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Title: The Mother of Washington and Her Times
Author: Pryor, Sara Agnes Rice
Language: English
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THE MOTHER OF WASHINGTON AND HER TIMES
[Illustration: Publisher's mark]
[Illustration: SUPPOSED PORTRAIT OF MARY WASHINGTON.]
THE MOTHER OF WASHINGTON AND HER TIMES
by
MRS. ROGER A. PRYOR
"_That one who breaks the way with tears
Many shall follow with a song_"
New York
The Macmillan Company
London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.
1903
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1903,
By the Macmillan Company.
Set up, electrotyped, and published October, 1903
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
TO THE HON. ROGER A. PRYOR, LL.D.
IN WHOM LIVES ALL THAT WAS BEST
IN OLD VIRGINIA
CONTENTS
PART I
CHAPTER I
PAGE
Introductory 1
CHAPTER II
Mary Washington's English Ancestry 11
CHAPTER III
The Ball Family in Virginia 15
CHAPTER IV
Coat Armor and the Right to bear it 20
CHAPTER V
Traditions of Mary Ball's Early Life 25
CHAPTER VI
Revelations of an Old Will 32
CHAPTER VII
Mary Ball's Childhood 37
CHAPTER VIII
Good Times in Old Virginia 47
CHAPTER IX
Mary Ball's Guardian and her Girlhood 55
CHAPTER X
Young Men and Maidens of the Old Dominion 58
CHAPTER XI
The Toast of the Gallants of her Day 62
CHAPTER XII
Her Marriage and Early Life 69
CHAPTER XIII
Birthplace of George Washington 75
CHAPTER XIV
The Cherry Tree and Little Hatchet 85
CHAPTER XV
The Young Widow and her Family 90
CHAPTER XVI
Betty Washington, and Weddings in Old Virginia 102
CHAPTER XVII
Defeat in War: Success in Love 114
CHAPTER XVIII
In and Around Fredericksburg 127
CHAPTER XIX
Social Characteristics, Manners, and Customs 143
CHAPTER XX
A True Portrait of Mary Washington 167
CHAPTER XXI
Noon in the Golden Age 186
CHAPTER XXII
Dinners, Dress, Dances, Horse-races 197
PART II
CHAPTER I
The Little Cloud 231
CHAPTER II
The Storm 245
CHAPTER III
Mary Washington in the Hour of Peril 251
CHAPTER IV
Old Revolutionary Letters 262
CHAPTER V
The Battle-ground 279
CHAPTER VI
France in the Revolution 289
CHAPTER VII
"On with the Dance, let Joy be unconfined" 304
CHAPTER VIII
Lafayette and our French Allies 312
CHAPTER IX
In Camp and at Mount Vernon 317
CHAPTER X
Mrs. Adams at the Court of St. James 327
CHAPTER XI
The First Winter at Mount Vernon 332
CHAPTER XII
The President and his Last Visit to his Mother 340
CHAPTER XIII
Mary Washington's Will; her Illness and Death 347
CHAPTER XIV
Tributes of her Countrymen 353
ILLUSTRATIONS
Supposed Portrait of Mary Washington _Frontispiece_
PAGE
An Old Doll 39
Horn-book 41
Ducking-stool 44
The Old Stone House 45
William and Mary College _Facing_ 59
Old Yeocomico Church " 63
Monument at Wakefield marking the Birthplace
of George Washington 75
George Washington's Apron 82
Bewdley _Facing_ 83
Pohick Church, Mount Vernon, Virginia 86
Mrs. Washington persuades George not to go
to Sea 100
Kenmore House 103
The Hall at Kenmore, showing the Clock which
belonged to Mary Washington 111
Nellie Custis _Facing_ 112
George Washington as Major 115
General Braddock 118
Mount Vernon _Facing_ 120
St. Peter's Church, in which George Washington
was married 123
Martha Custis _Facing_ 124
Williamsburg 124
"Light-horse Harry" Lee 133
Governor Spotswood 134
Prince Murat 140
Colonel Byrd 147
Westover _Facing_ 150
The Kitchen of Mount Vernon 156
James Monroe 165
Mrs. Charles Carter 177
Mary Washington's House in Fredericksburg
_Facing_ 183
Monticello. The Home of Thomas Jefferson 188
The Garden at Mount Vernon _Facing_ 189
Elsing Green 192
Mount Airy _Facing_ 192
Bushrod Washington 206
Mary Ambler 210
Chief Justice John Marshall 211
Lord Dunmore 237
Robert Carter of Nomini Hall 241
Abigail Adams 248
Oratory Rock 260
Sir William Howe 265
Major André 270
Arthur Lee 274
Vergennes 289
Beaumarchais 290
Silas Deane 291
Benjamin Franklin 292
General Burgoyne 295
General Gates 296
Rochambeau 297
De Grasse 298
Lord Cornwallis 300
Greenway Court _Facing_ 302
George Washington Parke Custis 306
The Chair used by George Washington when Master
of Fredericksburg Lodge 307
General Lafayette _Facing_ 313
John Adams 328
Washington's Reception at Trenton 343
Mary Washington's Monument 357
The Avenue of Poplars at Nomini Hall 363
AUTHORITIES
Virginia Historical Magazine.
William and Mary Quarterly.
Virginia Historical Register.
Meade's Old Churches and Families of Virginia.
Campbell's History of Virginia.
Irving's Life of Washington.
Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington. By George
Washington Parke Custis.
Cooke's Virginia.
The Bland Papers. By Campbell.
Howe's Virginia.
Journal of Philip Vickars Fithian.
Towers's Lafayette.
Creasy's Fifteen Decisive Battles.
Morse's Franklin.
Lecky's England in the Eighteenth Century.
Fiske's American Revolution.
Sparks's Diplomatic Correspondence.
Washington's Works.
Bancroft's History of the United States.
Life and Letters of George Mason. By Kate Mason Rowland.
Beaumarchais and his Times.
Edwardes's Translations of Lemonie.
Lives of the Chief Justices of England.
Twining's Travels in America.
Burnaby's Travels.
The Story of Mary Washington. By Marion Harland.
Randall's Life of Jefferson.
Worthies of England. By Thomas Fuller.
Foote's Sketches of Virginia.
Parton's Franklin.
A Study in the Warwickshire Dialect. By Appleton Morgan, A.M.,
LL.B.
Maternal Ancestry of Washington. By G. W. Ball.
PART I
The Mother of Washington and her Times
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
The mothers of famous men survive only in their sons. This is a rule
almost as invariable as a law of nature. Whatever the aspirations
and energies of the mother, memorable achievement is not for her.
No memoir has been written in this country of the women who bore,
fostered, and trained our great men. What do we know of the mother
of Daniel Webster, or John Adams, or Patrick Henry, or Andrew
Jackson, or of the mothers of our Revolutionary generals?
When the American boy studies the history of his country, his
soul soars within him as he reads of his own forefathers: how
they rescued a wilderness from the savage and caused it to bloom
into fruitful fields and gardens, how they won its independence
through eight years of hardship and struggle, how they assured its
prosperity by a wise Constitution and firm laws. But he may look in
vain for some tribute to the mothers who trained his heroes. In his
Roman history he finds Cornelia, Virginia, Lucretia, and Veturia on
the same pages with Horatius, Regulus, Brutus, and Cincinnatus. If
he be a boy of some thought and perception, he will see that the
early seventeenth century women of his own land must have borne
a similar relation to their country as these women to the Roman
Republic. But our histories as utterly ignore them as if they never
existed. The heroes of our Revolution might have sprung armed from
the head of Jove for aught the American boy can find to the contrary.
Thus American history defrauds these noble mothers of their
crown--not self-won, but won by their sons.
Letitia Romolino was known to few, while the fame of "Madame Mère"
is as universal as the glory of Napoleon himself. But Madame Mère
had her historian. The pioneer woman of America, who "broke the
way with tears," retires into darkness and oblivion; while "many
follow with a song" the son to whom she gave her life and her keen
intelligence born of her strong faith and love.
Biographers have occasionally seemed to feel that something is due
the mothers of their heroes. Women have some rights after all! And
so we can usually find, tucked away somewhere, a short perfunctory
phrase of courtesy, "He is said to have inherited many of his
qualities from his mother," reminding us of "The Ladies--God bless
'em," after everybody else has been toasted at a banquet, and just
before the toasters are ripe for the song, "We won't go home till
morning!"
But--if we are willing to be appeased by such a _douceur_--there
is literature galore anent the women who have amused "great" men:
Helen of Troy, Madame de Pompadour, Madame du Barry, Lady Hamilton,
the Countess Guicciola, and such. We may comfort ourselves for this
humiliating fact only by reflecting that the world craves novelty,
and that these dames are interesting to the reading public, solely
because they are exceptional, while the noble, unselfish woman,
being the rule of motherhood, is familiar to every one of us and
needs no historian.
It is the noble, unselfish woman who must shine, if she shine at
all, by the light reflected from her son. _Her_ life, for the most
part, must be hidden by the obscurity of domestic duties. While
herself thus inactive and retired, her son is developed for glory,
and the world is his arena. It is only when he reaches renown that
she becomes an object of attention, but it is then too late to take
her measure in the plenitude of her powers. Emitting at best but a
feeble ray, her genius is soon lost in the splendor of his meridian.
Nay more, her reputation is often the sport of a love of contrast,
and her simplicity and his magnificence the paradox of a gossiping
public.
Mary Washington presents no exception to this picture. As the mother
of the man who has hitherto done most for the good and glory of
humanity, the details of her life are now of world-wide and enduring
interest. Those details were lost in the seclusion and obscurity
of her earlier years or else absorbed in the splendor of her later
career. It is not deniable, too, that in the absence of authentic
information, tradition has made free with her name, and has imputed
to her motives and habits altogether foreign to her real character.
The mother of Washington was in no sense a commonplace woman. Still
less was she hard, uncultured, undignified, unrefined.
The writer hopes to trace the disparaging traditions, and to refute
them by showing that all the known actions of her life were the
emanations of a noble heart, high courage, and sound understanding.
"Characters," said the great Englishman who lived in her time,
"should never be given by an historian unless he knew the people
whom he describes, or copies from those who knew them." "A hard
saying for picturesque writers of history," says Mr. Augustine
Birrell, who knows so well how to be picturesque and yet faithful to
the truth. Even he laments how little we can know of a dead man we
never saw. "His books, if he wrote books, will tell us something;
his letters, if he wrote any, and they are preserved, may perchance
fling a shadow on the sheet for a moment or two; a portrait if
painted in a lucky hour may lend a show of substance to our dim
surmisings; the things he did must carefully be taken into account,
but as a man is much more than the mere sum of his actions even
these cannot be relied upon with great confidence. For the purpose,
therefore, of getting at any one's character, the testimony of those
who knew the living man is of all the material likely to be within
our reach the most useful."
How truly the words of this brilliant writer apply to the ensuing
pages will be apparent to every intelligent reader. No temptation
has availed with the compiler to accept any, the most attractive,
theory or tradition. The testimony of those who knew Mary Washington
is the groundwork of the picture, and controls its every detail.
A few years ago an episode of interest was awakened in Mary
Washington's life. There was a decided Mary Washington Renaissance.
She passed this way--as Joan of Arc--as Napoleon Bonaparte, Burns,
Emerson, and others pass. A society of women banded themselves
together into a Mary Washington Memorial Association. Silver and
gold medals bearing her gentle, imagined face were struck off,
and when the demand for them was at its height, their number was
restricted to six hundred, to be bequeathed for all time from mother
to daughter, the pledge being a perpetual vigil over the tomb
of Mary Washington, thus forming a Guard of Honor of six hundred
American women. The Princess Eulalia of Spain, and Maria Pilar
Colon, a descendant of Christopher Columbus, were admitted into this
Guard of Honor, and wear its insignia.
This "Renaissance" grew out of an advertisement in the Washington
papers to the effect that the "Grave of Mary, the Mother of General
Washington," was to be "sold at Public Auction, the same to be
offered at Public Outcry," under the shadow of the monument erected
in her son's honor, and in the city planned by him and bearing his
name.
A number of the descendants of Mary Washington's old Fredericksburg
neighbors assembled the next summer at the White Sulphur Springs in
Virginia. It was decided that a ball be given at the watering-place
to aid the noble efforts of the widow of Chief Justice Waite to
avert the disaster, purchase the park, and erect a monument over the
ashes of the mother of Washington. One of the guests was selected to
personate her: General Fitzhugh Lee to represent her son George.
A thousand patrons assured the success of the ball. They wore Mary
Washington's colors--blue and white--and assumed the picturesque
garb of pre-Revolutionary days. The bachelor governor of New York,
learning what was toward with these fair ladies, sent his own state
flag to grace the occasion, and its snow-white folds mingled with
the blue of the state banner contributed by the governor of Virginia.
The gowns of the Virginia beauties were yellow with age, and
wrinkled from having been hastily exhumed from the lavender-scented
chests; for when lovely Juliet Carter chose the identical gown of
her great, great grandmother,--blue brocade, looped over a white
satin quilted petticoat,--the genuine example was followed by all
the rest. The Madam Washington of the hour was strictly taken in
hand by the Fredericksburg contingent. Her kerchief had been worn
at the Fredericksburg Peace Ball, her mob cap was cut by a pattern
preserved by Mary Washington's old neighbors. There were mittens,
a reticule, and a fan made of the bronze feathers of the wild
turkey of Virginia. Standing with her son George in the midst of
the old-time assembly, old-time music in the air, old-time pictures
on the walls, Madam Washington received her guests and presented
them to her son, whose miniature she wore on her bosom. "I am glad
to meet your son, Madam Washington!" said pretty Ellen Lee, as she
dropped her courtesy; "I always heard he was a truthful child!"
The lawn and cloister-like corridors of the large hotel were crowded
at an early hour with the country people, arriving on foot, on
horseback, and in every vehicle known to the mountain roads. These
rustic folk--weather-beaten, unkempt old trappers and huntsmen,
with their sons and daughters, wives and little children--gathered
in the verandas and filled the windows of the ball-room. When the
procession made the rounds of the room the comments of the holders
of the window-boxes were not altogether flattering. The quaint dress
of "the tea-cup time of hoop and hood" was disappointing. They had
expected a glimpse of the latest fashions of the metropolis.
"I don't think much of that Mrs. Washington," said one.
"Well," drawled another, a wiry old graybeard, "she looks quiet and
peaceable! The ole one was a turrible ole woman! My grandfather's
father used to live close to ole Mrs. Washington. The ole man used
to say she would mount a stool to rap her man on the head with the
smoke-'ouse key! She was that little, an' hot-tempered."
"That was _Martha_ Washington, grandfather," corrected a girl who
had been to school in Lewisburg. "_She_ was the short one."
"Well, Martha or Mary, it makes no differ," grimly answered the
graybeard. "They was much of a muchness to my thinkin'," and this
was the first of the irreverent traditions which caught the ear of
the writer, and led to investigation. They cropped up fast enough
from many a dark corner!
About this time many balls and costume entertainments were given to
aid the monument fund. There were charming garden parties to
"Bring back the hour
Of glory in the grass and splendor in the flower,"
when the Mother of Washington was beautiful, young, and happy. A
notable theatrical entertainment, the "Mary Washington matinée,"
was arranged by Mrs. Charles Avery Doremus, the clever New York
playwright. The theatre was hung with colors lent by the Secretary
of the Navy, the order therefor signed by "George Dewey." Everybody
wore the Mary Washington colors--as did Adelina Patti, who flashed
from her box the perennial smile we are yet to see again. Despite
the hydra-headed traditions the Mother of Washington had her
apotheosis.
Brought face to face with my reader, and devoutly praying I may hold
his interest to the end, I wish I could spare him every twice-told
tale--every dull word.
But "we are made of the shreds and patches of many ancestors." What
we are we owe to them. God forbid we should inherit and repeat all
their actions! The courage, the fortitude, the persistence, are
what we inherit--not the deeds through which they were expressed.
A successful housebreaker's courage may blossom in the valor of a
descendant on the field who has been trained in a better school
than his ancestor.
Dull as the public is prone to regard genealogical data, the
faithful biographer is bound to give them.
And therefore the reader must submit to an introduction to the Ball
family, otherwise he cannot understand the Mother of Washington or
Washington himself. One of them, perhaps the one most deserving
eminence through her own beneficence, we cannot place exactly in
our records. She was an English "Dinah Morris," and her name was
Hannah Ball. She was the originator of Sunday-schools, holding her
own school in 1772, twelve years before the reputed founder, Robert
Raikes, established Sunday-schools in England.
CHAPTER II
MARY WASHINGTON'S ENGLISH ANCESTRY
The family of Ball from which Mary, the mother of Washington,
descended, can be traced in direct line only as far back as the year
1480. They came originally from "Barkham, anciently 'Boercham';
noted as the spot at which William the Conqueror paused on his
devastating march from the bloody field of Hastings:[1] 'wasting ye
land, burning ye towns and sleaing (_sic_) ye people till he came to
Boerchum where he stayed his ruthless hand.'"
[1] _The Maternal Ancestry of Washington_, by George Washington
Ball.
In the "History of the Ball family of Barkham, Comitatis Berks,
taken from the Visitation Booke of London marked O. 24, in the
College of Arms," we find that "William Ball, Lord of the Manor of
Barkham, Com. Berks, died in the year 1480." From this William Ball,
George Washington was _eighth_ in direct descent.
The entry in the old visitation book sounds imposing, but Barkham
was probably a small town nestled amid the green hills of Berkshire,
whose beauty possibly so reminded the Conqueror of his Normandy
that "he stayed his ruthless hand." A century ago it was a village
of some fifty houses attached to the estate of the Levison Gowers.
There is no reason to suppose that the intervening Balls in the
line,--Robert, William, two Johns,--all of whom lived in Barkham, or
the William of Lincoln's Inn, who became "attorney in the Office of
Pleas in the Exchequer," were men of wealth or rank. The "getting of
gear was never," said one of their descendants, "a family trait, nor
even the ability to hold it when gotten"; but nowhere is it recorded
that they ever wronged man or woman in the getting. They won their
worldly goods honorably, used them beneficently, and laid them down
cheerfully when duty to king or country demanded the sacrifice, and
when it pleased God to call them out of the world. They were simply
men "doing their duty in their day and generation and deserving well
of their fellows."
They belonged to the Landed Gentry of England. This does not
presuppose their estates to have been extensive. A few starved
acres of land sufficed to class them among the Landed Gentry,
distinguishing them from laborers. As such they may have been
entitled to the distinction of "Gentleman," the title in England
next lowest to "Yeoman." No one of them had ever bowed his shoulders
to the royal accolade, nor held even the position of esquire to a
baronet. But the title "Gentleman" was a social distinction of
value. "Ordinarily the King," says Sir Thomas Smith, "doth only make
Knights and create Barons or higher degrees; as for _gentlemen_,
they be made good cheap in this Kingdom; for whosoever studieth the
laws of the realm, who studieth in the universities, who professeth
the liberal sciences, he shall be taken for a gentleman; for
gentlemen be those whom their blood and race doth make noble and
known." By "a gentleman born" was usually understood the son of a
gentleman by birth, and grandson of a gentleman by position. "It
takes three generations to make a gentleman," we say to-day, and
this seems to have been an ancient rule in England.
The Balls might well be proud to belong to old England's middle
classes--her landed, untitled Gentry. A few great minds--Lord
Francis Verulam, for instance--came from her nobility; and some
gifted writers--the inspired dreamer, for instance--from her tinkers
and tradesmen; but the mighty host of her scholars, poets, and
philosophers belonged to her middle classes. They sent from their
ranks Shakespeare and Milton, Locke and Sir Isaac Newton, Gibbon,
Dryden, "old Sam Johnson," Pope, Macaulay, Stuart Mill, Huxley,
Darwin, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Burke, Disraeli, Cowper, Sir William
Blackstone, and nearly all of the Chief Justices of England. These
are but a few of the great names that shine along the ranks of
England's middle classes.
Many of these men were called to the foot of the throne by a
grateful sovereign to receive some distinction,--so paltry by
comparison with glory of their own earning,--and among them came
one day an ancestor of the mother of George Washington. Who he was
we know not, nor yet what had been his service to his country; but
he was deemed worthy to bear upon his shield a lion rampant, the
most honorable emblem of heraldry, and the lion's paws held aloft a
ball! This much we know of him,--that in addition to his valor and
fidelity he possessed a poet's soul. He chose for the motto, the
_cri de guerre_ of his clan, a suggestive phrase from these lines of
Ovid:--
"He gave to man a noble countenance and commanded him to gaze upon
the heavens, and to carry his looks upward to the stars."
[Illustration: WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE.]
CHAPTER III
THE BALL FAMILY IN VIRGINIA
The first of the family of Ball to come to Virginia was William
Ball, who settled in Lancaster County in 1650. He was the son of
the attorney of Lincoln's Inn. He emigrated, with other cavaliers
because of the overthrow of the royal house and the persecution of
its adherents.
Before this time one John Washington, an Englishman and a loyalist,
had settled in Westmoreland. He became a man of influence in
the colony, rising rapidly from major to colonel, justice of
Westmoreland, and member of the House of Burgesses; accepting
positions under the Commonwealth, as did others of King Charles's
adherents; doing their duty under the present conditions, and
consoling themselves by calling everything--towns, counties, rivers,
and their own sons--after the "Martyred Monarch"; and in rearing
mulberry trees and silkworms to spin the coronation robe of purple
for the surely coming time of the Restoration.
John Washington married three times,--two Annes and one
Frances,--and, innocently unconscious of the tremendous importance
to future historians of his every action, he neglected to place
on record the date of these events. In his day a woman appeared
before the public only three times,--at her baptism, marriage, and
death. But one of Colonel Washington's wives emerges bravely from
obscurity. A bold sinner and hard swearer, having been arraigned
before her husband, she was minded to improve her opportunity; and
the Westmoreland record hath it that "Madam Washington said to ye
prisoner, 'if you were advised by yr wife, you need not acome to
this passe,' and he answered, having the courage of his convictions,
'---- ---- my wife! If it were to doe, I would do it againe.'"
And so no more of Madam Washington! This trouble had grown out of
what was characterized as "ye horrid, traiterous, and rebellious
practices" of a young Englishman on the James River, whose only
fault lay in the unfortunate circumstance of his having been born
a hundred years too soon. Bacon's cause had been just, and he was
eloquent enough and young and handsome enough to draw all men's
hearts to himself, but his own was stilled in death before he could
right his neighbors' wrongs.
And now, the Fates that move the pieces on the chess-board of
life ordained that two prophetic names should appear together to
suppress the first rebellion against the English government. When
the Grand Assembly cast about for loyal men and true to lay "a Levy
in ye Northern Necke for ye charges in Raisinge ye forces thereof
for suppressing ye late Rebellion," the lot fell on "Coll. John
Washington and Coll: W^m. Ball," the latter journeying up from his
home in Lancaster to meet Colonel Washington at Mr. Beale's, in
Westmoreland.
Colonel Ball's Lancaster home was near the old White Chapel
church, around which are clustered a large number of strong, heavy
tombstones which betoken to-day "a deep regard of the living for the
dead."
Almost all of them are inscribed with the name of Ball. In their
old vestry books are stern records. A man was fined five thousand
pounds of tobacco for profane swearing; unlucky John Clinton, for
some unmentioned misdemeanor, was required four times to appear on
bended knees and four times to ask pardon. As late as 1727 men were
presented for drunkenness, for being absent one month from church,
for swearing, for selling crawfish and posting accounts on Sunday.
"And in addition to above," adds Bishop Meade, "the family of Ball
was very active in promoting good things," as well as zealous in the
punishment of evil. Overt acts--swearing, fishing on Sunday, absence
from church--could easily be detected and punished. But how about
drunkenness? There are degrees of intoxication. At what point was it
punishable?
An old Book of Instructions settled the matter. "Where ye same
legges which carry a Man into a house cannot bring him out againe,
it is Sufficient Sign of Drunkennesse."
The descendants of William Ball held good positions in the social
life of the colony. Their names appear in Bishop Meade's list of
vestrymen, as founders and patrons of the Indian schools, and
fourteen times in the House of Burgesses. They intermarried with
the leading families in Virginia; and the Balls, in great numbers,
settled the counties of Lancaster, Northumberland, Westmoreland,
and Stafford. They are not quoted as eminent in the councils of the
time, or as distinguished in letters. That they were good citizens
is more to their credit than that they should have filled prominent
official positions; for high offices have been held by men who were
not loyal to their trusts, and even genius--that beacon of light in
the hands of true men--has been a torch of destruction in those of
the unworthy.
They, like their English ancestors, bore for their arms a lion
rampant holding a ball, and for their motto _Cælumque tueri_, taken,
as we have said, from these lines of Ovid:--
"Os homini sublime dedit, cælumque tueri
Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus."
The rampant lion holding the ball appears on an armorial document
belonging to the first emigrant. On the back of this document are
the following words, written in the round, large script of those
days, which, whatever it left undone, permitted no possible doubt of
the meaning it meant to convey:--
"The Coat of Arms of Colonel William Ball, who came from England
about the year 1650, leaving two sons--William of Millenbeck [the
paternal seat] and Joseph of Epping Forest--and one daughter,
Hannah, who married Daniel Fox.... Joseph's male issue is
extinct."[2]
[2] Horace Edwin Hayden in _William and Mary Quarterly_, Vol. iii,
p. 74.
George Washington was the grandson of this Joseph Ball through his
youngest daughter Mary. She was born at Epping Forest, in Lancaster,
Virginia, in 1708, and "not as is persistently stated by careless
writers on Nov: 30th 1706--a year before her parents were married."
CHAPTER IV
COAT ARMOR AND THE RIGHT TO BEAR IT
Bishop Meade says of William Ball's coat of arms: "There is much
that is bold about it: as a lion rampant with a globe in his paw,
with helmet, shield and visor, and other things betokening strength
and courage, but none these things suit of my work! There is,
however, one thing that does. On a scroll are these words, _Cælum
tueri!_ May it be a memento to all his posterity to look upward and
seek the things which are above!"
The Bishop attached, probably, more importance to the heraldic
distinction than did the mother of Washington. Virginia families
used the arms to which they had a right with no thought of
ostentation--simply as something belonging to them, as a matter of
course. They sealed their deeds and contracts with their family
crest and motto, displayed their arms on the panels of their
coaches, carved them on their gate-posts and on the tombstones of
their people; for such had been the custom in the old country which
they fondly called "home."
The pedigrees and coats of arms of the families, from which Mary
Ball and her illustrious son descended, have been much discussed
by historians. "Truly has it been said that all the glories of
ancestral escutcheons are so overshadowed by the deeds of Washington
that they fade into insignificance; that a just democracy, scornful
of honors not self-won, pays its tribute solely to the man, the
woman, and the deed; that George Washington was great because he
stood for the freedom of his people, and Mary Washington was great
because she implanted in his youthful breast righteous indignation
against wrong, which must ever be the inspiration of the hero. And
yet the insignia of a noble name, handed down from generation to
generation, and held up as an incentive to integrity and valor,
may well be cherished." The significance of the shield granted as
reward, and the sentiment chosen as the family motto, are not to be
ignored. The shield witnesses a sovereign's appreciation; the motto
affords a key-note to the aspirations of the man who chose it. Not
of the women! for only under limitations could women use the shield;
the motto they were forbidden to use at all. Mottoes often expressed
lofty sentiments. Witness a few taken from Virginia families of
English descent: _Malo mori quam foedari_. _Sperate et Virite
Fortes_ (Bland), _Sine Deo Cares_ (Cary), _Ostendo non ostento_
(Isham), _Rêve et Révéle_ (Atkinson), etc.
At the present moment the distinction of a coat of arms is highly
esteemed in this country. Families of English descent can always
find a shield or crest on some branch, more or less remote, of the
Family Tree. The title to these arms may have long been extinct--but
who will take the trouble to investigate? The American cousin scorns
and defies rules of heraldry! To be sure, he would prefer assuming
a shield once borne by some ancestor, but if that be impossible,
he is quite capable of marshalling his arms to suit himself. Is
not "a shield of pretence" arms which a lord claims and which he
adds to his own? Thus it comes to pass that the crest, hard won in
deadly conflict, and the motto once the challenging battle-cry,
find themselves embalmed in the perfume of a fine lady's tinted
billet, or proudly displayed on the panels of her park equipage.
Thus is many a hard-won crest and proud escutcheon of old England
made to suffer the extreme penalty of the English law, "drawn and
quartered," and dragged captive in boastful triumph at the chariot
wheels of the Great Obscure! They can be made to order by any
engraver. They are used, unchallenged, by any and every body willing
to pay for them.
It may, therefore, be instructive to turn the pages of old Thomas
Fuller's "Worthies of England," and learn the rigid laws governing
the use of arms by these "Worthies."
The "fixing of hereditary arms in England was a hundred years
ancienter than Richard the Second"--in 1277, therefore. Before his
second invasion into France, Henry V issued a proclamation to the
sheriffs to this effect: "Because there are divers men who have
assumed to themselves arms and coat-armours where neither they nor
their ancestors in times past used such arms or coat-armours, all
such shall show cause on the day of muster why he useth arms and by
virtue of whose gift he enjoyeth the same: those only excepted who
carried arms with us at the battle of Agincourt;" and all detected
frauds were to be punished "with the loss of wages, as also the
rasing out and breaking off of said arms called coat-armours--and
this," adds his Majesty, with emphasis, "you shall in no case omit."
By a later order there was a more searching investigation into
the right to bear arms. A high heraldic officer, usually one of
the kings-at-arms, was sent into all the counties to examine the
pedigrees of the landed gentry, with a view of ascertaining whether
the arms borne by them were unwarrantably assumed. The king-at-arms
was accompanied on such occasions by secretaries or draftsmen. The
"Herald's Visitations," as they were termed, were regularly held as
early as 1433, and until between 1686 and 1700. Their object was by
no means to create coats of arms but to reject the unauthorized,
and confirm and verify those that were authentic. Thus the arms
of the Ball and Washington families had been subjected to strict
scrutiny before being registered in the Heralds' College. They could
not have been unlawfully assumed by the first immigrant, nor would
he, while living in England, have been allowed to mark his property
or seal his papers with those arms nor use them in any British
colony.
CHAPTER V
TRADITIONS OF MARY BALL'S EARLY LIFE
Of the ancestry of Mary Washington's mother nothing is known. She
was the "Widow Johnson," said to have descended from the Montagus
of England, and supposed to have been a housekeeper in Joseph
Ball's family, and married to him after the death of his first
wife. Members of the Ball family, after Mary Washington's death,
instituted diligent search to discover something of her mother's
birth and lineage. Their inquiries availed to show that she was an
Englishwoman. No connection of hers could be found in Virginia.
Since then, eminent historians and genealogists, notably Mr. Hayden
and Mr. Moncure Conway, have given time and research "to the most
important problem in Virginia genealogy,--Who and whence was Mary
Johnson, widow, mother of Mary Washington?" The Montagu family has
claimed her and discovered that the griffin of the house of Montagu
sometimes displaced the raven in General Washington's crest; and it
was asserted that the griffin had been discovered perched upon the
tomb of one Katharine Washington, at Piankatnk. To verify this, the
editor of the _William and Mary Quarterly_ journeyed to the tomb of
Katharine, and found the crest to be neither a raven or a griffin
but a wolf's head!
It matters little whether or no the mother of Washington came of
noble English blood; for while an honorable ancestry is a gift of
the gods, and should be regarded as such by those who possess it,
an honorable ancestry is not merely a titled ancestry. Descent from
nobles may be interesting, but it can only be honorable when the
strawberry leaves have crowned a wise head and the ermine warmed a
true heart. Three hundred years ago an English wit declared that
"Noblemen have seldom anything in print save their clothes."
Knowing that Mary Johnson was an Englishwoman, we might, had we
learned her maiden name, have rejoiced in tracing her to some family
of position, learning, or wealth; for position and learning are
desirable gifts, and wealth has been, and ever will be, a synonym
of power. It can buy the title and command genius. It can win
friendship, pour sunshine into dark places, cause the desert to
bloom. It can prolong and sweeten life, and alleviate the pangs of
death.
These brilliant settings, for the woman we would fain honor, are
denied us. That she was a jewel in herself, there can be no doubt.
We must judge of her as we judge of a tree by its fruits; as we
judge a fountain by the streams issuing therefrom. She was the
mother of a great woman "whose precepts and discipline in the
education of her illustrious son, himself acknowledged to have been
the foundation of his fortune and fame:--a woman who possessed not
the ambitions which are common to meaner minds." This was said of
her by one who knew Mary, the mother of Washington,--Mary, the
daughter of the obscure Widow Johnson.
Indeed, she was so obscure that the only clew we have to her
identity as Joseph Ball's wife is found in a clause of his will
written June 25, 1711, a few weeks before his death, where he
mentions "Eliza Johnson, daughter of my beloved wife."
Until a few months ago it was supposed that Mary Ball spent her
childhood and girlhood at Epping Forest, in Lancaster County; that
she had no schooling outside her home circle until her seventeenth
year; that she visited Williamsburg with her mother about that time;
that in 1728 her mother died, and she went to England to visit her
brother Joseph, a wealthy barrister in London. Her biographers
accepted these supposed facts and wove around them an enthusiastic
romance. They indulged in fancies of her social triumphs in
Williamsburg, the gay capital of the colony; of her beauty, her
lovers; how she was the "Rose of Epping Forest," the "Toast of the
Gallants of her Day." They followed her to England,--whence also
Augustine Washington was declared to have followed her,--sat with
her for her portrait, and brought her back either the bride, or soon
to become the bride, of Augustine Washington; brought back also
the portrait, and challenged the world to disprove the fact that
it must be genuine and a capital likeness, for had it not "George
Washington's cast of countenance"?
The search-light of investigation had been turned in vain upon the
county records of Lancaster. There she had not left even a fairy
footprint. What joy then to learn the truth from an accidental
discovery by a Union soldier of a bundle of old letters in an
abandoned house in Yorktown at the close of the Civil War! These
letters seemed to lift the veil of obscurity from the youthful
unmarried years of Mary, the mother of Washington. The first letter
is from Williamsburg, 1722:--
"Dear Sukey--Madam Ball of Lancaster and her sweet Molly have
gone Hom. Mama thinks Molly the Comliest Maiden She Knows. She
is about 16 yrs. old, is taller than Me, is verry Sensable,
Modest and Loving. Her Hair is like unto Flax. Her Eyes are the
colour of Yours, and her Chekes are like May blossoms. I wish
You could see Her."
A letter was also found purporting to have been written by Mary
herself to her brother in England; defective in orthography, to be
sure, but written in a plain, round hand:--
"We have not had a schoolmaster in our neighborhood until now in
five years. We have now a young minister living with us who was
educated at Oxford, took orders and came over as assistant to
Rev. Kemp at Gloucester. That parish is too poor to keep both,
and he teaches school for his board. He teaches Sister Susie
and me, and Madam Carter's boy and two girls. I am now learning
pretty fast. Mama and Susie and all send love to you and Mary.
This from your loving sister,
"Mary Ball."
The fragment of another letter was found by the Union soldier. This
letter is signed "Lizzie Burwell" and written to "Nelly Car----,"
but here, alas! the paper is torn. Only a part of a sentence can
be deciphered. "... understand Molly Ball is going Home with her
Brother, a lawyer who lives in England. Her Mother is dead three
months ago." The date is "May ye 15th, 1728," and Mary Ball is now
twenty years old.
Could any admiring biographer ask more? Flaxen hair, May
blossoms--delightful suggestion of Virginia peach-blooms, flowering
almond, hedge roses! "Sensible, Modest, and Loving!" What an
enchanting picture of the girlhood of the most eminent of American
women! The flying steeds of imagination were given free rein. Away
they went! They bore her to the gay life in Williamsburg, then the
provincial capital and centre of fashionable society in the Old
Dominion. There she rode in the heavy coaches drawn by four horses,
lumbering through the dusty streets: or she paid her morning visits
in the sedan-chairs, with tops hitherto flat but now beginning to
arch to admit the lofty head-dresses of the dames within. She met,
perhaps, the haughty soldier ex-Governor, who could show a ball
which had passed through his coat at Blenheim: and also her Serene
Highness, Lady Spotswood, immortalized by William Byrd as "gracious,
moderate, and good-humored." Who had not heard of her pier glasses
broken by the tame deer and how he fell back upon a table laden
with rare bric-a-brac to the great damage thereof! Along with the
records of the _habeas corpus_, tiffs with the burgesses, the
smelting of iron, the doughty deeds of the Knights of the Golden
Horseshoe, invariable mention had been made of this disaster, and of
the fact that the gracious Lady Spotswood "bore it with moderation
and good-humor." This sublime example might have had some influence
in moulding the manners of Mary Ball--one of whose crowning
characteristics was a calm self-control, never shaken by the most
startling events!
And then we took ship and sailed away with our heroine to
England--Augustine Washington, as became an ardent lover, following
ere long. Anon, we bore her, a happy bride, home again, bringing
with her a great treasure,--a portrait true to the life, every
feature bearing the stamp of genuineness. Through how many pages did
we gladly amplify this, chilled somewhat by fruitless searches for
"Sister Susie"! "Never," said an eminent genealogist, "never reject
or lose tradition. Keep it, value it, record it _as tradition_;"
but surely this was not tradition. It was documentary evidence,
but evidence rudely overthrown by another document,--a dry old
yellow will lately found by the Rev. G. W. Beale in the archives of
Northumberland County, in Virginia.
CHAPTER VI
REVELATIONS OF AN OLD WILL
The old will proves beyond all question that Mary Ball's girlhood
was not passed in Lancaster, that she had ample opportunity for
education, and was, therefore, not untaught until she was sixteen.
She, probably, never visited Williamsburg when seventeen,--certainly
never with her mother. There never was a Sister Susie! At the time
the Williamsburg letter announced the recent death of her mother,
that mother had for many years been sleeping quietly in her grave.
Moreover, the letter of Mary herself had done a great injustice to
Gloucester parish, which was not a "poor parish" at all--with an
impecunious curate working for his board--but a parish erecting at
that moment so fine a church that Bishop Meade's pious humility
suffered in describing it.
From Dr. Beale's researches we learn that the "Rose of Epping
Forest" was a tiny bud indeed when her father died; that before
her fifth birthday her mother had married Captain Richard Hewes, a
vestryman of St. Stephen's parish, Northumberland, and removed to
that parish with her three children, John and Elizabeth Johnson,
and our own little Mary Ball.
In 1713, Captain Hewes died, and his inventory was filed by
his "widow, Mary Hewes," who also died in the summer of 1721.
"It is seldom," says Dr. Beale,[3] commenting upon her last
will and testament, "that in a document of this kind, maternal
affection--having other and older children to share its bequests--so
concentrates itself upon a youngest daughter, and she a child of
thirteen summers. Perhaps of all the tributes laid at the feet of
Mary Washington, none has been more heart-felt or significant of her
worth than legacies of her mother's last will and testament, written
as they were, all unconsciously of her future distinction." The will
discovered by the Rev. G. W. Beale settles all controversies. For
the benefit of those who must see in order to believe, we copy it
verbatim.
[3] Rev. G. W. Beale in the _Virginia Historical Magazine_.
"In the name of God Amen, the seventeenth Day December in the
year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and twenty."
"I Mary Hewes of St. Stephen's Parish, Northumberland County,
widow, being sick and weak in body but of sound and perfect
memory, thanks be to Almighty God for the same, and calling to
mind the uncertain state of this transitory life, and that the
flesh must yield unto Death, when it shall please God to call,
do make and ordain this my last will and Testament.
"First, I give and bequeath my soul (to God) that gave it me,
and my body to the Earth to be buried in Decent Christian burial
at the discretion of my executors in these presents nominated.
And as touching such Worldly estate which it hath pleased God to
bestow upon me, I give, devise and dispose of in the following
manner and form. _Imprimis_, I give and devise unto my Daughter
Mary Ball one young likely negro woman to be purchased for her
out of my Estate by my Executors and to be delivered unto her
the said Mary Ball at the age of Eighteen years, but, my will
is that if the said Mary Ball should dye without Issue lawfully
begotten of her body that the said negro woman with her increase
shall return to my loving son John Johnson to him, his heirs and
assigns forever.
"_Item._ I give and bequeath unto my said Daughter Mary Ball two
gold rings, the one being a large hoop and the other a stoned
ring.
"_Item._ I give unto my said Daughter Mary Ball one young mare
and her increase which said mare I formerly gave her by word of
mouth.
"_Item._ I give and bequeath unto my said Daughter Mary Ball
sufficient furniture for the bed her father Joseph Ball left
her, vizt: One suit of good curtains and fallens, one Rugg, one
Quilt, one pair Blankets.
"_Item._ I give and bequeath unto my said Daughter Mary Ball two
Diaper Table clothes marked M. B. with inck, and one Dozen of
Diaper napkins, two towels, six plates, two pewter dishes, two
basins, one large iron pott, one Frying pan, one old trunk.
"_Item._ I give and bequeath unto my said Daughter Mary Ball,
one good young Paceing horse together with a good silk plush
side saddle to be purchased by my Executors out of my Estate.
"_Item._ I give and bequeath unto my Daughter Elizabeth Bonum
one suit of white and black callico, being part of my own
wearing apparel.
"_Item._ All the rest of my wearing apparel I give and bequeath
unto my said Daughter Mary Ball, and I do hereby appoint her
(to) be under Tutiledge and government of Capt. George Eskridge
during her minority.
"_Item._ My will is I do hereby oblige my Executors to pay to
the proprietor or his agent for the securing of my said Daughter
Mary Ball her land Twelve pounds if so much (be) due.
"_Item._ All the rest of my Estate real and personal whatsoever
and wheresoever I give and devise unto my son John Johnson,
and to his heirs lawfully to be begotten of his body, and for
default of such Issue I give and devise the said Estate unto my
Daughter Elizabeth Bonum, her heirs and assigns forever.
"_Item._ I do hereby appoint my son John Johnson and my trusty
and well beloved friend George Eskridge Executors of this my
last will and Testament and also revoke and Disannul all other
former wills or Testaments by me heretofore made or caused to be
made either by word or writing, ratifying and confirming this to
be my last Will and Testament and no other.
"In witness whereof I have hereunto sett my hand and seal the
Day and Date at first above written.
"The mark and seal of Mary III Hewes. Sig. (Seal) Signed, Sealed
and Published and Declared by Mary Hewes to be her last Will and
Testament in presence of us.
"The mark of Robert × Bradley.
"The mark of Ralph × Smithurst
"David Stranghan."
The chief witness to this will was a teacher of no mean repute who
lived near Mrs. Hewes, "And," says Dr. Beale, "others might be named
who followed the same calling in Mary Ball's girlhood and near her
home."
The son, John Johnson, named as joint executor in his mother's will,
died very soon after her. His will and hers were recorded on the
same day. The first bequest reveals his affection for his little
half-sister.
"_Imprimis._ I give and bequeath unto my sister Mary Ball all my
land in Stafford which my father-in-law Richard Hewes gave me,
to the said Mary Ball and her heirs lawfully to be begotten of
her body forever."
The will of Samuel Bonum, husband of the "Elizabeth" mentioned in
Mrs. Hewes's will, was probated in Westmoreland, Feb. 22, 1726, and
contains an item bequeathing "to my sister-in-law Mary Ball, my
young dapple gray riding horse." Mary Ball was then eighteen years
old.
So it appears that the mother of Washington, although not rich,
according to the standard of that day or this, was fairly well
endowed with Virginia real estate. Also that she owned three or more
riding-horses, her own maid, a few jewels, and house plenishing
sufficient for the station of a lady in her day and generation.
CHAPTER VII
MARY BALL'S CHILDHOOD
It is easy to imagine the childhood of Mary Ball. Children in
her day escaped from the nursery at an early age. They were not
hidden away in convents or sent to finishing schools. There were no
ostentatious débuts, no "coming-out teas." As soon as a girl was
fairly in her "teens" she was marriageable.
Little girls, from early babyhood, became the constant companions
of their mothers, and were treated with respect. Washington writes
gravely of "Miss Custis," six years old. They worked samplers,
learned to edge handkerchiefs with a wonderful imitation of
needle-point, plaited lace-strings for stays, twisted the fine
cords that drew into proper bounds the stiff bodices, knitted
garters and long hose, took lessons on the harpsichord, danced the
minuet, and lent their little hands to "clap muslins" on the great
clearstarching days, when the lace "steenkirk," and ruffled bosoms,
and ample kerchiefs, were "gotten up" and crimped into prescribed
shape. No lounging, idleness, or loss of time was permitted. The
social customs of the day enforced habits of self-control. For
long hours the little Mary was expected to sit upon high chairs,
with no relenting pillows or cushions, making her manners as became
a gentleman's daughter throughout the stated "dining days," when
guests arrived in the morning and remained until evening. Nor was
her upright figure, clad in silk coat and mittens, capuchin and
neckatees, ever absent from the front seat of the yellow chariot as
it swung heavily through the sands to return these stately visits,
or to take her mother and sister to old St. Stephen's church.
Arriving at the latter, she might possibly have had a glimpse now
and then of other little girls as she paced the gallery on her way
to the high-backed family pew, with its "railing of brass rods
with damask curtains to prevent the family from gazing around when
sitting or kneeling." Swallowed up in the great square pew she could
see nothing.
[Illustration: An Old Doll.]
From the viewpoint of a twentieth-century child, her small feet
were set in a hard, if not thorny, path. The limits of an early
colonial house allowed no space for the nursery devoted exclusively
to a child, and filled with every conceivable appliance for her
instruction and amusement. There were no wonderful mechanical
animals, lifelike in form and color, and capable of exercising many
of their functions. One stiff-jointed, staring, wooden effigy was
the only prophecy of the enchanting doll family,--the blue-eyed,
brown-eyed, flaxen-curled, sleeping, talking, walking, and dimpled
darlings of latter-day children,--and the wooden-handled board,
faced with horn and bound with brass, the sole representative of the
child's picture-book of to-day. No children's books were printed
in England until the middle of the eighteenth century; but one
Thomas Flint, a Boston printer, appreciating the rhymes that his
mother-in-law, Mrs. Goose, sang to his children, published them
in book form and gave them a name than which none is more sure of
immortality. This, however, was in 1719--too late for our little
Mary Ball. She had only the horn-book as resource in the long, dark
days when the fairest of all books lay hidden beneath the snows of
winter--the horn-book, immortalized by Thomas Tickell as far back as
1636:--
"Thee will I sing, in comely wainscot bound,
And golden verge enclosing thee around:
The faithful horn before, from age to age
Preserving thy invulnerable page;
Behind, thy patron saint in armor shines
With sword and lance to guard the sacred lines.
The instructed handles at the bottom fixed
Lest wrangling critics should pervert the text."
The "sword and lance" were in allusion to the one illustration of
the horn-book. When the blue eyes wearied over the alphabet, Lord's
prayer, and nine digits, they might be refreshed with a picture of
St. George and the Dragon, rudely carved on the wooden back. The
"instructed handle" clasped the whole and kept it together.
[Illustration: Horn-book.]
All orphans and poor children in colonial Virginia were provided
with public schools under the care of the vestries of the
parishes--"litle houses," says Hugh Jones in 1722, "built on purpose
where are taught English, writing, etc." Parents were compelled to
send their children to these schools, and masters to whom children
were bound were required to give them schooling until "ye years
of twelfe or thereabout" without distinction of race or sex. For
instance, in the vestry book of Petsworth Parish, in Gloucester
County, is an indenture dated Oct. 30, 1716, of Ralph Bevis to give
George Petsworth, "a molattoe boy of the age of 2 years, 3 years'
schooling; and carefully to instruct him afterwards that he may
read well any part of the Bible." Having mastered the Bible, all
literary possibilities were open to the said George. The gentry,
however, employed private tutors in their own families,--Scotchmen
or Englishmen fresh from the universities, or young curates from
Princeton or Fagg's Manor in Pennsylvania. Others secured teachers
by indenture. "In Virginia," says the _London Magazine_, "a clever
servant is often indentured to some master as a schoolmaster." John
Carter of Lancaster directed in his will that his son Robert should
have "a youth servant bought for him to teach him in his books in
English or Latin." Early advertisements in the _Virginia Gazette_
assured all "single men capable of teaching children to Read
English, write or Cypher or Greek Latin and Mathematicks--also all
Dancing Masters," that they "would meet with good encouragement" in
certain neighborhoods.
But this was after Mary Ball's childhood. Days of silent listening
to the talk of older people were probably her early school days. In
Virginia there were books, true, but the large libraries of thirty
years later had not yet been brought over. There was already a
fine library at Stratford in Westmoreland. Colonel Byrd's library
was considered vast when it attained to "3600 titles." Books were
unfashionable at court in England. No power in heaven or earth has
been yet found to keep the wise and witty from writing them, but in
the first years of the eighteenth century it was very bad form to
talk about them. Later, even, the first gentleman in England was
always furious at the sight of books. Old ladies used to declare
that "Books were not fit articles for drawing-rooms." "Books!" said
Sarah Marlborough; "prithee, don't talk to me about books! The only
books I know are men and cards."
But there were earnest talkers in Virginia, and the liveliest
interest in all kinds of affairs. It was a picturesque time in the
life of the colony. Things of interest were always happening. We
know this of the little Mary,--she was observant and wise, quiet
and reflective. She had early opinions, doubtless, upon the powers
of the vestries, the African slave-trade, the right of a Virginia
assembly to the privileges of parliament, and other grave questions
of her time. Nor was the time without its vivid romances. Although
no witch was ever burnt in Virginia, Grace Sherwood, who must have
been young and comely, was arrested "under suspetion of witchcraft,"
condemned by a jury of old women because of a birth-mark on her
body, and sentenced to a seat in the famous ducking-stool, which had
been, in the wisdom of the burgesses, provided to still the tongues
of "brabbling women,"--a sentence never inflicted, for a few glances
at her tearful eyes won from the relenting justice the order that
this ducking was to be "in no wise without her consent, _or if the
day should be rainy_, or in any way to endanger her health!"
[Illustration: Ducking-stool.]
Stories were told around the fireside on winter nights, when the
wooden shutters rattled--for rarely before 1720 were "windows
sasht with crystal glass." The express, bringing mails from the
north, had been scalped by Indians. Four times in one year had
homeward-bound ships been sunk by pirates. Men, returning to England
to receive an inheritance, were waylaid on the high seas, robbed,
and murdered. In Virginia waters the dreaded "Blackbeard" had it
all his own way for a while. Finally, his grim head is brought home
on the bowsprit of a Virginia ship, and a drinking-cup, rimmed with
silver, made of the skull that held his wicked brains. Of course,
it could not be expected that he could rest in his grave under
these circumstances, and so, until fifty years ago (when possibly
the drinking-cup was reclaimed by his restless spirit), his phantom
sloop might be seen spreading its ghostly sails in the moonlight on
the York River and putting into Ware Creek to hide ill-gotten gains
in the Old Stone House. Only a few years before had the dreadful
Tuscaroras risen with fire and tomahawk in the neighbor colony of
North Carolina.
[Illustration: The Old Stone House.]
Nearer home, in her own neighborhood, in fact, were many suggestive
localities which a child's fears might people with supernatural
spirits. Although there were no haunted castles with dungeon, moat,
and tower, there were deserted houses in lonely places, with open
windows like hollow eyes, graveyards half hidden by tangled creepers
and wept over by ancient willows. About these there sometimes hung a
mysterious, fitful light which little Mary, when a belated traveller
in the family coach, passed with bated breath, lest warlocks or
witches should issue therefrom, to say nothing of the interminable
stretches of dark forests, skirting ravines fringed with poisonous
vines, and haunted by the deadly rattlesnake. People talked of
strange, unreal lights peeping through the tiny port-holes of the
old Stone House on York River--that mysterious fortress believed to
have been built by John Smith--while, flitting across the doorway,
had been seen the dusky form of Pocahontas, clad in her buckskin
robe, with a white plume in her hair: keeping tryst, doubtless, with
Captain Smith, with none to hinder, now that the dull, puritanic
John Rolfe was dead and buried; and, as we have said, Blackbeard's
sloop would come glimmering down the river, and the bloody horror of
a headless body would land and wend its way to the little fortress
which held his stolen treasure. Moreover, Nathaniel Bacon had risen
from his grave in York River, and been seen in the Stone House with
his compatriots, Drummond, Bland, and Hansford.
Doubtless such stories inspired many of little Mary's early dreams,
and caused her to tremble as she lay in her trundle-bed,--kept all
day beneath the great four poster, and drawn out at night,--unless,
indeed, her loving mother allowed her to climb the four steps
leading to the feather sanctuary behind the heavy curtains, and held
her safe and warm in her own bosom.
CHAPTER VIII
GOOD TIMES IN OLD VIRGINIA
Despite the perils and perplexities of the time; the irreverence
and profanity of the clergy; the solemn warning of the missionary
Presbyterians; the death of good Queen Anne, the last of the
Stuarts, so dear to the hearts of loyal Virginians; the forebodings
on the accession to the throne of the untried Guelphs; the total
lack of many of the comforts and conveniences of life, Virginians
love to write of the early years of the century as "the golden age
of Virginia." These were the days known as the "good old times
in old Virginia," when men managed to live without telegraphs,
railways, and electric lights. "It was a happy era!" says Esten
Cooke. "Care seemed to keep away and stand out of its sunshine.
There was a great deal to enjoy. Social intercourse was on the most
friendly footing. The plantation house was the scene of a round
of enjoyments. The planter in his manor house, surrounded by his
family and retainers, was a feudal patriarch ruling everybody;
drank wholesome wine--sherry or canary--of his own importation;
entertained every one; held great festivities at Christmas, with
huge log fires in the great fireplaces, around which the family
clan gathered. It was the life of the family, not of the world,
and produced that intense attachment for the soil which has become
proverbial. Everybody was happy! Life was not rapid, but it was
satisfactory. The portraits of the time show us faces without those
lines which care furrows in the faces of the men of to-day. That old
society succeeded in working out the problem of living happily to an
extent which we find few examples of to-day."
"The Virginians of 1720," according to Henry Randall, "lived in
baronial splendor; their spacious grounds were bravely ornamented;
their tables were loaded with plate and with the luxuries of the old
and new world; they travelled in state, their coaches dragged by
six horses driven by three postilions. When the Virginia gentleman
went forth with his household his cavalcade consisted of the mounted
white males of the family, the coach and six lumbering through the
sands, and a retinue of mounted servants and led horses bringing
up the rear. In their general tone of character the aristocracy of
Virginia resembled the landed gentry of the mother country. Numbers
of them were highly educated and accomplished by foreign study and
travel. As a class they were intelligent, polished in manners,
high toned, and hospitable, sturdy in their loyalty and in their
adherence to the national church."
Another historian, writing from Virginia in 1720, says: "Several
gentlemen have built themselves large brick houses of many rooms
on a floor, but they don't covet to make them lofty, having extent
enough of ground to build upon, and now and then they are visited
by winds which incommode a towering fabric. Of late they have
sasht their windows with crystal glass; adorning their apartments
with rich furniture. They have their graziers, seedsmen, brewers,
gardeners, bakers, butchers and cooks within themselves, and have a
great plenty and variety of provisions for their table; and as for
spicery and things the country don't produce, they have constant
supplies of 'em from England. The gentry pretend to have their
victuals served up as nicely as the best tables in England."
A quaint old Englishman, Peter Collinson, writes in 1737 to his
friend Bartram when he was about taking Virginia in his field of
botanical explorations: "One thing I must desire of thee, and do
insist that thee oblige me therein: that thou make up that drugget
clothes to go to Virginia in, and not appear to disgrace thyself and
me; for these Virginians are a very gentle, well-dressed people, and
look, perhaps, more at a man's outside than his inside. For these
and other reasons pray go very clean, neat and handsomely dressed to
Virginia. Never mind thy clothes: I will send more another year."
Those were not troublous days of ever changing fashion. Garments
were, for many years, cut after the same patterns, varying mainly
in accordance with the purses of their wearers. "The petticoats of
sarcenet, with black, broad lace printed on the bottom and before;
the flowered satin and plain satin, laced with rich lace at the
bottom," descended from mother to daughter with no change in the
looping of the train or decoration of bodice and ruff. There were
no mails to bring troublesome letters to be answered when writing
was so difficult and spelling so uncertain. Not that there was
the smallest disgrace in bad spelling! Trouble on that head was
altogether unnecessary.
There is not the least doubt that life, notwithstanding its dangers
and limitations and political anxieties, passed happily to these
early planters of Virginia. The lady of the manor had occupation
enough and to spare in managing English servants and negroes, and
in purveying for a table of large proportions. Nor was she without
accomplishments. She could dance well, embroider, play upon the
harpsichord or spinet, and wear with grace her clocked stockings,
rosetted, high-heeled shoes and brave gown of "taffeta and moyre"
looped over her satin quilt.
There was no society column in newspapers to vex her simple soul
by awakening unwholesome ambitions. There was no newspaper until
1736. She had small knowledge of any world better than her own, of
bluer skies, kinder friends, or gayer society. She managed well her
large household, loved her husband, and reared kindly but firmly her
many sons and daughters. If homage could compensate for the cares
of premature marriage, the girl-wife had her reward. She lived in
the age and in the land of chivalry, and her "amiable qualities of
mind and heart" received generous praise. As a matron she was adored
by her husband and her friends. When she said, "Until death do us
part," she meant it. Divorce was unknown; its possibility undreamed
of. However and wherever her lot was cast she endured to the end;
fully assured that when she went to sleep behind the marble slab in
the garden an enumeration of her virtues would adorn her tombstone.
In the light of the ambitions of the present day, the scornful
indifference of the colonists to rank, even among those entitled to
it, is curious. Very rare were the instances in which young knights
and baronets elected to surrender the free life in Virginia and
return to England to enjoy their titles and possible preferment. One
such embryo nobleman is quoted as having answered to an invitation
from the court, "I prefer my land here with plentiful food for my
family to becoming a starvling at court."
Governor Page wrote of his father, Mason Page of Gloucester, born
1718, "He was urged to pay court to Sir Gregory Page whose heir he
was supposed to be but he despised title as much as I do; and would
have nothing to say to the rich, silly knight, who finally died,
leaving his estate to a sillier man than himself--_one Turner_, who,
by act of parliament, took the name and title of Gregory Page."
Everything was apparently settled upon a firm, permanent basis.
Social lines were sharply drawn, understood, and recognized. The
court "at home" across the seas influenced the mimic court at
Williamsburg. Games that had been fashionable in the days of the
cavaliers were popular in Virginia. Horse-racing, cock-fighting,
cards, and feasting, with much excess in eating and drinking, marked
the social life of the subjects of the Georges in Virginia as in the
mother country. It was an English colony,--wearing English garments,
with English manners, speech, customs, and fashions. They had
changed their skies only.
_Coelum, non animum, qui trans mare currunt._
It is difficult to understand that, while custom and outward
observance, friendship, lineage, and close commercial ties bound
the colony to England, forces, of which neither was conscious,
were silently at work to separate them forever. And this without
the stimulus of discontent arising from poverty or want. It was a
time of the most affluent abundance. The common people lived in the
greatest comfort, as far as food was concerned. Fish and flesh,
game, fruits, and flowers, were poured at their feet from a liberal
horn-of-plenty. Deer, coming down from the mountains to feed upon
the mosses that grew on the rocks in the rivers, were shot for the
sake of their skins only, until laws had to be enforced lest the
decaying flesh pollute the air. Painful and hazardous as were the
journeys, the traveller always encumbered himself with abundant
provision for the inner man.
When the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe accomplished the perilous
feat of reaching the summit of the Blue Ridge Mountains, they had
the honor of drinking King George's health in "Virginia red wine,
champagne, brandy, shrub, cider, canary, cherry punch, white wine,
Irish usquebaugh, and two kinds of rum,"--all of which they had
managed to carry along, keeping a sharp lookout all day for Indians,
and sleeping on their arms at night. A few years later we find Peter
Jefferson ordering from Henry Wetherburn, innkeeper, the biggest
bowl of arrack punch ever made, and trading the same with William
Randolph for two hundred acres of land.
We are not surprised to find that life was a brief enjoyment.
Little Mary Ball, demurely reading from the tombstones in the old
St. Stephen's church, had small occasion for arithmetic beyond the
numbers of thirty or forty years--at which age, having "Piously
lived and comfortably died, leaving the sweet perfume of a good
reputation," these light-hearted good livers went to sleep behind
their monuments.
Of course the guardians of the infant colony spent many an anxious
hour evolving schemes for the control of excessive feasting and
junketing. The clergy were forced to ignore excesses, not daring
to reprove them for fear of losing a good living. Their brethren
across the seas cast longing eyes upon Virginia. It was an age
of intemperance. The brightest wits of England, her poets and
statesmen, were "hard drinkers." "All my hopes terminate," said
Dean Swift in 1709, "in being made Bishop of Virginia." There the
Dean, had he been so inclined, could hope for the high living and
hard drinking which were in fashion. There, too, in the tolerant
atmosphere of a new country, he might--who knows?--have felt free to
avow his marriage with the unhappy Stella.
In Virginia the responsibility of curbing the fun-loving community
devolved upon the good burgesses, travelling down in their sloops to
hold session at Williamsburg. We find them making laws restraining
the jolly planters. A man could be presented for gaming, swearing,
drunkenness, selling crawfish on Sunday, becoming engaged to more
than one woman at a time, and, as we have said, there was always the
ducking-stool for "brabbling women who go about from house to house
slandering their neighbors:--a melancholy proof that even in those
Arcadian days the tongue required control."
CHAPTER IX
MARY BALL'S GUARDIAN AND HER GIRLHOOD
Except for the bequest in her brother-in-law's will, nothing
whatever is known of Mary Ball for nine years--indeed, until her
marriage with Augustine Washington in 1730. The traditions of
these years are all based upon the letters found by the Union
soldier,--genuine letters, no doubt, but relating to some other Mary
Ball who, in addition to the flaxen hair and May-blossom cheeks,
has had the honor of masquerading, for nearly forty years, as the
mother of Washington, and of having her story and her letters placed
reverently beneath the corner-stone of the Mary Washington monument.
Mary Ball, only thirteen years old when her mother died, would
naturally be taken to the Westmoreland home of her sister Elizabeth,
wife of Samuel Bonum and only survivor, besides herself, of her
mother's children. Elizabeth was married and living in her own
house seven years before Mrs. Hewes died. The Bonum residence was
but a few miles distant from that of Mrs. Hewes, and a mile and a
half from Sandy Point, where lived the "well-beloved and trusty
friend George Eskridge." Major Eskridge "seated" Sandy Point in
Westmoreland about 1720. The old house was standing until eight
years ago, when it was destroyed by fire. He had seven children; the
fifth child, Sarah, a year older than Mary Ball and doubtless her
friend and companion.
Under the "tutelage and government" of a man of wealth, eminent in
his profession of the law, the two little girls would naturally be
well and faithfully instructed. We can safely assume, considering
all these circumstances, that Mary Ball's girlhood was spent in the
"Northern Neck of Virginia," and at the homes of Major Eskridge and
her only sister; and that these faithful guardians provided her
with as liberal an education as her station demanded and the times
permitted there cannot be the least doubt. Her own affectionate
regard for them is emphatically proven by the fact that she gave
to her first-born son the name of George Eskridge, to another son
that of Samuel Bonum, and to her only daughter that of her sister
Elizabeth.
Tradition tells us that in the latter part of the seventeenth
century, George Eskridge, who was a young law student, while walking
along the shore on the north coast of Wales, studying a law-book,
was suddenly seized by the Press Gang, carried aboard ship and
brought to the colony of Virginia. As the custom was, he was sold
to a planter for a term of eight years. During that time, he was not
allowed to communicate with his friends at home. He was treated very
harshly, and made to lodge in the kitchen, where he slept, because
of the cold, upon the hearth.
On the day that his term of service expired he rose early, and with
his mattock dislodged the stones of the hearth. Upon his master's
remonstrance, he said, "The bed of a departing guest must always
be made over for his successor;" and throwing down his mattock he
strode out of the house, taking with him the law-book which had been
his constant companion during his years of slavery.
He returned to England, completed his law studies, was admitted to
the bar, and, returning to Virginia, was granted many thousand acres
of land, held several colonial positions, and became eminent among
the distinguished citizens of the "Northern Neck,"--the long, narrow
strip of land included between the Potomac and the Rappahannock
rivers. His daughter, Sarah, married Willoughby Newton, and lived
near Bonum Creek in Westmoreland. The family intermarried, also,
with the Lee, Washington, and other distinguished families in the
Northern Neck.
CHAPTER X
YOUNG MEN AND MAIDENS OF THE OLD DOMINION
The social setting for Mary Ball--now a young lady--is easily
defined. It matters little whether she did or did not visit her
brother in England. She certainly belonged to the society of
Westmoreland, "the finest," says Bishop Meade, "for culture and
sound patriotism in the Colony." Around her lived the families of
Mason, Taliaferro, Mountjoy, Travers, Moncure, Mercer, Tayloe,
Ludwell, Fitzhugh, Lee, Newton, Washington, and others well known
as society leaders in 1730. If she was, as her descendants claim
for her, "The Toast of the Gallants of Her Day," these were the
"Gallants,"--many of them the fathers of men who afterward shone
like stars in the galaxy of revolutionary heroes.
The gallants doubtless knew and visited their tide-water
friends,--the Randolphs, Blands, Harrisons, Byrds, Nelsons, and
Carters,--and, like them, followed the gay fashions of the day.
They wrote sonnets and acrostics and valentines to their Belindas,
Florellas, Fidelias, and Myrtyllas--the real names of Molly, Patsy,
Ann, and Mary being reckoned too homespun for the court of Cupid.
These gallants wore velvet and much silk; the long vests that
Charles the Second had invented as "a fashion for gentlemen of all
time"; curled, powdered wigs, silver and gold lace; silken hose and
brilliant buckles. Many of them had been educated abroad, or at
William and Mary College,--where they had been rather a refractory
set, whose enormities must be winked at,--even going so far as to
"keep race-horses at ye college, and bet at ye billiard and other
gaming tables." Whatever their sins or shortcomings, they were
warm-hearted and honorable, and most chivalrous to women. It was
fashionable to present locks of hair tied in true-lovers' knots,
to tame cardinal-birds and mocking-birds for the colonial damsels,
to serenade them with songs and stringed instruments under their
windows on moonlight nights, to manufacture valentines of thinnest
cut paper in intricate foldings, with tender sentiments tucked shyly
under a bird's wing or the petal of a flower.
With the youthful dames themselves, in hoop, and stiff bodice,
powder and "craped" tresses, who cut watch-papers and worked
book-marks for the gallants, we are on terms of intimacy. We know
all their "tricks and manners," through the laughing Englishman,
and their own letters. An unpublished manuscript still circulates
from hand to hand in Virginia, under oath of secrecy, for it
contains a tragic secret, which reveals the true character of the
mothers of Revolutionary patriots. These letters express high
sentiment in strong, vigorous English, burning with patriotism
and ardent devotion to the interests of the united colonies--not
alone to Virginia. The spelling, and absurdly plentiful capitals,
were those of the period, and should provoke no criticism. Ruskin
says, "no beauty of execution can outweigh one grain or fragment
of thought." Beauty of execution and good spelling, according to
modern standards, do not appear in the letters of Mary Ball and her
friends, but they are seasoned with many a grain of good sense and
thought.
Of course we cannot know the names of her best friends. Her social
position entitled her to intimacy with the sisters of any or all of
the "gallants" we have named. She might have known Jane Randolph,
already giving her heart to plain Peter Jefferson, and destined
to press to her bosom the baby fingers that grew to frame the
Declaration of Independence; or Sarah Winston, whose brilliant
talents flashed in such splendor from the lips of Patrick Henry; or
ill-starred Evelyn Byrd, whose beauty had fired the sluggish veins
of George II and inspired a kingly pun upon her name, "Much have I
heard, lady, of thy fair country, but of the beauty of its birds I
know but now,"--all these and more; to say nothing of the mother
of Sally and Molly Cary, of Lucy Grymes, of Betsy Fauntleroy, and
of Mary Bland, each of whom has been claimed by Lossing and others
to be the Lowland beauty, to whom her illustrious son wrote such
wonderful sonnets, but quite impossible in the case of Mary Bland,
seeing she was born in 1704, and was some years older than his
mother.
They were a light-hearted band of maidens in these pre-Revolutionary
days in the "Old Dominion!" They had no dreams sadder than mystic
dreams on bride's cake, no duties except those imposed by affection,
no tasks too difficult, no burdens too heavy. They sang the old-time
songs, and danced the old-time dances, and played the old-time
English games around the Christmas fires, burning nuts, and naming
apple seeds, and loving their loves "with an A or a B," even
although my Lady Castlemaine, of whom no one could approve, had so
entertained her very doubtful friends a hundred years before. They
had the Pyrrhic dances, but they had the Pyrrhic phalanx as well!
The "nobler and manlier lessons" were not forgotten in all the
light-hearted manners of the age.
CHAPTER XI
THE TOAST OF THE GALLANTS OF HER DAY
Of the "Mistress Mary Ball's" personal appearance we know nothing,
unless we can guide our imaginations by the recollections of old
Fredericksburg neighbors who knew her after she had passed middle
age. Washington Irving says she was a beauty and a belle. He had
only one source of information, George Washington Parke Custis, the
sole eye-witness who wrote of her personal appearance in middle
life. Sparks, Lossing, and all the rest who have described her, had
no other. Parson Weems, of course, had something to say; but we do
not know that he ever saw her. Any pen-portrait made of her to-day
can boast only an outline of truth. Probability and imagination must
fill in the picture. It is _certain_ that she was "finely formed,
her features pleasing, yet strongly marked." That is all! Has not
some one said "her eyes were blue"? Well, then, fair hair and fair
complexion would match the blue eyes. She was purely English. Her
mother was probably born in England, her grandmother and grandfather
were certainly born and reared there. Her type was that of an
athletic, healthy Englishwoman, to whom an upright carriage and much
out-of-door life gave a certain style. I, for one, am assured that
she was handsome and distingué,--a superb woman in every particular.
She possessed a pure, high spirit, and
"Every spirit as it is most pure
And hath in it the more of heavenly light--
So it the fairer bodie doth procure
To habit in."
[Illustration: OLD YEOCOMICO CHURCH.]
Imagination and probability join hands in picturing her on
horseback. She was a fearless and expert horsewoman. At thirteen
years of age she had owned her own mount, her own plush saddle.
Now, at twenty, we find her in "habit, hat, and feather" at home
on her own dapple-gray, her brother-in-law's gift--she was too
good a horsewoman for mad gallops--"pacing" through the lanes in
Westmoreland to and fro from Bonum Creek to Sandy Point, or to
Yeocomico church, or to superintend her own fields. Her English
habit is of scarlet cloth, long and flowing as to the skirt and
tightly fitted as to the bodice. Her hat is of beaver, and hat and
floating plume alike are black.
This is a pleasing picture of the mother of our adored Washington,
and it is as true a picture as we have authority for drawing. It
would have helped much if we could have accepted any one of the
portraits claiming to be genuine, although no one of them expresses
the type which we may reasonably suppose to have been hers. Her
own descendants and the wisest historians declare she left no
portrait. A picture, claiming to be such, hangs to-day in Lancaster
court-house--one that was genuine was burned in the home of her
early married life. Handsome and stately she certainly was. Nor
can we suppose from the character developed in her early maternal
life, that she mingled to any extent in the gayeties of her time.
In no letter, no record of any kind, is her name mentioned until
her marriage. She was doubtless always grave, always thoughtful,
concerning herself much with her religious duties, industrious
in womanly occupations, reverently attentive to the services at
Yeocomico church, of which the Eskridge family were members.
We may be sure she was instructed in dancing--the universal
accomplishment of the time. The saintly blind preacher, James
Waddell, had his daughters, to the great scandal of his Presbyterian
followers, taught to dance; his defence being that "no parent has
a right to make his children unfit for polite society." Members of
the Lee, Corbyn, and other influential families of her neighborhood
urged the building of a "Banquetting House"--a rustic casino--in
Pickatown's Field in Westmoreland, according to contracts made
years before, "to make an Honourable treatment fit to entertain
the undertakers thereof, their wives, mistresses (sweethearts) and
friends, yearly and every year;" and the "yearly and every year"
was likely to be construed, as the merry colonists knew well how
to construe all opportunities for pleasure. For despite Francis
Makemie, James Waddell, and the truly evangelical priests of the
Established Church--of whom there were still some--the times went
merrily in old Virginia; and the waters of the York had cooled long
ago the fevered blood of the first martyr to freedom; and Benjamin
Franklin was composing ballads upon "Blackbeard, the pyrate," to
say nothing of rollicking rhymes fit no longer for ears polite; and
Patrick Henry, and Richard Henry Lee, and George Washington were yet
unborn.
The veil of obscurity which hangs over the unmarried life of Mary
Ball will never be lifted. The evidence is all in, the testimony
all taken. It is certain that she could hardly escape the social
round in the gay society of Westmoreland, and quite as certain that
she was not a prominent part of it. When the gardener desires the
perfecting of some flower, to bloom but once in a twelve-month, he
keeps it secluded in some cool, dark spot--only when well rooted
bringing it forth into the sunlight. Thus the mind and character
grow best in quiet and seclusion, becoming serene, strong, and
superior to petty passions. When Mary Ball's hour was come, when
her high vocation was pressed upon her, she was rooted and grounded
in all things requisite for her exalted but difficult lot.
The years of which we have no record included the formative period
of her life. They were dark years in the religious history of the
colony. She could have small help from the clerical guides of
the day. Even at the best, a church service was mainly a social
function,--prayers hurriedly read, perfunctory sermon of short
duration, followed by a social half-hour for the purpose of giving
and accepting invitations to dinner. The dinner ended with the
inevitable punch bowl, over which the clergyman was often the first
to become incapable of pursuing his journey home. It had not been
so very long since a rector of the Wicomoco church had reached the
limit of irreverence. While administering the Communion of the
Lord's Supper, upon tasting the bread, he had cried out to the
church warden, "George, this bread is not fit for a dog."[4]
[4] Foote's "Sketches of Virginia."
A more unwilling witness against the clergy than good Bishop Meade
can hardly be imagined. He tells of one who was for years the
president of a jockey club; of another who was an habitué of the
bar of a country tavern, often seen reeling to and fro with a bowl
of "toddy" in his hands, challenging the passers-by to "come in
and have a drink"; of still another who indulged in a fisticuff
with some of his vestrymen, floored them, and next Sunday preached
a sermon from Nehemiah, "And I contended with them and cursed them
and smote certain of them, and plucked off their hair!" (Let us
hope they were "Gentlemen" and therefore wore the wigs fashionable
in their day. "Plucked off" seems to imply as much.) One of these
recreant rectors fought a duel within the grounds of his own church;
all of them, according to a report made to the Bishop of London,
were either "slothful and negligent" or "debauched and bent on all
manner of vices."
No one of the Established Church ever _gave_ his services. They were
paid for by the piece or dozen like any other merchantable article.
In St. Stephen's parish the vestry book, in 1712, records the price
of sermons, for instance, to "Rev. John Bell for eight sermons 450
pounds of tobacco apiece." The Rev. Mr. Lechardy rated his eloquence
at a lower figure, "for two sermons 600 pounds of tobacco," etc.
Notwithstanding the velvet and lace, the powder, perfume, and
high-flown compliments of "the gallants of the early eighteenth
century" license of speech was universal. Colonel Byrd, the courtly
master of Westover, wrote letters too gross for the pages of a
reputable magazine. Swearing among women was as common as in the
"spacious times of great Elizabeth." From all this, no tutelage and
government, however careful, could insure escape. In spite of all
this and more, Mary Ball acquired the refinement and moderation of
speech by which she was characterized.
CHAPTER XII
HER MARRIAGE AND EARLY LIFE
"The 'Rose of Epping Forest,'" says one of her descendants, "and
'reigning Belle of the Northern Neck,' as she was universally
styled, would, in common parlance, be called 'hard to please,' in
that, in times when marriages were early she did not resign her
sceptre until she had attained the then ripe age of twenty-two--not
'love-inspiring sixteen,' as Parson Weems would have us believe. In
this she exhibited that consummate wisdom, calm equipoise of soul,
and perfect self-control so strikingly displayed throughout her
subsequent career."
She was blessed then with the priceless gift of a long and happy
girlhood--that sweet fountain of pure waters, the memory of which
has cheered so many women throughout a long and difficult life. In
her day so late a marriage was not only eccentric but something to
be condemned as unwise. The reluctant Virginia belle was warned that
those who "walked through the woods with a haughty spirit would have
to stoop at last and pick up a crooked stick." That women could
stand alone was unthinkable in those days. A staff was essential,
and she who scorned the stately saplings of the forest would surely
be forced at last to accept some inferior windfall.
But Mary Ball chose wisely and well; of this we may be sure.
Augustine Washington died before he could earn the honor of
impressing her life or that of his illustrious son.
He belonged to an old English family which had sent two of its
members to Virginia early in the seventeenth century, and, as we
have seen, his grandfather held positions of honor and trust in the
colony.
With the origin of his crest,--the closed visor, the soaring
raven,--with the motto _Excitus acta probat_, we need not concern
ourselves. The shield itself is more to our purpose, for it
furnished the pattern for the Stars and Stripes of this country;
and is surely of all insignia the most distinguished, since in all
lands, on all waters, amid all the emblems of the pride of the
world, it stands preëminent as the emblem of freedom won by valor.
It should be quite enough for us to know, "He was a gentleman of
high standing, noble character, large property and considerable
personal attractions, being of fair complexion, tall stature,
commanding presence and an age not disproportioned to her own."
He was a neighbor of Major George Eskridge, although their homes
were fifteen or twenty miles distant from each other. We have all
supposed that he followed Mary Ball to England and was married
there. Possibly, not probably. He was a plain Virginia planter,
immersed in business and domestic cares, and it is not probable that
he went to England in quest of Mary Ball. Why should he cross the
ocean to gather the flower that grew at his threshold?
It is much more likely that he rode over to attend service in the
handsome, recently erected Yeocomico church, and to visit George
Eskridge at Sandy Point, coming with his first wife and their little
boys, Lawrence and Augustine. Elizabeth Bonum lived a mile and a
half from Sandy Point. It is quite certain that all the families
in this hospitable region knew and visited each other. Mary Ball
probably knew Augustine Washington well, long before he was a
widower.
All this seems prosaic by contrast with the legend that "the
fair American" met her future husband while she was visiting
her half-brother in a Berkshire town in England; that one day a
gentleman was thrown from his travelling chariot in front of her
brother's gate, was seriously injured, brought in and nursed by the
fair hands of Mary herself; that love and marriage followed in short
order; that the pair lived several years in a villa at Cookham. All
this is so much more attractive than a plain story of propinquity
and old-fashioned neighborhood friendship, blossoming into a
temperate, middle-aged, old-fashioned widower-love and marriage! But
we are constrained to accept the latter, having no proof of anything
better. Besides, where were Lawrence and Augustine during all those
halcyon years? Who was looking after those lambs while the Shepherd
was disporting himself at villas in Cookham?
The snows had melted from the violet beds, and the "snow-birds"
were nesting in the cedars when our Mary left her girlhood's home
to become the wife of Augustine Washington. Her new home was a
large, old-fashioned house on the banks of the Potomac--one of those
dwellings with great low-stretching roof, which always reminds me of
a gigantic fowl brooding with expanded wings over its young. It was
not one of the imposing colonial houses just then (March 6, 1730) in
process of erection. Marion Harland says, in her reverent "Story of
Mary Washington": "Augustine Washington's plantation of Wakefield
rested upon the Potomac, and was a mile in width. Wakefield
comprised a thousand acres of as fine wood and bottom land as were
to be found in a county that by reason of the worth, talents and
patriotism that adorned it was called the Athens of Virginia. The
house faced the Potomac, the lawn sloping to the bank between three
and four hundred yards distant from the 'porch,' running from corner
to corner of the old dwelling. There were four rooms of fair size
upon the first floor, the largest in a one-story extension in the
back being the chamber. The high roof above the main building was
pierced by dormer windows that lighted a large attic. At each end of
the house was a chimney built upon the outside of the frame dwelling
and of dimensions that made the latter seem disproportionately
small. Each cavernous fireplace would hold half a cord of wood.
About the fireplace in the parlor were the blue Dutch tiles much
affected in the decorative architecture of the time." Here we can
fancy the bride, covertly exploring her new home and scanning
the footprints of her predecessor; keeping her own counsel, but
instructing herself as to what manner of woman had first enthroned
herself in the bosom of her lord.
It appears she was arrested in this voyage of discovery by a small
but rare treasure of books. Standing before the diamond-paned
"secretary," she examined one volume after another. Finally, turning
over the leaves of one, she read: "On Moderation and Anger," "On
Self-Denial," "On ye Vanity and Vexation which ariseth from Worldly
Hope and Expectation." These seemed to her words of wisdom by which
one might be guided. The title-page announced "Sir Matthew Hale's
Contemplations," the fly-leaf revealed the name of the owner, the
first wife, "Jane Washington." Finding the ink-horn, she wrote
firmly beneath, "And Mary Washington"--probably the first time
she had written the new name. We all know the rest: how this book
of England's learned Judge never left her side; how she read it
to her stepsons and her own sons; how it was reverenced by George
Washington; how it is treasured to-day at our National Mecca, Mount
Vernon.
CHAPTER XIII
BIRTHPLACE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON
At the Wakefield house was born, Feb. 22, 1732, the eldest son of
this superb specimen of young American womanhood. There is not the
least doubt that he was in every respect "a fine boy" and worthy of
the best name his mother could give him.
[Illustration: Monument at Wakefield marking the Birthplace of
George Washington.]
She did not follow the invariable custom of colonial Virginians. He
was not called "John" or "Augustine" or "Joseph" after his father
or grandfathers. He was given the first name of the "Trusty and
well-beloved George Eskridge,"--a fact which has hitherto escaped
the notice of biographers,--and no more significant tribute could
have been paid to faithful guardianship. According to Virginia
customs, her only daughter would naturally have been named for her
mother and grandmother, but here, again, affectionate gratitude for
an elder sister's love to a motherless girl decided the name.
The old house with the brooding wings burned down soon after--the
thrifty young housewife setting fire to it, not by "warming her
posset," but in her zealous burning up of the leaves and débris of
her garden. Her husband was absent at the time, but she saved some
furniture and Sir Matthew Hale--and we read that the family "dined
that day" in apparent content "in the kitchen." It is certain there
was no great loss of pictures, hangings, bric-a-brac, bibelots, and
the ten thousand trifles with which the housewife of a later day
would have been encumbered. In the old wills, after disposition had
been made of the bed, furniture, and "Rugg," there seems to have
been little worth the dignity of a bequest. The rug--always included
with the bed and its belongings--was the only carpet in general use
in 1730. Besides these, a chamber could boast of little except a
tall table surmounted by a small mirror, before which one must stand
in arranging the head-dress only (for no part of the person lower
than the head could be reflected), and a grandfather chair drawn
near the ample fireplace. Both table and chair were covered in white
linen or Virginia cotton cloth,--the toilet cover embroidered by
the ladies of the family. Similar embroidery or a bit of brocade
adorned the pin-cushion, which was an important article, conserving
as it did the scarce, imported English pins--clumsy, blunt affairs,
with a bit of twisted wire for the head which was always coming off.
Furniture was hard, stiff, and unyielding, not one whit more
luxurious in shape and cushioning than the furniture of the Greeks,
and without the charm of grace or beauty.
Moreover, it was, unhappily, built to last forever. Backs might
break on the hard chairs, but the chairs never! Beds, however, were
piled high with feathers, bolster, and pillows, and bed-curtains
were _de rigueur_. Dickens complained, among the horrors of his
early days in America, that he actually had no bed-curtains. Poor
indeed must be the house that could not afford "fallens," _i.e._
_valence_, around the "tester" and the bottom of the bedstead. This
ancient appanage of a man of quality, as early as in Chaucer's time,
was sometimes richly embroidered with pearls.
"Now is Albano's marriage-bed new hung
With fresh rich curtaines! Now are my Valence up
Imbost with orient pearles."
Losing her bed and valence, Mary Washington would have lost
everything! Her dining-table and chairs were of the plainest. There
were no sideboards in her day anywhere--no mahogany until 1747.
As to her best room, her parlor, she probably was content with a
harpsichord, a table, and chairs. Great fires glorified every room
in winter, and in summer the gaping, black fireplace was filled with
cedar boughs and plumy asparagus.
The colonial Virginian lived much out of doors. Driven in by a storm
he would find shelter in his "porch" and remain there until the
storm was over. His house was a good enough place to eat and sleep
in, but beauty in house-furnishing never inspired ambition. _That_
was fully gratified if he could welcome a guest to a good dinner,
and interest him afterwards in a fine horse or two and a pack of
foxhounds.
That Augustine Washington's house should burn down was perfectly
consistent and natural. Everything in colonial Virginia was burned
sooner or later,--dwelling-houses, court-houses with their records,
tobacco-houses with their treasures of Orinoko or Sweet-scented.
Nearer than the spring at the foot of the hill was no water, and,
except the pail borne on the head of the negro, no extinguishing
appliance whatever. Churches did not burn down for the very good
reason that they were never lighted or heated; thus insuring that
mortification of the body so good for the health of the soul. In
winter little stoves of perforated tin, containing coals or heated
bricks, were borne up the aisles by footmen and placed beneath the
feet of the colonial dames. Otherwise the slippered feet would
surely have frozen!
It has been a favorite fashion with historians to picture the
Wakefield house as an humble four-roomed dwelling. Americans love to
think that their great men were cradled in poverty, but excavations
have been recently made which develop the foundations of a large
residence. One is inclined to wonder when and by whom the pictures
were made of the birthplace of Washington, which was destroyed
by fire before there was a newspaper to print a description or
picture in Virginia. That the sketch of any visitor or member of
the family should have been preserved nearly two hundred years is
impossible. Why should it have been made at all? Nobody living in
the unpretending house had then interested the world. Every such
picture is from the imagination, pure and simple, of Mr. Prudhomme,
who made the first for a New York publishing house. He was probably
as accurate as he could be, but the house faced the road, not the
river, and the latter flowed at the bottom of a hill in the rear of
the mansion.
In the town of Quincy, in Massachusetts, the old home of John and
Abigail Adams still stands, built in 1716, according to "a truthful
brick found in the quaint old chimney." Pious hands have preserved
this house, restored it, filled it with just such furniture and
draperies and garments as were preserved by those who lived in the
year 1750. There the house stands--an object lesson to all who care
for truth about the old colonial farm-houses. Beauty, genius, and
patriotism dwelt in this house. From it the master went forth to
the courts of France and England and to become the President of the
United States; and on the little table in the front room Abigail,
the accomplished lady of beauty and talent, wrote, "This little
Cottage has more comfort and satisfaction for you than the courts of
Royalty."
The colonial houses of Virginia were larger, but yet were modest
dwellings. They became more ambitious in 1730, but Augustine
Washington's home had made a history of happiness and sorrow, birth
and death, before our Mary entered it.
The universal plan of the Virginia house of 1740 included four
rooms, divided by a central "passage" (never called a "hall")
running from front to rear and used as the summer sitting room of
the family. From this a short staircase ascended to dormer-windowed
rooms above. As the family increased in numbers one-story rooms and
"sheds" were tacked on wherever they were needed, without regard
to architectural effect, growing around a good chimney and even
enclosing a tree valued for its shade. The old house rambled about,
as the land lay, so rooms were often ascended by one or more steps.
I fancy this was the case with the Wakefield house--Mary Washington,
her fast-coming babies, and her very large family connection
demanding more room than did Jane with her two little boys.
The iron bar across the front folding-door of a colonial Virginian
house was never put up in summer except in a thunder-storm. The door
stood open, and proud and happy were master, mistress, children, and
servants when it was thronged with friendly neighbors or wandering
tourists from abroad. They were welcome to come, and to stay! One
instance of a visit lasted three years; another thirteen years! Not
once was the contented guest ever reminded that he had worn out his
welcome! One marvels that time was found for all this hospitality.
It was simply the prime occupation and duty of life; and then
fashions in garments were not always changing, and the housewife had
no bric-a-brac to dust and keep in order.
The Wakefield house, be it large or small, well or poorly appointed,
had the honor of being the birthplace of our adored Washington, and
there, or at the nearest church, he was baptized. Mildred Gregory,
Augustine Washington's sister, held him in her arms and renounced
for him "the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the
world" and all the "sinful desires of the flesh," promising that he
would "obediently keep God's holy will and commandments and walk in
the same all the days of his life."
[Illustration: George Washington's Apron.]
His baptismal robe is still in existence--or was, on the 22d of
February, 1850, when Virginia's monument in his honor was unveiled
in Richmond.
[Illustration: BEWDLEY.]
The Masonic orator of the day, Mr. R. G. Scott, exhibited, with
Washington's sash, apron, and gloves, the small silk mantle in which
he was baptized,--a sacred relic still preserved, no doubt, by the
Masonic Lodge of Richmond or Fredericksburg.
Mildred Gregory was then a widow. Her three beautiful daughters
(destined to take and keep the hearts of a family of Thorntons) were
present at the christening and full of interest in their Aunt Mary
and her first boy. Uncle Augustine did not signify! He had two boys
already. Were they not ordinary, commonplace fellows--their own
everyday playmates?
The proud young mother hastened to present her fine boy to her own
kindred, and when he was a month old she took him to visit her
cousin, Major James Ball at "Bewdley," in Lancaster County. The
house still stands that sheltered George Washington in infancy.
If any one wishes to know the probable appearance and extent of
the house in which he was born, the two-hundred-year-old house at
Bewdley will perhaps furnish the most accurate example. The steep,
double-storied roof, the heavy, outside chimneys, the old kitchen in
the yard, are all characteristics.
Probably the Wakefield house was never rebuilt. Fifty years ago a
solitary chimney, and a small, engraved stone marked the birthplace
of George Washington; the stone, the first monument ever dedicated
to his memory, having been placed there by the pious hands of George
Washington Parke Custis. A better stone, protected by an iron
railing, now marks the spot.
CHAPTER XIV
THE CHERRY TREE AND LITTLE HATCHET
Whether the immortal cherry tree grew at this home on the Potomac,
or on the farm on the Rappahannock to which the family moved, we
are not instructed by the imaginings of "Parson Weems," Washington
Irving, and others; but the hatchet, if the cherry tree grew in
Westmoreland, must have been a very "little hatchet," indeed, for
Augustine Washington removed to a seat opposite Fredericksburg when
George was a small boy.
And just here the writer begs leave to enter a plea for the life of
this cherry tree! Irreverent biographers sneer at it as "a myth."
We have sacrificed much to truth. We have wiped from our canvas all
the "gay gallants" of Williamsburg, the love-lorn wandering curate,
"Sister Susie," the life in England, the charming portrait! Really,
we cannot give up our cherry tree! It is deeply rooted. It has
flourished more than one hundred and fifty years. Its lessons and
its fruits are the crowning glory of the board on the twenty-second
day of February. We positively decline to bury the little hatchet or
uproot the cherry tree!
[Illustration: Pohick Church, Mount Vernon, Virginia.]
"Parson Weems," who first told the story of the little hatchet,
was an Episcopal clergyman well known to General Washington. His
"Life of Washington" appeared several years before the great
man's death. "It was read by him and mildly commended," says one
writer. Certainly it was never contradicted. Parson Weems was an
eccentric character, but so kind and charitable that his "oriental
imagination" was indulgently condoned by his neighbors. He claimed
to have been rector of Pohick church which was attended by General
Washington. Not even this was contradicted at the time, and is
given the benefit of a doubt by the accurate old Bishop Meade
himself. He loved to make people happy. He would preach to the poor
negroes and then fiddle for them to dance. He probably believed with
George Herbert that:--
"A verse may find him who a sermon flies
And turn delight into a sacrifice."
He was a charming historian. If there were no interesting facts to
mitigate the dryness of a narrative, why then, of course, something
must be invented! So "his books have been read," says Bishop Meade,
"by more persons than those of Marshall, Ramsey, Bancroft and Irving
put together." Evidently the good bishop at heart liked him. He
thought him probably "too good for banning, too bad for blessing,"
but he admired, nevertheless, "the pathos and elegance of his
writings." Now, if General Washington did not stamp the cherry-tree
story as a falsehood, and if Bishop Meade does not contradict it, we
may leave it, as they did, to flower and fruit for the teaching of
American children.
The title of the clergyman's book was, "The Life of George
Washington; With Curious Anecdotes, Equally Honourable to Himself
and Exemplary to His Young Countrymen. By M. L. Weems, Formerly
Rector of Mount Vernon Parish." It may be interesting to relate the
original cherry-tree story as it appeared in this quaint little
book. The author says it was communicated to him by "an aged lady
who was a distant relative, and who, when a girl, spent much of
her time in the family." How convenient the aged lady, the distant
relative, has always been in tradition!
"When George was about six years old he was made the wealthy master
of a hatchet; of which, like most little boys, he was immoderately
fond, and was constantly going about chopping everything that came
in his way. One day in the garden, where he often amused himself
hacking his mother's pea sticks, he unluckily tried the edge of
his hatchet on the body of a beautiful young English cherry tree,
which he barked so terribly that I don't believe the tree ever
got the better of it. The next morning the old gentleman, finding
out what had befallen this tree, which, by the way, was a great
favorite, came into the house, and with much warmth asked for the
mischievous author, declaring at the same time that he would not
have taken five guineas for the tree. Nobody could tell him anything
about it. Presently George and his hatchet made their appearance.
'George,' said his father, 'do you know who killed that beautiful
little cherry tree yonder in the garden?' This was a tough question
and George staggered under it for a moment, but quickly recovered
himself, and looking at his father with the sweet face of youth,
brightened with the inexpressible charm of all-conquering truth, he
bravely cried out, 'I can't tell a lie, Pa, you know I can't tell
a lie. I did cut it with my little hatchet.' 'Run to my arms, you
dearest boy,' cried his father in transports; 'run to my arms; glad
am I, George, that you killed my tree, for you have paid me for it a
thousand fold. Such an act of heroism in my son is worth more than
a thousand trees, though blossomed with silver and their fruits of
purest gold.'
"It was in this way," adds Parson Weems, tagging on his moral, "by
interesting at once both his head and heart, that Mr. Washington
conducted George with great ease and pleasure along the happy paths
of pleasure."
CHAPTER XV
THE YOUNG WIDOW AND HER FAMILY
Augustine Washington selected a fine site on the banks of the
Rappahannock opposite Fredericksburg, and near "Sting Ray Island,"
where the very fishes of the stream had resented the coming of
Captain John Smith. The name of this home was Pine Grove. "The
situation was commanding[5] and the garden and orchard in better
cultivation than those they had left. The house was like that at
Wakefield, broad and low with the same number of rooms upon the
ground floor, one of them in the shed-like extension at the back;
and the spacious attic was over the main building. It had its name
from a noble body of trees near it, but was also known by the old
neighbors as 'Ferry Farm.' There was no bridge over the Rappahannock
and communication was had with the town by the neighboring ferry."
"Those who wish to associate Washington," says another writer, "with
the grandeurs of stately living in his youth, would find all their
theories dispelled by a glimpse of the modest dwelling where he
spent his boyhood years. But nature was bountiful in its beauties
in the lovely landscape that stretched before it. In Overwharton
parish, where it was situated, the family had many excellent
neighbors, and there came forth from this little home a race of men
whose fame could gather no splendor had the roofs which sheltered
their childhood been fretted with gold and blazoned with diamonds.
The heroic principle in our people does not depend for perpetuity
on family trees and ancestral dignities, still less on baronial
mansions."
[5] "Story of Mary Washington," Marion Harland.
Augustine Washington died in 1743, at the age of forty-nine, at
Pine Grove, leaving two sons of his first wife, and four sons and
one daughter our Mary had borne to him, little Mildred having died
in infancy. We know then the history of those thirteen years, the
birth of six children, the death of one, finally the widowhood and
desolation of the mother.
At the time of his father's death, George Washington was only ten
years of age. He had been heard to say that he knew little of his
father except the remembrance of his person and of his parental
fondness. To his mother's forming care he himself ascribed the
origin of his fortune and his fame.
Mary Washington was not yet thirty-six, the age at which American
women are supposed to attain their highest physical perfection.
Her husband had left a large estate under her management to be
surrendered in portions as each child reached majority. Their lands
lay in different parts of the country,--Fairfax, Stafford, King
George, and Westmoreland. She found herself a member of a large and
influential society, which had grown rapidly in wealth, importance,
and elegance of living since her girlhood and early married life
in Westmoreland. Her stepson, Lawrence, married a few months after
his father's death, and she was thus allied to the Fairfaxes of
Belvoir--allied the more closely because of the devotion of Lawrence
to her own son George. Lawrence, with his pretty Anne Fairfax, had
gone to live on his inherited estate of "Hunting Creek," which he
made haste to rechristen in honor of an English admiral, famous for
having recently reduced the town and fortifications at Porto Bello;
famous also for having reduced the English sailors' rum by mixing
it with water. He was wont to pace his decks wrapped in a grogram
cloak. The irate sailors called him, and the liquor he had spoiled,
"Old Grog." The irreverent, fun-loving Virginians at once caught up
the word, and henceforth all unsweetened drinks of brandy or rum and
water were "grog," and all unstable partakers thereof "groggy."
Mary Washington, young, handsome, and the mistress of a fine
estate, was closely connected by ties of kindred with nearly all of
the families we shall describe hereafter. She could have elected
for herself a gay life of social pleasure, and could have been
a prominent figure in that life. The pictures we have of her
were nearly all drawn by George Washington Parke Custis, whose
authorities were the old neighbors who knew and remembered her well
at a later day, and in their turn had gathered impressions from the
companions of her early womanhood.
"She is the most excellent woman," says Goethe, "who when the
husband dies, becomes as a father to the children."
This was the part which Mary Washington, in her thirty-sixth year,
elected to perform for her five fatherless children,--George,
Elizabeth, Samuel, John Augustine, and Charles. Pleasing stories
are told of how the young widow would gather her brood around her,
reading them lessons from some good book, and then repairing to
her domestic tasks. She exacted the strictest obedience from her
children. She directed alike their amusements and their education,
manifesting in her administration of family affairs great good
sense, resolution, and business capacity.
Mr. Custis often visited her in his childhood, and although too
young to appreciate her, has gathered material for a noble tribute
to the youthful matron, which is best given in his own words:--
"Bred in those domestic and independent habits which graced the
Virginia matrons in the old days of Virginia," says Mr. Custis,
"this lady, by the death of her husband, became involved in the
cares of a young family, at a period when those cares seem more
especially to claim the aid and control of the stronger sex.
It was left for this eminent woman, by a method the most rare,
by an education and discipline the most peculiar and imposing,
to form in the youth-time of her son those great and essential
qualities which gave lustre to the glories of his after-life.
If the school savored the more of the Spartan than the Persian
character, it was a fitter school to form a hero, destined to be
the ornament of the age in which he flourished, and a standard
of excellence for ages yet to come.
"The home of Mrs. Washington, of which she was always mistress,
was a pattern of order. There the levity and indulgence common
to youth were tempered by a deference and well-regulated
restraint, which, while it neither suppressed nor condemned any
rational enjoyment used in the springtime of life, prescribed
those enjoyments within the bounds of moderation and propriety.
Thus the chief was taught the duty of obedience, which prepared
him to command. Still the mother held in reserve an authority
which never departed from her, even when her son had become the
most illustrious of men. It seemed to say, 'I am your mother,
the being who gave you life, the guide who directed your steps
when they needed a guardian: my maternal affection drew forth
your love; my authority constrained your spirit; whatever may be
your success or your renown, next to your God, your reverence is
due to me.' Nor did the chief dissent from the truths; but to
the last moments of his venerable parent, yielded to her will
the most dutiful and implicit obedience, and felt for her person
and character the highest respect, and the most enthusiastic
attachment.
"Such were the domestic influences under which the mind of
Washington was formed; and that he not only profited by, but
fully appreciated, their excellence and the character of his
mother, his behavior toward her at all times testified."
It was of the first importance that she should take care of the
inheritance of her children. She must keep the land together and
glean from it maintenance and education for her four boys and her
daughter.
Virginians were taught to hold their land at any sacrifice. "Never
part from your land, boys!" said Frances Bland Randolph to John
Randolph and his brother. "Keep your land and your land will keep
you!" And yet this plan did not insure competence. Land would keep
the family, it is true, but afford small margin for education. Mary
Washington realized this and wisely prepared her sons to earn their
own living.
She sent George to an old-field school of Master Hobby, the sexton
of the parish church, and then under his brother Lawrence's guidance
to Master Williams. During one winter he rode on horseback ten
miles to school every morning, returning home at night to prepare
his tasks for the next day. At another time he ferried himself
across the Rappahannock to his "day-school,"--the old academy at
Fredericksburg, afterwards attended by Madison and Monroe. He was
never sent, like other gentlemen's sons, to a college or university
at home or abroad. Conscious of this, he was probably the more
diligent to overcome by his own industry all deficiencies of
opportunity.
He proved an apt scholar, and soon possessed the rudiments of a
practical education, which was expanded in later life by reading
into scholarly accomplishments. But it was she, the mother, who
first cast his mind and heart in the right mould.
This schooling, supplemented by his own study and experience, was
his only foundation for that "thorough knowledge of the technical
part of his profession, that skill in military combinations, and
extraordinary gifts of military administration," which has won
the unstinted praise of England's brilliant historian. But it was
from the training of early habits by his watchful mother that he
became, as Lecky adds, "punctual, methodical, and exact in the
highest degree, managing the minute details so essential to the
efficiency of an army." From his mother he inherited qualities
which she herself possessed in an eminent degree,--"a rare form of
courage which can endure long-continued suspense, bear the weight
of great responsibility, and encounter, without shrinking, risks of
misrepresentation and unpopularity."
She early proved herself to be a strong, self-reliant woman, with
executive ability and a supreme power of awing and governing others.
Her life was given to her children and to the care of a thriving
plantation; to sowing, and planting, and reaping; to the rearing
of fine, blooded cattle. Her children had a plain, abundant,
comfortable home, and led healthy out-of-door lives. She made Truth
and Honor her handmaidens, and in their defence ruled her house
with austerity, that "austerity in woman so often the accompaniment
of a rare power of loving, causing love to be piety, tenderness,
religion, devotion strong as death."
Surrounding her children with all the comforts of a well-governed
household, she loved them, taught them, persuaded them. If all
failed, if Sir Matthew Hale was in vain, and headlong youth yielded
not when the right was at issue, she did not disdain to command
another influence, pliant, pungent, prompt, and most convincing,--a
bundle of keen rods gathered daily from the friendly peach tree!
This lay always upon her historic table, or found place in her
capacious pockets when she went abroad. It was the presence of this
ally, offensive and defensive, which made harder the telling of the
truth and enhanced the sublimity of virtue.
Tradition insists that she possessed a high spirit, passionate,
lofty, intense, and yet under the most magnificent control; that her
feelings were so deep and strong she durst not show them, durst not
even recognize them, lest they should master her. "A lady," says
Andrew Lang, "is a woman of high breeding, high passion and high
courage." Mary Washington was a lady! She was tender, gracious,
and courteous to her neighbors in humble station, but to them as to
others she made hard the way of the transgressor. Yet she knew how
to excuse and forgive.
Tradition relates that when George was a fine, big boy of twelve,
he was fired with ambition to conquer the spirit of an exceedingly
valuable colt which had never permitted the near approach of man
or boy. One morning early this feat was achieved. George with his
brothers having chased the rebel into a corner of the pasture, he
vaulted upon the back of the dangerous animal, which plunged forward
so madly that a blood-vessel was ruptured, dying, like the Indian,
with a broken heart sooner than submit.
There were five anxious faces around the breakfast table that
morning! Presently the mother forced matters to an issue by asking:
"Boys, have you seen my fine sorrel colt lately? Is he as big as his
sire?"
Four pairs of eyes were turned to George, who unhesitatingly
answered: "Madam, that horse possessed an ungovernable spirit which
had to be conquered. I mounted him this morning, and he plunged
violently and killed himself." The mother's face flushed for a
moment, and then she said quietly: "That seems to be a pity! But I
am proud and grateful for my brave, truthful son!"
This son was always a prince among boys, as he was afterwards a
king among men. Strong, brave, athletic, with a grand air, he became
the prime favorite of his aristocratic brother Lawrence, whom he
often visited at Mount Vernon, and who desired to place him in the
service of the crown. In 1747, when George was in his fourteenth
year, a midshipman's warrant was obtained for him by his brother
Lawrence, and he embraced with boyish ardor the idea of going to sea.
While the matter was in doubt, however, his English uncle, Joseph
Ball, wrote to his sister: "I understand that you have been advised
to put your son George to sea. I think he had better be apprentice
to a tinker; for a common sailor before the mast has by no means the
liberty of a subject; for they will cut and slash him and use him
like a negro, or rather like a dog. He must not be too hasty to be
rich, but go on gently with patience as things will naturally go,
without aiming to be a fine gentleman before his time," etc. The
ship that was to carry him into the service of his most Gracious
Majesty, George the Second, was riding at anchor in the Potomac with
the young midshipman's luggage on board, but when the hour came for
him to sail his mother braved the chance of Lawrence's displeasure,
and forbade him to go!
The great trials of her life were henceforth to come through her
crowning glory and pride. Her splendid boy, only fifteen years
old, entered, as surveyor to Lord Fairfax, a life of hardship and
peril, exposed to hourly danger from the Indians, and to the rigors
of inclement winters. The eaglet had flown from the nest, never to
return. Henceforth her straining eyes might strive to follow--they
could never recall him.
[Illustration: Mrs. Washington persuades George not to go to Sea.]
The lands to be surveyed lay in the wilderness beyond the Blue
Ridge. There the boy of sixteen matched himself against fatigue,
danger, and privations of every kind, and found himself equal to
them all. He became familiar with the frontier people--the Indians
and settlers. There he unconsciously trained himself for his future
career.
Just at this time, when Fate sent him into the wilderness as
preparation for the stern life ordained for him, the gentle god
of Love was experimenting with his virgin heart. Among the yellow
papers, which were tied in bundles and preserved in the deep drawers
of the old secretary at "Pine Grove," behold the following acrostic,
dated 1747, when the lad was fifteen:--
"From your bright sparkling eyes I was undone.
Rays you have--more transparent than ye Sun
Amidst its Glory in ye Rising Day.
None can you equal in y^r bright array.
Constant in y^r Calm, Unspotted Mind--
Equal toe all, will toe none Prove kind.
Soe knowing, seldom One soe young you'll find."
Who was Frances? Was she responsible for the "hurt of the heart
uncurable," of which he wrote a few months later? Alas, we shall
never know! Her Rays were all dimmed before Parson Weems appeared to
take notes and print them.
At least we have this fragment of boyhood love, and can enrol her
name as the _first_ of his five sweethearts.
There is also a relic of his work for Lord Fairfax. Underneath the
veranda at Capon Springs in West Virginia lies the trunk of one of
the trees that the young surveyor marked with his hatchet. At least,
it was there ten years ago!
CHAPTER XVI
BETTY WASHINGTON, AND WEDDINGS IN OLD VIRGINIA
In 1746 young Fielding Lewis came up from his family seat at
Marmion, bringing General Washington's aunt, Catharine Washington,
as his wife, and made his home at Kenmore in Fredericksburg. They
were married just one year before the birth of little John Lewis,
and Mrs. Henry Lee (the mother of "Light-horse Harry") and Mrs.
Mary Washington were godmothers. (Five times was this little fellow
destined to be married, and if a problem of involved relationship
be in order, he could furnish it. His first two wives were the
granddaughters of his great-aunt, Mildred Gregory, and his _last_
wife great-granddaughter of _her_ last husband!) But to return
to Fielding Lewis and Catharine (Washington) Lewis: the next
year (1748) Frances was born, George Washington (aged sixteen),
godfather--the next year (1749) the third child was born, and then
the poor young mother, having borne a child every year, was gathered
to her fathers and her children (January, 1750). All these events
were of keen interest to the family at "Pine Grove." In all these
functions nobody was more sympathetic than Betty Washington, now a
handsome maiden of seventeen. She took her little orphan cousins to
her heart, and in two months she comforted also the forlorn widower,
and became his wife.
[Illustration: Kenmore House.]
There is not the least doubt that she was given away by her
brother George, now eighteen years of age, and that Samuel, John
Augustine, and Charles, handsome, well-grown lads, were present
at her wedding. Charles was twelve years old; Samuel, sixteen.
Elizabeth was "a fine young woman." Describing her, Mr. Custis
used a favorite word of the day. Majesty being the highest of all
places, "Majestic" was the highest of all praise. Colonial beauties
were rarely described as "graceful," "winsome," "exquisite,"
"lovely"; they were "stately," "majestic," "queenly." They wore
stately garments,--paduasoy, from _soie de Padua_, where the strong,
lustrous silk so much worn by men and women was manufactured,
or "tabby" velvet and silk, the rich watered oriental fabric
manufactured in Attabya, a quarter in Bagdad. These were the
grandest, the most sumptuous fabrics known. The wife of Goldsmith's
Vicar was proud of her crimson paduasoy (the silk had given its name
to a garment). Samuel Pepys could not afford the genuine article,
but he boasted a "wastecoat of false tabby." Of course, a majestic
woman wore these rich materials, "silk gowns wad stand on end"
like the gowns of Dumbiedike's grandmother. Who could be majestic
in clinging, willowy chiffon? Elizabeth Washington, known by the
diminutive "Betty," undoubtedly enhanced her majesty by one or more
of these gowns made in the fashion invented by the artist Watteau.
As to the rest, we know she was "mannerly." Stately gowns befitted
stately manners. People "Sirred and Madamed" each other in true
Johnsonian style, with many a low courtesy, veiling the bosom with
outspread fan, and many a profound bow with hand on heart. There was
leisure for all this before the day of the trolley car and steam
car, or even the stage and omnibus; when in towns visits were made
at ten in the morning, and the visitors sent hither and thither in
sedan-chairs. Young ladies of her day were expert horsewomen. Those
of us who saw the portrait of Betty Washington at the Centennial in
New York can imagine her handsome figure on horseback. "She was a
most majestic woman," said Mr. Custis, adding that he perfectly well
remembered her, "and was so strikingly like the Chief her brother,
that it was a matter of frolic to throw a cloak around her, and
then place a military cap on her head: and such was the perfect
resemblance that had she appeared on her brother's steed, battalions
would have presented arms, and senates risen to do homage to the
chief." She adored her brother, and was proud to be so like him.
"Be good," she would say to her young friends in after life, "and I
will be General Washington for you!" Tying her hair in a cue, and
crowning it with a cocked hat, she would take a sword and masquerade
to their infinite amusement. She and her brother closely resembled
their mother in form, carriage, and the contour of their faces. They
inherited her splendid health, her mental strength, and her sterling
virtues--but _not_ her seriousness which grew to be a settled
sadness. Betty Washington was as merry-hearted a maiden as might be
found in that merry time.
If somebody had only thought of us at the great wedding at "Pine
Grove," when stately Elizabeth Washington was given in marriage to
the dignified, handsome Colonel Fielding Lewis, if somebody had only
described it for our sakes, we should not be obliged to imagine it!
The three great social occasions of domestic life were weddings,
christenings, and funerals. These were solemnized, if not too
distant, in churches. The bride on the large isolated estates made
her vows in her own home, in her own home consecrated her offspring,
from her own home was borne at last to her final resting-place. A
wedding lasted many days, during which the house was filled with
feasting kindred, coming from far and near. Social usage varied so
little in colonial Virginia that we are quite safe in noting some
features of Betty Washington's wedding. Of some things we may be
sure,--first, there is not the least doubt that she chose her own
husband.
One of the first fruits of the spirit of freedom was the American
girl's determination henceforth to choose her husband. She made
mistakes sometimes, poor child, but was probably silenced by the
reflection that she had no one to blame but herself. She was much
under the influence of French fashions, but had a prejudice against
the French manner of conducting matrimonial alliances, while the
French at once conceived a horror of the American departure. "We
must marry our daughters as soon as possible," said a Frenchwoman to
an easy-going American husband. "If we do not take care, she will be
like your terrible Americans, and end by joining in the '_hount for
housband_'!" dropping her French to quote the enormity in its own
appropriate tongue.
Something of the old-time English customs in contracting parties
remained in the formal correspondence of the prospective
bridegroom's father with the father of the bride-elect, presumably
before the young lady had been consulted. The former stated that his
son proposed "paying his addresses," and he therefore announced the
number of acres and slaves, and the kind of house he could give his
son, and, without any expression of romance or sentiment, politely
requested a similar statement from the "party of the second part."
This party informs the other that his son has applied for "leave to
make his addresses," and states what _he_ can do.
Of course, it sometimes happened that the matter rested just
here--the ideas on one side or the other being unsatisfactory. Then
it was that Cupid had his opportunity! More than one lover has
hidden in the close-screened, cedar summer-house, and more than one
maiden has stolen in the gray dawn from her back door, disguised
as her own maid, to join him in an early horseback ride to Gretna
Green. Moreover, more than one such maiden was "cut off with a
shilling" by an injured father, and went through her life stoutly
declaring herself the happiest woman in the world, albeit not as
rich in worldly goods as her dutiful sisters!
Betty Washington's wedding-dress we must imagine. It was probably
not unlike Martha Custis's wedding-gown a few years later. This
was thus described by one of her guests: a white satin quilt, over
which a heavy white silk, interwoven with threads of silver, was
looped back with white satin ribbons, richly brocaded in a leaf
pattern. Her bodice was of plain satin, and the brocade was fastened
on the bust with a stiff butterfly bow of the ribbon. Delicate
lace finished the low, square neck. There were close elbow-sleeves
revealing a puff and frill of lace. Strings of pearls were woven in
and out of her powdered hair. Her high-heeled slippers were of white
satin, with brilliant buckles. Just this dress, in style if not
material, was certainly worn by Betty.
Her mother being a devout churchwoman, she was probably married at
church. And if Colonel Lewis chose to follow the fashion of the day,
he was brave indeed in a white satin vest, a suit of fine cloth
lined with crimson satin, fine lace at wrist and throat, and diamond
(or was it paste?) buckles at knee and shoe top.
Our forefathers and foremothers wore good clothes in 1750!
We may be sure that none of the orthodox wedding customs and
ceremonies were omitted by Mary Washington at her daughter's
marriage. There were certainly bride's favors, wedding-cake, ring,
and thimble, and, alas! the slipper and rice. The bride was duly
provided, for her bridal costume, with
"Something old, and something new,
Something borrowed and something blue."
The "old" was oftenest an heirloom of lace; the "borrowed," an
orange blossom or two which had been worn by other brides; the
"blue," a tiny knot of ribbon on the garter.
These ceremonies were full of significance, and in observing them,
the bride linked herself in the long chain which stretches back to
the early stages of the world. The wedding-ring, and the choice of
the third finger as being connected with the heart, are mentioned in
old Egyptian literature. The blue ribbon, whether worn as a badge,
or order, or at bridals, comes down from the ancient Israelites,
who were bidden to put upon the borders of their fringed garments a
"ribband of blue"--blue, the color of purity, loyalty, and fidelity.
Bridesmaids were a relic of the ten witnesses of old Roman weddings.
Bride's cake and rice, of the aristocratic Roman _confarreatio_.
The Spanish custom of wearing fragments cut from the bride's
ribbons, first introduced into England when Charles II brought
home his Katharine of Portugal to be England's queen, survived in
the enormous white satin rosettes (bride's favors) worn by the
groomsmen, and survives to-day in the boutonnières of the bride's
flowers. The old and the new symbolize her past and future--not
divided, but united. The "something borrowed" signifies a pledge to
be redeemed. Nothing is without significance, which accounts for
the fact that all these old-time customs continue from century to
century, and are so jealously observed to-day.
One of the eighteenth-century customs, has, however, been lost
in the hurry and rush of our own time. The "infair," the faring
into the house of the bridegroom's parents, was quite as lengthy
and important a function as the wedding. This great housewarming
entertainment to celebrate the reception into the bridegroom's
family was an ancient English custom, religiously observed in
Virginia until the middle of the nineteenth century.
The quantity of wedding-cake made in the Virginia kitchens was
simply astounding! It was packed in baskets and sent all over the
country to be eaten by the elders and "dreamed on" by the maidens.
What would Betty Washington and Colonel Lewis have thought of a
wedding reception of an hour, and then a flitting to parts unknown,
leaving the world to comfort itself with a small square of cake in
a pasteboard box? Such behavior would have been little less than
"flat burglary," defrauding people of their just dues.
[Illustration: The Hall at Kenmore, showing the Clock which belonged
to Mary Washington.]
Colonel Fielding Lewis, although young, was already a merchant of
high standing and wealth, a vestryman, magistrate, and burgess.
Kenmore, near Fredericksburg, was built for him, that his wife might
be near her mother. The mansion, still kept in excellent repair, was
reckoned a fine one at the time. It was built of brick and skilfully
decorated by Italian artists. Betty wrote to her brother George that
their "invention had given out," and invited him to contribute
something. It is said that he designed the decoration illustrating
Æsop's fable of the Crow and the Fox, which adorns the drawing-room
mantel to-day. It is in stucco, and besides illustrating the fable
of the wheedling fox who seeks to gain booty by a smooth tongue,
another fable--the wolf accusing the lamb of fouling the water--is
represented. The story told at Kenmore is of Italians captured in
the French army as prisoners of war, who were led by choice or
necessity to remain in America, where they plied their trade of
decorators.
[Illustration: NELLIE CUSTIS.]
Nine months after Betty Washington's wedding, on St. Valentine's
day, 1751, another Fielding Lewis was born, and George Washington,
just nineteen, was godfather, his mother, godmother. Having done
her duty to her husband, Betty in 1752 named her next son John
Augustine, and her brother Charles, fourteen years old, was
godfather. A third boy was born, 1755, and Charles was again
godfather. In 1757 she named a fourth son George Washington, and,
in 1759, Mary Washington was sponsor for a little Mary Lewis, and
Samuel Washington, godfather. Then, in 1760, a year after his own
marriage, we find George Washington and his mother sponsors for
a Charles Lewis. Samuel and Betty were born respectively in 1763
and 1765, and in April, Lawrence, the lucky,--destined to win "the
nation's pride," lovely Nellie Custis, the adopted daughter of
General Washington. Then Robert and Howell were born. Again, and
yet again, was the traditional gown of black brocade brought forth
by the proud grandmother, as Betty claimed her mother and brothers
for the important and solemn office of sponsors for her splendid
boys--boys that followed their illustrious uncle all through the
war of the Revolution, and to whom he was ever the most faithful of
friends and guardians.
CHAPTER XVII
DEFEAT IN WAR: SUCCESS IN LOVE
Washington was only nineteen when Virginia appointed him one of her
adjutants-general. He was "Major Washington" now when he visited his
mother at "Ferry Farm," _visiting_ her only, because the failing
health of his brother Lawrence demanded his care. His mother gladly
surrendered him for the comfort of this, her devoted stepson, to
whom she had always deferred as the head of the family. He went with
this brother to try the warmer climate of Barbados, bringing him
back ere long to die at Mount Vernon.
[Illustration: George Washington as Major.]
In 1752 Governor Dinwiddie had information about the French. They
had commenced establishing forts in the territory on the banks
of the Ohio claimed by Virginia. The governor needed some trusty
messenger to send to the Chevalier Le Gardeur de St. Pierre,
the French commander, to claim that country as belonging to his
Britannic Majesty, "and," says Burnaby in his "Travels in Virginia,"
1759, "Mr. Washington, a young gentleman of fortune just arrived at
age, offered his service on this important occasion. The distance
was more than four hundred miles; two hundred of which lay
through a trackless wilderness, inhabited by cruel and merciless
savages, and the season was uncommonly severe. Notwithstanding
these discouraging circumstances, Mr. Washington, attended by one
servant only, set out upon this dangerous enterprise; travelled
from Winchester on foot, carrying his provisions on his back,
executed his commission; and after incredible hardships, and many
providential escapes, returned safe to Williamsburg."
He was in love with action and adventure! He had said to Governor
Dinwiddie, "For my own part I can answer that I have a constitution
hardy enough to encounter and undergo the most severe trials, and I
flatter myself resolution to face what any man dares,--as I shall
prove when it comes to the test."
France refused to surrender her claim. The courtly old chevalier
abated nothing of his punctilious courtesy when he received the
youthful ambassador--doubtless bronzed and travel-soiled. He said,
very politely, "I am here by the orders of my General, and I entreat
you, Sir, not to doubt one moment but that I am determined to
conform myself to them with all exactness and resolution that can
be expected from the best officer." So, in 1754, Dinwiddie sent the
young major back again--this time at the head of some soldiers. In
writing to the other governors for men, he says, "I sent a Gent: to
the Place by whom I know the Truth." A large force of the French
appearing, "The Gent" (Major Washington) was compelled to surrender
and, politely bowed out by the old chevalier, permitted to return to
Virginia.
This bitter experience had not the effect of discouraging
Washington. It only made him long for another chance, with another
result. He had written lightly to Governor Dinwiddie, as if he were
arranging a tournament, "We have prepared a charming field for an
encounter." It is even said that he added, "I know no music so
pleasing as the whistling of Bullets." This was repeated to George
the Second. "He would not say so," said the soldier-king, "had he
been used to many!" Years afterward Washington was reminded of this
incident, and he thoughtfully replied, "If I said so, it was when I
was young!"
His mother, foreseeing the tendency of all these events, had
bitterly opposed his last disastrous expedition. He was a man of
independent fortune, and had declined remuneration for his services
as he afterwards declined all pay during the years he served in the
war of the Revolution. She wished him to live on his own estate as
became a country gentleman. Her opposition to his fighting against
the English crown was not one whit greater than her opposition to
his fighting for the crown. The word "loyal" was a shifting quantity
in her time, meaning one thing to-day and another to-morrow! The
peril and the hardship were the same in either case.
The first time that he set forth for the frontier his mother almost
succumbed. "Oh, this fighting and killing!" she exclaimed, as she
entreated him not to go. When convinced that she must sacrifice
herself to his duty to his country she became calm. Laying her hand
upon his shoulder, she said, solemnly: "God is our sure trust.
To Him I commend you." She thus unconsciously provided him with
an unanswerable argument for another time. When General Braddock
offered him a place on his staff she drove to Mount Vernon to
entreat him not to accept the honor. "The God to whom you commended
me, Madam, when I set out on a more perilous errand, defended me
from all harm, and I trust he will do so now," was the reply.
[Illustration: General Braddock.]
When the news of Braddock's defeat and the dreadful slaughter of
his army reached Fredericksburg the anxious mother was forced to
wait twelve days before she could be assured of her son's safety.
In a long, calm letter he tells her of all his dangers and his own
wonderful escape, with four bullets through his coat and two horses
shot under him. He tells her, too, of an illness which confined him
in a wagon for more than ten days; how he was not half recovered at
the time of the fight; how he must halt and rest often upon his way
home to Mount Vernon, which he could scarce hope to leave before
September; how he was, "Honored Madam," her most dutiful son.
She drove to Mount Vernon to meet him, and warmly entreated him to
leave the service forever, urging the loss of health and fortune
should he remain in it. He had no answer then, but after she was at
home she received his final word.
"HONORED MADAM: If it is in my power to avoid going to Ohio
again, I shall; but if the command is pressed upon me by the
general voice of the country, and offered upon such terms as
cannot be objected against, it would reflect dishonor upon me
to refuse it, and that, I am sure must, or ought, to give you
greater uneasiness than my going in an honorable command. Upon
no other terms will I accept it."
The code of manners which ruled Virginia in the eighteenth century
forbade familiarity or the discussion of personalities. Washington's
letters to "Honored Madam," as he always addressed his mother,
relate mainly to important public events. Nothing is told of his
ups and downs, which he seems to have had in common with ordinary
mortals; of the envious slanderers who strove to undermine him in
the estimation of the governor; still less of his repulse by the
father of Miss Mary Cary who curtly refused him his daughter's
hand for the reason that she was "accustomed to riding in her own
carriage" and therefore above Virginia's young major. Bishop Meade
says that this lady, afterwards the wife of Edward Ambler, was in
the throng of applauding citizens when Washington passed through
Williamsburg at the head of the American army. He recognized her,
and gallantly waved his sword to her, whereupon she fainted. Nobody
knows that she ever wished to accept Major Washington. Had he waited
until 1753, her prudent father could have urged no objection to the
handsome young lover. In 1752 Lawrence Washington died, directing
in his will, in case of the demise of his wife without issue, the
estate at Mount Vernon should become the property of his brother
George. Within the year the young major received this legacy.
He seems to have been--for him--very faithful to an early dream. If
he cherished, as he doubtless did, hopes of winning his "Lowland
Beauty," she now put an end to his dream by marrying, in 1753,
Henry Lee of Stafford; and it may be remembered that it was in
this year, and only one month before her marriage, that he sought
the governor's permission to bear a message of remonstrance to the
Chevalier de St. Pierre. Like a wise soldier he knew when he was
defeated and retreated accordingly.
[Illustration: MOUNT VERNON.]
He did not marry until 1759; but it is not to be supposed that
his heart was breaking all these six years for Miss Mary Cary or
for the lovely Lucy Grymes, the "Lowland Beauty." Do we not know of
Miss Mary Philipse, whose father's manor-house may still be seen on
the Hudson? Washington Irving thinks she could not have refused him,
that he "rode away" before he had "made sufficient approaches in his
siege of the lady's heart to warrant a summons of surrender."
However this may be, all went well with the parties to the drama in
Virginia. The "Lowland Beauty" was the wife of one of Virginia's
honored sons, and the mother of "Light-horse Harry" Lee. Perfect
happiness was only waiting a few necessary preliminary events to
crown the young soldier's life with joy, in the person of the
fascinating widow, Martha Custis, who, according to old Bishop
Meade (who relished an innocent bit of gossip), resembled Miss
Cary as one twin-sister does another. He resigned his position as
commander-in-chief of the Virginia forces, and reasonably looked
forward to a life of calm content in his home on the right bank of
the Potomac.
Washington had always, his rebuffs to the contrary nevertheless,
flattered himself that he could "get along" with the ladies.
There was never a moment that some "Faire Mayde" was not well to
the fore, and it is known that he offered his heart and sword to
three,--Mary Cary, Lucy Grymes, and Mary Philipse. With the latter
he acknowledged that he had been too hasty. He thought things might
have resulted differently if he had "waited until ye ladye was in ye
mood."
Two years later he repeated his imprudence. Mr. Tony Weller had not
then been born, and there was nobody to bid him beware. He paid
an afternoon call, fell in love in an hour, and stayed on and on
until he was accepted. In a few days we find this entry in his cash
account, "One Engagement Ring, £2, 16s., 0d."
Mrs. Custis felt a little shy in announcing so hasty an engagement
to her friends, "My dear, the truth is my estate is getting in a bad
way, and I need a man to look after it."
The estate was large. She owned fifteen thousand acres of land, many
city lots, two hundred negroes, and money besides,--a great fortune
in colonial days. He had just returned from a brilliant campaign;
was gallant, young, and handsome; was just elected member of the
House of Burgesses; and was master of a fair domain on the right
bank of the Potomac, and so "ye ladye" found herself "in ye mood."
When he married the beautiful, rich widow, his mother was exultant.
Now he was safe! All the killing and fighting were over and done
with. He was to live near her at Mount Vernon. She was now fifty-two
years old, and was going to enjoy a serene and happy old age at
last. She wrote her brother, "I have had a great deal of trouble
about George, but it is all over now."
[Illustration: St. Peter's Church, in which George Washington was
married.]
She had a long season of busy home life, happy when she might be
in the happiness of her children. Her warrior son was behaving at
last as became a dignified country gentleman. But Fate was only
preparing him for future greatness. In the administration of his
large estate, and in the county and provincial business, he was
acquiring the rare skill in reading and managing men, for which he
became so remarkable. But of this he was totally unconscious. He
had small ambitions. He was proposing himself to the electors of
Frederick County, having "an easy and creditable Poll," cheerfully
paying his self-imposed assessment of thirty-nine pounds and ten
shillings besides "cyder and dinner" for his constituency. He was
attending the Annapolis races; going down to Williamsburg for the
assembly with Mrs. Washington and Miss Custis; loading his wagons
to provision his family and Colonel Bassett's on a visit "to try
the waters of the warm springs," much exercised lest Jack Custis
were premature in winning the affections of Miss Calvert (for Jack
was only eighteen, had been "fickle, and might wound the young
lady"); nay, he was beating his sword into a ploughshare, his spear
into a pruning-hook, planting May-Duke cherries and guelder-roses,
and lamenting "Rust in the wheat and Drought in the Corn crop."
Moreover, he was writing letters to England, giving orders for
all sorts of foreign elegancies, for his own wear and that of Madam
Washington and her children. Let us copy a summer order sent to
London in 1761.
[Illustration: Williamsburg.]
[Illustration: MARTHA CUSTIS.]
For his use the great man wants "a superfine velvet suit with
garters for the breeches; pumps, riding-gloves, worked ruffles
at twenty shillings a pair; housings of fine cloth edged with
embroidery, plain clothes with gold or silver buttons!" For
Mrs. Washington he orders "a salmon-colored tabby velvet with
satin flowers; ruffles of Brussels lace or point, to cost twenty
pounds; fine silk hose, white and black satin shoes; six pairs of
mitts; six pairs of best kid gloves; one dozen most fashionable
pocket-handkerchiefs; one dozen knots and breast-knots; real miniken
(very small) pins and hairpins; a puckered petticoat; six pounds of
perfumed powder; handsome breast flowers (_bouquets de corsage_) and
some sugar candy."
I have not room for Master Custis's outfit at eight years old, nor
that of Master Custis's liveried servant of fourteen years old, but
I cannot omit the delightful order for little "Miss Custis, six
years old," namely, "A coat of fashionable silk, with bib apron,
ruffles and lace tucker; four fashionable dresses of long lawn; fine
cambric frocks; a satin capuchin hat and neckatees; satin shoes and
white kid gloves; silver shoe-buckles; sleeve-buttons, aigrettes;
six thousand pins, large and short and minikin; a fashionable
dressed doll to cost a guinea; gingerbread, toys, sugar images and
comfits; a Bible and prayer-book; and one very good spinet, to be
made by Mr. Plinius, harpsichord maker, in South Audley street,
Grosvenor square, with a good assortment of spare strings." Not too
much, assuredly, for the little beauty, but not Spartan simplicity
nevertheless.
Six years later, it is recorded that "the Fair Sex, laying aside the
fashionable ornaments of England, exulted, with patriotic pride, in
appearing dressed with the produce of their own looms."
CHAPTER XVIII
IN AND AROUND FREDERICKSBURG
The origin of the names of the estates in the Northern Neck can
easily be traced. A few were Indian: "Quantico," "Occoquan,"
"Monacan," "Chappawamsic," "Chotank." Many were English:
"Stratford," "Wakefield," "Marlboro," "Chatham," "Gunston Hall,"
"Mount Vernon," "Ravensworth," "Blenheim," "Marmion,"--the latter,
of course, not named for Scott's fictitious hero (seeing that Sir
Walter had not yet been born), but, doubtless, by some emigrant of
Lincolnshire descent, in honor of Sir Robert de Marmion, who "came
over with the Conqueror," and was granted a manor in Lincolnshire.
"Chantilly" was thus named by Richard Henry Lee, after the beautiful
chateau and grounds of the Prince Condé, near Paris.
Mount Vernon was not too distant to be in Mary Washington's
neighborhood. She had but to cross the neck of land to the Potomac,
and a pleasant sail would bring her to the little wharf at Mount
Vernon--just where we, patriotic pilgrims, so often now land to
render our pious homage to the sacred homestead.
Within visiting distance of Mount Vernon was the "Chippawamsic"
plantation, at which lived another widow, rich, young, and
beautiful,--Ann Mason, the mother of George Mason, the patriot and
statesman, author of the Virginia Bill of Rights (the first complete
formula of the civil and political rights of man ever promulgated)
and author of the Virginia constitution of 1776, the first written
constitution of government ever adopted by a free people.
No one who studies the peculiar characteristics of Virginians of
this period can doubt that both these young widows were sought by
many suitors. The zeal with which men made haste to fill the places
of departed wives was something marvellous! Samuel Washington was
married five times, and one instance is recorded of a colonial
dame in the best society who had six husbands! The early marriage
of widows was the more desirable because of the outlying estates
which required management. Martha Custis gave this as excuse for
her prompt acceptance of Colonel Washington. But Ann Mason and Mary
Washington never married again. Each possessed great executive
ability, as well as unusual personal and intellectual gifts. Each
elected to devote those gifts to her children. Each was the mother
of a great patriot. And it is altogether probable that each one was
the devoted friend of the other, and that the close friendship
between the two Georges was inherited from their parents. Another
Ann Mason left letters and records which give us a hint of the
belongings of a Virginia housewife of her day. She enumerates
among her daughter's expenses prices paid for shoes with wooden
heels, hoop petticoats, and linen. George Mason of "Gunston Hall,"
the greatest, perhaps, of all the statesmen in an age of great
statesmen, remembered the furniture of his mother's bedroom. In it
was a large chest of drawers--a veritable high-boy![6] Three long
drawers at the bottom contained children's garments, in which the
children might rummage. Above these and the whole length of the
case were the gown-drawer, the cap-drawer, the shirt-drawer, the
jacket-drawer; above these a series of drawers always kept locked,
containing gauzes, laces, and jewels of value--ten or twelve
drawers in all! Then there were two large, deep closets, one on
each side of the recess afforded by a spacious stack of chimneys,
one for household linen, the other "the mistress's closet," which
last contained a well-remembered article, a small green horsewhip,
so often successfully applied to unruly children that they dubbed
it "the green Doctor." George Mason remembered other things in
connection with this splendid woman. She gathered her children
around her knees morning and evening to "say their prayers." She
was a lovely woman, true to her friends, pious to her Maker, humane,
prudent, tender, charming:--
"Free from her sex's smallest faults,
And fair as womankind can be."
[6] "Life of George Mason," by Kate Mason Rowland.
Both these Ann Masons--the wife of the statesman and her
mother-in-law--lived and died near Mary Washington's home before
1773. Both were brilliant women, with personal charm and amiable
dispositions.
Near the Masons, at "Marlboro," lived John Mercer, a lawyer of
fine talents and attainments, and owner of one of the best private
libraries in the colony. Virginia bibliophiles still boast in their
collections some of his books containing his heraldic book-plate.
There was a George in his family, one year younger than George
Washington. Their homes were just sixteen miles apart--a mere
nothing of distance, as neighborhoods were reckoned in those
days--and both in Overwharton parish. The Mercers were lifelong
friends of Mary Washington. General Mercer died in her grandson's
arms. Judge James Mercer wrote her will.
Then, not far from John Mercer's, lived one of the largest landed
proprietors in Stafford, a prominent burgess and planter of his day,
Raleigh Travers--of Sir Walter Raleigh's family--and married to
Mary Washington's half-sister, Hannah Ball. They were founders of
one of Virginia's great families, "distinguished in later years for
breeding, learning, and eloquence." Two miles from "Marlboro" lived
one of their daughters, Sarah, married to Colonel Peter Daniel, of
the "Crow's Nest."
Then came "Boscobel," the residence of Thomas Fitzhugh, the
father of a family of interesting young people. Susannah Fitzhugh
still smiles to us from these pages in her rich robe over a pearl
embroidered skirt and bodice of white satin, with a necklace of
pearls festooned over her fair bodice.
She was just three years younger than her beautiful cousin
Elizabeth, who lived at "Belle-Air" (her mother was Alice Thornton),
and whose portrait, painted by Hesselius, presents the fashionable
dress of her day. The gown is of fawn color, square corsage, elbow
sleeves with lace ruffles (like Susannah's), the hair carried
smoothly back from her brows, piled high over a cushion, and dressed
with strings of pearls.
The Fitzhughs did not quite "own the earth" in their region,--Lord
Fairfax did that,--but they owned a goodly portion of it: "Eagle's
Nest" in Stafford County, "Somerset" in King George, "Boscobel,"
"Belle-Air," and "Chatham" in Stafford, "Ravensworth" in Fairfax.
At the latter General Custis Lee, an honored descendant of this
honored race, sits to-day under the trees his fathers planted. In
the Fitzhugh pedigree the Thorntons crop up again and again. One
may sink a mine in any Virginia genealogy and he will encounter the
names of all these neighbors of Mary Washington.
At "Salvington" lived the Seldens, to whom Mary Washington was bound
by ties of close kindred. Mary Ball, daughter of Major James Ball
of "Bewdley," in whose arms Mary Washington had hastened to place
her son George when one month old, had married John Selden. For his
second wife he chose her first cousin, Sarah Ball, whose tombstone
may be seen to-day in the woods a mile from Lancaster court-house.
Later, a Samuel Selden married Mary Thompson Mason (she of the
wooden-heeled shoes and hoop petticoat), famous for her beauty, as
was her mother before her. The second wife of Samuel Selden was
Ann Mercer. Many of the descendants of these women inherited great
beauty. Even a little drop of their blood suffices to endow many a
Virginia woman of to-day.
At "Cleve," on the Rappahannock, lived Charles Carter, and thither
"Light-horse Harry" Lee went for his sweet wife Anne. Charles
Carter's father, Robert, the mighty man of Lancaster,--"King"
Carter,--died in the year George Washington was born. He had built
Christ Church, where Mary Washington was possibly baptized, for her
father lived near the church. King Carter owned 300,000 acres of
land, 1000 slaves, £10,000 in money. The cattle on a thousand hills
were his. He left many children, all of whom he was able to enrich,
and many of whom distinguished themselves in things better than
riches.
[Illustration: "Light-horse Harry" Lee.]
"Cleve," with its octagon front, is still in good preservation, and
is a fine example of the early Georgian manor-house, having been
built early in the eighteenth century. An excellent portrait of its
builder, Charles Carter, looks down to-day upon his descendants who
still own and live in the mansion.
[Illustration: Governor Spotswood.]
Four miles below Mary Washington's home was "Newpost," the ancestral
home of John Spotswood, a son of Governor Spotswood. His two sons,
Alexander and John, were destined to serve in the Revolutionary War,
one as a general, the other a captain, and to mingle the Spotswood
with the Washington blood by marriage with one of Mary Washington's
granddaughters. They came honestly by their dash and spirit through
the Spotswoods.
It appears that the _Virginia Gazette_ of 1737 lent its columns to
an article against Governor Spotswood, written by a Colonel Edwin
Conway, upbraiding the governor for delaying to turn over the arms
intended for Brunswick County. The article was entitled, "A Hint to
discover a few of Colonel Spotswood's Proceedings." A few days after
its appearance the _Gazette_ printed the following:--
"AN HINT FOR A HINT
"MR. PARKS,
"I have learnt in my Book, so far as to be able to read plain
English, when printed in your Papers, and finding in one of them
my Papa's name often mentioned by a scolding man called Edwin
Conway, I asked my Papa whether he did not design to answer him.
But he replied: 'No child, this is a better Contest for you that
are a school Boy, for it will not become me to answer every
Fool in his Folly, as the lesson you learned the other day of
the Lion and the Ass may teach you.' This Hint being given me,
I copied out the said Lesson and now send you the same for my
answer to Mr. Conway's Hint from
"Sir, your Humble Servant
"John Spotswood."
* * * * *
"FEB. 10.
A LION AND AN ASS
"An Ass was so hardy once as to fall a mopping and Braying at a
Lion. The Lion began at first to show his Teeth, and to stomach
the Affront. But upon second Thoughts, Well, says he, Jeer on
and be an Ass still, take notice only by the way that it is the
Baseness of your Character that has saved your Carcass."
There was a famous beauty in the family of Spotswood who shared, as
we shall see hereafter, in the spirit of her race. This was Kate!
She wore, on her high days and holidays, fawn-colored satin, looped
over a blue satin petticoat, square bodice and elbow sleeves and
ruffles; and her feet, which were extremely small and beautifully
formed, were shod in blue satin shoes, with silver buckles. Age did
not wither this haughty beauty. Her granddaughter remembered her
as she combed a wealth of silver hair, a servant the while holding
before her a mirror.
Not far from "Pine Grove" was "Traveller's Rest," the most beautiful
and significant of all the ambitious names of stately mansions on
the Rappahannock. "It should be called," said Byrd Willis, "Saint's
Rest--for only _they_ ever go there!" "Traveller's Rest" was part
of the "200 acres of land on ye freshes of Rappahannock River"
bequeathed to Mary Ball by her father, Joseph Ball. The family
of Gray long lived at "Traveller's Rest," and thither in after
years, Atcheson Gray brought his child-wife Catherine Willis, the
great-granddaughter of Mary Washington.
These are only a few of the country gentry among whom Mary
Washington lived, and to whom she was related. Time would fail to
describe them all--Colonel Thomas Ludwell Lee of "Berry Hill";
"Bellevue" and its occupants; the Brent family at Richland, in
Stafford County; "Belle Plaine," the residence of the Waugh family.
All these places were in a space of eight or ten square miles, and
from generation to generation the sons looked upon the daughters of
their neighbor cousins, and found them fair, until the families were
knit together in every conceivable degree of kinship.
In the town of Fredericksburg Mary Washington had near relatives
and friends. Roger Gregory, the merry-hearted, had married a
woman as merry-hearted as himself,--Mildred Washington, George
Washington's aunt and godmother. Foremost at the races, and first
on all occasions of mirth, was Roger Gregory. It has been said that
Augustine Washington was optimistic in his temperament, and, like
his sister Mildred, conspicuous for cheerfulness--also that from
him Betty Washington and her brothers inherited their love for gay,
social life--that Mary Washington was always serious, and in her
later years almost tragic. She surely had enough, poor lady, to make
her so.
Roger Gregory had died just before George Washington was
born, and his widow married Henry Willis of "Willis's Hill,"
Fredericksburg, afterwards "Marye's Heights," where the fierce
battle of the Civil War was fought. Mildred's three charming Gregory
girls were prominent figures as they trod the streets of old
Fredericksburg--the streets named after the Royal Princes--clad in
their long cloaks and gypsy bonnets tied under their chins. They
were soon absorbed by a trio of Thorntons, and their mother Mildred
left alone with her one son, Lewis Willis. "Old Henry Willis," his
father, had married three times, boasting that he "had courted
his wives as maids and married them as widows." He was a rich old
fellow with a long pedigree and gorgeous coat of arms on his coach
panels. Mildred Gregory had wept so bitterly when the death of his
first wife was announced to her, that a friend expressed surprise.
"Mildred Willis," she explained, "was my namesake and cousin,
and I grieve to lose her. But that is not the worst of it! I am
perfectly sure old Henry Willis will soon be coming down to see
me--and I don't know what in the world I can do with him!" Would it
be sinister to suggest that the lady was already won? It appears
she knew her man. Had he not been her suitor in her girlhood? His
grandson says, "In one little month he sat himself at her door and
commenced a regular siege: and in less than two months after his
wife's death he married her."
If the shade of this wife was permitted to be a troubled witness of
her recent husband's marriage, she could not complain. She had been
herself the widow, Brown, only for one month before she had married
Henry Willis.
This Colonel Henry Willis was known as "The Founder of
Fredericksburg." Colonel William Byrd visited him immediately after
his marriage with Mildred Gregory, and spoke of him as "the top man
of the place." Mildred Washington (Widow Gregory) had one son by her
marriage with Henry Willis. She named him for her first husband--her
first love--Lewis. He was two years younger than his cousin, George
Washington. The boys attended the same school, and were companions
and playmates. Lewis Willis often spoke of George Washington's
industry and assiduity at school as very remarkable. While his
brother Samuel, Lewis Willis, and "the other boys at playtime were
at bandy or other games, George was behind a door cyphering. But
one day he astonished the school by romping with one of the large
girls--a thing so unusual that it excited no little comment among
the other lads."
Through the Willis family Mary Washington's descendants became
allied to the Bonapartes. The second child of Byrd C. Willis (son of
Lewis Willis) was Catherine. Her mother was the daughter of George
Lewis, Betty Washington's son. Thus Mary Washington was ancestress
of Catherine Willis, who at thirteen years of age married, and at
fourteen was a widow, having lost also her child. She accompanied
her parents to Pensacola, where she married Achille Murat,
ex-prince of Naples and nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte. She was very
beautiful--this child--twice married and a mother before she was
fifteen.
The Murat and Bonaparte families at first opposed the marriage,
but all opposition vanished when they learned that she was nearly
related to General Washington.
[Illustration: Prince Murat.]
It is said that she was well received abroad: "In London she stood
up for her country and fought its battles in all companies." She was
once accompanied by John Randolph of Roanoke and other distinguished
personages on a visit to the London art galleries. In one of these
the portraits of Washington and Napoleon hung side by side, and
Randolph (who was always dramatic), pointing to the pictures,
said, "Before us we have Napoleon and Washington, one the founder
of a mighty Empire, the other of a great Republic." Then turning
to Catherine with extended hand, "Behold!" he exclaimed, "in the
Princess Murat the niece of both--a distinction which she alone can
claim."
As the century neared its highest noon Fredericksburg became the
home of one and another of the men destined to earn immortal fame
in the Revolution. James Monroe lived there, whose hand, long since
mingled with the dust, has yet the power to stay the advance of
nations. Men of wealth secured the pleasant society all around by a
residence in the town. As many as ten coaches were wont to drive out
in company when the summer exodus to the springs set in.
There was a famous tailor in Fredericksburg who made the
lace-trimmed garments for these gentry,--William Paul, a Scotchman.
Hanging in his shop, was a handsome portrait of "my sailor
brother John" as he explained to his customers. Anon the tailor
died, and John came over to administer upon his estate. He found
friends--Colonel Willy Jones and Doctor Brooke--who aided him
materially in the first years of his life in Fredericksburg. In
gratitude to the former he assumed the name of "Jones," and the
latter he made surgeon of the _Bon Homme Richard_--for this was
John Paul Jones the great, the brilliant naval officer of our
Revolution. Congress gave him a commission and a ship, _The
Alfred_, and on board that ship he hoisted before uelphia, with his
own hands, the flag of freedom--the first time it was displayed.
He claimed and received the first salute the flag of the infant
Republic received from a foreign power. He served through the war,
and at his death was the senior officer of the United States navy.
CHAPTER XIX
SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS
The essential principles in the drama of human life are ever
the same although its outward aspect changes with changing
circumstances. But in some ages events develop more rapidly than in
others under the urgency of peculiar conditions.
In colonial Virginia the story was told over and over again before
the final fall of the curtain. Scenes shifted with wonderful
rapidity. The curtain, in mimic drama, is usually rung down at the
church door after the early or late wooing and marriage; but in
Virginia in the eighteenth century this was only the first in a
drama of five or more acts. The early death of the first bride left
a vacancy speedily filled by new and successive unions with new
associations and combinations. Five times was not an unusual number
for men to remarry.
This meant five wooings, five weddings, five "infairs," many births
(varying in number from one to twenty-six), five funerals,--all to
be included in thirty adult years more or less. Then, too, there
were five tombstones to be erected and as many epitaphs to be
composed--no two of which to be alike. One wife (usually the first)
almost exhausts the vocabulary of adoring affection, another's piety
is emphasized, another "lived peacably with her neighbors"; each one
was "as a wife dutiful." "Obedient" was a word dear to the colonial
husband.
We have no authority for supposing that the officiating clergyman
at a funeral was ever actually retained for the ensuing nuptials of
the bereaved. Initial steps in that direction were never taken in
Virginia until a husband or wife was well under the sod. Divorce
being unknown, unthinkable indeed, husbands and wives were united
in bonds indissoluble, until death did them part. But when it
did--why, then there was no reasonable cause for delay. It was not
at all unusual for the new husband to offer for probate the will
of his predecessor. Man in those days did not believe he was made
to mourn, at least not for maid or matron, nor that charming women
were created to weep in widow's weeds beyond the decent period of
two months. The little hands were firmly drawn from their pressure
upon the tearful eyes, tucked comfortably under a new, strong arm,
and the widow's little baronry stitched to a new sleeve. There were
exceptions, of course, but not many. When one of the husbands of
Mary Washington's charming nieces (the Gregory girls) lay mortally
ill, he looked up with anguish at the lovely young wife bending
over him, and implored her to keep herself for him. She readily
promised never again to marry, and kept her promise. Another, left a
widow, essayed to follow the sublime example of her sister. One of
the masterful Thorntons sued for twenty years, but won at last. The
statute of limitations in Cupid's court held for twenty years only
in colonial Virginia.
Writers of the period explain these multiplied marriages by
the necessity of a protector for every woman owning land to be
cultivated by negro slaves and indented servants, and on the other
hand the woful state of a large family of young children left
motherless at the mercy of those servants. The new master and the
new mother became a necessity.
It sometimes happened that the newly contracting parties had already
many children from the three or four previous marriages. These must
now be brought under one sheltering roof. The little army must
be restrained by strict government; hence the necessity for the
stern parental discipline of colonial times. "It is gratifying, my
dear," said an amiable patriarch, "to find that _your_ children,
_my_ children, and _our_ children can live so peacefully together,"
nobody knowing so well as the patriarch and the children at what
price the peace had been purchased.
Thus it can be easily seen how maddening an enterprise is the
attempt to trace Virginia relationships, and how we so often lose a
woman and give her over as dead to find her resurrected under a new
name. We once lost Mary Washington's sister Hannah (Ball) Travers.
She turned up at last as Mrs. Pearson! To sort and label and
classify Virginia cousins means nervous prostration. In the families
of Thornton, Carter, and their kin, it means more! Madness lies that
way!
The spinster of uncertain age, known irreverently as an "old maid,"
was a rare individual in colonial Virginia. We all know Colonel
Byrd's "Miss Thekky, mourning her virginity." We really cannot name
another.
When a good man, addressing himself to the compilation of family
records for his children, was constrained to admit that one was
unmarried, he made haste to declare that she "lived single by her
own choice." Colonel Byrd Willis says of his daughter Mary, "She is
unmarried--but by her own choice. It will be a fine fellow who can
tempt her to leave her home. She has not seen him yet!" He goes on
to enumerate her social triumphs. There had been a "Bouquet Ball,"
of which a certain commodore was made king. He chose Miss Mary
Willis, and bestowed upon her the bouquet. A foot-note informs us
that she isn't single any more! She has married the commodore!
[Illustration: Colonel Byrd.]
Stern as was the parental discipline of the time, the spirit of the
young men, who were accounted grown and marriageable at nineteen,
was in no wise broken or quenched. Many of them ran away from their
masters at the schools in England and Scotland, and their fathers'
agents had much ado to find and capture them again. The sons of John
Spotswood were lost in England for many months, but were back home
again in time to be gallant officers in the Revolution. And even
the conservative blood of the Washingtons was not strong enough
to temper that of the Willises, for Mildred Washington's grandson
"Jack" Willis ran away from school and joined a party to explore
the wilderness of Kentucky. They were attacked by Indians, and were
scattered; Jack escaped in a canoe, and was the _first white man_ to
descend the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. His father had sewed some
doubloons in his jacket, but he gave them to a man in New Orleans to
purchase clothing and food, and never again beheld his agent or the
doubloons or their equivalent. He worked his way in a sailing vessel
to New York, and _walked_ from New York to his home in Virginia,
arriving, like the Spotswood boys, just in time to enter the army
with his father and serve to its close. He was a son of Lewis
Willis, Washington's schoolmate.
About 1740 the importation of horses of the English racing stock
commenced, also the breeding of horses for racing. Between 1740 and
1775 are recorded the names of fifty imported horses and thirty
mares of note: Aristotle, Babraham, Bolton, Childers, Dabster,
Dottrell, Dimple, Fearnaught, Jolly Roger, Juniper, Justice, Merry
Tom, Sober John, Vampire, Whittington, Janus, Sterling, Valiant,
etc. Owners of these horses among Mary Washington's neighbors were
Roger Gregory, Colonel John Mercer of "Marlboro," Mr. Spotswood,
William Fitzhugh of "Chatham," all the Thorntons, and _later_
Colonel George Washington of Mount Vernon, who was a steward of
the Alexandria Jockey Club and ran his own horses there and at
Annapolis! There was a fine race-course at Fredericksburg, and
purses were won from ten to a hundred pounds. This, the prime
amusement in spring, summer, and autumn, was varied (alas!) by
cock-fights, wrestling-matches, and rough games, in which the common
people, as in England, participated, while the gentry looked on and
awarded prizes. But in the long winter evenings, neighbors gathered
for Christmas and other house-parties, indulged in the gentle art of
story-telling. Later, old Fredericksburg boasted a notable, peerless
raconteur, John Minor, but his stories were built upon Virginia's
legends; his home, "Hazel Hill," was the rendezvous of all the
neighbors, young and old, in quest of sympathy or counsel, or advice
in the honorable settlement of quarrels, or for a season of genial
companionship. Around the fireside at "Hazel Hill" the children
would gather for their own story-telling hour "between daylight and
dark," and there the immortal "B'rer Rabbit" appears, but not for
the first time, in the annals of colonial history, and her Serene
Highness, the "Tar Baby," held her nightly court.
Around the winter fireside in the old colonial houses, the children,
and their seniors as well, learned the folk-lore of their native
colony, for, young as was the new country, Virginia had already her
legends: the mystic light on the lake in the Dismal Swamp, where the
lost lovers paddled their ghostly canoe; the footprints of the Great
Spirit on the rocks near Richmond; the story of Maiden's Adventure
on the James River; the story of the Haunted House--the untenanted
mansion at Church Hill--untenanted for eight decades because the
unhappy spirit of a maiden tapped with her fan on the doors where
wedded couples slept, invoking curses upon love that had failed her;
of sweet Evelyn Byrd, who rested not under her monument at Westover,
but glided among the roses, wringing her hands in hopeless grief
for the loss of a mortal's love; and of the legend of the wonderful
curative spring just discovered in Greenbrier County (learned from
an old Indian of the tribe of the Shawnees)--how one of the great
braves had once been missed from the council-fires and been found in
a valley, weak and supine, binding the brows of an Indian maid with
ferns and flowers; how two arrows had sped by order of the Great
Spirit, one destined for the man, one for the maid; how the recreant
warrior had been slain by the one, but the other arrow had buried
itself in the earth and when withdrawn a great, white sulphur spring
had gushed forth; how the maiden was doomed to wander as long as the
stream flowed, and not until it ceased could her spirit be reunited
to that of her lover in the happy hunting-grounds; also how the body
of the slain warrior was laid towards the setting sun, and the form
of the sleeping giant might be clearly discerned despite the trees
that grew over it.
[Illustration: WESTOVER.]
And one more Indian legend is so charming that we may be forgiven
for perpetuating it on these pages, remembering that these are
genuine Indian legends which have never before been printed. This
last was the story of the Mocking-bird. How once long ago there were
no wars or fightings, or tomahawks or scalpings among the Indians.
They were at perfect peace under the smile of the Great Spirit.
And in this beautiful time those who watched at night could hear a
strange, sweet song sweeping over the hills and filling the valleys,
now swelling, now dying away to come again. This was the music of
all things; moon, stars, tides, and winds, moving in harmony. But at
last Okee, the Evil One, stirred the heart of the red man against
his brother, and the nations arrayed themselves in battle. From that
moment the song was heard no more. The Great Spirit, Kiwassa, knew
that his children bemoaned their loss, and he promised them the song
should not be lost forever. It would be found some day by some
brave--loftier, better, stronger, than all others.
It fell at last that a chieftain loved the daughter of a hostile
chief. Both were captured and burned at the stake. Both died
bravely, each comforting the other. After death the chief, because
he had been so brave, was given the body of a bird, and sent in
quest of the Lost Song. When he found it, and only then, could
all be forgiven and the spirits of the lovers be reunited in the
happy hunting-grounds. Since then the bird has travelled north,
south, east, west, and wherever it goes it learns the songs of
all creatures, learns and repeats them. But the hatchet is not
yet buried; the Lost Song not yet found. Imagination can supply
few pictures fairer than this: firelight playing on the attentive
faces of old cavaliers and matrons, young men and lovely maidens,
the centre their accomplished host, "the pink of a chivalric
gentleman," gallant, cultured, refined, and at his knees, in his
arms, and seated on his shoulders, happy children, not only those
of his house-party, but others among his neighbors who dropped in
especially for the children's hour.
It is evident that Mary Washington's social life must have been an
active one. At the weddings and the christenings of her large circle
of neighbors and kindred she was certainly present. But I doubt
whether she ever attended the races, "Fish Frys, and Barbecues," of
which her neighbors were so fond. Not that she ventured to express
disapproval of things with which the clergy found no fault, but she
was a strict economist of time, never wasting it on trifles. She
kept her own accounts, managed her own plantation, and kept a stern
watch on the overseers of her son's estates.
To do this, and at the same time fill her place in her large circle
of friends, whose relations with her warranted their coming at will
for long visits, required all the method and management of which she
was capable.
Besides the householders, with their sons and daughters, who
regularly exchanged visits with each other at least once or twice
annually, Virginia had also her class of impecunious bachelors,
whose practice was to visit from house to house, taking in all
the well-to-do families. Until the Revolution--when they had
something else to do--they represented the class of hangers-on to
wealth, known to-day as "the little brothers of the rich,"--very
nice, adaptable, agreeable gentlemen, whom everybody likes, and to
whom society is willing to give much, exacting little in return.
In pre-Revolutionary Virginia, however, they could and did give
something. They gathered the news from house to house, brought
letters and the northern papers; were intelligent couriers, in
short, who kept the planter well-advised of all political rumors.
They possessed certain social accomplishments, could carve fairy
baskets out of cherry stones, cut profile portraits to be laid on
a black background, and make and mend pens to perfection. "When
I was in Stafford County a month ago," says the tutor at "Nomini
Hall," "I met[7] Captain John Lee, a Gentleman who seems to copy the
character of Addison's Will Wimble. He was then just sallying out on
his Winter's Visits, and has got now so far as here; he stays, as
I am told, about eight or ten weeks in the yeare at his own House,
the remaining part he lives with his Waiting Man on his Friends."
Captain Lee, by the way, is further recorded as "a _distant_ cousin
of the Lees of Westmoreland."
[7] Fithian's Diary.
In making these visits to the large country houses, young people
would naturally confer together and manage to meet those they knew
best and liked best. Thus it would sometimes happen (and who so
willing as the hosts?) that a large house-party would assemble
unheralded, and the house be filled with a merry company. "The usual
retinue," says General Maury, "at my wife's home was fifteen or more
well-trained servants when the house was full of company; and as
many as thirty or more of the family and friends daily dined there
together for weeks and months at a time." This was at Cleveland,
near Fredericksburg; and hospitality quite as generous ruled all the
homes in Mary Washington's neighborhood.
It sometimes happened that the capacity of the elastic house reached
its limit. On one such rare occasion a belated Presbyterian minister
alighted at the front gate and walked in with his baggage,--a pair
of well-worn saddle-bags. He was warmly welcomed, of course, but
the lady of the manor was in despair. Where could he sleep? Every
corner was full. One couldn't ask a clergyman to spend the night on
a settee in the passageway, nor lie upon a "pallet" of quilts on
the parlor floor. The children heard the troubled consultation as
to ways and means with their "Mammy," and were full of sympathy for
the homeless, unsheltered guest. The situation was still serious
when the household was summoned to family prayers. The clergyman--a
gaunt specimen with a beaklike nose and mournful voice--launched
into the one hundred and second Psalm, pouring out, as the pitying
children thought, his own soul in its homeless desolation. When he
reached the words, "I am like a pelican in the wilderness: I am like
an owl in the desert: I am as a sparrow alone upon the housetop,"
the exultant voice of the youngest little girl rang out, "_Mamma, he
can roost on the tester!_" One cannot wonder at this advice from a
hospitable man who had been literally "eaten out of house and home,"
"I advise my son to keep out of other people's houses, and keep
other people out of his own."
One can hardly imagine the care and labor involved in so much
entertaining. Nobody ever passed a house without calling; nobody
ever left it without refreshment for man and beast. Horses and
servants attended every visitor.
[Illustration: The Kitchen of Mount Vernon.]
Think of the quantity of food to be provided! And yet, a housewife's
_batterie de cuisine_ was of the simplest. The kitchen fireplace
held the iron pot for boiling the indispensable and much-respected
gammon of bacon (Virginia ham), and there were lidded ovens,
large and small, standing high on four feet, that coals might
burn brightly beneath them. There was a "skillet," with its ever
ascending incense from frying chickens and batter-cakes,--a
long-handled utensil with no feet at all, but resting upon the
portable, triangular "trevet,"--which, being light, could be thrust
into the very heart of the fire or drawn out on the fire-proof
dirt floor. There was a "hoe," known as a cooking utensil only in
Virginia, slanting before the coals for the thin hoe-cake of Indian
meal. In front stood the glory and pride of the kitchen,--the
spit, like two tall andirons with deeply serrated sides, on which
iron rods holding flesh and fowl could rest and be turned to roast
equally. An ample pan beneath caught the basting-butter and juices
of the meat. This spit held an exposed position, and has been known
to be robbed now and then by some unmannerly hound, or wandering
Caleb Balderstone, unable to resist such temptations. What would
the modern queen of the kitchen think of "a situation" involving
such trials,--her own wood often to be brought by herself, her
breakfast, including four or five kinds of bread (waffles, biscuit
thick and thin, batter-cakes, loaf bread), her poultry to be killed
and plucked by herself, her coffee to be roasted, fish scaled and
cleaned, meats cut from a carcass and trimmed, to say nothing of
cakes, puddings, and pies? And all this to be done for a perennial
house-party, with its footmen and maids!
True, the negro cook of colonial times had many
"kitchen-maids,"--her own children. But even with these her
achievements were almost supernatural. With her half-dozen utensils
she served a dinner that deserved--and _has_--immortality! "Old
Phyllis," the cook at "Blenheim," "Mammy Lucy" at Cleveland,
and many others have a high place in an old Virginian's Hall of
Fame,--his heart!
There was no lack of service in Mary Washington's day. The negro was
docile, affectionate, and quick to learn, at least these were the
characteristics of those employed in households. But even as late
as in Mary Ball's girlhood the negroes had no language intelligible
to their employers. One of the Lancaster clergymen, Mr. Bell,
writes that his congregation includes many "negroes, who cannot
understand my language nor I theirs." There is something infinitely
pathetic in this picture of the homeless savage in a strange land.
The African, finding himself not understood, made haste to acquire
the language spoken to him. His intimate association was with the
indented white men who labored with him, and he then and there
created a language distinctively known as his own, to which he still
clings and which contains, I believe, no word that can be traced
to African origin--at least this is true of the Virginia negro's
dialect. "It appears that the indented servants from whom he learned
must have come from Warwickshire. The negro dialect can be found in
Shakespeare;[8] for instance, 'trash,' afterwards accentuated by
'po' white trash.' 'What trash is Rome, what rubbish, what offal,'
says Cassius. 'They are trash,' says Iago, etc. 'Terrify,' for
'aggravate' or 'destroy,' is Warwickshire; also 'his'n,' 'her'n,'
for 'his' and 'hers'; 'howsomdever,' for 'however' (_Venus and
Adonis_); 'gawm,' for 'soiling hands or face'; 'yarbs,' for 'herbs';
'make,' for 'kindle' (make the fire); 'like,' for 'likely' (I was
like to fall); 'peart,' for 'lively'; 'traipsing,' for 'walking
idly about'; 'ooman,' for 'woman'; 'sallit,' for 'green stuff';
'yourn,' for 'yours.' These and many more negro words are taken from
Warwickshire dialect, and are to be found in Shakespeare." Upon
this root the negro grafted, without regard to its meaning, any and
every high-sounding word which he happened to hear, and which seemed
to him magnificent. The meaning signified so little that he never
deemed it necessary to ask it. The result was, to say the least,
picturesque.
[8] "Warwickshire Dialect," by Mr. Appleton Morgan.
The church being his earliest school, he was soon impressed by the
names of certain of the Hebrew Patriarchs, and the first names
with which he endowed his children were Aaron, Moses, Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob, and Isaiah. Why he scorned Jeremiah, Nahum, Ezekiel,
and others, is best known to himself. Later, he caught from
the companionship of the schoolboys the names of the heroes of
antiquity, giving decided preference to Pompey and Cæsar. There
was a Josephus in a Fredericksburg family, differentiated in the
next generation by _Jim_sephus. Later still his fancy was caught
by the shining lights of the Revolution. A goodly crop followed of
Washingtons, Jeffersons, and Randolphs. There was even a Rochambeau,
unhappily corrupted into "Rushingbow."
While the queen of the nursery was an ebony incarnation of faithful
love, tenderness, and patience, she never surrendered her sceptre
until her charges were actually married. She never condescended to
be taught by those to whom she had herself been teacher. "Mammy,"
exclaimed a little Fredericksburg maiden of ten, "what do you think?
I have found an ungrammatical error in the Bible." "Kill him, honey!
Kill him quick! He'll eat up the pretty book-mark!" exclaimed the
old nurse, too proud to acknowledge her ignorance of the beautiful
new word.
"Po' white trash" was a term applied to all householders who could
not afford style in living and equipage, notably to those (and they
were few) who owned no slaves. There was no squalor, no pauperism
in Virginia in 1740 and later. Even indented servants prospered
sufficiently after a few years to send to England for servants of
their own. The convict labor of Virginia was mainly employed in the
fields and on the boats; and it is recorded that these convicts were
short-lived, the hot sun giving them always a "seasoning fever"
which often proved fatal. Of course political convicts were of a
different class, and when found to have been educated were employed
as teachers.
Entirely distinct from these was the class who were entitled to
write "Gent" after their names, as their English fathers had done.
"The term 'Gentleman,'" says Mr. Lyon Tyler, "assumed a very general
meaning in the succeeding century, but its signification at this
time was perhaps what Sir Edward Coke ascribed to it, _qui gerit
arma_, one who bears arms."
It was not the custom then as now to address a man without some
prefix. He was "Squire" if he was a member of the King's Council;
"Gent" if he bore arms, otherwise "Mr."; and if in humble life,
"Goodman." Women of any degree were "Mistress"--Mistress Evelyn
Byrd, Mistress Mary Stagg; in middle class, "Dame"; of gentle blood,
"Madam" and "Lady." In the _Virginia Gazette_ "Lady Washington's"
comings and goings are duly chronicled. Even now the Virginian loves
to endow his fellows with a title, and risks "Colonel" in default of
a better.
The Virginia woman, at the period of which we write, felt keenly
the disadvantage of her remoteness from that centre of knowledge
and courtly usage, the mother country. Men who were educated abroad
began to accumulate books for ambitious libraries, but these books
were largely in the Latin tongue, and the Virginia girl had not
the courage of Queen Elizabeth, and did not address herself to
the study of the Classics that she might "match the men." She had
good, strong sense, and the faculty known as mother-wit, but I
am afraid I must confess she had small learning. What time had
she--married at fifteen--to read or study? As to Mary Washington,
her library, for ought we know to the contrary, seems to have begun
and ended with "Sir Matthew Hale." In 1736 Mr. Parks published his
_Virginia Gazette_ for fifteen shillings a year. Beverley & Stith
had published their "Histories," and William Byrd his "Pamphlets."
These she may have read; but it is extremely doubtful whether she
read the poems and other society doings, records of races and other
happenings, which appeared weekly in the _Gazette_, or approved of
seeing the names, qualities, and fortunes of the ladies recorded as
frankly as at the present day.
These ladies were the daughters, sisters, and wives of men of
brilliant genius and attainments. They could hardly sustain such
relations with such men without becoming themselves superior women.
Dr. Archibald Alexander knew Mrs. Meredith, the sister of Patrick
Henry. "She was, in my judgment, as eloquent as her brother;
nor have I ever met with a lady who equalled her in powers of
conversation."
Something then was said of a woman besides what she wore, whither
she went, and whom she entertained at dinner and tea. There were
women of whom the _Gazette_ kindly said they possessed "amiable
sweetness of disposition, joined with the finest intellectual
attainments," but I am constrained to challenge the latter if it
presupposes the attainments to have been literary. How could it
be otherwise when Thomas Jefferson prescribed that his daughter's
time should be divided between dancing, music, and French? And when
Charles Carter, of "Cleve," after ordering that his sons, John and
Landon, then in England, should master languages, mathematics,
philosophy, dancing, fencing, law, adds, "And whereas the
extravagance of the present age, and the flattering hopes of great
Fortunes may be a temptation to run into unnecessary Expenses of
Living, it is my positive Will and desire that my Daughters may be
maintained with great frugality, and _taught to dance_."
The young women whose brothers had tutors at home were fortunate.
They learned to "read and write and cypher." Then there were men
"Glad to turn itinerant
to stroll and teach from town to town"
and from plantation to plantation. From these the young ladies had
their music and dancing lessons. Their letters are very stilted and
polite,--poor dears,--but "intellectual attainments" do not appear
in many of them. They usually end with laying upon a bad pen all
the blame for all shortcomings. "Excuse bad spelling and writing,
for I have ane ill pen," said Jeanie Deans. The colonial ladies made
no apology for their phonetic spelling. Was not that all right?
If "hir" did not spell "her," pray, what did it spell? "Bin" was
surely more reasonable than "been"; "tha" than "they." There were
"Dixonaries" in the closets along with the Latin books, but they
were troublesome, and not always to be trusted. Dr. Johnson--if
we can imagine him as such--was in their day a sweet babe in long
clothes!
When the slow-sailing ships arrived from England one might have the
fashions of six months ago.
English cousins sometimes came over, and very nervous were the
Virginia girls lest the Western _ménage_ should be found to be
behind the times. Among old letters a certain Miss Ambler appears
to have been dreadfully aggrieved by the criticisms of some English
cousins. "Everything we eat, drink or wear seems to be wrong--the
rooms are too cold or too hot; the wood is not laid _straight_
on the Andirons:--and even poor Aunt Dilsey does not escape
censure,--dear Aunt Dilsey whom we all so love! Actually, Aunt
Dilsey came to me in tears, and said she had been ordered to pull
down her bandanna so that none of her wool would show in the back of
her poor neck, and to draw cotton gloves over her hands for they
were 'so black and nasty'!"
[Illustration: James Monroe.]
Many of the Virginians, at that early day, were advocates of negro
emancipation. James Monroe, who lived in Fredericksburg, was the
great friend of emancipation. Monrovia, the capital of Liberia,
was named in his honor. It was a citizen of Fredericksburg, in
1782, who introduced into the body, which had replaced the House
of Burgesses, the first resolution for the emancipation of negroes
and for the prohibition of the slave trade ever offered in America.
General John Minor, of "Hazel Hill," was the author and advocate of
this measure. In 1792 the first-published utterance against slavery
in this country appeared in a tract entitled, "Slavery Inconsistent
with Justice and Good Policy," by the Rev. David Rice. When estates
were settled large numbers of negroes were manumitted by common
consent and sent to Liberia.
We have reason to believe that house servants were treated with the
affectionate consideration they deserved. Mr. Custis distinctly
declares that this was true of Mary Washington,--that she was always
kind to her servants, and considerate of their comfort. The man
or woman who treated servants with severity was outlawed from the
friendship and respect of his neighbors, many of whom at a later day
freed their slaves and left them land to live upon.
CHAPTER XX
A TRUE PORTRAIT OF MARY WASHINGTON
"The search-lights of history have unfolded to us nothing of
interest touching Mrs. Washington from the time of the French
and Indian War until the awakening of the great Revolution.
Fortunate is the woman, said the Greek of old, of whom neither
good nor ill is spoken. And, curtained away from the world, the
matron lived under the great Taskmaster's eye, in the bosom of
that home, by whose fruit ye shall know her. Many years had
rolled by since she settled at 'Pine Grove,' with her first-born
son. And, while she lived in retirement and in silence, how had
great events rushed forward; how had the child become the father
to the man? Grave tasks were his while yet a boy. Step by step
he ascended the ladder of honor and usefulness. A surveyer for
Lord Fairfax at sixteen, crossing the Blue Ridge on horseback,
traversing the wilderness to the bounds of civilization, getting
six pistoles, or something more than $7 a day, for his efficient
service, while in leisure hours he read under the guidance of
Lord Fairfax, the history of England, the 'Spectator,' and other
books of that high order; appointed public surveyor a little
later, and then adjutant-general of Virginia troops at nineteen;
managing a great plantation and training the Militia of the
State; at twenty-one penetrating the Northwest as a negotiator
for Governor Dinwiddie, and fighting the French; aide-de-camp
to Braddock, a little later, in his ill-starred expedition,
suffering defeat; with the victor at Fort Duquesne, where
Pittsburg now stands, at twenty-six; member of the Virginia
House of Burgesses at twenty-seven; ever onward, ever upward,
until, as the great Revolution broke out, we find him journeying
to Philadelphia as a delegate to the Continental Congress, and
presently appearing on the field of Boston as commander-in-chief
of the Continental army!"
Thus spoke, out of the fulness of his heart, Senator Daniel at the
unveiling of the Mary Washington monument, but the truth is that
these years were marked by many cares and anxieties. Five times
had Samuel Washington married: Jane Champe, Mildred Thornton, Lucy
Chapman, Anne Steptoe, the widow Perrin. This list sounds like a
chapter from the reign of Henry the Eighth. Tradition says he was
separated from some of his wives otherwise than by death. It is
certain he was unfortunate in money matters, having many children
and finding it "hard to get along." His brother was always helping
him. His children were much at Mount Vernon, especially Steptoe
Washington and Harriett Washington, whose names appear frequently
upon the general's expense book. He enters various items against
Harriett,--earrings and necklace and many garments. He bemoans, "She
was not brung up right! She has no disposition, and takes no care
of her clothes, which are dabbed about in every corner and the best
are always in use." "In God's name," he writes to his brother, John
Augustine, "how has Samuel managed to get himself so enormously in
debt?" He found places from time to time for many of Samuel's sons,
and was never other than good to all.
John Augustine Washington, the general's favorite brother,
married Hannah Bushrod, and settled in Westmoreland. Charles, the
youngest, married Mildred Thornton of the Fall-Hill Thorntons, near
Fredericksburg. His home was in Charlestown, Jefferson County. Of
him the world has known but little. In the presence of a planet of
the first magnitude the little stars are not observed.
Mary Washington was now alone at "Pine Grove." Her windows commanded
Fredericksburg and the wharf, where the ships from England unloaded
rich stuffs to tempt the Virginian, loading again with sweet-scented
tobacco for the old country that had so quickly learned to love the
luxury from the new. It is doubtful whether she ever bought from
these vessels. She certainly never sold to them. In 1760 she writes
to her brother Joseph in England, excusing herself for having sent
him no letters, "As I don't ship tobacco the Captains never call
on me, soe that I never know when tha come and when tha goe." She
was a busy woman, minding her own affairs and utterly free from
idle curiosity. Her life was full of interest and occupation. The
conscientious housewife of her day was burdened with many cares.
The large plantation must support itself. Nearer than Annapolis
and Williamsburg were no shops or stores from which supplies could
be drawn. The large number of servants living on the plantations
demanded great quantities of food and clothing, and the farm work
many utensils,--all of which were manufactured on the farm itself.
The diary of a New Jersey tutor gives us interesting accounts
of life in the Westmoreland neighborhood, where lived the Lees,
Carters, Washingtons, Tayloes, and other large landholders. Higher
up, near Mount Vernon, dwelt George Mason of "Gunston Hall," and his
son, John, is our eye-witness-chronicler of the plantation life near
Mary Washington.
"It was the practice of gentlemen of landed and slave estates so
to organize them as to have resources within themselves. Thus
my father had among his slaves carpenters, coopers, sawyers,
blacksmiths, tanners, curriers, shoemakers, spinners, weavers
and knitters, and even a distiller. His woods furnished timber
and plank for the carpenters and coopers, and charcoal for
the blacksmith; his cattle, killed for their own consumption,
supplied skins for the tanners, curriers and shoemakers; his
sheep gave wool, his fields flax and cotton for the weavers;
and his orchards fruit for the distiller. His carpenters and
sawyers built and kept in repair all the dwelling houses, barns,
stables, ploughs, harrows, gates, &c., on his plantation. His
coopers made the hogsheads for tobacco and the casks to hold the
liquors. The tanners and curriers tanned the skins for leather
and the shoemakers made them into shoes for the negroes. A
Professed shoemaker was hired for three or four months in
the year to come and make up the shoes for the family. The
blacksmiths did all the iron work required on the plantation.
The spinners and knitters made all the clothes and stockings
used by the negroes, and some of finer texture worn by the
ladies and children of the family. The distiller made apple,
peach and persimmon brandy. A white man, a weaver of fine
stuffs, was employed to superintend the black weavers."[9]
[9] "Life of George Mason," by Kate Mason Rowland.
To carry on these operations--to cure and preserve meats, fruits,
and medicinal herbs, make vinegar and cordials, and to prepare
constantly for a great deal of company, coming incessantly to stay
at the house--required unceasing attention and strict method.
This is a large pattern which was repeated on a smaller scale
by Mary Washington. Method became, with her, almost a mania.
Her neighbors set their watches by the ringing of her bells.
She was never the fraction of a minute too late at church. She
was punctiliously exact in her observance of all appointments
and prompt to the minute in meeting those appointments. By the
well-regulated clock in her entry--the clock which is now preserved
at "Kenmore"--all the movements of her household were regulated.
Her illustrious son had also such a clock. He graciously allowed,
at dinner, five minutes for the possible variation of timepieces.
After they expired he would wait for no one. If an apologizing guest
arrived after the dinner was advanced, his excuses were met with
the simple announcement, "Sir, I have a cook who never asks whether
the company has come, but whether the hour has come." His mother
had taught him the value of time. Her teaching followed him through
life, and was obeyed after he was President of the United States.
The chaplain of Congress records that the hour of noon having been
fixed for hearing the President's message, he usually crossed the
threshold exactly as the clock was striking twelve.
A contemporary observer relates that "Mrs. Washington never failed
to receive visitors with a smiling, cordial welcome," but adds
quaintly that "they were never asked twice to stay, and she always
speeded the parting guest by affording every facility in her power."
Perfectly sincere herself, she believed them sincere when they
declared themselves unable to remain.
She was said to possess a dignity of manner that was at first
somewhat repellent to a stranger, but always commanded thorough
respect from her friends and acquaintances. Her voice was sweet,
almost musical in its cadences, yet firm and decided, and she was
always cheerful in spirit. "In her person she was of the middle
size, and finely formed; her features pleasing, yet strongly marked."
Her young friends and grandchildren often visited her. Lawrence
Washington, her son's cousin and playmate, said: "I was more afraid
of her than of my own parents--and even when time had whitened my
locks I could not behold that majestic woman without feelings it is
impossible to describe. She awed me in the midst of kindness."
"She was," said one of her family, "conspicuous for an awe-inspiring
manner, so characteristic in the Father of our Country. All who
knew her will remember the dignified matron as she appeared when
the presiding genius of her well-ordered home, commanding and being
obeyed," never speaking ill of any one, never condescending to
gossip herself or encouraging gossip in others.
I have always felt that this Lawrence Washington, the only person
who knew Mary Washington many years intimately, and who wrote his
impressions of her, was responsible for the universal opinion
that she was stern and repelling,--an opinion that has colored
all the traditions of all the others who knew her as children. I
am persuaded that this Lawrence did the mischief. Somebody sowed
tares in the fair field of her reputation. Lawrence, I am sure, was
the kind of boy known as "a terror,"--a boy who chased chickens,
brought hounds and muddy feet on the polished floors, trampled
flower-beds, rifled the fruit trees, overturned pans of milk, upset
the furniture, and broke the china. Well might he be more afraid of
Mrs. Washington even than of his own parents (and what more could
he say?), and we may believe he had many a scolding and in his early
years an opportunity to test the flavor of the peach tree.
I am so fully assured that his testimony was the beginning of all
that Mary Washington has suffered at the hands of her countrymen,
that I have diligently looked up his record, hoping to find that he
came to no good: but alas! he is mentioned with affectionate respect
in George Washington's will as "the acquaintance and friend of my
juvenile years." It is some comfort, however, to find he had a wild
son, Lawrence, who fought a duel, and gave him no end of trouble!
And as to the traditions! What are they worth? Has the reader never
stood in a line when a story whispered from one to the other was
told aloud at the end, and in no case ever found to be the story
of the beginning? Thomas Fuller tells of the name "Musard," which
became, as it passed down the generations from lip to lip "Roper."
A popular dramatic reader once took for his text the words "come
here," and showed how accent, gesture, and tone could change their
meaning from invitation to menace, from tenderness to fury.
The stories told of Mary Washington were always altered to fit the
prevailing opinion of her sternness. Let me give an example. "When
General Washington sent over the country to impress horses (and
pay for them) his officers were attracted by a pair ploughing in a
field. The driver was ordered to unhitch them, but an ebony Mercury
ran to warn his mistress who appeared in her doorway. 'Madam,' said
the officer, 'we bear General Washington's orders to take these
horses.' 'Does George need horses?' said Mary Washington. 'Well, he
can have mine, but he must wait until my field is finished.'"
Now this is a poor little story, with no point at all save to
illustrate Mary Washington's estimation of the relative importance
of the sword and the ploughshare. Like all others it is changed as
the years pass. A short time ago a revised edition reached me from
the West.
This is the amended story: "'What are you doing there with my
horses?' said an irate old woman who appeared just then on the
field. 'Leave the place instantly!' 'But--Madam--we have orders from
the Commander-in-chief! We must obey.' 'Well, then, you may just
obey _me_! Go back and tell your _Commander-in-chief_' (with great
scorn and derision) 'that his mother's horses are not for sale, and
he can't borrow 'em till her spring ploughing is done.' It was the
part of prudence to leave. The officers left!"
The story grew to this proportion in a hundred years. Given another
hundred, and we will find that Mary Washington laid violent hands
on the men who claimed the horses, and chastised the ploughmen who
surrendered them.
In 1765 two pair of observant eyes opened upon the world, and
were focussed upon the "awe-inspiring" lady, Betty Lewis, little
Betty and Dr. Charles Mortimer's little Maria. The children were
playmates, schoolmates, and girl friends from a very early age,
each intimate at the other's home and both intimate at the home of
Mary Washington. They adored her! They found naught to remember but
smiles, gentle words, sweet, motherly ways. Betty (afterwards Mrs.
Charles Carter) has furnished many of the unimportant traditions
quoted in various accounts of her grandmother's home life. They
come to us as traditions of traditions, not to be despised, yet
not to be accepted as history. The other pair of eyes were keener
for the dress and belongings of her venerable friend. To Maria
Mortimer, daughter of Mary Washington's physician, we are indebted
for the familiar picture of the short skirt and sack,--a sort of
cote-hardi,--the mob cap, the table upon which lay "Sir Matthew
Hale" and his ally, in the presence of which there was such small
hope for the sinner. Freshly gathered from the friendly peach
tree, this was used as freely--this much we willingly concede--as
circumstances demanded. The two children played happily at her knee
despite the menacing tools of the Inquisition, which we would fain
believe were never used on them.
[Illustration: Mrs. Charles Carter.]
To their dying day they talked reverently and most abundantly; for
after General Washington became so very great there were always
listeners. Had they written conscientiously as the New Jersey tutor
did instead of talking, we might have known more of the reserved,
stately woman who bore and fostered and taught the revered Father
of his Country; but we know too well how sentiments can be trimmed
and shaped and clothed upon as they pass down the generations from
lip to lip, to venture to give them as gospel facts in clear,
twentieth-century type. They will surely live without the aid
of any present or future historian, for this is the fortune of
trifles! Great thoughts, feelings, aspirations,--great unselfish
deeds even,--perish and are forgotten, while trifling words,
gestures, peculiarities in dress or speech, live with no apparent
reasonableness whatever--certainly not because of their dignity or
merit. They swarm around the honored men and women of the world
like insects around a traveller on a sunny day, living of their
own accord, too insignificant to challenge or brush away, gaining
dignity at last from their own antiquity. Who cares whether Thomas
Carlyle liked his chops tender, objected to vermin, or abhorred the
crowing of a cock? Yet, I venture to say, when his name is called,
his image is associated oftener with his peculiarities than with the
sublime thoughts with which he sought to elevate and inspire the
world.
Mary Washington sustained through a long life a lofty character for
Christian purity and dignity; trained a son to lead our country
through many years of danger and privation to the liberty and
prosperity which places it to-day in the front of all the nations
of the earth; yielded her life at last, in pain unspeakable,
with no murmur upon her pure lips. Yet when her name is called,
all the ingenuity of her countrymen is aroused to accentuate her
peculiarities--to treat her with a sort of whimsical indulgence, as
an unlettered old woman, conspicuous for eccentricities of temper,
of dress, petty economies--in short, make her ridiculous! Truly, in
all ages there are Greeks who weary of hearing Aristides called the
Just!
In the face of all the testimony I have presented and will present,
the most remarkable statements regarding Mary Washington are
continually printed in the Historical Sketches published by the
best firms in the country. What can be their authority for such
statements as these?--
"The Washingtons were poor hard-working people. Mary Washington
cooked, weaved, spun, washed and made the clothes for her
family."
"Her children had no outer garments to protect them from the
cold--no cloak, boots or hats except in winter; no cloaks then.
In severe weather the boys simply put on two or three trousers
instead of one."
"Mary Washington quarrelled with her son so that when he wished
to minister to her comfort in her old age he was forced to do so
through some third party. These things she accepted as her due,
showing a grim half-comic ingratitude that was very fine."
"Washington's mother scolded and grumbled to the day of her
death--seeking solace only by smoking a pipe."
Could this monstrous woman have held an honored place in a social
circle of stately, courteous, cultured people? Why assert such
things which completely offset an oft-repeated concession that
"all the sterling, classic virtues of industry, frugality and
truth-telling were inculcated by this excellent mother(!) and her
strong common sense made its indelible impress upon the mind of her
son."
She has also suffered much at the hands of her own countrywomen!
We must remember she never appeared in the full blaze of public
scrutiny until she was over seventy years old, and then,
impoverished by a long war with an _entourage_ the most discouraging
and painful. Women then found her parsimonious, ungraceful in
dress and manner, sour in temper! Pray what have we, my fastidious
sisters, done for our country in our day and generation? Compare
our privileges and opportunities with hers! The wealth, the light,
the leisure of a happy era, are ours, and yet not enough can this
affluent country afford for our adornment, our culture and pleasure.
We can--and do--traverse the earth, flitting from land to land
as the seasons change, becoming acquainted, if it so please us,
with the cloistered wisdom of libraries, the color and beauty of
palaces, the priceless treasures of art centres, able to enrich our
minds with all the whole world has to offer, from ancient days to
this, and with the possible contact of brilliant minds at home and
abroad. Show me the result! Something, I grant you, is gained in
personal charm, much, alas! in accentuating the natural heart-break
from which the less fortunate suffer in witnessing the undeserved
contrasts and inequalities of life.
Surely it is not for American women of this day--sheltered,
treasured, adored--to complain that industry, simplicity in living,
ungraceful dress and manner, mar the portrait of a noble woman whose
lot was cast in a narrow and thorny path, whose life was necessarily
a denied one, and yet who accomplished more for her country than any
other woman ever did or ever can do!
It was her pleasure to live simply--at a time of almost riotous
profusion. It was her pleasure to busy her own hands with the
housewifely work of her own household,--knitting, sewing, sorting
fleeces for "Virginia cloth," preserving fruits, distilling herbs
for the sick,--"making drudgery divine" by sharing the tasks she
laid upon others, thereby earning her many gifts to the poor.
In an age of abundant leisure she was industrious; in an age of
dissipation of time and money she was self-denying, diligent, and
frugal; in an age when speech was free and profanity "genteel" she
preserved her temperate speech, unpolluted by the faintest taint
of coarseness or irreverance. When the church no longer concerned
itself with the care of men's souls, she kept her own serene, in
her simple faith that prayer would prevail in the end, performing
every outward religious duty as conscientiously as if the priests
and bishops showed, as well as taught, the way. So did she--
". . . travel on life's common way
In cheerful Godliness; and yet her heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay."
This, the result of many years spent in studying her character, the
writer presents as the true Mary Washington, to be honored all the
more for her retired, her simple life, her homely industries.
It is proper that her characteristics should be summed up before
the weakness of extreme old age had lessened its activity and
usefulness, while she was still young enough to catch the enthusiasm
of her friends and neighbors for fine houses, fine coaches, rich
dress, and much indulgence in pleasure.
She was better able than some of her neighbors to indulge in these
things, deemed in her day the essentials of position. Perhaps she
may have heard the specious argument urged by some to warrant such
indulgence,--the argument that expenditure in luxuries becomes
the duty of the rich in order to stimulate the industries of the
poor. But Mary Washington believed in the wholesome influence of an
_example_ of self-denial, which can only become of any worth when
practised by choice and not by necessity. And yet she lived long
before Stuart Mill and other political economists had demonstrated
that money spent in rich garments, jewels, and luxury in living adds
nothing of permanent value to the world.
[Illustration: MARY WASHINGTON'S HOUSE IN FREDERICKSBURG.]
She never left the plain, four-roomed, dormer-windowed dwelling
at "Pine Grove," until for her greater protection she moved into
Fredericksburg, choosing a home still plainer and less spacious
than the house on her farm. Says Mr. Custis, who saw her in this
home: "Her great industry, with the well-regulated economy of
all her concerns, enabled her to dispense considerable charities
to the poor, although her own circumstances were always far from
rich. All manner of domestic economies met her zealous attentions;
while everything about her household bore marks of her care and
management, and very many things the impress of her own hands. In
a very humble dwelling thus lived this mother of the first of men,
preserving, unchanged, her peculiar nobleness and independence of
character."
This most valuable testimony as to Mary Washington's character,
appearance, and manner is contained in the first chapter of "The
Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington," by George
Washington Parke Custis, son of "Jack" Custis, who was the only
son of Mrs. George Washington. "Jack" Custis died young (he was
married at nineteen), and his son, named for General Washington,
with his sister, Nelly Custis, were adopted into the Mount Vernon
family. Although this son was too young to have fully appreciated
Mary Washington, his testimony comes directly from her own sons and
daughter and others who knew her intimately. Through them he studied
her, and by no one of them was he contradicted. His statements are
conclusive--not to be challenged. They need no additional force from
the tradition that between the Custis family and Madam Washington
"there was never perfect accord"--one of the meaningless traditions
originating in the busy brain of some gossip, for which there was
no foundation in truth. Although several extracts have already
been given from Mr. Custis's book, the fact that the book itself
is now out of print, and to be found only in the Congressional
Library at Washington, and possibly in some of the older libraries
of the country, will perhaps excuse me for having quoted so freely
the chapter relating to Mary Washington. It was written only
thirty-seven years after her death, and from it has been drawn the
relations given by Sparks, Lossing, and others.
"The mother of George Washington," says Mr. Custis, "the hero of the
American Revolutionary War, and the first President of the United
States, claims the noblest distinction a woman should covet or can
gain, that of training a gifted son in the way he should go, and
inspiring him by her example to make the way of goodness his path to
glory."
But the noblest tribute to this great woman was Washington's own.
"All that I am," said he, "I owe to my mother." All that we are as a
nation we owe to him. His debt is ours. It is many times multiplied.
It is ever growing as the ever growing Republic illustrates in its
virtues and in its faults alike the merit of his example and the
wisdom of her teachings. We but degrade ourselves when we refuse
to recognize this debt. Let us rather discharge it as best we
may, in "coin of the highest value--the pure gold of devotion and
gratitude."
CHAPTER XXI
NOON IN THE GOLDEN AGE
Virginia, between the years 1760 and 1775, attained her highest
prosperity. The growth of the colony in general, and the advance
of luxury in living was rapid, marked by an increased taste for
amusements of the most costly kind, and great expenditure in living
and entertaining.
It was high noon in the Golden Age! Life was far more elegant and
luxurious than it was even fifteen years before. The transplanted
Englishman had rapidly prospered in the new land. Great wealth had
suddenly come to him through his tobacco, and he made haste to use
and enjoy it. The four-roomed house--quite good enough for his
cavalier grandfather--had stepped aside to give place to a pillared,
porticoed, stately mansion. The dormer windows--like heavy-lidded
eyes--had been superseded by "five hundred and forty-nine lights"
for one dwelling. The planter often built on the site of his old
colonial residence, sometimes incorporating the old into the new.
An eminence, commanding a wide view of the surrounding country, was
a coveted spot in plantation times. It behooved the settler (for
reasons similar to those which influenced Captain John Smith) to
build his house "on a high hill neere a convenient river, hard to
be assalted and easie to be defended." When the perilous days of
Indian massacre and treachery had passed away, and the country had
entered upon its Saturnian age of peace and plenty, the Virginians
clung to the old historic building-sites, and upon them erected
ambitious mansions, with flagged colonnades, extended wings, and
ample offices; surmounting the whole with an observatory whence
the proprietor with his "spy-glass" could sweep the country--not
now for the stealthy approach of an enemy, but to feast his eyes
upon a scene of unbroken beauty peacefully lying beneath a summer's
sun. The mansion stood apart in solemn grandeur upon some knoll or
eminence overlooking the great highway, the river. It was not to be
taken casually, in a by-the-way sort of a manner, not to be stumbled
upon by accident. It was to be approached with deliberation through
a long line of sentinels--an avenue of Lombardy poplars--"the
proper tree, let them say what they will, to surround a gentleman's
mansion."
[Illustration: Monticello. The Home of Thomas Jefferson.]
This landward approach to the house passed sometimes between columns
of trimmed boxwood or stone gate-posts upon which the arms granted
the family in England were carved in high relief. Gravelled paths
under ornamental trees led to the veranda with its lofty columns.
In the rear, the hill sometimes fell sharply to the riverside in
terraces, after the English fashion. At a wharf, built out into the
bed of the stream, the family often assembled to watch the sailing
of their own ships, trading directly with the mother country. On
the green, facing the river, there were summer-houses of latticed
woodwork, covered with climbing roses, honeysuckle, and jasmine,
and haunted by brilliant humming-birds. Other cool retreats from
the ardor of the summer sun were made of resinous cedars planted
in a close circle, their tops tied together and their walls shaven
smoothly until they resembled little mosques of vivid green. A
low wall covered with honeysuckle or Virginia creeper bounded the
grounds at the water's edge.
[Illustration: THE GARDEN AT MOUNT VERNON.]
But it was in the garden and in the greenhouse that the lady of the
manor exulted! No simple flowers, such as violets, lilies, or roses
were forced in those days. These would come with the melting of the
snows early in February. Only tropical beauties were reared under
the glass: century-plant, cacti, gardenias, lemon and orange trees;
great, double, glowing pomegranates, and the much-prized snowy
globes of Camellia Japonica, sure to be sent packed in cotton as
gifts to adorn the dusky tresses of some Virginia beauty, or clasp
the folds of her diaphanous kerchief. These camellias were reckoned
the most elegant of flowers--so pure and sensitive, resenting the
profanation of the slightest touch. Fancy a cavalier of that day
presenting nothing rarer than a bouquet of daisies or daffodils!
But the garden! Who can describe a garden in the Virginia of 1770?
When the little children of the family were sent forth to breathe
the cool air of the morning, what a paradise of sweets met their
senses! The squares, crescents, stars, and circles, edged with box,
over which an enchanted, glistening veil had been thrown during the
night; the tall lilacs, snowballs, myrtles, and syringas, guarding
like sentinels the entrance to every avenue; the glowing beds of
tulips, pinks, purple iris, and hyacinths; the flowering-almond
with its rosy spikes; the globes of golden passion-fruit; the figs,
rimy with the early dew and bursting with scarlet sweetness! The
whole world filled with bloom and beauty, fragrance and melody.
At a respectful distance from the mansion were smaller houses of
brick or stone, far enough removed from "the great house" to secure
the master's quiet and privacy. In one, a five-roomed building
served for schoolhouse and lodging-rooms for the tutor and boys of
the family. Another was "the office" for the transaction of business
with agents from the other plantations of the master, or with
captains of trading vessels lying at his wharf, laden with outgoing
tobacco, or unloading the liquors, books, musical instruments, and
fine stuffs for the family. In the rear, hidden by maple or cherry
trees, were many houses: wash-house, dairy, bake-house, storehouses,
and a kitchen as large as the five-roomed schoolhouse, for the
sole use of the great High Priest--the cook--and her family. "All
these formed a handsome street," adds Mr. Fithian (the New Jersey
Presbyterian tutor, whom nothing escaped), and all were surrounded
with little gardens and poultry-yards, and enlivened with swarms of
chickens, ducks, pigs, and little negroes. Remote from these were
the great stables, well filled and admirably regulated.
The kitchens of these later mansions were always a long distance
away, because that source of comfort, the black cook, had so many
satellites revolving around her and drawing sustenance, light, and
warmth from her centre, that it was absolutely necessary to give her
elbow-room. The satellites, however, had their uses. At dinner-time,
each one with shining face, robed in a great apron to supplement
various trouser deficiencies, and bearing covered dishes, formed
a solemn procession back and forth to the dining room. There the
frosty eye of the gray-haired butler awed them into perfect decorum;
and in the kitchen the vigorous arm of the cook kept them well
within bounds, along with the hounds, and, like them, devouring with
hopeful eyes the delicious viands in course of preparation.
The planter felt that the time had come to concern himself with the
elegancies of fine living. He went home to England to select books
for his library and to have his portrait painted by Sir Joshua
Reynolds; perhaps bring over his grandfather's portrait by Sir
Peter Lely, or, at least, secure a copy of Sir Peter's portrait of
Charles the First. A precious picture now and then found its way to
the drawing-rooms of the Northern Neck; and at "Elsing Green," a
little lower down in King William County, were hangings of priceless
value--a set of Gobelin tapestry presented to the owner's ancestor,
Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, by William of Orange. "Race
horses, drawn masterly and set in elegant frames," adorned the
dining-room walls of Colonel John Tayloe of Mount Airy, owner of the
great Yorick, one of the most celebrated horses of the day; and in
the same dining room stood the famous punch-bowl, since celebrated
in verse. The fashion of adorning the grounds with marble statues
is first mentioned in describing Colonel Tayloe's beautiful garden,
near Mary Washington's girlhood home.
[Illustration: Elsing Green.]
Libraries in 1770 had been well chosen, and had attained respectable
proportions. Mr. Robert Carter of Westmoreland, and other men of
wealth, had collected law-books, books on divinity relating to the
Established Church, a large musical library, the works of Pope,
Locke, Addison, Young, Swift, Dryden, "and other works of mighty
men," in the Latin tongue.
[Illustration: MOUNT AIRY.]
Mr. Carter had also every musical instrument then known: "An Organ,
Spinet, Forte-Piano, Guittar, German Flutes, Harpsichord and
Harmonica. The last, the wonderful new instrument invented by one
Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia" (him of the Blackbeard Ballad),
"being musical glasses without water, framed into a complete
instrument capable of thorough bass and never out of tune." On these
the master, his sons, and daughters, and the Presbyterian tutor
discoursed learned music, sonatas, etc.
Reading of this age, one is amazed at the activity of these
Virginians of the Northern Neck. They were forever in motion,
passing up and down the Potomac and Rappahannock--the great canals
of their Venice--in barges and batteaux, and across country from one
river to the other on horseback, in chaises and chariots.
The Potomac was the theatre of much rivalry and ostentation among
the rich planters whose estates bordered the river. Superb barges
were made to their order in England; and the negro crew rowing them
were clad in showy uniforms. Occasionally a British frigate would
appear on the river, when all the country would be thrown into a
"paroxysm of festivity." Breakfasts and dinners at Mount Vernon and
"Belvoir" (the seat of the Fairfaxes) would be in order, with the
return courtesies of afternoon teas on board the frigate.
The river was always in order, but the highway on land was about
the last thing to which the Virginian turned his attention. He
accepted it as it was. If a section became impassable to the family
chariot, drawn often by six horses, the outriders simply dismounted,
and with axes cleared a passage around it for the vehicle to "turn
out." Hence the necessity for these outriders. The family never
went abroad unattended. At one dinner, described by our Froissart
of the Northern Neck, eight servants accompanied the coach and
chaise, namely: coachman, driver, two postillions, two servants for
the master, one each to attend the two gentlemen on horseback--the
chaise being driven by the master himself.
There were no bridges across the rivers. Logs of wood placed side
by side with planks nailed across formed a wide, floating bridge
which sank several inches under the weight of the great coach, the
horses splashing through the water. When the roads lay through
level ground, after rains they were submerged for miles. Struggling
through such a watery lane to visit John Augustine Washington, an
English traveller lost heart, and called out to the postillion of
the coach sent to fetch him, "Here, you fellow! How far out into
the river does your unfortunate master live?" Nobody ever thought
it worth while to drain the roads. When they ran through fields
crossed and recrossed by "stake-fences" (stakes set at intervals
and woven basket-fashion with "savin" or juniper boughs) the pauses
were incessant. Bars had to be let down, gates opened and shut. Our
Froissart counted thirteen gates in fifteen miles.
"When the roads were too rough for carriages," says an old writer
who remembered them, "the ladies used to ride on ponies, followed by
black servants on horseback. In this way ladies, even when advanced
in life, used to travel, clad in the scarlet riding-habits procured
from England. Nay, in this way, on emergencies, the young ladies
used to come to the balls, riding with their hoops arranged 'fore
and aft' like lateen sails, and after dancing all night ride home
again in the morning."
A "neighborhood" included everybody within a day's journey, all the
way from Westmoreland to Mount Vernon. Dinner-parties were going on
as incessantly then in the Northern Neck as now in the metropolis.
The nearest neighbors were invited to these every few days, while
occasionally, in order to reach the whole community of several
counties, balls were given to last five days!
Of course, all this close and familiar intercourse was an important
agent in the wonderful unanimity of the entire country when the hour
of conflict had come. At these balls and dinners something was done
besides dancing and card-playing--some hint or word from eloquent
lips to keep alive the spark soon to burst forth in resistless,
all-conquering flame. Historians speak of the period as "the lull
before the storm." It was not by any means a "lull"--rather a
carnival!
CHAPTER XXII
DINNERS, DRESS, DANCES, HORSE-RACES
If the grave New Jersey Presbyterian tutor--who has given us so
faithful a picture of domestic life in the Northern Neck--saw fit to
burn his candles at night while he described the dresses, dinners,
and dances of his day, surely it is worth our while to pause in our
history to consider them.
The planter's daily life began betimes with an early breakfast. The
planter was an early riser. He had retired early. The myrtle-berry
candle--the costly spermaceti--were not brilliant enough to tempt
late hours. Often before daybreak in the winter, when the nights
were long, he might be found at his secretary arranging the work of
the day. Washington at Mount Vernon would light his own fire and
read by candle-light, then breakfast on tea and Indian-meal cakes at
eight o'clock. But to all rules he and his mother were exceptions!
The usual life of the planter admitted more luxury. His breakfast
was a good one! But first, having risen early, he mixed with his own
hands the great beaker of crushed ice, peach-brandy, and mint to be
sent around to all the rooms as an appetizer. Even the children
were admitted to this morning loving-cup. Virginians believed in it!
Luckily the breakfast is not left to a twentieth-century
imagination--which would probably suggest an orange, coffee, and
roll. The Rev. Andrew Burnaby, Vicar of Greenwich, London, had the
pleasure of eating a Virginia breakfast in 1759: "The ancient custom
of eating meat for breakfast still continues. At the top of the
table where the lady of the house presides, there is constantly tea
and coffee, but the rest of the table is garnished out with roasted
fowls, ham, venison, game and other dainties. There is scarcely a
Virginia lady who breakfasts without ham!"
Dinner at home or abroad was served not later than three, and
was preceded by at least one mint julep all around. At one home
dinner we read of four kinds of fish, "Sheeps-head, Bass, Perch,
Picked Crab: Ham, Mutton, vegetables, pudding, fruits, cheese, old
Madeira," which to be presentable must have crossed the ocean more
than once. A dinner included three courses,--soup, then the whole
dinner placed on the table at once, then dessert. Ducks were served
at the fish feasts. The delicious canvasback duck was by no means
so highly appreciated as it is now. They were left in comparative
peace to feed upon the tender wild celery of the Potomac marshes.
The diamond-backed terrapin was much too abundant to be considered
a dainty. To save the scarcer and costlier pork, terrapin was fed to
the negroes. Laws were enacted in Maryland forbidding the slaves'
rations to be exclusively of terrapin!
At one of General Washington's ceremonious dinners there was soup,
fish roasted and boiled, "gammon of bacon" and fowl. The middle of
the table was decorated with artificial flowers and small images.
The dessert was a pudding and apple pie, ice-cream, jellies, melons,
apples, peaches, nuts. This dinner was recorded as "a great dinner."
Today it would be considered "a good enough dinner, to be sure, but
not a dinner to _ask_ a man to!" Some of the receipts for these old
Virginia dinners have been preserved in the Randolph family--notably
the receipts for English plum pudding, and for the Christmas mince
pie.
Tables were richly furnished with burnished pewter and handsome
silver. So many articles of silver--bowls, cups, and salvers--were
imported from England that the thrifty planter was constrained
to import an engraver as well, in order that his arms and crests
might be engraved under his personal supervision. The china was,
of course, English or of English importation. We manufactured no
china, imported none from the East--probably none from France. Mary
Washington's china we know was blue and white. Knives were of fine
Sheffield steel, and served other uses than cutting. How else did
the colonial dames eat their peas? Surely not with the little steel
fork with two wide-apart prongs. This is a painful reflection,
but we must remember that a good many ladies whom the world has
admired--Helen of Troy, the Mother of the Gracchi, all of its
earth-born goddesses, in fact, until Queen Elizabeth--had to content
themselves at dinner with the utensils God had given them. They had
no forks at all--not even a chop-stick! Hence the early need for
napkins.
There was no lack of good napery in Mary Washington's time, but the
usage of napkins differed somewhat from the usage of to-day, at
least at General Washington's dinners.
The destruction of cattle by Tarleton's Red Dragoons caused almost
a famine of cream and butter, immediately after the war, so that
"trifle" and ice-cream were articles of prime luxury. To obtain
sufficient cream for the dish known variously as trifle, syllabub,
or floating island, it was sometimes necessary to save it until it
soured or grew rancid.
Mrs. Morris tells of such a misfortune at one of Washington's
state dinners. She did not hesitate to consign her own unswallowed
morsel to her napkin, but records with wicked glee that "poor Lady
Washington ate a whole plate-full without wincing."
At dinner much ceremony was observed. "I have fortunately learned
by heart all the ceremonies of the table, and will make no
mistakes," says the tutor exultantly, when he finds it necessary to
preside in the illness of the mistress and absence of the master.
Toasts were regularly drunk at dinner if there were guests--but
postponed to the evening bowl of "toddy" or punch when the family
was alone. No day passed without these toasts. "To the King and
Queen, the Governor of Virginia and his Lady, and success to
American Trade and Commerce." After these each person was called
upon by the master for his toast. "I gave the Lovely Laura," says
our tutor--Laura being the name in Cupid's court for Miss Betty
Beatty.
One might trace the changes in political feeling by these toasts.
At first, after the royal family and success to Virginia commerce,
only the respective favorites among the ladies. Presently we observe
that "The Sons of Liberty" have crept into the company to demand
a toast. Then an ominous toast follows the king and all the rest,
"_Wisdom_ and _Unity_ to the Conference now assembled." Then the
royal family, governor, and his lady are dropped altogether, and
the toast, praying for "Wisdom and Unity," takes their places.
The Prince de Broglie records the toasts at General Washington's
table,--"The United States of America, the King of France, the
Queen"; "Success with our Enemies and the Ladies"; "Success in War
and Love." After these, the Marquis de Lafayette and the military
heroes of the war. General Washington, when President, discontinued
this custom, contenting himself with grave bows, and "Your Health,
Sir; your Health, Madam," all around the table, until every one was
thus honored.
One can hardly repress a shudder at the accounts given by Robert
Maclay and others of the deadly dulness and formality of General
Washington's state dinners. He kept up this formal coldness to the
end. Free and easy manners came in with Mr. Jefferson and long
trousers. Fancy this incident occurring at General Washington's
table: "Here's to thy Absent Broad-brim Friend Hollingworth," from
Dolly Madison. "Here's to thy Absent Kerchief, Friend Dorothy," from
the Quaker.
At informal dinners among neighbors the company "sat until sunset,"
then coffee, and at nine o'clock supper,--artichokes, crabs,
oysters, strawberries and cream, the punch-bowl again. Record is
made of "Sudden Pains and Sickness at the Stomach at night."
The dancing class was held in succession at all the mansions
along the Potomac as far as Mount Vernon. Mr. Christian--stern
but elegant--taught minuets and country-dances, first politely
requesting each guest "to step a minuet." He does not hesitate to
rap two young misses across the shoulder for a fault, and to inform
"one young Fellow" that he has observed him "through the course
of the Dance," to be "insolent and wanton," and shall require him
to alter his manner or leave the school. Then, when candles are
lighted, having danced all day, Mr. Christian winds up with another
minuet and country-dance, and at seven is glad to retire. But
fun holds awhile longer. They all "play Button to get Pauns for
Redemption, and carry it on with sprightliness and Decency." The
tutor is in luck. "In the course of redeeming my Pauns I had several
Kisses of the Ladies." Then Colonel Philip Ludwell Lee arrives in
a travelling chariot from Williamsburg. "Four candles on the table
make the room luminous and Splendid." There is a fine supper with
four instructed waiters. After supper all gather around the fire and
"play 'break the Pope's neck'" until ten o'clock, and then to bed.
"Almost every lady wears a red cloak,"[10] says our tutor; "and when
they ride out they tye a red handkerchief over their Head and face,
so that when I first came to Virginia I was distressed whenever I
saw a Lady, for I thought she had a Tooth-Ach." At a five-days' ball
at Squire Lee's "the Ladies were dressed Gay and splendid, and when
Dancing their Skirts and Brocades rustled and trailed behind them.
For five days and nights they Danced minuets, reels, marches: Giggs
(an exaggerated dance resembling the _Trescone_ of Italy) and,
last of all, Country Dances to the Music of a French Horn and two
Violins, for," says the astonished tutor, "Blow high, Blow Low, the
Virginians are genuine blood--they will Dance or die!"
[10] "Journal of Philip Vickens Fithian," edited by John Rogers
Williams.
The plantation fiddler belonging, as did the barber, shoemaker,
and carpenter, to each establishment, seems to have sufficed for
Mr. Christian's class. At this the gentlemen were "drest in black,
superfine broadcloth, laced Ruffles, Black silk Stockings, buckles
at knee and instep. They wore powder on their Hair, or the short Wig
now in fashion."
The ladies, well, the principal ladies, must each sit for her own
portrait.
First, Mary Washington's granddaughter, "Miss Jenny Washington,[11]
about seventeen, not a handsome face, but neat in her Dress,
well-proportioned, and has an easy, winning Behaviour. She is not
forward to begin a conversation, yet when spoken to is extremely
affable without assuming any girlhood affectation or pretending to
be overcharged with Wit. She moves with propriety when she dances
a _Minuet_, and without any _Flirts_ or vulgar _Capers_ when She
dances a _Reel_ or _Country-Dance_. She plays well on Harpsichord
and Spinet, understands the principles of Musick and therefore
performs her Tunes in perfect time--a neglect of which always makes
music intolerable, but it is a fault almost universal in young
Ladies. She sings likewise to her instrument, has a strong, full
voice and a well-judging Ear. Most of the Virginia Girls think it
labour quite sufficient to thump the Keys of a Harpsichord," etc.
"Her Dress is rich and well-chosen, but not tawdry, nor yet too
plain. She appears to-day" (at the dancing class in the morning) "in
a chintz cotton gown with an elegant blue Stamp, a sky-blue silk
Quilt" (petticoat over which the gown opens), "a spotted apron. Her
Hair is a light Brown, it was craped up high with two Rolls at each
Side, and on the top a small cap of beautiful Gauze and rich lace,
with an artificial flower interwoven."
[11] Fithian's "Journal."
Very satisfactory indeed for Mary Washington's granddaughter, sister
of Bushrod Washington, afterwards judge of the Supreme Court.
[Illustration: Bushrod Washington.]
Next, Miss Betsy Lee: "She is a well-set maid of a proper Height,
neither high nor low. Her Aspect when she is sitting is masculine
and Dauntless: she sits very erect; places her feet with great
propriety, her Hands she lays carelessly in her lap and never moves
them but when she has occasion to adjust some article of her dress,
or to perform some exercise of her Fan. Her Eyes are exactly such as
_Homer_ attributes to the Goddess _Minerva_ and her arms resemble
those which the same Poet allows to _Juno_. Her Hair which was
a dark Brown was craped up very high and in it she had a Ribbon
interwoven with an artificial Flower. At each of her ears dangled
a brilliant jewel. She was pinched up rather too near in a long
pair of new-fashioned Stays, which I think are a nuisance both to
us and themselves--For the late importation of Stays, said to be
now most fashionable in London, are produced upwards so high that
we can have scarce any view at all of the Ladies' Snowy Bosoms; and
on the contrary they are extended downwards so low that Walking
must, I think, cause a disagreeable friction of some parts of the
Body. I imputed the Flush which was visible in her Face to her being
swathed up _Body and Soul and Limbs_ together. She wore a light
chintz gown with a blue stamp elegantly made which set well upon
her. She wore a blue Silk Quilt. Her dress was rich and fashionable
and her behaviour was such as I should expect to find in a Lady
whose education had been constructed with some care and skill."
So much for Miss Lee. Now for the country beauty, Miss Aphia
Fauntleroy (afterwards married to Captain John Champe Carter of the
Revolution).
"Is the best dancer of the whole absolutely!--And the finest Girl!
Her head powdered as white as snow and craped in the newest taste.
She is the copy of the Goddess of Modesty--very handsome. She seemed
to be loved by all her Acquaintances and Admired by every Stranger."
"Miss Priscilla Carter is 16--small of her age, has a mild winning
Presence, a sweet obliging Temper, _never swears_ which is here
a distinguished virtue, dances finely, plays well on key'd
Instruments, is never without what seems to have been a common Gift
of Heaven to the _fair Sex_, the Copia Verborum, or readiness of
Expression." (This sweet-tempered fifteen-year-older, a pupil of the
Presbyterian tutor, was a young lady of spirit.) "Miss Prissy is
much offended! She retains her anger and seems peculiarly resentful,
refusing to walk over to the school. Indeed she is much affronted.
Monday afternoon by chance I tapp'd her on the Head and wholly
in Jest." Five days later the Diary records, "At last Prissy is
reconciled," having punished him sufficiently.
Next, Miss Hale, fourteen years old. "She is dressed in a white
Holland gown, quilt very fine, a Lawn Apron, has her hair craped
high, and upon it a Tuft of Ribbon for a cap. Once I saw her
standing. I rose immediately and begged her to accept my Chair.
She answered most kindly, 'Sir, I thank you,' and that was all I
could extract from this Wonder of her Sex for the two days of the
dance, and yet I seemed to have an equal Share in the Favours of her
Conversation."
Miss Sally Panton, lately come from England to teach Mr.
Turberville's daughters French and English, creates a sensation
because she is supposed to have brought with her the latest
London fashions. "Her stays are huge, giving her an enormous long
_Waist_. These stays are suited to come up to the upper part of her
shoulders, almost to her chin; and are swaithed round her as low as
they can possibly be, allowing her no liberty to walk at all. To be
sure this is a vastly _Modest_ Dress!" The stays are all right, but
"her _Head-Dress_ not to the liking of the Virginia Ladies" being
arranged low on the neck, of which they can, on no account approve.
"Nevertheless," quoth the tutor, "if her Principles of Religion and
her Moral Manner be unexceptionable _I_ shall think her Agreeable."
The last picture thrown on the canvas must be another Miss Lee. "A
tall, slim, genteel Girl thirteen years old. She is free from the
taciturnity of Miss Hale, yet by no means disagreeably forward. She
dances extremely well, and is just beginning to play on the Spinet.
She is drest in a neat shell Callico Gown, has very light hair done
up high with a feather, and her whole carriage is easy and graceful,
and free of formality and Haughtiness, the Common foible here."
For aught we know to the contrary this charming young lady was the
beauty who roused an anonymous poet to alliterative verse.
"May mild meridian moonbeams mantle me
With laughing, lisping Lucy Lightfoot Lee."
The ingenuous tutor is delightful. Not once does he interpret the
freezing manner, the haughtiness and formality of the maidens to any
dislike of himself. Perhaps it did not exist; his successor, also a
Presbyterian tutor, married one of them. But not so, I fancy, did
these ladies treat young Harry Lee--"our Light-horse Harry," the son
of the "Lowland Beauty"--when they met him at the Squire's ball; and
surely not thus would the young junior from Princeton College have
been impressed by them. One peep within the leaves of that Diary,--a
thing impossible to the veriest madcap in his school,--and all would
have been over for the Presbyterian tutor, albeit he and young
Harry had been college mates.
Two things were absolutely necessary in the etiquette of the
minuet,--the pointed foot must be so firm, so straight, that not a
crease or wrinkle appeared in the quilted petticoat, and, of course,
this quilt must be of a strength and richness: so rich, indeed, that
it would "stand alone," yielding not in dance and courtesy.
Evidently Miss Hale at fourteen, and Miss Lee at thirteen, were
already in society. In a few years, doubtless, they were all married
to Revolutionary officers, two or three, sometimes five, of them
falling in course of time to his lot, as was usual in that day of
short-lived women. As we have seen, Catherine Willis--afterwards
Princess Murat--married at thirteen.
[Illustration: Mary Ambler.]
The wife of Chief Justice Marshall, Mary Ambler, was only fourteen
years old when she attended the Dunmore ball and captured the
young Captain Marshall, who gave the only guinea he possessed to a
clergyman for marrying him soon after.
[Illustration: Chief Justice John Marshall.]
Arthur Lee said, "In Virginia a man is old at thirty and a woman at
twenty." A certain little Alice Lee, twelve years old, wrote this
remarkable letter from Stratford in 1772 to a kinsman in London.
(Doubtless Miss Alice was one of the dancers at Squire Lee's ball
two years later.)
"So you threaten me if I prove deficient in the deference I owe you
as a married man, with the power you have of forwarding or retarding
my success in the Matrimonial Way.[12] This would be a tremendous
threat indeed were I as fond of Matrimony as my young Mistress, as
you call her, but happily I am little more than twelve years old and
not so eager to tye a Knot which Death alone can Dissolve. And yet
I pretend not to ridicule the holy sacred institution, but have all
due reverence for that and the worthy people who have entered into
the Society, from good and generous motives. It is only those who
chuse to be married at all events that I think deserve raillery....
I never saw Westmoreland so dull. I was at Squire Lee's when your
letter came. He is the veriest Tramontane in nature; if ever he gets
married, if his wife civilizes him, she deserves to be canonized.
[12] "Lee of Virginia," Edited by Dr. Edward Jennings Lee.
"So you can't forbear a fling at femalities; believe me Curiosity is
as imputable to the Sons as the Daughters of Eve. Think you there
was ever a Lady more curious than our Cousin the Squire? He himself
is the greatest of all curiosities, but hang him, how came he to pop
twice in my head while I was writing to you!
"The Annapolis Races Commence the 6th of October. The American
Comp^y of Players are there and said to be amazingly improved. I
should like to see them, as I think Theatrical Entertainments a
rational amusement."
Clever little Mistress Alice! Twelve years old, and already
flirting with the sixty-year-old Squire Richard Lee Burgess from
Westmoreland, member of the Continental Congress, giver of five-day
balls; who yet found time to gather rosebuds, for he actually
married sixteen-year-old Sally Poythress after he was sixty-two
years old.
It is a great misfortune to us that our observant tutor was not
invited to Mount Vernon. Mr. Christian's class met at Mount Vernon,
also at "Gunston Hall"--the fine residence of the George Mason
who wrote the famous Declaration of Rights in 1776. Mrs. Martha
Washington's lovely daughter, Martha Custis, was then just thirteen
years old, and there is no doubt, not the least, that she wore
a blue silk quilt and had her hair "craped" (_crépé_) high and
interwoven with a feather. On the 18th of April, 1770, Washington
records, "Patsy Custis and Milly Posey went to Col. Mason's to the
Dancing School."
The discipline of children was stern. Their duties included the
courtesies of life as religiously as its business. "I have no
Stockings and I swear I won't go to the Dancing School," says
fifteen-year-old Bob, who is at the awkward age and dreads society.
"'Are Bob and Nancy gone to Mr. Turberville's?' said the Colonel
at Breakfast--'Nancy is gone, Sir, Bob stays at Home, he has no
shoes!' 'Poh--what nonsense,' says the Colonel. He sends the clerk
to the Plantation Store for a pair of Shoes. Bob he takes to his
Study and floggs severely for not having given seasonable notice,
and sends him instantly to the Dance" in a suitable and proper frame
of mind to enjoy himself!
Balls, fish feasts, christenings, cock-fights, horse-races and
_church-going_ filled the time as well as visiting and dancing.
Everybody went to church through all weathers. In winter the
churches were bitterly cold. No provision of any kind for heating
them was ever dreamed of. The church was one of the rallying places
for the neighborhood. "There are," says the tutor, "three grand
divisions of time at the church on Sundays; Viz: before Service
giving and receiving letters of business, reading Advertisements"
(affixed to the church-doors) "consulting about the price of
Tobacco, Grain, &c, and settling either the lineage, Age or
qualities of favourite Horses. 2. In the church at Service, prayers
read over in haste, a Sermon, seldom under and never over twenty
minutes, but always made up of sound morality, or deep-studied
Meta-physicks. 3. After Service is over, three quarters of an hour
spent in strolling round the church among the crowd in which time
invitations are given by gentlemen to go home with them to dinner."
The christenings were seasons of large family gatherings--the silver
christening bowl, like the punch-bowl, descending from generation to
generation.
There were no "poor whites"--the helpless, hopeless, anæmic race now
numerous in Virginia. There were well-instructed men and women in
the industrial classes who filled situations as visiting shoemakers,
weavers, or housekeepers. The Virginia woman in "The Golden Age"
had need of all the help she could get. She married while yet a
child--often less than fifteen years old. Her housekeeper was her
tower of strength. She helped generally throughout the family,
nursing the sick, caring for the children's comfort, and standing
sponsor for them in baptism.[13] A letter from one of these humble
retainers, a housekeeper at Stratford, somewhere about 1774, has
been preserved by which we perceive she represented the wife of
Governor Fauquier at a christening.
[13] "Lee of Virginia."
(Dated) "STRATFORD, September 27.
"TO MISS MARTHA CORBIN--_Dear Miss._ I gladly embrace this
oppertunity of writing to you to put you in mind there is such
a being as mySelfe. I did not think you two would have slited
me so. Your little cosen matilda was made a cristan the 25th of
September. The godmothers was mrs washington miss becy Tayloe
Miss Nancy Lawson Stod proxse for Miss Nelly Lee and I for
Mrs Fauquer, godfathers was col. Taloe Mr Robert Carter mrs
washington Col Frank Lee, the Esq: mr washington and your ant
Lee Dessers there Love to you I am your very humble servant
Elizabeth Jackson."
It is easy to understand why Miss Jackson should have dignified
all the Lees who employed her with large capitals, but why she
should thus have honored Miss Nancy Lawson above "mrs. washington"
we shall never know in this world, only, as everybody knows, no
married lady--even Mrs. John Augustine Washington, our Mary's
daughter-in-law--could possibly be as important as that most
worshipped of all creatures, a Virginia young lady.
As to the race-horses, we cannot begin to reckon their increased
importance. Janus and Yorick are among the immortals! So also should
be General Washington's horses,--Ajax, Blueskin, Valiant, and the
royal Arabian Magnolia. Nor should Silver-eye be forgotten, nor
the lordly Shakespeare, for whose service a groom was appropriated
to sleep near him at night in a specially built recess, that his
Lordship's faintest neigh might find response.
The men who settled the Northern Neck of Virginia were cavaliers
from "Merry England," with an inherited love of horse-racing, and,
indeed, all sporting. There was not a Roundhead among them! They
liked cards and dancing. Nobody could make them believe that the
devil hunted with the hounds and ran with the race-horses.
The early Virginia historians wrote at length about the pedigrees
and qualities of horses and the skill of their riders. The old
court records have many quaint entries of disputes about "faire
starts," and citizens' depositions were taken to settle them; for
instance, "Richard Blande, aged 21 yeares Deposeth that in the Race
run between John Brodnax and Capt. William Soane now in tryall,
the horse belonging to Henry Randolph on w'ch Capt. Soane layed,
came after the Start _first_ between the Poles agreed on for their
comeing in," etc. William Randolph's task was more difficult. He
"Deposeth in ye race between Wm. Epes and Mr. Stephen Cocke," that
the latter "endeavoured to gett the other's path, but he did not
gett it at two or three jumps nor many more, upon w'ch he josselled
on Mr. Epes' path all most part of ye Race."
People took all these things very seriously, and they formed the
subjects of conversation until the time came for horse and rider to
distinguish themselves in a sterner field.
The horses bred in Virginia were small, fleet, and enduring,
varying little from the early English racers,--the immediate
descendants of the Arabian horses. There was a fine race-course at
Fredericksburg, and Mary Washington's relatives and friends appear
in the contests--her sister-in-law's husband, Roger Gregory, always
among the foremost. He ran a famous mare, Dimple; Mr. Spotswood,
Fearnaught,--a name reasonably to be expected from John Spotswood's
horse. Then there were Fashion, Eclipse, Selima, Ariel, Why Not?
(why, indeed?), and many more. Purses from ten to two hundred
guineas or pounds were the prizes; also "Saddles, Bridles, Cups and
Soop Ladles."
Lewis Willis, General Washington's first cousin, worked his farm
principally with blooded plough-horses. The dams of Maid of the
Oaks and Betsy Blue were plough-horses. Maid of the Oaks--the most
splendid creature ever seen--sold for £15,000 to pay, alas! a
security debt. For this astonishing statement I have as authority
Lewis Willis's son, Byrd Willis,--father of the Princess Murat
and brother of the Jack Willis so loved by everybody and by none
more than General Washington himself. These were splendid, jovial
fellows, full of anecdote and inexhaustible humor. Colonel Byrd
Willis left a diary of the good times of his day.
But, alas for all the good times, the little cloud no bigger than
a man's hand in 1766 was now darkening the Northern sky. The
_Gazette_, that had chronicled so many merry days, gave its columns
to a warning note (July 21, 1774) from "a Virginian," recommending
that Fredericksburg suspend its races and contribute purses to the
people of Boston; and, indeed, there was no more record of a race
before the Revolution.
The Presbyterian tutor, from whom we must now part, was a candidate
for the ministry, but saw much to admire and little to condemn
in the social life of the Virginians. He had been warned "that
Virginia is sickly--that the people there are profane, and exceeding
wicked. That there I shall read no Calvinistic Books, nor hear any
Presbyterian Sermons." He finds himself under no more nor stronger
temptations to any kind of vice--perhaps not so great--as at home,
"unless sometimes when I am solicited to dance I am forced to
blush" not because of its wickedness--Oh, no!--but "because of my
_Inability_! I Wish it had been a part of my Education to learn an
innocent and ornamental qualification for a person to appear even
decent in Company!"
This impartial observer of the times in which Mary Washington lived
sums up the Virginians thus: "The people are extremely hospitable
and Polite--universal characteristics of a gentleman in Virginia.
Some swear bitterly, but the practice seems to be generally
disapproved. I have heard that this Country is notorious for Gaming,
however this may be I have not seen a Pack of _Cards_, nor a _Die_
since I left home, nor gaming nor Betting of any kind except at
the Races. The _Northern Neck_ is a most delightful country--the
best people are remarkable for regularity and economy, civil and
polite and of the highest quality in Virginia--well acquainted
with the formality and ceremony which we find commonly in High
Life--sensible, judicious, much given to retirement and study,"
etc., at length, of which the above extract is a fair example.
Another tutor, one John Davis, presumably a Welshman, who spent,
and wrote of, "Four and a Half Years in America," described the
Virginians of George Washington's time and neighborhood and the
church he attended:--
"No people could exceed these men in politeness. On the piazza
of Mr. Thornton's tavern I found a party of gentlemen from the
neighboring plantations carousing over a bowl of toddy and smoking
cigars. On my ascending the steps to the piazza, every countenance
seemed to say, 'This man has a double claim to our attention, for
he is a stranger in the place.' In a moment room was made for me to
sit down; a new bowl was called for, and every one who addressed me
did it with a smile of conciliation. But no man questioned me whence
I had come, or whither I was going. A gentleman in every country is
the same--and if good breeding consists in sentiment, it was found
in the circle I had got into.
"The higher Virginians seem to venerate themselves as men! I am
persuaded there was not one in that company who would have felt
embarrassed at being admitted to the presence and conversation
of the greatest monarch on earth. There is a compound of virtue
and vice in every human character. No man was ever faultless; but
whatever may be advanced against Virginians, their good qualities
will ever outweigh their defects; and when the effervescence of
youth has abated, when reason reasserts her empire, there is no man
on earth who discovers more exalted sentiments, more contempt of
baseness, more love of justice, more sensibility of feeling, than
a Virginian.... I found at the taverns every luxury that money can
purchase; the richest viands covered the table, and ice cooled the
Madeira that had been thrice across the ocean. About eight miles
away was _Powheek_ (Pohick) church--a name it claims from a run
that flows near its walls. Hither I rode on Sundays and joined
the congregation of Parson Weems" [our friend of the hatchet and
cherry tree!] "a minister of the Episcopal persuasion, who was
cheerful in his mien that he might win men to religion. A Virginian
church-yard on a Sunday, resembles rather a race-course than a
sepulchral ground. The ladies come to it in coaches, and the men,
after dismounting from their horses, make them fast to the trees.
The steeples to Virginia churches were designed not for utility but
ornament; for the bell is always suspended to a tree a few yards
from the church. I was confounded on first entering the church-yard
at Powheek to hear 'Steed threaten steed with high and boastful
neigh,' nor was I less stunned with the rattling of wheels, the
cracking of whips, and the vociferations of the gentlemen to the
negroes who accompanied them. One half the congregation was composed
of white people, the other of negroes, and Parson Weems preached the
great doctrines of salvation as one who had experienced their power."
The Welsh tutor, Davis, and the American tutor and patriot, Fithian,
wrote thus of the Virginians of Mary Washington's day, as they saw
and knew them. Their horizon was limited to a few representative
families in one or two neighborhoods. But a great and good man of
the present generation--wise, truthful, candid--has thus recorded
his opinion of the Virginians of that period. Says John Fiske: "On
the whole it was a noble type of rural gentry that the Old Dominion
had to show. Manly simplicity, love of home and family, breezy
activity, disinterested public spirit, thorough wholesomeness and
integrity,--such were the features of the society whose consummate
flower was George Washington."
This section of Virginia could boast a society, more exclusive, if
possible, than that of the James River region. It was free from the
mixed and motley crowd which infested Williamsburg. Somewhat remote
from the commercial centre, the life was that of the landed gentry
in England; quieter, more conservative, more leisurely and elegant
than the society gathered in towns.
Thomson Mason of the Northern Neck, providing in his will for the
education of his sons, adds, "but I positively direct that neither
of my sons shall reside on the South Side of James River until
the age of twenty-one years, lest they should imbibe more exalted
notions of their own importance than I could wish any child of mine
to possess." Already there was a protest against a certain lofty
manner in vogue among the planters. Fashions that had lasted long
began to change.
With the passing of the century Virginia's picturesque Golden Age
passed, never to return in the history of this country.
Even while Washington lived and held his stately court,--powdered,
in full court-dress, sword at side, and no "hand-shake" for the
crowd at his levees,--even then the Golden Age, the age dominated by
English influence, had passed. England was no longer the authority
in manner and dress. The people wished none of her customs,
traditions, or principles. Naturally their hearts had turned to
the French. The emancipated Englishman cared no more for family
trees, still less for armorial bearings. When Bishop Meade travelled
through Virginia to cull material for his history of the old
families, he found them reluctant to acknowledge the possession of
a coat of arms or to confess a descent from English nobility. "They
seemed ashamed of it. Everybody became a 'Democrat,' a 'patriot,'
and in the abstract at least 'an advocate of the rights of man.'
Many families who were properly entitled to arms, lost the evidence
of it in the general neglect which blighted the tree of pedigree."
The manner in which Jefferson, in the opening of his autobiography,
almost sneers at armorial bearings reflects the feeling of Virginia
for many years after the Revolution.
Judge N. Beverley Tucker prefaces a family history with these words,
"At this day it is deemed arrogant to remember one's ancestors."
_Nous avons changé tout cela!_ At _this_ day it is suicidal to
forget them!
In presenting these pictures of social life in Virginia in the
eighteenth century, I have been careful to accept the testimony
only of those who were actually a part of it. It has become the
fashion to idealize that old society as something better than our
own. It had its charm of stateliness, of punctilious etiquette,
of cordial hospitality; its faults of pompous manner, of excess
and vanity, differing as conditions have changed, only in type and
expression, from similar blemishes in our own manners of to-day;
neither better nor worse, perhaps, as the years have passed. In all
that is understood by the word "society" we find many points of
resemblance, a family likeness, in fact, to metropolitan society in
the nineteenth century.
Has the reader ever sought an intelligent definition of the term
"society"?
"Society," says Noah Webster, "is specifically the more cultivated
portion of any community, in its social relations and influence;
those who give and receive formal entertainments mutually." This
sounds reasonable enough, but the literary world of to-day, if we
may credit some of its shining lights, takes exception at the word
"cultivated."
"Society," says Bishop Huntington, in his "Drawing-room Homily,"
"is something too formless for an institution, too irregular for
an organization, too vital for a machine, too heartless for a
fraternity, too lawless for a school. It is a state wherein all
realism is suppressed as brutal, all natural expression or frank
sign of true feeling as distasteful and startling. Its subjects are
more prostrate than the slaves of the East before the Padishah! The
individual finds everything decided for him. Provided he imitates
copies, and repeats his models, he knows all that he need know, and
has entered into salvation."
Evidently, neither now, nor in the Arcadian days of Virginia's
Golden Age, has society seen fit to adopt the motto inscribed on
the palace gates of the young Alexander Severus, "Let none enter
here save the pure in heart." One, than whom none knows it better,
has declared it to be to-day "a garden of flowers where 'sweets
compacted lie.' But underneath the roses lurks a subtle and venomous
serpent whose poison already threatens the fair and beloved of the
land."
These eminent satirists are part of the society they condemn. They
know it well. And yet we would fain find comfort in the summing
up of another who also knew it well. "Society," says Emerson, "is
something too good for banning, too bad for blessing. In attempting
to settle its character, we are reminded of a tradition in pagan
mythology. 'I overheard Jove,' said Silenus, 'talking of destroying
the earth. He said he had failed; they were all rogues and vixens
going from bad to worse. Minerva said she hoped not; they were only
ridiculous little creatures with this odd circumstance,--if you
called them bad, they would appear so; if good, they would appear
good,--and there was no one person among them which would not puzzle
her owl--much more all Olympus--to know whether it was fundamentally
good or bad.'"
But whether or no society be fundamentally good or bad, its doings
have been in all ages interesting. Max O'Rell declares that the
upper ten thousand are alike all over the world; that the million
only--as affording original types--are interesting. He is wrong. The
world cares more for the fortunate few than for the ordinary mass
of mankind. Why do we find in every journal of the day long columns
filled with the comings and goings, the up-risings and down-sittings
of our wealthy classes? Why do readers never complain of the
monotonous round of their travels? People prick up their ears and
listen whenever the word "society" is uttered, although fully aware
that half we read is invented to meet the hunger of the multitude
for society news.
Everybody wants a glimpse of that gallant vessel bearing the elect
so gayly down the stream of time,--the stream so full of bitter
waters to many. They are more interesting, these voyagers in the
painted pleasure boat, than the poor man who shades his eyes with
his rough hand to gaze as they pass. They are even more interesting
than the crowd running along to cheer, or swimming in the wake for
the possible chance of being taken on board. There they go!--the
happy hundreds--a "merry chanter" at the prow, a merry crew in the
rigging; music, song, the flash of jewels, the perfume of flowers
mingling with everyday sights, and sounds of everyday life.
We may assure ourselves that it is possible to be happy on board
some other vessel, with a better pilot, and bound for a better port,
but life is serious on that vessel. We like to be amused, and are
keenly interested in those gayer voyagers.
PART II
CHAPTER I
THE LITTLE CLOUD
It seems to have been hard for England to take her American colonies
seriously. "The gentlemen of the opposition on the other side of
the water" were regarded as inferiors, or, at best, troublesome
children, to be dealt with accordingly, and taught to know--and
keep--their places.
As early as 1766 a "Planter" on the banks of the Potomac addressed
a letter to "The Merchants of London," and printed in the London
_Public Ledger_, in which he says: "The epithets of 'parent and
child' have been so long applied to Great Britain and her colonies
that individuals have adopted them, and we rarely see anything from
your side of the water free from the authenticated style of a master
to a schoolboy. He seems to say, 'We have, with infinite difficulty
and fatigue, got you excused this time; pray be a good boy for the
future; do what your papa and mamma bid you, and hasten to return
them your most grateful acknowledgments for condescending to let you
keep what is your own. If you are a naughty boy, and turn obstinate,
and don't mind what your papa and mamma say to you, and pretend to
judge for yourself when you are not arrived at years of discretion
or capable of distinguishing between good and evil, then everybody
will hate you; your parents and masters will be obliged to whip you
severely, and their friends will blame _them_.' See what you have
brought this child to! If he had been well scourged at first for
opposing your absolute will and pleasure and daring to think he had
any such thing as property of his own, he would not have had the
impudence to repeat the crime."
The first word of resistance to the enforcement of the Stamp Act
came from the Northern Neck of Virginia. At Leeds, Richard Henry
Lee, born in the same county and same year with George Washington,
wrote a set of resolutions which were unanimously adopted by one
hundred and fifteen of the most influential of his neighbors. No
Virginian could be legally tried but by his peers. No Virginian (for
were they not all British subjects?) could be taxed but by consent
of a parliament in which he is represented by persons chosen by the
people. "Any person using the stamp paper was an abandoned wretch,
lost to virtue and public good!" They bound themselves to resist and
punish such persons; and at the utmost risk of lives and fortunes to
protect any and every citizen who should suffer persecution because
of adherence to these resolutions.
This was in 1766. The defiant paper was signed by Mary Washington's
three sons,--Samuel, Charles, and John Augustine,--also by Dr.
Mortimer, her family physician. The Stamp Act was soon repealed, and
the stir and excitement naturally subsided. Several years later a
tax on tea, glass, and paper awakened it again. Even then there was
no apprehension of danger. Nobody dreamed of final separation from
England. The little cloud had been no bigger than a man's hand; it
was resting on the distant horizon and would give trouble to nobody.
In 1766 the odious Stamp Act was repealed. In 1767 a new and more
oppressive duty was laid on glass, paper, and tea. England, in the
next year, drew back again and repealed this later tax, excepting
only the tax on tea, "for," said Lord North, "a total repeal cannot
be thought of until America lies prostrate at our feet."
Virginia retaliated by her non-importation resolutions, binding
herself to import nothing from England until the obnoxious impost
should be repealed. Every known article of luxury in living or dress
was specified in her proscribed list, except--oh, wise and prudent
burgesses!--"women's bonnets and hats, sewing silk and netting silk!"
The resolutions were signed by 170 Virginians, including George
Washington, Spencer Ball, Samuel Eskridge, and the Lees, Tayloes,
Corbins, Carters, and others of Mary Washington's family, friends,
and neighbors in the Northern Neck. The firmest spirit pervaded the
assembly. At its close, the _Gazette_ goes on to say, "the whole
company walked in procession from the Capitol to the Raleigh Tavern,
where loyal and patriotic toasts were drunk--the King, the Queen
and Royal family, the Governor of Virginia, the Duke of Richmond,
Lord Chatham, Lord Camden, Lord Shelburne, British Liberty in
America." Warming up after half a score of glasses, somebody gave,
"May the Efforts of Virginia, joined with her Sister Colonies in
the Cause of Liberty, be crowned with Success;" and then, warmer
still, and jealously fearful of discourtesy to the government it had
just defied (for a gentleman must be polite on his own soil) this
toast was enthusiastically presented and applauded, "May the Rose
flourish, the Thistle grow, and the Harp be tuned to the cause of
American Liberty!"
A fine "schoolboy" this, loving liberty, loving fun, too much in
love with happiness to bear malice!
It was not long before the schoolboy had a fine chance for a frolic.
Ships laden with tea appeared in Boston harbor. A party disguised as
American Indians boarded the ships and threw the cargo overboard.
This was more than any indulgent parent could be expected to stand.
The schoolboy must be shut up in a closet, and the key turned on
him. The port of Boston was ordered by Act of Parliament to be
closed!
And now Richard Henry Lee's "Committee of Correspondence and
Communication with the Sister Colonies" came into active service. Of
course the governor had dissolved the assembly that adopted it. He
was too late! From the moment of its adoption expresses were flying
from Massachusetts to Virginia, back and forth, with details of
every step in the progress of events. William Lee wrote from London
that "this inter-colonial consultation had struck a greater panic in
the ministers than all that had taken place since the Stamp Act."
The expresses travelled fast. Not for nothing had the Virginians
bred fleet horses and trained fearless riders! It was said of those
riders that "they must almost have flown," so promptly did the pulse
in Virginia respond to the heart-throb in Massachusetts.
The news from Boston was overwhelming. Not only was the port to be
closed as punishment--the thumb-screw drew still closer. Parliament
passed an "Act whereby the People of Boston shall have no power of
trying any Soldier or Person for committing any crime: all such
offenders to be sent Home for legal Tryal." 14 Geo. III, c. 39.
The Virginia leaders were not surprised. The little cloud, no bigger
than a man's hand in 1766, had never disappeared altogether. For ten
years the storm had been gathering. The sky was now overcast, the
thunder was heard, the tempest was at hand. With a keen realization
of all that resistance implied, some of them hesitated. Many of
them were descendants of the royalists who had come over after the
execution of Charles the First. They knew what revolution meant! The
halter and the scaffold were still vivid in their traditions.
When the news came of the Act of Parliament closing the port, the
House of Burgesses was in session. They ordained "a day of solemn
fasting, humiliation and prayer, devoutly to implore the Divine
interposition for averting a heavy calamity which threatens the
civil rights of America."
Every man, one would think, has a right to humble himself, abstain
from food, and pray God for help in time of trouble. Not so thought
his Excellency, Governor Dunmore. Summoning the Honorable--the House
of Burgesses--to his Council Chamber, he spoke to them thus: "Mr.
Speaker and Gentlemen of the House of Burgesses, I have in my hand
a paper published by order of your House conceived in such terms
as reflect highly upon his Majesty and the Parliament of Great
Britain, which makes it necessary for me to dissolve you, and you
are dissolved accordingly."
So, then, the guardians of the colony were to be sent home to do
their fasting and praying in private, and perchance repent or hold
their tongues, at least.
But just here the unexpected happened. While the Virginians were
growing more and more hostile to Lord Dunmore and treating him with
ill-disguised contempt, his family arrived at Williamsburg,--the
Right Honorable, the Countess of Dunmore, Lord Fincastle, and the
Ladies Catherine, Augusta, and Susan Murray.
[Illustration: Lord Dunmore.]
Here was a pretty state of things,--distinguished strangers arriving
on Virginia soil and Virginia on the eve of a political earthquake.
However, there was but one way out of the difficulty,--hospitality
and hostility both claiming the hour, hostility must step aside
for a while. There was time for all things. There must be an
illumination of course; and if the ladies smiled as they entered
Williamsburg in their chariot drawn by six white horses, they must
receive acclamations in return.
They did smile. They made a most agreeable impression. The _Virginia
Gazette_ declared next day that the arrival of the countess gave
inexpressible pleasure, that she was a very elegant woman, that her
daughters were "fine, sprightly girls," and that "goodness of heart
flashed from them in every look."
Before they turned into the great palace gates they had won all
hearts. They were the guests of the colony. Already a herald had
published a Court Etiquette, whose leaflets were in the hands of the
pretty Jacqueline and Ambler girls. The finishing touch of courtly
grace and usage was to be given to the high-born Virginia beauties.
True, there was small time now to study court etiquette, but
a little delay could not matter much. Whether it did or no,
hospitality was the prime, sacred, delightful duty of the hour.
Accordingly, the gentlemen of the House of Burgesses caused the
_Gazette_ to announce a "Ball at the Capital to Welcome Lady
Dunmore and her Family to Virginia." The Apollo, which still echoed
Henry's eloquence and Washington's appeal for Boston, was hastily
made ready; and the men who had been most bitter in the morning in
their denunciation of the Port Bill bowed low in the evening to
the Countess of Dunmore, and led her and her daughters with grave
courtesy through the stately figures of the minuet.
Presently it is all over. The last note dies upon the strings,
the lights burn low in the coming dawn, parting words are
whispered,--"_adieu_" not "_au revoir_,"--and the hands that had
touched with refined finger-tips harden themselves for the gauntlet
and the sword. No matter, now her ladyship has been suitably
welcomed, how soon she runs away with her pretty daughters from the
guns and finds refuge on the _Fowey_! The sooner the better, in fact.
But before that could happen Lady Dunmore had time to become
immensely popular in Williamsburg. The _Gazette_ was forever
printing verses in her praise. The burgesses were welcomed to the
handsome "palace" of their governor,--the palace of which they
were so proud, with its "imposing cupola, lit at night on public
occasions, its ample green lawn in front, its artificial lakes,
gardens and terraces." Lady Dunmore gave an afternoon reception on
Queen Charlotte's birthday when her youngest child was christened
_Virginia_ in compliment to the Old Dominion. Everybody was invited
at night to join the royal party in a splendid ball in honor of the
Queen's birthday.
"The Mimic Court at Williamsburg was exerting all its powers to
please, but the patriots were not to be turned aside." They could
draw the velvet glove over the gauntlet to pleasure a lady, but the
gauntlet was there, nevertheless, and the gauntlet was of steel.
We are impressed in reading of all this, with the punctilious
etiquette of Williamsburg society which forbade the intrusion of
politics into the social life. Lord Dunmore had been regarded with
suspicion and distrust from the moment of his arrival in 1772. He
was perfectly aware of the feeling of the First Assembly which met
under his administration. Colonel Washington was a member of that
assembly, and had been present--and active--at the consultations
on public affairs held in the old Raleigh tavern. Yet, but for the
death of Miss Custis, he would have been Dunmore's companion when he
journeyed to Western Virginia to purchase land.
He dined with Lord Dunmore a few days before the couriers brought
news of the Act of Parliament closing the port at Boston. Nobody was
more resolute than he in denunciation of that act, and in support of
the resolutions of "sympathy for our distressed fellow-subjects of
Boston." At that moment his pocket held an accepted invitation to
dine with the governor. He did so dine, spent the evening with him,
probably the night, too, for he breakfasted with him the next day at
his farm. Two of Lord Dunmore's sons were students at William and
Mary College. To all outward appearance everything was going well
and smoothly among good friends and neighbors.
[Illustration: Robert Carter of Nomini Hall.]
The fast was appointed for the first day of June, 1774. The port
was to be closed on the fourth. On that day Washington wrote in
his diary, "Fasted all day and went to Church." George Mason, of
"Gunston Hall," in the Northern Neck wrote home, "Please tell my
dear little family that I desire my three eldest sons and my two
eldest daughters may attend church in mourning." His friend and
neighbor, Robert Carter, ordered differently. "No one must go from
hence to church or observe this fast at all." Not yet were all the
colonists prepared to follow Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Mason,
and Lee in defiance to the British Crown!
The fast was generally observed. The governor, it appears, had
no power to prevent it. The time had not yet come when Virginia
patriots, to avoid his interference, must hold their conferences
in old St. John's Church at Richmond. At Williamsburg a sermon was
preached from the text, "Help, Lord! for the godly man ceaseth, for
the faithful fail from among the children of men."
The tea was sealed up and destroyed, and money and provisions
ordered to be sent to Boston. The counties were canvassed for these,
and they were immediately forwarded.
The Virginia women entered with enthusiasm into all schemes for
sending help to their "distressed fellow-subjects in Boston," and
applauded Colonel Washington when he declared that "he was ready to
raise one thousand men, subsist them at his own expense and march at
their head to Massachusetts."
The colonial dames packed away in lavender-scented chests all their
imported finery, their "quilts" and brocades, and clothed themselves
in homespun or in mourning, destroying or sealing up their precious
stock of tea, and regarding with unfriendly eyes a certain dame who
continued to indulge in the proscribed luxury. It seems hard, poor
lady, that she should come down in history as the only one who thus
transgressed, "who continued to sip her tea in her closet after it
was banished from every table," and that even her name and lineage
should be given by an irreverent historian! This was no other than
Kate Spotswood, she of the fawn and blue satin gown and the silver
hair, now Mrs. Bernard Moore!
Even the master of "Nomini Hall" proscribed the tea long before he
ceased, for he _did_ cease at last, to toast "his Gracious Majesty,
the King." "Something," says our old friend, the tutor, "in our
palace this Evening very merry happened. Mrs. Carter made a dish of
Tea! At Coffee she sent me a dish--I and the Colonel both ignorant.
He smelt, sipt, look'd! At last with great gravity he asks, '_What's
this?_' 'Do you ask, Sir?' 'Poh!' and out he throws it, _splash!_ a
sacrifice to Vulcan."
It seems the tea was restored to favor, at least in the army, only
three years later. The colonists were then expressing themselves in
sterner language! An island was found somewhere near headquarters in
June, 1778. Here the officers invited their friends in the afternoon
to drink tea, and because the island was so beautiful and enchanting
they honored it with the name of "Paphos." There "Lady Stirling,
Lady Kilty, and Miss Brown, met his Excellency's lady, an agreeable,
well-disposed, excellent woman. The prospect of an alliance in
Europe had cheered every heart, and cheerfulness enlightened every
countenance." Was it the "alliance" or the dearly loved beverage
of which they had been so long deprived? Thenceforward and until
to-day the afternoon tea has been an institution, linked with the
history of our country. It came back on the island of Paphos, and
it came to stay! We hear of it once again in the annals of the
Revolution. The Marquis de Chastellux tells us of another afternoon
tea! "I left Mr. Samuel Adams with regret, and terminated my day by
a visit to Colonel Bland. He is a tall, handsome man who has been a
good soldier, but at present serves his country and serves it well
in Congress. I was invited to drink tea, that is, attend a sort of
Assembly: pretty much like the _conversazioni_ of Italy; for tea
here is the substitute for the _rinfresca_. Mr. Arthur Lee, M. de La
Fayette, M. de Noualles, M. de Dames, etc: were of the party." In
those days men could be found at an afternoon tea!
CHAPTER II
THE STORM
The stirring events which marked every month in the next two years
are known to every reader of American history: the steady injustice
and oppression of the governor, his attempt to disarm the colonists
by removing the powder of the colony from "The old Powder-horn,"
the quaint old building at Williamsburg, now cherished by the
association for the preservation of Virginia antiquities, the arming
of the Virginians headed by Patrick Henry to reclaim it, the flight
of poor Lady Dunmore and her pretty daughters to the protecting
guns of the _Fowey_, finally, the flight of the governor himself,
followed by the curses of the people,--how he trained his guns on
Norfolk, giving Virginia her first experience of the horrors of war,
how he hung about the coast to the terror of the country people,
and finally announced his intention of sailing up the Potomac and
capturing Mrs. Washington!
When the powder was stolen by Governor Dunmore, seven hundred
citizens, calling themselves the Friends of Liberty, armed and met
in Fredericksburg, ready to march to Williamsburg, and reclaim it
by force. They were led by Hugh Mercer, Mary Washington's friend
and neighbor. George Washington and George Mason prevailed upon them
to wait until Dunmore made restitution.
These were days of fearful trial to Mary Washington. Hitherto, on
her quiet farm on the banks of the Rappahannock, she had known
little of all the stir and excitement. Of the little that she heard
she disapproved. She was a loyal subject of the king and a devoted
churchwoman. All her early prejudices, traditions, ideas of duty,
close ties of kindred, bound her to the mother country and the
Church of England. That these should be resisted by her own family,
her four sons, and the Mercers, Travers, and Gregorys, was an
overwhelming disaster, to which she found it hard to be resigned.
When war was declared and she learned that her son was to lead the
rebellious army, her anguish was expressed in the most vehement
language. "Grandma Knox" strove in vain to console her. "Oh, is
there to be more fighting, more bloodshed? Surely it will all
end in the halter," exclaimed the devoted mother. So bitter were
her feelings at this moment, that when General Washington rode
to Fredericksburg to induce her to remove into the town, he was
doubtful in what manner she would receive him. He thought it prudent
to pause at the little inn, "The Indian Queen," and reconnoitre.
That a member of the family should "put up at a tavern" wasq
so tremendous an event that no one dared mention it to his
mother. Observing an air of mystery in the faces of her
servants, she demanded an explanation. "Tell George to come home
instantly--instantly!" she exclaimed; and straining him to her
bosom, she again commended him to God, and again gave him, with her
blessing, to his country.
On the 15th of June, 1775, he was elected commander-in-chief of the
American forces, and crossed the threshold of his mother's home, and
his own beloved Mount Vernon, on the right bank of the Potomac, to
return no more until the war should end. He was in his saddle, on
his way to Boston on horseback, when he was met by the news of the
battle of Bunker Hill. On the second of July he entered Boston amid
the acclamations of the people and the thunder of cannon, and the
next day assumed command of the American forces.
The anguish of his mother was shared by the wife, left alone at
Mount Vernon. She wrote to a relative who censured the folly of
Washington's position: "I foresee consequences, dark days, domestic
happiness suspended, eternal separation on earth possible. But my
mind is made up. My heart is in the cause. George is right; he is
always right!"
"Escorted," says Washington Irving, "by a troop of light-horse, and
a cavalcade of citizens, he proceeded to the headquarters provided
for him at Cambridge, three miles distant. As he entered the
confines of his camp, the shouts of the multitude and the thundering
of artillery, gave note to the enemy beleaguered in Boston of his
arrival."
[Illustration: Abigail Adams.]
He was already the idol of the hour! As he rode along the lines,
all travel-soiled and dusty, he found favor in every heart. The
soldiers adored him--the women as well. The elegant and accomplished
wife of John Adams, destined to be the first American lady to make
her courtesy to King George after it was all over, wrote to her
husband: "Dignity, ease and complacency, the gentleman and the
soldier, look agreeably blended in him. Modesty marks every line and
feature of his face. Those lines of Dryden instantly occurred to
me:--
"'Mark his majestic fabric! He's a temple
Sacred by birth and built by hands divine;
His soul's the Deity that lodges there;
Nor is the pile unworthy of the God!'"
What said the "Godlike" hero to all this? Simply that he trusted
that Divine Providence, which wisely orders the affairs of men,
would enable him to discharge his duty with fidelity and success. A
year later he wrote, "When I took command of the army I abhorred the
idea of independence, but I am now fully satisfied that nothing else
will save us."
Dunmore was still in the Virginia waters. He did not leave until
the following year, in fact, his burning of Norfolk occurred six
months after General Washington left Virginia. It was constantly
expected that he would appear upon the Rappahannock and Potomac
rivers; and Colonel George Mason, having moved his own family to a
place of safety, recommended to Mrs. Martha Washington, who was at
Mount Vernon, to leave the neighborhood also. He wrote to General
Washington a little later: "Dunmore has come and gone, and left us
untouched except by some alarms. I sent my family many miles back
into the country, and advised Mrs. Washington to do likewise as
a prudential movement. At first she said, 'No, I will not desert
my post,' but she finally did so with reluctance, rode only a few
miles, and, plucky little woman as she is, stayed away only one
night." During the summer of 1776, Dunmore started again to ascend
the Potomac to lay waste "Gunston Hall" and Mount Vernon and capture
Mrs. Washington. The county militia harassed him on his way, but he
probably would have achieved his purpose but for a dreadful storm
that threatened the safety of the ship. But when thunder and storm
reached him through the cannon-balls of Andrew Lewis, one of which
passed through his flag-ship and smashed his china, "Good God!" said
Lord Dunmore, "has it come to this?" and weighing anchor, he betook
himself to England, having injured as far as possible the colony he
was commissioned to protect.
CHAPTER III
MARY WASHINGTON IN THE HOUR OF PERIL
Mary Washington was kept in a state of perpetual anxiety and alarm.
She was left unprotected by her nearest friends and relatives. Her
son was gone, returning for no brief visits to his old home. Her
grandson, George Lewis, was on his uncle's staff. Her sons were
enlisted, all her grandsons. The Spotswood boys were at the front.
Her good neighbor, Hugh Mercer, was a general in the army; her near
relative, Colonel Burgess Ball, had raised and equipped a regiment,
and was maintaining it at his own expense. "All Europe was amazed
when out of the forests and fields of the remote colonies of the
Atlantic coast, from north to south, there stepped forth at the
drum beat of Revolution heroes, scholars, statesmen, soldiers, and
chieftains who overcame its master spirits in debate and foiled its
ablest commanders in the field of combat."
Others of her neighbors and relations were already at the front.
In many houses father and sons had gone; in almost every home the
first-born was a soldier. She had only with her the women of her
kindred and the good and faithful Dr. Charles Mortimer,--the loyal
American though English born,--the able, generous physician. At his
own expense he equipped and maintained a hospital in which Mary
Washington and his little Maria probably felt a deep and common
interest.
Her old age was not to be the ideal age so passionately desired
by the old, of quiet serenity, "honor, obedience, and troops of
friends." The latter she had, with the added pang of keen anxiety
for their safety and welfare. She was called upon to surrender all
she held sacred or dear,--her king, her church, her glorious son,
her kindred, her loved country home. She gave up all resignedly,
uncomplainingly.
It was after this triumph over her prejudices, this complete
surrender to conviction of duty that her character blossomed into
perfect beauty. A great calmness possessed her soul and shone in her
face, a dignified resignation differing altogether from dumb despair.
While her son was leading the troops of his country she was busily
engaged in the industries of domestic life,--sorting the fleece and
mingling it with shredded silk to make long hose for her son, the
general; weaving substantial fabrics in the great cumbrous looms;
learning cunning secrets of herbs and leaves to dye the cloth for
garments; preparing balsams and lotions for the sick and needy. Her
hands were never idle. Gathering her apron into a spacious pocket,
she walked about with the woollen knitting for her son's soldiers.
She became, it is true, somewhat more silent, more reserved. The
lines of the face lost all hint of humor. She was too sad for that,
but never peevish or complaining. Descendants of her old neighbors
acknowledged that "Mrs. Washington was somewhat stern," but add
that she and her daughter, Mrs. Lewis, possessed withal a lofty
graciousness of manner peculiarly their own. General Washington had
this manner, commanding deference and confidence, and forbidding
familiarity or the smallest liberty; although it is certain that
neither he nor his mother were conscious of the impression made upon
others.
Her daughter, Betty Lewis, lived at "Kenmore," the elegant mansion
near Fredericksburg, and entreated her to come to her "to be taken
care of," but she said, "My wants are few in this life, and I feel
perfectly competent to take care of myself." She elected a home of
her own very near "Kenmore," preferring to be independent. Thence
she was driven every day by "old Stephen" in her phaeton to her farm
across the river, whence she brought seeds and cuttings for her town
garden and a jug of water from the spring out of which her husband
and children had drunk. Old Stephen witnessed with glee her method
of dealing with her overseer. The latter ventured one day to depart
from her instructions, and she called him to account.
"Madam," said the agent, "in my judgment the work has been done to
better advantage than if I had followed your instructions."
"And pray, sir, who gave you the right to exercise any judgment in
the matter?" she asked; "I command you, sir! There is nothing left
for you but to obey."
Fredericksburg was in the direct line of communication between
Williamsburg and the headquarters of the army. Couriers were
perpetually passing to and fro, and many were the respectful letters
"honored madam" received from the great commander.
With the coming of these couriers came repeated tidings of loss and
defeat. She heard about the battle of Long Island, the long days
and nights in the saddle; of the defeat at White Plains; of how the
militia quitted and went home; of the Princeton victory, where her
loved neighbor, Hugh Mercer, died in her grandson's arms; of the
heavy loss at Brandywine and Germantown, where her near neighbor,
the son of plucky John Spotswood, fell dangerously wounded into
the hands of the enemy; of the misery at Valley Forge; of Howe's
occupation of Philadelphia; of General Gates's great victory at
Saratoga--perhaps of the cabal against her son, when the victorious
general was preferred by some to him. Perhaps her son may have
written, or some of Morgan's borderers written to their friends, of
their march from the Shenandoah to Boston with "Liberty or Death"
embroidered in white letters on their hunting-shirts; how General
Washington had met them as he was riding along his lines; how Morgan
had saluted with the words, "_From the right bank of the Potomac,
General!_" how the great commander had leaped from his horse, and
with tears in his eyes shook hands with each one of them.
"The night was dark and he was far from home!"
Or, perhaps, those watching, waiting women on the Rappahannock heard
of how the Virginian, George Rogers Clarke, had begged powder and
men, and gone out to shut and guard the back door of the country;
how they had waded in freezing water, fasting five days and nights,
holding their muskets above their heads as they struggled on; how,
finally, ready as they were to give up, a little drummer-boy had
mounted the shoulders of a tall soldier, and beat the vigorous
"Charge," rallying and inspiring their fainting spirits. Or, it
may be, that some messenger among the fleet couriers had come from
Wheeling, Virginia, and could tell of Elizabeth Zane, the brave
young girl, who volunteered to cross a plain under Indian fire, and
bring a keg of powder from a house in town to save the stockade in
which her people were hiding; how she ran across the plain, found
and fetched the powder, and saved the day.
"These noble legends," says Esten Cooke, "are the true glories of
American history; the race lives in them and is best illustrated by
them. It was a very great race, and faced peril without shrinking,
down to the very boys and girls; and what the long years of the
future will remember is this heroic phase, not the treaties and
protocols of American history." It was the _spirit_ behind our
little army that compelled events and carried it triumphantly to the
glorious result.
It is said that Mary Washington never tolerated an expression of
complaint or despair during these trying times. She would rebuke
it by saying, "The mothers and wives of brave men must be brave
women." Mr. Custis says that, "Directly in the way of the news, as
it passed from North to South, one courier would bring intelligence
of success to our arms; another, 'swiftly coursing at his heels,'
the saddening reverse of disaster and defeat. While thus ebbed and
flowed the fortunes of our cause, the mother, trusting to the wisdom
and protection of Divine Providence, preserved the even tenor of
her life, affording an example to those matrons whose sons were
alike engaged in the arduous contest; and showing that unavailing
anxieties, however belonging to nature, were unworthy of mothers
whose sons were combating for the inestimable rights of man and the
freedom and happiness of the world.
"During the war the mother set a most valuable example in the
management of her domestic concerns, carrying her own keys,
bustling in her household affairs, providing for her family, and
living and moving in all the pride of independence. She was not
actuated by that ambition for show which pervades lesser minds; and
the peculiar plainness and dignity of her manners became in no wise
altered, when the sun of glory arose upon her house. There are some
of the aged inhabitants of Fredericksburg who well remember the
matron as seated in an old-fashioned open chaise; she was in the
habit of visiting, almost daily, her little farm in the vicinity of
the town. When there she would ride about her fields, giving her
orders, and seeing that they were obeyed.
"Hers was a familiar form in Fredericksburg during the Revolution,
and its people showed her every respect as she walked the streets
leaning on her cane. Devout and worshipful she appeared every
Sabbath at church at the appointed hour; and while the armies under
her son were struggling for our freedom, the knitting needles were
busily plied, and from her home went forth her modest contributions
of supplies for him and his soldiers."
Her biographers love to dwell upon her preternatural serenity. This
serenity did not serve for dark hours only. She was not surprised
when the tide turned, and the waves of triumph were borne to her
feet. When her neighbors thronged her with plaudits and praise
of her noble son--their idol and hers--she restrained their
extravagant words, saying quietly: "George seems to have deserved
well of his country, but we must not praise him too much. George has
not forgotten his duty!"
When the news reached Fredericksburg of the victories of Trenton
and Princeton (in that ten days' campaign which Frederick the Great
called the most brilliant in the annals of war) friends gathered
around her with congratulations upon the great achievements of her
son. She received them with calmness, observed that it was most
pleasurable news, and that George appeared to have deserved well of
his country for such signal services, and continued, in reply to the
congratulating patriots (most of whom held letters in their hands,
from which they read extracts), "but, my good sirs, here is too much
flattery--still George will not forget the lessons I early taught
him; he will not forget himself, though he is the subject of so much
praise."
Among the traditions which still linger around Fredericksburg is one
illustrating her perfect calmness, trust, and self-control. George
Kiger, the courier, having at a time of great anxiety ridden hard
to deliver a packet to her from headquarters, was dismayed to see
her drop it unread into one of her unfathomable pockets, simply
remarking, "It is all right--I am well assured of that." Bursting
with curiosity, and mindful of the crowd which had assembled at
her gate to hear the news, Kiger suggested: "There may have been
a battle. The neighbors would like to know." Thereupon she fished
up the packet, glanced over it, and announced, "There has been a
victory!" adding, in the fulness of her heart, "George generally
carries through whatever he undertakes."
In relating this we are reminded of the despatch once handed to
General Washington while he was sitting for his portrait. He read
it apparently unmoved and in silence. It announced the surrender of
Burgoyne's army!
As the long years passed heavily away she had need of more than
her own strong nature to sustain her. She must seek for strength
not her own. "She was always pious," says Mr. Custis, "but in her
latter days her devotions were performed in private. She was in the
habit of repairing every day to a secluded spot, formed by rocks
and trees, near her dwelling, where, abstracted from the world and
worldly things, she communed with her Creator, in humiliation and
prayer."
This favorite resort of hers, sometimes called "Oratory Rock," was
a spot on Colonel Lewis's estate, sheltered by climbing vines from
observation. Oratory Rock was a knoll on the "Kenmore" grounds which
during her life overlooked the Rappahannock. The river has since
forsaken its bed there, and flows in another channel. It was to
this spot, made lovely by shade trees and flowing vines, that she
repaired daily for meditation and prayer, returning home soothed and
strengthened. She often expressed her gratitude for these serene
hours, and desired that she might be buried upon the spot, where she
had received such consolation.
[Illustration: Oratory Rock.]
And who can tell what heavenly messengers visited this great spirit
and ministered unto her? At her feet flowed the Rappahannock, over
which her son when a lad had thrown a stone. She could remember how
his heart had swelled with pride,--that heart now breaking at the
falling away of friends, the desertion of soldiers, the disasters
on the Hudson and Long Island. Who can doubt that the tears of the
great commander fell upon his mother's heart! Her life had been one
of anxiety, trouble, and strife. It was now almost over! She knew of
the end, only that for her it was near! It was then that whispered
words may have floated on the mists of the gathering twilight: "In
the world ye shall have tribulations! Fear not! I have overcome the
world."
CHAPTER IV
OLD REVOLUTIONARY LETTERS
Whenever the women of the Revolution appear upon the pages of
history or romance they are invested with extraordinary virtues.
Our traditions are only of maidens who forsook morning lessons
on the harpsichord, and afternoon tea, and embroidery, to knit
stockings and make plain garments; of Abigail Adams, who "sought
wool and flax and worked willingly with her own hands," of Lady
Washington, dignified and domestic, presenting gloves of her own
knitting, finished and unfinished, as souvenirs of morning visits,
of the angelic ministrations of the women of Massachusetts and New
Jersey. "Fairer always are the old moons of Villon, than the moons
of to-day!" Chesterfield says human nature is the same all the world
over. Woman nature assuredly is!
Letter-writing in the eighteenth century was difficult; the
transmission of letters after they were written uncertain. One
letter received from London was addressed in the fullest faith of
finding its destination to "Major George Washington, At the Falls
of the Rappahannock _or elsewhere in Virginia_." Of course, the
fate of these letters was doubtful. They were liable to be lost
or forgotten. They might be intercepted by the enemy. Hence the
stilted style of many of the Revolutionary letters, the liberal use
of initials to indicate proper names, the guarded hints, obscure
innuendoes and vague allusions which characterize them. Letters
were written on coarse paper, the sheet folded over to leave space
for the address, tied across with a string, and sealed with wax or
a small red wafer. There were no envelopes, no blotting-paper, no
pens except those of home manufacture from the goose-quill. Two
months was a reasonable length of time to allow for the delivery of
letters. To the captain of some passing sloop they were generally
confided, or to the pocket of some friend journeying at leisure from
neighborhood to neighborhood. When received they were treasured, and
packed away in old chests or the secret drawers of old secretaries,
thence to arise to accuse or defend, or entertain the curious in
future generations.
A New York paper, published about seventy years ago, tells the
history of some of these old letters, as follows:[14] "In one of
the thirty apartments of the old colonial home of the Bland family,
'Cawsons,' a large party were assembled at dinner with the master of
the house, a bachelor, and not a member of the Bland family, when a
servant entered and informed him that the house was on fire!
[14] "Bland Papers," edited by Charles Campbell.
"He received the information with great coolness and composure,
ordered that the fire should be extinguished, and requested his
guests not to disturb themselves, that 'the servants would attend to
it.'
"For a time the wine continued to circulate, and it appears that
the fire did also, for with less ceremony than their host it soon
drove the party out of doors. In the confusion books and papers
were thrust into boxes and barrels, or into anything that presented
itself, and carried off into a neighboring barn.
"The person who owned the place at the time of the fire has been
dead many years, and the accidental discovery, very recently, of
the papers was made in the following manner. A gentleman who had
lived on an adjoining farm was called upon one morning by a poor
negro who requested him to purchase a basket of eggs. The basket was
lined with manuscripts which proved upon closer inspection to be
original letters of importance from General Washington, the Marquis
La Fayette and others, addressed to Colonel Theodoric Bland, and
written during the Revolution."
There was one letter, alas! written to the wife of a Virginia
officer whom we should be loth to judge by her friends. It throws a
sinister light upon one phase of the social life in the time of Mary
Washington, and shows us women who could trifle, dress, dance, and
flirt with the enemies of their country in the darkest hour of their
country's peril, fiddling when Rome was burning.
[Illustration: Sir William Howe.]
Sir William Howe entered Philadelphia in the autumn of 1777, and
found "many to welcome him."[15] Philadelphia was a charming old
town with substantial colonial mansions surrounded by grounds of
great beauty. September roses were blooming in those old-fashioned
yards and gardens, and the gracious young beauties were quite
willing to gather them for the British officers. The officers, when
winter set in, were glad to give them all back in ball and concert,
play and assembly. It was a light-hearted, happy time! Why should
they not enjoy it? Why, indeed! Nobody would bleed the more freely
or starve or freeze to death the sooner!
[15] Irving's "Life of Washington."
One of the letters in the egg-basket was written by a lady who
elected to live in Philadelphia during the occupation of that city
by Sir William Howe. It was addressed to the wife of an officer
at the front. We cannot profane our fair, patriotic pages, but
the original is accentuated by oaths quite worthy of Queen Bess.
The ladies mentioned in the letter were wives and daughters of
officers in the field. The writer tells some very, very questionable
gossip to her "dear Patsy," and then proceeds: ... "You see I am
obeying your commands and writing a folio--My God! If this should
fall into your husband's hands I should die! for heaven's sake,
my dear Patsy, don't expose me to him. Your own saucy epistle
leads me into this scrape. Mrs. Beekman is still in the City. They
were very ungenteelly treated, being turned out of their house to
accommodate Lord Howe; they were then moved into the street where
my mother lives. Mr. & Mrs. G. are at their house in Chestnut
Street. Notwithstanding the gratification of their wishes was
completed in the arrival of the British Army, they received the
usual disappointment. Miss Roche did not marry 'S'--by all accounts
he is a vile fellow--so tell M. he may have hopes. Miss ---- is
not shackled, tho' she has many bleeding hearts at her feet." (The
owners of the bleeding hearts were British officers.) "Her vivacity
makes her admired, though saucy! One of her saucy _bon mots_ I
cannot omit. Sir William Howe, in a large company one evening,
snatched a piece of narrow riband from her the moment she entered
the ball room." (Here, alas, a covetous rat made a _bonne bouche_
of the _bon mot_--perhaps it is as well!) "Little Poll Redmond
still continues as violent a patriot as ever, and sings 'War and
Washington' and 'Burgoyne's Defeat' for the British officers, and
with a particular emphasis and saucy countenance warbles forth
'Cooped up in a Town.' You have no idea of the gay winter here;
and likewise the censure thrown on the poor girls for not scorning
these pleasures. You, my friend, have liberality of sentiment and
can make proper allowance for young people deprived of the gaieties
and amusements of life; with Plays, concerts, Balls, Assemblies in
rotation courting their presence. Politics is never introduced. The
Whig ladies are treated with the same politeness as the Tory ladies.
I myself have been prevailed on to partake of the amusements, and I
am, in raillery, styled 'rebel,' and all the Whig news is kept from
me. I had the 'draught of the bill' and Lord North's letter. I have
met a great Hessian Yager Colonel," etc., through endless gossip of
which the above is the only admissible sample!
It is unpleasant to observe that this letter was written in the
winter of 1777-1778--the winter that young Bartholomew Yates, a
lieutenant in a Virginia regiment, fell into the hands of the
enemy, and died in captivity from wounds _inflicted, after his
surrender, by the Hessians_--possibly at the order of my lady's
"great Hessian Yager Colonel," who was, according to her narrative,
admitted to her society and confiding to her the secrets of
the enemy. At that moment many American prisoners,--among them
young John Spotswood,--desperately wounded, were in Philadelphia
inhumanly treated, dying from wanton neglect; and General Washington
indignantly threatening retaliation in his letters to Sir William
Howe. "The English officers were received in the best society with
more than toleration, and they soon became extremely popular. The
winter was long remembered in Philadelphia for its gayety and
its charm. There were no signs of that genuine dislike which had
been abundantly displayed in Boston." It appears the ladies of
Philadelphia ignored the well-known character of Sir William Howe.
Also that the courtly Sir William, when he found a house that suited
him, knew how to make the terms for it.[16] He took the mansion
of a rich old loyalist Quaker, John Pemberton (in the absence of
the latter), and used also the elegant carriage of the Quaker for
his parties of pleasure. When the latter returned home he found his
property much injured, and claimed indemnity. Sir William curtly
refused. "Thee had better take care!" said John Pemberton. "Thee
has done great damage to my house, and thee has suffered thy wicked
women to ride in my carriage, and my wife will not use it since.
Thee must pay me for the injury or I will go to thy master" (the
King) "and lay my complaint before him."
[16] "History of the Valley of Virginia," Kercheval, p. 128.
Sir William did take care! He paid the money.
That most unfortunate of men, Major André, devised in honor of
Sir William Howe the splendid festival of the Mischianza during
the occupation of Philadelphia. Our gay correspondent received an
invitation with "the Howe arms and motto _vive vale_. The device was
a setting sun with 'He shines as he sets, to rise again.' We went to
Pool's bridge in carriages--thence boats, barges and galleys bore us
to ships of the fleet--all gay with the colors of all nations and
every country, and amid them, waving with grace and elegance, our
own _Stars and Stripes_!" "The entertainment comprised a regatta,
a ball, and a great display of fireworks, with innumerable emblems
and exhibitions of loyalty to England. It brought together one of
the most brilliant assemblages of the youth, beauty and fashion
of Philadelphia, and it was long remembered that Major André was
most prominent in organizing the entertainment, and that the most
prominent of the Philadelphia beauties who adorned it was Miss
Shippen, soon after to become the wife of Benedict Arnold."
[Illustration: Major André.]
The tournament was between the "Knights of the Ladies of the Blended
Rose and the Ladies of the Burning Mountain," the latter presumably
the daughters of the country about to be consumed!
The gayety was at its height when the army was encamped just
across the Schuylkill at Valley Forge--when the winter was one of
extraordinary rigor. During that winter the army was often without
bread, often entirely without meat. "Few men" had "more than one
shirt, many only the moiety of one, and some none at all." Men were
confined in hospitals or farmers' houses for want of shoes. In
camp there were on a single day 2,898 men unfit for duty because
they were "barefoot and otherwise naked." In December the men built
fires and sat up all night because there were no blankets to cover
them. When a march was necessary their way could be traced by their
bleeding feet. In three weeks of this time the army at Valley Forge
lost, in its overflowing hospitals, hundreds, some say thousands,
of men. Just across the river American women were bandying idle
compliments with the British and Hessian officers, living on
delicacies of their providing, dancing at midnight routs and noonday
festivals. Here, at Valley Forge, Martha Washington was passing
among the sick with deeds and words of cheer, and the aged mother
praying in solitude on the banks of the Rappahannock!
Of the lady, to whom the Philadelphia letter was addressed, we
must, perforce, form doubtful conclusions. That she possessed a
personality which found immediate favor in the eyes of men, there
is not the least doubt. No man could send her an ordinary message
of courtesy unadorned by expressions of gallantry. Alexander
Hamilton writes of Mrs. Bland to her husband so warmly that he
is constrained to explain, "I write in the style _d'amitie_, not
_d'amour_, as might have been imagined." Says Arthur Lee, "Lay me at
the feet of Mrs. Bland," prudently adding, "and in the bosom of your
friendship."
Stephen Higginson of Boston eclipses them all, and dilates upon
"the rapturous delight of _one fond kiss_ from sun to sun," which
it appears she had promised him; doubting, however, his "capacity
for enjoyments so excessive and for so long a time." Her own colonel
shows himself to be very tender and gentle to his wife. He preserved
all her letters. The poor lady had the smallpox, that dreadful
scourge of the time, but she had not the greatness of soul to keep
from the soldier in the field the knowledge of her disaster. She
drives him wild with her indefinite complainings, her vague hints.
He begs her to spare him this torture. "You say you have been too
ill until to-day to see yourself in the glass. You cannot know what
doubts I have had, what altercations in my own mind whether you
went to the glass or the glass came to you!" She pines for the stir
and excitement of the camp. He entreats her to feel benevolence
and interest in the stay-at-home people. But my lady is subtle;
all her trouble is forsooth for his sake--and he believes her. He
entreats her to spare him her repining _at his absence_, and says,
"Remember 'tis for you, for my country, for my honor, that I endure
this separation, the dangers and the hardships of war; remember that
America cannot be free, and therefore cannot be happy, without the
virtue of her sons and the heroism of her daughters."
We observe the lady gains her point. She joins the Court of Madam
Washington in camp. We observe further, as confirmation of our
estimate of her charms, that she did not long remain a widow after
her husband's early death. She became Mrs. Blodgett, and again
Mrs. Curran. Having refused to give John Randolph of Roanoke the
papers and family portraits belonging to her first husband, he wrote
bitterly of her, always as "the romantic Mrs. Bland-Blodgett-Curran."
With these volatile letters were others lining the ample
egg-basket,--the originals of some of the most celebrated letters of
Washington, Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Randolph, Richard Henry Lee,
on the grave issues of the hour, and all addressed to Colonel Bland.
A very important letter was from Arthur Lee, a pure, incorruptible
patriot, who could not understand how a public servant living on a
small salary could grow rich.
He was ambassador at the French court with Franklin. He left his
countrymen in great straits for money, clothing, and provisions. He
found their representatives abroad living in affluence. He wrote
home, Dec. 13, 1778, "they have made immense private fortunes for
themselves and their dependents. Mr. D. (Silas Deane) is generally
understood to have made £60,000 sterling while he was commissioner;
his clerk, from being penniless, keeps his house and carriage.
Dr. Franklin's nephew, Mr. Williams, from being clerk in a sugar
bakehouse in London, is become a capital merchant here, loading a
number of ships on his own account, while gentlemen of the first
fortunes in America cannot get remittances or credit for their
subsistence.
[Illustration: Arthur Lee.]
"These things are notorious, and there are no visible sources of
this property but the public money and State secrets to trade upon.
"They will force me one day or other to bring the proof of these
things before Congress and the public; when I am sure they will shed
some of their borrowed plumes."
Letters from the French officers, Lafayette, Fleury, De Francey,
speak of "_des lauriers que vous avez gagné à la defense de votre
patrie_," etc. One from Lafayette's own hand illustrates the
excellence of the marquis's English, perhaps quite as good as the
American colonel's French:--
"DEAR SIR: I make myself the pleasure of writing to you; and
wishing you an agreeable sejour at home. If you find there a
horse distinguished by his figure as well as his qualities for
what you think I can desire of him, I shall be obliged to you to
send him to me; Provided he would not be wicked for others or
troublesome to me; as otherwise they are not so dear at equal
beauties and qualities. Being so fine as I wish him, he must be
verry dear. I beg your pardon for this commission and I am, with
great affection
"Your most obedient servant,
"LA FAYETTE.
"P.S. We have not any other interesting news in camp but that a
vessel is arrived in Portsmouth from France with fifty pieces of
cannon and five thousand arms."
Rather an important item to follow an order for a horse.
How "verry dear" the marquis's fine horse was likely to be we can
gather from a letter written by the good old gentleman at "Cawsons,"
from which we have news of some old friends among the race-horses:
"I have a new coach which stands me in fourteen thousand and odd
pounds of the present money. I have sold the horse 'Aristotle'
at a profit and bought for your use the high-bred horse,
'Janus-and-Silver-eye,' which cost me one hundred and twenty pounds."
Another French officer who preferred his own English to Colonel
Bland's French was Colonel Armand. He complains that "Congress have
passed a resolve that have _hurted me in my hart and reputation_. I
have not practise the way of making friend to me in congress, for I
thought such way below the charactere of an honest man, and now God
know but I shall trayed to justify myself by myself." Another letter
exhibits Washington's stern ideas of honorable warfare, contrasting
sharply with some well-remembered methods in later days.
"I am informed that the liberty I granted the light dragoons to
impress horses has been horridly abused and perverted into a
plundering scheme. I intended nothing more than that the horses
belonging to the disaffected, in the neighborhood of the British
Army, should be taken for the use of the dismounted dragoons and
regularly reported to the quarter-master general that an account
might be kept of the number of persons from whom they were taken
in order to future settlement. You are to make known to your whole
corps that they are not to meddle with the horses or other property
of any inhabitants whatever; for they may be assured, as far as it
depends upon me, that _military execution_ will attend all caught in
the like practice hereafter."
Other letters relate to General Washington's famous order against
gaming, he being certain that "gentlemen"--that word so dear to the
colonial Virginian--"can find amusement without application to this
vile resource attended with so many evil consequences." In vain did
one John Hawkins complain of loss because of his erection "for the
amusement of gentlemen," of four large houses of entertainment with
billiard-tables. It was decided that billiards, as "a game where
wagers were laid" were included in the order.
These letters were written in times "well fitted to winnow the chaff
from the grain." While Washington wrote of the falling away of the
officers, and the desertion of thousands of men, he also paid more
than one noble tribute to the brave and true men who remained with
him. "Naked and starving as they are," he said, "we cannot enough
admire their incomparable patience and fidelity."
Upon Colonel Bland's election to the First Congress, General
Washington wrote him a most eloquent letter in behalf of an
appropriation for the payment of the army. The original of this
grand letter was found in the egg-basket collection.
"This army is of near eight years standing, six of which they have
spent in the field, without any other shelter from the inclemency
of the seasons than tents or such houses as they could build for
themselves without expense to the public. They have encountered
cold, hunger and nakedness. They have fought many battles and bled
freely. They have done this without pay." This superb tribute to the
men whose blood flows in the veins of the Sons and Daughters of the
American Revolution, concludes with an earnest appeal to Congress
for harmony. The jealousies already evident between the states
filled his heart with anguish. He continues, "Unless our Union can
be fixed upon this basis--the removal of the local prejudices which
intrude upon and embarrass that great line of policy which alone can
make us a free, happy and powerful people--unless our Union can be
fixed on such a basis as to accomplish these, certain am I _that we
have toiled, bled and spent our treasure to very little purpose_."
With this eloquent utterance we conclude our extracts from the
half-burned letters, with which the poor negro's egg-basket was
lined.
CHAPTER V
THE BATTLE-GROUND
In Virginia, about to become the battle-ground of the Revolution,
the condition of affairs was gloomy, humiliating, apparently
almost desperate. After a war of five years the state was still
unfortified, unarmed, unprepared. Her strength, her money, her sons
had been sent to fight her battles in the North. She had entered
the war already loaded with debt from the Indian and French wars,
and further depleted through her patriotic non-importation policy.
Navigable rivers ran, at intervals of a few miles, from her interior
to the coast. An invading fleet had but to sail up these rivers, to
lay waste the entire country, and end all by a single, well-directed
blow.
Virginia was slow to appreciate the necessity of an armed naval
force. She never desired to meet her enemy at sea. One of her sons
declared in Congress, "I deem it no sacrifice of dignity to say to
the Leviathan of the deep, 'We cannot contend with you in your own
element, but if you come within our limits we will shed our last
drop of blood in their defence,'" adding "What! Shall the great
mammoth of the American forests leave his native element, and
plunge into the water in a mad contest with a shark? Let him stay
on shore and not be excited by the muscles and periwinkles on the
strand to venture on the perils of the deep. Why take to water where
he can neither fight or swim?"
But in 1775 the Convention of Virginia directed the Committee of
Safety to procure armed vessels for the better defence of the
colony.[17] About seventy vessels were placed in service, built at
the Chickahominy Navy-yard, South Quay, and Hampton near Norfolk.
George Mason, for the Committee of Safety, built two galleys and
a fine battle ship, _The American Congress_, to carry fourteen
guns and ninety-six marines. The vessels were to serve separately
for the defence of the coast, but there was great difficulty in
obtaining sailors to man them. Among the seamen were faithful
negroes who purchased their freedom by serving through the war.
These ships sometimes captured sloops laden with supplies for
the officers of the invading army. Luxuries intended for British
officers found their way to rebel tables. The planters lacked many
essential articles,--food, clothing, medicines,--but they had a
pineapple now and then. They sent out their own tobacco in ships
which often never returned, and in time most of the Virginia ships
were either destroyed or captured. Then it was that John Paul Jones
obtained a commission from Congress to "harass the enemies of the
Commonwealth," and swept the seas.
[17] Campbell's "History of Virginia."
In January, 1781, Virginia was invaded by the enemy. Tarleton's
cavalry carried the torch and sword throughout the whole James
River region, burned houses, carried off horses, cutting the
throats of those too young for service. They made a dash to the
mountains and captured seven members of the assembly, then in
session at Charlottesville, announcing an intention to go as far as
Fredericksburg and Mount Vernon. In May, Tarleton was confidently
expected at Fredericksburg. The planters abandoned their homes
and removed their families from place to place for safety. The
homestead was totally destroyed or pillaged, china pounded up,
servants carried off, and every animal stolen or slaughtered. "Were
it possible," said one old citizen, "I should remove my family to
some other country, for nothing can compensate for the sufferings
and alarms they daily experience. Scarce do they remain one week
in a place, before they are obliged to abandon their shelter and
seek an asylum from the bounty of others." The state was swept as
by a tornado--growing crops destroyed, plantations laid waste. The
destruction of property was estimated at thirteen million sterling.
So dearly did the peaceful citizens of Virginia purchase freedom for
their descendants!
Among the stories of this prince of raiders still told at Virginia
firesides, is one of a day when he made a clean sweep of everything
portable on an old lady's plantation. Standing calmly in her
doorway, she watched the rifling of her poultry-yard. One cowardly
and aged Muscovy drake basely abandoned his harem and hid in a
hedge. The old dame espied him just as Tarleton and his staff rode
off. "Here, you Jim," she called to a negro lad; "catch that old
duck and ride for your life after that general. Tell him he forgot
one lean old duck, and I send it to him with my compliments." "What
did he say?" she asked the boy on his return. "He jes put dat old
Muscovy in he wallet, an' he say he much obliged."
The raids of the enemy along the navigable waters of Virginia
became incessant. Gunboats would ascend the rivers, to the terror
of all who dwelt on their banks. One of these went up the Pamunkey
at night, and was kept from landing by a handful of men who
fired, ran on ahead and fired again, and so on until the captain,
believing himself to be in the midst of a large force on shore, and
uncertain as to the possibility of return, hoisted a white flag
in the moonlight and surrendered! Then the captain on shore (John
Otey, with only twenty men) was, indeed, in a dilemma! Waiting
until the moon went down, he ordered the crew ashore, forbade any
to speak, took their arms and marched them through the darkness to
headquarters!
A schooner on April 9, 1781, ascended the Potomac as far as
Alexandria, landing at every house on the way, burning, destroying,
stealing, loudly declaring their errand to "burn out the traitors,
George Washington and George Mason."
On the 12th six armed vessels ascended the river, and the counties
of Stafford, Prince William, and Fairfax became the "scene of war."
Fifty miles from Fredericksburg, Cornwallis was encamped with his
main body of the British army. Twenty miles from Fredericksburg,
Lafayette was protecting, with his small force, the homes of the
mother, wife, and sister of the commander-in-chief. "Before this
letter reaches you," warned Colonel Bannister, "the enemy will have
penetrated to Fredericksburg."
To be brave and serene became the high duty of the commander's
family. They must present an example of fortitude and courage. This
was the obligation laid upon them by their position. Nor did they
demand, because of this position, anything more than the protection
accorded to all. No sentries or guards were posted around their
dwellings, no force detailed for their special protection. When
Mary Washington's daughter expressed alarm, her mother reminded her
that "the sister of the commanding General must be an example of
fortitude and faith." Even the general himself could not repress a
cry of anguish when he heard of the desolation of his native state.
"Would to God," he said, "would to God the country could rise as
one man and extirpate Cornwallis and his whole band!"
The general's family held their posts in calm silence, expressing
no excitement or alarm. Tarleton's cavalry--mounted on Virginia's
race-horses--were dashing all over the country, and liable at any
moment to appear wherever it pleased him. For Mary Washington there
was no security, no peace, save in the sanctuary of her own bosom.
Virginia was the battle-ground, convulsed through her borders with
alarms! Finally, General Washington could bear it no longer. Despite
her remonstrance he removed his mother to the county of Frederick,
in the interior of the state, where she remained for a short time to
escape the Red Dragoons of the dreaded Tarleton.
"As for our present distresses," he wrote to George Mason, "they are
so great and complicated that it is scarcely within the powers of
description to give an adequate idea of them. We are without money
and have been so for a long time; without provision and forage,
without clothing, and shortly shall be (in a manner) without men. In
a word; we have lived upon expedients till we can live no longer."
The eventful year of 1781--destined to bring so great a deliverance
to the country--brought infinite sorrow to Mary Washington and her
daughter. The good man and pure patriot, Fielding Lewis, died in
January. Always too frail in health to bear arms, he had sent his
sons to the front, advanced £7000 for the manufacture of arms, and
so impoverished himself by advances of money to the colony that he
was unable to pay his taxes (Calendar State Papers, Vol. i, p. 503;
Henings Statutes, Vol. ix, p. 71).
In the same year Samuel Washington died at his home, "Harewood," in
Jefferson County. The family bond was close in Mary Washington's
household and no one was dearer than her son Samuel!
Washington's letters in 1780 repeat the story of Valley Forge.
"The present situation of the army" (Jan. 8, 1780) "is the most
distressing of any we have experienced since the beginning of the
war. For a fortnight past the troops, both officers and men, have
been almost perishing from want. The troops are half starved,
imperfectly clothed, riotous, and robbing the country people of
their subsistence from sheer necessity." In April things had not
improved. "We are on the point of starving," he wrote to Reed
of Pennsylvania. "I have almost ceased to hope. The country in
general is in such a state of insensibility and indifference to its
interests that I dare not flatter myself with any change for the
better." And he adds, like a sigh of hopeless anguish, "In modern
wars the longest purse must chiefly determine the event."
The English were fully cognizant of this state of affairs. "We look
on America as at our feet," wrote Horace Walpole, in 1780, to Mann.
"Poorly clothed, badly fed, and worse paid," said General Wayne
in 1780, "some of them not having had a paper dollar for nearly
twelve months; exposed to winter's piercing cold, to drifting snows
and chilling blasts, with no protection but old worn-out coats,
tattered linen overalls, and but one blanket between three men! In
this situation, the enemy begin to work upon their passions, and
have found means to circulate proclamations among them. The officers
in general, as well as myself, stand for hours every day exposed
to wind and weather among the poor naked fellows while they are
working at their huts, assisting with our own hands, sharing every
vicissitude in common with them, participating in their ration
of bread and water. The delicate mind and eye of humanity are
hurt--very much hurt--at their distress."
These were the trials to which the soldiers of the American
Revolution were subjected, and which those who endured to the end
bore without murmuring; for no stress of suffering could wring from
their brave hearts a word of injury to the cause for which they
suffered!
May the honors now so gladly awarded to those brave men, by those
descended from them, never be given by inadvertence or mistake to
the caitiff host that forsook their commander in his dark hour!
The army that bore the sufferings of which so many have written was
a small one. Few armies have ever shown a nobler self-devotion than
that which remained with Washington through the dreary winter at
Valley Forge, but the conscientious historian must not give honor
equally to them and the mighty host of the American people who had
no sympathy with the movement. Washington himself wrote, Dec. 30,
1778, "If I were called upon to draw a picture of the times and of
the men from what I have seen, heard, and part know, I should in
one word say that idleness, dissipation, and extravagance seem to
have laid fast hold upon them; that speculation, peculation and an
insatiable thirst for riches seem to have got the better of every
other consideration--that party disputes and quarrels are the great
business of the day; whilst the momentous concerns of an empire, a
great and accumulating debt, ruined finances, depreciated money, and
want of credit--which in its consequence is want of everything--are
but of secondary consideration."
Under these circumstances the nobility and beauty of the character
of Washington can indeed hardly be surpassed. "He commanded," says
Lecky, "a perpetually fluctuating army, almost wholly destitute of
discipline and respect for authority, torn by the most violent
personal and provincial jealousies, wretchedly armed, wretchedly
clothed, and sometimes in danger of starvation. Unsupported for
the most part by the population among whom he was quartered, and
incessantly thwarted by Congress, he kept his army together by a
combination of skill, firmness, patience, and judgment which has
rarely been surpassed, and he led it at last to a signal triumph."
But while he thus held his army discontent, distrust,
suspicion,--the train which inevitably follows failure,--possessed
the minds of the people and embittered the hearts of those who were
striving to serve them. The leaders were blamed for the misfortunes
of the time, their ability doubted, their patriotism suspected.
Thus hampered and trammelled, weak, sick at heart, America stretched
out appealing hands to France.
CHAPTER VI
FRANCE IN THE REVOLUTION
The rebellion of the colonies had been long expected in France. As
early as 1750, Turgot, before the Sorbonne, had compared colonies to
fruits which only remain on the stem until they reach maturity, and
then drop off.
[Illustration: Vergennes.]
Vergennes, in conversation with an English traveller, had predicted:
"England will soon repent of having removed the only check that
can keep her colonies in awe. They stand no longer in need of her
protection. She will call upon them to contribute towards supporting
the burdens they have helped to bring on her. They will answer by
striking off all dependence."
France had excellent reasons for hating England. Her lilies had
gone down again and again before the British flag. Despoiled by
England of her American and Canadian possessions, dislodged from
her foothold in India, subjected to the espionage, and stung by
the arrogance of her enemy, her policy was directed toward one
object, the rehabilitation of her former glory at the expense of her
greatest rival.[18]
[18] Edwardes's "Translations of Lemonie," p. 259.
[Illustration: Beaumarchais.]
Louis the Sixteenth, young and pleasure-loving, was glad to
shift all responsibility upon his able advisers,--Maurepas,
whom he tolerated, Vergennes, whom he feared and respected, and
Beaumarchais, the son of a watchmaker, author of "Le Mariage de
Figaro" and "Le Barbier de Seville,"--whom he cordially admired and
loved, and who had probably more influence at court than all the
rest put together. These were the men with whom Deane and Franklin
labored, with varying result, for many years--sometimes thwarted
and discouraged, at others cheered by promises, and sustained by
substantial favors. Presents of money were given by France to
America, and her ports were open to American trading-vessels. But
England had a vigilant ambassador at the French court, watching
like a cat lest the plucky little mouse should venture too far. It
behooved the mouse to keep well in hiding. He could hope to gain an
advantage over his enemy by stealthy diplomacy only.
[Illustration: Silas Deane.]
France had, early in September, 1776, sent secret messengers to
America to ascertain the state of affairs and report to the court of
Versailles. Congress sent Silas Deane, Benjamin Franklin, and Arthur
Lee to plead the cause of the colonists at the French court, and
negotiate treaties with foreign powers.[19]
[19] Sparks's "Diplomatic Correspondence," Vol. I, p. 5.
[Illustration: Benjamin Franklin.]
Franklin, on being selected, had said to Dr. Rush, "I am old and
good for nothing, but, as store keepers say of their remnants
of cloth, I am but a fag-end, and you may have me for what you
please;"[20] but Franklin had strong personal reasons for hating
England. Accused once by the solicitor-general (Wedderburn, Lord
Loughborough) of stealing political letters, the latter had
arraigned him and poured upon his head all the vials of ministerial
wrath, branding him as a thief in the most fearful philippic ever
pronounced against man.[21] "Franklin stood," says Dr. Priestly,
"conspicuously erect during the harangue, and kept his countenance
as immovable as wood." He was dressed in a suit of Manchester
velvet, which he laid aside and never wore after the terrible
lashing of Lord Loughborough; but, "Seven years afterwards, on the
termination of the war, so triumphant to his own country, and so
humiliating to Britain, he signed the articles of Peace, being then
Ambassador at Paris, _dressed in the Manchester velvet_,"--once the
garment of heaviness and humiliation, now the royal robe of triumph!
[20] Parton's "Franklin," Vol. II, p. 166.
[21] "Lives of the Lord Chancellors of England," by Lord Campbell,
Vol. VI, pp. 110-111.
He became, fortunately, a toast at the French court. The statesman
who could write ballads and invent musical instruments possessed
a charming versatility which attracted the French. How versatile
he still could be, even in old age, is attested by the fact that
poets, philosophers, and men of fashion,--Vergennes, Voltaire,
Turgot,--nay, the queen herself, admired and sought him. Turgot
described him in a line which afterwards adorned the snuff-boxes,
medallions, and rings of the court. On these Franklin's head
appeared, with this legend, _Eripuit fulmen sceptrumque tyrannus_,
the dignified, old, unpowdered head, its thin hair concealed by
a fur cap, which yet had wisdom to guide the hand that "tore the
lightning from heaven and the sceptre from the tyrant!"
It was not designed by Providence that America should fail in her
contest. Rough-hewn as her methods must perforce be, they were given
shape by the hand that guides our ends. Every event here, every move
on the chess-board in France, tended to the same result. One of the
fifteen decisive battles of the world was fought at Saratoga. "The
Capitulation of General Burgoyne to Mr. Gates" (as the English in
their wrath expressed it) turned the tide of affairs. It resulted
immediately in the alliance with France, so long and ardently
desired, without which this country might not have won independence.
Of course, we sent post-haste to tell the good news of this victory
to our long-suffering envoy at the French court. The "Capitulation
to Mr. Gates" occurred Oct. 17, 1777; the news reached Franklin Dec.
4, of the same year--nearly two months afterward. But we are the
last people who should ever lament the want of telegraphic service
in our early history. Had such existed during the Revolution, we
would surely this day be sending our humble duty, with many gifts,
to our Gracious Sovereign, his Most Sacred Majesty, Edward VII, upon
his coronation. A polite ambassador would not be nearly sufficient.
[Illustration: General Burgoyne.]
When Benjamin Franklin received the news he was quietly dining,
not dreaming of any better fortune than that we should be able
to hold Philadelphia.[22] No more dramatic scene can be imagined
than that which took place on the evening of Dec. 4, 1777, when
Jonathan Austin's chaise rapidly drove into the courtyard at Passy
and rudely interrupted Dr. Franklin's dinner-party. The guests,
among whom were Beaumarchais, rushed out. "Sir," exclaimed Franklin,
"is Philadelphia taken?" "Yes, Sir," replied Austin; and Franklin
clasped his hands and turned to reënter the house. Austin cried, "I
have better and greater news; General Burgoyne and his whole army
are prisoners of war." Beaumarchais set out with all speed to notify
Vergennes, and he drove with such haste that his coach upset, and he
dislocated his arm.
[Illustration: General Gates.]
[22] Morse's "Franklin," p. 267.
[Illustration: Rochambeau.]
It was not, however, until July 10, 1780, that Rochambeau wrote from
Newport to Washington: "We are now at your command. It is hardly
necessary for me to tell your Excellency that I bring sufficient
cash for whatever is needed by the King's army."
Lafayette was holding Cornwallis at Yorktown, having orders from
Washington that he was on no account to be permitted to escape.
In order to prevent this it was necessary to have the assistance
of the French fleet. To this end he despatched a frigate to Cape
Henry, where De Grasse was expected to touch, urging him to come
up Chesapeake Bay as soon as possible to clear the James River and
blockade the York. This word was received by De Grasse, who arrived
with his fleet of twenty-eight ships of the line in Chesapeake Bay
on Aug. 30, 1781.
[Illustration: De Grasse.]
The French forces then joined Washington in a rapid march to
Virginia, having made a feint of attacking New York, and thus
deceived Sir Henry Clinton. Well for us there were no railroads or
telegraph wires in those days! Washington and his allies were not
discovered until they were almost in front of Cornwallis.
The march through Philadelphia was a species of triumph. And now
who more ready than the Tory ladies to welcome and applaud! "The
windows were filled with ladies waving handkerchiefs and uttering
exclamations of joy. The ragged Continentals came first with their
torn battle-flags and cannon; and the French followed in gay white
uniforms faced with green to the sound of martial music. A long time
had passed since Philadelphia had seen such a pageant; the last
resembling it had been the splendid Mischianza festival, devised by
poor André in the days of the British occupation,"[23] and enjoyed,
alas, by these same ladies, while these same Continentals were
starving and perishing with cold!
[23] Irving's "Life of Washington."
They were equal to any situation, these Philadelphia ladies!
The first duty of woman, according to them, was to make herself
agreeable to the powers that be--the heroes of the hour. Said
Washington Irving, "The beauties who had crowned the British Knights
in the chivalrous time of the Mischianza, were now ready to bestow
wreaths and smiles on their Gallic rivals."
[Illustration: Lord Cornwallis.]
Fifteen days after the arrival of the allied forces successful
assaults were made upon the enemy's redoubts, Washington putting the
match to the first gun; and on Oct. 17, Cornwallis, after having
made unsuccessful efforts to relieve his position and to escape by
water, proposed a cessation of hostilities and the appointment of
commissioners to settle terms of surrender. On Oct. 19, in pursuance
of articles of capitulation, drawn by Vicomte de Noualles and
Colonel Laurens, representing the allies, and Colonel Dundas and
Major Ross, representing the British, Lord Cornwallis surrendered;
the English marching out to the tune, "The World's Turned Upside
Down,"--a fact which was, no doubt, accepted by the brave
Cornwallis as the only solution to the turn events had taken.
"The work is done and well done," said Washington as he heard the
long shout of the French and the Americans.
To Maurepas, in France, Lafayette wrote:--
"The play is over, Monsieur le Compte, the fifth act has just come
to an end."[24]
[24] Tower's "Lafayette," Vol. II, p. 455.
"It's all over now," said our old friend Lord North,[25] heartily
relieved, we may well believe, to be rid of all the bother.
[25] Bancroft, Vol. III, p. 430.
At midnight on Oct. 23, 1781, Philadelphia was startled by the cry,
"Cornwallis is taken." And on Oct. 24, on motion of Mr. Randolph, it
was resolved, "That Congress at 2 o'clock this day go in procession
to the Dutch Lutheran Church and return thanks to Almighty God
for crowning the allied arms of the United States and France with
success by the surrender of the whole British Army under the command
of the Earl of Cornwallis."[26]
[26] Journals of Congress, Vol. III, pp. 679-682.
But not with joy and gratitude was the news received by old Lord
Fairfax, who had given Washington his first opportunity in life.
He had liked the fifteen-year-old lad, had taught him to follow
the hounds, and been his cordial friend as long as he fought for
the Crown. Lord Fairfax, "the Nimrod of Greenway Court," was now
ninety-two years old. "When he heard," says the irrepressible Parson
Weems, "that Washington had captured Cornwallis and all his army, he
called to his black waiter: 'Come, Joe! Carry me to bed, for it is
high time for me to die.'"
"Then up rose Joe, all at the word
And took his master's arm.
And thus to bed he softly laid
The Lord of Greenway farm.
"There oft he called on Britain's name
And oft he wept full sore.
Then sighed, 'Thy will, O Lord, be done,'
And word spake never more."
The old Royalist's heart had broken with grief and disappointment.
But how was the aged mother to hear the news? Would her heart break
with the sudden access of joy?
Washington himself despatched a courier to her with the news of the
surrender. She raised her hands to heaven and exclaimed with the
deepest fervor:--
"Thank God! Thank God! All the fighting and killing is over. The war
is ended and now we shall have peace and happiness."
[Illustration: GREENWAY COURT.]
Mindful of her age her son would not come to her suddenly and
unheralded. He could not come immediately. He had to attend to
the distribution of ordnance and stores, the departure of prisoners,
the embarkation of troops, to say nothing of the courtesies of the
hour--such as the selection of two beautiful horses as a present to
De Grasse, who did not sail until Nov. 4. He was then summoned in
haste to Eltham, the seat of his old friend Colonel Bassett, there
to fold his tender arms around the dying form of Parke Custis and
receive his last breath. Years before, he had thus comforted the
sweet young sister, "Patsy Custis," in her last hour.
Martha Washington, the mother, and the wife and four children of
Parke Custis (who was only twenty-eight years old) were all at
Eltham, and with them Washington remained until the last tribute
of respect was paid to the deceased. And that he might comfort his
wife and help the young widow, he then and there adopted George
Washington Parke Custis and Nellie Custis into his family.
From Eltham he proceeded immediately on pressing business with
Congress at Philadelphia, and not until Nov. 11 did he reach
Fredericksburg.
CHAPTER VII
"ON WITH THE DANCE, LET JOY BE UNCONFINED"
That was a great day when the news came to
Fredericksburg--"Cornwallis has surrendered." "With red spurs" rode
the couriers that carried the glad tidings, and the hearts of the
people leaped with joy. Twenty-eight British captains had stepped
forth from the lines and surrendered as many colors to the ragged
Continentals. With instinctive magnanimity the conquerors had given
a banquet to their captive officers, and Washington had saluted
Cornwallis with a toast to the British army. Thus the brave honor
the brave. And now--courtesies all rendered, the sword sheathed,
the guns stacked--the great commander was coming home, first to
his mother, attended by a brilliant retinue of French and American
officers. When the soldier of his people laid his country's freedom
at his mother's feet, if ever in this world a foretaste of heavenly
joy be given to human beings, to Mary and George Washington alike
this was the hour. Says Mr. Custis:--
"After an absence of nearly seven years, it was, at length, on the
return of the combined armies from Yorktown, permitted to the
mother again to see and embrace her illustrious son. So soon as he
had dismounted, in the midst of a numerous and brilliant suite, he
sent to apprise her of his arrival, and to know when it would be
her pleasure to receive him. No pageantry of war proclaimed his
coming, no trumpets sounded, no banners waved. Alone and on foot,
the Marshal of France, the general-in-chief of the combined armies
of France and America, the deliverer of his country, the hero of the
age, repaired to pay his humble duty to her whom he venerated as
the author of his being, the founder of his fortune and his fame.
For full well he knew that the matron would not be moved by all the
pride that glory ever gave, nor by all the 'pomp and circumstance'
of power.
"The lady was alone, her aged hands employed in the works of
domestic industry, when the good news was announced; and it was
further told that the victor chief was in waiting at the threshold.
She welcomed him with a warm embrace, and by the well-remembered and
endearing name of his childhood; inquiring as to his health, she
remarked the lines which mighty cares and many trials had made on
his manly countenance, spoke much of old times and old friends, but
of his glory--not one word."
But old Fredericksburg tells a story so characteristic that we
are fain to accept it. Her neighbors had gathered at her door to
congratulate her; but before they spoke with her, an orderly dashed
up, dismounted, touched his three-cornered hat and said, "Madam! his
Excellency will be here within the hour." "_His Excellency!_ Tell
George I shall be glad to see him," replied the dame; and turning
to her wide-eyed ebony maid, she said, "Patsy, I shall need a white
apron."
[Illustration: George Washington Parke Custis.]
Old Fredericksburg threw its hat in the air and declared that the
"Indian Oueen" should be swept and garnished, and the Fredericksburg
beauties tread a measure with those gay foreigners. This thing
of "belonging to the country" was all very well, but George
Washington was a Virginian--what was more, he was master-mason in
the Fredericksburg Lodge No. 4, and a Fredericksburg boy out and
out. "But would Madam Washington come to a ball?" Ay, she would.
Her "dancing days were pretty well over," but she would "be glad to
contribute to the general happiness."
[Illustration: The Chair used by George Washington when Master of
Fredericksburg Lodge.]
But here we give place again to Mr. Custis, for he had his story at
first hands.
"Meantime, in the village of Fredericksburg, all was joy and
revelry; the town was crowded with the officers of the French and
American armies, and with gentlemen from all the country around, who
hastened to welcome the conquerors of Cornwallis. The citizens made
arrangements for a splendid ball, to which the mother of Washington
was specially invited. She observed that, although her dancing days
were pretty well over, she should feel happy in contributing to the
general festivity, and consented to attend.
"The foreign officers were anxious to see the mother of their
chief. They had heard indistinct rumors respecting her remarkable
life and character; but, forming their judgments from European
examples, they were prepared to expect in the mother that glare and
show which would have been attached to the parents of the great in
the old world. How they were surprised when the matron, leaning on
the arm of her son, entered the room! She was arrayed in the very
plain, yet becoming, garb worn by the Virginian lady of the olden
time. Her address, always dignified and imposing, was courteous,
though reserved. She received the complimentary attentions, which
were profusely paid her, without evincing the slightest elevation;
and, at an early hour, wishing the company much enjoyment of their
pleasures, observing that it was time for old people to be at home,
retired.
"The foreign officers were amazed to behold one so many causes
contributed to elevate, preserving the even tenor of her life,
while such a blaze of glory shone upon her name and offspring. The
European world furnished no examples of such magnanimity. Names of
ancient lore were heard to escape from their lips; and they observed
that, 'if such were the matrons of America, it was not wonderful the
sons were illustrious.'
"It was on this festive occasion that General Washington danced
a minuet with Mrs. Willis" (one of the Gregory girls). "It closed
his dancing days. The minuet was much in vogue at that period, and
was peculiarly calculated for the display of the splendid figure of
the chief and his natural grace and elegance of air and manner. The
gallant Frenchmen who were present--of which fine people it may be
said that dancing forms one of the elements of their existence--so
much admired the American performance as to admit that a Parisian
education could not have improved it. As the evening advanced,
the commander-in-chief, yielding to the gayety of the scene, went
down some dozen couples in the contra-dance, with great spirit and
satisfaction."
But General Washington's dancing days did not close with the
Fredericksburg ball. Mr. Custis did not know. Two years later
Lieutenant McAllister wrote from Baltimore: "A ball was given to his
most excellent Excellency by the ladies of this town. A brilliant
collection assembled to entertain him, and the illustrious Chief led
and mingled in the joyous dance."
The commanding general had perceived the wisdom of introducing into
the camp life some relaxation and amusement, as the Arctic explorer
arranged a series of theatricals when starvation threatened his
ice-locked crew. In the year and month in which Washington wrote his
most despairing letter to George Mason, there were frequent balls
in the camp at Middlebrook. "We had a little dance at my quarters,"
wrote General Greene to Colonel Wadsworth in March, 1779 (the dark
hour), "His Excellency and Mrs. Greene danced upwards of three hours
without once sitting down."
Bishop Meade, in his intense admiration of Washington and his not
less intense abhorrence of dancing, reasons that these reports of
the great chief _could_ not be true. They were undoubtedly true.
Washington, although habitually grave and thoughtful, was of a
social disposition, and loved cheerful society. He was fond of the
dance, and it was the boast of many Revolutionary dames that he had
been their partner in contra-dances, and had led them through the
stately figures of the minuet.
Little Maria Mortimer, aged sixteen, was at the Fredericksburg
ball. Betty Lewis followed the party later to Mount Vernon. For
Maria a great dignity was in store. Her father, Dr. Charles
Mortimer, issued invitations at the ball for a great dinner to the
distinguished strangers the next day but one, and his wife (Sarah
Griffin Fauntleroy), being too ill to preside, that honor fell to
the daughter of the house.[27]
[27] "Maternal Ancestry of Washington," by G. W. Ball.
The house, an immense pile of English brick, still stands on the
lower edge of the town, facing Main Street, with a garden sloping to
the river, where Dr. Mortimer's own tobacco ships used to run up
to discharge their return English cargoes by a channel long since
disused and filled up.
The mansion was hastily put _en fête_--which meant swept walks,
polished floors, and abundant decoration of flowers and evergreens.
The running cedar of Virginia, with its plumy tufts of green, lent
itself gracefully to outline doors and windows, encircle family
portraits, and hang in festoons from the antlers of the deer in the
hall.
The table, as little Maria described it in after years, groaned with
every delicacy of land and water, served in massive pewter dishes
polished until they shone again.
The chief sat beside the master of the house at the long table,
although at his own house his place was always at the side of the
table among his guests. Little Maria "with her hair craped high"
was taken in by the Marquis Lafayette, or Count d'Estaing, or Count
Rochambeau,--they were all present,--and the little lady's heart was
in her mouth, she said, although she danced with every one of them
at the ball--nay, with Betty Lewis's Uncle George himself!
To this dinner the doctor, of course, invited Mrs. Washington, but
equally, of course, she did not come, her appearance at the ball
having been an extraordinary effort intended to mark her sense of
the importance of the occasion which was intoxicating the whole
country with joy.
CHAPTER VIII
LAFAYETTE AND OUR FRENCH ALLIES
In 1784 the Marquis de Lafayette returned to Virginia "crowned
everywhere," wrote Washington to the Marchioness de Lafayette, "with
wreaths of love and respect." He made a visit to Mount Vernon, and
thence, before he sailed for France, he went to Fredericksburg
to pay his homage to the mother of Washington. A great crowd of
citizens and old soldiers thronged the town to do him honor. One
of the old soldiers from the country had heard much of a new
character who had followed the armies, and had lately appeared
in Virginia--active, prevalent, and most successful! This rustic
determined to see Lafayette, "pick-pocket" or no "pick-pocket." Had
he not two hands! One should never let go a firm grasp on the watch
in his own pocket. Finally he succeeded, after pressing through
the throng, in reaching the general. In his enthusiasm at being
greeted so warmly by the great marquis, he seized with both hands
Lafayette's friendly grasp, and as he turned away clapped his hand
upon his watch-pocket. It was empty! There is no doubt--not the
least--that the honest man never thought his honors too dearly
bought.
[Illustration: GENERAL LAFAYETTE.]
Escaping from all these good people so keenly and cordially enjoyed
by the warm-hearted marquis, he found Betty Washington's son to act
as sponsor and guide--lest he should have been forgotten!--to visit
the mother of his friend. He wished to pay his parting respects and
to ask her blessing.
"Accompanied by her grandson," says Mr. Custis, "he approached
the house; when the young gentleman observed, 'There, sir, is my
grandmother.' Lafayette beheld, working in the garden, clad in
domestic-made clothes, and her gray head covered in a plain straw
hat, the mother of his hero! The lady saluted him kindly, observing,
'Ah, Marquis! you see an old woman; but come, I can make you welcome
to my poor dwelling, without the parade of changing my dress.'
"The Marquis spoke of the happy effects of the Revolution, and the
goodly prospect which opened upon independent America; stated his
speedy departure for his native land; paid the tribute of his heart,
his love and admiration of her illustrious son. To the encomiums
which he had lavished upon his hero and paternal chief, the matron
replied in her accustomed words, 'I am not surprised at what George
has done, for he was always a very good boy.'
"In her latter days, the mother often spoke of 'her own good boy,'
of the merits of his early life, of his love and dutifulness to
herself; but of the deliverer of his country, the chief magistrate
of the great republic, she never spoke. Call you this insensibility?
or want of ambition? Oh, no! her ambition had been gratified to
overflowing. She had taught him to be good; that he became great
when the opportunity presented, was a consequence, not a cause."
Would that we could record naught but reward--long life, honor, and
happiness--to every one of our brave allies who came to us in our
extremity. But, alas! Fortune held in her closed hand these gifts
for some--for others disgrace, the dungeon, the guillotine!
Louis XVI was overjoyed at the _éclat_ won by the French arms in
America. When Rochambeau presented himself at court the young
king received him graciously, and said to him, "I have read in
the Commentaries of Cæsar that a small army, commanded by a great
general, can achieve wonders, and you are a proof of it."
Lafayette threw himself with ardor into the stirring military life
of his own country, and came back to us in 1824 to find his path
strewn with flowers by Daughters of the American Revolution; and
Daughters of the American Revolution but a few months ago crowned
his statue with the same laurels with which they crowned the adored
Washington!
Great riches and honor were heaped upon the Comte de Vergennes. He
was given a position which brought him an income of 60,000 francs.
Afterwards the Empress of Russia--as reward--made him Knight of
the Order of the Holy Ghost, with 100,000 francs! A serene, very
honorable and comfortable old age was Fortune's gift to our friend
Vergennes.
And Beaumarchais, who poured money into our empty treasury from
his own full horn-of-plenty,--Beaumarchais, the artist, dramatist,
politician, merchant, who set all Paris wild with his "Mariage
de Figaro," of whose wit and satire and mischievous subtlety our
translations give us no idea,--Beaumarchais must needs ruin himself
by spending 1,000,000 livres on a gorgeous _édition de luxe_ of
Voltaire, and yet more than that on French muskets. He died of "no
particular disease," say his biographers, "at sixty-nine years." So
Fortune for him had a long life and a merry one, and riches of which
he made a noble use.
We all know the fate of the pleasure-loving young king,--the husband
of the beautiful and accomplished Marie Antoinette! America,
perhaps, owes little to him,--but she remembers that little, and can
mourn for the bitter hour that ended his misguided life.
But ungrateful, indeed, would she be did she cease to remember
Marie Antoinette! Well may we call our beautiful buildings and
graceful fashions after her name. Many years after she had bent
her lovely head with such courage to the guillotine, Paine wrote,
"It is both justice and gratitude to say that it was the queen
of France who gave the cause of America a fashion at the French
Court." "_Dites-moi_," she had said in parting from Lafayette,
"_dites-moi de bonnes nouvelles de nos bons Americans, de nos cher
Republicans_," little dreaming, poor lady, that "she was giving the
last great impulse to that revolutionary spirit which was so soon to
lead her to misery and death."
For one more of the Frenchmen who served us--one who was a loyal
friend in the field and a traitor at the fireside--the stern Nemesis
holds a strange immortality. The secret manuscript which for one
hundred and twenty-five years has passed from hand to hand among
Virginia women; which was known to and partially quoted by Bishop
Meade; which is known to-day by many who gave, like him, a promise
never to print the whole of it, contains the story of a young
nobleman's infamy--told that he may be execrated by women, the names
implicated kept from publication that the innocent descendants may
not suffer. "_Sed quid ego hæc nequicquam ingrata revolvo?_ It is
vain to lament that corruption which no human power can prevent or
repair."
CHAPTER IX
IN CAMP AND AT MOUNT VERNON
Peace was not declared until March 3, 1783. In the meanwhile the
armies must be kept in camp, regularly drilled, and ready at a
moment's notice for action. The American army was encamped at
Verplanck's Point; that of Count de Rochambeau--alas, for the
honor and peace of one household!--at Williamsburg. The brilliant
campaign in Virginia attracted immense interest abroad. Every ship
brought strangers to visit the camp,--artists, writers, military
men. Washington begins to be sensitive about our meagre facilities
for entertaining these visitors. "We have nothing to offer," he
deplores, "except whisky hot from the still,--and not always
that,--and meat with no vegetables," etc. There was always plenty of
Virginia hickory nuts! They appeared at every meal. They saved many
a day and redeemed many a slender breakfast, dinner, and supper. The
commander-in-chief seems to have striven to make them fashionable by
devoting himself to their consumption.
M. de Broglie came to Virginia in 1782, bearing letters of
introduction to General Washington from Benjamin Franklin,--letters
"rendered doubly agreeable," said the general, "by the pleasure
I had in receiving them from the hands of such an amiable and
accomplished young gentleman." M. de Broglie kept a journal which
found its way to the columns of the _Courier des États Unis_, and
was translated by a Boston literary journal. The impression made
upon this "amiable and accomplished young gentleman" presents an
interesting portrait of Washington in the year succeeding the
surrender, and also permits our curtain to fall upon a charming
picture of the ancestors of the sons and daughters of the American
Revolution.
M. de Broglie says: "I found the American Army encamped in a place
called Verplanck's Point. There were six thousand men who, for the
first time during the war, were well armed, well drilled, well
kept, and camped under tents of a regular form. I passed along its
front with pleasure, astonishment and admiration. All the soldiers
appeared to me fine, robust and well chosen. The sentinels well
kept, extremely attentive, and sufficiently well placed under arms,
contrasted so completely with the crude idea I had formed of these
troops, that I was obliged to repeat to myself several times that I
was indeed seeing this army that formerly had no other uniform than
a cap upon which was written 'Liberty.'
"I pressed M. de Rochambeau, who received me with kindness, to
add that of making me acquainted with Washington. He assented;
and the day after my arrival, he went with me to dine with this
famous man. I gave him a letter from my father; and, after a slight
'_shake hand_,' he was kind enough to say a thousand flatteries and
polite things to me. Here is his portrait, which I have formed from
what I have been able to see of him for myself, and from what the
conversations which I have had with regard to him, have taught me:--
"The General is about forty-nine years of age; he is large, finely
made, very well proportioned. His figure is much more pleasing than
the picture represents it. He was fine looking until within about
three years; and, although those who have been constantly with him
since that time say that he seems to them to have grown old fast, it
is undeniable that the General is still fresh, and active as a young
man.
"His physiognomy is pleasant and open; his address is cold, though
polite; his pensive eye is more attentive than sparkling; but his
countenance is kind, noble and composed. He maintains, in his
private deportment, that polite and attentive manner which does
not offend. He is the enemy of ostentation and vain-glory. His
manners are always equable; he has never shown the least temper.
Modest even to humility, he seems not to estimate himself duly; he
receives with good grace the deference paid to him, but rather
shuns than courts it. His society is agreeable and pleasing. Always
serious, never constrained; always simple, always free and affable,
without being familiar, the respect which he inspires never becomes
painful. He talks little in general, and in a very low tone of
voice; but he is so attentive to what is said to him, that you
are satisfied that he understands you, and are almost willing to
dispense with a reply. This conduct has often been of advantage to
him in various circumstances; no one has more occasion than he to
use circumspection, and to weigh well his words. He unites to an
unalterable tranquillity of soul, a fine power of judgment; and one
can seldom reproach him for a little slowness in determination, or
even in acting, when he has formed his decision. His courage is calm
and brilliant. An excellent patriot, a wise, virtuous man--one is
tempted to grant him all qualities, even those which circumstances
have not permitted him to develop. Never was there a man more fitted
to lead the Americans nor one who has evinced in his conduct more
consistency, wisdom, constancy and reason.
"Mr. Washington has never received any compensation as General; he
has refused such, as not needing it. The expenses of his table are
alone made at the expense of the State. He has every day as many as
thirty people at dinner, gives good military receptions, and is
very attentive to all the officers whom he admits to his table. It
is, in general, the moment of the day when he is most gay.
"At dessert, he makes an enormous consumption of nuts, and, when
the conversation amuses him, he eats them for two hours, 'drinking
healths,' according to the English and American custom, several
times. This is called _toasting_. They begin always by drinking to
the United States of America; afterwards to the King of France, to
the Queen, and success to the arms of the combined army. Then is
given, sometimes, what is called a sentiment; for example, 'To our
success with our enemies and the ladies!' 'Success in war and love!'
"I have _toasted_ several times with General Washington. On one
occasion I proposed to him to drink to the Marquis de Lafayette,
whom he looked upon as a son. He accepted with a smile of
benevolence, and had the politeness to propose to me in return that
of my father and wife.
"Mr. Washington appears to me to keep up a perfect bearing towards
the officers of his army; he treats them very politely, but they are
far from growing familiar with him; they all wear, on the contrary,
in presence of this General, an air of respect, confidence and
admiration."
For two years after the surrender, General Washington was confined
to the routine of camp life. We read of no visits to Fredericksburg
or to Mount Vernon. If he made them, they were brief and uneventful.
His mother lived quietly in her new home, never fulfilling her
intention of returning to "Pine Grove" across the river. She was
now seventy-eight years old, but remembered by the children of her
old neighbors as bright, active, and alert--keenly interested in
everything around her. Charming granddaughters were growing up in
Betty Lewis's "Kenmore" home. One of these--doubtless our "little
Betty,"--accompanied General and Mrs. Washington on their joyful
return home to Mount Vernon from Annapolis, whither the general had
gone to resign his commission. Mr. Lossing has preserved a letter
from little Miss Lewis:--
"I must tell you what a charming day I spent at Mt. Vernon with
Mama and Sally. The General and Madame came home at Christmas
Eve, and such a racket the servants made! They were glad of their
coming. Three handsome young officers came with them. All Christmas
afternoon people came to pay their respects and duty. Among these
were stately dames and gay young women. The General seemed very
happy and Mrs. Washington was up before daybreak making everything
as agreeable as possible for everybody. Among the most notable
callers was Mr. George Mason of Gunston Hall, who brought a charming
granddaughter with him about fourteen years old. He is said to be
one of the greatest statesmen and wisest men in Virginia. We had
heard much of him, and were delighted to look in his face, hear him
speak, and take his hand which he offered in a courtly manner. He
has a grand head and clear gray eyes--is straight, but not tall, and
has few white hairs, though they say he is about sixty years old."
The little hero-worshipper! And so reverent to her illustrious uncle
and his wife, with no underbred, familiar claiming of kinship with
"the General and Madame."
Even before peace was declared, our French allies circulated large
sums of gold and silver coin, which put to flight the wretched paper
currency of our country, and in an incredibly short time quantities
of French and English goods were imported. "Our people," laments
an old writer, "suddenly laid aside their plain, home-manufactured
clothing. Fine ruffles, powdered heads, silks and scarlets decorated
the men, while the most costly silks, satins, chintzes, calicoes and
muslins decorated our females. Superb plate, foreign spirits, and
wines, sparkled on the sideboards, and as a necessary consequence
the people ran in debt, and money was hard to raise."
General Washington's family resumed their old-time habits of living.
They rose early, breakfasted at half-past seven, dined frugally at
two, retired early. "Those who come to see me," said the general,
"will always find a bit of mutton and a glass of wine. If they
expect anything more, they will be disappointed." Mary Washington
and the mistress of Mount Vernon never laid aside their simple
customs, dress, and occupations. They seemed to have formed, said
Washington Irving, "an inveterate habit of knitting" in and out
of the drawing-room. Walking about her garden, Mary Washington's
fingers held the flying needles. The results were sent to somebody
less fortunate than herself. Martha Washington kept up her
"inveterate habit" long after she became the first lady in the land,
presenting unfinished gloves of her own knitting to her friends to
"finish and wear for my sake," thus delicately suggesting a plan by
which the gift could be rendered more valuable, and at the same time
inspiring her gay young visitors with something of her own spirit of
industry.
Inestimable to women is the value of such occupation! For them
the curse has been transmuted into a golden blessing. There could
have been no necessity for Mary and Martha Washington to employ
themselves so diligently in sewing and knitting. The hands were
numerous enough around them among the negroes and humbler classes
for all such work. But they held an old-fashioned creed: that the
human hand--that wonderful mechanism--was created for some useful
purpose! In their day the hand had not claimed for its beauty the
cunning skill of the "artist manicure." The instructed hand made
laces, and manipulated the spinet and harp, but it made garments
as well. Let none call the love of needlework useless--its results
not worth the while! Knitting may not be the highest use for one's
beautiful hands, but it surely ranks with the highest when it
ministers to those who suffer! And even as an innocent occupation
it is not to be despised. All such work is better than dull
vacuity or lack of interest in domestic life. A passion for such
things is not the worst passion that can possess a woman's soul.
Besides, needlework is an admirable sedative to the nerves. Mary
Washington's knitting helped to relieve her mind of its tension when
circumstances seemed so unfortunate and discouraging. Perhaps the
Queen of Scots sometimes forgot the uncertain tenure by which she
held her beautiful head because she had a passion for embroidery and
was, every day, expecting new flosses and filoselles from France to
finish something very lovely which she had commenced.
But knitting was not with Mary Washington and her daughters a
matter of sentiment or resorted to as a nerve cure. It was simply
the natural expression of pure benevolence. There was no money to
buy--nothing imported to be bought. The destitution of the soldiers
pressed heavily upon the hearts of these good women. Constantly
employed every moment of their waking hours, they might hope
to achieve something to add to that "cap upon which was written
'Liberty.'" The Phrygian cap might indeed protect the fervid brain
of the patriot, but could in no wise comfort his weary feet!
American women have never failed in time of war to give the work
of their own hands. With the wife of another Virginia commander,
Mary Custis Lee, knitting was as inveterate a habit in the time of
America's Civil War as it was with her great-grandmother, Martha
Washington, in the war of the American Revolution.
Many were the soldiers who were comforted in body and heartened in
spirit by the gifts of these noble women--all the more because they
were wrought by their own gentle hands.
CHAPTER X
MRS. ADAMS AT THE COURT OF ST. JAMES
Mary Washington lived long enough to witness the crowning
triumph of the colonies, when the proud country that had sought
their subjugation was compelled to receive at its Court their
accredited Minister. In 1785 John Adams of Massachusetts was
chosen for this delicate position. He had nominated Washington for
Commander-in-chief of the Colonial troops, he had belonged to the
committee which reported the immortal Declaration of Independence,
he had been sent in 1777 as commissioner to the Court of Versailles.
Moreover, he was the husband of the accomplished, patriotic Abigail
Adams,--"a woman of fine personal appearance, good education and
noble powers of mind." A fitting pair this to represent the new land
that had just won a place among the nations!
In the drawing-rooms of the late queen--the arbiter of social
usage for nearly a century--Majesty stood upon a raised platform
surrounded by the lights, larger or lesser, of her court. A few
ladies only were admitted at a time. These might not clasp the
outstretched hand of Majesty. On the _back_ of their hands her own
was laid for an instant, and something like a butterfly touch of
the lips was permitted. Then to the long line of lesser stars were
courtesies rendered, and the "presented" lady passed on and out.
[Illustration: John Adams.]
Not so did George the Third and his queen receive. Their guests were
assembled in the drawing-room, and the king, accompanied by Lord
Onslow, passed around first; the queen, as much as two hours later,
made her rounds in a similar fashion.
Mrs. Adams wrote to her sister a description of the first
drawing-room attended by the first American Minister to the Court
of St. James. The company assembled in silence. The king went
around to every person--finding small talk enough to speak to them
all--"prudently speaking in a whisper so that only the person
next you can hear what is said." King George, Mrs. Adams thought,
was "a personable man," but she did not admire his red face and
white eyebrows. When he came to her, and Lord Onslow said, "Mrs.
Adams," she hastily drew off her right-hand glove; but to her
amazement the king stooped and kissed her on her left cheek! There
was an embarrassed moment--for Royalty must always begin and end a
conversation. George the Third found only this to say:--
"Madam, have you taken a walk to-day?"
"No, Sire."
"Why? Don't you love walking?"
Her impulse was to tell him frankly that all the morning had been
given to attiring herself to wait upon him, but she informed him
only that she was "rather indolent in that respect," upon which he
allowed her the last word, bowed, and passed on. In about two hours
it was Mrs. Adams's turn to be presented to the queen. "The queen,"
she writes, "was evidently embarrassed. I had disagreeable feelings,
too. She, however, said: 'Mrs. Adams, have you got into your house?
Pray, how do you like the situation of it?'" She, too, yielded the
last word, passing on after an earnest assurance that the American
lady had nothing to complain of. "She was in purple and silver,"
said Mrs. Adams in her letter to her sister. "She is not well-shaped
nor handsome. As to the ladies of the Court, rank and title may
compensate for want of personal charm, but they are in general very
plain, ill-shaped and ugly--but don't you tell anybody that I said
so!"
From the letter of our Minister's wife, we perceive that fashions
in dress had not changed materially since the days when Jenny
Washington, Betsy Lee, and Aphia Fauntleroy danced in Westmoreland.
The classic David had not yet laid down his stern laws. The train
was still looped over an ornate petticoat, and all supported by
an enormous hoop; the hair still "craped high," surmounted with
feathers, flowers, lace, and gauze. Mrs. Adams, when all ready
to set forth to the drawing-room, found time while waiting for
her daughter to describe the presentation gowns to her sister in
Massachusetts:--
"My head is dressed for St. James, and in my opinion looks very
tasty. Whilst my daughter is undergoing the same operation I set
myself down composedly to write you a few lines. I directed my
manteau-maker to let my dress be elegant, but plain as I could
possibly appear with decency. Accordingly it is white lutestring
covered and full-trimmed with white crape festooned with lilac
ribbon and mock point lace, over a hoop of enormous extent. There
is only a narrow train of about three yards in length to the gown
waist, which is put into a ribbon upon the left side, the Queen only
having her train borne. Ruffle cuffs for married ladies, a very
dress cap with long lace lappets, two white plumes and a blond-lace
handkerchief. This is my rigging. I should have mentioned two pearl
pins in my hair, earrings and necklace of the same kind.
"Well, methinks I hear Betsy and Lucy say, 'What is cousin's dress?'
White, my dear girls, like your aunt's, only differently trimmed and
ornamented, her train being wholly of white crape and trimmed with
white ribbon; the petticoat, which is the most showy part of the
dress, covered and drawn up in what are called festoons, with light
wreaths of beautiful flowers; the sleeves white crape, drawn over
the silk with a row of lace around the sleeve near the shoulder,
another half-way down the arm, and a third upon the top of the
ruffle, a little flower stuck between; a kind of hat cap with three
large feathers and a bunch of flowers; a wreath of flowers upon
the hair. Thus equipped we go in our own carriage, and Mr. Adams
and Colonel Smith in his. But I must quit the pen in order for the
ceremony which begins at 2 o'clock."
Mrs. Adams was not one whit "flustered" or nervous on this
occasion--unique from the circumstances attending it. The
embarrassment was all on the part of Royalty. Very sustaining must
be the consciousness of belonging to the victorious party!
CHAPTER XI
THE FIRST WINTER AT MOUNT VERNON
Washington Irving speaks of the first winter at Mount Vernon as
being of such intense cold that "General Washington could not
travel through the snows even as far as Fredericksburg to visit
his aged mother." General Dabney H. Maury, in his "Recollections
of a Virginian," says: "After Washington's military career ended
he used to go frequently to Fredericksburg to visit his venerable
mother, and his arrival was the occasion of great conviviality and
rejoicing. Dinner parties and card parties were then in order,
and we find in that wonderful record of his daily receipts and
expenditures that on one of these occasions he won thirty guineas at
Lop-loo! Probably it was after this night that he threw the historic
dollar across the river, the only instance of extravagance ever
charged against him." A dinner-party was usually given to him on his
arrival at the old "Indian Queen" tavern. On these visits Washington
laid aside his state, and--near his boyhood's home--was a boy again.
Judge Brooke, for many years chief justice of Virginia, who had
served as an officer in the legion of "Light-horse Harry," used
to tell of having frequently met Washington on his visits to
Fredericksburg after the Revolutionary War, and how "hilarious" the
general was on those occasions with "Jack Willis and other friends
of his young days." Judge Brooke remembered one dinner given to
Washington at the "Indian Queen" tavern at which he was present. "A
British officer sang a comic song. Washington laughed till the tears
rolled down his cheeks, and called upon the singer to repeat it."
"Light-horse Harry" Lee was always a great favorite in the
Washington family. He was, perhaps, the only person outside of
it "never under the influence"--according to Irving--"of that
reverential awe" which Washington is said to have inspired. His
summer home "Chatham" adjoined Mary Washington's Stafford farm;
he was often in Fredericksburg at the "Indian Queen" banquets.
Nobody could take such liberties with the great man. The son of his
"Lowland Beauty" stepped right into the place she had left vacant.
The general one day asked "Light-horse Harry" if he knew where he
could get a good pair of carriage horses.
"I have a fine pair, general--but _you_ can't get them."
"Why not?"
"Because," said the saucy young soldier, "you will never pay more
than half price for anything, and I must have full price for my
horses."
Silence--broken at last by the bantering laugh of a pet parrot caged
near them. The general took the assault upon his dignity in great
good part. "Ah, Lee, you are a funny fellow!" said he; "even the
birds laugh at you!"
"But," adds Irving, "hearty laughter was rare with Washington. The
sudden explosions we read of were the result of some ludicrous
surprise."
Still we do read of this rare laughter--this willing yielding to
merriment--on the occasions of his visits to his mother.
All of which goes to prove, first, that Washington did not, as has
been charged, neglect to visit her during the four intervening
years between the declaration of peace and his own appointment
to the Presidency, and, secondly, that these were happy visits,
notwithstanding his mother's age and infirmities--happy for her,
otherwise, they could not have been happy for him.
It is not the purpose of the compiler of this story of Mary
Washington and her times to answer all of the witless charges that
thoughtless--we will not say malignant--persons have made regarding
Washington's relations with his mother; but one of these stories
found its way to the columns of a newspaper, and perhaps we may
check its echo, now going on from lip to lip, to the effect that
after he became President, Washington _denied_ to his mother a home
in his temporary residence. He entered that residence late in the
spring of 1789. His mother died in August of that year. She was ill
when he parted from her, and he was prostrated for many weeks with
a malignant carbuncle. He was not recovered when she died; he could
not go to her. It is not possible that she wished to exchange the
repose of her own home and the ministrations of her loved physician
and only daughter for the stirring life of a noisy metropolis.
And as for her noble son--if the splendor of his record be more
than the eyes of his critics can bear, they are at liberty to veil
it for their own comfort by the mists of their own imaginings. They
will never persuade the world that the purest and best man this
country ever saw could be capable of neglecting an aged and infirm
woman--and that woman the mother who bore him, and to whom he owed
all that made him greater than his fellows.
I should doubt the authenticity of any letter, tending to lower our
estimation of Washington's character. William Smyth of Cambridge
University, England, in his "Lectures on History" (Lecture 34,
p. 436), warns us that _one_ volume of "Washington's Letters" is
spurious and not to be respected. I have not seen this assertion of
Smyth's repeated, but he could not have made it without authority.
As to the neglect of his mother during the last five years of his
life--a charge that has been made more than once--there can be
no foundation whatever. He never realized his dream of rest and
leisure. The one ice-bound winter succeeding the declaration of
peace was his only moment of repose. He found his own affairs much
involved--so much so that Congress wished to aid him in restoring
them. But he refused to accept any gift or any compensation for his
eight years of service. He complained of the enormous burden of the
letters he must answer. He found small time for the arboricultural
pursuits in which he was so much interested. Hardly had he planted
his balsams, ivies, and ornamental trees of various kinds, when
trouble in the country claimed his attention. He writes of his
longing for privacy and leisure, and remembers that his time to
enjoy them must be short. Still he plants "elms, ash, white-thorn,
maples, mulberries, horse-chestnuts, willows and lilacs," and writes
that his trees grow fast, as if they knew him to be getting old and
must make haste if they wish ever to shelter him!
All this was brought to an end by the very serious discords in the
country as to the Constitution adopted by the Confederation of
States. The story of these discords is a long one, and has been
ably told elsewhere. Washington's feelings were intensely excited
by the news that the insurgents of Massachusetts had exhibited such
violence that the chief magistrate had called out the militia of the
state to support the Constitution. "Good God!" he exclaims, "who
besides a Tory or a Briton could have predicted this? It was but the
other day we were shedding our blood to obtain the constitutions
under which we now live,--constitutions of our own choice and
making,--and now we are unsheathing the sword to overturn them. If
any man had told me this three years since, I should have thought
him a bedlamite, a fit subject for a mad house!"
The troubles ended in a call for another convention of which he
was, reluctantly, compelled to accept the place of delegate. To
serve intelligently he went into a course of study of the history of
ancient and modern confederacies, and has left among his papers an
abstract of their merits and defects. He must now learn a new trade!
He must become a wise and learned statesman.
One can easily see the impossibility of long and frequent visits
to his mother at Fredericksburg. The man was bound, hand and foot.
He longed for repose, and at first rebelled against further public
duty. "Having had some part in bringing the ship into port," he
said, "and having been fairly discharged, it is not my business to
embark again upon a sea of troubles."
The country ordered otherwise. There was a quarrel in the family,
and a serious one, and the "Father of his Country" must help to
settle it.
Virginia had done what she could. She was rich and powerful, and
the weaker states reckoned themselves at a disadvantage beside her.
Virginia was the foremost advocate for equality and union, and was
willing to make sacrifices to secure it.
She nobly surrendered to the Federal government a great
principality. All the country beyond the Ohio, now forming the
states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, belonged to Virginia. Says
Esten Cooke: "Her right to it rested upon as firm a basis as the
right of any other Commonwealth to its own domain, and if there was
any question of the Virginia title by charter, she could assert her
right by conquest. The region had been wrested from the British by a
Virginian commanding Virginia troops; the people had taken 'The oath
of allegiance to the Commonwealth of Virginia,' and her title to the
entire territory was indisputable.
"These rights she now relinquished, and her action was the result of
an enlarged patriotism and devotion to the cause of Union."
Thus she aided in the settlement of the questions before the great
Convention of 1788, of which Washington was made President. All the
great men of the country were present at this convention, and the
result was that the Constitution of the United States went into
operation, and Washington was elected President by a unanimous vote.
In the face of these vital matters _no_ one--certainly not his
brave, good, reasonable mother--could blame him that the hours of
the days were all too short for the great work he had to do.
CHAPTER XII
THE PRESIDENT AND HIS LAST VISIT TO HIS MOTHER
Once more, and once only, do we hear of Mary Washington in
connection with her son. We read that her home filled her time
and heart; that she, like her son, sowed and planted, arranging
her garden as the seasons succeeded each other, delighting in her
personal work therein. Who can measure the charm, to a woman, of
even a small garden! How often has she not "heard the voice of the
Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day!" She was born
in a garden. Her first perception of beauty was awakened by her
flowers. With these for companionship, who can be utterly wretched?
Not all unhappy was the prisoner, after his "Picciola" had cleft the
stone masonry of his dungeon!
We love to think of Mary Washington in the old garden! Nowhere so
sweetly, so gently, can a wearied body fulfil its day, until God
wills the release of the soul.
On the 14th of April, 1789, Washington received at Mount Vernon
official intelligence that he had been chosen President of the
United States. He at once prepared to go to New York and enter
upon the duties of his office, but before doing so he set out on
the evening of the same day, mounted on his horse and attended
by his favorite body-servant, Billy Lee, to visit his mother in
Fredericksburg. He found her feeble in body but bright-minded and
cheerful, and he informed her that he had been elected President,
and had come to bid her an affectionate farewell before assuming
his office. "So soon," he said, "as the public business which must
necessarily be encountered in arranging a new government can be
disposed of, I shall hasten to Virginia"--but here she interrupted
him and said: "You will see me no more. Age and disease warn me that
I shall not be long in this world. I trust in God I am somewhat
prepared for a better. But go; fulfil the high destinies which
Heaven appears to assign you; go, and may Heaven's and your mother's
blessing be with you always." This was the last meeting between the
mother and the son.
But that her heart followed him through the marvellous events of the
next few weeks none can doubt. They helped her to ignore the shadow
hanging over her. She was cheerful, strong, and uncomplaining.
She decided to make two visits,--one to the family of Charles and
the other to the widow and orphan children of Samuel Washington.
The families met together to talk gratefully and affectionately of
the illustrious one whom the country was loading with honors. He
had left Mount Vernon on the 16th of April. An entry in his diary
records his feelings. "I bade adieu to Mount Vernon and domestic
felicity and with a mind oppressed with more anxious and painful
sensations than I can express, set out for New York with the best
disposition to render service to my country in obedience to its
call, but with less hope of answering its expectations."
To his friend, General Knox, he wrote: "Integrity and firmness
are all I can promise. These, be my voyage long or short, shall
never forsake me, although I may be deserted by all men; for of
the consolations which are to be derived from these under any
circumstances, the world cannot deprive me."
This was the spirit in which he met the extraordinary honors which
awaited him. "His progress to the seat of government was a continual
ovation. The ringing of bells and roaring of cannonry proclaimed
his course through the country. The old and young, women and
children, thronged the highways to welcome him." Governors met him
at the frontiers of their respective states. Cavalry assembled to
escort him. The throngs gathered as he advanced until a mighty host
followed him. Arches of flowers and evergreens, and triumphal arches
of laurel, spanned the paths he travelled. When he reached the banks
of the Delaware he must have recalled that midnight passage over
the ice-bound river at Christmas,--a representation of which hangs
in almost every humble hostelry in the country. How different his
feelings then and now! Over the stream which flows through Trenton a
bridge was decked with laurel, with the inscription, "The Defenders
of the Mothers will be the Protectors of the Daughters." The matrons
were there; and the young girls, crowned with garlands, strewed his
way with flowers, singing of their love and gratitude. No king on
his way to coronation ever received such a heartfelt ovation!
[Illustration: Washington's Reception at Trenton.]
And so--on and on--until at Elizabeth Point he entered the barge
with white satin canopy, which was to bring him to New York. Parties
of ladies and gentlemen followed the barge singing pæans of welcome.
In his diary that night he records, "The display of boats, the
songs, the instrumental music, the decorations of the ships, the
roar of cannon, the loud acclamations filled my mind with sensations
as painful (considering the reverse of this scene which may be the
case after all my labors to do good) as they are pleasing."
For, after all, he was a sad man. He had surrendered his soldier's
dream of home and peace. He had parted with his aged mother,
and knew that he could not minister to her in her last few
months of life. He was too great a man to permit such things as
these--applause, laurel, songs, salvos of artillery--to fill his
heart or even his imagination with pleasure.
She heard it all! Doubtless her mental commentary was her old
refrain: "This is too much praise! George has only done his duty."
The world still shares--still marvels at--the worship of Washington
then and now. As Lecky says, "He entered the scene as only a
conspicuous member of the planter aristocracy, his mind not quick
or original, no brilliancy of wit, entirely without the gift of
eloquence, with few accomplishments, no language except his own,
nothing to dazzle or overpower." Moreover, he had not a university
training at home or abroad, and no foreign travel to enlarge his
vision. His was the splendid triumph of _character_--character
inherited and fostered in the formative years of his life by a
faithful mother. No one can read the just eulogy of the accomplished
nineteenth-century English writer, without perceiving the close
resemblance--in temperament and character--between the two.
"Those who knew him noticed that he had keen sensibilities and
strong passions; but his power of self-command never failed him,
and no act of his life can be traced to personal caprice, ambition
or resentment. In the despondency of long-continued failure, in
the elation of sudden success, at times when the soldiers were
deserting by hundreds and malignant plots were formed against his
reputation, amid the constant quarrels, rivalries and jealousies of
his subordinates, in the dark hour of national ingratitude and in
the midst of the most intoxicating flattery, he was always the same
calm, wise, just and single-minded man, pursuing the cause which he
believed to be right without fear or favour or fanaticism."
In short, he triumphed over all through the strength of a character,
firm as a rock, which no storm could shake or dislodge. The English
writer himself marvels at the unchallenged worship of the world, and
he thus explains it. "He was in the highest sense a gentleman and a
man of honour. It was always known by his friends, and it was soon
acknowledged by the nation and by the English themselves, that in
Washington, America had found a leader who could be induced by no
earthly motive to tell a falsehood or to break an engagement or to
commit a dishonourable act."
Whatever may be the deep, underlying cause of the idolatry of the
American people, it certainly inspires all classes of men. He is the
star to which all eyes gratefully turn--the wise and unlettered,
rich and poor. Other heroes are, and deserve to be, admitted into
their hearts: but they jealously hold for him the chiefest, holiest
place.
"See here, do you expect to get to heaven?" was asked of a
peculiarly profane lad--a "hard case"--who indignantly answered:
"Course I do! Don't you suppose I want to see General Washington?"
CHAPTER XIII
MARY WASHINGTON'S WILL; HER ILLNESS AND DEATH
Mary Washington made her will only a year before her death,
stating therein that she was "in good health." This was one of the
years, during which it has been asserted that she was not only
neglected by her son but that they were estranged because of her
Tory principles! Besides a few small bequests to her daughter and
grandchildren, "desiring their acceptance thereof as all the token
I now have to give them," she leaves _all_ her estate "to my Son
General George Washington," also--that crowning pride of the early
Englishwoman--her best bed, bedstead, curtains, quilt, and other
bed furniture. Long after the Englishwoman had lived in Virginia
she held her bed in the highest esteem, and always made special
mention of it in her will. She came from the land where, from
ancient days, the bed was the most important feature in the whole
house--made of feathers and adorned with tapestry or with velvets
or with "cloth of gold, or miniver." In the "pane" (the forerunner
of our "counterpane"--from _contre-pointe_--adorned with "drawn
thread lattice work") the ambition of the housewife centred, and was
indulged. When Lafayette desired to make a handsome present to Dr.
Galt of Williamsburg, who had entertained him, he sent from France
a set of velvet bed curtains, dark blue with ornate figuring of
gold, quite the handsomest of the textile fabrics exhibited at our
Centennial in New York City.
Mary Washington bequeathed the articles in which she had most pride
to her "Son General George Washington." She was then, May, 1788,
"in good health." It appears, from an old letter, she once fell
at her door-step and hurt her arm. Perhaps then she also wounded
her breast, in which a cancerous growth appeared not long before
her death. In those days the medical and surgical sciences were
all wrong, if we may believe them to be now all right. A New York
writer had said that more lives had been destroyed in that city by
physicians than by all other causes whatever.
Virginians at the school of medicine in Edinburgh had organized
themselves, a few years before, into a Virginia Society "for the
protection of the profession against quacks and imposters who
had degraded the profession by mingling with it the trade of an
apothecary or surgeon!" An eloquent petition is preserved addressed
"To the Honourable the Council of Virginia and House of Burgesses,"
entreating that "laws be passed forbidding the intrusion of
pretenders into the domain of the authorized practitioner, thereby
dishonouring the profession itself and destroying mankind." We can
imagine the enormities committed by the quacks and imposters when
we observe the methods of the legitimate practitioner. When a man
or woman sickened, the doctors sped the parting guest,--taking
from him his very life-blood, by cupping, leeching, bleeding, and
reducing his strength by blistering and drenching. Nature was
sometimes strong enough to give battle to doctor and disease, and
even to win a victory over their combined forces. But in old age
Nature prudently retired without a struggle. We hope much for
Mary Washington from the gentle ministration of Betty Lewis and
the indulgent kindness of good Dr. Charles Mortimer, also Betty
Lewis's own testimony, one month before the end, of her patience and
resignation. The last word from her lips reveals no earthly wish
save the desire to hear from her son's "own hand that he is well."
August 25, 1789, she was released from sufferings which had been
borne with unfaltering faith and fortitude; and on the 27th of that
month she was laid to rest in the spot she had herself chosen as
her last resting-place, and over which her monument, erected by the
women of America, now stands.
The President did not learn of her death--in that day of
post-riders--until the 1st of September. It was announced to him by
his kinsman Colonel Burgess Ball.
On September 13, he wrote to his sister, Mrs. Betty Lewis, as
follows:--
"MY DEAR SISTER: Colonel Ball's letter gave me the first
account of my Mother's death. Since that I have received Mrs.
Carter's[28] letter, written at your request, and previous to
both. I was prepared for the event by advices of her illness
coming to your son Robert.
"Awful and affecting as the death of a parent is, there is
consolation in knowing that Heaven has spared ours to an age
beyond which few attain, and favored her with the full enjoyment
of her mental faculties and as much bodily strength as usually
falls to the lot of four score.
"When I was last in Fredericksburg I took a final leave of her,
never expecting to see her more....
"Your affectionate brother,
"GEORGE WASHINGTON."
[28] Mrs. Charles Carter, his niece, Betty Lewis's daughter.
Ten years later he records the death of all of his mother's
children. September 22, 1799, he writes to Colonel Burgess Ball:--
"DEAR SIR: Your letter of the 16th inst. has been received
informing me of the death of my brother (Charles).
"The death of near relations always produces awful and affecting
emotions under whatsoever circumstances it may happen. That
of my brother has been long expected: and his latter days so
uncomfortable to himself must have prepared all around him for
the stroke though (_sic_) painful in the effect.
"I was the first, and am, now, the last of my father's children,
by the second marriage, who remain.
"When I shall be called upon to follow them is known only to the
Giver of Life. When the summons comes I shall endeavor to obey
it with a good grace.
"With great esteem and regard I am, Dear Sir, your affectionate
serv't,
"GO. WASHINGTON."
Less than three months afterwards the summons came. Nothing in his
life became him like the leaving it. The generation had passed away!
The stars of the western firmament had set. In the same year died
Patrick Henry and George Washington!
Mary Washington left a noble band of grandsons who worthily
served their country. Bushrod Washington (son of John Augustine
Washington), was soon to become justice of the Supreme Court of the
United States. When President Washington went to Fort Pitt to visit
the troops sent to suppress the Whiskey Insurrection, it is related
that as he passed, uncovered, down the line, every man poured forth
the homage of his heart in words of devotion and loyalty, and that
an escort of cavalry was detailed to conduct him on his homeward
way. Dismissing this, after travelling a short distance, he thus
addressed the officer in charge, the eldest son of his only sister,
Betty Lewis: "George, you are the eldest of five nephews that I
have in this army! Let your conduct be an example to them, and do
not turn your back until you are ordered."
The five nephews were Major George Lewis, commandant of the cavalry;
Major Lawrence Lewis, aide-de-camp to Major General Morgan; Howell
Lewis, in Captain Mercer's troop; Samuel Washington, son of Colonel
Charles Washington, and Lawrence Washington, son of Colonel Samuel
Washington--the two latter light-horsemen in the troop commanded by
Captain Lewis, the _first_ troop of cavalry to cross the mountains
on this expedition. Standing in the field under the new banner of
their new government, were six of Mary Washington's descendants.
The spirit of the stout-hearted grandmother lived in these men, and
inspired them in their prompt response to the call of their country
for support of law and order.
CHAPTER XIV
TRIBUTES OF HER COUNTRYMEN
Mary Washington was laid by reverent hands in the spot chosen by
herself near "Kenmore." Tradition declares that General Washington
proposed erecting a monument over her ashes, but was restrained by
the assurance that the country claimed that privilege.
If this promise was made, it was never redeemed. The American
nation, in its reasonable gratitude, dedicated in almost every
hamlet some memorial to its great commander. For her it did nothing.
No stone or tablet for years marked her resting-place.
Tradition loves to repeat the myth that Congress, which was in
session at the time of her death, wore the usual badge of mourning
for thirty days, and passed resolutions of respect to her memory and
sympathy with the President. No such action was taken by Congress.
There is no official record of the fact. Nor does Robert Maclay, who
transcribed in his journal every incident of his senatorial life,
make any mention whatever of Mary Washington.
We delighted to call her son "a king among men, godlike in his
virtues." We knew that he served us for eight years in peril of
life and fortune, unsustained by encouragement or the hope of
success, leading a forlorn hope against a powerful enemy. We knew
that his, more than any score of names, had given us the place we
held among the nations of the earth. We knew that he himself said,
"All that I am, I owe to my mother."
And yet the country seemed content with toasting his name at
its banquets, and left his mother's grave to be marked only by
mouldering stones and noisome weeds! The graves of her family were
all preserved from decay. Her distinguished son lay, as it was
fitting he should lie, in a marble sarcophagus at Mount Vernon. She
had chosen for her final pillow, the spot where God had answered her
prayers in the gift of wonderful serenity of soul, and in a short
while God alone would have known where to find that spot. Brambles
and weeds covered it, hiding, for very shame, the witness of man's
ingratitude and neglect. Twice, bills were presented to the Congress
of the United States, asking for an appropriation for a monument
over Mary Washington's grave. By various misfortunes the bills were
lost. In 1830 the women of Fredericksburg banded themselves together
to rear this monument, and were zealously engaged to that end when
they received the following letter from a patriotic man of wealth in
New York City:--
"NEW YORK, April 11, 1831.
"TO THE HONORABLE THOMAS GOODWIN, _Mayor of the Town of
Fredericksburg, Va._
"SIR:--I have seen with the greatest interest the efforts
making by the citizens of Fredericksburg to erect a monument
over the remains and to rescue from oblivion the sacred spot
where reposes the great American mother, Mary, the mother of
Washington. I feel a great interest that the ashes of this good
American mother shall remain where they are, and I wish to be
allowed the honor of individually erecting the monument, which I
assure you, sir, shall be, in style and execution, to please the
family of Washington and the citizens of the United States.
"Be pleased, sir, to make this communication known to the
Washington family and all interested, and believe me truly,
"Your most ob't s'vt,
"SILAS E. BURROWS."
The offer was gladly accepted. Work on the monument was at once
commenced. The handsome marbles were finished, and the corner-stone
laid in the presence of Andrew Jackson, then President of the United
States. On this occasion President Jackson said: "Mary Washington
acquired and maintained a wonderful ascendency over those around
her. This true characteristic of genius attended her through life,
and she conferred upon her son that power of self-command which was
one of the remarkable traits of her character.
"She conducted herself through this life with virtue and prudence
worthy of the mother of the greatest hero that ever adorned the
annals of history. There is no fame in the world more pure than
that of the mother of Washington, and no woman, since the mother of
Christ, has left a better claim to the affectionate reverence of
mankind."
This monument was completed but never erected. The stone-mason and
the contractor died before the shaft was placed on the foundation,
and, soon after, Mr. Burrows died also. The work ceased, and the
unfinished structure stood as the contractor left it, until torn
down for the present finished monument. The non-completion of the
old monument, therefore, seems to have been providential, and no
fault of the projector or contractor. During the Civil War between
the North and the South, the guns of the contending armies were
fired across the stones, and they became a prey to the vandalism of
strangers.
In 1857 Captain George Washington Ball (grandson of the patriot,
Colonel Burgess Ball, and his wife--Frances Washington) circulated
an appeal throughout the country, asking for donations to complete
the monument. For eleven years Captain Ball worked zealously
and faithfully. He desired to erect near the monument a noble
charity,--an institution of learning for young women,--but it seemed
ordained that he should be not immediately successful, and in time
he became discouraged. It was a heart-breaking disappointment to
"this old man eloquent,"--the author of the monograph so freely
quoted on these pages.
[Illustration: Mary Washington's Monument.]
Finally the women of America reared a shaft over the desecrated
spot, and by a hereditary office, held by six hundred of their
number, provided a perpetual Guard of Honor over the grave of Mary,
the mother of Washington. The corner-stone of this last monument was
laid Oct. 20, 1893. The monument--the first ever reared by women in
honor of a woman--is a classic shaft of granite. It was dedicated
by President Cleveland on May 10, 1894, in the presence of a large
concourse of people.
Fredericksburg made the occasion one of rejoicing and festivity. The
day was a glorious one. The sun never looked down upon a brighter
scene,--garlands and festoons of flowers, "ripples of ribbons in the
air," officers in uniform, maidens in white, music, and song! There
was a grand masonic banquet, and a ball.
The procession was headed by a number of beautiful young women
habited in black with black hats and sable plumes, handsomely
mounted on horseback. The Chief Justice of the United States, the
Justices of the Supreme Court, and members of the Cabinet, preceded
the companies of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, and again, beside
the grave of this modest woman, were repeated words of honor and
applause, than which no words in any language could be nobler or
better deserved.
These words--from the citizens of her own town, from the senator of
her state, from the President of the United States--were for her:
not alone as the mother of the adored Washington, but for the true
woman "of clear, prompt and decided mind," the woman of courage and
integrity, the "Christian woman, devout and worshipful," to whom the
"greatest hero that ever adorned the annals of history" ascribed all
that had made him great and good.
And very noble was the tribute of Virginia's honored son at the
ceremonies attendant upon the unveiling of the monument reared in
her honor by the women of America. Said Senator Daniel:
"She nursed a hero at her breast. At her knee she trained to the
love and fear of God and to the kingly virtues, honor, truth and
valor, the lion of the tribe that gave to America liberty and
independence. This her title to renown. It is enough. Eternal
dignity and heavenly grace dwell upon the brow of this blessed
mother; nor burnished gold, nor sculptured stone, nor rhythmic
praise could add one jot or tittle to her chaste glory. Tributes
to the lofty genius, which is the rare gift of nature, and to the
brilliant deeds, which are the rare fruits of fitting opportunity,
fulfil a noble function; but they often excite extravagant
emulations that can never be satisfied, and individualize models
which few by possibility may copy. This tribute is not to them. It
is to one who possessed only the homely virtues of her sex; but what
is there in human life that can be more admirable or bring it in
closer proximity to the divine? She was simply a private citizen.
No sovereign's crown rested on her brow. She did not lead an army,
like Joan of Arc, nor slay a tyrant, like Charlotte Corday. She was
not versed in letters or in arts. She was not an Angel of Mercy,
like Florence Nightingale, nor the consort of a hero, like the wife
of Napoleon. She did not shine amidst the throngs which bow to the
charms of wit, beauty, and hospitality; but in any assembly of the
beautiful, the brilliant, the powerful, or the brave of her sex,
no form could awaken a holier sentiment of reverence than she, and
that sentiment is all the deeper because she was the unassuming wife
and mother whose kingdom was her family, whose world was her home.
In the shadow and in the silence from day to day and year to year
she followed the guiding star of that truth which tells us that 'to
do that which before us lies in daily life is the prime wisdom.'
She was the good angel of the hearthstone--the special providence
of tender hearts and helpless hands, content to bear her burdens
in the sequestered vale of life, her thoughts unperverted by false
ambitions, and all unlooking for the great reward that crowned her
love and toil.
"But for the light that streamed from the deeds of him she bore,
we would doubtless have never heard the name of Mary Washington,
and the grass that grew upon this grave had not been disturbed by
curious footsteps or reverential hands. But it does not follow
that she shines only in the reflection of her offspring's fame.
Her virtues were not created; they were only discovered by the
marvellous career of her illustrious son. This memorial might indeed
be due to her because of who she was, but it is far more due to her
because of what she was. It is in her own right, and as the type of
her sex, her people and her race, that she deserves this tribute
stone.
"There were ten thousand Mary Washingtons among the mothers of the
Revolution, and honoring her we honor the motherhood of heroic days
and heroic men. It was in his character, all sufficient in every
emergency, that was displayed the overtowering greatness of George
Washington, and it is not doubted that this character was toned and
shaped by his mother's hand. The principles which he applied to
a nation were those simple and elementary truths which she first
imprinted upon his mind in the discipline of home.
"Mary Washington was the 'light of the dwelling' in a plain, rural,
colonial home. Her history hovers around it. There she was wife,
mother, and widow.
"Home is the pure original fountain from which all patriotism must
flow, and the stream can never rise above its source. As the woman
is, the man is; as the man and woman are, the home is; and as the
home, so the country. Show me refined, enlightened, virtuous, and
industrious homes, and I will show you a good government and a great
nation. The nation is the aggregate, the homes are the units; man
is the builder, woman is the inspiration. Discuss constitutions,
administrations, and policies as we may, the outcome must depend
upon the subsoil they spring from. Make the home all right, and the
rest must follow. This is woman's mission. Our race, the youngest
that has framed a language, moulded a constitution, and made a
name, has recognized that mission and held it sacred. Other races
roam the earth for pelf and adventure, and condescend to inferior
connections. Our race roams the earth only to find the spot on
which to build its homes. Indeed it never quits home. It carries
home with it. Wife and child, the domestic animals and plants, the
household goods go where it goes, over the stormy billows, into
the wilderness, and even to the verge of battle. It is a beautiful
legend of the Rappahannock that when Spotswood and his companions
came sailing hither the air was made vocal by the English swallows
that they brought with them. The stars might change, but they would
make the skies still resonant with the songs of the olden homes."
And as the ages pass may there be always some to make the skies
vocal with the songs of the olden times of the Virginia she loved.
But the "olden homes," alas, are passing away. Their solid masonry
long resists the tooth of Time, but the all-destroyer, Fire, levels
them at last. The walls fall, the stones are removed,--let us hope
for the building of other homes,--finally the drifting earth fills
the foundations, and daisies that "look up to God" alone remain to
keep vigil.
Pious hands preserve the old historic churches. Old Christ Church in
Lancaster, where Mrs. Ball (the "Widow Johnson") stood with little
Mary's sponsors in baptism, still exists; so does Yeocomico church
in Westmoreland, where sweet Mary Ball prayed to the God who never
forsook her; so does St. George's Church in Fredericksburg, built on
the site of "Old St. George's," where, "devout and worshipful," her
venerable form was never a moment too late.
[Illustration: The Avenue of Poplars at Nomini Hall.]
Her last residence in Fredericksburg is tended by the gentle hands
of a society of Virginia women. The garden she loved is kept
"passing sweet with flowers." Mount Vernon is also thus kept by the
women of the whole country. The ancient home of "Epping Forest"
fell into ruin long, long ago. A cluster of old trees marks the
spot where the mother of Washington was born. Some of the "olden
homes" named in these pages are still standing,--"Gunston Hall,"
the residence of George Mason; "Stratford," the home of the Lees
in Westmoreland; "Bushfield," the home of Jenny Washington of the
dancing-class; "Mount Airy," where lived the pretty Tayloe girls.
These are in good repair, and there are many others whose thresholds
were often crossed by Mary Washington in her girlhood, wifehood, and
widowhood.
Of "Nomini Hall," where our New Jersey tutor taught and admired the
ladies, no trace remains; except the avenue of poplars which still
live and sleep all winter, and in leafing-time nod and whisper to
each other of those they once sheltered who are sleeping on forever!
THE WILL OF MARY WASHINGTON, AS REGISTERED IN THE CLERK'S OFFICE
AT FREDERICKSBURG, VIRGINIA
"In the name of God! Amen! I, Mary Washington, of Fredericksburg in
the County of Spotsylvania, being in good health, but calling to
mind the uncertainty of this life, and willing to dispose of what
remains of my worldly estate, do make and publish this, my last
will, recommending my soul into the hands of my Creator, hoping for
a remission of all my sins through the merits and mediation of Jesus
Christ, the Saviour of mankind; I dispose of my worldly estate as
follows:
"_Imprimis._ I give to my son General George Washington, all my land
in Accokeek Run, in the County of Stafford, and also my negro boy
George, to him and his heirs forever. Also my best bed, bedstead,
and Virginia cloth curtains (the same that stands in my best
bedroom), my quilted blue and white quilt and my best dressing-glass.
"_Item._ I give and devise to my son, Charles Washington, my negro
man Tom, to him and his assigns forever.
"_Item._ I give and devise to my daughter Bettie Lewis, my phaeton
and my bay horse.
"_Item._ I give and devise to my daughter-in-law Hannah Washington,
my purple cloth cloak lined with shag.
"_Item._ I give and devise to my grandson, Corbin Washington, my
negro wench, old Bet, my riding chair, and two black horses, to him
and his assigns forever.
"_Item._ I give and devise to my grandson, Fielding Lewis, my negro
man Frederick, to him and his assigns forever, also eight silver
tablespoons, half of my crockeryware, and the blue and white tea
china, with book case, oval table, one bedstead, one pair sheets,
one pair blankets and white cotton counterpain, two table cloths,
six red leather chairs, half my peuter and one half of my kitchen
furniture.
"_Item._ I give and devise to my grandson, Lawrence Lewis, my negro
wench Lydia, to him and his assigns forever.
"_Item._ I give and devise to my granddaughter, Bettie Curtis,
my negro woman, little Bet, and her future increase, to her and
her assigns forever. Also my largest looking-glass, my walnut
writing desk and drawers, a square dining-table, one bed, bedstead,
bolster, one pillow, one blanket and pair sheets, white Virginia
cloth counterpains and purple curtains, my red and white tea china,
teaspoons, and the other half of my peuter and crockeryware, and the
remainder of my iron kitchen furniture.
"_Item._ I give and devise to my grandson, George Washington, my
next best glass, one bed, bedstead, bolster, one pillow, one pair
sheets, one blanket and counterpain.
"_Item._ I devise all my wearing apparel to be equally divided
between my granddaughters, Bettie Curtis, Fannie Ball, and Milly
Washington,--but should my daughter, Bettie Lewis, fancy any one two
or three articles, she is to have them before a division thereof.
"Lastly, I nominate and appoint my said son, General George
Washington, executor of this, my will, and as I owe few or no debts,
I direct my executor to give no security or appraise my estate,
but desire the same may be allotted to my devisees, with as little
trouble and delay as may be, desiring their acceptance thereof as
all the token I now have to give them of my love for them.
"In witness thereof, I have hereunto set my hand and seal the 20th
day of May, 1788.
"MARY WASHINGTON.
"Witness, JOHN FERNEYHOUGH.
"Signed, sealed and published in the presence of the said Mary
Washington and at her desire.
"JNO. MERCER.
"JOSEPH WALKER."
* * * * *
_WORKS BY MRS. ALICE MORSE EARLE_
=STAGE-COACH AND TAVERN DAYS=
With many illustrations from photographs.
=8vo. Cloth. $2.50=
"Not the least valuable items in her book are the pictures with
which it is lavishly provided,--admirable reproductions, most of
them, of old taverns, tavern signs and bills, stage coaches, and a
number of copies of the paintings of Mr. Henry, who has made the
stagecoach days of the United States a special study."--_New York
Tribune._
"Mrs. Earle is no mere compiler. Her books represent original
research, combined with a happy faculty of knowing what to tell and
what to omit. They are not only authentic, they are interesting,
full of human nature, and touched throughout with a delightful sense
of humor."--_Chicago Tribune._
=OLD TIME GARDENS=
A Book of the Sweet o' the Year. With many illustrations from
photographs. =8vo. Cloth. $2.00, net=
"Every page is laden with things interesting, attractive, and
curiously and effectively instructive. Mrs. Earle's knowledge of
American local traditionary lore, as we have long since learned, is
matchless."--_Booklovers' Bulletin_, Philadelphia.
"A treatise which will be welcomed by all lovers of gardens and
of literature ... for the scholarly fragrance distilled by every
chapter of a volume that may be worthily enshrined among the
classics of gardening literature."--GEORGE H. ELLWANGER in the _Book
Buyer_.
=SUN-DIALS AND ROSES OF YESTERDAY=
Garden delights which are here displayed in very truth and are
moreover regarded as emblems. Profusely illustrated.
=8vo. Cloth. $2.00, net=
=HOME LIFE IN COLONIAL DAYS=
Illustrated by photographs, gathered by the author, of real
things, works, and happenings of olden times.
=8vo. Cloth. $2.50=
"The work is mainly and essentially an antiquarian account of
the tools, implements, and utensils, as well as the processes
of colonial domestic industry; and it is full enough to serve
as a moderate encyclopædia in that kind.... This useful and
attractive book, with its profuse and interesting pictures, its
fair typography, and its quaint binding, imitative of an old-time
sampler, should prove a favorite."--_The Dial._
"Mrs. Earle has made a very careful study of the details of domestic
life from the earliest days of the settlement of the country. The
book is sumptuously illustrated, and every famed article, such
as the spinning-wheel, the foot-stone, the brass knocker on the
door, and the old-time cider-mill, is here presented to the eye
and faithfully pictured in words. The volume is a fascinating one,
and the vast army of admirers and students of the olden days will
be grateful to the author for gathering together and putting into
permanent form so much accurate information concerning the homes of
our ancestors."--_Education._
=CHILD LIFE IN COLONIAL DAYS=
With many illustrations from photographs.
=8vo. Cloth. $2.50=
"The whole work presents a complete and graphic picture of colonial
childhood, that cannot but form a valuable supplementary study for
students of American history. At the same time it has much general
interest, for child life of any period is interesting, but the
interest is doubled when it concerns the formative influences of
American ancestry."--_New York Times._
"From the scant records of colonial days Mrs. Earle has been enabled
to make up a volume that is full of life and variety, and that
gives an insight into the beauty and tenderness of family life even
under the austere conditions of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. The portraits of children form a gallery as rare as it is
beautiful."--_New York Herald._
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
=66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK=
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.
Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as
printed.
Missing page numbers are page numbers that were not shown in the
original text.
The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up
paragraphs, thus the page number of the illustration might not match
the page number in the List of Illustrations.
Page 19: The transcriber has inserted a footnote anchor for footnote
2: Horace Edwin Hayden in _William and Mary Quarterly_, Vol. iii, p.
74.].
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Mother of Washington and Her Times" ***
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