The notion of George Washington hero-worshipping someone may seem odd, but this tale tells of just that instance. The novel Paul and Virginia, footnoted, by Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, was published in 1787. The title characters, very good friends since birth who fall in love, die when they are shipwrecked. It is mentioned in several children's books of the Victorian era, apparently required reading in French classes of the time.George Washington, as every schoolboy knows, was the son of Augustine Washington, of Westmoreland County, Virginia. Lawrence Washington, George's half-brother, and fifteen years his senior, was, while George was yet a schoolboy, an officer of Virginia troops fighting for the English flag against the "Dons," at Carthagena and on the Spanish Main. Colonel William Fairfax, of Belvoir, a great man in the old Virginia days, was the county lieutenant, member of the Governor's Council, and the resident manager of the vast Virginian estates of his cousin Thomas, Lord Fairfax. Belvoir lay among the Potomac hills in that beautiful stretch of country that many readers of St. Nicholas have doubtless seen from the great white dome of the Capitol. After his father's death, Lawrence Washington built a home, which he called Mount Vernon, upon his inherited estate of 7000 acres on the Potomac, and he married Annie Fairfax, the daughter of the great man of Bclvoir.
So to that beautiful home, his school days over, came young George Washington, a bright boy of fourteen. Madame Lawrence Washington's brothers and sisters at Belvoir were, most of them, of a companionable age for young George, and he soon grew intimate and familiar at the Fairfax mansion. The abundance of youthful society made Belvoir very attractive to a lad of Washington's tastes, surroundings, and disposition.
The sports of the open air and the pleasant indoor amusements led to a friendship that colored all of Washington's life. The elder of the two Fairfax lads, George William Fairfax, early won the admiration of Washington, and his influence is shown in a curious way, by the fact that, just as Washington grew into manhood, he changed his signature and fashioned it anew upon the model of George Fairfax's autograph.
When Washington was seventeen years of age he wrote his name thus:
George William Fairfax's signature, still to be seen on a score of documents at Fairfax Court House, is as follows:
After Washington had been acquainted with Mr Fairfax for some years, and had corresponded with him, he changed his autograph to this:
The second of the Fairfax boys bore the name of Thomas. This lad young Washington never saw, but it was this absent Thomas who exerted the strongest influence over young George Washington's developing youth and excited a spirit of manliness and emulation that none of his actual associates could inspire. Before Washington became intimate at Belvoir, young Thomas Fairfax, then scarcely more than a child, had been made a midshipman in the "King's Navee," and had sailed away to foreign seas.But, though away from Belvoir, he was by no means forgotten in the loving family circle into which George Washington had been admitted. Indeed, the absent lad Thomas Fairfax was the hero of that Virginian home. Around his name there hung the glamour of romance, and to the home-folk the boy's doings and experiences were of far more importance than were the events of which they formed a part.
In March, 1744, all Europe became involved in the strife over the claims of Maria Theresa, the great Archduchess of Austria: and France declared war against England. In the fall of 1744, a British squadron, comprising two ships-of-war of sixty guns and one of twenty guns, under the flag of Commodore Barnet, sailed from Portsmouth, England, with orders to cruise against the French in the East Indian seas; and on one of these—the ship-of-war Harwick, Captain Cartaret commanding—sailed young Thomas Fairfax, Midshipman.
The fleet was to cruise in the Bay of Bengal, mainly between Ceylon and Madras; but no sooner had it appeared in East Indian waters, than Monsieur Labourdonnais, commandant of the Isles of France and Bourbon,* and an adventurous and daring sailor, hastened to oppose their maneuvers. Embarking a crew of three thousand untried men, of whom seven hundred were negroes, on nine leaky vessels, he sailed to the attack; but with an unseaworthy fleet, and an equally unscauorthy crew, the ocean defeated him even before he met the enemy. One of his ships was wrecked on the coast of Madagascar, and he was obliged to put back for repairs. So not until 1746 did the hostile squadrons meet. They joined then in what the chronicles of the day call "a distant and almost bloodless action," in which "neither party could lay claim to any decided advantage." But that "almost bloodless action," of which the histories of India scarcely make mention, had its effect, in one way, upon the future of what is now a nation of fifty millions of people. For on the deck of the Harwick, His Britannic Majesty's ship-of-war, fell the young Virginian, Thomas Fairfax, the brave boy midshipman.
With the first winds of winter came the sad news to Belvoir; and young George Washington. then about fifteen, joined in the deep but stately grief of the stricken family, and, under the inspiration of the report of courageous deeds, woke to a new ambition that never died.
Funeral rites were performed at Belvoir for the young hero who had been buried at sea. His father inscribed upon the marble that commemorated his death that quaint epitaph:—
A manly boy is quick to listen and ready to respond to the story of manliness in others. To young George Washington the dirges for the dead midshipman at Belvoir came rather as a note of triumph than a song of sorrow, for they told of a heroic death—the epic of a boy, scarce older than himself, who had fallen under the enemies' guns on far-off eastern seas, where the flag of his ship. unstruck, waved at the peak above his ocean funeral.To the Memory of Who died fighting in his Country 's cause on board the harwick Ship of War in an engagement with Monsieur Bourdenaye, commander of a French Squadron on the Indian Coast
THOMAS FAIRFAX ESQUIREthe 26th of June 1746, Beloved by his commander, Captain Carteret, and highly favored by his friend Commodore Barnet for his politeness of manners. He was a comely personage, of undoubted bravery, skilled in the theory of the profession; excelled by a few as a Naval Draughtsman, gave early promises, by a pregnant genius and diligent application, of a consummate officer for the service of his country. But the Wisdom of Heaven is inscrutable: human life is ever in the hands of its author; and while the good and brave are always ready for death, resignation becomes their surviving friends. Convinced of this duty yet subdued by the sentiments of a tender parent this tablet was inscribed and dedicated by his sorrowing father.
and in the 21st year of his age,------------- May, Britain, all thy sons like him behave—
May all be virtuous and like him be brave.
Thy fiercest foes undaunted be withstood,
And perished fighting for his country's good.
Bold, ambitious, accustomed to see no boy excel him, full of high sentiments of honor, loyalty, and duty—who can doubt what pulses thrilled the heart of Washington, when this example was brought face to face with him every hour of his life? Who can fail to see in these events the motive which led him to seek, like Fairfax, a midshipman's commission? You all know the story: how a vessel waited in the Potomac; how Washington's luggage was sent on board; how his mother, agonized lest her son, too, should die among strangers on far-off seas, intervened; and how, at her entreaties, he abandoned a career that seemed to liim full of promise and of glory,—all these are ramiliar themes. He laid his ambition at his mother's feet, and turned his steps to the then quiet paths that lay about his home. And soon those paths extended into scenes of peril and adventure that gave him fame even before he reached the age at which Thomas Fairfax fell. But the influence of the midshipman's example did not stop there. And the heights of Boston and the field of Yorktown witnessed in after years the disf the martial spirit that was quickened into memory of Thomas Fairfax and of his death in that unchronicled fight, when the Virginia boy builded his life into the foundations of the Empire of India.
* Now known as Mauritius, and famous in literature as the scene of the story of Paul and Virginia.
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