When, in 1920, Woodrow Wilson was musing about retirement, he
drew up a list of possible places to go and awarded them marks on a per- centage basis for Climate, Friends, Opportunities, Freedom and Amusement. With the help of one hundred for Amusement, New York ran out the winner, Washington's chances being ruined by a decisive nought for Freedom. Succeeding Presi- dents, notably the current one, must have often felt the same. For all its attractiveness, it is con- demned to be a city of arrivals and departures; a long-term transit camp into and out of which flow the acquaintances and friends of acquaint- ances of a lifetime; people one really ought to have round to dinner some time; or would drinks be enough?
For this reason, and in spite of protocol, many Americans are sorry, embarrassed •even, that the Queen should be going to Williamsburg and Washington on her visit, both being unrepre- sentative. We did the Washington-Williamsburg run on a Greyhound bus; not the happiest route for an introduction to this way of travel, as it consists largely of motels and filling stations, pro- viding the landscape which Sir Hugh Casson re- cently excoriated in the Observer. But the effect was to make the sight of Williamsburg all the more welcome. It is an attempt, and basically a successful one, to reconstruct a colonial pre- Revolution settlement; some $60 million has been put into it by the Rockefeller family, and the work of reconstruction and restoration has been care- fully and attractively done.
Where controversy begins is on whether it was wise to dress up the locals in eighteenth-century costume—which, it is argued, lends a ludicrous fancy-dress air to the place. This is arguable; but what is beyond doubt is that the plan, if it is to succeed in recapturing atmosphere as well as providing an eighteenth-century museum, de- pends on the banishment of all intrusive elements of modern times. And one intruder has not been banished : the automobile.
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