Tonight on New Hampshire Crossroads, we'll retrace the steps of George Washington on his only visit to New Hampshire 200 years ago this month.

Then we'll visit with Becky Graber and Susan Kislinger as they perform the Book of Qualities.

And we continue with the Robert Frost series of poetry, The Tuft of Flowers.

Hi, I'm Fritz Weatherbee, and this is New Hampshire Crossroads.

Theme Music Presentation of New Hampshire Crossroads is made possible by grants from Shaw’s Supermarkets, providing quality and service in all their stores located in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island.

First NH Banks, serving the financial needs of individuals, corporations, and local governments throughout New Hampshire.

Continental Cablevision, providing quality cable service and community programing throughout New Hampshire.

And the Union Leader Corporation, publisher of New Hampshire's statewide newspapers.

We're right for New Hampshire.

Today we're at the back channel off from Portsmouth Harbor.

You know, back in the early 1800s, Portsmouth Harbor played an important part in shipbuilding all over the United States.

As a matter of fact, it was known all over the world.

And 200 years ago this week, George Washington paid a visit to Portsmouth.

He had been president of the United States only six months, and he came here, he said, because he wanted to find out what the citizens of this new country were thinking.

In our first story, producer Marya Danihel retraces George Washington's steps.

This doesn't look much like historic New England, does it?

No stone walls, no graceful colonial houses.

But this spot on the Amesbury Road in Seabrook marks the beginning of five historic days for New Hampshire.

It was here that, 200 years ago, George Washington's carriage rumbled across the Massachusetts border for his only official visit to the Granite State.

He wasn't sure that he should come at all.

This man, whose soldiers had followed him through the winter when they had no shoes or blankets, who had defeated an army four times larger than his own, was unsure of himself as the first leader of a newly created republic.

How was a president supposed to behave?

In May 1789, soon after his inauguration in New York, Washington wrote to influential Congressman James Madison, seeking his advice.

Would it not be advantageous to the interests of the Union for the president to make the tour of the United States in order to become better acquainted with their principal characters and internal circumstances?

Fortunately, Mr.

Madison saw no impropriety in this.

On October 15th, George Washington set out from New York.

In his retinue was 27 year old Tobias Lear, Washington's personal secretary and a native of Portsmouth.

On October 26th, Lear rode into Portsmouth ahead of the president to smooth away.

The news galvanized the citizens.

They had just four days to get ready.

On Halloween 1789, a Saturday morning, Washington and his party left Newburyport for New Hampshire.

State President John Sullivan was ready with a welcome.

Besides some of New Hampshire's most distinguished civilians, he had with him a military escort of about 700.

Here in Greenland, the president got out of his carriage and mounted his horse.

He wanted to make a commanding entrance into Portsmouth at the head of an escort that now numbered nearly a thousand.

Tobias Lear took his place in the open coach, and as the party rode into Portsmouth, some of the crowd mistook Lear for the president, even though he was 30 years younger.

So he bowed and smiled, not wishing to disappoint the spectators.

Are you ready, gentlemen?

He comes He comes Your sons prepare!

The matchless chief approaches here he’s Now, Portsmouth, you may remember had just four days to prepare a welcome suitable for the president.

There were speeches to be written, songs to be rehearsed, and a parade to be organized.

Welcome welcome, welcome to Antonia’s Plains (bell ringing) On the glorious day, the president rode into Portsmouth to the joyful noise of church bells, cheering, and cannon.

At the top of Congress Street he dismounted and was escorted into the old state House, which sat in the middle of Market Square.

He appeared on a balcony and was regaled with music and a formal parade.

Finally, Washington got his dinner and a well-earned rest.

Tobias Lear had arranged for him to stay at Brewster's Tavern, which stood at the corner of Pleasant and Court Streets.

After the day he had had, the president probably slept through the fireworks going off in Market Square that night in his honor.

(fireworks exploding) The old State House is gone now.

The Old North Church that Washington saw was taken down in 1854, and this one was built.

But if he were here today, he'd recognize one thing anyway.

This weathervane set atop the first North Church in 1732, the year George Washington was born, looked down on all the festivities that last day of October in 1789.

Perhaps Mr.

Washington, the farmer, not the president, consulted it from time to time while he was here.

On Sunday, November 1st, the president diplomatically attended services at the Old North Church and at Queen's Chapel, now called Saint John's.

According to his diary, he spent the rest of the afternoon in his room writing letters.

But Portsmouth historian Ray Brighton believes he might have paid a quiet visit to Tobias, Lear's fiancée.

I think he told a little bit of the truth, but I feel that that afternoon he probably went to the Long home, Polly Long's home, and met with Polly and her mother.

He couldn't go back to New York and tell Martha Washington that he hadn't met a young woman that was going to come and live in her house, could he?

(no dialogue) Early Monday morning, the president toured Portsmouth Harbor.

Of course, he was taken past Fort William and Mary on Newcastle Island, now the Coast Guard station.

It was here that in 1774, John Sullivan and the Sons of Liberty overpowered British sentries and took five tons of gunpowder, some of which was later used in the Battle of Bunker Hill.

There were only 11 states officially in the Union then, but the fort saluted Washington with 13 cannon, expressing the hope that Rhode Island and North Carolina would join.

At the mouth of the harbor, the party stopped to do a little fishing.

He apparently hooked a fish.

The fish got loose and the hook snagged on something on the bottom.

Washington gave it a mighty tug, and it let go, and it dumped him over backward into a bucket of clams they were using for bait.

And as he was falling, he hit his eye on Langdon's three cornered hat.

Well, I think it's kind of amusing.

He's probably the only president of the United States who got a physical black eye during his term of office.

The party disembarked at the mansion where former Royal Governor Benning Wentworth had lived, and then returned by carriage to Senator John Langdon's house to dine.

Before dinner, State Vice President John Pickering presented the town's official address of welcome.

The speech expressed Portsmouth's particular gratitude that she had avoided the fate of many other seaport towns in the Union, that is, shelling by British ships.

The president's modest reply read, in part, I fear the fond partiality of my countrymen has too highly appreciated my past exertions.

I can claim no particular merit, gentlemen, for the preservation of your town from the devastation of the enemy.

On Tuesday morning, after sitting for a portrait, Washington set out to pay an important personal call.

He walked down Court Street, past what is now Strawberry Banke and down Hunking’s Lane to Tobias Lear's house.

The house is still here.

It's usually closed, but for the bicentennial of George Washington's visit, volunteers from the Wentworth Garden and Tobias Lear Association spruced it up and invited in the public.

Tobias had poor luck with his wives.

His first wife was Polly Long.

They treated visitors to the kind of tea Tobias Lear's mother would have served, and Doctor Dorothy Vaughan talked about the Lears and the Washingtons.

He was very, very close to the First family, and I don't think local people realize that.

I hadn't realized it until I began reading about Tobias and reading these diaries and letters and things that have been left, that there was a great connection between the Lear family on Hunking Street and the Washington family of Mount Vernon.

When Washington returned to his rooms at nine, he may have found dispatches from New York, which caused him to cut short his tour.

At 7:30 the next morning, Washington left quietly for Exeter.

Of course, Exeter planned to welcome him when he arrived near Folsom’s Tavern, but it didn't come off quite the way they had planned.

Some of the party were still saddling their horses when Washington made his appearance, and their faces must have fallen when he told them that he could stay for only a short time.

However, the Exonians made the best of it and gave him a collation, a sort of brunch, it being about 10 a.m.. After about an hour, the president took his leave and drove off towards Haverhill.

The official visit was over.

The chairs that Washington sat in, the glasses he drank from, the slippers worn by ladies who danced with him.

All these have been reverently handed down in New Hampshire families, to the occasional amusement of younger generations.

But these objects represent a yearning to touch an extraordinary event: the triumphal tour of the man who had fathered the first significant democracy in thousands of years.

Back in Exeter, they celebrated through the night.

Music George Washington in New Hampshire, a book written back in the 1930s by Elwin Page, was a major source for our story, and that book is being reissued by the Portsmouth Maritime Society, and it should be in the bookstores sometime in mid-December, just in time for Christmas.

And another fascinating story, The Checkered Career of Tobias Lear by Portsmouth historian Raymond Brighton, chronicles the ups and downs of Washington's secretary.

Our next story is about, well, it's about life and all its peculiar qualities.

Seacoast residents Susan Kislinger and Becky Graber met some ten years ago and began collaborating on songs and plays and musicals, and one of their recent plays is based on the discovery of the Book of Qualities by Ruth Gendler.

Last fall, we paid a visit to them and taped some of their performances at the Market Square studio right here in Portsmouth.

Just when you think you know her, she will shift and surprise you In the Qualities, you see real clear images of characters that can pass in and out of many of us.

In the kind of work that I've done psychologically, or the kind of reading I like to do, it often has to do with these characters within us who are trying to find ways to get out and get healed.

And so the Qualities were right, talking right to what I'm a lot of times most interested in, which is those little inner characters that run the show a lot of times, unless they're integrated.

Music Honesty.

He’s the most vulnerable man I have ever met.

He is simple and loving.

He lives in a small house on a cliff near the beach.

I had forgotten how many stars there are in the midnight sky, till I spent a week with him at his house by the sea.

Music In my time I have been afraid of so many things, most especially of the heights and of the darkness.

I know if I had been driving anywhere else, the road would have terrified me.

But knowing I was on my way to see him softened the fear, and in his presence, the darkness becomes big and deep and comforting.

He says, if you are totally vulnerable, you cannot be hurt.

Music Adding the music just added a whole new dimension to it, I think because it let the words live.

It just got a lot more full, I guess, the more we worked on it, and the more and and when something didn't work, like we tried to do one of them innocence, I guess, we realized it wasn't really working the way it was, because it just didn't have the richness of character.

So as we worked on it, they just seemed to round themselves out.

Innocence talks to old people on the commuter train.

La la la la la la la Sometimes she talks to the window.

La la la la la la Sometimes she talks to the man next to her, hiding behind his newspaper.

La la la la la Sometimes she talks to herself.

And sometimes she sings a little song.

She tells secrets in between her words, but most people don't think they’re secrets because she says them right out loud.

La la la la la She told me it takes a lot of sophistication for her to stay innocent.

That was a secret.

La la la la la Since her affair with Danger, she is not afraid of anything.

La la la la la Music Change, where’s my sister's moccasins?

He stays up late and wakes up early.

He likes to come up quietly and kiss me on the back of the neck when I’m at my drawing table.

He wants to amuse people, and it hurts him when they yell at him.

He is very musical, but sometimes you must listen for a long time before you hear the pattern in his music.

Music Artistically and in our lives, the sort of relationship of what we're doing to our own, shall I call it spiritual quest, relationship to our spiritual life, has been very important for both of us in what we're doing artistically, and I think that's been an important part of our friendship, too.

Music Patience, where's my grandmother’s filigree earrings?

She bakes marvelous dark bread.

She has beautiful hands.

She carries great sacks of peace and purses filled with small treasures.

You don't notice her right away in a crowd, but then suddenly you see her all at once.

And she is so beautiful, you wonder why you never saw her before.

Ooh, ooh Aah, aah.

Aah, aah The people that I've introduced to the Qualities have been hungry to find those kinds of characters to identify with.

I know that kids are.

When I tell stories, I know that they love,f little kids, love to become the different things and grown ups do, too.

I mean, whenever, and grown ups become them in a different way.

They don't, you know, start to get the faces or something.

But I think people do identify with and liked and like to see parts of themselves fleshed out so they can see them.

I think we do it when we're walking down the street and we see somebody and we think, oh, I could be like that if I'd just turned this one corner a little differently.

There's me in a different costume, kind of.

Music Since we taped that story.

Becky and Susan have combined the Book of Quality with some old and new material, and have come up with a brand new play, which they entitle Matching Outfits.

And separately, Susan is working on a play for and about single parents, which she is writing with the students from the Strafford Elementary School, and Becky continues her storytelling in the schools, and she is pregnant with her first child.

Back when Robert Frost was living in Derry and trying to be a poultry farmer, he learned of an opening at the local school, the Pinkerton Academy.

Well, the local men's league asked Frost to read some of his poetry in order to introduce himself to the community.

The idea of it just terrified him.

But the local minister agreed to read one of Frost poems, and the poem that he chose was entitled A Tuft of Flowers.

Well, the reading was a great success, and so, in spite of his nervousness, Frost got the job.

(birds chirping) Music I went to turn the grass once after one who mowed it in the dew before the sun.

The dew was gone that made his blade so keen before I came to view the levelled scene.

I looked for him behind an isle of trees.

I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.

But he had gone his way, the grass all mown.

And I must be as he had been, alone.

As all must be, I said within my heart.

Whether they work together or apart.

But as I said it, swift there passed me by on noiseless wing a bewildered butterfly, seeking with memories grown dim o’er night, some resting flower of yesterday's delight.

And once I marked his flight go round and round, as where some flower lay withering on the ground.

And then he flew as far as I could see.

And then on tremulous wing came back to me.

I thought of questions that have no reply, and would have turned to toss the grass to dry.

But he turned first, and led my eye to look at a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook, a leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared, beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.

The mower in the dew had loved them thus, by leaving them to flourish, not for us, nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him, but from sheer morning gladness at the brim.

Music The butterfly and I had lit upon, nevertheless, a message from the dawn that made me hear the wakening birds around, and hear his long scythe whispering to the ground, and feel a spirit kindred to my own.

So that henceforth I worked no more alone.

But glad with him I worked as with his aid, and weary sought at noon with him the shade and dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech with one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.

Men work together, I told him from the heart, whether they worked together or apart.

We would like to thank Richard Polonsky and Raymond Péchoux of Mending Wall Farm up in Bethlehem, New Hampshire, for their help in producing that poem.

Incidentally, the Frost family summered for many years on that farm when it was owned by the Lynches.

That was before they bought a home in Franconia, New Hampshire.

Well, that's our show for this week.

Join us next week when we join a group of students from Rye, New Hampshire as they travel to the Stone Environmental School up in Maine to have some hands-on experience with their natural environment.

Till then, for New Hampshire Crossroads, I’m Fritz Wetherbee.

Tonight's Robert Frost poem was made possible by a grant from the New Hampshire Humanities Council, connecting people with ideas.

With additional support from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts.

Theme Music Presentation of New Hampshire Crossroads is made possible by grants from Shaw’s Supermarkets, providing quality and service in all their stores located in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island.

First NH Banks,serving the financial needs of individuals, corporations, and local governments throughout New Hampshire.

Continental Cablevision, providing quality cable service and community programing throughout New Hampshire, and the Union Leader Corporation, publisher of New Hampshire's statewide newspapers.

We're right for New Hampshire.

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