Washington [397]
Even as the Washingtons sought an optimal balance between presidential splendor and republican austerity, an opposition press emerged that accused them of trying to foist a monarchy on the country. For anyone who had seen the opulence of Versailles or Windsor Castle, such accusations would have seemed wildly overblown. But every revolution breeds fears of counterrevolution, and worries about a reversion to monarchism were perhaps predictable after a war against royal absolutism. Each morning as he read the gazettes, Washington was stung by commentary on his receptions. Berating his dinners, the Daily Advertiser warned readers that “in a few years we shall have all the paraphernalia yet wanting to give the superb finish to the grandeur of our AMERICAN COURT! The purity of republican principle seems to be daily losing ground . . . We are on the eve of another revolution.”28 Even Martha’s rather wholesome Friday-night gatherings were depicted darkly in some quarters as “court-like levees” and “queenly drawing rooms.”29 When Washington’s birthday was celebrated in February 1790 as a national holiday, purists disparaged it as yet another showy monarchical exercise.
Among the leading critics of Washingtonian excess was William Maclay, the caustic senator from Pennsylvania with a thin, bony face. The son of Scotch-Irish Presbyterian immigrants, Maclay had a pronounced populist streak that predisposed him to spot signs of incipient monarchy. In June 1789 he recorded his private fears that fancy people around town had seduced the president: “Indeed, I entertain not a doubt but many people are aiming, with all their force, to establish a splendid court with all the pomp of majesty. Alas, poor Washington, if you are taken in this snare, how will the gold become dim?”30
In copious diary entries, written with the satirical eye of a gadfly, Maclay left vivid impressions of President Washington in social situations during his first term. An eager purveyor of gossip, Maclay was scarcely objective, taking a mordant, often jaundiced, view of people. Sometimes his tattle was downright mean-spirited, as when Robert Morris’s wife told him of a presidential dinner at which she bit into a dessert only to find it full of rancid cream. When informed of it, the president “changed his plate immediately. But, she added with a titter, Mrs. Washington ate a whole heap of it.”31 His observations could be laced with patent envy: “No Virginian can talk on any subject but the perfections of Gen[era]l Washington.”32
Nonetheless, Maclay left some priceless glimpses into the social world of George and Martha Washington, whom he satirized as boors and bumpkins, overshadowed by more elegant couples they were trying to impress. He reported Washington’s misery in social settings, picking up little fidgety habits that showed him enduring these occasions rather than enjoying them. He did not realize how much Washington hated dealing with so many strangers. In trying to impart dignity to presidential protocol, Washington sometimes became frozen in this studied role, eliminating the levity and conversational flow that enlivened at least some dinners at Mount Vernon or with his military family during the war.
Every other Thursday the Washingtons held an official dinner at four P.M. The president, seeking geographic diversity, often tried to balance northern and southern legislators on his guest list. If guests were even five minutes late by the hall clock, they found the president and his company already seated. Washington would then explain curtly that the cook was governed by the clock and not by the company. In his diary, Maclay described a dinner on August 27, 1789, in which George and Martha Washington sat in the middle of the table, facing each other, while Tobias Lear and Robert Lewis sat on either end. John Adams, John Jay, and George Clinton were among the assembled guests. Maclay described a table