering food, drink, and furnishings for all occasions. He wanted Mount Vernon to conform to the highest standards of elegance, and he studied how other people entertained. A telling diary entry, dated a year after his marriage, shows how observant he was of other people’s parties and how scornful of anything that struck him as slovenly or vulgar:

Washington’s diaries from the 1760s attest to a crowded social calendar and show how George and Martha Washington absorbed Sally Fairfax into their lives as a dear friend. Given her close proximity at Belvoir, it would have been difficult to keep her at arm’s length. Instead, Sally came and went freely at Mount Vernon, and her husband remained one of Washington’s favorite hunting partners. The Washingtons were likewise regular visitors at Belvoir. In January 1760 Sally came to visit Martha, who was then recuperating from the measles. Three years later George wrote to inquire about an illness that Sally had contracted and said Martha “was in hopes of seeing Mrs Fairfax this morning,” until she herself came down with a fever.
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Martha Washington could never have befriended Sally Fairfax in this manner unless she thought that the earlier romance with her husband had been an ephemeral, youthful infatuation that had now receded to a safe distance.

THE MOST SPLENDID STAGE on which George Washington paraded in his early years was the colonial capital at Williamsburg, now overseen by Lieutenant Governor Francis Fauquier—the “ablest man who had ever filled that office,” in Jefferson’s view—a charming man of eclectic interests who was a fellow of the Royal Society and had published papers on science and economics.
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The town, which was characterized by “the manners and etiquette of a court in miniature,” according to Washington, stood forth as a glittering symbol of British royalty, a showplace of surface brilliance whose major social priorities were “precedence, dress, imitation.”
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To jaded European eyes, Williamsburg might have appeared small and prosaic, but its handsome government buildings, formal gardens, and spacious streets with brick sidewalks surpassed anything seen in rural Virginia.

In October 1760 Martha asked her husband if she could join him for the upcoming session at the House of Burgesses, and they traveled there in the full regalia of rich tobacco planters—a coach and six, with uniformed slaves riding as coach-man and postilion. Once at the capital, Washington lodged on the most fashionable thoroughfare, Duke of Gloucester Street. For ten years he stayed in the hostelry of a diminutive widow, Christiana Campbell, “a little old woman about four feet high and equally thick, [with] a little turn[ed] up pug nose, [and] a mouth screw[e]d up to one side,” as one Scottish traveler sketched her.
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That October Washington arrived in Williamsburg amid much jubilation. In early September the French had surrendered to British forces at Montreal, bringing to a close the conquest of Canada and leading Fauquier to declare, somewhat prematurely, that “the war is gloriously brought to a happy end.”
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The festive tone proved transitory. On October 25, 1760, George II, the only king George Washington had ever known, died and gave way to a new monarch. On February 11 Fauquier announced the accession to the throne of George III, whose reign would be bedeviled by George Washington and an army of renegade soldiers. The tidings of a new king had immediate repercussions for Washington, since it meant that the old House of Burgesses would be dissolved and new elections held.

Four days later Washington learned of an unexpected challenge to his seat. Lieutenant Colonel Adam Stephen had fought with Washington at Fort Necessity and in the ill-fated Braddock expedition and wound up as second in command in the Virginia Regiment. More recently Washington and Stephen had sparred during an intense scramble for western lands. In 1754, to spur lagging recruitment, Governor Dinwiddie had promised bounty lands in the Ohio Country to war veterans, and Washington had formed a partnership with three veterans—Robert Stewart, George Mercer, and Nathaniel Gist—to accumulate such land. They competed with a rival partnership led by Adam Stephen, who in later years, in a conversation with Dr. Benjamin Rush, vilified Washington as a “weak man.”
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Washington, for his part, castigated his quondam friend Stephen as “designing” and unprincipled.
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