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, 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]
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.
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.
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."