Episode 24 — The Charge Of So Crazy A Body

Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant
Episode 24: "The Charge Of So Crazy A Body"
Published on June 22, 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 got the idea recently to do a series, which I haven't done before, but I listen to other podcasts that have done series, and I've always enjoyed them. So, I thought I might give it a shot. The reason being that there is a story that I am somewhat obsessed with, it's one of those things that if I start talking about it at a party, my husband has to kind of reel me in, otherwise it'll turn into like a half hour ramble. But, so this way, what this will allow me to go into the amount of detail about a story that I find fascinating, and I think you will, too, once we dig into it, it's too big and complicated a story to fit into one episode or one letter. So, I'm going to split it out amongst a couple. And the story is Martha Washington's in-laws, which some of you will probably be confused about. Obviously, when you think of Martha Washington, you think of her marriage to George Washington, but Martha Washington's first husband was a man named Daniel Parke Custis. And his ancestry is truly wild. It's one of those things that just about every book about Martha Washington has to mention this briefly, because they want to get to the stuff about when she's First Lady of the United States. But it leads to things like these throwaway sentences about her father-in-law, not allowing his son to marry her father-in-law, having a tombstone in which he insults the integrity of his wife carved onto his tombstone, and a grandfather, who was murdered in the Leeward Islands. So, people always sort of have to rush past the Custises, and just throw these little juicy little nuggets out there, which I have the pleasure to have had the opportunity to really dig into in a way that a lot of people who are writing books don't get that opportunity, because when I began my job at the Martha Washington papers, I was but a humble research assistant. So, my job was to trail down these little stories. So I found all sorts of wild stuff about this family, and I am always telling people about it, and it's very difficult to sort of set up the context. But here we are in a History podcast that the whole point of it is to tell these little stories about history, might as well dig into it. So, this is going to be part one of my Martha Washington's in-laws series. Maybe I'll come up with a catchier name and but this is a letter from a woman of the eighteenth century, very early eighteenth century. This is a letter from Jane Ludwell Parke, to her husband, Daniel Parke, written on 12th July 1705, you'll notice the language is a little bit different. The transcription of the letter which I'm using, it didn't follow exactly her spelling and manner of speaking it modernized it, so it'll be easier for me to read. But just keep that in mind that like she's using closer to an earlier form of English, then some of these letters I've been reading from the 1840s we're using.

I will give background, I'm going to introduce everybody who's involved in this letter. But I have to admit that doing research on Daniel Parke, and a lot of people from this era is complicated, because the dates are a little murky, depending on what source you're looking at, you get wildly different dates for when people were born, when they were married, the political things, we've got very good records of what's going on, but the personal life, marriage records and things like that are just not as accurate. So, I'm going to be a little bit vague about the very specific details. So if you're a fact checker out there, sorry. I'm gonna give you more of a gist than the very, very specifics. Jane Ludwell Parke, the woman who wrote the letter we're going to be reading today  was born in Virginia in the 1660s to Philip Ludwell, who was a member of the Governor's Council, he was briefly the governor of Carolina, he is one of the men who was part of the Governor's Council during Bacon's Rebellion in the 1670s. Which, I'm not going to go into a great amount of detail about that, but that's something that you might be familiar with, or you could very easily look up. All of this is to say that she was born into a wealthy, prominent family in Virginia. She was born in Virginia, but she's one of the early Virginia colonists that was born there. Her father was from England and was basically coming over here to be involved in colonial politics. We don't know exactly when Jane married Daniel Parke, there's a lot of disagreeing stories. One of the most frequently cited ones is that she was ten years older than him when they married and they married when he was fifteen. The source for that, though, is quite dubious, but the fact which probably led to that misunderstanding is that Daniel Parke was also born into a very wealthy family, but both of his parents died before he was of legal age to inherit that property, but everybody knew that this teenage boy was going to inherit land, and at that point, that was all you really needed to become sort of a member of the prominent level of society at this time. Chances are, it wasn't that she was twenty-five and he was fifteen, and they got married because he was going to inherit property. They were probably both quite young. They're probably both teenagers, somewhere around like sixteen/seventeen years old when they got married. They married young, and it was I'm confident in saying, not a happy marriage. Daniel Parke is described fantastically by a number of different historians because he had one of those just truly wild colonial, Virginian lives. One historian referred to him as one of the most notorious scamps of the colonial period, and another described him as a "complete sparkish" gentleman, and "the greatest hector in the town." And you'll get people that counter this, they'll try to say, you know, oh, those were just people who were politically on the other side of Daniel Parke, they're going to make him sound like a bigger jerk than he was. But if you look at the cumulative evidence of the rest of Daniel Parke's life, I got to conclusively say that he was a sparkish gentleman. There's an anecdotal story of him actually dragging the wife of one of his political rivals out of her pew in church in front of everyone and dragging her out of the church. He was elected to the Council of Burgesses, which was the Virginia governing council back at the time that Virginia was still an English colony in 1688. There we've got a date for you. That one was written down. He could have been as young as nineteen years old at the time that he was a member of the Council of Burgesses. Again, because he's got land, that's all you need. That's the qualifications. He's in there. A lot of his political career is defined by conflict. Jane and Daniel Parke had three daughters together, Frances, Julia, and Evelyn, but Evelyn died in infancy. So they had two daughters that survived to adulthood, Francis, and Julia. In 1690, Daniel Parke traveled to England with his father-in-law, partially to complain about the colonial government and taxation, and to try to sort of talk to Parliament about getting a better political position. Daniel Parke really wants to be colonial governor of Virginia. He returned from England two years later, with a woman named Mrs. Barry, who, there's a lot of different accounts of who she is and what's going on there. But she was pregnant with his child.

He called her "Cousin Brown," he brought her back to Virginia with him, and she had a son who they named Julius Caesar Parke. And Daniel Parke basically put Julius Caesar in the care of his wife, and had him raised alongside his half sisters. So, that's a somewhat scandalous situation, but it's sort of one of those things that if you're Jane Ludwell Park, you just sort of have to live with you don't have much control over your situation at this time.

So she's raising her own daughters, plus, the child of Cousin Brown. After about eight years back in Virginia, he's still not getting the political positions that he wants to, he goes back to England, and begins to try to get a seat in Parliament in whatever way that he can. I just want to point out to this is about 1701. If you've seen the movie, The Favorite, this is that time period, so it's Queen Anne, the cast of characters we're dealing with are similar to the characters in the movie, The Favorite, so Parke actually kind of attached himself to the Duke of Marlborough, who was played by Mark Gatiss in the film, and despite not particularly having a glorious military career, or anything like that, he was the messenger of good news. He famously rode eight days to be the first person to tell Queen Anne that the Duke of Marlborough had one victory at the Battle of Blenheim and she awarded him with a miniature portrait of herself, and he tried to use these good feelings to get himself again a seat in Parliament, hopefully the governorship of Virginia, but he ends up instead being appointed the governor of the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean.

And that is the context of the letter that she writes to her husband. Daniel Parke has basically abandoned her in Virginia. He's overseas, he's not sending her any money, he's not really sending her any news, and she finds out through the grapevine, not from him, that he's got this appointment in the Leeward Islands, and so she sits down to write her husband this letter. Oh, and if you want to know how these people are related to Martha Washington, Daniel Parke, is Martha Washington's first husband's grandfather. Okay, so that's the context of the letter. I'm gonna read it, it's a little bit long. But I think, again, you'll find it interesting. So, this is a letter from Jane Ludwell Parke, to Daniel Parke, she doesn't write the name of her house, it just says Virginia, July 12 1705. She's in her 40s or early 50s, at the time of writing this letter.

"My dear, having given you an account of all your affairs here, allow me to congratulate your good fortune, which I pray God may ever attend to you, as I have reason to think it does by the report going about the country that is said to come from Bristol, which is that you're going to be made General of the Leeward Islands, which I am told is a place of great honor as well as profit, I am told it is so near this place that we may expect to see you, and I remember you have often written me that when I did, it should be by way of surprise, from which it is so distant that I have as much wondered at your long stay from your home, as I do now at your silence after being informed you returned from Flanders in November, since which several ships have come from London and Bristol, and by which I thought I might have been worthy of one line from your hand, if it had been but in regard to the charge left in my hands, both of your estate and your children who think it is time you should think of placing them out in the world, your eldest wanting but two months of entering into our twentieth year, the younger well gone on her eighteenth. I did not tell you this that either encourage or him in haste to part with them, but in consideration that they are women grown, and are now past the government of childhood, and as you desire to have them bred, you must expect in the station in which you live to have the offers of the best young gentleman in the country for them, as indeed they have and would have every day more might they have but admittance, which, according to your orders, I have avoided as much as possibly I could, in so much that they have had a word sent them if they would please to permit of it, they would wait for them at some other place since they could not be advised to wait on them at home. If you consider that you were once young yourself, you may think this is enough to make me conscious of too much restraint, as well as have too much liberty, as yet I know not what their inclination is for marriage, you more than I think they would be glad to know the fortune you designed for them, whether there or here. If you design it there, you should have provided for it long since before they were women grown. If you design for them here, then it will not be for their advantage to put by the best in the country. And it may be they will at least be glad to take their fortune here for which reason I took care to discharge the trust you seem to repose in me by giving you full notice of the offer made to your eldest daughter, not doubting in the least, of a speedy answer to so weighty of a concern as the disposing of a child. At least whether you were willing or not to dispose of them here, which answer would have made them easier in their minds than they can be without it. And, it might have been more to your own future satisfaction, they being so much of your own temper, not to consider and nicely weigh all those things which I have so long stood the brunt of that after the way of natural affection and desiring to see them happy. I shall leave the disposal of them to yourself and them who must bear the lot of their good or bad fortune. And, as I hope they will be careful in the Liberty they take, I hope you will be the same by way of constraint, remembering who it is that has for these 20 odd years made your home so uneasy for you, in which I have been so great to sharer as to have brought my life with sorrow to the grave where I should have been long sense but for merciful redemption if God Almighty who from time to time has delivered me from the terrors of death, and restored me in some measure to health and strength again, after four months dying sickness, which has so destroyed the very foundation of nature that it has forever made me incapable of taking the worldly care I have done and must continue in so greater trust as you have here. And, as it is impossible for me to be further serviceable to you, I earnestly desire you will now grant what I have so often desired, to be happily released from all worldly care quietly, to sit down with a small incompetence as you please. I having done all the service I can for you and your children, who I think God are better able to keep themselves than I can them or myself, and being so tired with a sickly life, the least thing in the world has become burdensome to me, which makes me the more earnest to quit it all, on any terms, whatever.

The last time I heard from you, I refrain to consent to it first, desiring to see how the rise of your fortune might be, which you have now seen, as I believe, to your great advantage, which I hope will make you mindful of your word. And, I think it more for your interest to allow me a small living, for which I shall most willingly quit all claim to anything more, where you to be the emperor of the world. When you see the money I have been forced to be out, and the continual charge, so sickly, a body must be to you, you will, then indeed think it for your interest to grant my desire, I not being able, in my sickly state to live within those narrow bounds I have hitherto lived in. As you know, I have never had anything to be called a living from your hand, but what I have shifted and charged and toiled for here, which I was so unable to do in my sickness that had it not been for the assistance of my friends and relations, I might have suffered the greatest want imaginable. I have not charged you with a quarter part one of what I expended in my sickness besides Doctor fees. If you consider how short your allowances that we have never had one drop of wine for almost these five years gone by, and then but two dozen pints, with the addition of 100 pounds of brown sugar, something mutilated, that is all we have ever had. But, what we can't starve for here, at so dear advice, as gives you liberty to find fault with our extravagant living, when at the same time there is nearby a middling family, what can afford to live better than we ever pretend. As your daughters are grown women, and we live in the notion of your wife and daughters, it is expected we should live equal with the best in the country, which is so far from that to keep but any sort of kindly acquaintance is impossible. You can't think your daughter is to be tolerably bred without some conversation, the least of which requires more than I have ever been allowed by you, which makes me many times wonder how you think we live, especially you that have lived so like a man of quality all your life, and know so well how a gentlewoman should live, though with more retiredness than this place will remit of, especially well, there are young women in the house that are single. I think, at the rate you have all along written to your daughters, your whole concern is to make them great and happy. You can't blame them for desiring to live as such, nor me for endeavoring to make them so which can't be done without charge, as you will find by the money charged for their dancing. And as much sense as I made them a summer suit they having sent home their white damask dresses and thus have nothing to wear, but the store of clothes sent the last fleet. This is what I could not avoid doing for them to have them look tolerable like other people. If you do not like have it, you must forbid it hereafter. I have at last heard of a French woman fit to teach your daughters French when I have her in the house, and your God sends yours up at the college. As you have ordered, I shall take him home to learn to if it'd be possible to make him learn anything, as were you to see him you would not believe he ever had one hour study bestowed upon him. I must confess, I am ashamed to think I have had eight years care of him to so little purpose. I am unwilling to speak much of his temper, lest you should think it prejudice in me. So between us both, the child will be reweaned, for unless he could be kept more severely than I can keep him he, I fear will never come too much, though I'm sure none upon Earth could be more desirous of doing anyone good than I have him and shall yet continue what I can do for him. But I think it's high time to put them to something whereby he may know how to get his living. What I have said relating to your daughters is what I really think as their father you ought to consider I having no further interest in what I say, than to be glad to see both you and them satisfied in their settled life. Well, knowing a married life is the best or worst of lives. And as I can go no further in their conduct. I hope you will take a fatherly care of them whose whole dependence is on you as to my own state unless it pleases God to bestow better health upon me, then I can properly expect, I can never hope to do anything equal to the charge of so crazy a body, which is made so much the worst by every little uneasiness, that it still increases my request of a small retired living to myself which I desired no other way than so inconsiderate a sum, as with no way tax your own easy living, nor the sum of your daughter's fortunes, for which reason I hope, you will consider what I have written, the granting of which will bring ease to yourself, and lessen my burden. If you deny it on any thought, that I shall break out into extravagant living, I will upon your release, give you such security as you shall like to keep you clear from further charge of me, I shall commit myself into the cares of the world, but live a more retired life and be content with what little improvement I could make, without living in such perpetual hurry and confusion, as must be where there is so much worldly care of which I have gone through so much that I am now really tired of it. Otherwise, I should not make this proposition to you of giving me a small competence to live out of your estate, after which I will freely and willingly relinquish all my right and title, whatever, and forever to be the remainder of your estate in general, and if you think me so unprofitable as servant as to not resign or what I have requested, I shall be finished with all interest holy to Providence of the good and mighty God, in whom I pray, I shall never be forsaken in this world, nor the world to come. And, if you missed out my extravagant lines, so as to think I claim any part of your estate, again, I will endeavor to get one of my brothers to be your security against my ever troubling you more. My real design and asking what I do is for no other end than to live the remainder of my days, somewhat freer from those perpetual cares and vexations I have hitherto lived in so that I am now quite worn out and unfit to take care of so great a charge in which I have hitherto done my best endeavor. But since it is not to your content, nor my ease of body or mind to have such a numerous family to take care for, and so little allowed for their disposal, that I find it impossible to do as you desire for their future, without any charge at all to you. Which, if ever you undertake it yourself, you will find it not to be done. I have undertaken alone, as much as I have done without being called on to do it, which is a little too hard to measure when one knows one has done as much as one can. All which makes me still the more earnest in the request I have here made as being fully resolved to lighten the burden I am now under for since I find such wrong constructions put on all I do, and at the same time, live as near as it is possible, and yet bear the blame of the greatest extravagance. These are things so hard to bear, that I'm very desirous to quit it all at once on a smaller reserve as you shall think, fit, and pray God prosper you with the rest and make you happier than you have ever been with me. And may the children that are between us prove Blessings to you, and whose care I commend them that are dear to me than life. Had I the wherewithal to keep them I would most willingly do it being very hard for a mother to forget her child, and yet it is as hard to live in the jeopardy I now do both of the body and soul. Otherwise, I should not write as I do, which perhaps you may dislike of, but I thought it much better to be free and plain and expressing my thoughts by letting you know I could no longer act in your business here where I can never hope to give contents there due. I think it better you leave them in trust. So, I hope when this comes to hand you will consider of it. And let me know your resolution. In the meantime, I shall take all the diligent care I can of all that is now in the care of your affectionate wife, Jane Parke.

So what I get from this letter is that this is a woman who was born into a certain class of society, married into a certain class of society, expected to be able to maintain the lifestyle of that class of society into which she married and had always lived and found herself pretty much abandoned. Whenever she spends the amount of money that she thinks is expected for something like buying new dresses for her daughters who are of marrying age, and should be out there going to these dances doing things like learning French getting this education, and it seems like in his letters to her daughters, that's what he expects as well. But then when she does that she's accused of overspending, spending too much money, she's not given enough money to actually manage the household the way that she sees that she's supposed to. And then she gets sick, very badly sick while he's gone. And he doesn't even write to let her know that he's gotten this really sweet as she says profitable gig in the Leeward Islands. And she's basically saying, you know what, I'm done. I'm out. You set your daughter's up with a dowry. They can marry somebody here who they want, I will no longer have to take care of them. I've done my best to get your godson who we know is his illegitimate son, Julius Caesar, set up and education. That's an interesting little paragraph as well, but that she says you, you wouldn't even know that he'd had any sort of education at all, she should get him set up in some sort of training for work, get the daughters married, and out of her care, she can get rid of the care of this massive property that she's been in charge of pretty much by herself. And all she wants is enough money to live a modest, simple lifestyle. For the few years that she sees that she has left on the planet. That's what she's asking for. So this to me reads like kind of a breakup divorce letter, but very specifically a 1705. One, because she cannot she can't make her own money, she can't really get a divorce, she needs for him to pay her something. And she knows she's not going to get the money that she needs to live the lifestyle that she wants, and she's basically come to terms with that. And she's saying, Give me as little money as you want, and I will retire on that. Now, I again, don't know these individuals personally, maybe this is her being a sort of a martyr, maybe she's saying something along the lines of oh, woe is me. I mean, she is like still able to get French tutors. Maybe she was spending money.

She's one of the biggest complaints she has about him not being able to take care of her is not sending enough wine. So I'm sure to certain impoverished people and people of a lower class. This can sound sort of like a whiny letter. But knowing what we know about Daniel Park being such a difficult, angry person, and it also feels a little bit to me a little bit like financial abuse in a time period when the man had complete control over finances to make her feel like anything she spends is exorbitant and terrible. Meanwhile, he's over in England spending whatever the heck money he wants on whatever the heck he wants to do, trying to get in see the Parliament, and then to write letters, scolding his wife for trying to spend some money to get his children who he clearly wants to marry well, to do what she needs to do to make that happen. He's scolding her for I am very much on Jane Ludwell Parke's side in this correspondence. And I think what she's asking for seems really perfectly reasonable considering the fact that he has had at least one very obvious affair that she's had to live with the consequences with, he's basically just up and left her twice, with very little communication. And then from what we know, later, when he goes to the Leeward Islands, he impregnates, another woman, and ends up getting killed by a mob. So, I'm going to go into that in a future letter, but it seems to me that she is fully justified in asking for a little bit of peace of mind from her husband, that she can just live a simple lifestyle for the rest of her life, and basically, even though she's still quite young, retire, and die in peace, hopefully, knowing that her daughters have married well. The people who are actively courting Frances and Lucy, are familiar names to people who study early colonial Virginia. It is William Byrd II, and John Custis, IV.

So for the next part of this series of Martha Washington's in-laws and their crazy lives, I am going to read some of the courtship, at least one of the courtship letters of William Byrd, and Lucy Parke. And I think that's something that you're going to enjoy. So, that's sort of the next chapter of the story. But so we know from this letter, that this is a fairly miserable marriage that Jane Ludwell is pretty much checking out of at this point, and the next step is to try to get these two girls married, while their father has this profitable position as Governor of the Leeward Islands. As to what happens to Jane Ludwell Parke, she mentions in the letter that the Leeward Islands are close enough that she could expect to see Daniel Parke on visits. And she's not wrong. There was a lot of ship traffic going back and forth between Virginia and the Leeward Islands he never visited. She ended up dying three years later, so pretty young. She dies at her brother's home in Green Spring, so she became essentially one of those widowed women who has to depend on family members for care, or whether or not she actually got the small allowance that she wanted from her husband to live out the rest of her life. I don't know, that would require a little bit more research, it seems that she's living with her brother, she sort of put herself in her brother's care instead of her husband's care at that point. So she passes away in 1708, which is two years after her daughter's marry William Byrd II and John Custis IV in 1706. So, the next couple episodes in this series will be some courtship letters with William Byrd II. I'll give you more background about William Byrd. I will give you more background about John Custis IV, I will give you more background about Lucy Parke and Frances Parke as well, who also seemed to be a little bit of firecrackers and characters. And this is all again setting up the scene of Williamsburg in the early 1700s. So, that's what's coming up next, interspersed, as I'm doing this series, I will have some other regular episodes that I've already recorded with guests. Just keep your ears peeled, and I will keep posting. Thank you very much for listening. I am as ever, your most obedient and humble servant. Thank you very much.