service of the crown. In 1747, when George was in his fourteenth
year, a midshipman's warrant was obtained for him by his brother
Lawrence, and he embraced with boyish ardor the idea of going to sea.

While the matter was in doubt, however, his English uncle, Joseph
Ball, wrote to his sister: "I understand that you have been advised
to put your son George to sea. I think he had better be apprentice
to a tinker; for a common sailor before the mast has by no means the
liberty of a subject; for they will cut and slash him and use him
like a negro, or rather like a dog. He must not be too hasty to be
rich, but go on gently with patience as things will naturally go,
without aiming to be a fine gentleman before his time," etc. The
ship that was to carry him into the service of his most Gracious
Majesty, George the Second, was riding at anchor in the Potomac with
the young midshipman's luggage on board, but when the hour came for
him to sail his mother braved the chance of Lawrence's displeasure,
and forbade him to go!

The great trials of her life were henceforth to come through her
crowning glory and pride. Her splendid boy, only fifteen years
old, entered, as surveyor to Lord Fairfax, a life of hardship and
peril, exposed to hourly danger from the Indians, and to the rigors
of inclement winters. The eaglet had flown from the nest, never to
return. Henceforth her straining eyes might strive to follow--they
could never recall him.

[Illustration: Mrs. Washington persuades George not to go to Sea.]

The lands to be surveyed lay in the wilderness beyond the Blue
Ridge. There the boy of sixteen matched himself against fatigue,
danger, and privations of every kind, and found himself equal to
them all. He became familiar with the frontier people--the Indians
and settlers. There he unconsciously trained himself for his future
career.

Just at this time, when Fate sent him into the wilderness as
preparation for the stern life ordained for him, the gentle god
of Love was experimenting with his virgin heart. Among the yellow
papers, which were tied in bundles and preserved in the deep drawers
of the old secretary at "Pine Grove," behold the following acrostic,
dated 1747, when the lad was fifteen:--

    "From your bright sparkling eyes I was undone.
    Rays you have--more transparent than ye Sun
    Amidst its Glory in ye Rising Day.
    None can you equal in y^r bright array.
    Constant in y^r Calm, Unspotted Mind--
    Equal toe all, will toe none Prove kind.
    Soe knowing, seldom One soe young you'll find."

Who was Frances? Was she responsible for the "hurt of the heart
uncurable," of which he wrote a few months later? Alas, we shall
never know! Her Rays were all dimmed before Parson Weems appeared to
take notes and print them.

At least we have this fragment of boyhood love, and can enrol her
name as the _first_ of his five sweethearts.

There is also a relic of his work for Lord Fairfax. Underneath the
veranda at Capon Springs in West Virginia lies the trunk of one of
the trees that the young surveyor marked with his hatchet. At least,
it was there ten years ago!

CHAPTER XVI

BETTY WASHINGTON, AND WEDDINGS IN OLD VIRGINIA

In 1746 young Fielding Lewis came up from his family seat at
Marmion, bringing General Washington's aunt, Catharine Washington,
as his wife, and made his home at Kenmore in Fredericksburg. They
were married just one year before the birth of little John Lewis,
and Mrs. Henry Lee (the mother of "Light-horse Harry") and Mrs.
Mary Washington were godmothers. (Five times was this little fellow
destined to be married, and if a problem of involved relationship
be in order, he could furnish it. His first two wives were the
granddaughters of his great-aunt, Mildred Gregory, and his _last_
wife great-granddaughter of _her_ last husband!) But to return
to Fielding Lewis and Catharine (Washington) Lewis: the next
year (1748) Frances was born, George Washington (aged sixteen),
godfather--the next year (1749) the third child was born, and then
the poor young mother, having borne a child every year, was gathered
to her fathers and her children (January, 1750). All these events
were of keen interest to the family at "Pine Grove." In all these
functions nobody was more sympathetic than Betty Washington, now a
handsome maiden of seventeen. She took her little orphan cousins to
her heart, and in two months she comforted also the forlorn widower,
and became his wife.

[Illustration: Kenmore House.]

There is not the least doubt that she was given away by her
brother George, now eighteen years of age, and that Samuel, John
Augustine, and Charles, handsome, well-grown lads, were present
at her wedding. Charles was twelve years old; Samuel, sixteen.
Elizabeth was "a fine young woman." Describing her, Mr. Custis
used a favorite word of the day. Majesty being the highest of all
places, "Majestic" was the highest of all praise. Colonial beauties
were rarely described as "graceful," "winsome," "exquisite,"
"lovely"; they were "stately," "majestic," "queenly." They wore
stately garments,--paduasoy, from _soie de Padua_, where the strong,
lustrous silk so much worn by men and women was manufactured,
or "tabby" velvet and silk, the rich watered oriental fabric
manufactured in Attabya, a quarter in Bagdad. These were the
grandest, the most sumptuous fabrics known. The wife of Goldsmith's
Vicar was proud of her crimson paduasoy (the silk had given its name
to a garment). Samuel Pepys could not afford the genuine article,
but he boasted a "wastecoat of false tabby." Of course, a majestic
woman wore these rich materials, "silk gowns wad stand on end"
like the gowns of Dumbiedike's grandmother. Who could be majestic
in clinging, willowy chiffon? Elizabeth Washington, known by the
diminutive "Betty," undoubtedly enhanced her majesty by one or more
of these gowns made in the fashion invented by the artist Watteau.

As to the rest, we know she was "mannerly." Stately gowns befitted
stately manners. People "Sirred and Madamed" each other in true
Johnsonian style, with many a low courtesy, veiling the bosom with
outspread fan, and many a profound bow with hand on heart. There was
leisure for all this before the day of the trolley car and steam
car, or even the stage and omnibus; when in towns visits were made
at ten in the morning, and the visitors sent hither and thither in
sedan-chairs. Young ladies of her day were expert horsewomen. Those
of us who saw the portrait of Betty Washington at the Centennial in
New York can imagine her handsome figure on horseback. "She was a
most majestic woman," said Mr. Custis, adding that he perfectly well
remembered her, "and was so strikingly like the Chief her brother,
that it was a matter of frolic to throw a cloak around her, and
then place a military cap on her head: and such was the perfect
resemblance that had she appeared on her brother's steed, battalions
would have presented arms, and senates risen to do homage to the
chief." She adored her brother, and was proud to be so like him.
"Be good," she would say to her young friends in after life, "and I
will be General Washington for you!" Tying her hair in a cue, and
crowning it with a cocked hat, she would take a sword and masquerade
to their infinite amusement. She and her brother closely resembled
their mother in form, carriage, and the contour of their faces. They
inherited her splendid health, her mental strength, and her sterling
virtues--but _not_ her seriousness which grew to be a settled
sadness. Betty Washington was as merry-hearted a maiden as might be
found in that merry time.

If somebody had only thought of us at the great wedding at "Pine
Grove," when stately Elizabeth Washington was given in marriage to
the dignified, handsome Colonel Fielding Lewis, if somebody had only
described it for our sakes, we should not be obliged to imagine it!
The three great social occasions of domestic life were weddings,
christenings, and funerals. These were solemnized, if not too
distant, in churches. The bride on the large isolated estates made
her vows in her own home, in her own home consecrated her offspring,
from her own home was borne at last to her final resting-place. A
wedding lasted many days, during which the house was filled with
feasting kindred, coming from far and near. Social usage varied so
little in colonial Virginia that we are quite safe in noting some
features of Betty Washington's wedding. Of some things we may be
sure,--first, there is not the least doubt that she chose her own
husband.

One of the first fruits of the spirit of freedom was the American
girl's determination henceforth to choose her husband. She made
mistakes sometimes, poor child, but was probably silenced by the
reflection that she had no one to blame but herself. She was much
under the influence of French fashions, but had a prejudice against
the French manner of conducting matrimonial alliances, while the
French at once conceived a horror of the American departure. "We
must marry our daughters as soon as possible," said a Frenchwoman to
an easy-going American husband. "If we do not take care, she will be
like your terrible Americans, and end by joining in the '_hount for
housband_'!" dropping her French to quote the enormity in its own
appropriate tongue.

Something of the old-time English customs in contracting parties
remained in the formal correspondence of the prospective
bridegroom's father with the father of the bride-elect, presumably
before the young lady had been consulted. The former stated that his
son proposed "paying his addresses," and he therefore announced the
number of acres and slaves, and the kind of house he could give his
son, and, without any expression of romance or sentiment, politely
requested a similar statement from the "party of the second part."
This party informs the other that his son has applied for "leave to
make his addresses," and states what _he_ can do.

Of course, it sometimes happened that the matter rested just
here--the ideas on one side or the other being unsatisfactory. Then
it was that Cupid had his opportunity! More than one lover has
hidden in the close-screened, cedar summer-house, and more than one
maiden has stolen in the gray dawn from her back door, disguised
as her own maid, to join him in an early horseback ride to Gretna
Green. Moreover, more than one such maiden was "cut off with a
shilling" by an injured father, and went through her life stoutly
declaring herself the happiest woman in the world, albeit not as
rich in worldly goods as her dutiful sisters!

Betty Washington's wedding-dress we must imagine. It was probably
not unlike Martha Custis's wedding-gown a few years later. This
was thus described by one of her guests: a white satin quilt, over
which a heavy white silk, interwoven with threads of silver, was
looped back with white satin ribbons, richly brocaded in a leaf
pattern. Her bodice was of plain satin, and the brocade was fastened
on the bust with a stiff butterfly bow of the ribbon. Delicate
lace finished the low, square neck. There were close elbow-sleeves
revealing a puff and frill of lace. Strings of pearls were woven in
and out of her powdered hair. Her high-heeled slippers were of white
satin, with brilliant buckles. Just this dress, in style if not
material, was certainly worn by Betty.

Her mother being a devout churchwoman, she was probably married at
church. And if Colonel Lewis chose to follow the fashion of the day,
he was brave indeed in a white satin vest, a suit of fine cloth
lined with crimson satin, fine lace at wrist and throat, and diamond
(or was it paste?) buckles at knee and shoe top.

Our forefathers and foremothers wore good clothes in 1750!

We may be sure that none of the orthodox wedding customs and
ceremonies were omitted by Mary Washington at her daughter's
marriage. There were certainly bride's favors, wedding-cake, ring,
and thimble, and, alas! the slipper and rice. The bride was duly
provided, for her bridal costume, with

    "Something old, and something new,
    Something borrowed and something blue."

The "old" was oftenest an heirloom of lace; the "borrowed," an
orange blossom or two which had been worn by other brides; the
"blue," a tiny knot of ribbon on the garter.

These ceremonies were full of significance, and in observing them,
the bride linked herself in the long chain which stretches back to
the early stages of the world. The wedding-ring, and the choice of
the third finger as being connected with the heart, are mentioned in
old Egyptian literature. The blue ribbon, whether worn as a badge,
or order, or at bridals, comes down from the ancient Israelites,
who were bidden to put upon the borders of their fringed garments a
"ribband of blue"--blue, the color of purity, loyalty, and fidelity.
Bridesmaids were a relic of the ten witnesses of old Roman weddings.
Bride's cake and rice, of the aristocratic Roman _confarreatio_.
The Spanish custom of wearing fragments cut from the bride's
ribbons, first introduced into England when Charles II brought
home his Katharine of Portugal to be England's queen, survived in
the enormous white satin rosettes (bride's favors) worn by the
groomsmen, and survives to-day in the boutonnières of the bride's
flowers. The old and the new symbolize her past and future--not
divided, but united. The "something borrowed" signifies a pledge to
be redeemed. Nothing is without significance, which accounts for
the fact that all these old-time customs continue from century to
century, and are so jealously observed to-day.

One of the eighteenth-century customs, has, however, been lost
in the hurry and rush of our own time. The "infair," the faring
into the house of the bridegroom's parents, was quite as lengthy
and important a function as the wedding. This great housewarming
entertainment to celebrate the reception into the bridegroom's
family was an ancient English custom, religiously observed in
Virginia until the middle of the nineteenth century.

The quantity of wedding-cake made in the Virginia kitchens was
simply astounding! It was packed in baskets and sent all over the
country to be eaten by the elders and "dreamed on" by the maidens.

What would Betty Washington and Colonel Lewis have thought of a
wedding reception of an hour, and then a flitting to parts unknown,
leaving the world to comfort itself with a small square of cake in
a pasteboard box? Such behavior would have been little less than
"flat burglary," defrauding people of their just dues.

[Illustration: The Hall at Kenmore, showing the Clock which belonged
to Mary Washington.]

Colonel Fielding Lewis, although young, was already a merchant of
high standing and wealth, a vestryman, magistrate, and burgess.
Kenmore, near Fredericksburg, was built for him, that his wife might
be near her mother. The mansion, still kept in excellent repair, was
reckoned a fine one at the time. It was built of brick and skilfully
decorated by Italian artists. Betty wrote to her brother George that
their "invention had given out," and invited him to contribute
something. It is said that he designed the decoration illustrating
Æsop's fable of the Crow and the Fox, which adorns the drawing-room
mantel to-day. It is in stucco, and besides illustrating the fable
of the wheedling fox who seeks to gain booty by a smooth tongue,
another fable--the wolf accusing the lamb of fouling the water--is
represented. The story told at Kenmore is of Italians captured in
the French army as prisoners of war, who were led by choice or
necessity to remain in America, where they plied their trade of
decorators.

[Illustration: NELLIE CUSTIS.]

Nine months after Betty Washington's wedding, on St. Valentine's
day, 1751, another Fielding Lewis was born, and George Washington,
just nineteen, was godfather, his mother, godmother. Having done
her duty to her husband, Betty in 1752 named her next son John
Augustine, and her brother Charles, fourteen years old, was
godfather. A third boy was born, 1755, and Charles was again
godfather. In 1757 she named a fourth son George Washington, and,
in 1759, Mary Washington was sponsor for a little Mary Lewis, and
Samuel Washington, godfather. Then, in 1760, a year after his own
marriage, we find George Washington and his mother sponsors for
a Charles Lewis. Samuel and Betty were born respectively in 1763
and 1765, and in April, Lawrence, the lucky,--destined to win "the
nation's pride," lovely Nellie Custis, the adopted daughter of
General Washington. Then Robert and Howell were born. Again, and
yet again, was the traditional gown of black brocade brought forth
by the proud grandmother, as Betty claimed her mother and brothers
for the important and solemn office of sponsors for her splendid
boys--boys that followed their illustrious uncle all through the
war of the Revolution, and to whom he was ever the most faithful of
friends and guardians.

CHAPTER XVII

DEFEAT IN WAR: SUCCESS IN LOVE

Washington was only nineteen when Virginia appointed him one of her
adjutants-general. He was "Major Washington" now when he visited his
mother at "Ferry Farm," _visiting_ her only, because the failing
health of his brother Lawrence demanded his care. His mother gladly
surrendered him for the comfort of this, her devoted stepson, to
whom she had always deferred as the head of the family. He went with
this brother to try the warmer climate of Barbados, bringing him
back ere long to die at Mount Vernon.

[Illustration: George Washington as Major.]

In 1752 Governor Dinwiddie had information about the French. They
had commenced establishing forts in the territory on the banks
of the Ohio claimed by Virginia. The governor needed some trusty
messenger to send to the Chevalier Le Gardeur de St. Pierre,
the French commander, to claim that country as belonging to his
Britannic Majesty, "and," says Burnaby in his "Travels in Virginia,"
1759, "Mr. Washington, a young gentleman of fortune just arrived at
age, offered his service on this important occasion. The distance
was more than four hundred miles; two hundred of which lay
through a trackless wilderness, inhabited by cruel and merciless
savages, and the season was uncommonly severe. Notwithstanding
these discouraging circumstances, Mr. Washington, attended by one
servant only, set out upon this dangerous enterprise; travelled
from Winchester on foot, carrying his provisions on his back,
executed his commission; and after incredible hardships, and many
providential escapes, returned safe to Williamsburg."

He was in love with action and adventure! He had said to Governor
Dinwiddie, "For my own part I can answer that I have a constitution
hardy enough to encounter and undergo the most severe trials, and I
flatter myself resolution to face what any man dares,--as I shall
prove when it comes to the test."

France refused to surrender her claim. The courtly old chevalier
abated nothing of his punctilious courtesy when he received the
youthful ambassador--doubtless bronzed and travel-soiled. He said,
very politely, "I am here by the orders of my General, and I entreat
you, Sir, not to doubt one moment but that I am determined to
conform myself to them with all exactness and resolution that can
be expected from the best officer." So, in 1754, Dinwiddie sent the
young major back again--this time at the head of some soldiers. In
writing to the other governors for men, he says, "I sent a Gent: to
the Place by whom I know the Truth." A large force of the French
appearing, "The Gent" (Major Washington) was compelled to surrender
and, politely bowed out by the old chevalier, permitted to return to
Virginia.

This bitter experience had not the effect of discouraging
Washington. It only made him long for another chance, with another
result. He had written lightly to Governor Dinwiddie, as if he were
arranging a tournament, "We have prepared a charming field for an
encounter." It is even said that he added, "I know no music so
pleasing as the whistling of Bullets." This was repeated to George
the Second. "He would not say so," said the soldier-king, "had he
been used to many!" Years afterward Washington was reminded of this
incident, and he thoughtfully replied, "If I said so, it was when I
was young!"

His mother, foreseeing the tendency of all these events, had
bitterly opposed his last disastrous expedition. He was a man of
independent fortune, and had declined remuneration for his services
as he afterwards declined all pay during the years he served in the
war of the Revolution. She wished him to live on his own estate as
became a country gentleman. Her opposition to his fighting against
the English crown was not one whit greater than her opposition to
his fighting for the crown. The word "loyal" was a shifting quantity
in her time, meaning one thing to-day and another to-morrow! The
peril and the hardship were the same in either case.

The first time that he set forth for the frontier his mother almost
succumbed. "Oh, this fighting and killing!" she exclaimed, as she
entreated him not to go. When convinced that she must sacrifice
herself to his duty to his country she became calm. Laying her hand
upon his shoulder, she said, solemnly: "God is our sure trust.
To Him I commend you." She thus unconsciously provided him with
an unanswerable argument for another time. When General Braddock
offered him a place on his staff she drove to Mount Vernon to
entreat him not to accept the honor. "The God to whom you commended
me, Madam, when I set out on a more perilous errand, defended me
from all harm, and I trust he will do so now," was the reply.

[Illustration: General Braddock.]

When the news of Braddock's defeat and the dreadful slaughter of
his army reached Fredericksburg the anxious mother was forced to
wait twelve days before she could be assured of her son's safety.
In a long, calm letter he tells her of all his dangers and his own
wonderful escape, with four bullets through his coat and two horses
shot under him. He tells her, too, of an illness which confined him
in a wagon for more than ten days; how he was not half recovered at
the time of the fight; how he must halt and rest often upon his way
home to Mount Vernon, which he could scarce hope to leave before
September; how he was, "Honored Madam," her most dutiful son.

She drove to Mount Vernon to meet him, and warmly entreated him to
leave the service forever, urging the loss of health and fortune
should he remain in it. He had no answer then, but after she was at
home she received his final word.

     "HONORED MADAM: If it is in my power to avoid going to Ohio
     again, I shall; but if the command is pressed upon me by the
     general voice of the country, and offered upon such terms as
     cannot be objected against, it would reflect dishonor upon me
     to refuse it, and that, I am sure must, or ought, to give you
     greater uneasiness than my going in an honorable command. Upon
     no other terms will I accept it."

The code of manners which ruled Virginia in the eighteenth century
forbade familiarity or the discussion of personalities. Washington's
letters to "Honored Madam," as he always addressed his mother,
relate mainly to important public events. Nothing is told of his
ups and downs, which he seems to have had in common with ordinary
mortals; of the envious slanderers who strove to undermine him in
the estimation of the governor; still less of his repulse by the
father of Miss Mary Cary who curtly refused him his daughter's
hand for the reason that she was "accustomed to riding in her own
carriage" and therefore above Virginia's young major. Bishop Meade
says that this lady, afterwards the wife of Edward Ambler, was in
the throng of applauding citizens when Washington passed through
Williamsburg at the head of the American army. He recognized her,
and gallantly waved his sword to her, whereupon she fainted. Nobody
knows that she ever wished to accept Major Washington. Had he waited
until 1753, her prudent father could have urged no objection to the
handsome young lover. In 1752 Lawrence Washington died, directing
in his will, in case of the demise of his wife without issue, the
estate at Mount Vernon should become the property of his brother
George. Within the year the young major received this legacy.

He seems to have been--for him--very faithful to an early dream. If
he cherished, as he doubtless did, hopes of winning his "Lowland
Beauty," she now put an end to his dream by marrying, in 1753,
Henry Lee of Stafford; and it may be remembered that it was in
this year, and only one month before her marriage, that he sought
the governor's permission to bear a message of remonstrance to the
Chevalier de St. Pierre. Like a wise soldier he knew when he was
defeated and retreated accordingly.

[Illustration: MOUNT VERNON.]

He did not marry until 1759; but it is not to be supposed that
his heart was breaking all these six years for Miss Mary Cary or
for the lovely Lucy Grymes, the "Lowland Beauty." Do we not know of
Miss Mary Philipse, whose father's manor-house may still be seen on
the Hudson? Washington Irving thinks she could not have refused him,
that he "rode away" before he had "made sufficient approaches in his
siege of the lady's heart to warrant a summons of surrender."

However this may be, all went well with the parties to the drama in
Virginia. The "Lowland Beauty" was the wife of one of Virginia's
honored sons, and the mother of "Light-horse Harry" Lee. Perfect
happiness was only waiting a few necessary preliminary events to
crown the young soldier's life with joy, in the person of the
fascinating widow, Martha Custis, who, according to old Bishop
Meade (who relished an innocent bit of gossip), resembled Miss
Cary as one twin-sister does another. He resigned his position as
commander-in-chief of the Virginia forces, and reasonably looked
forward to a life of calm content in his home on the right bank of
the Potomac.

Washington had always, his rebuffs to the contrary nevertheless,
flattered himself that he could "get along" with the ladies.
There was never a moment that some "Faire Mayde" was not well to
the fore, and it is known that he offered his heart and sword to
three,--Mary Cary, Lucy Grymes, and Mary Philipse. With the latter
he acknowledged that he had been too hasty. He thought things might
have resulted differently if he had "waited until ye ladye was in ye
mood."

Two years later he repeated his imprudence. Mr. Tony Weller had not
then been born, and there was nobody to bid him beware. He paid
an afternoon call, fell in love in an hour, and stayed on and on
until he was accepted. In a few days we find this entry in his cash
account, "One Engagement Ring, £2, 16s., 0d."

Mrs. Custis felt a little shy in announcing so hasty an engagement
to her friends, "My dear, the truth is my estate is getting in a bad
way, and I need a man to look after it."

The estate was large. She owned fifteen thousand acres of land, many
city lots, two hundred negroes, and money besides,--a great fortune
in colonial days. He had just returned from a brilliant campaign;
was gallant, young, and handsome; was just elected member of the
House of Burgesses; and was master of a fair domain on the right
bank of the Potomac, and so "ye ladye" found herself "in ye mood."

When he married the beautiful, rich widow, his mother was exultant.
Now he was safe! All the killing and fighting were over and done
with. He was to live near her at Mount Vernon. She was now fifty-two
years old, and was going to enjoy a serene and happy old age at
last. She wrote her brother, "I have had a great deal of trouble
about George, but it is all over now."

[Illustration: St. Peter's Church, in which George Washington was
married.]

She had a long season of busy home life, happy when she might be
in the happiness of her children. Her warrior son was behaving at
last as became a dignified country gentleman. But Fate was only
preparing him for future greatness. In the administration of his
large estate, and in the county and provincial business, he was
acquiring the rare skill in reading and managing men, for which he
became so remarkable. But of this he was totally unconscious. He
had small ambitions. He was proposing himself to the electors of
Frederick County, having "an easy and creditable Poll," cheerfully
paying his self-imposed assessment of thirty-nine pounds and ten
shillings besides "cyder and dinner" for his constituency. He was
attending the Annapolis races; going down to Williamsburg for the
assembly with Mrs. Washington and Miss Custis; loading his wagons
to provision his family and Colonel Bassett's on a visit "to try
the waters of the warm springs," much exercised lest Jack Custis
were premature in winning the affections of Miss Calvert (for Jack
was only eighteen, had been "fickle, and might wound the young
lady"); nay, he was beating his sword into a ploughshare, his spear
into a pruning-hook, planting May-Duke cherries and guelder-roses,
and lamenting "Rust in the wheat and Drought in the Corn crop."
Moreover, he was writing letters to England, giving orders for
all sorts of foreign elegancies, for his own wear and that of Madam
Washington and her children. Let us copy a summer order sent to
London in 1761.

[Illustration: Williamsburg.]

[Illustration: MARTHA CUSTIS.]

For his use the great man wants "a superfine velvet suit with
garters for the breeches; pumps, riding-gloves, worked ruffles
at twenty shillings a pair; housings of fine cloth edged with
embroidery, plain clothes with gold or silver buttons!" For
Mrs. Washington he orders "a salmon-colored tabby velvet with
satin flowers; ruffles of Brussels lace or point, to cost twenty
pounds; fine silk hose, white and black satin shoes; six pairs of
mitts; six pairs of best kid gloves; one dozen most fashionable
pocket-handkerchiefs; one dozen knots and breast-knots; real miniken
(very small) pins and hairpins; a puckered petticoat; six pounds of
perfumed powder; handsome breast flowers (_bouquets de corsage_) and
some sugar candy."

I have not room for Master Custis's outfit at eight years old, nor
that of Master Custis's liveried servant of fourteen years old, but
I cannot omit the delightful order for little "Miss Custis, six
years old," namely, "A coat of fashionable silk, with bib apron,
ruffles and lace tucker; four fashionable dresses of long lawn; fine
cambric frocks; a satin capuchin hat and neckatees; satin shoes and
white kid gloves; silver shoe-buckles; sleeve-buttons, aigrettes;
six thousand pins, large and short and minikin; a fashionable
dressed doll to cost a guinea; gingerbread, toys, sugar images and
comfits; a Bible and prayer-book; and one very good spinet, to be
made by Mr. Plinius, harpsichord maker, in South Audley street,
Grosvenor square, with a good assortment of spare strings." Not too
much, assuredly, for the little beauty, but not Spartan simplicity
nevertheless.

Six years later, it is recorded that "the Fair Sex, laying aside the
fashionable ornaments of England, exulted, with patriotic pride, in
appearing dressed with the produce of their own looms."

CHAPTER XVIII

IN AND AROUND FREDERICKSBURG

The origin of the names of the estates in the Northern Neck can
easily be traced. A few were Indian: "Quantico," "Occoquan,"
"Monacan," "Chappawamsic," "Chotank." Many were English:
"Stratford," "Wakefield," "Marlboro," "Chatham," "Gunston Hall,"
"Mount Vernon," "Ravensworth," "Blenheim," "Marmion,"--the latter,
of course, not named for Scott's fictitious hero (seeing that Sir
Walter had not yet been born), but, doubtless, by some emigrant of
Lincolnshire descent, in honor of Sir Robert de Marmion, who "came
over with the Conqueror," and was granted a manor in Lincolnshire.
"Chantilly" was thus named by Richard Henry Lee, after the beautiful
chateau and grounds of the Prince Condé, near Paris.

Mount Vernon was not too distant to be in Mary Washington's
neighborhood. She had but to cross the neck of land to the Potomac,
and a pleasant sail would bring her to the little wharf at Mount
Vernon--just where we, patriotic pilgrims, so often now land to
render our pious homage to the sacred homestead.

Within visiting distance of Mount Vernon was the "Chippawamsic"
plantation, at which lived another widow, rich, young, and
beautiful,--Ann Mason, the mother of George Mason, the patriot and
statesman, author of the Virginia Bill of Rights (the first complete
formula of the civil and political rights of man ever promulgated)
and author of the Virginia constitution of 1776, the first written
constitution of government ever adopted by a free people.

No one who studies the peculiar characteristics of Virginians of
this period can doubt that both these young widows were sought by
many suitors. The zeal with which men made haste to fill the places
of departed wives was something marvellous! Samuel Washington was
married five times, and one instance is recorded of a colonial
dame in the best society who had six husbands! The early marriage
of widows was the more desirable because of the outlying estates
which required management. Martha Custis gave this as excuse for
her prompt acceptance of Colonel Washington. But Ann Mason and Mary
Washington never married again. Each possessed great executive
ability, as well as unusual personal and intellectual gifts. Each
elected to devote those gifts to her children. Each was the mother
of a great patriot. And it is altogether probable that each one was
the devoted friend of the other, and that the close friendship
between the two Georges was inherited from their parents. Another
Ann Mason left letters and records which give us a hint of the
belongings of a Virginia housewife of her day. She enumerates
among her daughter's expenses prices paid for shoes with wooden
heels, hoop petticoats, and linen. George Mason of "Gunston Hall,"
the greatest, perhaps, of all the statesmen in an age of great
statesmen, remembered the furniture of his mother's bedroom. In it
was a large chest of drawers--a veritable high-boy![6] Three long
drawers at the bottom contained children's garments, in which the
children might rummage. Above these and the whole length of the
case were the gown-drawer, the cap-drawer, the shirt-drawer, the
jacket-drawer; above these a series of drawers always kept locked,
containing gauzes, laces, and jewels of value--ten or twelve
drawers in all! Then there were two large, deep closets, one on
each side of the recess afforded by a spacious stack of chimneys,
one for household linen, the other "the mistress's closet," which
last contained a well-remembered article, a small green horsewhip,
so often successfully applied to unruly children that they dubbed
it "the green Doctor." George Mason remembered other things in
connection with this splendid woman. She gathered her children
around her knees morning and evening to "say their prayers." She
was a lovely woman, true to her friends, pious to her Maker, humane,
prudent, tender, charming:--

    "Free from her sex's smallest faults,
    And fair as womankind can be."

  [6] "Life of George Mason," by Kate Mason Rowland.

Both these Ann Masons--the wife of the statesman and her
mother-in-law--lived and died near Mary Washington's home before
1773. Both were brilliant women, with personal charm and amiable
dispositions.

Near the Masons, at "Marlboro," lived John Mercer, a lawyer of
fine talents and attainments, and owner of one of the best private
libraries in the colony. Virginia bibliophiles still boast in their
collections some of his books containing his heraldic book-plate.
There was a George in his family, one year younger than George
Washington. Their homes were just sixteen miles apart--a mere
nothing of distance, as neighborhoods were reckoned in those
days--and both in Overwharton parish. The Mercers were lifelong
friends of Mary Washington. General Mercer died in her grandson's
arms. Judge James Mercer wrote her will.

Then, not far from John Mercer's, lived one of the largest landed
proprietors in Stafford, a prominent burgess and planter of his day,
Raleigh Travers--of Sir Walter Raleigh's family--and married to
Mary Washington's half-sister, Hannah Ball. They were founders of
one of Virginia's great families, "distinguished in later years for
breeding, learning, and eloquence." Two miles from "Marlboro" lived
one of their daughters, Sarah, married to Colonel Peter Daniel, of
the "Crow's Nest."

Then came "Boscobel," the residence of Thomas Fitzhugh, the
father of a family of interesting young people. Susannah Fitzhugh
still smiles to us from these pages in her rich robe over a pearl
embroidered skirt and bodice of white satin, with a necklace of
pearls festooned over her fair bodice.

She was just three years younger than her beautiful cousin
Elizabeth, who lived at "Belle-Air" (her mother was Alice Thornton),
and whose portrait, painted by Hesselius, presents the fashionable
dress of her day. The gown is of fawn color, square corsage, elbow
sleeves with lace ruffles (like Susannah's), the hair carried
smoothly back from her brows, piled high over a cushion, and dressed
with strings of pearls.

The Fitzhughs did not quite "own the earth" in their region,--Lord
Fairfax did that,--but they owned a goodly portion of it: "Eagle's
Nest" in Stafford County, "Somerset" in King George, "Boscobel,"
"Belle-Air," and "Chatham" in Stafford, "Ravensworth" in Fairfax.
At the latter General Custis Lee, an honored descendant of this
honored race, sits to-day under the trees his fathers planted. In
the Fitzhugh pedigree the Thorntons crop up again and again. One
may sink a mine in any Virginia genealogy and he will encounter the
names of all these neighbors of Mary Washington.

At "Salvington" lived the Seldens, to whom Mary Washington was bound
by ties of close kindred. Mary Ball, daughter of Major James Ball
of "Bewdley," in whose arms Mary Washington had hastened to place
her son George when one month old, had married John Selden. For his
second wife he chose her first cousin, Sarah Ball, whose tombstone
may be seen to-day in the woods a mile from Lancaster court-house.

Later, a Samuel Selden married Mary Thompson Mason (she of the
wooden-heeled shoes and hoop petticoat), famous for her beauty, as
was her mother before her. The second wife of Samuel Selden was
Ann Mercer. Many of the descendants of these women inherited great
beauty. Even a little drop of their blood suffices to endow many a
Virginia woman of to-day.

At "Cleve," on the Rappahannock, lived Charles Carter, and thither
"Light-horse Harry" Lee went for his sweet wife Anne. Charles
Carter's father, Robert, the mighty man of Lancaster,--"King"
Carter,--died in the year George Washington was born. He had built
Christ Church, where Mary Washington was possibly baptized, for her
father lived near the church. King Carter owned 300,000 acres of
land, 1000 slaves, £10,000 in money. The cattle on a thousand hills
were his. He left many children, all of whom he was able to enrich,
and many of whom distinguished themselves in things better than
riches.

[Illustration: "Light-horse Harry" Lee.]

"Cleve," with its octagon front, is still in good preservation, and
is a fine example of the early Georgian manor-house, having been
built early in the eighteenth century. An excellent portrait of its
builder, Charles Carter, looks down to-day upon his descendants who
still own and live in the mansion.

[Illustration: Governor Spotswood.]

Four miles below Mary Washington's home was "Newpost," the ancestral
home of John Spotswood, a son of Governor Spotswood. His two sons,
Alexander and John, were destined to serve in the Revolutionary War,
one as a general, the other a captain, and to mingle the Spotswood
with the Washington blood by marriage with one of Mary Washington's
granddaughters. They came honestly by their dash and spirit through
the Spotswoods.

It appears that the _Virginia Gazette_ of 1737 lent its columns to
an article against Governor Spotswood, written by a Colonel Edwin
Conway, upbraiding the governor for delaying to turn over the arms
intended for Brunswick County. The article was entitled, "A Hint to
discover a few of Colonel Spotswood's Proceedings." A few days after
its appearance the _Gazette_ printed the following:--

"AN HINT FOR A HINT

     "MR. PARKS,

     "I have learnt in my Book, so far as to be able to read plain
     English, when printed in your Papers, and finding in one of them
     my Papa's name often mentioned by a scolding man called Edwin
     Conway, I asked my Papa whether he did not design to answer him.
     But he replied: 'No child, this is a better Contest for you that
     are a school Boy, for it will not become me to answer every
     Fool in his Folly, as the lesson you learned the other day of
     the Lion and the Ass may teach you.' This Hint being given me,
     I copied out the said Lesson and now send you the same for my
     answer to Mr. Conway's Hint from

     "Sir, your Humble Servant
     "John Spotswood."

     "FEB. 10.
     A LION AND AN ASS

     "An Ass was so hardy once as to fall a mopping and Braying at a
     Lion. The Lion began at first to show his Teeth, and to stomach
     the Affront. But upon second Thoughts, Well, says he, Jeer on
     and be an Ass still, take notice only by the way that it is the
     Baseness of your Character that has saved your Carcass."

There was a famous beauty in the family of Spotswood who shared, as
we shall see hereafter, in the spirit of her race. This was Kate!
She wore, on her high days and holidays, fawn-colored satin, looped
over a blue satin petticoat, square bodice and elbow sleeves and
ruffles; and her feet, which were extremely small and beautifully
formed, were shod in blue satin shoes, with silver buckles. Age did
not wither this haughty beauty. Her granddaughter remembered her
as she combed a wealth of silver hair, a servant the while holding
before her a mirror.

Not far from "Pine Grove" was "Traveller's Rest," the most beautiful
and significant of all the ambitious names of stately mansions on
the Rappahannock. "It should be called," said Byrd Willis, "Saint's
Rest--for only _they_ ever go there!" "Traveller's Rest" was part
of the "200 acres of land on ye freshes of Rappahannock River"
bequeathed to Mary Ball by her father, Joseph Ball. The family
of Gray long lived at "Traveller's Rest," and thither in after
years, Atcheson Gray brought his child-wife Catherine Willis, the
great-granddaughter of Mary Washington.

These are only a few of the country gentry among whom Mary
Washington lived, and to whom she was related. Time would fail to
describe them all--Colonel Thomas Ludwell Lee of "Berry Hill";
"Bellevue" and its occupants; the Brent family at Richland, in
Stafford County; "Belle Plaine," the residence of the Waugh family.
All these places were in a space of eight or ten square miles, and
from generation to generation the sons looked upon the daughters of
their neighbor cousins, and found them fair, until the families were
knit together in every conceivable degree of kinship.

In the town of Fredericksburg Mary Washington had near relatives
and friends. Roger Gregory, the merry-hearted, had married a
woman as merry-hearted as himself,--Mildred Washington, George
Washington's aunt and godmother. Foremost at the races, and first
on all occasions of mirth, was Roger Gregory. It has been said that
Augustine Washington was optimistic in his temperament, and, like
his sister Mildred, conspicuous for cheerfulness--also that from
him Betty Washington and her brothers inherited their love for gay,
social life--that Mary Washington was always serious, and in her
later years almost tragic. She surely had enough, poor lady, to make
her so.

Roger Gregory had died just before George Washington was
born, and his widow married Henry Willis of "Willis's Hill,"
Fredericksburg, afterwards "Marye's Heights," where the fierce
battle of the Civil War was fought. Mildred's three charming Gregory
girls were prominent figures as they trod the streets of old
Fredericksburg--the streets named after the Royal Princes--clad in
their long cloaks and gypsy bonnets tied under their chins. They
were soon absorbed by a trio of Thorntons, and their mother Mildred
left alone with her one son, Lewis Willis. "Old Henry Willis," his
father, had married three times, boasting that he "had courted
his wives as maids and married them as widows." He was a rich old
fellow with a long pedigree and gorgeous coat of arms on his coach
panels. Mildred Gregory had wept so bitterly when the death of his
first wife was announced to her, that a friend expressed surprise.
"Mildred Willis," she explained, "was my namesake and cousin,
and I grieve to lose her. But that is not the worst of it! I am
perfectly sure old Henry Willis will soon be coming down to see
me--and I don't know what in the world I can do with him!" Would it
be sinister to suggest that the lady was already won? It appears
she knew her man. Had he not been her suitor in her girlhood? His
grandson says, "In one little month he sat himself at her door and
commenced a regular siege: and in less than two months after his
wife's death he married her."

If the shade of this wife was permitted to be a troubled witness of
her recent husband's marriage, she could not complain. She had been
herself the widow, Brown, only for one month before she had married
Henry Willis.

This Colonel Henry Willis was known as "The Founder of
Fredericksburg." Colonel William Byrd visited him immediately after
his marriage with Mildred Gregory, and spoke of him as "the top man
of the place." Mildred Washington (Widow Gregory) had one son by her
marriage with Henry Willis. She named him for her first husband--her
first love--Lewis. He was two years younger than his cousin, George
Washington. The boys attended the same school, and were companions
and playmates. Lewis Willis often spoke of George Washington's
industry and assiduity at school as very remarkable. While his
brother Samuel, Lewis Willis, and "the other boys at playtime were
at bandy or other games, George was behind a door cyphering. But
one day he astonished the school by romping with one of the large
girls--a thing so unusual that it excited no little comment among
the other lads."

Through the Willis family Mary Washington's descendants became
allied to the Bonapartes. The second child of Byrd C. Willis (son of
Lewis Willis) was Catherine. Her mother was the daughter of George
Lewis, Betty Washington's son. Thus Mary Washington was ancestress
of Catherine Willis, who at thirteen years of age married, and at
fourteen was a widow, having lost also her child. She accompanied
her parents to Pensacola, where she married Achille Murat,
ex-prince of Naples and nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte. She was very
beautiful--this child--twice married and a mother before she was
fifteen.

The Murat and Bonaparte families at first opposed the marriage,
but all opposition vanished when they learned that she was nearly
related to General Washington.

[Illustration: Prince Murat.]

It is said that she was well received abroad: "In London she stood
up for her country and fought its battles in all companies." She was
once accompanied by John Randolph of Roanoke and other distinguished
personages on a visit to the London art galleries. In one of these
the portraits of Washington and Napoleon hung side by side, and
Randolph (who was always dramatic), pointing to the pictures,
said, "Before us we have Napoleon and Washington, one the founder
of a mighty Empire, the other of a great Republic." Then turning
to Catherine with extended hand, "Behold!" he exclaimed, "in the
Princess Murat the niece of both--a distinction which she alone can
claim."

As the century neared its highest noon Fredericksburg became the
home of one and another of the men destined to earn immortal fame
in the Revolution. James Monroe lived there, whose hand, long since
mingled with the dust, has yet the power to stay the advance of
nations. Men of wealth secured the pleasant society all around by a
residence in the town. As many as ten coaches were wont to drive out
in company when the summer exodus to the springs set in.

There was a famous tailor in Fredericksburg who made the
lace-trimmed garments for these gentry,--William Paul, a Scotchman.
Hanging in his shop, was a handsome portrait of "my sailor
brother John" as he explained to his customers. Anon the tailor
died, and John came over to administer upon his estate. He found
friends--Colonel Willy Jones and Doctor Brooke--who aided him
materially in the first years of his life in Fredericksburg. In
gratitude to the former he assumed the name of "Jones," and the
latter he made surgeon of the _Bon Homme Richard_--for this was
John Paul Jones the great, the brilliant naval officer of our
Revolution. Congress gave him a commission and a ship, _The
Alfred_, and on board that ship he hoisted before uelphia, with his
own hands, the flag of freedom--the first time it was displayed.
He claimed and received the first salute the flag of the infant
Republic received from a foreign power. He served through the war,
and at his death was the senior officer of the United States navy.

CHAPTER XIX

SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS

The essential principles in the drama of human life are ever
the same although its outward aspect changes with changing
circumstances. But in some ages events develop more rapidly than in
others under the urgency of peculiar conditions.

In colonial Virginia the story was told over and over again before
the final fall of the curtain. Scenes shifted with wonderful
rapidity. The curtain, in mimic drama, is usually rung down at the
church door after the early or late wooing and marriage; but in
Virginia in the eighteenth century this was only the first in a
drama of five or more acts. The early death of the first bride left
a vacancy speedily filled by new and successive unions with new
associations and combinations. Five times was not an unusual number
for men to remarry.

This meant five wooings, five weddings, five "infairs," many births
(varying in number from one to twenty-six), five funerals,--all to
be included in thirty adult years more or less. Then, too, there
were five tombstones to be erected and as many epitaphs to be
composed--no two of which to be alike. One wife (usually the first)
almost exhausts the vocabulary of adoring affection, another's piety
is emphasized, another "lived peacably with her neighbors"; each one
was "as a wife dutiful." "Obedient" was a word dear to the colonial
husband.

We have no authority for supposing that the officiating clergyman
at a funeral was ever actually retained for the ensuing nuptials of
the bereaved. Initial steps in that direction were never taken in
Virginia until a husband or wife was well under the sod. Divorce
being unknown, unthinkable indeed, husbands and wives were united
in bonds indissoluble, until death did them part. But when it
did--why, then there was no reasonable cause for delay. It was not
at all unusual for the new husband to offer for probate the will
of his predecessor. Man in those days did not believe he was made
to mourn, at least not for maid or matron, nor that charming women
were created to weep in widow's weeds beyond the decent period of
two months. The little hands were firmly drawn from their pressure
upon the tearful eyes, tucked comfortably under a new, strong arm,
and the widow's little baronry stitched to a new sleeve. There were
exceptions, of course, but not many. When one of the husbands of
Mary Washington's charming nieces (the Gregory girls) lay mortally
ill, he looked up with anguish at the lovely young wife bending
over him, and implored her to keep herself for him. She readily
promised never again to marry, and kept her promise. Another, left a
widow, essayed to follow the sublime example of her sister. One of
the masterful Thorntons sued for twenty years, but won at last. The
statute of limitations in Cupid's court held for twenty years only
in colonial Virginia.

Writers of the period explain these multiplied marriages by
the necessity of a protector for every woman owning land to be
cultivated by negro slaves and indented servants, and on the other
hand the woful state of a large family of young children left
motherless at the mercy of those servants. The new master and the
new mother became a necessity.

It sometimes happened that the newly contracting parties had already
many children from the three or four previous marriages. These must
now be brought under one sheltering roof. The little army must
be restrained by strict government; hence the necessity for the
stern parental discipline of colonial times. "It is gratifying, my
dear," said an amiable patriarch, "to find that _your_ children,
_my_ children, and _our_ children can live so peacefully together,"
nobody knowing so well as the patriarch and the children at what
price the peace had been purchased.

Thus it can be easily seen how maddening an enterprise is the
attempt to trace Virginia relationships, and how we so often lose a
woman and give her over as dead to find her resurrected under a new
name. We once lost Mary Washington's sister Hannah (Ball) Travers.
She turned up at last as Mrs. Pearson! To sort and label and
classify Virginia cousins means nervous prostration. In the families
of Thornton, Carter, and their kin, it means more! Madness lies that
way!

The spinster of uncertain age, known irreverently as an "old maid,"
was a rare individual in colonial Virginia. We all know Colonel
Byrd's "Miss Thekky, mourning her virginity." We really cannot name
another.

When a good man, addressing himself to the compilation of family
records for his children, was constrained to admit that one was
unmarried, he made haste to declare that she "lived single by her
own choice." Colonel Byrd Willis says of his daughter Mary, "She is
unmarried--but by her own choice. It will be a fine fellow who can
tempt her to leave her home. She has not seen him yet!" He goes on
to enumerate her social triumphs. There had been a "Bouquet Ball,"
of which a certain commodore was made king. He chose Miss Mary
Willis, and bestowed upon her the bouquet. A foot-note informs us
that she isn't single any more! She has married the commodore!

[Illustration: Colonel Byrd.]

Stern as was the parental discipline of the time, the spirit of the
young men, who were accounted grown and marriageable at nineteen,
was in no wise broken or quenched. Many of them ran away from their
masters at the schools in England and Scotland, and their fathers'
agents had much ado to find and capture them again. The sons of John
Spotswood were lost in England for many months, but were back home
again in time to be gallant officers in the Revolution. And even
the conservative blood of the Washingtons was not strong enough
to temper that of the Willises, for Mildred Washington's grandson
"Jack" Willis ran away from school and joined a party to explore
the wilderness of Kentucky. They were attacked by Indians, and were
scattered; Jack escaped in a canoe, and was the _first white man_ to
descend the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. His father had sewed some
doubloons in his jacket, but he gave them to a man in New Orleans to
purchase clothing and food, and never again beheld his agent or the
doubloons or their equivalent. He worked his way in a sailing vessel
to New York, and _walked_ from New York to his home in Virginia,
arriving, like the Spotswood boys, just in time to enter the army
with his father and serve to its close. He was a son of Lewis
Willis, Washington's schoolmate.

About 1740 the importation of horses of the English racing stock
commenced, also the breeding of horses for racing. Between 1740 and
1775 are recorded the names of fifty imported horses and thirty
mares of note: Aristotle, Babraham, Bolton, Childers, Dabster,
Dottrell, Dimple, Fearnaught, Jolly Roger, Juniper, Justice, Merry
Tom, Sober John, Vampire, Whittington, Janus, Sterling, Valiant,
etc. Owners of these horses among Mary Washington's neighbors were
Roger Gregory, Colonel John Mercer of "Marlboro," Mr. Spotswood,
William Fitzhugh of "Chatham," all the Thorntons, and _later_
Colonel George Washington of Mount Vernon, who was a steward of
the Alexandria Jockey Club and ran his own horses there and at
Annapolis! There was a fine race-course at Fredericksburg, and
purses were won from ten to a hundred pounds. This, the prime
amusement in spring, summer, and autumn, was varied (alas!) by
cock-fights, wrestling-matches, and rough games, in which the common
people, as in England, participated, while the gentry looked on and
awarded prizes. But in the long winter evenings, neighbors gathered
for Christmas and other house-parties, indulged in the gentle art of
story-telling. Later, old Fredericksburg boasted a notable, peerless
raconteur, John Minor, but his stories were built upon Virginia's
legends; his home, "Hazel Hill," was the rendezvous of all the
neighbors, young and old, in quest of sympathy or counsel, or advice
in the honorable settlement of quarrels, or for a season of genial
companionship. Around the fireside at "Hazel Hill" the children
would gather for their own story-telling hour "between daylight and
dark," and there the immortal "B'rer Rabbit" appears, but not for
the first time, in the annals of colonial history, and her Serene
Highness, the "Tar Baby," held her nightly court.

Around the winter fireside in the old colonial houses, the children,
and their seniors as well, learned the folk-lore of their native
colony, for, young as was the new country, Virginia had already her
legends: the mystic light on the lake in the Dismal Swamp, where the
lost lovers paddled their ghostly canoe; the footprints of the Great
Spirit on the rocks near Richmond; the story of Maiden's Adventure
on the James River; the story of the Haunted House--the untenanted
mansion at Church Hill--untenanted for eight decades because the
unhappy spirit of a maiden tapped with her fan on the doors where
wedded couples slept, invoking curses upon love that had failed her;
of sweet Evelyn Byrd, who rested not under her monument at Westover,
but glided among the roses, wringing her hands in hopeless grief
for the loss of a mortal's love; and of the legend of the wonderful
curative spring just discovered in Greenbrier County (learned from
an old Indian of the tribe of the Shawnees)--how one of the great
braves had once been missed from the council-fires and been found in
a valley, weak and supine, binding the brows of an Indian maid with
ferns and flowers; how two arrows had sped by order of the Great
Spirit, one destined for the man, one for the maid; how the recreant
warrior had been slain by the one, but the other arrow had buried
itself in the earth and when withdrawn a great, white sulphur spring
had gushed forth; how the maiden was doomed to wander as long as the
stream flowed, and not until it ceased could her spirit be reunited
to that of her lover in the happy hunting-grounds; also how the body
of the slain warrior was laid towards the setting sun, and the form
of the sleeping giant might be clearly discerned despite the trees
that grew over it.

[Illustration: WESTOVER.]

And one more Indian legend is so charming that we may be forgiven
for perpetuating it on these pages, remembering that these are
genuine Indian legends which have never before been printed. This
last was the story of the Mocking-bird. How once long ago there were
no wars or fightings, or tomahawks or scalpings among the Indians.
They were at perfect peace under the smile of the Great Spirit.
And in this beautiful time those who watched at night could hear a
strange, sweet song sweeping over the hills and filling the valleys,
now swelling, now dying away to come again. This was the music of
all things; moon, stars, tides, and winds, moving in harmony. But at
last Okee, the Evil One, stirred the heart of the red man against
his brother, and the nations arrayed themselves in battle. From that
moment the song was heard no more. The Great Spirit, Kiwassa, knew
that his children bemoaned their loss, and he promised them the song
should not be lost forever. It would be found some day by some
brave--loftier, better, stronger, than all others.

It fell at last that a chieftain loved the daughter of a hostile
chief. Both were captured and burned at the stake. Both died
bravely, each comforting the other. After death the chief, because
he had been so brave, was given the body of a bird, and sent in
quest of the Lost Song. When he found it, and only then, could
all be forgiven and the spirits of the lovers be reunited in the
happy hunting-grounds. Since then the bird has travelled north,
south, east, west, and wherever it goes it learns the songs of
all creatures, learns and repeats them. But the hatchet is not
yet buried; the Lost Song not yet found. Imagination can supply
few pictures fairer than this: firelight playing on the attentive
faces of old cavaliers and matrons, young men and lovely maidens,
the centre their accomplished host, "the pink of a chivalric
gentleman," gallant, cultured, refined, and at his knees, in his
arms, and seated on his shoulders, happy children, not only those
of his house-party, but others among his neighbors who dropped in
especially for the children's hour.

It is evident that Mary Washington's social life must have been an
active one. At the weddings and the christenings of her large circle
of neighbors and kindred she was certainly present. But I doubt
whether she ever attended the races, "Fish Frys, and Barbecues," of
which her neighbors were so fond. Not that she ventured to express
disapproval of things with which the clergy found no fault, but she
was a strict economist of time, never wasting it on trifles. She
kept her own accounts, managed her own plantation, and kept a stern
watch on the overseers of her son's estates.

To do this, and at the same time fill her place in her large circle
of friends, whose relations with her warranted their coming at will
for long visits, required all the method and management of which she
was capable.

Besides the householders, with their sons and daughters, who
regularly exchanged visits with each other at least once or twice
annually, Virginia had also her class of impecunious bachelors,
whose practice was to visit from house to house, taking in all
the well-to-do families. Until the Revolution--when they had
something else to do--they represented the class of hangers-on to
wealth, known to-day as "the little brothers of the rich,"--very
nice, adaptable, agreeable gentlemen, whom everybody likes, and to
whom society is willing to give much, exacting little in return.
In pre-Revolutionary Virginia, however, they could and did give
something. They gathered the news from house to house, brought
letters and the northern papers; were intelligent couriers, in
short, who kept the planter well-advised of all political rumors.
They possessed certain social accomplishments, could carve fairy
baskets out of cherry stones, cut profile portraits to be laid on
a black background, and make and mend pens to perfection. "When
I was in Stafford County a month ago," says the tutor at "Nomini
Hall," "I met[7] Captain John Lee, a Gentleman who seems to copy the
character of Addison's Will Wimble. He was then just sallying out on
his Winter's Visits, and has got now so far as here; he stays, as
I am told, about eight or ten weeks in the yeare at his own House,
the remaining part he lives with his Waiting Man on his Friends."
Captain Lee, by the way, is further recorded as "a _distant_ cousin
of the Lees of Westmoreland."

  [7] Fithian's Diary.

In making these visits to the large country houses, young people
would naturally confer together and manage to meet those they knew
best and liked best. Thus it would sometimes happen (and who so
willing as the hosts?) that a large house-party would assemble
unheralded, and the house be filled with a merry company. "The usual
retinue," says General Maury, "at my wife's home was fifteen or more
well-trained servants when the house was full of company; and as
many as thirty or more of the family and friends daily dined there
together for weeks and months at a time." This was at Cleveland,
near Fredericksburg; and hospitality quite as generous ruled all the
homes in Mary Washington's neighborhood.

It sometimes happened that the capacity of the elastic house reached
its limit. On one such rare occasion a belated Presbyterian minister
alighted at the front gate and walked in with his baggage,--a pair
of well-worn saddle-bags. He was warmly welcomed, of course, but
the lady of the manor was in despair. Where could he sleep? Every
corner was full. One couldn't ask a clergyman to spend the night on
a settee in the passageway, nor lie upon a "pallet" of quilts on
the parlor floor. The children heard the troubled consultation as
to ways and means with their "Mammy," and were full of sympathy for
the homeless, unsheltered guest. The situation was still serious
when the household was summoned to family prayers. The clergyman--a
gaunt specimen with a beaklike nose and mournful voice--launched
into the one hundred and second Psalm, pouring out, as the pitying
children thought, his own soul in its homeless desolation. When he
reached the words, "I am like a pelican in the wilderness: I am like
an owl in the desert: I am as a sparrow alone upon the housetop,"
the exultant voice of the youngest little girl rang out, "_Mamma, he
can roost on the tester!_" One cannot wonder at this advice from a
hospitable man who had been literally "eaten out of house and home,"
"I advise my son to keep out of other people's houses, and keep
other people out of his own."

One can hardly imagine the care and labor involved in so much
entertaining. Nobody ever passed a house without calling; nobody
ever left it without refreshment for man and beast. Horses and
servants attended every visitor.

[Illustration: The Kitchen of Mount Vernon.]

Think of the quantity of food to be provided! And yet, a housewife's
_batterie de cuisine_ was of the simplest. The kitchen fireplace
held the iron pot for boiling the indispensable and much-respected
gammon of bacon (Virginia ham), and there were lidded ovens,
large and small, standing high on four feet, that coals might
burn brightly beneath them. There was a "skillet," with its ever
ascending incense from frying chickens and batter-cakes,--a
long-handled utensil with no feet at all, but resting upon the
portable, triangular "trevet,"--which, being light, could be thrust
into the very heart of the fire or drawn out on the fire-proof
dirt floor. There was a "hoe," known as a cooking utensil only in
Virginia, slanting before the coals for the thin hoe-cake of Indian
meal. In front stood the glory and pride of the kitchen,--the
spit, like two tall andirons with deeply serrated sides, on which
iron rods holding flesh and fowl could rest and be turned to roast
equally. An ample pan beneath caught the basting-butter and juices
of the meat. This spit held an exposed position, and has been known
to be robbed now and then by some unmannerly hound, or wandering
Caleb Balderstone, unable to resist such temptations. What would
the modern queen of the kitchen think of "a situation" involving
such trials,--her own wood often to be brought by herself, her
breakfast, including four or five kinds of bread (waffles, biscuit
thick and thin, batter-cakes, loaf bread), her poultry to be killed
and plucked by herself, her coffee to be roasted, fish scaled and
cleaned, meats cut from a carcass and trimmed, to say nothing of
cakes, puddings, and pies? And all this to be done for a perennial
house-party, with its footmen and maids!

True, the negro cook of colonial times had many
"kitchen-maids,"--her own children. But even with these her
achievements were almost supernatural. With her half-dozen utensils
she served a dinner that deserved--and _has_--immortality! "Old
Phyllis," the cook at "Blenheim," "Mammy Lucy" at Cleveland,
and many others have a high place in an old Virginian's Hall of
Fame,--his heart!

There was no lack of service in Mary Washington's day. The negro was
docile, affectionate, and quick to learn, at least these were the
characteristics of those employed in households. But even as late
as in Mary Ball's girlhood the negroes had no language intelligible
to their employers. One of the Lancaster clergymen, Mr. Bell,
writes that his congregation includes many "negroes, who cannot
understand my language nor I theirs." There is something infinitely
pathetic in this picture of the homeless savage in a strange land.
The African, finding himself not understood, made haste to acquire
the language spoken to him. His intimate association was with the
indented white men who labored with him, and he then and there
created a language distinctively known as his own, to which he still
clings and which contains, I believe, no word that can be traced
to African origin--at least this is true of the Virginia negro's
dialect. "It appears that the indented servants from whom he learned
must have come from Warwickshire. The negro dialect can be found in
Shakespeare;[8] for instance, 'trash,' afterwards accentuated by
'po' white trash.' 'What trash is Rome, what rubbish, what offal,'
says Cassius. 'They are trash,' says Iago, etc. 'Terrify,' for
'aggravate' or 'destroy,' is Warwickshire; also 'his'n,' 'her'n,'
for 'his' and 'hers'; 'howsomdever,' for 'however' (_Venus and
Adonis_); 'gawm,' for 'soiling hands or face'; 'yarbs,' for 'herbs';
'make,' for 'kindle' (make the fire); 'like,' for 'likely' (I was
like to fall); 'peart,' for 'lively'; 'traipsing,' for 'walking
idly about'; 'ooman,' for 'woman'; 'sallit,' for 'green stuff';
'yourn,' for 'yours.' These and many more negro words are taken from
Warwickshire dialect, and are to be found in Shakespeare." Upon
this root the negro grafted, without regard to its meaning, any and
every high-sounding word which he happened to hear, and which seemed
to him magnificent. The meaning signified so little that he never
deemed it necessary to ask it. The result was, to say the least,
picturesque.

  [8] "Warwickshire Dialect," by Mr. Appleton Morgan.

The church being his earliest school, he was soon impressed by the
names of certain of the Hebrew Patriarchs, and the first names
with which he endowed his children were Aaron, Moses, Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob, and Isaiah. Why he scorned Jeremiah, Nahum, Ezekiel,
and others, is best known to himself. Later, he caught from
the companionship of the schoolboys the names of the heroes of
antiquity, giving decided preference to Pompey and Cæsar. There
was a Josephus in a Fredericksburg family, differentiated in the
next generation by _Jim_sephus. Later still his fancy was caught
by the shining lights of the Revolution. A goodly crop followed of
Washingtons, Jeffersons, and Randolphs. There was even a Rochambeau,
unhappily corrupted into "Rushingbow."

While the queen of the nursery was an ebony incarnation of faithful
love, tenderness, and patience, she never surrendered her sceptre
until her charges were actually married. She never condescended to
be taught by those to whom she had herself been teacher. "Mammy,"
exclaimed a little Fredericksburg maiden of ten, "what do you think?
I have found an ungrammatical error in the Bible." "Kill him, honey!
Kill him quick! He'll eat up the pretty book-mark!" exclaimed the
old nurse, too proud to acknowledge her ignorance of the beautiful
new word.

"Po' white trash" was a term applied to all householders who could
not afford style in living and equipage, notably to those (and they
were few) who owned no slaves. There was no squalor, no pauperism
in Virginia in 1740 and later. Even indented servants prospered
sufficiently after a few years to send to England for servants of
their own. The convict labor of Virginia was mainly employed in the
fields and on the boats; and it is recorded that these convicts were
short-lived, the hot sun giving them always a "seasoning fever"
which often proved fatal. Of course political convicts were of a
different class, and when found to have been educated were employed
as teachers.

Entirely distinct from these was the class who were entitled to
write "Gent" after their names, as their English fathers had done.
"The term 'Gentleman,'" says Mr. Lyon Tyler, "assumed a very general
meaning in the succeeding century, but its signification at this
time was perhaps what Sir Edward Coke ascribed to it, _qui gerit
arma_, one who bears arms."

It was not the custom then as now to address a man without some
prefix. He was "Squire" if he was a member of the King's Council;
"Gent" if he bore arms, otherwise "Mr."; and if in humble life,
"Goodman." Women of any degree were "Mistress"--Mistress Evelyn
Byrd, Mistress Mary Stagg; in middle class, "Dame"; of gentle blood,
"Madam" and "Lady." In the _Virginia Gazette_ "Lady Washington's"
comings and goings are duly chronicled. Even now the Virginian loves
to endow his fellows with a title, and risks "Colonel" in default of
a better.

The Virginia woman, at the period of which we write, felt keenly
the disadvantage of her remoteness from that centre of knowledge
and courtly usage, the mother country. Men who were educated abroad
began to accumulate books for ambitious libraries, but these books
were largely in the Latin tongue, and the Virginia girl had not
the courage of Queen Elizabeth, and did not address herself to
the study of the Classics that she might "match the men." She had
good, strong sense, and the faculty known as mother-wit, but I
am afraid I must confess she had small learning. What time had
she--married at fifteen--to read or study? As to Mary Washington,
her library, for ought we know to the contrary, seems to have begun
and ended with "Sir Matthew Hale." In 1736 Mr. Parks published his
_Virginia Gazette_ for fifteen shillings a year. Beverley & Stith
had published their "Histories," and William Byrd his "Pamphlets."
These she may have read; but it is extremely doubtful whether she
read the poems and other society doings, records of races and other
happenings, which appeared weekly in the _Gazette_, or approved of
seeing the names, qualities, and fortunes of the ladies recorded as
frankly as at the present day.

These ladies were the daughters, sisters, and wives of men of
brilliant genius and attainments. They could hardly sustain such
relations with such men without becoming themselves superior women.
Dr. Archibald Alexander knew Mrs. Meredith, the sister of Patrick
Henry. "She was, in my judgment, as eloquent as her brother;
nor have I ever met with a lady who equalled her in powers of
conversation."

Something then was said of a woman besides what she wore, whither
she went, and whom she entertained at dinner and tea. There were
women of whom the _Gazette_ kindly said they possessed "amiable
sweetness of disposition, joined with the finest intellectual
attainments," but I am constrained to challenge the latter if it
presupposes the attainments to have been literary. How could it
be otherwise when Thomas Jefferson prescribed that his daughter's
time should be divided between dancing, music, and French? And when
Charles Carter, of "Cleve," after ordering that his sons, John and
Landon, then in England, should master languages, mathematics,
philosophy, dancing, fencing, law, adds, "And whereas the
extravagance of the present age, and the flattering hopes of great
Fortunes may be a temptation to run into unnecessary Expenses of
Living, it is my positive Will and desire that my Daughters may be
maintained with great frugality, and _taught to dance_."

The young women whose brothers had tutors at home were fortunate.
They learned to "read and write and cypher." Then there were men

    "Glad to turn itinerant
    to stroll and teach from town to town"

and from plantation to plantation. From these the young ladies had
their music and dancing lessons. Their letters are very stilted and
polite,--poor dears,--but "intellectual attainments" do not appear
in many of them. They usually end with laying upon a bad pen all
the blame for all shortcomings. "Excuse bad spelling and writing,
for I have ane ill pen," said Jeanie Deans. The colonial ladies made
no apology for their phonetic spelling. Was not that all right?
If "hir" did not spell "her," pray, what did it spell? "Bin" was
surely more reasonable than "been"; "tha" than "they." There were
"Dixonaries" in the closets along with the Latin books, but they
were troublesome, and not always to be trusted. Dr. Johnson--if
we can imagine him as such--was in their day a sweet babe in long
clothes!

When the slow-sailing ships arrived from England one might have the
fashions of six months ago.

English cousins sometimes came over, and very nervous were the
Virginia girls lest the Western _ménage_ should be found to be
behind the times. Among old letters a certain Miss Ambler appears
to have been dreadfully aggrieved by the criticisms of some English
cousins. "Everything we eat, drink or wear seems to be wrong--the
rooms are too cold or too hot; the wood is not laid _straight_
on the Andirons:--and even poor Aunt Dilsey does not escape
censure,--dear Aunt Dilsey whom we all so love! Actually, Aunt
Dilsey came to me in tears, and said she had been ordered to pull
down her bandanna so that none of her wool would show in the back of
her poor neck, and to draw cotton gloves over her hands for they
were 'so black and nasty'!"

[Illustration: James Monroe.]

Many of the Virginians, at that early day, were advocates of negro
emancipation. James Monroe, who lived in Fredericksburg, was the
great friend of emancipation. Monrovia, the capital of Liberia,
was named in his honor. It was a citizen of Fredericksburg, in
1782, who introduced into the body, which had replaced the House
of Burgesses, the first resolution for the emancipation of negroes
and for the prohibition of the slave trade ever offered in America.
General John Minor, of "Hazel Hill," was the author and advocate of
this measure. In 1792 the first-published utterance against slavery
in this country appeared in a tract entitled, "Slavery Inconsistent
with Justice and Good Policy," by the Rev. David Rice. When estates
were settled large numbers of negroes were manumitted by common
consent and sent to Liberia.

We have reason to believe that house servants were treated with the
affectionate consideration they deserved. Mr. Custis distinctly
declares that this was true of Mary Washington,--that she was always
kind to her servants, and considerate of their comfort. The man
or woman who treated servants with severity was outlawed from the
friendship and respect of his neighbors, many of whom at a later day
freed their slaves and left them land to live upon.

CHAPTER XX

A TRUE PORTRAIT OF MARY WASHINGTON

     "The search-lights of history have unfolded to us nothing of
     interest touching Mrs. Washington from the time of the French
     and Indian War until the awakening of the great Revolution.
     Fortunate is the woman, said the Greek of old, of whom neither
     good nor ill is spoken. And, curtained away from the world, the
     matron lived under the great Taskmaster's eye, in the bosom of
     that home, by whose fruit ye shall know her. Many years had
     rolled by since she settled at 'Pine Grove,' with her first-born
     son. And, while she lived in retirement and in silence, how had
     great events rushed forward; how had the child become the father
     to the man? Grave tasks were his while yet a boy. Step by step
     he ascended the ladder of honor and usefulness. A surveyer for
     Lord Fairfax at sixteen, crossing the Blue Ridge on horseback,
     traversing the wilderness to the bounds of civilization, getting
     six pistoles, or something more than $7 a day, for his efficient
     service, while in leisure hours he read under the guidance of
     Lord Fairfax, the history of England, the 'Spectator,' and other
     books of that high order; appointed public surveyor a little
     later, and then adjutant-general of Virginia troops at nineteen;
     managing a great plantation and training the Militia of the
     State; at twenty-one penetrating the Northwest as a negotiator
     for Governor Dinwiddie, and fighting the French; aide-de-camp
     to Braddock, a little later, in his ill-starred expedition,
     suffering defeat; with the victor at Fort Duquesne, where
     Pittsburg now stands, at twenty-six; member of the Virginia
     House of Burgesses at twenty-seven; ever onward, ever upward,
     until, as the great Revolution broke out, we find him journeying
     to Philadelphia as a delegate to the Continental Congress, and
     presently appearing on the field of Boston as commander-in-chief
     of the Continental army!"

Thus spoke, out of the fulness of his heart, Senator Daniel at the
unveiling of the Mary Washington monument, but the truth is that
these years were marked by many cares and anxieties. Five times
had Samuel Washington married: Jane Champe, Mildred Thornton, Lucy
Chapman, Anne Steptoe, the widow Perrin. This list sounds like a
chapter from the reign of Henry the Eighth. Tradition says he was
separated from some of his wives otherwise than by death. It is
certain he was unfortunate in money matters, having many children
and finding it "hard to get along." His brother was always helping
him. His children were much at Mount Vernon, especially Steptoe
Washington and Harriett Washington, whose names appear frequently
upon the general's expense book. He enters various items against
Harriett,--earrings and necklace and many garments. He bemoans, "She
was not brung up right! She has no disposition, and takes no care
of her clothes, which are dabbed about in every corner and the best
are always in use." "In God's name," he writes to his brother, John
Augustine, "how has Samuel managed to get himself so enormously in
debt?" He found places from time to time for many of Samuel's sons,
and was never other than good to all.

John Augustine Washington, the general's favorite brother,
married Hannah Bushrod, and settled in Westmoreland. Charles, the
youngest, married Mildred Thornton of the Fall-Hill Thorntons, near
Fredericksburg. His home was in Charlestown, Jefferson County. Of
him the world has known but little. In the presence of a planet of
the first magnitude the little stars are not observed.

Mary Washington was now alone at "Pine Grove." Her windows commanded
Fredericksburg and the wharf, where the ships from England unloaded
rich stuffs to tempt the Virginian, loading again with sweet-scented
tobacco for the old country that had so quickly learned to love the
luxury from the new. It is doubtful whether she ever bought from
these vessels. She certainly never sold to them. In 1760 she writes
to her brother Joseph in England, excusing herself for having sent
him no letters, "As I don't ship tobacco the Captains never call
on me, soe that I never know when tha come and when tha goe." She
was a busy woman, minding her own affairs and utterly free from
idle curiosity. Her life was full of interest and occupation. The
conscientious housewife of her day was burdened with many cares.
The large plantation must support itself. Nearer than Annapolis
and Williamsburg were no shops or stores from which supplies could
be drawn. The large number of servants living on the plantations
demanded great quantities of food and clothing, and the farm work
many utensils,--all of which were manufactured on the farm itself.
The diary of a New Jersey tutor gives us interesting accounts
of life in the Westmoreland neighborhood, where lived the Lees,
Carters, Washingtons, Tayloes, and other large landholders. Higher
up, near Mount Vernon, dwelt George Mason of "Gunston Hall," and his
son, John, is our eye-witness-chronicler of the plantation life near
Mary Washington.

     "It was the practice of gentlemen of landed and slave estates so
     to organize them as to have resources within themselves. Thus
     my father had among his slaves carpenters, coopers, sawyers,
     blacksmiths, tanners, curriers, shoemakers, spinners, weavers
     and knitters, and even a distiller. His woods furnished timber
     and plank for the carpenters and coopers, and charcoal for
     the blacksmith; his cattle, killed for their own consumption,
     supplied skins for the tanners, curriers and shoemakers; his
     sheep gave wool, his fields flax and cotton for the weavers;
     and his orchards fruit for the distiller. His carpenters and
     sawyers built and kept in repair all the dwelling houses, barns,
     stables, ploughs, harrows, gates, &c., on his plantation. His
     coopers made the hogsheads for tobacco and the casks to hold the
     liquors. The tanners and curriers tanned the skins for leather
     and the shoemakers made them into shoes for the negroes. A
     Professed shoemaker was hired for three or four months in
     the year to come and make up the shoes for the family. The
     blacksmiths did all the iron work required on the plantation.
     The spinners and knitters made all the clothes and stockings
     used by the negroes, and some of finer texture worn by the
     ladies and children of the family. The distiller made apple,
     peach and persimmon brandy. A white man, a weaver of fine
     stuffs, was employed to superintend the black weavers."[9]

  [9] "Life of George Mason," by Kate Mason Rowland.

To carry on these operations--to cure and preserve meats, fruits,
and medicinal herbs, make vinegar and cordials, and to prepare
constantly for a great deal of company, coming incessantly to stay
at the house--required unceasing attention and strict method.

This is a large pattern which was repeated on a smaller scale
by Mary Washington. Method became, with her, almost a mania.
Her neighbors set their watches by the ringing of her bells.
She was never the fraction of a minute too late at church. She
was punctiliously exact in her observance of all appointments
and prompt to the minute in meeting those appointments. By the
well-regulated clock in her entry--the clock which is now preserved
at "Kenmore"--all the movements of her household were regulated.
Her illustrious son had also such a clock. He graciously allowed,
at dinner, five minutes for the possible variation of timepieces.
After they expired he would wait for no one. If an apologizing guest
arrived after the dinner was advanced, his excuses were met with
the simple announcement, "Sir, I have a cook who never asks whether
the company has come, but whether the hour has come." His mother
had taught him the value of time. Her teaching followed him through
life, and was obeyed after he was President of the United States.
The chaplain of Congress records that the hour of noon having been
fixed for hearing the President's message, he usually crossed the
threshold exactly as the clock was striking twelve.

A contemporary observer relates that "Mrs. Washington never failed
to receive visitors with a smiling, cordial welcome," but adds
quaintly that "they were never asked twice to stay, and she always
speeded the parting guest by affording every facility in her power."
Perfectly sincere herself, she believed them sincere when they
declared themselves unable to remain.

She was said to possess a dignity of manner that was at first
somewhat repellent to a stranger, but always commanded thorough
respect from her friends and acquaintances. Her voice was sweet,
almost musical in its cadences, yet firm and decided, and she was
always cheerful in spirit. "In her person she was of the middle
size, and finely formed; her features pleasing, yet strongly marked."

Her young friends and grandchildren often visited her. Lawrence
Washington, her son's cousin and playmate, said: "I was more afraid
of her than of my own parents--and even when time had whitened my
locks I could not behold that majestic woman without feelings it is
impossible to describe. She awed me in the midst of kindness."

"She was," said one of her family, "conspicuous for an awe-inspiring
manner, so characteristic in the Father of our Country. All who
knew her will remember the dignified matron as she appeared when
the presiding genius of her well-ordered home, commanding and being
obeyed," never speaking ill of any one, never condescending to
gossip herself or encouraging gossip in others.

I have always felt that this Lawrence Washington, the only person
who knew Mary Washington many years intimately, and who wrote his
impressions of her, was responsible for the universal opinion
that she was stern and repelling,--an opinion that has colored
all the traditions of all the others who knew her as children. I
am persuaded that this Lawrence did the mischief. Somebody sowed
tares in the fair field of her reputation. Lawrence, I am sure, was
the kind of boy known as "a terror,"--a boy who chased chickens,
brought hounds and muddy feet on the polished floors, trampled
flower-beds, rifled the fruit trees, overturned pans of milk, upset
the furniture, and broke the china. Well might he be more afraid of
Mrs. Washington even than of his own parents (and what more could
he say?), and we may believe he had many a scolding and in his early
years an opportunity to test the flavor of the peach tree.

I am so fully assured that his testimony was the beginning of all
that Mary Washington has suffered at the hands of her countrymen,
that I have diligently looked up his record, hoping to find that he
came to no good: but alas! he is mentioned with affectionate respect
in George Washington's will as "the acquaintance and friend of my
juvenile years." It is some comfort, however, to find he had a wild
son, Lawrence, who fought a duel, and gave him no end of trouble!

And as to the traditions! What are they worth? Has the reader never
stood in a line when a story whispered from one to the other was
told aloud at the end, and in no case ever found to be the story
of the beginning? Thomas Fuller tells of the name "Musard," which
became, as it passed down the generations from lip to lip "Roper."
A popular dramatic reader once took for his text the words "come
here," and showed how accent, gesture, and tone could change their
meaning from invitation to menace, from tenderness to fury.

The stories told of Mary Washington were always altered to fit the
prevailing opinion of her sternness. Let me give an example. "When
General Washington sent over the country to impress horses (and
pay for them) his officers were attracted by a pair ploughing in a
field. The driver was ordered to unhitch them, but an ebony Mercury
ran to warn his mistress who appeared in her doorway. 'Madam,' said
the officer, 'we bear General Washington's orders to take these
horses.' 'Does George need horses?' said Mary Washington. 'Well, he
can have mine, but he must wait until my field is finished.'"

Now this is a poor little story, with no point at all save to
illustrate Mary Washington's estimation of the relative importance
of the sword and the ploughshare. Like all others it is changed as
the years pass. A short time ago a revised edition reached me from
the West.

This is the amended story: "'What are you doing there with my
horses?' said an irate old woman who appeared just then on the
field. 'Leave the place instantly!' 'But--Madam--we have orders from
the Commander-in-chief! We must obey.' 'Well, then, you may just
obey _me_! Go back and tell your _Commander-in-chief_' (with great
scorn and derision) 'that his mother's horses are not for sale, and
he can't borrow 'em till her spring ploughing is done.' It was the
part of prudence to leave. The officers left!"

The story grew to this proportion in a hundred years. Given another
hundred, and we will find that Mary Washington laid violent hands
on the men who claimed the horses, and chastised the ploughmen who
surrendered them.

In 1765 two pair of observant eyes opened upon the world, and
were focussed upon the "awe-inspiring" lady, Betty Lewis, little
Betty and Dr. Charles Mortimer's little Maria. The children were
playmates, schoolmates, and girl friends from a very early age,
each intimate at the other's home and both intimate at the home of
Mary Washington. They adored her! They found naught to remember but
smiles, gentle words, sweet, motherly ways. Betty (afterwards Mrs.
Charles Carter) has furnished many of the unimportant traditions
quoted in various accounts of her grandmother's home life. They
come to us as traditions of traditions, not to be despised, yet
not to be accepted as history. The other pair of eyes were keener
for the dress and belongings of her venerable friend. To Maria
Mortimer, daughter of Mary Washington's physician, we are indebted
for the familiar picture of the short skirt and sack,--a sort of
cote-hardi,--the mob cap, the table upon which lay "Sir Matthew
Hale" and his ally, in the presence of which there was such small
hope for the sinner. Freshly gathered from the friendly peach
tree, this was used as freely--this much we willingly concede--as
circumstances demanded. The two children played happily at her knee
despite the menacing tools of the Inquisition, which we would fain
believe were never used on them.

[Illustration: Mrs. Charles Carter.]

To their dying day they talked reverently and most abundantly; for
after General Washington became so very great there were always
listeners. Had they written conscientiously as the New Jersey tutor
did instead of talking, we might have known more of the reserved,
stately woman who bore and fostered and taught the revered Father
of his Country; but we know too well how sentiments can be trimmed
and shaped and clothed upon as they pass down the generations from
lip to lip, to venture to give them as gospel facts in clear,
twentieth-century type. They will surely live without the aid
of any present or future historian, for this is the fortune of
trifles! Great thoughts, feelings, aspirations,--great unselfish
deeds even,--perish and are forgotten, while trifling words,
gestures, peculiarities in dress or speech, live with no apparent
reasonableness whatever--certainly not because of their dignity or
merit. They swarm around the honored men and women of the world
like insects around a traveller on a sunny day, living of their
own accord, too insignificant to challenge or brush away, gaining
dignity at last from their own antiquity. Who cares whether Thomas
Carlyle liked his chops tender, objected to vermin, or abhorred the
crowing of a cock? Yet, I venture to say, when his name is called,
his image is associated oftener with his peculiarities than with the
sublime thoughts with which he sought to elevate and inspire the
world.

Mary Washington sustained through a long life a lofty character for
Christian purity and dignity; trained a son to lead our country
through many years of danger and privation to the liberty and
prosperity which places it to-day in the front of all the nations
of the earth; yielded her life at last, in pain unspeakable,
with no murmur upon her pure lips. Yet when her name is called,
all the ingenuity of her countrymen is aroused to accentuate her
peculiarities--to treat her with a sort of whimsical indulgence, as
an unlettered old woman, conspicuous for eccentricities of temper,
of dress, petty economies--in short, make her ridiculous! Truly, in
all ages there are Greeks who weary of hearing Aristides called the
Just!

In the face of all the testimony I have presented and will present,
the most remarkable statements regarding Mary Washington are
continually printed in the Historical Sketches published by the
best firms in the country. What can be their authority for such
statements as these?--

     "The Washingtons were poor hard-working people. Mary Washington
     cooked, weaved, spun, washed and made the clothes for her
     family."

     "Her children had no outer garments to protect them from the
     cold--no cloak, boots or hats except in winter; no cloaks then.
     In severe weather the boys simply put on two or three trousers
     instead of one."

     "Mary Washington quarrelled with her son so that when he wished
     to minister to her comfort in her old age he was forced to do so
     through some third party. These things she accepted as her due,
     showing a grim half-comic ingratitude that was very fine."

     "Washington's mother scolded and grumbled to the day of her
     death--seeking solace only by smoking a pipe."

Could this monstrous woman have held an honored place in a social
circle of stately, courteous, cultured people? Why assert such
things which completely offset an oft-repeated concession that
"all the sterling, classic virtues of industry, frugality and
truth-telling were inculcated by this excellent mother(!) and her
strong common sense made its indelible impress upon the mind of her
son."

She has also suffered much at the hands of her own countrywomen!
We must remember she never appeared in the full blaze of public
scrutiny until she was over seventy years old, and then,
impoverished by a long war with an _entourage_ the most discouraging
and painful. Women then found her parsimonious, ungraceful in
dress and manner, sour in temper! Pray what have we, my fastidious
sisters, done for our country in our day and generation? Compare
our privileges and opportunities with hers! The wealth, the light,
the leisure of a happy era, are ours, and yet not enough can this
affluent country afford for our adornment, our culture and pleasure.
We can--and do--traverse the earth, flitting from land to land
as the seasons change, becoming acquainted, if it so please us,
with the cloistered wisdom of libraries, the color and beauty of
palaces, the priceless treasures of art centres, able to enrich our
minds with all the whole world has to offer, from ancient days to
this, and with the possible contact of brilliant minds at home and
abroad. Show me the result! Something, I grant you, is gained in
personal charm, much, alas! in accentuating the natural heart-break
from which the less fortunate suffer in witnessing the undeserved
contrasts and inequalities of life.

Surely it is not for American women of this day--sheltered,
treasured, adored--to complain that industry, simplicity in living,
ungraceful dress and manner, mar the portrait of a noble woman whose
lot was cast in a narrow and thorny path, whose life was necessarily
a denied one, and yet who accomplished more for her country than any
other woman ever did or ever can do!

It was her pleasure to live simply--at a time of almost riotous
profusion. It was her pleasure to busy her own hands with the
housewifely work of her own household,--knitting, sewing, sorting
fleeces for "Virginia cloth," preserving fruits, distilling herbs
for the sick,--"making drudgery divine" by sharing the tasks she
laid upon others, thereby earning her many gifts to the poor.
In an age of abundant leisure she was industrious; in an age of
dissipation of time and money she was self-denying, diligent, and
frugal; in an age when speech was free and profanity "genteel" she
preserved her temperate speech, unpolluted by the faintest taint
of coarseness or irreverance. When the church no longer concerned
itself with the care of men's souls, she kept her own serene, in
her simple faith that prayer would prevail in the end, performing
every outward religious duty as conscientiously as if the priests
and bishops showed, as well as taught, the way. So did she--

    ".  .  . travel on life's common way
    In cheerful Godliness; and yet her heart
    The lowliest duties on herself did lay."

This, the result of many years spent in studying her character, the
writer presents as the true Mary Washington, to be honored all the
more for her retired, her simple life, her homely industries.

It is proper that her characteristics should be summed up before
the weakness of extreme old age had lessened its activity and
usefulness, while she was still young enough to catch the enthusiasm
of her friends and neighbors for fine houses, fine coaches, rich
dress, and much indulgence in pleasure.

She was better able than some of her neighbors to indulge in these
things, deemed in her day the essentials of position. Perhaps she
may have heard the specious argument urged by some to warrant such
indulgence,--the argument that expenditure in luxuries becomes
the duty of the rich in order to stimulate the industries of the
poor. But Mary Washington believed in the wholesome influence of an
_example_ of self-denial, which can only become of any worth when
practised by choice and not by necessity. And yet she lived long
before Stuart Mill and other political economists had demonstrated
that money spent in rich garments, jewels, and luxury in living adds
nothing of permanent value to the world.

[Illustration: MARY WASHINGTON'S HOUSE IN FREDERICKSBURG.]

She never left the plain, four-roomed, dormer-windowed dwelling
at "Pine Grove," until for her greater protection she moved into
Fredericksburg, choosing a home still plainer and less spacious
than the house on her farm. Says Mr. Custis, who saw her in this
home: "Her great industry, with the well-regulated economy of
all her concerns, enabled her to dispense considerable charities
to the poor, although her own circumstances were always far from
rich. All manner of domestic economies met her zealous attentions;
while everything about her household bore marks of her care and
management, and very many things the impress of her own hands. In
a very humble dwelling thus lived this mother of the first of men,
preserving, unchanged, her peculiar nobleness and independence of
character."

This most valuable testimony as to Mary Washington's character,
appearance, and manner is contained in the first chapter of "The
Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington," by George
Washington Parke Custis, son of "Jack" Custis, who was the only
son of Mrs. George Washington. "Jack" Custis died young (he was
married at nineteen), and his son, named for General Washington,
with his sister, Nelly Custis, were adopted into the Mount Vernon
family. Although this son was too young to have fully appreciated
Mary Washington, his testimony comes directly from her own sons and
daughter and others who knew her intimately. Through them he studied
her, and by no one of them was he contradicted. His statements are
conclusive--not to be challenged. They need no additional force from
the tradition that between the Custis family and Madam Washington
"there was never perfect accord"--one of the meaningless traditions
originating in the busy brain of some gossip, for which there was
no foundation in truth. Although several extracts have already
been given from Mr. Custis's book, the fact that the book itself
is now out of print, and to be found only in the Congressional
Library at Washington, and possibly in some of the older libraries
of the country, will perhaps excuse me for having quoted so freely
the chapter relating to Mary Washington. It was written only
thirty-seven years after her death, and from it has been drawn the
relations given by Sparks, Lossing, and others.

"The mother of George Washington," says Mr. Custis, "the hero of the
American Revolutionary War, and the first President of the United
States, claims the noblest distinction a woman should covet or can
gain, that of training a gifted son in the way he should go, and
inspiring him by her example to make the way of goodness his path to
glory."

But the noblest tribute to this great woman was Washington's own.
"All that I am," said he, "I owe to my mother." All that we are as a
nation we owe to him. His debt is ours. It is many times multiplied.
It is ever growing as the ever growing Republic illustrates in its
virtues and in its faults alike the merit of his example and the
wisdom of her teachings. We but degrade ourselves when we refuse
to recognize this debt. Let us rather discharge it as best we
may, in "coin of the highest value--the pure gold of devotion and
gratitude."

CHAPTER XXI

NOON IN THE GOLDEN AGE

Virginia, between the years 1760 and 1775, attained her highest
prosperity. The growth of the colony in general, and the advance
of luxury in living was rapid, marked by an increased taste for
amusements of the most costly kind, and great expenditure in living
and entertaining.

It was high noon in the Golden Age! Life was far more elegant and
luxurious than it was even fifteen years before. The transplanted
Englishman had rapidly prospered in the new land. Great wealth had
suddenly come to him through his tobacco, and he made haste to use
and enjoy it. The four-roomed house--quite good enough for his
cavalier grandfather--had stepped aside to give place to a pillared,
porticoed, stately mansion. The dormer windows--like heavy-lidded
eyes--had been superseded by "five hundred and forty-nine lights"
for one dwelling. The planter often built on the site of his old
colonial residence, sometimes incorporating the old into the new.
An eminence, commanding a wide view of the surrounding country, was
a coveted spot in plantation times. It behooved the settler (for
reasons similar to those which influenced Captain John Smith) to
build his house "on a high hill neere a convenient river, hard to
be assalted and easie to be defended." When the perilous days of
Indian massacre and treachery had passed away, and the country had
entered upon its Saturnian age of peace and plenty, the Virginians
clung to the old historic building-sites, and upon them erected
ambitious mansions, with flagged colonnades, extended wings, and
ample offices; surmounting the whole with an observatory whence
the proprietor with his "spy-glass" could sweep the country--not
now for the stealthy approach of an enemy, but to feast his eyes
upon a scene of unbroken beauty peacefully lying beneath a summer's
sun. The mansion stood apart in solemn grandeur upon some knoll or
eminence overlooking the great highway, the river. It was not to be
taken casually, in a by-the-way sort of a manner, not to be stumbled
upon by accident. It was to be approached with deliberation through
a long line of sentinels--an avenue of Lombardy poplars--"the
proper tree, let them say what they will, to surround a gentleman's
mansion."

[Illustration: Monticello. The Home of Thomas Jefferson.]

This landward approach to the house passed sometimes between columns
of trimmed boxwood or stone gate-posts upon which the arms granted
the family in England were carved in high relief. Gravelled paths
under ornamental trees led to the veranda with its lofty columns.
In the rear, the hill sometimes fell sharply to the riverside in
terraces, after the English fashion. At a wharf, built out into the
bed of the stream, the family often assembled to watch the sailing
of their own ships, trading directly with the mother country. On
the green, facing the river, there were summer-houses of latticed
woodwork, covered with climbing roses, honeysuckle, and jasmine,
and haunted by brilliant humming-birds. Other cool retreats from
the ardor of the summer sun were made of resinous cedars planted
in a close circle, their tops tied together and their walls shaven
smoothly until they resembled little mosques of vivid green. A
low wall covered with honeysuckle or Virginia creeper bounded the
grounds at the water's edge.

[Illustration: THE GARDEN AT MOUNT VERNON.]

But it was in the garden and in the greenhouse that the lady of the
manor exulted! No simple flowers, such as violets, lilies, or roses
were forced in those days. These would come with the melting of the
snows early in February. Only tropical beauties were reared under
the glass: century-plant, cacti, gardenias, lemon and orange trees;
great, double, glowing pomegranates, and the much-prized snowy
globes of Camellia Japonica, sure to be sent packed in cotton as
gifts to adorn the dusky tresses of some Virginia beauty, or clasp
the folds of her diaphanous kerchief. These camellias were reckoned
the most elegant of flowers--so pure and sensitive, resenting the
profanation of the slightest touch. Fancy a cavalier of that day
presenting nothing rarer than a bouquet of daisies or daffodils!

But the garden! Who can describe a garden in the Virginia of 1770?
When the little children of the family were sent forth to breathe
the cool air of the morning, what a paradise of sweets met their
senses! The squares, crescents, stars, and circles, edged with box,
over which an enchanted, glistening veil had been thrown during the
night; the tall lilacs, snowballs, myrtles, and syringas, guarding
like sentinels the entrance to every avenue; the glowing beds of
tulips, pinks, purple iris, and hyacinths; the flowering-almond
with its rosy spikes; the globes of golden passion-fruit; the figs,
rimy with the early dew and bursting with scarlet sweetness! The
whole world filled with bloom and beauty, fragrance and melody.

At a respectful distance from the mansion were smaller houses of
brick or stone, far enough removed from "the great house" to secure
the master's quiet and privacy. In one, a five-roomed building
served for schoolhouse and lodging-rooms for the tutor and boys of
the family. Another was "the office" for the transaction of business
with agents from the other plantations of the master, or with
captains of trading vessels lying at his wharf, laden with outgoing
tobacco, or unloading the liquors, books, musical instruments, and
fine stuffs for the family. In the rear, hidden by maple or cherry
trees, were many houses: wash-house, dairy, bake-house, storehouses,
and a kitchen as large as the five-roomed schoolhouse, for the
sole use of the great High Priest--the cook--and her family. "All
these formed a handsome street," adds Mr. Fithian (the New Jersey
Presbyterian tutor, whom nothing escaped), and all were surrounded
with little gardens and poultry-yards, and enlivened with swarms of
chickens, ducks, pigs, and little negroes. Remote from these were
the great stables, well filled and admirably regulated.

The kitchens of these later mansions were always a long distance
away, because that source of comfort, the black cook, had so many
satellites revolving around her and drawing sustenance, light, and
warmth from her centre, that it was absolutely necessary to give her
elbow-room. The satellites, however, had their uses. At dinner-time,
each one with shining face, robed in a great apron to supplement
various trouser deficiencies, and bearing covered dishes, formed
a solemn procession back and forth to the dining room. There the
frosty eye of the gray-haired butler awed them into perfect decorum;
and in the kitchen the vigorous arm of the cook kept them well
within bounds, along with the hounds, and, like them, devouring with
hopeful eyes the delicious viands in course of preparation.

The planter felt that the time had come to concern himself with the
elegancies of fine living. He went home to England to select books
for his library and to have his portrait painted by Sir Joshua
Reynolds; perhaps bring over his grandfather's portrait by Sir
Peter Lely, or, at least, secure a copy of Sir Peter's portrait of
Charles the First. A precious picture now and then found its way to
the drawing-rooms of the Northern Neck; and at "Elsing Green," a
little lower down in King William County, were hangings of priceless
value--a set of Gobelin tapestry presented to the owner's ancestor,
Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, by William of Orange. "Race
horses, drawn masterly and set in elegant frames," adorned the
dining-room walls of Colonel John Tayloe of Mount Airy, owner of the
great Yorick, one of the most celebrated horses of the day; and in
the same dining room stood the famous punch-bowl, since celebrated
in verse. The fashion of adorning the grounds with marble statues
is first mentioned in describing Colonel Tayloe's beautiful garden,
near Mary Washington's girlhood home.

[Illustration: Elsing Green.]

Libraries in 1770 had been well chosen, and had attained respectable
proportions. Mr. Robert Carter of Westmoreland, and other men of
wealth, had collected law-books, books on divinity relating to the
Established Church, a large musical library, the works of Pope,
Locke, Addison, Young, Swift, Dryden, "and other works of mighty
men," in the Latin tongue.

[Illustration: MOUNT AIRY.]

Mr. Carter had also every musical instrument then known: "An Organ,
Spinet, Forte-Piano, Guittar, German Flutes, Harpsichord and
Harmonica. The last, the wonderful new instrument invented by one
Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia" (him of the Blackbeard Ballad),
"being musical glasses without water, framed into a complete
instrument capable of thorough bass and never out of tune." On these
the master, his sons, and daughters, and the Presbyterian tutor
discoursed learned music, sonatas, etc.

Reading of this age, one is amazed at the activity of these
Virginians of the Northern Neck. They were forever in motion,
passing up and down the Potomac and Rappahannock--the great canals
of their Venice--in barges and batteaux, and across country from one
river to the other on horseback, in chaises and chariots.

The Potomac was the theatre of much rivalry and ostentation among
the rich planters whose estates bordered the river. Superb barges
were made to their order in England; and the negro crew rowing them
were clad in showy uniforms. Occasionally a British frigate would
appear on the river, when all the country would be thrown into a
"paroxysm of festivity." Breakfasts and dinners at Mount Vernon and
"Belvoir" (the seat of the Fairfaxes) would be in order, with the
return courtesies of afternoon teas on board the frigate.

The river was always in order, but the highway on land was about
the last thing to which the Virginian turned his attention. He
accepted it as it was. If a section became impassable to the family
chariot, drawn often by six horses, the outriders simply dismounted,
and with axes cleared a passage around it for the vehicle to "turn
out." Hence the necessity for these outriders. The family never
went abroad unattended. At one dinner, described by our Froissart
of the Northern Neck, eight servants accompanied the coach and
chaise, namely: coachman, driver, two postillions, two servants for
the master, one each to attend the two gentlemen on horseback--the
chaise being driven by the master himself.

There were no bridges across the rivers. Logs of wood placed side
by side with planks nailed across formed a wide, floating bridge
which sank several inches under the weight of the great coach, the
horses splashing through the water. When the roads lay through
level ground, after rains they were submerged for miles. Struggling
through such a watery lane to visit John Augustine Washington, an
English traveller lost heart, and called out to the postillion of
the coach sent to fetch him, "Here, you fellow! How far out into
the river does your unfortunate master live?" Nobody ever thought
it worth while to drain the roads. When they ran through fields
crossed and recrossed by "stake-fences" (stakes set at intervals
and woven basket-fashion with "savin" or juniper boughs) the pauses
were incessant. Bars had to be let down, gates opened and shut. Our
Froissart counted thirteen gates in fifteen miles.

"When the roads were too rough for carriages," says an old writer
who remembered them, "the ladies used to ride on ponies, followed by
black servants on horseback. In this way ladies, even when advanced
in life, used to travel, clad in the scarlet riding-habits procured
from England. Nay, in this way, on emergencies, the young ladies
used to come to the balls, riding with their hoops arranged 'fore
and aft' like lateen sails, and after dancing all night ride home
again in the morning."

A "neighborhood" included everybody within a day's journey, all the
way from Westmoreland to Mount Vernon. Dinner-parties were going on
as incessantly then in the Northern Neck as now in the metropolis.
The nearest neighbors were invited to these every few days, while
occasionally, in order to reach the whole community of several
counties, balls were given to last five days!

Of course, all this close and familiar intercourse was an important
agent in the wonderful unanimity of the entire country when the hour
of conflict had come. At these balls and dinners something was done
besides dancing and card-playing--some hint or word from eloquent
lips to keep alive the spark soon to burst forth in resistless,
all-conquering flame. Historians speak of the period as "the lull
before the storm." It was not by any means a "lull"--rather a
carnival!

CHAPTER XXII

DINNERS, DRESS, DANCES, HORSE-RACES

If the grave New Jersey Presbyterian tutor--who has given us so
faithful a picture of domestic life in the Northern Neck--saw fit to
burn his candles at night while he described the dresses, dinners,
and dances of his day, surely it is worth our while to pause in our
history to consider them.

The planter's daily life began betimes with an early breakfast. The
planter was an early riser. He had retired early. The myrtle-berry
candle--the costly spermaceti--were not brilliant enough to tempt
late hours. Often before daybreak in the winter, when the nights
were long, he might be found at his secretary arranging the work of
the day. Washington at Mount Vernon would light his own fire and
read by candle-light, then breakfast on tea and Indian-meal cakes at
eight o'clock. But to all rules he and his mother were exceptions!
The usual life of the planter admitted more luxury. His breakfast
was a good one! But first, having risen early, he mixed with his own
hands the great beaker of crushed ice, peach-brandy, and mint to be
sent around to all the rooms as an appetizer. Even the children
were admitted to this morning loving-cup. Virginians believed in it!

Luckily the breakfast is not left to a twentieth-century
imagination--which would probably suggest an orange, coffee, and
roll. The Rev. Andrew Burnaby, Vicar of Greenwich, London, had the
pleasure of eating a Virginia breakfast in 1759: "The ancient custom
of eating meat for breakfast still continues. At the top of the
table where the lady of the house presides, there is constantly tea
and coffee, but the rest of the table is garnished out with roasted
fowls, ham, venison, game and other dainties. There is scarcely a
Virginia lady who breakfasts without ham!"

Dinner at home or abroad was served not later than three, and
was preceded by at least one mint julep all around. At one home
dinner we read of four kinds of fish, "Sheeps-head, Bass, Perch,
Picked Crab: Ham, Mutton, vegetables, pudding, fruits, cheese, old
Madeira," which to be presentable must have crossed the ocean more
than once. A dinner included three courses,--soup, then the whole
dinner placed on the table at once, then dessert. Ducks were served
at the fish feasts. The delicious canvasback duck was by no means
so highly appreciated as it is now. They were left in comparative
peace to feed upon the tender wild celery of the Potomac marshes.
The diamond-backed terrapin was much too abundant to be considered
a dainty. To save the scarcer and costlier pork, terrapin was fed to
the negroes. Laws were enacted in Maryland forbidding the slaves'
rations to be exclusively of terrapin!

At one of General Washington's ceremonious dinners there was soup,
fish roasted and boiled, "gammon of bacon" and fowl. The middle of
the table was decorated with artificial flowers and small images.
The dessert was a pudding and apple pie, ice-cream, jellies, melons,
apples, peaches, nuts. This dinner was recorded as "a great dinner."
Today it would be considered "a good enough dinner, to be sure, but
not a dinner to _ask_ a man to!" Some of the receipts for these old
Virginia dinners have been preserved in the Randolph family--notably
the receipts for English plum pudding, and for the Christmas mince
pie.

Tables were richly furnished with burnished pewter and handsome
silver. So many articles of silver--bowls, cups, and salvers--were
imported from England that the thrifty planter was constrained
to import an engraver as well, in order that his arms and crests
might be engraved under his personal supervision. The china was,
of course, English or of English importation. We manufactured no
china, imported none from the East--probably none from France. Mary
Washington's china we know was blue and white. Knives were of fine
Sheffield steel, and served other uses than cutting. How else did
the colonial dames eat their peas? Surely not with the little steel
fork with two wide-apart prongs. This is a painful reflection,
but we must remember that a good many ladies whom the world has
admired--Helen of Troy, the Mother of the Gracchi, all of its
earth-born goddesses, in fact, until Queen Elizabeth--had to content
themselves at dinner with the utensils God had given them. They had
no forks at all--not even a chop-stick! Hence the early need for
napkins.

There was no lack of good napery in Mary Washington's time, but the
usage of napkins differed somewhat from the usage of to-day, at
least at General Washington's dinners.

The destruction of cattle by Tarleton's Red Dragoons caused almost
a famine of cream and butter, immediately after the war, so that
"trifle" and ice-cream were articles of prime luxury. To obtain
sufficient cream for the dish known variously as trifle, syllabub,
or floating island, it was sometimes necessary to save it until it
soured or grew rancid.

Mrs. Morris tells of such a misfortune at one of Washington's
state dinners. She did not hesitate to consign her own unswallowed
morsel to her napkin, but records with wicked glee that "poor Lady
Washington ate a whole plate-full without wincing."

At dinner much ceremony was observed. "I have fortunately learned
by heart all the ceremonies of the table, and will make no
mistakes," says the tutor exultantly, when he finds it necessary to
preside in the illness of the mistress and absence of the master.
Toasts were regularly drunk at dinner if there were guests--but
postponed to the evening bowl of "toddy" or punch when the family
was alone. No day passed without these toasts. "To the King and
Queen, the Governor of Virginia and his Lady, and success to
American Trade and Commerce." After these each person was called
upon by the master for his toast. "I gave the Lovely Laura," says
our tutor--Laura being the name in Cupid's court for Miss Betty
Beatty.

One might trace the changes in political feeling by these toasts.
At first, after the royal family and success to Virginia commerce,
only the respective favorites among the ladies. Presently we observe
that "The Sons of Liberty" have crept into the company to demand
a toast. Then an ominous toast follows the king and all the rest,
"_Wisdom_ and _Unity_ to the Conference now assembled." Then the
royal family, governor, and his lady are dropped altogether, and
the toast, praying for "Wisdom and Unity," takes their places.
The Prince de Broglie records the toasts at General Washington's
table,--"The United States of America, the King of France, the
Queen"; "Success with our Enemies and the Ladies"; "Success in War
and Love." After these, the Marquis de Lafayette and the military
heroes of the war. General Washington, when President, discontinued
this custom, contenting himself with grave bows, and "Your Health,
Sir; your Health, Madam," all around the table, until every one was
thus honored.

One can hardly repress a shudder at the accounts given by Robert
Maclay and others of the deadly dulness and formality of General
Washington's state dinners. He kept up this formal coldness to the
end. Free and easy manners came in with Mr. Jefferson and long
trousers. Fancy this incident occurring at General Washington's
table: "Here's to thy Absent Broad-brim Friend Hollingworth," from
Dolly Madison. "Here's to thy Absent Kerchief, Friend Dorothy," from
the Quaker.

At informal dinners among neighbors the company "sat until sunset,"
then coffee, and at nine o'clock supper,--artichokes, crabs,
oysters, strawberries and cream, the punch-bowl again. Record is
made of "Sudden Pains and Sickness at the Stomach at night."

The dancing class was held in succession at all the mansions
along the Potomac as far as Mount Vernon. Mr. Christian--stern
but elegant--taught minuets and country-dances, first politely
requesting each guest "to step a minuet." He does not hesitate to
rap two young misses across the shoulder for a fault, and to inform
"one young Fellow" that he has observed him "through the course
of the Dance," to be "insolent and wanton," and shall require him
to alter his manner or leave the school. Then, when candles are
lighted, having danced all day, Mr. Christian winds up with another
minuet and country-dance, and at seven is glad to retire. But
fun holds awhile longer. They all "play Button to get Pauns for
Redemption, and carry it on with sprightliness and Decency." The
tutor is in luck. "In the course of redeeming my Pauns I had several
Kisses of the Ladies." Then Colonel Philip Ludwell Lee arrives in
a travelling chariot from Williamsburg. "Four candles on the table
make the room luminous and Splendid." There is a fine supper with
four instructed waiters. After supper all gather around the fire and
"play 'break the Pope's neck'" until ten o'clock, and then to bed.

"Almost every lady wears a red cloak,"[10] says our tutor; "and when
they ride out they tye a red handkerchief over their Head and face,
so that when I first came to Virginia I was distressed whenever I
saw a Lady, for I thought she had a Tooth-Ach." At a five-days' ball
at Squire Lee's "the Ladies were dressed Gay and splendid, and when
Dancing their Skirts and Brocades rustled and trailed behind them.
For five days and nights they Danced minuets, reels, marches: Giggs
(an exaggerated dance resembling the _Trescone_ of Italy) and,
last of all, Country Dances to the Music of a French Horn and two
Violins, for," says the astonished tutor, "Blow high, Blow Low, the
Virginians are genuine blood--they will Dance or die!"

  [10] "Journal of Philip Vickens Fithian," edited by John Rogers
  Williams.

The plantation fiddler belonging, as did the barber, shoemaker,
and carpenter, to each establishment, seems to have sufficed for
Mr. Christian's class. At this the gentlemen were "drest in black,
superfine broadcloth, laced Ruffles, Black silk Stockings, buckles
at knee and instep. They wore powder on their Hair, or the short Wig
now in fashion."

The ladies, well, the principal ladies, must each sit for her own
portrait.

First, Mary Washington's granddaughter, "Miss Jenny Washington,[11]
about seventeen, not a handsome face, but neat in her Dress,
well-proportioned, and has an easy, winning Behaviour. She is not
forward to begin a conversation, yet when spoken to is extremely
affable without assuming any girlhood affectation or pretending to
be overcharged with Wit. She moves with propriety when she dances
a _Minuet_, and without any _Flirts_ or vulgar _Capers_ when She
dances a _Reel_ or _Country-Dance_. She plays well on Harpsichord
and Spinet, understands the principles of Musick and therefore
performs her Tunes in perfect time--a neglect of which always makes
music intolerable, but it is a fault almost universal in young
Ladies. She sings likewise to her instrument, has a strong, full
voice and a well-judging Ear. Most of the Virginia Girls think it
labour quite sufficient to thump the Keys of a Harpsichord," etc.