19
Children Not His Own
MARTHA WASHINGTON had been married for three years and was visiting in Westmoreland County with her husband. Her daughter Martha Parke Custis (Patsy), then six, was asleep where the mother could see that she was covered. But she had left John Parke Custis (Jacky), who was seven, at home "for a trial to see how well I could stay without him. ... If at any time, heard the dogs bark or a noise out, I thought there was a person sent for me. I often fancied he was sick or some accident had happened to him." She decided that "my children's interest" forbade her from accompanying her husband on any more trips unless both children came along. 1
Jacky was healthy, good-natured, and unenergetic, wearing a self-satisfied smile on his round, soft face with its doe's eyes and trivial chin. Patsy was dark, spindly, and sickly from the start. A stepfather's duty, George wrote, was to be "generous and attentive." 2
"I conceive," he explained, "there is much greater circumspection to [be observed] by a guardian than a natural parent, who is only accountable to his own conscience," while "any faux pas in a guardian, however well meant the action, seldom fails to meet with malicious construction." 3 He hesitated to interfere between the mother and her children. Thus he could influence
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