The Washingtons lived in three different “presidential mansions” as the capitol city moved, the first two in New York and then the third in Philadelphia through the end of the president’s second term in early 1797. These pre-Washington, D.C. and pre-White House residences have all since been demolished. Glimpses of the Washingtons’ efforts to create a new standard for a presidential life and for the First Lady’s role come through, though. George Washington held a regular formal reception on Tuesday afternoons for men, and Martha held a less formal one, ostensibly for ladies but in fact men and women both attended, on Friday evenings. They called these gatherings “levees,” the name for formal public access to the French monarch; features of the Washingtons’ levees included Martha greeting people from a raised dais (to be fair, she was petite at only 5 feet tall), raised eyebrows and some critical commentary. How was this democratic?
Yet how was one to be a First Lady – or for that matter, a president – when there had never been such a thing? Borrowing some ceremonial features from the system they knew best, tempered by the sentiments of the revolution, seemed sensible. Martha would hold “the first rank in the United States,” and what she did or said, where she went and what she wore all made for political fodder. The Washingtons would step carefully but decisively, together, into this phase of their “public life.”
For Martha, having been raised to hostess duties, managing the accoutrements of hospitality for diplomats, politicians, office seekers and the general curious public was second nature. She stocked the official residences with such supplies as china decorated with all of the states around the rim of the plates and her own initials in the middle, cutlery, wine, and more prosaic items like “mops and Clamps for scouring brushes.” They acquired printed invitations to dine (“The President of the United States and Mrs. Washington, request the Pleasure…”) which could be filled in with the names of the lucky invitees. Martha described both formal and less formal visits: “the practice with me has been always to receive the first visits, and then to return them”; these included “the ladies of the diplomatic corps…introduced in their first visits by the Secretary of State.”