Martha Washington (27 page)

Entrepreneurs gathered collections of “natural curiosities,” both living and dead. Almost as soon as they came to town, the children were taken to Wall Street to see Dr. King's exhibition of orangutans, sloths, baboons, monkeys, and porcupines. They all enjoyed the “speaking image,” a large doll suspended from a ribbon in “a beautiful Temple” that answered questions put to it by the audience. Then there were the waxworks on Water Street, not far from their house. Mr. Bowen's wax likenesses included the British royal family, George Washington in military uniform being crowned with laurels, and biblical scenes.

Concerts, lectures, and dancing assemblies were opportunities for enjoyment, but the best of all entertainments in New York for the Washingtons was the theater. George had first seen a professional performance in Barbados as a teenager and fallen under the spell of the theater. He had drawn Martha into his intense appreciation of both comedy and drama.
Cato
represented serious republican theater to them both, but they loved bawdy comedies like Sheridan's
School for Scandal
, which they saw many times throughout their lives. One of the president's more puritanical guests found the play, with its glittering dialogue, attempted seductions, and ill-natured gossip, “an indecent representation before ladies of character and virtue.” That one remark says everything about the cultural differences between northern Presbyterians and southern Episcopalians.

The only theater in New York was on John Street between Broadway and Nassau, a red wooden building entered through a roofed passageway. Those who came in coaches were requested to “order their Servants to take up and let down with their horses' heads to the East River, to avoid confusion.” The president's box, where he invited numerous guests, was painted with the arms of the United States. His and Martha's attendance was advertised in advance to drum up business, their arrival greeted with “The President's March” and a standing ovation.

Weekends were family times. Every Saturday, George ordered out the coach. He and Martha, often with the children, rode around the town and out into the countryside for an hour or two, amusing themselves observing whatever was going on. They left at about eleven a.m., the forenoon, and returned home in good time to change for dinner. Occasionally they followed the “fourteen mile round,” a popular carriage ride that made a circuit of lower Manhattan Island; an extended version took in the village of Greenwich. Sometimes they invited the Adams or Knox families for an informal dinner.

Attending church had always been part of the Washingtons' life. Trinity Church on Broadway, burned during the British occupation, was still being rebuilt in 1789, so they joined other Episcopalians at St. Paul's Chapel farther up the street; a canopied pew was provided for the president. Washington was present the following March when Trinity was reconsecrated, its gothic spire reaching two hundred feet into the heavens, counting the lightning rods. For the rest of the year, the Washingtons could be found in the presidential pew at Trinity on Sunday mornings. Occasionally they attended churches of other denominations for special celebrations. When he was traveling, Washington attended whatever local church was available. Their charity was almost daily—cash to old soldiers, wood to poor widows, large numbers of tickets purchased for charity concerts, fifty guineas for the relief of imprisoned debtors.

After church on Sunday, they stayed quietly at home, reading, sewing, talking, studying, writing letters. George usually devoted himself to making plans for Mount Vernon and writing long, detailed letters to George Augustine about those plans. Nor did Martha let her attention wander far from Mount Vernon and family affairs in Virginia, writing her own letters of inquiry and instruction. Nieces needed looking after—Harriot Washington given permission to visit a cousin, special attention for Patsy Dandridge requested from New Kent relatives, Fanny Washington reassured of her aunt's love. She sent special messages for her grandniece: “Give sweet little Maria a thousand kisses for me. I often think of the dear little engaging child and wish her with me to hear her little prattle.”

For her dear Fanny, she bought a watch “of the newest fashion, if that has any influence on your taste,” with a chain like those worn by Mrs. Adams and “those in the polite circles.” Her commonsense attitude toward pretension surfaced: “[The watch] will last as long as the fashion—and by that time you can get another of a fashionable kind.”

While George sent home instructions about planting, she sent them about sewing and housekeeping. She organized the sewing for Charlotte and other house slaves as piecework—fabric and thread for each item bundled together—and sent special items like Wash's shirt ruffles to be hemmed at home. She clearly didn't think everything would be properly cleaned without her oversight, often sending detailed orders about having the kitchen scrubbed and whitewashed, all the bedding aired, or the bedsteads, so prone to harbor bugs, scalded and disinfected.

The fall brought sad news from Virginia—expected, but sad nonetheless. On September 1, George learned that his mother had died of breast cancer. He and the menservants wore mourning arm-bands and cockades in her honor. Although their relationship had never been easy or truly congenial, he respected and loved Mary Washington.

Soon afterward, Jack Custis's poor bargain for Abingdon had to be dealt with. Both Martha and George formally agreed by letter with David Stuart's decision to let the property go, returning it to the original owner with the payment of a fair rent. Financially it made perfect sense, but emotionally it was hard. The Stuarts moved with Betsy and Patty Custis to Hope Park, a plantation near Fairfax Courthouse “in the windings of a forest obscured,” as Nelly put it. It was much too far from Alexandria, Mount Vernon, and an active social life for girls just entering adolescence.

Besides their dinners, concerts, and theater evenings, the Washingtons and the Adamses made occasional pleasure jaunts together. At a Thursday dinner, the president proposed that both families take the barge on an excursion to visit Prince's Garden, a well-known nursery and orchard at Flushing on Long Island. But the plans needed a readjustment for Martha's benefit. Abigail remarked that, as she “does not Love the water we agreed that the Gentlemen should go by water and the Ladies should meet them at a half way House and dine together.” On October 10, the men were rowed to the island early in the morning, where Washington found that “the shrubs were trifling.” Martha and Nelly, Abigail, and the pregnant Nabby Smith (for the third time in three years) waited until eleven to set out in the Washingtons' coach on “a most Beautifull day.” In the countryside far up Manhattan Island overlooking the Harlem River, the two parties met at Mariner's tavern, where they all dined.

Washington wanted to visit all the states of the Union while president, listening to public opinion everywhere. After Congress adjourned, he set off on a tour of the northern states on October 15. As he was a southerner, he felt it important to go north first, emphasizing his national, rather than regional, allegiance. This was very much public business. His itinerary was published so that all citizens who desired it could arrange to see him. He traveled in his chariot and six, accompanied by two aides and six servants. This month-long tour (he returned November 13) was an important affirmation that he was president of a united nation.

Everyone knew that Martha would be lonely without her husband. In his absence, she and Abigail planned to spend a great deal of time together “on terms of much sociability.” Martha invited the Adams family to dinner and to a concert by Alexander Reinagle, and Abigail invited her to dine at Richmond Hill with the Knoxes and several other friends. She also continued her usual activities.

Nevertheless, with George gone, she was unhappy so far from home and family, among strangers, no matter how friendly. Martha was bored and lonely without her husband and the female relatives who had surrounded her throughout her life. In a letter to Fanny, she had wondered about a friend's marriage to a northerner: “It would be hard to her to leave all her friends. . . . What could be her inducements to marry a stranger?” That summed up her attitude.

Although she made many friends, none of them became truly intimate. For her, family was the center of life's pleasures, not just for the occasional visit, but living together under one roof. With painful intensity, she missed Nelly Stuart and Fanny Washington, who had provided her with day in, day out companionship and the intimacy that she craved. They could discuss friends and relatives with their infinite variety of interests, illnesses, marriages happy or not, childbirths, deaths, and the whole range of human existence. In New York, she sorely missed the women of her family.

During the dreary month that George toured New England, she sank into a depression. Comings and goings at the house slowed to a trickle in the president's absence. She repined and often stayed at home: “I live a very dull life hear and know nothing that passes in the town. I never goe to the 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—and as I can not doe as I like I am obstinate and stay at home a great deal.” With some exaggeration, she enlarged on this theme later: “I have been so long accustomed to conform to events which are governed by the public voice that I hardly dare indulge any personal wishes which cannot yield to that.”

George came back in a good mood, buoyed by his reception on the tour and the generally positive attitude he observed among the people. Despite certain disappointments and disagreements with other leaders, the new government was up and running, most important federal positions filled, courts in place, many precedents set, some taxes collected. Better than anyone, Martha understood how unwillingly her husband had become president and how he dreaded being thought self-interested. She observed of his reaction to the tour: “I am persuaded that he has experienced nothing to make him repent his having acted from what he conceived to be alone a sense of indispensable duty.”

Once he was at home and happy, Martha largely overcame her depression. But she was still debating with herself, and no doubt with him, about the sacrifice of years of their lives to public service, particularly since they were growing old. She wrote to Mercy Warren in December: “As my grand children and domestic connections made a great portion of the felicity which I looked for in this world. I shall hardly be able to find any substitute that would indemnify me for the Loss of a part of such endearing society. . . . I have [seen] too much of the vanity of human affairs to expect felicity from the splendid scenes of public life.”

In their late fifties, they were definitely considered elderly by eighteenth-century standards. They fell prey much more easily to illness and recovered more slowly. Their hair was white and thinning, hearing fading, sight dimming, teeth giving out. Both needed strong glasses for reading, writing, or (in Martha's case) sewing. Martha wore weaker spectacles around the house, keeping her two pairs of glasses in a double spectacle case. George's teeth had begun to go bad when he was young, and one by one they had been extracted. Martha had always had beautiful teeth, but finally she must have lost a few of them because she began to wear some sort of bridge. False teeth of the day were made up of human teeth and/or carved from the ivory tusks of animals such as hippos. They were held in the mouth with wires and metalwork. Wooden teeth are myths concocted by later writers.

Both Martha and George were worried about George Augustine's health because they loved him and Fanny and also counted on him to keep their financial affairs at Mount Vernon in order. His tuberculosis seemed to be getting worse. When he wrote in mid-December, George Augustine complained of the “disorderd state of my Head” and weakness and inflammation in the eyes.

Christmas 1789 was a quiet family affair, but New Year's Day was a major holiday in New York—traditionally celebrated by the Dutch with a cake called “New Year's cookie” and cherry bounce, rum or brandy sweetened and flavored with cherries. All the members of the government, foreign “public characters,” and “all the respectable Citizens” came “to pay the compliments of the season” to the president. Since New Year's fell on Friday, Martha's drawing room, according to Abigail, “was as much crowded as a Birth Night at St. James, and with company as Brilliantly drest, diamonds & great hoops excepted.”

Congress reconvened January 4, 1790, and Washington delivered his first address on the state of the nation. Thomas Jefferson had returned from France and would take up the post of secretary of state in the spring, after taking care of long neglected personal business in Virginia. In the meantime, John Jay took care of the day-to-day business of foreign affairs. Alexander Hamilton began working on a plan to put the nation on a sound financial footing. The president expected another productive political year. In three years, at the end of this term, he would be able to hand over the position to a younger man.

In the meantime, something had to be done about their house. Living arrangements on Cherry Street were makeshift at best, since the house was not only their residence, but the working office of the president and his staff. As the government developed, he needed more secretaries. Five young men were now living at the house, bunking together in overcrowded bedrooms on the third floor. The live-in slaves and servants also shared rooms on the third floor, the attic, and the outbuildings. Martha was concerned by this overcrowding, believing that it caused illness to spread. As she wrote about a nephew with an unhealthy family: “Living in small Houses and being crowded many in a room is a very great cause of thair being so sickly.”

The neighborhood was definitely less than fashionable, close as it was to the East River docks and the shanties of German and Irish immigrants. Government and society had moved to the west side of the island, close to the Hudson River. Federal Hall, where Congress met, was on Wall Street facing Broad. The majority of government officials lived in that neighborhood. The Spanish and French ministers lived on Broadway, as did Jay, Knox, and several senators and congressmen. Hamilton, Morris, and the powerful Livingston family lived on Wall Street. But these weren't upper-class residential enclaves. Residential and commercial buildings were intermingled with shops, boardinghouses, taverns, hairdressers, schools, and a dry nurse—all to be found on the same streets with fine houses.