George Washington: Farmer Part 16

Most people think of Washington as a marble statue on a pedestal rather than as a being of flesh and blood with human feelings, faults and virtues. He was self-contained, he was not voluble, he had a sense of personal dignity, but underneath he was not cold. He was really hot-tempered and on a few well-authenticated occasions fell into pa.s.sions in which he used language that would have blistered the steel sides of a dreadnaught. Yet he was kind-hearted, he pitied the weak and sorrowful, and the list of his quiet benefactions would fill many pages and cost him thousands of pounds. He was even full of sentiment in some matters; on more than one occasion he provided positions that enabled young friends or relatives to marry, and I shrewdly suspect that he engineered matters so that the beloved Nelly Custis obtained a good husband in the person of his nephew, Lawrence Lewis. I might say much more tending to show his human qualities, but I shall add only this: Having for many years studied his career from every imaginable point of view, I give it as my deliberate opinion that perhaps no man ever lived who was more considerate of the rights and feelings of others. Not even Lincoln had a bigger heart.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE VALE OF SUNSET

Washington looked forward to the end of his presidency as does "the weariest traveler, who sees a resting-place, and is bending his body to lay thereon." "Methought I heard him say, 'Ay.' I am fairly out, and you are fairly in; see which of us is the happiest," wrote John Adams to his wife Abigail. And from Mount Vernon Nelly Custis informed a friend that "grandpapa is very well and much pleased with being once more Farmer Washington."

The eight years of toilsome work, which had been rendered all the harder by much bitter criticism, had aged him greatly and this helped to make him doubly anxious to return to the peace and quiet of home for his final days. And yet he was affected by his parting from his friends and a.s.sociates. A few partisan enemies openly rejoiced at his departure, but there were not wanting abundant evidences of the people's reverence and love for him. It is a source of satisfaction to us now that his contemporaries realized he was one of the great figures of history and that they did not withhold the tribute of their praise until after his death. As we turn the thousands of ma.n.u.scripts that make up his papers we come upon scores of private letters and public resolutions in which, in terms often a bit stilted but none the less sincere, a country's grat.i.tude is laid at the feet of its benefactor.

The Mount Vernon to which he returned was perhaps in better condition than was that to which he retired at the end of the Revolution, for he had been able each summer to give the estate some personal oversight; nevertheless it was badly run down and there was much to occupy his attention. In April he wrote: "We are in the midst of litter and dirt, occasioned by joiners, masons, painters, and upholsterers, working in the house, all parts of which, as well as the outbuildings, are much out of repair."

Anderson remained with him, but Washington gave personal attention to many matters and exercised a general oversight over everything. Like most good farmers he "began his diurnal course with the sun," and if his slaves and hirelings were not in place by that time he sent "them messages of sorrow for their indisposition." Having set the wheels of the estate in motion, he breakfasted. "This being over, I mount my horse and ride around my farms, which employs me until it is time for dinner, at which I rarely miss seeing strange faces.... The usual time of sitting at table, a walk, and tea bring me within the dawn of candlelight; previous to which, if not prevented by company, I resolve that, as soon as the glimmering taper supplies the place of the great luminary, I will retire to my writing table and acknowledge the letters I have received, but when the lights are brought I feel tired and disinclined to engage in this work, conceiving that the next night will do as well. The next night comes, and with it the same causes of postponement, and so on.... I have not looked into a book since I came home; nor shall I be able to do it until I have discharged my workmen, probably not before the nights grow longer, when possibly I may be looking in Doomsday Book."

He had his usual troubles with servants and crops, with delinquent tenants and other debtors; he tried Booker's threshing machine, experimented with white Indian peas and several varieties of wheat, including a yellow bearded kind that was supposed to resist the fly, and built two houses, or rather a double house, on property owned in the Federal City--he avoided calling the place "Washington."

A picture of the Farmer out upon his rounds in these last days has been left us by his adopted son, George Washington Parke Custis. Custis relates that one day when out with a gun he met on the forest road an elderly gentleman on horseback who inquired where he could find the General. The boy told the stranger, who proved to be Colonel Meade, once of Washington's staff, that the General was abroad on the estate and pointed out what direction to take to come upon him. "You will meet, sir, with an old gentleman riding alone in plain drab clothes, a broad-brimmed white hat, a hickory switch in his hand, and carrying an umbrella with a long staff, which is attached to his saddle-bow--that person, sir, is General Washington."

Those were pleasant rides the old Farmer took in the early morning sunshine, with the birds singing about him, the dirt lanes soft under his horse's feet, and in his nostrils the pure air fragrant with the scent of pines, locust blossoms or wild honeysuckle. When he grew thirsty he would pause for a drink at his favorite gum spring, and as he made his rounds would note the progress of the miller, the coopers, the carpenters, the fishermen, and the hands in the fields, how the corn was coming up or the wheat was ripening, what fences needed to be renewed or gaps in hedges filled, what the increase of his cattle would be, whether the stand of clover or buckwheat was good or not. He was the owner of all this great estate, he was proud of it; it was his home, and he was glad to be back on it once more. For he had long since realized that there are deeper and more satisfying pleasures than winning battles or enjoying the plaudits of mult.i.tudes.

An English actor named John Bernard who happened to be in Virginia in this period has left us a delightfully intimate picture of the Farmer on his rounds. Bernard had ridden out below Alexandria to pay a visit and on his return came upon an overturned chaise containing a man and a woman. About the same time another horseman rode up from the opposite direction. The two quickly ascertained that the man was unhurt and managed to restore the wife to consciousness, whereupon she began to upbraid her husband for carelessness.

"The horse," continues Bernard, "was now on his legs, but the vehicle was still prostrate, heavy in its frame and laden with at least half a ton of luggage. My fellow-helper set me an example of activity in relieving it of internal weight; and when all was clear we grasped the wheel between us and to the peril of our spinal columns righted the conveyance. The horse was then put in and we lent a hand to help up the luggage. All this helping, hauling and lifting occupied at least half an hour under a meridian sun, in the middle of July, which fairly boiled the perspiration out of our foreheads."

After the two Samaritans had declined a pressing invitation to go to Alexandria and have a drop of something, the unknown, a tall man past middle age, wearing a blue coat and buckskin breeches, exclaimed impatiently at the heat and then "offered very courteously," says Bernard, "to dust my coat, a favor the return of which enabled me to take a deliberate survey of his person."

The stranger then called Bernard by name, saying that he had seen him play in Philadelphia, and asked him to accompany him to his house and rest, at the same time pointing out a mansion on a distant hill. Not till then did Bernard realize with whom he was speaking.

"Mt. Vernon!" he exclaimed. "Have I the honor of addressing General Washington?"

With a smile Washington extended his hand and said: "An odd sort of introduction, Mr. Bernard; but I am pleased to find that you can play so active a part in private and without a prompter."

Then they rode up to the Mansion House and had a pleasant chat[12].

[12] This anecdote is accepted by Mr. Lodge in his life of Washington, but doubt is cast upon it by another historian. All that can be said is that there is nothing to disprove it and that it is not inherently improbable.

Upon his retirement from the presidency our Farmer had told Oliver Wolcott that he probably would never again go twenty miles from his own vine and fig tree, but the troubles with France resulted in a quasi-war and he was once more called from retirement to head an army, most of which was never raised. He accepted the appointment with the understanding that he was not to be called into the field unless his presence should be indispensable, but he found that he must give much of his time to the matter and be often from home, while a quarrel between his friends Knox and Hamilton over second place joined with Republican hostility to war measures to add a touch of bitterness to the work. Happily war was avoided and, though an adjustment of the international difficulties was not reached until 1800, Washington was able to spend most of the last months of his life at Mount Vernon comparatively undisturbed.

Yet things were not as once they were. Mrs. Washington had aged greatly and was now a semi-invalid often confined to her bed. The Farmer himself came of short-lived stock and realized that his pilgrimage would not be greatly prolonged. Twice during the year he was seriously ill, and in September was laid up for more than a week. His brother Charles died and in acknowledging the sad news he wrote:

"I was the first, and am, now, the last of my father's children by the second marriage, who remain.

"When I shall be _called upon to follow them_ is known only to the Giver of Life. When the summons comes, I shall endeavor to obey it with good grace."

And yet there were gleams of joy and gladness. "About candlelight" on his birthday in 1799 Nelly Custis and his nephew, Lawrence Lewis, were wedded. The bride wished him to wear his gorgeous new uniform, but when he came down to give her away he wore the old Continental buff and blue and no doubt all loved him better so. Often thereafter the pair were at Mount Vernon and there on November twenty-seventh a little daughter came as the first pledge of their affection. As always there was much company. In August came a gallant kinsman from South Carolina, once Colonel but now General William Washington of Cowpens fame, and for three days the house was filled with guests and there was feasting and visiting. November fifteenth Washington "Rode to visit Mr. now Lord Fairfax," who was back from England with his family, and the renewal of old friendships proved so agreeable that in the next month the families dined back and forth repeatedly.

Nor did the Farmer cease to labor or to lay plans for the future. He entered into negotiations for the purchase of more land to round out Mount Vernon and surveyed some tracts that he owned. On the tenth of December he inclosed with a letter to Anderson a long set of "Instructions for my manager" which were to be "most strictly and pointedly attended to and executed." He had rented one of the farms to Lawrence Lewis, also the mill and distillery, and was desirous of renting the fishery in order to have less work and fewer hands to attend to; in fact, "an entire new scene" was to be enacted. The instructions were exceedingly voluminous, consisting of thirty closely written folio pages, and they contain plans for the rotation of crops for several years, as well as specific directions regarding fencing, pasturage, composts, feeding stock, and a great variety of other subjects. In them one can find our Farmer's final opinions on certain phases of agriculture. To draw them up must have cost him days of hard labor and that he found the task wearing is indicated by the fact that in two places he uses the dates 1782 and 1783 when he obviously meant 1802 and 1803.

There was no hunting now nor any of those other active outdoor sports in which he had once delighted and excelled, while "Alas! our dancing days are no more." Happily he was able to ride and labor to the last, yet more and more of his time had to be spent quietly, much of it, we may well believe, upon the splendid broad veranda of his home.

Unimaginative and unromantic though he was, what visions must sometimes have swept through the brain of that simple farmer as he gazed down upon the broad shining river or beyond at the cl.u.s.tered Maryland hills glorified by the descending sun. Perchance in those visions he saw a youthful envoy braving hundreds of miles of savage wilderness on an errand from which the boldest might have shrunk without disgrace. Then with a handful of men in forest green it is given to that youth to put a Continent in hazard and to strike on the slopes of Laurel Hill the first blow in a conflict that is fought out upon the plains of Germany, in far away Bengal and on most of the Seven Seas. For an instant there rises the delirium of that fateful day with Braddock beside the ford of the Monongahela when

"Down the long trail from the Fort to the ford, Naked and streaked, plunge a moccasined horde: Huron and Wyandot, hot for the bout; Shawnee and Ottawa, barring him out.

"'Twixt the pit and the crest, 'twixt the rocks and the gra.s.s, Where the bush hides the foe and the foe holds the pa.s.s, Beaujeu and Pontiac, striving amain; Huron and Wyandot, jeering the slain,"

The years pa.s.s and the same figure grown older and more sedate is taking command of an army of peasantry at war with their King. Dorchester Heights, Brooklyn, Fort Washington, Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, Valley Forge, Monmouth, Morristown, the sun of Yorktown; Green, Gates, Arnold, Morgan, Lee, Lafayette, Howe, Clinton, Cornwallis--what memories! Lastly, a Cincinnatus grown bent and gray in service leaves his farm to head his country's civil affairs and give confidence and stability to an infant government by his wisdom and character.

Here, with bared heads, let us take leave of him--a farmer, but "the greatest of good men and the best of great men."

THE END