seems to beseech us not to deny him the privileges of having his unheroic hours. 8 No farmer could be plainer. In the words of Eugene E. Prussing he was "the busiest and biggest man in Virginia just before the Revolution. He took off his coat when need be and pitched hay with his negro slaves, or helped to repair the broken-down carriage of a wayfarer. "He mixed manure with his own hands, planted gardens to please his wife, and swam regularly in the Potomac because plumbing was unknown." In January, 1768, he began an astonishing record of his variety of activities and interests, hunting, surveying, fishing, playing cards, going to church, entertaining guests, incessantly visiting Sally Fairfax and her husband at Belvoir or being visited by them at Mount Vernon. All the colonies were flaming with resistance to the parliament. Women were combining as "Daughters of Liberty." The Virginia Assembly was astir with ominous excitement, but Washington tells only where he ate, and that he went to the theatre and to church, followed the hounds, or attended to his multifarious businesses. "6. Doeg Run People finishd grubbing ye Swamp they were in and proceeded to another adjacent. "12. Threshing Wheat at all Plantations. Ground being too hard froze to Grub to any advantage. "16. Finishd my Smith's Shop-that is the Carpenters work of it. "18. Carpenters went to Saw Plank at Doeg Run for finishing the Barn there. "18. Will put new girders into my Mill where they had Sunk. "26. Laid of a Road from Mt. Vernon to the Lain by Mr. Manley's. "March 3d. Deliver'd a Load of 508 Bushels of Muddy hole Wheat to Mr. Kirk's ship and my Schooner returnd "April 12. White fish began to Run, catching 60 or 70 at a Haul with some Her[rin]g. “June 5. The Maryland hound Bitch lady took Forrester and was also servd by Captn, and refusd the Dogs on the 11th. "22. Musick was also in heat and servd promiscuously by all the Dogs, intending to drown her Puppys. "25. Went to Alexandria and bought a Bricklayer from Mr. Piper and returnd to Dinner. In the afternoon Mr. R. Alexander came. “August 24. Imbarkd on board my Schooner for Nomony. Lay of Captn. Laidler's. "Sept. 8. Went to a Ball in Alexandria. "9. Proceeded to the Meeting of our vestry at the New Church and lodgd at Captn. Edwd. Payne's. "20. Colo. Burwell, &ca. went away to Belvoir; and (I with) Mrs. Washington and ye two childn. went up to Alexandria to see the Inconstant, or Way to Win him Acted. "21. Stayd in Town all day and saw the Tragedy of Douglas Playd." The concluding entry is: "13th. Killd Hogs." England was boiling with the expulsion and re-expulsion of John Wilkes from the House of Commons, and his reelection and re-reelection, and fourth election in spite of a conviction for libel. The Junius Letters were the mystery of the day. James Otis, the father of the Revolution, went insane. The colonies were reeling toward the end of all loyalty. Washington "Killd Hogs." Incessantly the diary runs on the even tenor of its way. In January, 1769, as so often: "2. Went to Colo. Fairfax's with the Family and stayd all Night. "6. The two Colo. Fairfax's and Mrs. Fairfax and Dr. Rumney dind here and spent the Evening. "12. Went out in the Morng. with the Hounds in order to meet Colo. Fairfax, but did not. In Hell hole started a fox and after an hours chase run him into a hole and left him. In ye afternoon went to Alex. to ye Monthly Ball. "16. Went a ducking in the forenoon-otherwise at home all day. In the afternoon Mr. B. Fairfax came here. "10. A very spewing frost among Wheat, particularly in ye little field at Doeg Run. Note the consequence of this. "22. The hound bitch Musick got out of her confinement and was lind by Pilot. "26. She was lined by Mr. Fairfax's Hound Rockwood. "Feb. 3. Went a Gunning up the Creek. Killd 7 Ducks. "16. At home all day, Joshua Evans, who came here last Night, put an Iron Ring upon Patcy (for Fits) and went away after Breakfast. "18. Went a hunting with Doctr. Rumney. Started a fox, or rather 2 or 3, and catchd none. Dogs mostly got after Deer and never joind." And thus he goes on and on, registering only the least momentous happenings of a period when nearly every day marked an epoch in the advance of his people and himself. The conclusion is hardly to be escaped that one of the reasons he did not write history was that he did not know it was being made, and least of all that he would soon be summoned to make it and himself immortal. I VII HE FIGHTS THE SOIL N agriculture, as in the military and political and other fields, Washington had the strange luck to build out of a few brilliant strokes and a majority of defeats a lofty fame as a triumphant success. Indomitable earnestness and his persistent recovery from persistent defeat make in themselves a kind of glory. He has been the subject of unbounded praise as a farmer, as "the Farmer," yet his own secretary, Lear, said that he could not have made his farm pay expenses but for his sales of land. But he loved to farm and cherished an undying illusion of success. He wrote of Mount Vernon: "No estate in United America is more pleasantly situated than this. It lies in a high, dry, and healthy country, 300 miles by water from the sea.. on one of the finest rivers in the world. Its margin is washed by more than ten miles of tide water; from the beds of which and the innumerable coves, inlets, and small marshes, with which it abounds, an inexhaustible fund of rich mud may be drawn as a manure. .. The soil of the tract. . . is a good loam. This river is well supplied with various kinds of fish at all seasons of the year the whole shore, in short, is one entire fish ery." 1 In this Paul Haworth bluntly contradicts him: "Only ignorance of what good land really is, or an owner's blind pride in his own estate, can justify the phrase 'a good loam'. . . To an observer brought up on a farm of the rich Middle West, Mount Vernon, except for a few scattered fields, seems extremely poor land. For farming purposes most of it would be high at thirty dollars an acre. Much of it is so broken by steep hills and deep ravines as scarcely to be tillable at all." 2 He points out that while Washington had a lot of land, little of it was better than mediocre; much of it was uncleared, and the best of it was "hopelessly distant from a market.” It was so scattered that he could not look after it in person, must rent, trust to a manager, or let it lie idle. Even Mount Vernon was really far from a good market, with cost of transportation forbiddingly high. Finally his labor was expensive and not very productive, even though he fed the slaves pork and corn and herring. As for Washington's boast that his farm was healthy, Professor Haworth "must take exception . . . the tidal marshes breed a variety of mosquito capable of biting through armor plate and of infecting the devil himself with malaria. a large part of the population, both white and black, suffered every August and September from chills and fever. The master himself was not exempt." Tobacco was his mainstay and he "made" over 34,000 pounds of it in 1759; the next year 65,000; in 1763, 89,000, and never again so much. Two years later the crop fell to hardly more than half of the 1765 output. In 1773 he produced only 5,000 pounds, and after that hardly enough to consider. His tobacco, for all his toil and care, was of inferior grade and did not bring the best prices, for which he naturally blamed his agents. He began to feel himself a slave to tobacco and to his slaves, and wished to emancipate himself from his slaves and from the weed before he developed his wish to free himself from England. He tried corn later, but could not exceed fifteen bushels per acre against the hundred that farmers in good corn |