Author: daintyfire

Martha [Washington] in particular found [von Steuben’s] accent and his occasional difficulties with the English language highly amusing. The Baron knew when he had an appreciative audience, so he pretended to be clumsier with the language than he actually was. One evening Martha asked him how he passed the time now that his military duties were somewhat reduced. Steuben replied that he read, wrote, played chess, and–for the first time in his life–went fishing. But he knew he wasn’t a very good angler, he confessed, for he had sat in a boat in the Hudson for three hours and had caught only two fish. One of them, he said, was a whale. “A whale, Baron, in the North River?” Lady Washington asked. “Yes, I assure you, a very fine whale.” turning to his staff, he demanded with a wink, “It was a whale, was it not?” Billy North corrected him: “An eel, Baron.” Steuben shrugged his shoulder and pretended to be mortally offended by the correction. “I beg your pardon, my Lady, but that gentleman certainly told me it was a whale.”