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By Root 25639 0

Washington went to inordinate lengths to educate his stepchildren properly. Starting in 1761, he hired a young, self-effacing Scottish immigrant, Walter Magowan, to tutor the children at home, and they were soon introduced to the Greek Testament and Latin poets and other things George Washington never learned. Toward the end of 1767 Magowan surrendered the post and returned to England, hoping to be ordained as an Anglican minister. In seeking a new teacher for thirteen-year-old Jacky, Washington contacted the Reverend Jonathan Boucher, an Anglican clergyman who ran a small academy for wealthy boys in his home near Fredericksburg. In his introductory letter, Washington described Jacky as “a promising boy” who was “untainted in his morals and of innocent manners,” but then he tipped his hand and confessed his “anxiety to make him fit for more useful purposes than a horse racer.”7 He was trying to be loyal to Jacky and frank at the same time, a tenuous balancing act he would perform for many years. A toadying character straight out of a Jane Austen novel, Boucher, with a tug of the forelock, answered in an unctuous manner: “Ever since I have heard of Mast[e]r Custis, I have wish[e]d to call him one of my little flock.”8 In short order, Washington rode off to Boucher’s school with Jacky, Jacky’s young slave Julius, and two horses.

At first Boucher expressed high hope for his young charge, and Washington placed an order in London for one hundred books, many in Latin. A transparently insincere fellow, Boucher laid on the flattery with a trowel, telling Washington what he thought he wanted to hear. His first letter described Jacky as a little angel, “a boy of so exceedingly mild and meek a temper” that Boucher worried he might be too artless, with “all the harmlessness of the dove” and none of “the wisdom of the serpent.” Of this little paragon, he concluded, “I have not seen a youth that I think promises fairer to be a good and a useful man than John Custis.”9

A year later, having discovered Jacky’s profligate nature, Boucher whistled a different tune. “You will rem[embe]r my having complain[e]d of Jack’s laziness, which, however, I now hope is not incurable,” he wrote to Washington.10 The reverend’s dismay steadily deepened: “The chief failings of [Jacky’s] character are that he is constitutionally somewhat too warm, indolent, and voluptuous.” He trembled for the fate of the Custis fortune: “Sunk in unmanly sloth, [Jacky’s] estate will [be] left to the managem[en]t of some worthless overseer and himself soon be entangled in some matrimonial adventure.”11 Cognizant of the exorbitant wealth he would inherit, Jacky saw little need to apply himself to studies, which couldn’t help but distress his stepfather with his nagging work ethic.

In 1770 Jonathan Boucher became a rector in Annapolis, Maryland, and Jacky followed him there. Boucher’s scathing strictures on Jacky’s behavior came in private exchanges with Washington and probably weren’t communicated to Martha. Always concerned with Jacky’s health, she feared he would drown and urged Boucher not to let him swim too frequently. When Boucher devised an elaborate plan to chaperone Jacky on a grand European tour, Washington vetoed it as too expensive but probably suspected as well that Martha would never allow her son to travel for an extended period, especially on an ocean voyage.

In the end, Jacky became so uncontrollable that he started gallivanting about with friends after school and often spent the night elsewhere. Washington knew that Annapolis, with its horse races and theater, tempted his stepson with its many sinful haunts. “I would beg leave to request,” Washington told Boucher, “that [Jacky] may not be suffered to sleep from under your own roof . . . nor allow him to be rambling about at nights in company with those who do not care how debauched and vicious his conduct may be.”12 No longer feeling obligated to flatter Master Custis, Boucher dropped all pretense. “I must confess to you,” he replied, “I never did in my life know a youth so exceedingly indolent or so surprisingly