The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers (7 page)

VII

The war dragged on for two more years. Most of the time, the general and Martha lived in a house in Newburgh, a few miles from the Continental Army’s camp in New Windsor, about forty miles north of New York. Often during these months, Washington reported Martha was “low,” suffering from “bilious fevers and colic” and other complaints, probably symptoms of depression. Washington was bored and not a little irritated
at Congress’s inability to raise money to pay his troops. He, too, had minor physical woes; missing teeth made it difficult to chew his food and his eyes were beginning to fail. He ordered two sets of spectacles from Philadelphia, one for distant vision, the other for reading.

From Virginia came more bad news about his mother. Mary was back at her old game, telling everyone in Fredericksburg and elsewhere that she was penniless and close to starvation. An angry Washington wrote to his favorite younger brother, Jack, begging him to pay their mother a visit. He urged Jack to tell Mary “in delicate terms” that she should not accept money or favors from anyone but her “relations.” He had no doubt whatsoever that they would be able to satisfy her “
real
wants.” As for her “
imaginary
wants,” they were “boundless and always changing.”
¹⁰

On his way to Mount Vernon from Yorktown, Washington had stopped in Fredericksburg to visit Mary. She was not at home—an accident that he probably regarded as a stroke of luck, saving him from listening to a litany of complaints. He left her some money and went on his way. Several weeks later, she wrote him a letter lamenting that she had missed his visit. She had taken a trip “over the mountains” that “almost kill’d” her. There she had seen some land he owned that she thought would be perfect for “a little hous of my one [own] if it is only twelve foot squar.” George was paying rent for her to live in an elegant house in Fredericksburg, but it was apparently unsatisfactory. Whatever he did for Mary was unsatisfactory. There is little doubt that George’s encounters with his mother invariably increased his affection for Martha Custis.

VIII

By the time the War for Independence ended, Nelly Custis had found another husband, an Alexandria physician, Dr. David Stuart. She took her two older girls with her into the new marriage. The Washingtons adopted the two youngest children, four-year-old Nelly and two-year-old George Washington Parke Custis, whom everyone called “Wash.” When Washington arrived at Mount Vernon on Christmas eve, 1783, a private citizen once more, the ex-general’s trunk was full of toys he had bought in Philadelphia for the “little folks” as well as presents for a beaming Martha.

In the same two years, George and Martha acquired other parental responsibilities. His younger brother Samuel had died at forty-seven.
Samuel had never been much of a businessman, and the deaths of no fewer than four wives had added to his woes. He had left his fifth wife penniless, wondering how she was going to feed her newborn baby, plus three boys and a girl from one of Samuel’s previous unions. “In God’s name,” Washington asked his brother Jack, “how did my brother Saml. contrive to get himself so enormously in debt?”

Jack Washington could only plead with his older brother not to ask him for help with the indigent children. He had his hands full trying to provide for his own family. Their youngest brother, Charles Washington, was a hopeless alcoholic. George wearily saw he again had no choice. He ordered Samuel’s three youngest children sent to Mount Vernon. The oldest, a fourteen-year-old boy, and the baby would stay with his brother’s widow. The two younger boys turned out to be hell-raisers who drove Washington and several schoolmasters to distraction. But he persisted in paying their tuitions and lecturing them on good behavior, and they eventually graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. Their sister, Harriot, lived at Mount Vernon for almost two decades. Also in residence was Fanny Bassett, daughter of Martha’s sister, Nancy, who had died in 1777.

The older children could more or less fend for themselves. George and Martha’s chief concern—and pleasure—were Nelly and Wash. When their step-grandfather became president, they traveled with George and Martha to New York, and later to Philadelphia when the capital was shifted there. This ready-made family was enormously important to Martha, whose maternal needs remained intense. Washington was equally involved in the “little folks’” future. He began thinking about a tutor for “Wash,” who was so fat he was often called “Tubby.” George told one friend he planned to “fit the boy for a university.” He was hoping to succeed where he had failed with Wash’s father. Alas, he was doomed to another disappointment. As rich as his father, Wash was to prove equally resistant to scholarly effort. He quit or was expelled from no fewer than three colleges.
¹¹

IX

When Washington became president, Martha once more journeyed north and became a crucial part of his household in the new capital, New York. Many people are under the mistaken impression that because he was elected unanimously, Washington’s presidency was a love feast. The
opposite is closer to the truth. There were still a substantial number of Americans, loosely called anti-federalists, who feared and disliked the Constitution and the new government it had created. Much of this hostility focused on the presidency, which they regarded as an office fraught with menace to American rights and liberties. Thousands of eyes were on Washington, suspecting him of being ready to turn into an American version of George III.

When Martha arrived in New York on May 27, 1789, these critics were growling because the president, after being overwhelmed with impromptu visitors ten hours a day, announced he was restricting such time-wasting encounters to two hours a week so that he could get some work done. Others carped at his weekly receptions, which were too formal, they thought, and smacked of an audience with a monarch. Still others complained about the poor quality of the dinners he served. Martha took charge of the kitchen, and soon guests were telling friends how deliciously they had dined and wined. Next, she launched her own weekly receptions, at which ladies were welcomed, and everyone was charmed by her relaxed, cheerful style. She also acquired a title that she neither sought nor liked: “Lady Washington.” It was the invention of well-meaning people who felt a need for something better than “Mrs. President.”
¹²

Equally important was the way Martha made friends with the wives of cabinet members and other VIPs, above all, the vice president’s wife, Abigail Adams. “A most becoming pleasantness sits upon her countenance,” Abigail declared. She was particularly pleased by Martha’s insistence that Abigail sit beside her and join in greeting the guests at her receptions.
¹³

In little more than a month, Martha discovered another important role: nurse. Washington began complaining about a severe pain in his left thigh. Doctors discovered a growth that swelled and festered, making them fear it was malignant. Another physician suspected anthrax, a disease common among farm animals and sometimes contracted from people who sorted newly sheared wool. The president ran a high fever, and a rumor swept the city that he was dying. Two doctors operated without anesthesia, a discovery still far in the future. The pain was agonizing, and afterward Washington’s head ached so intensely he could not tolerate the slightest noise. His secretary roped off the street around his house to eliminate passing carriages and bawling peddlers with creaky carts. It took him the entire summer to recover his strength.

Most of the time the Washingtons enjoyed New York. The city was full of exhibits of exotic animals, sometimes stuffed, often alive. A waxworks on Water Street featured “The President of the United States, sitting under a canopy, in his military dress.” Martha seems to have found this an especially enjoyable sight. She took the children and several other “young misses” and persuaded Washington to go for a private viewing.

The Washingtons’ favorite recreation was the John Street theater, which they attended so often that the proprietor created a presidential box, with the coat of arms of the United States in gold across its front. They particularly liked plays such as Sheridan’s
School for Scandal
, which was considered racy in its day. Their attendance was usually advertised in advance to drum up business. As they entered their box, often with a party of friends, the band struck up “The President’s March” and the audience gave them a standing ovation.
¹⁴

X

Politics absorbed most of the president’s attention. Congress was torn by wild wrangles over how to create a workable government. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton had proposed a financial plan to cure the nation’s chronic bankruptcy. The government would assume the wartime debts of both the states and Congress and utilize a new entity, the Bank of the United States, to gradually repay them. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and his friend Congressman James Madison violently opposed Hamilton’s vision of the United States as an industrial and commercial powerhouse. Their opposition morphed into a detestation of New York as the nation’s capital, because the city’s numerous wealthy merchants supposedly corrupted Congress. The Virginians wanted a rural capital beyond the reach of big-city temptations. These clashes, which soon spilled into the newspapers, made President Washington a very worried man.

While the politicians called one another vicious names, Washington caught a cold that transmuted into pneumonia. This time, the fear that he was sinking toward death was more than a rumor. In an eerie replay of Jack Custis’s demise, four doctors watched helplessly while the president struggled for breath. Another physician was summoned all the way from Philadelphia but had nothing to offer but more hand-wringing. The story
spread throughout the nation, causing acute anxiety everywhere. “Every eye full of tears,” one senator wrote.
¹⁵

Martha was at George’s bedside constantly. On the sixth day, one of the doctors grimly predicted the president’s imminent death. About four o’clock that afternoon, George broke into a terrific sweat—a sign the disease had reached its crisis. Within two hours, he was smiling at Martha and speaking in a low voice. Probably at Martha’s urging, he was soon taking rides with her in their carriage to escape the perpetual pressures of the presidency.

The realization that Washington was mortal may have influenced the politicians to reach a major compromise. Jefferson agreed to round up southern votes for Hamilton’s financial plan and the New Yorker persuaded northerners to support a bill placing the permanent capital of the nation on the Potomac River in a newly created District of Columbia, carved from Maryland and Virginia. In the meantime, the federal government would move to Philadelphia, presumably less corrupt than New York. President Washington signed both bills and political tensions relaxed for a while. A booming market in government bonds and shares in the Bank of the United States began creating prosperity throughout the nation.

XI

There were times when Martha tired of public attention. It was often overwhelming. At one point she told her niece Fanny Bassett that she felt “more like a state prisoner than anything else.” When Washington left her in New York while he visited the New England states, she almost slipped into a depression. She wrote a remarkably frank letter to Abigail Adams’s friend Mercy Otis Warren, in response to a “very friendly” letter Mercy had sent her. Martha said she was pleased by “the demonstrations of respect and affection” that the president had received from the American people. It made the burdens of the presidency tolerable for him—and for her. “You know me well enough to…believe that I am only fond of what comes from the heart,” she wrote.

But Martha still yearned for Mount Vernon, where she had thought when the Revolutionary War ended she and George would be “left to grow old in solitude and tranquility together.” Her problem, Martha confessed, was how acutely she missed her “grandchildren and domes
tic connections” in Virginia. But she was determined to be cheerful. “Everybody and everything conspire to make me as contented as possible.” She had learned from experience that “the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not upon our circumstances.”
¹⁶

After seventeen months on public display, President Washington decided he and Martha could take a vacation. They headed back to Mount Vernon, where grandchildren and grandnieces rushed to join them. At one point there were no fewer than ten young people, from teenagers to toddlers, rampaging around the house. Martha loved every minute of the chaos. Washington rode out regularly to his outlying farms and soon regained his health. He and Martha began discussing a topic that would absorb them for the next year. Should he accept a second term? The answer, they jointly decided, was an emphatic NO. The president asked James Madison to help him write a farewell address to the American people.

XII

The Washingtons were soon forced to change their minds. Frantic letters from Hamilton, Jefferson, and numerous other politicians warned the president that the country would come apart if he did not serve for another four years. Once more, Washington bowed to necessity. He knew Martha was deeply disappointed, but he also knew that she would remain at his side as his loyal partner. By this time they had settled into a comfortable mansion on Market Street in Philadelphia and were enjoying the numerous amenities of this sophisticated city. Close friends such as merchant Robert Morris added to their pleasures. But politics soon soured their lives in a tumultuous new way.

The second term had scarcely begun when news arrived from Paris that King Louis XVI, the monarch who had supported America’s revolution, had been guillotined, along with his Austrian-born queen, Marie Antoinette. Within weeks came word that England had joined a coalition of European nations that were determined to crush France’s revolution. At first the Marquis de Lafayette, a man for whom Washington had deep, almost paternal affection, had been among the leaders. But the marquis had been forced to flee and was now in an Austrian prison. Radicals known as Jacobins had seized control of France and had launched a reign
of terror that sent thousands of people to grisly deaths beneath the guillotine’s relentless blade.