• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 25991 0

the Custis fortune, which made him lazy and unfocused. George was again afraid to cross Martha on the loaded subject of the children and the Custis money. In a fascinating letter written in 1791, Tobias Lear talked about this uneasy standoff between the Washingtons: “I clearly see that [Washy] is in the high road to ruin . . . The president sees it with pain, but, as he considers that Mrs. W’s happiness is bound up in the boy, he is unwilling to take such measures as might reclaim him, knowing that any rigidity towards him would perhaps be productive of serious effects on her.”43 This was one area where the most powerful man in the country tread cautiously. Where Washington did succeed was in introducing the two children to the theater. The boy was sufficiently imbued with the love of acting that he played Cassius in a performance of Julius Caesar, enacted at the presidential mansion, and later made an effort to become a playwright—a literary urge that resulted in a flowery memoir of his grandfather.

From the outset of the administration, the Washingtons did their best to cope with the inconveniences of the Cherry Street house. Though roomy by ordinary standards, it could not accommodate enough people for large formal dinners and receptions. In the fall of 1789, when Washington heard that the Count de Moustier was being recalled to France, he jumped at the chance to occupy his house at 39-41 Broadway, on the west side of the street south of Trinity Church (erected two years earlier by merchant Alexander Macomb). This second presidential mansion was four stories high, featured two high-ceilinged drawing rooms, and was much more stately than its predecessor. When one New Yorker toured the house and its two neighbors under construction in 1787, he was thrilled by their imposing dimensions, saying that “they are by far the grandest buildings I ever saw and are said to excel any on the continent.”44

On February 23, 1790, the Washingtons moved from their old cramped quarters to this airy, commodious new residence. Where they could seat only fourteen people at state dinners before, they now had room for more than two dozen. In the rear of the house, glass doors opened onto a balcony with unobstructed views of the Hudson River. Washington also built a stable nearby with handsome planked floors and twelve stalls for horses. With his eye for furnishings, he bought from Moustier everything from a dozen damask armchairs to huge gilt mirrors to a bidet. Eager to augment presidential dignity, he bought more than three hundred pieces of gilt-edged porcelain for dinner parties. Green was the omnipresent color of the house, which had green silk furniture and a green carpet spotted with white flowers. Washington’s love of greenery was further reflected in his purchase of ninety-three glass flowerpots scattered throughout the residence. It is curious that America’s first president chose a residence so thoroughly saturated with a French sensibility.

This executive mansion never had the dark, smoky atmosphere that we associate with an age of candlelight dinners. Attuned to the spirit of technical innovation, Washington bought fourteen lamps of a new variety patented by Aimé Argand, a Swiss chemist. They used whale oil and burned with a cleaner, brighter light than anything used before, chasing away evening shadows and affording up to twelve times the illumination of candlepower. Washington mounted these lamps in the drawing rooms, hallway, entries, and stairwells, banishing shadows from the residence. As he wrote excitedly, “These lamps, it is said, consume their own smoke, do no injury to furniture, give more light, and are cheaper than candles.”45 In this manner, Washington initiated America’s insatiable appetite for oil, provided theatrical lighting to burnish the splendid statecraft that he practiced, and introduced a welcome touch of modernity.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

The State of the President

A LITTLE AFTER NOON ON JANUARY 8, 1790, George Washington climbed into his cream-colored coach and rode off to Federal Hall behind a team