First of Men

by Ferling, John;

  Did his letter indicate that he had never abandoned his love for Sally? Probably. To Washington she always would be an alluring woman, beguiling, a bit mysterious, always able to ignite the emotions that he otherwise succeeded in keeping so closely controlled. Moreover, she was about the only thing that he ever had determined to pursue and attain that had eluded him.

  But did his ineradicable feelings for Sally indicate unhappiness with Martha? Washington was a private person, and in nothing more so than the very personal relationship he shared with his wife. He simply was not the type to wear his feelings on his sleeve. Yet some things seem clear. Their union began as a virtual marriage of convenience. He was ready to marry, she was a widow ready to remarry; economically it was a good match. Shortly after the marriage, at a time when, as he later put it, most young men are caught up in the “transports of passion,” he quaintly referred to Martha only as an “agreable Consort.” But regardless of his feelings when they married, his attitude changed as he grew older. Love, he grew to believe, was too fragile a cornerstone for a marriage; “like all delicious things, it is cloying,” he said, and likely to evaporate. Instead, the qualities that made for felicity in marriage, he advised his step-granddaughter, were “good sense [and] good dispostions.”33 What Washington perhaps was thinking was that he always had loved Sally Fairfax, but that with Martha he was comfortable—and quite happy.

  Washington hoped to have children of his own, but year after year slipped past without issue. By the early 1770s he knew it was hopeless. Jackie and Patsy were there, and he cared for and shepherded them with all the love he would have given to his own. Jackie, without a father for half his five years before Martha married George, was a spoiled and pampered child whose manner at times utterly exasperated his stepfather. Nevertheless, Washington saw to it that the youngster had opportunities that he himself had been denied. By the time he was eight years old Jackie was studying under a tutor, and soon Washington was ordering Latin and Greek readers for the boy. When Jackie was fifteen Washington purchased nearly fifty books for him, a collection that included classics, religious tracts, histories, and the musings of contemporary philosophers. About the same time, too, George and Martha decided to pack Jackie off to school, to study under Anglican clergyman Jonathan Boucher. Washington enrolled the lad, explaining to the schoolmaster what Jackie had read, though acknowledging that he was “a little rusty” in both Latin and Greek. Otherwise, he continued, Jackie was a boy “of good genius . . . untainted in his morals, and of innocent manners.” Jackie, chubby, fair, soft, departed in the summer of 1768, accompanied by his personal slave and two horses. He spent the better part of five years under Boucher’s tutelage, most of it in Maryland, first in Annapolis, then in Prince George’s County. Jackie was not an impressive student. An idler to begin with, the knowledge that he would inherit a fortune when he came of age did not induce him to expend much effort on his books. Boucher found him to be one of his most exasperating pupils, calling him the most indolent and hedonistic person he had ever known, and asserting that the boy was better suited to be an “Asiatic Prince” than a scholar. Nevertheless, sniffing the boy’s wealth, the rector suggested that a European tour—led, of course, by Boucher and financed by Washington—just might turn the lad around. Washington drew the line at that point, genteelly demurring on the grounds that Jackie was “by no means ripe enough for a travelling tour.” (At the conclusion of his stay, Boucher maintained that the boy was deficient in the “knowledge befitting a Gentleman,” and, he raged, Jackie’s only interests were guns and horses.)34

  John Parke Custis (“Jackie”), by Charles Willson Peale (1772). Courtesy of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association of the Union.

  By 1773 Jackie’s parents decided the time had come for a change. He should be enrolled in college. Washington—with Boucher’s accord—concluded that William and Mary College was unsatisfactory, and he opted instead for King’s College (now Columbia University) in New York. Not long before he was to depart, however, eighteen-year-old Jackie dropped a bombshell. He was going to get married. The girl: Eleanor Calvert (called Nelly by her friends), the beautiful, sable-haired, dark-eyed daughter of the Benedict Calverts of Mount Airy, Maryland. Martha and George were crushed. Not only was Jackie’s education jeopardized, but he had not bothered to consult his parents. Nelly, moreover, came from a more modest planting background than Washington would have preferred. Washington fretted, too, at Jackie’s “fickleness,” fearing that the boy might back out of his commitment and “injure the young lady.” Yet, other than to argue and cajole, there was not much that could be done. With Martha’s consent—and maybe after a push from her—George did write Nellie’s father hoping for a postponement because of Jackie’s “youth, inexperience, and unripened Education. . . . If the Affection which they have avowed for each other is fixd upon a Solid Base, it will receive no diminution in the course of two or three years. . . .” Her father agreed to “delay, not break off, the intended match.” That spring Nelly, her parents, and some girl friends visited Mount Vernon, and the Washingtons later called on the Calverts. In June, as planned, Jackie matriculated at King’s College. George took him to New York, along the way meeting Benjamin Franklin’s son William, the governor of New Jersey, and renewing an old acquaintanceship with Sir Thomas Gage, now commander of all British troops in America. Jackie’s college career lasted just six months. His stepfather wanted to force the boy to stay on, but Martha at last gave in to his importunings for her consent to an immediate marriage; Washington decided not “to push my opposition too far,” and the couple were married in the winter of 1774.35

  Martha’s change of heart was prompted by a terrible tragedy. Patsy had lived a common enough life for a planter’s daughter. Girlishly playful, she pampered the dolls her parents ordered for her, was tutored by her mother, and received private music lessons. Then, on a mild summer day in 1768 she suddenly fell to the floor in the grip of an epileptic seizure. Her frightened parents summoned a physician, Dr. William Rumney, a native of England and former British army surgeon who had settled in Alexandria; he bled her and prescribed valerian, “nerve drops.” The next month he was back with more valerian and two capsules of musk oil, thought to contain an antispasmodic agent. She had a second attack in November; following this seizure Rumney administered purging pills, mercurial tablets, and a decoction, that is, warm water in which a medicinal vegetable medly had been boiled. Another seizure followed, however, and her doctor now recommended an iron ring, or a “cramp ring” as they sometimes were called; worn on the finger, these iron bands allegedly warded off fits. The next summer the family tried the baths at Berkeley Springs, but Patsy was “unwell” while undergoing this treatment. Late in 1769 her stepfather called in another physician, a University of Leyden-trained doctor who had settled in Virginia. He examined her frequently, yet in July 1770 she became seriously ill with both seizures and an “ague and fever.” Dr. Rumney now showed up again, this time experimenting with various powders and with cinchona, or Peruvian bark, thought to be a remedy for malaria as well as for epilepsy. Six months later still another doctor was consulted, this one a graduate of the University of Edinburgh. He prescribed ether, presumed by many to be an effective antispasmodic; Washington obtained some in Annapolis, and it was administered as an oral dose.36

  Obviously nothing had worked. By her fifteenth birthday Patsy had grown into an attractive young lady, with an altogether elegant, but friendly demeanor. Her long ebony hair accentuated her somber eyes and dark, arching brows. Her face was thin and delicate, with dainty lips, a graceful, slightly pointed nose, and beautiful, somewhat melancholy eyes. Despite her illness she seemed so full of life that neither Martha nor George were prepared for what happened. On June 19, 1773, Washington’s brother John and his family were at Mount Vernon for a visit, along with Nelly and one of her girl friends. It had been an enjoyable day; Patsy felt fine—as she had for several weeks, in fact—and she was very happy to have company. Then, just as
the family concluded a long Saturday afternoon meal, Patsy fell to the floor without a sound, the victim of still another seizure. She was dead in less than two minutes.37

  George was badly shaken by the child’s sudden death, and by the ineradicable recollection of the events of those final brief, horrid moments. He undertook no business for three weeks, and then it was only to write London to order mourning garments. Martha, of course, was disconsolate, wracked by grief and doubt and anger; as George put it, one could find it “an easier matter to conceive, than to describe [his wife’s] distress. . . .” He postponed a trip to the West. For weeks he stayed at Mount Vernon, trying to provide solace, and seeking comfort in Martha’s company as well. He and Martha took several carriage rides alone, solemn and solitary drives to nowhere in particular, something they rarely had done before, and George withdrew for lonely and unattended walks in the nearby forest. Nelly stayed on too, refusing to return with her parents when they came to pick her up three weeks after the funeral; her presence helped, for she was about Patsy’s age, and she and Martha already had grown close. Except for a trip to the Calvert’s home in late July, Washington did not spend a night away from Mount Vernon for three months.38

  A jaunt to the races in Annapolis in September signaled the end of the period of mourning. Before he left, however, Washington faced the unpleasant business of the probate of Patsy’s will. Her estate had accrued a value of over £16,000; Jackie received half this amount, while Martha (meaning George, of course) acquired the remainder. In November he notified his English creditors that he was using the inheritance to eliminate his long-standing debts.39

  Although Patsy’s death continued to cast a pall over the Washingtons as they traveled to Annapolis that September in their chic carriage, both George and Martha must have felt that on balance fate had smiled on them during their nearly fifteen years together. Washington had grown from a neophyte planter with potential to one of the wealthiest and most respected men in his province. Mount Vernon had been transformed, too, from a ramshackle, mismanaged farm into a grand estate. Both George and Martha, moreover, had been generally healthy. Only a brief bout with the measles in 1760 had really afflicted Martha. A year later Washington had fallen ill, the only serious medical problem (except for chronic dental problems) that he experienced for thirty years after his protracted army related ailment in 1758. Washington’s troubles began with a cold, but eventually some of the maladies of his soldiering years recurred. For several months he was weak and haunted by fevers, left to worry that in this “very low and dangerous State” he might contract some even more serious ailment. By the autumn of that year, however, he once again felt fine.40

  When he had recovered from that lone affliction, Washington joked to his brother that although he felt fine his face looked as if he was “very near my last gasp.” He no longer looked like that in 1773. Early that year he hired Charles Willson Peale, a young artist (and former saddle maker) who recently had studied his new trade in Boston and London, to come to Mount Vernon and paint the family; Peale made miniatures of Martha and the children, and he completed a large oil portrait of Washington. Aged forty-one, Washington was posing for the first time. He wore the uniform he had designed for the army of Virginia; a musket was cradled jauntily in his left arm, a sword dangled at his side, written orders jutted from a waistcoat pocket. He was depicted as standing in the wilderness; the theme must have been chosen by Washington, for he was conscious that the artist was “describing to the world what manner of man I am.” Peale placed Washington under dense foliage; in the background, toward the ascending western mountains, a translucent sky gave way to uncertain and morbidly opaque clouds. Washington looks paunchy, but strong and robust. His cheeks are slightly ruddy, his beard rather dark. The most striking aspect of the painting, however, is that Washington is shown to be contemplative. This may have been the way he saw himself, or perhaps the way he wished to be seen. His eyes are looking to his right, but they do not seem to be seeing anything. Instead, he is deep in thought, the deliberative warrior, the soldier-philosopher.

  George Washington, by Charles Willson Peale (1772). Courtesy of Washington and Lee University. At age forty Washington posed for the artist in the uniform of the Virginia Regiment.

  Peale’s representation of Washington’s physical characteristics tallies with the descriptions left by many eyewitnesses, although some who saw him maintained that no portrait ever really succeeded in capturing the man. He was about 6′ 3″ tall (he was listed as 6′ 3½″ tall by those who measured him for his coffin). He must have seemed even taller to contemporaries than he would to us. For instance, not one man in fifty who had served under him stood at six feet.41 Home cooking apparently agreed with Washington. His weight increased by 40 pounds to about 215 pounds within a few years of his marriage. Obviously Washington was a big and physically imposing man. His chest was broad and muscular, though toward the center it was indented, “caved in,” the result, he believed, of a childhood respiratory illness. Undoubtedly, his waist no longer was as thin as it had been as it had been at age twenty-five, when George Mercer had referred to it as “narrow.” On the other hand, according to his step-grandson, his legs, particularly his thighs, were rather slender and not nearly as thick as almost every artist tended to depict them.

  Washington had large feet and quite long arms, so extended, in fact, that he was self-conscious about them. His arms were “large and sinewy,” more so than ever captured on canvas, according to that same grandchild. Washington also was embarrassed by what he regarded as his abnormally large hands; they do not appear in Peale’s rendering, nor would they in many subsequent portraits. Almost everyone who saw him was struck by his posture. He stood not just without a slouch but in a ramrod-straight manner, to use the metaphor of more than one soldier who observed him. Thomas Jefferson referred simply to his “erect and noble” bearing, and many who saw him commented not only on his dignified walk but on the grace and athleticism with which he moved. Historian Garry Wills has speculated that because of his long arms he was compelled to walk in an exaggeratedly erect manner; otherwise, said Wills, “he would have looked like an ape . . . about to scrape the backs of his knuckles along the ground.” Then again, as a child he may simply have taken up this bearing out of mimicry of his idol Lawrence, a soldier at the time of their initial meeting.

  At middle age Washington’s hair still was dark brown, with no hint of greyness or baldness. His eyes were a pleasant and striking blue, yet there was a hard, penetrating glint to them as well. Pockmarks lightly dotted his face, and, though Peale concealed the fact, persistent gum problems had robbed him of some teeth and disfigured others.42

  Two men accustomed to judging character saw a side to Washington that Peale—always his favorite artist—did not make evident. Gilbert Stuart, an artist whose livelihood depended in part on his ability to capture the true essence of his subjects, believed Washington’s “features were indicative of the strongest and most ungovernable passions. Had he been born in the forests,” Stuart added, “he would have been the fiercest man among the savages.” Jonathan Boucher, Jackie’s tutor, thought that Washington “seems to have nothing generous or affectionate in his nature.”43

  Late in September 1773 Washington and his host in Annapolis, the governor of Maryland, played the horses in the afternoon and attended the theater in the evening. On one of those days that he relaxed and gambled, a Philadelphia newspaper carried an ominous letter. “Being a great schemer,” the writer warned, the British prime minister, Lord North, had succeeded in the enactment of a bill, the Tea Act, designed to procure a revenue from the American colonists. “It is much to be wished,” the herald concluded, “that the Americans will convince Lord North that they are not yet ready to have the yoke of slavery riveted about their necks, and [that they will] send back the tea whence it came.”44

  Events were beginning to swirl about the colonies that autumn that would change Washington’s life forever, but he seemed heedless of
their course. He remained preoccupied by his own small world. He managed his properties, and the Custises’ too. He employed gardeners to spruce up Mount Vernon, hoping to give it a gleam that might help to ease the pain caused by the loss of Patsy. He and Martha—who was loath to stay alone at home now that both children were gone—traveled frequently. They rode to Williamsburg in October, where Washington tended to several financial matters. In November they visited the Bassetts. Later Washington dropped in on his mother, and he visited with his brother for a spell. There were visitors at Mount Vernon almost every day; sometimes his guests were good friends, but often they were people that he had never before met. Frequently he invited old cohorts to his estate for a day of hunting, and both he and Martha spent some time preparing for Jackie’s imminent wedding. And on December 16, at the precise moment of the Boston Tea Party a thousand miles to the north, Washington, tired from a long day of riding and walking and inspecting two of his outlying farms, rode back home in the gloom of evening, the end of a foggy, unseasonably warm late autumn day.45