Dolley

by Rita Mae Brown

  “I can at least draft a reply,” James said stubbornly.

  “Why dignify their ravings? You must put this printed poison out of your mind and get ready for bed. You need all your strength. Come on.” She reached up for his hand then rose.

  Jemmy put his arms around his wife. “This is my fault.” He sighed. “I’m too agitated for sleep.”

  “I don’t want to hear that kind of talk. This is not your fault. Politics is—you know.” She kissed him. “Let’s walk about. It’s too cold to go outside, and I’ve been standing still chattering to everyone tonight. I need to move around even if you don’t.”

  They walked through the rooms of the house, their shoes softly tapping against the grain of the wooden floors. Without speaking to each other, they found themselves in the dining room staring upward at the somber painting of George Washington.

  “I’ve never thought it looks like him.” Jemmy studied the figure.

  “His complexion was florid—that part’s right—but his nose was more pronounced and this makes his cheeks look puffy. Still, there is something of Washington there, something of his imposing stature and the majestic stillness he possessed.” She slipped her arm around her husband’s waist. “It must be quite difficult for a painter to capture a person. A painter who paints too true to life runs the risk of offending the victim; if too complimentary, the subject’s friends won’t recognize him. Let me put it this way: he looks enough like George Washington so that future generations can get an idea of him.”

  “I agree.”

  “Now I don’t think there is any representation of you that I like. They don’t portray your clear eyes, the way the color shifts sometimes, and I have always liked your eyebrows; they’re—they’re manly.”

  James burst out laughing. “You’re painting with words.”

  “Well, you’re handsomer than people realize.”

  He laughed again until the tears came into his eyes. “Dolley, you are the only person in the world who thinks that. Even my own mother never called me handsome.”

  “A mother never looks at a son the way a lover does. Of course she wouldn’t say you were handsome.”

  “You’re a terrible liar, Dolley Payne Madison, but I love you with all my heart and soul.”

  She was silent for a moment. “Jemmy, what do you think Washington would have done if the papers had rained calamity and dirt on Martha’s head?”

  “Flown into a rage. He could, you know. Not often, but I remember Hamilton’s telling me that once, during the war, the general lost his temper and he just cleared the room, he so terrified his staff officers.” Madison mused. “The longer he is dead the more he will be painted as a lifeless saint, and then when no one is left alive who knew him, they’ll paint on the halo.” James put his arm around Dolley’s waist so that they were intertwined. He couldn’t hug her and stand behind her to look over her shoulder at the painting because they were exactly the same height, both five feet six inches. “Yes, I think he would have flown into a rage, but like the good leader he was, he would have put it behind him and addressed the serious problems before him. He wouldn’t forget though, and Dolley, neither will I.”

  “Did you like the painting Gilbert Stuart did of me?” Dolley inquired. It had been painted in 1804 and hung at Montpelier.

  “Yes, but how can a man paint laughter?”

  A sickly sweat shone on John C. Calhoun’s face. Dolley, hurriedly leaving the gallery in the House of Representatives, noticed the man’s pallor. Langdon Cheves banged the gavel to no avail. The uproar in the chamber must have sounded like the roar when Pandora opened her box. Republicans dashed from their desks to congratulate one another, while some Federalists sat grim and quiet and others congratulated one another for a compromise that could buy them time. Daniel Webster’s eyes glittered like onyx. Laban Wheaton threw his papers on the floor and stalked out to the cloakroom.

  Congress had passed legislation authorizing an Army of 62,773 men, an odd number that reflected the seesaw battle between Republican and Federalist. Madison’s magical number of 100,000 had been whittled down enough to demonstrate the power of the Federalists, even though they were the minority party. As of that moment, the Army consisted of only 11,000 men.

  The number of new troops would have been even lower if the Republicans, ably led by Calhoun, had not modified the embargo forbidding trade with Great Britain. This was done to relieve the famine on Nantucket Island, and it changed some critical Massachusetts votes.

  Clay always said that politics was give and take, and Calhoun knew that his party must offer the Federalists something. Until a new Secretary of the Treasury could be ratified, John Calhoun would have to beg, borrow, and steal the money for those 62,773 soldiers.

  Dolley dashed out to her carriage, French John at the reins.

  “Won but compromised,” she called up to him as she hopped in and closed the door before he could climb down to assist her.

  She suddenly felt faint. A warmth and wooziness washed down from her head to her toes.

  As the carriage pitched and rolled toward the presidential mansion, she realized the fear, the anxiety, was ebbing out of her. Her body had relaxed. The danger was over even though her mind continued to race.

  She tipped her head back on the little cushion and looked outside the window. Washington alternated between cold and damp and steaming and damp. The climate was so miasmal that Clay had once said to her during one of her levees that it was probably healthier to be on the battlefield than to be in Washington. He had thought a moment and then added, “Especially if the commander is Hull.”

  She laughed out loud and couldn’t wait to tell her husband of the vote.

  “James,” Dolley called as she stepped through the back door.

  She hurried through the mansion, past the large painting of Washington, still calling her husband’s name.

  James emerged, his spectacles on his nose, papers in hand.

  “Sixty-two thousand, seven hundred and seventy-three men,” she said and stopped in front of him.

  He sagged against the wall. “Not enough.”

  “It has to be enough, Jemmy.” She reached for his hand. “It just has to do. You knew the Federalists would never give you what you asked for, what we need.”

  “I had hoped …” his voice trailed off, then gained vigor. “You’re right. This will be enough.”

  “I can’t believe God would bring us so far only to destroy us. We will yet surprise our enemy.”

  “If I had more generals with your enthusiasm, I have no doubt we would win this war.” He covered his eyes for a moment, his hand trembling. “Dolley, sometimes I wonder, will the Union hold?”

  “Husband,” her voice was firm, “you are the answer. When the Articles of Confederation failed, you gave us the Constitution. You, Jemmy, you are the architect of this nation.”

  “No. There were many others—”

  She interrupted. “James Madison, the others were like firewood without a match. You ignited them. The Constitution is your instrument, your creation.”

  He dropped his hand from his eyes. “My dear, your faith in me restores me even if you do give me too much credit.”

  “If it weren’t for you, we would rush from crisis to crisis as do so many other governments. They’ve periodically refashioned themselves with the result that they’re too exhausted to get anything else accomplished.”

  “Great Britain is stable.”

  “Yes … and at a very high price. You gave us order without a King, without a standing Army ready to march on its own citizens. We will endure this test. The Constitution will prevail and the Union will hold. It will.”

  “You’re a lion, my love.” He hugged her fiercely. “I married a lion. Oh, Dolley, I love you so.”

  27 January 1814, Thursday

  Congress voted today to give the Army more men. Jemmy was much relieved when I told him. When Henry Clay and John Calhoun arrived after the vote, he spent hours with them. Get
ting Armstrong to use the new troops effectively may be as difficult as facing the British. Jemmy, like his mother, usually has a tendency to see the dark side. But today he’s hopeful that Armstrong could suffer a streak of competence. For a change, I am less optimistic than he.

  Anna and I celebrated by baking her children gingerbread. We’ve all but forgotten the lies the Federalist papers have printed about me. The cook fussed when we descended on the kitchen. Dickey is much better and Anna’s spirits have returned to their usual ebullient state, although her husband’s long absences are hard for her.

  My spirits today should be as ebullient as my sister’s. We’ve won more men. Dickey is healthy again. Anna is happy. If only I would hear from Payne; I keep telling myself that if anything terrible had happened to him, I would have heard by the fastest ship. Albert Gallatin would have seen to that. Anna comforts me and Jemmy teases me that young men rarely think of their mothers as often as their mothers think of them. Of course, I know that’s true, but Russia is so very far away.

  Madame Serurier says that “General Winter” is the only general who ever really defeated Napoleon in the field, and there is my son in the depths of a Russian winter. His world must be silver and white. Here it’s returned to mud.

  Mrs. Gallatin showed me a letter from her husband wherein he quoted Vasily Golitsyn, a most fascinating man. This Golitsyn, the favorite of Sophia, the Czarina or whatever she was called—well, actually, she was Peter the Great’s half sister and she ruled for a time—anyway, in 1682 he wrote to her that his dream was of “peopling the deserts, of enriching the beggars, turning savages into men and cowards into heroes and shepherds’ huts into palaces of stone.”

  Isn’t that what we’ve done in America? Surely that is why we must continue this war. I am happy that Congress, after a knock-down-drag-out, voted for more men. Yet it means more killing. Why must we kill? Why can’t men sit down at a table and settle their differences? Freedom and justice are such seductive words, but the older I get, the more I believe that no state can stay in power without threat of violence. Will there be a time when this nation, so dedicated to the pursuit of liberty, allows a standing Army, a large body of men who can be turned this way and that? May the people have the wisdom never to allow such a thing. Imagine such an Army under the influence of an American Napoleon. How easy it would have been for George Washington to keep the Army together and rule. He was more opposed to the military meddling in politics than any man I know. If only he was among us now. The British would be sent packing!

  I must never let my husband know my thoughts on war. Jemmy hates it, too, but he doesn’t hear the echo of my mother’s voice.

  The insults and outrages Mother and Father endured during the War of Independence—how did they bear it? Men rode up to my father in the fields for the nasty pleasure of baiting him. My older brothers were ashamed. It seemed to Walter and Temple that fighting the Redcoats was a worthy goal, but Father said that killing was killing and it makes no difference in the eyes of the Lord. If you destroy His handiwork, you violate God. Temple could never understand how an Englishman could be God’s handiwork. Right now I’m not sure that I can either.

  Over and over Mother and Father defended their beliefs when they were pressed, moved their household when they were threatened with being burned out. We talked differently from other people, using “thee” and “thou,” and we dressed differently. As a child I used to think that we looked like a flock of gray pigeons. The only bright soul was Mother Amy.

  But I think when that Redcoat rode up the steps into the hallway, Mother would have killed him if he had tried to harm us. She hid us for our protection and I believe she hid us so that we wouldn’t see her true self. He could have struck her down with one blow but he didn’t. Why? Because she exerted some moral force that even he felt? Because she wasn’t worth killing? Because she was a woman and he was a gentleman? I have observed few gentlemen in times of war. Because hearth and home are still the sacred province of women and he knew he had trespassed? Or because, but for his red coat, epaulets, and saber, he was a Christian and he could not kill a defenseless person? The rules of war somewhat amuse me. In theory they sound noble, but in practice I expect they are often forgotten. Nonetheless, that haughty, bewigged, handsome Redcoat did not kill my mother.

  But she would have killed him. I often wonder if she knew I was there. She never spoke of it.

  In my heart of hearts I don’t believe my father would have killed to save us. His Quaker principles meant more than his own flesh and blood. He couldn’t live without those principles. When he violated the Society of Friends by going bankrupt, he shriveled up and finally died.

  Despite Father’s cherished principles, I think that my mother was the most Christian woman I have ever known. Perhaps there are times when one simply must kill and God will forgive, but killing in defense of one’s family is different from going into the field to kill the enemy. Ah, I know all the arguments. I know that the enemy, that faceless mass, ultimately threatens one’s family. Still, it doesn’t seem right to me.

  I wish I could put these concerns out of my mind. I often wish I had not been raised a Quaker, and then there are times when I wish everyone had been raised a Quaker.

  Maybe it isn’t just the killing. Maybe it’s death. January is a sad month. I’ll be glad to be done with it.

  I sometimes think that my family and friends are like a flock of pigeons in the sky—turning, whirling, and slashing through the blue sky of Time until one by one we fall out of the air.

  Until the morrow, God willing.

  D.P.M.

  PART TWO

  31 July 1814, Sunday

  I am so astonished and exhausted that I can barely write. I don’t know quite where to begin. I awoke early this morning. I couldn’t sleep, which is unusual for me, but these troubled times are affecting everyone, I suppose. The war god, Mars, is not smiling on us.

  Anyway, the morning star shone brightly, the red rim of the sun had just peeped over the horizon, and I slipped out of bed, careful not to waken anyone, most particularly Uncle Willy. I tiptoed past my drawing room, which must be why I found what I found. Had I walked with a firm tread, I would have given warning of my presence. There was Sukey reading my diary. I could scarcely believe it.

  “Sukey, what are you doing?” I asked.

  She jumped so violently, she dropped the diary and then stooped to retrieve it. Her eyes were as big as King George’s when she’s stalking a mouse. She couldn’t even open her mouth to answer me. I walked over and took the diary from her hands.

  I repeated, “What are you doing?”

  “Dusting,” came the halfhearted reply.

  “At dawn? Sukey, I may be a white woman but I am not a total fool. Now you tell me what you’re doing going through my diary.” I never thought to lock my desk. Jemmy would not read something so personal without asking. Then it occurred to me that Sukey couldn’t read.

  “Really, Miz Dolley, there’s just so much mess with the windows being open and the heat and you put such store by this book that I—”

  “Don’t you lie to me or I will slap your face! What were you doing and who taught you to read?”

  Sukey’s lips actually quivered. “I can’t read but so much.”

  “Well, how much then?” I seized her by the upper arm and just shook her like a rag doll. I was so angry. “I can read my name.”

  “I expect you can read more than that. Nouns?” I remember as a child when I was learning to read that the names of persons and things were easy but the verbs were difficult.

  “I don’t know nothing about no nouns.” Sukey’s natural surliness was returning with full vigor.

  “Names. Can you read my name?” Sukey nodded, so I continued. “And Master James?” She nodded again, and again at every name I could rattle off. She had obviously mastered “to be” and “go” but I was right, she hadn’t progressed very far with verbs. “Who taught you this?”

  “You can
’t make me tell.”

  I was furious. She put her hands on her hips and thrust out her ample bosom.

  “I can make you tell and I will make you tell.” I shook her again and when I grabbed her other arm, I dropped the diary. Well, Sukey is younger and quicker than I am, which also makes me want to spit. She snatched the diary off the floor and began ripping out pages and running away from me. I chased her but she had a head start, running through the house, tearing up pages with every step. I was afraid we’d waken Jemmy, but to my relief, if I can call it that, she bolted into the kitchen just as Paul Jennings entered through the back door. “Stop her, Paul!”

  He did. She screamed and bit him, all the while shredding my diary. By the time I could get it back from her, she had destroyed nearly everything. I was so furious. I can’t remember being that angry since I was a girl and Temple would goad me. I raised my hand to strike her. She flinched but was unrepentant. Poor Paul didn’t know what to do, but he hung on to her. I couldn’t hit her.

  I made Paul push her into a chair and hold her there. He put his hands on her shoulders and she didn’t budge. I expect, too, that she knew French John would be arriving at any moment and it would afford him enormous pleasure to thrash her.

  “Why do you want to know what’s in my diary?” I beheld the pathetic remnants in my hand.

  “You talking ugly about me.” She pointed to the pages.

  “I am not.”

  “I seen my name and I seen André’s name and”—she turned to look up at Paul—“I seen your name, too.”

  “So what?” Paul rejoined.

  “Why is it so important to you, Sukey? A diary is where a person records the events of the day, the people she’s seen, and what she is thinking about. Why does it matter?”