I'm John Batchel with the author and historian Malibir, Evangelica, New York, and we're speaking of Angelica, 1755 to 1814.

But right now, it's the summer of 89. Angelica will be in London until 97, but this is a trip by herself with a man

named Jack Trumbull who paints her portrait. Jack Trumbull does Battle of Bunker Hill. Jack Trumbull does

Yorktown. Big canvases, huge historical paintings, very popular. He was the son of a Connecticut

governor and therefore

had a colorful career, but Jack and Angelica were friends. Comes home to 89. That's the year that

the Constitution is approved. George Washington is sworn in. There's a new country. What does she make

of her new country? Does she have confidence in it, Molly?

You know, so she arrives, she's someone who tends to miss the ceremony itself and show up for the party.

She arrives a couple days after George Washington is inaugurated, and she hasn't been home since 17,

since the war was over, since the year the war ended.

And I think it was startling to her.

You know, if you live overseas, you, you romanticize your home and you

and you imagine it all the time.

And so I think she's been thinking of it in these very, like,

um,

an optimistic light. And now she's been thinking of it in these very, like, in optimistic light.

And now she's here.

And, of course, we're all human.

And it looks like that. And everybody's busy and arguing with each other.

And it doesn't look quite as idealistic as they had imagined it during the war when it didn't yet exist.

You know, and George Washington is a massive personality, and she admires him a lot, but now he's

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