The Washingtons

by Flora Fraser

  The Association frowned on “all Manner of Luxury and Extravagance,” but signs of the “universal retrenchment,” for which Washington, Mason, and others had hoped, proved sparse. Within two years all sanctions on British imports in Virginia were virtually at an end. The Association had failed to live up to its promise as a club with which to beat the British government. Many of the merchants of the colony acted, in the words of Burgess Francis Lightfoot Lee of Stratford Hall, as “traitors” and ignored the agreement that they had signed. The “country gentlemen” or backwoodsmen planters, who played no part in colony politics, had been “indolent.” They either omitted to sign the agreement or else, having signed, ordered from Britain and purchased from Virginia merchants goods proscribed by the Association.

  Washington, with Mason, was instrumental in June 1770 in securing a new Association. It was, the former wrote to George William Fairfax in England, “formed much upon the old Plan, but more relaxed.” Upward of three hundred merchants, including John Carlyle and Robert Adam of Alexandria, were signatories, as were a further thirty-odd planters including Washington. This agreement called for county committees to police imports and for a boycott of those merchants who imported goods on the proscribed list. Washington and Mason, as members of the Fairfax County Committee, interrogated two local merchants in July 1771 about cargoes including “silver handed knives and forks” and “nine men’s fine hats,” both proscribed items. By and large the committees failed to control the volume of goods imported against the spirit and letter of the Association.

  The British government lifted in March 1771 the tax on all but tea and a few other exports, though the American Board of Customs remained in place in Boston. For this surprising turn of events, civil disobedience in Boston and the establishment there of two regiments of foot were responsible. Disaffection culminated in a bloody clash of townsmen and soldiers in March 1770. Five townsmen lost their lives in what became known as the Boston Massacre. The British government, yielding to the temper of the times, scaled down the odious Revenue Act. In other colonies, Associations had, in response, disbanded. Washington and Mason would both have liked to continue the Virginia boycott, encouraging planters and merchants to favor domestic manufacture and eschew luxury goods. They were not proof against the commercial instincts of merchants, on the one hand, and against the habits of planters, on the other. They reluctantly recommended to Peyton Randolph, chair of the Association, an end to the sanctions on all goods except tea “and such other articles as are, or may be, taxed for the purpose of raising revenue in America (which, we trust, will never be departed from until our grievances are redressed).”

  At a general meeting of this later Association in Williamsburg in July 1771, it was duly agreed that sanctions on taxed tea, paper, glass, and painters’ colors of foreign manufacture alone should remain. The Washingtons, nothing if not pragmatic, sent invoices immediately to Robert Cary, on their own behalf and that of Jacky and Patsy. Orders for crested rings, morocco prayer books, satin slippers, and pickled walnuts jostled for space. The few years of sackcloth and retrenchment were over. Once more, whether their estates could bear the expense or not, every Virginian would be at pains to appear as “neat” and “fashionable” as they imagined the inhabitants of the “metropolis,” London, to be.

  7

  Fevers and Physicians

  “Miss Custis’s Complaint…rather Increases than abates.”

  At MOUNT VERNON THE WELFARE of Patsy Parke Custis was a matter of concern to George and Martha. She began to suffer frightening “fevers and fits” in 1768, when she was about twelve years old. These episodes, which would increase in frequency and in strength as the months and years went by, appeared, to her mother’s and Washington’s infinite distress, impervious to medical aid. Mount Vernon, till now a haven of calm when financial worries did not impinge, was set to become the scene of frustration and sorrow.

  There had been no suggestion earlier that Patsy was in poor health. When the Washingtons were at Warm Springs in the summer of 1767, Lund had written to inform them of life at home: “The Children are very well & were Yesterday at Alexandria Church with Miss Guess [Gist, a local spinster] who called & carry’d them up in the Chariot. Let Colonel Fairfax know his family are well & he has a plenty of Rain—this day with us is very rainy.” For some time Patsy learned her lessons alongside her brother, and she received her own copy of Ruddiman’s Rudiments (of the Latin tongue). Subsequent Latin and Greek grammars and texts were charged to Jacky alone, and her formal education seems to have ceased entirely when the children’s tutor, Magowan, left before Christmas 1767. The following June her brother, at thirteen, was enrolled as a pupil at the school that clergyman Jonathan Boucher had established in his parish about six miles from Fredericksburg. Patsy devoted hours to music lessons with Mr. Stedlar. Washington ordered on her behalf from London songbooks and music composition books as well as books of prayer, and she continued to take part in dancing classes.

  Anxiety about Patsy’s health first surfaced in February 1768. Washington returned on the twenty-fourth from a day that he had spent duck shooting—“killed 2 Mallards & 5 bald faces,” he noted in his diary—to find William Rumney at dinner. Many of the Alexandria medic’s visits to Mount Vernon were purely social, and he often joined Washington and others out foxhunting or shooting. On this occasion Dr. Rumney in his official capacity prescribed twelve powders for Patsy, as well as “a vial of nervous drops” and valerian, a substance then in common use as an antispasmodic. Next morning Rumney departed, and Washington went out with his gun again: “Killd 2 ducks—viz. a sprig tail and Teal.” Two days later Mr. Stedlar came as usual so as to give Patsy and her brother their music lesson.

  Three months later Jacky was preparing to become Mr. Boucher’s pupil. Washington noted, following a visit to Belvoir, on June 14: “Sent for Doctr. Rumney to Patsey Custis, who was seized with fits.” Once more the physician prescribed valerian and “nervous drops.” Now he also bled his patient. In July he experimented with capsules of musk, another anticonvulsant. With time the convulsions that incapacitated Patsy periodically appear in her stepfather’s almanac and diary notations, and in other doctors’ bills and cash accounts. They were almost certainly epileptic seizures. Epilepsy is currently defined as short episodes of symptoms caused by a burst of abnormal electrical activity in the brain. Washington recorded Patsy’s fits in the margins of his almanac for some months in 1770 and passed judgment on their severity. In July, beside three dates, he noted: “½ fit.” These may have been some form of partial—or petit mal—seizure, characterized by loss of awareness and lasting between ten seconds and two minutes. Only a part of the brain is involved, and these “fits” do not tax the sufferer unduly. From the outset—in 1768 Washington used the phrase “seized with fits”—Patsy very likely also suffered grand mal episodes, which may last up to five or ten minutes. The electrical storm pervades the whole brain.

  Grand mal episodes, being violent in nature and causing nervous and physical exhaustion, are frightening to behold and potentially dangerous to the sufferer. Washington noted in his 1770 almanac beside twenty-six different summer dates variously “Fit,” “2 fits,” “3 fits,” and “Ditto.” On July 31 he wrote: “1 very bad ditto.” Typically in a grand mal seizure the sufferer goes rigid and, if standing, falls to the ground. Next, her arms and legs begin to jerk. Her eyes may close or roll back in their sockets, she may bite her tongue or cheek, and incontinence may occur. Patsy would afterward very likely have proceeded to sleep deeply before waking confused, with no memory of the episode. From the first, the Washingtons appear to have taken practical steps regarding the danger that these “fits” posed to Patsy. George made this entry in his cash accounts for December 1768: “Mary Wilson came to live here as a House keeper a[t] 15/. [fifteen shillings] Pr. Month.” Previously Martha had superintended all. This appointment points to the mother’s need to supervise her daughter’s health closely and depute duties where she could.
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br />   Between episodes Patsy was resilient, as an entry in Washington’s diary during the harvest season of 1768 shows: “Rid [Rode] to Ditto [the wheat field in Dogue Run, a part of the plantation two miles from the main house] in the forenoon with my Wife & Patsy Custis.” A commission from London that summer for a “very handsome and fashionable” saddle “with bridle and everything complete” for Patsy’s use, and other riding equipment charged to her account over the next years, confirms that she continued to ride out. Patsy accompanied her mother and stepfather in August when they went on a fortnight’s visit to the Samuel Washingtons at Chotank. Jacky joined them from school, and the family party continued on to the John Augustine Washingtons in Westmoreland County. Patsy was apparently well, although Jacky fell ill with an “intermitting fever, attended with bilious vomitings.” Washington wrote to the Reverend Boucher on September 4, to apologize for the boy’s late return to school: Martha had insisted on taking Jacky home with them to convalesce. The clergyman, in reply, ascribed Jacky’s gastric disorder to gluttony: “he is fond of fruit, and what is worse for him, he is fond of cucumbers.”

  Washington noted on September 20: “Mrs Washington & the two Children went up to Alexandria to see [George Farquhar’s] The Inconstant, or Way to Win Him acted.” Jacky started back to school only on October 20, having missed a good two months of lessons. Martha, placing much less emphasis than her husband on Jacky’s education, reserved her own enthusiasm for making much of her son at home and finding reasons to prolong his stays there.

  Returning home from Williamsburg in early November 1768, George brought north his sister-in-law, Betsy Dandridge. Martha had feared their mother spoiled Betsy when she was younger. Now in her late teens, the girl, who had no dowry, was as yet unmarried, and she remained some months at Mount Vernon. No husband emerged from the ranks of young men of the neighborhood she encountered on visits and at public balls in Alexandria. She settled, in 1773, for a cousin at home, John Aylett, attorney. The future for Betsy’s wealthy niece at Mount Vernon, meanwhile, was in doubt. Rumney again bled her in November 1768. When she was almost thirteen, he treated her once more with a “vial of drops” and more musk capsules at Epiphany 1769—the Washingtons’ tenth wedding anniversary. Jacky, claiming to be affected by his sister’s “disorder,” stayed on at home after Christmas until near the end of January 1769. Washington apologized to Boucher: “After so long a vacation, we hope Jacky will apply close to his Studies, and retrieve the hours he has lost from his Book since your opening School—he promises to do so, & I hope he will.”

  Attempts to find a cure for Patsy dominated the new year. Hugh Mercer, a Scot and celebrated apothecary in Fredericksburg who had served earlier as a surgeon in the British army in America, consulted at Mount Vernon with Rumney on January 31, 1769. He advocated “mercurial pills, purging pills, and ingredients for a decoction.” Neither these nor any other treatments were effective. Washington made this entry in his diary in February: “Joshua Evans who came here last Night put an Iron [finger] Ring upon Patcy (for Fits) and went away after Breakfast.” Evans—probably a blacksmith of that name from Loudoun County—charged a guinea for this cramp ring, a device medieval in origin. The doctors’ bills were far higher, the benefits of their treatments as nebulous. Rumney’s account for the year ran to £19 6s 6d, and Mercer, for his consultation, was paid £6. But there was “no alteration for better or worse in Patsy,” as Washington informed Burwell Bassett that June.

  In a renewed attempt to find a cure, George and Martha took Patsy to Warm Springs in August 1769. (Ever the careful accountant, Washington ascribed all the costs of the summer journey to his ward’s account, as the enterprise was for her benefit.) The journey appears to have been to no avail. In the autumn, Patsy accompanied Washington and her mother south. Dr. John Sequeyra, graduate of Leyden University and member of a distinguished family of London physicians, had set up his stall in Williamsburg years earlier. He reviewed her case, saw her at Eltham on three occasions and in town on five, and submitted a bill for £10 15s. Pasteur, the apothecary in Duke of Gloucester Street, supplied a course of medicine. A brief respite from medical appointments was afforded Patsy on November 2 when, in company with her mother and stepfather and the Bassetts, she ate oysters at Mrs. Campbell’s hostelry in town.

  The following July, when Patsy was about fourteen, Washington was to write to Thomas Johnson, a Maryland lawyer, whose brother was a doctor: “Mrs. Washington wou’d think herself much favourd in receiving those Simples”—concoctions—“& direction’s for the use of them, which your Brother Administers for Fitts—Miss Custis’s Complaint has been of two years standing, & rather Increases than abates.” Cargoes of John Johnson’s herbal preparations were subsequently ferried to Mount Vernon, and for some time Johnson himself was a regular visitor to the house. Recommending that Patsy keep her body “cool and open,” he further urged on her “light cooling food”—frumenty, a kind of porridge, made either of barley or of wheat. The implication is that some at least of Patsy’s seizures occurred when her temperature was high. In June 1771 Washington agreed that Boucher should send more “physic” from Dr. Johnson, “as he has been so obliging to provide it…tho’, if [it be] some of the last, nothing is to be expected from it; that was used without having in the smallest degree, the desired effect.”

  As Patsy turned fifteen and then sixteen in 1771 and 1772, invoices sent to Robert Cary and Co. for luxury items—necklaces, suits of Brussels lace, songbooks, riding hats—continue to reflect her status as a wealthy young woman. But she was no better, as entries in Washington’s guardian accounts indicate: “4 bottles of Fit drops of Mr John Carter” and “2 bottles of Norris’s drops.” Dr. Norris advertised the drops purchased on her account as a cure for fever. Dr. Hammond promoted bottles of “essence of antimony,” one of which features in the guardian accounts, as a cure for spasmodic and other “nervous weaknesses.” Washington wrote to Boucher in February 1771: “Mrs Washington requests the favour of you to get her 2 Oz. of the Spirit of Ether”—another antispasmodic—“if such a thing is to be had in Annapolis, for Miss Custis.” Nearer to home Dr. Rumney continued to administer medicine at Mount Vernon. In addition, the guardian accounts for Patsy show a large sum, £5 10s 6d, Maryland currency, paid in 1773 to Dr. James Craik of Alexandria. The acquisition of a parrot at £1 16 shillings, Virginia currency, in April of that year may have done more to lift the afflicted girl’s spirits than all the medics who attended her with their nostrums to no discernible effect.

  Patsy’s illness was taking its toll, and a miniature painted of her in 1772 shows a girl shockingly wan and pinched. One can hardly connect her to the healthy child of the earlier portraits. Charles Willson Peale, the young artist from Philadelphia who took her likeness, much later recalled, “we danced to give Miss Custis exercise, who did not enjoy a good state of health. She was subject to fits.” Jacky, painted by Peale at the same time, on the other hand, brims with vitality and is plainly an elder version of the younger child.

  Wan of face Patsy might be, but her person did not lack for adornment. A request for the Lady’s Magazine indicates that she enjoyed, with her mother, a healthy interest in dress. Other requests—for a velvet collar, a fan, a firestone necklace and earrings, jeweled hairpins and shoe buckles—reflect that fondness. Silk shoes, one pair striped with gold, one with silver, swelled the order. Patsy continued, when well, to lead an active life. She paid visits and went to church with her family like any of her peers. Neighbor John Posey’s daughter Milly—formally Amelia—was much at Mount Vernon and shared, in 1770, Patsy’s dancing lessons with Mr. Christian. Milly also accompanied her friend two years later to a ball in Alexandria. And Patsy traveled with the Washingtons as far afield as Williamsburg in the autumn of 1772. One may assume that they were unwilling to leave her to “fit” in the company of housekeepers and house slaves.

  Martha had been morbidly anxious, since her children’s extreme youth, about their health, and Patsy’s fits were har
d to bear. Moreover, abnormal and sudden falls, jerking limbs, and frothing at the mouth were hardly genteel behavior in anyone, let alone in a young heiress who might normally expect to attract suitors of her own high rank. Yet Martha and George, far from being ashamed of Patsy and her condition, canvassed opinion widely for a cure and took no pains to hide Patsy’s fits from anyone or indeed to hide Patsy herself away. When Associations did not preclude such purchases, the invoices sent to London on Patsy’s behalf—for necklaces, for silks, and for satin dancing slippers—were as exacting as for any other “young miss” of her age and gave no hint of debility.

  That Patsy attended formal occasions, dressed according to her station, is evident from a letter of complaint that Martha addressed in July 1772 to a London milliner, Mrs. Thorpe. Martha had ordered a “handsome suit of Brussels lace”—comprising cap, tippet, ruffles, and tucker for formal occasions—“to cost £20” for her daughter. Upon the consignment’s arrival at Mount Vernon, it was found that cap and tippet were missing. Moreover, the lace that did arrive, Mrs. Washington complained, was set on “plain joining net, such as can be bought in the milliners’ shops here at 3/6 per yard.” Martha had shown the offending items to “several ladies who are accustomed to such kind of importations.” All agreed that they were “most extravagantly high charged.” Miss Custis could ill afford to do without even the incomplete suit of lace that had been sent, wrote her mother, else these “hard bargains” would have been returned. Martha now sent for another “suit of fashionable lace,” at a price “not to exceed £40,” with strict instructions that it was to include a cap with lappets, ruffles, and tippet or handkerchief.

  Patsy, in her costly ruffles and tucker or wearing a cap “of Minto lace” that her mother ordered for her, was no invalid living in the shadows of society. Virginia society was forgiving, Governor Lord Dunmore being among those who commiserated with Patsy’s debility. But how did she combine an active social life with an illness whose alarming and uninhibited symptoms were so unmaidenly? Artist Peale noted in 1772 that Mrs. Washington “never suffered her to be a minute out of her sight.” One may imagine that, at the first sign of a fit developing, Patsy was whisked into some private setting. Courtship, marriage, and progeny did not lie in the future for her. Unspoken though implicit in all arrangements was the understanding that in lieu of a husband, her mother and stepfather would cherish Patsy at home, their daily anxiety about her fits undiminished, as she and they aged. The Washingtons, celebrating thirteen years of marriage in January 1772, had need to draw on all the reserves of mutual affection and understanding that had accumulated in those years.