Chapter 11 Mrs. Thornton’s Diary
Table of Contents Rewriting this chapter Chapter 11: Mrs. Thornton’s Diary Octagon and environs toward southwest in 1817 When Mrs. Thornton began keeping a diary on January 1, 1800, she refrained from describing what must have been her husband's difficult adjustment to the loss of his patron and friend. He had arrived at Mount Vernon with the Laws a day late, and would long regret that he had not arrived soon enough to perform a tracheotomy, not that there is any evidence that he had ever slit anyone's throat. Sometime after 1802, he would eventually write a fantasy claiming that he offered to bring the General back to life but "was not seconded." In January, she merely noted letters from Mount Vernon. On January 3, Tobias Lear wrote that "Mrs. Washington had consented to give up the body of her late husband to be placed in a Monument to be erected by congress in the Capitol." After dinner on Saturday January 4, Thornton took his wife and her mother ...