The Mother of Washington and Her Times. Sara Agnes Rice Pryor
"tricks and manners," through the laughing Englishman, and their own letters. An unpublished manuscript still circulates from hand to hand in Virginia, under oath of secrecy, for it contains a tragic secret, which reveals the true character of the mothers of Revolutionary patriots. These letters express high sentiment in strong, vigorous English, burning with patriotism and ardent devotion to the interests of the united colonies—not alone to Virginia. The spelling, and absurdly plentiful capitals, were those of the period, and should provoke no criticism. Ruskin says, "no beauty of execution can outweigh one grain or fragment of thought." Beauty of execution and good spelling, according to modern standards, do not appear in the letters of Mary Ball and her friends, but they are seasoned with many a grain of good sense and thought.
Of course we cannot know the names of her best friends. Her social position entitled her to intimacy with the sisters of any or all of the "gallants" we have named. She might have known Jane Randolph, already giving her heart to plain Peter Jefferson, and destined to press to her bosom the baby fingers that grew to frame the Declaration of Independence; or Sarah Winston, whose brilliant talents flashed in such splendor from the lips of Patrick Henry; or ill-starred Evelyn Byrd, whose beauty had fired the sluggish veins of George II and inspired a kingly pun upon her name, "Much have I heard, lady, of thy fair country, but of the beauty of its birds I know but now,"—all these and more; to say nothing of the mother of Sally and Molly Cary, of Lucy Grymes, of Betsy Fauntleroy, and of Mary Bland, each of whom has been claimed by Lossing and others to be the Lowland beauty, to whom her illustrious son wrote such wonderful sonnets, but quite impossible in the case of Mary Bland, seeing she was born in 1704, and was some years older than his mother.
They were a light-hearted band of maidens in these pre-Revolutionary days in the "Old Dominion!" They had no dreams sadder than mystic dreams on bride's cake, no duties except those imposed by affection, no tasks too difficult, no burdens too heavy. They sang the old-time songs, and danced the old-time dances, and played the old-time English games around the Christmas fires, burning nuts, and naming apple seeds, and loving their loves "with an A or a B," even although my Lady Castlemaine, of whom no one could approve, had so entertained her very doubtful friends a hundred years before. They had the Pyrrhic dances, but they had the Pyrrhic phalanx as well! The "nobler and manlier lessons" were not forgotten in all the light-hearted manners of the age.
CHAPTER XI
THE TOAST OF THE GALLANTS OF HER DAY
Of the "Mistress Mary Ball's" personal appearance we know nothing, unless we can guide our imaginations by the recollections of old Fredericksburg neighbors who knew her after she had passed middle age. Washington Irving says she was a beauty and a belle. He had only one source of information, George Washington Parke Custis, the sole eye-witness who wrote of her personal appearance in middle life. Sparks, Lossing, and all the rest who have described her, had no other. Parson Weems, of course, had something to say; but we do not know that he ever saw her. Any pen-portrait made of her to-day can boast only an outline of truth. Probability and imagination must fill in the picture. It is certain that she was "finely formed, her features pleasing, yet strongly marked." That is all! Has not some one said "her eyes were blue"? Well, then, fair hair and fair complexion would match the blue eyes. She was purely English. Her mother was probably born in England, her grandmother and grandfather were certainly born and reared there. Her type was that of an athletic, healthy Englishwoman, to whom an upright carriage and much out-of-door life gave a certain style. I, for one, am assured that she was handsome and distingué—a superb woman in every particular. She possessed a pure, high spirit, and
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