Recreation

Recreation. Washington learned billiards when young, played cards, and especially enjoyed the ritual of the fox hunt. In later years, he often spent evenings reading newspapers aloud to his wife. He walked daily for exercise. EARLY ROMANCE Washington was somewhat stiff and awkward with girls, probably often tongue-tied. In his mid-teens he vented his frustration in such moonish doggerel as, Ah woes me, that I should love and conceal, Long have I wishd, but never dare reveal, Even though severely Loves Pains I feel. Before he married Martha, Washingtons love life was full of disappointment.

Betsy Fauntleroy. The daughter of a justice and burgess from Richmond County, Virginia, she was but 16 when she attracted Washington, then 20. He pressed his suit repeatedly, but, repulsed at every turn, he finally gave up. Mary Philipse. During a trip to Boston to straighten out a military matter in 1756, Washington stopped off in New York and there met Mary Philipse, 26, daughter of Frederick Philipse, a wealthy landowner.

Whether he was taken with her charms or her 51,000 acres is unknown, but he remained in the city a week and is said to have proposed. She later married Roger Morris, and together they were staunch Tories during the American Revolution. Sally Fairfax. From the time he met Sarah Gary Sally Fairfax as the 18-year-old bride of his friend and neighbor George William Fairfax, Washington was infatuated with her easy charm, graceful bearing, good humor, rare beauty, and intelligence.

Although the relationship almost certainly never got beyond flirtation, the two had strong feelings for each other and corresponded often. In one letter written to her in 1758, at a time when he was engaged to Martha, he blurted his love, albeit cryptically lest the note fall into the wrong hands. He confessed he was in love with a woman well known to her and then continued, You have drawn me, dear Madam, or rather I have drawn myself, into an honest confession of a simple Fact. Misconstrue not my meaning doubt it not, nor expose it. The world has no business to know the object of my Love, declared in this manner to you, when I want to conceal it. As heartbroken as Washington appears to have been over the hopelessness of the relationship, the anguish might have been greater had he pressed the affair, for the Fairfaxes would not come to share Washingtons passion for an independent America.

In 1773, the year American resentment over British taxes erupted in the Boston Tea Party, Sally and George Fairfax left Virginia for England, where they settled permanently, loyal subjects to the end. MARRIAGE Washington, 26, married Martha Dandridge Custis, 27, a widow with two children, on January 6, 1759, at her estate, known as the White House, on the Pamunkey River northwest of Williamsburg.

Born in New Kent County, Virginia, on June 21, 1731, the daughter of John Dandridge, a planter, and Frances Jones Dandridge, Martha was a rather small, pleasant-looking woman, practical, with good common sense if not a great intellect.

At 18 she married Daniel Parke Custis, a prominent planter of more than 17,000 acres. By him she had four children, two of whom survived childhood. Her husband died intestate in 1757, leaving Martha reputedly the wealthiest marriageable woman in Virginia. It seems likely that Washington had known Martha and her husband for some time. In March 1758 he visited her at White House twice the second time he came away with either an engagement of marriage or at least her promise to think about his proposal.

Their wedding was a grand affair. The groom appeared in a suit of blue and silver with red trimming and gold knee buckles. After the Reverend Peter Mossum pronounced them man and wife, the couple honeymooned at White House for several weeks before setting up housekeeping at Washingtons Mount Vernon. Their marriage appears to have been a solid one, untroubled by infidelity or clash of temperament.

During the American Revolution she endured considerable hardship to visit her husband at field headquarters. As the First Lady, Mrs. Washington hosted many affairs of state at New York and Philadelphia the capital was moved to Washington in 1800 under the Adams administration. After Washingtons death in 1799, she grew morose and died on May 22, 1802.