my most visited post; Dolly Madison is ushered to the White House door

“Stuart is all the rage…”

Dolly, widowed at age 25 with two children upon the sudden death of her first husband from the yellow fever epidemic which swept through the new capital of the United States, met 38 yr old James Madison in Philadelphia in 1794 after having moved there to be with her Quaker family. They were married soon afterwards.

Her parents were strict members of the “Society of Friends”. The young Dolly: “… was wondrously fair. Her mother, who would not permit her to wear jewels, taught her to take care of her complexion. She was sent to school with long gloves on her hands and arms, a close sunbonnet and a white linen mask on her face; in fact it is plain to see that in many ways great attention was bestowed upon the outward as well as the inward graces of the young Friend.” (Life and Letters of Dolly Madison by A. C. Clark, W F Roberts Co, Washington DC 1914; p 13, a quote by Harriet T. Upton.) Just before meeting with Madison; she wrote her friend Mrs. Lee, saying, “Dear friend, thou must come to me. Aaron Burr says that the ‘great little Madison’ has asked to be brought to see me this evening.” She was dressed in a mulberry-colored satin, with a silk tulle kerchief over her neck, and on her head an exquisitely dainty little cap, from which an occasional uncropped curl would escape. In this first interview, at her own house, she captured the heart of the recluse book-worm, Madison… always thought to be an irreclaimable old bachelor.” (Memoirs and Letters of Dolly Madison by Dolley Madison, Lucia Beverly Cutts, Houghton, Mifflin &Co. Boston and NY, 1887, p 15)

read more!! click here

and click here, George Washington stays put and why Dolly is ushered to the door!

and click here for the Stuart portrait of Dolly Madison's sister's portrait (and Gibby's nose)!

and here for Stuart portrait of James Madison

From the Lawrence Park Volume:

Mrs James Madison 1768-1849

Dorothy Todd Payne was a daughter of John and Mary (Coles) Payne of North Carolina. She married, first, in 1786, John Todd (died 1789) of Philadelphia, and second, in 1794, James Madison (q.v.).

Philadelphia, early in 1804. Canvas, 30 x 25 in. Mrs. Madison, writing to her sister from Montpelier, June 3, 1804, says: "Stuart has taken an admirable likeness of Mr. Madison; both his and mine are finished." This half-length portrait shows Mrs. Madison seated, half-way to the left, in a crimson upholstered chair, with her hands folded in her lap, and her grayish-blue eyes directed to the spectator. Her dark brown hair is dressed in curls on her forehead and in front of her ears. She wears a low-necked, short-sleeved white dress, trimmed with an edging of lace and two rows of narrow gold ribbon around the neck and sleeves. A yellow gauze scarf is draped over her right arm and is brought around onto the left arm of the chair. Around her neck a gold chain is wound four times, and a small gold and topaz brooch is fastened to the front of her dress. A crimson curtain is draped in the background and to the left is a column on a parapet with a cloud-flecked sky in the distance. ...This portrait of Mrs. Madison was bought at public auction just after her death by her adopted daughter, Anna Payne, afterwards the wife of Doctor Causten. Mrs. Causten bequeathed it to her daughter Mary Carvallo Causten, wife of John Kunkel of Washington, DC. On November 6, 1899, the portrait was acquired by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.

James Madison finishes the Constitution in September 1787, an early Republican and a father of American Politics

James Madison by Gibert Stuart:

the portrait was painted for the Honorable James Bowdoin and presented by him to Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine

James Madison is known as the Father of the Constitution, reflecting his role in planning, writing and ratifying the nation's fundamental law. This should be his month: The Constitutional Convention, where he starred, finished the document in September 1787. And Congress sent the amendments that became the Bill of Rights—which Madison also played a major role in shaping—to the states in September 1789.
But Madison has another claim on our attention. He is the father of American politics as we know it.
Madison helped establish America's first political party, the Republicans. In 1791, as a representative from Virginia, he joined Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson on a trip through upstate NY and New England, supposedly collecting biological specimens for the American Philosophical Society but actually collecting political allies for themselves. The politician they wished to combat, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, already wielded great power through his office, and hence he was somewhat slower to organize a party; when he did, it took the name Federalists.
Madison and Jefferson built better than Hamilton: the Federalists disappeared as a national party in 1816, while the old Republicans march on today as the Democrats. (The modern GOP is an unrelated organization established in 1854.)
Madison helped found the first party newspaper, the National Gazette. He recruited the paper’s first editor, Philip Freneau, a versifier and college chum. Jefferson gave Freneau a nominal job as a translator in the State Dept and in his free time Freneau smacked Hamilton in prose. Madison’s interest in newspapers flowed from his interest in the power of public opinion. “Whatever facilitates a general intercourse of sentiments,” he wrote in a December 1791 National Gazette essay, “...a circulation of newspapers throughout the entire body of the people...is favorable to liberty.” Then “every good citizen will be...a sentinel over the rights of the people.”

Drowning in both media and poll data today, we understand the importance of regularly measuring public opinion. But in the early republic consulting public opinion was a new concept.
The Federalists had little use for it. They thought the people should rule at the polls, then let the victors do their best until the next election. Madison foresaw, and applauded, our world of 24/7 news, comment and pulse-taking before it existed.
Madison belonged to an early form of the political machine, the dynasty. America had revolted against George III and the House of Hanover, but the dynastic temptation lingered on. Federalist John Adams, our second president, saw his eldest son, John Quincy Adams, become the sixth president. But the Adamses were unpopular one-termers. Between them stretched the Virginia Dynasty—two terms of Jefferson, two terms of Madison, two terms of James Monroe—24 years of government by friends and neighbors.The Adams—and the Kennedys, Bushes and Clintons in our day—had dynasties of blood and marriage. Jefferson, Madison and Monroe made a dynasty of ideological brotherhood.

Not that Madison ignored the political importance of marriage. After an unhappy courtship in his early 30s, he left romance alone until he was 43, when he married a pretty widow, Dolley Payne Todd (click here for more). When Madison took office as Secretary of State (1801) and as president in 1809, Dolley Madison became more than a hostess. She was a political wife, America’s first: half a campaign tag-team, and often the better half. Gregarious and outgoing, she completed her husband’s personality, which was shy and stiff except with intimates.
Martha Washington, the first First Lady, was beloved but domestic; Abigail Adams, the second, was political but abrasive. Thomas Jefferson, the third president, was a widower. As one US senator put it, only Madison had “a wife to aid in his pretensions.”
Madison succeeded as a politial innovator because he was good at politics. He did what came naturally to him: agenda-setting, committee work, parliamentary maneuvering. He grew up in a family as large as an oyster bed—six siblings who survived childhood, numerous nieces, nephews and cousins—good training for a future legislator.
He worked at what didn’t come naturally; public speaking and campaigning. His voice was weak; time and again, note takers at debates he participated in left blanks in his remarks or simply gave up, becuase Mr. Madison “could not be distinctly heard.” Yet when circumstances required it, he took on the flamboyant Patrick Henry and once tangled with his friend Monroe in the open air of a snow storm so bitter he got frost bite on his nose. He won both debates.
Madison played well with others. He worked with George Washington, profiting from his charisma and judgment, and before they fell out with Hamilton, profiting from his exuberance. (Hamilton tapped Madison to contribute to the Federalists papers, which was initially Hamilton’s project; Madison wrote 29 of the 85 essays.) As President, he learned something about money and the world from his Treasury secretary, Albert Gallatin. He was a great man who was not afraid of assisting or deferring to other great men (another legacy of his tight family life.) He also worked with the less-than-great; hatchet-men, gossips, wire-pullers. They do the work of politics too. They are part of the game. James Madison helped build a republic. He was also an ambitious party activist who counted votes, stumped, spoke, scratched backs and (when necessary) stabbed them. He would not be afraid of the contrast, for his deepest thinking told him that the architects of liberty had to understand and sometimes use the ordinary political materials of ambition and self-advancement to ensure that this republic would endure.

an article by Richard Brookhiser

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More on Dolley Madison, saving the Gilbert Stuart portrait of Washington, her slave Jennings, and ....Daniel Webster!

Dolley Madison painted by Gilbert Stuart 1804, White House Collection

Dolley Madison by William Elwell 1848; National Portrait Gallery
Click here for a great telling of the story of Dolley Madison, asking the question, how/who really saved the Stuart portrait of Washington! from *18th-century American Women--a museum in a blog*

an historical mystery...

Below is MY COMMENT, but I recommend you read the entry first... ! and if anyone has more thoughts/chooses to do more research on this, please comment as well!

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Super.

Re: "Mrs. Madison was a remarkably fine woman. She was beloved by every body in Washington, white and colored. Whenever soldiers marched by, during the war, she always sent out and invited them in to take wine and refreshments, giving them liberally of the best in the house."

So did Mrs. Madison really save the Stuart portrait, or is Jennings correct? Perhaps there is truth to both sides, Dolley did not stand there while the portrait was being cut and taken down, but ordered it to be done (and she flees)...why would servants risk their safety in the face of the approaching British, if there was no order to save the portrait? She was a "remarkably fine woman" according to Jennings. Seems likely she would possess the wherewithal, composure and intelligence to recognize the value of the portrait of Washington, and knew that its safety would be jeopardized....Anyway, super entry, I would like to mention it in my blog, if you don't mind?

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her response:

Please do, Beth. And thank you! Barbara

Dolly Madison is ushered to the White House door

“Stuart is all the rage…”

Dolly, widowed at age 25 with two children upon the sudden death of her first husband from the yellow fever epidemic which swept through the new capital of the United States, met 38 yr old James Madison in Philadelphia in 1794 after having moved there to be with her Quaker family. They were married soon afterwards.

Her parents were strict members of the “Society of Friends”. The young Dolly: “… was wondrously fair. Her mother, who would not permit her to wear jewels, taught her to take care of her complexion. She was sent to school with long gloves on her hands and arms, a close sunbonnet and a white linen mask on her face; in fact it is plain to see that in many ways great attention was bestowed upon the outward as well as the inward graces of the young Friend.” (Life and Letters of Dolly Madison by A. C. Clark, W F Roberts Co, Washington DC 1914; p 13, a quote by Harriet T. Upton.) Just before meeting with Madison; she wrote her friend Mrs. Lee, saying, “Dear friend, thou must come to me. Aaron Burr says that the ‘great little Madison’ has asked to be brought to see me this evening.” She was dressed in a mulberry-colored satin, with a silk tulle kerchief over her neck, and on her head an exquisitely dainty little cap, from which an occasional uncropped curl would escape. In this first interview, at her own house, she captured the heart of the recluse book-worm, Madison… always thought to be an irreclaimable old bachelor.” (Memoirs and Letters of Dolly Madison by Dolley Madison, Lucia Beverly Cutts, Houghton, Mifflin &Co. Boston and NY, 1887, p 15)

Dolly Payne Todd Madison (1768-1849) , 1804 by Gilbert Stuart;

White House Collection

At the time of this portrait of his wife in 1804, James Madison was secretary of state under President Thomas Jefferson, and was elected our 4th President in 1809. Dolly held the FIRST Inaugural Ball, and Washington had never seen such a grand affair! The attendees came from all over the Nation, riding their carriages over muddy and bumpy roads. At this time, James was 54, and Dolly a lovely 41. As First Lady from 1809 to 1817, Dolly was a sparkling asset, using her natural charm, wit, and formidable social skills while hosting numerous lavish entertainments and special occasions at the Executive Mansion. Surely with her trademark costly Parisian gowns (NOTE the empire-waist style as popularized by Josephine), elaborate feathered turbans, wit, charm and intelligence, she rivalled Napoleon’s Josephine in the realm of queenly graciousness on the world stage!

Dolly gained fame in 1812 by saving Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington from being burned by the British in the War of 1812. “Our kind friend, Mr. Carroll, has come to hasten my departure, and in a very bad humor with me, because I insist on waiting until the large picture of General Washington is secured, and it requires to be unscrewed from the wall. This process was found too tedious for these perilous moments; I have ordered the frame to be broken, and the canvas taken out. It is done! and the precious portrait placed in the hands of two gentlemen of New York, for safe keeping.”

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Why is Dolly being ushered out of the White House? Answer will be in the following post! (or click here)

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PS on an artistic note, click on the portrait of Dolly for a closer look at the piece of material draped over her right arm & right-hand lower corner. There are characteristic swift swishes of Stuart's brush (creating a superb depiction of her shawl) and something to look for ...in addition to the skill of drawing the 'likeness of the head'... as "his signature." Wondrous. One can also clearly note the stark similarities in arrangement to the portrait of Samuel Meeker, both portraits done in approx the same time period.

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