James and Dolley Madison

by Bruce Chadwick

  Or a woman would invite seven or eight women to her home in the afternoon for drinks and then, later, a dinner. Informal afternoon and evening soirees, with just a dozen people, were also popular. Many Washingtonians would go to the local military barracks on weekend afternoons to listen to bands play. They would go with other couples or meet other couples at the concerts.

  Dolley re-created Washington's social world back home at Montpelier in the summers when they lived there, hosting long strings of parties, receptions, and balls, and inviting dozens of people to stay over at their home for as often as they wanted. British foreign minister Foster, as an example, stayed for an entire week one summer. She wrote at the end of the summer of 1807 that “we have had, my dear, a constant round of relations and neighbors to visit us, so that I have been unable to steal an hour for writing.”57

  People loved to go riding on horseback, or in carriages, because the new capital was such a beautiful place, a newly carved, bucolic Garden of Eden along the Potomac. “Conrad's boardinghouse…was on top of the hill, the precipitous sides of which were covered with grass, shrubs and trees in their wild uncultivated state. Between the foot of the hill and the broad Potomac extended a wide plain, through which the Tiber wound its way…. Its banks were shaded with tall and umbrageous forest trees of every variety, among which the superb Tulep-Poplar rose conspicuous; the magnolia, the azalea, the hawthorn, the wild rose and many other indigenous shrubs grew beneath their shade, while violets anemonies and a thousand other sweet wood flowers found shelter among their roots, from the winter's frost and greeted with the earliest bloom the return of spring. The wild grapevine climbing from tree to tree hung in unpruned luxuriance among the branches of the trees and formed a fragrant and verdant canopy over the greenward, impervious to the noon day sun,” wrote one resident.58

  The idea of a “dancing assembly,” or club, so popular in both New York and Philadelphia, caught on, too, and hundreds of Washingtonians joined the one that opened there in 1802. The dances were usually held in public rooms of the new hotels. They were run by Captain Thomas Tingey, an audacious naval officer. Dolley ran them with Tingey and tried to make them as lively as the ones she attended in Philadelphia.59

  Being the president's hostess was not an easy task. Jefferson paid little attention to the women of Washington when he took over the reins of government. He held dinner parties that were attended almost entirely by men. It wasn’ t until the second year of his first term, at the urging of Dolley, that he began to invite women to his dinners. Those dinner parties that Dolley supervised for men were a struggle for her, too. To fit his egalitarian image, President Jefferson insisted that all of his dinner parties be held at a round table so that no one in attendance would feel socially slighted by where he sat at a rectangular table. Jefferson invited only Federalists to one dinner party and only Republicans to another to avoid the same kind of arguments and rancor that existed in the halls of Congress. The dinner ordinarily started in late afternoon, but after the meal, guests lingered, at Jefferson's insistence, and talked diplomacy and politics well into the night, all under the watchful eye of Dolley and the White House staff.

  Dolley was the official hostess at all the dinner parties, whether all-male or mixed company. In addition to being at the dinner, she met guests before and after the meal to fraternize. “[We] sat in the drawing room with Mrs. Madison and her sister, whose social disposition soon made us well acquainted with each other,” said one woman guest at a White House dinner.60 She also served as hostess each New Year's Day, when Jefferson, with her husband at his side, flung open the White House doors for a day-long reception for anyone in town who wanted to socialize with the president. It was “a festal day in high style,” wrote Congressman Cutler. “Mrs. Madison wore a headdress like a white turban.”61

  Another problem Dolley had at the beginning of Jefferson's term, and in her own household, was that few of the congressmen brought their wives to live with them in Washington. In many years, there were only twenty or thirty congressional wives in town. In 1801, just seven congressmen of 130 representatives and 34 senators brought their wives to the capital. The women stayed for the fall and winter and went home with their spouses in the spring. Dolley had to make certain that all of them were invited to the White House, and the Madisons’ home, as frequently as possible and that she befriended them so that they would feel comfortable in this new and growing city far from their own homes, family, and friends. It was not easy.62

  Dolley also went out of her way to create a large social community in Washington that included not only elected representatives, government workers, and diplomats but also local residents, regardless of their line of work. She had maps drawn of residential areas and made up long lists of citizens whom she invited to different parties. She and her husband were seen throughout Washington. They rode around town in an easy-to-spot, elegant, horse-drawn, dark-green coach with silver monogram Ms on each door, glass windows, and venetian blinds, plus candles for nighttime traveling. They stopped at the homes of different friends, traveled to Alexandria and Georgetown, and made social connections everywhere. Dolley was convinced that merging the residents, government officials, and visiting diplomats was the best way, the only way, to create a vibrant social life in the nation's capital.63

  She enjoyed acting as the president's hostess but, always with an eye to friendship and diplomacy, moved aside when Jefferson's daughters were in town. Whenever his girls, “Patsy” (Martha) and “Polly” (Maria), visited the White House, Dolley had them join her as hostesses for the evening, stepping back whenever the president introduced them to friends, permitting the president's family to shine.

  Dolley liked the president's two daughters, whom she had met after her marriage to Madison, and renewed her friendship with them as soon as they visited Washington. The girls, used to the quiet life of Monticello and its environs, were overwhelmed by the high society of the capital, with its well-dressed diplomatic corps and army of lobbyists. They were nervous at meetings with people and at dinners and balls they were invited to, so Dolley decided to take them under her wing and went everywhere with them. She introduced them to everyone she knew, took them on tours of Washington and nearby Georgetown, and with her grace and charm enabled the girls to feel as comfortable as if they were home on the lawns at Monticello. Mrs. Madison went further. She told the girls that if they needed any shopping done in Washington, if they needed anything at all in the capital, she would be glad to do it for them. It was the least she could do for old friends, she told them, and she was never annoyed at their letters seeking clothing, jewelry, or other amenities. Merchants often talked of her happily shopping for the girls and then sending goods to them at Monticello via couriers or by carriage.

  The process was simple. The girls wrote Dolley Madison directly, or they wrote their father. In the fall of 1802, for example, Martha Jefferson wrote the president, “Dear Papa…will you be so good as to send orders to the milliner—Madame Peco, I believe her name is—through Mrs. Madison, who very obligingly offered to execute any little commission for me in Philadelphia, for two wigs of the color of the hair enclosed, and of the most fashionable shapes.” Dolley was always glad to do it, no matter where she was living. In 1805, when she was recovering from knee surgery in Philadelphia, Jefferson's daughter asked her to buy some things for her there. She did not send any money, so Dolley just paid for them herself.64

  Jefferson never thought twice about asking Dolley to go shopping for his family. When Virginia, the president's granddaughter, was going to be married, he asked Dolley to shop not only for her wedding gown and other garments but also for jewelry, trinkets, and clothing for the entire Jefferson family. She and a servant spent several days in shops in Georgetown and Washington completing the job.65

  All of this work never kept Dolley from her family life. She took care of her husband and took extra care of her rambunctious teenaged son, Payne, who, like his father, always tended to be sickly. Midway throu
gh Madison's two terms as secretary of state, in July 1804, the worried Dolley took her ill son, upon whom she had doted all of her life, back home from Washington, hoping that the fresh air and forests of their plantation at Montpelier would help him recover from his latest malady. “We go to Montpelier this week. Payne continues weak and sick; and my prospects rise and fall to sadness as the precious child recovers or declines,” the very worried mom wrote her sister.66

  Dolley usually arranged three or four dinner parties a week for the president with a dozen or so guests, in addition to receptions and balls. Jefferson was criticized for his numerous and elegant dinner parties, but he ignored his critics. He saw his many parties as instrumental in creating relationships with government officials, diplomats, and politicians that were outside the staid and somber hallways and chambers of the Capitol building: “I cultivate personal intercourse with the members of the legislature that we may know one another and have opportunities of little explanations of circumstance which not understood, might produce jealousies and suspicions injurious to the public interest,” he said, defending his dinners.67

  Dolley's events were quite popular, and the president, and the Republicans, urged her to host more. She did. By the end of that first year in Washington, she was hosting some event just about every night at the White House and sometimes as many as three events during a single day. She was also always at the White House for state dinners, official visits, and holidays. She kept busy and kept smiling through it all, no matter how arduous the work became. She wrote her sister with a smile, “The Fourth of July I spent at the President's, sitting quite still, and amusing myself with the mob.”68

  Everybody was charmed by her. Dolley dressed well and was intelligent, witty, well read, and politically attuned to whatever issues were being debated at dinners or parties. There was something more to her success, though. One man summed it up best when he said that “there is something very fascinating about her—yet I do not think it possible to know what her real opinions are. She is all things to all men.”

  The women loved Dolley even more than did the men. She held numerous soirees just for women at the White House and at her home. These were soon called “dove parties,” and the highlight of each was a lottery in which a woman holding the lucky number won a prize. Then, as the women departed, each received a personal gift from Dolley that they treasured.

  The capital's cleverest politicians listened carefully to everything she said and to what people reported that she said to them. They were impressed. Dolley Madison talked as easily about foreign-trade problems as she did about the latest fashions, yet did it so casually that years later, President Martin Van Buren said of her that “Mrs. Madison's talk at dinner is free on any matter.”69 John Quincy Adams was equally enchanted. He wrote of Dolley that “she was the most beautiful lady in America…the liveliest, endowed with the greatest charm, and possibly was the most sensible.”70 Mrs. Margaret Bayard Smith added that “Mrs. Madison was a foe to dullness in every form, even when invested with the dignity which high ceremonial could bestow.”71

  And Mrs. Madison got along with everybody. She found it just as easy to befriend people from Philadelphia as from Washington and from France as from America. She wrote her sister about her relationship to a French woman she had just met in 1805, “She is good natured and intelligent, generous, plain and curious—we ride, walk together and visit sans ceremony. I never visit in her chamber but I crack my sides laughing—I wish I could tell you on paper at what. She shows me everything she has and would fain give me everything.” Later in life, she explained her personality traits to her niece. “I might fill a volume in favor of always sustaining a sweet and gentle character.”72

  One of her strengths as a hostess for the president, and hosting her own parties at the Madison home, was her exuberant fashion styles and her height. At 5'8”, she was taller than almost all of her party revelers. She also loved to wear high, brightly colored feathers stuck into a turban or a speckled band that wrapped around her forehead. The feathers made her appear to be seven feet tall and her height, and the feathers, made it easy to find her. This was critical in large parties in which several hundred people mingled. Where was the hostess? She was right there, over to the right, in the orange feathers. It helped her maintain her status as the capital's social lioness.

  In addition to the parties at the White House, Dolley was invited to dinner parties all over town, along with friends, such as Margaret Bayard Smith. The editor's wife wrote that in just a single two-week period, she dined at the White House twice, three times at the home of the French minister, four times at the home of the Navy Yard commandant, and once at General John Mason's. She also wrote that she had tea at someone's home three or four times, went to several balls, and declined invitations to others. Yet Dolley's social card was even more active than Smith's.

  Dolley met people who arranged their invitations within the hour. Thomas Jefferson's son-in-law was one of them. He had been to numerous rather-loud parties and teas on a visit to Washington before visiting Mrs. Madison, alone, in her home. She relaxed him completely. He told his wife he had been charmed by the “sweet simplicity of Mrs. Madison's conversation.”73

  Dolley understood that her work as hostess made it possible for Jefferson to succeed as president and for her and her husband to win over many Washingtonians as new companions. They had many friends—government workers—when they arrived because Madison had been his friend Jefferson's chief political adviser in setting up the new government. Jefferson had appointed most of the people whom Madison had recommended, and Madison knew these men as officials and as friends. Once the Madisons arrived in Washington, they made more friends.74

  Dolley also learned the talent of gliding out of an awkward situation. One night the White House threw a party for the chiefs of Native American tribes. She was upstairs in a lounge when she saw, in a mirror, the image of one of the chiefs, staring at her. She simply moved to the side of the room and pulled on a bell chain to summon an aide. He arrived and learned that someone had given the chief, who was very apologetic, the wrong directions to find a room, and he wound up in Dolley's. She thought nothing of it and told friends it was a fine “frolick.” She always spoke fondly of the chiefs and referred to them as “the Kings and Princes.”75

  She socialized in unpleasant circumstances, too, such as the time after Aaron Burr, the vice president, shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. She wrote about the duel “with horror” in several letters and told friends her husband and the president had been badly shaken by Hamilton's violent death.76

  No one knew more than Dolley that James Madison was not an easily lovable man, on the surface. He was a “gloomy, stiff creature,” said one woman. Another woman who met him said he was “mute, cold and repulsive.” British minister Foster wrote that he found James Madison “a little man” and a “disputatious pleader” on issues.

  Dolley's job was to get them to see the man she loved or, through osmosis, to like him because they liked her. It worked. British minister Foster, for instance, did not care for Madison but was astonished by his wife. “[She is] a very handsome woman and tho’ an uncultivated 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.”77

  Dolley Madison also arrived on the public stage at the time of the demise of the Republican woman, the wife who ran her husband's farm or business, an important job, for years during the revolution and then was returned to the domestic sphere when the conflict ended. Without power or influence once again, the Republican woman faded from the footlights and turned to the new job of raising her children as worthwhile members of the “new” democratic country. By 1800, when Dolley arrived in Washington, that era had ended. Women had changed by then, and Dolley's activities at the center of the public stage did not cause anyone to denigrate her, as they might have twenty years earlier. Mrs. Madison was also not just a well
-dressed, bejeweled, wealthy woman, a natural source of envy to ordinary women. Dolley had become so opulent, so ostentatious, that she had soared well past all the boundaries and was beyond envy. She had become a dazzling, iconic figure, something special. And, very carefully, she did all of that in the guise of an ordinary woman, a loving wife, reflecting the glory of her husband and never seeking it for herself. Everyone liked that about her. It was a skill that she carried all of her life.

  Mrs. Madison's gossiping helped her. She had the same gasping astonishment at scandalous news as many of the other women in Washington and chatted about salacious news she heard with many. This had started when Madison was just a congressman in Philadelphia. An older diplomat had been caught in bed the wife of a servant. Dolley wrote friends that the husband had “caught the old goat, with his wife, and in not the most decent situation. So the fellow very politely took him by the nose and saluted him with kicks [at] the corner of the street.”78

  In another example, Dolley led the critics of French minister general Louis-Marie Turreau, a bald, red-faced man with a prominent moustache and a reputation for brutality in the French Revolution. He had a lovely wife whom all admired and felt sorry for because of the gossip attached to their marriage. Dolley chortled about Turreau and his wife. She said she heard “sad things” about the marriage and “that he whips his wife and abuses her dreadfully. I pity her sincerely; she is an amiable and sensible woman.”79

  But the talkative Mrs. Madison usually had nothing but good things to say about members of the diplomatic corps. She saw all of them as both men and women and as diplomats, and she joined her fellow Washington ladies in admiring them. She was one of the first to be smitten by the new diplomat from Prussia, Baron Freidrich Alexander Von Humboldt. Like everybody else, she thought he was just dazzling and was not afraid to say so. “We have lately had a great treat in the company of a charming Prussian Baron,” she wrote. “All the ladies say they are in love with him, notwithstanding his want of personal charms. He is the most polite, modest, well informed and interesting traveller we have ever met with,” she wrote her sister.80