“I know nothing of his domestic matters.  There were malicious persons who started many reports of discord between Washington and his lady.  These I believe were all false.  Mrs. Washington was a high-bred woman, a lady in everything; and so far as my observation or acquaintance extended, was devoted and dutiful.  Of one thing I am very sure:  she was a proud woman, and was proud of her husband.  She certainly had not the dignity of her husband; no one, male or female, ever had.  She was less reserved, more accessible, and not indifferent to the attentions and flatteries of her husband’s friends.  In fine, she was a woman.  Washington’s deportment toward his wife was kind and respectful, but always dignified and courteous.  Toward his servants he was uniformly kind.

“He was an enemy to slavery, and never hesitated to avow his sentiments.  His black servants were very much attached to him.  The peculiar nature of Washington forbade those heart-friendships demanded by a narrower and more impulsive nature.  He kept all the world too far from him ever to win that tenderness of affection which sweetens social life in the blending of hearts and sympathy of souls.  But he commanded that esteem which results from respect and appreciation of the great and commanding attributes of his nature, which elevated him so far above the men of his age.  He wanted the softness and yielding of the heart that so wins upon the affections of associates and those who are in close and constant intercommunication.  Are not these incompatible with the stern and towering traits essential to such a character as was Washington’s?  Like a shaft of polished granite towering amid shrubs and flowers, cold and hard, but grand and beautiful, he stood among the men and the women who surrounded him when President.

“General Washington was cautious and reserved in his expressions about men.  He rarely praised or censured.  At the time I was in the Cabinet, he had abundant cause for dislike to Mr. Jefferson, who, in his Mazei letter, had represented him as laboring to break up the Government, that upon its ruins a monarchy might arise for his own benefit.  He spoke of this letter more severely than I had ever heard him speak of anything, and said no man better knew the charge false, than Mr. Jefferson.  Some correspondence, I believe, took place between them on the subject.  I believe they never met after this.  Upon one occasion I heard him say that it was unfortunate that Jefferson had been sent to France at the time that he was, when morals and government alike were little less than chaos, for he had been tainted in his ideas of both.”

“You knew Mr. Jefferson?” I asked.