Sex and the Founding Fathers: The American Quest for a Relatable Past (Sexuality Studies) (6 page)

The inclusion of such information, therefore, was vital, and many in
the nineteenth century believed that "private habits, not public deeds, gave
the truest measure of character, and that biography should emphasize individual character over national history."35 The broader cultural goals of the
writers, however, tend to emphasize the connections between the individual
romantic life and national concerns. For Irving, for example, the relevance
of highlighting Washington's early interest in girls is explained in his preface, where he asserts that "all his actions and concerns almost from boyhood
were connected with the history of the country" and therefore, even seemingly "apparently disconnected" topics have "bearing upon the great drama
in which he was the principle actor."36

Washington's list of loves, however, would only grow through the century as the capacity for romantic love increasingly came to matter. One of
three letters that Washington wrote to one Sally Fairfax also briefly contributes to the nineteenth-century depiction of Washington as a man of powerful romantic inclinations and illustrates the emphasis on documentation to
support interpretations of personal life and its association with masculine
character. One letter first surfaced in 1877 in one of the largest newspapers in the country, the New York Herald. The newspaper headlines the letter "A
Washington Romance: A Letter from General Washington Acknowledging
the Power of Love." It reads, in part:

'Tis true, I profess myself a Votary of Love-I acknowledge that a
Lady is in the Case-and further I confess that this Lady is known
to you.-Yes Madam, as well as she is to one, who is too sensible of
her Charms to deny the Power, whose Influence he feels and must
ever Submit to. I feel the force of her amiable beauties in the recollection of a thousand tender passages that I coud [sic] wish to obliterate,
till I am bid to revive them.-but experience alas! Sadly reminds
me how Impossible this is.-and evinces an opinion which I have
long entertained, that there is a Destiny, which has the Sovereign
Controul of our Actions-not to be resisted by the Strongest efforts
of Human Nature.i"

In addition to publishing the text of the letter, the newspaper notes that
it was "never before made public" and describes it as a letter to a woman
to whom "George Washington once offered his hand but was refused for
his friend and comrade, George William Fairfax." The newspaper is not
forthcoming about the timing of Washington's alleged expression of love
for Fairfax, which, according to the letter, would have taken place after his
engagement to Martha. Indeed, the newspaper remarks on portions of the
letter that declare love for Mrs. Custis as unintended and incorrectly reports
that Mrs. Custis was still married at the time and therefore could not be
someone he was romantically interested in while expressing love for Fairfax. After this very public debut, the auctioned-off letter was secretly and
anonymously archived. Yet as this chapter shows, the revelations it allegedly
exposes would be scrutinized by biographers for generations.

For nineteenth-century Americans, it was relatively easy to see that
Washington had a healthy interest in women and that he had successfully
married and established himself as head of a prosperous household. The issue
that became somewhat thorny, however, was his lack of children. No early
account hides the fact that he had no children of his own. But nineteenthcentury writers do not dwell on this aspect of his life, leaving some readers
to their own devices to determine this aspect of his private family life. When
Weems includes at the end of his biography excerpts from Washington's will,
he singles out his "affection" for Martha, as indicated by Washington's leaving his estate to her "during her life." He also mentions that "having no
children," Washington left much to his nephews and nieces.38

Writers in the nineteenth century could not anticipate that readers
would ever expect an answer to the very personal question of why he had no
children. Such speculation would have gone beyond the bounds of delicacy
and intruded on the privacy of George and Martha. Typical accounts declare
the childlessness and leave it at that: "No children had blessed the union of
George Washington and Martha Custis," writes one late-nineteenth-century
biographer, leaving the question of why unasked .31

Washington may have had some influence in establishing a view of his
home life as normative, despite having had no children of his own. In an
early authorized biography, portions of which Washington had reviewed and
approved, David Humphrey states, "Though he has no offspring, his actual
family consists of eight persons: it is seldom alone."40 At the end of the nineteenth century, one writer describes him as a "devoted husband, [who] gave
to his step-children the most affectionate care."" Another writes that Washington "fathered" Martha's children.42

Even more popular and more broadly consumed than biographies were the
images of Washington that were widely reprinted. The popular engravings and
paintings of Washington that depict him as properly domestic reflect the portrayal found in early biographies. And while rumors abounded that highlighted
Washington's virility and his early biographers were giving little attention to the
reason for his childlessness, artists and printers did their part by busily fashioning an ideal head-of-household and father figure, befitting of the nineteenthcentury domestic ideal. Washington alone could serve as an individual role
model. The Washington household, of which he was head, could also operate
as an American icon. And, indeed, scholars have noted, "Their marriage came
to serve as a model union for mid-nineteenth-century Americans."43

Contrary to the contemporary claim that Washington has always been
disembodied and only recently humanized, even the earliest images emphasize both his domestic life and his military and government successes. Echoing the biographies of the day, some nineteenth-century images also establish
Washington as the romantic man. Early images include his courting of Philipse.44 Other nineteenth-century images focus on his courtship of and marriage to Martha. Many of these were often widely reproduced and copied.
In addition to portraying his relationships with women, and especially his
wife, painters, engravers, and other nineteenth-century images disseminate
the view of Washington as the idealized father figure and head-of-household.
Many images focus on Washington as the family man (Figure 1.5).

Virtually no writers in the nineteenth century raise any questions about
Washington's manhood. Biographers then move away from the early emphasis on using only documents and an approach of objectivity (an emerging concept in history) to begin including "oral lore" to supplement lacking documentation. This approach opened up the possibility of telling additional
stories that could be folded into the public memory of Washington's personal life, which would only shore up his reputation as properly and successfully masculine in his private life 45 Indeed, a rumor in the 1870s, for
example, suggested that Washington had actually fathered a son, but not
with Martha. The Cincinnati Daily Commercial published a statement that
relied on the "fact" that many people believed that one Thomas Posey was
Washington's son, although no documentation was provided .46 Posey's parents had lived as tenant farmers on one of Washington's plantations. According to the story, after Posey's mother was widowed, she and Washington
had a son whose education he oversaw. In 1886, a newspaper in St. Louis,
where Posey was buried, similarly reported that everyone in southern Illinois
believed it to be true.47 Another undocumented rumor, this time regarding his death, also irreverently underscored Washington's sexually charged
image in public memory. This story explained that Washington's death was
the result of a cold he caught from leaping out a window, pants-less after a
romantic encounter with an "overseer's wife."48

Figure 1.5. Washington family portrait. (The Washington Family. Edward Savage. Oil on
canvas, 1789-1796. Andrew W.Mellon Collection. Courtesy of the National Gallery of
Art, Washington, D.C.)

Late-nineteenth-century biographies assert that Washington lacked
no romantic interests in women. Like other early biographers, Woodrow
Wilson, a historian by training who published several biographies before
embarking on a successful career in politics, mentions Washington's early
courtship of Philipse in New York. But by the end of the nineteenth century, biographers like Wilson were increasingly linking sexual interest in
women to an emerging concept of normative desire and heteronormative
masculinity. Wilson writes, "Mary Philipse had but taken his fancy for a
moment, because he could not pass such a woman by and deem himself still
a true Virginian."49 For Americans, the message was clear, and their Founder
served as the delivery system: Real men desire beautiful women. Other latenineteenth-century biographers echo this point. Writes one, "There can be
no doubt that Washington during the whole of his life had a soft heart for
women, and especially for good-looking ones.""

By the late nineteenth century, even those biographers who write largely
political accounts of his life also broach the subject of his personal life: Using
the nation's first president as a model of virtuous manhood necessarily entails
examining his life beyond his public accomplishments. In 1897, noted historian and senator Henry Cabot Lodge authored a two-volume biography
of Washington that includes a chapter entitled "Love and Marriage." In the
chapter, Lodge explains that "by the time he was fourteen he had fallen
deeply in love with Mary Bland of Westmoreland, whom he calls his 'Lowland Beauty"' and as he matured-"a gentleman writing of a Mrs. Hartley,
whom Washington much admired, said that the general always liked a fine
woman."" Indeed, Lodge writes that Washington fell in love in Philadelphia
as a young hero of the French and Indian War.

Echoing the sentiment articulated by Weems almost eighty years earlier,
for Lodge such stories reveal the true man: "How much this little interlude,
pushed into a corner as it has been by the dignity of history,-how much it
tells of the real man! How the statuesque myth and the priggish myth and
the dull and solemn myth melt away before it!... One loves to picture that
gallant, generous, youthful figure, brilliant in color and manly form, riding
gaily on from one little colonial town to another, feasting, dancing, courting, and making merry."52

Sally Fairfax in the Early Twentieth Century:
A True Man Emerges

Early-twentieth-century writers depict Washington's private life in essentially the same way as do portrait artists of the nineteenth century: Virtually all of them present an image of manliness that speaks to virility, fatherhood,
and marriage. Even without children, Washington's image cultivates the
manly ideal. At the turn of the century, a series of biographies with "True" in
the title focuses on private life 53 The True George Washington, for example,
includes discussion of his relations with women, among other personal anecdotes.

The volume of writing on Washington's personal life increased exponentially through the century. The rumor that he had fathered Posey, for
example, continued to spread. An encyclopedia entry referring to Revolutionary soldiers buried in Illinois describes Posey as "reputedly the natural
son of George Washington."54 No doubt, such stories led many to assume
that he was not childless in his own marriage. In part, this is because of a
broader cultural shift that occurred with regards to sex in American society.
In the early twentieth century, American culture underwent a sexual revolution. In the 1910s and 1920s, the Victorian silence surrounding sex and
romance withered in the face of a new emphasis on open public expression of
erotic desires and feelings.55 As love and desire became openly celebrated in
song and dance, so too, did biographies begin to emphasize in greater detail
the loves of Washington. Most notably, this focus gave rise to the presence
of Fairfax in biographies on Washington. The view we have of Fairfax today
is that his "love" for her "was a lengthy torment" and an "impossible infatuation."56

In the early twentieth century, three brief letters from Washington
became central to building a case for an intimate connection to Fairfax. As
we have seen, one was published in the New York Herald. It was one of two
letters that were written in 1758 before his marriage, and they are flirtatious.
The third letter comes from later in Washington's life, when, as one biographer puts it, he "confessed to an elderly Sally that she had been the passion of
his youth, that he had never been able to forget her." The key sentence from
this letter is one that declares that he had not been able to "eradicate from my
mind those happy moments, the happiest in my life, which I have enjoyed in
your company."57 In the absence of additional evidence, little more has been
revealed or written about by biographers. Yet the flirtatious letters generally
have been read as expressions of sincere and deeply felt life-long love. (It is
notable that they are never read as indicating the less-virtuous lust-which
in the late eighteenth century could have been expressed in the same politely
flirtatious manner.)