s wife's sister. But that
only adds fuel to the fire, as being often and unavoidably in company
with her revives my former passion for your Lowland Beauty; whereas
were I to live more retired from young women, I might in some measure
alleviate my sorrow by burying that chaste and troublesome passion in
oblivion; I am very well assured that this will be the only antidote
or remedy." Our gloomy young gentleman, however, did not take to
solitude to cure the pangs of despised love, but preceded to calm his
spirits by the society of this same sister-in-law of George Fairfax,
Miss Mary Cary. One "Lowland Beauty," Lucy Grymes, married Henry Lee,
and became the mother of "Legion Harry," a favorite officer and friend
of Washington in the Revolution, and the grandmother of Robert E. Lee,
the great soldier of the Southern Confederacy. The affair with Miss
Cary went on apparently for some years, fitfully pursued in the
intervals of war and Indian fighting, and interrupted also by matters
of a more tender nature. The first diversion occurred about 1752, when
we find Washington writing to William Fauntleroy, at Richmond, that he
proposed to come to his house to see his sister, Miss Betsy, and that
he hoped for a revocation of her former cruel sentence.[3] Miss Betsy,
however, seems to have been obdurate, and we hear no more of love
affairs until much later, and then in connection with matters of a
graver sort.

[Footnote 1: Quoted from the Willis MS. by Mr. Conway, in _Magazine of
American History_, March, 1887, p. 196.]

[Footnote 2: _Magazine of American History_, i. 324.]

[Footnote 3: _Historical Magazine_, 3d series, 1873. Letter
communicated by Fitzhugh Lee.]

[Illustration: Mary Cary]

When Captain Dagworthy, commanding thirty men in the Maryland
service, undertook in virtue of a king's commission to outrank the
commander-in-chief of the Virginian forces, Washington made up his
mind that he would have this question at least finally and properly
settled. So, as has been said, he went to Boston, saw Governor
Shirley, and had the dispute determined in his own favor. He made
the journey on horseback, and had with him two of his aides and two
servants. An old letter, luckily preserved, tells us how he looked,
for it contains orders to his London agents for various articles, sent
for perhaps in anticipation of this very expedition. In Braddock's
campaign the young surveyor and frontier soldier had been thrown among
a party of