The Mother of Washington and Her Times. Sara Agnes Rice Pryor
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pollute the air. Painful and hazardous as were the journeys, the traveller always encumbered himself with abundant provision for the inner man.
When the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe accomplished the perilous feat of reaching the summit of the Blue Ridge Mountains, they had the honor of drinking King George's health in "Virginia red wine, champagne, brandy, shrub, cider, canary, cherry punch, white wine, Irish usquebaugh, and two kinds of rum,"—all of which they had managed to carry along, keeping a sharp lookout all day for Indians, and sleeping on their arms at night. A few years later we find Peter Jefferson ordering from Henry Wetherburn, innkeeper, the biggest bowl of arrack punch ever made, and trading the same with William Randolph for two hundred acres of land.
We are not surprised to find that life was a brief enjoyment. Little Mary Ball, demurely reading from the tombstones in the old St. Stephen's church, had small occasion for arithmetic beyond the numbers of thirty or forty years—at which age, having "Piously lived and comfortably died, leaving the sweet perfume of a good reputation," these light-hearted good livers went to sleep behind their monuments.
Of course the guardians of the infant colony spent many an anxious hour evolving schemes for the control of excessive feasting and junketing. The clergy were forced to ignore excesses, not daring to reprove them for fear of losing a good living. Their brethren across the seas cast longing eyes upon Virginia. It was an age of intemperance. The brightest wits of England, her poets and statesmen, were "hard drinkers." "All my hopes terminate," said Dean Swift in 1709, "in being made Bishop of Virginia." There the Dean, had he been so inclined, could hope for the high living and hard drinking which were in fashion. There, too, in the tolerant atmosphere of a new country, he might—who knows?—have felt free to avow his marriage with the unhappy Stella.
In Virginia the responsibility of curbing the fun-loving community devolved upon the good burgesses, travelling down in their sloops to hold session at Williamsburg. We find them making laws restraining the jolly planters. A man could be presented for gaming, swearing, drunkenness, selling crawfish on Sunday, becoming engaged to more than one woman at a time, and, as we have said, there was always the ducking-stool for "brabbling women who go about from house to house slandering their neighbors:—a melancholy proof that even in those Arcadian days the tongue required control."
CHAPTER IX
MARY BALL'S GUARDIAN AND HER GIRLHOOD
Except for the bequest in her brother-in-law's will, nothing whatever is known of Mary Ball for nine years—indeed, until her marriage with Augustine Washington in 1730. The traditions of these years are all based upon the letters found by the Union soldier—genuine letters, no doubt, but relating to some other Mary Ball who, in addition to the flaxen hair and May-blossom cheeks, has had the honor of masquerading, for nearly forty years, as the mother of Washington, and of having her story and her letters placed reverently beneath the corner-stone of the Mary Washington monument.
Mary Ball, only thirteen years old when her mother died, would naturally be taken to the Westmoreland home of her sister Elizabeth, wife of Samuel Bonum and only survivor, besides herself, of her mother's children. Elizabeth was married and living in her own house seven years before Mrs. Hewes died. The Bonum residence was but a few miles distant from that of Mrs. Hewes, and a mile and a half from Sandy Point, where lived the "well-beloved and trusty friend George Eskridge." Major Eskridge "seated" Sandy Point in Westmoreland about 1720. The old house was standing until eight years ago, when it was destroyed by fire. He had seven children; the fifth child, Sarah, a year older than Mary Ball and doubtless her friend and companion.
Under the "tutelage and government" of a man of wealth, eminent in his profession of the law, the two little girls would naturally be well and faithfully instructed. We can safely assume, considering all these circumstances, that Mary Ball's girlhood was spent in the "Northern Neck of Virginia," and at the homes of Major Eskridge and her only sister; and that these faithful guardians provided her with as liberal an education as her station demanded and the times permitted there cannot be the least doubt. Her own affectionate regard for them is emphatically proven by the fact that she gave to her first-born son the name of George Eskridge, to another son that of Samuel Bonum, and to her only daughter that of her sister Elizabeth.
Tradition tells us that in the latter part of the seventeenth century, George Eskridge, who was a young law student, while walking along the shore on the north coast of Wales, studying a law-book, was suddenly seized by the Press Gang, carried aboard ship and brought to the colony of Virginia. As the custom was, he was sold to a planter for a term of eight years. During that time, he was not allowed to communicate with his friends at home. He was treated very harshly, and made to lodge in the kitchen, where he slept, because of the cold, upon the hearth.
On the day that his term of service expired he rose early, and with his mattock dislodged the stones of the hearth. Upon his master's remonstrance, he said, "The bed of a departing guest must always be made over for his successor;" and throwing down his mattock he strode out of the house, taking with him the law-book which had been his constant companion during his years of slavery.
He returned to England, completed his law studies, was admitted to the bar, and, returning to Virginia, was granted many thousand acres of land, held several colonial positions, and became eminent among the distinguished citizens of the "Northern Neck,"—the long, narrow strip of land included between the Potomac and the Rappahannock rivers. His daughter, Sarah, married Willoughby Newton, and lived near Bonum Creek in Westmoreland. The family intermarried, also, with the Lee, Washington, and other distinguished families in the Northern Neck.
CHAPTER X
YOUNG MEN AND MAIDENS OF THE OLD DOMINION
The social setting for Mary Ball—now a young lady—is easily defined. It matters little whether she did or did not visit her brother in England. She certainly belonged to the society of Westmoreland, "the finest," says Bishop Meade, "for culture and sound patriotism in the Colony." Around her lived the families of Mason, Taliaferro, Mountjoy, Travers, Moncure, Mercer, Tayloe, Ludwell, Fitzhugh, Lee, Newton, Washington, and others well known as society leaders in 1730. If she was, as her descendants claim for her, "The Toast of the Gallants of Her Day," these were the "Gallants,"—many of them the fathers of men who afterward shone like stars in the galaxy of revolutionary heroes.
The gallants doubtless knew and visited their tide-water friends—the Randolphs, Blands, Harrisons, Byrds, Nelsons, and Carters—and, like them, followed the gay fashions of the day. They wrote sonnets and acrostics and valentines to their Belindas, Florellas, Fidelias, and Myrtyllas—the real names of Molly, Patsy, Ann, and Mary being reckoned too homespun for the court of Cupid. These gallants wore velvet and much silk; the long vests that Charles the Second had invented as "a fashion for gentlemen of all time"; curled, powdered wigs, silver and gold lace; silken hose and brilliant buckles. Many of them had been educated abroad, or at William and Mary College—where they had been rather a refractory set, whose enormities must be winked at—even going so far as to "keep race-horses at ye college, and bet at ye billiard and other gaming tables." Whatever their sins or shortcomings, they were warm-hearted and honorable, and most chivalrous to women. It was fashionable to present locks of hair tied in true-lovers' knots, to tame cardinal-birds and mocking-birds for the colonial damsels, to serenade them with songs and stringed instruments under their windows on moonlight nights, to manufacture valentines of thinnest cut paper in intricate foldings, with tender sentiments tucked