Washington: A Life

During his Mount Vernon stays, Humphreys was a charming, amiable companion of the family. With a deep passion for poetry, he was wont to burst into recitations on the spur of the moment. He became the roving poet of the plantation, spouting verses en plein air when he quit work for the day. As happened with Lafayette, Humphreys brought out a youthful idealism in Washington, even a buried utopian streak. The man who had headed an army for more than eight years told Humphreys, in biblical cadences, that he longed to see the curse of war ended: “My first wish is to see this plague to mankind banished from the earth and the sons and daughters of this world employed in more pleasing and i

Slowly, Washington assembled a cadre of bright, capable young men—the peacetime equivalent of his military family—to assist him with the mounting stacks of paperwork. In January 1786 General Benjamin Lincoln recommended as a private secretary twenty-three-year-old Tobias Lear of New Hampshire, a Harvard graduate who read French and was a fluent letter writer. In reply, Washington explained that such an assistant would also tutor Washy and “will sit at my table—will live as I live—will mix with the company which resort to the Ho[use].”70 Despite his unstinting admiration for Washington, Lear expressed one reservation about working at Mount Vernon: he abhorred slavery. Only when Washington declared his ultimate intention to free his slaves and said they would meanwhile be better off under his tutelage than anywhere else did Lear relent. The personal and professional relationship with Lear lasted much longer than that with the self-absorbed David Humphreys. Lear became yet another of the surrogate sons who supplied the absence of biological children for George and Martha Washington. The feeling was reciprocated, as can be seen in Lear’s praise of Martha Washington as “everything that is benevolent and good. I honor her as a second mother and receive from her all those attentions which I should look for from her who bore me.”71

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Gentleman Farmer

GEORGE WASHINGTON might resign his commission—might spurn an impertinent suggestion that he be anointed king—but he refused to renounce a princely style in his private life, as if his highest social ambition after the war were to return to Virginia and resurrect the privileged world he had left behind. He had, in many ways, been transformed by the war, but he had not yet realized how profoundly the democratic message of the American Revolution would filter down to the masses and even, in the fullness of time, threaten slavery itself. He clung to the tastes of a British country squire while making few concessions to a more egalitarian ethos. Strange as it may sound, Mount Vernon after the war did not evolve in notable ways that reflected American independence, except for greater efforts at agricultural modernity.

Many improvements that Washington had first projected in the early 1770s came to fruition only after the long hiatus of the war. Where visitors had once approached Mount Vernon by a straight path, they now rode along a symmetrical pair of serpentine drives that tantalized them with flickering glimpses of the distant mansion. At the end, right before they alighted, their carriages ran over rough gravel and curved around a bowling green and a small circular courtyard. Unable to tell a lie, Washington admitted in his diary that he had “cut down the two cherry trees in the courtyard.”1 The house was now attached to the outlying buildings by graceful covered walkways that, instead of shutting out nature, disclosed distant vistas of natural beauty. All in all, Mount Vernon contained fourteen or fifteen separate buildings, giving newcomers the impression that they had rolled into a small, bustling rural village.

The most imposing expansion of the house was the soaring chamber at the north end, dubbed the New Room or Banquet Hall. The splendid stage set for many social and political gatherings, it was the closest approximation Washington could obtain to a state dining room. Executed in a grander and more refined style than anything else in the house—it made the rest seem fairly humdrum by comparison—the room rose two stories high, its height emphasized by a tall Palladian window. At the time, green and blue were the most expensive imported pigments, prompting a status-conscious Washington to opt for bright green wallpaper, which gave the room a cheerful buoyancy by day but must have lent guests a lurid sheen at candlelit di

When he mentioned to Samuel Vaughan of Philadelphia that the room lacked a chimneypiece, the English-born merchant spontaneously sent one of Italian marble, flanked by fluted columns and topped by pastoral imagery—farm animals, plows, contented peasants—evocative of Cinci

In these early postwar years, Mount Vernon acquired the architectural touches that became its trademark and marked its owner’s new self-assurance. Most striking was the two-story piazza fronting the Potomac, supported by eight square wooden pillars and with an English flagstone walkway. Porches were relatively new in America, and this one transcended anything Washington might have seen, underscoring his architectural daring. The stately piazza, with expansive views of the Potomac, lent itself to hospitality. The porch also signaled to river traffic coming around the bend—one visitor remembered an “amazing number of sloops . . . constantly sailing up and down the river”—the elevated standing of the plantation’s owner.4 “The view down the river is extensive and most charming,” said Samuel Powel of Philadelphia, who called Mount Vernon “the most charming seat I have seen in America.”5 Washington paid a penalty in indoor comfort for his magnificent piazza, since the projecting roof plunged the rooms on that side into perpetual shadow. On the other hand, he had Windsor chairs and light portable tables brought onto the piazza in warm weather, which allowed guests to enjoy alfresco dining, cooled by river breezes and serenaded by parrots.

Adding grandeur to the west side was an octagonal cupola, surmounted by a weathervane, figured as the Dove of Peace, with a green olive branch in its black beak. It was a powerful statement from the former commander in chief, a silent prayer for peace. The gracious quality of Mount Vernon in the 1780s surely owed something to Washington’s desire for a restful atmosphere after the backbreaking years of combat.

The man who won American independence nonetheless remained in thrall to British fashion. When he told Samuel Vaughan of his desire to redo the New Room in stucco, he added an anxious aside, as if seeking urgent confirmation—“which, if I understood you right, is the present taste in England.” 6 On the slope between the piazza and the river, Washington laid out a deer park in the English style, with a mixed herd of English and American deer—an i