described, these letters. In abridging and connecting the train of them,
Washington's language is used to the extent that will be seen. The style
is different from that of his official productions and other letters of
his voluminous correspondence. He naturally stepped into one more
familiar when writing to a confidential friend on family matters
relating to his home at Mount Vernon, or as it was to be arranged in
Philadelphia while he was President. But the style has the directness
and sincerity of all his writings. It is apparent that the letters are
written without reserve. With two or three exceptions, no copies appear
to have been kept; yet everything is frank and straight-forward.
Understanding human nature thoroughly under all its phases, he deals
wisely with men in small things as in great; but he does no one
injustice. When others are acting disingenuously towards him, though
seeing through it, he is considerate and forbearing, not taking steps
hastily, but ready to make allowances where they could be made.
Dishonesty or suspicion of it he never overlooks. In the second letter
he suspects his steward of extravagance in spending too much for
supplies of the table kept for his upper servants; yet he authorizes Mr.
Lear to retain him, if, on looking into his accounts, he finds him
honest; intimating that any successor to him might act in the same way,
and a dismissal might be only a change without a benefit. His
reprobation of all dishonesty is seen in more than one of the letters,
as well as his restrained modes of dealing with it whilst affecting only
his own interests.
As regards the minutiae seen in the letters; the details respecting his
house, furniture, servants, carriages, horses, postilions, and so on,
these will be read with curiosity and interest. They suggest a new test
by which to try Washington, and let him be tried by it. We have not
before had such details from himself. It is for the first time the
curtain has been so lifted.
All great men, the very greatest, Caesar, Cromwell, Napoleon, Frederick,
Peter the Great, Marlborough, Alexander, all on the long list of
towering names, have had contact with small things. No pinnacle in
station, no supremacy in excellence or intellect, can exempt man from
this portion of his lot. It is a human necessity. Washington goes into
this sphere with a propriety and seemliness not always observable in
others of his high cast, but often signally the reverse. In dealing with
small things, he shows no undue tenacity of opinion; no selfishness; no
petulance; no misplaced excitements. He never plays the petty tyrant. He
does not forget himself; he does not forget others; he assumes nothing
from any exaltation in himself, but is reasonable and provident in all
his domestic and household arrangements.
Shall we seek for comparisons, or rather contrasts? With as much of
Washington's domestic portraiture before us as these letters hold up,
shall we turn to look at others? There is no difficulty, but in
selecting from the vast heap.
Frederick thought coffee too expensive an indulgence for common use in
his kingdom, saying he was himself reared on beer soup, which was surely
good enough for peasants and common fellows, as he called his people. He
wrote directions to his different cooks with his own hand the better to
pamper his appetite with every variety of the dishes and sauces he liked
best. He stinted Voltaire in sugar while a guest in his palace, or gave
it to him cheap and bad. He praised him face to face, and ridiculed him
behind his back. Napoleon played blind-man's buff at St. Helena. He lost
his temper at his coronation on perceiving that some of the princesses
of his family who were to act as trainbearers were not in their right
places. Caesar was versed in all the ceremonials of State. It was said
that he would even have been a perfect Roman gentleman but for a habit
of putting one of his fingers in his hair. Yet such a master of forms
gave grave offence to the Roman Senate by not rising when they intended
him a compliment; so unwise was he in small things. Cromwell in a frolic
threw a cushion at Ludlow, who in turn threw one at him. He bedaubed
with ink the face of one of the justices, who, with Cromwell himself,
had just been condemning Charles to the block. Peter the Great travelled
about with a pet monkey, which unceremoniously jumped upon the King of
England's shoulder when the latter visited the Czar in London. Some
great men have played leap-frog; some practised this affectation, some
that. The book of history records too amply the child-like diversions
among those who have flourished on the summits of renown. We hear of
none of this in Washington; no idle whimsies, no studied or foolish
eccentricities; none of the buffoonery of ripe years. They were not in
him; or if they were, self-discipline extirpated them, as it did the bad
ambition and moral callousness that have disfigured too many of the
great names of the earth, ancient and modern; whilst his matchless
purity and deathless deeds raise him above them all. This verdict is
already more than half pronounced by the most enlightened and
scrutinizing portions of mankind, and time is silently extending its
domain as he is longer tried by the parallels of history, and by the
philosophy of greatness itself.
Before his fame, steadily ascending from its adamantine foundation, gave
signs that it was to encircle the globe, some imagined him too prudent.
Some thought him devoid of sensibility; a cold, colossal mass,
intrenched in taciturnity, or enfolded in a mantle of dignity. The
sequel disclosed that his complete mastery over passion, moving in
harmony with his other powers and faculties, lent its essential aid
towards his unrivalled name. Opinion and passion were strong in him. The
latter existed in vehemence; but he put the curb upon it, turning it
into right directions, and excluding it otherwise from influence upon
his conduct. He stifled his dislikes; he was silent under sneers and
disparaging innuendoes lest inopportune speech might work injury to the
great cause confided to him. To the success of that cause he looked
steadily and exclusively. It absorbed his whole soul, and he determined
to concentrate upon it all his forbearance as well as energy. The
complicated dangers which encompassed it he knew, from his position,
sooner and better than others; but he would not make them public, lest
the foe might hear them, or others whose prepossessions were unfriendly;
preferring that temporary odium should rest upon himself. Therefore his
reserve; and thus it was that the grand results of his life came out in
manifold blessings to his country; thus it was that some at first
distrustful, and others long distrustful, of his superiority, came to
admit it in the end. Be it added, that his native good sense teaching
him the value of social restraint, and his knowledge of the world, its
approved observances in intercourse, the tone of the gentleman on its
best models ever also graced his public glory.
An anecdote I derived from Colonel Lear shortly before his death in
1816, may here be related, showing the height to which his passion would
rise yet be controlled. It belongs to his domestic life which I am
dealing with, having occurred under his own roof, whilst it marks public
feeling the most intense, and points to the moral of his life. I give it
in Colonel Lear's words as nearly as I can, having made a note of them
at the time.
Towards the close of a winter's day in 1791, an officer in uniform was
seen to dismount in front of the President's in Philadelphia, and,
giving the bridle to his servant, knock at the door of his mansion.
Learning from the porter that the President was at dinner, he said he
was on public business and had dispatches for the President. A servant
was sent into the dining-room to give the information to Mr. Lear, who
left the table and went into the hall where the officer repeated what
he had said. Mr. Lear replied that, as the President's Secretary, he
would take charge of the dispatches and deliver them at the proper time.
The officer made answer that he had just arrived from the western army,
and his orders were to deliver them with all promptitude, and to the
President in person; but that he would wait his directions. Mr. Lear
returned, and in a whisper imparted to the President what had passed.
General Washington rose from the table, and went to the officer. He was
back in a short time, made a word of apology for his absence, but no
allusion to the cause of it. He had company that day. Everything went on
as usual. Dinner over, the gentlemen passed to the drawing-room of Mrs.
Washington, which was open in the evening. The General spoke courteously
to every lady in the room, as was his custom. His hours were early, and
by ten o'clock all the company had gone. Mrs. Washington and Mr. Lear
remained. Soon Mrs. Washington left the room.
The General now walked backward and forward slowly for some minutes
without speaking. Then he sat down on a sofa by the fire, telling Mr.
Lear to sit down. To this moment there had been no change in his manner
since his interruption at table. Mr. Lear now perceived emotion. This
rising in him, he broke out suddenly, "_It's all over--St. Clair's
defeated--routed;--the officers nearly all killed, the men by wholesale;
the route complete--too shocking to think of--and a surprise into the
bargain_!"
He uttered all this with great vehemence. Then he paused, got up from
the sofa and walked about the room several times, agitated but saying
nothing. Near the door he stopped short and stood still a few seconds,
when his wrath became terrible.
"_Yes_," he burst forth, "HERE _on this very spot, I took leave of him;
I wished him success and honor; you have your instructions, I said, from
the Secretary of War, I had a strict eye to them, and will add but one
word_--BEWARE OF A SURPRISE. _I repeat it_, BEWARE OF A SURPRISE--_you
know how the Indians fight us. He went off with that as my last solemn
warning thrown into his ears. And yet!! to suffer that army to be cut to
pieces, hack'd, butchered, tomahawk'd, by a surprise--the very thing I
guarded him against!! O God, O God, he's worse than a murderer! how can
he answer it to his country;--the blood of the slain is upon him--the
curse of widows and orphans--the curse of Heaven_!"
This torrent came out in tones appalling. His very frame shook. It was
awful, said Mr. Lear. More than once he threw his hands up as he hurled
imprecations upon St. Clair. Mr. Lear remained speechless; awed into
breathless silence.
The roused Chief sat down on the sofa once more. He seemed conscious of
his passion, and uncomfortable. He was silent. His warmth beginning to
subside, he at length said in an altered voice: "_This must not go
beyond this room_." Another pause followed--a longer one--when he said
in a tone quite low, "_General St. Clair shall have justice; I looked
hastily through the dispatches, saw the whole disaster but not all the
particulars; I will receive him without displeasure; I will hear him
without prejudice; he shall have full justice_."
He was now, said Mr. Lear, perfectly calm. Half an hour had gone by. The
storm was over; and no sign of it was afterwards seen in his conduct or
heard in his conversation. The result is known. The whole case was
investigated by Congress. St. Clair was exculpated and regained the
confidence Washington had in him when appointing him to that command. He
had put himself into the thickest of the fight and escaped unhurt,
though so ill as to be carried on a litter, and unable to mount his
horse without help.
A passage from one of Mr. Jefferson's letters which the historian Sparks
records, may here be given, as its spirit covers the private as well as
public life of Washington. Mr. Jefferson withdrew his services as
Secretary of State from the administration of Washington towards the
close of his first term in the Presidency. His retirement from that
post took place when party spirit was violent and bitter in the extreme;
never was it more so in the annals of our country; and it was known that
he had differed from Washington on political questions of the greatest
importance. Nevertheless, writing of him at a later period Mr. Jefferson
says: "His integrity was most pure; his justice the most inflexible I
have ever known; no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship
or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every
sense of the word, a wise, a good, and a great man."
I return to his letters to Mr. Lear. In superintending his domestic
affairs, these letters exhibit him as the head of a well-ordered family,
himself the regulator of it all under maxims that best conduce to order
because not too rigid. We see that he was truly hospitable; kind;
devoted to his kindred whom he gathers around him, interesting himself
in their education and welfare; cheering them with a welcome at Mount
Vernon, and soothing them in sickness and sorrow. The kindred of Mrs.
Washington alike share his solicitudes, paternal care, and constant
kindness. All this is discernible from the facts that drop out in these
letters. They point to a heart affectionately alive to the best social
and family feelings. We see his attention to the comfort of his
servants, slaves, and others. His government of them, upper and
subordinate, appears to have been perfect by his union of discipline
with liberality. He knew that his postilions, if they slept over the
stable, would carry lights there whether he forbade it or not, for they
would do it when he knew nothing about it and not tell on each other. He
therefore allowed no sleeping there at all.
I could not avoid remarking, as characteristic throughout the whole of
this correspondence, that there is never any complaining of his labors.
Letter-writing alone would have been a heavy labor to him but for his
system and industry. Promptitude in using his pen there must necessarily
have been, or he could not have written so much. The history of the
times will show that when he wrote these letters he was simultaneously
writing others on public business, which, as the world knows, he never
neglected in any jot or tittle no matter what else he might be doing.
The domestic letters must therefore have been struck off with great
facility. Let us call to mind also the more than two hundred volumes of
folio manuscript of his public correspondence which Congress purchased,
and then remember that the sum of all he wrote is as nothing to what he
_did_ in his long career of activity in his country's service, military
and civil.
Next I remark, as a new corroboration of the modesty ever so prominent
in him, that not once throughout the whole of this correspondence does
he make any, the slightest, allusion to himself in connection with the
Revolutionary War, comparatively recent as it then was. Besides that the
general tenor of the correspondence might have supplied occasions for
such allusions, special opportunities were at hand while skirting the
battlegrounds and other localities of his military operations in the
war, even in his journeys between Mount Vernon and Philadelphia; yet
they are never once made. The casual mention of his "_Old Sergeant
Cornelius_," whom he happened to want as a workman about his grounds at
Mount Vernon, is the sole reference that could wake up the mind to his
having had anything to do with the Revolution. He had helped to pave the
way for that great event by the influence of his high character thrown
into the scale when the early questions of resistance or submission were
in agitation; he had helped it on by his attachment to constitutional
liberty at that epoch though his fortune was at stake, and friendships
among the highborn and cultivated from the parent State then among his
associates in Virginia--could a bosom like his have been swayed by such
thoughts; he had helped it on by the special weight of name he had won
in arms fighting side by side with the proud generals and troops of
Britain confident of victory, but saved from annihilation by his inborn
fearlessness and superiority, when death was all around him and dismay
everywhere in Braddock's disastrous fight--their silent homage crowning
the head of their deliverer; his triumphant sword at Yorktown put the
crowning hand to the immortal work--the work that founded this great
nation; yet we could never infer from a word or hint in the course of
these letters, from first to last, that he had anything to do with the
work, except as the name of "_Sergeant Cornelius_" incidentally falls
from his pen with only a rural object. What a lesson! Some extol
themselves openly. Some do it under cover of self-humiliation, called by
a French writer the pomp of modesty. Washington is simply silent; he
will slide into no allusions to the great and glorious work of his life
in the midst of temptations to it.
Finally: the charm of these letters is in their being so familiar, so
out of the sphere of his correspondence generally, and therefore holding
him up in lights that seem new. Mankind, long familiar with the external
attributes and grandeur of his character, looking up to his vast fame
as hero and statesman uncertain which predominates, have known less of
him at home with his family, his relations and his friends. The inner
parts of his character, the kindlier impulses of his nature, his
sympathies with those dear to him, dependent on him, or looking to him
for the solace of his kindness, seem to have remained less publicly
known. Mr. Sparks, in his preface to his "Life and Writings," remarks
that "it must be kept in mind that much the larger portion of his life
passed on a conspicuous public theatre, and that no account of it can be
written which will not assume essentially the air of history." He adds,
that while in his work "anecdotes are interwoven and such incidents of a
private and personal nature as are known, they are more rare than could
be desired."
The synopsis of the letters which I have given may perhaps tend in some
small degree to supply this desideratum in his illustrious life
alongside of the more copious anecdotes and reminiscences supplied by
the patriotic and filial devotion of Mr. Custis. This is my humble hope.
Since the foregoing Letters were received from Mrs. Lear, she has
favored me with the perusal of other manuscripts introducing us to the
domestic hours of General Washington. Among them is a Diary kept by Mr.
Lear at Mount Vernon in 1786, anterior therefore to the time when
Washington became President. From this document I am permitted to copy a
passage entire. It is dated the 23d of October, '86. Mr. Drayton and Mr.
Izard, gentlemen of South Carolina, had been spending the day at Mount
Vernon. After dinner, the company still round the table, Washington was
led to speak of Arnold's treason, and Mr. Lear wrote down his account of
it in his Diary of that day. Although history has made us familiar with
that whole transaction in its essential facts, to hear it under such
circumstances from the lips of Washington, seems to impart to it new
interest. We listen with revived curiosity and attention when such a
narrator speaks. The copy from Mr. Lear's Diary, in which is recorded
this interesting dinner-table narrative, is in the words following:--
"MOUNT VERNON,
Monday, October 23d, 1786.