Free The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers by Thomas Fleming Page A

had stopped in Fredericksburg to visit Mary. She was not at home—an accident that he probably regarded as a stroke of luck, saving him from listening to a litany of complaints. He left her some money and went on his way. Several weeks later, she wrote him a letter lamenting that she had missed his visit. She had taken a trip “over the mountains” that “almost kill’d” her. There she had seen some land he owned that she thought would be perfect for “a little hous of my one [own] if it is only twelve foot squar.” George was paying rent for her to live in an elegant house in Fredericksburg, but it was apparently unsatisfactory. Whatever he did for Mary was unsatisfactory. There is little doubt that George’s encounters with his mother invariably increased his affection for Martha Custis.
    VIII
    By the time the War for Independence ended, Nelly Custis had found another husband, an Alexandria physician, Dr. David Stuart. She took her two older girls with her into the new marriage. The Washingtons adopted the two youngest children, four-year-old Nelly and two-year-old George Washington Parke Custis, whom everyone called “Wash.” When Washington arrived at Mount Vernon on Christmas eve, 1783, a private citizen once more, the ex-general’s trunk was full of toys he had bought in Philadelphia for the “little folks” as well as presents for a beaming Martha.
    In the same two years, George and Martha acquired other parental responsibilities. His younger brother Samuel had died at forty-seven.Samuel had never been much of a businessman, and the deaths of no fewer than four wives had added to his woes. He had left his fifth wife penniless, wondering how she was going to feed her newborn baby, plus three boys and a girl from one of Samuel’s previous unions. “In God’s name,” Washington asked his brother Jack, “how did my brother Saml. contrive to get himself so enormously in debt?”
    Jack Washington could only plead with his older brother not to ask him for help with the indigent children. He had his hands full trying to provide for his own family. Their youngest brother, Charles Washington, was a hopeless alcoholic. George wearily saw he again had no choice. He ordered Samuel’s three youngest children sent to Mount Vernon. The oldest, a fourteen-year-old boy, and the baby would stay with his brother’s widow. The two younger boys turned out to be hell-raisers who drove Washington and several schoolmasters to distraction. But he persisted in paying their tuitions and lecturing them on good behavior, and they eventually graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. Their sister, Harriot, lived at Mount Vernon for almost two decades. Also in residence was Fanny Bassett, daughter of Martha’s sister, Nancy, who had died in 1777.
    The older children could more or less fend for themselves. George and Martha’s chief concern—and pleasure—were Nelly and Wash. When their step-grandfather became president, they traveled with George and Martha to New York, and later to Philadelphia when the capital was shifted there. This ready-made family was enormously important to Martha, whose maternal needs remained intense. Washington was equally involved in the “little folks’” future. He began thinking about a tutor for “Wash,” who was so fat he was often called “Tubby.” George told one friend he planned to “fit the boy for a university.” He was hoping to succeed where he had failed with Wash’s father. Alas, he was doomed to another disappointment. As rich as his father, Wash was to prove equally resistant to scholarly effort. He quit or was expelled from no fewer than three colleges. 11
    IX
    When Washington became president, Martha once more journeyed north and became a crucial part of his household in the new capital, New York. Many people are under the mistaken impression that because he was elected unanimously, Washington’s presidency was a love feast. Theopposite is closer to the truth. There