Washington [87]
From Washington’s correspondence with his London factors, what emerges clearly is that he didn’t relegate social duties to his wife, but took an active part in ordering food, drink, and furnishings for all occasions. He wanted Mount Vernon to conform to the highest standards of elegance, and he studied how other people entertained. A telling diary entry, dated a year after his marriage, shows how observant he was of other people’s parties and how scornful of anything that struck him as slovenly or vulgar:
Went to a ball at Alexandria, where music and dancing was the chief entertainment. However, in a convenient room detached for the purpose abounded great plenty of bread and butter, some biscuits with tea, and coffee which the drinkers of cou[l]d not distinguish from hot water sweetened. Be it remembered that pocket handkerchiefs served the purposes of tablecloths and napkins and that no apologies were made for either. I shall therefore distinguish this ball by the style . . . of the Bread and Butter Ball.25
Washington’s diaries from the 1760s attest to a crowded social calendar and show how George and Martha Washington absorbed Sally Fairfax into their lives as a dear friend. Given her close proximity at Belvoir, it would have been difficult to keep her at arm’s length. Instead, Sally came and went freely at Mount Vernon, and her husband remained one of Washington’s favorite hunting partners. The Washingtons were likewise regular visitors at Belvoir. In January 1760 Sally came to visit Martha, who was then recuperating from the measles. Three years later George wrote to inquire about an illness that Sally had contracted and said Martha “was in hopes of seeing Mrs Fairfax this morning,” until she herself came down with a fever. 26 Martha Washington could never have befriended Sally Fairfax in this manner unless she thought that the earlier romance with her husband had been an ephemeral, youthful infatuation that had now receded to a safe distance.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Providence
THE MOST SPLENDID STAGE on which George Washington paraded in his early years was the colonial capital at Williamsburg, now overseen by Lieutenant Governor Francis Fauquier—the “ablest man who had ever filled that office,” in Jefferson’s view—a charming man of eclectic interests who was a fellow of the Royal Society and had published papers on science and economics.1 The town, which was characterized by “the manners and etiquette of a court in miniature,” according to Washington, stood forth as a glittering symbol of British royalty, a showplace of surface brilliance whose major social priorities were “precedence, dress, imitation.”2 To jaded European eyes, Williamsburg might have appeared small and prosaic, but its handsome government buildings, formal gardens, and spacious streets with brick sidewalks surpassed anything seen in rural Virginia.
In October 1760 Martha asked her husband if she could join him for the upcoming session at the House of Burgesses, and they traveled there in the full regalia of rich tobacco planters—a coach and six, with uniformed slaves riding as coach-man and postilion. Once at the capital, Washington lodged on the most fashionable thoroughfare, Duke of Gloucester Street. For ten years he stayed in the hostelry of a diminutive widow, Christiana Campbell, “a little old woman about four feet high and equally thick, [with] a little turn[ed] up pug nose, [and] a mouth screw[e]d up to one side,” as one Scottish traveler sketched her.3
That October Washington arrived