Washington [243]
As he tried to straighten out the nation’s affairs, Washington developed a fine rapport with the new president of Congress, John Jay, whom he had known since the First Continental Congress. Despite their best efforts, Washington and Nathanael Greene found their serious work obstructed by an unceasing round of parties. To fulfill his duties, Greene said, he “was obliged to rise early and go to bed late to complete them. In the morning, a round of visiting came on. Then you had to prepare for dinner after which the evening balls would engage your time until one or two in the morning.”28 The toast of the town, sought by every hostess, Washington was shocked at the decadent civilian life that contrasted with the hardscrabble world of his men. He stared in outraged wonder at the stately carriages rolling by, the opulent parties unfolding around him. It infuriated him that people feasted as his men suffered. “Speculation, peculation, and an insatiable thirst for riches seem to have got the better of every other consideration and almost of every order of men,” he wrote.29 As Greene aptly noted, the city’s luxurious life gave Washington “infinitely more pain than pleasure.”30 He began to feel vaguely guilty about lingering in Philadelphia while his men still wallowed in poverty. By now he had developed something close to a mystic bond with his men and placed great store on his presence among them. “Were I to give in to private conveniency and amusement,” he told Joseph Reed, “I should not be able to resist the invitation of my friends to make Phila[delphia] (instead of a squeezed up room or two) my quarters for the winter, but the affairs of the army require my constant attention and presence.”31
When Washington returned to Middlebrook in February 1779, after a six-week stay in Philadelphia, he and Martha tried to brighten up the winter camp. Since the tin plates at meals had grown rusty, Washington ordered a set of china for the table along with six genteel candlesticks. The fare was less spartan than at Valley Forge, and the Washingtons entertained in modest style. As the surgeon James Thacher said of one dinner, “The table was elegantly furnished and the provisions ample, but not abounding in superfluities . . . In conversation, His Excellency’s expressive countenance is peculiarly interesting and pleasing; a placid smile is frequently observed on his lips, but a loud laugh, it is said, seldom, if ever, escapes him. He is polite and attentive to each individual at table and retires after the compliments of a few glasses.”32 Thacher assessed Martha with an approving eye: “Mrs. Washington combines in an uncommon degree great dignity of manner with the most pleasing affability, but possesses no striking marks of beauty.”33
Washington remained a man of unusual physical stamina who was still strong, manly, and youthful, while Martha had aged more quickly. One telling difference was that while George still loved to dance, especially with lovely young women, Martha had renounced the practice. In November Washington had expressly asked Nathanael Greene to have his young wife, Caty, come to the winter camp, and she duly arrived with her little boy, George Washington Greene. At a dance in February to celebrate the first anniversary of the French alliance, Washington danced first with the obese Lucy Knox. Having done his social duty, he then indulged in an experience that recalled happier times: he danced