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According to Jefferson, Washington told him that “nobody disliked more the ceremonies of his office and he had not the least taste or gratification in the execution of its function; that he was happy at home alone.”41 Suffering from the stultifying etiquette imposed by his office, he later railed against those who had prescribed such formality. He was especially upset that, having tried to strike a balance between pomp and austerity, he had been roundly criticized and misunderstood. As Jefferson wrote after a 1793 conversation, Washington “expressed the extreme wretchedness of his existence while in office and went lengthily into the late attacks on him for levees etc., and explained to me how he had been led into them by the persons he consulted at New York and that, if he could but know what the sense of the public was, he would most cheerfully conform to it.”42
Washington found it hard to live frugally, and the chief steward he hired to supervise the kitchen made economy that much more difficult. Sam Fraunces had formerly owned the tavern at which Washington had enacted his lachrymose farewell to his officers at the war’s end.43 In the mid-1780s Fraunces had run into serious debt and even appealed to Washington for financial aid. By the time Washington hired him to manage his household, Fraunces had opened another tavern on Cortlandt Street.
A shrewd operator with a flamboyant ma
Unfortunately, the feisty Fraunces wasn’t one to be deterred, not even by a sitting president. “Well he may discharge me,” Frances declared. “He may kill me if he will, but while he is President of the United States and I have the honor to be his steward, his establishment shall be supplied with the very best of everything that the whole country can afford.”47 Washington’s attempts to rein in Fraunces led to a ru
Even before Washington occupied 3 Cherry Street, he had grumbled about the cost of renovating it. The handsome three-story building had a high stoop, balusters along the roof, and seven fireplaces inside. It stood on a boisterous thorough-fare crawling with traffic. The day before Washington arrived, Sally Robinson, niece of owner Samuel Osgood, inspected the premises and found “every room furnished in the most elegant ma
The impresario of entertaining, Washington took personal charge of selecting the ornaments that defined the grandeur of his dining room. Far from shunting off decorating on his wife or subordinates, he trusted his detailed knowledge of the decorative arts. To create a tea service, he melted down some old silver and had the finished products engraved with his griffin crest. When he asked Gouverneur Morris, then resident in Europe, to purchase wine coolers for di
No small part of the splendor of Washington’s establishment was his household contingent of twenty servants, seven of them slaves. All the servants, white and black, were buffed to a high gloss. A few slaves were bedecked in the same costumes as the white servants: a white livery with red trim on the cuffs and collars. Cocked hats, gloves, and well-polished shoes completed the glossy outfit. To posterity, it seems shocking that Washington imported slaves into the presidential mansion, but Jefferson would bring a dozen slaves from Monticello to the White House; the tradition of having slaves in the presidential household unfortunately lasted until the death in 1850 of Zachary Taylor, the last of the slaveholding presidents.
Washington extended the grandeur of his presidency to morning horseback rides. He kept a dozen horses in New York and made a daily a tour of his stables. Aware of how impressive he looked atop a white mount, he once instructed a friend to buy him a horse, specifying that he “would prefer a perfect white.”50 In the early days of his presidency, he rode a pair of spotless white parade horses, Prescott and Jackson. Perhaps he had a subliminal memory of Lord Botetourt riding to the palace in colonial Williamsburg behind a coach with shining white horses. So taken was Washington with his unblemished chargers that he had grooms rub them with white paste at night, bundle them in cloths, then bed them down on fresh straw. In the morning the hardened white paste gleamed, its paleness accentuated by black polish applied to the horses’ hooves. For command performances, the animals’ mouths were rinsed and their teeth scrubbed. In another fancy touch, Washington set his saddles in leopard skins edged with gold braiding.
On a fine spring day New York residents might glimpse the president and first lady out for a ride in their ornate, varnished coach, drawn by six well-matched bay horses. With four postilions attired in leather breeches and glazed leather hats, the coach made an exquisite impression as it rolled through the crowded streets. “When he travels,” a British diplomat later observed, “it is in a very kingly style.”51 Sometimes the Washingtons stared out the window and at other times drew the Venetian blinds or black leather curtains for privacy. In 1790 Washington adorned the coach with allegorical scenes of the four seasons, executed on the outside panels, affixing his personal crest to four small quarter panels.