Washington [399]
According to Jefferson, Washington told him that “nobody disliked more the ceremonies of his office and he had not the least taste or gratification in the execution of its function; that he was happy at home alone.”41 Suffering from the stultifying etiquette imposed by his office, he later railed against those who had prescribed such formality. He was especially upset that, having tried to strike a balance between pomp and austerity, he had been roundly criticized and misunderstood. As Jefferson wrote after a 1793 conversation, Washington “expressed the extreme wretchedness of his existence while in office and went lengthily into the late attacks on him for levees etc., and explained to me how he had been led into them by the persons he consulted at New York and that, if he could but know what the sense of the public was, he would most cheerfully conform to it.”42
Washington found it hard to live frugally, and the chief steward he hired to supervise the kitchen made economy that much more difficult. Sam Fraunces had formerly owned the tavern at which Washington had enacted his lachrymose farewell to his officers at the war’s end.43 In the mid-1780s Fraunces had run into serious debt and even appealed to Washington for financial aid. By the time Washington hired him to manage his household, Fraunces had opened another tavern on Cortlandt Street.
A shrewd operator with a flamboyant manner, Fraunces seemed ubiquitous at Washington’s dinner parties, “resplendently dressed in wig and small-clothes,” according to one historian.44 A skillful cook, he knew how to dress a table, supervise waiters, prepare desserts, and bring forth a sumptuous meal. Somewhat to Washington’s chagrin, Fraunces preened himself on the “bountiful and elegant” dinners he presented.45 Tobias Lear stared agog at the heaps of lobster, oysters, and other dishes, saying Fraunces “tossed up such a number of fine dishes that we are distracted in our choice when we sit down to table and obliged to hold a long consultation upon the subject, before we can determine what to attack.”46 In time Washington began to reprimand his steward for unconscionable extravagance. However fond he was of lavish living, he minded his pennies and personally reviewed household bills.
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.”47 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.”48 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