The life mask repaid the effort applied to its preparation, and Houdon proudly called it “the most perfect reproduction of Washington’s own face.”14 Showing Washington’s face at rest, the mask’s expression is gentle and pensive yet also powerful because of the strong cheekbones and musculature. Due to the loss of teeth on the left side, with the attendant bone decay, Washington’s asymmetrical chin slants down obliquely to the right.

On October 17, as abruptly as they had appeared, Houdon and his assistants packed up their implements, marched down to the dock, and boarded Washington’s barge for the short ride to Alexandria, where they caught a stagecoach bound for Philadelphia. Acknowledging Houdon’s tremendous investment of time, Washington praised the French sculptor “for his trouble and risk of crossing the seas.”15 During the winter, Jefferson wrote to say that Houdon had arrived safely in Paris with the life mask, from which he would sculpt the standing statue for the Virginia capitol. Jefferson then posed an odd question: How would Washington like to be costumed in the sculpture? Once again Washington opted for modern dress in lieu of a Roman toga. The manner in which he expressed this to Jefferson betrayed his old provincial insecurity, as if he weren’t sure he was entitled to an opinion in the artistic sphere and feared committing an error:

I have only to observe that not having a sufficient knowledge in the art of sculpture to oppose my judgment to the taste of connoisseurs, I do not desire to dictate in the matter. On the contrary, I shall be perfectly satisfied with whatever may be judged decent and proper. I should even scarcely have ventured to suggest that perhaps a servile adherence to the garb of antiquity might not be altogether so expedient as some little deviation in favor of the modern custom, if I had not learnt from Colo. Humphreys that this was a circumstance hinted in conversation by Mr [Benjamin] West to Houdon. This taste, which has been introduced in painting by West, I understand is received with applause and prevails extensively. 16

Washington is quite knowing in his comment, although he advances it with a touching timidity.

No less a perfectionist than Washington, Houdon toiled for years over the Richmond statue, which wasn’t set in the capitol rotunda until 1796. In the final version, Houdon played on the Cincinnatus theme of Washington returning to Mount Vernon and divesting himself of the instruments of war. Still dressed in uniform, his outer coat unbuttoned, Washington seems quietly self-possessed, his great labor finished. He has exchanged his sword for a walking stick in his right hand while his left arm rests on a column topped by his riding cape. He is tall and proud, erect and graceful, as he gazes into the bountiful future of his country. With true humility, Washington had asked to have the sculpture life-size instead of larger than life, and Houdon had heeded this noble request.

During that fall of 1785 Washington entertained another French visitor at Mount Vernon who was much less famous than Houdon but probably no less welcome. The dentist Jean-Pierre Le Mayeur had stayed in close touch with Washington ever since he visited the Continental Army’s headquarters in 1783. During the summer of 1784 he spent enough time with the Washington family to become a close companion and endeared himself to Washy through the gift of a toy wooden horse. We know that Washington bought nine teeth that year from slaves for either implants or dentures in his own mouth. Wanting to stay in Le Mayeur’s good graces, Washington promoted his career and furnished him with introductory letters to political luminaries in Virginia. Le Mayeur was such a frequent visitor at Mount Vernon, showing up three times in June 1786 alone, that he and Washington became fast friends. The dentist was a fancier of horseflesh, and Washington allowed him to drop off his mares to be serviced by his famous stallion Magnolio. For all the ingenuity Le Mayeur devoted to Washington’s teeth, he couldn’t seem to arrest the decay, and Washington continued to lose teeth. Martha Washington had previously had a cheerier history with her teeth, but by now she too had been fitted out with dentures in what must have become a new form of marital compatibility.

EVEN AS HOUDON WORKED ON HIS STATUE OF WASHINGTON, which reflected a hopeful stance toward America’s future, the latter was heartsick at the country’s disarray and feared that peace would undo the valiant work accomplished by the Continental Army. His complaints about the Articles of Confederation were consistent with those voiced during the war. The government had no real executive branch, just an endless multiplicity of committees. The few executive departments were adjuncts of a chaotic, ramshackle Congress, which Washington condemned as “wretchedly managed.”17 This legislative body required a quorum of nine states to do business; operated on a one-state, one-vote basis; and could pass major laws only with a unanimous vote. The United States wasn’t a country but a confederation of thirteen autonomous states, loosely presided over by Congress. The states’ blatant selfishness frustrated any effort to run a sound national government, which had no real enforcement powers over them. As Washington phrased it in a letter, “We are either a united people under one head . . . or we are thirteen independent sovereignties, eternally counteracting each other.”18 Americans now defined themselves as the antithesis of everything English, even if that acted to their detriment.

Thanks to congressional impotence, the government was unable to repay creditors who had financed the Revolution. The paper issued to them now traded at a tiny fraction of its face value, and Congress was powerless to redeem it. Still lacking an independent revenue source, Congress could request money from the states but not compel them to pay. Meanwhile America was fast becoming an irredeemably profligate nation. Despite his own checkered history with London creditors, Washington was adamant that Americans should pay their prewar debts to England, as stipulated in the peace treaty. The federal government also lacked the power to regulate trade among states or with foreign nations. Many states imposed duties on goods from neighboring states, and as Madison cynically interpreted it for Jefferson, “the predominant seaport states were fleecing their neighbors.”19 The resulting trade disputes led to scorching interstate battles. As England imposed restrictions on American trade in the West Indies, the federal government was helpless to retaliate. Without such power, Washington thought, the United States could never negotiate commercial treaties or bargain advantageously with other countries. If the states tried individually to regulate trade, he warned, “an abortion or a many-headed monster would be the issue.”20

Washington also perceived a pressing need for American military power. Still hemmed in by hostile foreign nations in North America, the country had a federal army of fewer than a thousand men. England refused to surrender a string of forts that stretched in a broad arc from the St. Lawrence River to the Great Lakes and the Ohio Valley. Spain also figured as a threat. The peace treaty had granted the United States the territory between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi. This produced friction with Spain, which shut the lower Mississippi River to American commerce, threatening the livelihood of restive western farmers. There was a more distant threat to peace: in 1785 Barbary pirates from northern Africa began preying on American merchant vessels, which no longer enjoyed the protection of the British Navy. “Would to Heaven we had a navy to reform those enemies to mankind or crush them into non-existence,” Washington told Lafayette.21 There was no way to create a sizable army or navy without shoring up federal power.