Scheme of Inland Navigation.—Shares of Stock offered to
Washington.—Declined.—Rural Improvements.—The Tax of
Letter-writing.—The Tax of Sitting for Likenesses.—Ornamental
Gardening.—Management of the Estate.—Domestic Life.—Visit of Mr.
Watson.—Reverential Awe inspired by Washington.—Irksome to
him.—Instances of his Festive Gayety.—Of his Laughing.—Passion
for Hunting revived.—Death of General Greene.—His
Character.—Washington’s Regrets and Encomiums.—Letters to the
French Noblemen.
Washington’s zeal for the public good had now found a new channel; or,
rather, his late tours into the interior of the Union had quickened
ideas long existing in his mind on the subject of internal navigation.
In a letter to Richard Henry Lee, recently chosen President of Congress,
he urged it upon his attention; suggesting that the western waters
should be explored, their navigable capabilities ascertained, and that a
complete map should be made of the country; that in all grants of land
by the United States, there should be a reserve made for special sale of
all mines, mineral and salt springs, that a medium price should be
adopted for the western lands, sufficient to prevent monopoly, but not
to discourage useful settlers. He had a salutary horror of “land
jobbers” and “roaming speculators,” prowling about the country like
wolves; marking and surveying valuable spots to the great disquiet of
the Indian tribes. “The spirit of emigration is great,” said he; “people
have got impatient, and though you cannot stop the road, it is yet in
your power to mark the way; a little while, and you will not be able to
do either.”
In the latter part of December he was at Annapolis, at the request of
the Assembly of Virginia, to arrange matters with the Assembly of
Maryland respecting the communication between the Potomac and the
western waters. Through his indefatigable exertions two companies were
formed under the patronage of the governments of these States, for
opening the navigation of the Potomac and James rivers, and he was
appointed president of both. By a unanimous vote of the Assembly of
Virginia, fifty shares in the Potomac, and one hundred in the James
River Company, were appropriated for his benefit, to the end that, while
the great works he had promoted would remain monuments of his glory,
they might also be monuments of the gratitude of his country. The
aggregate amount of these shares was about forty thousand dollars.
Washington was exceedingly embarrassed by the appropriation. To decline
so noble and unequivocal a testimonial of the good opinion and good-will
of his countrymen, might be construed into disrespect, yet he wished to
be perfectly free to exercise his judgment and express his opinions in
the matter, without being liable to the least suspicion of interested
motives. It had been his fixed determination, also, when he surrendered
his military command, never to hold any other office under government to
which emolument might become a necessary appendage. From this resolution
his mind had never swerved.
While, however, he declined to receive the proffered shares for his own
benefit, he intimated a disposition to receive them in trust, to be
applied to the use of some object or institution of a public nature. His
wishes were complied with, and the shares were ultimately appropriated
by him to institutions devoted to public education. Yet, though the love
for his country would thus interfere with his love for his home, the
dream of rural retirement at Mount Vernon still went on.
“The more I am acquainted with agricultural affairs,” he says, in a
letter to a friend in England, “the better I am pleased with them;
insomuch that I can nowhere find so much satisfaction as in those
innocent and useful pursuits. While indulging these feelings, I am led
to reflect, how much more delightful to an undebauched mind is the task
of making improvements on the earth, than all the vainglory that can be
acquired from ravaging it by the most uninterrupted career of conquest.”
“How pitiful, in the age of reason and religion, is that false ambition
which desolates the world with fire and sword for the purpose of
conquest and fame, compared to the milder virtues of making our
neighbors and our fellow-men as happy as their frail convictions and
perishable natures will permit them to be.”
He had a congenial correspondent in his quondam brother-soldier,
Governor Clinton of New York, whose spear, like his own, had been turned
into a pruning-hook.
“Whenever the season is proper and an opportunity offers,” writes he to
the governor, “I shall be glad to receive the balsam-trees or others
which you may think curious and exotic with us, as I am endeavoring to
improve the grounds about my house in this way.” He recommends to the
governor’s care certain grape-vines of the choicest kinds for the table,
which an uncle of the Chevalier de Luzerne had engaged to send from
France, and which must be about to arrive at New York. He is literally
going to sit under his own vine and his own fig-tree, and devote himself
to the quiet pleasures of rural life.
At the opening of the year (1785) the entries in his diary show him
diligently employed in preparations to improve his groves and shrubbery.
On the 10th of January he notes that the white thorn is full in berry.
On the 20th he begins to clear the pine-groves of undergrowth.
In February he transplants ivy under the walls of the garden to which it
still clings. In March he is planting hemlock-trees, that most beautiful
species of American evergreen, numbers of which had been brought hither
from Occoquan. In April he is sowing holly berries in drills, some
adjoining a green-briar hedge on the north side of the garden gate;
others in a semicircle on the lawn. Many of the holly bushes thus
produced, are still flourishing about the place in full vigor. He had
learnt the policy, not sufficiently adopted in our country, of clothing
his ornamented grounds as much as possible with evergreens, which resist
the rigors of our winter, and keep up a cheering verdure throughout the
year. Of the trees fitted for shade in pasture-land he notes the locust,
maple, black mulberry, black walnut, black gum, dogwood, and sassafras,
none of which he observes, materially injure the grass beneath them.
Is then for once a soldier’s dream realized? Is he in perfect enjoyment
of that seclusion from the world and its distractions, which he had so
often pictured to himself amid the hardships and turmoils of the camp?
Alas, no! The “post,” that “herald of a noisy world,” invades his quiet
and loads his table with letters, until correspondence becomes an
intolerable burden.
He looks in despair at the daily accumulating mass of unanswered
letters. “Many mistakenly think,” writes he, “that I am retired to ease,
and to that kind of tranquillity which would grow tiresome for want of
employment; but at no period of my life, not in the eight years I served
the public, have I been obliged to write so much myself, as I have done
since my retirement.”[105] Again, “It is not the letters from my friends
which give me trouble, or add aught to my perplexity. It is references
to old matters, with which I have nothing to do; applications which
often cannot be complied with; inquiries which would require the pen of
a historian to satisfy; letters of compliment as unmeaning perhaps as
they are troublesome, but which must be attended to; and the commonplace
business which employs my pen and my time often disagreeably. These,
with company, deprive me of exercise, and unless I can obtain relief,
must be productive of disagreeable consequences.”
From much of this drudgery of the pen he was subsequently relieved by
Mr. Tobias Lear, a young gentleman of New Hampshire, a graduate of
Harvard College, who acted as his private secretary, and at the same
time took charge of the instruction of the two children of the late Mr.
Parke Custis, whom Washington had adopted.
There was another tax imposed by his celebrity upon his time and
patience. Applications were continually made to him to sit for his
likeness. The following is his sportive reply to Mr. Francis Hopkinson,
who applied in behalf of Mr. Pine:—
“‘_In for a penny in for a pound_,’ is an old adage. I am so hackneyed
to the touches of the painters’ pencil, that I am altogether at their
beck, and sit ‘like Patience on a monument,’ whilst they are delineating
the lines of my face. It is a proof among many others, of what habit and
custom can accomplish. At first I was impatient at the request, and as
restive under the operation as a colt is under the saddle. The next time
I submitted very reluctantly, but with less flouncing. Now no dray-horse
moves more readily to his thill, than I to the painter’s chair. It may
easily be conceived, therefore, that I yield a ready obedience to your
request, and to the views of Mr. Pine.”
It was not long after this that M. Houdon, an artist of great merit,
chosen by Mr. Jefferson and Dr. Franklin, arrived from Paris, to make a
study of Washington for a statue, for the Legislature of Virginia. He
remained a fortnight at Mount Vernon, and having formed his model, took
it with him to Paris, where he produced that excellent statue and
likeness, to be seen in the State House in Richmond, Virginia.
Being now in some measure relieved from the labors of the pen,
Washington had more time to devote to his plan for ornamental
cultivation of the grounds about his dwelling.
We find in his diary noted down with curious exactness, each day’s labor
and the share he took in it; his frequent rides to the Mid Swamp; the
Dogue Creek; the “Plantation of the Neck,” and other places along the
Potomac in quest of young elms, ash-trees, white thorn, crab-apples,
maples, mulberries, willows, and lilacs; the winding walks which he lays
out, and the trees and shrubs which he plants along them. Now he sows
acorns and buck-eye nuts brought by himself from the Monongahela; now he
opens vistas through the Pine Grove, commanding distant views through
the woodlands; and now he twines round his columns scarlet honeysuckles,
which his gardener tells him will blow all the summer.
His care-worn spirit freshens up in these employments. With him Mount
Vernon is a kind of idyl. The transient glow of poetical feeling which
once visited his bosom, when in boyhood he rhymed beneath its groves,
seems about to return once more; and we please ourselves with noting
among the trees set out by him, a group of young horse-chestnuts from
Westmoreland, his native country, the haunt of his schoolboy days; which
had been sent to him by Colonel Lee (Light-horse Harry), the son of his
“lowland beauty.”
A diagram of the plan in which he had laid out his grounds, still
remains among his papers at Mount Vernon; the places are marked on it
for particular trees and shrubs. Some of those trees and shrubs are
still to be found in the places thus assigned to them. In the present
neglected state of Mount Vernon, its walks are overgrown, and vegetation
runs wild; but it is deeply interesting still to find traces of these
toils in which Washington delighted, and to know that many of the trees
which gave it its present umbrageous beauty were planted by his hand.
The ornamental cultivation of which we have spoken, was confined to the
grounds appertaining to what was called the mansion-house farm; all but
his estate included four other farms, lying contiguous, and containing
three thousand two hundred and sixty acres; each farm having its bailiff
or overseer, with a house for his accommodation, barns and outhouses for
the produce, and cabins for the negroes. On a general map of the estate,
drawn out by Washington himself, these farms were all laid down
accurately and their several fields numbered; he knew the soil and local
qualities of each, and regulated the culture of them accordingly.
In addition to these five farms there were several hundred acres of fine
woodland, so that the estate presented a beautiful diversity of land and
water. In the stables near the mansion-house were the carriage and
saddle horses, of which he was very choice; on the four farms there were
54 draft horses, 12 mules, 317 head of black cattle, 360 sheep, and a
great number of swine which last ran at large in the woods.
He now read much on husbandry and gardening, and copied out treatises on
those subjects. He corresponded also with the celebrated Arthur Young,
from whom he obtained seeds of all kinds, improved ploughs, plans for
laying out farm-yards, and advice on various parts of rural economy.
“Agriculture,” writes he to him, “has ever been among the most favored
of my amusements, though I have never possessed much skill in the art,
and nine years total inattention to it has added nothing to a knowledge,
which is best understood from practice; but with the means you have been
so obliging as to furnish me, I shall return to it, though rather late
in the day, with more alacrity than ever.”
In the management of his estate he was remarkably exact. No negligence
on the part of the overseers or those under them was passed unnoticed.
He seldom used many words on the subject of his plans; rarely asked
advice; but, when once determined, carried them directly and silently
into execution; and was not easily dissuaded from a project when once
commenced.
We have shown, in a former chapter, his mode of apportioning time at
Mount Vernon, prior to the Revolution. The same system was, in a great
measure, resumed. His active day began sometime before the dawn. Much of
his correspondence was dispatched before breakfast, which took place at
half-past seven. After breakfast he mounted his horse which stood ready
at the door, and rode out to different parts of his estate, as he used
to do to various parts of the camp, to see that all was right at the
outposts, and every one at his duty. At half-past two he dined.
If there was no company he would write until dark, or, if pressed by
business until nine o’clock in the evening, otherwise he read in the
evening, or amused himself with a game of whist.
His secretary, Mr. Lear, after two years’ residence in the family on the
most confidential footing, says, “General Washington is, I believe, the
only man of an exalted character who does not lose some part of his
respectability by an intimate acquaintance. I have never found a single
thing that could lessen my respect for him. A complete knowledge of his
honesty, uprightness, and candor in all his private transactions, has
sometimes led me to think him more than a man.”
The children of Parke Custis formed a lively part of his household. He
was fond of children and apt to unbend with them. Miss Custis, recalling
in after life the scenes of her childhood, writes, “I have sometimes
made him laugh most heartily from sympathy with my joyous and
extravagant spirits;” she observes, however, that “he was a silent,
thoughtful man. He spoke little generally; never of himself. I never
heard him relate a single act of his life during the war. I have often
seen him perfectly abstracted, his lips moving; but no sound was
perceptible.”
An observant traveller, Mr. Elkanah Watson, who visited Mount Vernon in
the winter of 1785, bearer of a letter of introduction from General
Greene and Colonel Fitzgerald, gives a home picture of Washington in his
retirement. Though sure that his credentials would secure him a
respectful reception, he says, “I trembled with awe, as I came into the
presence of this great man. I found him at table with Mrs. Washington
and his private family, and was received in the native dignity, and with
that urbanity so peculiarly combined in the character of a soldier and
an eminent private gentleman. He soon put me at my ease, by unbending in
a free and affable conversation.
“The cautious reserve which wisdom and policy dictated, whilst engaged
in rearing the glorious fabric of our independence, was evidently the
result of consummate prudence and not characteristic of his nature. I
observed a peculiarity in his smile, which seemed to illuminate his eye;
his whole countenance beamed with intelligence, while it commanded
confidence and respect.
“I found him kind and benignant in the domestic circle; revered and
beloved by all around him; agreeably social, without ostentation;
delighting in anecdote and adventures; without assumption; his domestic
arrangements harmonious and systematic. His servants seemed to watch his
eye, and to anticipate his every wish; hence a look was equivalent to a
command. His servant Billy, the faithful companion of his military
career, was always at his side. Smiling content animated and beamed on
every countenance in his presence.”
In the evening Mr. Watson sat conversing for a full hour with Washington
after all the family had retired, expecting, perhaps, to hear him fight
over some of his battles; but, if so, he was disappointed, for he
observes: “He modestly waived all allusions to the events in which he
had acted so glorious and conspicuous a part. Much of his conversation
had reference to the interior country, and to the opening of the
navigation of the Potomac by canals and locks, at the Seneca, the Great
and Little Falls. His mind appeared to be deeply absorbed by that
object, then in earnest contemplation.”
Mr. Watson had taken a severe cold in the course of a harsh winter
journey, and coughed excessively. Washington pressed him to take some
remedies, but he declined. After retiring for the night his coughing
increased. “When some time had elapsed,” writes he, “the door of my room
was gently opened, and, on drawing my bed curtains, I beheld Washington
himself, standing at my bedside with a bowl of hot tea in his hand. I
was mortified and distressed beyond expression. This little incident,
occurring in common life with an ordinary man, would not have been
noticed; but as a trait of the benevolence and private virtue of
Washington, deserves to be recorded.”
The late Bishop White, in subsequent years, speaking of Washington’s
unassuming manners, observes: “I know no man who so carefully guarded
against the discoursing of himself or of his acts, or of anything that
pertained to him and it has occasionally occurred to me when in his
company, that, if a stranger to his person were present, he would never
have known from anything said by him that he was conscious of having
distinguished himself in the eye of the world.”
An anecdote is told of Washington’s conduct while commander-in-chief,
illustrative of his benignant attention to others, and his freedom from
all assumption. While the army was encamped at Morristown, he one day
attended a religious meeting where divine service was to be celebrated
in the open air. A chair had been set out for his use. Just before the
service commenced, a woman bearing a child in her arms approached. All
the seats were occupied. Washington immediately rose, placed her in the
chair which had been assigned to him, and remained standing during the
whole service.[106]
The reverential awe which his deeds and elevated position threw around
him was often a source of annoyance to him in private life; especially
when he perceived its effect upon the young and gay. We have been told
of a case in point, when he made his appearance at a private ball where
all were enjoying themselves with the utmost glee. The moment he entered
the room the buoyant mirth was checked; the dance lost its animation;
every face was grave; every tongue was silent. He remained for a time,
endeavoring to engage in conversation with some of the young people, and
to break the spell; finding it in vain, he retired sadly to the company
of the elders in an adjoining room, expressing his regret that his
presence should operate as such a damper. After a little while light
laughter and happy voices again resounded from the ball-room; upon which
he rose cautiously, approached on tip-toe the door, which was ajar, and
there stood for some time a delighted spectator of the youthful revelry.
Washington in fact, though habitually grave and thoughtful, was of a
social disposition, and loved cheerful society. He was fond of the
dance, and it was the boast of many ancient dames in our day, who had
been belles in the time of the Revolution, that they had danced minuets
with him, or had him for a partner in contra-dances. There were balls in
camp, in some of the dark times of the Revolution. “We had a little
dance at my quarters,” writes General Greene from Middlebrook, in March,
1779. “His Excellency and Mrs. Greene danced upwards of three hours
without once sitting down. Upon the whole, we had a pretty little
frisk.”[107]
A letter of Colonel Tench Tilghman, one of Washington’s aides-de-camp,
gives an instance of the general’s festive gayety, when in the above
year the army was cantoned near Morristown. A large company, of which
the general and Mrs. Washington, general and Mrs. Greene, and Mr. and
Mrs. Olney were part, dined with colonel and Mrs. Biddle. Some little
time after the ladies had retired from the table, Mr. Olney followed
them into the next room. A clamor was raised against him as a deserter,
and it was resolved that a party should be sent to demand him, and that
if the ladies refused to give him up, he should be brought by force.
Washington humored the joke, and offered to head the party. He led it
with great formality to the door of the drawing-room, and sent in a
summons. The ladies refused to give up the deserter. An attempt was made
to capture him. The ladies came to the rescue. There was a mêlée; in the
course of which his Excellency seems to have had a passage at arms with
Mrs. Olney. The ladies were victorious, as they always ought to be, says
the gallant Tilghman.[108]
More than one instance is told of Washington’s being surprised into
hearty fits of laughter, even during the war. We have recorded one
produced by the sudden appearance of old General Putnam on horseback,
with a female prisoner _en croupe_. The following is another which
occurred at the camp at Morristown. Washington had purchased a young
horse of great spirit and power. A braggadocio of the army, vain of his
horsemanship, asked the privilege of breaking it. Washington gave his
consent, and with some of his officers attended to see the horse receive
his first lesson. After much preparation, the pretender to equitation
mounted into the saddle and was making a great display of his science,
when the horse suddenly planted his fore feet, threw up his heels, and
gave the unlucky Gambado a somerset over his head. Washington, a
thorough horseman, and quick to perceive the ludicrous in these matters,
was so convulsed with laughter, that, we are told, the tears ran down
his cheeks.[109]
Still another instance is given, which occurred at the return of peace,
when he was sailing in a boat on the Hudson, and was so overcome by the
drollery of a story told by Major Fairlie of New York, of facetious
memory, that he fell back in the boat in a paroxysm of laughter. In that
fit of laughter, it was sagely presumed that he threw off the burden of
care which had been weighing down his spirits throughout the war. He
certainly relaxed much of his thoughtful gravity of demeanor when he had
no longer the anxieties of a general command to harass him. The late
Judge Brooke, who had served as an officer in the legion of Light-horse
Harry, used to tell of having frequently met Washington on his visits to
Fredericksburg after the Revolutionary War, and how “hilarious” the
general was on those occasions with “Jack Willis, and other friends of
his young days,” laughing heartily at the comic songs which were sung at
table.
Colonel Henry Lee, too, who used to be a favored guest at Mount Vernon,
does not seem to have been much under the influence of that “reverential
awe” which Washington is said to have inspired, if we may judge from the
following anecdote. Washington one day at table mentioned his being in
want of carriage horses, and asked Lee if he knew where he could get a
pair.
NOTE.
Another instance is on record of one of Washington’s fits of laughter,
which occurred in subsequent years. Judge Marshall and Judge
Washington, a relative of the general, were on their way on horseback
to visit Mount Vernon, attended by a black servant, who had charge of
a large portmanteau containing their clothes. As they passed through a
wood on the skirts of the Mount Vernon grounds, they were tempted to
make a hasty toilet beneath its shade; being covered with dust from
the state of the roads. Dismounting, they threw off their dusty
garments, while the servant took down the portmanteau. As he opened
it, out flew cakes of windsor soap and fancy articles of all kinds.
The man by mistake had changed their portmanteau at the last stopping
place for one which resembled it, belonging to a Scotch pedlar. The
consternation of the negro, and their own dismantled state, struck
them so ludicrously as to produce loud and repeated bursts of
laughter. Washington, who happened to be out upon his grounds, was
attracted by the noise, and so overcome by the strange plight of his
friends, and the whimsicality of the whole scene, that he is said to
have actually rolled on the grass with laughter.—See _Life of Judge J.
Smith_.
“I have a fine pair, general,” replied Lee, “but you cannot get them.”
“Why not?”
“Because you will never pay more than half price for anything; and I
must have full price for my horses.”
The bantering reply set Mrs. Washington laughing, and her parrot,
perched beside her, joined in the laugh. The general took this familiar
assault upon his dignity in great good part, “Ah, Lee, you are a funny
fellow,” said he; “see, that bird is laughing at you.”[110]
Hearty laughter, however, was rare with Washington. The sudden
explosions we hear of were the result of some sudden and ludicrous
surprise. His general habit was a calm seriousness, easily softening
into a benevolent smile.
In some few of his familiar letters, yet preserved, and not relating to
business, there is occasionally a vein of pleasantry and even of humor;
but almost invariably, they treat of matters of too grave import to
admit of anything of the kind. It is to be deeply regretted that most of
his family letters have been purposely destroyed.
The passion for hunting had revived with Washington on returning to his
old hunting-grounds; but he had no hounds. His kennel had been broken up
when he went to the wars, and the dogs given away, and it was not easy
to replace them. After a time he received several hounds from France,
sent out by Lafayette and other of the French officers, and once more
sallied forth to renew his ancient sport. The French hounds, however,
proved indifferent; he was out with them repeatedly, putting other
hounds with them borrowed from gentlemen of the neighborhood. They
improved after a while, but were never stanch, and caused him frequent
disappointments. Probably he was not as stanch himself as formerly; an
interval of several years may have blunted his keenness, if we may judge
from the following entry in his diary:—
“Out after breakfast with my hounds, found a fox and ran him sometimes
hard, and sometimes at cold hunting from 11 till near 2—when I came home
and left the huntsmen with them, who followed in the same manner two
hours or more, and then took the dogs off without killing.”
He appears at one time to have had an idea of stocking part of his
estate with deer. In a letter to his friend, George William Fairfax, in
England, a letter expressive of kind recollections of former
companionship, he says: “Though envy is no part of my composition, yet
the picture you have drawn of your present habitation and mode of
living, is enough to create a strong desire in me to be a participator
of the tranquillity and rural amusements you have described. I am
getting into the latter as fast as I can, being determined to make the
remainder of my life easy, let the world or the affairs of it go as they
may. I am not a little obliged to you for contributing to this, by
procuring me a buck and doe of the best English deer; but if you have
not already been at this trouble, I would, my good sir, now wish to
relieve you from it, as Mr. Ogle of Maryland has been so obliging as to
present me six fawns from his park of English deer at Bellair. With
these, and tolerable care, I shall soon have a full stock for my small
paddock.”[111]
While Washington was thus calmly enjoying himself, came a letter from
Henry Lee, who was now in Congress, conveying a mournful piece of
intelligence: “Your friend and second, the patriot and noble Greene, is
no more. Universal grief reigns here.” Greene died on the 18th of June,
at his estate of Mulberry Grove, on Savannah River, presented to him by
the State of Georgia. His last illness was brief; caused by a stroke of
the sun; he was but forty-four years of age.
The news of his death struck heavily on Washington’s heart, to whom, in
the most arduous trials of the Revolution, he had been a second self. He
had taken Washington as his model, and possessed naturally many of his
great qualities. Like him, he was sound in judgment; persevering in the
midst of discouragements; calm and self-possessed in time of danger;
heedful of the safety of others; heedless of his own. Like him, he was
modest and unpretending, and like him he had a perfect command of
temper.
He had Washington’s habits of early rising, and close and methodical
dispatch of business, “never suffering the day to crowd upon the
morrow.” In private intercourse he was frank, noble, candid, and
intelligent; in the hurry of business he was free from petulance, and
had, we are told, “a winning blandness of manner that won the affections
of his officers.”
His campaigns in the Carolinas showed him to be a worthy disciple of
Washington, keeping the war alive by his own persevering hope and
inexhaustible energy, and, as it were, fighting almost without weapons.
His great contest of generalship with the veteran Cornwallis, has
insured for him a lasting renown.
“He was a great and good man!” was Washington’s comprehensive eulogy on
him; and in a letter to Lafayette he writes: “Greene’s death is an event
which has given such general concern, and is so much regretted by his
numerous friends, that I can scarce persuade myself to touch upon it,
even so far as to say that in him you lost a man who affectionately
regarded, and was a sincere admirer of you.”[112]
Other deaths pressed upon Washington’s sensibility about the same time.
That of General McDougall, who had served his country faithfully through
the war, and since with equal fidelity in Congress. That, too, of
Colonel Tench Tilghman, for a long time one of Washington’s
aides-de-camp, and “who left,” writes he, “as fair a reputation as ever
belonged to a human character.” “Thus,” adds he, “some of the pillars of
the Revolution fall. Others are mouldering by insensible degrees. May
our country never want props to support the glorious fabric!”
In his correspondence about this time with several of the French
noblemen who had been his associates in arms, his letters breathe the
spirit of peace which was natural to him; for war with him had only been
a matter of patriotism and public duty.
To the Marquis de la Rouerie, who had so bravely but modestly fought
under the title of Colonel Armand, he writes: “I never expect to draw my
sword again. I can scarcely conceive the cause that would induce me to
do it. My time is now occupied by rural amusements, in which I have
great satisfaction; and my first wish is (although it is against the
profession of arms, and would clip the wings of some of our young
soldiers who are soaring after glory) to see the whole world in peace,
and the inhabitants of it as one band of brothers, striving who should
contribute most to the happiness of mankind.”
So, also, in a letter to Count Rochambeau, dated July 31st, 1786: “It
must give pleasure,” writes he, “to the friends of humanity, even in
this distant section of the globe, to find that the clouds which
threatened to burst in a storm of war on Europe, have dissipated, and
left a still brighter horizon.... As the rage of conquest, which in
times of barbarity stimulated nations to blood, has in a great measure
ceased; as the objects which formerly gave birth to wars are daily
diminishing; and as mankind are becoming more enlightened and humanized,
I cannot but flatter myself with the pleasing prospect, that a more
liberal policy and more pacific systems will take place amongst them. To
indulge this idea affords a soothing consolation to a philanthropic
mind; insomuch that, although it should be found an illusion, one would
hardly wish to be divested of an error so grateful in itself and so
innocent in its consequences.”
And in another letter, “It is thus, you see, my dear Count, in
retirement upon my farm I speculate upon the fate of nations, amusing
myself with innocent reveries that mankind will one day grow happier and
better.”
How easily may the wisest of men be deceived in their speculations as to
the future, especially when founded on the idea of the perfectibility of
human nature. These halcyon dreams of universal peace were indulged on
the very eve, as it were, of the French Revolution, which was to deluge
the world in blood, and when the rage for conquest was to have unbounded
scope under the belligerent sway of Napoleon.
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