This is a dinner invitation to the Listons, from President George Washington.
In February 1796, immediately after their wedding, Robert and Henrietta Liston began their journey to Philadelphia, then the capital of the United States, where they would take up residence and live for four years.
The Listons formed a real and politically significant friendship with President George Washington and his wife Martha Dandridge Custis Washington. The friendship helped to repair fragile British-American relations after the Revolutionary War.
It was in Philadelphia that Henrietta first met President Washington and had her first experience of presidential dinning. In her journal Henrietta records that there were 'two courses of French cookery served up in the American style'. The Washingtons also invited the Listons to their estate in Virginia, Mount Vernon.
The exhibition includes Henrietta's 1796 and 1797 journals from North America, which record her impressions of the young republic and its Founding Fathers.
Read Henrietta Liston's account of President George Washington's resignation and his death