CHAPTER XX.LADIES OF THE WHITE HOUSE.
A Morning Dream—Wives and Daughters of the Presidents—Memories of Martha Washington—An Average Matron of the 18th Century—Educational Disadvantages—Comparisons—A Well-Regulated Lady—A Useful Wife—Warm Words of Abigail Adams—Advantages of Having a Distinguished Husband—A Modern Lucretia—Washington’s Inauguration Suit—An Awkward Position for a Lady—A PrimitiveLevée-Festivities in Franklin Square!—Decorous Ideas of the Father of His Country—The Government on Its Travels—Transporting the Household Gods—Keeping Early Hours—Primitive Customs—A DignifiedCongé—Much-Shaken Hands—Remembrances of a Past Age—An English Manufacturer “Struck with Awe”—Very Questionable Humility—The Room in which Washington Died—Days of Widowhood—A Wife’s Congratulations—A True Woman—Domestic Affairs at the White House—An Unfinished Mansion—Interesting Details—A Woman’s Influence—A Monument Wanted—Devotion of a Husband—The “Single Life”—Theodocia Burr and Katherine Chase—“Levées” Summarily Abolished—Disappointed Belles—An Extraordinary Reception—Blacked His Own Boots—A Dignified Foreigner Shocked—Governmental Enquiries—Womanly Indignation—The Poet Pardoned—“The Sweetest Creature in Virginia”—A Daughter’s Affection.
Sitting in the lovely Blue Room this June morning, the breezes from the Potomac floating through the closed blinds and lace curtains, drifting over the mounds of flowers which, rising high above the great vases, fill all the air with fragrance, I evoke from the past a company of fair and stately women who have dwelt under this roof, or influenced the life and happiness of men who have ruled the nation.
First, Martha Washington. To be sure, she never reigned in the Blue Room; but who can recall the wives of the Presidents and not see the very first, the serenely beautiful old lady whose face is so familiar to us all.
In herself, Martha Washington was in no wise a remarkable woman. Personally, she was a fair representative of the average American matron of the eighteenth century. I say American, for whatever may be her right to boast of superior educational advantages to-day, in the time of Martha Washington and Abigail Adams, New England ignored utterly the education of her women. They were shut out even from the Boston High-School, because they had flocked to it in such numbers in pursuit of knowledge. While her brother went to Harvard, the girl of Massachusetts, if taught at all, was self-taught. Massachusetts had no right to boast over Virginia in that day. The daughters of the cavalier probably were oftener taught to dance and to play the spinnet than the daughters of the Puritans; but neither could spell, nor many more than barely read. But had Martha Washington enjoyed the highest mental privileges, she would never have been known to the world as an intellectual woman, or as a woman who, by any impulse of her unassisted nature, would ever have risen above the commonplace. She could spin, but she could not spell. She could bask in the warmth of the bountiful home whose heavy cares were all carried by her illustrious husband. She could pack the family coach with delicacies, and go through storm and mud once a year to his camp, when the perils of his country had made him its deliverer; but it is doubtful if any impulse of her soul would ever have roused her to the majestic eloquence of Abigail Adams, who, when she read the English King’sproclamation to his rebellious colonies, with her little children about her in the depth of the night, wrote to her absent husband: “This intelligence will make a plain path for you, though a dangerous one. I could not join to-day in the petition of our worthy pastor for a reconciliation between our no longer parent state, but tyrant state, and these colonies. Let us separate; they are unworthy to be our brethren. Let us renounce them, and instead of supplications as formerly for their prosperity and happiness; let us beseech the Almighty to blast their counsels and bring to naught all their devices.”
Abigail Adams comes down to posterity, independently of all relations to others, as one of the grandest women of her time. Martha Washington’s only claim to veneration is because she was the wife of Washington. As his wife, her homely virtues and moral rectitude show to unclouded advantage. Personally, her most marked characteristics were her strong natural sense of propriety and fitness and high moral qualities. In these, if she never added lustre to it, she always honored the name of Washington. We see the former characteristic in the fact, that during the Revolution she never wore foreign or costly attire. While all the outer affairs of the estate, to their minutest detail, were superintended by General Washington, in addition to the mighty burdens of state which he bore, Mrs. Washington superintended her handmaidens and spinning-wheels. Looms were constantly plying in her house, and General Washington wore, at his first inauguration, a full suit of fine cloth woven in his own house. At a ball given in New Jersey, in honor of herself, Martha Washington appeared in “simple russet gown,” with a white handkerchief about her neck. To the statelevéesof New York and Philadelphia she carried the same stately simplicity. A lady of the olden time, a daughter of Virginia, her ideas of court forms and etiquette had all been received from the mother country. Hers was the difficult task to harmonize aristocratic exclusiveness with republican plainness. She was never to forget that she was the wife of the President of a Republic,—and also never to forget that she was to command the respect of the old monarchies who were ready to despise everything poor and crude in the efforts of the new government to maintain itself in poverty, difficulty and inexperience. Thus the sociallevéesof the first President of the United States, at No. 3, Franklin square, New York, were held under the most rigorous and exclusive rules. They were only open to persons of privileged rank and degree, and they could not enter unless attired in full dress. The receptions of Mrs. Washington merely reproduced, on a smaller plan, the customs and ceremonies of foreign courts.
The first President and his wife never forgot their personal dignity, and never forgot that they represented a republic which was already an object of interested scrutiny to the whole civilized world. President Washington wrote to his friend Mrs. Macaulay: “Mrs. Washington’s ideas coincide with my own as to simplicity of dress and everything which can tend to support propriety of character without partaking of the follies of luxury and ostentation.”
In the second year of Washington’s administration, the government was removed to Philadelphia, there to remain for the next ten years. The household furniture of the Washingtons was moved thither by slow and weary processes of land and water, the President, in addition to his public cares, superintending personally the preparation andembarkation of every article himself. Mrs. Washington was sick at the time, but the following year, the house of Robert Morris having been taken by the corporation, as the President’s house, Mrs. Washington again opened her drawing-rooms from seven to tenP. M.Sensible woman! No haggard and faded beauties dancing all night, faded and old before their time, owed their wasted lives and powers toher. In Philadelphia and New York, when the clock’s hand pointed to ten, she arose with affable dignity, and, bowing to all, retired, leaving her guests to do likewise. With this action, it was unnecessary to repeat the announcement which she made at the firstlevéeheld by her in New York, viz.: “General Washington retires at ten o’clock, and I usually precede him. Good-night.”
At theselevéesMrs. Washington sat. The guests were grouped in a circle, round which the President passed, speaking politely to each one, butnever shaking hands. It was reserved to a later generation to shake that poor member till it has to be poulticed after official greetings. It was the habit of Mrs. Washington to return the calls of those who were privileged to pay her visits. A Philadelphia lady who, as a child, remembered her, wrote: “It was Mrs. Washington’s custom to return visits on the third day. In calling on my mother she would send a footman over, who would knock loudly and announce Mrs. Washington, who would then come over with Mr. Lear. Her manners were very easy, pleasant and unceremonious, with the characteristics of other Virginia ladies.”
An English manufacturer, who breakfasted with the President’s family in 1794, says:
“I was struck with awe and veneration when I recollected that I was now in the presence of the great Washington, thenoble and wise benefactor of the world.... Mrs. Washington herself, made tea and coffee for us. On the table were two small plates of sliced tongue and dry toast, bread and butter; but no broiled fish, as is the custom here. She struck me as being somewhat older than the President, though I understand both were born the same year. She was extremely simple in her dress, and wore a very plain cap, with her gray hair turned up under it.”
“I was struck with awe and veneration when I recollected that I was now in the presence of the great Washington, thenoble and wise benefactor of the world.... Mrs. Washington herself, made tea and coffee for us. On the table were two small plates of sliced tongue and dry toast, bread and butter; but no broiled fish, as is the custom here. She struck me as being somewhat older than the President, though I understand both were born the same year. She was extremely simple in her dress, and wore a very plain cap, with her gray hair turned up under it.”
It is as the wife of Washington, through sentiments called out by the greatness of his character and the love which she bore him, that the moral capacity of Martha Washington’s nature ever approaches greatness. In her reply to Congress, who asked that the body of George Washington might be placed beneath a monument in the capitol which his patriotism had done so much to rear, her words rise to the patriotic grandeur of Abigail Adams, they could not rise higher. She says:
“Taught by that great example, which I have so long had before me, never to oppose my private wishes to the public will, I must consent to the request made by Congress, which you have had the goodness to transmit to me, and in doing this, I need not, I cannot say what a sacrifice of individual feeling I make to a sense of public duty.”
“Taught by that great example, which I have so long had before me, never to oppose my private wishes to the public will, I must consent to the request made by Congress, which you have had the goodness to transmit to me, and in doing this, I need not, I cannot say what a sacrifice of individual feeling I make to a sense of public duty.”
But it is in the little room at Mount Vernon, in which she died, that Martha Washington, as a woman, comes nearest to us. Here one can realize how utterly done with earth, its pangs and glory, was the soul who shut herself within its narrow walls, there to take on immortality. The rooms of Washington below, a thrifty mechanic of the present day would think too small and shabby for him. Here he died. And when the great soul went forthto the unknown, as a human presence to inhabit it never more, the wife also went forth, and never again crossed its threshold. Here, in this little room, scarcely more than a closet, surrounded only by the simplest necessaries of existence, Martha Washington lived out the lonely days of her desolate widowhood—and here she died.
Abigail Adams was the first wife of a President who ever presided at the White House—the President’s house, as it was so fitly called in those days. Only in this latter time of degenerate English has it swelled into the “Executive Mansion.”
In February, 1797, John Adams was elected President of the United States, to succeed President Washington. From her country home in Massachusetts, Mrs. Adams sent to her husband the following recognition of his exaltation to be chief ruler of the United States:
“You have this day to declare yourself head of a nation. ‘And now, O Lord, my God, thou hast made thy servant ruler over the people, give unto him an understanding heart, that he may know how to go out and to come in before this great people; that he may discern between good and bad. For who is able to judge this, thy so great a people?’ were the words of a royal sovereign, and not less applicable to him who is invested with the chief magistracy of a nation, though he wear not a crown nor the robes of royalty. My thoughts and meditations are with you, though personally absent; and my petitions to heaven are, that the things which make for your peace may not be hidden from your eyes. My feelings are not those of pride or ostentation upon the occasion. They are solemnized by a sense of the obligations, the important trusts, and numerous duties connected with it. That you may be enabled to discharge them with honor to yourself, with justice and impartiality to yourcountry, and with satisfaction to this great people, shall be the daily prayer of yours—”
“You have this day to declare yourself head of a nation. ‘And now, O Lord, my God, thou hast made thy servant ruler over the people, give unto him an understanding heart, that he may know how to go out and to come in before this great people; that he may discern between good and bad. For who is able to judge this, thy so great a people?’ were the words of a royal sovereign, and not less applicable to him who is invested with the chief magistracy of a nation, though he wear not a crown nor the robes of royalty. My thoughts and meditations are with you, though personally absent; and my petitions to heaven are, that the things which make for your peace may not be hidden from your eyes. My feelings are not those of pride or ostentation upon the occasion. They are solemnized by a sense of the obligations, the important trusts, and numerous duties connected with it. That you may be enabled to discharge them with honor to yourself, with justice and impartiality to yourcountry, and with satisfaction to this great people, shall be the daily prayer of yours—”
In such exaltation of spirit, and with such grandeur of speech, did the wife of the second President receive the fact of her husband’s elevation. As devout as Deborah, her utterance is equally marked by its comprehensiveness of view, its devotion and self-forgetfulness. No visions of personal finery, of fashionable entertainments and show, gleam through the grand utterances of this majestic woman. And yet no pictures of the White House, no sketches of the social life of her time begin to be as graphic, frequent and “telling,” as those of Abigail Adams. Nothing has been more quoted than her sketch of the White House as she found it.
“The house is upon a grand and superb scale, requiring about thirty servants to attend and keep the apartments in proper order, and perform the ordinary business of the house and stables—an establishment very well proportioned to the President’s salary. The lighting the apartments from the kitchen to parlors and chambers, is a tax indeed, and the fires we are obliged to keep to secure us from daily agues is another very cheering comfort. To assist us in this castle, and render less attendance necessary, bells are wholly wanting, not one single one being hung through the whole house, and promises are all you can obtain. This is so great an inconvenience that I know not what to do or how to do. The ladies from Georgetown and in the city have many of them visited me. Yesterday I returned fifteen visits. But such a place as Georgetown appears! Why, our Milton is beautiful. But no comparisons; if they put me up bells, and let me have wood enough to keep fires, I designto be pleased. But surrounded with forests, can you believe that wood is not to be had, because people cannot be found to cut and cart it.... We have indeed come into a new country.“The house is made habitable, but there is not a single apartment finished, and all within side, except the plastering, has been done since B. came.... If the twelve years in which this place has been considered as the future seat of government, had been improved as they would have been in New England, very many of the present inconveniences would have been removed. It is a beautiful spot, capable of any improvement, and the more I view it the more I am delighted with it.“The ladies are impatient for a drawing-room: I have no looking-glasses but dwarfs, for this house; and a twentieth part lamps enough to light it. My tea-china is more than half missing.... You can scarcely believe that here in this wilderness city I should find my time so occupied as it is. My visitors, some of them, came three or four miles. The return of one of them is the work of one day.... We have not theleast fence, yard, or other conveniences without, and the great unfinished audience-room—(the East room) I make a drying-room of to hang my clothes in. Six chambers are made comfortable; two lower rooms, one for a common parlor and one for a ball-room.”
“The house is upon a grand and superb scale, requiring about thirty servants to attend and keep the apartments in proper order, and perform the ordinary business of the house and stables—an establishment very well proportioned to the President’s salary. The lighting the apartments from the kitchen to parlors and chambers, is a tax indeed, and the fires we are obliged to keep to secure us from daily agues is another very cheering comfort. To assist us in this castle, and render less attendance necessary, bells are wholly wanting, not one single one being hung through the whole house, and promises are all you can obtain. This is so great an inconvenience that I know not what to do or how to do. The ladies from Georgetown and in the city have many of them visited me. Yesterday I returned fifteen visits. But such a place as Georgetown appears! Why, our Milton is beautiful. But no comparisons; if they put me up bells, and let me have wood enough to keep fires, I designto be pleased. But surrounded with forests, can you believe that wood is not to be had, because people cannot be found to cut and cart it.... We have indeed come into a new country.
“The house is made habitable, but there is not a single apartment finished, and all within side, except the plastering, has been done since B. came.... If the twelve years in which this place has been considered as the future seat of government, had been improved as they would have been in New England, very many of the present inconveniences would have been removed. It is a beautiful spot, capable of any improvement, and the more I view it the more I am delighted with it.
“The ladies are impatient for a drawing-room: I have no looking-glasses but dwarfs, for this house; and a twentieth part lamps enough to light it. My tea-china is more than half missing.... You can scarcely believe that here in this wilderness city I should find my time so occupied as it is. My visitors, some of them, came three or four miles. The return of one of them is the work of one day.... We have not theleast fence, yard, or other conveniences without, and the great unfinished audience-room—(the East room) I make a drying-room of to hang my clothes in. Six chambers are made comfortable; two lower rooms, one for a common parlor and one for a ball-room.”
Abigail Adams is an illustrious example of the grandeur of human character. She proved in herself how potent an individual may be, and that individual a woman, in spite of caste, of sex, or the restrictions of human law or condition. She never went to school in her life, yet her thoughtful utterances will live where the labored utterances of her scholarly husband are forgotten. She was less than a year the mistress of the President’s house, yet she has lived ever since in memory a grand model to all who succeed her. The daughter of a country clergyman, the wife of a patriotic and ambitious man, whether she gathered her children about her or sent them forth across stormy seas, while she left herself desolate; whether shestood the wife of the Republican Minister before the haughty Charlotte in the stateliest and proudest court of Europe; whether she presided in the President’s house in the new Capital or in the wilderness, or wrote to statesmen and grandchildren in her own lowly house in Quincy, in prosperity or sorrow, in youth and in age, in life and in death, always she was the regnant woman, devout, wise, patriotic, proud, humble and loving.
Her pictures of the social life of her time are among the most acute, lively and graphic on record. While in her letters to her son, to her husband, to Jefferson and other statesmen, we find some of the grandest utterances of the Revolutionary period. Cut off by her sex from active participation in the struggles and triumphs of the men of her time, not one of them would have died more gladly or grandly than she, for liberty; denied the power of manhood, she made the most of the privileges of womanhood. She instilled into the souls of her children great ideas; she inspired her husband by the hourly sight of a grand example; she gave, through them, her life-long service to the State, and she gave to her country and to posterity her spotless and heroic memory. Tardy Massachusetts! You build monuments to your sons, and ignore the fame of your illustrious daughters. When in the Pantheon of the States you shall place the sculptured forms of two of your patriots, honor your ancient fame by giving to posterity the majestic lineaments of the great woman of the Revolution—Abigail Adams.
In her portrait, Stuart gives us Minerva in a lace cap. Dainty and delicate, it softens without veiling her august features. The exquisite lace ruff about the throat, the lace shawl upon the shoulders, all indicate the finest offeminine tastes, while the broad brow, wide eyes, keenly cut nose, firm chin and slightly imperious mouth, proclaim the proud and powerful intellect, and the high head the commanding moral nature of the woman.
The wife of Jefferson died in her youth. His love for her was the passion of his life. In his love, and in his existence, she was never supplanted. Ever after, he lived in his children, his grand-children, his books and the affairs of State.
Jefferson had two daughters, the only two of his children who survived to mature life. One of these, Maria, who in childhood went to Paris in the care of Mrs. Adams, and who was remarkable for her beauty and the loveliness of her nature, died in early womanhood. She was indifferent to her own beauty, and almost resented the admiration which it called forth, exclaiming, “You praise me forthatbecause you can not praise me for better things.” She set an extraordinary value upon talent, believing that the possession of it alone could make her the worthy companion of her father. She was most tenderly beloved by him, and, at the time of her early death, he wrote to his friend, Governor Page: “Others may lose of their abundance; but I, of my want, have lost even the half of that I had. My evening prospects now hang on the slender thread of a single life.” This “single” life was that of Martha Jefferson Randolph. She lived to be not only the domestic comforter, but the intellectual companion of her father. She was one of that type of daughters, of which, in our own country, Theodocia Burr and Katherine Chase have been such illustrious examples. These women, equally beautiful, intellectual, and charming, identifiedthemselves not only with the private interests, but with the public life and political ambitions of their fathers.
Had Martha Jefferson been less womanly and domestic, she might have made herself famous as abelle, a wit, or a scholar. Married at seventeen, the mother of twelve children, seven of whom were daughters, the fine quality of her intellect, and the nobility of her soul were all merged into a life spent in their guidance, and in devotion and service to her husband and father. The mother of five children at the time of her father’s inauguration as President of the United States, separated from Washington by a long and fatiguing journey, which could only be performed by coach and horse-travel, Mrs. Randolph never made but two visits to the President’s house, during his two terms of office. Her son, James Madison Randolph was born in the “White House.”
Jefferson began his Presidency with a certain ostentation of democracy. One of the first declarations of his administration was, “Levéesare done away.” Remembering what importance was attached to these assemblies by Washington and Adams, and what grand court occasions they were made, we can imagine the disapprobation with which this mandate was received by the “bellesof society.” A party of these gathered in force, and, all gaily attired, proceeded to the President’s house. On his return from a horseback ride he was informed that a large number of ladies were in the “Levéeroom” waiting for him. Covered with dust, spurs on, and whip in hand, he proceeded to the drawing-room. Shade of Washington! He told them he was glad to see them, and asked them to remain. Thesebellesand beauties received his polite salutationswith how much delight we may fancy. They never came again.
A Virginian accustomed to the service of slaves, as the President of the United States, Jefferson blacked his own boots. A foreign functionary, a stickler for etiquette, paid him a visit of ceremony one morning, and found him engaged in this pleasing employment. Jefferson apologized, saying, that being a plain man, he did not like to trouble his servants. The foreign grandee departed, declaring that no government could long survive, whose head was his own shoe-black. Jefferson gave great offense to the English Minister, Mr. Merry, because he took Mrs. Madison, to whom he happened to be talking, into dinner instead of Mrs. Merry. Mr. Merry made it an official offense which was reported to his government. Mr. Madison wrote to Mr. Monroe, who was then Minister to England, that he might be ready to answer the call of the British government for explanations. Mr. Monroe wrote back that he was glad of it, for the wife of a British under-secretary had recently been given precedence to Mrs. Monroe, in being escorted to the dinner table. Nevertheless, Mrs. Merry’s nose never came down from the air, and she never again crossed the threshold of the President’s house.
The same year Jefferson aroused the ire of Thomas Moore, then twenty-four years of age, and without fame, save in his own country. The President, from his altitude of six feet two-and-a-half inches, looked down on the curled and perfumed little poet, and spoke a word and passed on. This was an indignity that London’s and Dublin’s darling never pardoned, and he went back to lampoon, not only America, but the President. One of his attacks came into the hands of Martha Randolph, who,deeply indignant, placed it before her father in his library. He broke into an amused laugh. Years afterwards, when Moore’s Irish melodies appeared, Jefferson, looking them over, exclaimed: “Why, this is the little man who satirized me so! Why, he is a poet afterall.”all.”And from that moment Moore had a place beside Burns’ in Jefferson’s library.
John Randolph, her father’s political foe, said of Martha Jefferson: “She is the sweetest creature in Virginia,” and we all know that John Randolph believed that nothing “sweet” or even endurable existed outside of Virginia. In adversity and sorrow, in poverty and trial, in age as in youth, the steadfast sweetness of character, and elevation of nature, which made Martha Jefferson remarkable in prosperity, shone forth with transcendent lustre when all external accessories had fled. The daughter of a man called a free-thinker, she all her life was sweetly, simply, devoutly religious. In her letters to her daughter, “Septimia,” she draws us nearer to her tender soul in its heavenly love and charity. This daughter, to his latest breath, was to Jefferson, the soul of his soul. After his retirement she not only entertained his guests, and ministered to his personal comforts, but shared intellectually all his thoughts and studies. Six months before her death, Sully painted her portrait. Her daughter says:
“I accompanied her to Mr. Sully’s studio, and, as she took her seat before him, she said playfully: ‘Mr. Sully, I shall never forgive you if you paint me with wrinkles.’“I quickly interrupted, ‘Paint her just as she is, Mr. Sully, the picture is for me.’“He said, ‘I shall paint you, Mrs. Randolph, as I remember you twenty years ago.’“The picture does represent her younger—but failed to restore the expression of health and cheerful, ever-joyous vivacity which her countenance then habitually wore. My mother’s face owed its greatest charm to its expressiveness, beaming, as it ever was, with kindness, good humor, gayety and wit. She was tall and very graceful; her complexion naturally fair, her hair of a dark chestnut color, very long and very abundant. Her manners were uncommonly attractive from their vivacity, amiability and high breeding, and her conversation was charming.”
“I accompanied her to Mr. Sully’s studio, and, as she took her seat before him, she said playfully: ‘Mr. Sully, I shall never forgive you if you paint me with wrinkles.’
“I quickly interrupted, ‘Paint her just as she is, Mr. Sully, the picture is for me.’
“He said, ‘I shall paint you, Mrs. Randolph, as I remember you twenty years ago.’
“The picture does represent her younger—but failed to restore the expression of health and cheerful, ever-joyous vivacity which her countenance then habitually wore. My mother’s face owed its greatest charm to its expressiveness, beaming, as it ever was, with kindness, good humor, gayety and wit. She was tall and very graceful; her complexion naturally fair, her hair of a dark chestnut color, very long and very abundant. Her manners were uncommonly attractive from their vivacity, amiability and high breeding, and her conversation was charming.”