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I’ll say no more and leave you to guess the rest.”25 Washington knew that any greater candor could wreck two marriages. That Sally refused to credit his love or openly reciprocate it suggests that she was an artful woman who had enjoyed having her vanity stroked by a handsome younger man. This would have made Washington the more appreciative of Martha, who was practical, honest, and straightforward. The youthful infatuation prepared Washington for the deeper joys of marriage, although the beguiling image of Sally Fairfax persisted in his memory. She would always be mixed up with recollections of Belvoir and an idyllic, sunstruck period of his youth. The Sally Fairfax saga may well testify to Washington’s repressed romantic nature, buried beneath many layers of reserve. But it’s even more a stoic tale of self-denial, previewing the supreme command he would attain over his unruly emotions. Washington’s storied self-control was not something inherited but achieved by dint of hard work, making it all the more formidable an accomplishment.

In later years Washington liked to philosophize about love and marriage and became a veritable Polonius with young relatives as he peppered them with sage advice. In 1795 he received a letter from his adopted granddaughter, Eleanor Parke Custis, who had attended a Georgetown ball and boasted of her indifference to the advances of young men there. Washington warned her bluntly of the often-unstoppable force of passion. “Do not therefore boast too soon or too strongly of your insensibility . . . to its power. In the composition of the human frame, there is a good deal of inflammable matter [W apparently meant flammable], however dormant it may lie for a time and . . . when the torch is put to it, that which is within you may burst into a blaze.” Washington went on to say that this mighty blaze “ought to be under the guidance of reason, for although we cannot avoid first impressions, we may assuredly place them under guard.”26 The author of these lines seemed knowledgeable about ungovernable emotions and how to tame them.

Perhaps the best proof that the relationship between Washington and Sally Fairfax stayed deep but platonic is that the Washingtons remained intimate friends with George William and Sally Fairfax before the American Revolution and even traveled with them. In all likelihood, George confessed to Martha his longtime flirtation, which had cooled and receded to its proper place. The febrile yearnings of youth had made way for a more mature love. It speaks to the strength of the Washingtons’ marriage that they were never threatened by the close proximity of Sally Fairfax, who remained a welcome guest at Mount Vernon and no less a friend to Martha than to George. There is something admirably grown-up, sensitive, and dignified about the way these two couples handled a most delicate situation.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Darling of a Grateful Country

IN THE SPRING OF 1758 George Washington entertained one last forlorn hope of a brilliantly climactic military campaign in the Ohio Valley. He was about to tender his resignation when he heard reports in March that the Crown planned to send a fleet with seven thousand men to North America and contemplated another operation against Fort Duquesne. The new commander, Brigadier General John Forbes, was a veteran Scottish officer who took a decidedly low view of colonial officers, maligning them as a “bad collection of broken innkeepers, horse jockeys, and Indian traders.”1

Hoping to curry favor with Forbes, Washington wrote to Brigadier General John Stanwix and badgered him “to mention me in favorable terms to General Forbes,” but “not as a person who would depend upon him for further recommendation to military preferment, for I have long conquered all such expectancies . . . but as a person who would gladly be distinguished in some measure from the common run of provincial officers.”2 Perhaps a chastened Washington meant it when he now said that he expected no royal commission. Contrary to his bias against colonial soldiers, Forbes singled out Washington