The children settled into their new schools with few crises—the only one missing was Custis, the oldest son, who had followed his father’s footsteps to become a cadet at West Point, and whose academic career there Lee followed earnestly. Lee had in fact gone to a good deal of trouble to secure Custis “an appointment ‘at large’ at the Military Academy,” demonstrating that he was willing to lobby on behalf of his children, though he would not do so for himself. Here, at last, was an area in which his advice went beyond the moral to the practical. If there was one thing Lee knew about it was life in the “thin gray line,” and the temptations and pitfalls facing a cadet. When he detected in Custis a tendency toward indolence, he was at pains to correct it by numerous letters.
Lee had delivered Custis to West Point, and had been relieved that his son did not find it “the dreadful place it had been represented to be.” He was pleased that the boy fitted in well and made friends quickly. At first his grades caused concern, but after energetic prodding from his father they improved, and Lee gave a sigh of relief. “Your letter . . . ,” he wrote, “has given me more pleasure than any I now recollect having ever received. It has assured me of the confidence you feel in my love and affection, and that with frankness and candor you open to me all your thoughts. . . . I cannot express my pleasure at hearing you declare your determination to shake off the listless fit that has seized you, and arouse all your faculties into activity and exertion. . . . I do not think you lack either energy or ambition. Hitherto you have not felt the incentive to call them forth.”
The relief on Lee’s part turned out to be premature, for shortly afterward liquor was discovered in Custis’s room during an inspection. This was a serious violation of the rules, and although Custis and his roommates denied having any knowledge of how the liquor got there, they were all put under arrest. Lee was, not surprisingly, “deeply humiliated . . . and distressed,” but there were apparently strong reasons for supposing that Custis and his roommates were innocent, so much so that their entire class came to their support, leading one to conclude that somebody other than the inhabitants of the room had placed the liquor there and that the cadets knew who it was. The superintendent of the academy contented himself with giving Custis eight demerits, the equivalent of a slap on the wrist.
Lee wrote to his son, “Dearest Mr. Boo,” with evident pleasure when he learned the news: “I was delighted at the contradiction in your last letter of that slanderous report against the room of those fine cadets Lee, Wood & Turnbull. . . . I trust there will be no cause for even suspicions in future. . . . Your letter also did me good in other respects. It talked of being on the Colour Guard, of being relieved from Post, of taking your ease in your own tent [cadets moved into tents during the summer]. . . . It assured me of your being released from arrest, of being on duty again, of coming right up to the mark, of no discouragement, no abatement in exertion, or relaxation in will. In short, of standing up to the rack, fodder or no fodder. . . .* Think always of your devoted father.”
Lee’s touching concern for Custis, reawakening as it must have done his own years at West Point and the immense pressures that any first-year cadet must feel bearing down on him—pressure to conform, pressure to compete, pressure to succeed, pressure to resist even the most innocent of temptations—and Lee’s belief that he “could meet with calmness and unconcern all else the world may have in store” for him, so long as his children were good and happy, make him seem at once a more vulnerable and more lovable person than the stern, melancholy figure usually portrayed. At times he can seem positively Dickensian,* as when he writes of a family Christmas. He, Mary, and the children always tried to spend Christmas with Mr. and Mrs. Custis at Arlington, and in this case Lee says, “We came home on a Wednesday morning. . . . The children were delighted at getting back [from Baltimore], and passed the evening at devising pleasure for the morrow. They were in upon us before day on Christmas morning, to overhaul their stockings. Mildred thinks she drew a prize in the shape of a beautiful new doll; Angelina’s infirmities [Angelina was Mildred’s doll] were so great that she was left in Baltimore and this new treasure was entirely unexpected. The cakes, candies, books, etc., were entirely overlooked in the caresses she bestowed upon her. . . . Rooney got among his gifts a new pair of boots, which he particularly wanted, and the girls, I hope, were equally pleased with their presents, books and trinkets. . . . Your mother, Mary, Rooney, and I went into church, and Rooney and the twins [visitors] skated back on the canal, Rooney having taken his skates along for that purpose. . . . I need not describe for you our amusements . . . nor the turkey, cold ham, puddings, mince pies, etc., at dinner.”
Lee’s joy at being surrounded by his family more than compensates for his constant exhortations and detailed advice to even the youngest members—for he fussed and prodded, and in an age when a girl’s education did not seem to most parents as important as a boy’s, he urged his girls to excel at their studies with as much firmness as he urged Custis at West Point.
In the meantime, progress on Fort Carroll was slowing. Congress was reluctant to provide the funds, and adjourned in March 1851 without having made any appropriation for continuing the work. As Lee’s chief, Brigadier General Totten, commented, “Nothing was needed to assure rapid . . . progress except regular appropriations,” but these were not forthcoming, perhaps because Totten’s political antennae were not as sensitive as his predecessor’s had been, or perhaps because nobody in Congress took seriously the possibility of a renewed British descent on Baltimore. It may have pained Lee, as an engineer, that he was never in a position to see any of the huge projects for which he was responsible fully completed—he had been moved on before his work on Cockspur Island, at Saint Louis, or in New York Harbor was at all near to being finished—but in the spring of 1852, as he was busy driving piles and laying concrete, he received a letter from Brigadier General Totten assigning him to take command as superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy.* On the face of it, there was everything to be said in favor of this appointment, except for the problem that it would place Mary Lee at a far greater distance from her parents and her home at Arlington. The superintendency of the academy was a prestigious post, and very much in the public eye; it carried with it a “handsome house,” a full staff, and direct access to the War Department; in addition, it would bring Lee’s whole family together in one place, since Custis was still a cadet.
Given the care with which Lee oversaw his own children’s education, it is surprising that he was not “pleased.” Freeman attributes this entirely to Lee’s modesty and his belief that “he lacked the experience for the position.” True, Lee constantly responded to any form of promotion over the years by protesting that he wished an “abler man” had been chosen for it; this may have been modesty, or simply a polite formula, but it is also possible to guess that Mary Lee’s reluctance to exchange Virginia and Maryland for three or four years in the lower Hudson valley may have played a significant part in Lee’s attempt to decline the honor. An indication that this was more than a mild, formal protestation is that Lee responded to the letter the same day it was received—there was apparently no soul-searching involved. By Lee’s standards, his reply to General Totten was brief and to the point: “I learn with much regret the determination of the Secretary of War to assign me to that duty, and I fear I cannot realize his expectations in the management of an Institution requiring more skill and experience than I command.”
Interestingly, having gone as far as he could in declining the appointment, Lee does not appear to have followed up by going to Washington and paying a call on his old comrade in arms from the Mexican War to argue his case for choosing someone else; after all, Totten admired and liked Lee, and Washington is only thirty-nine miles from Baltimore, even in those days not more than an hour away by train (“the cars” as they were called then). The answer is probably that Lee, with his innate sense of duty and obedience, was willing to write a formal letter objecting to the appointment, but no
more willing to lobby to remain in his present post than he was to lobby for a promotion.
Lee had to wait only ten days for a terse reply that “his letter had been received and the chief engineer had to decline to change the assignment,” a sign that Totten knew he had picked the best man for the job. Once Lee received the letter, he settled down to the task of drawing up his accounts and passing on to his assistant all his papers regarding Fort Carroll. He continued to point out to friends that he did not feel he was up to the task, but he was resigned to its inevitability. Since the fort was still not completed by the time the Civil War broke out, Lee was perhaps fortunate to be removed from what can only be seen as a dead-end job, and it may well be that he gave it up without regret—certainly he expressed none. On the other hand, he was going from the routine of overseeing a construction project, however ambitious, to what we would now call a high-profile role, in command of several hundred cadets and a large army establishment, for West Point then as now was a hallowed institution. It was also a post that called for an extraordinary degree of tact, both with parents and with politicians, since each cadet had been “sponsored” by a congressman or senator from his home state, and no parents wanted to learn that their boy was falling behind in his studies or was about to be dismissed for accumulating too many demerits.
The West Point to which Lee was returning was much bigger than it had been when he himself was a cadet—West Point’s history is one of constant growth and improvement, and the years between 1829 and 1852 were no exception—but at its core it was still governed by the regulations and the inflexible honor code laid down by Colonel Sylvanus Thayer during his years as superintendent. These Lee knew by heart, and—more important—he accepted them without reservations. Hard as it might sometimes be for Lee to enforce Thayer’s regulations, he had no doubts about their importance, or about the need for cadets to practice complete and willing obedience to them in every detail.
The duties of the superintendent were equally exacting and inflexible. Even the smallest and least important of decisions required a mountain of correspondence, most of it directed to the chief of the Corps of Engineers, if it involved a cadet; or to the secretary of war, if it involved a matter of policy. Even a cadet’s request “to receive a packet of socks from home” had to make its way up the chain of command to Lee’s desk, then be sent on to the chief engineer in Washington for his approval or disapproval, with Lee’s signed recommendation attached. The sheer volume of paperwork made even Lee sigh.
Lee arrived at West Point in August 1852 alone, and although Mary took her time before joining him there—as every biographer of Lee notes with implied criticism—it does not seem unreasonable for him to have spent some time going over the details of his new command and making sure that everything was in order for her arrival. It was no small move. Mary arrived with four of their children—Mary, Rooney, Rob, and Mildred, respectively seventeen, fifteen, nine, and six years old—while Anne, thirteen, and Agnes, eleven, remained at Arlington with their grandparents, under the care of a governess. Their daughter Mary was entered in a boarding school in Westchester, while Rooney was placed in one in New York City, but moving the others, together with all their belongings, from Virginia to a new home that Mary Lee had never seen cannot have been an easy undertaking for a woman who was accustomed to being surrounded by familiar servants. The family’s horses, as well as all their furniture, soon arrived, and judging from Rob’s description, the superintendent’s quarters (now known as Quarters 100, on Jefferson Road) were large and comfortable enough to suit Mary. Originally built in 1820 for Colonel Thayer, the house was a substantial two-story brick edifice, painted white, with four chimneys each topped by a chimney cap in the shape of an elaborately worked, ornamental Greek or Roman temple. It provided not only a home for the superintendent but a suitable place to entertain guests. “It was built of stone,” Rob wrote, remembering the house years later, “large and roomy, with gardens, stables, and pasture lots. We, the two youngest children, enjoyed it all. ‘Grace Darling’ and ‘Santa Anna’ [the pony Lee had bought for Rob in Mexico] were there with us, and many a fine ride did I have with my father in the afternoons, when, released from his office, he would mount his old mare and, with Santa Anna carrying me by his side, take a five- or ten-mile trot. Though the pony cantered delightfully, he would make me keep him in a trot, saying playfully that the hammering I sustained was good for me. We rode the dragoon-seat,* no posting, and until I became accustomed to it I used to be very tired by the time I got back.”
It is typical of Lee to have insisted on a seat that must have been as uncomfortable for the horse as for the rider, and Rob would make the same complaint about having to ride Traveller with a dragoon seat for his father at one point during the Civil War a decade later. There is something endearing in the way that Lee used these father-and-son rides not only to enforce a style of riding that was already old-fashioned but to toughen Rob up.
Lee was a born pedagogue, never happier than when his children were learning to do something the right way. Rob describes how his father went to great trouble to make sure he learned how to skate, to swim, even to sled. When possible he taught the children himself. As soon as each of them was old enough he sent, in his absence, long letters of moral and practical advice. A letter he wrote to “My Precious Annie,” then fourteen, from West Point, is typical in its combination of jovial good humor and firm instruction: “I am told you are growing very tall, and I hope very straight. I do not know what the cadets will say if the Superintendent’s children do not practice what he demands of them.”
It is a testament to Lee’s affection and patience that his children did not rebel; in fact they appear to have thrived. Custis was graduated from the U.S. Military Academy, and Rooney from Harvard; all three of the boys served in the Confederate Army with distinction, two of them as major generals, the youngest rising from the rank of private to that of captain in some of the hardest fighting in the war. Although Lee’s biographers tend to avoid Freudian speculation, it is nevertheless interesting that none of his four daughters ever married, perhaps because it was hard to find anyone who matched their father’s standards, perhaps because he simply remained, by his constant affection, interest, and attention in everything they did, the dominant male personality in their lives.
In a perfect world all of this might have made Lee exactly the right man to be superintendent of West Point, but from the beginning he felt himself to be in loco parentis for each of his cadets, and set the same high standards for them that he did for his own children. Every day except Sunday the door to his office was open for one hour from six in the morning until seven, with Lee waiting at his desk in faultless dress uniform for any cadet who had a moral or personal problem to share with him. He may have been unaware that he was an intimidating presence—certainly Lee underestimated the amount of time and emotional energy the problems and tribulations of the cadets would cost a perfectionist like him, and it was about then that his hair started to turn gray, the first step on the path from dashing young officer to careworn patriarch.
The West Point honor code, though it reads simply enough, presented him in real life with a ceaseless stream of baffling moral complexities and seemingly endless hairsplitting that would have tried the patience of a saint. His youngest son, Rob, experienced this on one of his afternoon rides with his father, when they unexpectedly came upon three cadets far beyond where they were allowed to go without permission. The cadets, seeing Lee, leaped over a low wall and vanished into a ravine. “We rode on for a minute in silence,” Rob wrote many years later; “then my father said: ‘Did you know these young men?’” Before Rob could reply, Lee gently told him not to answer the question: “‘But no,’” he said, “‘if you did, don’t say so.’” Then, after a moment, “‘I wish boys would do what is right, it would be so much easier for all parties.’”
The code bade cadets not to lie, cheat, or steal, and not to tolerate those who did; but on the other hand it
was as firmly ingrained in Lee’s mind as in the mind of each of his cadets that a gentleman does not reveal the name of another to the authorities. Lee would of course have to report what he had seen to the commandant of cadets, but since Rob hadn’t told him who the cadets were, it would be impossible to punish them. It was, on a small, personal scale, exactly the kind of dilemma that Lee wrestled with every day as superintendent of West Point, with the result that his three years at its head are remembered chiefly because he had to dismiss James McNeill Whistler, who was to become arguably the most important American painter of his time.
“If silicon were a gas I would have been a major general one day,” is perhaps one of Whistler’s most famous remarks. It refers to the fact that he had failed to answer correctly the first question in a chemistry examination at West Point, and this led to his dismissal by Lee. It is odd that the young Whistler, already a gifted draftsman, a mordant caricaturist, and full-fledged eccentric, should have sought to enter West Point in the first place, or been accepted. Even an admiring commentator describes him as “moody and insolent”—moodiness and insolence are not promising character traits for a cadet—and in addition he was nearsighted, was in poor health, and had a sharp sense of ridicule. He had rejected the idea of becoming a churchman, and apparently faute de mieux decided to become a soldier instead, although he had no interest in military affairs and a poor seat on a horse. It is remarkable that with his long, tousled hair (his nickname at West Point was “Curly”) and his sloppy uniform, he managed to survive as a cadet for three years.
Clouds of Glory Page 24