George Washington, Volume II

by Henry Cabot Lodge

{The Vertot's if they are in estimation.}

If there is a good Bookseller's shop in the City, I would thank you for sending me a catalogue of the Books and their prices that I may choose such as I want."

His tastes ran to history and to works treating of war or agriculture, as is indicated both by this list and some earlier ones. It is not probable that he gave so much attention to lighter literature, although he wrote verses in his youth, and by an occasional allusion in his letters he seems to have been familiar with some of the great works of the imagination, like "Don Quixote."[¹]

[Footnote 1: [(return)] At his death the appraisers of the estate found 863 volumes in his library, besides a great number of pamphlets, magazines, and maps. This was a large collection of books for those days, and showed that the possessor, although purely a man of affairs, loved reading and had literary tastes.]

He never freed himself from the self-distrust caused by his profound sense of his own deficiencies in education, on the one hand, and his deep reverence for learning, on the other. He had fought the Revolution, which opened the way for a new nation, and was at the height of his fame when he wrote to the French officers, who begged him to visit France, that he was "too old to learn French or to talk with ladies;" and it was this feeling in a large measure which kept him from ever being a maker of phrases or a sayer of brilliant things. In other words, the fact that he was modest and sensitive has been the chief cause of his being thought dull and cold. This idea, moreover, is wholly that of posterity, for there is not the slightest indication on the part of any contemporary that Washington could not talk well and did not appear to great advantage in society. It is posterity, looking with natural weariness at endless volumes of official letters with all the angles smoothed off by the editorial plane, that has come to suspect him of being dull in mind and heavy in wit. His contemporaries knew him to be dignified and often found him stern, but they never for a moment considered him stupid, or thought him a man at whom the shafts of wit could be shot with impunity. They were fully conscious that he was as able to hold his own in conversation as he was in the cabinet or in the field; and we can easily see the justice of contemporary opinion if we take the trouble to break through the official bark and get at the real man who wrote the letters. In many cases we find that he could employ irony and sarcasm with real force, and his powers of description, even if stilted at times, were vigorous and effective. All these qualities come out strongly in his letters, if carefully read, and his private correspondence in particular shows a keenness and point which the formalities of public intercourse veiled generally from view. We are fortunate in having the account of a disinterested and acute observer of the manner in which Washington impressed a casual acquaintance in conversation. The actor Bernard, whom we have already quoted, and whom we left with Washington at the gates of Mount Vernon, gives us the following vivid picture of what ensued:—

"In conversation his face had not much variety of expression. A look of thoughtfulness was given by the compression of the mouth and the indentations of the brow (suggesting an habitual conflict with, and mastery over, passion), which did not seem so much to disdain a sympathy with trivialities as to be incapable of denoting them. Nor had his voice, so far as I could discover in our quiet talk, much change or richness of intonation, but he always spoke with earnestness, and his eyes (glorious conductors of the light within) burned with a steady fire which no one could mistake for mere affability; they were one grand expression of the well-known line: 'I am a man, and interested in all that concerns humanity.' In one hour and a half's conversation he touched on every topic that I brought before him with an even current of good sense, if he embellished it with little wit or verbal elegance. He spoke like a man who had felt as much as he had reflected, and reflected more than he had spoken; like one who had looked upon society rather in the mass than in detail, and who regarded the happiness of America but as the first link in a series of universal victories; for his full faith in the power of those results of civil liberty which he saw all around him led him to foresee that it would, erelong, prevail in other countries, and that the social millennium of Europe would usher in the political. When I mentioned to him the difference I perceived between the inhabitants of New England and of the Southern States, he remarked: 'I esteem those people greatly; they are the stamina of the Union and its greatest benefactors. They are continually spreading themselves too, to settle and enlighten less favored quarters. Dr. Franklin is a New Englander.' When I remarked that his observations were flattering to my country, he replied, with great good-humor, 'Yes, yes, Mr. Bernard, but I consider your country the cradle of free principles, not their armchair. Liberty in England is a sort of idol; people are bred up in the belief and love of it, but see little of its doings. They walk about freely, but then it is between high walls; and the error of its government was in supposing that after a portion of their subjects had crossed the sea to live upon a common, they would permit their friends at home to build up those walls about them.' A black coming in at this moment with a jug of spring water, I could not repress a smile, which the general at once interpreted. 'This may seem a contradiction,' he continued, 'but I think you must perceive that it is neither a crime nor an absurdity. When we profess, as our fundamental principle, that liberty is the inalienable right of every man, we do not include madmen or idiots; liberty in their hands would become a scourge. Till the mind of the slave has been educated to perceive what are the obligations of a state of freedom, and not confound a man's with a brute's, the gift would insure its abuse. We might as well be asked to pull down our old warehouses before trade has increased to demand enlarged new ones. Both houses and slaves were bequeathed to us by Europeans, and time alone can change them; an event, sir, which, you may believe me, no man desires more heartily than I do. Not only do I pray for it, on the score of human dignity, but I can already foresee that nothing but the rooting out of slavery can perpetuate the existence of our Union, by consolidating it in a common bond of principle.'

"I now referred to the pleasant hours I had passed in Philadelphia, and my agreeable surprise at finding there so many men of talent, at which his face lit up vividly. 'I am glad to hear you, sir, who are an Englishman, say so, because you must now perceive how ungenerous are the assertions people are always making on your side of the water. One gentleman, of high literary standing,—I allude to the Abbé Raynal,—has demanded whether America has yet produced one great poet, statesman, or philosopher. The question shows anything but observation, because it is easy to perceive the causes which have combined to render the genius of this country scientific rather than imaginative. And, in this respect, America has surely furnished her quota. Franklin, Rittenhouse, and Rush are no mean names, to which, without shame, I may append those of Jefferson and Adams, as politicians; while I am told that the works of President Edwards of Rhode Island are a text-book in polemics in many European colleges.'

"Of the replies which I made to his inquiries respecting England, he listened to none with so much interest as to those which described the character of my royal patron, the Prince of Wales. 'He holds out every promise,' remarked the general, 'of a brilliant career. He has been well educated by events, and I doubt not that, in his time, England will receive the benefit of her child's emancipation. She is at present bent double, and has to walk with crutches; but her offspring may teach her the secret of regaining strength, erectness, and independence.' In reference to my own pursuits he repeated the sentiments of Franklin. He feared the country was too poor to be a patron of the drama, and that only arts of a practical nature would for some time be esteemed. The stage he considered to be an indispensable resource for settled society, and a chief refiner; not merely interesting as a comment on the history of social happiness by its exhibition of manners, but an agent of good as a school for poetry, in holding up to honor the noblest principles. 'I am too old and too far removed,' he added, 'to seek for or require this pleasure myself, but the cause is not to droop on my account. There's my friend Mr. Jefferson has time and taste; he goes always to the play, and I'll introduce you to him,' a promise which he kept, and which proved to me the source of the greatest benefit and pleasure."

This is by far the best account of Washington in the ordinary converse of daily life that has come down to us. The narrator belonged to the race who live by amusing their fellow-beings, and are in consequence quick to notice peculiarities and highly susceptible to being bored. Bernard, after the first interest of seeing a very eminent man had worn off, would never have lingered for an hour and a half of chat and then gone away reluctantly if his host had been either dull of speech or cold and forbidding of manner. It is evident that Washington talked well, easily, and simply, ranging widely over varied topics with a sure touch, and that he drew from the ample resources of a well-stored and reflective mind. The scraps of conversation which Bernard preserves are interesting and above the average of ordinary talk, without manifesting any attempt to be either brilliant or striking, and it is also apparent that Washington had the art of putting his guest entirely at his ease by his own pleasant and friendly manner. He had picked up the English actor on the road, liked his readiness to be helpful (always an attraction to him in any one), found him well-mannered and intelligent, and brought him home to rest and chat in the pleasant summer afternoon. To Bernard he was simply the plain Virginia gentleman, with a liberal and cultivated interest in men and things, and not a trace of oppressive and conscious greatness about him. It is to be suspected that he was by no means equally genial to the herd of sight-seers who pursued him in his retirement, but in this meeting he appeared as he must always have appeared to his family and friends.

We get the same idea from the scattered allusions that we have to Washington in private life. Although silent and reserved as to himself, he was by no means averse to society, and in his own house all his guests, both great and small, felt at their ease with him, although with no temptation to be familiar. We know from more than one account that the dinners at the presidential house, as well as at Mount Vernon, were always agreeable. It was his wont to sit at table after the cloth was removed sipping a glass of wine and eating nuts, of which he was very fond, while he listened to the conversation and caused it to flow easily, not so much by what he said as by the kindly smile and ready sympathy which made all feel at home. We can gather an idea also of the charm which he had in the informal intercourse of daily life from some of his letters on trifling matters. Here is a little note written to Mrs. Stockton in acknowledgment of a pastoral poem which she had sent him:—