Washington [323]
The visitors’ accounts during these years give many candid glimpses of Washington. Their impressions vary dramatically, suggesting that he reacted quite differently to people—so much so that, at times, he scarcely seemed the same person. He could be merry and convivial or, if he didn’t care for the guests, silent and morose. This mutable personality, reflecting his shifting levels of trust in his listeners, has made it hard for historians to form a coherent sense of his personality. Seldom quotable in person, Washington could never be surprised into confessional statements. But if few visitors came away with treasured table talk, he made his presence powerfully felt.
A young Scottish visitor, Robert Hunter, left this portrait of Washington’s venerable appearance: “The General is about six foot high, perfectly straight and well made, rather inclined to be lusty. His eyes are full and blue and seem to express an air of gravity.”35 He picked up Washington’s fastidious regard for appearance. When they first met, the general “was neatly dressed in a plain blue coat, white cashmere waistcoat, and black breeches and boots, as he came from his farm.”36 Washington left him briefly with Martha and Fanny, shed his work clothes, then reappeared in more fashionable garb, “with his hair neatly powdered, a clean shirt on, a new plain drab coat, white waistcoat, and white silk stockings.”37 Hunter conjured up a Washington who seemed relaxed after the great labors of war, a man still healthy and vital who could be elegant in the drawing room and energetic in the field. He noted that Washington was talkative with intimates, but that, cherishing his privacy, he was far more guarded and laconic with people he distrusted.
Hunter recorded the clockwork regularity of Washington’s days as the latter followed a farmer’s routine of going to bed at nine, then rising with the sun. Mornings he devoted to the masses of mail that swamped him. “It’s astonishing the packets of letters that daily come for him from all parts of the world,”noted Hunter.38 With evident pride, Washington showed him the vast archive of wartime letters he had transcribed for posterity: “There are thirty large folio volumes of them upstairs, as big as common ledgers, all neatly copied.”39 Hunter discovered that his study, with a thousand books shelved behind glass, was the inner sanctum to which he denied admittance to strangers. As Washington gave him a tour of his extensive fields and gardens, Hunter reported that his “greatest pride is now to be thought the first farmer in America.”40 Far from being an aloof boss, Washington often dismounted from his horse to work alongside slaves and indentured servants, especially to ensure that construction matched his specifications: “It’s astonishing with what niceness he directs everything in the building way, condescending even to measure the things himself, that all may be perfectly uniform.”41
While Washington opened up in Hunter’s company, he clammed up with others. If he didn’t like someone, he would be correct but never warm. As one European visitor observed, “There seemed to me to skulk somewhat of a repulsive coldness, not congenial with my mind, under a courteous demeanor.”42 One Dutchman also came away disgusted: “I could never be on familiar terms with the General—a man so cold, so cautious, so obsequious.”43 It did not occur to these tourists that Washington felt burdened by uninvited