“Look at mine,” he cried, laughing. “I have only one suit, and the rest are hardly better off.”
I drew back and waited. In a few minutes the general came out, and mounting, sat still until all of the staff were in the saddle.
He had changed greatly from the fresh, clear-skinned country gentleman I saw first in Philadelphia. His face was more grave, his very ruddy skin less clear and more bronzed. I observed that his eyes were deep set, light blue in colour, and of unusual size; his nose was rather heavy and large; the mouth resolute and firm, with full lips. His general expression was sedate and tranquil. In full, neat buff and blue, his hair powdered, the queue carefully tied, he sat very erect in the saddle, and looked to be a good horseman.
This is all I remember at that time of this high-minded gentleman. I heard much of him then and later; and as what I heard or saw varies a good deal from the idea now held of him, I shall not refrain from saying how he seemed to us, who saw him in camp and field, or in the hour of rare leisure. But I shall do better, perhaps, just now to let my friend say what he seemed to be to his more observant and reflective mind. It was writ long after.
“Abler pens than mine,” says Jack, “have put on record the sorrowful glory of that dreadful campground by Valley Forge. It is strongly charactered in those beseeching letters and despatches of the almost heartbroken man, who poured out his grief in language which even to-day no man can read unmoved. To us he showed only a gravely tranquil face, which had in it something which reassured those starving and naked ones. Most wonderful is it, as I read what he wrote to inefficient, blundering men, to see how calmly he states our pitiful case, how entirely he controls a nature violent and passionate beyond that of most men. He was scarcely in the saddle as commander before the body which set him there was filled with dissatisfaction.
“I think it well that we know so little of what went on within the walls of Congress. The silence of history has been friendly to many reputations. There need be no silence as to this man, nor any concealment, and there has been much. I would have men see him as we saw him in his anger, when no language was too strong; in his hour of serene kindliness, when Hamilton, the aide of twenty, was ‘my boy’; in this starving camp, with naked men shivering all night in their blankets by the fires, when ‘he pitied those miseries he could neither relieve nor prevent.’ Am I displeased to think that although he laughed rarely he liked Colonel Scammel’s strong stories, and would be amused by a song such as no woman should hear?
“This serene, inflexible, decisive man, biding his hour, could be then the venturesome soldier, willing to put every fortune on a chance, risking himself with a courage that alarmed men for his life. Does any but a fool think that he could have been all these things and not have had in him the wild blood of passion? He had a love for fine clothes and show. He was, I fear, at times extravagant, and, as I have heard, could not pay his doctor’s bill, and would postpone that, and send him a horse and a little money to educate his godson, the good doctor’s son. As to some of his letters, they contained jests not gross, but not quite fit for grave seigniors not virginibus puerisque. There is one to Lafayette I have been shown by the marquis. It is most amusing, but—oh, fie! Was he religious? I do not know. Men say so. He might have been, and yet have had his hours of ungoverned rage, or of other forms of human weakness. Like a friend of mine, he was not given to speech concerning his creed.”
My Jack was right. Our general’s worst foes were men who loved their country, but who knew not to comprehend this man. I well remember how I used to stop at the camp-fires and hear the men talk of him. Here was no lack of sturdy sense. The notion of Adams and Rush of appointing new major-generals every year much amused them, and the sharp logic of cold and empty bellies did not move them from the belief that their chief was the right man. How was it they could judge so well and these others so ill?
He had no tricks of the demagogue. He coveted no popularity. He knew not to seek favour by going freely among the men. The democratic feeling in our army was intense, and yet this reserved aristocrat had to the end the love and confidence of every soldier in the ranks.