The True George Washington | Page 8

through the vicissitudes of the late
Revolution, afterwards devoting his time for many years whilst my
public employments rendered it impracticable for me to do it myself,
thereby affording me essential services and always performing them in
a manner the most filial and respectful."
Of his wife's kith and kin Washington was equally fond. Both alone
and with Mrs. Washington he often visited her mother, Mrs. Dandridge,
and in 1773 he wrote to a brother-in-law that he wished "I was master
of Arguments powerful enough to prevail upon Mrs. Dandridge to
make this place her entire and absolute home. I should think as she
lives a lonesome life (Betsey being married) 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