Part 19

"He might have been a king But that he understood How much it was a meaner thing To be unjustly great than honourably good."

_Duke of Buckingham on Lord Fairfax._

On the 2d of February I visited Mount Vernon, in company with a large party of gentlemen and ladies. Of all places in America, the family seat and burial-place of Washington is that which strangers are most eager to visit. I was introduced by Judge Story to the resident family, and was received by them, with all my companions, with great civility and kindness.

The estate of Mount Vernon was inherited by General Washington from his brother. For fifteen years prior to the assembling of the first general Congress in Philadelphia, Washington spent his time chiefly on this property, repairing to the provincial legislature when duty called him there, but gladly returning to the improvement of his lands. The house was, in those days, a very modest building, consisting of only four rooms on a floor, which form the centre of the present mansion. Mrs. Washington resided there during the ten years' absence of her husband in the wars of the Revolution; repairing to headquarters at the close of each campaign, and remaining there till the opening of the next. The departure of an aiddecamp from the camp to escort the general's lady was watched for with much anxiety as the echoes of the last shot of the campaign died away; for the arrival of "Lady Washington" (as the soldiers called her) was the signal for the wives of all the general officers to repair to their husbands in camp. A sudden cheerfulness diffused itself through the army when the plain chariot, with the postillions in their scarlet and white liveries, was seen to stop before the general's door. Mrs. Washington was wont to say, in her latter years, that she had heard the first cannon at the opening and the last at the close of every campaign of the revolutionary war. She was a strong-minded, even-tempered woman; and the cheerfulness of her demeanour, under the heavy and various anxieties of such a lot as hers, was no mean support to her husband's spirits, and to the bravery and hopefulness of the whole army, whose eyes were fixed upon her. She retired from amid the homage of the camp with serene composure when the fatigues and perils of warfare had to be resumed, and hid her fears and cares in her retired home. There she occupied herself industriously in the superintendence of her slaves, and in striving to stop the ravages which her husband's public service was making in his private fortunes.

After the peace of 1783 she was joined by her husband, who made a serious pursuit of laying out gardens and grounds round his dwelling, and building large additions to it. He then enjoyed only four years of quiet, being called in 1787 to preside in the convention which framed the Constitution, and in 1789 to fill the presidential chair. Mrs. Washington was now obliged to leave the estate with him, and it was eight years before they could take possession of it again. In 1797 Washington refused to be made president for a third term, and retired into as private a life as it was possible for him to secure. Trains of visiters sought him in his retreat, and Mrs. Washington's accomplishments as a Virginia housewife were found useful every day; but Washington was at home, and he was happy. In a little while he was once more applied to to serve the state at the head of her armies. He did not refuse, but requested to be left in peace till there should be actual want of his presence. Before that time arrived he was no more. Two years after his retirement, while the sense of enjoyment of repose was still fresh, and his mind was full of such schemes as delight the imaginations of country gentlemen, death overtook him, and found him, though the call was somewhat sudden, ready and willing to go. In a little more than two years he was followed by his wife. From the appearance of the estate, it would seem to have been going to decay ever since.

Our party, in three carriages, and five or six on horseback, left Washington about nine o'clock, and reached Alexandria in about an hour and a half, though our passage over the long bridge which crosses the Potomac was very slow, from its being in a sad state of dilapidation. Having ordered a late dinner at Alexandria, we proceeded on our way, occasionally looking behind us at the great dome of the Capitol, still visible above the low hills which border the gray, still Potomac, now stretching cold amid the wintry landscape. It was one of the coldest days I ever felt, the bitter wind seeming to eat into one's very life. The last five miles of the eight which lie between Alexandria and Mount Vernon wound through the shelter of the woods, so that we recovered a little from the extreme cold before we reached the house. The land appears to be quite impoverished; the fences and gates are in bad order; much of the road was swampy, and the poor young lambs, shivering in the biting wind, seemed to look round in vain for shelter and care. The conservatories were almost in ruins, scarcely a single pane of glass being unbroken; and the house looked as if it had not been painted on the outside for years. Little negroes peeped at us from behind the pillars of the piazza as we drove up. We alighted in silence, most of us being probably occupied with the thought of who had been there before us; what crowds of the noble, the wise, the good, had come hither to hear the yet living voice of the most unimpeachable of patriots. As I looked up I almost expected to see him standing in the doorway. My eyes had rested on the image of his remarkable countenance in almost every house I had entered; and here, in his own dwelling, one could not but look for the living face with something more than the eye of the imagination. I cared far less for any of the things that were shown me within the house than to stay in the piazza next the garden, and fancy how he here walked in meditation, or stood looking abroad over the beautiful river, and pleasing his eye with a far different spectacle from that of camps and conventions.

Many prints of British landscapes, residences, and events are hung up in the apartments. The ponderous key of the Bastile still figures in the hall, in extraordinary contrast with everything else in this republican residence. The Bible in the library is the only book of Washington's now left. The best likeness of the great man, known to all travellers from the oddness of the material on which it is preserved, is to be seen here, sanctioned thus by the testimony of the family. The best likeness of Washington happens to be on a common pitcher. As soon as this was discovered, the whole edition of pitchers was bought up. Once or twice I saw the entire vessel locked up in a cabinet, or in some such way secured from accident; but most of its possessors have, like the family, cut out the portrait and had it framed.

The walk, planned and partly finished during Washington's life, the winding path on the verge of the green slope above the river, must be very sweet in summer. The beauty of the situation of the place surprised me. The river was nobler, the terrace finer, and the swelling hills around more varied than I had imagined; but there is a painful air of desolation over the whole. I wonder how it struck the British officers in 1814, when, in passing up the river on their bandit expedition to burn libraries and bridges, and raze senate chambers, they assembled on deck, and uncovered their heads as they passed the silent dwelling of the great man who was not there to testify his disgust at the service they were upon. If they knew what it was that they were under orders to do, it would have been creditable to them as men to have mutinied in front of Mount Vernon.

The old tomb from which the body of Washington has been removed ought to be obliterated or restored. It is too painful to see it as it is now, the brickwork mouldering, and the paling broken and scattered. The red cedars still overshadow it, and it is a noble resting-place. Every one would mourn to see the low house destroyed, and the great man's chamber of dreamless sleep made no longer sacred from the common tread; but anything is better than the air of neglect which now wounds the spirit of the pilgrim. The body lies, with that of Judge Washington, in a vault near, in a more secluded but far less beautiful situation than that on the verge of the Potomac. The river is not seen from the new vault, and the erection is very sordid. It is of red brick, with an iron door, and looks more like an oven than anything else, except for the stone slab, bearing a funeral text, which is inserted over the door. The bank which rises on one side is planted with cedars, pines, and a sprinkling of beech and birch, so that the vault is overshadowed in summer, as the places of the dead should be. The president told me that the desolation about the tomb was a cause of uneasiness to himself and many others; and that he had urged the family, as the body had been already removed from its original bed, to permit it to be interred in the centre of the Capitol. They very naturally clung to the precious possession; and there is certainly something much more accordant with the spirit of the man in a grave under the tiles of his own home than in a magnificent shrine; but, however modest the tomb may be--were it only such a green hillock as every rustic lies under--it should bear tokens of reverent care. The grass and shade which he so much loved are the only ornaments needed; the absence of all that can offend the eye and hurt the spirit of reverence is all that the patriot and the pilgrim require.

Before we reached the crazy bridge, which it had been difficult enough to pass in the morning, the sweet Potomac lay in clear moonshine, and the lights round the Capitol twinkled from afar. On arriving at our fireside, we found how delightful a total change of mood sometimes is. Tea, letters, and English newspapers awaited us; and they were a surprising solace, chilled or feverish as we were with the intense cold and strong mental excitement of the day.

MADISON.

"For neither by reason nor by her experience is it impossible that a commonwealth should be immortal; seeing the people, being the materials, never die; and the form, which is motion, must, without opposition, be endless. The bowl which is thrown from your hand, if there be no rub, no impediment, shall never cease; for which cause the glorious luminaries, that are the bowls of God, were once thrown for ever."--HARRINGTON'S _Oceana_.

While I was at Washington I received a kind invitation from Mr. and Mrs. Madison to visit them at their seat, Montpelier, Virginia. I was happy to avail myself of it, and paid the visit on my way down to Richmond. At six o'clock in the morning of the 18th of February my party arrived at Orange Courthouse, five miles from Montpelier; and while two proceeded to Charlottesville, where we were to join them in three or four days, a friend and I stopped, first to rest for a few hours, and then to proceed to Mr. Madison's. After some sleep, and breakfast at noon, we took a carriage for the five miles of extremely bad road we had to travel. The people of the inn overcharged us for this carriage, and did not mention that Mr. Madison had desired that a messenger should be sent over for his carriage as soon as we should arrive. This was the only occasion but one, in our journey of ten thousand miles in the United States, that we were overcharged; while, I suspect, the undercharges, where any literary reputation is in the case, are more numerous than can be reckoned.

It was a sweet day of early spring. The patches of snow that were left under the fences and on the rising grounds were melting fast. The road was one continued slough up to the very portico of the house. The dwelling stands on a gentle eminence, and is neat and even handsome in its exterior, with a flight of steps leading up to the portico. A lawn and wood, which must be pleasant in summer, stretch behind; and from the front there is a noble object on the horizon, the mountain-chain which traverses the state, and makes it eminent for its scenery. The shifting lights upon these blue mountains were a delightful refreshment to the eye after so many weeks of city life as we had passed.

We were warmly welcomed by Mrs. Madison and a niece, a young lady who was on a visit to her; and when I left my room I was conducted to the apartment of Mr. Madison. He had, the preceding season, suffered so severely from rheumatism, that, during this winter, he confined himself to one room, rising after breakfast, before nine o'clock, and sitting in his easy-chair till ten at night. He appeared perfectly well during my visit, and was a wonderful man of eighty-three. He complained of one ear being deaf, and that his sight, which had never been perfect, prevented his reading much, so that his studies "lay in a nutshell;" but he could hear Mrs. Madison read, and I did not perceive that he lost any part of the conversation. He was in his chair, with a pillow behind him, when I first saw him; his little person wrapped in a black silk gown; a warm gray and white cap upon his head, which his lady took care should always sit becomingly; and gray worsted gloves, his hands having been rheumatic. His voice was clear and strong, and his manner of speaking particularly lively, often playful. Except that the face was smaller, and, of course, older, the likeness to the common engraving of him was perfect. He seemed not to have lost any teeth, and the form of the face was therefore preserved, without any striking marks of age. It was an uncommonly pleasant countenance.

His relish for conversation could never have been keener. I was in perpetual fear of his being exhausted; and at the end of every few hours I left my seat by the arm of his chair, and went to the sofa by Mrs. Madison on the other side of the room; but he was sure to follow and sit down between us; so that, when I found the only effect of my moving was to deprive him of the comfort of his chair, I returned to my station, and never left it but for food and sleep, glad enough to make the most of my means of intercourse with one whose political philosophy I deeply venerated. There is no need to add another to the many eulogies of Madison; I will only mention that the finest of his characteristics appeared to me to be his inexhaustible faith; faith that a well-founded commonwealth may, as our motto declares, be immortal; not only because the people, its constituency, never die, but because the principles of justice in which such a commonwealth originates never die out of the people's heart and mind. This faith shone brightly through the whole of Mr. Madison's conversation except on one subject. With regard to slavery he owned himself almost to be in despair. He had been quite so till the institution of the Colonization Society. How such a mind as his could derive any alleviation to its anxiety from that source is surprising. I think it must have been from his overflowing faith; for the facts were before him that in eighteen years the Colonization Society had removed only between two and three thousand persons, while the annual increase of the slave population in the United States was upward of sixty thousand.

He talked more on the subject of slavery than on any other, acknowledging, without limitation or hesitation, all the evils with which it has ever been charged. He told me that the black population in Virginia increases far faster than the white; and that the licentiousness only stops short of the destruction of the race; every slave girl being expected to be a mother by the time she is fifteen. He assumed from this, I could not make out why, that the negroes must go somewhere, and pointed out how the free states discourage the settlement of blacks; how Canada disagrees with them; how Hayti shuts them out; so that Africa is their only refuge. He did not assign any reason why they should not remain where they are when freed. He found, by the last returns from his estates, that one third of his own slaves were under five years of age. He had parted with some of his best land to feed the increasing numbers, and had yet been obliged to sell a dozen of his slaves the preceding week. He observed that the whole Bible is against negro slavery; but that the clergy do not preach this, and the people do not see it. He became animated in describing what I have elsewhere related[12] of the eagerness of the clergy of the four denominations to catch converts among the slaves, and the effect of religious teaching of this kind upon those who, having no rights, can have no duties. He thought the condition of slaves much improved in his time, and, of course, their intellects. This remark was, I think, intended to apply to Virginia alone, for it is certainly not applicable to the southwestern states. He accounted for his selling his slaves by mentioning their horror of going to Liberia, a horror which he admitted to be prevalent among the blacks, and which appears to me decisive as to the unnaturalness of the scheme. The willing mind is the first requisite to the emigrant's success. Mr. Madison complained of the difficulty and risk of throwing an additional population into the colony, at the rate of two or three cargoes a year; complained of it because he believed it was the fault of the residents, who were bent upon trading with the interior for luxuries, instead of raising food for the new comers. This again seems fatal to the scheme, since the compulsory direction of industry, if it could be enforced, would be almost as bad as slavery at home; and there are no means of preventing the emigrants being wholly idle, if they are not allowed to work in their own way for their own objects. Mr. Madison admitted the great and various difficulties attending the scheme, and recurred to the expression that he was only "less in despair than formerly about slavery." He spoke with deep feeling of the sufferings of ladies under the system, declaring that he pitied them even more than their negroes, and that the saddest slavery of all was that of conscientious Southern women. They cannot trust their slaves in the smallest particulars, and have to superintend the execution of all their own orders; and they know that their estates are surrounded by vicious free blacks, who induce thievery among the negroes, and keep the minds of the owners in a state of perpetual suspicion, fear, and anger.

Footnote 12: "Society in America," vol. ii., p. 160.

Mr. Madison spoke strongly of the helplessness of all countries cursed with a servile population in a conflict with a people wholly free; ridiculed the idea of the Southern States being able to maintain a rising against the North; and wondered that all thinkers were not agreed in a thing so plain. He believed that Congress has power to prohibit the internal slavetrade. He mentioned the astonishment of some strangers, who had an idea that slaves were always whipped all day long, at seeing his negroes go to church one Sunday. They were gayly dressed, the women in bright-coloured calicoes; and, when a sprinkling of rain came, up went a dozen umbrellas. The astonished strangers veered round to the conclusion that slaves were very happy; but were told of the degradation of their minds; of their carelessness of each other in their nearest relations, and their cruelty to brutes.

Mrs. Madison's son by a former marriage joined us before dinner. We dined in the next room to Mr. Madison, and found him eager for conversation again as soon as we had risen from table. Mrs. M. is celebrated throughout the country for the grace and dignity with which she discharged the arduous duties which devolve upon the president's lady. For a term of eight years she administered the hospitalities of the White House with such discretion, impartiality, and kindliness, that it is believed she gratified every one and offended nobody. She is a strong-minded woman, fully capable of entering into her husband's occupations and cares; and there is little doubt that he owed much to her intellectual companionship, as well as to her ability in sustaining the outward dignity of his office. When I was her guest she was in excellent health and lively spirits; and I trust that though she has since lost the great object of her life, she may yet find interests enough to occupy and cheer many years of an honoured old age.

Mr. Madison expressed his regret at the death of Mr. Malthus, whose works he had studied with close attention. He mentioned that Franklin and two others had anticipated Malthus in comparing the rates of increase of population and food; but that Malthus had been the first to draw out the doctrine, with an attempt at too much precision, however, in determining the ratio of the increase of food. He laughed at Godwin's methods of accounting for the enormous increase of population in America by referring it to emigration, and having recourse to any supposition rather than the obvious one of an abundance of food. He declared himself very curious on the subject of the size of the Roman farms, and that he had asked many friends where the mistake lies in the accounts which have come down to us. Some Roman farms are represented as consisting of an acre and a quarter, the produce of which would be eaten up by a pair of oxen. The estate of Cincinnatus being three times this size, he could scarcely plough after having lost half of it by being surety. Either there must be some great mistake about our notion of the measurement of Roman farms, or there must have been commons for grazing and woods for fuel, the importation of grain from Sicily and other places not having taken place till long after. He asked by what influence our corn-laws, so injurious to all, and so obviously so to the many, were kept up, and whether it was possible that they should continue long. He declared himself in favour of free trade, though believing that the freedom cannot be complete in any one country till universal peace shall afford opportunity for universal agreement.

He expressed himself strongly in favour of arrangements for the security of literary property all over the world, and wished that English authors should be protected from piracy in the United States without delay. He believed that the utterance of the national mind in America would be through small literature rather than large, enduring works. After the schools and pulpits of the Union are all supplied, there will remain an immense number of educated sons of men of small property who will have things to say; and all who can write, will. He thought it of the utmost importance to the country, and to human beings everywhere, that the brain and the hands should be trained together; and that no distinction in this respect should be made between men and women. He remembered an interesting conversation on this subject with Mr. Owen, from whom he learned with satisfaction that well-educated women in his settlement turned with ease and pleasure from playing the harp to milking the cows.

The active old man, who declared himself crippled with rheumatism, had breakfasted, risen, and was dressed before we sat down to breakfast. He talked a good deal about the American presidents and some living politicians for two hours, when his letters and newspapers were brought in. He gayly threw them aside, saying he could read the newspapers every day, and must make the most of his time with us, if we would go away as soon as we talked of. He asked me, smiling, if I thought it too vast and anti-republican a privilege for the ex-presidents to have their letters and newspapers free, considering that this was the only earthly benefit they carried away from their office.