But Charles Carter did not see Harry through his daughter's rosy vision. He saw him as a widower who was seventeen years older than Ann, and as a soldier who had been disillusioned by war and had not adjusted to peace.
However, Harry won his suit and carried the happy Ann back with him to Stratford. Ann was a brunette of medium height and twenty years old. Little else is known about her except that she was good.
Ann's first impression of the Lee mansion must have been a gloomy one. Gayety had left Stratford with Matilda. The musicians had long since been gone, and the blooded horses. The windows once so brightly lighted were dark, and with no voices and laughter to fill the house, one could hear the wolves howling at night in the forest. This remote fortress in the fastness of the Northern Neck was different from anything that this great-granddaughter of King Carter had ever known. Shirley had been warm and happy.
Harry had no taste or ability as a farmer, and even if he had, Westmoreland County was now losing ground as a tobacco country. At first Ann may have traveled to Richmond with her husband and visited Shirley, for Harry was thrice elected to the governorship of Virginia. But as the years went by, Ann and her small children were more and more alone at Stratford. As his political career waned, Harry stayed away from home more and more, chasing various "will o' the wisps" which he believed would recoup his fortune.
Sometimes Ann stayed at Stratford as long as six months at a time without going anywhere to visit, or without seeing her social equals. Still, Ann wrote a friend that she was too busy to be bored. We can imagine her moving about the house, sometimes carrying a charcoal brazier with her into the living room, to warm her frail body or to give the illusion of warmth.
