George Washington

by David O. Stewart

  By 1758, Washington had known Sally Fairfax for nearly a decade, during most of which time she was married to George William. George William and Sally lived at Belvoir with Colonel Fairfax. Washington was a frequent visitor.

  The paper trail of the friendship between Washington and Sally begins with a letter from the beginning of the Braddock march in 1755. Washington offered social gossip, reported army news, and asked that Sally correspond with him, a request he made three weeks later to the wife of another friend, John Carlyle. Sally Fairfax’s one-sentence response in late July—also signed by two of her women friends—thanked heaven for his safe return from the slaughter on the Monongahela and promised to visit him at Mount Vernon. Fourteen months later, he learned that a seamstress was staying at Belvoir, so he sent fabric and a shirt of his, asking that the seamstress make him another shirt. When Washington straggled home in late 1757, miserable with the bloody flux, he sought Sally’s assistance in assembling the foods for his recovery. In early 1758, Washington sent to her two short notes with mundane messages. Because one transmits to Sally a letter from George William in London, it suggests an opportunity in that winter for a depressed soldier and a lonely wife to find solace in each other’s arms.3

  After those infrequent and thoroughly unromantic exchanges, Washington’s letter of September 12, 1758, from Fort Cumberland, represented a sea change. In elaborate, sometimes clumsy phrases, he expressed joy over renewing their correspondence, a joy he claimed to keep in a silence that “speaks more intelligibly than the sweetest eloquence.” He denied that his conflict with General Forbes was due to “anxiety” at “the animating prospect of possessing Mrs. Custis”—so his engagement to Martha was no secret from Sally. Washington then wrote the opaque phrases that have confounded for generations:

  Tis true, I profess myself a votary to love—I acknowledge that a lady is in the case—and further I confess, that this lady is known to you . . . as well as she is to one who is too sensible of her charms to deny the power, whose influence he feels and must ever submit to. I feel the force of her amiable beauties in the recollection of a thousand tender passages that I could wish to obliterate.

  The puzzle begins with an omission. Washington states that he is a “votary to love,” but does not name his love object. Indeed, rather than pledging himself to Martha, his betrothed, he implies that his devotion is directed to another “known” to Sally—perhaps Sally herself? He then admits, “Experience alas! sadly reminds me how impossible this is.” Putting impossibility aside, he then restates his mysterious confession of a simple fact:

  Misconstrue not my meaning— ’tis obvious—doubt it not, nor expose it—the world has no business to know the object of my love, declared in this manner to—you when I want to conceal it—One thing, above all things in this world I wish to know, and only one person of your acquaintance can solve me that, or guess my meaning—but adieu to this, till happier times, . . . I dare believe that you are as happy as you say—I wish I was happy also.

  At this point, likely to the relief of both writer and recipient, Washington turned to matters unrelated to love.

  Two weeks later, Washington penned another murky passage to Sally, beginning: “Do we still misunderstand the true meaning of each other’s letters. I think it must appear so, though I would fain hope the contrary as I cannot speak plainer without—but I’ll say no more, and leave you to guess the rest.” He then related war news, but circled back with a literary reference to his desire to act as “the Juba to such a Marcia as you must make.” That referred to the play Cato, by Joseph Addison, popular in colonial Virginia though rarely performed in the last century. At social gatherings, Virginians staged readings of the work. In the drama, Juba is a Numidian prince whose love for Cato’s daughter Marcia must be denied. Washington and Sally may have read those roles at a party.

  Several factors limit our understanding of the letters. Most obviously, we do not know what he and Sally had spoken to each other beforehand, nor do we know what Sally wrote to him between his first and second letters. She may have written that she wondered what on earth he meant in his first letter. Also, because Washington and Martha destroyed almost all correspondence between them, we cannot compare what he wrote to Martha at the same time, or even how he customarily wrote to the woman he spent most of his life with.

  Two conflicting interpretations of these letters suggest themselves.4

  The first is that Washington was professing his undying secret love for Sally.5 The words in the letters, though cloudy, will bear that interpretation. Washington’s reference to “a thousand tender passages” suggests a long connection with the object of his love; he had, in fact, known Sally for a decade, and had spent far less time with Martha. The references to being a “votary of love” and to the doomed love of Juba and Marcia in Cato reinforce the idea that Washington was confessing deep, taboo feelings. (Juba, an African, crossed racial lines in pursuing the Roman Marcia.) Around this time, Washington had written impetuous and ill-advised letters to Governor Dinwiddie. This note to Sally came from the same volatile young man. Also, Sally retained the letter for the next fifty years, an act of preservation that could reveal its significance.

  Yet the context of the letters undermines this interpretation. Washington was writing while cooling his heels at Fort Cumberland, bored and (by his own admission) unhappy, four months before his scheduled marriage to Martha. He specifically refers to “the animating prospect of possessing Mrs. Custis.” The first letter also includes the wish to see Sally’s family, which certainly included her husband, George William. Indeed, that summer George William was overseeing the repairs to Mount Vernon. On the same day that Washington wrote the first letter to Sally, he also wrote to George William. Both letters—one to husband and one to wife—were delivered by George Mercer, a mutual friend, not by some confidential messenger. Both Sally and her husband thus knew that the other received a letter from Washington in an era when the arrival of correspondence was an event and letters were routinely shared. Washington would expect the Fairfaxes to show those letters to each other, or at least to talk about them. If Washington had truly been proposing a tryst with Sally—or confirming or ending one—he took a huge risk of discovery by his friend.

  All of those contextual factors might be dismissed if Washington was known as a risk-taker in his personal life, or if he was likely indifferent to the judgments of society or to the feelings of George William or Martha Custis. But none of those statements is true.

  Washington was punctilious in his private conduct and placed extraordinary importance on his public reputation and on the Fairfax connection. Both Colonel Fairfax and Lord Fairfax had been essential sponsors. His election to the House of Burgesses was a festival of Fairfax support. On polling day, Winchester bristled with Fairfaxes supporting Washington, including Lord Thomas, George William, nephew Bryan Martin, and brother-in-law John Carlyle. Washington had urged his brother Jack to cultivate the Fairfaxes. His brother Lawrence had married George William’s sister, and a cousin (Warner Washington) had married another Fairfax sister. The notion that Washington would risk tearing up those connections is difficult to swallow. His love affair, as one historian has shrewdly noted, was with the Fairfax family, not with Sally.6

  Equally difficult to swallow is the idea that he would imperil his marriage to Martha Custis, whose wealth could elevate him in the Virginia hierarchy. While still a teenager, Washington had seen the pain inflicted by the accusation that Reverend Charles Green had taken advantage of Lawrence’s young wife, Anne Fairfax. Such sensational episodes linger long in memories, and Washington could hardly have wished for another sex scandal involving a Fairfax woman and a Washington man.7

  Indeed, a romantic dalliance with Sally Fairfax would have been contrary to Washington’s resolutely prudent approach to life, which involved building and burnishing his public reputation. That contradiction has made the possibility of a dalliance be
tween Sally and Washington even more appealing to historians, happy to detect a juicy transgression by the starchy, sanctimonious Washington. That this possibility is entirely implausible seems to enhance its allure. It remains, however, implausible.

  The remaining alternative is that Washington’s letters to Sally were a mannered, maladroit bit of play between friends. As noted by one editor of Washington’s papers, his socializing with Sally Fairfax and other women at Belvoir often groaned under the weight of a “labored gallantry.” The eighteenth century featured awkward banter between the sexes. Other messages to ladies from Washington, and some written by Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, can induce cringes from modern readers. Washington, bored and frustrated in his frontier posting, might well have hazarded such banter with a friend who should not (he thought) misunderstand him.8

  Contemporaries portrayed Washington as a man who enjoyed a joke. His letters included occasional jests, though they generally fell short of nimble badinage or deft satire. Sometimes he polished an attempt at wit by repeating it to multiple recipients. Through his many years in public life, under the gaze of dutiful diarists, diligent correspondents, and simple gossips, he made few remarks so humorous that anyone thought to write them down. Accordingly, it should not be shocking to find that, while relatively young, an attempt at drollery was ill considered, opaque, or awkward.9

  When Washington first proposed that Sally correspond with him in 1755, he suggested it would “enliven dull hours and make me happier than I am able to express.” The better explanation of his letters to her in 1758 is that he was, indeed, enlivening dull hours, though somewhat ineptly. That this explanation is an interpretation of cloudy text ensures that the controversy will continue.10

  * * *

  On his twenty-seventh birthday, February 22, 1759, Washington took his seat in the House of Burgesses, listening with his new colleagues to the address of Governor Fauquier. Four days later, the House adopted a resolution thanking Washington for his “faithful services . . . and for his brave and steady behavior” in fighting the French. Notably absent was any recitation of a battlefield victory. He might have winced inwardly that the resolution also applauded the “happy reduction of Fort Duquesne,” a victory achieved by ignoring his advice.11

  Any wince would have passed quickly. He was leaving military life behind, though the reputation for bravery won on the frontier would live on. For now, he was resolved on a new career as husband, stepfather, farmer, and politician. His mother, who never wanted him in the army, cheered the change, writing to her brother in England that “there was no end to my trouble while George was in the army.”12

  The man who stood before the burgesses in late February had been shaped by many forces, including three parents. His father, Gus, gave him an agreeable disposition and great physical gifts. Mother Mary imbued in him discipline and drive. Brother Lawrence cared for him through awkward adolescent years and offered both a model for self-advancement and a leg up on that effort. Washington now had to launch himself, without title or great wealth, into the hierarchical world of colonial Virginia and the British Empire.

  In April, when the newlyweds finally moved into Washington’s “mansion house” on the Potomac, Halley’s Comet was lighting up American skies. For those inclined to read portents in the heavens, it could only seem promising. By September, another symptom of married life emerged in Washington’s order to a British merchant. Buried in a long list of items was a request for four ounces of Spanish fly, an aphrodisiac of high reputation.13 Washington was embracing his new life and his new wife.

  PART II

  I cannot conceive how [George Washington] could . . . have ever been spoken of as a great man. He is shy, silent, stern, slow and cautious, but has no quickness of parts, extraordinary penetration, nor an elevated style of thinking. . . .

  —Jonathan Boucher, tutor to Washington’s stepson (1776)1

  Chapter 17

  The New Life

  In 1759, Washington’s life transformed. He put aside his uniform. He unbuckled his sword. No longer would he resemble the hero in a boy’s adventure tale, thundering on horseback in pursuit of Indians and treacherous Frenchmen, braving icy rivers and scaling craggy peaks. He exchanged military service for a legislative job and the endless trials of plantation management. Martha and her children brought him an instant family. Once he was installed at Mount Vernon, his ascent through Virginia society would proceed by a new route.

  Free from physical dangers, he faced other challenges. Stepparenthood brought frustrations and sorrows. Virginia agriculture was entering a decades-long decline that would limit the fortune that Mount Vernon’s thin soil could yield. His dream of a western land empire would collide with British policies, resentful tribes, and falling land prices. Conflicts with Britain would simmer, recede, boil, and finally explode, heaving Washington to the front of a movement toward self-government and liberty that still echoes more than two centuries later.

  During the sixteen years until public events again seized him by the collar, Washington would develop the political skills and self-mastery that would inspire his countrymen. In place of the impetuous colonel would arise a patient leader, willing to listen to others while keeping a finger on the public pulse. Years of colonial politics would teach him to measure words and consider actions, while gauging the consequences of both.

  Some skim over Washington’s relatively obscure years between the Virginia Regiment and the Continental Army.1 Yet those sixteen years—as a businessman, legislator, judge, and community leader—formed the man he became. Washington was not the only person for whom age brought more seasoned judgment, but his evolution was dramatic. He observed closely the leadership styles of prominent Virginians, drawing lessons to meld with his own talents. His private roles as husband, stepfather, and neighbor deepened his understanding of people, his world, and himself. All of those experiences produced a master politician.

  * * *

  In the winter months of 1759, waiting for the Mount Vernon renovations to be finished, Washington had quiet winter days at the Custis estate on the Pamunkey River to learn about the three people who would share his new life: Martha, four-year-old Jacky, and two-year-old Patsy. Having lost two infant children to illness, Martha could be a fretful mother. When she forced herself to spend a few nights away from Jacky, she assumed every noise was a messenger with terrible news. “I often fancied he was sick,” she confessed to her sister, “or some accident had happened to him.” Martha’s anxieties grew when her daughter, Patsy, developed fits and fevers that proved to be epilepsy.2

  Those first weeks were likely tentative ones as children and adults explored new roles. Washington was a dutiful stepfather, but deferred to Martha on child-rearing matters. Her indulgent mothering style—some described Jacky as spoiled—contrasted with Mary Washington’s stern approach. Washington likely had to suppress his preference for discipline and order, qualities that small children rarely display. Stepparents were common in the eighteenthcentury, an era when parent mortality rivaled infant mortality, yet the relationship brought the same challenges then as in any era. Washington explained his caution as a stepparent in a letter to Jacky’s schoolmaster. “[I] conceive there is much greater circumspection by a guardian than a natural parent,” he wrote, because “any faux pas in a guardian however well meant the action, seldom fails to meet with malicious construction.” That sentence was written by someone who likely had committed such faux pas and been chastised for it.3

  As Martha’s husband and guardian for Jacky and Patsy (he never adopted them), Washington controlled the Custis plantations, which covered thousands of acres between Williamsburg and Richmond. Washington needed to consult with the longtime steward of the Custis lands, meet the farm overseers, and review enslaved laborers and accounts. The Custis properties concentrated on tobacco, a demanding and fickle crop that Washington intended to grow at Mount Vernon. In addition, Washington directed
the defense of a long-running lawsuit brought by illegitimate Custis descendants. Those responsibilities were a constant reminder that Jacky and Patsy were Daniel Parke Custis’s children, blessed with wealth Washington had not known.4

  After six weeks, the new family moved on to Williamsburg, where the House of Burgesses was to convene. Lodging was easy. They stopped on the way at the home of Martha’s favorite sister, Anna Maria, and husband Burwell Bassett; in Williamsburg, they stayed in the “six-chimney house” that Martha owned.5

  * * *

  Williamsburg had changed little in the eight years since Washington arrived there from Barbados. Several miles from coastal ports, without an important crossroads, its commerce was small. The modest colonial bureaucracy and the College of William & Mary were the town’s highlights. Well-heeled visitors revived the sleepy town whenever the burgesses met, and also during quarterly market weeks when the courts convened. At those times, the colony’s elite socialized, gambled, and drank in taverns and boardinghouses. In Virginia, more than half of adult white males could vote, but the gentry—especially the Carters, Randolphs, Byrds, and Nelsons—filled the colony’s top offices.6

  The Washington carriage rolled into Williamsburg past scattered residences and three brick college buildings, then down Duke of Gloucester Street, a wide passage that bustled during market weeks with liveried servants and sleek riding horses. It passed the Governor’s Palace, which rose three full stories to a steep roof and a cupola that climbed another thirty feet. That end of town held the wealthiest residents, some of whom sat on the Executive Council. Taverns and inns clustered at the other end, near the Capitol.