Could this monstrous woman have held an honored place in a social circle of stately, courteous, cultured people? Why assert such things which completely offset an oft-repeated concession that "all the sterling, classic virtues of industry, frugality and truth-telling were inculcated by this excellent mother(!) and her strong common sense made its indelible impress upon the mind of her son."
She has also suffered much at the hands of her own countrywomen! We must remember she never appeared in the full blaze of public scrutiny until she was over seventy years old, and then, impoverished by a long war with an entourage the most discouraging and painful. Women then found her parsimonious, ungraceful in dress and manner, sour in temper! Pray what have we, my fastidious sisters, done for our country in our day and generation? Compare our privileges and opportunities with hers! The wealth, the light, the leisure of a happy era, are ours, and yet not enough can this affluent country afford for our adornment, our culture and pleasure. We can—and do—traverse the earth, flitting from land to land as the seasons change, becoming acquainted, if it so please us, with the cloistered wisdom of libraries, the color and beauty of palaces, the priceless treasures of art centres, able to enrich our minds with all the whole world has to offer, from ancient days to this, and with the possible contact of brilliant minds at home and abroad. Show me the result! Something, I grant you, is gained in personal charm, much, alas! in accentuating the natural heart-break from which the less fortunate suffer in witnessing the undeserved contrasts and inequalities of life.
Surely it is not for American women of this day—sheltered, treasured, adored—to complain that industry, simplicity in living, ungraceful dress and manner, mar the portrait of a noble woman whose lot was cast in a narrow and thorny path, whose life was necessarily a denied one, and yet who accomplished more for her country than any other woman ever did or ever can do!
It was her pleasure to live simply—at a time of almost riotous profusion. It was her pleasure to busy her own hands with the housewifely work of her own household,—knitting, sewing, sorting fleeces for "Virginia cloth," preserving fruits, distilling herbs for the sick,—"making drudgery divine" by sharing the tasks she laid upon others, thereby earning her many gifts to the poor. In an age of abundant leisure she was industrious; in an age of dissipation of time and money she was self-denying, diligent, and frugal; in an age when speech was free and profanity "genteel" she preserved her temperate speech, unpolluted by the faintest taint of coarseness or irreverance. When the church no longer concerned itself with the care of men's souls, she kept her own serene, in her simple faith that prayer would prevail in the end, performing every outward religious duty as conscientiously as if the priests and bishops showed, as well as taught, the way. So did she—
". . . travel on life's common way
In cheerful Godliness; and yet her heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay."
This, the result of many years spent in studying her character, the writer presents as the true Mary Washington, to be honored all the more for her retired, her simple life, her homely industries.
It is proper that her characteristics should be summed up before the weakness of extreme old age had lessened its activity and usefulness, while she was still young enough to catch the enthusiasm of her friends and neighbors for fine houses, fine coaches, rich dress, and much indulgence in pleasure.
She was better able than some of her neighbors to indulge in these things, deemed in her day the essentials of position. Perhaps she may have heard the specious argument urged by some to warrant such indulgence,—the argument that expenditure in luxuries becomes the duty of the rich in order to stimulate the industries of the poor. But Mary Washington believed in the wholesome influence of an example of self-denial, which can only become of any worth when practised by choice and not by necessity. And yet she lived long before Stuart Mill and other political economists had demonstrated that money spent in rich garments, jewels, and luxury in living adds nothing of permanent value to the world.