Washington [138]
For Washington, thoughts of Mount Vernon offered solace from wartime scenes in New England and became his favorite form of mental refreshment. Perhaps admitting that his absence from Virginia might be prolonged, he gave the faithful Lund a generous raise to manage the estate in his absence. Throughout the war Washington remained exceedingly attentive to doings at home, penning hundreds of lengthy letters to Lund, typically one a week. He retained a staggering amount of detailed information about Mount Vernon inside his compartmentalized mind and seemed able to visualize every square foot of the estate—every hedge, every fence, every pond, every meadow. Often exacting in his demands, he supervised the planting of crops, the purchase of land, and the moves and countermoves of lawsuits as if he had never left the plantation. Forever daydreaming about the future, he was determined to persist with renovations to his mansion started the year before. Writing as if he might return that winter, he told Lund to “quicken” the introduction of a new chimneypiece, “as I could wish to have that end of the house completely finished before I return. I wish you had done the end of the new kitchen next the garden as also the old kitchen with rusticated boards.”42 Clearly Washington found psychological balm in these pleasing fantasies of a renovated Mount Vernon awaiting him when the war ended.
Continuing to fret about Martha, the commander in chief was beset by sporadic fears that Lord Dunmore might abduct her. Then he dismissed such actions as unworthy of a gentleman. “I can hardly think that Lord Dunmore can act so low and unmanly a part as to think of seizing Mrs. Washington by way of revenge upon me,” he told Lund Washington in late August.43 Should Lund believe it necessary, however, he advised him to move both Martha and his personal papers to safety in Alexandria.
Even as he privately berated the New Englanders, Washington enjoyed a special wartime camaraderie with two who stood out amid the dearth of able officers. Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island was one of the first brigadier generals picked by Congress; having turned thirty-three that summer, he was the youngest general in the Continental Army. Tall and solidly built with striking blue eyes, full lips, and a long straight nose, Greene had been reared in a pious Quaker household by a prosperous father who owned an iron forge, a sawmill, and other businesses. Discouraged from reading anything except the Bible, he had received little schooling and missed a college education as much as Washington. “I lament the want of a liberal education,” he once wrote. “I feel the mist [of] ignorance to surround me.”44 To compensate for this failing, he became adept at self-improvement and devoured authors both ancient and modern, including Pope, Locke, Sterne, and Jonathan Swift.
After his father died in 1770, Greene inherited his business but was shadowed by mishaps. Two years later one of the forges burned, and the following year he was barred from Quaker meetings, possibly because he patronized alehouses. In 1774 Greene married the exceptionally pretty Catharine “Caty” Littlefield, who was a dozen years younger and a preeminent belle of the Revolutionary era. As relations with Great Britain soured