informed our tour group, George and Martha Washington had entertained 677 overnight guests.
What had brought them? Not, I think, the healthy air nor even the splendid view of the Potomac River winding its way to the sea. Some, of course, had come with the prospect of political gain, but most made this trek, I suspect, for reasons very similar to today's travelers: to feel closer to this great man, to connect to a person whose life decisions had approached an ideal that very few have any hope of equaling.
In this way Mount Vernon is more than a presidential home; it is an ideal, and it is that ideal that is on display today in pastoral Virginia. As I have toured the site with Carol on several occasions, I have invariably been struck with the panoramic loveliness of the piazza overlooking the Potomac, the unexpectedly bold aqua color of the walls of the “Great Room" with its 16 foot tall ceiling, and the pieces of genuine history which adorn the walls of the central entrance hall. (Displayed here, for instance, is an unprepossessing frame which houses a large key. “That arrived in late 1789," docents inform us. “It was one of the keys of the Bastille sent by Lafayette with the accompanying note, 'A symbol of liberty to the Father of liberty.' ") Even the historical reality of slavery pales here, in no small part, perhaps, because of Washington's ultimate decision to free those men and women who had served him.
One might expect, then, in traveling to this beloved place which Washington had called home for over forty years, that an earnest seeker would gain many meaningful insights into the illustrious personage who had designed so many of its features and reveled in its graceful beauty.
Yet even after ascending the wide wooden stairway up to the second floor and standing quietly and patiently outside the doorway of Washington's bedroom for a chance to look at the bed on which the President had died in 1799, I have found it nearly impossible to envision George Washington here. And my subsequent research has revealed to me that, in this, I am not alone. As one of Washington's most esteemed biographers, Marcus Cunliffe, observed,
Innumerable tourists visit Mount Vernon. It is a handsome place, as they can testify, refurbished with taste and maintained in immaculate order. But the ghosts have been all too successfully exorcised in the process; Mount Vernon is less a house than a kind of museum-temple. We know that George Washington lived and died there; we do not feel the fact …. (2)
It is important that such comments not be construed as criticism of the loving conservation of this site, provided so ably by the Mount Vernon Ladies Association. Mount Vernon is arguably the most completely perfect example of presidential home restoration and conservation in the United States. It is just that I have been unable to find much of Washington the man in this place.
That is, until the spring of 2012. On this most recent of my tours of the Mount Vernon property, I thought I glimpsed, however momentarily, an aspect of General Washington's humanity that related directly to the mythic stature he has assumed over the years. But then again, I may have been wrong. Walk with me down the pathway toward the river to visit Washington's tomb. Or tombs, I should say, for it is their plurality that provided me the insight to which I am referring.
In fact, it had not been my initial intent to stop at the Washington tomb(s) when I had begun the long walk down the steep hillside from the plantation house to the wharf on the Potomac. I had chosen to make the descent only because Carol and I had arrived at Mount Vernon nearly an hour before our scheduled house tour, and we needed something to do to pass the time prior to our entry to the home. Carol had chosen to enjoy the site's new state of the art Educational Center and Museum, and I had decided to see the riverside wharf and landing area which I had never taken the time to visit in my earlier trips here.
As I was about halfway down the hill, my attention was caught by a sign identifying Washington's “Old Tomb." As no one was heading down the brick pathway indicated by the sign, I wondered where it would lead. Why weren't there crowds of people wending their way to pay their respects to Washington? And why “old" tomb? Wouldn't any tomb containing the remains of the first President of the United States be old?
The pathway ended in a landing which spread out before a plain, square brick structure with a closed wooden door in the middle. Beside this small edifice was an explanatory sign which contained a quotation from Washington’s Last Will and Testament: “The family vault of Mount Vernon requiring repairs and being improperly situated besides, I desire that a new one of Brick and upon a larger scale may be built at the foot of what is commonly called the Vineyard Inclosure.”
Although several other family members had already been laid to rest here, had Washington begun to question whether or not such a humble family vault was worthy of the “Father of his Country”? Was he realizing the importance of elevating himself “to the level of myth” in order to assure himself a permanent place in the hearts and minds of those who would come after him? As I wondered about all this, I became determined to see the newer tomb that had been erected in place of this original crypt.
The second tomb was a bit further down the hill, and it was deluged with reverent visitors who passed its door respectfully and solemnly. Its architecture was a striking contrast to the “Old Tomb." It was several times larger than the original vault. This, of course, had been in accordance with Washington's instructions regarding a “larger scale." The building also featured an elegant, brick Gothic arch, and, on either side of the path leading to the tomb, were impressive stone obelisks reminiscent of the monument that would later be erected in Washington's name on the mall of the capital city. Finally, I thought, here was a distinct glimpse of Washington, the man. After all his deprivations, his sacrifices for his country, his years of selfless service, here was concrete evidence that George Washington had desired glory and national reverence. I couldn't blame him. Certainly, if anyone in American history had earned such adulation, he had. But it also made him human, perhaps even understandably fallible, in a way that nothing else I had seen here quite matched. I had received my insight, my revelation.
Or so I thought. But, as I was to learn, quotations are tricky things. After I had returned home and was conducting some research into the design of the newer tomb, I came upon the complete text of the portion of Washington's Last Will and Testament relating to his burial site. The words that had been quoted on the sign by the “Old Tomb" were not all he had written. The next, concluding, sentence was vintage Washington: “And it is my express wish that my corpse may be interred in a private manner, without parade or funeral Oration." These were hardly the words of a man who, at the last, had wished for the lionization of his memory. The figure I believed that I had grasped, however momentarily, was once again becoming elusive.
Why was it so difficult to find evidence of Washington's human characteristics, his faults as well as his virtues, in this place? Perhaps Mount Vernon has remained distinct from Washington's personal character because, even for him, it had always been both more and less than an actual home.
It had been less than a home because, as much as he had thought about it and loved it, Washington was seldom present here for any extended period of time. From the moment he had officially acquired the estate in 1754, he had been constantly called away to service, first in the British nine year war with France and later in the colonies' eight year struggle for independence from Britain. Even with that remarkable victory achieved, Washington had been called away again—this time for eight more years—to serve as his country's first President. Finally, in 1797 he had been able to return to his beloved Mount Vernon, only to die two years later.
But Mount Vernon had always been more than a home, even more than the “museum-temple" referred to by Marcus Cunliffe. From its earliest days, it had been a kind of secular Mecca, a place of pilgrimage
