Washington [533]
One of Washington’s cherished activities was arranging the huge trove of papers he had lugged back from Philadelphia. Before leaving office, he had instructed his secretaries to skim off documents needed by President Adams and ship the rest to Mount Vernon. He also had them forward a letterpress device so he could make copies of letters. One visitor was staggered by the sheer size of his Revolutionary War archives: “They consist of between 30 and 40 cases of papers, containing all the military expeditions, reports, journals, correspondence with Congress, with the generals, etc. What a wealth of material!”17 As if envisaging the first presidential library, Washington planned to build a house at Mount Vernon dedicated to his records, a project that never came to fruition even though he ordered bookcases for it before his death.
Another labor of love was adding the finishing touches to the renovation of the main house. At the north end Washington completed the New Room, the stately dining room featuring a long table that seated ten people. From Philadelphia he carted home twenty-four mahogany dining chairs, enabling him to expand the number of people he entertained. Unfortunately, delays in completing the room had so weakened the underlying girders that “a company only moderately large would have sunk altogether into the cellar,” Washington complained before undertaking expensive corrective work.18 Outside the house, the kitchen garden, greenhouse, and serpentine walks along the lawn created a beautiful geometric area where elegant, well-dressed people could stroll through fragrant, refreshing spaces. After negotiating the bad roads and thick woods nearby, visitors found the mansion house a sudden oasis of order. “Good fences, clear grounds, and extensive cultivation strike the eye as something uncommon in this part of the world,”noted architect Benjamin Latrobe.19
Spared the onus of public office, Washington permitted his mind to roam into the pathways of the past. In the spring of 1798, when he learned that Belvoir, the old Fairfax estate, was up for sale, he was flooded with memories about his youthful dalliance with Sally Fairfax. On some subterranean level, the entrancing memory of Sally, now a widow of nearly seventy, had stayed evergreen in his mind. In May 1798 he learned that Bryan Fairfax, Sally’s brother-in-law, was traveling to England, and he handed him an elegiac letter to Sally, which mixed frank references to their amorous past with staple Washingtonian rhetoric about America’s glorious future. Very often, he admitted to Sally, he cast a nostalgic glance toward Belvoir and wondered whether she would spend her final days near her Virginia relatives “rather than close the sublunary scene in a foreign country.”20 He acknowledged the many extraordinary events he had lived through, then abruptly declared that none of these events, “not all of them together, have been able to eradicate from my mind the recollection of those happy moments—the happiest of my life—which I have enjoyed in your company.”21 This unexpected line offered the ultimate romantic compliment: Washington had won a long war, founded a country, and created a new government, but such accomplishments paled beside the faded recollections of a youthful love affair. In its autumnal tone, the letter represented a farewell address of sorts. Having written it, he wanted to ensure