“The Women of Washington’s Headquarters” in Cambridge, 13 Mar.

I’ll miss Ray Raphael’s talk in Worcester on Thursday evening because at that time I’ll be speaking in Cambridge on “The Women of Washington’s Headquarters.”

This is the latest in a series of talks I’ve given at Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site to commemorate Evacuation Day, when Gen. George Washington saw the siege of Boston brought to a successful end. This year’s topic, though we didn’t think about this when we planned, also fits with National Women’s History Month.

I’ll talk about some of the women who lived and worked at John Vassall’s confiscated mansion in 1775-76. In particular, I’ll discuss:

• Lydia Austin
• Elizabeth Chapman
• Martha Washington
• Margaret Thomas

One of them is, of course, a household name. The others have their own stories, faintly recorded, and they helped to keep the military headquarters functioning.

This talk will start at 6:30 P.M. It’s free, but space is limited, so the park service asks people to phone 617-876-4491 to reserve seats. If you’ve got time, ask about Ranger Garrett Cloer’s Revolutionary-themed tour of the House in the afternoon before the talk.

(Seasonal photograph above by Tom Stohlman.)

Mrs. Warner Lewis and the Chain of Errors

Martha Washington arrived at the mansion that is now Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site on 11 Dec 1775. (The portrait at right shows her fifteen years later, as painted by Edward Savage.) With her was Elizabeth Gates, wife of Gen. Horatio Gates, who I think was also staying in that house. Both women had traveled from Virginia, though they had met and started sharing a carriage only in Philadelphia.

Also on that northern leg of the journey, according to Helen Bryan’s Martha Washington: First Lady of Liberty (2002), was “Mrs. Warner Lewis, a relative of George’s.” Yet there’s no indication of why Mrs. Warner Lewis would have come along, nor anyone who recorded meeting her in Cambridge.

Bryan evidently relied on Anne Hollingsworth Wharton’s Martha Washington (1897), which states:

From the “Pennsylvania Gazette,” of November 29, it appears that Mrs. Washington and her party, which had been joined by Mrs. Gates, wife of General Gates, and Mrs. Warner Lewis, left Philadelphia on the twenty-seventh…

That book was in turn probably informed by a footnote in the 1889 edition of Washington’s writings, edited by Worthington Chauncey Ford, which quotes the 29 Nov 1775 Pennsylvania Gazette this way:

On Monday last, the Lady of His Excellency General Washington, the Lady of General Gates, J. Curtis, Esq; and Lady of Warner Lewis, Esq; set out for Cambridge.

But in fact that newspaper item reads:

On Monday last, the Lady of His Excellency General WASHINGTON, the Lady of General GATES, J. CURTIS, Esq; and Lady, and WARNER LEWIS, Esq; set out for Cambridge.

So the “Lady” in question was actually the wife of Curtis, and Warner Lewis was a man. Which offers the lesson of always relying on the earliest sources.

Except that the 1775 newspaper contained mistakes as well. “Curtis” was really John Parke Custis, son of Martha Washington and her first husband. He and his wife Nelly accompanied his mother to Cambridge and back home in the spring.

And while there was a prominent Virginia planter named Warner Lewis related to the commander-in-chief, he didn’t travel with Martha Washington in 1775. Nor did his son of the same name. The newspaper printer misidentified Washington’s teen-aged nephew George Lewis.

TOMORROW: Why George Lewis came to Cambridge.

Capturing George Washington’s Face in 1785

In yesterday’s Boston Globe an op-ed essay by George H. Rosen retold an anecdote about Jean-Antoine Houdon making a life mask of George Washington in 1785. I can’t confirm the details of that anecdote, which sound a lot like the story of John Henri Isaac Browere making a similar life mask of Thomas Jefferson forty years later. But the underlying incident is documented.

The state of Virginia wanted a full-size statue of its celebrated general. Jefferson, then an American diplomat in Paris, sought out Houdon, a promising French sculptor, and made a deal with him to travel to America to start the work. (Jefferson also bought insurance in case Houdon couldn’t finish the job.)

Houdon arrived at Mount Vernon in October 1785 with recommendations from Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. He spent a few days observing how his host stood, taking measurements, and deciding that the expression he wanted to capture was when the general became upset at a horse-trader.

On 10 October, Washington wrote in his diary: “Observed the process for preparing the plaster of Paris and mixing of it according to Mr. Houdon.” To capture the general’s physiognomy, Houdon would pour that plaster over the general’s face and let it harden.

Washington’s granddaughter Nelly Custis later recorded her memory of the process:

I was only six years old at that time, and perhaps should not have retained any recollection of Houdon & his visit, had I not seen the General as I supposed, dead, & laid out on a large table coverd with a sheet. I was passing the white servants Hall & saw as I thought the Corpse of one I considerd my Father, I went in, & found the General extended on his back on a large table, a sheet over him, except his face, on which Houdon was engaged in putting on plaster to form the cast. Quills were in the nostrills. I was very much alarmed until I was told that it was a bust, a likeness of the General & would not injure him.

I suppose folks might have told Nelly this was for a bust. The quills were to let Washington breathe through the plaster.

The cast no longer exists, it appears. The plaster mask Houdon made with it is at the Morgan Library and Museum, and the terra cotta bust that he made next is at Mount Vernon. Houdon returned to Paris to complete the full-sized statue, which stands in the Virginia capitol building; it’s a magnificent portrait. Many replicas have been made; I recall encountering two ’round these parts at the Boston Athenaeum and the Sheraton Commander Hotel in Cambridge.

(The image above is the replica of Houdon’s life mask of Washington that one can buy from Haunted Studios.)