Visiting the House Where Washington Slept

On a recent trip to Washington my wife Joyce said, “Let’s go to Mt. Vernon.”

“Wait a minute,” I replied. “Isn’t that like going through a house?”

“Don’t argue,” Joyce said. “You could use a culture trip.”

And so we went and there was a little boy who was 9 years old. We knew because his grandmother was taking him to Mt. Vernon, Va., as a birthday present. He was wearing a blue “Official NASA Space-Type Jump Suit.”

Joyce asked him his name. “George,” he said. And then with a smile he added, “George Washington.”

“Oh dear, oh dear,” his grandmother said. “We’re off.”

We took a picture of George, but the 9-year-old just wouldn’t cooperate. The best shot we got was when he sat up straight, grinning with a couple of pennies in his eyes.

“Doesn’t really matter,” he said. “I’m not the real George Washington. He was my dad.”

“Oh dear, oh dear,” his grandmother said.

I had thought Mt. Vernon would be like going through a chateau, another lifeless pile of yesterday with cut stone on the outside and faded tapestries on the inside.

Green and Clean

Not even close. Mt. Vernon was alive. Or felt that way. The estate was manicured, green and clean. The crowds were orderly and the personnel, mostly mature women, were courteous to the point of being courtly.

One of the women told us about the house. And I began to feel that maybe “the father of our country” and I were, somehow, kindred spirits.

“You’ll notice, though, it looks like it’s made from stone blocks. But it’s really just wood.”

She explained that the Washington family had saved money by building the house from wood that had been cut to resemble stone. It had then been varnished until it looked like masonry.

It wasn’t even hardwood, just plain Virginia pine. And the inside doors were the same, pine--just painted to look like hardwood.

Mt. Vernon isn’t particularly elegant inside, either. It is just a well-appointed farmhouse that looks as if the family had just moved out.

We were led through the rooms that were all earth colors. “In this room,” the guide said, “Martha served tea to guests. The porcelain tea service you see on the table was one she used.”

The table in the small dining room was set for dinner. In a larger, more formal room, our guide told us the Washingtons had been entertaining when he learned that he had been elected President of the United States.

A Little Short?

In the master bedroom someone remarked that the bed seemed a little short for a man reputed to have been close to 6 feet, 4 inches tall.

“No sir,” the guide said. “He was just over 6 feet 2. All the beds in the house were built to accommodate a man of his stature.”

Then the feeling that the family had just stepped out faded when the guide said, “It was in that bed that George Washington died.”

Someone said, “Oh,” as if the information was unexpected. It was the 9-year-old from the bus. Young George was gazing at the bed as if the first President were still in it.

“The President died,” the guide said, “of what we now know as a strep throat, and there were three doctors in attendance at the time. Strangely enough, one of them had seen tracheotomies performed in Europe and such an operation would have saved Washington’s life. But because he was George Washington and so famous, the doctors were afraid to try it.”

On the pathway to the family burial grounds, Joyce and I stopped to talk with an attractive woman fanning herself with a large picture hat. Her name tag said she was Eileen Rasmussen.

As we walked toward the Old Family Vault and the Potomac River, a child threw a gum wrapper onto the ground. An elderly gentleman stopped to pick it up.

At the same time, Rasmussen told us that Mt. Vernon is privately owned and maintained, and how the last Washington to inherit the estate had offered it to the federal government and the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Both refused and the estate fell into disrepair until 1852, when a woman from South Carolina was shocked to hear that the politicians had refused to buy George Washington’s home.

“So be it,” the woman said. “If the men of this country won’t take care of the home of our first President, the women will!”

She founded the Mt. Vernon Ladies Assn., raised $200,000, bought the estate and restored it. The association has maintained it ever since. Not one cent of government money is involved.

When we got onto the bus again for the 20-mile trip back to the city of Washington, young George was more than a little subdued. We were almost back to Alexandria before he said anything.

“I’m not really named George Washington,” he told us.

“What is your name?”

“Fulgoni,” he said. “And George Washington wasn’t really my dad.”

I winked. “Gosh, that’s a surprise!”