Another mainstay of D.C. tourism that I neglected until recently is Arlington Cemetery. I'd only been there once before and then only to visit the Military Women's Memorial and not the cemetery proper. During a week-long visit in June of 2017, my Mom and I decided to tour Arlington House, the Custis-Lee mansion at the heart of Arlington Cemetery. I knew next to nothing about the site - I had a vague notion it was connected with both George Washington and General Robert E. Lee.
Mom and I got into Mom's Prius on the Wednesday morning at the middle of my visit and I drove us onto the GW Parkway and down the west bank of the Potomac to the exit for the cemetery. We'd learned online that the cemetery is administered by the Department of the Army and the house by the National Park Service and that to visit the house one must park at the Cemetery visitors' center at the bottom of the hill. Eschewing the tram tour of the entire cemetery, we decided to walk up the hill to the house. Mom was such a trooper - the walk was entirely uphill and a steep hill at that. We took several breaks to examine monuments near the path and to admire the ever-wider view of the city as we ascended. The identical gravestones of the soldiers gave way to the larger and grander monuments of the higher ranking officers closer to the top of the hill. Making our way through the formal gardens behind the house, we came around to the front of the building and were astonished by the sweeping view of our nation's capital.
Having missed the on-the-hour tour, we took the advice of the park representative at the door of the mansion and killed time until the next tour walking around the house and grounds. The house is furnished - we never learned how much of the furniture actually belonged to the families that lived there, but it all looked authentic enough to me. There was a lovely Knabe piano and a convex wall mirror in the drawing room and a beautiful grandfather clock in the upstairs hallway with an exquisite moonphase indicator. In the conservatory there were two family tree diagrams. One showed the members of the Custis family, including Martha Custis who had become Mrs. George Washington and the later member of that family to whom Robert E. Lee eventually became married. The other family tree showed the Syphax family which was begun by the relationship between a member of the Custis-Washington family and one of the enslaved members of the household staff. I found it interesting and heartening that the history of the house as promoted by the Park Service upholds the enslaved beside the slaveholders.
Mom and I dutifully took our seat on the benches beneath the immense cedar tree at the back of the house where the tour was supposed to begin. Somehow the tourguide failed to notice us when the tour got started and I had to chase down the tour in progress to allow us to join. Our guide was a youngish woman who did a wonderful job acquainting us with the history of the house and its inhabitants. She was a wealth of information about the structure, telling us about the rather haphazard construction history and how it resulted in many inconsistencies in door height and passage width and level. An interesting detail was the ring-shaped stain on a piece of wooden furniture in the back hallway caused by the nightly deposition of a glass of buttermilk to be collected by General Lee on his way to bed. Also interesting was the construction of the central window in the upstairs back hallway which opened to allow furniture to be hoisted into the upper part of the house. A major renovation is slated to begin soon to provide electricity and climate control to the edifice - I suppose the timing of our visit was lucky in that respect.
Our tourguide made the same speech twice during the tour to ensure, as she said, that everyone would hear it including those who bailed out after the end of the second-floor portion. In it, she acknowledged the difficult and controversial history of the building as it pertained to slaveholding and the Civil War. She made a carefully worded appeal to those present to be open to each others' perspectives and to engage in thoughful dialogue in, as she put it, a time of divisiveness. I was impressed by her earnestness and touched by her appeal.
After the tour, Mom expressed a desire to explore transportation options back down the hill. We saw that a tour tram was in the process of being loaded at the curb of the access road behind the house. We approached it with a mind to asking about buying tickets but were practically bundled onto the vehicle by attendants who were anxious for the bus to remain on schedule. No one asked us for our tickets and we enjoyed the remainder of the tour and the easy route back to the visitors' center. While comfortable with the Department of the Army's unwitting consideration for my mother, I decided that I should spring for a ticket for myself. I bought one and pocketed it while Mamma was using the facilities.
