A Fairfax World
AS HIS brother Lawrence's protégé, George frequented Belvoir, the mansion William Fairfax had built overlooking the Potomac within distant sight of Mount Vernon. The house was described, probably by George himself, as "of brick, two stories high, with four convenient rooms and a large passage on the lower floor; five rooms and a large passage on the second; servant's hall and cellar below. Convenient to it are offices, stables, and a coach house; adjacent is a large and well-furnished garden stored with a great variety of fruits all in good order." 1
The dining room furnishings were, whenever possible, of mahogany and were worth sixty-two pounds as compared with the six pounds three shillings for the "hall" which served as a dining room at Ferry Farm. The Ferry Farm parlor contained three beds, 2 while the parlor at Belvoir, presided over by a chimney glass worth ten pounds, was exclusively a second sitting room. This was a different way of life: George found its natural inhabitants fascinating. He was as charmed as only a boy whose own domestic life was unhappy could be.
When he stated, as an elderly man, that study abroad endangered young American democrats, did he recall that, without leaving Virginia, he had learned aristocratic mores in the man