Sex and the Founding Fathers: The American Quest for a Relatable Past (Sexuality Studies)

by Thomas A. Foster

  By the late nineteenth century, even those biographers who write largely political accounts of his life also broach the subject of his personal life: Using the nation's first president as a model of virtuous manhood necessarily entails examining his life beyond his public accomplishments. In 1897, noted historian and senator Henry Cabot Lodge authored a two-volume biography of Washington that includes a chapter entitled "Love and Marriage." In the chapter, Lodge explains that "by the time he was fourteen he had fallen deeply in love with Mary Bland of Westmoreland, whom he calls his 'Lowland Beauty"' and as he matured-"a gentleman writing of a Mrs. Hartley, whom Washington much admired, said that the general always liked a fine woman."" Indeed, Lodge writes that Washington fell in love in Philadelphia as a young hero of the French and Indian War.

  Echoing the sentiment articulated by Weems almost eighty years earlier, for Lodge such stories reveal the true man: "How much this little interlude, pushed into a corner as it has been by the dignity of history,-how much it tells of the real man! How the statuesque myth and the priggish myth and the dull and solemn myth melt away before it!... One loves to picture that gallant, generous, youthful figure, brilliant in color and manly form, riding gaily on from one little colonial town to another, feasting, dancing, courting, and making merry."52

  Sally Fairfax in the Early Twentieth Century: A True Man Emerges

  Early-twentieth-century writers depict Washington's private life in essentially the same way as do portrait artists of the nineteenth century: Virtually all of them present an image of manliness that speaks to virility, fatherhood, and marriage. Even without children, Washington's image cultivates the manly ideal. At the turn of the century, a series of biographies with "True" in the title focuses on private life 53 The True George Washington, for example, includes discussion of his relations with women, among other personal anecdotes.

  The volume of writing on Washington's personal life increased exponentially through the century. The rumor that he had fathered Posey, for example, continued to spread. An encyclopedia entry referring to Revolutionary soldiers buried in Illinois describes Posey as "reputedly the natural son of George Washington."54 No doubt, such stories led many to assume that he was not childless in his own marriage. In part, this is because of a broader cultural shift that occurred with regards to sex in American society. In the early twentieth century, American culture underwent a sexual revolution. In the 1910s and 1920s, the Victorian silence surrounding sex and romance withered in the face of a new emphasis on open public expression of erotic desires and feelings.55 As love and desire became openly celebrated in song and dance, so too, did biographies begin to emphasize in greater detail the loves of Washington. Most notably, this focus gave rise to the presence of Fairfax in biographies on Washington. The view we have of Fairfax today is that his "love" for her "was a lengthy torment" and an "impossible infatuation."56

  In the early twentieth century, three brief letters from Washington became central to building a case for an intimate connection to Fairfax. As we have seen, one was published in the New York Herald. It was one of two letters that were written in 1758 before his marriage, and they are flirtatious. The third letter comes from later in Washington's life, when, as one biographer puts it, he "confessed to an elderly Sally that she had been the passion of his youth, that he had never been able to forget her." The key sentence from this letter is one that declares that he had not been able to "eradicate from my mind those happy moments, the happiest in my life, which I have enjoyed in your company."57 In the absence of additional evidence, little more has been revealed or written about by biographers. Yet the flirtatious letters generally have been read as expressions of sincere and deeply felt life-long love. (It is notable that they are never read as indicating the less-virtuous lust-which in the late eighteenth century could have been expressed in the same politely flirtatious manner.)

  The controversy over how best to interpret such letters has been generally overlooked by popular writers, who typically accept such letters as historical artifacts or documents to be taken at face value and read with modern sensibilities in mind. Academic historians and literary scholars, however, have long argued that eighteenth-century letters are anything but transparent and, as was the approach of the day, often inflect popular literature as well as the style guides published in letter-writing manuals. Moreover, as one scholar reminds us, "Letter reading, as opposed to writing, was until quite recently an entirely social affair." Letter writers would typically indicate which passages were to be kept private, and, as letters between John and Abigail Adams illustrate, writers would often hold back for fear of public exposure of private sentiments.58 The later letter is referred to in nearly all twentieth-century biographies of Washington.59

  A 1926 biography, subtitled The Human Being and the Hero, mentions not only his attraction to a "Lowland lady" and to Philipse but also his involvement with Fairfax. Rupert Hughes includes a chapter entitled the "Mystery of Sally Fairfax," in which he calls their lost love a "tragedy." He derides Wilson's handling of the Fairfax attraction, charging that by not mentioning her by name, he is able to "evade direct mention of the most pathetic and baffling incident." Critical of those who deny the interpretation of the letter as proof of the engaged Washington's love for the married woman, Hughes writes, "Sally Fairfax can not be ignored in Washington's life-story. She ought not to be. She deserves the honor of having a profound influence on the formation of his character. She stirred his heart more deeply than any other woman ever did."" Others biographers follow suit. Despite emphasizing "love at first sight" between George and Martha, another account points out that "Martha was not George's first love, nor his third, nor yet his fifth; nor was she ever, perhaps, his real love."61 Still another 1920s biography, after discussing the Lowland Beauty and Philipse, turns to Fairfax, who is identified as "the grand passion of Washington's life." This account views the letter written just a few months before Washington married Martha not as scandalous but rather as something that tells readers that "he was human enough to love in such a way." Echoing popular ideas of the day about masculine prowess, the author notes, "George Washington had courage to face sentiment as he had courage to face his foes, and, in both love and war, his unusual tactics made him victorious."62

  These observations rang true at a time when Sigmund Freud's influence was making its early and initial impact on American culture by highlighting the centrality of romantic and sexual desires to human existence and personal development.63 Washington, Hughes writes, may well have been "cold" and "silent" and "under almost perfect self-control." "But," he continues, "he could love. He did love." Critical of his nineteenth-century predecessors, specifically Sparks and Weems, Hughes writes that his biography is "a study of the man." And he laments that in previous generations, Washington's memorializers have so obscured his personal life that "he was a man of whom it may almost be said that he had no private life."64

  Striking a similar tone, Eugene Prussing published George Washington in Love and Otherwise, explaining that his early-twentieth-century account corrected an earlier generation's avoidance of Washington's intimate life"This is what Washington meant to be and was." Prussing includes a chapter entitled "In Love" alongside his coverage of Washington the "Engineer" and "Captain of Industry." Setting Washington's personal life on par with his professional self, Prussing explains that "the most difficult test of character" for men and women is "their conduct when in love." Like Hughes, Prussing publishes the letters to Fairfax and reads them as evidence of a "startling confession" of love for her. And he does so with the explanation that Washington had done "what nearly every man has done at some time"-that is, he told "a woman he has no right to tell, that he loves her, whom he has no right to love."65 Another account similarly emphasizes the normativity of Washington's desires, commenting on the Fairfax letters that his "romantic strain... will not be unfamiliar to many men who can honestly recall their youth."66

  Underscoring his view that one's conduct in love
could reveal much about the individual, something espoused by Weems but now laden with new psychological meaning, Prussing writes about Washington's turning away from Fairfax and deciding to marry Martha: "Such was Washington's romance. He had firmly removed it from his path when it became dangerous." He continues, "In place of it he had put a wholesome plant, which he carefully and faithfully tended .1117

  Washington's mid-twentieth-century definitive biographer, Douglas Southall Freeman, includes the full text of the Fairfax letter in his sevenvolume biography. He acknowledges that no original exists, that it came to be known only after being published in the New York Herald in 1877, and that some biographers discredit the letter because its existence has not been verified. Weighing in on a debate about its authenticity, he notes that in style and writing, he believes it to be authentic. Moreover, he argues in a footnote as a matter of "interpretation not a statement of fact" that it should be concluded that "he was going to marry Martha but was in hopeless love with Sally and wished above everything else to know whether she loved him."68

  Some biographers read the letter to Fairfax in a different light. John C.Fitzpatrick, author of a multivolume publication of Washington's writings, in his biography expresses discomfort with the interpretation that most would come to accept. For Fitzpatrick, the letter is clearly an expression of love for Martha and for her alone. If it is not, Fitzpatrick remarks, Americans would have to think of Washington as a "worthless scoundrel." The letters written to Fairfax while Washington was encamped during the French and Indian War, he explains, were prompted by a "bored state" and "to claim more than this requires an imagination unresponsive to the niceties of honor and good breeding." Fitzpatrick sees these desires as elements of normative masculinity but believes that Washington's writings are best interpreted as stemming from "the tendency of youth to exaggerate personal romance."69

  Regardless of how his interpretation stands in contrast to the popular notion of the story of a young Washington deeply in love with, and never able to have, Fairfax, what is underscored by his discussion is the extent to which biographers, academic or lay, have had to deal with the public's knowledge of and interest in this story of one of Washington's early loves.

  Twentieth-Century Happy Family

  In addition to the importance they attach to the Fairfax story as evidence that Washington was capable of deep love, twentieth-century biographies also depict his household as a happy one. For much of the century, biographers downplay his childlessness and emphasize his paternal nature, which was demonstrated by his fatherly emotions and material care that he gave to the children that Martha brought from her previous marriage.

  Although the 1926 title The Family Life of Washington might lead us to expect a discussion of his childlessness, readers receive only two phrases that assume knowledge of his childlessness-and are never offered any explanation or reason for it.70 Another biographer explains, "They kept hoping for children" but offers no more than this claim on the topic.71 Similarly, another notes that his "faithfulness and lifelong devotion to Martha Washington were not rewarded, as we think they deserved to be, by children, to carry it on."72

  The view of Washington as the ideal family man gained new currency in the twentieth century, and many biographies emphasize that his was a household that raised children. Thus, Charles Moore, for example, asserts that Washington was "naturally affectionate to the point of indulgence, and dearly loving children." And on his not having "offspring," he writes, "he made up for this lack by fatherly care of his wife's children and grandchildren and his own nephews and nieces."73 On taking in the grandchildren, one author writes, "He and Martha were a childless couple who loved children."74 Even books that focus on the domestic life of the Washingtons take this approach. One notable exception is an early-twentieth-century account that insinuates that the childlessness was Martha's responsibility, stating that his life might have been quite different if he had married Philipse: "There might have been children if she had been Washington's wife," the author postulates, "to gambol on the green slopes of Washington's childless home."75

  In the nineteenth century, childlessness was relatively rare, happening in less than 10 percent of married families. Through the twentieth century, however, shifting contexts would contribute to the issue of Washington's childlessness as being one that begged for more explanation-and perhaps compensation. At the turn of the twentieth century, Theodore Roosevelt famously talked about "race suicide," drawing attention to the alarming drop in the birth rate for white, middle-class, native-born families. This comment was explicitly linked to concerns about American manhood becoming weakened and sexually degenerate." Historian Elaine Tyler May discusses the "pressure to procreate" that white middle-class families felt in the early decades of the twentieth century. Yet, for the most part, few earlytwentieth-century writers venture beyond the above statements, perhaps to avoid raising questions about Washington's potency, which was becoming an increasingly important element of American manhood."

  By mid-century, however, infertility became more of an unavoidable topic, occurring in some 20 percent of couples. Thus, it was perhaps more of a cultural concern in the mid-twentieth century than at other times. This factor would be one of many that would drive discussions of Washington's infertility in the later twentieth century. A post World War II baby boom and the "rise of compulsory parenthood" were linked to patriotism that continued in the early years of the Cold War. Post World War II fatherhood "was an important responsibility and evidence of maturity, patriotism, and citizenship." Childlessness was linked to subversiveness, to "pinkos" and "homos," and anticommunism nurtured the notion that it was patriotic to have a nuclear family. Washington's lack of children had to be addressed, and for some, his fathering of stepchildren and extended kin would be one way to fit the bill.78

  The emphasis on happy families in the twentieth century also gave rise to greater degrees of speculation about the marriage of George and Martha. Despite the reservations of one biographer, who reminds people that "little is known" about Washington's marriage or courtship and that "the stories of this part of the lives of George Washington and Mrs. Martha Custis are nothing but gratuitous, imaginary pictures," a romanticized view of the marriage of Martha and George grew through the twentieth century.' An early-twentieth-century account imagines a scene where George and Martha, "infatuated with love at first sight, talk the moon down and the sun up."80 Some biographers, such as Moore, argue that the letters written to Fairfax indicate Washington's deep love for Martha and are not evidence of love between him and Fairfax. If Fairfax "ever sacrificed either time or affection for his sake," contends Moore, "that fact has not appeared."81 A 1926 account repeats the characterization of George and Martha's bond as "love at first sight."82

  Freeman's mid-twentieth-century biography takes issue with the argument that Washington courted Martha too soon after her husband passed and underscores that she selected him above all others. Washington, he argues, began his courtship at the "earliest" nearly a year after she was widowed, and, as she was only twenty-six and very wealthy, she could have married any number of eligible men.83 Many biographers acknowledge the utility of the union but imagine that it was also privately satisfying. It was a "prudent engagement," writes one, but there is no reason to assume a "marriage of convenience."84

  In the middle decades of the twentieth century, George and Martha could plausibly serve as fodder for books penned in the style of romantic novels. Such accounts continue the appealing image of Washington and imagine his marriage in idealized romantic terms. Martha Washington: Our First Lady, published by author and photographer Alice Desmond in 1942, depicts the couple as perfectly matched and in love. In a chapter entitled "Love at First Sight," the meeting of Martha and George is wrapped in the gauzy headiness of early romance novels. Desmond imagines Martha, then still married, at the theater when she sees George for the first time. As she scans the crowd, she notices "a man-a young giant of about twenty-four, in the blue uniform of a
Virginia soldier. He was an unusually noticeable figure, more than six feet tall, broad-shouldered, yet of a slender and athletic build." Even the man whom she asks about his identity admires him, commenting, "Isn't he a fine-looking man?" Martha suddenly recalls having met him years before: "Who could forget that commanding presence? That handsome head poised on broad shoulders? That face with the rather large nose, ruddy cheeks, firm lips and chin?" The image of an attractive young Washington gives way to the still-appealing older president: "His face was so handsome," Desmond writes, "that many a lady's heart fluttered as she curtsied to him. Always distinguished-looking, George Washington, nearing sixty, was even more striking in appearance than in his youth."85

  When mid-century smiling nuclear families in their domestic bliss symbolized the American Dream, the romantic imagining of George and Martha's relationship would take center stage and endure for decades.86 In 1969, best-selling romance novelist Mary Higgins Clark published Aspire to the Heavens.87 Washington is the idealized masculine hero of romance novels in this account. Women flirt with him and find him charming. He dances, banters, and is full of manly appeal. And the chemistry between Martha and George is evident at their first meeting.

  Romantic Man for the New Millennium

  In their efforts to depict a more appealing and approachable Washington, contemporary biographers position themselves in opposition to what they argue is an older, starched image. Writing in an era that has popularized the stories of ordinary men and women and viewing with a critical eye the unsullied images of elites, biographers often note that Washington has been disembodied and dehumanized. He comes to us, they lament, as a marble bust in a museum, a statesman in an early American painting, an enormous head on Mount Rushmore, on the dollar bill, and on the quarter. We see Washington everywhere, they say, but nowhere do we Americans connect with the man. More than for any other Founding Father, modern biographies of Washington have had to struggle with portraying their human subject while still presenting the embodied symbol of the nation itself. Washington's face and name have become iconic symbols of the United States of America, not merely images of one of its Founding Fathers. Asserts one recent biographer, "For more than two centuries, artists and historians have portrayed George Washington as cold, stern, and distant.... But the real George Washington-the private, personal George Washington-was human to the core: laughing, loving, and living life to the fullest."88 But, as we have seen, it has become a centuries-old cliche that he is always disembodied through nationalized imagery that makes the identity synonymous with his portrait.