Washington

by Ron Chernow

  In copious diary entries, written with the satirical eye of a gadfly, Maclay left vivid impressions of President Washington in social situations during his first term. An eager purveyor of gossip, Maclay was scarcely objective, taking a mordant, often jaundiced, view of people. Sometimes his tattle was downright mean-spirited, as when Robert Morris’s wife told him of a presidential dinner at which she bit into a dessert only to find it full of rancid cream. When informed of it, the president “changed his plate immediately. But, she added with a titter, Mrs. Washington ate a whole heap of it.”31 His observations could be laced with patent envy: “No Virginian can talk on any subject but the perfections of Gen[era]l Washington.”32

  Nonetheless, Maclay left some priceless glimpses into the social world of George and Martha Washington, whom he satirized as boors and bumpkins, overshadowed by more elegant couples they were trying to impress. He reported Washington’s misery in social settings, picking up little fidgety habits that showed him enduring these occasions rather than enjoying them. He did not realize how much Washington hated dealing with so many strangers. In trying to impart dignity to presidential protocol, Washington sometimes became frozen in this studied role, eliminating the levity and conversational flow that enlivened at least some dinners at Mount Vernon or with his military family during the war.

  Every other Thursday the Washingtons held an official dinner at four P.M. The president, seeking geographic diversity, often tried to balance northern and southern legislators on his guest list. If guests were even five minutes late by the hall clock, they found the president and his company already seated. Washington would then explain curtly that the cook was governed by the clock and not by the company. In his diary, Maclay described a dinner on August 27, 1789, in which George and Martha Washington sat in the middle of the table, facing each other, while Tobias Lear and Robert Lewis sat on either end. John Adams, John Jay, and George Clinton were among the assembled guests. Maclay described a table bursting with a rich assortment of dishes—roasted fish, boiled meat, bacon, and poultry for the main course, followed by ice cream, jellies, pies, puddings, and melons for dessert. Washington usually downed a pint of beer and two or three glasses of wine, and his demeanor grew livelier once he had consumed them.

  Maclay painted a deadly portrait of Washington at one dinner as a veteran bore, devoid of conversation except platitudes, and very jittery: “The president kept a fork in his hand when the cloth was taken away—I thought for the purpose of picking nuts. He ate no nuts, but played with the fork, striking on the edge of the table with it.”33 Washington could neither relax nor converse spontaneously, leading Maclay to conclude that “it was the most solemn dinner ever I ate at . . . The ladies sat a good while and the bottles passed about, but there was a dead silence almost.”34

  On March 4, 1790, Maclay wrote an account of another stifling dinner and again portrayed a consistently somber Washington: “The president seemed to bear in his countenance a settled aspect of melancholy. No cheering ray of convivial sunshine broke thro[ugh] the cloudy gloom of settled seriousness. At every interval of eating or drinking, he played on the table with a fork or knife, like a drumstick.”35 Sitting at Washington’s right side, John Adams fared no better at the hands of Maclay, who derided the vice president as “mantling his visage with the most unmeaning simper that ever dimpled the face of folly.”36 Senator Samuel Johnston of North Carolina, who attended the same dinner, was entranced by it: “I have just left the president’s, where I had the pleasure of dining with almost every member of the Senate. We had some excellent champagne and after it, I had the honor of drinking coffee with his lady, a most amiable woman. If I live much longer, I believe that I shall at last be reconciled to the company of old women for her sake.”37

  Two months later, finding Washington in better spirits, Maclay provided a possible clue to the awkward silences of earlier gatherings: “Went to dine with the president, agreeable to invitation. He seemed more in good humor than ever I saw him, tho[ugh] he was so deaf that I believe he heard little of the conversation.”38 That Washington’s hearing had deteriorated—not surprising after eight years of roaring cannon—may explain the gruesome conversational gaps that Maclay so freely mocked. Deafness can be an isolating experience, especially for a president. People would naturally have waited for him to respond to statements before proceeding with the conversation; to conceal his deafness, a self-conscious Washington may well have feigned hearing what they said and sat there in silence. It was yet another sign of the aging process that had transformed the once dashing, athletic Washington.

  On January 20, 1791, Maclay, a lame duck senator, attended a last dinner with the president. Though Maclay had developed into a sharp political opponent, the president still treated him with instinctive decorum, not the royal hauteur of his imaginings. Maclay took a final measure of the man, and his description shows how dramatically time had altered Washington: “Let me take a review of him as he really is. In stature about six feet, with an unexceptionable make, but lax appearance. His frame would seem to want filling up. His motions rather slow than lively, tho[ugh] he showed no signs of having suffered either by gout or rheumatism. His complexion pale, nay, almost cadaverous. His voice hollow and indistinct owing, as I believe, to artificial teeth before in his upper jaw.”39

  Washington had clearly undergone a startling change. Described as “lusty” by Robert Hunter in 1785, he was now slow and shuffling. Instead of being ruddy with buoyant health, he was gaunt and “cadaverous.” Where earlier observers had commented on his well-padded muscles, Washington’s frame now wanted “filling up.” And the voice was again described as thin and whispery. An unaccustomed stiffness had overtaken his movements, he knew. When one Virginian criticized his clumsy bows at receptions, he said they were “the best I was master of” and remarked plaintively to David Stuart, “Would it not have been better to have thrown the veil of charity over them, ascribing their stiffness to the effects of age . . . than to pride and dignity of office, which, God knows, has no charms for me?”40

  According to Jefferson, Washington told him that “nobody disliked more the ceremonies of his office and he had not the least taste or gratification in the execution of its function; that he was happy at home alone.”41 Suffering from the stultifying etiquette imposed by his office, he later railed against those who had prescribed such formality. He was especially upset that, having tried to strike a balance between pomp and austerity, he had been roundly criticized and misunderstood. As Jefferson wrote after a 1793 conversation, Washington “expressed the extreme wretchedness of his existence while in office and went lengthily into the late attacks on him for levees etc., and explained to me how he had been led into them by the persons he consulted at New York and that, if he could but know what the sense of the public was, he would most cheerfully conform to it.”42

  Washington found it hard to live frugally, and the chief steward he hired to supervise the kitchen made economy that much more difficult. Sam Fraunces had formerly owned the tavern at which Washington had enacted his lachrymose farewell to his officers at the war’s end.43 In the mid-1780s Fraunces had run into serious debt and even appealed to Washington for financial aid. By the time Washington hired him to manage his household, Fraunces had opened another tavern on Cortlandt Street.

  A shrewd operator with a flamboyant manner, Fraunces seemed ubiquitous at Washington’s dinner parties, “resplendently dressed in wig and small-clothes,” according to one historian.44 A skillful cook, he knew how to dress a table, supervise waiters, prepare desserts, and bring forth a sumptuous meal. Somewhat to Washington’s chagrin, Fraunces preened himself on the “bountiful and elegant” dinners he presented.45 Tobias Lear stared agog at the heaps of lobster, oysters, and other dishes, saying Fraunces “tossed up such a number of fine dishes that we are distracted in our choice when we sit down to table and obliged to hold a long consultation upon the subject, before we can determine what to attack.”46 In time Washington began to repri
mand his steward for unconscionable extravagance. However fond he was of lavish living, he minded his pennies and personally reviewed household bills.

  Unfortunately, the feisty Fraunces wasn’t one to be deterred, not even by a sitting president. “Well he may discharge me,” Frances declared. “He may kill me if he will, but while he is President of the United States and I have the honor to be his steward, his establishment shall be supplied with the very best of everything that the whole country can afford.”47 Washington’s attempts to rein in Fraunces led to a running battle that raged until Fraunces quit in February 1790. To show there were no hard feelings, Washington bestowed on him a last bonus for his tavern.

  Even before Washington occupied 3 Cherry Street, he had grumbled about the cost of renovating it. The handsome three-story building had a high stoop, balusters along the roof, and seven fireplaces inside. It stood on a boisterous thorough-fare crawling with traffic. The day before Washington arrived, Sally Robinson, niece of owner Samuel Osgood, inspected the premises and found “every room furnished in the most elegant manner,” she told a friend. “The best of furniture in every room and the greatest quantity of plate and china I ever saw. The whole of the first and second stories [are] papered and the floors covered with the richest kinds of Turkey and Wilton carpets . . . There is scarcely anything talked about now but General Washington and the Palace.”48 For all the fuss made over the house, it did not work well for the Washingtons. It had to house thirty people and was sufficiently cramped that three secretaries—Humphreys, Nelson, and Lewis—slept in a single room on the third floor. Humphreys, then writing a play, reportedly strode the hall after dark in his nightshirt, loudly declaiming verse from the epilogue. The house was located at an inconvenient spot near the East River, distant from the tony seats of government and society situated on Broadway.

  The impresario of entertaining, Washington took personal charge of selecting the ornaments that defined the grandeur of his dining room. Far from shunting off decorating on his wife or subordinates, he trusted his detailed knowledge of the decorative arts. To create a tea service, he melted down some old silver and had the finished products engraved with his griffin crest. When he asked Gouverneur Morris, then resident in Europe, to purchase wine coolers for dinners, he showed a characteristic concern with orderly appearance. To keep the wine cool, the bottles would be placed in silver wire baskets partly immersed in ice. Washington issued precise instructions for their manufacture so that “whether full or empty, the bottles will always stand upright and never be at variance with each other.”49 With an educated eye for furnishings that might lend brilliance to state dinners, he also had Morris ship him decorative mirrors for the tabletop, so that silverware and candlesticks would emit shimmering reflections. As if part of his job were refining American taste, Washington oversaw the purchase of many objets d’art, including porcelain figures, silver spoons, and a china set embellished with the eagle of the Society of the Cincinnati.

  No small part of the splendor of Washington’s establishment was his household contingent of twenty servants, seven of them slaves. All the servants, white and black, were buffed to a high gloss. A few slaves were bedecked in the same costumes as the white servants: a white livery with red trim on the cuffs and collars. Cocked hats, gloves, and well-polished shoes completed the glossy outfit. To posterity, it seems shocking that Washington imported slaves into the presidential mansion, but Jefferson would bring a dozen slaves from Monticello to the White House; the tradition of having slaves in the presidential household unfortunately lasted until the death in 1850 of Zachary Taylor, the last of the slaveholding presidents.

  Washington extended the grandeur of his presidency to morning horseback rides. He kept a dozen horses in New York and made a daily a tour of his stables. Aware of how impressive he looked atop a white mount, he once instructed a friend to buy him a horse, specifying that he “would prefer a perfect white.”50 In the early days of his presidency, he rode a pair of spotless white parade horses, Prescott and Jackson. Perhaps he had a subliminal memory of Lord Botetourt riding to the palace in colonial Williamsburg behind a coach with shining white horses. So taken was Washington with his unblemished chargers that he had grooms rub them with white paste at night, bundle them in cloths, then bed them down on fresh straw. In the morning the hardened white paste gleamed, its paleness accentuated by black polish applied to the horses’ hooves. For command performances, the animals’ mouths were rinsed and their teeth scrubbed. In another fancy touch, Washington set his saddles in leopard skins edged with gold braiding.

  On a fine spring day New York residents might glimpse the president and first lady out for a ride in their ornate, varnished coach, drawn by six well-matched bay horses. With four postilions attired in leather breeches and glazed leather hats, the coach made an exquisite impression as it rolled through the crowded streets. “When he travels,” a British diplomat later observed, “it is in a very kingly style.”51 Sometimes the Washingtons stared out the window and at other times drew the Venetian blinds or black leather curtains for privacy. In 1790 Washington adorned the coach with allegorical scenes of the four seasons, executed on the outside panels, affixing his personal crest to four small quarter panels.

  Occasionally in the early afternoon, Washington descended from Mount Olympus and ambled through the city streets, where he greeted citizens in a more egalitarian manner. On one such promenade, he encountered in a shop six-year-old Washington Irving, attended by a Scottish maid. “Please your honor,” said the maid, pushing the little boy forward, “here’s a bairn [child] was named after you.”52 Washington patted the head of the little boy fated to be his future biographer. That Washington walked the streets and made himself accessible to ordinary people carried important political overtones. As David Stuart reported from Virginia, “It has given me much pleasure to hear every part of your conduct spoke[n] of with high approbation, and particularly your dispensing with ceremony occasionally and walking the streets, while [John] Adams is never seen but in his carriage and six.”53

  Another place Washington encountered New Yorkers was at his presidential pew at St. Paul’s Chapel, where he often appeared on Sunday mornings. He devoted Sunday afternoons to writing lengthy communications to George Augustine Washington about Mount Vernon matters, ranging from crop rotation to mule breeding. On Sunday evenings he read aloud sermons or passages from Scriptures and continued to say grace at meals. An integral component of his religiosity was his charitable largesse to the indigent and others in need. When destitute veterans flocked to his door, Washington frequently dispensed alms to them. He gave scores of charitable contributions, preferring anonymity, though he sometimes made exceptions on public holidays to set an example for the citizenry. After he designated Thursday, November 26, 1789, as the first Thanksgiving Day, for example, he contributed beer and food to those jailed for debt.

  Washington lost no time becoming a regular visitor to the John Street Theater. A simple red wooden building, large and bare as a barn, it had its own presidential box, emblazoned with the arms of the United States. When the theater manager told Washington that he usually started plays at seven P.M. but would gladly delay them until his arrival, Washington set him straight, saying he would always be punctual and that the audience would never have to wait. Washington invariably appeared at seven on the dot. The instant he did, the orchestra struck up “The President’s March,” later known as “Hail, Columbia,” and the audience erupted with robust cheers. Since Washington’s presence was typically announced in advance, the performances usually drew veterans who doffed their caps and waved up to him.

  At the time theatergoing was still considered a bit racy. When Washington invited John and Sarah Jay to join him in his box, he said he would understand if they declined from “any reluctance to visiting the theater.”54 The Jays accepted with pleasure. That George Washington was a habitué of risqué plays indicates he was hardly a prude. The first play he saw, on May 11, 1789, was his all-time sa
tirical favorite, William Sheridan’s The School for Scandal. His box was large enough to accommodate several guests, and he invited along Senator Maclay. Even the curmudgeonly Maclay was thrilled by the experience and regretted not having brought his children: “Long might one of them [have] live[d] to boast of their having been seated in the same box with the first character in the world.”55 That box was often packed with government dignitaries and leading personalities. On the evening of November 24, 1789, the Washingtons were joined by Abigail Adams, Alexander and Elizabeth Hamilton, Philip Schuyler, and Catharine “Caty” Greene, the general’s widow. Such evenings constituted a perfect form of entertainment for the man who acted the presidency better than anybody else.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  The Cares of Office

  FOR A MAN OF SUCH PRODIGIOUS STRENGTH, Washington had been pestered by recurrent medical problems, and his presidency proved no exception. He had weathered more than eight years of war partly because as a planter he was accustomed to a rugged outdoor life. As president, he found it hard to adapt to a sedentary job in an urban setting, which may have weakened his health. In mid-June 1789 he ran a fever as a fast-growing tumor appeared on his left thigh. The area grew so tender and inflamed that it became excruciating for him to sit. Four years earlier Washington had watched his Mount Vernon overseer, John Alton, “reduced to a mere skeleton” from a fatal abscess on his thigh, and he must have been alarmed when he developed a comparable symptom.1