HER MARRIAGE AND EARLY LIFE
"The 'Rose of Epping Forest,'" says one of her descendants, "and 'reigning Belle of the Northern Neck,' as she was universally styled, would, in common parlance, be called 'hard to please,' in that, in times when marriages were early she did not resign her sceptre until she had attained the then ripe age of twenty-two—not 'love-inspiring sixteen,' as Parson Weems would have us believe. In this she exhibited that consummate wisdom, calm equipoise of soul, and perfect self-control so strikingly displayed throughout her subsequent career."
She was blessed then with the priceless gift of a long and happy girlhood—that sweet fountain of pure waters, the memory of which has cheered so many women throughout a long and difficult life. In her day so late a marriage was not only eccentric but something to be condemned as unwise. The reluctant Virginia belle was warned that those who "walked through the woods with a haughty spirit would have to stoop at last and pick up a crooked stick." That women could stand alone was unthinkable in those days. A staff was essential, and she who scorned the stately saplings of the forest would surely be forced at last to accept some inferior windfall.
But Mary Ball chose wisely and well; of this we may be sure. Augustine Washington died before he could earn the honor of impressing her life or that of his illustrious son.
He belonged to an old English family which had sent two of its members to Virginia early in the seventeenth century, and, as we have seen, his grandfather held positions of honor and trust in the colony.
With the origin of his crest,—the closed visor, the soaring raven,—with the motto Excitus acta probat, we need not concern ourselves. The shield itself is more to our purpose, for it furnished the pattern for the Stars and Stripes of this country; and is surely of all insignia the most distinguished, since in all lands, on all waters, amid all the emblems of the pride of the world, it stands preëminent as the emblem of freedom won by valor.
It should be quite enough for us to know, "He was a gentleman of high standing, noble character, large property and considerable personal attractions, being of fair complexion, tall stature, commanding presence and an age not disproportioned to her own." He was a neighbor of Major George Eskridge, although their homes were fifteen or twenty miles distant from each other. We have all supposed that he followed Mary Ball to England and was married there. Possibly, not probably. He was a plain Virginia planter, immersed in business and domestic cares, and it is not probable that he went to England in quest of Mary Ball. Why should he cross the ocean to gather the flower that grew at his threshold?
It is much more likely that he rode over to attend service in the handsome, recently erected Yeocomico church, and to visit George Eskridge at Sandy Point, coming with his first wife and their little boys, Lawrence and Augustine. Elizabeth Bonum lived a mile and a half from Sandy Point. It is quite certain that all the families in this hospitable region knew and visited each other. Mary Ball probably knew Augustine Washington well, long before he was a widower.
All this seems prosaic by contrast with the legend that "the fair American" met her future husband while she was visiting her half-brother in a Berkshire town in England; that one day a gentleman was thrown from his travelling chariot in front of her brother's gate, was seriously injured, brought in and nursed by the fair hands of Mary herself; that love and marriage followed in short order; that the pair lived several years in a villa at Cookham. All this is so much more attractive than a plain story of propinquity and old-fashioned neighborhood friendship, blossoming into a temperate, middle-aged, old-fashioned widower-love and marriage! But we are constrained to accept the latter, having no proof of anything better. Besides, where were Lawrence and Augustine during all those halcyon years? Who was looking after those lambs while the Shepherd was disporting himself at villas in Cookham?
The snows had melted from the violet beds, and the "snow-birds" were nesting in the cedars when our Mary left her girlhood's home to become the wife of Augustine Washington. Her new home was a large, old-fashioned house on the banks of the Potomac—one of those dwellings with great low-stretching roof, which always reminds me of a gigantic fowl brooding with expanded wings over its young. It was not one of the imposing colonial houses just then (March 6, 1730) in process of erection. Marion Harland says, in her reverent "Story of Mary Washington": "Augustine Washington's plantation of Wakefield rested upon the Potomac, and was a mile in width. Wakefield comprised a thousand acres of as fine wood and bottom land as were to be found in a county that by reason of the worth, talents and patriotism that adorned it was called the Athens of Virginia. The house faced the Potomac, the lawn sloping to the bank between three and four hundred yards distant from the 'porch,' running from corner to corner of the old dwelling. There were four rooms of fair size upon the first floor, the largest in a one-story extension in the back being the chamber. The high roof above the main building was pierced by dormer windows that lighted a large attic. At each end of the house was a chimney built upon the outside of the frame dwelling and of dimensions that made the latter seem disproportionately small. Each cavernous fireplace would hold half a cord of wood. About the fireplace in the parlor were the blue Dutch tiles much affected in the decorative architecture of the time." Here we can fancy the bride, covertly exploring her new home and scanning the footprints of her predecessor; keeping her own counsel, but instructing herself as to what manner of woman had first enthroned herself in the bosom of her lord.