The recollection of this visit, although reviving many pleasant hours, is very sad, for it was the last time I saw the dear, kind face of Mrs. Lee; of whom the General once said when one of us, alluding to him, used the word “hero:” “My dear, Mrs. Lee is the hero. For although deprived of the use of her limbs, by suffering, and unable for ten years to walk I have never heard her murmur or utter one complaint.”
And the General spoke truly, Mrs. Lee was a heroine. With gentleness, kindness and true feminine delicacy, she had strength of mind and character a man might have envied. Her mind well stored and cultivated made her interesting in conversation; and a simple cordiality of manner made her beloved by all who met her.
During this last visit she loved to tell about her early days at Arlington—her own and her ancestors’ plantation home—and in one of these conversations gave me such a beautiful sketch of her mother—Mrs. Custis—that I wish her every word could be remembered that I might write it here.
Mrs. Custis was a woman of saintly piety, her devotion to good works having long been a theme with all in that part of Virginia. She had only one child—Mrs. Lee—and possessed a very large fortune. In early life she felt that God had given her a special mission, which was to take care of and teach the three hundred negroes she had inherited.
“Believing this,” said Mrs. Lee to me, “my mother devoted the best years of her life to teaching these negroes, for which purpose she had a school house built in the yard, and gave her life up to this work; and I think it an evidence of the ingratitude of their race, that although I have long been afflicted, only one of those negroes has written to enquire after me, or offered to nurse me.”
These last years of Mrs. Lee’s life were passed in much suffering, being unable to move any part of her body except her hands and head. Yet her time was devoted to working for her church. Her fingers were always busy with fancy work, painting or drawing—she was quite an accomplished artist—which were sold for the purpose of repairing and beautifying the church in sight of her window, and as much an object of zeal and affection with her, as the chapel was with the General.
Indeed the whole family entered into the General’s enthusiasm about this chapel—just then completed—especially his daughter Agnes, with whom I often went there, little thinking it was so soon to be her place of burial.
In a few short years all three—General Lee, his wife and daughter—were laid here to rest, and this chapel they had loved so well became their tomb.