by Flora Fraser
Duly admonished, Custis had left his belongings behind at college when he came home for the summer holidays. But, the general wrote to Dr. Stuart in August, the young man appeared “to be moped & Stupid, says nothing—and is always in some hole or corner excluded from Company.” The Stuarts and Washingtons came to suspect that Wash still hankered after Miss Hodgson. Nelly Stuart, who had personal experience of an impetuous Parke Custis pressing his suit, was particularly anxious that her son should not return to Annapolis. With reluctance, in September, Washington addressed the president of St. John’s College in a letter that the young man delivered at Annapolis. The boy returned only to “pack up for good,” the general wrote. By the late autumn, after Tobias Lear had attempted to tutor his former pupil at home, the general had “a thorough conviction that it was a vain attempt to keep Washington Custis to any literary pursuits, either in a public Seminary, or at home under the direction of any one.” He took Lear with him to Philadelphia to act as his secretary. Wash, at age seventeen, was free to chat away the day and roam all hours with his gun.
In Philadelphia, where he had formerly lived in splendor, Washington took lodgings in November in a boardinghouse on Eighth Street. He wrote from there to Lawrence Lewis two weeks after his arrival, on December 2: “Making a selection of Officers for the twelve new Regiments…is a work of infinite more difficulty than I had any conception of.…When this will be accomplished I am not yet able to say.” They were not to rise from their work until December 13, having been at it a full month. The commander-in-chief wrote of having little respite from his labors: “In order to bring it to an end we sit from ten o’clock until after three—& from Seven in the evening until past nine.” He dined abroad with friends in the interval between the daily and evening sessions, and took tea elsewhere afterward. He dined too, on one occasion, with Robert Morris in the debtors’ prison on Prune Street. Adams and others in government were also his hosts.
Washington wrote to Mrs. Powel on November 17, a week after he arrived in the city: “I am to dine this day at Mr Willing’s”—Thomas Willing, her brother—“and if you are disengaged, will have the honor of drinking Tea with you in Third Street, afterwards.” He proposed himself, on December 1, as her breakfast guest the following day, a Sunday. No record of either tea or breakfast appears in his diary, but the general and the lady were in constant communication in these early days of December, as his business wound to a close. She hoped, on the third, that he was none the worse for his “wet Sunday walk” of the day before. On the fourth he acknowledged her “kind, and obliging offer to choose some thing handsome, with which to present Miss Custis.” She had suggested a muff. He thought Nelly was already provided with one: “of a tippet I am not so certain; but a handsome Muslin, or any thing else, that is not the whim of the day, cannot be amiss.” He asked her also: “Is there any thing—not of much cost—I could carry Mrs Washington as a memento that she has not been forgotten, in this City?”
Mrs. Powel duly supplied a piece of muslin for sixty-five dollars, a thread case at seven, and also dolls, for Martha’s great-granddaughters. On December 7, having named the total sum of her expenditure as seventy-four dollars, Mrs. Powel wrote additionally: “My Heart is so sincerely afflicted and my Ideas so confused that I can only express my predominant Wish—that God may take you into his holy keeping and preserve you safe both in Traveling and under all Circumstances, and that you may be happy here and hereafter is the ardent Prayer of Your affectionate afflicted Friend.”
What prompted this sophisticated woman to tell of a “sincerely afflicted” heart and of “confused” ideas? Had she or Washington or both declared or acted on a feeling for the other that was forbidden, given his marriage to Martha? Had she misunderstood the nature of the friendship that brought Washington to her door to breakfast and take tea? In response to this effusion, Washington wrote unexceptionably: “For your kind and affectionate wishes, I feel a grateful sensibility, and reciprocate them with all the cordiality you could wish, being My dear Madam Your most Obedt & obliged Hble Servant.”
Mrs. Powel wrote, next day, to ask Washington to dine on the ninth. He declined courteously: “I feel much obliged by your kind & polite invitation to dine with you to day, but am under the necessity of denying myself that pleasure.” He had “requested Generals Hamilton & Pinckney to come prepared this morning, at their usual hour—ten O’clock—for the whole day; that a few moments for dinner only might interrupt our daily labour.” Washington departed south for Mount Vernon, with the purchases Mrs. Powel had made for him, without seeing her again. Nor did they resume a correspondence.
While in Philadelphia, it had occurred to the commander-in-chief that a place might be found, subject to his mother’s and grandmother’s approval, for Washington Custis in a regiment. “The only hesitation I had, to induce the caution before mentioned,” he later wrote to Dr. Stuart, “arose from his being an only Son; indeed the only male of his Great great Grandfathers family.” It had been decided that Lawrence Lewis was to captain a regiment of light dragoons; Custis’s name was provisionally inscribed in this corps as a cornet of horse. Lear, who had not understood that the appointment was conditional on others’ approval, wrote to seek the young man’s own consent. Washington Custis was “highly delighted.” Martha, who may have believed, with her husband, that a French invasion was unlikely, raised no objection; nor did Custis’s mother. Washington wrote wryly to Stuart on December 30: “At least it might serve to divert his attention from a Matrimonial pursuit (for a while at least) to which his constitution seems to be too prone.”
Washington Custis was zealous in his wish to assume the trappings of an officer, including a sword, “silver mounted.” “Daily, fruitless enquiries are made of me to know when they may be expected,” Washington told McHenry the following summer. “If you were to jog Mr [Tench] Francis, the Purveyor [of Public Supplies], the sooner they might be Purveyed, and the young Gentleman gratified. I wish them to be handsome, and proper for an Officer, but not expensive.”
One of the Mount Vernon household declined, however, an appointment for which he had previously been eager. Washington informed McHenry in February 1799, that during the previous autumn, while he was in Philadelphia, Lewis had been making “overtures of marriage to Miss Custis.” These overtures had made no apparent impression, until Nelly learned that her beau was about to serve as a captain in the Regiment of Light Dragoons and “try his fortune in the Camp of Mars.” This, Washington wrote, “brought into activity those affections for him, which before she conceived were the result of friendship only.” Their betrothal followed, while Washington was still in Philadelphia, Nelly imposing the condition that Lawrence was to “relinquish the field of Mars for the Sports of Venus.” Washington had been so eager to divert Wash Custis from matrimonial adventures, he confessed to Martha’s nephew, Bartholomew Dandridge, that he had had no suspicion that the boy’s sister was romancing. He and Martha, however, welcomed a match for Nelly that kept her for the moment at Mount Vernon, while Lewis remained in his uncle’s employ.
29
The Death of a President, 1799
“I die hard; but I am not afraid to go.”
AT NEARLY TWENTY, Nelly was in high spirits when she wrote on February 3, 1799, to her friend Miss Bordley. “Cupid, a small mischievous Urchin,” she declared, had taken her by surprise, just when she had resolved to pass through life a “prim starched Spinster.” She wrote of colorless Lawrence Lewis as “universally esteemed.” Her happiness was clouded only when she thought of leaving her “Beloved Grandparents…and this dear spot—which has been my constant Home, since my first remembrance.” Those grandparents may have thought lovely Nelly thrown away on a man whose only asset was a farm he had inherited in distant Frederick County. Lewis’s decision not to serve in the dragoons after all may not have endeared him to his uncle. But family feeling was strong in them both. Washington wrote to his nephew on January 23: “I presume, if your health is restored, there will be
no impediment to your Union.” Two days before writing, the general had served as Nelly’s guardian in Alexandria, so that she could obtain a license for the nuptials.
Lawrence’s health held. At Nelly’s wish, they were wed on the general’s birthday. Washington marked in his diary: “The Revd. Mr Davis & Mr Geo. Calvert”—one of Nelly’s uncles—“came to dinner & Miss Custis was married abt. Candle light [at dusk] to Mr Lawe Lewis.” A “routine of ceremonious dinners, parties, visits; some agreeable, others tiresome,” which Nelly described to Miss Bordley, followed the wedding. Joshua Brookes, a young English visitor who dined at Mount Vernon during this time of festivity, found the Washingtons their usual hospitable selves. Martha, who sat with him half an hour, was as imperturbable as ever. Brookes noted that she wore a “Mazarin blue satin gown with three belts over her handkerchief across the body,” and her gray hair was combed straight under a loose cap. She asked for news, “said she was no politician but liked to read the newspapers.” Her “affability, free manner and mild, placid countenance,” wrote Brookes, brought to mind his mother.
When Nelly in the guise of Mrs. Lawrence Lewis next wrote to Miss Bordley, in November of this year, she and her husband were back at Mount Vernon. They intended to spend the winter there, and she was expecting a child. They had embarked, in May, on a series of visits to different seats belonging to relations of Lawrence’s. They had also visited the White House, in New Kent County—now the property of her brother—which Nelly had never seen. Lawrence, however, had suffered from ill health for much of the year. At Marmion, his brother George Lewis’s property near Fredericksburg, he had been confined, Nelly told Miss Bordley, “for four weeks to a dark room with an inflammation in one of his eyes.” There had been no time to make their house in Frederick ready for the winter, as Lewis had never been well enough to visit that county. Nelly, a songbird even in winter, wrote that she had been busily engaged in “providing little trappings” for the baby to come, as had her grandmother. “Think, My Dear Eliza, what a pleasure I shall have in seeing her fondle my child.” Martha, she told Miss Bordley on November 4, had been severely unwell for several weeks before the Lewises’ arrival at Mount Vernon, but was now better. “Grandpapa is quite well.”
George had recently given Lawrence congenial news, writing in September, “From the moment Mrs Washington & myself adopted the two youngest children of the late Mr Custis, it became my intention (if they survived me, and conducted themselves to my satisfaction) to consider them in my will, when I was about to make a distribution of my property. This determination has undergone no diminution, but is strengthened by the connexion which one of them has formed with my family.” He understood, “from expressions occasionally dropped from (Nelly Custis, now) your wife,” that the Lewises wished to settle in the neighborhood. His intention was to bequeath the young couple a part of his estate. Should they wish to do so, the Lewises might build a dwelling on the land now and continue to live at the Mount Vernon mansion till it was ready. It was an offer that Nelly and Lawrence gratefully accepted.
The Washingtons, when in good health, were enjoying a tranquil autumn. In the Federal City, two brick houses were rising on lots north of the Capitol that Washington had bought the previous September, and he made frequent visits to inspect their progress. Difficulties with farm manager Anderson inclined him to realize a plan he had harbored for some years, to sell off a large part of the Mount Vernon plantations and manage the mansion house farm himself. But as yet he had made no move to do this.
Discontent among the slave workforce, both among the field “people” and among those within the house, continued. Christopher Sheels, who had been Washington’s body servant during the presidency, was discovered in a plot to abscond with a new wife, a “mulatto girl,” property of a neighbor. Martha had no good opinion in general of slaves. To her niece Fanny she had written in May 1795, following the death of a child, her niece’s property, “I hope you will not find him too much loss. The blacks are so bad in their nature that they have not the least gratitude for the kindness that may be showed to them.” Yet Martha was, by her standards, kind to the Mount Vernon slaves. While in Philadelphia she had regularly paid for Hercules and other enslaved members of the household to see “the play” and made them presents. She called in doctors when they were sick. She never thought, however, of attending to their spiritual welfare. Though her maids were in the room when she read the Bible and devotional literature first thing in the morning and last thing at night, she never had them join her in prayer.
Though Martha had employed others at Mount Vernon as her maids, she still hankered after Oney, the domestic slave who had run away in the summer of 1797. That August Washington wrote to Burwell Bassett, Jr., now the owner of Eltham following his father’s death three years earlier, asking him to make efforts to recover the errant maid, who was believed to be still in Portsmouth, New Hampshire: “it would be a pleasing circumstance to your Aunt.” He added, in a letter only partially legible, that if the young woman put him to “no unnecessary trouble and expence” and conducted herself well, she would “be treated according to her merit[s].” To promise more would be an impolitic “& dangerous” precedent. Oney Judge Staines, now a married woman and a mother, was warned that Bassett was looking for her, and she temporarily left town, avoiding arrest.1 Martha at last admitted defeat. No further attempts were made to recover Oney.
That summer Nelly’s marriage and the death of his one remaining full brother, Charles, prompted Washington to make a new will. It provided for the establishment of a number of educational institutions, namely, a free school in Alexandria, a university in the District of Columbia, and a national university in a central part of the United States. In this latter place, he envisaged, students from all parts of the country, forgoing both halls of learning in Europe and state colleges, would freely associate with one another.
He left the use and profit of his “whole estate” for life, barring bequests to her grandchildren, to his “beloved wife.” Thereafter Mount Vernon and the rest of his estate would pass to his nephew Bushrod Washington. There was one provision that was the product of much thought. Upon the decease of his wife, Washington stated, his slaves were to be manumitted. It was not in his power to free the dower slaves who would pass, on Martha’s death, back to the Parke Custis estate and become property of her grandchildren. “To emancipate them during [her] life,” wrote Washington of the slaves he owned, “would, tho’ earnestly wish[ed by] me, be attended with such insu[pera]ble difficulties on account of thei[r inter-m]ixture by Marriages with the [dow]er Negroes.” He had no wish to “excite the most pa[in]ful sensations, if not disagreeabl[e c]onsequences,” that would follow if the Mount Vernon slaves went free, while their near relations among the dower slaves remained at the estate. The separation of the Washington and dower slaves following Martha’s death was the lesser evil.
Henrietta Liston, who visited with her husband, Robert, in the late autumn of 1798, noted of the general: “His figure, always noble, appeared less, & an approaching deafness, had in some degree affected his spirits.” This winter the managers of the Alexandria assemblies who hoped that the Washingtons would attend their revels received this reply from George: “alas! our dancing days are no more; we wish, however, all those whose relish for so agreeable, & innocent an amusement, all the pleasure the Season will afford them.” The daily routine at Mount Vernon offered both Washingtons occupation and interest, and gatherings of the younger generation provided additional zest.
On November 27, 1799, Nelly Parke Custis Lewis gave birth at the mansion to her first child—a daughter, given the name Frances Parke Lewis and known as Parke. Both Dr. Craik and a midwife were in attendance. Nothing untoward occurred. On December 9, Lawrence Lewis and Washington Custis, father and uncle of the newborn, set off on a journey to inspect the latter’s New Kent County estate. The morning, Washington recorded in his diary, was “clear and pleasant.” Visitors including “Lord Fairfax, his Son Thos. an
d daughter and his lady”—Bryan Fairfax had lately inherited the title from his cousin Robert—came to dinner two nights later. That evening, the general noted, there was “A large circle round the Moon.…About 1 o’clock it began to snow—soon after, to Hail, and then turned to a settled cold Rain.”
Disregarding the weather conditions, Washington made his usual round of the estate. When he came in, Lear, who was present, observed, “the snow was hanging upon his hair.” As he was late for dinner, the general did not change his dress. The following day, Friday the thirteenth, he made this entry in his diary: “Morning Snowing & abt. 3 Inches deep. Wind at No[rth]. E[as]t. & Mer[cury]. at 30. Continuing Snowing till 1 O’clock and abt. 4 it became perfectly clear. Wind in the same place but not hard.”
He had developed a sore throat. Nevertheless, he went out onto the snowbound front lawn to mark some trees he had in mind to cut. In the parlor that evening, after dinner, and in the company of Martha and Lear, he read the newspapers, which had just arrived. About nine o’clock, the secretary recorded later, Martha “went up into Mrs Lewis’ room.” Nelly was still keeping to her room and nursing. Washington and Lear remained, reading the papers. “He was very cheerful,” Lear recorded, “and when he met with anything interesting or entertaini[n]g, he read it aloud as well as his hoarseness would permit him.”
Washington rejected Lear’s recommendation to take something for his cold. In the night—sometime after two in the morning—he woke Martha and reported that he was very unwell. He had suffered an “ague,” or paroxysm of chills. Martha saw that her husband could scarcely speak and breathed with difficulty. He refused, nevertheless, to allow her to get up and send a servant for help. He did not want his wife to catch cold, Martha later told Lear. The couple lay there together until daybreak, when Caroline, the maid, customarily came in to make up the fire. In subsequent days Martha was to act with great immediacy and firmness. Possibly, in these early hours of December 14, husband and wife contemplated together the possibility of his death and decided on certain protocols to follow, should it occur. Later in the day, he was to say to Lear: “I believed from the first that the disorder would prove fatal.” He told Dr. Craik, “I believed from my first attack, that I should not survive it.”
