In 1809, she decided that coasters that could hold three glasses at the same time were just what the White House needed and told decorator Benjamin Latrobe to buy some. He looked all over America only to discover that nobody made them. Dolley was very disappointed. Then she asked him to buy a piano for the White House and he went on another national search, turning down one piano after another until he found one for $530 (about $9,000 in today's money) that he assured Mrs. Madison he could get for $450. “It is of such superior tone, in strength and sweetness, that I would be by all means recommend its being taken at that price,” he gushed to her. She bought it. Latrobe and his wife worried themselves sick that they could not please the First Lady. A few months later, they were unable to find French china sets with cups and saucers for her because they were not manufactured that way. They spent days finding marvelous-looking cups and saucers made in Nanking, China, and prayed that Dolley would use them. She did; they were relieved. Just a week later, Latrobe was sweating again because he could not find the type of cloth Dolley wanted for the interior of two new carriages he was decorating for her. “I have been obliged to have recourse to second cloth of somewhat a darker tint, but of the same character of color. The color of your carriage will be a very beautiful reddish brown, according to your wish,” he wrote.29
Her efforts, and those of her friends, not only permitted her to be a fashionista of the first order, but a trendsetter. Her trends were not only unprecedented but daring. People often went to parties just to see what Dolley Madison was wearing that night. The next day's conversation would be consumed with talk about her clothes and hats, plus her extravagant guest list.
Later, in Washington, Dolley created a colorful social life for her husband and those he and she entertained. “The frank and cordial manners of its mistress, gave a peculiar charm to the frequent parties there assembled,” wrote Margaret Bayard Smith.30 “All foreigners who visited the seat of government, strangers from the different states of the union, the heads of departments, the diplomatic corps senators, representatives, citizens, mingled with an easy freedom. A sociability and gayety, to be met with in no other society…never was a woman better suited to the task.”
One thing that Dolley was intent on doing was leading American women out of the drab, somber look in their clothing. Following the American Revolution, the simple look became popular as a contrast to the upper-crust British royalty look and the exaggerated dress of the wives of diplomats and rich merchants. Simple was Republican and patriotic. Dolley, though, believed that it was a new century that demanded new fashion rules—and she would set them. She also felt that, as the unofficial hostess in the White House and then First Lady, it was her solemn obligation not only to help eradicate the old fashions but also to lead the charge. She never flinched in her new dresses and her dazzling new look.
One night, she stunned people with a dress that Frances Few wrote was a “gown of brick coloured silk with a train two yards long trimmed with white—on her head a small cap with a large bunch of flowers.” That ensemble was nothing. Shortly afterward, partygoers saw her in an over-the-top ensemble that would have made the royals of Windsor Castle blush. A friend wrote of Dolley that “her Majesty's appearance was truly regal—dressed in a robe of pink satin, trimmed elaborately with ermine, a white velvet and satin turban, with nodding ostrich plumes and a crescent in front, gold chains and clasps around the waist and wrists.”31
Dolley was extremely careful in her dress, and did not simply throw on the latest dresses from Paris. She always made certain that while she showed plenty of cleavage, it was not too much. She wanted to look like the finely dressed women at Washington parties, but not exactly like them. She wanted to look European, but American too. One huge issue was her jewelry. She wore many rubies, emeralds, and pearls, but never diamonds. Americans did not like diplomats or First Ladies in diamonds. Mrs. Elizabeth Merry, wife of the British ambassador, was roundly criticized for wearing a diamond necklace to a White House party and Dolley understood, right away, that diamonds were the symbols of the rich. She never wore them.32 The Dolley Madison look, though, was not just her new and expensive dresses and her exotic turbans. Her look included her makeup, the way she glided from room to room never making a false step, her laugh, and her smile. Altogether, it was an irresistible combination. She, like Washington earlier, had created a very royal look that was not quite royal, a very elegant look that was not quite elegant, and a very wealthy look that was not quite wealthy. What she had done, like Washington, was create a distinctly “American” look. It was new and different, and he and she exemplified it. And, too, she always remembered the words of her husband on fame, “be always on your guard that you become not the slave of the public, nor the martyr to your friends.”33
Dolley also had the rare ability to talk to anybody about anything. She knew something about whatever region her guests were from, knew some of the people they knew, and encountered some of the problems they had endured. “We remarked on the ease of which she glided into the stream of conversation and accommodated herself to its endless variety. In the art of conversation she is said to be distinguished,” said one White House guest.34 Another said that she always exhibited “a willingness to please.”
The people loved her for doing it and rarely criticized her for reveling in it. Danish minister Peder Pederson put it best: “I have, by turns, resided in all the courts of Europe, and most positively assure you, I never have seen any Duchess, Princess or Queen whose manners, with equal dignity, blended such equal sweetness,” he said.35 “She looks like a Goddess; she moves like a Queen.”
She was a fashion lioness with style, though. People expected her outrageous dress, wanted it, and, when they saw her in those clothes, loved her for it. A woman who met Dolley at a party wrote that “she had on a pale buff colored velvet made plain, with a very long train, but not the least trimming, and beautiful pearl necklace, earrings and bracelets. Her headdress was a turban of the same coloured velvet and white satin (from Paris) with two superb plumes, the bird of paradise feathers. It would be absolutely impossible for anyone to behave with more perfect propriety than she did. Unassuming, dignity, sweetness, grace. Such manners would disarm envy itself and conciliate even enemies.”36
The Washington, DC, that greeted James and Dolley Madison upon their arrival on a quiet day in the spring of 1801 was a small country village with some gargantuan public buildings dotting its streets and meadows and enormous, uninhabited stretches of land. The huge structures soared into the sunlit morning sky and cast lengthy, dark shadows on the uneven lawns around them. The sprawl of land within the city's borders was mostly empty, and a bit foreboding, when they made it to town that May. Washington was a brand-new city, the new national capital, under construction on the banks of the wide, easy-flowing Potomac River. The community had fewer than ten government buildings finished and opened that spring, including the Capitol (which was still unfinished, without its dome and with a combination of two large buildings connected by a narrow, mostly wooden center) and the President's Mansion (later named the White House). Streets that would become famous in history, such as Pennsylvania Avenue, were just wide stretches of dirt, mud, and holes that horses, carriages, and wagons had a hard time traversing. Parts of the lengthy avenue, one of the city's main thoroughfares, ran through a very wet, murky, mosquito-infested swamp that no one seemed able to drain. There were unfinished structures everywhere, from half-completed stone walls to the wood frames of houses and warehouses. No matter where you looked, you saw piles of stone, lumber, sand, and bricks that workers were using to finish public buildings, as well as residential homes and boardinghouses. Wooden ladders rose alongside buildings, and from early morning until dusk workers toiled, nailing thick, freshly cut wood beams together; lifting large grey stones; and finishing roofs, all amid a loud clamor of noise. Horses could be heard shifting about in their newly constructed stables, and servants repaired carriages that sat in new coach houses or under slow
ly blooming trees. People walked down the streets and marveled at the way that homes and boardinghouses were built, often able to see construction completed from the skeleton wood frame to finished homes with lighted living-room candles. Workers put up houses as quickly as they could and then moved on to the next home, the new row, the next block, the next neighborhood. Once-vacant blocks filled up quickly with houses, and uncut meadows became green, alluring backyards. Fully completed blocks and neighborhoods stood next to huge, vacant lots in what was an odd panorama for foreign visitors so used to large, populated, and very completed European capitals such as London and Paris.
“The houses were very low and far in between,” said Mary Cutts, Dolley's niece, who arrived in town later. “In many places the roads not opened, the beautiful square in front of the President's house not distinguishable from the open commons, many original trees still growing in the midst of this new city. In bad weather, the roads were almost impassable.”1 Madison slave Paul Jennings grumbled that “the city was a dreary place.”
The local newspapers were filled with ads run by people who were selling either finished homes, houses under construction, or vacant lots. The house ads were not just for Washington, either. Dozens more were for sale in neighboring Georgetown and Alexandria, Virginia.2 There were several dozen streets that had become home to boardinghouses for government officials, senators, congressmen, and judges. Residential structures, large and small, had been opening their doors over the last several months. Some buildings were constructed as clusters and given names like “Six Buildings,” which was a tightly built row of six large, brick homes that included the offices of the secretary of state. Architect William Thornton, soon to become a close friend of the Madisons, supervised the construction of “Six Buildings” as well as several other handsome homes in town. Thomas Law oversaw the construction of nine houses on a single block near the Capitol. There was also Carroll Row, with more than a dozen homes within its confines. Wide and unoccupied lots, many with tree stumps, large boulders, ravines, and narrow creeks that ran through them, sat next to many government buildings, such as the White House. Some of these lots were so large that people went horseback riding on them. President Jefferson oversaw the planting of poplar trees along the sides of some city streets. City parks were unfinished, bridges not yet built, outhouses still common, and a press corps not yet founded. Foreign dignitaries settled into crude quarters that were a far cry from their opulent palaces back in Europe (and that they complained about endlessly).
Businesses in the nation's capital were scarce. The city in 1801 was home to just eight boardinghouses, one tailor, one shoemaker, one printer, a washing woman, a grocery shop, a pamphlet-and-stationary shop, a small dry-goods shop, and an oyster house. There was a liquor store, though, called Alexander Henderson and Co. and located at Merchant's Wharf, that had a sale on Madeira wine (with “moderate” prices).3 The capital was designed in three sections: the Capitol area, the White House neighborhood, and the village of Georgetown, several miles away (Alexandria, Virginia, was across the Potomac). Each bloomed independently of the other.4 Visitors complained that the houses that had been completed in such record time were constructed poorly and were barely inhabitable. Altogether, there were 108 brick buildings and 253 made of wood. The last year that Congress would spend any money on improvements in Washington was 1801; and the city, still struggling with untrained self-government and unable to raise much money, became a ramshackle capital full of water-filled meadows and muddy streets. Tom Moore, an Irish poet traveling in America, wrote a sarcastic poem about the capital:
This famed metropolis where fancy sees,
Squares in morasses, obelisks in trees,
Which traveling fools and gazetteers adorn
With shrines unbuilt and heroes yet unborn.5
Some did not mind the debris. Others loved the city despite its faults. On an 1803 visit, Hetty Ann Barton of Philadelphia said that “the romantic city, rising in splendor out of the forests all combined, formed a picture as beautiful as can well be imagined in the happy mixture of an endless variety of objects.”6 She added that the city and its surrounding villages looked their best from the roof of the White House, where she stood with President Jefferson. “The Potomac in all its grandeur and serenity as far as the eye could reach, in the distance just visible, the town of Alexandria enveloped in a fine blue mist, yet glittered in the sun, just playing on its spires. The number of beautiful country seats in every direction, the fine scenery along the bank of the river.”
Even foreigners who seemed to despise everything and everybody they met in Washington, such as Mrs. Charles Bagot, the wife of a British minister, fell in love with the Potomac. “I was much struck with the beauty of it & particularly with the opposite shore of Virginia which is thickly wooded & the light green of the trees…intermixed with the dark pines & cedar trees had a beautiful effect,” she wrote one day; and then, on another day, when she visited Potomac Falls, she added, “the scenery at the little falls is as wild & romantic as it is possible to conceive. On each side of it are rocks of a grey kind of stone which on the right side are immensely high & raggy & covered with every beautiful description of American forest tree which appear as if they sprang from the rocks themselves.”7
It was an ever-expanding city, though. In 1801, on the day the Madisons arrived, Washington was home to only 3,200 residents.8 By the time Madison became president in 1808, that number would jump to 8,208 and to 13,117 by 1820, just after he would leave office. The whole area, including Georgetown and Alexandria, had fourteen thousand residents in 1801 and thirty-three thousand in 1820. The town was constantly growing and no matter where you walked or rode in those years you went past construction or road improvements of some kind. There were dirt piles and shovels everywhere.9 The government had begun construction of a large wooden barracks for the Marine Corps and spacious warehouses and offices at the Navy Yard, on the Potomac, where new ships would be built and old ones repaired. In the summer and fall of 1801, new boardinghouses began to open along different city streets with new dry goods, grocery, and clothing stores nearby. Pontius Stelle's hotel on capital square, the first in the city, opened its doors. Construction was started on Mechanics Hall, a large rooming house for working men, in Georgetown. Its purpose was to house the hundreds of laborers working on government offices and residential housing in the area. Several well-appointed inns, with large stables behind them, opened on Pennsylvania Avenue, all affording a grand view of the half-finished Capitol to one side and the three-story-high President's Mansion on the other. By the end of 1801, 599 houses were owned or were rented or served as inns in the community.
“No town in the Union has advanced so rapidly,” wrote the editor of the National Intelligencer.10 It was a city of potential. President Adams said in his last State of the Union message that “in this city may…self government which adorned the great character whose name it bears be forever held in veneration.”11
Others sneered. Critics charged that the nation's capital was a dark, unlit, dangerous town. There were few oil lamps to guide people and horses through the streets at night. The newly laid-out streets were not only narrow but badly maintained. Ruts and potholes were frequent, and sometimes tree stumps under the roadways were uncovered by a hard rain. The rain turned streets to mud; and in summer, with little precipitation, the dry dirt turned to dust and drifted about town when a steady gust of wind blew down the streets. It was routine for visitors upon arrival at their destination to first say hello and then flick dust off their clothes.
It was “both melancholy and ludicrous…a city in ruins,” wrote the unhappy congressman of Connecticut, Richard Griswold, to his wife back home.12 Gouverneur Morris wrote sarcastically that “we only need here houses, cellars, kitchens, scholarly men, amiable women and a few other such trifles, to possess a perfect city.”13
The brand-new city had little entertainment, and this annoyed not only diplomats from capitals in Europe that were full
of music and theater but also American officeholders who had enjoyed concerts and plays in their home cities. Washington only had one legitimate stage, the Washington Theater, and it was open for just two months a year when a traveling acting company from Philadelphia made it their home. The theater did not stage full dramas, either, but only shortened Shakespearean plays and new one-act plays by British authors. The actors who worked there always considered the theater inferior to the one in Williamsburg, Virginia. Smaller, one-room theaters opened for a few weeks throughout the year and offered entertainment and acrobats. There were no concert halls or opera houses, no art galleries, and no salons in which philosophers and intellectuals could gather. The only recreational area that was popular was the racetrack, the Jockey Club, where wealthy Washingtonians who owned well-bred horses raced them during a short season of three meets in good weather. The races seemed to attract everybody, and many wagered on the finishes. A lavish ball, with an orchestra and finely dressed servants, was held at the beginning of the Jockey Club's racing season and was said to be as impressive as those held in other major cities.
Wealthy residents, such as James Tayloe, owned several racehorses and traveled with them to different tracks in the Chesapeake area, such as those in Annapolis and Richmond. The Jockey Club's social life pleased many Americans, but some of the wealthier residents of Washington scowled at them and referred to them as public circuses. At the club's track, “persons of all descriptions from the president and chief officers of state, down to their Negro slaves…collected together, driving full speed about the course, shouting, drinking, quarreling and fighting,” snorted Dr. Samuel Mitchill, a leader of the town's social set.14
The Marine Corps band began to play concerts each Saturday afternoon in spring and summer, but President Jefferson did not think they were very good. He tried to hire a dozen Italian musicians to join them, but immigration paperwork was snarled and only half of them ever played with the band.15
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