Episode 18 - Think Me Not Vain - Part 2

Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant
Episode 18, Part 2: "Think Me Not Vain"
Published on March 16, 2021

Note: This transcript was generated by Otter.ai with light human correction

Kathryn Gehred 

Hello, and welcome to Your Most Obedient and Humble Servant. This is Women's History podcast where we feature eighteenth and early nineteenth century women's letters that don't get as much attention as we think they should. I'm your host, Katherine Gehred. So on our last episode, you heard my guest host, Lizzie Thomas give an incredible reading of an extremely long letter from Elizabeth Parke Custis Law to her friend David Baillie Warden, and of the letter itself is from April 20, 1808. If you've not yet listened to that episode, you should go back and listen to the previous one, because you'll need the context. Now, Lizzie and I actually had a really delightful hour long discussion about this letter. But due to technical difficulties, on my end, in my own error, I actually lost all of my audio for our conversation, but I have all of Lizzie's audio. So what I'm going to do is a different sort of podcasting technique where I'm going to cut in Lizzie's comments along with the comments on my end, and we'll see how that all turns out. So, welcome if you're new to the podcast, this isn't our usual format, but we'll see how it goes. So, as a brief recap of the letter, Elizabeth Parke Custis Law shortly after separating from her husband, they weren't divorced, yet they were separated, wrote this incredibly long letter to her friend, David Baillie Warden, which basically serves as an autobiography, she's telling him about her childhood, even before her childhood, the entirety of the letter doesn't survive, it actually cuts off, while George Washington is president. But, you get sort of a gist of Elizabeth Parke Custis Law, at least her own view of her life, and her personality from this very, very long letter. The letter, as it survives, was published in the 1940s by a man named William D. Hoyt. And in his introduction to the letter, he described her as a person of extremely egocentric composition, a woman who quite as a matter of course, observed events as if she were the hub of the universe, who made no bones about the fact that she was first and best in every way. When I read a male historian describe any woman like that, it kind of makes some alarm bells go off. Because, because this is sort of a classic example of a woman showing a type of assertiveness and self confidence, that would be considered maybe a little eccentric for a man but sort of acceptable for a man, and then in this is something that makes her terrible, right, that she's extremely egocentric and just out of line, because it's not falling into her feminine role, which the letter itself shows that Elizabeth Parke Custis Law was not very good at fitting into the 18th century feminine roles of her time, and she's still being punished for it. And, that looking into trying to turn Elizabeth Park Custis Law into some sort of like "Girl boss," feminist icon, she definitely was pretty full of herself, but I think we should acknowledge that she's a human being and a lot of human beings are full of themselves and try to maybe examine why she might be writing the letter the way that she does, and what it tells us about her and about her family, like she's still very much a spoiled plantation, daughter of the South. And, I think that you need to keep that in mind as you're looking at what she's like as a person, but the fact that she is the way that she is, is still really interesting. And, I just want to point out that historians regularly write way crazier things about George Washington then Elizabeth writes about herself, like people would be talking about how great and blessed George Washington's family is the same way that Elizabeth Parke Custis does. So, let's just all calm down. Lizzie, who in her job as a costumed interpreter, and first person interpreter at Colonial Williamsburg has actually portrayed Elizabeth Parke Custis law in the past. So her take is a little bit more nuanced, I would say than Hoyt's.

Lizzie Thomas

My first impression of her it was it was for a Christmas program, and so it's very much focused on the Washington family. And, so my first impression of her really was just her place within the family. She seemed to have a very strong personality, and I hear more about her sister Nellie, I think you can tell a lot about Eliza when you just look at her portrait. I don't know if you have seen her portrait for those who haven't just just Google her and she's got her arms crossed, like she's got her hat in her hand or I guess her bonnet actually, and she's she's sort of looking at you like "what?" So, that was my first impression of her was her portrait was like okay, we are working with a very bold I think someone who is very, at least I'm sure in her mind very knowledgeable about herself, someone who's very self assured.

Kathryn Gehred 

So, I think that Elizabeth Parke Custis Law is both a self centered person and a person who is thinks very highly of her own abilities, and also a person living in a time where she is very much discouraged from behaving that way. And, the fact that she is in so stubbornly continues to do that is somewhat admirable.

Lizzie Thomas

One of the things that really strikes me is what she says at the beginning, "I wish not to appear better than I am." I'm like, 'but do you?'

Kathryn Gehred 

But, I also think it's doing Elizabeth Parke Custis a disservice to look at this letter as just something that happened out of the blue that she just wrote, for no reason, to her friends, just to talk about how great she is. I think you have to look at the fact that this is a letter that she wrote shortly after separating from her husband, and it is a massively public separation actually spoke to the scholar Cassandra Good, on this subject, she's got a book coming out about the Custis heirs, and she points out that this was what everybody in Washington DC was talking about, like how scandalous was it that Elizabeth Parke Custis Law was separating from her husband. So, she's feeling betrayed by Washington society. She's feeling very much alone, her family's not necessarily coming to her aid, and she is mad, I think comes through clearly here she is mad at Thomas Law, her ex husband, so if you look at this as kind of a raw letter from a woman who is has been spurned, and who is defending herself, and who's kind of passive aggressively trying to make her ex husband feel bad, that makes so much of what she says, make a lot more sense. So, I think that is why she has these examples of massive self confidence and ego mixed in with these moments of sort of extreme self pity.

Lizzie Thomas

The way that she describes how her father looked at her mother, how his heart was unchanged and warm and unchangeable, and he would never deserted her mother is sort of a nudge nudge Wink, wink, hint hint.

Kathryn Gehred 

So, if you take the letter that way, I think the way that she writes about her father makes a little bit more sense. She writes in very glowing, almost uncomfortable terms about her father.

Lizzie Thomas

God of love. You know what I pictured when I read that, Michelangelo's David, like but but as Jackie Custis, like fully clothed, okay, fully clothed, first of all, but just standing on a pedestal like I seriously think that's how she looks at her dad.

Kathryn Gehred 

When and when she's describing how loyal, and how faithful, and how absolutely in love with her mother, her father was. She says his heart when fixed was incapable of "perfidy and and desertion." That's gotta be to Thomas Law, like she's writing that to make Thomas Law feel bad. Her dad died when she was young, he's sort of been built up as an icon in her mind. She's using this example of her father's loyalty to her mother, as something that her ex husband has absolutely not lived up to. I love that she starts the letter before she's even born, talking about her family history, and the Custis family point I'm trying to make here is she has clearly received very glowing family stories about the quality of the Custis family going way, way back. And when you look into it, because the Custis family is a hot mess. There's a lot of drama, there's a lot of absolutely miserable, famously miserable marriages. Her dad she talks about how wonderful and great her dad was. He's described as a terrible student; I don't know if necessarily there's a lot of historical backing for him being so desperate to go out and fight in the American Revolution. He was pretty comfortable, wealthy kind of lush, sort of guy from most descriptions, his tutors descriptions of Jackie Custis are absolutely hysterical.

Lizzie Thomas

You know I vaguely remember hearing about that letter Washington sent of like 'I think my stepson has gotten worse he, he now spills words with numbers is this some cipher I'm missing?' No, I'm I'm joking. I don't want anybody to leave your podcast and be like, did you know Jackie Custer spelled words with numbers? It's interesting cuz didn't Washington they looked at William and Mary. I feel like for a minute, the William and Mary at the time was considered to be a somewhat party school, right. Yeah. And so didn't it was King's College, eventually that that they went? Yeah. And then he ends up in Annapolis.

Kathryn Gehred 

My co host has an interesting theory about why Elizabeth Parke Custis Law was so wrapped up in her childhood and her early childhood. And I think part of that comes from Lizzie's training as a costumed interpreter, where she points out that as a very young child, that gender roles weren't so set in stone at this time, little boys and little girls wore the same clothes, they were running and playing in the same places. So, as as a little girl, she wasn't quite hit with all of the cultural expectations just yet.

Lizzie Thomas

But it's when she was four, a lot of young boys would also be running around in skirts, and dresses. So there wasn't an easy, or a quick rather way to immediately see her as a girl as female, and the how, specifically when she mentions, how, if only she were a boy, what promise she would have. So she also seems to she has this interlude about Dr. Reid and him being so in, enraptured with her, in a way, a way when she's four, and yet, when she begins to grow, she seems to resent the fact that, you know, she really, maybe actually maybe they are connected, but she's just resenting the fact that she, I think is, you know, she's going through puberty, biology is doing what biology does, and she is more easily seen by outside forces as being female. And so then, okay, you are female, therefore, this, this, this, this, this, all these expectations, and it's almost as resentful, well maybe resembles a little bit strong, but she's frustrated. And, I feel like because it's like, well, if only I were a boy, and when I'm young, and all the other boys, including myself, we're all running around in skirts, I can at least be seen as a boy, it's like I'm taking more seriously when I'm four years old, versus when I'm female. And you know, that frustration of just because I go through puberty doesn't mean I lose my mind.

Kathryn Gehred 

The part of the letter were where Elizabeth Parke Custis Law talks about her education, and how she was very quick, and she could have learned everything that a boy learn, but she wasn't allowed to, and the fact that she wasn't allowed to and was forced to only learn things that girls could learn, made her actually resent and dislike, the things that girls are supposed to learn is really interesting. For me, it's somewhat relatable. I used to be one of those like, not like other girls, people myself, and so to see that 200 years ago, and a letter like this is really interesting. Some of the stories though, when she's talking about her behavior as a little girl, are just sort of like those cute stories that enter your family lore. I particularly enjoyed the stories about her singing songs to her dad and his friends.

Lizzie Thomas

This is definitely something where I have a story not not dirty, solid story, but I I have a story like this, like I'm two or three years old and my ever patient mother is 'like, um, what do we think we're doing?' Like, I love how she describes her mom, it just kind of, you know, happening on this scene and her dad's like, it's fine. It's great. You don't know half of what she's saying. It's fine. And her mom's like, okay. And with such gusto, you know how I had such a commanding presence and, you know, strutting I love her description of strutting about the table.

Kathryn Gehred 

Now, the very lengthy section describing the death of her father, this is just such a valuable historical resource, because this is something that was very key moment for Martha Washington, it was a very key moment for George Washington, because this was Martha Washington's last remaining child who died. And, there's many descriptions of his death from George and Martha's viewpoint, to read it from the perspective of his daughter, I think, just really adds another valuable lens and all of her details for these things. Sometimes she's definitely looking at things through rose colored glasses, but the details and the timeline of what's going on in her family's life. Even the stories when she's a toddler, are pretty spot on actually, just like any historical source, you have to read it with a grain of salt to see who's saying what what perspective they have. Elizabeth Parke Custis Law is very much making her own historical argument about her family, namely that her family is the greatest and she's really great and smart. But, the facts of when things happen and how they happen are actually pretty good. So, I thought that the section about her father dying was really interesting, and something that definitely deserves a serious historical study. But then she goes right into, again, some of the more interesting takes about her mother's choices afterwards.

Lizzie Thomas

I'm sure Dr. Stewart was fine, you know, yeah. He's like, I just want to like be nice to your mom. Okay, like I'm trying to help you out. And, you know, she does sort of grumbling like, give him a little bit of credit for or, and her mom too, when she talks about, you know, Elena remarrying. She just kind of grumble about like, I guess it was to protect our fortune, I guess it was to protect my inheritance. Oh bother. And it's like he's trying to help you. Like stop reading Romeo and Juliet just read Much Ado About Nothing for a minute, it's fine.

Kathryn Gehred 

It does seem a little bit rough that she's basically complaining that her mother didn't die after her father dies, it could sound a little callous. But again, if we take the letter as something that Elizabeth is writing out of a place of anger and bitterness after her husband has left her, I think that adds a little nuance to it, because she could be saying, so like for a woman to be loved by a man so completely and then to lose that man, she should wither away. She could be saying, look at me, or making me wither away, or she could be saying, 'You clearly don't love me that much, so I'm not going to wither away and die.' Something that struck my co host, Lizzie as she was listening to it is how some of this letter really does feel like something that a really angry 15 year old really emotional person would write, which even though Elizabeth was in her 30s, when she wrote this letter, I think the emotional state, after having the entire society of Washington DC turn against you, and have your husband abandon you, I think that puts you in a pretty similar emotional state. So, there as much as there are parts of this letter that are surprising to me, there are parts that are often very relatable.

Lizzie Thomas

I know, I wrote letters like this when I was like 15, and you know, like listening to MCR going, like the world is a cold dead shoe. That made me like, that's not a verbatim quote, but I'm just sitting, like, sitting here in judgment. And like, there's a little piece of there's a little bit of my mind that's just kind of popping up some memories to check myself.

Kathryn Gehred 

Now, the way that Elizabeth Parke Custis Law writes about her grandparents, shows that there was a close relationship, and I believe 100%, there was a close relationship. I believe that somebody like Martha Washington was taking a very active role in raising these little grandbabies, and that she was very close with them. I think that looking at the letter as a document that's making sort of a point about her life, she's sort of showing that these heroes, Martha Washington, and George Washington, the greatest of all American heroes, loved me so much, is something that's sort of adding to the point that she's making it in the letter. I couldn't let the section on talking about all of the slaves crying when Martha Washington left, go by, I think a really important thing to point out is that when Martha Washington and the grandkids were going off to New York, when George Washington was president, she was taking quite a few enslaved people with her, people with large families. So maybe, some of these people weren't just crying over who's essentially their boss, the person who owns them leaving, and maybe they're crying at the fact that their daughter is going away for what might be several years to a place where you don't know you're ever going to see them again. So always keep that in mind, people are always trying to make the argument that enslaved people were just so obsessed with the white family. It's always coming from the white family saying that. So, you've got to take all that with a grain of salt. 

Lizzie Thomas

God bless her, you know, she's trying, but there are times where, like, with Dr. Stewart, I don't necessarily trust her opinion on the matter. And so I actually want to go and do a little bit of research on my own about Dr. Stewart, and about the reptile tutor, who was the has not his name, I'm gonna learn his name. But you know, the fact that he was with Arthur Middleton, I'm like, okay, that's a place to start, you know.

Kathryn Gehred 

Now, I mentioned before that even people who are really interested in George Washington and Martha Washington and Mount Vernon and this history, a lot of times they don't even know that Elizabeth Parke Custis Law and her sister, Martha, exist, because they didn't live with Martha and George in New York and Philadelphia, and they had slightly more of a distant relationship. They weren't raised by Martha in the way that Nellie and George Washington Parke Custis were, and I do think that it provides some evidence for the fact that there was a little bit of resentment between Martha and Elizabeth, the older siblings, and the younger siblings that got to go be essentially American royalty in like the biggest and most bustling cities of the early United States. I think you can tell a little bit that Elizabeth wished that she could have gone and lived with her grandmother. Clearly she wasn't a huge fan of Dr. Stewart. Doesn't seem like she was very close with her mother's family, so you read her write about this as though it's sort of a tragedy that she wasn't able to spend as much time with her grandmother who she adored, but she does visit them from time to time and there's a quote from a Martha Washington letter where she describes this visit. So I'm going to read this quote she says,

"Betsy Custis told me she wished to stay with me, ad I wrote to her mother for her permission, which she readily gave, she seemed to be very grave. I wasn't hoping that being in the gay world would have a good effect on her, but she seems to wish to be at home and very much by herself. She takes no delight to go out to visit, she would not go with Nellie and myself to the Assembly last week, she don't like to go to church every Sunday thinks that too fatiguing."

To be honest in this part of the letter was mutilated, but it's probably something like to be always in company.

"She often complains of not being well, she looked ill when she first came here. But as much better and looks better, though she does not like to be told. So, the girls has lived so long and solitude that they do not know how to get the better of it, Betsy seems to be reconciled to be alone."

So, I think that's interesting that even when she is out of this house that she doesn't really like. And she feels very isolated in the Dr. Stewart House while she's living with her mother and family. Once she actually does go to the gay world of Philadelphia, where she could go to assemblies and be in company, she doesn't particularly like that either. Or at least she it takes her a little while to adjust to it at the time that they're writing this letter. So if this might be, Elizabeth's personality might just be a little bit not, she's not going to be content with just about anything. All in all, if you're going to summarize this letter, it seems like Elizabeth is a person who was frustrated with her options, as a woman, in whatever opportunities that are given to her dancing, she seems to particularly like dancing, even though she thinks it's dumb and womanly, she's going to be the best at it. Music, she's very good at music, but because it's a womanly thing, then she started to spurn it. She wants to be a serious person, the way that men are considered to be serious people. And she's just not allowed to at any point. Later in life, people describe her as wearing men's clothing, wearing sort of outlandish clothing, she buys her own house, like for a few years, she actually has her own sort of plantation household, which is something that women, single women was never able to do. Widows were able to manage the plantation, but they're always looking for new husband, Elizabeth, after getting divorced, buys her own house, and she uses her privilege and money to try to do some of the things that men are able to do. And what ends up happening, is she's spurned by her family, she's sort of teased and made sort of a laughingstock by Washington, DC society. And she ends up as one of those unmarried women at this time that because they're not able to maintain their own household, they're not able to make enough money do that, just visits from family member to friend to family member, just the sort of homeless women who have a position in society, who just stay with other people, until she passes away, and she dies at a friend's house.

Lizzie Thomas

You know, the, what, really, every single time I've read it, what really just continues to stand out to me is, she is so proud. Judging by this letter, of her intellect, of the fact that she was known as a scholar, you know, she could do arithmetic, she wanted to learn Greek and Latin, and all the things that the boys got to learn. And that being told, you don't need to, and again, as she grows, and as seen more and more as a woman, and like physically, and so people view her and when they view her as female, they put certain expectations on her whether or not they know her. So being just, and so as that continues, then, of course, those expectations begin to supersede perhaps your own desires, you know, like, you don't need to learn arithmetic, you need to learn what eligible bachelors in town. So, you can make a good match. Right? So you can be protected. I mean, there, it wasn't quite as mercenary. I think that sometimes we might hear about it, you know, there was just by property laws, there was a real incentive for making a good match with somebody who did have financial assets to protect you. Because just the way the laws were set up, you couldn't really protect yourself. In most cases, there's always an exception to the rule, and actually in Virginia and Maryland, there were bits and pieces of English law that did allow for certain married women, I say certain we're talking free, mostly Gentry, mostly with connections to you know, old time Gentry, that you could actually have some you could you could have some recourse And if your husband had sold property that you brought to the marriage certain property that you brought to the marriage, if he sold it without your consent, you could actually sue him. Good luck, you know, with the the marriage, then deal but hey, that's why Yeah, but I think my point is is that being seen as "what" rather than "who" you are being seen as female, therefore this, this, this, this, this assumption is made, rather than who.

Kathryn Gehred 

I always try to find things that are relatable about a letter, and writing a massively long diatribe about how great you are to a friend, in response to a bad breakup, I think, is in many ways relatable. I think you can still find pop songs that are sort of kept capturing that energy. I think the story she tells about her childhood, incredibly relatable. I mean, obviously, the situation of being out as a toddler and sticking a cotton seed up your nose and bothering all the enslaved people in your house isn't unusual, not super relatable situation, but toddler sticking things up their nose is universal. The stories of her singing maybe dirty, inappropriate songs that she shouldn't be singing to her dad's friends is very cute. That's something that I mean, you still see pictures, people taking Polaroid pictures of their kids with like beer cans next to them. That's just classic, good old fashioned parent humor. That's something that has transcended time space. And again, I'm not here to try to say that Elizabeth Parke Custis Law is the greatest person who has ever lived, I think she's made a pretty good point of doing that for herself. I do think it's important to look at the way that we judge documents from women that show this kind of arrogance and self assuredness compared to the way that we view documents from men. I think just as in the twentieth century, people are more likely to take men who say they're super great at face value and go, 'Oh, wow, that person might have been great.' Whereas a woman who says, 'Hey, I'm super great' to immediately then condemn and question that, I think just a facet of gendered history that still survives. My point isn't also that women necessarily should be arrogant, and we should say, 'That's fine all the time.' I think the point is that men need to be less. We need to start taking men who perhaps talk about themselves the way that Elizabeth Parke Custis Law talks about herself less seriously, because you're not all that great. So with that, I would like to thank my co host, Lizzie Thomas, who's an excellent historian, an excellent actress, and an excellent first person interpreter, and she brought a lens to this letter that I really needed and she made a lot of points that I actually hadn't even thought about. So thank you very much for being a guest. I would like to thank you my listeners. Again, I'll put as many notes as I can in the show notes. Feel free to check those out, and I am as ever, your most obedient and humbled. Thank you very much.

Kathryn Gehred 

Hello, this is Kathryn, again, just checking in. I just wanted to say thank you to any new listeners who may have joined the podcast after Alexis Coe's really delightful write up of the podcast in her newsletter, Study Marry Kill. It was incredibly kind of hard to write that I was absolutely flattered. My mother cried. So thank you, Alexis. And so thank you for listening. I hope you continue to enjoy and support the podcast. Feel free to check out our social media. We're on Twitter @humservt, Facebook also Humservt, and our website www.humservt.com. You can find ways to support the podcast. We have had a flood of financial support for the podcast, which is so very appreciated. This has paid for the web hosting for the podcast, it's paid for some of the audio editing equipment that I've been able to use, so thank you. If you're able to whatever you give on Ko-fi just know that I am incredibly appreciative. Again, thank you very much for listening, and stay tuned. We've got some more content for you coming up in a few weeks.