CHAPTER XIII
MARY WASHINGTON'S WILL; HER ILLNESS AND DEATH
Mary Washington made her will only a year before her death, stating therein that she was "in good health." This was one of the years, during which it has been asserted that she was not only neglected by her son but that they were estranged because of her Tory principles! Besides a few small bequests to her daughter and grandchildren, "desiring their acceptance thereof as all the token I now have to give them," she leaves all her estate "to my Son General George Washington," also—that crowning pride of the early Englishwoman—her best bed, bedstead, curtains, quilt, and other bed furniture. Long after the Englishwoman had lived in Virginia she held her bed in the highest esteem, and always made special mention of it in her will. She came from the land where, from ancient days, the bed was the most important feature in the whole house—made of feathers and adorned with tapestry or with velvets or with "cloth of gold, or miniver." In the "pane" (the forerunner of our "counterpane"—from contre-pointe—adorned with "drawn thread lattice work") the ambition of the housewife centred, and was indulged. When Lafayette desired to make a handsome present to Dr. Galt of Williamsburg, who had entertained him, he sent from France a set of velvet bed curtains, dark blue with ornate figuring of gold, quite the handsomest of the textile fabrics exhibited at our Centennial in New York City.
Mary Washington bequeathed the articles in which she had most pride to her "Son General George Washington." She was then, May, 1788, "in good health." It appears, from an old letter, she once fell at her door-step and hurt her arm. Perhaps then she also wounded her breast, in which a cancerous growth appeared not long before her death. In those days the medical and surgical sciences were all wrong, if we may believe them to be now all right. A New York writer had said that more lives had been destroyed in that city by physicians than by all other causes whatever.
Virginians at the school of medicine in Edinburgh had organized themselves, a few years before, into a Virginia Society "for the protection of the profession against quacks and imposters who had degraded the profession by mingling with it the trade of an apothecary or surgeon!" An eloquent petition is preserved addressed "To the Honourable the Council of Virginia and House of Burgesses," entreating that "laws be passed forbidding the intrusion of pretenders into the domain of the authorized practitioner, thereby dishonouring the profession itself and destroying mankind." We can imagine the enormities committed by the quacks and imposters when we observe the methods of the legitimate practitioner. When a man or woman sickened, the doctors sped the parting guest,—taking from him his very life-blood, by cupping, leeching, bleeding, and reducing his strength by blistering and drenching. Nature was sometimes strong enough to give battle to doctor and disease, and even to win a victory over their combined forces. But in old age Nature prudently retired without a struggle. We hope much for Mary Washington from the gentle ministration of Betty Lewis and the indulgent kindness of good Dr. Charles Mortimer, also Betty Lewis's own testimony, one month before the end, of her patience and resignation. The last word from her lips reveals no earthly wish save the desire to hear from her son's "own hand that he is well." August 25, 1789, she was released from sufferings which had been borne with unfaltering faith and fortitude; and on the 27th of that month she was laid to rest in the spot she had herself chosen as her last resting-place, and over which her monument, erected by the women of America, now stands.
The President did not learn of her death—in that day of post-riders—until the 1st of September. It was announced to him by his kinsman Colonel Burgess Ball.
On September 13, he wrote to his sister, Mrs. Betty Lewis, as follows:—
"My Dear Sister: Colonel Ball's letter gave me the first account of my Mother's death. Since that I have received Mrs. Carter's[28] letter, written at your request, and previous to both. I was prepared for the event by advices of her illness coming to your son Robert.
"Awful and affecting as the death of a parent is, there is consolation in knowing that Heaven has spared ours to an age beyond which few attain, and favored her with the full enjoyment of her mental faculties and as much bodily strength as usually falls to the lot of four score.
"When I was last in Fredericksburg I took a final leave of her, never expecting to see her more....
"Your affectionate brother,
"George Washington."