First Ladies

by Caroli, Betty

  At first, Rachel Jackson tried to keep to herself in the capital and, except for church twice a week, rarely left her rooms at Gadsby’s Hotel. But on January 8, 1825, a party honoring her husband required her attendance. The hostess did little to make Rachel feel comfortable and the party became an ordeal for her. The other guests singled her out as “stout, vulgar, illiterate” and according to one who was present, they made “many repetitions of her ungrammatical speeches … the favorite form of spite.”18 Andrew Jackson later confessed that he had no idea his enemies would stoop so low as to treat “a woman in her declining years … [with such] wickedness.”19

  By the time of the 1828 presidential campaign, Rachel’s fitness to occupy a conspicuous place had become a political issue. A North Carolina paper, admittedly hostile to Andrew Jackson, advised voters to consider carefully the wisdom of putting Rachel “at the head of the female society of the United States.”20 When rumors about her character multiplied, the Jackson camp sent out investigators to line up supporting evidence for its version of the divorce. Rachel understood that the attacks on her were politically motivated, but that hardly eased her discomfort. “The enemys of the Genls have dipt their arrows in wormwood and gall and sped them at me,” she wrote, adding in her curious spelling, “thay had no rite to do [it].”21

  Rachel Jackson died of a heart attack in December 1828, before her husband’s inauguration in March. At sixty-one, she was older than any previous president’s wife. Her decision just before her death to ask her niece, Emily Donelson, to substitute for her might have been based on her own failing health.

  But that explanation fails to suffice when it becomes clear that Emily Donelson is only the beginning of a long list of youthful chatelaines. After Emily’s untimely death at twenty-eight, another Jackson niece came from Tennessee to take her place; and in the subsequent administration, Angelica Van Buren, wife of Martin’s son, played a similar role. She was followed by Jane Harrison (daughter-in-law of William), Priscilla Tyler (daughter-in-law of John), Bettie Bliss (daughter of Zachary Taylor), Mary Abigail Fillmore (daughter of Millard), Harriet Lane (niece of James Buchanan), and Martha Patterson (daughter of Andrew Johnson). They presented a stark contrast to the earlier White House chatelaines. All were sweet, young models of girlish innocence, and they fit well the mood of a nation that expected little more of prominent women than cheerful acquiescence.

  Respect for age and experience had begun to fall away in America between 1790 and 1820. According to the historian David Hackett Fischer, men felt the effects of the emphasis on youth more than women did. In his book, Growing Old in America, Fischer dated the change before the advent of both industrialization and urbanization. Towns changed seating arrangements in the late eighteenth century so that the oldest residents no longer automatically received the choice seats at meetings but had to compete with everybody else in bidding for places. Some state constitutions added mandatory retirement ages so that officeholders, especially judges, had to step down at a prescribed age rather than serve for life as had been the practice. John Adams, for one, thought the age limitations despicable and fumed to Thomas Jefferson that he could “never forgive New York, Connecticut, or Maine for turning out venerable men.”22

  The new respect for youth enticed people to shave a few years off their real ages. “Rounding off” became common so that forty-five often translated into “early forties” and moving from the one decade to the next involved special reluctance. The temptation to remain thirty-nine rather than celebrate a fortieth birthday proved particularly irresistible.23

  Concurrent developments in fashion reinforced the advantages of youth. The white wigs and powdered hair, favored by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, disappeared. Knee breeches, which had flattered the older man by exposing his legs, often the last part of the anatomy to go, gave way to leg-concealing trousers. Men’s jackets, which formerly featured a rather egg-shaped form with small shoulders and rounded middle, took on an entirely new outline which was considerably more difficult for the elderly man to wear: small-waisted with pronounced shoulders and a very straight, broad back.24 The United States did not originate the mode—France already led in clothing design—but Americans enthusiastically adopted the new styles.

  Women’s fashion after 1800 also changed to feature first the straight-skirted, high-waisted line of the Empire style and then, the hoopskirt. Although it may be accurate, as David Hackett Fischer has argued, that women’s clothes all through the nineteenth century reflected the subjection of the entire sex to men, it is also true that changes after 1800 gave new importance to a youthful figure. The large posterior and sagging bodice, styles of the late eighteenth century, accommodated more comfortably a matronly figure than did the high-waisted, slim-hipped styles of the early 1800s. Women’s clothes in the early nineteenth century resembled children’s frocks: thin muslin that clung to the body and shorter skirts that revealed the white stockings and flat slippers so often associated with little children.25 The ribbons and curls of the 1820s and the hoopskirt and the simpler hairstyles of the 1830s all worked to the advantage of the young woman.

  The English language also reflected a decreased respect for the elderly in the early nineteenth century. Words once flatteringly applied to older persons became pejorative or at least less complimentary. “Gaffer,” formerly a contracted, but affectionate term for “Grandfather,” changed to mean an old man deserving of contempt, and “fogy” went through a similar metamorphosis.

  American writers joined in the praise of youth, and several of the transcendentalists commented bluntly on the uselessness of age. Henry David Thoreau wrote: “Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost. One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living. … Practically, the old have no very important advice to give to the young. … [The old] are only less young than they were.”26

  Among the many foreigners who commented on the new admiration for youth in America was the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, who connected the change to democracy.27 Others documented the existence of a youth cult but offered no explanation for its causes. Several European visitors thought the worship of youth had gotten completely out of hand, resulting in spoiled, although admittedly sometimes precocious, youngsters, but most outsiders wrote approvingly of Americans’ infatuation with youth.28

  Eventually the United States earned an international reputation for being “youth conscious,” but the phenomenon began inconspicuously.29 The president’s residence, with its long string of youthful mistresses between 1829 and 1869, offers just one more example of the result.

  Andrew Jackson’s niece, Emily Donelson, was, in many ways, just a younger version of her Aunt Rachel. When she married at seventeen, Emily had traveled little and boasted no superior education. But when she arrived in Washington three years later, her age evidently excused her limitations.30 Fanny Kemble, the British actress, described Emily approvingly as “a very pretty person … [with] simple and pleasant manners,” and John R. Montgomery, a lawyer from Pennsylvania, wrote his daughter that he had found the young Emily Donelson “a very agreeable woman.”31 It is difficult to account for Emily’s popularity in the same city that had so castigated her aunt, except by pointing to her youth. The very same adjectives (“sweet,” “simple,” “pleasant”), that had been directed at Rachel in sarcasm, became compliments for her young niece.

  Andrew Jackson relinquished the White House in March 1837 to Martin Van Buren, the New York Democrat whose nomination for vice president Andrew had carefully engineered in 1832. In one term (1833–1837), Van Buren carefully groomed himself for the top office. A widower for many years, he maintained a mostly male preserve until his son’s marriage in 1838. Then he quickly acted to install his son’s bride as his hostess. Angelica Singleton Van Buren solicited the advice of her distant relative, Dolley Madison, whose word still carried a certain weight with the capital’s so
cial arbiters, and soon the president’s parties livened up. After the 1839 New Year’s reception, the Boston Post raved: “[Angelica Van Buren is a] lady of rare accomplishments, very modest yet perfectly easy and graceful in her manners and free and vivacious in her conversation … universally admired.”32 She left behind a revealing portrait of herself. Painted by Henry Inman, it shows a smiling woman in plumed headdress, her head tilted to one side, a model of the youth and obeisance in style for women of her time.33

  Other men (to be discussed later in the chapter) would win the presidency before another came to office without a wife. Then, in 1856, James Buchanan, the only bachelor president (1857–1861), continued the tradition of installing young hostesses at the President’s House by calling on his twenty-seven-year-old niece, Harriet Lane. At his inauguration, the press hailed her as the “Democratic Queen,” and in many ways she performed like a member of royalty. A United States cutter was named for her, necklines went down in response to her fashion lead, and she became the first White House occupant to be credited with having had a song dedicated to her: “Listen to the Mockingbird.”34

  As a result of her popularity, Harriet was offered many gifts, which, although the president cautioned her not to accept the costly ones, she could not resist. One frequently repeated story had it that a wealthy young admirer of Harriet’s had picked up some pebbles, fashioned them into a bracelet for her, and then increased the value of his gift by adding a few diamonds. Harriet very much wanted to keep the bracelet but she realized that her uncle would object if he knew the true worth. She waited until she found him in a particularly good mood and then asked if she could keep some “pebbles” she had been given. Buchanan replied offhandedly that she could. Later, when she told the story, she would remind her listeners, “Diamonds are pebbles, you know.”35

  Such stories of Harriet’s girlish innocence and her insistence on having her own way caused the president some embarrassment, but the press and the public tended to indulge the ingénue at the “head of female society.” Although campaigning for male relatives had not yet become acceptable for a “lady” in the 1850s, Harriet Lane met with an important Pennsylvania Democrat to promote her uncle’s candidacy. Her youth, and perhaps her unmarried state, evidently rendered the meeting politically acceptable, and the Pennsylvanian pronounced himself much taken with her.36 One contemporary judged Harriet the perfect combination of “deference and grace.”37

  Behind the innocent charm, Harriet Lane showed evidence of considerable exposure to Washington politics and to foreign courts. Buchanan, then a United States senator from Pennsylvania, had assumed her guardianship when she was ten years old and her mother (his sister) had died. He had sent his niece to the best Washington school, and later, when he served in James Polk’s cabinet, he arranged for her to visit the White House. When he was appointed envoy to Great Britain in 1853, he took Harriet with him to London. Among her English admirers were Queen Victoria, who had accorded her the rank of minister’s wife, and an elderly, titled gentleman who proposed marriage. Harriet rejected that offer and returned to the United States with her uncle, who, after many years in public office, finally won the presidency in 1856. By then, Harriet was prepared to leave her own mark on Washington. One southern congressman’s wife saw in Harriet’s White House management the “highest degree of elegance.”38 It was sometimes said that the capital had never been gayer than in the years of Harriet Lane, even if the possibility of civil war was on many people’s minds.39

  Harriet Lane was still a schoolgirl in Washington when Dolley Madison rounded out her long career as reigning social figure, but the lesson of the older woman was not lost on the younger. Harriet spared no effort in trying to complement her uncle’s political success. “[Harriet was] always courteous, always in place, silent whenever it was possible to be silent, watchful and careful,” one contemporary wrote of her in what might be considered a prescription for womanly success in the middle of the nineteenth century, and added: “She made no enemies, was betrayed into no entangling alliances and was involved in no contretemps of any kind.”40

  Further evidence for a more serious side to the publicly frivolous Harriet showed up in her reaction to requests she received. People who felt they lacked representation elsewhere sometimes appealed to her for help, and her papers indicate that she tried to comply. Indians who turned to her for assistance showed their gratitude by naming many of their daughters “Harriet.”41 She intervened to get jobs for friends and she interspersed artists with politicians at White House dinners to give more importance to cultural subjects.42 Her genuine interest in art is attested to by the fact that she later provided that her own art collection, begun during the years she lived with her uncle, go to the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Eventually, after funds became available in 1920 and other donations of considerably more worth were added to it, it became the basis of the National Collection of Fine Arts at the Smithsonian.43

  Harriet Lane’s prominence and popularity led to rumors that she influenced the president, and according to one careful student of the correspondence between her and her uncle, people believed that he listened to her.44 Sarah Agnes Pryor, wife of a Washington newspaperman, described Harriet as her uncle’s “confidante in all matters political and personal.”45 She possessed political astuteness, Pryor noted, a trait of considerable value during the last months of the Buchanan administration when John Brown raided Harpers Ferry and war between the states seemed more likely than ever before.

  In many ways, Harriet Lane is a transitional figure in the history of White House chatelaines. Although her age fits her into the string of youthful hostesses, her record indicates that she played a more substantial role. The historian Lloyd C. Taylor, Jr., singled her out as the “first of the modern First Ladies [because she] capture[d] the imagination of [her] contemporaries.”46 Indeed, her remarkable popularity, her experiment with campaigning, her response to individuals who sought access to the president through her, her mixing of artists and politicians at social functions, and her use of her position to promote American art all make her sound very much like a First Lady of the twentieth century.

  The fact that youthful hostesses assisted Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, and James Buchanan might not seem remarkable since none of these men had wives and each had to seek a substitute hostess somewhere. But the number of presidents’ wives who relied on young surrogates to fulfill what had come to be considered their official responsibilities raises other questions. What explains why so many presidents’ wives between 1829 and 1869 said they were too ill to take on the role of First Lady when such an explanation is quite rare before and after that period? Beginning with Anna Harrison in 1841 and ending with Eliza Johnson in 1869, there are only two exceptions to that curious pattern of invalidism.

  Jacksonian America did not initiate illness among presidents’ wives. Beginning with Martha Washington, whom George described as “scarce ever well,”47 First Ladies recorded long and serious illnesses at one time or another. Abigail Adams became so sick in the summer of 1798 that John feared she would not survive.48 Dolley Madison believed she was dying in the summer of 1805 and put herself in the care of one of Philadelphia’s most prominent physicians, a man with the unlikely name of Dr. Physick.49 Elizabeth Monroe’s poor health had been the talk of Washington for years before her husband’s retirement in 1825, when he cited the strain of politics on her. Louisa Adams’s diary and that of her husband carry ample evidence that she frequently complained she was not well.

  But none of these women, with the exception of Elizabeth Monroe, used their illnesses to excuse them from virtually all official tasks. Their successors did. From the distance of more than a century and without access to their medical records, it would be folly to attempt to assess the women’s health. But the evidence extant does suggest that claims of illness easily relieved women from the responsibility of attempting tasks in which they had shown little interest.

  Individuals can, of course, recover from si
ckness and live many more years, but Anna Harrison’s longevity is intriguing. She cited illness as her reason for not going to Washington in 1841 for the inauguration of her husband, William Henry Harrison, but she survived another twenty-four years, outliving all but two of her nine children. Sixty-five years old at the time of William’s nomination, she began the campaign enthusiastically enough, greeting the people who came to her North Bend, Ohio home to assess the candidate. Then in June of that year, one of her sons died, and she became despondent and refused to appear in public. Cincinnati newspapers began to describe her as an “invalid.”50

  When word came of William’s victory, Anna had little inclination to accompany him to Washington. His friends had done him no favor by elevating him to high office, she pointed out, when he had been happy and contented in retirement. As for herself, she preferred to wait for milder weather to make the trip and sent her widowed daughter-in-law, Jane Harrison, to substitute for her in the capital. The younger woman had little opportunity beyond the inaugural festivities to establish her reputation because William Henry Harrison died one month after taking office, but contemporaries spoke approvingly, of the “attractive, young” daughter-in-law.51

  Because no president had ever died in office, many people seemed to think none ever would. Congress debated what arrangements should be made for the widow, and the vice president, John Tyler, prepared to move to Washington. The entire Tyler household was thrown into confusion, but not more confusion than reigned among the Whigs who had put him on the ticket. They had chosen him for his balancing effect, not his potential as president. John Tyler was known to disagree with William Henry Harrison on just about every important issue—the question of whether or not the country should have a national bank, the ideal tariff, and how public lands should be distributed. Once John Tyler took office, the Whigs quickly abandoned him and he was dubbed the “president without a party.”52