Martha Washington and the Revolutionary War

Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert de Motier Lafayette

Stanley J. Idzerda, ed.

Cornell University Press

1977-00-00

eng

Marquis de Lafayette, and Stanley J. Idzerda, ed. Lafayette in the Age of the American Revolution: Selected Letters and Papers, 1776-1790. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977.

“…Several general officers have brought their wives to camp, and I am very envious, not of their wives [who are rather dull], but of the pleasure they have in being able to see them. General Washington has also just decided to send for his wife, a modest and respectable person, who loves her husband madly….” (1: 225)

26. From: The Marquis de Lafayette to Adrienne de Noailles de Lafayette, 8/20/1784, in Stanley J. Idzerda and others, editors, Lafayette in the Age of the American Revolution: Selected Letters and Papers, 1776-1790, Volume 5 (Ithaca, New York, and London: Cornell University Press, 1983), 237-238.
“Though I do not know if my letter will reach you, my dear heart, I had to write you that I am at Mount Vernon and that I am reveling in the happiness of finding my dear general again…I arrived here on the seventeenth…To describe to you the life that we lead here, I shall tell you that after breakfast the general and I chat together for some time. After having thoroughly discussed the past, the present, and the future, he withdraws to take care of his affairs and gives me things to read that have been written during my absence. Then we come down for dinner and find Mrs. Washington with visitors from the neighborhood. The conversation at table turns to the events of the war or to anecdotes that we are fond of recalling. After tea we resume our private conversations and pass the rest of the evening with the family. That, my dear heart, is how we spend our time, and we often talk of you, of our children, and of anything that has to do with the family. There are in the house two small children of Mrs. Washington, who you know was married once before. The general has adopted them and loves them with great tenderness. It was rather amusing, when I arrived, to see the curiosity of these two little ones, who had heard me spoken of all day and were very anxious to see if I looked like my portrait. The general read with great pleasure your letter and Anastasie’s. I have been asked to send the fondest regards from the whole household, and Mrs. Washington was saying the other day that since they were old, we must not defer the pleasure they would have in entertaining you and our whole little family here. On my earlier trip, my dear heart, I made the most solemn promise to bring you with me.”