Washington - A Life Part 1

Was.h.i.+ngton : a life.

Ron Chernow.

TO VALERIE, IN MEMORIAM.

Simple truth is his best, his greatest eulogy.

-ABIGAILADAMS, speaking of George Was.h.i.+ngton after his death

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

Since I quote extensively from George Was.h.i.+ngton's vast correspondence, I have taken the liberty of modernizing the spelling and punctuation of the eighteenth-century prose. A biographer hesitates to forfeit the special period flavor that comes from preserving all the oddities of contemporary writing. But all too often, Was.h.i.+ngton's muscular style can seem awkward and stilted to modern readers because of the way he distributed his commas, for instance, whereas the writing suddenly becomes smooth and flowing with more familiar punctuation. Occasionally I retain the quirks of the original spelling in order to highlight the eccentricity or lack of education of the personality in question. Throughout the text, the actual wording has been exactly reproduced.

PRELUDE.

The Portrait Artist.

IN MARCH 1793 Gilbert Stuart crossed the North Atlantic for the express purpose of painting President George Was.h.i.+ngton, the supreme prize of the age for any ambitious portrait artist. Though born in Rhode Island and reared in New-port, Stuart had escaped to the cosmopolitan charms of London during the war and spent eighteen years producing portraits of British and Irish grandees. Overly fond of liquor, prodigal in his spending habits, and with a giant brood of children to support, Stuart had landed in the Marshalsea Prison in Dublin, most likely for debt, just as Was.h.i.+ngton was being sworn in as first president of the United States in 1789.

For the impulsive, unreliable Stuart, who left a trail of incomplete paintings and irate clients in his wake, George Was.h.i.+ngton emerged as the savior who would rescue him from insistent creditors. "When I can net a sum sufficient to take me to America, I shall be off to my native soil," he confided eagerly to a friend. "There I expect to make a fortune by Was.h.i.+ngton alone. I calculate upon making a plurality of his portraits . . . and if I should be fortunate, I will repay my English and Irish creditors."1 In a self-portrait daubed years earlier, Stuart presented himself as a restless soul, with tousled reddish-brown hair, keen blue eyes, a strongly marked nose, and a pugnacious chin. This harried, disheveled man was scarcely the sort to appeal to the immaculately formal George Was.h.i.+ngton. In a self-portrait daubed years earlier, Stuart presented himself as a restless soul, with tousled reddish-brown hair, keen blue eyes, a strongly marked nose, and a pugnacious chin. This harried, disheveled man was scarcely the sort to appeal to the immaculately formal George Was.h.i.+ngton.

Once installed in New York, Stuart mapped out a path to Was.h.i.+ngton with the thoroughness of a military campaign. He stalked Was.h.i.+ngton's trusted friend Chief Justice John Jay and rendered a brilliant portrait of him, seated in the full majesty of his judicial robes. Shortly afterward Stuart had in hand the treasured letter of introduction from Jay to President Was.h.i.+ngton that would unlock the doors of the executive residence in Philadelphia, then the temporary capital.

As a portraitist, the garrulous Stuart had perfected a technique to penetrate his subjects' defenses. He would disarm them with a steady stream of personal anecdotes and irreverent wit, hoping that this glib patter would coax them into self-revelation. In the taciturn George Was.h.i.+ngton, a man of granite self-control and a stranger to spontaneity, Gilbert Stuart met his match. From boyhood, Was.h.i.+ngton had struggled to master and conceal his deep emotions. When the wife of the British amba.s.sador later told him that his face showed pleasure at his forthcoming departure from the presidency, Was.h.i.+ngton grew indignant: "You are wrong. My countenance never yet betrayed my feelings!"2 He tried to govern his tongue as much as his face: "With me it has always been a maxim rather to let my designs appear from my works than by my expressions." He tried to govern his tongue as much as his face: "With me it has always been a maxim rather to let my designs appear from my works than by my expressions."3 When Was.h.i.+ngton swept into his first session with Stuart, the artist was awe-struck by the tall, commanding president. Predictably, the more Stuart tried to pry open his secretive personality, the tighter the president clamped it shut. Stuart's opening gambit backfired. "Now, sir," Stuart instructed his sitter, "you must let me forget that you are General Was.h.i.+ngton and that I am Stuart, the painter." To which Was.h.i.+ngton retorted drily that Mr. Stuart need not forget "who he is or who General Was.h.i.+ngton is."4 A master at sizing people up, Was.h.i.+ngton must have cringed at Stuart's facile bonhomie, not to mention his drinking, snuff taking, and ceaseless chatter. With Was.h.i.+ngton, trust had to be earned slowly, and he balked at instant familiarity with people. Instead of opening up with Stuart, he retreated behind his stolid mask. The scourge of artists, Was.h.i.+ngton knew how to turn himself into an impenetrable monument long before an obelisk arose in his honor in the nation's capital.

As Was.h.i.+ngton sought to maintain his defenses, Stuart made the brilliant decision to capture the subtle interplay between his outward calm and his intense hidden emotions, a tension that defined the man. He spied the extraordinary force of personality lurking behind an extremely restrained facade. The mouth might be compressed, the parchment skin drawn tight over ungainly dentures, but Was.h.i.+ngton's eyes still blazed from his craggy face. In the enduring image that Stuart captured and that ended up on the one-dollar bill-a magnificent statement of Was.h.i.+ngton's moral stature and sublime, visionary nature-he also recorded something hard and suspicious in the wary eyes with their penetrating gaze and hooded lids.

With the swift insight of artistic genius, Stuart grew convinced that Was.h.i.+ngton was not the placid and composed figure he presented to the world. In the words of a mutual acquaintance, Stuart had insisted that "there are features in [Was.h.i.+ngton's] face totally different from what he ever observed in that of any other human being; the sockets of the eyes, for instance, are larger than he ever met with before, and the upper part of the nose broader. All his features, [Stuart] observed, were indicative of the strongest and most ungovernable pa.s.sions, and had he been born in the forests, it was his opinion that [Was.h.i.+ngton] would have been the fiercest man among the savage tribes." The acquaintance confirmed that Was.h.i.+ngton's intimates thought him "by nature a man of fierce and irritable disposition, but that, like Socrates, his judgment and great self-command have always made him appear a man of a different cast in the eyes of the world."5 Although many contemporaries were fooled by Was.h.i.+ngton's aura of cool command, those who knew him best shared Stuart's view of a sensitive, complex figure, full of pent-up pa.s.sion. "His temper was naturally high-toned [that is, high-strung], but reflection and resolution had obtained a firm and habitual ascendency over it," wrote Thomas Jefferson. "If ever, however, it broke its bonds, he was most tremendous in wrath."6 John Adams concurred. "He had great self-command . . . but to preserve so much equanimity as he did required a great capacity. Whenever he lost his temper, as he did sometimes, either love or fear in those about him induced them to conceal his weakness from the world." John Adams concurred. "He had great self-command . . . but to preserve so much equanimity as he did required a great capacity. Whenever he lost his temper, as he did sometimes, either love or fear in those about him induced them to conceal his weakness from the world."7 Gouverneur Morris agreed that Was.h.i.+ngton had "the tumultuous pa.s.sions which accompany greatness and frequently tarnish its l.u.s.ter. With them was his first contest, and his first victory was over himself . . . Yet those who have seen him strongly moved will bear witness that his wrath was terrible. They have seen, boiling in his bosom, pa.s.sion almost too mighty for man." Gouverneur Morris agreed that Was.h.i.+ngton had "the tumultuous pa.s.sions which accompany greatness and frequently tarnish its l.u.s.ter. With them was his first contest, and his first victory was over himself . . . Yet those who have seen him strongly moved will bear witness that his wrath was terrible. They have seen, boiling in his bosom, pa.s.sion almost too mighty for man."8 So adept was Was.h.i.+ngton at masking these turbulent emotions behind his fabled reserve that he ranks as the most famously elusive figure in American history, a remote, enigmatic personage more revered than truly loved. He seems to lack the folksy appeal of an Abraham Lincoln, the robust vigor of a Teddy Roosevelt, or the charming finesse of a Franklin Roosevelt. In fact, George Was.h.i.+ngton has receded so much in our collective memory that he has become an impossibly stiff and inflexible figure, composed of too much marble to be quite human. How this seemingly dull, phlegmatic man, in a stupendous act of nation building, presided over the victorious Continental Army and forged the office of the presidency is a mystery to most Americans. Something essential about Was.h.i.+ngton has been lost to posterity, making him seem a worthy but plodding man who somehow stumbled into greatness.

From a laudable desire to venerate Was.h.i.+ngton, we have sanded down the rough edges of his personality and made him difficult to grasp. He joined in this conspiracy to make himself unknowable. Where other founders gloried in their displays of intellect, Was.h.i.+ngton's strategy was the opposite: the less people knew about him, the more he thought he could accomplish. Opacity was his means of enhancing his power and influencing events. Where Franklin, Hamilton, or Adams always sparkled in print or in person, the laconic Was.h.i.+ngton had no need to flaunt his virtues or fill conversational silences. Instead, he wanted the public to know him as a public man, concerned with the public weal and transcending egotistical needs.

Was.h.i.+ngton's lifelong struggle to control his emotions speaks to the issue of how he exercised leaders.h.i.+p as a politician, a soldier, a planter, and even a slave-holder. People felt felt the inner force of his nature, even if they didn't exactly hear it or see it; they sensed his moods without being told. In studying his life, one is struck not only by his colossal temper but by his softer emotions: this man of deep feelings was sensitive to the delicate nuances of relations.h.i.+ps and p.r.o.ne to tears as well as temper. He learned how to exploit his bottled-up emotions to exert his will and inspire and motivate people. If he aroused universal admiration, it was often accompanied by a touch of fear and anxiety. His contemporaries admired him not because he was a plaster saint or an empty uniform but because they sensed his unseen power. As the Was.h.i.+ngton scholar W. W. Abbot noted, "An important element in Was.h.i.+ngton's leaders.h.i.+p both as a military commander and as President was his dignified, even forbidding, demeanor, his aloofness, the distance he consciously set and maintained between himself and nearly all the rest of the world." the inner force of his nature, even if they didn't exactly hear it or see it; they sensed his moods without being told. In studying his life, one is struck not only by his colossal temper but by his softer emotions: this man of deep feelings was sensitive to the delicate nuances of relations.h.i.+ps and p.r.o.ne to tears as well as temper. He learned how to exploit his bottled-up emotions to exert his will and inspire and motivate people. If he aroused universal admiration, it was often accompanied by a touch of fear and anxiety. His contemporaries admired him not because he was a plaster saint or an empty uniform but because they sensed his unseen power. As the Was.h.i.+ngton scholar W. W. Abbot noted, "An important element in Was.h.i.+ngton's leaders.h.i.+p both as a military commander and as President was his dignified, even forbidding, demeanor, his aloofness, the distance he consciously set and maintained between himself and nearly all the rest of the world."9 The goal of the present biography is to create a fresh portrait of Was.h.i.+ngton that will make him real, credible, and charismatic in the same way that he was perceived by his contemporaries. By gleaning anecdotes and quotes from myriad sources, especially from hundreds of eyewitness accounts, I have tried to make him vivid and immediate, rather than the lifeless waxwork he has become for many Americans, and thereby elucidate the secrets of his uncanny ability to lead a nation. His unerring judgment, sterling character, rect.i.tude, steadfast patriotism, unflagging sense of duty, and civic-mindedness-these exemplary virtues were achieved only by his ability to subdue the underlying volatility of his nature and direct his entire psychological makeup to the single-minded achievement of a n.o.ble cause.

A man capable of constant self-improvement, Was.h.i.+ngton grew in stature throughout his life. This growth went on subtly, at times imperceptibly, beneath the surface, making Was.h.i.+ngton the most interior of the founders. His real pa.s.sions and often fiery opinions were typically confined to private letters rather than public utterances. During the Revolution and his presidency, the public Was.h.i.+ngton needed to be upbeat and inspirational, whereas the private man was often gloomy, scathing, hot-blooded, and pessimistic.

For this reason, the new edition of the papers of George Was.h.i.+ngton, started in 1968 and one of the great ongoing scholarly labors of our time, has provided an extraordinary window into his mind. The indefatigable team of scholars at the University of Virginia has laid a banquet table for Was.h.i.+ngton biographers and made somewhat outmoded the monumental Was.h.i.+ngton biographies of the mid-twentieth century: the seven volumes published by Douglas Southall Freeman (1948-57) and the four volumes by James T. Flexner (1965-72). This book is based on a close reading of the sixty volumes of letters and diaries published so far in the new edition, supplemented by seventeen volumes from the older edition to cover the historical gaps. Never before have we had access to so much material about so many aspects of Was.h.i.+ngton's public and private lives.

In recent decades, many fine short biographies of Was.h.i.+ngton have appeared as well as perceptive studies of particular events, themes, or periods in his life. My intention is to produce a large-scale, one-volume, cradle-to-grave narrative that will be both dramatic and authoritative, encompa.s.sing the explosion of research in recent decades that has enriched our understanding of Was.h.i.+ngton as never before. The upshot, I hope, will be that readers, instead of having a frosty respect for Was.h.i.+ngton, will experience a visceral appreciation of this foremost American who scaled the highest peak of political greatness.

PART ONE.

The Frontiersman

The earliest known portrait of George Was.h.i.+ngton, dressed in his old uniform from the French and Indian War, painted by Charles Willson Peale in 1772.

CHAPTER ONE.

A Short-Lived Family.

THE CROWDED CAREER of George Was.h.i.+ngton afforded him little leisure to indulge his vanity or gratify his curiosity by conducting genealogical research into his family. As he admitted sheepishly when president, "This is a subject to which I confess I have paid very little attention. My time has been so much occupied in the busy and active scenes of life from an early period of it that but a small portion of it could have been devoted to researches of this nature."1 The first Was.h.i.+ngton to claim our attention was, ironically, the casualty of a rebellion against royal authority. During the English Civil War, Lawrence Was.h.i.+ngton, George's great-great-grandfather and an Anglican minister, was hounded from his parish in the Puritan cleansing of the Church of England under Oliver Cromwell. This shattered a cozy existence that intermingled learning with modest wealth. Lawrence had spent the better part of his childhood at the family residence, Sulgrave Manor near Banbury in Oxfords.h.i.+re, before earning two degrees at Brasenose College, Oxford; he later served as a fellow of the college and a university proctor. Persecuted by the Puritans as one of the "scandalous, malignant priests," he was accused of being "a common frequenter of alehouses," which was likely a trumped-up charge.2 His travails may have spurred his son John to seek his fortune in the burgeoning tobacco trade with North America. After landing in Tidewater Virginia in late 1656, John Was.h.i.+ngton settled at Bridges Creek, hard by the Potomac River in Westmoreland County. Less a committed colonist than a temporary castaway, John was stranded when heavy squalls grounded his s.h.i.+p and soaked its precious cargo of tobacco, prompting him to tarry in Virginia. His travails may have spurred his son John to seek his fortune in the burgeoning tobacco trade with North America. After landing in Tidewater Virginia in late 1656, John Was.h.i.+ngton settled at Bridges Creek, hard by the Potomac River in Westmoreland County. Less a committed colonist than a temporary castaway, John was stranded when heavy squalls grounded his s.h.i.+p and soaked its precious cargo of tobacco, prompting him to tarry in Virginia.

One marvels at the speed with which the young man prospered in the New World, exhibiting certain traits-a bottomless appet.i.te for land, an avidity for public office, and a zest for frontier combat-that foreshadowed his great-grandson's rapid ascent in the world. John also set a precedent of social mobility through military laurels after he was recruited to fight Indians in Maryland and was rewarded with a colonel's rank. In this rough-and-tumble world, he was accused of slaughtering five Indian emissaries and cheating tribes of land, activities that won him the baleful Indian nickname of Conotocarious, which meant "Destroyer of Villages" or "Town Devourer."3 He also found time to woo and wed Anne Pope, whose well-heeled father favored the newlyweds with seven hundred acres of land. John piled up an impressive roster of the sort of local offices-justice of the peace, burgess in the Virginia a.s.sembly, lieutenant colonel in the county militia-that signified social standing in colonial Virginia. Most conspicuous was his omnivorous craving for land. By importing sixty-three indentured servants from England, he capitalized upon a British law that granted fifty acres to each immigrant, and he eventually ama.s.sed more than five thousand acres, with the single largest property bordering the Potomac River at Little Hunting Creek, the future site of Mount Vernon. He also found time to woo and wed Anne Pope, whose well-heeled father favored the newlyweds with seven hundred acres of land. John piled up an impressive roster of the sort of local offices-justice of the peace, burgess in the Virginia a.s.sembly, lieutenant colonel in the county militia-that signified social standing in colonial Virginia. Most conspicuous was his omnivorous craving for land. By importing sixty-three indentured servants from England, he capitalized upon a British law that granted fifty acres to each immigrant, and he eventually ama.s.sed more than five thousand acres, with the single largest property bordering the Potomac River at Little Hunting Creek, the future site of Mount Vernon.

After his wife died, John Was.h.i.+ngton married, in quick succession, a pair of l.u.s.ty sisters who had been accused, respectively, of running a brothel and engaging in adulterous relations with the governor. Coincidentally, both scandal-ridden women had appeared before him in his guise as justice of the peace. In 1677 John succ.u.mbed at age forty-six to a fatal disease, likely typhoid fever, setting an enduring pattern of shortened life expectancy for Was.h.i.+ngton males in America. By then he had struggled his way up to the second-tier gentry, an uncertain stratum that would endow George Was.h.i.+ngton with a modic.u.m of money, while also instilling a restless yearning to advance into the uppermost ranks of Virginia grandees.

It was John's eldest son from his first marriage, Lawrence Was.h.i.+ngton, who inherited the bulk of his father's estate and became paternal grandfather of the first president. With the monarchy restored in England, Lawrence had been educated in the mother country before settling in Virginia, where he, too, collected an array of local posts-justice of the peace, burgess, and sheriff-that complemented his work as an attorney. If John furnished the family with a tenuous foothold in the gentry, Lawrence added a patina of social distinction by marrying Mildred Warner, daughter of a member of the prestigious King's Council. When he expired in 1698 at thirty-eight, Lawrence perpetuated the grim tradition of Was.h.i.+ngton men dying young.

Lawrence Was.h.i.+ngton's untimely death occurred when his second son, Augustine-the future father of George Was.h.i.+ngton-was only three or four years old. After his widow, Mildred, married George Gale, a British s.h.i.+p captain from Whitehaven, a port on the c.u.mberland coast, she sailed there with him and her three children in late May 1700. Already pregnant during the voyage, she died in January 1701, not long after her arrival in England, and her newborn daughter followed her shortly thereafter. For the next two or three years, Gale placed Augustine and his older brother John in the Appleby Grammar School in County Westmorland, a scenic spot east of the English Lake District. The school provided a cla.s.sical education, with a heavy emphasis on Latin. When Mildred's three children were ensnared in a protracted legal tussle over their inheritance, they were s.h.i.+pped back to Virginia under a court order.

Raw-boned and good-natured, Augustine Was.h.i.+ngton remains a shadowy figure in the family saga, little more than a hazy but sunlit memory for his famous son. A strapping man, six feet tall with a fair complexion, he was favored with that brand of rustic strength that breeds backwoods legends. The sole contemporary description avers that he could "raise up and place in a wagon a ma.s.s of iron that two ordinary men could barely raise from the ground," yet he balanced this notable brawn with a mild-mannered demeanor that made his manly strength the more becoming.4 No less community-minded than his Was.h.i.+ngton forebears, he was named a justice of the peace and sat on the county court. No less community-minded than his Was.h.i.+ngton forebears, he was named a justice of the peace and sat on the county court.

From spotty early records, Augustine emerges as a remorseless, hard-driving businessman. He started with 1,100 acres that he inherited along the Potomac and augmented that with 1,750 acres from the dowry of his first wife, Jane Butler. He specialized in tobacco farming until he began snapping up properties rich in iron ore at Acc.o.keek Creek, near Fredericksburg. In 1729 he traveled to England to seal a contract with the Principio Company, which owned iron operations in Virginia and Maryland. By the time he returned to Virginia, his wife had died, saddling him with the care of three small children: two sons, Lawrence and Augustine Jr. (often called Austin), and a daughter, Jane. Minding children on his own wasn't an option for a hard-pressed colonial widower, and Augustine may not have been overly fussy in his urgent quest to find a country bride. On March 6, 1731, the thirty-seven-year-old Augustine married Mary Johnson Ball, a pious, headstrong woman who would exert a profound formative influence on her son George. At twenty-three, Mary was already slightly old for marriage, which may say something about her feisty personality or about Augustine's hopeful conviction that he could tame this indomitable woman.

Mary Ball was born in 1708 into a situation that skirted the edge of local scandal. Her English-born father, Joseph Ball, a thriving businessman, had settled on the Potomac, married, and raised several children before his wife's death. Lonesome at fifty-eight, he then shocked propriety and threatened his children's inheritance by wedding an illiterate woman named Mary Johnson. Their daughter, Mary Ball, was only three when her elderly father died, leaving her with a bequest of four hundred acres, fifteen head of cattle, three slaves, and a sackful of feathers from which to fas.h.i.+on a bed. Her mother remarried but then died, converting Mary into an orphan at age twelve. The girl was farmed out to an obliging family friend, George Eskridge, who treated her so humanely that she would honor his memory by naming her first son George after him. It was probably Eskridge who acted as go-between in matching up Mary and Augustine Was.h.i.+ngton.

A crusty woman with a stubborn streak, Mary Ball Was.h.i.+ngton made few concessions to social convention. In a lesson internalized by her celebrated son, she didn't adapt or bend easily to others but stayed resolutely true to her own standards. We can only a.s.sume that her forlorn childhood, characterized by constant loss, left innumerable scars and insecurities, producing an anxious personality. With flinty self-reliance and iron discipline, she ran a thrifty household and was sparing in her praise and very definite in her opinions. A plain, homespun woman who may have smoked a pipe, she betrayed little interest in the larger world, confined her attention to the family farm, and shunned high society. Since her own mother was illiterate, Mary probably received scant education. Her few letters are replete with spelling errors, dispense with all grammar and punctuation, and confirm the impression of an unlettered countrywoman.

The thick family Bible at Mount Vernon records that George Was.h.i.+ngton was born around ten A.M. on February 11, 1732, at the family farm at Pope's Creek in Westmoreland County, an area of bucolic beauty less than a mile from the Potomac River. The modest birthplace later went up in flames. The newborn boy was reputed to be a baby of unusual heft. His original birthday derived from the Julian, or Old Style, calendar, which remained in effect in Britain and its colonies until the mid-eighteenth century, when the new Gregorian calendar deferred it by eleven days to February 22. Until the end of his life, some of Was.h.i.+ngton's admirers in Alexandria insisted upon celebrating his birthday on February 11.

Baptized in early April, the boy was reared amid the rich, open farmland of Tidewater Virginia, the eastern territory washed by four broad rivers: the James, York, Rappahannock, and Potomac. Broad tobacco fields flourished in tidal flats broken only by a scattering of tiny, isolated towns. George Was.h.i.+ngton entered a strictly hierarchical universe, ruled by simple verities and dominated by a distant monarch. That the commoner George could ever aspire to a life as richly consequential as that of King George II, then enthroned in royal splendor, would have seemed a preposterous fantasy in the 1730s. Hugging the eastern seaboard, the loyal British colonies were tightly lashed to the trading world of London by commerce and culture. The all-powerful planters in this provincial sphere strove to ape their English cousins, who remained the unquestioned model of everything superior and cosmopolitan. As the economic basis of this undemocratic world, slavery was commonplace and unquestioned, fostering an idle, dissolute existence for rich young Virginians. As one German visitor sniffed of the average Virginia adolescent, "At fifteen, his father gives him a horse and a negro, with which he riots about the country, attends every fox hunt, horse race and c.o.c.kfight, and does nothing else whatever."5 As the eldest of Augustine Was.h.i.+ngton's second set of children, George straddled two families, perhaps forcing him to hone some early diplomatic skills. His older half brother, Lawrence, was sent to the Appleby Grammar School before George was born and was shortly followed there by his brother Augustine Jr. while George was still a toddler. Death first encroached on George's life when, right before his third birthday, his older half sister Jane died. As the eldest of Mary Was.h.i.+ngton's children, George probably helped to care for his gaggle of younger siblings, which grew to include Betty, Samuel, John Augustine, Charles, and Mildred. That only two of Gus Was.h.i.+ngton's nine offspring perished in an era of elevated mortality rates for children speaks to hardy family stock.

Later on, irked by the sanctimonious moralizing about Was.h.i.+ngton's perfections, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote mockingly that Was.h.i.+ngton "was born with his clothes on and his hair powdered and made a stately bow on his first appearance in the world."6 But there was nothing cosseted about his provincial boyhood, and he had little exposure to any pampered society that might have softened the rigors of his rural upbringing. Nor would the unforgiving Mary Was.h.i.+ngton have tolerated such laxity. She drilled habits of thrift and industry into her children, including rising early with the sun, a strict farmer's habit that George retained for the rest of his life. But there was nothing cosseted about his provincial boyhood, and he had little exposure to any pampered society that might have softened the rigors of his rural upbringing. Nor would the unforgiving Mary Was.h.i.+ngton have tolerated such laxity. She drilled habits of thrift and industry into her children, including rising early with the sun, a strict farmer's habit that George retained for the rest of his life.

The childhood was a roving and unsettled one. In 1735, when George was three, Augustine relocated his family sixty miles upstream to his 2,500-acre tract at Little Hunting Creek on the Potomac, an unspoiled area of pristine forests. Perched on a hilltop at a scenic bend of the river, the house he constructed was more ample than the earlier one, with four ground-floor rooms bisected by a central hallway and warmed by four fireplaces; a row of smaller bedrooms upstairs accommodated the growing clan. So st.u.r.dy was the new house that its downstairs rooms were later embedded into George's expanding mansion at Mount Vernon, turning the building into an archaeological record of his life.

In 1736 Augustine Was.h.i.+ngton sailed to England and negotiated a one-twelfth owners.h.i.+p share of the Principio Company. To aid his performance as manager of their iron furnace in Virginia, Gus uprooted his expanding family again in 1738 and moved them south to a sylvan 260-acre spread on the Rappahannock River, directly opposite Fredericksburg and a convenient ride away from Acc.o.keek Creek. Poised on the brow of a hill and slightly recessed from the river, the farm had woods nearby for firewood; broad, level fields for growing tobacco, wheat, and corn; and several pure streams for drinking water. Since access to the ferry later ran straight through the property-to George's annoyance, crowds flocked gaily down the footpath during fair days or when courts were in session-the house would be dubbed Ferry Farm.

Touted in a newspaper advertis.e.m.e.nt as a "handsome dwelling house," the two-story clapboard residence was a dark reddish-brown color, roofed with wooden s.h.i.+ngles and flanked by brick chimneys.7 With its seven rooms-four downstairs and three upstairs-the house counted as a substantial affair for the time, and recent excavations have disclosed many unexpected touches of gentility. Among the artifacts unearthed have been wig curlers, bone-handled toothbrushes, and a Wedgwood tea set, betokening an unmistakable air of affluence. The Was.h.i.+ngtons must have entertained a steady flow of visitors, for they had curtained beds sprinkled throughout the house. Other details of their home inventory-thirteen tablecloths, thirty-one napkins, twenty-six silver spoons-conjure up a sociable, highly prosperous clan. Having acquired nearly fifty slaves and ten thousand acres of land, Augustine Was.h.i.+ngton had planted his family firmly among the regional gentry. Though not born into great wealth, George Was.h.i.+ngton doesn't qualify for inclusion in the ranks of self-made Americans. With its seven rooms-four downstairs and three upstairs-the house counted as a substantial affair for the time, and recent excavations have disclosed many unexpected touches of gentility. Among the artifacts unearthed have been wig curlers, bone-handled toothbrushes, and a Wedgwood tea set, betokening an unmistakable air of affluence. The Was.h.i.+ngtons must have entertained a steady flow of visitors, for they had curtained beds sprinkled throughout the house. Other details of their home inventory-thirteen tablecloths, thirty-one napkins, twenty-six silver spoons-conjure up a sociable, highly prosperous clan. Having acquired nearly fifty slaves and ten thousand acres of land, Augustine Was.h.i.+ngton had planted his family firmly among the regional gentry. Though not born into great wealth, George Was.h.i.+ngton doesn't qualify for inclusion in the ranks of self-made Americans.

Ferry Farm provided George with his first treasured glimpses of a world beyond his boyhood haunts. The newly incorporated hamlet of Fredericksburg, with its courthouse and stone prison, was already an active port featuring rudiments of a more developed society. The young George Was.h.i.+ngton could peer across the river and see a perfect tableau of the British Empire in action. Moored at town wharves, s.h.i.+ps bulging with tobacco, grain, and iron gave glimmers of the lucrative transatlantic trade with London that enriched the colony.

Around the time the Was.h.i.+ngtons settled into their new home, changes occurred in the composition of the family. George's baby sister Mildred was born and soon died, and he also set eyes for the first time on his older half brother Lawrence, a quasi-mythical figure who suddenly materialized in Virginia, polished by years at the Appleby Grammar School. Tall and debonair, Lawrence must have radiated a mature, well-traveled air of worldly sophistication for George, who was fourteen years his junior. Since Lawrence had stayed at Appleby until age twenty, he had probably graduated to the status of an "usher," or a.s.sistant teacher, at the school. Lawrence would function as both a peer and a parental figure for his half brother, and his youthful adventures operated so powerfully on George's imagination that the latter's early life seems to enact a script first drafted by his older brother. When Augustine a.s.signed Lawrence to superintend the Potomac River property recently vacated by the family, it immediately became the most desirable destination in George's eyes.

George's first exposure to war came vicariously through the exploits of his idolized brother. In 1739 Great Britain clashed with Spain in the Caribbean in a conflict styled the War of Jenkins' Ear-Robert Jenkins being a British s.h.i.+p captain whose ear was allegedly mutilated by the Spanish. To bolster an amphibious force the following year, the Crown enlisted colonial subjects into an American Foot Regiment, and Lawrence landed a coveted spot as the captain of a Virginia company. In the major offensive of this expeditionary force, Admiral Edward Vernon hurled nine thousand men against the Spanish at Cartagena, on the northern coast of South America, in what degenerated into a b.l.o.o.d.y fiasco. Lawrence and his men never disembarked from their s.h.i.+p, which was ravaged by yellow fever and other tropical diseases no less efficiently than their colleagues were mowed down by enemy bullets. Some perished from sunstroke in sweltering heat. In the gruesome account he sent home, Lawrence detailed how "the enemy killed of ours some 600 . . . and the climate killed us in greater number . . . a great quant.i.ty of officers amongst the rest are dead . . . War is horrid in fact but much more so in imagination." Amid the gloom, Lawrence struck a cavalier note that George mimicked years later: "We there have learned to live on ordinary diet, to watch much, and disregard the noise or shot of cannon."8 In these thrilling, if sanguinary, tales of war, Lawrence must have communicated mixed impressions of his British superiors. On the one hand, he had to brook the condescension of Brigadier General Thomas Wentworth, who sneered at colonial troops and kept them cooped up aboard the s.h.i.+p. At the same time, Lawrence retained clear affection for Admiral Vernon and, in a burst of Anglophilia, would rename the Little Hunting Creek estate Mount Vernon, hanging the admiral's portrait in an honored place there. Thus the name of a forgotten British admiral would implausibly grace America's secular shrine to the revolt against British rule. However frustrated with his British superiors, Lawrence earned the royal commission that would always elude George's eager grasp-a precedent that could only have sharpened the latter's keen sense of inequitable treatment at British hands. In his flouris.h.i.+ng career, Lawrence was also named adjutant general of Virginia, which brought him the rank of major and entrusted him with the task of molding militia companies into an effective fighting force.

In June 1742 George's other older half brother, Augustine Jr., also returned from a lengthy stay at Appleby. George must have expected that he would shortly follow suit, but that dream was rudely dashed a year later, when he was summoned back from a cousin's home by news that his father was ill. On April 12, 1743, Augustine Was.h.i.+ngton died at forty-nine in a manner that eerily prefigured George's own demise at century's end: he had ridden out in a storm, gotten sick, and expired. This early death underscored a central paradox of George Was.h.i.+ngton's life: that although he was a superb physical specimen, with a magnificent physique, his family's medical history was blighted by truncated lives. He subsequently lamented, "Tho' I was blessed with a good const.i.tution, I was of a short-lived family."9 The most significant bequest fell to Lawrence, who inherited Mount Vernon and the iron mine, while Austin received the family farm at Pope's Creek, where George was born and would spend much time after his father's death. George himself inherited Ferry Farm, a half share in an upriver parcel called Deep Run, and a.s.sorted lots in Fredericksburg. The eleven-year-old also found himself the juvenile owner of ten human beings. Since he could not claim this property until he reached maturity, George's newfound wealth was purely theoretical and placed him at the mercy of his strong-willed mother, who would not relinquish Ferry Farm for another thirty years. Augustine's early death robbed George of the cla.s.sical education bestowed on his older brothers, leaving him with an enduring sense of stunted, incomplete schooling. His father's death threw the boy back upon his own resources, stealing any chance of a lighthearted youth. From then on, George grew accustomed to shouldering weighty family burdens. Because Mary never remarried-unusual in a frontier society with a paucity of women-George developed the deeply rooted toughness of children forced to function as adults at an early age. He discovered a precocious ability to perform many adult tasks, but he probably never forgot the sudden fright of being deprived of the protection of a father. One wonders whether he resented his mother for her failure to find a second husband, which imposed inordinate burdens on him as the eldest son. Quite naturally, George turned to older men as sponsors and patrons, cultivating the art of ingratiating himself with influential figures.

If Mary Ball Was.h.i.+ngton comes across as an unbending, even shrewish, disciplinarian, one can only imagine the unspoken dread that she, too, experienced at being widowed at thirty-five. She had to manage Ferry Farm, tend five children ranging in age from six to eleven, and oversee dozens of slaves. Gus's death forced Mary to eliminate any frills of family life, and her spartan style as a businesswoman, frugal and demanding, had a discernible impact on her son. "In her dealings with servants, she was strict," writes Douglas Southall Freeman. "They must follow a definite round of work. Her bidding must be their law."10 With more than a touch of the martinet in her forbidding nature, Mary Was.h.i.+ngton displayed a powerful capacity to command, and one is tempted to say that the first formidable general George Was.h.i.+ngton ever encountered was his own mother. With more than a touch of the martinet in her forbidding nature, Mary Was.h.i.+ngton displayed a powerful capacity to command, and one is tempted to say that the first formidable general George Was.h.i.+ngton ever encountered was his own mother.

This trying woman inspired a healthy trepidation among George's companions. "I was often there with George, his playmate, schoolmate, and young man's companion," said Lawrence Was.h.i.+ngton of Chotank, a distant relative. "Of the mother I was more afraid than of my own parents; she awed me in the midst of her kindness, for she was, indeed, truly kind."11 There was nothing especially gentle about Mary Was.h.i.+ngton, little that savored of maternal warmth. Gus's death removed any moderating influence between mother and eldest son, who clashed with their similarly willful personalities. Always a dutiful but seldom a loving son, George treated his mother with frigid deference, taking refuge in polite but empty forms. His letters to her would be addressed to "Honored Madam" and end with distant formality, "Your most Dutiful and Obedient Son, George Was.h.i.+ngton." This studiously correct tone, likely laced with suppressed anger, only highlighted the absence of genuine filial affection. There was nothing especially gentle about Mary Was.h.i.+ngton, little that savored of maternal warmth. Gus's death removed any moderating influence between mother and eldest son, who clashed with their similarly willful personalities. Always a dutiful but seldom a loving son, George treated his mother with frigid deference, taking refuge in polite but empty forms. His letters to her would be addressed to "Honored Madam" and end with distant formality, "Your most Dutiful and Obedient Son, George Was.h.i.+ngton." This studiously correct tone, likely laced with suppressed anger, only highlighted the absence of genuine filial affection.

There would always be a cool, quiet antagonism between Was.h.i.+ngton and his mother. The hypercritical mother produced a son who was overly sensitive to criticism and suffered from a lifelong need for approval. One suspects that, in dealing with this querulous woman, George became an overly controlled personality and learned to master his temper and curb his tongue. It was the extreme self-control of a deeply emotional young man who feared the fatal vehemence of his own feelings, if left unchecked. Anything pertaining to Mary Ball Was.h.i.+ngton stirred up an emotional tempest that George quelled only with difficulty. Never able to express these forbidden feelings of rage, he learned to equate silence and a certain manly stolidity with strength. This boyhood struggle was, in all likelihood, the genesis of the stoical personality that would later define him so indelibly.

On the one hand, the similarities between Mary Was.h.i.+ngton and her eldest son were striking. She was a fine horsewoman, enjoyed dancing, reputedly possessed enormous strength, was manic in money matters, tenaciously superintended her farm, and displayed a stubborn independence. Both mother and son exhibited supreme willpower that people defied at their peril. Both were vigorous, enterprising, and exacting in their demands. Yet in many other ways, George Was.h.i.+ngton defined himself as the ant.i.thesis of his mother. If his mother was crude and illiterate, he would improve himself through books. If she was self-centered, he would be self-sacrificing in serving his country. If she was slovenly, he would be meticulous in appearance. If she disdained fancy society, he would crave its acceptance. If she showed old-fas.h.i.+oned religious fervor, he would be devout in a more moderate fas.h.i.+on. And if she was a veteran complainer, he would be known for his stiff upper lip.

Unable to afford a fancy education for her children, Mary Was.h.i.+ngton did her best to pound moral precepts into them, reading daily portions from a volume ent.i.tled Contemplations Moral and Divine Contemplations Moral and Divine by Sir Matthew Hale. Many speculative theories have been floated about Was.h.i.+ngton's education. Before his father's death, he may have received a limited education in math, reading, and writing at a day school taught by a Mr. Hobby, one of his father's tenants, who boasted that he had "laid the foundation of [Was.h.i.+ngton's] greatness." by Sir Matthew Hale. Many speculative theories have been floated about Was.h.i.+ngton's education. Before his father's death, he may have received a limited education in math, reading, and writing at a day school taught by a Mr. Hobby, one of his father's tenants, who boasted that he had "laid the foundation of [Was.h.i.+ngton's] greatness."12 He may also have attended a school in Fredericksburg run by the Reverend James Marye, the rector of St. George's Parish. According to one cla.s.smate, George applied himself to math while the others played at field hockey, his sole indiscretion being that he was caught "romping with one of the largest girls." He may also have attended a school in Fredericksburg run by the Reverend James Marye, the rector of St. George's Parish. According to one cla.s.smate, George applied himself to math while the others played at field hockey, his sole indiscretion being that he was caught "romping with one of the largest girls."13 Finally, when he stayed with Austin at the Pope's Creek farm, he may have been schooled in the rudiments of math and surveying by a schoolmaster named Henry Williams. Oddly for a towering personage in history, Was.h.i.+ngton never cited an early educational mentor, suggesting that his boyhood lessons were pretty humdrum. He left behind more than two hundred pages of schoolboy exercises that focused on geometry lessons, weights and measures, compound interest, currency conversions, and other skills necessary for business or surveying. Almost by osmosis, he absorbed law and economics by monotonously copying out legal forms for bail bonds, leases, and land patents, stocking his mind with a huge fund of practical information. The furnace of ambition burned with a bright, steady flame inside this diligent boy. Finally, when he stayed with Austin at the Pope's Creek farm, he may have been schooled in the rudiments of math and surveying by a schoolmaster named Henry Williams. Oddly for a towering personage in history, Was.h.i.+ngton never cited an early educational mentor, suggesting that his boyhood lessons were pretty humdrum. He left behind more than two hundred pages of schoolboy exercises that focused on geometry lessons, weights and measures, compound interest, currency conversions, and other skills necessary for business or surveying. Almost by osmosis, he absorbed law and economics by monotonously copying out legal forms for bail bonds, leases, and land patents, stocking his mind with a huge fund of practical information. The furnace of ambition burned with a bright, steady flame inside this diligent boy.

With painstaking effort, Was.h.i.+ngton learned to write in a round hand that lacked elegance but had great clarity. It took time for him to compose clean, declarative sentences-his teenage prose was often turgid and ungrammatical-but by dint of hard work, his powers grew steadily until he became a writer of considerable force, able to register his wishes with precision. It was in Was.h.i.+ngton's nature to work doubly hard to rectify perceived failings. Writing in 1807, the biographer David Ramsay said of the young Was.h.i.+ngton that "he was grave, silent, and thoughtful, diligent and methodical in business, dignified in his appearance, strictly honorable in his deportment."14 One can't help but surmise that Was.h.i.+ngton's life would have been vastly different had he attended college. He lacked the liberal education that then distinguished gentlemen, setting him apart from such ill.u.s.trious peers as Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, and Madison. He would always seem more provincial than other founders, his knowledge of European culture more secondhand. A university education would have spared him a gnawing sense of intellectual inadequacy. We know that he regretted his lack of Latin, Greek, and French-the major intellectual adornments of his day-since he lectured wards in later years on their importance. The degree to which Was.h.i.+ngton dwelt upon the transcendent importance of education underscores the stigma that he felt about having missed college. As president, he lectured a young relative about to enter college that "every hour misspent is lost forever" and that "future years years cannot compensate for lost cannot compensate for lost days days at this period of your life." at this period of your life."15 Without much formal schooling, Was.h.i.+ngton was later subject to condescension from some contemporaries, especially the sn.o.bbish John Adams, who disparaged him as "too illiterate, unlearned, unread for his station and reputation."16 Was.h.i.+ngton has suffered from comparisons with other founders, several of whom were renowned autodidacts, but by any ordinary standard, he was an exceedingly smart man with a quick ability to grasp ideas. He seized every interval of leisure to improve himself and showed a steady capacity to acquire and retain useful knowledge. Throughout his life, he strenuously molded his personality to become a respectable member of society. As W. W. Abbot aptly expressed it, "More than most, Was.h.i.+ngton's biography is the story of a man constructing himself." Was.h.i.+ngton has suffered from comparisons with other founders, several of whom were renowned autodidacts, but by any ordinary standard, he was an exceedingly smart man with a quick ability to grasp ideas. He seized every interval of leisure to improve himself and showed a steady capacity to acquire and retain useful knowledge. Throughout his life, he strenuously molded his personality to become a respectable member of society. As W. W. Abbot aptly expressed it, "More than most, Was.h.i.+ngton's biography is the story of a man constructing himself."17 As an adolescent, Was.h.i.+ngton dabbled in fiction, history, philosophy, and geography. An avid reader of periodicals, he sampled The Spectator The Spectator by the age of sixteen. With the novel flowering as a literary form, he was to purchase copies of Henry Fielding's by the age of sixteen. With the novel flowering as a literary form, he was to purchase copies of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones Tom Jones and Tobias Smollett's and Tobias Smollett's The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle in coming years, and he was especially drawn to military history. As he experienced the first stirrings of an abiding pa.s.sion for theater, he read Joseph Addison's in coming years, and he was especially drawn to military history. As he experienced the first stirrings of an abiding pa.s.sion for theater, he read Joseph Addison's Cato, Cato, a paean to republican virtues that he quoted repeatedly throughout his life. It is often said, with truth, that Was.h.i.+ngton absorbed his lessons from action, not books, yet he came to own a vast library and talked about books as if he were a serious reader, not a dilettante. When his adopted grandson entered college, Was.h.i.+ngton lectured him thus: "Light reading (by this, I mean books of little importance) may amuse for the moment, but leaves nothing solid behind." a paean to republican virtues that he quoted repeatedly throughout his life. It is often said, with truth, that Was.h.i.+ngton absorbed his lessons from action, not books, yet he came to own a vast library and talked about books as if he were a serious reader, not a dilettante. When his adopted grandson entered college, Was.h.i.+ngton lectured him thus: "Light reading (by this, I mean books of little importance) may amuse for the moment, but leaves nothing solid behind."18 Never an intellectual who relished ideas for their own sake, he mined books for practical wisdom and delighted in dredging up handy aphorisms. At seventeen, he possessed an English compendium of the princ.i.p.al Dialogues of Seneca the Younger Dialogues of Seneca the Younger and took to heart his stoic beliefs: "The contempt of death makes all the miseries of life easy to us." Or: "He is the brave man . . . that can look death in the face without trouble or surprise." and took to heart his stoic beliefs: "The contempt of death makes all the miseries of life easy to us." Or: "He is the brave man . . . that can look death in the face without trouble or surprise."19 As his life progressed, Was.h.i.+ngton would adhere to the stoic creed of governing one's pa.s.sions under the most adverse circ.u.mstances and facing the prospect of death with serenity. As his life progressed, Was.h.i.+ngton would adhere to the stoic creed of governing one's pa.s.sions under the most adverse circ.u.mstances and facing the prospect of death with serenity.

In trying to form himself as an English country gentleman, the self-invented young Was.h.i.+ngton practiced the cla.s.sic strategy of outsiders: he studied closely his social betters and tried to imitate their behavior in polite society. Whether to improve his penmans.h.i.+p or perhaps as a school a.s.signment, he submitted to the drudgery of copying out 110 social maxims from The Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation, The Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation, a handy guidebook of etiquette that traced its origins to a French Jesuit work of the sixteenth century. This humorless manual preached against a.s.sorted social gaffes that would have haunted the nightmares of an insecure youth who daydreamed of venturing into fas.h.i.+onable drawing rooms. Number four warned: "In the presence of others, sing not to yourself with a humming noise, nor drum with your fingers or feet." Number eleven: "s.h.i.+ft not yourself in the sight of others, nor gnaw your nails." Number twelve: "Bedew no man's face with your spittle by approaching too near him when you speak." a handy guidebook of etiquette that traced its origins to a French Jesuit work of the sixteenth century. This humorless manual preached against a.s.sorted social gaffes that would have haunted the nightmares of an insecure youth who daydreamed of venturing into fas.h.i.+onable drawing rooms. Number four warned: "In the presence of others, sing not to yourself with a humming noise, nor drum with your fingers or feet." Number eleven: "s.h.i.+ft not yourself in the sight of others, nor gnaw your nails." Number twelve: "Bedew no man's face with your spittle by approaching too near him when you speak."20 Number one hundred: "Cleanse not your teeth with the tablecloth, napkin, fork, or knife, but if others do it, let it be done with a pick tooth." Number one hundred: "Cleanse not your teeth with the tablecloth, napkin, fork, or knife, but if others do it, let it be done with a pick tooth."21 Many of these rules, which talked about showing due respect for one's superiors, tread a fine line between self-abas.e.m.e.nt and simple humility. Number thirty-seven: "In speaking to men of quality, do not lean, nor look them full in the face, nor approach too near them; at least keep a full pace from them."22 Or thirty-nine: "In writing or speaking, give to every person his due t.i.tle according to his degree and the custom of the place." Or thirty-nine: "In writing or speaking, give to every person his due t.i.tle according to his degree and the custom of the place."23 This is a crib sheet for a world shot through with cla.s.s distinctions and informed by a deep terror of offending one's betters. This guidebook "taught modesty, deference, and submission to authority," writes William Guthrie Sayen, who notes that it would have instructed Was.h.i.+ngton on how to control his temper and learn "the importance of managing his body, his facial expressions, his speech, and his moods." This is a crib sheet for a world shot through with cla.s.s distinctions and informed by a deep terror of offending one's betters. This guidebook "taught modesty, deference, and submission to authority," writes William Guthrie Sayen, who notes that it would have instructed Was.h.i.+ngton on how to control his temper and learn "the importance of managing his body, his facial expressions, his speech, and his moods."24 The book must have spoken to some inborn sense of decorum in Was.h.i.+ngton, soothing his schoolboy fears of committing a faux pas. If thoroughly heeded, The book must have spoken to some inborn sense of decorum in Was.h.i.+ngton, soothing his schoolboy fears of committing a faux pas. If thoroughly heeded, The Rules of Civility The Rules of Civility would have produced a cool, pragmatic, and very controlled young man with genteel manners-exactly the social facade Was.h.i.+ngton wished to project to conceal the welter of stormy emotions inside him. would have produced a cool, pragmatic, and very controlled young man with genteel manners-exactly the social facade Was.h.i.+ngton wished to project to conceal the welter of stormy emotions inside him.

Though respectful of education, George Was.h.i.+ngton was never a bookish boy. He loved to swim in the smooth, deep waters of the Rappahannock. He excelled in riding, liked to hunt, later learned fencing, attended a dancing school, played billiards, frequented c.o.c.kfights and horse races, and experimented with his first flirtations. Despite a certain underlying roughness, he would perfect the social graces that prepared him to enter well-bred society. At the same time, he was an unusually sober and purposeful young man. In countless letters in later years, he advised young relatives that adolescence was a risky time when evil influences lurked nearby, ready to pounce: "You are now extending into that stage of life when good or bad habits are formed. When the mind will be turned to things useful and praiseworthy or to dissipation and vice."25 He issued warnings against young male companions who "too often mistake ribaldry for wit and rioting, swearing, intoxication, and gambling for manliness." He issued warnings against young male companions who "too often mistake ribaldry for wit and rioting, swearing, intoxication, and gambling for manliness."26 The young George Was.h.i.+ngton seldom seemed to show a truant disposition, as if he were already preparing for bigger things. The young George Was.h.i.+ngton seldom seemed to show a truant disposition, as if he were already preparing for bigger things.

CHAPTER TWO.

Fortune's Favorite.

IN THE ABSENCE OF A FATHER and with a mother who doled out criticism more freely than encouragement, George Was.h.i.+ngton turned naturally to his three younger brothers for recreation and to his two older brothers, Lawrence and Austin, for guidance. Of the younger brothers, John Augustine or "Jack" was decidedly his favorite, "the intimate companion of my youth and the most affectionate friend of my ripened age," as George remembered him.1 It was his outgoing and older half brother Lawrence, however, who fired his ambitions and steered him firmly in the direction of a military career. It was his outgoing and older half brother Lawrence, however, who fired his ambitions and steered him firmly in the direction of a military career.

After his father's death, George found asylum from his difficult mother in periodic trips to stay with Lawrence at Mount Vernon, which would always beckon invitingly on the far horizon of his life. From time to time he also escaped to his brother Austin's place at Pope's Creek, though he was never as close to him. In a surviving portrait of Lawrence Was.h.i.+ngton by an unknown artist, he is clad in the uniform of a British Army officer but seems made of gentler stuff than George. He has boldly marked eyebrows, full lips, a cleft chin, and receding brown hair. The dark eyes are large and sensitive, evoking a poet or a scholar more than a bluff soldier. Indeed, the cultivated Lawrence presented an appealing model of urbanity for his younger brother. "For the enlargement of George's mind and the polis.h.i.+ng of his manners, Lawrence was almost an ideal elder brother," writes Douglas Southall Freeman.2 After returning from the military debacle at Cartagena, Lawrence Was.h.i.+ngton appeared headed for a life of easy riches. Though a lackl.u.s.ter businessman, he was fortunate to marry Ann Fairfax in July 1743, three months after his father's death, a fateful match that catapulted him to the apex of Virginia society, a status certified by Lawrence's election to the House of Burgesses.

The bride was the daughter of the august Colonel William Fairfax, who wielded breathtaking power in Tidewater Virginia as land agent for the Northern Neck Proprietary, the long strip of fertile farmland between the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers. Through this land grant, dating back to the reign of King Charles II, the Fairfax family controlled a veritable duchy of five million acres that extended all the way west to the Shenandoah Valley. William represented his cousin, Thomas Fairfax, the sixth Baron Fairfax, in administering this princely domain. Through a maze of business dealings and social and marital ties, Fairfax power ramified into every corner of Virginia society.

Ann Fairfax grew up on the family estate, Belvoir, which s.h.i.+mmered like a radiant mirage on the Potomac River, four miles downstream from Mount Vernon. This luxurious realm encapsulated the youthful fantasies of George Was.h.i.+ngton, who later described it thus: "Within full view of Mount Vernon, separated therefrom by water only, [it] is one of the most beautiful seats on the river . . . there are near 2,000 acres of land belonging to the tract, surrounded in a manner by water." Of the two-story Georgian brick mansion that stood as its stately centerpiece, Was.h.i.+ngton recalled that it "stood on high and commanding ground."3 The house was approached by a circular drive and a huge courtyard, with formal grounds, stables, a coach house, and lavish gardens laid out with the full grandeur of an opulent British country house. The house was approached by a circular drive and a huge courtyard, with formal grounds, stables, a coach house, and lavish gardens laid out with the full grandeur of an opulent British country house.

By marrying Ann Fairfax, Lawrence Was.h.i.+ngton crossed a social chasm that segregated the merely comfortable from the fabulously rich, making George a welcome visitor at Belvoir at the impressionable age of eleven. When Lawrence and Ann lost four children in infancy, it only fortified their bond with George. Ushered into the rarefied milieu of Belvoir, George befriended the colonel's son, George William Fairfax, who was eight years his senior and rather sn.o.bbish; the latter faintly praised Belvoir as a "tolerable cottage" in a "wooded world."4 A portrait of the fastidiously dressed George William shows a man with a long, narrow face and an alert, slightly suspicious glance. The Fairfax connection opened up a world of extraordinary magnificence for young Was.h.i.+ngton, who must have felt a rough country b.u.mpkin in comparison. His amazing career would never have unfolded had his fortunes not meshed so neatly with the interests of this ruling clan. A portrait of the fastidiously dressed George William shows a man with a long, narrow face and an alert, slightly suspicious glance. The Fairfax connection opened up a world of extraordinary magnificence for young Was.h.i.+ngton, who must have felt a rough country b.u.mpkin in comparison. His amazing career would never have unfolded had his fortunes not meshed so neatly with the interests of this ruling clan.

George won more than grudging entree to the Fairfax estate, for Colonel Fairfax spied unusual potential in this capable youth, invited him on foxhunts, and took an active interest in furthering his career. The colonial world revolved around such pivotal connections. To secure a powerful patron was an indispensable prerequisite to advancement for a boy born outside the upper gentry. In the mid-1750s, while coaching his younger brother Jack, George exhorted him to spend more time at Belvoir: "I should be glad to hear that you live in perfect harmony and good fellows.h.i.+p with the family at Belvoir, as it is in their power to be serviceable upon many occasions to us as young beginners . . . to that family I am under many obligations, particularly to the old gentleman."5 That old gentleman, Colonel Fairfax, seemed to dote on Was.h.i.+ngton and signed his letters to him "your a.s.sured and loving friend." That old gentleman, Colonel Fairfax, seemed to dote on Was.h.i.+ngto