The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Mother of Washington and Her Times, by Sara Agnes Rice Pryor

The Mother of Washington
And Her Times

The Mother of Washington
And Her Times

BY

MRS. ROGER A. PRYOR

"That one who breaks the way with tears
Many shall follow with a song"

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1903

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1903,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up, electrotyped, and published October, 1903

Norwood Press

J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

To the Hon. Roger A. Pryor, LL.D.
IN WHOM LIVES ALL THAT WAS BEST
IN OLD VIRGINIA

CONTENTS

PART I

PART II

ILLUSTRATIONS

AUTHORITIES

Virginia Historical Magazine.

William and Mary Quarterly.

Virginia Historical Register.

Meade's Old Churches and Families of Virginia.

Campbell's History of Virginia.

Irving's Life of Washington.

Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington. By George Washington Parke Custis.

Cooke's Virginia.

The Bland Papers. By Campbell.

Howe's Virginia.

Journal of Philip Vickars Fithian.

Towers's Lafayette.

Creasy's Fifteen Decisive Battles.

Morse's Franklin.

Lecky's England in the Eighteenth Century.

Fiske's American Revolution.

Sparks's Diplomatic Correspondence.

Washington's Works.

Bancroft's History of the United States.

Life and Letters of George Mason. By Kate Mason Rowland.

Beaumarchais and his Times.

Edwardes's Translations of Lemonie.

Lives of the Chief Justices of England.

Twining's Travels in America.

Burnaby's Travels.

The Story of Mary Washington. By Marion Harland.

Randall's Life of Jefferson.

Worthies of England. By Thomas Fuller.

Foote's Sketches of Virginia.

Parton's Franklin.

A Study in the Warwickshire Dialect. By Appleton Morgan, A.M., LL.B.

Maternal Ancestry of Washington. By G. W. Ball.

PART I

The Mother of Washington and her Times

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

The mothers of famous men survive only in their sons. This is a rule almost as invariable as a law of nature. Whatever the aspirations and energies of the mother, memorable achievement is not for her. No memoir has been written in this country of the women who bore, fostered, and trained our great men. What do we know of the mother of Daniel Webster, or John Adams, or Patrick Henry, or Andrew Jackson, or of the mothers of our Revolutionary generals?

When the American boy studies the history of his country, his soul soars within him as he reads of his own forefathers: how they rescued a wilderness from the savage and caused it to bloom into fruitful fields and gardens, how they won its independence through eight years of hardship and struggle, how they assured its prosperity by a wise Constitution and firm laws. But he may look in vain for some tribute to the mothers who trained his heroes. In his Roman history he finds Cornelia, Virginia, Lucretia, and Veturia on the same pages with Horatius, Regulus, Brutus, and Cincinnatus. If he be a boy of some thought and perception, he will see that the early seventeenth century women of his own land must have borne a similar relation to their country as these women to the Roman Republic. But our histories as utterly ignore them as if they never existed. The heroes of our Revolution might have sprung armed from the head of Jove for aught the American boy can find to the contrary.

Thus American history defrauds these noble mothers of their crown—not self-won, but won by their sons.

Letitia Romolino was known to few, while the fame of "Madame Mère" is as universal as the glory of Napoleon himself. But Madame Mère had her historian. The pioneer woman of America, who "broke the way with tears," retires into darkness and oblivion; while "many follow with a song" the son to whom she gave her life and her keen intelligence born of her strong faith and love.

Biographers have occasionally seemed to feel that something is due the mothers of their heroes. Women have some rights after all! And so we can usually find, tucked away somewhere, a short perfunctory phrase of courtesy, "He is said to have inherited many of his qualities from his mother," reminding us of "The Ladies—God bless 'em," after everybody else has been toasted at a banquet, and just before the toasters are ripe for the song, "We won't go home till morning!"

But—if we are willing to be appeased by such a douceur—there is literature galore anent the women who have amused "great" men: Helen of Troy, Madame de Pompadour, Madame du Barry, Lady Hamilton, the Countess Guicciola, and such. We may comfort ourselves for this humiliating fact only by reflecting that the world craves novelty, and that these dames are interesting to the reading public, solely because they are exceptional, while the noble, unselfish woman, being the rule of motherhood, is familiar to every one of us and needs no historian.

It is the noble, unselfish woman who must shine, if she shine at all, by the light reflected from her son. Her life, for the most part, must be hidden by the obscurity of domestic duties. While herself thus inactive and retired, her son is developed for glory, and the world is his arena. It is only when he reaches renown that she becomes an object of attention, but it is then too late to take her measure in the plenitude of her powers. Emitting at best but a feeble ray, her genius is soon lost in the splendor of his meridian.

Nay more, her reputation is often the sport of a love of contrast, and her simplicity and his magnificence the paradox of a gossiping public.

Mary Washington presents no exception to this picture. As the mother of the man who has hitherto done most for the good and glory of humanity, the details of her life are now of world-wide and enduring interest. Those details were lost in the seclusion and obscurity of her earlier years or else absorbed in the splendor of her later career. It is not deniable, too, that in the absence of authentic information, tradition has made free with her name, and has imputed to her motives and habits altogether foreign to her real character. The mother of Washington was in no sense a commonplace woman. Still less was she hard, uncultured, undignified, unrefined.

The writer hopes to trace the disparaging traditions, and to refute them by showing that all the known actions of her life were the emanations of a noble heart, high courage, and sound understanding.

"Characters," said the great Englishman who lived in her time, "should never be given by an historian unless he knew the people whom he describes, or copies from those who knew them." "A hard saying for picturesque writers of history," says Mr. Augustine Birrell, who knows so well how to be picturesque and yet faithful to the truth. Even he laments how little we can know of a dead man we never saw. "His books, if he wrote books, will tell us something; his letters, if he wrote any, and they are preserved, may perchance fling a shadow on the sheet for a moment or two; a portrait if painted in a lucky hour may lend a show of substance to our dim surmisings; the things he did must carefully be taken into account, but as a man is much more than the mere sum of his actions even these cannot be relied upon with great confidence. For the purpose, therefore, of getting at any one's character, the testimony of those who knew the living man is of all the material likely to be within our reach the most useful."

How truly the words of this brilliant writer apply to the ensuing pages will be apparent to every intelligent reader. No temptation has availed with the compiler to accept any, the most attractive, theory or tradition. The testimony of those who knew Mary Washington is the groundwork of the picture, and controls its every detail.

A few years ago an episode of interest was awakened in Mary Washington's life. There was a decided Mary Washington Renaissance. She passed this way—as Joan of Arc—as Napoleon Bonaparte, Burns, Emerson, and others pass. A society of women banded themselves together into a Mary Washington Memorial Association. Silver and gold medals bearing her gentle, imagined face were struck off, and when the demand for them was at its height, their number was restricted to six hundred, to be bequeathed for all time from mother to daughter, the pledge being a perpetual vigil over the tomb of Mary Washington, thus forming a Guard of Honor of six hundred American women. The Princess Eulalia of Spain, and Maria Pilar Colon, a descendant of Christopher Columbus, were admitted into this Guard of Honor, and wear its insignia.

This "Renaissance" grew out of an advertisement in the Washington papers to the effect that the "Grave of Mary, the Mother of General Washington," was to be "sold at Public Auction, the same to be offered at Public Outcry," under the shadow of the monument erected in her son's honor, and in the city planned by him and bearing his name.

A number of the descendants of Mary Washington's old Fredericksburg neighbors assembled the next summer at the White Sulphur Springs in Virginia. It was decided that a ball be given at the watering-place to aid the noble efforts of the widow of Chief Justice Waite to avert the disaster, purchase the park, and erect a monument over the ashes of the mother of Washington. One of the guests was selected to personate her: General Fitzhugh Lee to represent her son George.

A thousand patrons assured the success of the ball. They wore Mary Washington's colors—blue and white—and assumed the picturesque garb of pre-Revolutionary days. The bachelor governor of New York, learning what was toward with these fair ladies, sent his own state flag to grace the occasion, and its snow-white folds mingled with the blue of the state banner contributed by the governor of Virginia.

The gowns of the Virginia beauties were yellow with age, and wrinkled from having been hastily exhumed from the lavender-scented chests; for when lovely Juliet Carter chose the identical gown of her great, great grandmother,—blue brocade, looped over a white satin quilted petticoat,—the genuine example was followed by all the rest. The Madam Washington of the hour was strictly taken in hand by the Fredericksburg contingent. Her kerchief had been worn at the Fredericksburg Peace Ball, her mob cap was cut by a pattern preserved by Mary Washington's old neighbors. There were mittens, a reticule, and a fan made of the bronze feathers of the wild turkey of Virginia. Standing with her son George in the midst of the old-time assembly, old-time music in the air, old-time pictures on the walls, Madam Washington received her guests and presented them to her son, whose miniature she wore on her bosom. "I am glad to meet your son, Madam Washington!" said pretty Ellen Lee, as she dropped her courtesy; "I always heard he was a truthful child!"

The lawn and cloister-like corridors of the large hotel were crowded at an early hour with the country people, arriving on foot, on horseback, and in every vehicle known to the mountain roads. These rustic folk—weather-beaten, unkempt old trappers and huntsmen, with their sons and daughters, wives and little children—gathered in the verandas and filled the windows of the ball-room. When the procession made the rounds of the room the comments of the holders of the window-boxes were not altogether flattering. The quaint dress of "the tea-cup time of hoop and hood" was disappointing. They had expected a glimpse of the latest fashions of the metropolis.

"I don't think much of that Mrs. Washington," said one.

"Well," drawled another, a wiry old graybeard, "she looks quiet and peaceable! The ole one was a turrible ole woman! My grandfather's father used to live close to ole Mrs. Washington. The ole man used to say she would mount a stool to rap her man on the head with the smoke-'ouse key! She was that little, an' hot-tempered."

"That was Martha Washington, grandfather," corrected a girl who had been to school in Lewisburg. "She was the short one."

"Well, Martha or Mary, it makes no differ," grimly answered the graybeard. "They was much of a muchness to my thinkin'," and this was the first of the irreverent traditions which caught the ear of the writer, and led to investigation. They cropped up fast enough from many a dark corner!

About this time many balls and costume entertainments were given to aid the monument fund. There were charming garden parties to

"Bring back the hour
Of glory in the grass and splendor in the flower,"

when the Mother of Washington was beautiful, young, and happy. A notable theatrical entertainment, the "Mary Washington matinée," was arranged by Mrs. Charles Avery Doremus, the clever New York playwright. The theatre was hung with colors lent by the Secretary of the Navy, the order therefor signed by "George Dewey." Everybody wore the Mary Washington colors—as did Adelina Patti, who flashed from her box the perennial smile we are yet to see again. Despite the hydra-headed traditions the Mother of Washington had her apotheosis.

Brought face to face with my reader, and devoutly praying I may hold his interest to the end, I wish I could spare him every twice-told tale—every dull word.

But "we are made of the shreds and patches of many ancestors." What we are we owe to them. God forbid we should inherit and repeat all their actions! The courage, the fortitude, the persistence, are what we inherit—not the deeds through which they were expressed. A successful housebreaker's courage may blossom in the valor of a descendant on the field who has been trained in a better school than his ancestor.

Dull as the public is prone to regard genealogical data, the faithful biographer is bound to give them.

And therefore the reader must submit to an introduction to the Ball family, otherwise he cannot understand the Mother of Washington or Washington himself. One of them, perhaps the one most deserving eminence through her own beneficence, we cannot place exactly in our records. She was an English "Dinah Morris," and her name was Hannah Ball. She was the originator of Sunday-schools, holding her own school in 1772, twelve years before the reputed founder, Robert Raikes, established Sunday-schools in England.

CHAPTER II

MARY WASHINGTON'S ENGLISH ANCESTRY

The family of Ball from which Mary, the mother of Washington, descended, can be traced in direct line only as far back as the year 1480. They came originally from "Barkham, anciently 'Boercham'; noted as the spot at which William the Conqueror paused on his devastating march from the bloody field of Hastings:[1] 'wasting ye land, burning ye towns and sleaing (sic) ye people till he came to Boerchum where he stayed his ruthless hand.'"

In the "History of the Ball family of Barkham, Comitatis Berks, taken from the Visitation Booke of London marked O. 24, in the College of Arms," we find that "William Ball, Lord of the Manor of Barkham, Com. Berks, died in the year 1480." From this William Ball, George Washington was eighth in direct descent.

The entry in the old visitation book sounds imposing, but Barkham was probably a small town nestled amid the green hills of Berkshire, whose beauty possibly so reminded the Conqueror of his Normandy that "he stayed his ruthless hand." A century ago it was a village of some fifty houses attached to the estate of the Levison Gowers.

There is no reason to suppose that the intervening Balls in the line,—Robert, William, two Johns,—all of whom lived in Barkham, or the William of Lincoln's Inn, who became "attorney in the Office of Pleas in the Exchequer," were men of wealth or rank. The "getting of gear was never," said one of their descendants, "a family trait, nor even the ability to hold it when gotten"; but nowhere is it recorded that they ever wronged man or woman in the getting. They won their worldly goods honorably, used them beneficently, and laid them down cheerfully when duty to king or country demanded the sacrifice, and when it pleased God to call them out of the world. They were simply men "doing their duty in their day and generation and deserving well of their fellows."

They belonged to the Landed Gentry of England. This does not presuppose their estates to have been extensive. A few starved acres of land sufficed to class them among the Landed Gentry, distinguishing them from laborers. As such they may have been entitled to the distinction of "Gentleman," the title in England next lowest to "Yeoman." No one of them had ever bowed his shoulders to the royal accolade, nor held even the position of esquire to a baronet. But the title "Gentleman" was a social distinction of value. "Ordinarily the King," says Sir Thomas Smith, "doth only make Knights and create Barons or higher degrees; as for gentlemen, they be made good cheap in this Kingdom; for whosoever studieth the laws of the realm, who studieth in the universities, who professeth the liberal sciences, he shall be taken for a gentleman; for gentlemen be those whom their blood and race doth make noble and known." By "a gentleman born" was usually understood the son of a gentleman by birth, and grandson of a gentleman by position. "It takes three generations to make a gentleman," we say to-day, and this seems to have been an ancient rule in England.

The Balls might well be proud to belong to old England's middle classes—her landed, untitled Gentry. A few great minds—Lord Francis Verulam, for instance—came from her nobility; and some gifted writers—the inspired dreamer, for instance—from her tinkers and tradesmen; but the mighty host of her scholars, poets, and philosophers belonged to her middle classes. They sent from their ranks Shakespeare and Milton, Locke and Sir Isaac Newton, Gibbon, Dryden, "old Sam Johnson," Pope, Macaulay, Stuart Mill, Huxley, Darwin, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Burke, Disraeli, Cowper, Sir William Blackstone, and nearly all of the Chief Justices of England. These are but a few of the great names that shine along the ranks of England's middle classes.

Many of these men were called to the foot of the throne by a grateful sovereign to receive some distinction,—so paltry by comparison with glory of their own earning,—and among them came one day an ancestor of the mother of George Washington. Who he was we know not, nor yet what had been his service to his country; but he was deemed worthy to bear upon his shield a lion rampant, the most honorable emblem of heraldry, and the lion's paws held aloft a ball! This much we know of him,—that in addition to his valor and fidelity he possessed a poet's soul. He chose for the motto, the cri de guerre of his clan, a suggestive phrase from these lines of Ovid:—

"He gave to man a noble countenance and commanded him to gaze upon the heavens, and to carry his looks upward to the stars."