But the experienced eye of Lord Fairfax, and of other members of the Fairfax family, had discovered beneath the unattractive appearance of George Washington a sterling character.  Their neighbourhood, on the upper Potomac, was much less civilised and refined than Fredericksburg, and this young gentleman, so well instructed in right rules of behaviour and conduct, won their hearts and their confidence.  It had been necessary that he should leave school at the age of sixteen to earn a living.  At seventeen he was appointed by Lord Fairfax surveyor of his vast estates in Virginia, and for a time he resided with his lordship at Greenway Court.  There can be little doubt that it was partly through the training in manners which Washington gained from the old French maxims that he thus made headway against circumstances, and gained the friendship of the highly-educated and powerful Fairfax family.

It should be mentioned, however, that young Washington’s head was not in the least turned by this intimacy with the aristocracy.  He wrote letters to his former playmates in which no snobbish line is discoverable.  He writes to his “Dear friend Robin”:  “My place of residence is at present at his lordship’s where I might, was my heart disengaged, pass my time very pleasantly, as there’s a very agreeable young lady lives in the same house (Col.  George Fairfax’s wife’s sister).  But as that’s only adding fuel to fire, it makes me the more uneasy, for by often and unavoidably being in company with her revives my former passion for your Lowland beauty; whereas, was I to live more retired from young women, I might eleviate in some measure my sorrows by burying that chaste and troublesome passion in the grave of oblivion or etearnall forgetfulness, for as I am very well assured, that’s the only antidote or remedy that I ever shall be relieved by or only recess that can administer any cure or help to me, as I am well convinced, was I ever to attempt anything, I should only get a denial which would be only adding grief to uneasiness.”

The young lady at Greenway Court was Mary Gary, and the Lowland beauty was Betsy Fauntleroy, whose hand Washington twice sought, but who became the wife of the Hon. Thomas Adams.  While travelling on his surveys, often among the red men, the youth sometimes gives vent to his feelings in verse.

  “Oh Ye Gods why should my Poor resistless Heart
    Stand to oppose thy might and Power
  At last surrender to Cupid’s feather’d Dart
    And now lays bleeding every Hour
  For her that’s Pityless of my grief and Woes,
    And will not on me Pity take. 
  I’ll sleep among my most inveterate Foes
    And with gladness never wish to wake,
  In deluding sleepings let my Eyelids close
    That in an enraptured dream I may
  In a rapt lulling sleep and gentle repose
    Possess those joys denied by Day.”