Harper's Weekly, Saturday February 21, 1903.

George Washington as a Father

Several writers have announced that Providence denied children to George Washington in order that he might become the father of his country. This divination of the counsels of Heaven is original with so many that it may be esteemed the general judgment. Yet neither the General nor Mrs. Washington expected their marriage to be childless; for the hopes of a lady who loves her lord may be plainly read between the lines of a letter, dated June 1. 1760, from the mistress of Mount Vernon to her sister Anna. Mrs. Burswell Bassett:

“I think myself in a better state of health than I have been for a long time. I don't doubt I shall present, you a fine healthy girl again when I come down in the fall, which is as soon as Mr. Washington's business will suffer him to leave here.”

Washington had known little of family life when, in 1758, he began his home at Mount Vernon. Away, at school, from home he did not see the death-bed of his father. He had mingled little with his younger brothers and sisters because he was absent, at school, for most of the year. His latter youth had been occupied with distant surveys: and with his early manhood had come public missions in the wilderness. Then on the sea and in the West Indies with Lawrence Washington, his sick half-brother: at Fort Duquesne; and on the Ohio with Gist and Croghan: —all his life had been away from home. Even the home which he had seen at Mount Vernon had been a house of sorrow. There three of the children of Lawrence Washington had died. Lawrence himself was a constant invalid, and when he died the only daughter he left behind soon followed him to the grave: and then, apparently weary of such scenes, his widow married again and went to live elsewhere.

Five years afterwards, the fruit trees were in bud and the fields were green, and George Washington brought his wife and children to make Mount Vernon a happy home. Almost as soon as they arrived. May covered the hills with flowers.

His affection for the children was a father's true love. His “agony of prayer” beside the dying bed of “Patsy Custis,” though unanswered, turned him for a while to religion. He kept his sagacity busy whenever the interests of John Parke were concerned, and his conduct in the upbringing of that somewhat wayward youth developed a lessening of rein and a softness of disposition that were never shown elsewhere than at home, John Parke was led with a tender hand through youth to marriage and beyond, and had firm support on the path of honor and the ascent towards fame. Tutors attended him at home until he was over fifteen years of age. and then Rev, Mr. Boucher instructed, if not trained, him at his boarding-school in Annapolis. When home for the holidays Washington gave him abundant sport in fox-hunting, and the other manly athletics of the day; but insisted that when at school he should study with something like thoroughness. Instead of this, John Parke's “only books were woman's looks.” The first news Washington had of him was that the youth, not then nineteen years of age, had courted, won, and was engaged to be married to the belle of Annapolis — the first-risen star of the splendid Maryland galaxy that yet lights the halls of the Naval Academy. He had won the heart and hand of Miss Nellie Calvert, the second daughter of Mr. Benedict Calvert. a descendant of Lord Baltimore.

It was a trying situation. A lad with the finest prospects of any boy in America might be ruined by a misstep. It is said in Alexandria that in his early manhood Washington never saw a colt that he was not able to control. Now he needed all his horse-sense to break in and guide the boy he loved best of all the sons of men. He mistrusted his own capacity in affairs of literature and scholarship, but he knew life, and he knew that his stepson would need for a prosperous career all the supple strength that training gives; that he was not yet trained, and was disposed to resent training.

Washington never failed to ask advice when in doubt, and he asked the opinion John Parke's teacher, Dr. Boucher. Dr. Boucher seems to have advised that the ocean be placed between the lovers, and that he be allowed to carry the young gentleman to Europe on a tour of education. The teacher believed that absence conquers love; but Washington saw in this plan a proposal to break the engagement; and for this non-age was not a valid plea in his code of honor. So he dismissed Mr. Boucher's plan with a curt reminder that John Parke was “by no means ripe for a tour of travel.” He knew that, sometimes, a good method of training a colt is to drive him with a mate, and he wrote to the young lady's father.

He informed Mr. Calvert that the match would be acceptable to the family of Mr. Custis, who were pleased with the choice, but that the youth, inexperience, and unripe education of the young man were insuperable objections to the immediate completion of the marriage. He suggested, too. that if love cooled it had better do so before marriage than afterwards. That Mr. Custis must keep his tryst with his fiancee as a man of honor, and to help him to school a wandering fancy he would be kept at his books, and “so avoid the little flirtations that might divide his attention and so tend to lessen his first love.” This course pleased Mr. Calvert. Washington, anticipating that if the lovers were neighbors, the magnetism of the lady would draw his stepson from his books, carried John Parke to New York, and placed him at King's College under charge of Rev. Dr. Cooper. The wireless telegraph of love's young dream kept New York and Annapolis in connection, and within a year Washington, whose wife yearned for a son's wife's sympathy in her mourning for her dead “Patsy,” gave his consent to the marriage, and John Parke, nineteen years old, wedded Miss Eleanor Calvert, of Mount Airy.

The young couple went to housekeeping at Abingdon, beside the Potomac, a few miles below the land that is now the city of Washington. Visits between Abingdon and Mount Vernon were frequent, and it was said in the neighborhood that if any horse of the stables were started from Abingdon, and left to his own free will, it would be found in due time at the entrance to Mount Vernon. At Abingdon three childrrn were born to Mr. and Mrs. John Parke Custis — Elizabeth (who married Mr. Law), in 1776, and Martha (who married Mr. Peter), in 1777, and Eleanor (who became an inmate of Washington's family), in 1779. Meanwhile John Parke, aided by the influence of his grandfather and the attractive freshness of young manhood, had been elected to the House of Burgesses of Virginia. As the Revolutionary War was advancing, he sent his wife and children to the home of her father at Mount Airy, and followed Washington to fight for independence. At Mount Airy, on the 30th of August, 1781, his first and only son was born and named for George Washington. On the march from the head of Elk towards Yorktown, John Parke had just time to stop and embrace his son. Then he tore himself away and hurried forward on a road he was fated never to retrace. The joyous news soon came to Mount Vernon and Mount Airy that lord Cornwallis had surrendered to General Washington. Joy was soon dimmed, for the sad tidings came that John Parke was sick unto death in his aunt's house at Eltham. His wife hurried from Mount Airy and his mother from Mount Vernon, and met Washington, bowed with grief, beside the dying bed of the young soldier. Shadows clouded for the Washington family the glory of Yorktown.

As the breath left the body of the dying father, Washington threw his left arm around his wife and gave his right hand to the newly made widow, and said, amid sobs and tears. “From this moment I take the two youngest children for my own.” So with the loss of his only son, he became the father of a son and daughter. At that time Nellie was about three years old. and the baby. George Washington, about three months. The two children soon came to Mount Vernon, where George Washington the younger was nursed by Mrs. Anderson, wife of the confidential steward.

The widowed Mrs. Custis resumed her residence at Abingdon, and when the period of her mourning was over she married in the fall of 1783, Dr. David Stuart. So when Washington came back to his home after he had surrendered his commission he found the mourning widow he had left in her weeds a happy bride. She had married a gentleman for whom Washington had high esteem, and to whom he gave no small advancement in the public service.

The renewed family at Mount Vernon had now, like the old one, several years of home joys and quiet before its father was called away again into the busy world. The Christmas eve of 1783, when Washington arrived home after independence had been won, opened a season of calm delight for the father and mother and a halcyon time for the children. “I am solacing myself,” wrote Washington to Lafayette. For a while at least he had few cares, These related to the amendment of his fortune, injured by his absence, and the improvement of the fortunes of his neighbors by promoting better navigation of the Potomac River which rolled by the base of his hills. He was in the prime of life, about fifty years of age, and his wife a few months younger; for he had been born in the February and she in the May of the same year. Little Nellie was about five years old; the baby, George Washington, having finished the first task of childhood, the cutting of his teeth, was toddling around with the prattle through which Nature introduces men to sober speech.

Soon came George A. Washington, the nephew of the General, to be his secretary and Majordomo. Miss Frances Bassett, Mrs. Washington's niece, was for months at a time an inmate of the Mount Vernon home. These young people were, of course, thrown continually into each other's society, and while they entertained the children, the children amused them. It will never be known how much courtship they mingled in the innocent pastimes they got up for Nellie and George; but it was not long before the little ones, as well as the elders, saw a wedding at Mount Vernon, and on the 15th of October. 1785, the General's nephew and his wife's niece were made man and wife by Rev. Spence Grayson. Washington gave the bride away, and could scarcely fail to have been impressed with the lesson that if absence conquers love, presence carries love on to marriage. Within fifteen years he put the lesson in practice to bring about another marriage dear to his heart.

The honeymoon of the new couple was a time of jubilee in the Old Virginia style. During the festivities the bridnl party came twice to the Alexandria races, and dined on the first occasion with Colonel Denis Ramsay, and on the next as the home of Mr. William Herbert. Both the dwellings still stand.

In those days Mount Vernon was always filled with company, and General Washington's expenses exceeded his income. On the 30th of June. 1785, he writes in his Journal. “Dined with Mrs. Washington only, which I believe is the first instance of it since my retirement from public life.” Not long afterwards he writes, “Never till now have I experienced the want of money.” He borrowed five hundred pounds, Virginia currency — about $2600 — from Captain Conway, a merchant and shipmaster of Alexandria, and financial stringency ceased at Mount Vernon.

Meanwhile the life of Miss Nellie became especially pleasant. Both the General and Mrs. Washington vied in parental fondness for her. Young people came to Mount Vernon from all the country families round-about. Between Mount Vernon and Abingdon. the residence of Mrs. Dr. Stuart, the mother of Nellie and George, there were almost daily visits. The twelve miles between the two seats were easily gotten over in carriages, and oftentimes, as both seats were on the riverside, General Washington's barge, rowed by stalwart colored men, made speedy connection over the bright waters of the Potomac River, and when the children were on board the dark crew wore white feathers in their hats. Midway lay Alexandria, with its ships, and General Washington could tell them how he had seen it rise on the lines he had laid out with a compass and chain in his boyhood.

So passed pleasant years, and then Mount Vernon was again abandoned for a period as long as that of the Revolutionary War. Washington became the head of the American state created by the Constitution he hail helped to form. The new Washington Hnme located first on Cherry and Pearl, and then on Rector Street, in New York, and then at the Morris “hired house” in Philadelphia. There, amid the decorous etiquette required by official position, Washington was as fatherly and kind to his children as he had been at Mount Vernon, to which all hoped soon to return. Mrs. Washington's Drawing Rooms and her Friday nights gave them an outlook on the world of fashion and politics from a place of ease.

Washington was not less careful in his supervision of young George Washington Custis, who was at school in Annapolis, than he was in that of his daughter. The General evidently had the untimely wooing of John Parke in mind, and feared that the Maryland belles might carry him off. He wrote to Mr. Boucher, the teacher, that he wished him to “prevent, as much as it can be done without too rigid a restraint, a devotion of his time to visitations of the families in Annapolis, which, when carried to excess or beyond a certain point, cannot fail to take his mind from study, and turn his thoughts to very different objects. Above all, let me request, if you should perceive any appearance of his attaching himself, by visits or otherwise, to any young lady of that place, that you would admonish him against the measure on account of his youth and incapability of appreciating all the requisites in a connection which in the common course of things can terminate with the death of one of the parties only; and if it is done without effect, to advise me thereof.”

On the 22d of February, 1799, Washington's sixty-seventh birthday, Lawrence Lewis and Nellie Custis were married, he gave the bride away, and endowed the young couple generously from his lands.

George Washington Custis tried his patience to the utmost. Skilled in music, painting, literature, nothing came amiss to him; but he loved ease more than all the arts and sciences, “I can govern men. but I cannot govern boys.” said Washington; but he loved George to the end.

The life of George Washington Parke Custis during the fifty years he lived after Washington's death was devoted to his memory. The townspeople of Alexandria, to whom he paid visits on every recurrence of the 22d of February, often saw tears on the cheek of the venerable man when the name of George Washington was mentioned. These silent tears were the son's tribute to Washington as a father.

Washington as a Father, Harper's Weekly, Saturday February 21, 1903, Vol. XLVII, No. 2409, cover and page 322-325.