me, will sit at my Table, will live as I live, will … be treated in every respect with civility, and proper attention.” Lear’s acceptance of these bright prospects began a relationship with the family that would last throughout Washington’s lifetime.

Recalling her early education, Nelly mentioned not only Tobias Lear but also another tutor, named Gideon Snow, and told of occasions when David Humphreys, Washington’s aide, taught her to recite passages from the Iliad. Nelly would never attend college; that privilege was reserved for boys. But her loving grandparents saw to it that she had the best education society could offer young women of her time.

Nelly’s first opportunity to receive formal classroom training came in 1789 when Washington became President and took his family to live in New York, the first capital of the new United States. The trip from Mount Vernon was marked by a good deal of ceremonial pomp. When Martha and the children arrived in New York in late May, Martha reported in a letter home that Nelly had complained of feeling a bit sick from the carriage travel and that “dear little Washington” seemed lost in the confusion of crowds and parades along the way.

Once settled in the new capital, Martha turned her thoughts to the children’s education. Nelly was privately tutored in music and art, one art teacher being the famed painter, historian, and playwright William Dunlap. Her music instructor was Alexander Reinagle of Little Queen Street, an Englishman who was then writing some of the best music of his century. In addition to these private lessons, Nelly was enrolled with Mrs. Graham of Maiden Lane, a woman who kept a fashionable school for young ladies. Mrs. Graham advertised a curriculum of reading, English, grammar, plainwork, and embroidery, in addition to geography, painting, music, dancing, and French. For at least seven months, Nelly went to the little academy along with the children of several prominent New Yorkers. Then the Washington family left New York for Philadelphia, which had become the second capital of the young nation and was also the cultural center of America.

Nelly was eleven when the Washingtons moved into the Robert Morris house in Philadelphia. Their neighbors were the Morrises—already good friends—who had renovated and occupied the house next door. The Morrises’ daughter Maria became the first of Nelly’s companions in Philadelphia; their friendship had already been launched the year before when Martha and the children visited the Morris home. Now Maria and Nelly began to gather around them a small circle of young girls who were not to take their friendships lightly and who would continue their correspondence well into their adult years.

Elizabeth Bordley, nearly two years older than Nelly and Maria, soon joined this select circle. Her father was John Beale Bordley, the man Washington had appointed to receive subscriptions to the Bank of the United States. Young Elizabeth Bordley’s lifelong friendship with Nelly, and the resulting exchange of letters, is our

main source of information about Nelly’s life. The circle also included at various times Elizabeth Allen, whose father had served in the Continental Congress, and Susan Randolph.

The life that turned these girls into winsome, chattering teen-agers was the best the nation could provide. Philadelphia was the hub of the world to Nelly; her beloved “Grandpapa” was the President and the idol of his country; Nelly was in love with everyone and everything, and the world seemed eager to return the affection. With some dismay, grandmother Martha wrote home, “I hope when Nelly has a little more gravitie she will be a good girl. At Present- she is I fear half crazy.” But Martha loaded up the whole giggling crowd for rides about town in the presidential carriage, and tolerated a parrot named Snipe and a dog named Frish.

Strict attention was paid to Nelly’s continuing education. She studied art with Jean Pierre Henri Elouis, and her dancing master was James Robaret. She learned languages also, apparently becoming proficient in Italian, French, and Spanish. In writing to her friends, she delighted in the small vanity of carelessly dropped foreign phrases: Votre très humble servante , and de tout mon coeur . She taught her parrot to sing “Pauvre Madeion” in French. Washington, obviously proud of his talented granddaughter, continued her musical training and made her play for company.

Nelly once sent a note to Elizabeth Bordley saying she could not come to a party because “we have a large company of the Honorable Congress to dine with us, & I must not be so remiss to go out in the evening as they like to hear musick .” She added, with what was becoming a tendency toward sharp-tongued evaluation of her peers and elders, that the congressmen “do not know one note from another.”

Nelly was beginning to notice young men, not always with approval. One hapless lad she labeled a “little milk and water monkey.” When she was paid compliments and given adoring verses by Andrew Allen, she was flattered by the attention but was not yet ready to take any boy seriously. Still, she was reaching the age when men were going to find her attractive, a few exceedingly so, and Grandpapa Washington thought it time to offer some counsel on the matter. On the occasion of an important social event in January, 1795, when Nelly was off visiting in Georgetown, Washington wrote one of his few letters to her that have survived. In it, he fondly warned her that her current indifference to men would soon change, and advised her to use her reason as well as her emotions in choosing a husband. (See box on page 84.)

In the fall of 1795, Nelly experienced her first prolonged absence from her grandmother. She went to visit her mother at Hope Park, Virginia, a rather isolated estate twenty miles from Alexandria. Then she went on to Georgetown

to visit her older sister Martha, now married to Thomas Peter. Nelly found it hard to part with her grandparents. She wrote to Elizabeth Bordley, “I have gone through the greatest trial, I ever experienced—parting with my beloved Grandmama. This is the first separation for any time since I was two years old. Since my father’s death, she has been even more than a mother to me, & the President most affectionate of Fathers. I love them more than any one.”

By May of 1796, Nelly was pleased to write that she would be spending the summer at Mount Vernon with her grandmother. In September she was still at the family estate and told Elizabeth, “I am more & more attached to this place, & in spite of the ague & fever, prefer it to all others.” She had been plagued by malaria and her grandmother had suffered four bouts of it, but she loved Mount Vernon anyway. “I ride sometimes on horseback, walk, read, write French, work, play & always think the weeks go off too fast.” Although Nelly was to return to Philadelphia for the winter, Washington’s second term as President was expiring early in 1797, and in March of that year, the whole Washington family left the capital to return to Mount Vernon permanently. Nelly’s baggage was predictably burdensome. Washington good-naturedly complained to Tobias Lear that “On one side I am called upon to remember the Parrott, on the other to remember the dog. For my own part I should not pine much if both were forgot.” Though Nelly grieved for her lost friends, she was happy to return to the country. “When I look at this noble river,” she wrote to Elizabeth, “& all the beautifull prospects around, I pity all those who are in cities, for surely a country life, is the most rational & most happy of any, and all the refinements of Art and Luxury are nothing in comparison to the Beauties of Nature.”

Nelly had absorbed her grandfather’s strong interest in horticulture. A flower that she loved especially, and mentioned several times in her letters, was the woodbine, or jessamine, an evergreen with yellow flowers that bloomed in April. She wrote to Elizabeth’s father to thank him for one of his works on agriculture, saying that with his instruction she hoped to become “a great Farmer ” in time.

As much as Nelly loved the country life, it was hard for her to stay away from the stimulation of society. After little more than a month at home she went up to Washington for the races, and reported to Elizabeth about a ball at the Union Tavern. She evidently attracted quite a bit of attention by dancing six times with a new acquaintance, Charles Carroll. He was the son of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, a wealthy lad whose estate, Homewood, would later become a part of the Johns Hopkins University campus in Baltimore.