Washington [84]
George and Martha Washington were a sociable couple who entertained an unending cavalcade of guests at Mount Vernon. During the seven years before the American Revolution, they fed (and frequently housed) an estimated two thousand guests.4 One visitor murmured his approval at how cordially Washington had treated him “as if I had lived years in his house.”5 Washington was an excellent host of a certain sort. He was congenial without being deeply personal, friendly without being familiar, and perfected a cool sociability that distanced him from people even as it invited them closer. He never felt the urge to impress people. As John Marshall wrote, “He had no pretensions to that vivacity which fascinates, and to that wit which dazzles.”6 He knew the value of silence, largely kept opinions to himself, and seldom committed a faux pas.
Very concerned with winning the approval of others, Washington tended his image with extreme care, suggesting a self-conscious insecurity about how people perceived him. Peter Henriques has commented on Washington’s “intense fear of failure” and the hundreds of times the word approbation crops up in his letters.7 Since he struck people as stern and grave, pleasant and affable at once, he seemed to embody Benjamin Franklin’s maxim “Let all men know thee, but no man know thee thoroughly.” People sensed the turbulent, buried emotions within him and occasionally glimpsed their raw power. One stage actor who visited Mount Vernon said that Washington had “a compression of the mouth and [an] indentation of the brow . . . suggesting habitual conflict with and mastery over passion.”8
During the American Revolution, some officers claimed that they never saw Washington smile. If he seldom submitted to belly laughs, he was never as dour as legend claims. Said one perceptive former slave: “I never see that man laugh to show his teeth—he done all his laughing inside.”9 If laughter didn’t come readily to Washington, it could be coaxed out of him after several glasses of wine, when he fell into the uproarious spirit of a dinner party. James Madison later noted that while Washington didn’t tell funny stories, he responded when others did: “He was particularly pleased with the jokes, good humor, and hilarity of his companions.”10 Washington was also more unbuttoned at the theater. “You would seldom see a frown or smile on his countenance, his air was serious and reflecting,” wrote one observer, “yet I have seen him in the theater laugh heartily.”11
Acutely aware of being a provincial subject in a remote corner of the British Empire, Washington sometimes sounded an apologetic, self-deprecating note when writing to London. When he invited his British factor, Richard Washington, to visit Mount Vernon, he said, “We have few things here striking to European travelers (except an abundant woods) but a little variety, a welcome reception among a few friends, and the open and prevalent hospitality of the country in general.”12 With his emphasis on self-improvement, Washington trained himself to play the gentleman in polite drawing rooms and among the highly educated. People sensed something a bit studied about his behavior and suspected, correctly, that the manner was partly learned. The British ambassador’s wife noted that he had “perfect good breeding and a correct knowledge of even the etiquette of a court,” but how he had acquired it, “heaven knows.”13 Washington exemplified the self-invented American, forever struggling to better himself and rise above his origins.
While Washington cultivated friendships throughout his life, he didn’t have many true intimates and his relationships were seldom of the candid or confessional type. His reserve, if not impenetrable, was by no means lightly surrendered. He was habitually cautious with new people and only gradually opened up as they passed a series of loyalty