THE FARMER'S WIFE
Martha Dandridge's first husband was a man much older than herself and her second was almost a year younger. Before she embarked upon her second matrimonial venture she had been the mother of four children, and having lost two of these, her husband, her father and mother, she had known, though only twenty-seven, most of the vital experiences that life can give. Perhaps it was well, for thereby she was better fitted to be the mate of a man sober and sedate in disposition and created by Nature to bear heavy burdens of responsibility.
In view of the important places her husband filled, it is astonishing how little we really know of her. Washington occasionally refers to her in his letters and diaries, but usually in an impersonal way that gives us little insight into her character or activities. She purposely destroyed almost all the correspondence that passed between her and her husband and very little else remains that she wrote. From the few letters that do survive it is apparent that her education was slender, though no more so than that of most women of her day even in the upper class. She had a fondness for phonetic spelling, and her verbs and subjects often indulged in family wrangles. She seems to have been conscious of her deficiencies in this direction or at least to have disliked writing, for not infrequently the General acted as her amanuensis. But she was well trained in social and domestic accomplishments, could dance and play on the spinet--in short, was brought up a "gentlewoman." That she must in youth have possessed charm of person and manners is indicated by her subjugation of Daniel Parke Custis, a man of the world and of much greater fortune than herself, and by her later conquest of Washington, for, though it be admitted in the latter case that George may not have objected to her fortune, we can not escape the conclusion that he truly loved her.
In fact, the match seems to have been ideally successful in every respect except one. The contracting parties remained reasonably devoted to each other until the end and though tradition says that Martha would sometimes read George a curtain lecture after they had retired from company, there remains no record of any serious disagreement. Though not brilliant nor possessed of a profound mind, she was a woman of much good sense with an understanding heart. Nor did she lack firmness or public spirit. Edmund Pendleton relates that when on his way to the Continental Congress in 1774 he stopped at Mount Vernon, "She talked like a Spartan mother to her son on going to battle. 'I hope you will all stand firm--I know George will,' she said."
The poorest artisan in Boston with nothing to lose but his life did not embrace the patriot cause with any greater eagerness than did these Washingtons with their broad acres and thousands of pounds on bond.
There is every reason to believe that Martha Washington was helpful to her husband in many ways. At home she was a good housewife and when Washington was in public life she played her part well. No brilliant sallies of wit spoken by her on any occasion have come down to us, but we know that at Valley Forge she worked day and night knitting socks, patching garments and making shirts for the loyal band of winter patriots who stood by their leader and their cause in the darkest hour of the Revolution.
A Norristown lady who paid her a call in the little stone house that still stands beside the Schuylkill relates that "as she was said to be so grand a lady, we thought we must put on our best bibs and bands. So we dressed ourselves in our most elegant ruffles and silks, and were introduced to her ladyship. And don't you think we found her knitting with a specked apron on! She received us very graciously, and easily, but after the compliments were over, she resumed her knitting."
But the marriage was a failure in that there were no children. No doubt both wanted them, for Washington was fond of young people and many anecdotes are handed down of his interest in little tots. Some one has remarked that he was deprived of offspring in order that he might become the Father of His Country.
Toward those near and dear to her Martha Washington was almost foolishly affectionate. In one of her letters she tells of a visit "in Westmoreland whare I spent a weak very agreabley. I carred my little patt with me and left Jackey at home for a trial to see how well I coud stay without him though we ware gon but won fortnight I was quite impatiant to get home. If I at aney time heard the doggs barke or a noise out, I thought thair was a person sent for me. I often fancied he was sick or some accident had happened to him so that I think it is impossible for me to leave him as long as Mr. Washington must stay when he comes down."
Any parent who has been absent from home under similar circumstances and who has imagined the infinite variety of dreadful things that might befall a loved child will sympathize with the mother's heart--in spite of the poor spelling!
Patty Custis was an amiable and beautiful girl who when she grew up came to be called "the dark lady." But she was delicate in health. Some writers have said that she had consumption, but as her stepfather repeatedly called it "Fits," I think it is certain that it was some form of epilepsy. Her parents did everything possible to restore her, but in vain. Once they took her to Bath, now Berkeley Springs, for several weeks and the expenses of that journey we find all duly set down by Colonel Washington in the proper place. As Paul Leicester Ford remarks, some of the remedies tried savored of quackery. In the diary, for February 16, 1770, we learn that "Joshua Evans who came here last Night put an iron Ring upon Patey and went away after Breakfast." Perhaps Evans failed to make the ring after the old medieval rule from three nails or screws that had been taken from a disinterred coffin. At any rate the ring did poor Patty little good and a year later "Mr. Jno. Johnson who has a nostrum for Fits came here in the afternoon." In the spring of 1773 the dark lady died.
Her death added considerably to Washington's possessions, but there is every evidence that he gave no thought to that aspect of the matter. "Her delicate health, or perhaps her fond affection for the only father she had ever known, so endeared her to the 'general', that he knelt at her dying bed, and with a passionate burst of tears prayed aloud that her life might be spared, unconscious that even then her spirit had departed." The next day he wrote to his brother-in-law: "It is an easier matter to conceive than describe the distress of this Family: especially that of the unhappy Parent of our Dear Patey Custis, when I inform you that yesterday removed the Sweet Innocent Girl [who] Entered into a more happy & peaceful abode than any she has met with in the afflicted Path she hitherto has trod."
Before this John Parke Custis, or "Jacky," had given his stepfather considerable anxiety. Jacky's mind turned chiefly from study to dogs, horses and guns and, in an effort, to "make him fit for more useful purposes than horse races," Washington put him under the tutorship of an Anglican clergyman named Jonathan Boucher, who endeavored to instruct some of the other gilded Virginia youths of his day. But Latin and Greek were far less interesting to the boy than the pretty eyes of Eleanor Calvert and the two entered into a clandestine engagement. In all respects save one the match was eminently satisfactory, for the Calvert family, being descended from Lord Baltimore, was as good as any in America, and Miss Nelly's amiable qualities, wrote Washington, had endeared her to her prospective relations, but both were very young, Jack being about seventeen, and the girl still younger. While consenting to the match, therefore, Washington insisted that its consummation should be postponed for two years and packed the boy off to King's College, now Columbia. But Martha Washington was a fond and doting mother and, as Patty's death occurred almost immediately, Jack's absence in distant New York was more than she could bear. He was, therefore, allowed to return home in three months instead of two years, and in February, 1774, was wedded to the girl of his choice. Mrs. Washington felt the loss of her daughter too keenly to attend, but sent this message by her husband:
"MY DEAR NELLY.--God took from me a Daughter when June Roses were blooming--He has now given me another Daughter about her Age when Winter winds are blowing, to warm my Heart again. I am as Happy as One so Afflicted and so Blest can be. Pray receive my Benediction and a wish that you may long live the Loving Wife of my happy Son, and a Loving Daughter of
"Your affectionate Mother,
"M. WASHINGTON."
The marriage, it may be added here, sobered John Custis. He and his bride established themselves at Abingdon on the Potomac, not far from Mount Vernon, and with their little ones were often visitors, especially when the General was away to the war and Mrs. Washington was alone. Toward the close of the war Jack himself entered the army, rose to the rank of colonel and died of fever contracted in the siege of Yorktown. Thus again was the mother's heart made sorrowful, nor did the General himself accept the loss unmoved. He at once adopted the two youngest children, Eleanor and George Washington Parke, and brought them up in his own family.
Eleanor Custis, or "Nelly," as she was affectionately called, grew up a joyous, beautiful cultured girl, who won the hearts of all who saw her. The Polish poet, Julian Niemcewicz, who visited Mount Vernon in 1798, wrote of her as "the divine Miss Custis.... She was one of those celestial beings so rarely produced by nature, sometimes dreamt of by poets and painters, which one cannot see without a feeling of ecstacy." As already stated, she married the General's nephew, Lawrence Lewis. In September, 1799, Washington told the pair that they might build a house on Grey's Heights on the Dogue Run Farm and rent the farm, "by all odds the best and most productive I possess," promising that on his death the place should go to them. Death came before the house was built, but later the pair erected on the Heights "Woodlawn," one of the most beautiful and pretentious places in Fairfax County.
George Washington Parke Custis grew up much such a boy as his father was. He took few matters seriously and neglected the educational opportunities thrown in his way. Washington said of him that "from his infancy I have discovered an almost unconquerable disposition to indolence in everything that did not tend to his amusements." But he loved the boy, nevertheless, and late in life Custis confessed, "we have seen him shed tears of parental solicitude over the manifold errors and follies of our unworthy youth." The boy had a good heart, however, and if he was the source of worry to the great man during the great man's life, he at least did what he could to keep the great man's memory green. He wrote a book of recollections full of filial affection and Latin phrases and painted innumerable war pictures in which Washington was always in the foreground on a white horse "with the British streaking it." Washington bequeathed to him a square in the City of Washington and twelve hundred acres on Four Mile Run in the vicinity of Alexandria. Upon land near by inherited from his father Custis built the famous Arlington mansion, almost ruining himself financially in doing so. Upon his death the estate fell to his daughter, Mrs. Robert E. Lee, and it is now our greatest national cemetery.
Mrs. Washington not only managed the Mount Vernon household, but she looked after the spinning of yarn, the weaving of cloth and the making of clothing for the family and for the great horde of slaves. At times, particularly during the Revolution and the non-importation days that preceded it, she had as many as sixteen spinning-wheels in operation at once. The work was done in a special spinning house, which was well equipped with looms, wheels, reels, flaxbrakes and other machinery. Most of the raw material, such as wool and flax and sometimes even cotton, was produced upon the place and never left it until made up into the finished product.
In 1768 the white man and five negro girls employed in the work produced 815-3/4 yards of linen, 365-1/4 yards of woolen cloth, 144 yards of linsey and 40 yards of cotton cloth. With his usual pains Washington made a comparative statement of the cost of this cloth produced at home and what it would have cost him if it had been purchased in England, and came to the conclusion that only £23.19.11 would be left to defray the expense of spinning, hire of the six persons engaged, "cloathing, victualling, wheels, &c." Still the work was kept going.
A great variety of fabrics were produced: "striped woolen, wool plaided, cotton striped, linen, wool-birdseye, cotton filled with wool, linsey, M's and O's, cotton Indian dimity, cotton jump stripe, linen filled with tow, cotton striped with silk, Roman M., janes twilled, huccabac, broadcloth, counter-pain, birdseye diaper, Kirsey wool, barragon, fustian, bed-ticking, herring-box, and shalloon."
In non-importation days Mrs. Washington even made the cloth for two of her own gowns, using cotton striped with silk, the latter being obtained from the ravellings of brown silk stockings and crimson damask chair covers.
The housewife believed in good cheer and an abundance of it, and the larders at Mount Vernon were kept well filled. Once the General protested to Lund Washington because so many hogs had been killed, whereupon the manager replied that when he put up the meat he had expected that Mrs. Washington would have been at home and that he knew there would be need for it because her
"charitable disposition is in the same proportion as her meat house."
She had a swarm of relatives by blood and marriage and they visited her long and often. The Burwells, the Bassetts, the Dandridges and all the rest came so frequently that hardly a week passed that at least one of them did not sleep beneath the hospitable roof. Even her stepmother paid her many visits and, what is more, was strongly urged by the General to make the place her permanent home. When Mrs. Washington was at home during the Revolution her son and her daughter-in-law spent most of their time there. After the Revolution her two youngest grandchildren resided at Mount Vernon, and the two older ones, Elizabeth and Martha, were often there, as was their mother, who married as her second husband Doctor Stuart, a man whom Washington highly esteemed.
It would be foolish to deny that Mrs. Washington did not take pleasure in the honors heaped upon her husband or that she did not enjoy the consideration that accrued to her as First Lady of the Land. Yet public life at times palled upon her and she often spoke of the years of the presidency as her "lost days." New York and Philadelphia, she said, were "not home, only a sojourning. The General and I feel like children just released from school or from a hard taskmaster.... How many dear friends I have left behind! They fill my memory with sweet thoughts. Shall I ever see them again? Not likely unless they come to me, for the twilight is gathering around our lives. I am again fairly settled down to the pleasant duties of an old-fashioned Virginia-housekeeper, steady as a clock, busy as a bee, and cheerful as a cricket."
That she did not overdraw her account of her industry is borne out by a Mrs. Carrington, who, with her husband, one of the General's old officers, visited Mount Vernon about this time. She wrote:
"Let us repair to the Old Lady's room, which is precisely in the style of our good old Aunt's--that is to say, nicely fixed for all sorts of work--On one side sits the chambermaid, with her knitting--on the other, a little colored pet learning to sew, an old decent woman, with her table and shears, cutting out the negroes' winter clothes, while the good old lady directs them all, incessantly knitting herself and pointing out to me several pair of nice colored stockings and gloves she had just finished, and presenting me with a pair half done, which she begs I will finish and wear for her. Her netting too is a great source of amusement and is so neatly done that all the family are proud of trimming their dresses with it."
This domestic life was dear to the heart of our Farmer's wife, yet the home-coming did not fail to awaken some melancholy memories. To Mrs. George Fairfax in England she wrote, or rather her husband wrote for her: "The changes which have taken place in this country since you left it (and it is pretty much the case in all other parts of this State) are, in one word, total. In Alexandria, I do not believe there lives at this day a single family with whom you had the smallest acquaintance. In our neighborhood Colo. Mason, Colo. McCarty and wife, Mr. Chickester, Mr. Lund Washington and all the Wageners, have left the stage of human life; and our visitors on the Maryland side are gone and going likewise."
How many people have had like thoughts! One of the many sad things about being the "last leaf upon the tree" is having to watch the other leaves shrivel and drop off and to be left at last in utter loneliness.
Like her husband, Mrs. Washington was an early riser, and it was a habit she seems to have kept up until the end. She rose with the sun and after breakfast invariably retired to her room for an hour of prayer and reading the Scriptures. Her devotions over she proceeded with the ordinary duties of the day.
She seems to have been somewhat fond of ceremony and to have had a considerable sense of personal dignity. A daughter of Augustine Washington, who when twelve years of age spent several weeks at Mount Vernon, related when an old woman that every morning precisely at eleven o'clock the mistress of the mansion expected her company to assemble in the drawing-room, where she greeted them with much formality and kept them an hour on their good behavior. When the clock struck twelve she would rise and ascend to her chamber, returning thence precisely at one, followed by a black servant carrying an immense bowl of punch, from which the guests were expected to partake before dinner. Some of the younger girls became curious to discover why her "Ladyship" retired so invariably to her room, so they slipped out from where she was entertaining their mothers, crept upstairs and hid under her bed. Presently Lady Washington entered and took a seat before a large table. A man-servant then brought a large empty bowl, also lemons, sugar, spices and rum, with which she proceeded to prepare the punch. The young people under the bed thereupon fell to giggling until finally she became aware of their presence. Much offended, or at least pretending to be, she ordered them from the room. They retired with such precipitancy that one of them fell upon the stairway and broke her arm.
Another story is to the effect that one morning Nelly Custis, Miss Dandridge and some other girls who were visiting Nelly came down to breakfast dressed dishabille and with their hair done up in curl papers. Mrs. Washington did not rebuke them and the meal proceeded normally until the announcement was made that some French officers of rank and young Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, who was interested in Miss Custis, had driven up outside, whereupon the foolish virgins sprang up to leave the room in order to make more conventional toilets. But Mrs. Washington forbade their doing so, declaring that what was good enough for General Washington was good enough for any guest of his.
She spoiled George Washington Custis as she had his father, but was more severe with Eleanor or Nelly. Washington bought the girl a fine imported harpsichord, which cost a thousand dollars and which is still to be seen at Mount Vernon, and the grandmother made Nelly practise upon it four or five hours a day. "The poor girl," relates her brother, "would play and cry, and cry and play, for long hours, under the immediate eye of her grandmother." For no shirking was allowed.
The truth would seem to be that Lady Washington was more severe with the young--always excepting Jacky and George--than was her husband. He would often watch their games with evident enjoyment and would encourage them to continue their amusements and not to regard him. He was the confidant of their hopes and fears and even amid tremendous cares of state found time to give advice about their love affairs. For he was a very human man, after all, by no means the marble statue sculptured by some historians.
Yet no doubt Mrs. Washington's severity proceeded from a sense of duty and the fitness of things rather than from any harshness of heart. The little old lady who wrote: "Kiss Marie. I send her two handkerchiefs to wipe her nose," could not have been so very terrible!
She was beloved by her servants and when she left Mount Vernon for New York in 1789 young Robert Lewis reported that "numbers of these poor wretches seemed most affected, my aunt equally so." At Alexandria she stopped at Doctor Stuart's, the home of two of her grandchildren, and next morning there was another affecting scene, such as Lewis never again wished to witness--"the family in tears--the children a-bawling--& everything in the most lamentable situation."
Although she was not the paragon that some writers have pictured, she was a splendid home-loving American woman, brave in heart and helpful to her husband, neither a drone nor a drudge--in the true Scriptural sense a worthy woman who sought wool and flax and worked willingly with her hands. As such her price was far beyond rubies.
As has been remarked before, no brilliant sayings from her lips have been transmitted to posterity. But I suspect that the shivering soldiers on the bleak hillsides at Valley Forge found more comfort in the warm socks she knitted than they could have in the bon mots of a Madame de Stael or in the grace of a Josephine and that her homely interest in their welfare tied their hearts closer to their Leader and their Country.
It is not merely because she was the wife of the Hero of the Revolution and the first President of the Republic that she is the most revered of all American women.