When we aides weren’t working, we spent plenty of time gossiping about the General and Lady Washington, generally about their wealth or sexual conduct. Most of us initially believed the General’s wealth largely came from his marriage to Lady Washington. The General said nothing to discourage this assumption, but as I discovered in looking over his private correspondence, the General had substantial wealth before his marriage either via inheritance from his half brother, Lawrence, or from self-taught surveying, and this wealth was probably more assured than Lady Washington’s when they married.
Most of the latter’s wealth was tied up for decades in litigation, because her first husband, Daniel Parke Custis, had a grandfather, also named Daniel, who was a very wealthy man in the West Indies and had sowed illegitimate offspring far and wide. These children claimed to be the rightful heirs to his grandfather’s vast Virginia and West Indian properties. It was apparently a close call as to whether Lady Washington would inherit much, if anything, of the lands she and Daniel Parke Custis had occupied. It took twenty years of litigation involving the top lawyers in Virginia and the Privy Council in London to give Lady Washington title to the properties, long after Daniel Parke Custis’s death and Lady Washington’s marriage to the General.
As for the gossip about sex, we aides were disappointed about the lack of grist for juicy speculation. There were plenty of rumors about the General being in love with a New York heiress and also a wealthy Virginia neighbor, but these stories all preceded his marriage to Lady Washington.
Most of the gossip about sex pertained to Lady Washington and the family of her first husband, Daniel Custis. It was rumored that her first husband’s father, John Custis, had the same sexual proclivities as her grandfather-in-law and had produced a son, Mulatto Jack, to whom John, at least briefly, threatened to bequeath the family estate. Under Virginia’s racial inheritance laws, this would have deprived Lady Washington and her first husband of their inheritance.
Another rumor was that Lady Washington’s father, John Dandridge, had sired a Negro-Indian girl who was Martha’s half sister.
Just a few years ago I heard a rumor that Lady Washington’s grandson Wash had several affairs and children with slaves.
As for the General, we all knew that many Southern planters had hypocritical attitudes on slavery. It has been charged by newspapers hostile to Thomas Jefferson (I don’t know if it is true or not) that our third president had relations and children with his slave Sally Hemings, which is surprising coming from a man who, I have read in his Notes on the State of Virginia, described Negroes as inferior and compared them to “oran-gutans.” We never heard the General use such language, however, and he seemed so prim, proper, and concerned with his reputation that we doubted the General would engage in such sexual conduct. Maybe all the stories about interracial sex in Lady Washington’s family explain why Lady Washington, while gracious to all and adored by the troops, seemed far more diffident than the General when it came to associating with free blacks and slaves.
We aides all agreed that theirs was a puzzling relationship. The British had tried to sow discord. Articles appeared in British-controlled New York newspapers claiming, on the basis of intercepted letters and eyewitness accounts, that the General often visited a mistress in New Jersey or had gone to this or that whorehouse. However, the British efforts were so clumsy—dates when the General was known by his troops to be elsewhere or in the company of Lady Washington—that they were more a source of amusement than of worry. We aides read the stories with much glee and thought them a great joke. The General told me he was used to false rumors; in the French and Indian War, it was widely believed he had been killed. I doubted, however, that Lady Washington was amused.
Sometimes we laughed over whether our proper leader even had relations with Lady Washington, let alone ran off hundreds of miles to visit a whorehouse. We concluded that their affection and love was so great they must have, although the lack of children—the children were all by Lady Washington’s deceased first husband—caused some wonder. The General always wore a miniature picture of Lady Washington around his neck. He also made clear, in the many letters I reviewed, his desire that Martha stay with him as much as possible during the war, which she did. She was with the General for most of the war, enduring the cold winters and generally only returning to Mount Vernon during the summers to supervise the plantation. In late 1782 and early 1783, Lady Washington was with us every month, including that week in Newburgh. They appeared to dote on one another, and their private letters were full of affection, although I do not recall hearing any public expressions of that affection. I do know the General thought of Lady Washington often, particularly during her absences, and was very appreciative of her presence with us during the war. Often the General told me he would find more happiness in one month at home with Lady Washington than in all his service in the war.
I never did understand why Lady Washington burned all the correspondence between them after the General’s death. There was nothing embarrassing in any of the letters I penned to her back at Mount Vernon, just expressions of affection, a yearning for her presence, and queries about the stepchildren and grandchildren. I think back to the letters we aides sent to our lady friends during the war, boasting of our positions with the General and setting up as many dalliances as possible during our leaves. (Of course, that was before my engagement to Prescilla.) Now, those are letters I wouldn’t want published! I suppose Lady Washington burned their letters because, while the General and Lady Washington were public figures, they were very private people. I was told burning personal letters was a tradition in Lady Washington’s family.