Washington [60]
During the impasse over the proposed marriage, Martha made the courageous decision to appeal to John Custis directly at his Williamsburg mansion and beard the lion in his den. Somehow she reached into herself and found hidden reserves of strength. We don’t know what she said to sweet-talk this cantankerous man into agreement, but she won him over completely. Although he now hailed her as “beautiful and sweet-tempered,” he still didn’t consent to the marriage. Nonetheless, soon after Martha’s visit, a family lawyer named James Power gave a horse, bridle, and saddle to Black Jack and informed John Custis that this had been Daniel’s doing. The touching display of brotherly love finally made John Custis submit to his son’s marriage to Martha. As the lawyer told Daniel, “I am empowered by your father to let you know that he heartily and willingly consents to your marriage with Miss Dandridge—that he has so good a character of her, that he had rather you should have her than any lady in Virginia.”21 Power lauded the “prudent speech” that Martha made to her future father-in-law, but several scholars have speculated that Martha arranged the cunning gift to Black Jack, the master stroke of the drama. She had shown extraordinary coolness under fire, foreshadowing her ability to deal with incendiary situations later on. On May 15, 1750, Martha Dandridge, eighteen, at last wed Daniel Parke Custis, thirty-eight. Black Jack resided with the newlyweds at the White House until he died, probably from meningitis, eighteen months later.
BY EARLY APRIL 1758 George Washington was sufficiently recovered from his bout of dysentery that he traveled west to regain control of the Virginia Regiment. Due to his blossoming romance with Martha Custis, he had to deal with one piece of unfinished business: his lingering infatuation with Sally Fairfax. It seems likely that when her husband, George William, was detained in Great Britain on legal matters that winter, Sally frequented Mount Vernon and nursed George through his illness. We will never know whether their affair was consummated. Since Washington had retained the admiration of both his patron Colonel Fairfax and his son George William, it seems hard to believe he had ever lured Sally into outright infidelity. Both George and Sally would have recognized the forbidden, illicit nature of their bond, the fearful price they would pay in Virginia society for any major transgression. There was probably much saucy banter and teasing pleasantries—the stuff of eighteenth-century gallantry—mixed up with deep affection and flirtation in their relationship. At the same time, there is little doubt of George’s passionate attachment to this woman or the lasting power she exerted on his feverish imagination. His feelings for Sally Fairfax belonged to that brand of impossible, unattainable love for an older married woman that has filled the amorous fantasies of ardent young men throughout history.
On September 12, 1758, George Washington sat down at Fort Cumberland and penned a letter to Sally Fairfax that was an eloquent valedictory, not so much to their friendship, which would continue unabated, as to their sentimental affair. He had just received a letter from Sally, relayed by George William, who was helping to supervise renovations at Mount Vernon. Flooded with emotion at seeing the letter, Washington told her “how joyfully I catch at the happy occasion of renewing a correspondence which I feared was disrelished on your part.”22 That Sally had suspended the correspondence suggests that she feared Washington might be straying into dangerous territory and had to be pointedly restrained. In his response, Washington was probably motivated by two impending events: his marriage to Martha Custis and a hazardous military campaign against Fort Duquesne that would naturally have awakened thoughts of mortality. The letter