III. THE SELF-PITY AND SENTIMENTALISM OF YOUTH
Those who like their hero to be of chiseled marble may be shocked to think that George Washington, “the father of his Country,” wrote pages in his journal of foolish love-sighs and more foolish poetry. He often bewailed his “poor restless heart, wounded by Cupid’s dart,” and wrote of this wounded heart as “bleeding for one who remains pitiless to my griefs and woes.” That he never had a confidant to whom he could tell his sacred heart-burnings is indicated by the lines:
“Ah, woe is me, that I should love and conceal,
Long have I wished and never dared reveal.”
But such experiences let George Washington come a little closer to us as a real boy, and is consolation for many a man who had a like foolish spell in his youth.
George not only kept a tell-tale diary, which has given us all we know of his inner life in youth, but he wrote letters in that journal to many persons. Whether those letters were imaginary or were actually copies of real letters we do not know. Some of these were written while visiting the Fairfax family of Belvoir, after Lord Fairfax had come there from England as the head of the family interests. He wrote to his “dear friend Robin”: “My residence is at present at his lordship’s, where I might, was my heart disengaged, pass my time very pleasantly, as there’s a very agreeable young lady lives in the same house; but, as that’s only adding fuel to the fire, it makes me the more uneasy, for, by often and unavoidably being in company with her, revives my former passion for your Lowland Beauty; whereas, was I to live more retired from young women, I might in some measure alleviate my sorrows by burying that chaste and troublesome passion in the grave of oblivion.”
The “lowland beauty” he refers to is said to have been Miss Grimes, of Westmoreland, who, as Mrs. Lee, became the mother of General Henry Lee, famous in revolutionary times as Light Horse Harry, and always a favorite with General Washington.
Lord Fairfax, to whom he often refers, had a strong influence on his life. This real nobleman had inherited through his mother the Virginia lands granted to Lord Culpepper by Charles II. Having been jilted at the altar, in the very height of a rather famous career, by a lady who had a chance to marry a duke, Lord Fairfax renounced society and left England for Virginia. He took a great liking to young George Washington and they became companions on many a fox-hunt.
Presently it became necessary for Lord Fairfax to have his lands surveyed, and Washington, having studied surveying, was chosen for this task. The boy, though now man’s size, was not yet seventeen when he undertook this very responsible work. But here his careful training served him well. Nothing was ever undertaken by him until it had been thoroughly thought out, and success was thus assured in this his first man-making task. He still kept his journal day by day, but it was now full of the business of life. The emotional dreams of his Lowland Beauty are recorded no more.
This escape from self-pity and individual sentimentalism is in line with Edison’s advice to get busy at something useful if you would avoid temptation and foolishness. Even one so sternly set as Washington needed to have his attention occupied with something to do, as employment for idle hands, in order to be free from devil-ideas sowing artificial interests in the growing mind.