Washington [61]
At the outset of this coded letter, he made glancing reference to “the animating prospect of possessing Mrs. Custis,” leaving no doubt that he planned to proceed with the wedding. Then he went on to deliver a cunningly ambiguous love note in which he was obviously talking about Sally, while making it seem to prying eyes that he referred to Martha:
Tis true, I profess myself a votary to Love. I acknowledge that a lady is in the case and further I confess that this lady is known to you. Yes, Madam, as well as she is to one who is too sensible of her charms to deny the power whose influence he feels and must ever submit to. I feel the force of her amiable beauties in the recollection of a thousand tender passages that I could wish to obliterate till I am bid to revive them. But experience, alas!, sadly reminds me how impossible this is and evinces an opinion which I have long entertained that there is a destiny which has the sovereign control of our actions, not to be resisted by the strongest efforts of human nature.23
The reference to a “thousand tender passages” makes clear that Sally, not Martha, was the lady in question; George’s acquaintance with Martha was too brief to have packed in so many tender memories. He seemed to be saying that their love, defeated by the practical circumstances of life, was simply not meant to be. She was married to a rich man, and he was about to marry a rich woman, and George Washington, for all his high-flown rhetoric, was an eminently practical young man, not cut out for doomed, quixotic affairs. He ended the epistle with a frank admission of love: “You have drawn me, my dear Madam, or rather have I drawn myself, into an honest confession of a simple fact. Misconstrue not my meaning—’tis obvious—doubt it not, nor expose it. The world has no business to know the object of my love, declared in this manner to you, when I want to conceal it . . . I dare believe you are as happy as you say. I wish I was happy also. Mirth, good humor, ease of mind and—what else?—cannot fail to render you so and consummate your wishes.”24
This letter overturns the conventional image of a phlegmatic Washington and shows a much more passionate figure. It shocks as well because of his apparent betrayal of his friend and patron, George William Fairfax, and his fiancée, Martha. Any moral outrage must be tempered, however, by the overriding fact that George was honorably declaring an end to their amorous relationship on the eve of his marriage, which would call an irrevocable halt to such youthful folly. Sally Fairfax had always been somewhat coy and elusive with Washington, as evidenced by her recent discontinuance of their correspondence. Her coquetry, in the last analysis, was constrained by a self-protective instinct. She had also, as the letter makes clear, insisted that she was happy with her life. So why did Washington write such a daring letter? There is always the possibility that he was testing the waters with Sally one last time before he committed to marriage. Or perhaps, at the end, he wanted some final validation of his powerful longings for Sally, some recognition that she, too, had been deeply touched by taboo feelings. That he announced his love in such dramatic fashion confirms that he had never done so before and that he and Sally had left many things unsaid and probably undone. Whatever was the true situation, Sally must have recognized and treasured the frank admission of love, for she retained the letter until she died in 1811—a period of more than fifty years.
Although Sally’s response has been lost, we can surmise its contents from Washington’s September 25 reply. Apparently she either feigned ignorance of the mystery lady’s identity, or pretended it was Martha. Washington stood his ground. “Dear Madam, do we still misunderstand the true meaning of each other’s letters? I think it must appear so, tho[ugh] I would feign hope the contrary as I cannot speak plainer without. But