THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND
I
‘If New York wanted any revenge for the removal,’ wrote Mrs. Adams to
her daughter soon after reaching Philadelphia, ‘the citizens might be
glutted if they could come here, where every article has been almost
doubled in price, and where it is not possible for Congress and the
appendages to be half as well accommodated for a long time.’[455]
Reconciliation for the removal was not complete several months later
when Oliver Wolcott wrote his father complaining that ‘the manners of
the people are more reserved than in New York.’[456] Even so he had
‘seen nothing to tempt [him] to idolatry,’ after having seen ‘many of
their principal men,’ and he had no apprehensions of ‘self-humiliating
sensations’ after a closer acquaintance.[457] It was not with
unrestrained enthusiasm that the officials took up their residence in
the greater city, with its population of more than 60,000. ‘The
Philadelphians,’ according to the indignant comment of Jeremiah Smith,
‘are from the highest to the lowest, from the parson in his black gown
to the fille de joie or girl of pleasure, a set of beggars. You cannot
turn around without paying a dollar.’[458]
To the visitor entering by coach on Front Street and rumbling up to the
City Tavern the prospect did not seem so black as to those who received
their first impressions from the water-front. These beheld ‘nothing ...
but confused heaps of wooden store houses, crowded upon each
other’--and, behind the wharves, Water Street, narrow, shut in by the
old bank of the river, dirty, filthy, stinking.[459] Could he have
looked down upon the city from some convenient hill, he would have found
something to revive his drooping spirits in the compactness of the town
and the substantial character of the houses. The principal streets of
the period were Front, Second, Third, and Fourth, and beyond Sixth
there were scarcely any habitations. No one thought of building on Arch
or Chestnut Streets west of Tenth, where the land was thickly dotted
with frogponds.[460] Practically all of business and fashion was to be
found east of Fourth Street, and the visitor or official sojourner could
congratulate himself on the ease with which he could get about from
place to place. An English tourist, observing that with the exception of
Broad and High Streets the thoroughfares were not more than fifty feet
in width, found them suggestive of ‘many of the smaller streets of
London except that the foot pavement on either side is of brick instead
of stone.’[461]
If the filth of the odorous water-front, the narrowness of the streets,
and the frogponds on the outskirts, so audible in the night, were
depressing, the houses, attractive, and in many instances
architecturally pretentious, hinted of comfort and solidity if not of
opulence. The fact that almost all were constructed of brick was not
lost upon the travelers.[462] In the more congested districts these
houses had a shop on the first floor.
The streets, with their red-brick foot pavements and rows of trees,
making them fragrant after summer rains, and drearily murmurous in the
winter winds, were paved with pebbles in the middle,[463] with a gutter
made of brick or wood, and lined with strong posts to protect the area
of the pedestrians.[464] The trees, mostly buttonwood, willow, and
Lombardy poplars, had been brought over from Europe some years before by
William Hamilton.[465] At frequent intervals town pumps offered
refreshment to the thirsty, or, in the night, an accommodating
hanging-post for the inebriate staggering home from one of the popular
taverns.[466] Not without its charm was a walk through the streets of
Philadelphia in the days when Hamilton and Jefferson were exchanging
shots, with the poplars and willows to shut off the sun, the pumps to
minister to the comfort, and with most of the houses offering to the
view a garden filled with old-fashioned flowers--lilacs, roses, pinks,
and tulips, morning-glories and snowballs with gourd vines climbing over
the porches. In the case of the more imposing mansions there were more
elaborate gardens with rare flowers and shrubbery, but in many of these
wealth claimed its privilege and shut off the view from the common folk
who could only catch the fragrance.[467]
The visitor on public business bent found all the governmental centers
close together. If interested in the debates at Congress Hall, erected
for the purpose at Sixth and Chestnut Streets next to the State House,
the smallest child could direct him. If a person of no special
importance, he could find his way into the commodious gallery of the
House, and, looking down upon the chamber, a hundred by sixty feet, with
its three semi-circular rows of seats facing the Speaker’s rostrum--‘a
kind of pulpit near the center’[468]--could find Ames busy at his
circular writing-desk, Madison on his feet or Sedgwick in conference
with a lobbyist. If fortunate he might be admitted to the space on the
floor beneath the gallery. But it was not so easy to penetrate to the
more sacred precincts of the Senate on the floor above where the
self-constituted guardians of the covenant and the rights of property
held themselves aloof from the gaze of the vulgar. Perhaps, if he really
prized the privilege, he might look down from some point of vantage on
the State House Garden where the statesmen were wont to take the air and
compose their thoughts.
Did he have business with Jefferson? It was only a little way to the
three-story brick residence at High and Eighth Streets which had been
taken over for the purposes of the State Department. With Hamilton? It
was but a few steps to the old Pemberton mansion near Chestnut and
Third, with its well-cultivated garden in the rear where the
indefatigable human dynamo worked far into the night.[469] With the
President? It was but a short distance from Jefferson’s office to the
Morris house.
At the time Washington moved in, the Morris house was one of the most
distinguished in the city, a dignified and impressive brick mansion,
with two large lamps in front, and with ample gardens to proclaim it the
abode of a personage of consequence. It was under its roof that
Washington had lived as the guest of Morris while presiding over the
Constitutional Convention. It was not without difficulties and
annoyances that the house was taken over. The banker was lustily praised
by his friends for his sacrifice in abandoning his home, but it appears
to have been a sacrifice similar to that of managing the finances of the
Revolution. One writer questioned whether ‘giving up a house of moderate
dimensions for 700 pounds a year can be deemed a great sacrifice ...
when ... the President was accommodated in this city [New York] with a
much more elegant house at 400 pounds per annum.’[470] Even Washington,
who was Morris’s intimate friend, was distressed at the difficulty in
persuading him to fix the rental, and wrote Lear that he could not
understand the Senator. He would be willing to pay as much as he paid in
New York, and even more if there was not clear extortion. The owner
finally fixed the rental at three thousand dollars a year.[471] Thus
Washington moved in, and there the Presidents lived until the capital
was moved to Washington.
There, if properly presented, the visitor might call to receive the
rather cold, stately bow of Washington or even drink a cup of tea with
Mrs. Washington. In the case of a levee, he was sure to be welcome. But
if his social status did not suffice to justify the crossing of the
threshold, he might, if he were patient, see the great man as he drove
forth in his ornately decorated coach; or, better still, see him emerge
on foot with his secretaries, Lear and Jackson, one on either side, with
cocked hats on their heads, the aides a little in the rear. If he had
the temerity to follow at a respectable distance, he would have been
surprised, perhaps, to find that the President did not converse with his
secretaries while on his walks.[472]
II
It was not joy unconfined to be interned in any of the hotels or taverns
of Philadelphia at any time while it was the capital. In the journals of
tourists who sojourned there we encounter no enthusiastic encomiums,
even for O’Eller’s, which owes something of its glamour in perspective
to the fact that the Assembly dances were held in its ballroom. It was
infinitely better, at any rate, than the Sign of the Sorrel Horse on
Second Street, which comes down to us as a ‘bad one.’[473] The City
Tavern, scene of numerous political demonstrations, concededly one of
the best, would have been better rid of vermin that infested the
beds.[474] The London Tavern, which had its days as the ‘principal
hotel,’ was ‘deficient in comfort’ even at its best,[475] and the Indian
Queen distinguished itself as the scene of a doleful robbery when some
of Ames’s colleagues lost their linen, and thirty thousand dollars in
securities, and he escaped only because his name on his trunk assured
the ‘partial rogues’ that ‘nothing was to be got by taking it
away.’[476] In 1794, the Golden Lion or the Yellow Cat at Eighth and
Filbert Streets was a favorite because of its well-drawn beer and
porter; and the visitor, pushing through the smoke-laden air to drink
malt liquor from a pewter mug, would, likely as not, find Governor
Mifflin or General Knox of the Cabinet enjoying their mugs along with
the mechanics and clerks.[477] But it was not necessary to sleep in the
beds of the Yellow Cat to quaff its liquors, and after a brief
experience with the taverns the tourist would be likely to follow the
example of Thomas Twining and seek more comfortable and sanitary
quarters in some of the numerous rooming-houses that catered
particularly to members of Congress. The choicest of these resented the
idea that they were other than the private houses of gentlemen
accommodating political personages--this particularly true in the case
of Francis, the Frenchman, at whose house on Fourth Street,
Vice-President Adams had a room.[478] In these private rooming and
boarding-houses, in which the majority of the celebrities lived, an
abundant table, clean agreeable rooms, and the congenial companionship
of colleagues made an appeal. At Francis’s the head of the table was
reserved for Adams, and all the ceremonial forms were scrupulously
observed, although he frequently had his meals served in his rooms. It
was not until he had escaped from the Indian Queen and found lodgings
‘at the house of Mrs. Sage’ that Ames began ‘to feel settled and at
home.’[479] This hiving had its comedies, sometimes its scandals, and
occasionally its romances, as on the day Senator Aaron Burr took James
Madison to call upon the winsome daughter of his landlady, and history
was made in the candlelit parlor of the boarding-house.
Quiet and home-like, at least, these boarding-houses of our early
statesmen, and if they had no bars, they were in close proximity to
many that were of good repute. The members of the Legislature sometimes
were known to discuss important measures at Geisse’s Tavern over the
mugs,[480] were wont, on adjournment, to linger at Mr. O’Eller’s for his
incomparable punch,[481] and to celebrate the ending of a session with
an evening of conviviality at ‘Mr. Burns tavern on Tenth Street.’[482]
Gentlemen riding along the banks of the Schuylkill could seldom resist
the impulse to dismount at the tavern of Metz--for these drinking-houses
were kindly placed among a people intolerant of puritanism.[483]
Going forth into the streets to mingle with the common people was a
revelation to the polished tourist from the old lands. Here they found
nothing of the humility of the lowly to which they were accustomed. The
mechanics and common laborers took the theory of equality seriously. One
traveler found ‘the lower sort of people’ lacking in good manners[484]
and observed that a well-dressed stranger, asking a polite question, was
almost certain of an impudent answer.[485] These were the men who were
to man the societies fashioned after those of the Parisian radicals, to
rally passionately to the support of the French Revolution, and to
supply Jefferson with his shock troops--and sometimes shocking
troops--in his fight for the democratization of the Republic.
These, too, in their desperate striving for equality were moved to
imitations of the spendthrift practices of the rich. Even the servants
and the negroes gave elaborate balls which Liancourt found ‘destitute of
the charming simplicity of the fêtes of our peasants.’[486] The women
appeared in dresses beyond their means; the laborer and his lady rode in
coaches to the dance, where an elaborate supper was served, with liquid
refreshments. Sundays found the public-houses of the environs packed
with the men of the factories and shop, borne thither, with their
families, in chairs. There was much drinking and spending with gambling
on the fights arranged for their delectation.[487] At Harrowgate
Gardens, two miles out on the New York road, and Gray’s Gardens on the
Schuylkill, they flocked to drink tea or liquor, to dance, promenade, or
flirt, and on summer nights the young men of all stations were lured to
them by the promise of romance. Even the grave and reverend statesmen
could not, in all cases, resist the call. Gay and wicked some must have
thought the scene--with the painted women of the town a bit brazen in
their fishing for men. ‘We have Eves in plenty, of all nations, tongues
and colors,’ wrote Oliver Wolcott to his wife from Gray’s Gardens where
he had taken refuge from the yellow fever, ‘but do not be jealous--I
have not seen one yet whom I have thought pretty’--leaving her to
imagine the possibilities should one such appear.[488] And yet,
pleasure-loving as the population was, the nights were reasonably quiet.
About the time the city assumed the dignity of a capital, there was
little to disturb the tranquillity of the night after ten o’clock beyond
the voice of the watchman, or the footsteps of some night-hawk wending
his way by the light of the street-lamps ‘placed like those in
London.’[489] But five years later, a visitor who recalled that in 1794
it was unusual to meet any one at night, or to hear any noises after
eleven o’clock, found that the nocturnal annoyances continued far later
into the night.[490]
It was by day, however, that the city made its best impression. The
luxury-loving people, the wealth and extravagance of the social leaders
insisting upon London and Parisian styles, the commercial traditions of
the community gave to its shopping district an elegance found nowhere
else in America. The houses of the importers and wholesalers, some
maintaining their own ships, were found, for the most part, on Front and
Water Streets. When in the spring and autumn the ships came in, and the
great boxes of English dry-goods were stretched along the pavement of
Front between Arch and Walnut Streets to be opened, it was a thrilling
event to the Philadelphians. Fluttering about them were the retail
merchants--for most of these in the days of the city’s political
preëminence were women--exclaiming ecstatically over the contents. Soon
the goods were transferred to the shops, which even a Frenchman found
‘remarkable for their neatness’[491]--due, no doubt, to the sex of the
proprietors. What more fascinating than to stand before the great show
windows--something new--at Mrs. Whiteside’s fancy dress-goods shop, with
exquisite cloths and dresses hung full length and festooned to best
advantage after the manner of Bond Street, London. Did it add anything
to the appeal to know that the proprietress had come from London? Alas,
no doubt. Thither the ladies from the mansions drove in their carriages
to make their purchases, and thence, perhaps, for something more, to the
South Second Street store of the smiling Mrs. Holland, and then on,
perchance, to Mrs. Jane Taylor’s at the Sign of the Golden Lamb.[492]
And then, having ministered to the materialistic yearnings of vanity, as
like as not milady directs the coachman to stop at Bell’s British Book
Shop on Third Street, near Pearl, lest the lord and master, in placing
his order with his London agent, overlooked something she would not
miss.
An easy, patrician life for some of these Philadelphians, but not for
all. The workman receiving a dollar a day and board, and with the
smallest houses on the outskirts renting for three hundred dollars a
year, found it far from a frolic to make both ends meet. The
middle-class employees of the stores and industries, paying from eight
to twelve dollars a week for board, without wine, candles, or fire,
could have found little to interest them in Mrs. Whiteside’s show
windows, for, while the clerks were courteous and the merchant polite,
the cost of her goods was far in excess of that on Bond Street.[493] But
it is not with these of the more humble order that we are concerned just
now. It is quite possible that the curious Jefferson, who had a habit of
prying into the living conditions of ‘people of no importance,’ may have
wondered how these lived, but the social environment of the majority of
the statesmen was far removed from the common people. It is with the
world of fashion that we are concerned.
III
No society in America could have been less in harmony with the spirit of
democracy, for nowhere was class consciousness and caste pride more
pronounced. ‘Those who constitute the fashionable world are at best a
mere oligarchy, composed of a few natives and as many foreigners,’ wrote
Otis to his wife.[494] ‘I might have believed myself in an English
town,’ said Viscount de Chateaubriand.[495] An Englishman noted that
‘amongst the upper circles ... pride, haughtiness, and ostentation are
conspicuous; and it seems that nothing could make them happier than that
an order of nobility should be established, by which they might be
exalted above their fellow citizens, as much as they are in their own
conceit.’[496] A French nobleman could not escape the observation that
‘the English influence prevails in the first circles and prevails with
great intolerance.[497] And Otis, who liked the tone himself, was much
impressed with the discovery that ‘the women after presentations to the
court of George III or Louis XVI transplanted into Philadelphia society
the manners of the English aristocracy and the fashions of Paris.’[498]
During the days of the British occupation, the cream of society had
reveled with the British officers, and many of these had resumed their
places in the society of the republican capital without abandoning their
former views. This English tone was to be felt by Jefferson a little
later when his sympathy with the French Revolution was to enter into his
policies. From the beginning these pro-English aristocrats were to draw
political lines in social intercourse, and in time Otis was to record
that ‘Democratic gentlemen and their families, no matter how high their
social qualifications, were rigidly ostracised by the best
society.’[499] Along with this went a rather vulgar deification of the
dollar, and, strangely enough, a lack of polite hospitality to the
stranger. ‘What is justly called society,’ wrote Liancourt whose ideas
had been fashioned at Versailles, ‘does not exist in this city. The
vanity of wealth is common enough.’ The picture he paints is not a
pretty one. It shows a flamboyant rich man flauntingly displaying ‘his
splendid furniture, his fine English glass, and exquisite china,’ to the
stranger invited to come to ‘one ceremonious dinner,’ and then
dismissing him for another who had not ‘seen the magnificence of the
house, nor tasted the old Madeira.’ This, we are told, was the routine
for all who came from Europe--‘philosophers, priests, literati, princes,
dentists, wits and idiots.’ But alas, ‘the next day the lionized
stranger is not known in the street except he be wealthy.’[500] However
much they may have fallen short in manners, they yielded nothing to
Versailles in dress. This ‘elegance of dress’ astonished Chateaubriand,
and Liancourt was amazed at ‘the profusion and luxury’ in ‘the dresses
of their wives and daughters.’ At balls, ‘the variety and richness of
the dresses did not suffer in comparison with Europe.’ The brilliant
note was assiduously sought in costumes, and there was much copying of
the subjects of Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds. One foreigner
noting the ‘immense expense on their toilet and head dress’ thought it
‘too affected to be pleasing.’[501] But by common consent these grand
dames and belles were beautiful, with their sparkling eyes, graceful
forms, and the brilliancy of their complexions.
If this aristocracy was neglectful of the stranger who had no golden key
to its interest, it was not because of a dearth of entertaining. Here
there was a hectic activity--dinners, dances, breakfasts, teas, parties
enough to satisfy the most insatiate passion for such excitement.
Throughout the season the great houses were ablaze with light, and if,
as Mrs. Adams complained, there was much the same company in all, it was
congenial company, and the intimacy of the contact allowed a familiarity
that sometimes verged on the _risqué_. In less than a month after her
arrival, Mrs. Adams was appalled at ‘the invitations to tea and cards in
the European style,’[502] and was complaining that she ‘should spend a
very dissipated winter if [she] were to accept one half the invitations,
particularly to the touts or teas and cards with even Saturday night ...
not excepted.’[503] A little later Aaron Burr was being swamped with
‘many attentions and civilities--many invitations to dine, etc.’[504] If
Burr declined, as he wrote his wife, the handsome young Otis, who loved
the company of women, was not so coy. ‘I have dined once with Cuttling
at Mrs. Grattan’s,’ he wrote home, ‘once at Yznardi’s [Spaniard who
spent much time in Philadelphia] in great stile; and yesterday in the
country with Jonathan Williams [nephew of Franklin]. I am engaged for
next Christmas with Mrs. Powell, but with nobody for the Christmas after
next.’[505]
At these functions--heavy drinking--flirting--_risqué_ talk. Even a
German was shocked to find that at public dinners each person would
often consume six bottles of Madeira.[506] Only Burr was hard to
satisfy. ‘I despair of getting genuine Trent wine in this city,’ he
wrote Theodosia. ‘There never was a bottle of real unadulterated Trent
imported here for sale. Mr. Jefferson, who had some for his own use, has
left town.’[507] But if there was no Trent, Madeira flowed in streams,
beer and ale, punch and whiskey and champagne could be had for the
asking, and there was asking enough, even at parties and dinners. Even
Hamilton, who drank with moderation, sometimes became ‘liquorish’ at the
table, and on one occasion made rather free with another man’s wife to
the husband’s indignation until mollified with the assurance of his
spouse that she ‘did not like him at all.’ Even so, thought the irate
husband, Hamilton ‘appears very trifling in his conversation with
ladies.’[508] And ‘trifling’ indeed must have been much of the talk.
Thus it was at a dinner at Clymer’s, a leading member of the House.
Present, Otis, the Binghams, the Willings--the top cream of the
aristocracy. Aha, cried the vivacious sister of Mrs. Bingham, referring
to the host’s newly acquired stomacher, and mentioning the touching case
of the Duke of York, recently married to the Duchess of Württemberg who
was compelled to cut a semi-circle out of his table to give access to
his plate. Mrs. Bingham coyly expressed sympathy for the Duchess.
(Bursts of laughter and applause.) But Clymer, not to be outdone, turned
to his married sister with the comment that he would ‘soon be able to
retort this excellent jest on her.’ (Renewed laughter and more
applause.) It was an hilarious occasion, the applause ‘would have done
credit to a national convention’ and ‘Miss Abby and Miss Ann did not
disguise their delight nor their bosoms.’[509] On now to a dinner at
Harrison’s, who married a sister of Mrs. Bingham, where one of the
guests, ‘after rallying Sophia ... upon her unfruitfulness,’ led to a
‘natural but not very flattering transition’ which ‘introduced Mrs.
Champlin and her want of prolific qualities as a seasoning for the
Canvas Backs.’[510] But let us hurry on to a third dinner, with
Hamilton, his vivacious sisters-in-law, Mrs. Church and Miss Schuyler. A
lively company! Mrs. Church, ‘the mirror of affectation,’ who is ‘more
amusing than offensive’ because so affable and free from ceremony; and,
still more lively, Miss Schuyler ‘a young wild flirt from Albany, full
of glee and apparently desirous of matrimony.’ Mrs. Church drops her
shoe bow, Miss Schuyler picks it up and fastens it in Hamilton’s
button-hole with the remark, ‘I have made you a knight.’ ‘But what
order?’ asks Mrs. Church, ‘he can’t be a knight of the garter in this
country.’ ‘True, sister, but he would be if you would let him.’
Wine, women and song--such the spirit in some of the great houses in
moments of _abandon_. But it would be unfair to leave the impression
these incidents would convey. There were brilliant men of vast
achievement, and women of extraordinary charm and cleverness moving
behind these curtained windows. Let us meet them in the mansion of Mrs.
Bingham--the uncrowned queen of the Federalist group--the woman without
a peer.
IV
None of the three capitals of the country have produced another social
leader of the cleverness, audacity, and regality of Mrs. William
Bingham. During the eight years of the domination of the Federalists, of
whom her husband was one of the leaders, there was no public character
of the first order who did not come under the influence of her
fascination. By birth, environment, nature, and training she was fitted
to play a conspicuous part in the social life of any capital in the
world. The daughter of Willing, the partner of Robert Morris, she was
the favored of fortune. Some years before her birth, her father,
inspired by sentimental motives, built the mansion on Third Street in
which she was born, and patterned it after the ancestral home in
Bristol, England. There, surrounded by all the advantages of wealth, her
beauty unfolded through a happy childhood. The pomp and pride of great
possessions did not imbue her with a passion for republics or democracy.
She was destined to play a part in a rather flamboyant aristocracy, and
was as carefully perfected in the arts and graces of her sex as any
princess destined to a throne. In the midst of the Revolution, in her
sixteenth year, she married William Bingham who combined the advantages
of wealth, social position, and a capacity for political leadership.
She was only twenty, when, accompanied by her husband, she went abroad
to captivate court circles with her vivacity, charm, and beauty. At
Versailles, the gallants, accustomed to the ways and wiles of the most
accomplished women of fashion, were entranced. At The Hague, where she
lingered awhile, the members of the diplomatic corps fluttered about the
teasing charmer like moths about the flame. In the court circles of
England she suffered nothing in comparison with the best it could offer,
and the generous Abigail Adams, thrilling to the triumph of the young
American, found her brilliancy enough to dim the ineffectual fires of
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Five years of familiarity with the
leaders in the world of European fashion and politics prepared her to
preside with stunning success over the most famous political
drawing-room of the American capital.
It was after their return from Europe that Mrs. Bingham moved into the
imposing mansion on Third Street built on the ample grounds of her
childhood home. All the arts of the architect, landscape gardener, and
interior decorator had been drawn upon to make a fit setting for the
mistress. The garden, with its flowers and rare shrubbery, its lemon,
orange, and citron trees, its aloes and exotics, was shut off from the
view of the curious, only mighty oaks and the Lombardy poplars visible
above the wall--‘a magnificent house and gardens in the best English
style.’[511] The furnishings were in keeping with the promise of the
exterior. ‘The chairs in the drawing-room were from Seddon’s in London
of the newest taste, the back in the form of a lyre, with festoons, of
yellow and crimson silk,’ according to the description of an English
tourist. ‘The curtains of the room a festoon of the same. The carpet,
one of Moore’s most expensive patterns. The room papered in the French
taste, after the style of the Vatican in Rome.’[512] The halls, hung
with pictures selected with fine discrimination in Italy, gave a promise
not disappointed in the elegance of the drawing-rooms, the library, the
ballroom, card-rooms, and observatory.[513] To some this extravagant
display of luxury was depressing, and Brissot de Warville, who was to
return to Paris to die on the guillotine as a leader of the ill-fated
party of the Gironde, held the
[Illustration: MRS. WILLIAM BINGHAM]
mistress of the mansion responsible for the aristocratic spirit of the
town. It was a pity, he thought, that a man so sensible and amiable as
Bingham should have permitted a vain wife to lead him to ‘a pomp which
ought forever have been a stranger to Philadelphia.’ And all this
display ‘to draw around him the gaudy prigs and parasites of Europe,’
and lead ‘to the reproach of his fellow citizens and the ridicule of
strangers.’[514] But if the French republican was shocked, even so
robust a democrat as Maclay was so little offended that he was able to
write after dining at the mansion that ‘there is a propriety, a
neatness, a cleanliness that adds to the splendor of his costly
furniture and elegant apartments.’[515]
And ‘the dazzling Mrs. Bingham,’ as the conservative Abigail described
her,[516] what of her? The elegance and beauty which has come down to us
on canvas prepares us for the glowing descriptions of contemporaries.
Hers was the type of patrician beauty that shimmered. She was above the
medium height and well-formed, and in her carriage there was
sprightliness, dignity, elegance, and distinction. Sparkling with wit,
bubbling with vivacity, she had the knack of convincing the most
hopeless yokel introduced into her drawing-room by the exigencies of
politics that she found his personality peculiarly appealing. Daring at
the card-table, graceful in the dance, witty in conversation even though
sometimes too adept with the naughty devices of a Congreve dialogue,
inordinately fond of all the dissipations prescribed by fashion, tactful
in the selection and placing of her guests at table, she richly earned
the scepter she waved so authoritatively over society.[517] What though
she did sometimes stain her pretty lips with wicked oaths, she swore as
daintily as the Duchess of Devonshire, and if she did seem to relish
anecdotes a bit too spicy for a puritanic atmosphere, she craved not the
privilege of breathing such air.[518]
Hers the consuming ambition to be the great lady and to introduce into
American society the ideas and ideals of Paris and London. Did Jefferson
gently chide her for her admiration of French women? Well--was she not
justified? Did they not ‘possess the happy art of making us pleased with
ourselves?’ In their conversation could they not ‘please both the fop
and the philosopher?’ And despite their seeming frivolity, did not these
‘women of France interfere with the politics of the country, and often
give a decided turn to the fate of empires?’ In this letter to the man
she admired and liked, while loathing his politics, we have the nearest
insight into the soul of the woman.[519]
But these graver ambitions were not revealed to many who observed her
mode of life, her constant round of dissipations, her putting aside the
responsibilities of a mother, leaving her daughters to their French
governesses until the tragic elopement of Marie with a dissipated
nobleman, and the apprehension of the pair after their marriage at the
home of a milliner in the early morning. Hers were not the prim notions
of the average American of her time. It was Otis, not she, who was
shocked to find Marie so thinly dressed in mid-winter that he was
‘regaled at the sight of her whole legs for five minutes together,’ and
wondered ‘to what height the fashion would be carried.’[520] Swearing,
relating risqué stories, indulging in dissipations night after night,
shaming her motherhood by her affected indifference or neglect, the fact
remains that the breath of scandal never touched her until the final
scene when in her early thirties they bore her on a stretcher from the
home of her triumphs in the vain hope of prolonging her life in the soft
air of the Bermudas.
And so to her dinners, dances, parties, the clever men of the Federalist
Party flocked, with only a sprinkling of Jeffersonians, for, though
Jefferson himself could always count on a gracious reception from the
hostess, he was not comfortable among the other guests. Always the best
was to be had there--and the newest. Did she not introduce the foreign
custom of having servants announce the arriving guests, to the
discomfiture of Monroe?
‘Senator Monroe,’ called the flunky.
‘Coming,’ cried the Senator.
‘Senator Monroe’--echoed a flunky down the hall.
‘Coming as soon as I can get my greatcoat off,’ promised the Senator.
But we may be sure that no expression of amusement on the face of the
beaming Mrs. Bingham added to his embarrassment.
‘A very pretty dinner, Madame,’ said the intolerable Judge Chase, after
looking over the proffered repast, ‘but there is not a thing on your
table that I can eat.’
An expression of surprise or resentment on the hostess’s face? Not at
all. What would the Judge relish? Roast beef? Very well--and a servant
received his orders and soon hurried back with beef and potatoes to be
gluttonously devoured and washed down with a couple of bottles of stout
ale instead of French wines.
‘There, Madame,’ said the Judge, made comfortable, ‘I have made a
sensible and excellent dinner, but no thanks to your French cook.’
And he never knew from the lady’s pleased expression that she thought
him an insufferable bore.
Such the woman whose home was to be to the Hamiltonians what Madame
Roland’s was to the Girondists, and Lady Holland’s to the English Whigs.
Now let us peep into the drawing-room and observe the men and women who
bowed to her social scepter.
V
In deference to Mrs. Bingham we shall permit the servant to announce
these visitors as they arrive.
‘Mr. and Mrs. Robert Morris.’
No doubt about their importance, for he was as intimate with Washington
as she with Mrs. Washington, and such was her intimacy that she was
frequently referred to as ‘the second lady in the land.’ It was she who
accompanied Mrs. Washington from Philadelphia to New York after the
inauguration, and during the spring and autumn the two might frequently
be seen under the trees at ‘The Hills,’ the Morris farm near the city,
enjoying the view of the river and such pastoral pictures as were
offered by the imported sheep and cattle grazing on the rolling hills.
Of Mrs. Morris it was said that ‘so impressive is her air and demeanor
that those who saw her once seldom forgot her.’[521] She had dignity,
tact, and elegance, and, like Mrs. Washington, no respect for ‘the
filthy democrats.’ She was a thorough aristocrat. Her husband, banker,
merchant, Senator, was of imposing height, his merry blue eyes, clear
complexion, and strong features denoting something of his significance;
and he had the social graces that captivate and hold. His wealth alone
would have made him a commanding figure in the society of the time and
place. Some generations were to settle on his grave before he was to
appear as the martyr who had sacrificed a fortune to liberty, for there
was a different understanding in his day.[522] A natural aristocrat,
ultra-conservative because of his business connections and great
possessions, if he was tolerant of the experiment in republicanism, he
took no pains to conceal his contempt of democracy--in Senate or
drawing-room.
‘Mrs. Walter Stewart.’
Another of the intimate circle of the Washingtons who dwelt in a fine
house next door to the Morrises, she was one of the most brilliant and
fascinating women with whom Mrs. Bingham liked to surround herself. A
long way she had traveled from her girlhood home as the daughter of
Blair McClenachan, the ardent democrat who was to help burn Jay’s
Treaty, welcome Genêt, and to follow Jefferson, for she was the wife of
the rich General Stewart, and had been seduced by the glitter of the
aristocracy. Like Mrs. Bingham, she had had her fling with the nobility
in London, Paris, Berlin, and Rome, and had returned to open her house
for some of the most elaborate entertaining of her time. In striking
beauty, conversational charm, and a caressing manner, she rivaled Mrs.
Bingham at her best. About her dinner table the leaders of the
Federalist Party were frequently found.[523]
‘Mrs. Samuel Powell.’
An interesting lady, ‘who looks turned fifty,’[524] enters to be greeted
by the hostess as ‘Aunt.’ A courteous, kindly woman, almost motherly in
her manner, she talks with the fluency and ease to be expected of the
mistress of the famous house on ‘Society Hill.’[525] No one of Mrs.
Bingham’s guests who has not promenaded on summer evenings in the Powell
gardens, the walks lined with statuary.[526]
‘General and Mrs. Knox.’
An impressive figure, the Secretary of War, his height carrying the two
hundred and eighty pounds not ungracefully, his regular Grecian nose,
florid complexion, bright, penetrating eyes giving an attractive cast to
his countenance. They who know him best suspect that he enjoys too well
the pleasures of the table, but love him for a kindliness that temper
cannot sour, a sincerity and generosity that know no bounds, a gayety
that his dignity cannot suppress--a fine sentimental figure with a
Revolutionary background. What though he had been a bookseller before he
eloped with a lady of quality, he was too keenly appreciative of the
advantages of aristocracy to have much patience with the queer notions
of Tom Jefferson, whom he liked. He rubbed his shins when Hamilton
stumbled over a chair.
And Mrs. Knox--she must have been a dashing belle in her romantic youth,
for despite her enormous weight, she was still handsome with her black
eyes and blooming cheeks.[527] Passing her girlhood in the Loyalist
atmosphere of an aristocratic home, she had never become reconciled to
the impertinence of the people, and even during the war her adoring
Henry had been moved to warn her against sneering openly at the manners
and speech of the people of Connecticut. ‘The want of refinement which
you seem to speak of is, or will be, the salvation of America,’ he
wrote.[528] But hers was the more masterful nature and his democracy was
to capitulate to her aristocracy in the end.[529] But--whither goes the
lady from the drawing-room so quickly? Ah--of course, it is to the
card-room, for was it not the gossip that ‘the follies of a gambling
wife are passed on to the debits of her husband?’[530] In the morning,
no doubt, she will run in on Mrs. Washington at the Morris house, for
they are very close.
‘Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Hamilton.’
What a romantic picture he makes in the finery that sets him off so
well--brilliant eyes sparkling, eloquent lips smiling, a courtly figure
bending over the hostess’s hand. Only a moment for the lightest kind of
banter with the ladies, and he is off to the Pemberton mansion to work
far into the night. Mrs. Hamilton will linger a little longer, an
appealing type of woman, her delicate face set off by ‘fine eyes which
are very dark’ and ‘hold the life and energy of the restrained
countenance.’[531] Hamilton had found her in the Schuyler homestead at
Albany, ‘a brunette with the most good-natured, dark lovely eyes,’[532]
gentle, retiring, but in the home circle full of gayety and courage.
Weeks and months sometimes found her missing from the social circle, for
with her, in those days, life was just one baby after another.
‘Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Wolcott, and Miss Wolcott.’
A pleasing personality was that of the handsome protégé of Hamilton,
breathing the spirit of jollity, given to badinage, capable, too, of
serious conversation on books and plays. He loses himself in the lively
throng, but his infectious laughter is as revealing of his presence as
the bell of Bossy in the woods. But we are more interested in his
companions. Mrs. Wolcott was all loveliness and sweetness, grace and
dignity, and such was the appeal of her conversation that one statesman
thought her ‘a divine woman’; another, ‘the magnificent Mrs. Wolcott’;
and the brusque Senator Tracy of her State, on being assured by a
condescending diplomat that she would shine at any court, snorted that
she even shone at Litchfield.[533] Even so the eyes of the younger men
are upon Mary Ann Wolcott, sister of the Federalist leader, a pearl of
her sex, combining an extraordinary physical beauty with opulent charms,
and a conversational brilliance unsurpassed by any woman of the social
circle. Very soon she would marry the clever, cynical Chauncey Goodrich
and take her place in official society in her own right. The Wolcotts,
we may be sure, read Paine’s ‘Rights of Man’ with amazement and disgust.
‘Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Sedgwick.’
A magnificent type of physical manhood, the face of one accustomed to
command and sneer down opposition; a woman of elegance and refinement,
typical of the best New England could offer in a matron.
‘Pierce Butler.’
A handsome widower this man, maintaining an elegant establishment in
Philadelphia, who affected to be a democrat, and carefully selected his
associates from among the aristocracy, a South Carolinian with a certain
reverence for wealth.
‘Mrs. William Jackson.’
An equally charming but less beautiful sister of the hostess, now wife
of one of Washington’s secretaries, a favorite at the Morris mansion,
and with no time for thinking on the grievances of the yokels and
mechanics--an American prototype of the merry ladies of Versailles
before the storm broke.
Among the foreign faces we miss the tall figure of Talleyrand whose
Philadelphia immoralities shocked the French Minister, and whose affairs
with a lady of color[534] excluded him from the Bingham drawing-room.
But there is Viscount de Noailles who had proposed the abolition of
feudal rights in the early days of the French Revolution; and Count
Tilley, the dissipated roué planning an elopement with his hostess’s
daughter with the connivance of her French governess; and Brissot de
Warville, enlightened political idealist of France soon to fall beneath
the knife of Robespierre. There, too, the Duc de La
Rochefoucauld-Liancourt who was redolent of courts, and the Baring
brothers of London, bankers, soon to marry the Bingham girls.
A veritable Vanity Fair, many clever, some brilliant, most skeptical of
republics, idolatrous of money and distinctions, and few capable of
discriminating between anarchy and democracy. Such was the social
atmosphere of the capital when the fight to determine whether this
should be a democratic or aristocratic republic was made.
VI
We have an English-drawn picture of an evening at the British Legation
with many American guests gathered about the blazing fire. The Consul is
‘descanting on various subjects, public and private, as well as public
and private characters, sometimes with unbecoming levity, sometimes with
sarcasm even more unbecoming.’ An English guest was afraid that such
talk ‘could hardly fail to be offensive to ... many of the guests and to
the good taste of all.’ But could this English gentleman have listened
in on the conversations at Mrs. Bingham’s, Mrs. Morris’s, or Mrs.
Stewart’s, he might have concluded that these reflections on certain
public characters were altogether pleasing to the principal figures in
the society of the capital.[535] And could he have returned a little
later to find society chuckling over the display in the windows of a
newspaper office of the pictures of George III, Lord North, and General
Howe, he might have decided that there was a pronouncedly pro-English
party in America. Had he driven about the environs, among the hills, and
along the banks of the rivers, he would have seen country houses of the
aristocracy--Lansdowne, the seat of the Binghams; Bush Hill, where the
Adamses lived at first; Woodford, and other country places to suggest
similar seats in his own land. And had he been meandering in the
neighborhood of Horsehead’s or Chew’s Landing, seven or nine miles out,
he might have been startled at the familiar English picture of gentlemen
in bright coats, the pack in full cry after the fox.[536] And having
made these observations he could have found some extenuation in the
conversation in the British Minister’s house.
The snobbery of class consciousness entered into even the Dancing
Assembly which held forth at frequent intervals at O’Eller’s, in a
ballroom sixty feet square, with a handsome music gallery at one end,
and the walls papered after the French style.[537] The suppers at these
dances were mostly liquid,[538] and, since it is on record that on hot
summer days ladies and gentlemen could count on a cool iced punch with
pineapple juice to heighten the color, it may be assumed that the
Assembly suppers were a success.[539] The fact that the young ladies
sometimes took two pair of slippers, lest they dance one out, hints of
all-night revels.[540] And the expulsion from membership of a young
woman who had dared marry a jeweler tells its own tale.[541] At the
theater, which was usually crowded,[542] the aristocrats and democrats
met without mingling, for the different prices put every one in his or
her place, and if wine and porter were sold between acts to the people
in the pit ‘precisely as if they were in a tavern,’[543] the aristocracy
paid eight dollars for a box,[544] and an attaché, in full dress of
black, hair powdered and adjusted in the formal fashion, and bearing
silver candlesticks and wax candles, would meet Washington at the
entrance and conduct him with much gravity to the presidential box,
festooned with red drapery, and bearing the United States coat of
arms.[545] ‘The managers have been very polite to me and my family,’
wrote Mrs. Adams. ‘The actors came and informed us that a box is
prepared for us. The Vice-President thanked them for their civility, and
told them he would attend whenever the President did.’[546] On these
occasions, when the highest dignitaries of the State attended, a
stranger, dropped from the clouds, would have scarcely thought himself
in a republic. At the theater he would have found a military guard, with
an armed soldier at each stage door, with four or five others in the
gallery, and these assisted by the high constables of the city and
police officers.[547] There was no danger threatening but the occasion
offered the opportunity for pompous display so tempting to the society
of the city.
At first the statesmen had to content themselves with the old Southwark
Theater, which was dreary enough architecturally, lighted with oil lamps
without glasses, and with frequent pillars obstructing the view.[548]
But the best plays were presented, by good if not brilliant players, and
the aristocracy flirted and frolicked indifferent to the resentful
glances of the poorer classes in less favored seats. It reached the
climax of its career just as the new theater was about to open with the
then celebrated tragic actress, Mrs. Melmoth--and soon afterward, the
new Chestnut Street Theater opened its doors and raised its curtain. The
opening was an event--the public entranced. Two or three rows of boxes,
a gallery with Corinthian columns highly gilded and with a crimson
ribbon from capital to base. Above the boxes, crimson drapery--panels of
rose color--seats for two thousand. ‘As large as Covent Garden,’ wrote
Wansey, ‘and to judge by the dress and appearance of the company around
me, and the actors and scenery, I should have thought I had still been
in England.’[549] And such a company! There was Fennell, noted in Paris
for his extravagance, socially ambitious, and handsome, too, with his
six feet of stature, and ever-ready blush, about whom flocked the
literary youth of the town. Ladies--the finest trembled to his howls of
tragedy and simpered to his comedy. There, too, was Harwood, who had
married the granddaughter of Ben Franklin--a perfect gentleman; and
Mrs. Oldmixon, the spouse of Sir John, the ‘beau of Bath,’ who divided
honors in his day with Nash and Brummel; and Mrs. Whitlock, whom her
admirers insisted did not shine merely by the reflected glory of her
sister, Mrs. Siddons.
Quite as appealing to both aristocrat and democrat was the Circus at
Twelfth and Market Streets, established in 1792 by John Ricketts whose
credentials to society were in his erstwhile connection with the
Blackfriars Bridge Circus of London. Washington and Martha occasionally
witnessed the performances, quite soberly we may be sure, and the ‘court
party’ thus got its cue if any were needed. The proprietor riding two
horses at full gallop, Signor Spinacuta dancing daringly on a tight
rope, a clown tickling the risibilities of the crowd and mingling Mrs.
Bingham’s laughter with that of Mrs. Jones, her washwoman, women on
horseback doing stunts, and a trained horse that could leap over other
horses without balking--such were the merry nights under the dripping
candles.[550]
Then there was Bowen’s Wax Works and museum of curiosities and paintings
and the museum of Mr. Peale--and under the same roof with the latter the
reading-room of the Philosophical Society, where Jefferson was to find a
sanctuary in the days when he was to be anathema in the fashionable
drawing-rooms.
Frivolity, extravagance, exaggerated imitation of Old-World
dissipations, could scarcely have been suited to Jefferson’s taste; but
when he wished for society of another sort he could always run in on
Rittenhouse to discuss science, or on Dr. Rush who mixed politics with
powders, or, better still, he could drive out to ‘Stenton,’ the
beautiful country house of Dr. James Logan and his cultured wife,
approached by its glorious avenue of hemlocks. There he could sit under
the trees on the lawn or walk in the old-fashioned gardens or browse in
the fine library. There before the huge fireplace in the lofty
wainscoted rooms he could sit with the Doctor and discuss the
aristocratic tendencies of the times--and this he frequently did.
Despite his democracy, Jefferson lived like an aristocrat. He had found
a place in the country near the city where the house was ‘entirely
embosomed in high plane trees with good grass below,’ and there, on warm
summer days, he was wont to ‘breakfast, dine, write, read, and
entertain company’ under the trees. Even in its luxury, his was the home
of the philosopher. It was under these plane trees that he worked out
much of the strategy of his political battles.[551] Such was the social
background for the struggle of Hamilton and Jefferson--with little in it
to strengthen or encourage the latter in his fight.