THE BOY WITH A WILL AND A WAY
I. EARLY CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE FIRST AMERICAN HERO
1732
George Washington has his place in American history, not only as being
the great commander-in-chief of the American revolutionary army, but
as being no less influential and powerful as a political leader and
constructive American statesman. He was born February 22, 1732, in one
of the wealthiest and most cultured homes in America. From the front
door of his father’s house, on the estate that was a few years later
named Mount Vernon, could be seen many miles of the Potomac River, and
a wide sweep of the shores of Maryland. All that can enter into making
life delightful flourished abundantly about the cradle of this child,
and contributed toward his preparation and development for leadership,
that was to produce a new power in the cause of human freedom for the
world. There are easily seen many contributing interests that seemed
to be carefully engaged in fitting him for the consequential task of
taking the divine right from kings and giving it back to the people
who alone have the right to the freedom of the earth.
Very soon after the birth of this child, the family moved to an estate
owned by the father on the shores of the Rappahannock, across from
Fredericksburg.
All traditions agree that the boy’s father was exceedingly careful
that his son should have his mind built up in the most gentlemanly
honesty.
Somehow, as we trace the early lives of great men, that word honesty
is always intruding as of first importance. In an age when so many men
seem to arrive at riches and power through intrigue and the
unscrupulous manipulation of means, the word honesty loses
significance and is looked upon either as hypocrisy or a joke. And
yet, such conditions fail and the success does not succeed.
George Washington was fortunate in his childhood protectors. Besides
having his father and mother to take watchful care of his right views
of life, there was Lawrence, fourteen years older than George.
Lawrence Washington was a son of their father’s earlier marriage. He
had been sent away to England to be educated and he returned when
George was eight years old. He has been described as a handsome,
splendid, gentlemanly young man. He dearly loved George and did all he
could to give the boy his honorable ideas of social and political
life.
In the midst of this fraternal interest, at the most impressionable
age of a child, came a great military excitement. War for the
possession of the West Indies was on between Great Britain and Spain.
Admiral Vernon had captured Porto Bello on the Isthmus of Darien, and
the Spaniards, aided by the French, were preparing to drive the
English out. A regiment was to be raised in the Colonies and Lawrence
Washington was eager to become a soldier. Such was his father’s
position in Colonial affairs that Lawrence was given a Captain’s
commission and he sailed away in 1740.
The sound of fife and drum, with Lawrence’s enlistment, doubtless
excited the martial spirit in George, as is confirmed by many an
anecdote, and started him on the way to that knowledge and training
which fitted him to become the head of the revolutionary army.
Augustus Washington, George’s father, died suddenly in 1743, at the
age of forty-nine. He was estimated to have been at his death the
wealthiest man in Virginia. At least he was able to leave an
inheritance to each of his seven children, so that they were each
regarded as among the most extensive property owners of that
prosperous colony.
Lawrence inherited the estate on the Potomac, which he named Mount
Vernon, in honor of his commander in the war with the Spaniards.
George was eleven years old when his father died, and he, with the
other four minor children, were left with their property to the
guardianship of their mother.
She was indeed the great mother of a great man. Her management morally
and financially was conscientious, exact and admirable. George, being
her eldest child, was always her favorite, but, with scrupulous care
she served each as needed and with the unstinted affection of a noble
mother.
II. A COMMUNITY PROUD OF ITS FAMILY HONOR
Lawrence Washington showed in many ways that he dearly loved his
reliable, busy little half-brother. George spent much of his time at
Mount Vernon. Lawrence had become quite an important man in the public
estimation. He had what might well be called a princely estate, which
he upheld in princely style, without offence to any one, and with the
admiration of all the people.
Next to him, on the picturesque Potomac ridge, lived his father-in-law
on the beautiful estate named Belvoir. This very honorable and
high-minded gentleman was of an old aristocratic English family, and
he was the manager of the extensive estates in Virginia of his cousin,
Lord Fairfax.
George Washington grew up in these severely aristocratic associations,
in which the gentility had no snobbery and the class distinction
nothing offensive beyond the requirements of merit, culture and the
manners of genuine gentlemen. Doubtless in admiration for the
neatness, cleanliness, harmony and scrupulous morality of these
beautiful homes, he was inspired to draw up his famous code known as
“Rules for Behavior in Company and Conversation.” We can easily
imagine that the visitors he met at Mount Vernon and Belvoir were the
very well-bred ladies and chivalrous gentleman of a courtly English
period, among whom were mingled numerous heroic captains from the West
Indies, whose chief topics of conversation were thrilling descriptions
and stories of Pirates and Spaniards. Perhaps he was then receiving a
vision of international affairs, from a world view, that was important
to his mission in civilization, even as Lincoln learned his country’s
welfare in his struggle upward among the backwoods commoners of his
times.
That George was greatly influenced by the warship heroes he met is
shown by his eagerness to join the navy. Everybody seemed to think
this was the thing for him except his mother. Even her firm decisions
were at last overcome, a midshipman’s place was obtained for him and
his personal effects were sent aboard the man-of-war, but the mother
could not say good-bye to her eldest son. She couldn’t give him up and
she didn’t. It is hardly likely that the world, a hundred years later,
could have known that there ever was such a person as George
Washington, if his mother had not changed her mind and kept him from
the boisterous turmoil of the uncertain sea. However that may be, he
was sent to school instead of making a cruise in the West Indies. His
study was mathematics and military tactics, the very thing most needed
in the sublime undertaking that was to make his name immortal.
Strange to say, he was known as a very bashful boy. In fact, all
through his life he was embarrassed in the presence of ladies. A girl
of his own age, who saw much of him when he was a boy, wrote in later
life, that “he was a very bashful young man.” She says, “I used often
to wish that he would talk more.”
That his emotional feelings were very early developed is quite certain
from his own diary written at that time. He wrote, with the usual
foolishness of a boy, about some unnamed girl with whom he was madly
in love. He was for a long time exceedingly unhappy. Even his
well-disciplined mind and his severe regulation of conduct were no
proof against the turmoil of unreturned affection. We have never known
anything about this beautiful lodestone that had drawn the heart out
of him. He never described her or told who she was. It was probably
merely a fancy ideal with which he clothed some one utterly impossible
as a real friend or mate to him. Such queer freaks of interest have
often happened to the emotions of a growing mind, and later, the
victim wondered what was possible in the object to cause such
feelings. In all likelihood, there was nothing in the object that
should have caused anything more than a just admiration or respect.
But instead, the feelings caught on fire and had to burn out. So it
was with Washington. As he was loyal to his ideals, even when they
were merely fancy, foolishly wrapped about some inappropriate object,
he remained devoted to his grief until years wore out the memory.
III. THE SELF-PITY AND SENTIMENTALISM OF YOUTH
Those who like their hero to be of chiseled marble may be shocked to
think that George Washington, “the father of his Country,” wrote pages
in his journal of foolish love-sighs and more foolish poetry. He
often bewailed his “poor restless heart, wounded by Cupid’s dart,” and
wrote of this wounded heart as “bleeding for one who remains pitiless
to my griefs and woes.” That he never had a confidant to whom he could
tell his sacred heart-burnings is indicated by the lines:
“Ah, woe is me, that I should love and conceal,
Long have I wished and never dared reveal.”
But such experiences let George Washington come a little closer to us
as a real boy, and is consolation for many a man who had a like
foolish spell in his youth.
George not only kept a tell-tale diary, which has given us all we know
of his inner life in youth, but he wrote letters in that journal to
many persons. Whether those letters were imaginary or were actually
copies of real letters we do not know. Some of these were written
while visiting the Fairfax family of Belvoir, after Lord Fairfax had
come there from England as the head of the family interests. He wrote
to his “dear friend Robin”: “My residence is at present at his
lordship’s, where I might, was my heart disengaged, pass my time very
pleasantly, as there’s a very agreeable young lady lives in the same
house; but, as that’s only adding fuel to the fire, it makes me the
more uneasy, for, by often and unavoidably being in company with her,
revives my former passion for your Lowland Beauty; whereas, was I to
live more retired from young women, I might in some measure alleviate
my sorrows by burying that chaste and troublesome passion in the grave
of oblivion.”
The “lowland beauty” he refers to is said to have been Miss Grimes, of
Westmoreland, who, as Mrs. Lee, became the mother of General Henry
Lee, famous in revolutionary times as Light Horse Harry, and always a
favorite with General Washington.
Lord Fairfax, to whom he often refers, had a strong influence on his
life. This real nobleman had inherited through his mother the Virginia
lands granted to Lord Culpepper by Charles II. Having been jilted at
the altar, in the very height of a rather famous career, by a lady who
had a chance to marry a duke, Lord Fairfax renounced society and left
England for Virginia. He took a great liking to young George
Washington and they became companions on many a fox-hunt.
Presently it became necessary for Lord Fairfax to have his lands
surveyed, and Washington, having studied surveying, was chosen for
this task. The boy, though now man’s size, was not yet seventeen when
he undertook this very responsible work. But here his careful training
served him well. Nothing was ever undertaken by him until it had been
thoroughly thought out, and success was thus assured in this his first
man-making task. He still kept his journal day by day, but it was now
full of the business of life. The emotional dreams of his Lowland
Beauty are recorded no more.
This escape from self-pity and individual sentimentalism is in line
with Edison’s advice to get busy at something useful if you would
avoid temptation and foolishness. Even one so sternly set as
Washington needed to have his attention occupied with something to do,
as employment for idle hands, in order to be free from devil-ideas
sowing artificial interests in the growing mind.