“Look at mine,” he cried, laughing. “I have only one suit, and the rest
are hardly better off.”
I drew back and waited. In a few minutes the general came out, and
mounting, sat still until all of the staff were in the saddle.
He had changed greatly from the fresh, clear-skinned country gentleman I
saw first in Philadelphia. His face was more grave, his very ruddy skin
less clear and more bronzed. I observed that his eyes were deep set,
light blue in colour, and of unusual size; his nose was rather heavy
and large; the mouth resolute and firm, with full lips. His general
expression was sedate and tranquil. In full, neat buff and blue, his
hair powdered, the queue carefully tied, he sat very erect in the
saddle, and looked to be a good horseman.
This is all I remember at that time of this high-minded gentleman. I
heard much of him then and later; and as what I heard or saw varies a
good deal from the idea now held of him, I shall not refrain from saying
how he seemed to us, who saw him in camp and field, or in the hour of
rare leisure. But I shall do better, perhaps, just now to let my friend
say what he seemed to be to his more observant and reflective mind. It
was writ long after.
“Abler pens than mine,” says Jack, “have put on record the sorrowful
glory of that dreadful campground by Valley Forge. It is strongly
charactered in those beseeching letters and despatches of the almost
heartbroken man, who poured out his grief in language which even to-day
no man can read unmoved. To us he showed only a gravely tranquil face,
which had in it something which reassured those starving and naked ones.
Most wonderful is it, as I read what he wrote to inefficient, blundering
men, to see how calmly he states our pitiful case, how entirely he
controls a nature violent and passionate beyond that of most men. He was
scarcely in the saddle as commander before the body which set him there
was filled with dissatisfaction.
“I think it well that we know so little of what went on within the
walls of Congress. The silence of history has been friendly to
many reputations. There need be no silence as to this man, nor any
concealment, and there has been much. I would have men see him as we saw
him in his anger, when no language was too strong; in his hour of serene
kindliness, when Hamilton, the aide of twenty, was ‘my boy’; in this
starving camp, with naked men shivering all night in their blankets by
the fires, when ‘he pitied those miseries he could neither relieve nor
prevent.’ Am I displeased to think that although he laughed rarely he
liked Colonel Scammel’s strong stories, and would be amused by a song
such as no woman should hear?
“This serene, inflexible, decisive man, biding his hour, could be then
the venturesome soldier, willing to put every fortune on a chance,
risking himself with a courage that alarmed men for his life. Does any
but a fool think that he could have been all these things and not have
had in him the wild blood of passion? He had a love for fine clothes and
show. He was, I fear, at times extravagant, and, as I have heard, could
not pay his doctor’s bill, and would postpone that, and send him a horse
and a little money to educate his godson, the good doctor’s son. As to
some of his letters, they contained jests not gross, but not quite
fit for grave seigniors not _virginibus puerisque_. There is one to
Lafayette I have been shown by the marquis. It is most amusing, but--oh,
fie! Was he religious? I do not know. Men say so. He might have been,
and yet have had his hours of ungoverned rage, or of other forms of
human weakness. Like a friend of mine, he was not given to speech
concerning his creed.”
My Jack was right. Our general’s worst foes were men who loved their
country, but who knew not to comprehend this man. I well remember how I
used to stop at the camp-fires and hear the men talk of him. Here was
no lack of sturdy sense. The notion of Adams and Rush of appointing new
major-generals every year much amused them, and the sharp logic of cold
and empty bellies did not move them from the belief that their chief was
the right man. How was it they could judge so well and these others so
ill?
He had no tricks of the demagogue. He coveted no popularity. He knew not
to seek favour by going freely among the men. The democratic feeling in
our army was intense, and yet this reserved aristocrat had to the end
the love and confidence of every soldier in the ranks.