Fitzhugh Lee, General Lee

[26] emerged from his Alma Mater. They had known each other when she was a child at Arlington and he a young boy in Alexandria, some eight miles away. It is said she met him to admire when he came back to Alexandria on furlough from the Military Academy. It was the first time any one in that vicinity had ever seen him in his cadet uniform. He was handsomer than ever; straight, erect, symmetrical in form, with a finely shaped head on a pair of broad shoulders. He was then twenty years old and a fine specimen of a West Point cadet on leave of absence. The impressions produced were of an enduring nature, and the officer, upon graduation, followed up the advantage gained by the attractive cadet.

G. W. P. Custis was the adopted son of Washington and the grandson of Mrs. Washington. Lee was therefore to marry a great granddaughter of Mrs. Washington, and was a fortunate man, not so much, perhaps, from these ties, but because of the great qualities of head and heart possessed by Mary Custis, his affianced bride. It is difficult to say whether she was more lovely on that memorable June evening when the Rev. Mr. Keith asked her, “Wilt thou have this man to be thy wedded husband?” or after many years had passed, and she was seated in her large armchair in Richmond, almost unable to move from chronic rheumatism, but busily engaged in knitting socks for sockless Southern soldiers. The public notice of the marriage was short:

Married, June 30, 1831, at Arlington House, by the Rev. Mr. Keith, Lieutenant Robert E. Lee, of the United States Corps of Engineers, to Miss Mary A. R. Custis, only daughter of G. W. P. Custis, Esq.

The modesty of the newly married couple was spared the modern newspaper notice of what the bride wore at her wedding and what she had packed in her trunks, and her presents and trousseau are in happy oblivion. Beautiful old Arlington was in all her glory that night. The stately mansion never held a happier assemblage. “Its broad portico and widespread ”