His mother lived quietly in her new home, never fulfilling her intention of returning to "Pine Grove" across the river. She was now seventy-eight years old, but remembered by the children of her old neighbors as bright, active, and alert—keenly interested in everything around her. Charming granddaughters were growing up in Betty Lewis's "Kenmore" home. One of these—doubtless our "little Betty,"—accompanied General and Mrs. Washington on their joyful return home to Mount Vernon from Annapolis, whither the general had gone to resign his commission. Mr. Lossing has preserved a letter from little Miss Lewis:—
"I must tell you what a charming day I spent at Mt. Vernon with Mama and Sally. The General and Madame came home at Christmas Eve, and such a racket the servants made! They were glad of their coming. Three handsome young officers came with them. All Christmas afternoon people came to pay their respects and duty. Among these were stately dames and gay young women. The General seemed very happy and Mrs. Washington was up before daybreak making everything as agreeable as possible for everybody. Among the most notable callers was Mr. George Mason of Gunston Hall, who brought a charming granddaughter with him about fourteen years old. He is said to be one of the greatest statesmen and wisest men in Virginia. We had heard much of him, and were delighted to look in his face, hear him speak, and take his hand which he offered in a courtly manner. He has a grand head and clear gray eyes—is straight, but not tall, and has few white hairs, though they say he is about sixty years old."
The little hero-worshipper! And so reverent to her illustrious uncle and his wife, with no underbred, familiar claiming of kinship with "the General and Madame."
Even before peace was declared, our French allies circulated large sums of gold and silver coin, which put to flight the wretched paper currency of our country, and in an incredibly short time quantities of French and English goods were imported. "Our people," laments an old writer, "suddenly laid aside their plain, home-manufactured clothing. Fine ruffles, powdered heads, silks and scarlets decorated the men, while the most costly silks, satins, chintzes, calicoes and muslins decorated our females. Superb plate, foreign spirits, and wines, sparkled on the sideboards, and as a necessary consequence the people ran in debt, and money was hard to raise."
General Washington's family resumed their old-time habits of living. They rose early, breakfasted at half-past seven, dined frugally at two, retired early. "Those who come to see me," said the general, "will always find a bit of mutton and a glass of wine. If they expect anything more, they will be disappointed." Mary Washington and the mistress of Mount Vernon never laid aside their simple customs, dress, and occupations. They seemed to have formed, said Washington Irving, "an inveterate habit of knitting" in and out of the drawing-room. Walking about her garden, Mary Washington's fingers held the flying needles. The results were sent to somebody less fortunate than herself. Martha Washington kept up her "inveterate habit" long after she became the first lady in the land, presenting unfinished gloves of her own knitting to her friends to "finish and wear for my sake," thus delicately suggesting a plan by which the gift could be rendered more valuable, and at the same time inspiring her gay young visitors with something of her own spirit of industry.
Inestimable to women is the value of such occupation! For them the curse has been transmuted into a golden blessing. There could have been no necessity for Mary and Martha Washington to employ themselves so diligently in sewing and knitting. The hands were numerous enough around them among the negroes and humbler classes for all such work. But they held an old-fashioned creed: that the human hand—that wonderful mechanism—was created for some useful purpose! In their day the hand had not claimed for its beauty the cunning skill of the "artist manicure." The instructed hand made laces, and manipulated the spinet and harp, but it made garments as well. Let none call the love of needlework useless—its results not worth the while! Knitting may not be the highest use for one's beautiful hands, but it surely ranks with the highest when it ministers to those who suffer! And even as an innocent occupation it is not to be despised. All such work is better than dull vacuity or lack of interest in domestic life. A passion for such things is not the worst passion that can possess a woman's soul. Besides, needlework is an admirable sedative to the nerves. Mary Washington's knitting helped to relieve her mind of its tension when circumstances seemed so unfortunate and discouraging. Perhaps the Queen of Scots sometimes forgot the uncertain tenure by which she held her beautiful head because she had a passion for embroidery and was, every day, expecting new flosses and filoselles from France to finish something very lovely which she had commenced.
But knitting was not with Mary Washington and her daughters a matter of sentiment or resorted to as a nerve cure. It was simply the natural expression of pure benevolence. There was no money to buy—nothing imported to be bought. The destitution of the soldiers pressed heavily upon the hearts of these good women. Constantly employed every moment of their waking hours, they might hope to achieve something to add to that "cap upon which was written 'Liberty.'" The Phrygian cap might indeed protect the fervid brain of the patriot, but could in no wise comfort his weary feet!
American women have never failed in time of war to give the work of their own hands. With the wife of another Virginia commander, Mary Custis Lee, knitting was as inveterate a habit in the time of America's Civil War as it was with her great-grandmother, Martha Washington, in the war of the American Revolution.
Many were the soldiers who were comforted in body and heartened in spirit by the gifts of these noble women—all the more because they were wrought by their own gentle hands.