The True George Washington | Page 8

it might suit her well, & be agreeable, both to herself & my Wife, to me most assuredly it would." Washington was also a frequent visitor at "Eltham," the home of Colonel Bassett, who had married his wife's sister, and constantly corresponded with these relatives. He asked this whole family to be his guests at the Warm Springs, and, as this meant camping out in tents, he wrote, "You will have occasion to provide nothing, if I can be advised of your intentions, so that I may provide accordingly." To another brother-in-law, Bartholomew Dandridge, he lent money, and forgave the debt to the widow in his will, also giving her the use during her life of the thirty-three negroes he had bid in at the bankruptcy sale of her husband's property.
The pleasantest glimpses of family feeling are gained, however, in his relations with his wife's children and grandchildren. John Parke and Martha Parke Custis--or "Jack" and "Patsey," as he called them--were at the date of his marriage respectively six and four years of age, and in the first invoice of goods to be shipped to him from London after he had become their step-father, Washington ordered "10 shillings worth of Toys," "6 little books for children beginning to read," and "1 fashionable-dressed baby to cost 10 shillings." When this latter shared the usual fate, he further wrote for "1 fashionable dress Doll to cost a guinea," and for "A box of Gingerbread Toys & Sugar Images or Comfits." A little later he ordered a Bible and Prayer-Book for each, "neatly bound in Turkey," with names "in gilt letters on the inside of the cover," followed ere long by an order for "1 very good Spinet" As Patsy grew to girlhood she developed fits, and "solely on her account to try (by the advice of her Physician) the effect of the waters on her Complaint," Washington took the family over the mountains and camped at the "Warm Springs" in 1769, with "little benefit," for, after ailing four years longer, "she was seized with one of her usual Fits & expired in it, in less than two minutes, without uttering a word, or groan, or scarce a sigh." "The Sweet Innocent Girl," Washington wrote, "entered into a more happy & peaceful abode than she has met with in the afflicted Path she has hitherto trod," but none the less "it is an easier matter to conceive than to describe the distress of this family" at the loss of "dear Patsy Custis."
[Illustration: JOHN AND MARTHA PARKE CUSTIS]
The care of Jack Custis was a worry to Washington in quite another way. As a lad, Custis signed his letters to him as "your most affectionate and dutiful son," "yet I conceive," Washington wrote, "there is much greater circumspection to be observed by a guardian than a natural parent." Soon after assuming charge of the boy, a tutor was secured, who lived at Mount Vernon, but the boy showed little inclination to study, and when fourteen, Washington wrote that "his mind [is] ... more turned ... to Dogs, Horses and Guns, indeed upon Dress and equipage." "Having his well being much at heart," Washington wished to make him "fit for more useful purposes than [a] horse racer," and so Jack was placed with a clergyman, who agreed to instruct him, and with him he lived, except for some home visits, for three years. Unfortunately, the lad, like the true Virginian planter of his day, had no taste for study, and had "a propensity for the [fair] sex." After two or three flirtations, he engaged himself, without the knowledge of his mother or guardian, to Nellie Calvert, a match to which no objection could be made, except that, owing to his "youth and fickleness," "he may either change and therefore injure the young lady; or that it may precipitate him into a marriage before, I am certain, he has ever bestowed a serious thought of the consequences; by which means his education is interrupted." To avoid this danger, Washington took his ward to New York and entered him in King's College, but the death of Patsy Custis put a termination to study, for Mrs. Washington could not bear to have the lad at such a distance, and Washington "did not care, as he is the last of the family, to push my opposition too far." Accordingly, Jack returned to Virginia and promptly married.
The young couple were much at Mount Vernon from this time on, and Washington wrote to "Dear Jack," "I am always pleased with yours and Nelly's abidance at Mount Vernon." When the winter snows made the siege of Boston purely passive, the couple journeyed with Mrs. Washington to Cambridge, and visited at head-quarters for some months. The arrival of children prevented the repetition of such