Fanny’s voice when she would speak of “having a home of our own.” To say nothing, reflected Martha’s more practical side, of the badly kept tangle of plantation records that George was still trying to sort out four years after war’s end, and the terrifying tally of debts.
As the evening grew later, and the men remained talking in the dining-room, the anger congealed to a point of heat behind her heart.
I followed him for eight years. I left behind those who had reason to expect my help.
Does he really need me to remind him, that he laid down the sword of power with the understanding that he would not take it up again?
A Cincinnatus, not a Caesar,
he had promised.
A farmer and not a ruler of men.
By the end of the War, he could have become a Caesar. The charisma that drew her—and every woman who encountered George—combined with his good sense and calm integrity, to unite, at last, New York men who’d grown up despising Pennsylvanians, Massachusers to whom every Rhode Islander was a thief, South Carolinians who held their noses at the mention of Vermont boys. He had made of them one fighting force. Year by year, she saw how he became the embodiment of the cause that held them together, the cause for which more and more of them risked their lives simply because he was willing to risk his.
In September of 1781, word reached her at Mount Vernon that George was coming. On the way to join with the French fleet in a maneuver to trap the British army at Yorktown, he would have the chance to visit the home he had not seen in six years. The previous winter, one of George’s most trusted generals, Benedict Arnold, had turned his coat and gone over to the British side, and had led their armies in raids on Virginia. Arnold had occupied the new capital, Richmond, and barely missed capturing Tom Jefferson, whose fragile baby daughter died as a result of the hardships of the family’s escape. Martha had been with George at the winter camp in New Windsor at that time, frantic with worry about her own little granddaughters; about her mother, ill at Chestnut Grove; about Fanny.
That spring, moreover, Martha herself was ill, first at Headquarters and later in Philadelphia. She was still not feeling herself by the time she returned to Mount Vernon in June—having missed the birth of little George Washington Parke Custis—and had barely recovered her strength when George wrote in September that he would indeed be able to cross his own threshold for the first time since May of 1775.
He arrived on the ninth of September after everyone was in bed. Martha, for a week too excited to sleep, heard the dogs barking, and then hooves in the driveway.
It’s one of his aides coming to announce his arrival tomorrow….
But from downstairs she heard a familiar deep voice say, “If she’s asleep, for God’s sake let her sleep! That’s an order, Breechy. Just to see the roof-line and smell the gardens is worth the ride….”
“General Washington—” Martha appeared at the top of the stairs, her braid hanging forgotten over the embroidered homespun of her dressing-gown and hairpins still in her hand. “If you dared let me go six hours til dawn not knowing you were in the house, I should—I should write a letter to the
Times
in London saying that such conduct proved you to be
no
gentleman.”
He grinned wide—something he almost never did because of his teeth—and reached the bottom of the stairs in two strides, in time to catch Martha in his arms.
He had ridden sixty miles from Baltimore that day, to sleep beneath his own roof at her side.
The French did arrive the following day, General Rochambeau handsome and courtly and a little too suave in his gorgeous uniform—George had written to her that he was too hard on his men, which was something, coming from George. The day after that—the eleventh of September—the rest of the French officers appeared, and on their heels, Jacky, Eleanor, and the grandchildren whom
As the evening grew later, and the men remained talking in the dining-room, the anger congealed to a point of heat behind her heart.
I followed him for eight years. I left behind those who had reason to expect my help.
Does he really need me to remind him, that he laid down the sword of power with the understanding that he would not take it up again?
A Cincinnatus, not a Caesar,
he had promised.
A farmer and not a ruler of men.
By the end of the War, he could have become a Caesar. The charisma that drew her—and every woman who encountered George—combined with his good sense and calm integrity, to unite, at last, New York men who’d grown up despising Pennsylvanians, Massachusers to whom every Rhode Islander was a thief, South Carolinians who held their noses at the mention of Vermont boys. He had made of them one fighting force. Year by year, she saw how he became the embodiment of the cause that held them together, the cause for which more and more of them risked their lives simply because he was willing to risk his.
In September of 1781, word reached her at Mount Vernon that George was coming. On the way to join with the French fleet in a maneuver to trap the British army at Yorktown, he would have the chance to visit the home he had not seen in six years. The previous winter, one of George’s most trusted generals, Benedict Arnold, had turned his coat and gone over to the British side, and had led their armies in raids on Virginia. Arnold had occupied the new capital, Richmond, and barely missed capturing Tom Jefferson, whose fragile baby daughter died as a result of the hardships of the family’s escape. Martha had been with George at the winter camp in New Windsor at that time, frantic with worry about her own little granddaughters; about her mother, ill at Chestnut Grove; about Fanny.
That spring, moreover, Martha herself was ill, first at Headquarters and later in Philadelphia. She was still not feeling herself by the time she returned to Mount Vernon in June—having missed the birth of little George Washington Parke Custis—and had barely recovered her strength when George wrote in September that he would indeed be able to cross his own threshold for the first time since May of 1775.
He arrived on the ninth of September after everyone was in bed. Martha, for a week too excited to sleep, heard the dogs barking, and then hooves in the driveway.
It’s one of his aides coming to announce his arrival tomorrow….
But from downstairs she heard a familiar deep voice say, “If she’s asleep, for God’s sake let her sleep! That’s an order, Breechy. Just to see the roof-line and smell the gardens is worth the ride….”
“General Washington—” Martha appeared at the top of the stairs, her braid hanging forgotten over the embroidered homespun of her dressing-gown and hairpins still in her hand. “If you dared let me go six hours til dawn not knowing you were in the house, I should—I should write a letter to the
Times
in London saying that such conduct proved you to be
no
gentleman.”
He grinned wide—something he almost never did because of his teeth—and reached the bottom of the stairs in two strides, in time to catch Martha in his arms.
He had ridden sixty miles from Baltimore that day, to sleep beneath his own roof at her side.
The French did arrive the following day, General Rochambeau handsome and courtly and a little too suave in his gorgeous uniform—George had written to her that he was too hard on his men, which was something, coming from George. The day after that—the eleventh of September—the rest of the French officers appeared, and on their heels, Jacky, Eleanor, and the grandchildren whom
Similar Books
