The Washingtons

by Flora Fraser

  Referring to public dinners that he hosted from early in the presidency every Thursday, Washington wrote to David Stuart in July, “it was thought best to confine my invitations, to official characters and strangers of distinction.” Some in Congress had bitter memories of what they considered profligate public dinners given by presidents of the Continental Congress. They called on the president to renounce the practice of giving dinners entirely. This “line of conduct,” however, Washington rejected, not least because, in England, King George III dined always in private. He told Stuart: “first, the novelty of it would, I well knew, be considered as an ostentatious imitation, or mimicry of Royalty—and secondly…so great a seclusion wd stop the avenues to useful information from the many, & make me dependent on the few in whose vortex I moved.”

  At Mount Vernon, Martha, in no sanguine mood, was preparing to follow her husband to New York. A colonel, who brought her letters and a package from Washington in early May, told the president that he was “much affected at some of her observations on your both being oblig’d to leave Mount-Vernon once more.” Washington’s nephew, Bob Lewis, who was to serve as a third secretary to his uncle, went with his aunt on the journey north later that month. He recorded the leave-taking at Mount Vernon: “The servants of the House, and a number of the field negroes made their appearance—to take leave of their mistress—numbers of these poor wretches seemed greatly agitated, much affected—My Aunt equally so.” Moll and Oney, dower slaves, went with Martha as her maids. Possibly some of the slaves lamented their departure more than that of Mrs. Washington. When the party stopped at Abingdon, the commotion was still greater, “the family in tears, the children a-bawling, everything in the most lamentable situation.” Martha was taking ten-year-old Nelly and Wash, six, with her to New York. The tears of their elder siblings, Bet and Pat, may have been born of frustration that they were not going instead.

  After Martha dined with James McHenry at Baltimore, the former aide-de-camp addressed the president: “I was sorry we were obliged to harass her with company (her stay being so very short) but our neighbors who visited her, would never have forgiven me if they had not been asked to supper.” At Philadelphia, Thomas Mifflin, now president of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, and the First City Troop escorted Martha into town. With Mrs. Robert Morris and that lady’s daughters, she made the last leg of the journey north. The president and Morris, now a senator, met their wives on the Jersey shore, and the party was rowed over to New York—“in the fine Barge you have seen so much said of in the papers,” Martha informed Fanny on June 8, “with the same oarsmen that carried the P. to New York.” She added, “dear little Washington seemed to be lost in a maze at the great parade that was made for us all the way we come.”

  “I have not had one half hour to myself since the day of my arrival,” Martha told Fanny on the same date. Her hair was “set and dressed” every day. She added, “I have put on white muslins for the summer—you would, I fear, think me a good deal in the fashion if you could but see me.” Fanny was to send her a “black lace apron and handkerchief [neckerchief]”—she thought they were “in one of my drawers in the chest of drawers in my chamber”–and some thread lace or joining net to be found “in one of the baskets on the shelf in my closet.” A postscript reads: “Give my love to Harriot [Washington, a niece of the president’s in residence at Mount Vernon] and send me the measure of her foot.” At Philadelphia, Martha had commissioned stays and shoes to be dispatched to Fanny and to Nelly Stuart and the girls at Abingdon. Foreign ministers, government officials, New York residents and their ladies might require entertainment. The needs of family in Virginia must also be accommodated.

  Washington’s Tuesday levée remained strictly for gentlemen and occupied only an hour, from three to four in the afternoon. He told David Stuart in June 1790: “These visits are optional—They are made without invitation. Gentlemen—often in great numbers—come and go—chat with each other—and act as they please. A Porter shews them into the room, and they retire from it when they please, and without ceremony. At their first entrance they salute me, and I them, and as many as I can talk to I do.” At “the visits every Friday afternoon,” though the president was always in attendance, Martha was now the hostess. These “visits,” he wrote, though similar in form to the Tuesday levée, were “of a more familiar and sociable kind.” Husbands and wives came and brought their sons and daughters to be presented too.

  This August Abigail Adams, wife of the vice president, noted: “The company are entertained with Lemonade & Ice Creams.” Tobias Lear or David Humphreys was on hand to escort each visiting lady to Mrs. Washington, to whom they curtsied. The visitors then seated themselves, and the president came up and addressed them individually in conversation. Thereafter they were free to circulate until their departure, which they prefaced with another curtsy to Martha.

  Just as the Tuesday assembly was known as the “levée,” that on the Friday became known as the “drawing room.” The proceedings took the form of an evening reception and served as an opportunity for ladies to display elaborate coiffures and elegant gowns. Though there was some mockery of Martha’s “company days” as “Queenly drawing rooms”—Queen Charlotte in England hosted such weekly entertainments in London—they never attracted such obloquy as would, in time, the Tuesday levée.

  To confound those who would have liked to criticize the president’s consort, there was no “Tincture of hauteur about her.” So Abigail Adams discovered on coming to town in June and encountering Martha for the first time. Mrs. Washington received her at Cherry Street, she wrote, “with great ease & politeness. She is plain in her dress, but that plainness is the best of every article.…Her Hair is white, her Teeth beautiful, her person rather short than other ways.…Her manners are modest and unassuming, dignified and feminine.” A further visit in July compounded Mrs. Adams’s respect. She described Martha as “one of those unassuming characters which creates Love & Esteem. A most becoming pleasantness sits upon her countenance & an unaffected deportment which renders her the object of veneration and Respect. With all these feelings and Sensations I found myself much more deeply impressed than I ever did before their Majesties of Britain.”

  Martha was no doubt easier in her mind in July. A lesion on Washington’s thigh the previous month had required surgery, and weeks of convalescence had followed. The Massachusetts Centinel was obsequious, on June 27, in its report: “His Excellency was attended by the principal physicians of New-York—and chains were extended across the streets, to prevent carriages passing before his door.” Following his recovery, the levées and drawing rooms resumed. Abigail Adams wrote, of one Friday evening in August, that Washington conversed with ladies “with a grace dignity ease, that leaves Royal George far behind him.”

  Vice President John Adams was unpopular with many, following the “monarchical” line he had taken when debating titles for the president. David Stuart told Washington, in July, that stories were circulating that the vice president never ventured out without six horses to his carriage. This Washington disputed: “One of the Gentlemen whose name is mentioned in your letter [John Adams] though high toned, has never, I believe, appeared with more than two horses in his Carriage.” The honors accorded the Adamses, however, when John had been minister at the Court of St. James’s, had marked the couple and made them believe more firmly in form than did others in government circles. Power, Adams had none, unless Washington should perish; with form he and Abigail must be content. Writing of the Friday drawing rooms, Abigail remarked to her sister: “My station is always at the right hand of Mrs W; through want of knowing what is right, I find it sometimes occupied.” Martha’s friend Mrs. Robert Morris is noted in some contemporary accounts as having occupied this prized “station.” Abigail wrote with satisfaction, “the President never fails of seeing that it is relinquished…they have now learnt to rise and give it me.”

  Nathanael Greene had died on his estate near Savannah, Georgia,
shortly after settling there with his family at the war’s end. The Washingtons afforded widowed Caty every courtesy when she visited New York this summer, to press for settlement of her husband’s Revolutionary War accounts. The president himself handed her to her carriage on “company days.” Only General Montgomery’s widow received similar dues. Caty was not especially grateful. She wrote, on August 7, to a friend, regarding Washington: “on levée Days No person presumes to sit in his presence—and he is treated in most respects as if he had a crown. He, however did me the honour to give me a kiss for which I made my best courtesy and thanked him.”

  In August 1789, following the death of his mother in Fredericksburg, Washington ordered for the household at Cherry Street “mourning Cockades & Ribbon.” He himself adopted a suit of imported black velvet for “full dress” occasions. Many in New York adopted mourning in turn—“black crape or ribbon on the arm or hat, for gentlemen, and a black ribbon and necklace for ladies.” Such was the mourning prescribed at the Court of St. James’s on the death of a member of the relevant royal family. Questions were inevitably raised about the legitimacy of recognizing Washington’s private grief in this public fashion.

  Washington made his own rules in certain respects. Though the period of mourning for his mother in due course ended, he continued to be conspicuous by his majestic, velvet-clad figure at levées and drawing rooms. When in “undress” at home, he wore what Walter Buchanan, a visiting godson, described as “pepper-and-salt coloured clothes.” Homespun, which he had worn for his inauguration, no longer featured in his wardrobe.

  On the education and upbringing of the Custis children in their care, both George and Martha continued to exercise thought. Martha’s first care, she told Fanny in June, had been to search out “a good school” for the children. She wrote indulgently of Nelly that summer: “she is a little wild creature and spends her time at the window looking at carriages etc passing by which is new to her and very common for children to do.” However, she noted, the following week her granddaughter was to begin “Musick.” Patsy Parke Custis’s spinet, exported from London thirty years before, was duly exchanged for a pianoforte, and “Entrance money” was paid to Alexander Reinagle, musician and composer, to teach Nelly. Wash, years later, in his unreliable memoirs, recalled: “The poor girl would play and cry, and cry and play, for long hours, under the immediate eye of her grandmother, a rigid disciplinarian in all things.” She became a fine performer. At Mrs. Graham’s in Maiden Lane, the school for young ladies, where she was inscribed in the late autumn, Nelly was a conscientious student. Artist William Dunlap, who had so reveled in life at headquarters at Rocky Hill, gave her lessons in “drawing etc.”

  Like father, like son. Eight-year-old Wash was, from the beginning, inattentive to his lessons. After an experiment with a tutor, he was enrolled at Patrick Murdoch’s school on Greenwich Street, behind Trinity Church. Among other pupils were the sons of Alexander Hamilton and Henry Knox. Martha declared herself, to Mercy Otis Warren in December, grateful for the “advantages of education” that New York offered her grandchildren. There were also metropolitan amusements, of which their siblings at Abingdon could only dream. Nelly and Wash went out daily in the carriage with Martha. The president attended them as often as he could. The children visited a waxworks museum and other curiosities of the town and visited “the play” with a chaperone or in a party with young friends.

  When George III in London showed himself at Drury Lane in London, he received ovations. The Gazette of the United States recorded Washington’s attendance at the Ford Theater in John Street on November 24: “The audience rose, and received him with the warmest acclamations.” The play he watched was The Toy, or A Trip to Hampton Court, and with him were Caty Greene, Abigail Adams, the Hamiltons, and Betsy Hamilton’s parents, General Philip Schuyler—now a senator—and Mrs. Schuyler.

  His patronage of the different theaters of New York afforded Washington a rare opportunity to relax. Henry Knox, secretary of war, his wife Lucy, Baron von Steuben, and Robert Morris were other regular guests. Martha, however, more sociable than her husband, felt very much the sacrifice of “private life.” Rather than quibble over what that constituted, Washington abjured, as Adams had advised, almost all “intercourse with society, but upon public Business.”

  “I lead a very dull life here,” Martha wrote to Fanny in October, “and know nothing that passes in the town. I never go to any publick place,—indeed I think I am more like a state prisoner than anything else, there is certain bounds set for me which I must not depart from.” Martha ended defiantly: “and as I cannot do as I like, I am obstinate and stay at home a great deal.” At the time she wrote, Washington was away, on a lengthy journey eastward to survey those states with which he was least familiar. During his absence, despite her words to Fanny, she was not wholly unsociable. She asked “Mrs Adams and family” to dinner and to accompany her thereafter to “the concert.” The Adamses inhabited the house on Richmond Hill that had briefly served the Washingtons as a home during the war. With them were living their daughter “Nabby”—another Abigail—and her husband, a former aide to Washington, and their children. In early November, Martha accepted an invitation to dine, in her turn, with the children at Richmond Hill. For company, she told Abigail, she would be “very happy with General Knox and the ladies mentioned or any others you please.”

  Before he left for the East, the president had proclaimed that Thursday, November 26, was to be a day of thanksgiving and prayer throughout the United States. Citizens might acknowledge divine favor and “the opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.” Though critics disputed the right of Congress to proclaim such a day, Washington was not deterred, noting in his diary for November: “Thursday 26th. Being the day appointed for a thanksgiving I went to St Pauls Chapel though it was most inclement and stormy—but few people at Church.” He could at least reflect that, in comparison with both their former enemy and their former ally, the United States was tranquil. England had suffered political crisis in October 1788 when King George III became mentally and physically incapacitated and a regency crisis developed. No regent had ultimately been appointed. This spring the king had been restored to health, but divisions within the royal family and political parties had been laid bare. Across the Channel, following the storming of the Bastille in July, a national assembly in Paris had been legitimized as a new French government. The king, Louis XVI, was now titular head of state only. The abolition of feudalism, among other measures, followed.

  Following her husband’s return to New York in the late autumn of 1789, Martha was more resigned to her lot, if we may trust her letter of December 26 to Mercy Otis Warren. Mrs. Warren had been an outspoken critic of the new Constitution, and some amanuensis at Cherry Street framed the emollient sentences that flowed from Martha’s pen: “The difficulties which presented themselves to view upon his first entering upon the Presidency seem to be in some measure surmounted.” However, the letter may have accurately reflected Martha’s state of mind. Had she been younger, she wrote, she would probably have enjoyed “the innocent gaieties of life” that her residence in New York afforded. She was not dissatisfied with her elevated situation: “no, God forbid, for everybody and everything conspire to make me as contented as possible in it.” She was, she wrote, determined to be cheerful and happy, having learned from experience that “the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our disposition.”

  There was no thought of leaving New York at Christmas. In late February 1790 the presidential household took possession of a house on Broadway that the Comte de Moustier had lately vacated. As minister plenipotentiary to the United States, he had proved a dilatory negotiator of matters outstanding from the war and of new commercial treaties in concert with John Jay, secretary of foreign affairs—from September 1789, secretary of state. Moustier had, however, been a lavish host at his house, arguably the most elegant in New York. It enjoyed sweeping vi
ews, from the balcony on the garden front, of the Hudson and of the western waterfront of Manhattan. Now, leaving a chargé d’affaires to act with Jay, he returned home to France.

  The owner of the house occupied, with his family, a portion of it. Congress took a year’s lease on the remainder. Reception rooms on either side of the hall were lavish in size and in decoration. The furniture that Moustier had left and that was to be sold was “well adapted to particular public rooms,” Washington noted, when he inspected the house on February 3. Washington, easier in office now, had less compunction about displays of grandeur where he judged them fitting. Congress had prevailed on him in September to accept an annual “Compensation” of $25,000. Adams received $5,000. Martha sent to Fanny in March at Mount Vernon to search out “a silver seal” that bore her late father John Dandridge’s arms, and take an impression of it. Her niece was to send this to New York as soon as possible, with a “white necklace” and “some small mother of pearl beads” that she would find in one of the drawers of her aunt’s “cabinet.”

  Before George and Martha left Cherry Street, however, they faced further criticism. In New York and elsewhere, Washington’s birthday in February 1790 was made the occasion of celebration. In America before the Revolution, King George III’s birthday, June 4, had been the most important day of celebration in the secular calendar; the queen’s birthday, May 19, the second. Was New York society now to glitter in February rather than on the glorious Fourth of July? Moreover, though all direct inquiries met a civil response from the president that he observed his birthday on February 22, some celebrated on the eleventh, as Rochambeau had before them. Levées, multiple birthdays, drawing rooms—Jefferson, who took up his duties as secretary of state in March, was later to growl that Washington had intended all along to introduce these trappings of the English court, with the aim, ultimately, of establishing a constitutional monarchy.