Many years later, writing to one of Martha’s granddaughters upon her engagement, Washington warned that romantic love cooled in time. This letter may explain Washington’s final preference for Martha Custis over Sally Fairfax.

Do not then, in your contemplation of the marriage state, look for perfect felicity before you consent to wed. Nor conceive, from the fine tales the poets and lovers of old have told us of the transports of mutual love, that heaven has taken its abode on earth. Nor do not deceive yourself in supposing that the only mean[s] by which these are to be obtained is to drink deep of the cup and revel in an ocean of love. Love is a mighty pretty thing, but, like all other delicious things, it is cloying. And when the first transports of the passion begin to subside, which it assuredly will do and yield, oftentimes too late, to more sober reflections, it serves to evince that love is too dainty a food to live upon alone and ought not to be considered farther than as a necessary ingredient for that matrimonial happiness which results from a combination of causes; none of which are of greater importance than that the object on whom it is placed should possess good sense, good dispositions, and the means of supporting you in the way you have been brought up.²¹

Washington could never have married a poor woman, but neither could he have tolerated a cold and loveless marriage.

Throughout his life Washington was noticeably attracted to women, but his steely willpower and stern discipline likely overmastered any fugitive impulses to stray. Many people observed his gallantry with the ladies. One British officer described how women left his dining room after meals only to be squired right back in by Washington. As he recalled, Washington introduced “a round of ladies as soon as the cloth was removed by saying he had always a very great esteem for the ladies and therefore drank them in preference to anything else.”²² In corresponding with women, Washington frequently slipped into a breezily flirtatious tone. When the widow Annis Boudinot Stockton later sent him an ode in his honor, he encouraged her to produce more poetry: “You see, madam, when once the woman has tempted us and we have tasted the forbidden fruit, there is no such thing as checking our appetites, whatever the consequences may be.”²³

In a century of sterling wits, George Washington never stood out for his humor, but he had a bawdy streak and relished hearty, masculine jokes. In the 1920s the puritanical J. P. Morgan, Jr., destroyed some letters by Washington that he owned, claiming they were “smutty.”²⁴ When breeding animals, Washington wrote about their couplings with dry, facetious mirth. In the 1780s, after the Spanish king sent him a male donkey nicknamed Royal Gift, he launched an experiment in breeding mules. Washington noted drolly that the donkey was at first indifferent to “female allurements” and that when he finally responded, he proceeded with “deliberation and majestic solemnity to the work of procreation.”²⁵ At the same time he hoped Royal Gift would catch the democratic spirit in America and “that when he becomes a little better acquainted with republican enjoyments, he will amend his manners and fall into a better and more expeditious mode of doing business.”²⁶

Perhaps the earthiest comment Washington ever made about sex occurred when he learned of the marriage of forty-seven-year-old Colonel Joseph Ward. He seemed to find forty-seven a comically advanced age for matrimony. “I am glad to hear that my old acquaintance Colo. Ward is yet under the influence of vigorous passions,” he told a correspondent. He supposed that Ward, “like a prudent general,” had “reviewed his strength, his arms, and ammunition before he got involved in an action. But if these have been neglected . . . let me advise him to make the first onset upon his fair del Tobosa [Dulcinea del Toboso, the country girl in Don Quixote] with vigor that the impression may be deep, if it cannot be lasting or frequently renewed.”²⁷

The marriage thrived even though Martha and George lacked children. Many theories have been advanced to explain this barren marriage. Martha may have sustained injury during the birth of Patsy, her final child, making additional births impossible. Some scholars have speculated that George’s early bout of smallpox or some other disease left him infertile. We know that George Washington didn’t think he was sterile, because, in writing once to a nephew, he stated that if Martha died and he remarried, he “probably” wouldn’t have children, but only because he would marry a woman suitable to his age—obviously implying that he could have children with a younger woman.²⁸ The historic stress on the childless marriage has obscured the fact that the Washingtons, far from being lonely, were always surrounded by children. In the early years at Mount Vernon, there were Jacky and Patsy Custis and then, in later years, two of Jacky’s children, plus assorted other young relatives, perhaps numbering a dozen orphaned youngsters in all. This childless couple ran a household teeming with high-spirited children, which may have been their way of filling a perceived void.

Later on Washington’s childless state helped him to assume the title of Father of His Country. That he wasn’t a biological father made it easier for him to be the allegorical father of a nation. It also retired any fears, when he was president, that the nation might revert to a monarchy, because he could have no interest in a hereditary crown. In a draft of his first inaugural address, Washington (or his ghost-writer David Humphreys) wrote that “Divine Providence hath not seen fit that my blood should be transmitted or my name perpetuated by the endearing, though sometimes seducing, channel of immediate offspring. I have no child for whom I could wish to make a provision—no family to build in greatness upon my country’s ruins.”²⁹ Many contemporaries professed to discern heavenly influence in Washington’s childless state—God’s tacit way of protecting America. As Gouverneur Morris stated in his eulogy for Washington, “AMERICANS! he had no child BUT YOU and HE WAS ALL YOUR OWN.”³⁰

IN MARRYING MARTHA CUSTIS , George Washington inherited the posh commercial connection that Daniel Parke Custis had formed with the top-drawer London firm of Robert Cary and Company. That spring Washington sent an authenticated copy of his marriage certificate to this London agent and advised that “for the future please to address all your letters which relate to the affairs of the late Dan[ie]l Parke Custis Esqr. to me.”³¹ Like his previous London representative, Richard Washington, Robert Cary and Company were factors who received tobacco shipments from Virginia plantations, sold them at the best possible price, then used the proceeds to purchase wares from fashionable London purveyors. The firm had also collected dividends for Martha from her former husband’s stock in the Bank of England. Robert Cary was a larger and more prestigious house than Richard Washington, providing further proof of Washington’s swift ascent.

Washington’s relationship with Robert Cary formed an integral part of his quest for refinement. A profligate spender, he promptly placed an order with Cary for a new bedroom set, complete with a four-poster bed, window curtains, a bedspread, and four chairs, all upholstered in matching blue and white fabric to give the “uniformly handsome and genteel” effect he desired.³² From this first order, it was plain that the young couple planned to entertain in high style. They ordered a “fashionable set” of dessert glasses, special stands for sweetmeats and jellies, and silver knives and forks with ivory handles. In this first lengthy order, there was also an ominous hint of early dental trouble for Washington, who ordered from an apothecary on Ludgate Hill six bottles of a special brew concocted to cleanse teeth and cure toothaches.