First Ladies (4 page)

The greatest tone setter among the early First Ladies was Dolley Madison, wife of our fourth president, James Madison. Although his brilliant brain practically invented the United States of America singlehandedly (or mindedly) at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Madison was not a very prepossessing man. Short, shy, addicted to wearing black suits, he was once described as always looking like a man on his way to a funeral. Without his predecessor Thomas Jefferson’s vigorous backing, he would never have become President. Without Dolley, Madison would almost certainly have been a one-term failure. In those days the President was nominated—or renominated—by his party’s caucus in Congress. If you did not charm the lawmakers, you did not get reelected.

Dolley Madison knew exactly what she wanted to do as First Lady because she had spent eight years visiting the White House while Thomas Jefferson was President and James Madison was secretary of state. Occasionally she served as hostess for the widower Jefferson. The Sage of Monticello had concentrated more on his wines and food than on the decor of the mansion, which was still largely unfinished when he left in 1809. One of Dolley’s first and most astute moves—something succeeding First Ladies might have emulated—was to invite a select group of congressmen and senators to see for themselves how bad things looked. The legislators came through with five thousand dollars (a hundred thousand in today’s dollars), and Dolley spent it so fast it made heads swim.

No one complained, because within three months of taking charge, Dolley had the lawmakers and half of Washington to her first reception
in three resplendent rooms that ran along the south front of the house—the present Blue Room, Red Room, and State Dining Room. She had given the job of decorating them to Benjamin Latrobe, one of the best architects of the day, and he ransacked New York and Philadelphia for furniture and fabric for curtains and drapes. The results were spectacular, particularly the room known as Mrs. Madison’s Parlor (now the Red Room), which was done in sunflower yellow, with high-backed sofas and chairs in the same lush color and a yellow damask fireboard in front of the mantel.

Even more splendid was the Elliptical Saloon (the current Blue Room). It had a long mirror above the mantel, the walls were papered in rich cream, and the woodwork shadowed in blue and gray. Red silk velvet draperies and red cushioned furniture, including thirty-six “Grecian” chairs, plus a Brussels carpet and bronze lamps completed the brilliant effect. During receptions the buffet table in the State Dining Room was heaped with the equivalent of a “harvest home supper.” Dessert featured one of Mr. Jefferson’s most inspired imports, ice cream in pastry shells.

It was a setting that would have made a professional misanthrope cheerful. Dolley’s bonhomie further guaranteed an absence of gloom. It might be worth pausing here to recall that her marvelous merriment was achieved only after a painful break with her stern Quaker past. It took courage for her to defy the religion that she later said “used to control me entirely” and marry James Madison.

Dolley did not entirely abandon her Quaker past. She may have rejected the Plain People’s ban on stylish clothes and balls and parties, but she retained the virtues of honesty and charity. I am convinced that generosity of spirit was the secret of Dolley’s charisma. It was rooted in the Quaker belief in the goodness of most people, even when they were quarreling politicians.

She was particularly kind to young people. William Campbell Preston was presented to Dolley by a relative shortly after he graduated from college. She introduced him to a swarm of pretty young women and announced he would be her guest in the White House as long as he stayed in Washington. Two decades later, when he became a senator from South Carolina, he was still talking about the good time he had.

Dolley’s triumph as First Lady is all the more remarkable in the light of her background. Her father was a small businessman who had gone bankrupt when she was young. Her mother supported the family by running a boardinghouse. There is nothing in her past to account for her combination of good taste and impeccable hospitality.

Dolley herself was no beauty. She was forty by the time she became First Lady and was definitely into middle-age spread. She applied rouge and other cosmetics of the day with a heavy hand. But her radiance overcame any and all physical deficiencies. One White House guest left a pen portrait of her in her hostessing prime. She was 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.” The entranced visitor insisted it was “the woman who adorns the dress and not the dress that beautifies the woman.”

Dolley had a genius for making every guest feel special. She never forgot a name or a connection. Moreover, she hired the best chef in Washington, and she mingled writers and artists with the usual guest list of politicians and diplomats. But it was Dolley’s totally unassuming style that set the tone of the White House. She was nothing if not down-to-earth. Once, chatting with the soon-to-be famous congressman Henry Clay, Dolley offered him some snuff. She was addicted to this form of nicotine and never went anywhere without her snuffbox. While Clay inhaled and sneezed, Dolley whipped out a red-checked handkerchief. “This is for rough work,” she said, and snorted into it. Next came a fine lace handkerchief. “And this,” she went on, “is my polisher.” She applied this to her nose in more dainty fashion.

With marvelous astuteness, Dolley managed to work both sides of the aristocracy versus democracy debate. At her receptions, some people liked the way she insisted that each lady guest curtsy to the President before taking a seat. Others admired the way she mingled “the Minister from Russia and the under clerks of the post office.”

“Politics,” Dolley once told her sister, “is the business of men. I don’t care what offices they hold, or who supports them. I care only about
people?
” Few lines are a better summary of one of the fundamental parameters of the First Lady’s role. Every First Lady who has
lost touch with this principle—or was perceived to have lost touch with it—has gotten into trouble. I should add, however, that Dolley was intensely interested in politics, and she frequently asked her husband for the latest developments on the international and national scenes.

Without Dolley Madison, James Madison would probably have been a one-term president. Here is a portrait of her in her hostessing prime
.
(American Heritage Library)

There is another dimension to Dolley which in turn leads us to a wider view of First Ladies. The uncommon courage she displayed in the White House rescued Madison’s presidency—and even the country—from the debacle of an unpopular war. In 1811, westerners and southerners in Congress coalesced into something called “the War Hawks,” who breathed sulfur and flame on the English for their highhanded insistence on boarding and sometimes seizing American ships to enforce their blockade against Napoleon’s France. Dolley, a shrewd observer of human nature, undoubtedly warned Madison that the War Hawks’ real motive was the hope of getting rich from captured real estate in British-owned Canada. But the President reluctantly
signed a declaration of war on June 19, 1812, even though it passed the Senate by only seven votes.

The country, already divided, turned savagely on Madison and his First Lady when the American attempt to invade Canada ended in a rout and an invading British army captured Detroit. The President was called “the little man in the palace.” Others spelled
white house
in lowercase letters to indicate their contempt for its occupant. Dolley was assailed with accusations of supposed infidelity.

Although Dolley valiantly tried to fill the White House with her usual good cheer, the political situation turned even gloomier when Napoleon collapsed, leaving the United States all alone versus Great Britain, the most powerful country on the globe. The Federalist Party, still potent in New England, talked secession and surrender. The British thought they had a chance to regain their lost thirteen colonies—or a hefty chunk of them. They dispatched a fleet under a big-talking admiral named Cockburn, who cruised off the East Coast, declaring he planned to “make his bow” in Mrs. Madison’s drawing room.

Washington seethed with unrest and anxiety. There were rumors of an assassination plot, supposedly to get rid of Madison and put in his place a pro-British puppet. Some friends urged Dolley to flee the city. “I am
determined to
stay with my husband,” she replied and began sleeping with a saber beside her bed. She heartily approved when the President stationed one hundred soldiers on the White House grounds to demonstrate his determination to stand his ground.

Deciding their war of nerves had failed, the British landed 4,500 veteran troops in Maryland, less than a day’s march from the capital. Dolley could only watch and pray as Madison rode off with 6,000 hastily assembled American militia to stop them. The First Lady mounted to the White House roof and swept the horizon with a spyglass, hoping to see her husband returning in triumph. All she saw were some dispirited militiamen and crowds of Washingtonians fleeing into Virginia. The troops assigned to protect the White House panicked and joined the exodus. Dolley soon learned that the pickup American army had stampeded for safety at the first British volley.

Still she refused to budge. She ordered the servants to prepare dinner and set the table for the President and his staff. She was determined to show the citizens there was no panic or cowardice in the White House. Dinner was almost ready to serve when two dust-covered horsemen pounded up to the door. They shouted orders from the President to abandon the house immediately and flee into the country. Dolley was infuriated. She vowed that if she were a man, she would have found soldiers, posted a cannon in every window, and fought the British to the bitter end. But she realized it was time to be sensible and depart.

She still declined to panic. She had sent Madison’s papers into the country the previous day. Now she ordered the red silk velvet draperies in the Elliptical Saloon taken down. She also packed the silver service and the blue and gold Lowestoft china she had purchased for the State Dining Room. Then she saw Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of George Washington on the wall of the dining room, in an elaborate gold frame. She could not allow the Father of the Country to be captured by the British. “Take it down,” she said.

Sweating and cursing, the steward and his assistants tried, but the frame was bolted to the wall. Dolley ordered them to break the frame and cut the canvas out of it. Finally, as she headed out the door with the painting under her arm, she scooped up a precious copy of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. At this point, one of Madison’s black servants, Jim Smith, rode up, shouting: “Clear out! Clear out!” The British were only a few miles away. Dolley climbed coolly into her carriage and rode off to Rokeby, Virginia, to stay in a friend’s house.

The British, as even the most casual students of American history know, marched into deserted Washington and gleefully torched the White House, the Capitol, and other public buildings. The Americans, I regret to say, had it coming to them. They had started the pyromania by burning several public buildings in Toronto during their abortive invasion of Canada. Admiral Cockburn no doubt made a drunken bow in Dolley’s parlor before striking the match.

Dolley returned to Washington the day after the British marched back to their ships. She shed tears over the blackened shell of the
White House and took up residence nearby in an elegant brick mansion, Octagon House. The story of her White House heroics, particularly her rescue of Washington’s portrait, swept the country, inspiring an outburst of patriotic fervor.

In Maryland a local orator proclaimed: “The spirit of the nation is aroused.” Men rushed to volunteer for the Army, and when the British fleet tried to capture Baltimore, a furious nightlong cannonade from Fort McHenry beat them off. The battle inspired a vociferous antiwar critic of the Madisons, Francis Scott Key, to write a song called “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Labeled appeasers, the Federalist Party virtually went out of business.

Three months later, a shattering victory over another British invasion fleet on Lake Champlain convinced the King’s men to talk peace. Wearing her trademarks, the feathered satin turban and the gold chains, Dolley presided over a reunited nation. Even the new British minister, invited to one of her Octagon House galas, was forced to admit: “She looked every inch a queen.”

The sheer dimensions of Dolley’s mastery introduced a new problem into the First Ladies’ story—how to follow such a performance. Her successor, Elizabeth Kortright Monroe, made a mistake which we will see repeated in our own time: she reacted
against
Dolley’s democratic style and became the first example of a First Lady who set the wrong tone for her husband’s administration.

A New York beauty, the daughter of a wealthy merchant, Elizabeth and her presidential husband were in charge of rebuilding and refurbishing the incinerated White House. As a result of her years spent in Paris when James Monroe was American ambassador there, she loved things French. (The French had reciprocated, worshipfully calling her
La belle Américaine)
In private, she often spoke French to her husband and daughters. She and the President filled the mansion with French furniture, some of it their own, in the restrained style of the 1780s and 1790s, the rest in the more flamboyant Empire style of Napoleon’s era.