"ON WITH THE DANCE, LET JOY BE UNCONFINED"
That was a great day when the news came to Fredericksburg—"Cornwallis has surrendered." "With red spurs" rode the couriers that carried the glad tidings, and the hearts of the people leaped with joy. Twenty-eight British captains had stepped forth from the lines and surrendered as many colors to the ragged Continentals. With instinctive magnanimity the conquerors had given a banquet to their captive officers, and Washington had saluted Cornwallis with a toast to the British army. Thus the brave honor the brave. And now—courtesies all rendered, the sword sheathed, the guns stacked—the great commander was coming home, first to his mother, attended by a brilliant retinue of French and American officers. When the soldier of his people laid his country's freedom at his mother's feet, if ever in this world a foretaste of heavenly joy be given to human beings, to Mary and George Washington alike this was the hour. Says Mr. Custis:—
"After an absence of nearly seven years, it was, at length, on the return of the combined armies from Yorktown, permitted to the mother again to see and embrace her illustrious son. So soon as he had dismounted, in the midst of a numerous and brilliant suite, he sent to apprise her of his arrival, and to know when it would be her pleasure to receive him. No pageantry of war proclaimed his coming, no trumpets sounded, no banners waved. Alone and on foot, the Marshal of France, the general-in-chief of the combined armies of France and America, the deliverer of his country, the hero of the age, repaired to pay his humble duty to her whom he venerated as the author of his being, the founder of his fortune and his fame. For full well he knew that the matron would not be moved by all the pride that glory ever gave, nor by all the 'pomp and circumstance' of power.
"The lady was alone, her aged hands employed in the works of domestic industry, when the good news was announced; and it was further told that the victor chief was in waiting at the threshold. She welcomed him with a warm embrace, and by the well-remembered and endearing name of his childhood; inquiring as to his health, she remarked the lines which mighty cares and many trials had made on his manly countenance, spoke much of old times and old friends, but of his glory—not one word."
But old Fredericksburg tells a story so characteristic that we are fain to accept it. Her neighbors had gathered at her door to congratulate her; but before they spoke with her, an orderly dashed up, dismounted, touched his three-cornered hat and said, "Madam! his Excellency will be here within the hour." "His Excellency! Tell George I shall be glad to see him," replied the dame; and turning to her wide-eyed ebony maid, she said, "Patsy, I shall need a white apron."
George Washington Parke Custis.
Old Fredericksburg threw its hat in the air and declared that the "Indian Oueen" should be swept and garnished, and the Fredericksburg beauties tread a measure with those gay foreigners. This thing of "belonging to the country" was all very well, but George Washington was a Virginian—what was more, he was master-mason in the Fredericksburg Lodge No. 4, and a Fredericksburg boy out and out. "But would Madam Washington come to a ball?" Ay, she would. Her "dancing days were pretty well over," but she would "be glad to contribute to the general happiness."
The Chair used by George Washington when Master of Fredericksburg Lodge.
But here we give place again to Mr. Custis, for he had his story at first hands.
"Meantime, in the village of Fredericksburg, all was joy and revelry; the town was crowded with the officers of the French and American armies, and with gentlemen from all the country around, who hastened to welcome the conquerors of Cornwallis. The citizens made arrangements for a splendid ball, to which the mother of Washington was specially invited. She observed that, although her dancing days were pretty well over, she should feel happy in contributing to the general festivity, and consented to attend.
"The foreign officers were anxious to see the mother of their chief. They had heard indistinct rumors respecting her remarkable life and character; but, forming their judgments from European examples, they were prepared to expect in the mother that glare and show which would have been attached to the parents of the great in the old world. How they were surprised when the matron, leaning on the arm of her son, entered the room! She was arrayed in the very plain, yet becoming, garb worn by the Virginian lady of the olden time. Her address, always dignified and imposing, was courteous, though reserved. She received the complimentary attentions, which were profusely paid her, without evincing the slightest elevation; and, at an early hour, wishing the company much enjoyment of their pleasures, observing that it was time for old people to be at home, retired.
"The foreign officers were amazed to behold one so many causes contributed to elevate, preserving the even tenor of her life, while such a blaze of glory shone upon her name and offspring. The European world furnished no examples of such magnanimity. Names of ancient lore were heard to escape from their lips; and they observed that, 'if such were the matrons of America, it was not wonderful the sons were illustrious.'
"It was on this festive occasion that General Washington danced a minuet with Mrs. Willis" (one of the Gregory girls). "It closed his dancing days. The minuet was much in vogue at that period, and was peculiarly calculated for the display of the splendid figure of the chief and his natural grace and elegance of air and manner. The gallant Frenchmen who were present—of which fine people it may be said that dancing forms one of the elements of their existence—so much admired the American performance as to admit that a Parisian education could not have improved it. As the evening advanced, the commander-in-chief, yielding to the gayety of the scene, went down some dozen couples in the contra-dance, with great spirit and satisfaction."
But General Washington's dancing days did not close with the Fredericksburg ball. Mr. Custis did not know. Two years later Lieutenant McAllister wrote from Baltimore: "A ball was given to his most excellent Excellency by the ladies of this town. A brilliant collection assembled to entertain him, and the illustrious Chief led and mingled in the joyous dance."
The commanding general had perceived the wisdom of introducing into the camp life some relaxation and amusement, as the Arctic explorer arranged a series of theatricals when starvation threatened his ice-locked crew. In the year and month in which Washington wrote his most despairing letter to George Mason, there were frequent balls in the camp at Middlebrook. "We had a little dance at my quarters," wrote General Greene to Colonel Wadsworth in March, 1779 (the dark hour), "His Excellency and Mrs. Greene danced upwards of three hours without once sitting down."
Bishop Meade, in his intense admiration of Washington and his not less intense abhorrence of dancing, reasons that these reports of the great chief could not be true. They were undoubtedly true. Washington, although habitually grave and thoughtful, was of a social disposition, and loved cheerful society. He was fond of the dance, and it was the boast of many Revolutionary dames that he had been their partner in contra-dances, and had led them through the stately figures of the minuet.
Little Maria Mortimer, aged sixteen, was at the Fredericksburg ball. Betty Lewis followed the party later to Mount Vernon. For Maria a great dignity was in store. Her father, Dr. Charles Mortimer, issued invitations at the ball for a great dinner to the distinguished strangers the next day but one, and his wife (Sarah Griffin Fauntleroy), being too ill to preside, that honor fell to the daughter of the house.[27]
The house, an immense pile of English brick, still stands on the lower edge of the town, facing Main Street, with a garden sloping to the river, where Dr. Mortimer's own tobacco ships used to run up to discharge their return English cargoes by a channel long since disused and filled up.
The mansion was hastily put en fête—which meant swept walks, polished floors, and abundant decoration of flowers and evergreens. The running cedar of Virginia, with its plumy tufts of green, lent itself gracefully to outline doors and windows, encircle family portraits, and hang in festoons from the antlers of the deer in the hall.
The table, as little Maria described it in after years, groaned with every delicacy of land and water, served in massive pewter dishes polished until they shone again.
The chief sat beside the master of the house at the long table, although at his own house his place was always at the side of the table among his guests. Little Maria "with her hair craped high" was taken in by the Marquis Lafayette, or Count d'Estaing, or Count Rochambeau,—they were all present,—and the little lady's heart was in her mouth, she said, although she danced with every one of them at the ball—nay, with Betty Lewis's Uncle George himself!
To this dinner the doctor, of course, invited Mrs. Washington, but equally, of course, she did not come, her appearance at the ball having been an extraordinary effort intended to mark her sense of the importance of the occasion which was intoxicating the whole country with joy.