Joseph Dennie, a magazine editor, put Dolley on one of his covers and told a friend that he could not believe the easy way that she slid into conversations on any topic about books. Guests at the White House always noticed that when she arrived at a party, she always had a book in her hand (Don Quixote was her favorite). Later, a statue erected in her honor at the Smithsonian Institution showed Dolley holding a book. Dolley also was a member of a small book club with her sisters and relatives. They exchanged favorite volumes with each other all of their lives. She asked her son, who traveled extensively, to buy books for her in European capitals, and sometimes she sent him a list of specific titles she was interested in. She asked friends to do the same.
The First Lady was the recipient of an enormous string of gifts from public figures, Washington residents, merchants, and their wives. Interior decorator Latrobe's wife was always buying Dolley new turbans in whatever city she visited and mailed them to her in Washington. Betsy Patterson Bonaparte, one of her social friends, bought hats, stockings, and dresses and sent them to the White House as gifts. Dolley received gifts from very prominent people, too, such as John Jacob Astor, who forwarded to her expensive fur hats. One of the strangest gifts she received was a fourteen-pound beetroot plant from France stuffed in a wooden crate, which was sent by Ambassador Joel Barlow, who called it her “oddest present ever.” People did not give her gifts for favors; they did it because they liked her. A woman who gave her a cap told her that “I hope that you will wear it if only once & think of one that always thinks of you with great affection.”42
She also became famous for always carrying snuff with her. It annoyed many, though. “Mrs. Madison is still pretty, but, oh, that unfortunate propensity to snuff-taking!” complained Aaron Burr.43
That combination of intellectual achievement, ebullient personality, and social graces made Dolley an extraordinarily successful First Lady. Harriet Martineau wrote that “for a term of eight years she administered the hospitalities of the White House with such discretion, impartiality and kindliness that it is believed she gratified every one and offended nobody. She is a strong minded woman, fully capable of entering into her husband's occupations and cares; and there is little doubt that he owed much to her intellectual companionship, as well as to her ability in sustaining the outward dignity of his office.”44
One problem Dolley encountered in 1809 was her weight. After eight years as both hostess for her husband and the president, she had wined and dined guests at well over a thousand parties and dinners, all featuring gourmet meals and a never-ending stream of exotic desserts, such as multiflavored ice creams. She had put on twenty pounds or so in those years and now, in 1809, found herself more careful in picking out clothing that hid her weight. Two years later, she started to lose some of her hearing. In a panic, she wrote her sister that “the deafness continues & distresses me beyond anything that ever ailed me.”45
Mrs. Madison stayed clear of any public connections to politics, preferring to lobby for her husband and his causes at home. She told a friend, “the mornings are devoted to Congress. where all delight to listen to the violence of evil spirit. I stay quietly at home (as quietly as one can be who has so much to feel at the expression for and against their conduct).”46
At home, though, behind the closed doors of the White House, Dolley was a full participant in national politics. She advised her husband on the issues of the day and, more important, helped him pick cabinet members and government workers, always reminding him to look at a man's total background, not just his political bent. Thanks to her, Madison wound up with a hardworking team that did not stir much controversy in the early years of his term. James Blaine, who would later become secretary of state, wrote “Mrs. Madison saved the administration of her husband, held him back from the extremes of Jeffersonism and enabled him to escape from the terrible dilemma of the War of ’12.”47
Dolley always knew what was going on in the political world through her husband. She often asked him to tell her more about politics in his letters to her and, in nearly all of them, reminded him that she would not reveal anything he said—and as far as one can tell, she was true to her word. “I wish you would indulge me with some information respecting the war with Spain and the disagreement with England which is so generally expected,” she wrote. Then she added in the next breath, “you know I am not much of a politician, but I am extremely anxious to hear (as far as you think proper) what is going forward in the cabinet,” she wrote the Madison in 1805. She wrote about politics to sister Anna, too, and Anna kept her views secret. For instance, at the end of the summer of 1808, when the embargo against England was a hot national issue, Dolley wrote her sister, “the President and Madison have been greatly perplexed by the remonstrances from so many towns to remove the Embargo. You see they refer to Congress, and the evading it is a terrible thing. Madison is uneasy.”48
Dolley smiled broadly to all, but behind that smile could be petty grudges that she held against people, even longtime friends. For example, there was a feud she and her husband tumbled into with architect Thornton, who sold them their first house in Washington, introduced them to the capital social scene, and for a time co-owned racehorses with the president. The Madisons drifted from him, though. In March 1817, just after the Madisons left the capital when James's second term ended, Thornton wrote the president that “I have long had to lament a marked distance and coldness towards me, for which I cannot account, and am the more affected by it, because we once enjoyed the happiness of being considered as among your friends. It would have been kind to have mentioned any cause of dissatisfaction rather than wound us by exhibiting to the world our misfortune in the loss of your friendship and esteem.”49
Sometimes Dolley snapped responses to questions and let her true feelings out. At one party, she was involved in a discussion with several women about the character of a woman no one seemed to like. Something was said to Dolley and she sneered, “Oh, she's a hussy.” She would tell others that certain people were dull, were tedious, or bored you with endless “instructions” on how to live. She said of one woman that “it is in her power to be kind and perhaps useful to you, but if she is ever offended in any way she is bitter. It is best for us, my dear, to beware of ‘most everybody’ as I have often said.”
Dolley could be biting. She had a sharp tongue, and pen, and she had used them since she was a teenager. In 1788, as a young woman, she wrote a friend about Philadelphia that “this place is almost void of anything novel.” She told Anna Thornton of Thomas Jefferson's grandson that he was “a fine one, but as cross as you could wish anything to be.” She wrote her husband in 1805 from Philadelphia that the impression of French ambassador Louis-Marie Turreau “was a sad one. He is the fighting husband. [Friends] said the Americans hate him.”50
The gossip of her friends was just as scathing as her own. Sally McKean, who married the Spanish ambassador, told Dolley that “Harper has made the most ridiculous speech in the world…the fool.” About President Adams, she wrote that “old Adams’ speech, or rather Old Beelzebub's, many people who went to hear him were so amazed at it that they scarce believed their own ears.” McKean could be acidic. She said of an acquaintance, “that old, what shall I call her, with her hawk eyes, gave out that the weather was too warm and it would affect her nerves…she is not young and confounded ugly.” She added that the woman's family was eager to have a fuss made over them in Boston, “for, dear knows, they have had none made over them here.” Another friend of Dolley's, Dolley Cole Beckwith, told Mrs. Madison that “I can almost see and hear Mrs. Duvell set shuffling her cards with her turban and frieze slipped to the back of her head and her false jaws working.”51
Dolley would engage several people to help her conduct lengthy investigations into the lives of people whom she felt were being unfair to her and her husband or causing unnecessary trouble. She once utilized Edward Coles, Madison's secretary, for that purpose, sending him on trips to visit members of the family of Gen
eral Alexander Smith to discover why the Smiths were involved in a vendetta against the Madisons. They had, Dolley charged, spread false rumors about the president and First Lady and, she said, written a pamphlet and slanderous newspaper articles about them in journals such as the Whig. A friend asked her if she laughed about the articles and pamphlet. She said her husband did, but she was furious at the Smiths. She vowed revenge, too. “It was too impertinent to excite any other feeling in me than anger. He will be sick of his attempt when he reads all that will be replied to it,” she wrote.52
Coles visited the Smiths, dined with them, and drank with them in an effort to get at the truth. He also discovered that the scurrilous newspaper articles about the Madisons signed “Timolean” were actually written by George Stevenson, a nephew of one of the Smiths. These inquiries were not only meant to discover some secret but also to let the targets, and everyone else in Washington, know that Dolley Madison was going to investigate them. It was a powerful warning from the First Lady of the United States.53
Dolley gossiped continually with friends. She wrote Phoebe Morris in 1813: “You remember the Judges. They have been some time amongst us, and are as agreeable as ever. They talk of you continually, particularly [Supreme Court Justice] Joseph Story”54
Dolley's high-paced social life at the White House spurred others to host parties, too, officially and unofficially. The embassies of countries, such as France, England, and Turkey, all held receptions, dinners, and parties at their official houses, and the Madisons were always invited. “We had a breakfast at the French Minister's which was quite pleasant, a small party & profusion of fruit,” wrote Dolley of one. Diplomats, congressmen, and Washington residents held dinners and receptions at their homes—very unofficial—and the Madisons attended those, too. By the time her husband's first term as president was over, Dolley had significantly increased the social world of Washington, and it all radiated from the White House.55
The parties did not just attract the beautiful and powerful. They attracted many people, including egotistical men and women who used the gatherings to showcase their looks and grace, sometimes looks and grace that they no longer possessed. Some were convinced that gowns and diamonds would cover up their age, wrinkles, and physical shortcomings. They were the targets of much behind-the-scenes talk. Congressman Joseph Story joked to his wife that the parties were filled with “some aged damsels, flirting in the gay undress of 18 and antiquated country squires assuming the air of fashionable beaux.”56
When her husband became secretary of state, Dolley's signature headgear was the French beret that she wore casually over her hair. French fashions waned after a few years, though, and she replaced the beret with her own invention—the turban. She created the dazzling-looking turban, which looked like the headgear of Turkish princes, by simply wrapping a three- or four-foot-long piece of silk or other material around her hair in a wide cone. The turban was not just stylish but also enabled her to wrap up her uncombed hair in a few seconds. Women loved it because it also covered one's head and prevented the need, at the time, to powder one's hair. Women also did not want to spend endless hours combing their hair. And it was fast and simple to wrap the turban. Dolley decorated her turbans with jewels and pins, making them quite stylish. Dolley first wore a turban at a White House ball, and hundreds of women in Washington began to wear it the following week. The turban then swept through America and overseas. It found its way to France, where Josephine Bonaparte began to wear it.
The turban also added another foot or so to Dolley's height, making her 6'8” tall when she walked through her parties, a wandering beacon of a hostess in blazing color, easy to find and easy to talk to about anything. James Madison never liked the turbans. Before each party he would tell her how much he disliked them and how they detracted from her natural beauty. They would argue a bit and then Dolley would spin around, wrap her hair in the turban, and walk to the party. Her husband, the president, would grumble and follow her.57
Dolley copied the daring French dress styles of the day, too. At one party, the belle of the ball was the rather daring, voluptuous, young American wife of Jerome Bonaparte, Betsy, whom Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte refused to meet and who seemed to dress for the sole purpose of creating scandal. She always wore low-cut, tight dresses that showed much cleavage. She looked like she had been poured into them. Betsy knew what she looked like, too, and she moved her body to show it off. She was so shapely that the Baltimore American newspaper even published a poem devoted to her physical beauty. Betsy had her own full-time hair dresser, too.
“Mobs of boys have crowded around her splendid equipage to see what I hope will not often be seen in this country, an almost naked woman…her back, her bosom, part of her waist and her arms were uncovered and the rest of her form visible,” wrote one woman.58
Men certainly enjoyed the new, daring women's dresses. One man at a White House party wrote that “the ladies were not remarkable for anything so much as for the exposure of their swelling breasts and bare backs.”59
Women out-dressed each other. Mrs. Anthony Merry, the British ambassador's wife, arrived covered in diamonds, from bracelets on her wrists to a necklace to a diamond tiara at one party. Then, fashionably late, the president and his wife arrived. Dolly was dressed in a beautiful, tight, ivory satin gown with a plunging neckline. On her head she had one of her turbans, decked out in jewels and, to top it all off, two large, flamboyant ostrich plumes stuck up out of the turban. All gasped; Dolley smiled.
Ambassador Merry and his wife were a constant problem for both Jefferson and the Madisons. The Merrys were thin-skinned and overly socially conscious. Success in Washington's social world seemed as important as success on the international front. At one White House party, the Merrys felt they were official invited dinner guests and that protocol dictated that the president, without a companion, should offer his arm to Mrs. Merry and escort her in to dinner. Instead, Jefferson turned to Dolley Madison and gave her his arm. She demurred and told him he had to take in Mrs. Merry. Jefferson smiled wryly, tightened his grip on Dolley, and led her into the dining room. Mrs. Merry, furious, followed them in the official procession. A week later, the Merrys felt similarly disrespected at a party at the Madisons’ home and left early, offending everyone. Madison later explained to Merry that American dinner-party rules were quite loose, unlike those of England, and that no snubs were intended. The Merrys were still angry. Mrs. Merry steamed about the snubs for months and, with her ambassador husband, made it a huge social issue in the capital. No one in Washington paid much attention to the Merrys, and, Madison learned through snoopy gossips in London, neither did the British.60
On another occasion, Dolley invited the Merrys to a party and insisted that it was very unofficial and very informal. The president escorted Mrs. Merry into dinner on his arm, as required by social and political protocol. There, the smiling Merrys were introduced to the guests at the dinner. Then, at the end of the table, Mrs. Merry was introduced to a local haberdasher and his wife, invited by Dolley because she thought both were quite funny and would liven up the political dinner. Mrs. Merry was aghast. British legation chief Augustus Foster wrote his mother that America was “indeed a country not fit for a dog.”61
It was that same Foster who also paid Dolley one of the finest backhanded comments she ever received. After a visit to Montpelier, Foster said of her that “she was a very handsome woman and tho’ an uncultured mind and fond of gossiping, was so perfectly good tempered and good humored that she rendered her husband's house as far as depended on her agreeable to all parties.”62
Mrs. Madison shone at Montpelier, where she reigned as the First Lady of both the United States and Orange County. She hosted numerous parties each summer, and each one was larger, louder, and gaudier than the other. On the Fourth of July in 1816, she outdid herself, throwing a party for ninety guests outdoors on her lawns. “The dinner was profuse & handsome,” she said, “and the company very orderly…the day was cool & quit
e pleasant.”63
As his first year as president ended, Madison told friends that the government he ran, and the country that he represented, had turned out well and functioned as a smooth-running union of states. His party retained its strong majority in Congress, Republican newspapers were solidly behind the administration, and the nation's farming and business was good. The people were happy. “With a union of its citizens, a government thus identified with the nation may be considered as the strongest in the world; the participation of every individual in the rights and welfare of the whole, adding the greatest moral, to the greatest physical strength of which political society is susceptible,” he wrote at the end of 1810.64
It had been a tough first year, filled with international problems and political infighting at home, but he was satisfied with it. Those who saw him when he was not in the president's office said that the burdens of office were not wearing him down, as many feared. “When he can disengage himself for a moment from the [chores] attached to the painful honor of being Chief of a republican government, the wrinkles smooth out of his face, his countenance lights up, it shines then with all the fire of the spirit and with a gentle gayety; and one is surprised to find in the conversations of the great statesman…as much sprightliness as strength,” wrote Baron de Montlezun, a diplomat.65
Madison had become a strong and resourceful chief executive after his first year in office. He had stepped out of the shadow of Thomas Jefferson and become his own man, his own president.
From the first day he arrived at his office in the White House until the end of his administration, James Madison was crippled by the British. His embargo and subsequent Non-Intercourse Act had not succeeded, and neither had the diplomatic missions of any of his State Department envoys to London, all sent there to end the British search and seizure of American ships and impressment of American sailors. The British were determined to stop American ships wherever they found them, whether in the English Channel, the high seas of the rolling Atlantic Ocean, or the faraway ports of the Caribbean. They captured sailors whom they claimed were British Navy deserters and also grabbed Americans. They threatened to fire upon and sink American ships, and, in fact, had done so in American waters off the coast of Maryland in 1807 when, after a dispute over their right to board the ship to search for British deserters, they opened fire on the USS Chesapeake. Three American sailors were killed and eighteen wounded.
James and Dolley Madison Page 23
