The House on the Hill was the home of quite ceremonious entertaining in those days. John Adams, in another land, would surely have been a courtier—a Cavalier rather than a Roundhead. John T. Morse, Jr., says that the Vice-president liked "the trappings of authority." The same historian declares that in his advice to President Washington, "... he talked of dress and undress, of attendants, gentlemen-in-waiting, chamberlains, etc., as if he were arranging the household of a European monarch."
Gulian C. Verplanck (sometimes known by the nom de plume of "Francis Herbert"), wrote in 1829, quite an interesting account of Richmond Hill as he personally recalled it. He draws for us a graphic picture of a dinner party given by the Vice-president and Mrs. Adams for various illustrious guests.
After entering the house by a side door on the right, they mounted a broad staircase with a heavy mahogany railing. Dinner was served in a large room on the second floor with Venetian windows and a door opening out onto the balcony under the portico. And then he gives us these vivid little vignettes of those who sat at the great table:
In the centre sat "Vice-president Adams in full dress, with his bag and solitaire, his hair frizzed out each side of his face as you see it in Stuart's older pictures of him. On his right sat Baron Steuben, our royalist republican disciplinarian general. On his left was Mr. Jefferson, who had just returned from France, conspicuous in his red waistcoat and breeches, the fashion of Versailles. Opposite sat Mrs. Adams, with her cheerful, intelligent face. She was placed between the Count du Moustier, the French Ambassador, in his red-healed shoes and earrings, and the grave, polite, and formally bowing Mr. Van Birket, the learned and able envoy of Holland. There, too, was Chancellor Livingston, then still in the prime of life, so deaf as to make conversation with him difficult, yet so overflowing with wit, eloquence and information that while listening to him the difficulty was forgotten. The rest were members of Congress, and of our Legislature, some of them no inconsiderable men. Being able to talk French, a rare accomplishment in America at that time, a place was assigned to me next the count."
Verplanck goes on to describe the dinner. He says that it was a very grand affair, bountiful and elaborately served, but the French Ambassador would taste nothing. He took a spoonful or two of soup but refused everything else "from the roast beef down to the lobsters." Everyone was concerned, for that was a day of trenchermen, and only serious illness kept people from eating their dinners. At last the door opened and his own private chef,—quaintly described by Verplanck as "his body-cook,"—rushed into the room pushing the waiters right and left before him, and placed triumphantly upon the table an immense pie of game and truffles, still hot from the oven. This obviously had been planned as a pleasant surprise for the hosts. Du Moustier took a small helping himself and divided the rest among the others. The chronicler adds, "I can attest to the truth of the story and the excellence of the pâté!"
No one doubts the courteous intentions of the Count, but something tells me that that excellent housewife and incomparable hostess, Mistress Adams, was not enchanted by the unexpected addition to her delicious and carefully planned menu!
It is Verplanck, by the bye, who has put in a peculiarly succinct way one of the most signal characteristics of New York—its lightning-like evolution.
"In this city especially," he says, "the progress of a few years effect what in Europe is the work of centuries." A shrewd and happily tongued observer, is Mr. Verplanck; we shall have occasion, I believe, to refer to him again.
The Adams' occupancy of Richmond Hill House was, we must be convinced, a very happy one. It was a house of a flexible and versatile personality, a beautiful home, an important headquarters of many state affairs, a brilliant social nucleus. Washington and his wife often went there to call in their beloved post-chaise, and there was certainly no dignitary of the time and the place who was not at one time or another a guest there. In the course of time, the Adamses went to a new and fine dwelling at Bush Hill on the Schuylkill. And dear Mistress Abigail, faithful to the house of her heart, wrote wistfully of her just-acquired home:
"It is a beautiful place, but the grand and sublime I left at Richmond Hill"...