Chapter Thirty-Two #2
Every Friday evening all manner of people turned out for Mrs. Washington’s levees dressed brilliantly to be entertained with lemonades and ice creams. And while other ladies tried to outdo one another in pearls, gloves, feather ornaments, and embroidered silk shoes, I had the honor to attend the president’s lady on the dais.
President Washington even did me the honor of gently removing any other lady who tried to take my place.
And there, at Martha Washington’s side, I carried myself with what I hoped was a dignified bearing—trying to convey the sense of authority and sureness that would’ve rivaled any lady-in-waiting at a royal court.
But, of course, this was a republican court.
Mrs. Washington’s simpler levees—held in her neoclassical drawing room with its Wilton carpet and gilded paintings—were grand
enough for me. For if I closed my eyes, I could easily remember myself on my knees scrubbing floors, feeding geese, milking
cows, and scraping together meals for my children from old root vegetables in the cellar.
Fortunately, I’d come a long way from the days of the war. And what diplomacy I’d learned in Europe made me better able to
manage being pressed on all sides by those who now sought to curry favor.
I found myself besieged by hangers-on who wished me to get an audience for them with my husband. I was approached by strangers
who somehow thought they had some right to presume upon me. I was also pressed by friends of long-standing acquaintance, like
Mrs. Warren, who—despite her indebtedness to me, her lack of letters, her new coolness to us, and her virulent opposition
to the Constitution—now asked me to convince my husband to find some government position for her sons.
I couldn’t do this in good conscience. To spare us both the embarrassment, I threw the letter into the fire and pretended
never to have received it.
“Oh, for an English butler and housekeeper,” I muttered while fixing the place settings, lighting the parlor, and fussing
over my own hair, since we had no friseur.
Still, we were managing. I might complain about my weariness in making idle conversation with the wives of every government official, diplomat, or other stranger who happened to make the trip to Richmond Hill. But I was becoming exceedingly good at it.
I’d learned well in Paris and London. I knew that my quick, acerbic wit could be an asset in political circles, because society
ladies feared me a little bit, and under the circumstances, that was no bad thing. It meant they were more apt to aim their
darts at someone like the round and jolly Mrs. Knox.
I was well content. And why shouldn’t I be? Surrounded by my children and grandchildren, I told Nabby that if only I could
pluck my remaining loved ones from Braintree and transport them here, I should be the happiest woman alive.
Nabby’s brow inched up. “That is all you want for?”
I glanced down at my expanding waistline. “Well, I should also like to develop an aversion to Mrs. Washington’s lemon cakes
before I grow ro—round.”
I’d nearly said the word rotund, which called to mind the mockery of my husband as His Rotundity, the Duke of Braintree. And Nabby smirked at me. “Papa cannot
pass them by either. It would seem to be a family trait.”
“Now that you mention it, your brother Charles grows fat as a goose.”
My daughter chuckled. “Because you domesticated him! He was once a wild slender songbird, fluttering about Harvard’s courtyard
in nothing but the clothing of nature. Now that he’s caged, he has naught to do but gorge on the seed.”
I eyed her for her poultry references. “It is good for wives to have different interests than their husbands, you know.”
“You likened Charles to a goose!”
I laughed. “Truthfully, he eats quite sparingly. So, he mustn’t take enough exercise. Or, perhaps he too often sacrifices
to Bacchus with your husband at his social club.”
Nabby understood this to be a veiled accusation. “It is more likely the sweets my unmarried sister-in-law plies him with.
There isn’t a girl who doesn’t want to watch the dimpled Charles Adams eat her confections.”
Scandalized, I flapped my fan against her arm. “He had best be careful, or those dimples of his will be his undoing.”
“Welcome to New York, Mr. Jefferson!” I said, beckoning our old friend into my drawing room.
Having only recently returned from his stint as ambassador in Paris, Jefferson had been made secretary of state. And we couldn’t
be happier.
Now the Virginia gentleman lifted my hands to give a courtly kiss to the back of each one. “Mrs. Adams, you are a sight for
sore eyes after a journey in such snow I could travel no more than three miles an hour. How pleased I am to find you looking
well.”
Jefferson was also looking well. Very well indeed. Still tall, freckled, and lean—but with a new gravitas and a more sophisticated
wardrobe he acquired in Paris.
“Are your little girls with you?” I asked.
Jefferson smiled. “Not so little now. Patsy is seventeen and soon to be married.”
“I had not heard!”
He nodded, hands behind his back. “A distant cousin. Not a blockhead. I’m delighted by the match.”
“We will send a gift!” I said, then teased, “Though I hoped we might match your Patsy to one of my boys to strengthen the
federal union.”
Jefferson chuckled. “Well, I still have Polly. When I’m better settled, she’ll join me.”
My heart filled with warmth, remembering that little girl. “That would be wonderful! And how fares Sally?”
Oddly, Jefferson curled inward at the question, as if I had somehow stabbed at a vulnerable spot. “Well. She’s well.”
I was confused; perhaps Virginians didn’t ask after each other’s enslaved servants, but he had never flinched when I’d asked
after James Hemings. In any case, the discomfort of the moment was fleeting, as Mr. Jefferson was charming as ever.
We fell swiftly into amiable conversation as he asked after Nabby and my grandchildren. Jefferson smiled broadly and his eyes settled upon the decorative table where little Willy’s childish chalk crayon drawing lay, as the maids had yet to clear it away.
“I see your grandson is an artist in the making,” Jefferson said with a wink. “You ought to frame it to ornament the walls
of this lovely abode. And it is truly lovely. I’m envious, as I’m lodging at a boardinghouse just now, though I hope to take
a house on Maiden Lane.”
“A good location. Colonel Smith found a place on Nassau Street. You’ll be neighbors.”
I didn’t mention it was a foolish expense for Nabby’s husband to undertake, considering a third child was soon to be born.
I kept my own counsel about my son-in-law’s expenses, since no one is without their difficulties, whether in high or low life,
and every person knows best where their own shoe pinches.
“What news from the House of Representatives?” Jefferson came around to asking as we waited for John to return from the ferry.
“I was in attendance myself to hear Secretary Hamilton’s report on the public credit and his proposal to assume state debts;
I looked on from the galleries with Mrs. Jay. It was a spectacle.”
Time with the ladies of France seemed to have accustomed Jefferson to women in public affairs, for he no longer showed surprise
at my involvement in politics or finance. “And what think you of the proposal to move the nation’s capital?”
I made a face. “I’d rather not move again.” I doubted there was a spot in the United States so beautiful as this upon which
I lived now. But I knew southerners feared northern influence. Cheekily, I suggested, “Perhaps Philadelphia would be convenient.”
“Or even Baltimore,” he replied, ever the diplomat. “In any case, I’m curious to see what compromise may be had.”
“I am curious about what is happening in France,” I said, unable to resist interrogating him on the matter even a moment longer.
“We’ve heard positively dreadful reports. Violence and mayhem.”
“Some,” he said, his tone measured. “So far it seems that their revolution has got along with a steady pace, with occasional
difficulties and dangers. But we are not to expect to be transported from despotism to liberty in a feather bed.”
“But I’m so fearful for the Lafayettes.”
He grimaced. “Yes. I’ve never feared for the ultimate result, though I fear for Lafayette personally. France would work out
her salvation, but were she to lose Lafayette, it would cost her oceans of blood, and years of confusion and anarchy.”
He seemed disconcertingly philosophical about it. And I sensed, even then, that small political fissures were beginning to
open between us. But we were all only too glad that Jefferson would be secretary of state—that, and knowing he would add so
much to our social circle over the season.
And so he did, though I cannot say everyone was happy for his company.
Alexander Hamilton greeted the secretary of state’s debut as if a rival for his lady love had swept into town.
At Mrs. Washington’s glorious New Year’s party, the chandeliers dripped candle wax onto clusters of lemon-verbena-scented
ladies in feathered plumes, while gentlemen gulped down warm spiced wine.
Mr. Jefferson tried valiantly for light conversation with other guests, but Hamilton cornered him near the table of sugar-dusted
honey cakes, and like an angry hornet, dove straight in for the sting. “A national debt, Secretary Jefferson—if it is not
excessive—will be a blessing.”
Jefferson frowned into his glass of punch, apparently fascinated by the orange slice bobbing in his drink. “I wish I could
agree for the sake of agreeableness, sir. But I sincerely believe the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity
is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”
I stared into my own cup of syllabub, feigning distraction. But I was still listening attentively when Hamilton began to needle
Jefferson about the progress of the French Revolution, disparaging all who took part in it.
I saw that Jefferson took great offense, though he was too much a gentleman to ruin the merriment of the evening by saying
so. But his fury would later be vented behind Hamilton’s back.
For the two cabinet secretaries apparently started the year as they meant to go on, and by spring, it was already known they were dedicated foes.
The weather remained uncommonly wet and cold, as if the sky itself grieved the passing of Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia
at the ripe old age of eighty-four.
Here in New York, we had more snow in spring than through the whole winter. And everyone was now sick. Most especially President
Washington.
“We are in great anxiety for the president,” John confided. “Be prudent and say little upon the subject. We cannot have general
alarm.”
“I’m certainly in no state to gossip,” I said, vexed by a frightful cough and the idea he could think me so foolish. “I thought
he was recovering in the countryside?”
“He returned with a violent fever and such a rattling in his throat that Mrs. Washington left his room thinking him dying.
The physicians warn me we may need to be prepared to step forward.”
He meant that if Washington died, he’d become president, and I’d replace Martha Washington as the foremost lady in the land.
I’d seen enough to know what that meant, and it was a position I had not the least ambition to attain.
That night, as freezing rain lashed the windows, I lay awake, haunted by a single thought: the government’s survival depended
on George Washington’s life.
If he died, John would be called to replace him, and it would be an impossible task. The burden could crush him—our public
finances in chaos, the government untested, the people unsure.
Leadership in such times was filled with peril. In France, the king and his family were prisoners of the mob. And John warned
that this was the fate of leaders when government failed.
I feared that fate for him. I feared it for us all.
Even if Washington recovered—he had already been at death’s door twice. And if he didn’t last to the next election . . . where
would we be?