Any investigator of early American social life may depend on Abigail Adams for spicy, keen observations and interesting 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 at its height, she introduced many a foreign custom or fad to the somewhat unsophisticated society of America.  One of these was that of having a servant announce repeatedly the name of the visitor as he progressed from the outside door to the drawing room, and this in itself caused considerable ridiculous comment and sometimes embarrassing blunders on the part of Americans ignorant of foreign etiquette.  One man, hearing his name thus called a number of times while he was taking off his overcoat, bawled out repeatedly, “Coming, coming,” until at length, his patience gone, he shouted, “Coming, just as soon as I can get my great-coat off!”