However to make his and other company more agreeable I shall endeavour to engage a butler to go over with me at least for one year.
My Dear, I have often wished for your company to enjoy the amusements of this Metropolis, for I can with truth say, they are not much so to me in my present situation and that I now and then go to a play only to kill time. But I please myself with my country visits imagining the time there will pass more agreeable.
Permit me Sally to advise a steady and constant application to those things directed for your welfare, which may afford me the greatest satisfaction upon my arrival.
Your affect. and loving husband
Go. Wm. Fairfax[86]
Back in America within the year, at a court held for Fairfax County on August 19, 1758, George William Fairfax "presents a commission from his honor the Governor appointing me Lt. Colonel of Militia" of the county and at the same court he took the oaths according to law as a vestryman for Truro Parish.[87] In 1760 he went back to England again and remained nearly two years. On this occasion Sally accompanied him.
All the while, George William Fairfax was occupied with his English inheritance, he was gradually losing interest in his Virginia life. Although he is credited with being loyal to the colonial cause (certainly he never failed in loyalty to his colonial friends) it is more than possible that the friction between the two countries swayed him somewhat in his determination to quit Virginia for the more settled state of the Old Country.
On a June afternoon in 1773, George William and Sally set out from Belvoir to Mount Vernon for the last time to take leave of George and Martha Washington. Dr. Craik arrived in time to meet them and say goodbye. The next day, June 9, in the afternoon, Martha and George went to Belvoir to see these old and devoted friends "take shipping."[88] As the breeze lifted the sails and the sturdy little ship faded out of sight down the Potomac, it carried the Fairfaxes away from Belvoir forever.
Until his own affairs became too involved, Washington supervised George Fairfax's Virginia interests. In August 1774, a year after the master's departure from Virginia, the contents of Belvoir house were sold. Washington himself bought many things—the sideboard, card tables, and other things. Other Fairfax furnishings came to Alexandria; Dr. Craik became the possessor of a Wilton carpet which Washington bought for him.
George and Sally Fairfax settled in Bath in a red-brown sandstone house at 11 Lansdown Crescent, where they became a part of the gay parties taking the waters at the Pump Room and attending assembly balls in the fashion of Jane Austen's most aristocratic characters. Friendly letters went back and forth between Bath and Mount Vernon. After the Revolution, Fairfax wrote to Washington: "I glory in being called an American," regretted his inability to contribute to the "glorious cause of Liberty" and offered his "best thanks for all your exertions ... to ... the End of the Great work ..."[89]