Washington Winter Show 2019

48 beckoned with enticing sweets chosen by the hostess—cakes in the winter and ice cream in the summer, accompanied by lemonade, orangeade, tea, wine, and fruits (including such delicacies as pineapple and coconut). A potentially hazardous incident occurred at one levée in the summer of 1789. Miss Mary McEvers (Mrs. Edward Livingston) appeared wearing a fashionable headdress crowned with tall ostrich feathers. As she walked under a chandelier, the feathers caught fire, causing “no small alarm” among the guests. An aide to the president, Major William Jackson, “with great presence of mind, and equal gallantry,” dashed over to the young lady and, by clapping the burning plumes between his hands, extinguished the flame. Recalling this incident years later, George Washington Parke Custis, Mrs. Washington’s grandson, commented that “the drawing-room went on as usual.” Like most gentlemen of the 18th century, George Washington paid close attention to his home’s dining spaces and furnishings. These men recognized that mealtime rituals provided opportunities to present themselves as sophisticated members of the gentry class, enlightened citizens, and gracious hosts. Martha Washington was renowned as a consummate hostess whose scrupulous attention extended from the gardens to the kitchens to the table. At Mount Vernon, she diligently oversaw the planting and harvesting of produce; at army headquarters and in the president’s houses, she instructed the household steward on each day’s marketing. She met daily with cooks to plan menus and held the keys to the larders and china closet. When Martha Dandridge Custis married George Washington, in January 1759, she was one of the wealthiest women, and perhaps the wealthiest widow, in Virginia. The marriage catapulted then Colonel Washington into the highest echelons of society in the colony. Coming from the Tidewater area, the center of elevated Virginia manners and fashion, Martha brought with her to Mount Vernon the material goods necessary for genteel entertaining. Her baggage train included fifty-four tablecloths, ninety-nine napkins and towels, two cases of knives and forks, a tea set, a tea chest, sixty glasses, two sets of china, ten-dozen bottles of wine, and the extraordinary luxury of a dozen well-trained enslaved house servants. Rum (forty-two gallons), nutmegs, cloves, mace, and twenty loaves of sugars would have provided for ample servings of punch, a staple of southern hospitality. Years later, the Polish nobleman Julian Niemcewicz recalled that Mrs. Washington welcomed him to Mount Vernon “most graciously and had punch served.” By the time Washington died, in 1799, he and Martha had amassed an impressive array of tableware and household furnishings. Their purposeful arrangement offered Mount Vernon visitors a window on George Washington’s varied interests and many accomplishments—as Virginia planter, general, and America’s first president. Designed to impress Mount Vernon’s many visitors, George Washington’s “New Room” provided a grand space for receptions, large dinner parties, and the president’s landscape paintings.