“I am now, I believe, fixed in this seat, with an agreeable partner for life; and I hope to find more happiness in retirement than I ever experienced in the wide and bustling world.”
Most of our readers are familiar with the home of Washington, as it has been presented to them in the many engravings which have found their way to almost every fireside. The mansion, very spacious on the ground floor, was architecturally quite pleasing. It stood upon a smooth, green, velvety lawn, spreading several hundred feet down to the river which washed its eastern base. The prospect it commanded was magnificent. The eminence, in the rear, was crowned with the stately forest. The spacious estate, of two thousand five hundred acres, was divided into many highly cultivated farms. Much of the region was still covered with the forest, which the axe of the settler had never disturbed. Game of every variety abounded on the hills, and in the meadows and streamlets. A nobler hunting ground could perhaps nowhere be found. Washington, when but a stripling, had often ranged its vast expanse, where deer, foxes, and rabbits had found their favorite haunts; and where water-fowl floated, often in countless numbers, upon the creeks and lakelets. In one of Washington’s letters he writes enthusiastically, and yet truly:
“No estate in United America is more pleasantly situated. In a high and healthy country; in a latitude between the extremes of heat and cold; on one of the finest rivers in the world—a river well stocked with various kinds of fish at all seasons of the year, and, in the spring with shad, herring, bass, carp, sturgeon, etc., in great abundance. The borders of the estate are washed by more than ten miles of tide water. Several valuable fisheries appertain to it. The whole shore, in fact, is one entire fishery.”
Washington was, from his natural disposition, and also from the teachings of his mother, a devout man. The society in the midst of which he was born, and by which he was from childhood surrounded, was aristocratic in all its habits and tastes. Most of the wealthy planters were connected with the aristocratic families of England. They had brought over large sums of money, purchased extensive estates and were living in a style of splendor and of profuse hospitality unknown in any of the other colonies.
The governors, in particular, being appointed by the crown and who were generally men of wealth and high birth, endeavored to form their establishments on the pattern of miniature royalty. The Episcopal church, or church of England, was altogether predominant throughout the Dominion. Many of these haughty men maintained it merely as an essential part of the political organization of the British government. But Washington was a religious man in heart and in life. He was vestryman[54] of two parishes: Fairfax and Truro.
The parochial church of Fairfax was at Alexandria, ten miles from Mount Vernon. The church of the Truro parish was at Pohick, about seven miles distant. Washington had presented the plan of the latter church, and had built it almost at his own expense. He attended one or the other of these churches when the weather and the state of the roads would permit. He and Mrs. Washington were both communicants.
Notwithstanding the rapid increase of wealth and splendor in our land, the style of living, which prevailed among these opulent families in Virginia, has long ago faded away. Massive side-boards were generally, seen covered with glittering plate. The burglar was not feared in these large households. Superb carriages, drawn often by four blooded horses, all imported from England, conveyed the richly dressed families, through the forest roads, from mansion to mansion in their stately calls.
Washington had his chariot and four.[55] His black postilions, chosen for their manly beauty, were richly clad in livery. When he accompanied Lady Washington in any one of her drives, he, a splendid horseman, almost invariably appeared mounted, and their equipage would often surpass that of the minor dukes and princes of Europe.
Mr. Irving writes: “A large Virginia estate, in those days, was a little empire. The mansion-house was a seat of government, with its numerous dependencies, such as kitchens, smoke-house, workshops and stables. In this mansion the master ruled supreme; his steward, or overseer, was prime minister and executive officer. He had his legion of house negroes for domestic service, and his host of field negroes for the culture of tobacco, Indian corn, and other crops, and for other out-door labor.
“Their quarters formed a kind of hamlet, composed of various huts, with little gardens and poultry yards, all well stocked; and swarms of little negroes gambolling in the sunshine. Then there were large wooden edifices for curing tobacco, the staple and most profitable production, and mills for grinding wheat and Indian corn, of which large fields were cultivated for the supply of the family, and the maintenance of the negroes.