not
be complied with; inquiries which would require the pen of a
historian to satisfy; letters of compliment as unmeaning perhaps
as they are troublesome, but which must be attended to; and the
commonplace business which employs my pen and my time often
disagreeably. These, with company, deprive me of exercise, and
unless I can obtain relief, must be productive of disagreeable
consequences.[1]

[Footnote 1: Irving, IV, 466.]

When we remember that Washington used to write most of his letters
himself, and that from boyhood his handwriting was beautifully neat,
almost like copper-plate, in its precision and elegance, we shall
understand what a task it must have been for him to keep up his
correspondence. A little later he employed a young New Hampshire
graduate of Harvard, Tobias Lear, who graduated in 1783, who served
him as secretary until his death, and undoubtedly lightened the
epistolary cares of the General. But Washington continued to carry on
much of the letter-writing, especially the intimate, himself;
and, like the Adamses and other statesmen of that period, he kept
letter-books which contained the first drafts or copies of the letters
sent.

Another source of annoyance, to which, however, he resigned himself as
contentedly as he could, was the work of the artists who came to him
to beg him to sit for his picture or statue. Of the painters the most
eminent were Charles Peale and his son Rembrandt. Of the sculptors
Houdon undoubtedly made the best life-sized statue--that which still
adorns the Capitol at Richmond, Virginia--and from the time it was
first exhibited has been regarded as the best, most lifelike. Another,
sitting statue, was made for the State of North Carolina by the
Italian, Canova, the most celebrated of the sculptors of that day. The
artist shows a Roman costume, a favorite of his, unless, as in the
case of Napoleon, he preferred complete nudity. This statue was much
injured in a fire which nearly consumed the Capitol at Raleigh.
The English sculptor, Chantrey, executed a third statue in which
Washington was represented in military dress. This work used to be
shown at the State House in Boston.

Of the many painted portraits of Washington, those by Gilbert Stuart
have come to be accepted as authentic; especially the head in the
painting which hung in the Boston Athenaeum as a pendant to that of
Martha Washington, and is now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. But