Washington [251]
In the letter, Washington presented a lighthearted but vivid picture of his own ardent nature as a young man, as if Lafayette brought out some buried romanticism in him. Washington asked Lafayette to tell the marchioness
that I have a heart susceptible of the tenderest passion and that it is already so strongly impressed with the most favorable ideas of her that she must be cautious of putting love’s torch to it, as you must be in fanning the flame. But, here again, methinks I hear you say, I am not apprehensive of danger. My wife is young, you are growing old, and the Atlantic is between you. All this is true, but know, my good friend, that no distance can keep anxious lovers long asunder, and that the wonders of former ages may be revived in this.40
He ended on a somber note: “But, alas! will you not remark that amidst all the wonders recorded in holy writ no instance can be produced where a young woman from real inclination has preferred an old man.”41 Clearly Washington, forty-seven, was lapsing into the wistful mood of an older man nostalgic for his passionate youth. Whether he was thinking of Martha Washington or Sally Fairfax when he wrote this confessional letter, we do not know. At the end, as if amazed at how he had rambled on, he remarked, “When I look back to the length of this letter, I am so much astonished and frightened at it myself that I have not the courage to give it a careful reading for the purpose of correction.”42
Though French diplomats were impressed with Washington, he remained in the dark about the plans of the Count d’Estaing. He heard stray rumors about his fleet’s return to northern waters and stationed Major Henry Lee on the New Jersey shore to greet it, but he could not verify the information. The day after the state dinner with the French, Washington wrote to d’Estaing that the British had beefed up their strength in New York to fifteen thousand men. Reviving his favorite fantasy, he wondered aloud whether the count planned to attack New York. Reduced to an almost servile status, Washington had to beg for scraps of information about French plans. “I have taken the liberty to throw out these hints for your Excellency’s information,” Washington wrote gingerly, “and permit me to entreat that you will favor me as soon as possible with an account of your Excellency’s intentions.” 43 Washington yearned to hurl the weight of his army against the British in New York or Rhode Island, and he seeded New York City with spies to ascertain the strength of the British garrison—all to no avail, as he felt increasingly powerless vis-à-vis his French allies.
In late September Washington learned that d’Estaing’s fleet had appeared off the Georgia coast. When another month passed without information, Washington vented his frustration to Jacky Custis, complaining of his fickle French ally that “we begin to fear that some great convulsion in the earth has caused a chasm between this and that state that cannot be passed.”44 Then Washington learned that d’Estaing and General Benjamin Lincoln had launched a disastrous foray to recapture Savannah. They had stormed British fortifications and suffered more than eight hundred American and French casualties, leaving behind a “plain strewed with mangled bodies.”45 Amid the general carnage, d’Estaing suffered wounds in the arm and leg before retreating with his fleet to the West Indies. As far as Washington was concerned, this unfortunate performance rounded out a misbegotten year of botched battles, missed chances, and enforced idleness.
Resigned to the seasonal end of combat in the northern states, Washington took the bulk of his army into the safe haven of a winter cantonment in Morristown, New Jersey. Confronted by early snow and hail, the soldiers chopped down two thousand acres of timber and roughed out a city