Today I found myself staring out the window, Uncle Willy on my shoulder. There I stood staring, like a resident of Bedlam, I suppose, until I realized there was a crowd staring back. Once I regained my senses, I fed Uncle Willy, since that’s what they like to see.
I never saw our cousin Patrick Henry’s mad wife, but Isaac, Temple, and I used to scare Anna with stories about her, which we punctuated with screams because we thought all insane people screamed. Today I wondered if a touch of that blood isn’t in me. I’ve never before lost myself like that … just staring into thin air … thinking of John.
I felt his presence like a little golden hammer tapping at my heart. I could almost hear his deep voice, “Trust in the Lord, Dolley, trust in the Lord.” As he lay dying at thirty, so young, so handsome even with the fever raging through him, he didn’t complain. He trusted in the Lord.
This time doesn’t frighten me. That time did. I was twenty-five. Perhaps, at forty-six, I’ve lived long enough. The thought of dying isn’t fearsome. What was it Samuel Johnson said? “… when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” I should know. I should know many things.
Back in 1793, I only knew that I loved my husband and Death held him in his white claws. John, so blessed by nature and respected by all, a lawyer with a blossoming practice, a good businessman—such wonderful things were predicted for John. And in early October his mother and father perished of the fever. He bore it with fortitude. We were all shaken. The death toll in Philadelphia was thirty-three people a day. And before the month was out, my husband and my older son had died, adding to that frightful number.
And then I, too, fell ill. I don’t really know why I lived and they died. I had Payne. There were times when I was so sick I didn’t even know I had a living son. I couldn’t remember who I was or that my love had died or my boy. Then a piercing shaft of light would open my eyes and I would remember. Oh, that cursed memory, which pressed into my heart like jagged glass. The pain tore so deep I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t breathe. Then I would remember Payne, so small and helpless, fatherless. He would not be motherless. I lived.
I don’t know what’s before me, but I do know that I will do all I can. At least I know my enemy’s name. At least my son is a grown man and far from harm’s way. If I die, I can’t complain that I haven’t lived.
My only wish, my one regret, is that Jemmy and I never had children. God granted me two sons by a gentle and good man and one lived. If only God could have granted me another son or a daughter with the man to whom I have pledged my life, a man I first respected and then learned to love. More than my own life I love Jemmy. If only we could have left some love behind with a child.
When I turned forty, we were at Montpelier. It must have been a late spring that year, 1808, for even though my birthday is May twentieth, a few lilac bushes remained in bloom. Jemmy and I walked to the log cabin his parents built when they first came to the land. He asked me if I minded very much that we had never had children together. I replied that I would have liked to have them but it was not to be. He put his arm around me as we walked and said, “I’m grateful you have a son.” Then he paused and said, “Perhaps for us, the United States is our child.” That was the only time he ever discussed the matter with me. Jemmy displays a remarkable restraint. He never wants to burden another person with his feelings and yet he is willing to bear their burdens. He’s bearing everyone’s burdens now and I wish, more than ever, that we had children of our own. Young people to share in this woe and to give him laughter; sons and daughters to live on, should we die in this war.
I don’t mind dying, but I can’t bear the thought of Jemmy’s dying.
“Trust in the Lord.”
Well, John, I have no choice.
Until the morrow, God willing.
D.P.M.
17 August 1814, Wednesday
French John said we needed the blind, the lame, and the halt to fill up the table tonight. My levee, again attended by more foreigners than Americans, was a quiet affair, except for Uncle Willy, of course.
The cook let King George out of the kitchen, and that bold creature dashed into the dining room, jumped on the table before anyone could catch her, and stole a huge hunk of pork as big as she was. Then she tore off the table with her booty. Indeed, King George provided most of the evening’s entertainment. She’s quite the thief.
Even the small orchestra was flat.
Still, we enjoyed the company of friends. Dr. Thornton and his wife attended. As usual, the superintendent of our Patent Office boomed jolliness and believes the day will come when we have talking machines. Jemmy is grateful he has remained in the city, especially since Dr. Thornton is a Federalist.
Afterward Lisel and Louis Serurier, André Daschkov, French John, and I found ourselves in a most unusual conversation. Everyone avoided the subject of the British, for which I was thankful. I can’t remember how the conversation started, but I know French John brought Virginia wine from Mr. Jefferson’s county for the Seruriers and Daschkov to sip. I serve American foods whenever I can, although I know it will take our vintners centuries to catch up to the French and the Germans. My guests politely sampled the white wine, and André was complimentary. The Seruriers too were, naturally, polite. Now I remember how the conversation started. French John beamed as they complimented the wine and asked the Seruriers, who would have been extremely young then, if they remembered the wine before the Revolution in France—those great vintages, which then faltered as did everything during the Revolution.
The priest at the church where French John was an acolyte told him that those vintages of the ancien régime were worth more than plate, gold, or jewels, and that aristocrats employed heroic measures to save their wines. Some hid them in secret compartments on their estates. When the families were guillotined, no one was left to reveal the hiding places. Centuries from now, some individual will lean against a portrait or stumble over a key and find the treasure. Many others managed to get the wine onto ships and flee to England, those wise enough to know there was no hope in France for their kind. If the British come, I wonder what we will hide and then forget.
We listened to these tales. The Seruriers too had many to tell, of buried wine and wealth, when André asked if anyone knew who actually beheaded the King and Marie Antoinette. Louis replied that the identities of the executioners for any guillotine remained secret. Before the guillotine, the same was true for the axman. In fact, this was a profession with strict rules for practitioners and a long apprenticeship. A great executioner made certain that his victim did not suffer much pain. The beheadings, whether with the blade or the ax, were quick. We have nothing comparable here. Our condemned are hanged, which a European aristocrat would consider a vile death, a commoner’s death. Beheading—by ax, broadsword, or guillotine—was a privilege of station. Naturally, an executioner needed to be strong because the neckbone is not easy to sever. The guillotine changed that, but should there be a failure, the executioner had to make a good job of it. With haste.
How curious that we lapsed into discussing executions. I suppose we are each thinking of death.
André Daschkov reminded us that no Russian Czar has ever been killed by commoners. This is certainly not true in England and France, where kings have been killed by their subjects. Now, it has always been hinted that Catherine the Great had her insane husband killed, but that’s not the same as the people rising up and killing their ruler. Daschkov, passionate by this time, said, “If only you could see Russia. If only you could see how beloved the Czar and his family are. The Russian is born to obey. The idea of revolution is anathema and akin to blasphemy.”
Madame Serurier complacently listened to André’s outburst. She regards a Russian as most Frenchmen do: an oaf. I find this odd because the Russians speak impeccable French, and we Americans can barely speak English correctly.
Lisel touched André’s glass with hers (he shivered with delight) and said, “Robespier
re was the Sorcerer’s apprentice, summoning up forces he could not control, but my dear Minister, any country, at any time, is capable of producing its Robespierre. And the day may yet come even in your great nation when people turn on Pharaoh.”
French John and I stared at each other. My mind turned like a top. Daschkov’s country, recently ravaged by Napoleon, hates France. Even more, the Russian nobility must have hated Napoleon’s liberating politics.
Louis and Lisel, servants of that same Napoleon, believe that talent must rise and nations be reborn. If aristocrats won’t make way or become useful to this process, then they must be removed. Not that Lisel counsels mass extermination, and she was but a child during the Reign of Terror, but the men of ability who burst forth once that dead hand was removed and Napoleon seized power—well, they were extraordinary.
No arguments or fights have ever marred my levees. I told André and Louis, “You would seem to be polar opposites in many ways; yet both your nations have offered mine steadfast friendship, and each of you gentlemen has given my dear husband wise and valued counsel. Perhaps that is the gift my country can give to you. In Europe you would not have met and profited from each other’s experiences, but here you can and do and I am the richer for it, and I think you are, too.”
French John drank a glass of wine straight down to celebrate the avoidance of altercation.
André bowed to me, as did Louis, and then André said, “Madam, you grace me with your compliments just as you have continually charmed me with your kindness. Your country, also, was born of revolution. Would you consider great Washington a Robespierre?”
“Never.” French John forgot his place.
I smiled and replied, “Our Revolution was more in the manner of a violent disagreement between a father and his son or a mother and her daughter. Such is the nature of the young that they wish to make their own way. I think”—and I inclined my head toward the Seruriers—“that for our dear friends, the disagreement was between brother and brother, a very different thing, you see.
“You might say the first American Revolution was against the tyranny of King George. The second American Revolution must be against the tyranny of selfishness.”
This is something I had written in my diary, but I didn’t expect to say it publicly. Proud as I am of my country, I don’t think democracy is served by cultivating illusion, and selfishness will ever be a problem in a nation such as ours. We’re taught to make our own way and to bow to no man.
I don’t think our guests expected me to be so honest.
After the company had left and I repaired to my room and this inviting desk, I began to think again of the executioner. No American President has ever been assassinated. I truly pray that no one will ever be killed in office, for it is barbaric, a mark on the entire people. Yet I fear that my Jemmy could be killed. Washington, Adams, and Jefferson knew little of the personal hatred that Jemmy faces daily. If this war should go from bad to worse, it could happen that some lunatic with a pistol might attack my husband.
We have lunatics enough armed with pens. Lisel informed me of the contents of more letters from John Randolph. He and his Massachusetts counterpart, Josiah Quincy, fairly screech against the war and James. How foolish are those political men who think they can scratch out the President with the stroke of a pen, but if they express their irrational passions so eloquently, there may be another man, less articulate, who expresses himself with a gun.
I am not by nature a worrier, but sometimes even I can’t turn away from aching possibilities.
And Jemmy sees it all, hears it all, and keeps working. He doesn’t lose his temper. He doesn’t succumb to fear. He wastes no time on personal vendettas. His greatest love is this country, and I wonder that these men who hate him so don’t understand that. They will never blow him off course.
Thinking of the French Revolution reminded me of taking tea with Henry Clay last year. Congress, as usual, was in a dither over raising money for the war. Endless speeches were given, and so forth. Christopher Gore and Rufus King walked into the drawing room and Clay said, “Ah yes, the Reign of Error.”
King Richard III would have given his kingdom for a horse. I think I’d give mine for a man with a sense of humor.
Until the morrow, God willing.
D.P.M.
18 August 1814, Thursday
Good news arrived today in the form of a dispatch. The British attacked much-contested Fort Erie with a force of thirty-five hundred men but were repulsed by General Edmund Pendleton Gaines. The enemy suffered terrible casualties. Our losses were slight. We have only two thousand men at the fort. They suffer constant bombardment. Perhaps our luck is changing.
Mother Amy used to tell me that good luck and bad luck are like one’s right and left hands. One must use them both. She could produce a phrase for any situation, and she could fetch up a knot on the side of one’s head, too!
I remember once when a guest gave the blessing at our dinner table, a long-winded guest who quoted nearly everything Saint Paul ever wrote. The food turned cold. After dinner Mother Amy whispered to my mother that Saint Paul surely didn’t look on the bright side of life. “Why, how could a man say not to get married unlessen you can’t control yourself?” Mother Amy was scandalized.
My mother laughed and said, “Paul never was partial to women.”
That convinced Mother Amy that her African tales were superior to those in the Bible. Oh, what wonderful stories she could tell, stories she’d heard from her mother and grandmother, stories kept alive as her people crossed the oceans, chained in the holds of ships.
What if the situation were reversed and I was serving some powerful African princess? I wonder what stories I would be telling, what would have survived the journey. I’m sure Moses in the bulrushes would have survived. No one can forget that story. Or Christ rising from the dead. Joshua at the walls of Jericho. Ruth and Naomi; I think that’s my favorite.
General Winder finally received an adjunct. A few days ago, John Armstrong managed to release an officer to the beleaguered man.
Lisel met me at Anna’s today. My sweet sister can no longer move with any speed, or grace for that matter. We thought we’d call on her to see if anything needs to be done. She was in good spirits, but her four boys ran around the house like wild Indians—even little Dolley Payne joined them. Anna lost her patience and ordered them outside, which was what they wanted. They pretended it was dastardly punishment, and the minute they were out the door we could hear them whoop and holler. I do so love the children.
As Lisel has seen great societal disruption, Anna asked her, referring to our troubled state, “What would a reasonable man do?”
Lisel replied, “In a time of crisis there are no reasonable men.”
Truthfully, I think we women are more reasonable in times of crisis. I said so, too. Anna agreed that she thought men lose their heads. Lisel laughed and said that in her country they do so, literally. It shouldn’t have been funny but it was.
As we left Anna’s, I had an urge so strong my heart was racing. I wanted to go to the stable, saddle up, and just gallop down Pennsylvania Avenue. I told Lisel and she said once the dog days were over, we could take our horses to the Virginia side of the river and run to our heart’s delight. Who is there to see us?
Jemmy is exhausted. Early this morning he said he wished Washington would come back from the grave because men fell silent in his presence. He laughed—I rejoiced to see him laugh despite the reason—and said, “Mrs. Madison, my love, it’s a terrible death to be talked to death.”
Not only do they never shut up, this gaggle of Cabinet secretaries, generals, and officials, but their opinions are constantly in conflict. They all talk at once. The blessing about everyone’s talking at once is that you can’t hear what they say.
Until the morrow, God willing.
D.P.M.
The thick mist of morning hugged the well-tended fields along Maryland’s shore. It hung like a gray net over Chesape
ake Bay, obscuring the hulls and huge white sails of His Majesty’s ships.
As the sun rose, casting a pink glow over the bay and the surrounding countryside, the warships and transport ships turned into the Patuxent River. The sight of this beautiful and terrifying fleet sent watermen into the small towns and farmers into their churches. The bells pealed alarm.
One alert American counted twenty-one warships and many other transport ships. The number of enemy ships varied according to the person reporting and how long he or she had stood on the shore, how clear the sight line was.
By the time word reached Commodore Joshua Barney, the figure was as high as fifty-one warships. His small flotilla of gunboats with their naval twenty-four-pounders could not match the collected might of massed warships and troop transports. The overwhelming numbers canceled out harassment as a strategy.
Barney ordered his men to sail farther up the Patuxent and to remain vigilant. His guns, his babies, he ordered cleaned again. The gunpowder was checked. Every man’s personal weapons were checked, cleaned, and checked again.
Barney had no need to check his maps and navigation charts. The warships would have to anchor in deep water. The soldiers would disembark and march along the shore. The lighter ships, carrying more men and supplies, might sail farther upriver.
Admiral Cockburn’s forces, having the run of the Chesapeake, knew the area quite well. Cockburn would make few mistakes.
Barney questioned where Cockburn’s troops would link up with these new troops and how long that would take. He figured two or three days at most. The new troops were the long-dreaded veterans. They knew how to move, and their officers were experienced, too.
No question now that the fight was coming. It was only a matter of when and where.
19 August 1814, Friday
A midst the uncertainty of the time, I can write down one happy event: little Dickey is improved. Anna was right, it was merely a summer cold. His cough has abated. I’m more relieved than Anna; she has become accustomed to his many sicknesses. The child rarely experiences a week without some ailment, and he’s not inventing them.
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