Washington [398]
Maclay painted a deadly portrait of Washington at one dinner as a veteran bore, devoid of conversation except platitudes, and very jittery: “The president kept a fork in his hand when the cloth was taken away—I thought for the purpose of picking nuts. He ate no nuts, but played with the fork, striking on the edge of the table with it.”33 Washington could neither relax nor converse spontaneously, leading Maclay to conclude that “it was the most solemn dinner ever I ate at . . . The ladies sat a good while and the bottles passed about, but there was a dead silence almost.”34
On March 4, 1790, Maclay wrote an account of another stifling dinner and again portrayed a consistently somber Washington: “The president seemed to bear in his countenance a settled aspect of melancholy. No cheering ray of convivial sunshine broke thro[ugh] the cloudy gloom of settled seriousness. At every interval of eating or drinking, he played on the table with a fork or knife, like a drumstick.”35 Sitting at Washington’s right side, John Adams fared no better at the hands of Maclay, who derided the vice president as “mantling his visage with the most unmeaning simper that ever dimpled the face of folly.”36 Senator Samuel Johnston of North Carolina, who attended the same dinner, was entranced by it: “I have just left the president’s, where I had the pleasure of dining with almost every member of the Senate. We had some excellent champagne and after it, I had the honor of drinking coffee with his lady, a most amiable woman. If I live much longer, I believe that I shall at last be reconciled to the company of old women for her sake.”37
Two months later, finding Washington in better spirits, Maclay provided a possible clue to the awkward silences of earlier gatherings: “Went to dine with the president, agreeable to invitation. He seemed more in good humor than ever I saw him, tho[ugh] he was so deaf that I believe he heard little of the conversation.”38 That Washington’s hearing had deteriorated—not surprising after eight years of roaring cannon—may explain the gruesome conversational gaps that Maclay so freely mocked. Deafness can be an isolating experience, especially for a president. People would naturally have waited for him to respond to statements before proceeding with the conversation; to conceal his deafness, a self-conscious Washington may well have feigned hearing what they said and sat there in silence. It was yet another sign of the aging process that had transformed the once dashing, athletic Washington.
On January 20, 1791, Maclay, a lame duck senator, attended a last dinner with the president. Though Maclay had developed into a sharp political opponent, the president still treated him with instinctive decorum, not the royal hauteur of his imaginings. Maclay took a final measure of the man, and his description shows how dramatically time had altered Washington: “Let me take a review of him as he really is. In stature about six feet, with an unexceptionable make, but lax appearance. His frame would seem to want filling up. His motions rather slow than lively, tho[ugh] he showed no signs of having suffered either by gout or rheumatism. His complexion pale, nay, almost cadaverous. His voice hollow and indistinct owing, as I believe, to artificial teeth before in his upper jaw.”39
Washington had clearly undergone a startling change. Described as “lusty” by Robert Hunter in 1785, he was now slow and shuffling. Instead of being ruddy with buoyant health, he was gaunt and “cadaverous.” Where earlier observers had commented on his well-padded muscles, Washington’s frame now wanted “filling up.” And the voice was again described as thin and whispery. An unaccustomed stiffness had overtaken his movements, he knew. When one Virginian