Washington: A Life

After breakfast Washington pulled on tall black boots, mounted his horse, and began the prolonged circuit of his five farms, where he expected to find hands hard at work. Once again, he was a diligent boss, not a gentleman farmer. Each day he rode twenty miles on horseback and personally supervised field work, fence construction, ditch drainage, tree planting, and dozens of other activities. An active presence, he liked to demonstrate how things should be done, leading by example. One startled visitor expressed amazement that the master “often works with his men himself, strips off his coat and labors like a common man.”52 Washington couldn’t bear anything slovenly. “I shall begrudge no reasonable expense that will contribute to the improvement and neatness of my farms, for nothing pleases me better than to see them in good order and everything trim, handsome, and thriving about them,” he advised one estate manager. “Nor nothing hurts me more than to find them otherwise and the tools and implements laying wherever they were last used, exposed to injuries from rain, sun, etc.”53 No detail was too trivial to escape his notice, and he often spouted the Scottish adage “Many mickles make a muckle”—that is, tiny things add up.54

Washington made sure that he returned for di

To maintain a detailed grasp of his vast operations, Washington kept comprehensive records long before such bookkeeping was commonplace. Being a farmer, he scratched out a daily log of the weather, but his record keeping went far beyond such basics. “He also makes copious notes in writing relative to his own experiments, the state of the seasons, nature of soils, effect of different kinds of manure, and everything that can throw light on the farming business,” wrote his later aide David Humphreys.55 Everything was perfectly sorted, classified, and slotted in his compartmentalized mind and books. Washington’s contemporaries recognized that this compulsive note taking, this itch to record his every action, went to the very essence of this well-regulated man. “You would be surprised to find what a uniform life he leads,” wrote John Hancock’s nephew after a visit to Mount Vernon. “Everything he does is by method of system . . . He keeps a journal where he records everything . . . he is a model of the highest perfection.”56

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Prodigy

LONG BEFORE he achieved great fame or renown, something about Washington’s bearing and presence bedazzled people. In common with other well-bred boys of his day, he probably wore a corset as a small child, which pulled his shoulders back and thrust his chest out, giving him added dignity. Like a figure strutting on a stage, he never lounged or slouched and seemed as comfortable in a ballroom as on a battlefield. Properly appareled on all occasions, he never allowed people to see him in a neglected state, much less undressed, and ordered clothes that gave him elegance with freedom of movement. In ordering a suit from London, he admonished his tailor to “make it in the best taste to sit easy and loose, as clothes that are tight always look awkward and are uneasy to the wearer.”1 In the ma

Much of the power of Washington’s presence derived from his fluid gait, the antithesis of the stiff, wooden image Gilbert Stuart grafted on the American imagination. The quintessential man of action, he moved like a national icon long before he became one. The sculptor William Rush recalled his smooth, unruffled movements: “I have been in battle immediately under his command. I have viewed him walking, standing, sitting. I have seen him at a game of ball for several hours,” and in all these activities he exhibited “the most manly and graceful attitudes I ever saw.”2 Washington was, quite simply, a sight to behold. “So tall, so straight!” one servant remembered. “And . . . with such an air! Ah, sire, he was like no one else!”3 At Williamsburg, he exuded a special splendor with his ceremonial sword riding on his hip, while showing the light, confident tread of the military man. If much of this gracefulness came naturally to Washington, some of it likely came from strenuous youthful efforts to form himself for polite society as he acquired the easy ma

George and Martha Washington were a sociable couple who entertained an unending cavalcade of guests at Mount Vernon. During the seven years before the American Revolution, they fed (and frequently housed) an estimated two thousand guests.4 One visitor murmured his approval at how cordially Washington had treated him “as if I had lived years in his house.”5 Washington was an excellent host of a certain sort. He was congenial without being deeply personal, friendly without being familiar, and perfected a cool sociability that distanced him from people even as it invited them closer. He never felt the urge to impress people. As John Marshall wrote, “He had no pretensions to that vivacity which fascinates, and to that wit which dazzles.”6 He knew the value of silence, largely kept opinions to himself, and seldom committed a faux pas.

Very concerned with wi

During the American Revolution, some officers claimed that they never saw Washington smile. If he seldom submitted to belly laughs, he was never as dour as legend claims. Said one perceptive former slave: “I never see that man laugh to show his teeth—he done all his laughing inside.”9 If laughter didn’t come readily to Washington, it could be coaxed out of him after several glasses of wine, when he fell into the uproarious spirit of a di