Martha Washington (37 page)

Sara B. Bearss, senior editor of the
Dictionary of Virginia Biography
, kindly brought the letters concerning Charles Carter's courtship of Martha Custis to my attention. Her fellow editor, Brent Tarter, made the original transcription of Carter's letter and read this manuscript, making essential suggestions. And they extended my deadline for the
DVB
. Thanks all around.

Mary H. Manhein, director of the LSU Faces Lab, arranged for the age regression of Charles Willson Peale's miniature of Martha Washington. N. Eileen Barrow, forensic imaging specialist, did the sensitive and accurate work of going back in time and showing us the youthful Martha Custis. Michael Deas created the beautiful portrait that should have been painted in 1757 but wasn't.

Thanks to Michael Sartisky, president and CEO of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, a great supporter of the literary life of New Orleans, for providing a fine writer's office; to Florence M. Jumonville, chair of the Louisiana and Special Collections Department, Earl K. Long Library, University of New Orleans, for obtaining microfilms of period newspapers; and to David G. Spielman, a photographer who specializes in making writers look good.

Wendy Wolf is an editor whose brief comments and subtle directions improve a manuscript without changing its essential character; she was able to lure a born procrastinator over the finish line. My agent, Jonathan Dolger, knows how to match an author with the right editor. Thanks to the Tennessee Williams/ New Orleans Literary Festival, where I met both these sterling characters.

The people at Viking Penguin worked with consummate professionalism to produce a handsome book on the shortest of deadlines. Paul Buckley art directed a book jacket that I imagine Martha Washington would have admired: I certainly do. He worked closely with artist Michael Deas to ensure that her portrait was both beautiful and true to the subject. The jacket design by Maggie Payette and the interior design by Nancy Resnick are graceful and easy to read. Sona Vogel was the perfect copyeditor, and Susan Groarke very accurately proofed the galleys. Production editor Kate Griggs coordinated everyone's efforts diligently, while Sandra Maffiore saw the book through the press. Clifford J. Corcoran, Wendy Wolf's assistant, was always available to answer questions, take care of snafus, and hold the author's hand when needed.

At the celebration of the bicentennial of the White House in 2000, I decided to write this book. My friends John C. Riley, associate director of the White House Historical Association, who invited me to attend; Clare Edwards, vice regent of Mount Vernon for Connecticut; and Ellen McCallister Clark, library director, Society of the Cincinnati, encouraged me to do it, and then there was no going back. John and Ellen also read portions of the manuscript.

Last, thanks to three terrific women. Chris Wiltz and Susan Larson told me years before I dared that I had to give up my day job and write full-time. When I finally made the leap, they encouraged me every step of the way. My executive assistant, Elizabeth Schmit, besides working on this book and other projects, kept my real life going. I couldn't have done it without them.

Abbreviations

1 “domestic enjoyments”:
James T. Flexner,
George Washington
, 4 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1965-1972), 1:229.

2 “I am truly sorry”:
Joseph E. Fields,
“Worthy Partner”: The Papers of Martha Washington
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994), 213.

3 “for we are extremely desirous”:
PGWPS
, 2:248.

3 “all the girls” and all quotes on page 4:
Robert Lewis, “A Journey from Fredericksburg, Virginia, to New York,” May 13-20, 1789, MVLA, 2-3.

5 “All was silent melancholy”:
Ibid., 4.

5 “the dreaded hour appeared”:
Ibid.

6 “unimproved” country:
PGWPS
, 2:205.

6 “the most dangerous and difficult”:
Ibid., 2:419.

7 “the children were very well”:
Fields, 215.

7 “shifted herself”
: Lewis, 6-7.

8 “the great parade”:
Fields, 215.

9 “my dear Mrs. Washington”:
PGWPS
, 1:461.

9 “scenes of bustle & trouble”:
Ibid., 2:3.

9 “harass[ing] her with company,”:
Ibid., 2:382.

9 “any parade that might be intended.”:
Lewis, 10.

10 “an excellent Band of Music”:
J. Thomas Scharf,
Chronicles of Baltimore
(Baltimore: Turnbull Brothers, 1874), 254.

10 “without the least accident”:
Fields, 215.

12 “Dear little Washington” and all other quotes on this page:
Ibid.

13 “The paper will tell you”:
Ibid.

16 “howling wilderness” and “foule noise”:
Richard Cullen Rath,
How Early America Sounded
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003), 147, 151.

16 “William Woodward, the Indian Interpreter”:
“Biographical and Genealogical Notes and Queries,”
William and Mary Quarterly
, 2nd series, 4 (April 1934): 174-79.

20 “To name generation after generation”:
DGW
, 1:l.

28 “an agreeable young Lady”:
Edmund S. Morgan,
Virginians at Home: Family Life in the Eighteenth Century
(Williamsburg, Va.: CWF, 1952), 31.

28
Daniel Custis recorded his own height as five feet seven in his “Invoice Book” and then struck through it and changed the figure to five feet six. He might have been considering the proper fit of his suit if he added an extra inch to his height. “Invoice Book &a,” Lee Family Papers, VHS.

30 “Fidelia”:
James B. Lynch Jr.,
The Custis Chronicles: The Virginia Generations
(Camden, Maine: Picton Press, 1997), 55-56.

30 “To hell, Madam”:
Ibid.

31 “vile names or give . . . any ill language”:
“A Marriage Agreement,”
Virginia Magazine of History and Biography
4 (1897): 64-66.

31 “young Alice”:
York County Records, Deed Book 5, 236-37, York County Project, Department of Historical Research, CWF. Research and data collection done with assistance from the National Endowment for the Humanities under Grants RS-0033-80-1604 and RO-20869.

32 “This comes at last . . .”:
Douglas Southall Freeman,
George Washington
, 7 vols. (Fairfield, N.J.: Augustus M. Kelley, 1981, rep.), 2:294.

32 John Custis made a will:
He bought a small piece of property for Jack, separate from the Custis and Parke holdings, and left him nine young enslaved boys, as well as the boy's mother, Alice. When Jack came of age, Daniel Custis was to build and furnish a house for him on the property. In the meantime, the land and slaves were held in trust by one of the elder Custis's nephews. York County Records, Will Book, CWF.

34 Tomb inscription:
Lynch, 87-88.

37 “for Mrs. Custis's use”:
“Invoice Book,” VHS.

42 “called her women together”:
Jack Larkin,
The Reshaping of Everyday Life
:
1790
-
1840
(New York: HarperPerennial, 1988), 94.

42 “so sweet an office”:
Sally G. McMillen,
Motherhood in the Old South: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Infant Rearing
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990), 111.

43 “my son”:
“Invoice Book,” VHS.

43 “favourite boy,”:
“Diary of John Blair,” Lyon G. Tyler, ed,
William and Mary Quarterly
, 1st series, 7 (January 1899), 152.

43 “black Jack”:
York County Records, Will Book 22, 292-93, CWF.

43 “games and contests”:
John W. Reps,
Tidewater Towns: City Planning in Colonial Virginia and Maryland
(Williamsburg, Va.: CWF, 1972), 179.

46 “Tomb for my son”:
“Invoice Book,” VHS.

48 “for Second Mourning,”:
Ibid.

50 “the best three Thread laid Twine,” and all other quotes on this page:
Ibid.

53 “agreeable and lasting to us both”:
Fields, 5.

55 “C.C. is very gay”:
Marion Tinling, ed.,
The Correspondence of the Three William Byrds of Westover, Virginia, 1684-1776
, 3 vols. (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1977), 2:646 and 646n.

55 “Mrs. C_s is now the object of my wish” and all other quotes on this page:
Charles Carter to Landon Carter, April 26, 1758, Carter Family Records, Sabine Hall.

56 His original inheritance:
Part of this property later came to be called Ferry Farm. Operated by George Washington's Fredericksburg Foundation, it is open to the public.

59 “Towering over most men”:
George Washington's great height was remarked on by all observers, but his exact height isn't really known. From his own orders to London merchants, describing himself as six feet tall, to the deathbed measurement of six feet three and a half inches, there is considerable variation. The estimate of six feet two and a half inches was used as an average.

61 “to be grave”:
Fields, 25-26.

62 “how joyfully I catch”:
PGWCLS
, 6:10-13.

62 “Do we still misunderstand”:
Ibid., 6:41-43.

63 “Colonel Washington . . . is married”:
Ibid., 6:175n.

63 “I . . . beg leave to present”:
Ibid., 6:187-88.

67 “in the best manner you can”:
PGWCLS
, 6:200.

68 “mirth and gaiety”:
Fields, 129.

70 “Honored Madam” and other quotes:
PGWCLS
, 1:304-05.

70 When visiting in Fredericksburg:
After it was sold by the Lewis family, the beautiful Georgian mansion was named Kenmore by nineteenth-century owners. Operated by George Washington's Fredericksburg Foundation, it is open to the public.

71 “uniformly handsome and genteel”:
Ibid., 6:317.

72 “an excellent table”:
Lincoln MacVeagh, ed.,
The Journal of Nicholas Cress-well, 1774-1777
(New York: Dial Press, 1924), 253.

72 “Martha Washington. 1759”:
The Bull-Finch: Being a Choice Collection of the Newest and Most Favourite English Songs
(London: R. Baldwin and John Wilkie), Mount Vernon Library, MVLA.

73 “I am now I beleive fixd”:
PGWCLS
, 6:359.

73 “I have had a very dark time”:
Fields, 146.

73 “I have not a doubt”:
Ibid., 268.

73 “1 oz seeds”:
Patricia Brady Schmit,
Nelly Custis Lewis's Housekeeping Book
(New Orleans: Historic New Orleans Collection, 1982), 107.

74 “little Patt” and all quotes on the following page:
Fields, 147.

74 “very fast”:
Ibid., 147-48.

74 “nothing more agreeable” and “Musick Professor”:
Judith S. Britt,
Nothing More Agreeable: Music in George Washington's Family
(Mount Vernon, Va.: The Association, 1984), 11, 19.

75 She may have trilled:
All lyrics from
The Bull-Finch
.

77 “her Children are as well”:
PGWCLS
, 8:20, 25.

77 “I deal little in politics”:
Ibid., 7:58

79 Beautiful little Patsy:
Some writers have argued that Patsy first showed signs of epilepsy when she was four because of a letter from Martha (its present location is unknown) that reported, “she has lost her fitts & fevours.” However, there is no record of parental concern, unusual doctors' visits, or large quantities of medicine in any of Washington's letters or in his meticulously kept guardian's accounts until January 1768. Most likely, in 1760 Patsy went into convulsions from a high fever but recovered. That illness seems to be unconnected to her later development of epilepsy. Fields, 131;
PGWCLS
, 8 passim,
DGW
, 2 passim.

79 “The unhappy situation”:
PGWCLS
, 8:496.

81 “I must confess to you”:
Ibid., 8:414.

82 “having yielded to Importunity”:
DGW
, 3:108-09.

83 “a Subject . . . of no small embarrassment to me”:
PGWCLS
, 9:209-10.