Washington [525]
The freedom that Hercules enjoyed in Philadelphia could only have made more oppressive the prospect of returning to Virginia, emboldening him to escape. Around the time that Washington left the presidency, Hercules suddenly disappeared. Although Washington made efforts to retrieve him, they were neither as systematic nor as prolonged as with Ona Judge. For one thing, he knew that Hercules had friends in the local black community who could hide him and that with his culinary skills he could easily make a living. George and Martha Washington did not seem to feel as personally betrayed by Hercules’s flight as by Judge’s, perhaps because he was an older and more independent personality who had nothing to gain by remaining a slave now that the presidency had ended.
In January 1798 Washington sent a pair of notes to Frederick Kitt, a household steward during his presidency, laying out secret plans for recapturing Hercules. As with Judge, Washington wanted to have Hercules hustled aboard a ship bound for Alexandria “with a strict charge to the master not to give him an opportunity of escaping.” 64 Washington showed implicit respect for Hercules’s shrewdness, warning Kitt that if he gets “the least hint of the design, he would elude all your vigilance.”65 Although Kitt made inquiries and verified Washington’s hunch that Hercules had indeed lingered in Philadelphia, the ex-slave was never caught and succeeded in winning his freedom. He paid a hefty price for it. He left behind his son Richmond, who had been sent back to Mount Vernon for allegedly stealing money, possibly the prelude to a joint escape with his father. He also had to say goodbye to a six-year-old daughter at Mount Vernon. When a French visitor confronted the little girl as to whether she was upset at her father’s action, she retorted, “Oh! Sir, I am very glad, because he is free now.”66
After the Washingtons returned to Mount Vernon in March 1797, the kitchen was a hectic, demanding place that had to handle the sudden advent of unexpected guests. Hercules’s flight threw the household into turmoil, and extensive inquiries were made to find a skilled cook to replace him. Martha wrote despondently to Eliza Powel, “The inconvenience I am put to since the loss of my cook is very great and rendered still more severe for want of a steward, who is acquainted with the management of such like matters.”67 Not a moment too soon, Washington found Eleanor Forbes, an English widow, to function as housekeeper and help supervise the kitchen. Washington told his nephew Bushrod that Martha had been “exceedingly fatigued and distressed for want of a good housekeeper.”68 For Washington, the search for a new slave cook ran into an insurmountable problem: it would force him to break his rule of not buying new slaves. “The running off of my cook has been a most inconvenient thing to this family,” he told a relative, “and what renders it more disagreeable is that I had resolved never to become the master of another slave by purchase; but this resolution, I fear I must break.”69 Washington did not stop to savor the irony here: Hercules would have had to remain a slave in order for Washington to make good on his pledge to end his purchases of slaves. However, the Washingtons could find no slave who replicated what the talented Hercules had done for many years and so decided to make do with Mrs. Forbes.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Exiting the Stage
IN THE LAST YEAR of Washington’s presidency, James Sharples executed portraits of the first couple in the profile format that was his trademark. The George Washington he sketched still stood out as a powerfully commanding presence, with a long, pointed nose and thick sideburns that curled down almost to the chin line. Washington applied pomade to the hair that bulged