General Washington was a splendid horseman. There was no animal he could not master, and he never lost his seat in the saddle. The well-known hatchet dialogue between his father and himself is suspected to have no better foundation than the imagination of the Rev. Mr. Weems. The following incident in his young life, and the subsequent interview between his mother and himself, rest on more substantial historical data: Lady Washington owned a fine span of gray horses, in which she took very great pride. One of them had never been broken to the saddle. It entered into the heads of some young friends of Washington to give the colt his first lesson in this particular branch of his education. The animal resisted their efforts, and would not allow any one of them to mount him. George, although one of the youngest of the party, managed to pacify the terrified creature and to bestride him. Then came a battle royal between horse and boy. All the animal’s efforts to free himself from his rider were vain, and he started to run. Washington gave him free rein. The horse never stopped till he fell prostrate beneath his young master. George, as may be imagined, was very much alarmed at what had occurred, but he immediately told his mother. “I forgive you,” she replied, “because you have had the courage to tell me the truth at once.”
Washington loved a good horse, and long before the war of the Revolution his blooded stock was not inferior to any in the country. Fox-hunting was one of his favorite amusements, and at the “meet” few of his planter friends and neighbors were better mounted than he was. All his hunting paraphernalia was imported from England. His costume was made by the best tailors in London. It consisted of a blue cloth coat, scarlet waistcoat, buckskin breeches, with velvet cap, and admirably became his splendid form and figure. He usually rode a large, fiery animal of great endurance, called “Blueskin.” The names of some of his other horses were “Chinkling,” “Valiant,” “Ajax,” and “Magnolia.” “Will Lee,” his huntsman, was famous through the province as a daring rider. “Mounted on Chinkling,” we are told, “this fearless horseman would rush through brake and tangled wood in a style at which modern huntsmen would stand aghast.” Washington’s kennel was an excellent one. When a mere boy he rode to the hounds with Lord Fairfax, who brought a pack from England, the only one, it is said, in the country at the time. Washington, therefore, knew what a good pack should be, and “it was his pride,” says Lossing, “to have it so critically drafted as to speed and bottom that, in running, if one leading dog should lose the scent another was at hand immediately to receive it, and thus, when in full cry, to use a racing phrase ‘you might cover the pack with a blanket.’” Here are the names of some of the dogs: “Vulcan,” “Ringwood,” “Singer,” “Truelove,” “Music,” “Sweetlips,” “Forester” and “Rockwood.” Lafayette sent Washington some hounds after the close of the war, but he had then given up hunting. Previous to that he hunted in the season two or three times a week. He is candid enough to admit, in his correspondence and diary, that the foxes nearly always escaped, but he philosophically consoled himself with the reflection that the main end in view—excitement and recreation—had been achieved.
During the Presidency he sometimes drove six horses to his carriage in New York and Philadelphia. His servants wore livery, for which Tom Paine bitterly attacked him, and he was often accompanied by outriders. George W. Parke Custis, his adopted son, in his “Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington,” gives an interesting account of the management of the stables when the seat of government was at Philadelphia. “The President’s stables,” he says, “were under the direction of ‘German Tom,’ and the grooming of the white chargers will rather surprise the moderns. The night before the horses were expected to be ridden they were covered entirely over with a paste, of which whiting was the principal component part; then the animals were swathed in bed-cloths and left to sleep upon clean straw. In the morning the composition had become hard, and was well rubbed in, and curried and brushed, which process gave to the coats a beautiful glossy and satin-like appearance. The hoofs were then blackened and polished, the mouths washed, the teeth picked and cleaned, and the leopard-skin housings being properly adjusted, the white chargers were led forth for service.” When Washington rode out he was always accompanied by his servant “Bishop.” This was his favorite exercise in New York and Philadelphia while he was President. He sometimes walked, however, and around the Battery, then a fashionable promenade in New York, and now given over almost entirely to immigrants from all quarters of the world, was the direction he most frequently took in this city. He frequently drove and rode what was then called the “fourteen miles around.” This route was up the old King’s Bridge road to McGowan’s Pass, at 108th Street, thence across on a line with the Harlem River to Bloomingdale, and down on the west side of the island to the city.
MOUNT VERNON.
Fowling was another favorite amusement of the first President. His own estates and the country around them abounded in game of all kinds. A century and a half ago, and, we suppose, long before that time, the waters of the Chesapeake were the resort, as they are now, of the incomparable canvas-back and other wild-duck. Tradition has it that Washington was a good shot. He knew the favorite feeding-places of the finest flocks, and he could steal a march on them as secretly as, in after years, it was his wont to surprise the fortified camp lines of the British redcoats. Although Washington loved to follow his own game-birds and bring them down when he could, he rigorously prohibited other people from breaking in on his preserves. His principal biographer has preserved a story from oblivion which illustrates his sentiments in this respect together with his personal courage and resolution. A lawless person was in the habit of crossing the Potomac opposite Mount Vernon in a canoe, and, concealing himself in the woods, filling his game-bag at Washington’s expense. Repeated warnings to desist were sent him, but, poacher-like, he was a believer in the doctrine that game is common property and belongs to him who can capture it. Washington was determined to stop the raids upon his birds, and the poacher’s end at last came. Hearing a shot one day, and suspecting who had fired it, Washington mounted his horse and rode in the direction of the sound. The poacher discovered his approach, and had time to enter his canoe and push a few yards from the banks before the master of Mount Vernon appeared in view. When Washington, with anger in his eye, became visible, the poacher raised his gun, cocked it, and took deliberate aim. Washington did not betray the slightest sign of alarm or timidity. He strode into the water, seized the canoe and pulled it ashore. Disarming his antagonist, Washington gave him so severe a chastisement that he never again ran the risk of meeting a similar reception. Washington in the latter part of his life was something of a fisherman. There is an entry in one of his diaries, while the Federal Convention was in session in Philadelphia, telling of a fishing party near Valley Forge. While President, he also drew in a codfish with his own hand on the fishing banks off Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
WASHINGTON CHASTISING THE POACHER.
No one of the presidents lived so much in the open air as Washington. With the exception of the eight years in the Presidency, he was almost constantly in the field, the woods, the wilderness, or the farm. His first occupation was that of a surveyor, upon which he entered when he was sixteen years of age. During his last summer at school he amused himself by surveying the grounds around the school-house. The adjoining plantations then became the field of his experiments, and their angles and boundaries were all marked down by him with the most minute detail. At this time he thought of going to sea. His brother Lawrence obtained a midshipman’s warrant for him, but his mother objected, and an admiral, perhaps, was lost to the navy of the English king whose most famous general he was destined to defeat. He then received a commission to survey the western lands of Lord Fairfax. This led him across the first range of the Alleghany Mountains into the wilderness. He was accompanied on this expedition by George, the eldest son of William Fairfax. They endured much hardship and privation, but the trip, in all probability, was the means of laying the basis of the splendid physical health which Washington enjoyed all through life. The country was almost uninhabited. The dwellings, mere huts at the best, were few and far apart. Storms very often swept away their tents, and frequently they were compelled to sleep with no roof except the skies. Three years, the severe winter months excepted, were spent in this work, which, like everything Washington undertook, was well executed. His success led to promotion. He received an appointment as official surveyor, which enabled him to make his entries in the county offices. The lands surveyed lay on the south bank of the Potomac, seventy miles above the present Harper’s Ferry. Washington did not foresee that in a short time he would have an opportunity to turn to very great advantage in the public service the knowledge he was then acquiring of this comparatively unknown region. But, nevertheless, the French-Indian war, in which he bore so conspicuous a part, was not far distant. In 1751, the western boundaries of the colony of Virginia were so harassed by the Indians that measures had to be adopted for their protection. The country was divided into districts, to one of which Washington was appointed inspector with the rank of major. He was now a soldier. In 1755, when he was only twenty-three years of age, the command of the Virginia troops was given to him. He resigned his commission in 1758 and the following year he was married.
Washington was barely twenty-seven years old when this interesting event took place, and when he may be said to have settled down to lead the life of a country gentleman. He was in every sense of the term what is called a favorite of fortune. Rich, honored, loved, married to a beautiful woman of distinguished family and large wealth, the possessor of a splendid estate, which he had just inherited, of handsome person and superb health, with more fame than falls to the share of most young men at his period of life, a keen relish for the good things of the world with the means to obtain and the capacity to enjoy them—the prospect before him was, indeed, an alluring one. Mount Vernon was one of the loveliest homes in the country and the landscape around it unrivaled on the continent. Through its hospitable gates came the governors and leading men of old colonial Virginia as the friends and guests of its master. Gay hunting parties, with hounds and horns to rouse the fox in his hill-side cover, gathered on its spacious lawns. Stately dames talked over the latest society gossip from the colonial capitals and across the seas on its broad verandas and under its overarching trees. To speak of more material things, there was a small army of slaves to employ, to clothe, to feed, to watch and to attend, for Washington was one of the most humane of masters. Thousands of broad acres awaited cultivation and improvement, while flocks and herds innumerable claimed protection from winter storm and summer heat. Into this manifold life, with all its cares and responsibilities, Washington entered with the keenest zest. His ambition in a public way seemed to have been satisfied with the fame he had won in the French war. But, whatever may have been his thoughts or aspirations, he set himself to the task of cultivating and adorning his property. Mount Vernon consisted of five farms, each one of which had its own appropriate set of laborers under the direction of an overseer. Washington visited them all daily and gave instructions for the day following. He was one of the most methodical of men, rising at a regular hour in the morning, and retiring at a fixed time at night. He loved his stock, and paid particular attention to their comfort. Prize cattle shows and exhibitions had not then come into fashion. If they had existed at the time it is very certain that the name of the young soldier-planter would have headed the lists of exhibitors, and that he would have filled Mount Vernon with cups and premiums testifying to his pre-eminence as a breeder. He had an attachment even for the lower animals, and never destroyed life when there was no necessity for it. A gentleman, who at one time lived in his family as secretary, tells us that, as he was walking one day with Washington in his grounds, a snake of a harmless species started up in front of them. The secretary lifted his heel to crush the reptile, when Washington caught his arm and exclaimed, “Stay, sir! Is there not room enough in this world for you and that harmless little reptile? Remember that life is all—everything to the creature—and cannot be unnecessarily taken without indirectly impugning its Creator, who bestowed it to be enjoyed with its appropriate pleasures through its own natural term of existence.”