Washington [106]
Like many desperate parents, George and Martha Washington wound up in the hands of charlatans. In February 1769 a blacksmith named Joshua Evans came to Mount Vernon to forge an iron “cramp ring” for one of Patsy’s fingers. Popular superstition contended that such rings, if accompanied by suitable mumbo jumbo, could banish epilepsy. That summer the Washingtons took Patsy to the mineral waters at Berkeley Springs, hoping for relief. The resort had become more fashionable since Washington and his brother Lawrence had first visited there and now offered everything from gambling to horse racing. In its springs, the women wore prudish, old-fashioned garments, with lead weights secreted in the hems to ensure that water didn’t push up their gowns and indecently expose flesh. Writing from the spa, Washington informed a friend that Patsy was “troubled with a complaint” and “found little benefit as yet from the experiment” of taking the waters. “What a week or two more may do, we know not and therefore are inclined to put them to the test.”5 Washington never spelled out the nature of Patsy’s “complaint,” suggesting the stigma attached to discussing epilepsy openly.
The adolescent girl’s fits grew more horrifying and frequent, sometimes striking twice a day. They recurred so often that Washington, in alarm, began to compile a record of them in the margin of his almanac calendars. During one frightful period from June 29 to September 22, 1770, Patsy fell to the floor in convulsions no fewer than twenty-six times. To compensate for her medical tribulations, Washington treated the girl to extra clothing and trinkets whenever possible. In Williamsburg that summer he bought her a pair of gold earrings and a tortoiseshell comb. By the following year, as shown by invoices to Robert Cary, he was ordering liquid laudanum, a powerful opiate that may well have been administered to Patsy.
In a poignant letter of July 1771, Washington disclosed that Martha didn’t believe that her daughter would ever be cured or even survive into adulthood. Referring to her anxieties about her son, Jacky, Washington observed, “The unhappy situation of her daughter has in some degree fixed her eyes upon him as her only hope.”6 Washington harbored many reservations about Jacky, who was outwardly sweet and affectionate toward his mother and never less than respectful toward his stepfather. At bottom, however, he was a young wastrel who loved horse races, hunting, and outdoor pursuits far more than his studies. When Charles Willson Peale sketched a watercolor of him, he portrayed the eighteen-year-old Jacky dressed in a green coat with a red collar and a richly embroidered waistcoat. He had a round face with a small chin and slightly crossed eyes, a detail that subtly captured his restless, perhaps immature, nature.
Where Washington wrote about Patsy with unfeigned affection, with Jacky he always seemed to bite his tongue and resort to euphemisms. Something about Patsy’s sweet simplicity he found irresistible, whereas Jacky’s feckless nature was to him intolerable. To Washington fell the thankless task of being the family disciplinarian, and he had to tread delicately in criticizing Jacky for fear of antagonizing his indulgent mother. Lacking the full legitimacy of a biological father, he found himself in a predicament as he tried to reform Jacky’s habits without running afoul of Martha. Though he might be the master of Mount Vernon, George Washington was far less powerful in the tiny emotional domain of his nuclear family.
Having been denied an adequate education,