The Painter's Chair (2 page)

I.
December 12, 1799 . . . The Mansion House . . . Mount Vernon, Virginia

On most days the General rose early, usually between four and five o’clock. He descended to his study, lit a fire, performed
his toilet, and dressed before devoting quiet hours to reading and writing letters. He expected to sit to his breakfast promptly
at seven, where he took tea (without cream), and ate corn cakes with butter and honey. He called them Indian cakes; they were
his preference, in part, because they required little chewing by his balky dentures. Although he had given up hunting, he
was still vigorous, taking plea sure in daily ten-, twelve-, or even fourteen-mile rides to survey his farms. This day had
been no exception as he had ridden out at ten o’clock. Now, as the minutes ticked by, the accepted dinner hour of three o’clock
had passed, and there was no sign of the General.

Though the moon had been visible the evening before, a northeast wind delivered a cover of clouds during the night. In the
early afternoon, several hours after the horseman departed, snow had begun to fall. The mercury continued to hover near the
freezing mark (Washington on rising had noted the temperature was thirty-three degrees). From the windows of the Mansion House,
Martha Washington—short, round, and businesslike in her movements—could see the snowflakes had given way to hail, then to
a steady, cold rain. She knew her husband would be hungry and in a need of hot food on his return. The meal would be postponed
until his arrival.

Yesterday the Washingtons had entertained guests, including Lord Fairfax, a British peer and an old friend of the family.
They had dined in the New Room, the large and grand dining room with its two-story ceiling. On this afternoon, however, with
little more than family on hand (Tobias Lear, Washington’s trusted secretary, was at his desk, laboring on the General’s correspondence),
a fire had been laid in the corner fireplace of the more intimate Small Dining Room. There the light from the flames reflected
off the looking glass suspended between the two windows, illuminating the lacy decorations on the white plaster ceiling, brightening
the brilliant verdigris of the walls. Like many of his contemporaries, Washington thought the color green relaxing. He termed
it “grateful to the eye.”

The delay was not so long. The General arrived shortly after the hour, and, met by Mr. Lear with the day’s correspondence,
he advised his younger friend, a sea captain’s son from New Hampshire, that there would be no posting of letters this evening.
The weather, he reported, was too bad to dispatch even a servant. Washington doffed his greatcoat, which was thoroughly wetted
by the snow and rain, but assured Lear that he himself was dry. Without a change of dress, he proceeded to his repast, by
the light of tall tapers that the servants had lit on learning of his return.

In the months since, Nelly Custis Lewis and her husband had taken a wedding tour to visit friends, from which she returned
large with child. She and her doting grandmother Martha had busied themselves that fall preparing for the arrival of the “sweet
stranger,” as they called the baby. On this day, the cries of the newborn could be heard echoing in the upstairs halls, and
Nelly and the child, born November 27, remained confined to the second floor. Nelly’s brother, eighteen-year-old George Washington
Parke Custis, was also absent from the domestic scene at dinner, having ridden off on Monday in the company of his brother-in-law
to review some of the property Wash had inherited from his late father.

As he ate, Washington ignored the dampness, but Lear noticed that his neck was wet, that snow still hung from the portion
of his hair that had not been protected by his hat. To Washington, the storm outside mattered little. Warmed by the nearby
fire, he consumed the meat, vegetables, and hot breads put before him. He was in the bosom of his family, in the house he
had remade for Martha, a place that was a safe haven to three generations. Since their marriage in 1759, Martha and George
had called the place home. She had arrived with her two surviving children from her first marriage; years later, after the
death of Martha’s last surviving child, her son Jacky, in 1783, Wash and Nelly, his two youngest children, had resided there,
too, under the tender ministrations of the Washingtons. More recently Lawrence Lewis had moved in. His uncle had invited the
young widower to Mount Vernon to act as a social secretary, but Lawrence and Nelly had soon been drawn to one another. Their
marriage resulted in the newest arrival, newborn Frances Parke Lewis, the great-grandaughter known affectionately as Parke.

II.
Friday the 13th . . . The Mansion House . . . Mount Vernon, Virginia

The General had awakened to the realization that a cold was upon him. He complained to Martha of a sore throat. Given the
inclement weather, he agreed to forgo his usual ride around his acreage. Instead, he retired to his study to tend to the correspondence
and other paperwork that always seemed to await him.

Whenever he worked in the study, he did so under the gaze of Lawrence Washington, whose portrait hung between the south-facing
windows. After their father’s death, when George was eleven, Lawrence had become his half brother’s mentor, introducing the
teenage George to aristocratic Virginia society. Lawrence had married a niece of Lord Fairfax, a Yorkshireman whose American
holdings amounted to more than five million acres between the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers. The impressionable George liked
almost everything that he saw at Belvoir, the Fairfax plantation just downstream from Mount Vernon. He spent a great deal
of time at the grand brick house, where foxhunting and dancing parties were commonplace. The family’s connections taught him
much about the expectations of fashionable society and also launched George’s first career. The Fairfax influence played a
role in his employment as a surveyor in laying out the new town of Alexandria and mapping portions of the Shenandoah Valley.

Washington had idolized his brother. An experienced soldier, Lawrence helped inspire in the boy a desire for military glory.
When George was nineteen, the brothers had traveled together on what would be the future president’s sole journey beyond the
borders of the thirteen colonies. Although their 1751 trip to Barbados was intended to help cure Lawrence of his nagging cough,
it served only to expose George to smallpox. Lawrence nursed him through his bout with the disease, but his own consumption
advanced, and by the following year he was dead. One eventual consequence was that George inherited Mount Vernon after the
premature death of Lawrence’s only heir.

Although he had twice radically remodeled his brother’s house—the first time to welcome his wife when he and Martha married
in 1759, then later during the Revolution—he honored Lawrence’s memory. When the General worked at his desk, it was Lawrence
who was positioned to look over his shoulder. The painting, bearing no artist’s signature, was a poor likeness. The face was
masklike, and the man’s red jacket and green waistcoat were suspended on the torso like paper-doll clothing. The painted likeness
was recognizable as his brother, but, compared to other art in his house hold, its maker’s skills were primitive.

Two other worthies peopled the study, both of them artworks of a more sophisticated kind. One was a workshop plaster cast
of a bust of America’s great naval hero, John Paul Jones. The other was no copy: It was an original bust of Washington from
the hand of the French master Jean-Antoine Houdon. From its perch atop a bracket, the terra-cotta head appeared to be gazing
across the room, as if musing over the books on the upper shelves in the bookpress. The Washington bust had been made on these
very acres during the Frenchman’s visit to Mount Vernon fourteen years earlier.

One of the world’s greatest artists, Houdon had come to Mount Vernon at the invitation of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.
After a fifteen-day stay at the plantation, Houdon returned to his Paris studio, carrying with him a plaster life mask he
had made of Washington. But at Mount Vernon he left as a gift to his host his first sculpted likeness. Made of clay dug from
the Virginia soil and fired in a Mount Vernon bake oven, the bust bore Houdon’s own fingerprints. The consensus among Washington’s
friends and family was that the Frenchman had captured George Washington as no other artist had done.