Page:Republican Court by Rufus Griswold.djvu/192

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THE REPUBLICAN COURT.

had troops of suitors before her first marriage, at seventeen; and when, a few years after, as the richest and handsomest widow in Virginia, Mrs. Daniel Parke Custis attracted the tender regard of the young soldier of Mount Vernon, there was, of course, abundant competition; but only the brave deserve the fair, and in this case only the bravest could win the fairest. It was certainly a love match; few, upon the whole, have been happier; and its only misfortune was doubtless fortunate for the world, since greatness is rarely transmissible, and any descendant of Washington, however respectable, would have seemed in history but a small satellite, too frequently passing between us and his impressive and luminous grandeur. During the revolution Mrs. Washington had remained as much as possible with the Chief. At the close of each campaign an aid-de-camp repaired to Mount Vernon, to escort her, and her arrival in camp, in a plain chariot, with postillions in white and scarlet liveries, was always an occasion of general happiness, and a signal for the wives of other principal officers to join their husbands. With the army, and all the successions of eminent and curious strangers who visited the head-quarters, at Cambridge, Valley Forge, Morristown, New Windsor, Newburgh, or elsewhere, she was eminently popular. The gay Marquis de Chastellux, a grandson of the great d'Aguesseau, described her at the end of the contest as "one of the best women in the world, and beloved by all about her."[1] In the sis years from the peace till Washington was chosen President, she dispensed the ample hospitalities of Mount Vernon with a tact and graciousness which won the applause of her numerous guests, many of whom left her praises in their correspondence. "Every thing about the house," said Brissot de Warville,

  1. ↑ But there were bo democrats in those days; when this sort of people came into fashion, during the French revolution, full grown, she cherished against them an intensity of dislike which made it quite impossible for even the most amiable of that patriotic class to regard her with any affection whatever.
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