We know—or at least suspect—that Martha Dandridge Custis was more than a little pleased by George Washington’s proposal. But this does not tell us much about her. There were undoubtedly a great many women in Virginia who would have felt a few shivers at the thought of being embraced by the famous Colonel Washington. For some people, Martha’s wealth has complicated and even distorted her and the marriage. Even when Washington was in his second term as president, a man inflamed by the politics of the day shouted at him, “What would you have been if you had not married the widow Custis?”
This crass view of the match as a marriage of ultimate convenience has led others to annotate with various degrees of wryness what Washington obtained when he said “I do.” Daniel Parke Custis had died without a will, which left Martha in charge of his 17,438-acre estate, all prime land within a forty-mile radius of Williamsburg. An early estimate of its value was 23,622 pounds—well over three million dollars in today’s money. A third of that sum was Martha’s and the rest would go to her two children, so the entire enterprise was her responsibility for decades to come. The moment George became her husband, Martha’s one-third was his property and he became the administrator of the children’s portions. From a cash-short landowner with a few thousand acres, Washington, like his brother Lawrence before him, ascended into Virginia’s upper class.
The cynics who note this miraculous transformation often forget that it was a marriage of convenience for Martha, too. She knew little or nothing about managing a huge estate. It involved dealing with overseers, worries over runaway or recalcitrant slaves, and problems with livestock and tenant farmers and with shipping tobacco to London when insurance rates were skyrocketing because of the ongoing war with France. Moreover, the Custis estate had a worrisome lawsuit looming on the legal horizon, stemming from the will of Daniel Parke Custis’s rakehell grandfather. He had named as one of his heirs an illegitimate daughter he had fathered in Antigua, and her descendants were threatening to sue in Virginia for a share of his estate in that colony. If the final verdict went the wrong way, Martha could lose almost all the property she had inherited.
This was another reason why she wanted and needed a man of cool judgment in her life. Her choice of Colonel Washington, who had managed large affairs during the war and was intimate with the ruling politicians of Virginia, indicated that she had not a little common sense in her makeup, which the tremors of possible romance did not by any means obscure.1
II
Historians and historical novelists have long disagreed about Martha’s looks. Some report her as ugly, or at best plain. One 1784 visitor to Mount Vernon even found fault with her “squeaky” voice. Unfortunately for Martha, she did not become a subject for first-rate portrait painters—or a personage to be studied by random visitors—until she was long past her youth. Most of her likenesses were painted when she was in her sixties and the wife of the first president. One writer sourly wondered why she persisted in wearing those silly mobcaps that made her look so old. Martha was, of course, merely dressing her age.2
Luckily, a traveling painter named John Wollaston has left us a portrait of Martha in 1757, when she was still Mrs. Custis. She was unquestionably an attractive young woman, with large hazel eyes and curly brown hair. Her forehead was wide and fine; her strong nose and firmly rounded chin added an air of self-confidence, which was equally visible in her small, firm mouth. She was barely five feet tall, but her figure was full and even eye-catching. One recent biographer called her “a pocket Venus, a petite cuddlesome armful.” By the time she married Washington, Martha had gained enough weight to be considered plump by some people. But the added pounds did not diminish her physical charm.
III
Even more important in appreciating Martha Dandridge Custis’s appeal to her husband is her personality. Almost everyone who met her was pleased by her warm, relaxed manner. Very early in life, she revealed a startling capacity to charm the male sex. The Dandridges were middling gentry, like the Washingtons. Everyone was agog when Daniel Parke Custis, one of the richest men in the colony, fell in love with Martha. The Dandridges had very little cash to spare for a dowry.
Daniel’s father, Colonel John Custis, already famous for his foul temper, vowed to disinherit his son if he married a penniless Dandridge. For several months, this edict stalemated matters. Daniel had no appetite for arguing with his headstrong parent. John Custis worsened matters by threatening to leave his entire estate to Jack, a mulatto boy he had fathered with Alice, one of his slaves. Daniel—and everyone else—knew he was more than capable of such a bizarre gesture. Soon the imbroglio was the talk of Virginia, with gossips gleefully reporting John Custis’s latest outrageous remark. At one point he gave silver engraved with the Custis coat of arms to an innkeeper’s wife to make sure it would never be owned by “any Dandridge’s daughter.” The woman displayed the gift in her Williamsburg tavern.3
Who could possibly resolve such an ugly contretemps? Martha Dandridge decided to try. She rode to Williamsburg and confronted the old tyrant in his house on Francis Street. Face to face, the colonel turned into a paper tiger, and then into a pussycat. He was impressed by Martha’s courage—and pleased by her calm, even temper and the direct, sensible way she talked to him about herself and his son. Daniel sent one of his friends, a lawyer named Power, to see his father. He discovered that Colonel Custis had changed his mind about the marriage. The Custises were so rich, his son did not need a dowry to marry Martha Dandridge.4
The lawyer rushed Daniel the astounding news: “I am empowered by your father to let you know he heartily and willingly consents to your marriage with Miss Dandridge.” Power attributed this miraculous transformation to “a prudent speech” that Martha had made to the colonel. “He is [now] as much enamored with her character as you are with her person,” Power continued. “Hurry down [here] immediately for fear he should change the strong inclination he has to your marrying directly.”5
IV
This episode tells us a lot about Martha Dandridge Custis Washington. She may have lacked Sally Fairfax’s education and interest in art and literature, but she was no plain Jane who was happy to be a humble echo of her outsized second husband. George had not been the only candidate for Mrs. Custis’s affections. Before Colonel Washington made his first visit, Martha had been pursued by one of the richest men in Virginia, Charles Carter, son of fabulously wealthy Robert “King” Carter. Charles’s wife had died about six months before Daniel Custis, and he frankly confessed that a widower’s life made him miserable.
“Mrs. C___s is now the object of my wish,” Charles Carter told his brother. He praised Martha’s beauty and—especially significant—her “uncommon sweetness of temper.” Although he was twenty-three years older than Martha, Carter hoped “to raise a flame in her breast.” He was still a vigorous man who dressed well and was the ultimate social insider. But Carter had fathered no less than a dozen children, and ten of them were still living at home. Martha, again exercising her gifts of common sense as well as frankness, told him she hoped to have more children. She wondered whether she—or any other woman—was capable of managing such a huge family, with its inevitable jealousies between half brothers and /or sisters. It is not hard to see how Colonel George Washington, single, childless, and almost exactly her own age, had a far greater appeal to this practical young woman.6
V
The newlyweds spent the first few months of their married life at Martha’s White House plantation and the Custis house in Williamsburg while George attended the House of Burgesses. Martha undoubtedly glowed with pride when he received the unanimous thanks of the legislature for his five years of service on the frontier. They joined in the parties and balls that enlivened the little colonial capital. Both loved to dance and performed all the popular steps of the day, from stately minuets to more intimate allemandes to energetic American jigs and reels that often sent European visitors fleeing to the sidelines, claiming that the “irregular and fantastical” style threatened their “sinews.” The Washingtons were young, rich, and with every reason in the world to enjoy themselves.
Not until April 2, 1759, did they take the road to Mount Vernon. Martha and the children traveled in the Custis family coach; Washington rode his horse beside them. Behind them came wagons that carried twelve slave servants from the White House, including a cook, a waiter, a seamstress, and a laundress. In other wagons were no fewer than six beds, several chests of drawers, linens, silverware, two sets of china, and dozens of pieces of kitchenware. In still more wagons rattled 120 bottles of wine, casks of rum and brandy, and numerous hams, plus a large supply of cheeses and sugar. Martha was obviously operating on the assumption that setting up a household in a bachelor establishment such as Mount Vernon was equivalent to a venture into the wilderness. Colonel Washington may have added to this impression with an anxious letter he rushed ahead to his overseer, urging him to “get out the chairs and tables,” clean the rooms, start fires in the fireplaces, and make a point of polishing the stairs “to make it look well.”7
At Mount Vernon, Martha soon began making lists of furniture and other expensive items for Robert Cary, the London merchant who handled such purchases for the Custises and many other wealthy Virginians. One of her most interesting orders was a bedroom set featuring a seven-and-a-half-foot-tall canopied bed with blue (Martha’s favorite color) curtains and matching coverlet, wallpaper and window curtains, plus four chair bottoms of the same color “to make the whole furniture of this room uniformly handsome and genteel.” Mr. Cary was soon being inundated with similar orders to convert the rest of Mount Vernon from its bachelor bareness to a comfortable, attractive home. Also on the purchase list were amenities such as “a pipe of the best old wine from the best house in Madeira.” A pipe, if it survived the high seas without being tapped by thirsty sailors, would deliver 126 gallons of Colonel Washington’s favorite wine.8
The colonel wrote these orders in his firm, legible hand. He also showed no hesitation in buying Martha virtually unlimited quantities of the best and finest lace, wool, and satin to be made into attractive dresses, riding suits, and cloaks. Satin slippers, black gloves for the winter, and white gloves for the summer arrived in multiple numbers. Although Washington could not carry a tune, he loved to hear Martha and others sing. Not long after their arrival at Mount Vernon, he inscribed Martha Washington, 1759 in a songbook—perhaps the first time he wrote her married name. Was he thinking with considerable satisfaction that she was no longer Martha Dandridge or Martha Custis?
Toward the end of their yearlong buying spree, Washington wrote a letter to Richard Washington, the English merchant with whom he had previously done business. His conscience was a bit troubled by the way he had deserted him for Mr. Cary, and he included a modest number of purchases to reassure him that he had not been forgotten. “I am now I believe fix’d at this seat [Mount Vernon] with an agreeable consort for life,” he wrote, “and hope to find more happiness in retirement than I ever experienced in a wide and bustling world.” These are the words of a contented man. To Washington, who had grown up in a household where Mary Ball Washington specialized in being disagreeable, Martha’s sunny disposition was something to treasure. He began to realize that marrying her was one of the best decisions of his life. Soon in private conversation he was calling her “Patsy”—the intimate nickname of her girlhood.9
VI
It did not take Washington long to see that four-year-old Jack and two-year-old Patsy were central to Martha’s happiness, and he did everything in his power to show her that he cared for them. Expensive clothes for the two children, as well as numerous toys, flowed off the ships that docked in nearby Alexandria and were trundled up the road to Mount Vernon. Later he bought one of the finest spinets made in England for Patsy and a good violin for Jack. Fashion dolls dressed in the latest mode also arrived regularly for Patsy as she matured into a pretty brunette. George was pleased when Martha began calling him “Poppa” and encouraged the children to do likewise.
Only one of Martha’s letters to George has survived. Fortunately, it tells us a good deal about the progress of their marriage from convenience to deepening love. She wrote it in 1767, while George was in Williamsburg attending a session of the House of Burgesses.
March 30, 1767
My Dearest
It was with very great pleasure that I see in your letter that you got safely down. We are all very well at this time but it still is rainey and wett. I am sorry you will not be at home as soon as I expected you. I had rather my sister did not come up so soon as May would be much plasenter time than April. We wrote you last post as I have nothing new to tell you I must conclude myself
Your most affectionate
Martha Washington10
The only shadow on their happiness was Martha’s anxiety about Jack and Patsy. She had lost two children to early deaths, and the thought of losing either of them terrified her. As she slowly realized that she and George were unlikely to have any children, Martha’s anxiety intensified. They had expected to have a brood. No one knows why they remained childless, but reasonable speculation suggests two possibilities. Martha may have had difficult deliveries with one or more of her four children that left her unable to conceive again, or Washington’s bout with smallpox in the West Indies may have left him sterile.
Gently, with great forbearance and understanding, Washington tried to help Martha deal with her almost uncontrollable maternal anxiety. He wanted her to accompany him to Williamsburg and to visit other planters in Virginia and Maryland who were anxious to entertain the famous colonel and his wife. At one point he suggested they leave Jack home and take Patsy with them on a two-week visit to his brother Jack Washington and his wife. Martha told her sister it was “a trial to see how well I could stay without him.”
The experiment was not a success. She was constantly listening for the thud of a horse’s hoofs, which she was sure would be a messenger reporting Jack was ill or worse. Even the bark of a dog made her start violently. Her imagination kept conjuring images of Jack lying sick in his bed or writhing in the road after falling from his horse.
VII
As Jack Custis grew older, Washington began worrying about his education. A private tutor had taught him how to read and write and do arithmetic. But Jack was going to be a very wealthy man, and Washington thought he should have a far more extensive intellectual background to play a leading role in Virginia society. All his life, Washington suffered pangs of inferiority over his limited schooling. He wanted to make sure Jack did not became a man with similar regrets. After consulting various friends, Washington enrolled Jack in a boarding school run by the Reverend Jonathan Boucher, a well-regarded Anglican clergyman.
Washington had scarcely persuaded Martha to part with the fourteen-year-old boy when calamity struck. Twelve-year-old Patsy, who seemed to be maturing into a very pretty young girl, suddenly collapsed in what George and Martha at first thought was a fainting spell. But her twitches and gasps and groans soon made them realize it was a convulsion. A few days later, she collapsed again in another “fitt.” Washington sent to Alexandria for a doctor, who glumly informed them that Patsy was an epileptic. Over the next several years, the Washingtons consulted eight different doctors. But there was no cure, and the drastic medicines the medical men forced down the poor girl’s throat only made her nauseous and morose.
For Martha it was a dismaying blow. It meant Patsy would probably never marry. Several of the doctors warned them that the seizures might grow worse in years to come. This proved to be the case. Soon Patsy was having two seizures in a single day. A mournful Washington knew what this meant for Martha. He told a friend, “The unhappy situation of her daughter has to some degree fixed her eyes upon [Jack] as her only hope.”
Meanwhile, Colonel Washington was receiving letters from the Reverend Boucher informing him that Jack, now seventeen, was close to being expelled from his school. “I never did in my life know a youth so exceedingly indolent, or so surprisingly voluptuous; one wd suppose nature had intended him for some Asian prince,” the clergyman ranted at one point. Jack was rich and knew it. So did many of his friends and acquaintances. He had far too many invitations to “visits, balls and other scenes of pleasure.” Worse, Jack had “a propensity to the sex.” It was hardly surprising after these revelations to learn that Jack “does not much like books.” More and more, Dr. Boucher had begun to think that only his “fervent prayers” would make Jack “if not very clever, what is much better, a good man.”11
The clergyman opined that forcing Jack to leave his horses at Mount Vernon might keep him at least in proximity to his books. Martha flew to her son’s defense, saying she thought he had done nothing that merited such punishment. She resented the idea of confining him like a criminal. In early 1771, at the close of the Christmas holidays, Washington assured Boucher that Jack was returning to school “with a determination of applying close attention to his studies.” But he was forced to add that Jack would be a few days late because he wanted a little more time for “his favorite amusement of hunting.”12
VIII
In 1773, shortly after Martha and George and Patsy returned from Williamsburg following the spring legislative session, Jack confided to Martha stunning news about his future plans. He had gotten engaged to a Maryland belle, Nelly Calvert, without asking his mother’s or his stepfather’s permission. Jack could, of course, have committed far worse indiscretions. In his family background lurked the example of his maternal grandfather, Daniel Parke, who was a womanizer of epic proportions, especially after he became governor of the West Indies island of Antigua. He was murdered by a group of outraged citizens, in part because of his pursuit of virtually every female on the island.
Jack was hardly imitating his grandfather in his pursuit of Nelly Calvert. But for a young man worth tens of thousands of pounds—an undoubted millionaire in today’s currency—to marry without consulting his parents was serious enough to justify Martha’s surprise. As for George, he could scarcely control his anger. Not only did he believe marriage was central to a man’s happiness, but there was a great deal of money involved. That large fact stirred worries about sincerity and honesty, especially if there was a disparity in the bride and bridegroom’s wealth. Moreover, Jack was still a minor; he could not marry without their permission. Before the distressed parents could do or say anything, Jack arrived at Mount Vernon with his fianceé’s father, Benedict Calvert, and the latter’s good friend, Sir Robert Eden, the governor of Maryland.
Ostensibly, Governor Eden was there to discuss with Washington ways to make the Potomac River a link to the West by dredging it and building canals. But there was little doubt Eden knew he added some social stature to his friend Calvert by inviting him along. Calvert was an illegitimate son of the colony’s proprietor, the fifth Lord Baltimore. Nobody held that against him. He had married the daughter of a former Maryland governor and prospered well enough to preside at Mount Airy, a comfortable plantation near Annapolis, and sit in the colony’s legislature.
After the two men departed, Washington wrote Calvert a letter that leaves no doubt that he was still very angry with Jack. The subject was “of no small embarrassment to me,” he began. He was aware that Jack had “paid his addresses” to “Miss Nelly” and that her “amiable qualifications stand confess’d by all hands.” He would be “wanting in candor” if he did not admit that an “alliance with your family would be pleasing” to Jack’s “family.” He might as well have written the literal truth behind that statement: Martha and young Patsy were delighted.
Washington then spent a paragraph making it clear that an immediate alliance would not be pleasing to him. Jack’s “youth, inexperience and unripened education is & will be insuperable obstacles in my eye.” As his guardian, he felt he had an “indispensable duty” to insist on Jack completing his education. He had enrolled him in King’s College in New York. At the same time, Washington admitted he had no desire to break up the match; he wanted only to postpone it. He was going to recommend to Jack “with the warmth that becomes a man of honor (notwithstanding he did not vouchsafe to consult either his mother or me) that he consider himself as much engaged to your daughter as if the indissoluble knot was tied.”
Washington followed this blend of smoldering rage and soothing assurances with a brief summary of Jack’s impressive net worth in land, slaves, and cash. He hoped this information would inspire Calvert to “do something genteel by your daughter” in the matter of a dowry. Then came words of virtual capitulation. He hoped that Calvert and his wife and daughters would “favor us” with a visit to Mount Vernon.13
Jack galloped off with this letter to Mount Airy and returned with a warm reply assuring Washington that Calvert agreed “it was too early for Mr. Custis to enter upon the matrimonial state.” But he hoped the coming separation would “only delay, not break off the intended match.” Unfortunately, he had ten children and feared Nelly’s dowry would be “inconsiderable.” That bad news delivered, he smoothly assured Washington that the Calverts would be glad to visit Mount Vernon while Jack was studying hard and otherwise maturing in distant New York.14
Washington personally escorted Jack to New York, a journey that grew into a two-week series of dinners and receptions with the elite of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. It is hard to decide whether Washington was hoping to impress Jack with the importance that can come from achieving some distinction in life or whether he simply found the attention paid to him impossible to refuse. Fame was already swirling around the edges of his life. The trip ended with the stepfather and son being feted at a dinner given by Washington’s friend from frontier warfare days, General Thomas Gage, now commander in chief of the British Army in America.
At King’s College, the president, Myles Cooper, greeted them as if they were visiting royalty. Jack was soon telling his “Dear Momma” that he liked the way he was being treated. He was the only student who had dinner with the faculty and joined them in “all their recreations.” He had a comfortable three-room suite, with a separate room for his slave body servant, Joe.
IX
Back in Mount Vernon, if Washington had hopes of terminating the match with Nelly Calvert, they vanished before his eyes as Nelly totally charmed Martha. They were similar types of women, warm and cordial by instinct; Nelly added to this pleasing temperament a lustrous brunette beauty. She not only mesmerized Martha, she became Patsy’s best friend. The two young women, roughly the same age, became inseparable. Martha buoyed their spirits by inviting numerous other belles from nearby plantations to join them in the evenings for music and dancing. George’s younger brother Jack and his wife, Hannah, and two of their children mingled with these visitors. It was a happy family gathering, marred only by the scorchingly hot weather.
On Saturday, June 19, they enjoyed a festive family dinner that kept everyone at the table until about five o’clock. Patsy and Nelly went upstairs, talking about Jack. Patsy ran into her bedroom to get a letter he had written to her. A thud and a strangled cry brought Nelly to the door. Patsy was lying on the floor, writhing in another epileptic seizure. Nelly called downstairs for help. Several people, including her stepfather, helped lift Patsy onto her bed. Almost instantly it became apparent that this was not a mild attack. Patsy’s breathing grew labored and suddenly dwindled. In less than two minutes, “without uttering a word, a groan or scarce a sigh,” Washington later wrote, she was dead.
Martha wept uncontrollably for hours. Washington’s sorrow—and possibly his tears—matched hers. It was visible in a letter he wrote to Martha’s brother-in-law, Burwell Bassett, the following day, after Patsy’s funeral:
It is an easier matter to conceive than to describe the distress of this family, especially that of the unhappy parent of our dear Patcy Custis, when I inform you that yesterday removed the sweet innocent girl into a more happy & peaceful abode than any she has met with in the afflicted path she hitherto has trod…. This sudden and unexpected blow has reduced my poor wife to the lowest ebb of misery, which is increased by the absence of her son.15
Washington wished he could persuade Martha’s mother, Fanny Dandridge, to move to Mount Vernon permanently, but no argument could entice this lady to join them. He had to depend on frequent visits from the Fairfaxes and his brother Jack and his wife, as well as the continuing presence of Nelly Calvert, to console Martha. He did his best to join them in this almost impossible task.
For the next several months, Washington stayed close to Mount Vernon, canceling a trip to the West with Lord Dunmore, the new governor of Virginia, on which he had hoped to add to the thousands of acres he already owned beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains. He frequently persuaded Martha to join him in a light carriage, supposedly to visit his outlying farms. “Rid with Mrs. Washington to Muddy Hole, Doeg Run and Mill Plantations,” he wrote in his diary on one of these days—terse testimony to his attempts to offer Martha his company and sympathy. He became very fond of Nelly Calvert, who stayed at Mount Vernon for most of the summer of 1773. Her tact and skill in comforting Martha soon created a bond that made her a substitute daughter.
X
For a while Jack Custis was a consolation. His letters from New York were cheerful and full of determination to study hard and acquire the education Washington wanted him to have. “I hope the progress I make…will redown not only to my own credit, but to the credit of those who have been instrumental in placing me here,” he told Washington. He made a point of thanking his stepfather for “the parental care and attention you have always & upon all occasions manifested toward me.”16
In September, after only three months of study, King’s College gave Jack a vacation—so he claimed. Washington arranged to meet him in Annapolis for the annual horse races and festivities connected with the meeting of the state’s assembly. Jack joined him for these revels and had a joyful reunion with Nelly Calvert. He and Washington stayed at Governor Eden’s mansion and spent five days enjoying balls, the theater, and the racetrack. They came home in good spirits to Mount Vernon, where Jack was greeted with fervent kisses by his delighted mother.
During the next several weeks, Washington’s pleasure at presiding over this joyous reunion turned into angry disappointment. He was a busy man; Patsy’s death meant the legal transfer of much valuable property to Jack’s estate and to Martha’s holdings as well. Meanwhile, Jack was telling his mother how much he loved Nelly and how badly they both wanted to console her for Patsy’s loss by giving her grandchildren. Jack persisted in this campaign while he and Martha and Nelly traveled to Williamsburg with Washington to arrange for the transfer of Patsy’s property and give Martha a chance to visit her mother and other nearby relatives. On the way home to Mount Vernon, Martha told Washington that Jack had obtained her permission to abandon his education and marry Nelly as soon as possible. All her relatives agreed with her decision.
Washington was infuriated, but what could he do? He had no desire to play the villain and oppose the young lovers, much less curtly inform Martha that she should wait patiently for grandchildren. Jack was so rich, it was difficult if not impossible to argue that a classical education was a vital necessity for him. Back at Mount Vernon, the defeated colonel wrote a letter to Myles Cooper, the president of King’s College, informing him of Jack’s decision. “I have yielded,” he all but growled, “contrary to my judgment & much against my wishes, to his quitting college…having his own inclinations—the desires of his mother & the acquiescence of almost all his relatives to encounter, I did not care, as he is the last of the family, to push my opposition too far; & therefore have submitted to a kind of necessity.”17
Two months later, a resigned Colonel Washington summoned a warm smile as Jack married Nelly at her family home, Mount Airy. Martha, still in mourning for Patsy, did not come with him. The newlyweds made Mount Vernon one of their first destinations. Their brimming happiness undoubtedly gladdened Washington’s heart as much as Martha’s. He could only console himself with the thought that he had done everything in his power to make Jack a man worthy of his wealth and potential importance. Another consolation was Nelly herself. Everyone, even Jack’s grumpy former schoolmaster, The Reverend Boucher, agreed she was an exceptional young woman, as intelligent as she was beautiful.
XI
Another event that stirred deep emotions in the master of Mount Vernon was a decision made by his neighbors, George William Fairfax and his wife, Sally. They were moving to England, perhaps permanently. George William had inherited property from a relative, and the bequest was being challenged in the courts by another member of the family. Behind the lawsuit lurked the accusation that George William had Negro blood and was disqualified from inheriting the dukedom when the now aged Lord Fairfax died. Like most English lawsuits of the era, this wrangle might take years to resolve. Washington could do little but extend his warmest wishes for success and promise to keep a close watch on a darkened, silent Belvoir.
A glum Washington noted in his diary that on July 8, 1773, George William and Sally came to Mount Vernon “to take leave of us.” The next day, he and Martha “went to Belvoir to see them take shipping.” In Sally’s trunks were the two tormented letters he had written to her fifteen years ago. How distant, how strange that yearning soldier must have seemed to Washington now! He was a different man, leading a different life, rich in peace and contentment. There were sorrows such as Patsy’s death and frustrations such as Jack Custis’s willful ways; disappointments occurred in almost every life. But he no longer lived on the brink of sudden death, clutching at the mere confession of Sally’s love as a consolation.18
XII
In the closing weeks of 1773, the problem of America’s relationship with England abruptly intruded on George Washington and his fellow Virginians. On December 16, a group of Bostonians disguised as Indians dumped 342 chests of British tea into the harbor to protest Parliament’s tax on it. Tea was the only item still on the mother country’s revenue list; American boycotts and strenuous denunciations by pamphleteers had persuaded the imperial legislature to abandon all the others. But everyone knew the tea tax had been kept to “maintain the right” to extract cash from the defiant Americans. Boston agitators led by Samuel Adams had struck in the night to let the world know they were determined to resist any and all taxation without representation.
Most Virginians, including Washington, denounced the tea party as vandalism. No one but Yankee fanatics worried about the tea tax. Most of the 80,000 pounds of the brew drunk in Virginia was smuggled from the West Indies or England itself, where tax evasion was a national industry. But as the Virginians read their newspapers, they soon realized this tea was a special case, imported under a monopoly set up by Parliament to give the almost bankrupt British East India company some badly needed revenue. The tea would have sold at a price below even that of smuggled tea—probably inducing thousands of people to save a few pennies while affirming Parliament’s right to tax Americans.
When the British responded to the destruction of the tea by closing the port of Boston, and making General Thomas Gage the royal governor of Massachusetts, backed by several regiments of regulars, opinion in Virginia underwent a radical change. Especially alarming on this list of what the British called the “Coercive Acts” was a ukase cancelling Massachusetts’s right to elect the governor’s council. Henceforth its members would be appointed by the king. Another law specified that anyone accused of treason would be tried in England, not in the American colonies. Washington voted wholeheartedly with Virginia’s House of Burgesses to protest these encroachments on Massachusetts’s rights and proclaim Virginia’s solidarity with their fellow Americans. Soon he was one of seven delegates chosen to represent Virginia in a general congress that met in Philadelphia to discuss the crisis.
In the middle of this political turmoil, Washington had a painful personal duty thrust on him. George William and Sally Fairfax asked him to supervise the sale of Belvoir’s furnishings. George William’s lawsuit looked more and more interminable, and the couple had decided it might be better to stay in England permanently. They thought it would give their argument more weight in court. George bought mahogany chests and tables, mirrors, and bedclothes, no doubt including Sally’s own. There was some consolation in bringing these purchases to Mount Vernon, but it was painful to see dozens of strangers buying up his old friends’ possessions from rooms where he had enjoyed so many happy hours. In retrospect, there was a fitting finality to the sale. It was a kind of farewell to Washington’s youth. But he did not see it that way at the time. He felt only sadness and regret.
History was taking charge of George Washington’s life. On August 30, Edmund Pendleton and Patrick Henry, two of the other Virginia delegates to the Congress, arrived at Mount Vernon to join him for the journey to Philadelphia and the first meeting of the Continental Congress. At dinner Martha listened to them discuss the confrontation with England. Pendleton was by nature a cautious man but Patrick Henry was his usual fiery self, determined to assert America’s rights no matter what the consequences. The next morning, Martha watched them depart with an uneasy mixture of pride and anxiety.19
XIII
In little more than a year, the quarrel with George III and his revenue-hungry Parliament led to bloodshed in Massachusetts. Sam Adams and his cousin John Adams, anxious to win the support of the rest of the country, backed Virginia’s Colonel Washington to head the impromptu New England army that rushed to besiege the British inside Boston. Three days after he received his commission from Congress, Washington wrote one of the most difficult—and revealing—letters of his life. It began with words that testified that Martha had become far more than an agreeable consort.
My Dearest:
I am now set down to write you on a subject which fills me with inexpressible concern—and this concern is greatly aggravated and increased when I reflect on the uneasiness I know it will give you—It has been determined in Congress that the whole army raised for the defence of the American cause shall be put under my care and that it is necessary for me to proceed immediately to Boston to take upon me the command of it. You may believe me, my dear Patcy, when I assure you, in the most solemn manner, that, so far from seeking this appointment I have used every endeavour in my power to avoid it, not only from my unwillingness to part with you and the family, but from a consciousness of its being a trust too great for my capacity, and that I should enjoy more real happiness and felicity in one month with you, at home, than I have my most distant prospect of reaping abroad, if my stay was to be seven times seven years.20
Those words bear witness to the deep and abiding happiness George Washington had achieved in his sixteen years of marriage to Martha Dandridge Custis. In the next few harried days, he made it clear that Martha’s peace of mind remained one of his foremost concerns. Washington wrote letters to Burwell Bassett, Jack Custis, and Jack Washington, in which he admitted “my absence will be a cutting stroke” upon Martha. He begged them to visit her as often as possible in the months to come. He had no idea that he was embarking on a venture that would keep him away from Mount Vernon for eight years.
On June 23, about to depart for Boston, Washington found time for one more hasty but equally revealing note:
My Dearest:
As I am within a few minutes of leaving this city [Philadelphia] I could not think of departing without dropping you a line…. I go fully trusting in that Providence which has been more bountiful to me than I deserve, and in full confidence of a happy meeting with you sometime in the fall. I have not time to add more, as I am surrounded with company…. I retain an unalterable affection for you which neither time or distance can change….
With the utmost truth & sincerity Yr entire
Geo Washington21