28

Retirement, 1797–1798

“Rooms to Paint—Paper—Whitewash &ca &ca”

WASHINGTON CELEBRATED the resumption of private life in Virginia to which he had so long looked forward with an economical diary entry for March 16, 1797: “At home all day alone. Wind at East & very cloudy all day.” On their way from Philadelphia to Mount Vernon, he and Martha and Nelly had dined with the Laws in their house near the Capitol and lodged with the Peters in Georgetown on their way home. Martha was not often again to visit the Federal City, now known also as the “city of Washington.” Her husband was to lodge alternately with the Laws and Peters when inspecting lots at either end of the city that he had bought four years earlier. The progress of the public buildings, too, was to attract his attention.

At first, both Washingtons stayed close to home. A change in the weather a few days after their arrival at Mount Vernon caused Nelly to write to her friend Elizabeth Bordley in Philadelphia: “this has been a charming morning—and everything appears to be revived. The grass begins to look green. Some trees are in blossom, others budding. The flowers are coming out—and the numerous different birds keep up a constant serenading.” The inhabitants of the house included the Marquis de Lafayette’s son and his tutor. The arrival of this young namesake, George Washington Motier Lafayette, in America two years earlier had not been without embarrassment for the president. The boy’s father had been denounced in France as a traitor to the revolution and by the allied powers as a traitor to the defunct king whom he had once served. After he fled France in 1792, Lafayette was captured by Austrian forces and imprisoned in a series of jails. Washington had won the approval of Congress, before he issued an invitation to George and his tutor to reside at the presidential mansion. They continued as the Washingtons’ guests at Mount Vernon.

George and Martha had at first little opportunity to appreciate the natural beauty of their home, and the general, little time to attend to his farms. There were still matters arising from their leave-taking of the house on Market Street. Washington’s ardent admirer, Mrs. Powel, had bought the writing desk he had used as president. She wrote in mid-March: “Suppose I should prove incontestably that you have without Design put into my Possession the love Letters of a Lady addressed to you under the most solemn Sanction; & a large Packet too.” After some raillery, she had pity on him: “to keep you no longer in Suspense, tho’ I know that your Nerves are not as irritable as a fine Ladies, yet I will with the Generosity of my Sex relieve you, by telling you—that upon opening one of the Drawers of your writing Desk I found a large Bundle of Letters from Mrs Washington bound up and labled with your usual Accuracy.” Washington denied in answer that he had any “love letters” to lose. He was, however, discomfited by his error in not having emptied the drawers and thanked Mrs. Powel for her “delicacy” in ensuring he received the letters safely and unread by others. Had they fallen into “more inquisitive hands,” he asserted, the correspondence would have been found to be “more fraught with expressions of friendship, than of enamoured love.” So as to confer “warmth, which was not inherent,” on the correspondence, an illicit reader with ideas “of the Romantic order,” he wrote with ponderous humor, might have committed the letters to the flames.

The Washingtons had left behind the “furniture of the Green Drawing Room”—scene of so many successful receptions—as well as their splendid town coach, in hopes that Adams would decide to acquire them. Mrs. Powel had written to Washington in February: “if Mr Adams lays the same stress on the association of Ideas that I do, both with respect to our Pleasures, and our Consequence, I think he will gladly become the Purchaser of not only your Coach, but of every Article that the World have been accustomed to see you make use of; and that you are disposed to part with.” John and Abigail Adams had other ideas. Furniture and vehicle were, in consequence, put up for sale, with the pictures that had adorned the public rooms—“fancy pieces of my own chusing,” Washington told Mary White Morris in May, and no longer required. To the disappointment of auctiongoers, Washington reserved for their home in Virginia what Lear termed in March “the Paintings, Prints &c”—images of the president.

Washington listed to Mrs. Powel, on March 26, “Rooms to Paint—Paper—Whitewash &ca &ca—But although these things are troublesome, & disagreeable as they will involve us in a good deal of litter & dirt, yet they will serve to give exercise both to the mind & body.” Three months later Martha confessed to David Humphreys that they were still “more beginners than old established residents.” They had, she wrote, found “everything in a deranged [condition] and all the buildings in a decaying state.” Among other defects in the mansion house, the Washingtons found the fireplace in the parlor all but out of its moorings and the house steps worn down. Problems continued to present themselves. A chance discovery that a girder underpinning the floor of the New Room was “much decayed” averted disaster. Washington told Bartholomew Dandridge in December that had action not been taken to make it good, “a company only moderately large would have sunk altogether into the Cellar.”

Rooms, once painted, were readied to receive furniture sent by water from Philadelphia. Lear supervised the loading aboard the sloop Salem in March of “ninety seven boxes; fourteen trunks; forty three Casks; thirteen packages; three hampers,” besides seven bandboxes, bedsteads, a bidet, “one Tin shower bath,” kitchen equipment and much else. In due course this freight was unpacked and installed or stored at Mount Vernon. Places were found for the Sèvres, and the Cincinnati china was put away, as well as a new service known as the “States china.” Each piece was inscribed with the names of the American states and featured Martha’s initials. A Dutch merchant had commissioned the service in Canton and recently presented the set to Martha.

The Washingtons entertained continually, despite the inconvenience of having workmen in the house. Unfortunately a man hired in Philadelphia to perform the duties of steward proved more hindrance than help. Martha wrote, in May, to Mrs. Powel: “he knows nothing of cooking, arranging a table, or servants, nor will he assume any authority over them.” Efforts by Mrs. Powel to secure a better candidate were not successful; nor were those of friends and relations nearer to hand. In August, Martha told her sister Betsy Aylett Henley, she was still being obliged to be her own housekeeper, “which takes up the greatest part of my time.”

Nelly Parke Custis wrote to Miss Bordley in Philadelphia, immediately after their arrival home in March, that she was “deputy housekeeper, in which employment I expect to improve much, as I am very partial to it.” However, Nelly did not take her duties too seriously. Once her harpsichord arrived, she told her friend in Philadelphia, she meant to practice a great deal and make “my Sister”—Eliza Law and Ann Stuart both had trained voices—“sing your parts of our Duetts.” Only in December did the advent of a satisfactory employee, Mrs. Eleanor Forbes, release Martha from what her husband had earlier termed “the drudgery of ordering & seeing the Table properly covered—& things œconomically used.”

The Washingtons were as much at a loss for a cook as a housekeeper. “Altogether,” Martha, usually resilient, told her sister, “I am sadly plagued.” While they were still on their journey home from Philadelphia in March, Hercules, who had been left at Mount Vernon the previous December, had run away. Both George and Martha strongly suspected he was living among the free black community in Philadelphia, and over subsequent months they made efforts to recover him, to no avail. Washington feared that to supply a cook, he would have to break his resolve “never to become the master of another Slave by purchase.” He told his nephew George Lewis in November, “I have endeavoured to hire, black or white, but am not yet supplied.” In the meantime, Nathan and other house slaves performed cooking duties.

Now that she was returned home for good, Martha took stock of the neighborhood. She told Humphreys in June: “Our circle of friends is of course contracted without any disposition on our part to enter into new friendships, though we have an abundance of acquaintances and a variety of visitors.” A year later she was to hunger after old friends, writing to Sally Fairfax in England: “ ‘It is amongst my greatest regrets now that I am again fixed (I hope for life) at this place, at not having you for as a neighbour and companion.” She had not felt this loss so acutely, she added, employing a homely metaphor, “while I was a kind of perambulator [traveler].” Now many of their friends from before the war were dead. Lund Washington had left his wife a widow at Hayfield the previous year. Martha added, “our visitors on the Maryland side are gone, and going likewise.”

Washington, in September 1797, refused an invitation to a family wedding party in another part of the state that, in former times, he and Martha might once have accepted. “Wedding assemblies are better calculated for those who are coming in to than to those who are going out of life,” he told his nephew, the bridegroom. “You must accept the good wishes of your Aunt and myself in place of personal attendance, for I think it not likely that either of us will ever be more than 25 miles from Mount Vernon again, while we are inhabitants of this Terrestrial Globe.”

The Washingtons were generous in their welcome to younger generations of neighbors. But George, in particular, found the demands of this hospitality great and the rewards scanty. His widowed sister Betty Lewis had recently died, and he proposed to her son Lawrence in August that he come to live at Mount Vernon, “to ease me of the trouble of entertaining company; particularly of Nights.” Washington wanted to escape, either to his study or to bed, soon after tea had been drunk and the candles lit. If Lewis would remain host after the master and mistress retired, his uncle wrote, “it would render him a very acceptable Service.”

Lawrence Lewis accepted the position as one, though without salary, with prospects. He had inherited a farm in Frederick County at his father Fielding’s death in 1781, and could at least usefully learn from his uncle how best to manage it. The fortunes of his family had declined. Soon after his mother Betty’s death, Millbrook, the fine house in Fredericksburg where Washington often stayed, was sold to pay off debts. Lawrence proved a satisfactory secretary to his uncle George and a dutiful surrogate host. Nelly Parke Custis, deputing for her grandmother, brought a vivacity and charm to the task of entertaining visitors that Lewis lacked. She was now, at eighteen, much admired. Benjamin Latrobe, a visiting artist, wrote of her “perfection of form, of expression, of colour, of softness.” He marked, too, her “firmness of mind.”

A year thence a Polish nobleman, Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, visiting Mount Vernon, was to encounter, besides Lewis, George de Lafayette, whom Nelly termed her “young adopted brother.” But the foreigner’s eyes were all for Nelly: “one of those celestial figures that nature produces only rarely, that the inspiration of painters has sometimes divined and that one cannot see without ecstasy.” He recorded: “she plays the harpsichord, sings, [and] draws better than any woman in America or even in Europe.” Her Philadelphia masters would have been pleased to hear it.

Nelly turned heads in Alexandria when she visited girlhood friends. While staying with her sister Patty Peter in Georgetown, she partnered a young man, Charles Carroll, for six dances at a ball held at the Union Tavern. But, she told Miss Bordley in Philadelphia, it was the custom at Virginia and Maryland assemblies to have one partner all evening. “When I have anything to impart, I shall rely upon your secrecy.” She wrote again, aggrieved by “meddling reporters” who were “perpettually engaging her to those whom she never had a chance of marrying and never wished to be united to.” She referred to George de Lafayette. Until she met a man she could love “with all my heart—that is, not romantically, but esteem & prefer him before all others,” she would remain “E P Custis.” Should she never meet such a paragon, she was content to stay “spinster for life.” Gossips would soon cease to link her name with Lafayette’s son. Under the terms of the Treaty of Campo Formio, the marquis was released from prison. The young man left America and joined his parents and sisters in Europe.

When the Listons from Philadelphia visited Mount Vernon in the late autumn of 1797, the minister’s wife pressed Nelly to spend a few weeks with them in Philadelphia, where her former friends—and beaux—abounded. But Miss Custis declined the opportunity. “I have not spent a winter here for eight years,” she explained. She wrote of “the winter weather, the trees, grass, houses, etc. all covered with ice. The appearance is beautiful and the river looks so wide and desolate—the Maryland shore so bleak and sublimely horrifying that I am quite delighted.” These romantic pleasures aside, she wrote, “I could not leave my Beloved Grandmama so lonesome.” She stayed on at Mount Vernon, apparently happy to read a nightly chapter and psalm to her grandmother rather than enjoy a greater world.

Washington Custis was, with Lawrence Lewis, newly of the household and supposedly studying at home. Faculty records show that, on September 7, 1797, the young man was suspended from Princeton “for various acts of meanness and irregularity.” In early October he reached Mount Vernon. There was apparently no question of his return to the college. Washington wrote to its president on October 9, regretting his ward’s “conduct and behaviour” and requesting a tally of accounts to pay. The shameful secret was kept from Martha and from Wash’s mother, Nelly.

Thereafter the general was driven to distraction by Washington Custis’s unsystematic mode of life, as a series of injunctions he laid down on January 7, 1798, shows. Hours spent studying between breakfast and dinner, “instead of running up & down stairs, & wasted in conversation with any one who will talk with you,” would enable the young man to advance in his studies. Moreover, Wash was to be “in place” at the usual breakfasting, dining, and tea hours. “It is not only disagreeable, but it is also very inconvenient, for servants to be running here, & there, and they know not where, to summon you to them.” A bare two weeks later Washington wrote to inform the boy’s stepfather that another solution must be found. It was in his view, impossible to make him “attend to his books” at home, “without an able Preceptor, always with him.”

After much consultation between Hope Park and Mount Vernon, Dr. Stuart inscribed his stepson in March in the College of St. John in Annapolis. Washington would have liked to send Wash off to Harvard, but considered in January that Martha would find the distance “too heartrending.” The boy was enjoined to write home once a fortnight. In mid-June Washington rebuked him for failing to do so, “knowing (as you must do) how apt your Grandmamma is to suspect that you are sick, or some accident has happened to you, when you omit this.” A previous letter Wash wrote in April, remarking on Charles Carroll’s pursuit of his sister, earned this rebuke: “Young Mr C came…to dinner, and left us next morning after breakfast. If his object was such as you say has been reported, it was not declared here…the less is said upon the subject, particularly by your sister’s friends, the more prudent it will be.”

Nelly herself wrote in May to Miss Bordley to deny that Mr. Carroll had ever told her of any attachment “by tongue or pen.” If this was a disappointment, she had much to tell her friend. Of one “charming dance” in Alexandria in February, she wrote: “I danced twenty-four dances, sets, cotillions, reels, etc, sung twelve songs, and at five [in the morning] went to roost; got up at seven.” Visits to “Sister Law” and “Sister Peter” in the city furnished other material for comment. The latter now had a second child, named Columbia Washington—“after the City, and District of Columbia. It is one of my sister’s and my choosing,” Nelly wrote, “and I am to be her godmother.” Old friends in Philadelphia also occupied her. Robert Morris, who had financed the Revolutionary army, had overinvested in the Federal City, was bankrupt, and would soon enter a debtors’ prison. The afflictions of his family perturbed Nelly, as they weighed on her grandmother and the general. “Innate worth is not diminished by loss of wealth,” she wrote.

New rebuke fell on Wash Custis. Washington wrote to the graceless scholar in June: “we have, with much surprise, been informed of your devoting much time, to paying particular attentions to a certain young lady of that place!” Custis allowed that he had informed a Miss Jennings—daughter of an Annapolis merchant—of his affections and of his prospects. He had begged her to wait till he was of age, in the hope that he could “bring about a union at some future day.” Custis wrote stiffly: “The conditions were not accepted.” He had the good sense, on June 17, to allege his youth as “an obstacle to the consummation of my wishes at the present time (which was farthest from my thoughts).”

The Washingtons were not entirely reassured. The general was displeased by Custis asking for more funds. He hoped that his ward had not indulged a taste for “fanciful dresses, or misspent time in company—perhaps in taverns.” Custis also inquired whether his education was complete, following a course of Euclid. This question, wrote Washington on July 24, “really astonishes me! For it would seem as if nothing I could say to you made more than a momentary impression.” The boy, in short, was to continue studies at the college.

Washington had other anxieties besides the conduct of his reprobate ward. Though he paid no visits to Philadelphia, James McHenry, now secretary of war, was one of many who had written to him to outline the growing hostility between the American government and the French republic. The French Directory, now the revolutionary government in power, objected to the Jay Treaty between Britain and America and had refused, in December 1796, to accept the credentials of the new American ambassador in Paris. Anti-French feeling among Federalists in Philadelphia built further when French privateers seized American ships trading with Britain. Adams, in his annual address to Congress in the winter of 1797, spoke of French intransigence and aggression and of the need to place his country “in a suitable posture of defence.” War between the two former allies seemed possible.

Now, in June 1798, Adams wrote to Washington: “In forming an Army, whenever I must come to that Extremity, I am at an immense Loss whether to call out all the old Generals or to appoint a young sett.…I must tap you, Sometimes for Advice. We must have your Name, if you, in any case will permit Us to Use it. There will be more efficacy in it, than in many an Army.” Washington had not served the country in a military capacity for fifteen years and was now sixty-six. He responded, on July 4, “it will not be an easy matter, I conceive, to find among the old set of Generals, men of sufficient activity, energy & health, and of sound politics, to train troops to the quick step, long Marches, & severe conflicts they may have to encounter.” He suggested, rather, looking to younger officers who had proved themselves in the revolutionary conflict.

Experienced officers of the late war still in government—McHenry, Timothy Pickering, the secretary of state, and others—feared the worst. France and Spain had allied in 1796. With friendly Spanish bases in the southern territories of the American continent to supply its needs, the hostile French republic might successfully send an army north to combat the United States. In this heightened state of alarm, numerous volunteer corps formed. Washington, Dr. Craik, and others in Alexandria established a home guard, composed of citizens over forty-five and so exempt from militia service. It went by the name of the Greyheads, or Silver Greys. Martha later in the year was to present to the regiment its colors, “white silk…on an azure blue ground.” A company of volunteer dragoons was similarly honored by Nelly. Meanwhile, on the Fourth of July a “large company of the civil and military of Fairfax company” dined at Spring Gardens outside Alexandria. The general, wearing “full uniform,” reviewed the different corps as they paraded and maneuvered, before all attended a service in Christchurch, where the Reverend Davis officiated.

Five days later, in Philadelphia, Congress, having previously rescinded treaties with France on July 6, authorized attacks on French warships. At sea America was at war with its former ally. McHenry sent to Washington, with a few perfunctory lines, a newspaper announcement. By an act of Congress, the general was once more appointed commander-in-chief of the United States army. It stood, since a reorganization two years earlier, at 3,000 men. The very first intimation he had had, Washington later told Knox, “that such a measure was in contemplation, was contained in a News-paper, as a complete Act of the President & Senate.” He was magnanimous: “if affairs were in the alarming state they are represented to be…it was not a time to complain, or stand upon punctilios.”

McHenry himself arrived, bearing the general’s commission as commander-in-chief. He had with him also, for Washington’s perusal, a “pending Bill for augmenting the Army of the U. States.” Washington’s immediate response was to urge delay in passing this hasty bill. Nevertheless, on July 16 Congress authorized the establishment of a provisional army, to be called up only in case of need. Twelve new infantry regiments and six troops of light dragoons were provided for. The “American Cincinnatus,” though he accepted the military post thrust upon him, exacted this condition: except for such time as he should spend in Philadelphia making appointments in these regiments, he would remain at home until the opening of hostilities. Martha and he must hope that the French, for want of money, and believing the United States well armed, would not venture an attack.

Understanding that Congress wished Hamilton—no longer secretary of the Treasury—to serve as inspector general, the commander-in-chief offered the next senior command to Thomas Pinckney, lately minister in London. To his former right-hand man, Henry Knox, he offered the junior command of the three. Washington opined to Hamilton on June 14, “if the French should be so mad as to Invade this Country in expectation of making a serious impression…their operations will commence in the States South of Maryland.” In that event “the services and influence” of southerner Pinckney would be crucial.

Knox, offended and wounded, protested to his former commanding officer at the end of July. But Washington, as ever, was firm where he saw his duty to the country. Knox declined to serve, but the appointments of Pinckney and Hamilton were confirmed. While the summer tide of visitors and family ebbed and flowed at Mount Vernon, Washington compiled lists of those officers who had served in the late war and might serve again. He sifted the letters of those who recommended sons, relatives, and young men of their acquaintance. He and Martha remained uneasy about her grandson.

Duly admonished, Custis had left his belongings behind at college when he came home for the summer holidays. But, the general wrote to Dr. Stuart in August, the young man appeared “to be moped & Stupid, says nothing—and is always in some hole or corner excluded from Company.” The Stuarts and Washingtons came to suspect that Wash still hankered after Miss Hodgson. Nelly Stuart, who had personal experience of an impetuous Parke Custis pressing his suit, was particularly anxious that her son should not return to Annapolis. With reluctance, in September, Washington addressed the president of St. John’s College in a letter that the young man delivered at Annapolis. The boy returned only to “pack up for good,” the general wrote. By the late autumn, after Tobias Lear had attempted to tutor his former pupil at home, the general had “a thorough conviction that it was a vain attempt to keep Washington Custis to any literary pursuits, either in a public Seminary, or at home under the direction of any one.” He took Lear with him to Philadelphia to act as his secretary. Wash, at age seventeen, was free to chat away the day and roam all hours with his gun.

In Philadelphia, where he had formerly lived in splendor, Washington took lodgings in November in a boardinghouse on Eighth Street. He wrote from there to Lawrence Lewis two weeks after his arrival, on December 2: “Making a selection of Officers for the twelve new Regiments…is a work of infinite more difficulty than I had any conception of.…When this will be accomplished I am not yet able to say.” They were not to rise from their work until December 13, having been at it a full month. The commander-in-chief wrote of having little respite from his labors: “In order to bring it to an end we sit from ten o’clock until after three—& from Seven in the evening until past nine.” He dined abroad with friends in the interval between the daily and evening sessions, and took tea elsewhere afterward. He dined too, on one occasion, with Robert Morris in the debtors’ prison on Prune Street. Adams and others in government were also his hosts.

Washington wrote to Mrs. Powel on November 17, a week after he arrived in the city: “I am to dine this day at Mr Willing’s”—Thomas Willing, her brother—“and if you are disengaged, will have the honor of drinking Tea with you in Third Street, afterwards.” He proposed himself, on December 1, as her breakfast guest the following day, a Sunday. No record of either tea or breakfast appears in his diary, but the general and the lady were in constant communication in these early days of December, as his business wound to a close. She hoped, on the third, that he was none the worse for his “wet Sunday walk” of the day before. On the fourth he acknowledged her “kind, and obliging offer to choose some thing handsome, with which to present Miss Custis.” She had suggested a muff. He thought Nelly was already provided with one: “of a tippet I am not so certain; but a handsome Muslin, or any thing else, that is not the whim of the day, cannot be amiss.” He asked her also: “Is there any thing—not of much cost—I could carry Mrs Washington as a memento that she has not been forgotten, in this City?”

Mrs. Powel duly supplied a piece of muslin for sixty-five dollars, a thread case at seven, and also dolls, for Martha’s great-granddaughters. On December 7, having named the total sum of her expenditure as seventy-four dollars, Mrs. Powel wrote additionally: “My Heart is so sincerely afflicted and my Ideas so confused that I can only express my predominant Wish—that God may take you into his holy keeping and preserve you safe both in Traveling and under all Circumstances, and that you may be happy here and hereafter is the ardent Prayer of Your affectionate afflicted Friend.”

What prompted this sophisticated woman to tell of a “sincerely afflicted” heart and of “confused” ideas? Had she or Washington or both declared or acted on a feeling for the other that was forbidden, given his marriage to Martha? Had she misunderstood the nature of the friendship that brought Washington to her door to breakfast and take tea? In response to this effusion, Washington wrote unexceptionably: “For your kind and affectionate wishes, I feel a grateful sensibility, and reciprocate them with all the cordiality you could wish, being My dear Madam Your most Obedt & obliged Hble Servant.”

Mrs. Powel wrote, next day, to ask Washington to dine on the ninth. He declined courteously: “I feel much obliged by your kind & polite invitation to dine with you to day, but am under the necessity of denying myself that pleasure.” He had “requested Generals Hamilton & Pinckney to come prepared this morning, at their usual hour—ten O’clock—for the whole day; that a few moments for dinner only might interrupt our daily labour.” Washington departed south for Mount Vernon, with the purchases Mrs. Powel had made for him, without seeing her again. Nor did they resume a correspondence.

While in Philadelphia, it had occurred to the commander-in-chief that a place might be found, subject to his mother’s and grandmother’s approval, for Washington Custis in a regiment. “The only hesitation I had, to induce the caution before mentioned,” he later wrote to Dr. Stuart, “arose from his being an only Son; indeed the only male of his Great great Grandfathers family.” It had been decided that Lawrence Lewis was to captain a regiment of light dragoons; Custis’s name was provisionally inscribed in this corps as a cornet of horse. Lear, who had not understood that the appointment was conditional on others’ approval, wrote to seek the young man’s own consent. Washington Custis was “highly delighted.” Martha, who may have believed, with her husband, that a French invasion was unlikely, raised no objection; nor did Custis’s mother. Washington wrote wryly to Stuart on December 30: “At least it might serve to divert his attention from a Matrimonial pursuit (for a while at least) to which his constitution seems to be too prone.”

Washington Custis was zealous in his wish to assume the trappings of an officer, including a sword, “silver mounted.” “Daily, fruitless enquiries are made of me to know when they may be expected,” Washington told McHenry the following summer. “If you were to jog Mr [Tench] Francis, the Purveyor [of Public Supplies], the sooner they might be Purveyed, and the young Gentleman gratified. I wish them to be handsome, and proper for an Officer, but not expensive.”

One of the Mount Vernon household declined, however, an appointment for which he had previously been eager. Washington informed McHenry in February 1799, that during the previous autumn, while he was in Philadelphia, Lewis had been making “overtures of marriage to Miss Custis.” These overtures had made no apparent impression, until Nelly learned that her beau was about to serve as a captain in the Regiment of Light Dragoons and “try his fortune in the Camp of Mars.” This, Washington wrote, “brought into activity those affections for him, which before she conceived were the result of friendship only.” Their betrothal followed, while Washington was still in Philadelphia, Nelly imposing the condition that Lawrence was to “relinquish the field of Mars for the Sports of Venus.” Washington had been so eager to divert Wash Custis from matrimonial adventures, he confessed to Martha’s nephew, Bartholomew Dandridge, that he had had no suspicion that the boy’s sister was romancing. He and Martha, however, welcomed a match for Nelly that kept her for the moment at Mount Vernon, while Lewis remained in his uncle’s employ.