Washington [67]
CHAPTER NINE
The Man of Mode
ON JANUARY 6, 1759, coinciding with the celebration of Twelfth Night, George Washington and Martha Dandridge Custis, attired in the latest British fashions, were married at her White House residence. George was presumably resplendent in the blue velvet suit he had had specially shipped from London, while Martha made a fetching impression in a gown “of deep yellow brocade with rich lace in the neck and sleeves” accompanied by purple satin shoes.1
While never shrinking from a rich appearance, Martha, like George, shuddered at any hint of ostentation. We don’t know what the Custis children, Jacky and Patsy, wore, but their dress probably conformed to that in an earlier painting by John Wollaston, which presents them in the pampered apparel of little British aristocrats. In that portrait, Jacky sports a shiny blue coat over a light-colored waistcoat, while Patsy wears a silvery gown edged with lace.
The newlyweds were by no means prudish. In his first postnuptial order to London, George ordered four ounces of Spanish fly, a popular aphrodisiac prepared from dried beetles. At some point that year, he also drew up a list of books inherited from the Custis estate that may disclose something of the amorous interests of Daniel and Martha Custis, or perhaps of Daniel’s father. The couple possessed a copy of Conjugal lewdness: or matrimonial whoredom by Daniel Defoe and The lover’s watch: or the art of making love by Aphra Behn.2
After the weak-willed Daniel Custis, George Washington must have struck Martha as the most commanding of men. Where Daniel had been cowed by a despotic father, George usually stood up to his forbidding mother. As best we can tell, Mary Ball Washington boycotted the wedding and, according to Martha’s biographer Patricia Brady, may not have met the bride until the year after the wedding.3 It is hard to resist the impression of a lasting coolness between Martha and her mother-in-law. Over the next thirty years, there is no evidence that Mary Washington ever visited Mount Vernon. The only time she saw her daughter-in-law was during obligatory stops that George and Martha made in Fredericksburg en route to Williamsburg. George routinely dropped in to see Mary and his sister Betty Lewis, who had married Fielding Lewis, a wealthy merchant, and lived nearby. (Betty bore an uncanny resemblance to George. Indeed, it was said that had she thrown on a military cloak and hat, battalions would have saluted her.) Washington kept his visits to his mother brief. During one snowy stay with her in January 1760, he recorded in his diary that after “getting a few things which I wanted out of the stores, [I] returned in the evening to mother’s—all alone with her.”4 That he jotted down this detail suggests that being alone with Mary was an effort. In all likelihood, George and Martha Washington treated Mary Ball Washington as a slightly dotty, difficult woman, a troubled oddball whom they had to put up with and never expected to reform.
Marriage came at a critical moment for George Washington, who went from a young officer at the mercy of the British military establishment to a prosperous planter who didn’t have to truckle to anyone. He had married up in the world, as had Martha before him, and they both inherited a huge chunk of the Custis fortune. Once again an untimely death contributed immeasurably to Washington’s burgeoning wealth. Martha’s money made her husband one of Virginia’s richest men, enabling him to issue his own declaration of independence. The marriage brought eighty-five dower slaves under his control, doubling his labor force. As the Washington editor Dorothy Twohig notes, “With his marriage, [Washington] was now in control of one of Virginia’s largest and most profitable estates, including property in 6 counties amounting to nearly 8,000 acres, slaves valued at £9,000 Virginia currency, and accounts current and other liquid assets in England of about £10,000 sterling.”5 Then on March 14, 1761, Ann Fairfax Lee, the widow of George