BREVET SECOND LIEUTENANT Robert Lee arrived “home”—Ravensworth this time—from his graduation at West Point to visit his mother on | her deathbed. Ann Lee had seemed to rally during the spring of 1829; but by the time her son reached her in June, she was sinking steadily. The tuberculosis which most probably killed her was far advanced, and about all Robert or anyone else could do was make her as comfortable as possible and feign good cheer. On July 24, Ann Lee made her will, and in the morning of July 26 she died.1
She had lived fifty-six years, the last thirty-six of which were very much conditioned by her marriage to Light Horse Harry Lee. Certainly she had been steadfast in her trials, and at the time of her death all five of her surviving children were grown and somewhat settled. From the time her husband went to jail for debt, Ann had said, “I must have my own house … to fix myself permanently, be it in ever so humble a manner”; but this she was never able to manage. After her stepson Henry became twenty-one (in 1801) and inherited Stratford from his mother, Ann and her children lived in a succession of borrowed homes, and she died a houseguest at Ravensworth.2
In her will Ann Lee left her personal effects, a few slaves, and the trust funds (about $20,000) left to her by her father and sister to her daughters, Ann Lee Marshall and Mildred Lee. Her sons, Carter, Smith, and Robert, received some land (20,000 acres) in Patrick County, southwestern Virginia, and thirty slaves. Carter, who helped administer his mother’s estate, most probably sold or had someone else sell some of the slaves and divided the proceeds with his brothers. The land only offered a quandary; it seemed worthless at the time, and with it Robert and his brothers inherited bills for back taxes. Eventually they decided to pay these taxes and thus retain the land.
Most probably Robert chose to invest his share of proceeds from the sale of his mother’s slaves and “hire out” (rent) the women he owned as a result of the bequest. He never saw his land in southwestern Virginia; Carter later lived on the property and tried in various ways to make a living there.3
Now Lee was an orphan at age twenty-two and still a houseguest. Carter took up the task of finishing up his mother’s affairs and closing her house in Georgetown; he was the eldest son and a lawyer. Robert remained at Ravens-worth for only several days and then moved on with Mildred to Eastern View, home of his maternal aunt Elizabeth and his uncle Robert Randolph, and to Kinloch, where Marietta Turner who was Mildred’s best friend lived. Lee informed his military superiors that he intended to spend August and September in the “interior of Virginia.” He was reacquainting himself with his extended family and friends, whom he had not seen since his furlough summer two years earlier.4
One of his old friends was Mary Custis, and the summer his mother died Lee seemed to have developed some sort of relationship with Mary. Marietta Turner was Mary Custis’s best friend as well as Mildred’s, so Custis and Lee likely were summer guests at Kinloch together. The two had family ties to Ravensworth as well and probably plotted simultaneous visits there. In any event, by September Lee had secured permission to write to Mary Custis. And in a letter to him, she cautioned Lee to be discreet. Others, including her mother, regularly read her mail and especially her letters from men. The only logical reason for cautioning a correspondent to be discreet is concern or conviction that he or she might have something they didn’t want revealed.5
While Lee was visiting family and friends and apparently courting Mary Custis, the Engineer Corps in Washington decided his immediate professional fate. On August 11, 1829, Brigadier General Charles Gratiot who commanded the Corps of Engineers signed an order directing Brevet Lieutenant Lee to Cockspur Island in the Savannah River. There Lee was to assist Major Samuel Babcock in preparing Cockspur Island, which lies about 12 miles down the Savannah River from the city of Savannah, for the construction of a massive fort. When erected the fort would control the mouth of the river and thus access to the port at Savannah.6
Lee had never been to Savannah; indeed, he had probably never been south of the James River in Virginia. However, Lee’s good friend at West Point, Jack Mackay, had grown up in Savannah, and Mackay was assigned to an artillery command in his home city. So Lee took comfort in the fact that he would have at least one friend at his first post.7
He would have a slave, as well. Nat, the aged black house servant and coachman to Lee’s mother, belonged to Mildred now by the terms of his mother’s will. But Nat was old and ill, thus of no value to Mildred, and someone in the family decided that Nat might need a warmer climate. So Lee agreed to take Nat with him to Cockspur Island and assume responsibility for the old man.
To reach Savannah from Virginia, Lee and Nat first had to travel north to New York, most likely by stagecoach. Then they embarked on a packet boat for Savannah. Lee’s orders were to report to Major Babcock at Cockspur by “the middle of November,” and Lee was nothing if not punctual, so he probably arrived early in November (1829).8
One of the first things Lee learned was that, thanks to the Mackays, he would enjoy Savannah, then a community of about 7,500 people. Jack Mackay’s mother Elizabeth was a widow who had six children besides Jack. Nevertheless, she “adopted” Lee and assigned him a room in her home on Broughton Street whenever he came to Savannah. Four of Elizabeth Mackay’s children were daughters ranging in age between fourteen and twenty. And because he was a friend of the Mackays, Lee made friends with many Savannahians, most of whom were lively young women.9
The next lesson Lee learned was that Cockspur Island was not Savannah. Named for a plant with long, nasty thorns, Cockspur was just barely an island. In 1829 it was essentially marsh—roughly a mile long and about two thirds of a mile wide—most of which flooded at high tide and all of which flooded during storms. It was a good location for a fort, because once built the fort would command Tybee Roads, the wide mouth of the Savannah between Tybee Island to the south and Turtle and Daufuskie Islands (South Carolina) to the north. Cockspur was a good location for a fort for everyone except those who had to build the fort.
Lee was on hand for the very beginnings of what became Fort Pulaski. The first task, however, was to create an island capable of supporting the future fort, and this involved dikes and ditches. On the fringes of Cockspur Island was some sand; most of the island was pure marsh mud—mud which seemed to possess no bottom and which clung to boots, clothes, and skin with a tenacity that defied baths and laundries. Legend, likely true, has Lee spending considerable time in marsh mud and water up to his armpits during his duty on Cockspur.
Work on the island was decidedly seasonal. The Corps of Engineers hired white men and rented black men to labor in the late fall, winter, and spring. Brutal, humid heat and voracious insects rendered work on Cockspur impossible during the summer and early autumn. And even during the working season, sand fleas in the region can provoke madness in otherwise sane persons.10
In addition to moving large amounts of marsh mud to create ditches and dikes (Lee termed them “embankments”), Lee had to oversee setting up houses for the workers and a wharf to permit the reception of supplies, building materials, and equipment. Actually Lee’s superior Major Babcock was responsible for doing all of this; but according to Lee, Babcock was content to stay away while Lee did the work and then appear in time to marvel at how well his project was progressing.
Babcock took up residency on Cockspur on May 1, 1830. In Lee’s mind, Babcock’s only contribution to the work on the island before then was to overrule Lee’s plan to locate the wharf on one side of the island instead of the other. About the wharf superior and subordinate had “issue joined,” and Babcock, of course, prevailed.11
Because Babcock was so seldom on hand, Lee had to remain at Cockspur to oversee the project for most of the working season of 1829–30. He wrote Carter that he had been to Savannah only eleven times between November 1829 and May 8, 1830. When he did go to the city, Lee much enjoyed the company of Jack Mackay’s sisters, Margaret, Elizabeth Anne (Eliza), and Catherine. He also called upon Sarah and Phillipa Minis and gave Sarah pen-and-ink drawings of an alligator and a terrapin he did on Cockspur. During the winter Jack Mackay received orders to Alabama, “ordered up among the Indians” as Lee phrased it, so Lee’s circle of special Savannah friends became almost exclusively young females. The circle narrowed some more when Margaret Mackay became engaged to one of Carter Lee’s Harvard classmates, Ralph E. Elliott. Lee, who had been interested in Margaret, shifted his attention to Eliza, to whom he gave two pen-and-ink drawings of an alligator and a terrapin all but identical to those he gave Sarah Minis.12
In March 1830, probably about the time he began anticipating going to northern Virginia on his summer leave, Lee heard discouraging news from “home.” His half brother Henry’s adultery with his sister-in-law in 1820 became very public knowledge, and the Lee family suffered significant disgrace.
“Black Horse Harry” had long since reconciled with his wife Ann. After he lost Stratford, in 1822, Henry became a minor civil servant in Washington and eventually lent his pen to the political cause of Andrew Jackson. In 1828, soon after he wrote his letter to John C. Calhoun on behalf of Robert’s candidacy for West Point, Henry learned that Stratford had changed hands again. The new owners were Betsy and Henry Storke, and Betsy Storke had once been Betsy McCarty, his partner in adultery. It was an odd case of inverse double standard. Betsy McCarty Storke lived at Stratford in social prominence for fifty years. Henry Lee continued his slide down the social scale.
Henry and Ann moved into Andrew Jackson’s home, The Hermitage, outside Nashville while Henry worked on a campaign biography of Jackson for the presidential election of 1828. Henry never completed the biography. But Jackson won the election and still considered Henry Lee eligible for some spoils of patronage. The President offered Lee a post as United States consul in Algiers; Lee leapt at the boon and soon left the country for Morocco. Not the least reason Lee wanted to leave was Ann Lee’s continued dependence upon morphine and his fear that her addiction would embarrass him. And, like his father, Henry set out for foreign lands only one step ahead of his creditors.
President Jackson submitted Henry Lee’s name to the Senate for confirmation along with an especially questionable set of nominees for government posts abroad. Like Lee, most of the nominees were writers or editors, and many senators seriously wondered about their qualifications as diplomats. The debate never became public record; but Henry Lee’s decade-old indiscretion got loudly proclaimed. The Senate refused to confirm some of Jackson’s appointees. In Henry Lee’s case the rejection was unanimous!
Gossip mills in Washington ground the Lees again. Henry Lee departed Algiers and with Ann sought refuge, first in Italy, then in Paris. He eventually embarked upon a biography of Napoleon; she remained addicted to morphine; and the two of them grew even more pitiable.13
Even knee-deep in marsh mud on Cockspur Island, Lee could not fail to hear the sad news from Washington. He could read the bare facts reported circumspectly in the Daily Savannah Republican and no doubt read between the lines as well. He kept abreast of his half brother’s travels and travails via Carter, who corresponded with Henry. At this point neither half brother and very few besides Henry knew the extent of Ann’s troubles. Henry had had endorsements from Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Marshall and from some of the same senators who ultimately voted against his confirmation. This only served as an index of how damning was the day-long debate in executive session of the Senate. To a degree Henry’s self-imposed exile must have seemed the best resolution possible for the family reputation.14
By the time Major Babcock suspended work on Cockspur and Lee was free to travel north for the summer, some of the scandal had subsided. Lee took Nat with him aboard the packet boat for New York.
When they reached the city they probably visited Carter, who had moved to 15 Pine Street in lower Manhattan and was once more practicing law in New York. Carter spent much of his young manhood and midlife attempting to settle down and like the law. Robert’s letters to his older brother changed very subtly in tone over time. If Carter had ever been a mentor to his younger brother, roles gradually reversed; Robert eventually counseled Carter. At this point the two brothers seem to have been friends and equals.15
Lee and Nat soon headed south to Virginia and more serious visiting. Lee made the rounds among family and friends once more, but spent a considerable time at Arlington with Mary Custis.
The plantation encompassed 1,100 acres, then within the District of Columbia; and on a hill across the Potomac from the Capitol, Arlington House crowned the estate. Designed in Greek Revival style by the English architect George Hadfield, the house is imposing indeed. Construction on the south wing commenced in 1802 and continued in fits and starts until 1817, when the structure was finally complete. Arlington was a showplace, modeled after a Greek temple, named for the Custis family estate on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, boasting massive Doric columns and a portico sixty feet wide, twenty-five feet deep. But behind the portico the house was smaller than it appeared, and the lives of the inhabitants much simpler than the grand facade implied.16
George Washington Parke Custis was Martha Washington’s grandson by way of her earlier marriage. An orphan from infancy, Custis grew up at Mount Vernon with his grandmother, and George Washington had adopted him as his son. Washington, however, may well have regretted his beneficence toward Custis. Blessed with every advantage a young man could have in the United States, Custis seemed determined to squander his good fortune and the fortunes of others as well.
Custis enrolled in the College of New Jersey; the college authorities expelled him. He enrolled at St. John’s College in Annapolis; he left without graduating. Young Custis had to answer in court an accusation that he stole two teaspoons from Gadsby’s Tavern in Alexandria, and his adoptive father spoke of Custis’s “almost uncontrolable disposition to indolence in everything that did not tend to his amusements.”17
Martha Washington died in 1802, and then Custis no longer had reason or excuse to remain at Mount Vernon. Fortunately he had inherited 15,000 acres in four large tracts from which to choose to establish his home. Custis selected the plantation on the Potomac, changed its name from Mount Washington to Arlington, and settled into a cabin while work began on Arlington House.
In 1806, Custis married Mary Lee Fitzhugh, daughter of William Fitzhugh, sister of the William H. Fitzhugh who owned Ravensworth and was Ann Lee’s counselor and benefactor. This Mary Custis was an accepting and giving person; Lee would call her “Mother” and mean the compliment.
Mr. Custis, Lee eventually called “Father,” and he may have understood the irony in this address very well. Custis shared some of Light Horse Harry Lee’s less admirable traits. The master of Arlington was never a planter, nor even a farmer. He gave other men charge of his productive land and slaves and lived on the money his tenants and managers paid him. He was a man of passing enthusiasms: he bred sheep and held contests for a time to encourage the development of American species; he painted massive canvasses; he composed poetry; he gave orations. Of all these activities, Custis was most successful with sheep. His paintings and poetry were bad. And his orations tended always to say the same thing: George Washington had been the greatest man in America’s golden age, and subsequent Americans were apostates from the founding faith.
Custis was a Federalist long after the party ceased to function in national politics. He made Arlington House into a Washington memorabilia museum. Not at all physically imposing, Custis was quite short and possessed of a premature paunch. He was forever the “child of Mount Vernon.”
Yet Custis could be charming, and he was essentially harmless to anyone who did not resent his unearned wealth or possess a low boredom threshold regarding the Father of Our Country. To the extent that any slaveholder could, Custis indulged his slaves and gave them freedom in his will. He certainly loved and pampered his daughter, and he and his wife helped define Virginia hospitality. Custis brought from Mount Vernon a large punch bowl painted inside to represent a ship—the hull at the bottom of the bowl and the mast extending up the side to the rim. When the Custises entertained, the men in attendance had to drink the full height of the mast from the potent bowl.18
The father Robert Lee never knew was famous for previous deeds, and before Robert was born Light Horse Harry Lee became more pose than anything else, a fiction his family perpetuated during his exile and after his death. The man Robert Lee called “Father” for twenty-six years, George Washington Parke Custis, claimed fame for the mere fact of his birth and the largess of his step-grandfather while he was still an infant. Custis, too, was principally posture, all but devoid of substance, sustained by wealth he possessed because he outlived his grandmother, and humored by friends and family too kind to speak a demeaning truth to his face.
Some time during that summer of 1830, Lee asked Mary Custis to marry him. She assented, presumably with enthusiasm, but deferred to her parents’ opinions in accord with custom.19 Her mother readily consented to the marriage; but her father withheld his consent. Most likely Custis simply did not want to lose his daughter. He also had to be concerned about a union with the Lee family and its scoundrels and recent scandal. Custis well knew that his daughter’s beau was poor. The couple would be compelled to live on a lieutenant’s salary, and Custis himself was often short of cash in spite of his lands and slaves; his potentially great wealth was less than liquid. Hence he knew that he could not much supplement the couple’s income, even if Lee were willing to accept his help.
So Custis exercised his prerogative, and the marriage was in limbo when Lee had to return to Cockspur Island in November. Those who knew Custis, however, knew that he was certainly not adamant in his position. If Mary Custis wanted to marry Robert Lee, she most probably would do so. Her father was hardly a man of bold, independent commitment; nor was he a father capable of denying his daughter whatever she desired.20
With some flourish, Lee wrote his older brother, “I am engaged to Miss Mary C. Think of that…. That is, she & her mother have given their consent. But the Father has not yet made up his mind, though it is supposed will not object.” Tentative plans for a wedding the following spring (1831) proceeded, while Custis was supposedly making up his mind.21
Lee lingered at Arlington into October of 1830 and then set out for New York via Baltimore, where he paid a visit to his sister Ann Marshall. He traveled alone this time; Nat followed him about a month later. Lee boarded the packet boat in New York on November 7 and arrived on Cockspur Island during the night of November 10.
Next morning he was not pleased. When he surveyed the remains of his hard work the previous season, Lee found that his buildings were still in good condition. But storms had wrecked the system of ditches and dykes he had designed and constructed, and destroyed the wharf. Lee took cold comfort in the fact that he had been right and Major Babcock wrong about the location of the wharf. What mattered now was the immense amount of work he would have to do all over again and the necessity of redesigning the system to withstand autumn gales in the future.
For the present, the only thing to do was wait for Major Babcock. Lee went to Savannah and spent a few days at the Mackays’ home. Rumor had it that Mrs. Babcock had left the major and taken their youngest child with her. Still, no one knew anything about Babcock himself.
So Lee returned to Cockspur and began himself the work of repairing the embankments. On December 1, Babcock had still not arrived. Lee, however, had succeeded in rebuilding much of his embankment and was preparing to direct his laborers to redig the ditches which drained the work site.22
Georgia was cold that winter, and more storms than normal seemed to lash the coast. Nat, Lee’s slave and charge, arrived on Christmas Day after a harrowing voyage of twenty-five days from New York. He was convinced that he had been at sea for five weeks, and his health suffered accordingly. He was quite weak and racked with coughing spasms. Lee was alarmed for Nat’s life and cared for the old man as best he could. However, at some time during this winter, Nat died: one more link with Lee’s youth was severed.
Again Lee enjoyed Savannah that winter. In addition to the friends he had made the previous year, he had relatives in town. His nephew Charles (son of half sister Lucy Carter) and Charles’s bride had journeyed south for the sake of her health. They spent the winter in Savannah, and Charles at least was a source of some amusement. Lee wrote Carter, “You never saw a fellow take a thing more kindly than Sweet Charles does his marriage.” He expanded, “There is not a party of any kind afloat, but what he is figuring away in his black tights & white silks, dancing and flirting with all the girls, while the madam is left at home to take care of her health.” Of course Lee had good reason to observe the behavior of newly married couples so closely.
He attended dinner parties though he termed them “my abomination,” and professed, “evening parties I can stand.” When he returned to Cockspur soon after the first of the year, Lee hoped he would be “better pleased with the quiet and uniformity.” The truth was Lee was shy and took pains to avoid large numbers of people and any number of people he did not know well.23
Eventually someone found Major Babcock, and his superiors in the Army had him arrested. Babcock resolved the issue of his protracted absence by resigning from the Army. In Babcock’s place, the Engineer Corps assigned Lieutenant Joseph K. F. Mansfield to command the project on Cockspur Island. Mansfield would remain in charge for fifteen years, until 1846, only one year before Fort Pulaski was completed.24
Mansfield arrived in January 1831, and soon after concluded that Cockspur Island would not support the fort the Engineer Corps intended to build there. He began to redesign the proposed structure and asked for help. In April, Captain Richard Delafield came to consult, and Mansfield and Delafield continued the redesign. Lee served the pair as problem solver and sketch drawer.
Meanwhile the powers that be in the Engineer Corps decided to reassign Lee. With Mansfield on the job at Cockspur, Lee became a luxury there and one the Corps could not afford. Had he had the opportunity Lee would certainly have requested an assignment closer to Arlington, both for the sake of his impending marriage and of his and Mary Custis’s ties with northern Virginia. Maybe Lee had someone powerful in Washington to speak a word or two in his behalf. At any rate he received orders to report for duty at Old Point, Virginia, at the tip of the peninsula formed by the York and James Rivers, and site of Fort Monroe. That fort was nearly complete; Lee would assist Captain Andrew Talcott with the outworks and the moat. In addition, Lee had charge of work on Fort Calhoun (later Fort Wool), which was then essentially a pile of stone a short way offshore.25
Some time in April Lee left Cockspur Island and started north by stagecoach. En route he visited Georgetown (South Carolina), Charleston, Fayetteville, Raleigh, and Richmond—none of which he had ever seen before.
He reported for duty at Fort Monroe on May 7, 1831, and almost immediately Talcott, his superior, left for Philadelphia. Policy in the Engineer Corps required at least one officer on duty whenever work took place, and here the work stopped in winter. Consequently Lee began to wonder when he would get married and whether he could secure leave from his new post to attend his own wedding. Lee lived in Talcott’s quarters, learned his way around a new community, and watched the mail for news from Arlington.
As often happens with weddings, the various elements fell into place at nearly the last minute. June 30, a Thursday evening, was the date. Lee secured a furlough from late June until early August, and in the process of making these arrangements he became better acquainted with Talcott. The two young officers (Lee twenty-four, Talcott thirty-four) became in time very good friends; indeed, Talcott would prove one of Lee’s best male friends.26
Meanwhile at Arlington very likely frenzy prevailed. Mr. Custis was $12, 000 in debt and the month following the wedding had to postpone paying off a note of only $65—he was, he said, “very short of cash at this time.” Mrs. Custis was ill, some sort of stomach ailment which made a relative concerned that she might have “got into bilious habit.” Mary Custis was having twelve attendants, six bridesmaids and six groomsmen; family members were planning to attend and remain for a few days; and Arlington House did not have rooms or room for this horde. The Custises borrowed cots, blankets, candlesticks, and other such necessities and planned for some of their guests to sleep three in a bed.27
At Old Point, Lee confessed to Carter, “I begin to feel quite funny when I count my days….” He did not go to Arlington and compound the chaos there until “the important day.” At least these were his bride’s instructions. At last the wedding day dawned. Lee probably arrived at Arlington by boat; that had been his plan earlier in the month.28
At Arlington he found brother Smith, who was his best man. Most of his other groomsmen were junior officers serving at Fort Monroe. John P. Kennedy had been a classmate at West Point; James A. Chambers, Lee had met in Savannah. “Dick” Tilghman and James H. Prentiss, Lee likely knew less well than the others. Thomas Turner, like Smith, was a naval officer who was also a cousin from the Carter side of his family. Lee made few close male friends, and some of those he did make, his brother Carter and John Mackay, for example, were unable to attend the wedding. Talcott became a close friend, but only later. As a result Lee’s groomsmen—Smith Lee and John Kennedy excepted—seem to have been groomsmen because they were available.
Mary Custis’s bridesmaids included her friends from childhood Catherine Mason and Marietta Turner, and some of her cousins—Mary Goldsborough, Angela Lewis, Julia Calvert, and Britannia Peter. Other friends and relatives were also present and some had been for two or three days. The Custises presided with their usual grace, having somehow managed the logistics of sleeping and eating for their guests.29
Lee later wrote Talcott, “There was neither fainting nor fighting, nor anything uncommon which could be twisted into an adventure.” Actually there was one adventure. To officiate at the ceremony, the Custises had asked the Reverend Reuel Keith, who had charge of Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria and who had also been Rector of Christ Church. As Keith was traveling the relatively short distance between Alexandria and Arlington, he encountered a summer rainstorm and arrived soaking wet. The only man with clothes to spare for Keith was Custis. But Keith was tall and thin, and Custis was short and chubby. Keith’s vestments solved the problem. He wore Custis’s clothes, but wore cassock and surplice over the misfits, and only those who had seen Keith unfrocked shared the joke.30
Lee recalled that Keith “had few words to say, though he dwelt upon them as if he had been reading my Death warrant….” The groom confessed to feeling “as bold as a sheep.” Lee then remembered that he had been “surprised at my want of Romance in so great a degree as not to feel more excitement than at the Black Board at West Point.”
Then the wedding ceremony was over and the party commenced. The wedding party remained in residence from Thursday, June 30, until the following Tuesday, July 5, when most of them left. Some of the women stayed until the end of that week, when the Lees and Custises were finally alone.
Lee went into Washington on July 11, called upon General and Mrs. Gratiot, and gleaned the latest news and gossip from the Engineer Corps. Then the couple and Mrs. Custis visited Ravensworth, Kinloch, and maybe Eastern View.
In his letter to Talcott about the wedding, Lee engaged in a very mild form of barracks bravado regarding his new intimacy with Mary. He recounted the departure of the last of the wedding party, and then wrote, “I would tell you how the time passed, but fear I am too prejudiced to say anything more, but that it went very rapidly & still continues to do so.” Near the close of the letter, Lee apologized for his haste and explained: “I actually could not find time before I left the District [Arlington] for anything except———.”31
As Lee the young husband came to know his new wife, he confirmed that she was quite unlike him. The sole surviving child of doting parents, Mary Lee was accustomed to having her way. She tended to center her attention upon herself, and in confronting new situations her first concern was usually how the situation would affect her. She was disorganized in her personal life and notoriously late for just about every occasion. Nor was she especially pretty, in sharp contrast to her husband, who was extremely handsome and seemed important when he entered a room. Still she chided “Mr. Lee” as though he were her servant.
As a recent bride she suffered “an attack of the Fever & Ague” within two weeks of her wedding. It was a portent; later in her life Mary Lee would endure wretched health. Afflicted by various ailments at various times, arthritis became her constant nemesis in midlife and relegated her to a wheelchair by the time she was in her mid-fifties.
Mary Lee was, or wanted to be, intensely pious. Filled with evangelical Protestant Christian zeal, she did not take kindly to the fact that “Mr. Lee” remained unchurched. She was concerned for his soul’s health and hoped that he would hear and respond to God’s call in his life.32
In her health and religious zeal, Mary Custis must have reminded Lee of his mother, and her chiding may have seemed maternal to him as well. Otherwise, she seemed very little like Ann Lee, who had been self-reliant, precise, and generous to the point of sacrifice.
But Mary Custis possessed just about everything to which Ann Lee had aspired—a stable family, a proper home, and assured status. Two years after his mother’s death, Lee made a safe and acceptable marriage. He was, as he said, “as bold as a sheep.” He did not “marry his mother” or a woman anything like his mother. He did, however, marry his mother’s unfulfilled dreams.