Washington: A Life (115 page)

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.”
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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.”
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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.”
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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.”
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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.”
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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.”
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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.”
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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.”
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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 satirical 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.”
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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.

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.
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The president summoned Dr. Samuel Bard, a prominent New York physician, who diagnosed the condition as the cutaneous form of anthrax. Petrified that Washington would expire, Bard refused to leave his bedside for several days. The situation must have shocked everyone around Washington: no sooner had the federal government been formed than its president lay in mortal peril. In all likelihood, Washington had a carbuncle or soft tissue infection. As might be expected, he was the picture of stoic courage. “I am not afraid to die and therefore can bear the worst,” he told Bard evenly. “Whether tonight, or twenty years hence, makes no difference. I know that I am in the hands of a good Providence.”
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The public knew something was wrong, if only because Tobias Lear had servants cordon off Cherry Street, stopping traffic. The household staff also sprinkled straw outside the mansion to deaden passing footsteps. Still, the public had no notion of the gravity of the president’s illness.

On June 17, when Dr. Bard operated on Washington’s thigh, he brought along his father, Dr. John Bard, to supervise the proceedings. The elder Bard, a veteran surgeon, felt too old to undertake the procedure himself. Surgery was then a hellish ordeal, as the patient gritted his teeth and endured excruciating pain. While the younger Dr. Bard split open the abscess, his father exhorted him to persevere: “Cut away—deeper—deeper still! Don’t be afraid. You see how well he bears it!”
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Tobias Lear claimed that the tumor was “very large and the incision on opening it deep.”
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In all likelihood, the younger Bard excised the mass of infected tissue and scraped away any pus or dead tissue, all of which would have been enormously painful for Washington, who remained unfailingly courteous. As Samuel Bard assured his daughter, “It will give you pleasure to be told that nothing can exceed the kindness and attention I receive from him.”
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For weeks afterward, as Washington lay bedridden, some friends thought he might never recover his legendary strength. “I have now the pleasure to inform you that my health is restored,” Washington apprised James McHenry on July 3, “but a feebleness still hangs upon me, and I am yet much incommoded by the incision which was made in a very large and painful tumor on the protuberance of my thigh.”
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In extreme discomfort, unable to walk or sit, he reclined on his right side for six weeks and couldn’t even draft a letter. When Abigail Adams visited, she found him, with becoming presidential dignity, stretched out on the sofa and praised this “singular example of modesty and diffidence.”
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The interior of Washington’s coach was reconfigured so he could lie down, although he had to be lifted and deposited gently inside by four servants. For an hour each day, he made salutary tours of the town with Martha. On July 4, 1789, Baron von Steuben and Alexander Hamilton—now, respectively, president and vice president of the New York Society of the Cincinnati—trooped to 3 Cherry Street to pay their respects before Hamilton delivered a eulogy to Nathanael Greene at St. Paul’s Chapel. In a moving homage to Greene’s memory, Washington, despite his discomfort, dressed up in full regimentals to greet his visitors at the door—an unusual instance of Washington donning a military costume during his presidency. To the limited extent possible, he kept up appearances and tried to convey an aura of calm.

By early September, Washington reassured Dr. James Craik that the inflammation had dwindled to “the size of a barleycorn” and that he expected it would shortly disappear altogether.
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Martha Washington was hugely relieved, although a visitor noticed that when she discussed her husband’s health, “a tear of apprehension for futurity was in her eye.”
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Except with intimates, Washington was discreet about discussing his malady. Dr. Craik and other friends urged him to launch a brisk regimen of outdoor exercise to offset his staid indoor life. Washington conceded that his job might have contributed to his ailment and might even kill him, but he was resigned to the sacrifice. Echoing Shakespeare, he said, “The want of regular exercise, with the cares of office, will, I have no doubt, hasten my departure for that country from whence no traveler returns.”
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Nevertheless, his official duties, he maintained, would remain “the primary consideration in every transaction of my life, be the consequences what they may.”
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