Washington [10]
This trying woman inspired a healthy trepidation among George’s companions. “I was often there with George, his playmate, schoolmate, and young man’s companion,” said Lawrence Washington of Chotank, a distant relative. “Of the mother I was more afraid than of my own parents; she awed me in the midst of her kindness, for she was, indeed, truly kind.”11 There was nothing especially gentle about Mary Washington, little that savored of maternal warmth. Gus’s death removed any moderating influence between mother and eldest son, who clashed with their similarly willful personalities. Always a dutiful but seldom a loving son, George treated his mother with frigid deference, taking refuge in polite but empty forms. His letters to her would be addressed to “Honored Madam” and end with distant formality, “Your most Dutiful and Obedient Son, George Washington.” This studiously correct tone, likely laced with suppressed anger, only highlighted the absence of genuine filial affection.
There would always be a cool, quiet antagonism between Washington and his mother. The hypercritical mother produced a son who was overly sensitive to criticism and suffered from a lifelong need for approval. One suspects that, in dealing with this querulous woman, George became an overly controlled personality and learned to master his temper and curb his tongue. It was the extreme self-control of a deeply emotional young man who feared the fatal vehemence of his own feelings, if left unchecked. Anything pertaining to Mary Ball Washington stirred up an emotional tempest that George quelled only with difficulty. Never able to express these forbidden feelings of rage, he learned to equate silence and a certain manly stolidity with strength. This boyhood struggle was, in all likelihood, the genesis of the stoical personality that would later define him so indelibly.
On the one hand, the similarities between Mary Washington and her eldest son were striking. She was a fine horsewoman, enjoyed dancing, reputedly possessed enormous strength, was manic in money matters, tenaciously superintended her farm, and displayed a stubborn independence. Both mother and son exhibited supreme willpower that people defied at their peril. Both were vigorous, enterprising, and exacting in their demands. Yet in many other ways, George Washington defined himself as the antithesis of his mother. If his mother was crude and illiterate, he would improve himself through books. If she was self-centered, he would be self-sacrificing in serving his country. If she was slovenly, he would be meticulous in appearance. If she disdained fancy society, he would crave its acceptance. If she showed old-fashioned religious fervor, he would be devout in a more moderate fashion. And if she was a veteran complainer, he would be known for his stiff upper lip.
Unable to afford a fancy education for her children, Mary Washington did her best to pound moral precepts into them, reading daily portions from a volume entitled Contemplations Moral and Divine by Sir Matthew Hale. Many speculative theories have been floated about Washington’s education. Before his father’s death, he may have received a limited education in math, reading, and writing at a day school taught by a Mr. Hobby, one of his father’s tenants, who boasted that he had “laid the foundation of [Washington’s] greatness.”12 He may also have attended a school in Fredericksburg run by the Reverend James Marye, the rector of St. George’s Parish. According to one classmate, George applied