Washington's Lady (37 page)

I stood at the door, my hand upon the knob. The room we had shared lay on the other side. The chamber that just hours ago had held my husband on his deathbed.

I started to turn the knob, but then . . .

I stopped myself.

I shook my head.

No.

I could not enter this room that was meant for two, that was our one private sanctuary amid a public life.

I would not enter.

Ever.

Ever again.

Then where would I go? The bedrooms were full: Nelly, Tobias, the doctors . . .

I turned round, my eyes spotting the tiny steps that led to the attic. At the moment no one was up there.

It beckoned me.

I held my candle aloft, lifted my skirt with the other hand, and went up, up to the attic. Up to the top of the house. I walked through the first empty bedroom toward the hall. I had my choice of four rooms. The bedroom looking out back on the opposite end was often Wash’s room. I would not intrude there. I looked toward the room above Nelly’s. There was comfort in that, being close to my dear granddaughter, yet separate.

I opened the door. The moon came through the garret window that overlooked the front drive. It invited me to enter.

I complied.

It was a spare room, with white walls, a sloped ceiling, a small bed, and a few chairs. “What more could I need?” I said aloud.

There was no fireplace, but a stove in the corner. A cold stove.

Good enough.

I pulled my shawl tighter about my shoulders and stood at the tiny window.

Mount Vernon lay before me: the circular drive, the bowling green, the rows of trees so lovingly planted. The outbuildings, kitchen, servants’ hall, the north lane leading to the spinning room, the salt house, the gardener’s house. And the south lane leading to the wash house, the smoke house, the stables and—

And the family crypt below . . .

The crypt where George would be laid.

The crypt that held Patsy, and George’s brother Lawrence, and George Augustine, and . . . the crypt that held so many who had gone before.

And now George, the only relative I had ever chosen.

Suddenly, the image of a grand dining room came to mind. In it were Patsy and Jacky, Fanny, George Augustine . . . They were all dressed in fine garments of white, edged in gold and silver. And they were smiling, coming forward to greet the newest arrival.

George.

There were grand greetings and many hugs as he was welcomed into the heavenly fold.

“Come, Poppa. I have made your favourite Indian cakes,” Patsy said.

“And I have brought some of the best Madeira,” Jacky said.

I smiled at the thought of them together once more, laughing and eating and sharing. A jolly affair. As good a gathering as any I had ever done?

“We will see,” I said.

And we would. For I would join them soon enough, when God so deemed. At that time I would take great pleasure in taking over the hostess duties. And at that time, I imagined George being the first in line to meet me. I would rush into his arms and he would greet me as he had done so many times after being apart.

Hello, my dearest. I have missed you.

And then I would hook my fingers into the lapels of his coat and pull him down to look at me eye to eye . . .

And I you, old man.

Death no longer mocked me.

Not with the promise of seeing my family again.

In that, I would be victorious.

Martha never again entered the bedroom she shared with George—or his study. She lived in the garret bedroom for over two years until she died on May 22, 1802. Martha was never the same after his death, her heart truly broken. And in one last act—perhaps her only act—of rebellion, she burned all the letters they had exchanged over the years as if saying to the world,
You will not have
this
part of us.
Only three have ever been found . . .

There are two quotes, written upon her death, that would have pleased her. One, from the
New England Pledium:

She was the worthy partner of the worthiest of men, and those who witnessed their conduct could not determine which excelled in their different characters, both were so well sustained on every occasion. They lived an honor and a pattern to their country, and are taken from us to receive the rewards—promised to the faithful and the just.

And this more personal tribute from her dearest granddaughter, Nelly:

I had the most perfect model of female excellence ever with me as my monitress, who acted the part of a tender and devoted parent, loving me as only a mother can love, and never extenuating or approving in me what she disapproved in others. She never omitted her private devotions, or her public duties . . . she and her husband were so perfectly united and happy . . . After forty years of devoted affection and uninterrupted happiness, she resigned him without a murmur into the arms of his Savior and his God, with the assured hope of his eternal felicity.

It is said that without George Washington there would be no United States, but without Martha, there would be no George Washington.

In his eyes, she was truly his “other self.”

“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death,

neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain:

for the former things are passed away.”

Revelation 21:4

I challenge you to name a single child who has ever worn a Martha Washington costume for Halloween.

Can’t think of one? I can. Take a gander at me (first photo), Nancy Young, 1962.

And here is my mother in a Martha Washington costume, circa 1934. Two of us, in Martha costumes? And then I write a book about her? The desire to connect to Martha must be in the genes.

When I dove into the task of giving a voice to Martha’s life, I didn’t expect to be so impressed. I admit to originally knowing only the basics: she was short, plump, had the odd name Custis attached, and was the wife of the first president of the United States. End of story.

Beginning of story. Or rather, a tiny part of the story. Because during the first half of her life there
was
no United States. The thirteen colonies were populated by loyal British subjects, and Martha’s life was more about being a wife and mother than caring about politics. Like most of us today, Martha went about her business without thinking too much beyond the small scope of her world.

But then everything changed and she was thrust into a rebellion that—if not for the determination and courage of its participants, and the divine intercession of the Almighty—could have turned out far differently. Although I’d learned the fundamentals of this Revolutionary War period in school, I was embarrassingly ignorant in regard to the depth and breadth of the story. Now, although I am more knowledgeable, I feel unworthy. For what have I ever done to deserve the sacrifice of these patriots? I live the life they planted for me, enjoy the fruits of their labor, and breathe freely through the gasps and groans of their courageous risk. What risk have I ever taken that comes close to theirs? What gives me the right to live as I do?

They gave me the right.
All
my rights as a free woman were ignited through their vision, struggle, and resolve. I’ve taken so much for granted . . .

I often think of the life Martha and George could have enjoyed if there had been no Glorious Cause. Eight years of war and eight years of the presidency could have been sixteen years of peaceful bliss shared at Mount Vernon, under their own “vine and fig tree.” Yet without their sacrifice, I could not live now, in peaceful bliss, under my own vine and fig tree.

None of us could.

In the process of discovering this country’s roots, I discovered my own. In the 1970s my mother put together a family history. She noted that one of my ancestors—Jonathan Tyler—fought in the Revolutionary War. And so, on a trip to New England in 2007, through an amazing stream of non-coincidences, I found his grave and discovered that his family—my family—was one of the founding families of Piermont, New Hampshire. I left that tiny town girded by a profound sense of belonging, as if a foundation had been erected beneath me. My relatives have been in America since 1638, a fact that strengthens me—and makes me proud.

That’s what I wish for you, dear reader. I hope Martha’s story will nudge you toward finding your roots and your purpose, reignite your gratitude to God for all His gifts and blessings, and open your eyes to His work in the world beyond your own front door.

And then . . . I want you to go out and do something amazing and courageous. Under God.

Nancy Moser

As a novelist, my forte is making things up. Yet while writing
Washington’s Lady
, I strove to discover the
facts
about Martha Washington’s life and the birth of this country. In a historical novel of this kind, I “scene-out” true-life events and try not to change them. Unfortunately, there are often gaps in the information and I have to do what I am loath to do: guess. Ah me, it can’t be helped. Below is the truth as I know it and instances of where I was forced to fudge. I hope the list adds to your enjoyment of the book.

• The Wollaston paintings of Martha, Daniel, Jacky, and Patsy are undeniably strange. Martha’s and Daniel’s facial features are very similar. In fact, Wollaston was known for repeating the same body, merely adding a new head—with only a few changes there too. Odd, odd paintings.

• The scene in Chapter 1 where Martha confronts her father-in-law-to-be is my creation. It’s not known for sure how she won him over (only that she did), but his beloved garden seemed the one place where John Custis might have been approachable. I believe Martha would have seen that and acted on it to achieve her goal. Especially since Daniel was scared to death of his father and couldn’t bring himself to face him.

• A note about the letters in the novel. Nearly all are real letters. You probably noticed the odd spellings in some of them. At this time in history there was no standardized spelling and people spelled and punctuated as they wished. Martha was a horrible speller. For this book we made a decision to correct the bad spelling if the letter was read aloud, but if it was silently read, we left it as is (or as
was
). Even people’s names had variations in spelling. For instance, the children’s Scottish tutor was sometimes Magowan and sometimes McGowan. And the music teacher was Stadler or Stedlar. In both cases, I chose the latter spelling. I also incorporated many quotes from letters into dialogue. The real words always got first dibs.

• The scene in Chapter 1 where Martha destroys her father-in-law’s possessions is wishful supposition but based on this: historians found sixteen wine goblets, rare delft tea bowls, and hand-blown wine bottles—one with John Custis’s seal defaced—in the well at the back of his Six Chimneys home in Williamsburg. Considering Martha and Daniel would have had access to his house . . . I couldn’t resist giving Martha the chance for a little revenge.

• Fort Du Quesne became known as Fort Duquesne (Du-cane). This site is now Point State Park in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The park showcases a brick outline of the fort’s walls.

• Martha’s engagement ring: it is not known what the ring looked like, or if it contained a pearl, but it cost 2.16 British pounds, and George had it specially made in Philadelphia.

• The delivery of Daniel’s tombstone to White House is my doing, but the tombstone and its inscription are real—as is the italicized detail in Chapter 3 regarding Martha’s order for it.

• It is a sad fact that the names of women are often lost in history—even when they had famous relations. For instance, in Chapter 4, I mention: “The siblings of George who were able to attend traveled a distance to be with us: his half-brother Austin and his wife, John Augustine and Hannah, and his dear sister Betty and her husband, Fielding Lewis.” Austin’s wife’s name is not known. How sad. Another note, about Betty’s husband, Fielding Lewis. Meriwether Lewis, famed explorer of the Louisiana Purchase (the Lewis and Clark Expedition), was a first cousin, once removed of Fielding (Meriwether Lewis’s father and Fielding Lewis were first cousins). Fielding also was the first mayor of Fredericksburg. Virginia.

• Regarding Sally Fairfax and George . . . There is a dispute over whether there was an affair. I don’t believe there was. Both had too much to lose. There is an odd rumor that George William Fairfax encouraged the relationship, wanting George to father a child with Sally because he needed an heir to get Lord Fairfax’s money. After all, he and Sally had been married ten years with no children. I find this farfetched, interesting . . . and impossible if one is to believe George was the cause of the childlessness between himself and Martha. Another rumor was that George William and his sister Anne (Lawrence Washington’s wife) had mulatto blood, which is why George William didn’t inherit from Lord Fairfax in 1781. It is also one author’s reason why Anne was allowed to marry the lowly Lawrence Washington, who had little to offer a rich family like the Fairfaxes. They were afraid no one of position would want to marry her with her mixed heritage. Again, farfetched but interesting. The truth is, we will never know.

• Jacky’s writing on the wall is my creation, but Martha’s inability to punish her children—and the consequences and conflict it created between her and George—is real.

• The locket Martha gave George . . . I don’t know when she gave it to him or who made it, but it is said he wore it all his life.

• Regarding George and Martha not having children: Although logic leans toward it being George’s problem, there is evidence he blamed Martha.

• In Chapter 6, George gives Martha a music book called
The Bull Finch
. This book still exists, with a 1759 date and her name inscribed. The song she sings (“The Gift”) is a poem by James Thomson, a Scottish poet. I don’t know if it was ever a song, but I made it into one. At the time, music books often supplied only the lyrics, which were then sung to familiar tunes.

• The incident that caused Jacky to be left behind in Chapter 7 is fictitious, although Martha did travel one time with only “little Pat” and did worry when she heard “doggs barke,” as per a 1762 letter she sent to her sister Nancy.

• The Stamp Act might seem rather inconsequential to us now, but John Adams reflected that the “child of Independence” was born in the minds of the colonists because of it. The Stamp Act started the ball rolling . . . And “Liberty and Property” was the phrase the mobs repeated. Jacky’s hanging incident with Patsy’s doll is fictional, but the information about the effigies and tax collector protests is real.

• In Chapter 8, George’s list of Jacky’s weaknesses is his own words: “He must learn that life is not only dogs, horses, guns, dress, and equipage.”

• Martha’s Great Cake served sixty and was more like a fruitcake than our image of cake. The recipe can be found on the Mount Vernon Web site.

• When George began to get involved in the rebellion, Patrick Henry said this about George’s thinking process: “It was slow in operation, being little aided by invention or imagination, but sure in conclusion.” He was a careful man.

• The 1772 painting by Charles Wilson Peale is one of the best known portraits of Washington. Peale would become the favorite portrait painter of both George and Martha.

• To expand from Chapter 9, some tidbits about Patrick Henry: His wife, Sarah, whom he’d married when she was sixteen, went crazy after the birth of her last child in 1771, and he kept her confined in the basement. She died in 1775, and in 1776, Patrick Henry married one of Martha’s relatives, Dorothea Dandridge. She was twenty-two, the same age as his son, John—who is rumored to have also been in love with her.

• Reverend Price’s sermon (which Rev. Gwatkin wrote) in Chapter 9: a transcript of the sermon is not available, but it is known that the topic was Genesis 18. The words beyond the verse are mine. After the service the speaker organized key members of the Williamsburg community to gather provisions and cash to be sent to the people of Boston.

• The wash desk George bought from the Fairfax estate can be seen at Mount Vernon.

• Martha did say “God be with you gentlemen” as she saw off the delegates for the Continental Congress. The words were recounted by Edmund Pendleton.

• George’s ardent speech to Martha while sitting before the fire in Chapter 10 is re-created from his own words regarding the situation of the colonies.

• In Chapter 10, George and Martha speak of seeking God’s wisdom, and George mentions a more personal God. The Great Awakening was going on at this time, changing religion from passive and ceremonial to aggressively personal. George and Martha were always quick to assign credit to “Providence,” and throughout her life, Martha had private Bible study every morning. The Washingtons were active members in many churches. Their pew can be seen (and sat in) at the Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg.

• The article in the
Virginia Gazette
, announcing George as commander, is my creation, although the Adams and Washington quotes are real.

• In Chapter 10, Patrick Henry’s famous quotation, “I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” was said during a speech at the Second Virginia Convention meeting on March 25, 1775, a few months before the Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia.

• The Chapter 10 letter from George to Martha is real and combines two June 1775 letters. As stated in the epilogue, in 1802, Martha destroyed their personal letters. Yet these two survived and Martha Parke Custis Peter, one of Martha Washington’s granddaughters, found them in a drawer of a small desk that she inherited from Mrs. Washington.

• The locket scene in Chapter 11 is fictional, as is the cabin. It is known that Martha spent one night away from home, not too far away, but it is not known where. I assume Eleanor, Jacky, Lund, and maybe a maid would have gone with her. And women often kept lockets containing the hair of a departed loved one.

• In Chapter 11, when Martha travels to Cambridge, she mentions having never been up north. She
had
been the twenty-six miles to Mount Airy, the Calvert plantation in Upper Marlboro, Maryland,
east
of Alexandria. Note: there is a town called Mount Airy, Maryland, sixty miles north. This is not Martha’s Mount Airy.

• In Chapter 11, Martha’s “beautiful country” and “very great somebody” phrases are her own.

• The army headquarters where George and Martha lived in Cambridge, the home that had formally belonged to loyalist John Vassal, would eventually be owned by the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It is currently a museum.

• Prospect Hill now sits in Somerville, Massachusetts, and in the 1870s was turned into an aristocratic residential neighborhood. In 1902 a park was created and a forty-two-foot granite tower built to commemorate the hill’s historical significance for future generations. Every year on January 1, Somerville residents gather on Prospect Hill for a ceremony honoring the historic flag raising.

• I don’t know if Lucy Knox was pregnant (Chapter 11), as I can find no birth dates for the Knox children. But they had thirteen (ten died in childhood), and since they had been married since June of 1774, I assume she was pregnant. As for namesakes, Kitty Greene had George Washington Greene in 1776 and Martha Washington Greene in 1777.

• “Then I peered up at him, hooked my finger in a buttonhole of his lapel, and pulled him down to my level.” Martha often used to do this. She also called George
old man
, even when he was only in his forties. The soldiers found this amusing. They must have thought the couple odd in appearance: George, tall and slim, and Martha, plump and petite.

• In Chapter 12, many of the details of the British evacuation of Boston were taken from the journal of army surgeon Dr. James Thacher.

• The leather key basket and brown-and-white-checkered chair can still be seen in the Washington’s bedroom at Mount Vernon.

• A general note: Eleanor was called Nelly by her family, but because she later had a daughter Nelly, I chose to call her Eleanor, to make the identification clearer. Also, George often called Martha
Patcy
, but again, with a daughter Patsy, I chose to ignore his nickname.

• In Chapter 12, I fudged the timeline in order to let Martha meet all three young men at once. I know Hamilton joined them March 1, 1777 (Martha arrived March 15). I don’t know when Laurens’ offer was accepted other than it was sometime in 1777, but Lafayette showed up in August after Martha had gone back to Mount Vernon. He did, however, become like a son to her.

• The Oneida Indian story in Chapter 13 is true. It was only recently discovered and was passed down for two hundred years through Oneida oral history. Martha did give these presents to Polly—after George was president.

• The house of Abingdon, built by Jacky and Eleanor, is now just a brick foundation that can be seen between two office buildings at the Reagan National Airport near Alexandria. On another piece of land in the area (which Jacky purchased in 1778), Jacky’s son, Wash, built Arlington House (in 1802). Wash’s daughter married Robert E. Lee, the Confederate Civil War general, and the couple lived in the house for many years. After the Civil War, the house and land were confiscated by the federal government because Lee was considered a traitor. The land around Arlington House became the Arlington National Cemetery. President John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jackie, are buried there.

• The winter of 1779-80 in Morristown was the worst winter in North America.

• Martha gave what would equal $20,000 in today’s dollars toward the women’s charity drive to make shirts for the soldiers. Total collected =$300,000!

• The friendly fire incident detailed in Chapter 15 actually happened, and the following line is a quote from George: “Never was I in more imminent danger by being between two fires, knocking up with my sword the presented pieces.” He didn’t speak of the incident for decades, but it obviously weighed heavily on his mind. This is the incident intimated about in Chapter 5.

• In Chapter 16, George shocked everyone when he resigned as commander in chief of the army. No one had ever willingly relinquished power like that. On his deathbed Napoleon said, “They wanted me to be another Washington”—something
he
obviously could never be.

• Eleanor Custis was to be pregnant twenty times. Thirteen children lived.

• “Our own vine and fig tree” is a quote from one of George’s letters and refers to his sentiment regarding their retirement to Mount Vernon. If only they could have enjoyed it longer . . .