Martha Washington (29 page)

Traveling south toward home, the presidential party stopped in Philadelphia to see about the house they would occupy. Delightfully enough, the large Morris mansion on High Street had been rented for them. Both Martha and George had been guests there; the Morrises obligingly moved to another house at the corner of the same block to make the house available for them.

Safely settled in at Mount Vernon, George regained his health as he rode over his land and tended to farming. He amused himself with a longer excursion to select a site for the new capital. For many solid geographic and economic reasons, he chose an area of Maryland at the southern end of the Potomac. That it was close to Mount Vernon meant he could look over the work as it progressed.

Martha too was in her element, reunited with Fanny Washington, surrounded by children. Nelly Stuart would have come over for a long visit as soon as her former mother-in-law arrived; they corresponded often, and Martha always let her know when they were returning to Mount Vernon. By this time, Betsy and Patty Custis were in their teens, as was Harriot Washington. Nelly and Wash were eleven and nine. The Stuarts' three little girls were stair steps from one to six. Fanny and George Augustine's Maria was a little over a year old, lately joined by another Washington namesake, the baby George Fayette. It must have been bedlam with ten children around the house, but it was just the sort of happy uproar that Martha loved.

That fall, a young Philadelphian visited Mount Vernon and wrote home to his father, “Hospitality indeed seems to have spread over the whole place its happiest, kindest influence. . . . Mrs. Washington is the very essence of kindness. Her soul seems to overflow with it like the most abundant fountain, and her happiness is in exact proportion to the number of objects upon which she can dispense her benefits.”

During their three-month stay at home, Martha finally convinced George that he had made a mistake in restricting their social life so severely. He had bowed to his advisers' opinions to avoid criticism. But, as she probably pointed out to him, they had been criticized all the same, accomplishing nothing but making her unhappy. Considering how attentive George was to his wife's feelings, it was amazing that it took her a year to convince him to relax his strictures. The formal presidential entertainments would continue in Philadelphia, basically unchanged, but she would be free to accept private invitations and to entertain her own friends as she liked.

On November 28, 1790, Martha and George arrived in Philadelphia, children and servants in tow. Of course, renovations and additions to the Morris house had taken longer than expected and still weren't finished—to George's great irritation. Punctuality was one of his watchwords, and he complained mightily and often when others failed to value it as highly as he did. Making Philadelphia the capital was a bonanza for the building trade, not to speak of land-lords and merchants. The town rang with hammer blows as builders tried to get all the rental houses and lodgings in shape for the fall influx of government officials and legislators.

Bush Hill, a country house rented by the Adamses, was also in disarray. Abigail had gotten to Philadelphia in October, and Polly Lear called on her in the midst of her lumber and boxes. According to the exasperated Abigail, Polly assured her “that I am much better off than Mrs. Washington will be when she arrives.” The Lears had been arranging things at the Morris house, overseeing “58 loads of furniture delivered . . . 2 days work with carts.”

To the three-story brick house flanked by brick walls, they had added a wing for a servants' hall and bedrooms, as well as the inevitable enlargement of the stables. Behind the walls, there was a good-size garden with large trees, ending at a coach house and stables that opened to an alley. Servants lived in the new ell, over the stables, and in outbuildings. Some white servants, including the household steward, had come from New York; others were hired in town. Among the Mount Vernon slaves, Molly and Oney had accompanied the Washingtons; the cook, Hercules, his son Richmond, Christopher, and Austin, a man of all work, came shortly afterward by stage or boat.

The two large “public” rooms on the first and second floors had been enlarged for presidential entertainments by throwing out bow windows overlooking the garden. Bow windows were the height of fashion, making rooms lighter and airier. Extra crimson fabric had to be purchased to extend the drapes in the dining room. On the second floor, the family had two drawing rooms, their bedrooms, and dressing rooms (Martha's warmed by a new cast-iron stove). The Lears occupied a large room on the third floor, along with two rooms for the aides, who had to accept the bachelor's lot of shared rooms. The president's office was also on that floor; those calling on government business had to climb two steep flights of stairs to reach it.

Philadelphia had become larger and more elegant with each passing year. A French observer claimed that “Philadelphia may be considered the metropolis of the United States. It is certainly the most beautiful and best-built city in the nation, and also the wealthiest, though not the most ostentatious.”

Not only was Philadelphia much larger than New York (42,520 to 32,305, according to the 1790 census), it boasted many more civic amenities. Its broad paved streets had oil lamps, sturdy posts to prevent carriages from running up on the sidewalks, and convenient public water pumps. It was much cleaner than New York as well, though it did have hogs running loose and rooting in the gutters. But Philadelphians had a logical explanation: the swine were part of the city's street-cleaning efforts.

High Street, where the Washingtons lived, was becoming known as Market Street. The two names were used interchangeably for a while until Market finally won out. On three blocks of this very wide street, a couple of blocks from their house, market arcades had been built down the middle of the roadway, with stalls rented between the pillars to meat and produce sellers. Traffic passed on the outsides of the buildings, and the inner aisles became a covered promenade.

In Philadelphia, there were many old friends and some engaging new ones. Through Morris, Willing, Powel, Allen, Chew, and Shippen family connections, the Washingtons met many other wealthy, well-educated, and sophisticated people, to the voluble disgust of republican critics. Probably the most glamorous of their new friends were William and Anne Willing Bingham. Their three-story brick house with its Palladian windows and fanlights on Third Street, set within carefully designed formal gardens, seemed palatial to Americans—especially those who visited and saw the freestanding marble staircase in the front hall and the mirrored drawing rooms hung with paintings. Equally impressive were Landsdowne, the country estate of John Penn, the last proprietary governor of Pennsylvania, and his wife, Anne Allen Penn, and Judge Richard Peters's Belmont, with its famous gardens, approached down a grand avenue of hemlocks. Martha and George frequently rode or drove out to visit these estates and enjoy the country air.

The Washingtons again took up their schedule of official entertainments, but Martha could now call informally on her friends and invite them for tea and conversation. Together, she and George occasionally attended the city's dancing assemblies and concerts, as well as dinners and balls in private homes. Martha bought yards of black velvet for a ball gown and several fans to flourish at these formal occasions, as well as lottery tickets and other presents for relatives back home.

Martha and George attended services at the nearby St. Peter's Church at Third and Pine, only a few blocks down from their house toward the river. The rector there, as well as at Christ Church, was Bishop William White, Mary Morris's brother. They continued their charitable gifts from small amounts for old soldiers or needy widows to larger sums for church building funds and other civic activities.

It was Martha's lifelong habit to spend an hour in the morning over her devotions, praying and reading from the New Testament and the Anglican Book of Common Prayer (1662). In late 1789, as the old Church of England in America was reorganized into the Episcopal Church, the prayer book was revised and published in a new American version. Martha bought a copy for herself as well as others she sent home to the women of the family in September.

Despite Quaker opposition, the stage was thriving in Philadelphia at the South Street Theater. The Old American Company, which the Washingtons had enjoyed in New York, presented a performance of
The School for Scandal
at the president's request. Washington bought eleven tickets for the evening. A stage box was reserved for the president, his lady, and their guests, complete with red draperies, cushioned seats, and the United States coat of arms draped over the front of the box. They went often during the season, also sending Nelly and Wash, the Washington boys, and Austin, Hercules, Christopher, and Oney on various occasions.

The greatest of all “rational amusements” in Philadelphia was Peale's museum. Charles Willson Peale had achieved considerable success as a portraitist of the American elite; beginning twenty years before, he had painted the Washingtons several times. Settling in Philadelphia and fathering a number of children—Raphaelle, Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens, and Van Dyke, among others—he was struck with the idea of setting up a museum of natural history.

First advertised in 1786, his museum at Third and Lombard consisted of two skylighted galleries added to his house. A neighboring shed housed live animals; the exhibits varied as these natural curiosities died and were replaced. The museum featured his own paintings of national heroes, the bones of an unidentified gigantic animal from the Ohio frontier, mammoth teeth, mineral specimens, insects and butterflies, a marine room with mounted fish and sharks, and Indian and South Seas artifacts. Most striking were the preserved specimens of birds and beasts, mounted in natural poses with watercolor backgrounds to lend realism. A conspicuous sign in the gallery read: “Do not touch the birds. They are covered with arsnic [
sic
] poison.” Not that most people paid attention, but the preservative coating wasn't enough to kill them. Martha was known for her tiny feet; she must have been astonished at the model of a Chinese lady's bound foot and her four-inch-long shoe. The Washington family visited several times, paying the admission price of twenty-five cents, before the president became a sponsoring member.

Expeditions to the botanical gardens and nursery on the banks of the Schuylkill River, established by Quaker botanist John Bartram, made a pleasant drive out of town. The gardens and greenhouses displayed familiar and exotic American plants, collected on botanical expeditions as far away as Spanish Florida; Bartram's sons sold roots, seeds, and even live plants. Among the other entertainments enjoyed by Martha and her family in the metropolis were waxworks, a sea leopard (seal) on display, French musicians who played at the door for tips, and street jugglers. Later there were balloon ascensions, a panorama, and the first elephant ever exhibited in Philadelphia, a sad-eyed beast kept penned in an alley off the market shed and given rum and brandy for the amusement of the spectators.

The children were settled in school and arrangements made for their music, language, and art lessons. By January 25, 1791, a dancing teacher began coming to the house Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at five p.m. It was desirable to have lots of children at the lessons to form sets for the popular country dances; even Abigail's six-year-old niece was invited to join them. Doubtless the Washington boys and the children's friends also danced at the president's house.

Washington had just brought George Steptoe and Lawrence Washington, his rapscallion orphaned nephews, to study at the University of Pennsylvania. Fortunately, they had settled down and acquitted themselves well at school. Balanced on the cusp between childhood and adolescence, Nelly wore a dancing dress trimmed with silver thread and spangles but had just gotten a new doll. She had made fast friends with the daughters of Washington's friends—Maria Morris, Susan Randolph, and Elizabeth Bordley. Elizabeth's elderly father shared the president's devotion to experimental agriculture. Wash had so many friends at school that Washington feared there was more playing than studying going on.

The spring and early summer of 1791 brought changes to the Washington household. Polly gave birth to Benjamin Lincoln Lear on March 11; the boy was named for Tobias's mentor and patron, a leading general in the Revolution, with Washington as his god-father. Martha and George were always happy to welcome a new child to their home.

David Humphreys went to Portugal as American minister; his place was taken by Martha's nephew Bat Dandridge. Between them, the Washingtons never ran out of helpful nephews. She told Fanny that Bat was “as yellow as a mulato”; he was probably suffering a relapse of Virginia's endemic malaria. Bat also had to be inoculated immediately against smallpox.

When the current steward proved unsatisfactory, Sam Fraunces was summoned from New York to take over. Then, on April 5, Edmund Randolph called on Martha to warn her that some of his household slaves, brought from Virginia, had claimed their freedom. They had cited the Pennsylvania law that declared adult slaves free after a residence of six months in the state. When she relayed the information to her husband, George was concerned about the financial consequences. If any of the Custis dower slaves became free, he would have to reimburse the estate. Neither George nor Martha seemed disturbed by the moral dilemma of keeping slaves in a free state.

Only Hercules, Austin, and Molly were of age. They decided to send the two men back to Mount Vernon from time to time on trumped-up excuses to circumvent the six-month residency requirement; Martha had already promised Austin's wife to send him home for a visit. They apparently didn't fear Molly's leaving. Lear was acutely troubled by this trickery and could excuse himself only by thinking of how well these people were treated by the Washingtons; the slaves themselves doubtless saw through the charade.