MARRIAGE. THE LIFE OF A PLANTER
War is like the wind, nobody can tell into whose garden it may blow
desolation. The French and Indian War, generally called now the Seven
Years' War, beginning as a mere border altercation between the British
and French backwoodsmen on the banks of the upper Ohio River, grew
into a struggle which, by the year 1758, when Washington retired from
his command of the Virginia Forces, spread over the world. A new
statesman, one of the ablest ever born in England, came to control the
English Government. William Pitt, soon created Earl of Chatham, saw
that the British Empire had reached a crisis in its development.
Incompetence, inertia, had blurred its prestige, and the little
victories which France, its chief enemy, had been winning against it
piecemeal, were coming to be regarded as signs that the grandeur of
Britain was passing. Pitt saw the gloomy situation, and the still
gloomier future which it seemed to prophesy, but he saw also the
remedy. Within a few months, under his direction, English troops were
in every part of the world, and English ships of war were sailing
every ocean, to recover the slipping elements and to solidify the
British Empire. Just as Pitt was taking up his residence at Downing
Street, Robert Clive was winning the Battle of Plassey in India, which
brought to England territory of untold wealth. Two years later James
Wolfe, defeating the French commander, Montcalm, on the Plains of
Abraham, added not only Quebec, but all Canada, to the British Crown,
and ended French rivalry north of the Great Lakes. Victories like
these, seemingly so casual, really as final and as unrevisable as
Fate, might well cause Englishmen to suspect that Destiny itself
worked with them, and that an Englishman could be trusted to endure
through any difficulties to a triumphant conclusion.
Beaten at every point where they met the British, the French, even
after they had secured an alliance with Spain, which proved of little
worth, were glad to make peace. On February 10, 1763, they signed
the Treaty of Paris, which confirmed to the British nearly all their
victories and left England the dominant Power in both hemispheres.
The result of the war produced a marked effect on the people of the
British Colonies in North America. "At no period of time," says Chief
Justice Marshall, in his "Life of Washington," "was the attachment of
the colonists to the mother country more strong, or more general, than
in 1763, when the definitive articles of the treaty which restored
peace to Great Britain, France, and Spain, were signed."[1] But we
who know the sequel perceive that the Seven Years' War not only
strengthened the attachment between the Colonies and the Mother
Country, but that it also made the Colonies aware of their common
interests, and awakened among them mutual friendship, and in a very
brief time their sense of unity prevailed over their temporary
enthusiasm for England. George III, a monarch as headstrong as he was
narrow, with insanity lurking in his mind, succeeded to the throne in
1760, and he seized the first opportunity to get rid of his masterful
Minister, William Pitt. He replaced him with the Earl of Bute, a
Scotchman, and a man of ingenious parts, but with the incurable Tory
habit of insisting that it was still midnight long after the sun was
shining in the forenoon of another day.
[Footnote 1: Marshall: _The Life of George Washington_ (Philadelphia,
1805, 5 vols.), II, 68.]
Before the Treaty was signed and the world had begun to spin in a new
groove, which optimists thought would stretch on forever, an equally
serious change had come to the private life of George Washington. To
the surprise of his friends, who had begun to doubt whether he would
ever get married, he found his life's companion and married her
without delay. The notion seems to have been popular during his
lifetime, and it certainly has continued to later days, that he was
too bashful to feel easy in ladies' society. I find no evidence
for this mistaken idea. Although little has been recorded of the
intimacies of Washington's youth, there are indications of more than
one "flame" and that he was not dull and stockish with the young
women. As early as 1748, we hear of the Low-Land Beauty who had
captivated him, and who is still to be identified. Even earlier, in
his school days, he indulged in writing love verses. But we need not
infer that they were inspired by living damsels or by the Muses.
"Oh ye Gods why should my poor resistless Heart
Stand to oppose thy might and power--
* * * * *
"In deluding sleepings let my eyelids close
That in an enraptured dream I may
In a rapt lulling sleep and gentle repose
Possess those joys denied by day."[1]
[Footnote 1: Quoted by Wister, 39.]
Cavour said that it was easier for him to make Italy than to write a
poem: Washington, who was also an honest man, and fully aware of his
limitations, would probably have admitted that he could make the
American Republic more easily than a love song. But he was susceptible
to feminine charms, and we hear of Betsy Fauntleroy, and of a "Mrs.
Meil," and on his return to Mount Vernon, after Braddock's defeat, he
received the following round robin from some of the young ladies at
Belvoir:
Dear Sir,--After thanking Heaven for your safe return I must
accuse you of great unkindness in refusing us the pleasure of
seeing you this night. I do assure you nothing but our being
satisfied that our company would be disagreeable should prevent us
from trying if our legs would not carry us to Mount Vernon this
night, but if you will not come to us tomorrow morning very early
we shall be at Mount Vernon.
S[ALLY] FAIRFAX ANN SPEARING ELIZ'TH DENT
Apparently Washington's love affairs were known and talked about among
his group. What promised to be the most serious of his experiences was
with Mary Philipse, of New York, daughter of Frederick Philipse, one
of the richest landowners in that Colony, and sister-in-law of Beverly
Robinson, one of Washington's Virginian friends. Washington was going
to Boston on a characteristic errand. One of the minor officers in
the Regular British Army, which had accompanied Braddock to Virginia,
refused to take orders from Washington, and officers of higher grade
in Virginia Troops, declaring that their commissions were assigned
only by Colonial officials, whereas he had his own from King George.
This led, of course, to insubordination and frequent quarrels. To
put a stop to the wrangling, Washington journeyed to Boston, to have
Governor Shirley, the Commander-in-Chief of the King's Forces in the
Colonies, give a decision upon it. The Governor ruled in favor of
Washington, who then rode back to Virginia. But he spent a week in New
York City in order to see his enchantress, Mary Philipse, and it is
even whispered that he proposed to her and that she refused him. Two
years afterwards she married Lieutenant-Colonel Roger Morris, and
during the Revolution the Morris house was Washington's headquarters;
the Morrises, who were Tories, having fled.
Persons have speculated why it was that so many of the young women
whom Washington took a fancy to, chilled and drew back when it came to
the question of marriage. One very clever writer thinks that perhaps
his nose was inordinately large in his youth, and that that repelled
them. I do not pretend to say. So far as I know, psychologists have
not yet made a sufficiently exact study of the nose as a determining
factor in matrimony, to warrant an opinion from persons who have
made no special study of the subject. The plain fact was that by his
twenty-fifth year, Washington was an unusually presentable young man,
more than six feet tall, broad-shouldered, very strong, slender and
athletic, carefully polite in his manners, a boon companion, though he
talked little, a sound and deliberate thinker; moreover, the part he
had taken in the war with the Indians and the French made him almost
a popular hero, and gave him a preëminent place among the Virginians,
both the young and the old, of that time. The possession of the
estate of Mount Vernon, which he had inherited from his half-brother,
Lawrence, assured to him more than a comfortable fortune, and yet
gossip wondered why he was not married. Thackeray intimates that
Washington was too evidently on the lookout for a rich wife, which, if
true, may account for some of the alleged rebuffs. I do not believe
this assertion, nor do I find evidence for it. Washington was always a
very careful, farseeing person, and no doubt had a clear idea of what
constitutes desirable qualifications in marriage, but I believe he
would have married a poor girl out of the workhouse if he had really
loved her. However, he was not put to that test.
One May day Washington rode off from Mount Vernon to carry despatches
to Williamsburg. He stopped at William's Ferry for dinner with his
friend Major Chamberlayne. At the table was Mrs. Daniel Parke Custis,
who, under her maiden name of Martha Dandridge, was well known
throughout that region for her beauty and sweet disposition. She was
now a widow of twenty-six, with two small children. Her late husband,
Colonel Custis, her elder by fifteen years, had left her a large
estate called White House, and a fortune which made her one of the
richest women in Virginia. From their first introduction, Washington
and she seemed to be mutually attracted. He lingered throughout the
afternoon and evening with her and went on to Williamsburg with his
despatches the next morning. Having finished his business at the
Capitol, he returned to William's Ferry, where he again saw Mrs.
Custis, pressed his suit upon her and was accepted. Characteristic
was it that he should conclude the matter so suddenly; but he had had
marriage in his intentions for many years.
During the summer Washington returned to his military duties and led
a troop to Fort Duquesne. He found the fort partly demolished, and
abandoned by the French; he marched in and took it, and gave it the
name of Fort Pitt, in recognition of the great statesman who had
directed the revival of British prestige. The fort, thus recovered to
English possession, stood on the present site of Pittsburgh. I quote
the following brief letter from Washington to Mrs. Custis, as it is
almost the only note of his to her during their engagement that has
been preserved:
We have begun our March for the Ohio. A courier is starting for
Williamsburg, and I embrace the opportunity to send a few words to
one whose life is now inseparable from mine. Since that happy hour
when we made our pledges to each other, my thoughts have been
continually going to you as another Self. That an all powerful
Providence may keep us both in safety is the prayer of your ever
faithful and affectionate friend.[1]
[Footnote 1: P.L. Ford, _The True George Washington_, 93.]
Late in that autumn Washington returned for good from his Western
fighting. On January 6, 1759 (Old Style), his marriage to Mrs. Custis
took place in St. Peter's Church, near her home at the White House.
Judging from the fine writing which old historians and new have
devoted to describing it, Virginia had seen few such elegant pageants
as upon that occasion. The grandees in official station and in social
life were all there. Francis Fauquier was, of course, gorgeous in his
Governor's robes but he could not outshine the bridegroom, in blue and
silver with scarlet trimmings, and gold buckles at his knees, with his
imperial physique and carriage. The Reverend Peter Mossum conducted
the Episcopal service, after which the bride drove back with a coach
and six to the White House, while Washington, with other gentlemen,
rode on horseback beside her acting as escort.
The bridal couple spent two or three months at the White House. The
Custis estates were large and in so much need of oversight that if
Washington had not appeared at this time, a bailiff, or manager, would
have had to be hired for them. Henceforth Washington seems to have
added the care of the White House to that of Mount Vernon, and the two
involved a burden which occupied most of his time, for he had retired
from the army. His fellow citizens, however, had elected him a member
of the House of Burgesses, a position he held for many years; going to
Williamsburg every season to attend the sessions of the Assembly.
On his first entrance to take his seat, Mr. Robinson, the Speaker,
welcomed him in Virginia's name, and praised him for his high
achievements. This so embarrassed the modest young member that he was
unable to reply, upon which Speaker Robinson said, "Sit down, Mr.
Washington, your modesty is equal to your valor, and that surpasses
the power of any language that I possess." In all his life, probably,
Washington never heard praise more genuine or more deserved. He had
just passed his twenty-seventh year. In the House of Burgesses he had
the reputation of being the silent member. He never acquired the art
of a debater. He was neither quick at rebuttal nor at repartee, but
so surely did his character impress itself on every one that when he
spoke the Assembly almost took it for granted that he had said the
final word on the subject under discussion. How careful he was to
observe the scope and effects of parliamentary speaking appears from a
letter which he wrote many years later.
Agriculture has always been a particularly fine training-ground
for statesmen. To persons who do not watch it closely, it may seem
monotonous. In reality, while the sum of the conditions of one year
tally closely with those of another, the daily changes and variations
create a variety which must be constantly watched and provided for. A
sudden freshet and unseasonable access of heat or cold, a scourge of
hail, a drought, a murrain among the cattle, call for ingenuity and
for resourcefulness; and for courage, a higher moral quality. Constant
comradeship with Nature seems to beget placidity and quiet assurance.
From using the great natural forces which bring to pass crops and the
seasons, they seem to work in and through him also. The banker, the
broker, even the merchant, lives in a series of whirlwinds, or seems
to be pursuing a mirage or groping his way through a fog. The
farmer, although he be not beyond the range of accident, deals more
continually with causes which regularly produce certain effects. He
knows a rainbow by sight and does not waste his time and money in
chasing it.
No better idea of Washington's activity as a planter can be had than
from his brief and terse journals as an agriculturist. He sets down
day by day what he did and what his slaves and the free employees did
on all parts of his estate. We see him as a regular and punctual man.
He had a moral repugnance to idleness. He himself worked steadily and
he chided the incompetent, the shirkers, and the lazy.
A short experience as landowner convinced him that slave labor was the
least efficient of all. This conviction led him very early to believe
in the emancipation of the slaves. I do not find that sentiment or
abstract ideals moved him to favor emancipation, but his sense of
fitness, his aversion to wastefulness and inefficiency made him
disapprove of a system which rendered industry on a high plane
impossible. Experience only confirmed these convictions of his, and in
his will he ordered that many slaves should be freed after the death
of Mrs. Washington. He was careful to apportion to his slaves the
amount of food they needed in order to keep in health and to work the
required stint. He employed a doctor to look after them in sickness.
He provided clothing for them which he deemed sufficient. I do not
gather that he ever regarded the black man as being essentially made
of the same clay as the white man, the chief difference being the
color of their skin. To Washington, the Slave System seemed bad, not
so much because it represented a debased moral standard, but because
it was economically and socially inadequate. His true character
appears in his making the best of a system which he recognized as most
faulty. Under his management, in a few years, his estate at Mount
Vernon became the model of that kind of plantation in the South.
Whoever desires to understand Washington's life as a planter should
read his diaries with their brief, and one might almost say brusque,
entries from day to day.[1] Washington's care involved not only
bringing the Mount Vernon estate to the highest point of prosperity
by improving the productiveness of its various sections, but also by
buying and annexing new pieces of land. To such a planter as he was,
the ideal was to raise enough food to supply all the persons who lived
or worked on the place, and this he succeeded in doing. His chief
source of income, which provided him with ready money, was the tobacco
crop, which proved to be of uncertain value. By Washington's time the
Virginians had much diminished the amount and delicacy of the tobacco
they raised by the careless methods they employed. They paid little
attention to the rotation of crops, or to manuring, with the result
that the soil was never properly replenished. In his earlier days
Washington shipped his year's product to an agent in Glasgow or in
London, who sold it at the market price and sent him the proceeds. The
process of transportation was sometimes precarious; a leaky ship might
let in enough sea water to damage the tobacco, and there was always
the risk of loss by shipwreck or other accident. Washington sent out
to his brokers a list of things which he desired to pay for out of
the proceeds of the sale, to be sent to him. These lists are most
interesting, as they show us the sort of household utensils and
furniture, the necessaries and the luxuries, and the apparel used in a
mansion like Mount Vernon. We find that he even took care to order a
fashionably dressed doll for little Martha Custis to play with.
[Footnote 1: See for instance in W.C. Ford's edition of _The Writings
of George Washington_, II, 140-69. Diary for 1760, 230-56. Diary for
1768.]
The care and education of little Martha and her brother, John Parke
Custis, Washington undertook with characteristic thoroughness and
solicitude. He had an instinct for training growing creatures. He
liked to experiment in breeding horses and cattle and the farmyard
animals. He watched the growth of his plantations of trees, and he
was all the more interested in studying the development of mental and
moral capacities in the little children.
In due time a tutor was engaged, and besides the lessons they learned
in their schoolbooks, they were taught both music and dancing. Little
Patsy suffered from epilepsy, and after the prescriptions of the
regular doctors had done no good, her parents turned to a quack named
Evans, who placed on the child's finger an iron ring supposed to have
miraculous virtues, but it brought her no relief, and very suddenly
little Martha Custis died. Washington himself felt the loss of his
unfortunate step-daughter, but he was unflagging in trying to console
the mother, heartbroken at the death of the child.
Jack Custis was given in charge of the Reverend Jonathan Boucher,
an Anglican clergyman, apparently well-meaning, who agreed with
Washington's general view that the boy's training "should make him fit
for more useful purposes than horse-racing." In spite of Washington's
carefully reasoned plans, the youth of the young man prevailed over
the reason of his stepfather. Jack found dogs, horses, and guns, and
consideration of dress more interesting and more important than
his stepfather's theories of education. Washington wrote to Parson
Boucher, the teacher:
Had he begun, or rather pursued his study of the Greek language,
I should have thought it no bad acquisition; ... To be acquainted
with the French Tongue is become a part of polite education;
and to a man who has the prospect of mixing in a large circle,
absolutely necessary. Without arithmetic, the common affairs of
life are not to be managed with success. The study of Geometry,
and the mathematics (with due regard to the limits of it) is
equally advantageous. The principles of Philosophy, Moral,
Natural, etc. I should think a very desirable knowledge for a
gentleman.[1]
[Footnote 1: W.C. Ford, _George Washington_ (1900), I, 136-37.]
There was nothing abstract in young Jack Custis's practical response
to his stepfather's reasoning; he fell in love with Miss Nelly Calvert
and asked her to marry him. Washington was forced to plead with the
young lady that the youth was too young for marriage by several years,
and that he must finish his education. Apparently she acquiesced
without making a scene. She accepted a postponement of the engagement,
and Custis was enrolled among the students of King's College
(subsequently Columbia) in New York City. Even then, his passion for
an education did not develop as his parents hoped. He left the college
in the course of a few months. Throughout John Custis's perversities,
and as long as he lived, Washington's kindness and real affection
never wavered. Although he had now taught himself to practice complete
self-control, he could treat with consideration the young who had it
not.
By nature Washington was a man of business. He wished to see things
grow, not so much for the actual increase in value which that
indicated, as because increase seemed to be a proof of proper methods.
Not content, therefore, with rounding out his holdings at Mount Vernon
and Mrs. Washington's estate at the White House, he sought investment
in the unsettled lands on the Ohio and in Florida, and on the
Mississippi. It proved to be a long time before the advance of
settlement in the latter regions made his investments worth much, and
during the decade after his marriage in 1759, we must think of him
as a man of great energy and calm judgment who was bent not only
on making Mount Vernon a model country place on the outside, but a
civilized home within. In its furnishings and appointments it did not
fall behind the manors of the Virginia men of fashion and of wealth
in that part of the country. Before Washington left the army, he
recognized that his education had been irregular and inadequate, and
he set himself to make good his defects by studying and reading for
himself. There were no public libraries, but some of the gentlemen
made collections of books. They learned of new publications in England
from journals which were few in number and incomplete. Doubtless
advertising went by word of mouth. The lists of things desired which
Washington sent out to his agents, Robert Cary and Company, once a
year or oftener, usually contained the titles of many books, chiefly
on architecture, and he was especially intent on keeping up with new
methods and experiments in farming. Thus, among the orders in May,
1759, among a request for "Desert Glasses and Stand for Sweetmeats
Jellies, etc.; 50 lbs. Spirma Citi Candles; stockings etc.," he asks
for "the newest and most approved Treatise of Agriculture--besides
this, send me a Small piece in Octavo--called a New System of
Agriculture, or a Speedy Way to Grow Rich; Longley's Book of
Gardening; Gibson upon Horses, the latest Edition in Quarto." This
same invoice contains directions for "the Busts--one of Alexander the
Great, another of Charles XII, of Sweden, and a fourth of the King of
Prussia (Frederick the Great); also of Prince Eugene and the Duke of
Marlborough, but somewhat smaller." Do these celebrities represent
Washington's heroes in 1759?
As time went on, his commissions for books were less restricted to
agriculture, and comprised also works on history, biography, and
government.
But although incessant activity devoted to various kinds of work was a
characteristic of Washington's life at Mount Vernon, his attention to
social duties and pleasures was hardly less important. He aimed to be
a country gentleman of influence, and he knew that he could achieve
this only by doing his share of the bountiful hospitality which was
expected of such a personage. Virginia at that time possessed no large
cities or towns with hotels. When the gentry travelled, they put up
overnight at the houses of other gentry, and thus, in spite of very
restricted means of transportation, the inhabitants of one part of the
country exchanged ideas with those of another. In this way also the
members of the upper class circulated among themselves and acquired
a solidarity which otherwise would hardly have been possible. We are
told that Mount Vernon was always full of guests; some of these being
casual strangers travelling through, and others being invited friends
and acquaintances on a visit. There were frequent balls and parties
when neighbors from far and near joined in some entertainment at the
great mansion. There were the hunt balls which Washington himself
particularly enjoyed, hunting being his favorite sport. Fairfax
County, where Mount Vernon lay, and its neighboring counties, Fauquier
and Prince William, abounded in foxes, and the land was not too
difficult for the hunters, who copied as far as possible the dress
and customs of the foxhunters in England. Possibly there might be a
meeting at Mount Vernon of the local politicians. At least once a year
Washington and his wife--"Lady," as the somewhat florid Virginians
called her--went off to Williamsburg to attend the session of the
House of Burgesses. Washington seldom missed going to the horse-races,
one of the chief functions of the year, not only for jockeys and
sporting men, but for the fashionable world of the aristocracy. Thanks
to his carefulness and honesty in keeping his accounts, we have his
own record of the amounts he spent at cards--never large amounts, nor
indicative of the gamester's passion.
Thus Washington passed the first ten years of his married life. A
stranger meeting him at that time might have little suspected that
here was the future founder of a nation, one who would prove himself
the greatest of Americans, if not the greatest of men. But if you had
spent a day with Washington, and watched him at work, or listened to
his few but decisive words, or seen his benign but forcible smile,
you would have said to yourself--"This man is equal to any fate that
destiny may allot to him."