Martha Washington (2 page)

Dismayed as she was at this fresh upheaval, she forged ahead with her preparations while awaiting the return of the coach and horses from New York. Every day was filled with arrangements great and small. On May 3, Washington's secretary wrote to George Augustine Washington, his favorite nephew, at Mount Vernon. He urged the younger Washington to hurry Mrs. Washington along, “for we are extremely desirous of seeing her here.” She ignored the suggestion until she was ready to go. Whole wardrobes of clothing for herself, her husband, and the two grandchildren who would accompany her to New York, as well as a multitude of household items necessary for the family's comfort and pleasure in a rented house—a month hardly seemed long enough to organize such a move.

Decisions had to be mulled over with George Augustine and his wife, Martha's own favorite niece, Fanny Bassett Washington. The young couple would be in charge at Mount Vernon during the presidency. Long-term visitors had to be sorted out. A nephew was summoned from New Kent County to retrieve his teenage sister, who had been staying with the Washingtons for the past nine months. Another nephew and his new bride, making a round of extended family visits, were abandoned with kisses and regrets. An orphaned niece, unruly and troublesome, was left under Fanny Washington's kind supervision.

Travel was always uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous. What with coach breakdowns, runaway horses, overturned ferries, collapsing bridges, flooded fords, unmarked or even undetectable roads, and squalid inns (when there were any at all), ladies did not travel alone. Mundane arrangements and any and all disasters were the purview of their male escorts. At Washington's invitation, his nephew Robert Lewis arrived on May 14, 1789, to accompany Martha on the trip to the capital, where he would serve as one of the president's aides.

The next youngest of a large brood, son of George's widowed only sister, Bob Lewis was a fresh-faced young man of nineteen, something of a mama's boy who loved singing, dancing, and kissing “all the girls.” Taking his first important responsibility very seriously, he was upset when he found that “everything appeared to be in confusion” at Mount Vernon. To his chagrin, his aunt refused to leave until the masses of boxes and trunks had been packed and repacked to her satisfaction, chests and closets ransacked one more time, lost items unearthed, and last minute matters talked over with George Augustine and Fanny.

Gentle, kind, and feminine as she genuinely was, Martha Washington was also strong-willed and determined; once Bob understood that his aunt would make the important decisions on their trip, he had an easier time of it. Like everyone, he succumbed to her matchless charm and passed a happy couple of days walking about and “viewing all the curiosities that was to be seen” while she completed her tasks.

Finally, after dinner in the early afternoon and a last round of family tears and farewells, they were ready to leave Mount Vernon on Monday, May 16. The house servants and a number of the field hands came up “to take leave of their mistress—numbers of these poor wretches seemed much affected—My aunt equally so.” The slaves were also saying good-bye to their relatives and friends who accompanied Martha to New York.

At three that afternoon, she and the Washingtons' adopted children—her youngest grandchildren, Nelly and Wash Custis (ten and eight years old, respectively)—climbed into the family coach, rolled down the serpentine drive, turned right on the road to Alexandria, and almost immediately lost sight of Mount Vernon among the trees. Bob Lewis rode along on horseback, as did the male servants. Assorted friends and cousins also rode with the travelers as far as Maryland. A small chariot carried Martha's maids, Molly and Oney; a high-piled baggage wagon jolted along behind. It was quite a cavalcade.

The crane-necked coach was still impressive despite its age. Twelve years before, early in the Revolution, the state of Pennsylvania had presented the London-built carriage as a gift to Martha. Painted a pleasant stone color with scenes of the four seasons on its panels, the coach was lined with green superfine cloth and boasted green silk cushions; its gilt-and-green appointments appeared rather grand even when coated thickly with road dust. Best of all, highway travel was somewhat less bone jarring than in most vehicles, thanks to the finest German steel springs.

The first leg of the trip was very short—only twelve miles to Abingdon, a plantation on the Potomac north of Alexandria, where they would spend the next two nights with Nelly Calvert Custis Stuart and her second husband. Nelly was the children's mother: their father, Jack Custis, had been Martha's son by a youthful first marriage. Even after her son's death seven and a half years earlier and Nelly's remarriage, Martha continued to think of her as a daughter-in-law. Living through sixteen years of family joys and sorrows together, the two women loved each other dearly. Nelly Stuart had agreed to let little Nelly and Wash go to New York with their grandmother, while their two older sisters and three little half-sisters would remain with her at Abingdon.

“All was silent melancholy” on the second evening as the close-knit family anticipated the long parting to come. At five the following morning, after the horses were hitched up and baggage loaded, “the dreaded hour appeared—[a] pathetic and affecting . . . scene.” As the tenderhearted Bob described their departure: “We at length got off by which I was greatly relieved—leaving the family in tears—the children a bawling—and everything in a most lamentable situation.”

About nine that morning, they arrived at Mason's ferry, which crossed the Potomac between northern Virginia and Georgetown, Maryland, a bustling little tobacco port built on a river bluff. The men unhitched the Mount Vernon team and sent them home with the coachman; fresh horses waited on the opposite shore. Despite the popularity of boat trips among the Virginia gentry, Martha never cared for being on the water. But travelers couldn't be choosers: ferry crossings were a given on any journey in early America.

Now she was alarmed to see the broad river running very high with a strong spring current. Things went as badly as she feared. The current drove the boat a considerable distance downriver, no matter how hard the boatmen struggled. When they finally landed, the shaken travelers were met by Colonel Gabriel Van Horne and his hostlers with a new team. Relying as usual on Revolutionary comrades, George Washington had arranged with the former militia commander to provide horses and lodgings for Martha's journey through the “unimproved” country from Georgetown to Philadelphia. Van Horne ran a stagecoach line that carried passengers and mail between Philadelphia and Alexandria; he also rented horses and carriages. Upset by the rough crossing, Martha decided not to wait for the coach. Instead she took the children and walked straight uphill on Water Street to get their breakfast at Georgetown's best hostelry, Suter's Tavern. The story-and-a-half frame structure with its large inn yard for coaches, wagons, and horses was located at the corner of Water and Bridge, the town's main street. Meanwhile, down at the riverside, the new horses balked at the unfamiliar harness. The coachman lashed them severely, but they reared, bucked, and broke the harness; repairing it and fetching a better-trained team caused a two-hour delay.

When they pushed on, Van Horne rode along with them, as he had promised Washington, on what he called “the most dangerous and difficult part of the journey” through Maryland, Delaware, and southern Pennsylvania. Their crossing of the Anacostia was uneventful, as was a brief stop at the small port town of Bladensburg for wine and cold cuts. At four that afternoon, they reached the turnoff to Thomas and Anne Ridgely Snowden's plantation. Major Snowden was another Revolutionary soldier, a wealthy man whose Patuxent River ironworks had supplied munitions to the patriot forces.

The muddy road was narrow, hemmed in by the surrounding woods—so narrow, in fact, that the coach got wedged between two trees, shuddering to an abrupt halt before it could be shoved free. But a delightful sight awaited them: Montpelier was an elegant red-brick Georgian mansion with tall chimneys and side wings, set off by a formal boxwood garden. The Snowdens welcomed them with open arms and alarming volubility, chattering like parrots in their happiness at entertaining the famous Mrs. Washington.

Despite her hosts' pleas and a strong threat of rain the next morning, they set off again, accompanied by Snowden for ten or twelve miles to show them a shortcut and to make sure that they didn't stray from the road. According to their fond grandmama, “the children were very well and chearfull all the way.” Poor Nelly complained only “a very little” of coach sickness as the coach bounded and jolted, lurched, shook, and shuddered on the terrible road.

From Bladensburg to Elk Ridge near Baltimore, much of their route passed through the wilderness—the native forest that eighteenth-century travelers found so monotonous and dispiriting, a desolate landscape crying for the touch of a human hand. Never mind the magnificent oaks, ashes, loblolly pines, flowering redbuds, white-blossomed dogwoods, blooming cascades of coral bells, tall columbines, and blue flag iris of springtime Maryland. Bob waxed lyrical when he finally spied a settlement with houses, plowed fields, fences, and orchards—
here
was beauty!

Twelve miles south of Baltimore, they stopped at Spurrier's Tavern. As the president's wife, Martha Washington would be under constant observation in these more heavily settled regions. Public spectacle was vital to the new nation's self-definition, and she instinctively understood the symbolic importance of her appearance—elegant but not opulent, simple in style, unadorned with ostrich plumes or gaudy jewels. Warned that she would be met by a group of Baltimore gentlemen outside the city, she “shifted herself”—that is, changed clothes—before continuing on.

Riding in a coach on unpaved roads was dirty work. Even with the curtains drawn, clouds of dust billowed in through the windows, settling on her traveling clothes until everything looked uniformly tan. Servants at Spurrier's would have rushed to bring hot water for the ewer and basin in the room set aside for her. She needed to wash and change out of her grimy dress, its every pleat clogged with dirt. Oney or Molly would have brushed the dust from her hair, combing it straight back from her forehead in her usual style, rebraiding the back, and tucking the tail in neatly. The maids would have opened a trunk, shaken out the wrinkles from a modish gown, and helped their mistress put it on. When Martha emerged looking considerably cleaner and more presentable, the coach and horses were ready and waiting at the door.

One more alarming ferry trip lay ahead. Although the branch of the Patapsco River they crossed was no more than forty yards wide at the landing, it was very deep. A swift tide was running in against the wind, cresting in steep waves. After they embarked, the wind rose almost to a gale, and the boat took on a great deal of water. Martha was frightened that the boat would sink, and Bob Lewis and Van Horne pitched in to help the ferrymen reach the opposite shore safely. On landing, she had to pull herself together to greet the waiting horsemen, but Martha never gave in to her fears for long. She was spared the windy speeches delivered at every stop on her husband's trips: ceremonial rhetoric was generally reserved for men. Dignified and erect at her full five feet tall, she enjoyed all the excitement and public acclamation, taking pleasure and pride in “the great parade that was made for us all the way we come.” It was the honeymoon of her life in the limelight.
Everyone
wanted to entertain her and her party. An urgent messenger begged them to turn aside on the outskirts of Baltimore at the Mount Clare estate, where the men regaled themselves with iced punch (more than two gallons in a quarter of an hour!) and fresh fruit from the estate's greenhouse.

Martha finally reached the city later that afternoon. All Baltimore's visitors were amazed by its growth. The fifth largest city in the nation and the leading port of the vast Chesapeake Bay, Baltimore boasted a population of 13,500, double its size in 1776. Compare that to the 12,300 residents in all of Fairfax County, where Mount Vernon was located, or the 3,700 souls in Richmond, Virginia's capital and largest city.

Baltimore was all about business—from the busy wharves, the shipyards of Fell's Point, and the fifty flour mills lining its streams to the lively wholesale and retail stores, warehouses, long rope-walks, chandleries, and brickyards with clouds of smoke rising from their kilns. Some of the streets had even been paved and lighted, the money raised by private lottery. High on Calvert Street loomed the imposing, if wildly eccentric, brick courthouse, its two stories topped by a tall lookout and spire, finished off with a weather cock and compass points. Like a witch's house perched on a giant stool, the building stood twenty feet in the air on an arched base, a novel means of preserving the building when the ground under it had been excavated for a street extension. Brick mansions had gone up throughout the town since the war, interspersed among modest, brightly painted frame houses.

Her hosts for the night were James and Margaret Caldwell McHenry; Major McHenry was yet another Revolutionary officer, a steadfast aide to both Washington and Lafayette, who was now a state representative with a large Federal-style house near the public square. He had written in early March inviting both the president and “my dear Mrs. Washington” to treat his house as their own on their separate journeys north. Like all the headquarters staff from the war years, McHenry was devoted to Martha, who had spent every winter of the war with the army.

George had declined this offer on his own behalf, staying instead at the Fountain Inn in the heart of the port area. He pled the “scenes of bustle & trouble” that would be caused by the expected crowds of well-wishers, as well as the appearance of favoritism in his new position. But he was less of a stickler where his beloved wife was concerned. She chose to stay in comfort with the McHenrys rather than at a noisy tavern.