g information. Her
letters picture happily the activities of Philadelphia society during
the last decade of the eighteenth century. For instance, she writes in
1790: "On Friday last I went to the drawing room, being the first of my
appearance in public. The room became full before I left it, and the
circle very brilliant. How could it be otherwise when the dazzling Mrs.
Bingham and her beautiful sisters were there: the Misses Allen, and the
Misses Chew; in short a constellation of beauties? If I were to accept
one-half the invitations I receive I should spend a very dissipated
winter. Even Saturday evening is not excepted, and I refused an
invitation of that kind for this evening. I have been to one assembly.
The dancing was very good; the company the best; the President and
Madam, the Vice-President and Madam, Ministers of State and their
Madames, etc."

The mention of Mrs. Bingham leads us to some notice of her and her
environment, as an aid to our perception of the real culture and
brilliance found in the higher social circles of colonial Philadelphia
and New York. One of the most beautiful women of the day, Mrs. Bingham,
added to a good education, the advantage of much travel abroad, and a
lengthy visit at the Court of Louis XVI. Her beauty and elegance were
the talk of Paris, The Hague, and London, and Mrs. Adams' comment from
London voiced the general foreign sentiment about her: "She is coming
quite into fashion here, and is very much admired. The hair-dresser who
dresses us on court days inquired ... whether ... we knew the lady
so much talked of here from America--Mrs. Bingham. He had heard of
her ... and at last speaking of Miss Hamilton he said with a twirl of
his comb, 'Well, it does not signify, but the American ladies do beat
the English all to nothing.'"

An English traveller, Wansey, visited her in her Philadelphia home, and
wrote: "I dined this day with Mrs. Bingham.... I found a magnificent
house and gardens in the best English style, with elegant and even
superb furniture. The chairs of the drawing room were from Seddons in
London, of the newest taste--the backs in the form of a lyre with
festoons of crimson and yellow silk; the curtains of the room a festoon
of the same; the carpet one of Moore's most expensive patterns. The room
was papered in the French taste, after the the style of the Vatican at
Rome."

Such a woman was, of course, destined to be a social leader, and while
her popularity was