The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers by Thomas Fleming Page B

probably knitting while joining in the conversation. The painter considered himself an amateur psychologist. He remarked that he was fascinated by Washington’s physiognomy—his face was that of a man with a terrific temper and violent passions.
    Martha was shocked. “You take a great deal upon yourself, Mr. Stuart!” she said.
    “Ah but Madam, let me finish,” Stuart said with a bow in her direction. “Mr. Washington has these qualities under perfect control.”
    “He’s right,” Washington said with a smile.
    Ninety-nine percent of the time Stuart’s intuition was on target. Otherwise, Washington would never have survived his second term.
    XIII
    The president found Martha’s company and the world of their family a welcome escape from the nation’s increasingly rancid politics. He was especially interested in Martha’s granddaughters and their thoughts and feelings as they grew to womanhood. His favorite, Nelly, was strikingly beautiful, and suitors thronged from all directions. Nelly told Washington they all left her cold. She had begun to think she would never marry because she could not imagine the callow “youth of the present day” approaching the awesome stature of the man she admired most—her grandfather. She was determined never to give herself “a moment’s uneasiness on account of any of them.” Washington took her announcement with the utmost seriousness and wrote her an earnest letter:
    Dear Nellie…. men and women feel the same inclinations for each other now that they always have done, and which they will continue to do until there is a new order of things, and you, as others have done, may find, perhaps, that the passions of your sex are easier raised than allayed. Do not therefore boast too soon or too strongly of your insensibility to, or resistance of, its powers. In the composition of the human frame there is a good deal of inflammable matter, however dormant it may lie for a time….
    When the fire is beginning to kindle, and your heart growing warm, propound these questions to it: Who is this invader? Have I a competent knowledge of him? Is he a man of good character: a man of sense? For, be assured, a sensible woman can never be happy with a fool. What has been his walk inlife? Is he a gambler, a spendthrift, or drunkard? Is his fortune sufficient to maintain me in the manner I have been accustomed to live?
    Finally, Washington urged Nelly to remember that the declaration of love must come from the man, without any invitation on her part, in order “to make it permanent and valuable.” Her task was to draw the line “between prudery and coquetry.” He had no doubt that she would do this and find a good husband “when you want and deserve one.” 19
    In 1799, Nelly married Captain Lawrence Lewis, son of Washington’s sister, Betty, on Washington’s birthday at Mount Vernon. The man she admired most escorted her up the aisle. 20
    XIV
    At last came the day in March of 1797 when Washington’s second term ended, and he and Martha and Nelly returned to Mount Vernon. Sixteen-year-old George Washington Parke Custis was studying at Princeton and wrote the ex-president a charming letter, wishing him a happy retirement. Martha told one of her friends, Lucy Knox, wife of the secretary of war, that she and the general [a title she preferred to president] “feel like children just released from school or from a hard taskmaster.” It was wonderful to have a home again “after being deprived of one for so long.” Nothing would ever tempt them to leave their “sacred roof-tree again, except…private business or pleasure.” 21
    The Washingtons were still unpacking when the ex-president opened a letter from Eliza Powel, the widow of the mayor of Philadelphia. She had become one of their closest friends. Behind them in their Philadelphia house they had left several pieces of furniture they could not use in Mount Vernon. One of them was a handsome rolltop French desk, which Mrs. Powel had