"So you threaten me if I prove deficient in the deference I owe you as a married man, with the power you have of forwarding or retarding my success in the Matrimonial Way.[12] This would be a tremendous threat indeed were I as fond of Matrimony as my young Mistress, as you call her, but happily I am little more than twelve years old and not so eager to tye a Knot which Death alone can Dissolve. And yet I pretend not to ridicule the holy sacred institution, but have all due reverence for that and the worthy people who have entered into the Society, from good and generous motives. It is only those who chuse to be married at all events that I think deserve raillery.... I never saw Westmoreland so dull. I was at Squire Lee's when your letter came. He is the veriest Tramontane in nature; if ever he gets married, if his wife civilizes him, she deserves to be canonized.
"So you can't forbear a fling at femalities; believe me Curiosity is as imputable to the Sons as the Daughters of Eve. Think you there was ever a Lady more curious than our Cousin the Squire? He himself is the greatest of all curiosities, but hang him, how came he to pop twice in my head while I was writing to you!
"The Annapolis Races Commence the 6th of October. The American Compy of Players are there and said to be amazingly improved. I should like to see them, as I think Theatrical Entertainments a rational amusement."
Clever little Mistress Alice! Twelve years old, and already flirting with the sixty-year-old Squire Richard Lee Burgess from Westmoreland, member of the Continental Congress, giver of five-day balls; who yet found time to gather rosebuds, for he actually married sixteen-year-old Sally Poythress after he was sixty-two years old.
It is a great misfortune to us that our observant tutor was not invited to Mount Vernon. Mr. Christian's class met at Mount Vernon, also at "Gunston Hall"—the fine residence of the George Mason who wrote the famous Declaration of Rights in 1776. Mrs. Martha Washington's lovely daughter, Martha Custis, was then just thirteen years old, and there is no doubt, not the least, that she wore a blue silk quilt and had her hair "craped" (crépé) high and interwoven with a feather. On the 18th of April, 1770, Washington records, "Patsy Custis and Milly Posey went to Col. Mason's to the Dancing School."
The discipline of children was stern. Their duties included the courtesies of life as religiously as its business. "I have no Stockings and I swear I won't go to the Dancing School," says fifteen-year-old Bob, who is at the awkward age and dreads society. "'Are Bob and Nancy gone to Mr. Turberville's?' said the Colonel at Breakfast—'Nancy is gone, Sir, Bob stays at Home, he has no shoes!' 'Poh—what nonsense,' says the Colonel. He sends the clerk to the Plantation Store for a pair of Shoes. Bob he takes to his Study and floggs severely for not having given seasonable notice, and sends him instantly to the Dance" in a suitable and proper frame of mind to enjoy himself!
Balls, fish feasts, christenings, cock-fights, horse-races and church-going filled the time as well as visiting and dancing. Everybody went to church through all weathers. In winter the churches were bitterly cold. No provision of any kind for heating them was ever dreamed of. The church was one of the rallying places for the neighborhood. "There are," says the tutor, "three grand divisions of time at the church on Sundays; Viz: before Service giving and receiving letters of business, reading Advertisements" (affixed to the church-doors) "consulting about the price of Tobacco, Grain, &c., and settling either the lineage, Age or qualities of favourite Horses. 2. In the church at Service, prayers read over in haste, a Sermon, seldom under and never over twenty minutes, but always made up of sound morality, or deep-studied Meta-physicks. 3. After Service is over, three quarters of an hour spent in strolling round the church among the crowd in which time invitations are given by gentlemen to go home with them to dinner."
The christenings were seasons of large family gatherings—the silver christening bowl, like the punch-bowl, descending from generation to generation.
There were no "poor whites"—the helpless, hopeless, anæmic race now numerous in Virginia. There were well-instructed men and women in the industrial classes who filled situations as visiting shoemakers, weavers, or housekeepers. The Virginia woman in "The Golden Age" had need of all the help she could get. She married while yet a child—often less than fifteen years old. Her housekeeper was her tower of strength. She helped generally throughout the family, nursing the sick, caring for the children's comfort, and standing sponsor for them in baptism.[13] A letter from one of these humble retainers, a housekeeper at Stratford, somewhere about 1774, has been preserved by which we perceive she represented the wife of Governor Fauquier at a christening.