The Mother of Washington and Her Times

by Sara Agnes Rice Pryor

There is not the least doubt that life, notwithstanding its dangers and limitations and political anxieties, passed happily to these early planters of Virginia. The lady of the manor had occupation enough and to spare in managing English servants and negroes, and in purveying for a table of large proportions. Nor was she without accomplishments. She could dance well, embroider, play upon the harpsichord or spinet, and wear with grace her clocked stockings, rosetted, high-heeled shoes and brave gown of "taffeta and moyre" looped over her satin quilt.

There was no society column in newspapers to vex her simple soul by awakening unwholesome ambitions. There was no newspaper until 1736. She had small knowledge of any world better than her own, of bluer skies, kinder friends, or gayer society. She managed well her large household, loved her husband, and reared kindly but firmly her many sons and daughters. If homage could compensate for the cares of premature marriage, the girl-wife had her reward. She lived in the age and in the land of chivalry, and her "amiable qualities of mind and heart" received generous praise. As a matron she was adored by her husband and her friends. When she said, "Until death do us part," she meant it. Divorce was unknown; its possibility undreamed of. However and wherever her lot was cast she endured to the end; fully assured that when she went to sleep behind the marble slab in the garden an enumeration of her virtues would adorn her tombstone.

In the light of the ambitions of the present day, the scornful indifference of the colonists to rank, even among those entitled to it, is curious. Very rare were the instances in which young knights and baronets elected to surrender the free life in Virginia and return to England to enjoy their titles and possible preferment. One such embryo nobleman is quoted as having answered to an invitation from the court, "I prefer my land here with plentiful food for my family to becoming a starvling at court."

Governor Page wrote of his father, Mason Page of Gloucester, born 1718, "He was urged to pay court to Sir Gregory Page whose heir he was supposed to be but he despised title as much as I do; and would have nothing to say to the rich, silly knight, who finally died, leaving his estate to a sillier man than himself—one Turner, who, by act of parliament, took the name and title of Gregory Page."

Everything was apparently settled upon a firm, permanent basis. Social lines were sharply drawn, understood, and recognized. The court "at home" across the seas influenced the mimic court at Williamsburg. Games that had been fashionable in the days of the cavaliers were popular in Virginia. Horse-racing, cock-fighting, cards, and feasting, with much excess in eating and drinking, marked the social life of the subjects of the Georges in Virginia as in the mother country. It was an English colony,—wearing English garments, with English manners, speech, customs, and fashions. They had changed their skies only.

Cœlum, non animum, qui trans mare currunt.

It is difficult to understand that, while custom and outward observance, friendship, lineage, and close commercial ties bound the colony to England, forces, of which neither was conscious, were silently at work to separate them forever. And this without the stimulus of discontent arising from poverty or want. It was a time of the most affluent abundance. The common people lived in the greatest comfort, as far as food was concerned. Fish and flesh, game, fruits, and flowers, were poured at their feet from a liberal horn-of-plenty. Deer, coming down from the mountains to feed upon the mosses that grew on the rocks in the rivers, were shot for the sake of their skins only, until laws had to be enforced lest the decaying flesh pollute the air. Painful and hazardous as were the journeys, the traveller always encumbered himself with abundant provision for the inner man.

When the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe accomplished the perilous feat of reaching the summit of the Blue Ridge Mountains, they had the honor of drinking King George's health in "Virginia red wine, champagne, brandy, shrub, cider, canary, cherry punch, white wine, Irish usquebaugh, and two kinds of rum,"—all of which they had managed to carry along, keeping a sharp lookout all day for Indians, and sleeping on their arms at night. A few years later we find Peter Jefferson ordering from Henry Wetherburn, innkeeper, the biggest bowl of arrack punch ever made, and trading the same with William Randolph for two hundred acres of land.

We are not surprised to find that life was a brief enjoyment. Little Mary Ball, demurely reading from the tombstones in the old St. Stephen's church, had small occasion for arithmetic beyond the numbers of thirty or forty years—at which age, having "Piously lived and comfortably died, leaving the sweet perfume of a good reputation," these light-hearted good livers went to sleep behind their monuments.