We are especially interested in this society because Jefferson, on his arrival, was shocked at its unrepublican tone. The inner or select circle did not number more than three hundred.[55] A French traveler was impressed with its tendency to luxury, its love of grandeur, and ostentatious display. ‘English luxury,’ ‘English fashions,’ the women in ‘the most brilliant silks, gauzes, hats, and borrowed hair,’ the men, more modest as to dress, but taking ‘their revenge in the luxury of the table’ and in smoking cigars from the Spanish islands.[56] The Loyalist families were forward in asserting their social prerogatives in the shadow of the Republican ‘Court.’ Did they not have money and the prestige of having wined and dined and danced with the officers of His Majesty in the days of the occupation? None more conspicuous than the Henry Whites with a fine house on Wall Street, with one son in His Majesty’s army, another a rear admiral in His Majesty’s navy. About the Misses White—‘so gay and fashionable, so charming in conversation, with such elegant figures’—the young blades gathered like moths about the flame. Giddy were the parties there, the men Beau Brummels in the extreme of fashion, and out of the few fugitive pictures we catch a glimpse of Mrs. Verplanck dancing a minuet ‘in hoop and petticoats,’ and a young beau catching cold from ‘riding home in a sedan chair with one of the glasses broken,’ after partaking too freely of hot port wine.[57]
Balls and teas there were aplenty, but ‘society’ preferred to dine and talk. Hamilton in his home on Wall Street gave frequent dinners insinuating when not boldly proclaiming his doubts of the people. Van Breckel, the Dutch Minister, entertained lavishly, making his dining-room the resort of the little foreign circle—and every one tried to keep up the pace.
It was the pace that killed—financially. The Henry Knoxes then began their journey toward bankruptcy, living elaborately on Broadway, maintaining horses and grooms, five servants, and giving two dinners a month. Almost a ninth of his salary went for wine alone. What with his own hair-dressing, and that of the expansive Lucy, who wore her hair, after the extreme fashion, ‘at least a foot high, much in the form of a churn bottom upward,’ the family account with Anthony Latour, hair-dresser, was no small matter,[58] and his annual deficit was a third of his salary.
Nor was the Secretary of War unique. The social life was a hectic swirl of calls, teas, entertainments. ‘When shall I get spirit to pay all the social debts I owe?’ wrote one lady of quiet tastes.[59] It was harvest-time for the dressmakers, the jewelers, the hair-dressers. The ball given in compliment to Washington by the French Minister called for special costumes, for there were ‘two sets of Cotillion Dancers in complete uniforms; one set in that of France and the other in Buff and Blue,’ while the ladies were ‘dressed in white with Ribbands, Bouquets and Garlands of Flowers answering to the uniforms of the Gentlemen.’[60] And so with other functions equally gay.
But after all, the ‘court’ had come to town, and if there was no Majesty on Cherry Street, it was not because the ‘court set’ did not pretend it so. The illusion of vanity was fostered by the snobbery of Fenno of the ‘court journal.’ When Madame Washington arrived, ‘conducted over the bay in the President’s barge rowed by thirteen eminent pilots in handsome white dress,’ the editor enumerated the ladies who had ‘paid their devoirs to the amiable consort of our beloved President.’ There were ‘the Lady of His Excellency the Governor, Lady Sterling, Lady Mary Watts, Lady Kitty Duer, La Marchioness de Brehan, the ladies of the Most Honorable Mr. Langdon, and the Most Honorable Mr. Dalton ... and a great many other respectable characters.’[61] This was too much for ‘A Republican’ who worked off his fury in a scornful letter to the opposition paper referring to the ‘tawdry phraseology,’ to the ‘titular folly of Europe’s courts,’ and suggesting that we ‘leave to the sons and daughters of corrupted Europe their levees, Drawing Rooms, Routs, Drums, and Tornedos.’[62] It was to require more than this, however, to jar the high-flying Fenno from the clouds, and his readers were soon informed that ‘His Excellency the Vice-President, His Excellency the Governor of the State, and many other personalities of the greatest distinction will be present at the theater this evening.’ It was not for nothing that the pedagogue pensman from Boston had launched his paper with the hope ‘that the wealthy part of the community will become patrons of this publication.’[63] The ‘inconveniency of being fashionable’ was impressed upon one Senator on finding a colleague, who, having ‘set up a coach,’ and, embarrassed in his plans by the irregular adjournments, was wont to sit alone in the Chamber ‘in a state of ennui’ as much as ‘two or three hours’ waiting for his carriage ‘to take him three or four hundred yards.’[64]
But while there was much of this ridiculous affectation, society was not without its charms; for Mrs. Hamilton had her days for receiving, and her drawing-room was brilliant, and all the more interesting because her vivacious sister, Mrs. Church, just back from London, bringing with her ‘a late abominable fashion of Ladies, like Washwomen with their sleeves above their elbows,’ was there to assist.[65] And all the men were not on stilts, for it is on record that the congressional delegation from Pennsylvania would occasionally break through the ‘court circle’ to dine from three to nine, and indulge in ‘a scene of beastial badness’ with Robert Morris proving himself ‘certainly the greatest blackguard in that way.’[66] There was the usual small gossip to bring the soarers to earth. The cream served at the table of Mrs. Washington was not the best. Mrs. Morris had been compelled to ‘rid herself of a morsel’ of spoiled food there, but ‘Mrs. Washington ate a whole heap of it.’[67] Mrs. Knox amused the Mother Grundys because so fat, and her blundering misuse of words caused much tittering behind fans and much whispering among her friends.
But it was on the Wall Street promenade that the gossips depended for their choicest morsels. The Wall Street of that day was just beginning to displace Pearl as the abode of fashion. True, there were a few business houses, a tavern, a fashionable caterer, a jeweler, but from Broadway to Pearl there was a row of substantial residences in which dwelt people of importance. It was there in the promenade that the political celebrities were encountered, but more appealing to the gentlemen of pleasure were the fine ladies who passed in their finery—gay silks and satins—walking or taking the air luxuriously in their sedan chairs. The cronies of Dan McCormick, the unsnared and lordly entertainer, who gazed out of the windows of his House of Gossip at Number 39, and from his front steps surveyed the parade with the eyes of connoisseurs, must have been trying to the modesty of the timid—but perhaps none such passed that way. If they laughed over the latest blunders of Mrs. Knox as she hove into sight like a huge ship in full sail, and made merry over the sister of the French Consul as she was borne luxuriously along in her sedan chair, we may be sure that they were appreciative of the pretty. And these crowded the narrow street for the promenade, quite as much bent on amusement and flirtation as the men about town on the steps of the House of Gossip.
For it was an age of gallantry, the men quite as vain as the women dared be, and there, in addition to political celebrities, paraded the local blades of society in their white buzz wigs, their three-cornered hats, and silver shoe buckles. Here the elegant Hamilton in banter with a blushing belle, there the courtly Burr bowing over the hand of a coquette unafraid of the fire, and yonder Dr. John Bard, who prescribed pills for the fashionable, pounding the pavement with his heavy cane as he walked along smiling a bit sardonically upon his patients. And, swinging along like a symphony, a dandy in a scarlet coat with mother-of-pearl buttons, a white silk waistcoat embroidered with colored flowers, black satin breeches, white silk stockings, and a cocked hat, an Irish miniature painter out for an airing and to give the ladies a treat. Here—on Wall Street—was Vanity Fair.[68]
Albeit the Vice-President had not then become the social head of the Nation, society liked nothing better than an invitation to Richmond Hill, the home of Adams, a mile and a half from the city. Even Abigail was delighted, for her home reminded her ‘of the valley of Honiton in Devonshire,’ with its avenue of forest trees, its shrubbery, its green fields, its pastures full of cattle, and the Hudson ‘white flecked with sails.’[69] Here at the dinner-table statesmen and their wives and the social leaders contrived to talk like ladies and gentlemen of the court, and Jefferson thought in a language foreign to a republic. But good talk it was, and good dinners, we may be sure, even though the French Consul did take his cook to Richmond Hill with the explanation that he had had experience with New York dinners.[70] There was enough elegance at Richmond Hill to encourage the Adams coachman to put on airs that offended the groundlings as he drove through the streets.