Free His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph J. Ellis Page B

along with medicinal potions, to include—a clear sign of parental desperation—a medieval iron ring with allegedly magical curative power. Even with these efforts, and despite several trips to different doctors and health spas that Washington personally supervised, nothing worked. She died suddenly after one of her seizures in 1773 at the age of seventeen. Washington ordered a black cape for Martha to wear in mourning for the following year. 7
    THE SQUIRE
    B EYOND THE DOMESTIC centerpieces of Washington’s world at Mount Vernon there lay a broad spectrum of different roles and responsibilities that, taken together, allow us to conjure up several different mental pictures of the mature man in his pre-icon phase. Perhaps the most jarring picture, because it clashes so dramatically with his subsequent reputation as the epitome of public virtue, is that of the indulged Virginia gentleman for whom the phrase “pursuit of happiness” meant galloping to hounds.
    And the foxhunt is not just a metaphor. According to his diary, Washington spent between two and five hours a day for forty-nine days in 1768 on horseback pursuing the elusive fox. He also devoted considerable energy to breeding his hounds, who frequently confounded him with their ingenuity at linking up—what he called “lining”—with partners of their own choosing. Especially after 1765, when Lund Washington, a distant relative, assumed many of the managerial responsibilities at Mount Vernon, Washington enjoyed a great deal of leisure time. He traveled to Alexandria, Annapolis, and Williamsburg to take in the horse races. After 1768 his trips were often made in an expensive chariot, custom-made in London, with leather interiors and his personal crest emblazoned on the side. His record of card-playing expenses from 1772 to 1774 reveals that he played twenty-five times a year and just about broke even in his wagers. He purchased his wine, usually Madeira, by the butt (150 gallons) and the pipe (110 gallons). On any given day he enjoyed the attention of two manservants, Thomas Bishop, a white servant who had been with him since the Braddock campaign, and Billy Lee, a mulatto slave, who came on the scene in 1768. 8
    This picture of the provincial aristocrat at play would not be complete without noticing his clothing. His coats, shirts, pants, and shoes were all ordered from a London tailor, but they invariably did not fit. He complained that “my Cloaths have never fitted me well,” but the reason for the persistent problem was that the instructions he customarily gave his tailor were misleading. For example, when ordering an overcoat he directed the tailor to “make it to fit a person Six feet high and proportionally made, & you cannot go much amiss.” But Washington was at least two inches taller than six feet and disproportionately made, with very broad shoulders and huge hips. When Charles Willson Peale came down from Philadelphia to paint his portrait in 1772, Washington chose to wear his old military uniform from the Virginia Regiment days. Biographers have speculated that his decision to be depicted as a soldier might have been a premonition of his looming role in the American Revolution. It is also possible that he wore the only suit of clothes that fit him. 9
    The clothing scene is comical, but so is any one-dimensional picture of Washington as a laconic embodiment of Virginia’s leisure class. (The Peale portrait, by the way, which is generally regarded as a poor likeness, reinforces the laid-back image, paunch and all.) Most of the time Washington was on horseback he was not foxhunting but riding out to his farms, in effect overseeing his own overseers, offering meticulous instructions about when to harvest his tobacco crop, what fields to plant with corn and peas, how many hogs to slaughter. Or he was riding over to Truro Parish to perform his duties as a vestryman. (A lukewarm Episcopalian, he never took Communion, tended to talk about