Their next two hours were filled with his reminiscences of fifty years of US presidents and government. He knew everybody in every state and analyzed them for Martineau. His letters and newspapers then arrived (he devoured his newspapers every day), but “he threw them aside saying he could read the newspapers every day and must make the most of his time with us. He asked me, smiling, if I thought it too vast and anti-republican a privilege for the ex-presidents to have their letters and newspapers free, considering that they were the only earthy benefit that they carried away from their office,” she said.41
The next day, Madison told her that he supported the separation of church and state and added that he thought more religious freedom was allowed in America than anywhere else. That day, feeling even better, he gave her a tour of the house, showed her his paintings and busts of famous people, and took her out to the front lawns and back lawns of the home. When the morning newspapers arrived, Martineau noted many stories about politics and France, and Madison went off on a lengthy analysis of France and its ties to the United States. He talked about the governments of England and Russia at length and, again and again, came back to why the United States had been so successful with its new democratic system. He had told her that “in a small republic there is much more noise from the fury of parties while in a spreading but simple working republic, like that of the Union, the silent influence of the federal head keeps down more than ever appear.” She then added that he had supreme confidence, still, that a large country with many political views does not bring chaos but organized progress and more freedom, not less.
When she left Montpelier, saying good-bye after three long days of interviews and conversation, Martineau wrote that “Madison reposed cheerfully, gayly, to the last, on his faith in the people's power of wise self-government.”42
Madison had been fading. As he passed eighty, he finally began to slow down. He caught the flu just before Christmas in 1827 and took a long time to recover from it. The next summer he was so sick, and for so long, from the bilious indisposition that had bothered him all of his life that he even missed the annual meeting of the University of Virginia board of governors. One year later, he fell victim to another of his numerous bouts with rheumatoid arthritis and found it hard to move his fingers. In the winter of 1832, his arthritis became worse and his hands became useless. That winter, Dolley wrapped his legs in oiled silk and gave him salt baths, but they did not offer much help. He cancelled the annual family trip to Warm Springs in the mountains. “I am still confined to my bed with my malady, my debility and my age, in triple alliance against me. Any convalescence, therefore, must be tedious, not to add imperfect,” he wrote that summer.43
Everyone who visited him at Montpelier admired Dolley's work as his amateur nurse. She waited on him from sunrise to sunset. “Her devotion to Mr. Madison is incessant and he needs all her constant attention,” noted Martineau.44
His condition became progressively worse as the year 1835 rolled on. A despairing Dolley said in the early winter of 1835 that “my days are devoted to nursing and comforting my patient, who walks only from the bed in which he breakfasts to the one in the little chamber…. Anna [Dolley's niece] who is a sterling girl, stays much at home with me and sleeps beside my bed ever since the illness of Mr. Madison in April…. He is better now but not yet well enough to walk across the two rooms.”
Madison wrote his cousin, Hubbard Taylor, of “the infirmities belonging to [advanced age]…to which are added inroads on my health, which among other effects have…crippled my fingers.” Throughout 1835 and 1836, unable to move his fingers he dictated most of his letters to Dolley or brother in law John Payne, still battling alcoholism, and signed them in his own hand.45
It was a winter in which Dolley became sick, too. She had trouble with her eyes, was constantly fatigued, and, in general, was worn out form taking care of her bedridden husband.46
In the balmy spring of 1836, to his surprise, Madison was visited by Charles Ingersoll, an old political friend whom he had not talked to in over twenty years. Ingersoll was traveling through Virginia that spring and slept overnight at an inn at Orange Court House in mid-May. He decided to ride over to Montpelier in the morning for a brief visit to pay his respects to the president and ended up staying for three days.
“He is very infirm, 85 years old last March, never was strong, and is now extremely emaciated and feeble…. He cannot sit up, except a little while now and then to rest from reclining on a sofa; and at first, when I saw him, he wore gloves, which were laid aside, however, as the weather became warm. We found him more unwell than usual and with a difficulty of breathing, which affects his speech, so that Mrs. Madison told me I [should] just talk and let him listen. But as I wanted to listen and he appeared to grow better every day; our conversation [was] animated without fatiguing him.”47
When he was well enough to speak, Madison regaled Ingersoll with stories of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and others. The president talked for a long time on the American system of government. “Mr. Madison's temper is perfectly amiable and the best word I now [use] to describe his love of the country is to call it beautiful or lovely patriotism, such natural profound and pure republicanism,” Ingersoll said.48
Ingersoll was James Madison's final public visitor.
For Dolley, life became very busy when Madison was in his eighties. She spent most of the day caring for him and the rest of the day worrying about him. She would carry on engaging conversations with visitors in a room of the mansion and then, like a machine that feels tremors miles away, she would blurt out “I must go to Madison,” rose and left. He had to be kept warm in winter and be tended to constantly. The former First Lady was her own drug store, inventing different medications for her husband and herself when her eyes became inflamed (“milk and water or cream and sometimes with fresh butter”). She never complained about her new, full-time job as nurse, but she did mutter that visitors never understood how sick he was. “He receives letters & visitors as if he was made of iron, to his great disadvantage & mine,” she said.49
But all that medical worry was nothing compared to the suffering the Madisons endured in their retirement because of their relationship with their son, Payne.
Dolley was so used to paying Payne's bills in different cities and states that she even established a phrase for the process. She did it to keep him out of jail, she told friends, and said that the debt range of $200 to $300 was “prison bounds.”50
People always fawned over Payne, but it was in very indirect ways. They wrote her about how handsome he was, how people loved being around him, and what fond memories they had of him as a small boy. The memories and descriptions always rang hollow, as if they were covering up some dark secret. For example, in June 1812, just before the war began, Sally McKean d'Yrugo, the American wife of the Spanish minister, wrote that “your son Payne has been twice to see me, but unfortunately I was out both times; the Marquis saw him and says he is a fine young man, grown so tall and handsome. I shall make an effort to find him today and intend to ask him if he remembers that when a little fellow he pulled off General Van Courtland's wig at the very moment he was making me a flourishing compliment.” It was like so many letters sent to her about Payne. They said much, and yet they said little.51
People who knew Payne when he was in his early twenties always complimented Dolley about him and rarely complained of his outlandish behavior. Dolley wrote everyone about what wonderful things people had to say about Payne. She told her sister in the summer of 1812, for instance, that “Payne is in Baltimore yet and as much admired and respected as you could wish, he writes me that Mrs. Patterson and Mrs. Bonaparte are very attentive to him and he is invited to all the great houses there. We intend to send him in a few months to Princeton.”52
Dolley treasured all of the compliments about Payne and the deep feelings of love for him that they stirred within her. But her visions and dreams of her son were far more pleasant than
the reality of him. Over the next few years, Payne's troubles would multiply and threaten to bring Montpelier and everything the Madisons owned and cherished toppling to the ground.
Payne Todd, the tall, thin, handsome, dark-haired, troublesome son of Dolley and James Madison, the life of the party wherever the party was being held, had returned home in the 1820s to Montpelier to be with his parents in retirement. Dolly was certain that if her beloved Payne lived with them at the plantation, she could save him. The former First Lady was a loving mom and a hopeless enabler who gave her son everything he asked for and things he never asked for, or even fantasized about, all in an effort to somehow turn him into the contented young man she dreamed of. He would be married, with children, happily strolling the grounds of Montpelier, smelling the flowers, with a wide smile on his face—someone all could admire. She never realized that his personal problems, which were considerable and did not diminish with time or place, would always prevent that and always leave the former First Lady frustrated and heartbroken.
Payne was impulsive; was a victim to roller-coaster highs and lows; was unable to complete simple tasks; had no regard for money; imposed on his parents and their friends endlessly; failed in all his romances; could not work for anyone else; had no direction in his life; paid no attention to schedules or deadlines; and, everyone said, did not seem to have any genuine feelings of emotion toward people, not even toward his parents. Yet, at the same time, he was very good looking, bright, and charming; and was a marvelous conversationalist, a good dancer, and a dazzling young man full of ambition. He drifted through life, though, with no wife, no family, no job, no money, lots of debts, and no goals. The Madisons were distraught.
He was so irresponsible that the president or Dolley constantly had to write him and tell him to pay his bills. In 1823, for example, Dolley wrote him that his father was angry with him because his debtors kept bothering him for the money. “Your papa tells me to remind you of the debt for papers to Mr. Walsh & the Franklin Gazette.”1
Payne, who was twenty-six years old when Madison retired, had been like that since he was a small child in Philadelphia. The president had sent him to St. Mary's Seminary, in Baltimore, which was an expensive and refined prep school for the children of the wealthy. He was sent there for eight years so that he could grow both intellectually and as a man, but his time at the school did not change him. The former president had given Payne jobs, important ones, such as a clerk for his diplomatic team sent to Europe to help end the War of 1812, and he had failed at all of them.
There was always veiled anger about Payne in conversations and letters from friends and colleagues. John Quincy Adams, for instance, wrote in his diary that on one morning in Europe he was awakened at daybreak by the noisy end of an all-night card game in the room of Henry Clay, an inveterate gambler. Playing cards with Clay until dawn was young Payne Todd. Adams wrote in his diary, “Just before rising, I heard Mr. Clay's company retiring from his chamber. I had left him with Mr. Russell, Mr. Beutzon and Mr. Todd at cards.” Another day, Adams wrote of Payne that “it is surprising he has sufficient talent to succeed in anything he undertakes.”2
When the commissioners all returned to America, Todd was not with them. Madison's son, who had been in Russia and Europe for two years, did not return home with William Crawford and James Bayard, but went to London with Henry Clay and Albert Gallatin instead. He sent his baggage and artwork he had purchased for the president along to America, in Crawford's care. Back in London, Todd was spending his nights gambling and being with women. The Madisons did not hear from him. When he finally returned to Montpelier, in September, an entire summer late, he revealed that he had run up bills of $6,500 buying art and other items and that he also owed Richard Cutts $1,500 for unknown expenses that Madison assumed were tied to drinking, womanizing, and gambling. The president had to pay all of Payne's bills and, as always, a small smile on his face, apologize for him to the other commissioners, who, naturally, smiled back and assured him that all had gone well.3
The Madisons could not keep track of where their son was going or where he had been. He, like Dolley's brother John, often disappeared for weeks and months on end and did not write to them. Payne ran up incredible bills in a variety of stores and boardinghouses and sent them all to Madison. Even when Madison approved of his spending money, such as for paintings in Paris, Payne spent three and four times what he was allocated and never blinked an eye.
No one understood Payne. If he was Dolley's son, why wasn't he more like Dolley? If Madison had raised him from childhood, why wasn't he more like the president? The Madisons did not understand their son either and told close friends that he had simply, like other young men, fallen victim to the temptations of the world, which was easier for him to do because he was the son of the president.
Given the accounts of him in letters and archives, Payne Todd was probably a sociopath, a person who does whatever he wants to do regardless of the consequences, and regardless of whom he hurts. He, like most sociopaths, was a very good liar and someone who could always talk people into lending him money to pay his bills. All he needed, as sociopaths constantly contend, was a helping hand and a new start. He continually told his parents that maturity would end his problems. He may have added that as the son of a famous man, it was hard for him to succeed in the world because people expected too much. He never worried about anything, was certain someone would get him out of trouble anywhere he found it, and led an aimless life, with no regard for anyone, always knowing that things would work out. And it they did not work out, he did not care.
And he was, like many sociopaths, utterly charming. All of his letters to his parents were written clearly and contained much lucid thinking and emotion. He reported news of the world, and of his life, just like any other son. He let his mother know how her friends, whom he had visited in different cities, were doing. He wrote from Russia, for example, about how appalled he was that the British burned Washington and destroyed the White House, his home. “This act of the enemy meets with universal excoriation and has induced for the first time the Paris journals to publish what was supposed contrary to the inclination of the British Government. I must also regret my absence, for if I could have been serviceable in no other way I might have been perhaps useful to my mother,” he wrote in the summer of 1814.4
He made friends easily and was considered a sociable young man. Everybody who knew him at first liked him. Eliza Collins Lee took him to a steamship wharf and waved good-bye to him as the boat drifted down river. “[The ship's] smoke reminds me of his departure,” she wrote. Dolley's niece, Fanny Madison, praised Payne to her aunt and told her “give my best wishes & thanks to your kind son and tell him his goodness has not been bestowed on ungrateful minds.”5
But, after a while, the troubled side of Payne wore them all out.
His relationships with women were worse than they were with men. He partied all over America and Europe and dated dozens of women. Some of the relationships lasted for months but, as always, the women simply tired of his boorish behavior and broke off the romance. If he was this way as a boyfriend, what would he be like as a husband?
Payne exhibited odd habits. He complained of pains in his teeth, legs, and arms, and of a lifelong rheumatism. He smoked too much and drank too much. Sometimes he woke up early and sometimes late. When he arose, he would often wrap himself in a blanket and lay in front of the fireplace for hours. He kept records of what he ate, when he drank, and when he abstained. He never signed his letters to his mother. He kept a secret diary in ciphers and was proud of it. He was forty-four when Madison died, but he had the mentality of a teenager. He was intent on running the plantation, just as his father had, but he was incapable of doing that. A manager, William Dixon, ran it, but complained to Dolley, who was in Washington, that Payne was often not around to be consulted or had fled for several weeks, often taking the keys to buildings with him. With Payne gone, there was no formal supervision of the slaves, and they often
starved. No work was done.6
Payne fell prey to temptation often because he was handsome and had a gregarious personality, and because he was the son of America's chief executive. He was a bona fide celebrity. Everybody wanted him at their parties. All the men wanted to drink with him and all the girls wanted to dance with him. People circled around him at parties, gave him their cards for future contact, and introduced him to their closest friends and family. People cut him in on business deals, went to the races with him, took him to lunch. Men gladly took him to gambling casinos, taverns, and brothels, happy to be of service to him, to enjoy the high life with him. It was a glittery world in which any normal person could tumble into trouble easily, but for a sociopath with money like Payne, it was a world in which one disaster followed another.
His days in Russia were a good example. He and the other American commissioners were invited to the czar's parties at his elegant palaces, with their wide ballrooms and high ceilings, and never-ending flow of liquor, but only royals were permitted to dance with the czar's sister. Payne was allowed to dance with her, though, because he was a president's son. He was invited everywhere, went everywhere, was admitted to every party, and was lauded by all there—because he was “Mr. Madison, the President's son.”7
The Madisons just wished he could remain at Montpelier, get into a local business of some kind, have an office in Orange Court House, and settle down. He often talked about marriage, family, and helping his stepdad at Montpelier, but nothing ever came of it.
Then, to the surprise of all, in the summer after the Madisons retired to Montpelier, Payne asked his stepfather to help him buy a 104-acre tract of land near Montpelier so that he could live there and start a silkworm farm that he thought he could turn into a profitable industry. He had met men in Paris who had made small fortunes through the silk business. His parents were thrilled. He could live and work on his business and be nearby. Running the farm and business would give him responsibility and help to turn around his life. Dolley's brother John had moved back to the Orange County area and he was doing better, so why wouldn't the same happen to Payne? They settled on a piece of land a few miles away on the road to Gordonsville. The land was cut in half by a stream and had some rock ledges and a small home that Payne could live in while he started his business. Payne immediately named it Toddsberth.
James and Dolley Madison Page 41
