Washington and Lafayette

For the last few months, I’ve been slowly trodding through Ron Chernow’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of George Washington, Washington: A Life. I love biographies, especially “life” biographies (meaning books that trace a person’s life from beginning to end, as opposed to some biographies that focus on a specific time in a person’s life, like the very hip Doris Kearns Goodwin book Team of Rivals ) because full-life biographies not only allow you to see the amazing or substantial things that person did, but also allow you to see how their life, like just about everyone’s life, is kinda sorta like yours, no matter when they lived or what they did.

George Washington’s life was certainly very different than mine, at least as far as its “plot” is concerned.  But in many ways, it was very similar.  He had obsessions, failures, doubts, triumphs.  Women he could never get, purchases he could never make, expecations he wrestled with, and the insidious pallor of mortality.  Reading Chernow’s biography–widely considered the most accurate yet written–is really making the man come alive for me, and I’m finding this book to be not only very informative, but quite surprisingly emotional.

One of George Washington’s best friends was French general Marquis de Lafayette (Gilbert to his pals), one of if not the largest French figure of the American Revolution.  Layfayette was 25 years younger than Washington–he was only 19 years old when he came to our young nation to help us win our independence, and at first, Washington played the role of a mentor to the young Frenchman.  But by war’s end–a war that certainly had to be one of the most emotional and amazing experiences in the history of mankind, and the participants were far from unaware of its immense magnitute—Washington and Lafayette had become great friends and equals.  A portrait of Lafayette hung in Washington’s parlor in Mount Vernon.

I tell you all this so I can put in here a passage I just read that moved me to tears.  It felt odd to be moved to tears by a biography of George Washington, but this is why I love history so much.  There were real people doing extraordinary things.

After all the incredible things these men had been through together in the war, there was a time of relative tranquility, before Washington knew he would become president, when he was looking forward to just farming his land in Virginia and resting.  Lafayette visited him for an extended stay, but eventually, it came time for him to go back to France.  This almost certainly meant the two close friends would never see each other again.  Ocean crossings were no small deal in those days.  Washington rode half the way from Virginia to Philadelphia (where he’d be sailing from) with Lafayette, and somewhere along the road, the two men said goodbye.

A short while later, back at Mount Vernon, Washington wrote Lafayette a letter (they never would see each other again, by the way).  The portion of the letter that moved me so is as follows:

In the moment of our seperation upon the road, as I traveled and every hour since, I felt all that love, respect, and attachment for you with which length of years, close connection, and your merits have inspired me.  I often asked myself, as our carriages distended, whether that was the last sight I should ever have of you?  And though I wished to say no, my fears answered yes.  I called to mind the days of my youth and found they had long since fled to return no more; that I was now descending the hill I had been 52 years climbing; and that though I was blessed with a good constitution, I was of a short-lived family and might soon expect to be entombed in the dreary mansions of my fathers.  These things darkened the shades and gave a gloom to the picture, consequently to my prospects of seeing you again.  Know, my friend, that I have loved you true, and my life stands altered for it.  But I will not repine—I have had my day.