Washington [420]
Desperate for some relief in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Washington went deep-sea fishing with some local fishermen. The outing turned into a fiasco: he caught not a single fish, and when one local fisherman hooked a cod, he handed the rod to the disappointed president so he could reel it in. Doubtless feeling a little foolish, Washington gave the man a silver dollar. He was much happier attending a sumptuous dinner in Portsmouth, where he resumed his head count of the ladies and showed himself a connoisseur of female coiffure. At this assembly, he wrote, “there were about 75 well dressed and many of them very handsome ladies. Among whom (as was also the case at the Salem and Boston assemblies) were a greater proportion with much blacker hair than are usually seen in the southern states.”24
As he circled back to New York, Washington stopped at Lexington and “viewed the spot on which the first blood was spilt in the dispute with Great Britain on the 19th of April 1775.” 25 After treading this hallowed ground, Washington proceeded south along crooked back roads to Waltham. Incredible as it seems, the presidential party had to ask directions of bystanders, who often gave Washington misleading information to the point that he complained of “blind and ignorant” advice.26 In his diary, he sounded the universal lament of travelers, grousing about room reservations that suddenly vanished, forcing the party to move on to another town for the night, or the atrocious entertainment at many taverns. The trip had been a colossal undertaking for Washington, especially after his recent malady. In the space of a month, he had toured or passed through almost sixty cities and villages. The journey had been an undisputed triumph, however, consolidating Washington’s popularity and giving citizens a sense of belonging to a single nation. For all its rigors, the journey had also revived Washington’s health. John Trumbull said he returned to the capital “all fragrant with the odor of incense.”27 With what must have been indescribable relief, he arrived back at his Cherry Street mansion at three P.M. on November 13, 1789, “where I found Mrs. Washington and the rest of the family all well.”28 There would be no rest for the weary: having reappeared on a Friday, he had to mingle with visitors at Martha’s weekly reception that evening.
ANOTHER EFFECTIVE WAY that Washington transmitted his image to the country and sought national unity was by sitting for portrait artists, an activity for which he set aside a huge amount of time. In early October he devoted two hours to an Irish artist, John Ramage, who daubed a miniature on ivory of him at Martha’s behest. Ramage depicted a notably dour Washington dressed in a uniform adorned by the badge of the Society of the Cincinnati. In this unflattering portrait, Washington’s nose looks too long and too hooked, his chin too sharp, and his expression morose, perhaps reflecting his fatigue before the northern trip reinvigorated him.
Around the same time, Washington posed for the Marquise de Bréhan, who was variously described as either the sister or the sister-in-law of the Count de Moustier, the French minister, with whom she lived in a scandalous liaison. A friend of Jefferson, the marquise had imagined that she was coming to an American