The estate he divided into five farms, each under an overseer responsible to the manager of the estate, and each equipped with the necessary complement of labor, buildings and stock. Through the manager the reports of progress from the five farms were passed up to the master in the big house every Saturday morning, and with scrupulous precision he transcribed and classified them. Washington never heard of a microbe, nor studied chemistry, yet in these reports and his own conclusions will be found exhaustive experiments in inoculating the soil and rotating crops. He balanced his cultivation so as to produce sufficient food for his people and stock, and the utmost yield of negotiable grains. “Our lands,” he wrote, “were originally very good; but use and abuse have made them quite otherwise”—and so he sent abroad for new seeds to try out. Selected quantities of his grains he set aside for experiment upon the diet of his livestock. Although he was a host of lavish hospitality within the house, every move he made as a farmer was a lesson in conservation. His woodcutters got explicit orders to select the timber they cut; his overseers were told not to try to squeeze the land for high crop yield at the expense of upkeep; each new herd of cattle must be better stock than the last; the mill was re-engineered to grind more meal from each bushel of corn; a stone deposit became a quarry; the waters of the Potomac gave up “a sufficiency of fish for my own people” in the first catch, and beyond that a great supply for salting and sale in the winter market; every by-product of the estate was developed and applied. Jefferson sat at Monticello above nature’s workshop as at a play; Washington took off his plain blue coat and tinkered with the machinery to increase its efficiency.
In his admirable work on Mount Vernon, Paul Wilstach has hit upon the secret of its master’s enthusiasm:
“Mount Vernon was eventually brought to a state of high productiveness, but the scale of life there was such that rarely did the farms show a balance wholly on the right side of the ledger. Washington had to look to his estate for other assets than appeared in the physical valuation of its produce. He found its true and largest asset in the fulfilled ideal of private life; in solving the interesting problems of the planter; in mental health and physical strength; and in the enjoyment of the easy and graceful social life of the colonial country gentleman, of which Mount Vernon became a veritable example.”
A vigorous life is easy and natural to a man of Washington’s physical power. He was six-feet-three-inches high, rose with the sun, and went to bed at nine unless there were guests. His routine during the sixteen years preceding the Revolution was varied on this day to ride “Valiant” or “Ajax” after the hounds, on that to dine at Belvoir or Gunston Hall, or Belle Aire; now up-river to a dance at Alexandria, now down-river shooting ducks; this week to Annapolis and the races, next to Williamsburg on affairs of the legislature. A never-ending procession of guests arrived and departed, from parsons to British naval officers, and found a uniformly perfect welcome—even extending to the gentleman who “contrary to all expectation” held Washington motionless for three sittings while he painted his first portrait, and charged him slightly more than £57 for effigies of himself, Mrs. Washington, Martha and Jack Custis.
To the refurnished home Mrs. Washington had brought many objects of her own to add to its luxury, which was further enhanced from time to time by orders upon his London agents for furniture and ornaments. On one occasion he wrote for busts of Alexander, Caesar, Charles XII of Sweden and the King of Prussia, fifteen inches high; Prince Eugene and the Duke of Marlborough, somewhat smaller; and “Wild Beasts, not to exceed twelve inches in height nor eighteen in length.” He received instead:
| “A Groupe of Aeneas carrying his Father out of Troy, with four statues, viz. his Father Anchises, his wife Creusa and his son Ascanius, neatly finisht and bronzed with copper | £3.3” |
| “Two Groupes, with two statues each of Bacchus & Flora, finisht neat & bronzed with copper | £4.4” |
and “Two Lyons after the antique Lyons in Italy,” also “finisht neat,” with the following apology:
“There is no busts of Alexander ye Great (none at all of Charles 12th of Sweden), Julius Causar, King of Prussia, Prince Eugene, nor the Duke of Marlborough, of the size desired; and to make models would be very expensive—at least 4 guineas each.”
With other orders the agents had better luck, for it was neither difficult nor distasteful to satisfy a Virginia gentleman who merely described the articles ordered (if he described them at all) as either “good” or “neat” or “fashionable.” He bought the best, rarely specified price, and paid in the best tobacco—a fair deal all round, and a very agreeably furnished home Mount Vernon became.
There came a day when he was called to command the army in the north. For eight years thereafter Mount Vernon saw him but twice, and then for fleeting visits: once on his way southward from Dobbs Ferry to Williamsburg, during the march on Yorktown; once on his return to the north. Those years had seen his ascent to the height of public veneration. On December 4 of 1783 his officers bade him a frankly tearful good-bye at Fraunce’s Tavern in New York, and the chief “walked in silence to Whitehall, followed by a vast procession ... and entered a barge ... on his way to lay his commission at the feet of Congress at Annapolis.” His progress to Mount Vernon was a succession of popular demonstrations. And when on Christmas Eve he went up the hill and pandemonium broke loose to see the master returned, in his mind were no thoughts of consulates or dictatorships, empire or world-domination, but only profound relief that he had come at last into sweet and voluntary exile from affairs.