“My lovely maid, I’ve often thought
Whether thy name be just or not;
Thy bosom is as cold as snow,
Which we for matchless white may show;
But when thy beauteous face is seen,
Thou’rt of brunettes the charming queen.
Resolve our doubts: let it be known
Thou rather art inclined to Brown.”
It is evident that this fair White did not permanently incline to Brown, as one sister became Lady Hayes, and the other married one of the Monroes. Here also, in goodly array, were Osgoods, Philipses, Rutherfurds, Van Cortlandts, Van Zandts, Clintons, Montgomerys, De Lanceys, De Peysters, Kissams, Bleeckers, Clarksons, Verplancks, Schuylers, Van Rensselaers, and Macombs. How the old names repeat themselves in the social life of to-day! Prominent in these inaugural festivities were the Livingstons of Clermont, Chief Justice Yates, of New York, the handsome soldierly figure of Morgan Lewis, Grand Marshal of the Inauguration ceremonies, Mrs. Dominick Lynch, Mrs. Edgar, Mrs. Provoost, Lady Stirling, and her two daughters, Lady Mary Watts and Lady Kitty Duer. We learn that their aunt, Mrs. Peter Van Brugh Livingston, had the honor of dancing a cotillon with the President, who opened the ball with the wife of the Mayor of New York, Mrs. James Duane. He also danced in the minuet with Mrs. James Homer Maxwell, with whom as Miss Catharine Van Zandt he had repeatedly danced while the army was quartered at Morristown. When Washington entered the lists, dancing seemed to be elevated to the dignity of a function of the state, and in proof of the grace with which his Excellency could tread a measure it is related that a French gentleman, after observing him in the dance, paid him the high compliment of saying that a Parisian education could not have rendered his execution more admirable. Mrs. James Beekman,[17] born Jane Keteletas, was the belle of the de Moustier ball, a week later, and gazing upon her serene face, framed in by a little cap of gauze and ribbon, that would have been trying to features less perfect, we can readily believe that she also occupied a prominent place in the inaugural festivities. Mrs. William Smith, who had returned from London, where her husband was Secretary of the American legation, was present, as was also Lady Temple, the American wife of Sir John Temple, British Consul-General, whom the Marquis de Chastellux found so distinguished that it was unnecessary to pronounce her beautiful. Her husband, Sir John, took upon himself “singular airs,” says Mrs. William Smith, and this spirited little woman declined to visit my lady because she did not consider that Sir John treated her spouse with proper deference. Lady Christiana Griffin, the Scotch wife of Cyrus Griffin, President of Congress, was also one of the guests of the evening.
Among New York women whose husbands held high positions were Mrs. Alexander Hamilton; Mrs. Ralph Izard, wife of the Senator from South Carolina, whose surname furnished Mrs. Bache a peg on which to hang her bon-mot about knowing everything South Carolinian from B[18] to Z (izzard); Mrs. Robert R. Livingston, the daughter of Colonel Henry Beekman, whose husband had a week earlier administered the oath of office to the President; Mrs. King, born Mary Alsop, of whose marriage to Rufus King John Adams speaks as “additional bonds to cement the love between New York and old Massachusetts;” and Mrs. Elbridge Gerry, wife of the Senator from Massachusetts. The Rev. Manasseh Cutler visited the Gerrys when they were living in Philadelphia, and speaks of the beauty and accomplishments of the New York lady. He expressed to her his surprise that Philadelphia ladies rose so early, saying that he saw them at breakfast at half-past five, when in Boston they could hardly see a breakfast-table before nine without falling into hysterics. To which Mrs. Gerry replied that she had become inured to early rising and found it conducive to her health.
Stately courtesy and dignity, combined with a certain simplicity begotten of pioneer living in a new country, seem to have been the distinguishing characteristics of this old-time society, and of the couple who presided over it and knew so well how to balance the functions of public office with the sacred demands of home life.
In days of retirement at Mount Vernon, when engaged in instructing her maidens, or in household pursuits, Mrs. Washington was always simply attired, and in cloth of home manufacture. She could, however, on occasions of state appear in rich costumes of satin, velvet, and lace, while the President, although appearing at the inaugural ceremonies in a suit of cloth of American manufacture, on festal occasions donned the velvet and satin that so well became him. With his republicanism in national affairs, it is evident that Washington inclined more to the state and ceremony of Old-World courts than to the extreme, almost bald, simplicity that came in with a later administration. The statement of that unknown “Virginia colonel” who said that General Washington’s “bows were more distant and stiff than anything he had seen at St. James’s” savors of probability, although disputed by some of his contemporaries, and Mr. Breck tells us that the President “had a stud of twelve or fourteen horses, and occasionally rode out to take the air with six horses to his coach, and always two footmen behind his carriage;” adding, “He knew how to maintain the dignity of his station. None of his successors, except the elder Adams, has placed a proper value on a certain degree of display that seems suitable for the chief magistrate of a great nation. I do not mean pageantry, but the decent exterior of a well-bred gentleman.” A President who thus realized all the dignity that his office implied naturally introduced a certain amount of form and ceremony into the social life of the capital, and when Mrs. Washington came from Mount Vernon, on the 27th of May, receptions were held at the old Franklin house on Cherry Street, whose like, for a certain state and fine aroma of old-time courtesy, we shall never see again. Those who, “with the earliest attention and respect, paid their devoirs to the amiable consort of our beloved President were,” says one of the newspapers of the time, “the Ladies of the Most Hon. Mr. Langdon [State Senator from New Hampshire] and the Most Hon. Mr. Dalton, the Mayoress [Mrs. James Duane], Mrs. Livingston of Clermont, Mrs. Chancellor Livingston, Mrs. Montgomery, Mrs. McComb, Mrs. Lynch, the Misses Bayard, and a great number of other respectable characters. Mrs. Washington from Philadelphia was accompanied by the Lady of Mr. Robert Morris.” We also learn that the President met his wife at Trenton, and that with a gayly-decorated and well-manned barge she made her journey to the seat of government.
Although we are not disposed to agree with the Chevalier de Crèvecœur, that “if there is a town on the American continent where English luxury displayed its follies, it was in New York,” Philadelphia, with Mrs. William Bingham as its social leader, having continued to assert its supremacy in this line, we are willing to believe that there was a fair amount of both folly and luxury in the national capital. This gentleman, Saint-John de Crèvecœur, sometime Consul-General at New York, was probably surprised to find anything approaching civilization in this city and country, as he exclaims, “You will find here the English fashions. In the dress of the women you will see the most brilliant silks, gauzes, hats, and borrowed hair.” It is amusing, in this connection, to note the French gentleman’s ideal of what a woman should be. He happened to be looking for a wife himself just then, and, like Solomon’s perfect woman, she was expected to look well to the ways of her household, to be skilled in the spinning of flax and the making of cheese and butter, and withal she was to have her mind cultivated a little, just enough to enable her to enjoy reading with her husband.
Mrs. William Smith, a less prejudiced observer than M. de Crèvecœur, in writing to her mother of a dinner at Chief Justice Jay’s which was served à la mode française, says that there was more fashion and state in New York than she would fancy. Brissot de Warville speaks of another dinner, this one at the house of Cyrus Griffin, at which seven or eight women appeared dressed in great hats and plumes. If the hats were as graceful and becoming as that worn by Mrs. John Jay in her portrait by Pine, we have no word of censure for those old-time beauties, although a plumed hat does seem a rather peculiar finish to a dinner costume, almost as odd as Mrs. William Smith’s elbow-sleeves, bare arms, and muff.
At her formal receptions, which Mr. Daniel Huntingdon has represented in his famous picture, Mrs. Washington stood with the Cabinet ladies around her, stately Mrs. Robert Morris by her side, herself the stateliest figure in the group. The President passed from guest to guest, exchanging a word with one and another, and pleasing all by the fine courtesy of his manner. The lovely ladies and the dignified gentlemen, many of the latter with powdered heads and bag-wigs, like his Excellency, trooped up by twos and threes to pay their respects to the first lady in the land. If around the Chief Magistrate were gathered the great men of the nation, those who, like John Adams, Robert Morris, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, had already impressed themselves deeply upon the past, and in connection with such younger minds as those of James Madison, Rufus King, Elbridge Gerry, and Oliver Ellsworth, the Cerberus of the Treasury, were destined to outline the serener history of the future, Mrs. Washington numbered in her Republican Court the noblest and most beautiful women in the land. Among these were many who, like her, had shared with their husbands the anxieties of the Revolutionary period,—notably, Mrs. General Knox, Mrs. Robert Morris, and Mrs. Adams,—while in a younger group were Mrs. Rufus King, who is described as singularly handsome, Mrs. Gerry, Mrs. George Clinton, Mrs. William Smith, John Adams’s daughter, Mrs. Walter Livingston, whom General Washington had once entertained, in rustic style, when encamped near New York, and, not the least attractive among these lovely dames, Mrs. John Jay, a daughter of Governor Livingston, who shared with Mrs. William Bingham, of Philadelphia, the distinction of being called the most beautiful and charming woman in America. Honors seem to have been easy between these two high-born dames, as both were beloved, admired, and fêted at home and abroad. The Marquise de Lafayette, who entertained a warm friendship for Mrs. Jay, said, with charming simplicity, that “Mrs. Jay and she thought alike, that pleasure might be found abroad, but happiness only at home.” All of Mrs. Jay’s portraits represent a face of such exquisite beauty that it is not difficult to imagine the furore she created at foreign and Republican courts.
Does there not seem to have been an indefinable charm of exquisiteness and dignity about these old-time dames, like the fragrance that surrounds some fine and stately exotic? They had abundant leisure to make their daily sacrifice to the graces, and they always appear before us in full toilette,—hair rolled or curled, slippers high of heel, and gown of stiff brocade or satin. We never catch these fair ladies en déshabille, nor do we desire to do so; their charm would as surely vanish before the inglorious ease of a loose morning gown and roomy slippers as does that of an American Indian when he divests himself of his war-paint and feathers. We read with equanimity of some of the belles of the period sitting all night with their pyramidal heads propped up against pillows, because the hair-dresser could not make his round without attending to some heads the night before the ball. This was “souffrir pour être belle” with a vengeance; yet, deeming it all in keeping with their stately elegance, for which they had to pay a price, we never stop to think of how their poor necks must have ached, choosing rather to dwell upon their triumphs when they entered the ball-room. We can hear Mr. Swanwick, or some other poet of the day, pay them the most extravagant compliments, while lamenting the void left by the absence of another fair one:
“Say why, amid the splendid rows
Of graceful belles and polish’d beaux,
Does not Markoe appear?
Has some intrusive pain dismay’d
From festive scenes the lov’ly maid,
Or does she illness fear?”