whose lovers wrangled about her almost as much as the wooers of the lady of Odysseus; and Mistress Alice Page of Rosewell, who had all the virtues possible to womankind inscribed upon her tombstone; and Colonel William Byrd and his wife, and lovely Evelyn Byrd; and also the heroine of our story when she was a shy girl of fifteen, and again when, as a young wife, she frequented the palace with her first husband, Colonel Custis, and later still when, as the wife of Colonel Washington, she paid her respects to Governors Fauquier, Botetourt, and Dunmore. Along this same drive passed the coach of my Lady Dunmore and her daughters on their way to a ball given them in the old capitol at the other end of the town, which festivity was speedily followed by a day of fasting and prayer for the Colonies, the election of delegates to a general congress, and an inglorious flight in the Fowey of the last royal governor of Virginia, who, like another child of monarchy in France a few years later, failed to appreciate the difference between a rebellion and a revolution, even when the storm was beating about his own

ears.

Not many miles from Williamsburg on the James are a number of fine old homesteads, where in the palmy days of old Virginia their

owners, surrounded by large plantations and attended by retinues of servants, lived a life nearly approaching that of the English country gentleman. Upon the Pamunkey and York also were numerous estates, while on the other side of the Chesapeake, upon that long peninsula curiously named the Eastern Shore of Virginia, were the homes of the Custis family and others of high degree. From these plantations near by, and from others more remote, representative Virginians, members of the House of Burgesses, came regularly to Williamsburg, bringing their families with them to take part in any especial gayeties that might occur during the sessions of the legislature, or to enjoy the play.1

In such an atmosphere as this, and amid such surroundings, refined and elegant in some respects, crude and unfinished in others, little Martha Dandridge was born and bred. In the most aristocratic circle of this most essentially aristocratic and English of the Colonies, from which wealthy planters sent their sons abroad to complete their educations, and were proud to have it reported in the local

1 Although the drama seems to have begun its American career in Annapolis, theatrical representations were given in Williamsburg as early as 1752, when two English stars, Lewis Hallam from Goodman's Fields Theatre, and Mrs. Douglass, appeared together upon the boards.

gazette that they had been presented at court and bent the knee to royalty, numbering among her relatives many who held high positions under the King, and were among his most loyal subjects, grew to gracious womanhood the future wife of the great soldier and leader of the Revolution.

II

AN EARLY MARRIAGE

ALL chronicles agree in stating that Miss Dandridge made her début at the capital during the administration of Governor Gooch, and at an age when, according to modern ideas, she should still have been in the nursery with her younger brothers and sisters.

It is to be regretted that no picture or description has come down to us of the fifteen-year-old débutante in her stiff bodice and flowered petticoat, who made her quaint little courtesy at the court in Williamsburg, which the magnates of old Virginia considered only second in importance to that of St. James. A childish portrait of Martha Dandridge, however, has recently been discovered, quaint and not unattractive.

If a good fairy in the form of some superstitious old Virginia "mammy, " endowed with the gift of second sight, foretold the future of this little girl of eight, her relatives and friends must have laughed incredulously at the career of prosperity, influence, and

honor that was predicted for her. The record of no such prophecy has come down to us, nor, indeed, of anything relating to her early years. As a rule, the sayings and doings of the woman-child were not considered of sufficient importance to be chronicled in the days in which she lived, or even to be handed down from mother to daughter. No parents' dreams, as prophetic as those of the dreamer of Israel, foretold for her future greatness, nor did an enthusiastic Weems arise to illumine little Martha Dandridge's girlhood with romance and fable, as in the case of her future husband, although this same biographer, describing her in after life, says, "I could never look on her without exclaiming with the poet,

'She was nearest heaven of all on earth I knew;
And all but adoration was her due.''

As the Rev. Mr. Weems's Life of Washing. ton was largely an imaginative production, and as, according to the testimony of several historians, he was never rector of Mount Vernon Parish, as he styled himself, and did not see much of General Washington at any period of his life, it is safe to believe. that he knew even less of the lady for whom he expressed such enthusiastic admiration.

Martha Dandridge was of small stature,