The First Ladies (2 page)

FIRST LADY: 1797–1801

John’s Wife

Even if John Adams’s immortality had been only as a signer of the Declaration of Independence, his wife would still be considered the preeminent colonial woman. For all the intellectual brilliance and wisdom of Abigail Smith Adams, her contribution strictly as First Lady is adequate but certainly not outstanding. Her huge contribution to history is purely as John’s wife. And what a wife she was!

John Adams met the fourteen-year-old minister’s daughter in her own house. At twenty-three, the young lawyer occasionally stayed with the Smith family when he was in
Weymouth, Massachusetts, attending to legal business. The young girl’s wit, outspoken manner, and pithy questions attracted him from the start, and they began courting in earnest when she was seventeen. They married a month before her twentieth birthday.

The Adams marriage was a remarkable partnership for their times. Abigail once said that their hearts were “cast in the same mold.” She possessed all the usual domestic skills of a New England housewife, but while Abigail was homeschooled, she was well educated, particularly in unladylike subjects such as
philosophy, theology, economics, and politics. John encouraged her serious interests. Had he not, had he relegated her to the customary domesticity of eighteenth-century womanly behavior, Abigail Adams would likely have provided nothing more than a series of almanac facts for historians. As it was, however, she buoyed him when he was in one of his despairs, soothed his recurrent spells of crankiness, and never failed to encourage his best efforts. He in turn was that rare man who appreciated a good mind wherever he found it, and if it was in the body of a woman—even his wife—so be it. He sincerely valued her prescient and insightful opinions and willingly gave her the respect and esteem she well deserved. Abigail had always enjoyed the abstract concept of politics and understood it as well as any male contemporary.

By the time she was thirty, Abigail was raising four small children in a tiny saltbox house, maintaining their modest farm, and devoting herself to running the household with limited funds and only seasonal or day help. They were never a wealthy family, and Abigail did her own housework, cooking, and sewing. She doctored the children when they were sick. She tutored all four in their basics until they were ready for neighborhood schooling. She maintained regular social contact within her community. And she did it alone. Her husband was four hundred miles away in Philadelphia, trying to form a new nation.

John delighted in their lively correspondence wherein they discussed all the events of the day, the potentials for unknown tomorrows, plus insights into the complex personalities that
made up the Continental Congress. Their letters, a treasure trove for history, are peppered with lively comments, sprightly exchanges, genuine respect and counsel, and overwhelming encouragement and affection for each other.

After nearly a decade of long separations, John finally sent for her. By the mid-1780s he had been dispatched to Europe to chart treaties for America’s peace and trade. “Come to Paris,” he said. Nearly forty, Abigail had never ventured farther than Boston. Everything she knew about France, including the language, was from books. She was totally unprepared for her great awakening. Like most Puritan-reared New Englanders, she came to Europe with a lifetime of prejudices: European society was decadent, scandalous, expensive, sacrilegious, and shocking to her preconceived moral values. What she learned, however, was that other values might have merit and that she could be open to change.

The ballet, for instance, which she found immoral at first, with women wearing flesh-colored tights and short skirts, became beautiful and graceful once she became exposed to it. The social liberties granted to women astonished and then delighted her. Her ingrained republican (small “r”) standards and principles would also moderate in Europe, as she began to appreciate some of the benefits of societal order, hierarchy, and etiquette. She learned that the elegant trappings of the Old World had a definite place, even in the coarse and rugged New World across the Atlantic.

When John and Abigail returned to their beloved New England, duty again called, this time to New York and then
Philadelphia. John Adams had been elected vice president of the new United States. Abigail was in residence only sporadically, however. Her health, never robust, was becoming iffier. Their new house in Braintree, purchased by proxy when they were still abroad, needed remodeling and supervision. Two of their children were not prospering, and it would eventually fall to Abigail to raise several grandchildren. Most of all, John hated his job, calling it “the most insignificant office ever devised by the hand of man.” He would escape back to Massachusetts at every opportunity. Nevertheless, when Abigail
was
available to fulfill her role as Second Lady, she performed graciously and in a spirit of friendship with Lady Washington. The two women sincerely liked each other.

Mrs. Adams was well known in political circles by the time she reached New York, at least by reputation. Her husband had spoken of her often over the years, and Abigail had engaged in her own personal correspondence with many notables of the day. (While conversation between the sexes was severely curtailed in the eighteenth century, written communication was permitted.) All were aware of her fine mind, as well as her noticeable lack of restraint in expressing herself. John, no shrinking violet himself, cautioned her that “we must both hold our tongues.” For her part, she grumbled about imposing “a silence upon myself, when I long to talk.”

Abigail did not attend her husband’s inauguration as president. She was nursing Old Mrs. Adams Senior, who would die within weeks. Abigail at fifty-four was also suffering from one of her frequent agues. Her nonprospering children were
now actively failing (with the exception of John Quincy), and she was pulled in many directions at once. But John needed her too, and she never failed him. He needed her counsel; he needed to talk things out with her. She was the perfect sounding board; he called her “his best and wisest advisor.” She was also needed to furnish and manage the president’s house in Philadelphia—an expense that rankled her. But she came often and stayed as long as possible, bringing wagon-loads of supplies, which, the thrifty woman insisted, were much cheaper in Braintree than in Philadelphia. The opulent $25,000 salary (twenty times more in today’s money) barely covered their expenses for the appropriate wining and dining of officialdom. Her letters and diaries are a litany of complaints about how expensive everything was.

The older Abigail became, the more conservative she became. The ardent revolutionary was now the establishment, and she had the examples of European civility fresh in her mind. She ordered a coat of arms painted on her carriage, but John made her remove it, believing it was too excessive. She was not afraid to disagree with John either.

During a troubled and unpopular term, when foreign policy seesawed either toward France or Britain, President Adams determined to take and hold a neutral position, which alienated him from every side. (Avoiding war would subsequently be considered one of his finest gifts to the country.) Abigail did not agree. She loathed the rabble-rousing French and much preferred the stolid English. She was also in favor of the Alien and Sedition Act, which was designed to prohibit
and punish adverse comments about the administration. John did not like the act, but he was persuaded to hold his nose and sign it. (That canceled out his “neutral” gift to the country.)

In their old age, cantankerous John mellowed and became downright lovable while Abigail seems to have soured. But never, never did they falter in their mutual devotion and esteem.

FIRST LADY: 1809–17

The Magnificent

On the evening of March 4, 1809, there was a great ball in Washington City with over four hundred people in attendance. It was the grandest affair ever given in the country. James Madison had just taken the oath of office as president, and Mrs. Madison was hosting the very first inaugural ball, although she had no idea she would be starting an honored tradition. The French Minister sat on one side of the hostess, and the English Minister on the other. Normally they would not have even been in the same room. Their countries were at war. Only Dolley Madison could have inspired that maneuver.

Quaker-bred Dolley Payne Todd Madison had had years of experience as diplomatic hostess par excellence. Widowed at twenty-five, she helped run her mother’s boardinghouse in Philadelphia, then the nation’s capital. In residence were several congressmen, one senator, and the secretary of state. Dolley, who presided at the head of the dinner table, imposed two rules: no controversial subjects (bad for the digestion), and everyone, even the most reticent, must be included in conversation (good for politics). No one objected to the rules, and the Payne boardinghouse became a popular social center. Everyone, particularly the Virginia congressman known as Great Little Madison, wanted to meet its lovely hostess.

Their courtship was brief, and their marriage changed Dolley’s life. The strict Quaker elders expelled her for marrying out of the faith, but Dolley, who was known to remark that she did not believe she had the soul of a Quaker, did not seem to mind. Now she became the “new” Dolley and could participate in the worldly things she so loved: color, music, fun, laughter, jewelry, and dessert. Madison came from a well-to-do Virginia planter family and was delighted to indulge her. Their marriage would be a particularly happy one, starting with his gift of a generations-old necklace (the first she had ever owned) and money for a trousseau of gowns in anything other than Quaker gray.

Dolley had a true talent for friendship. She sincerely liked people and enjoyed their company, and they liked her in return. She never pried or interfered, once claiming that her happiest blessing was a lack of curiosity about other peoples’
business. She never gossiped. She never flirted. And despite her pleasing good looks and an engaging personality, she managed to be on excellent and even intimate terms with both men and women. Every guest invariably received the full measure of her attention. Even her in-laws adored her.

When Thomas Jefferson became president, he appointed James Madison as secretary of state. The tentative pretensions of a republican court under Washington and Adams dissolved into practically nothing under the widowed Jefferson’s eight years of the gentleman’s “small table.” It was the home of the secretary of state that became the hub of social Washington. Dolley opened their house to guests nearly every night, and once Madison became president, that hub would henceforth and forevermore be in the White House.

As First Lady, forty-year-old Dolley was ready to initiate the Madison “large table.” It may not have been Madison’s personal choice, since he was a reticent man, but he adored his charming wife and was happy to oblige. He was also immensely proud and cognizant of her social skills, attributes he noticeably lacked. The White House itself was still a rude dwelling. Jefferson’s domestic proclivities had been centered solely on his beloved Monticello, and the Madisons inherited a drab and drafty mansion, not far removed from Abigail Adams’s days as a laundress. Having determined that the seat of government should be properly cushioned, Dolley invited several congressmen for tea and a tour of the place. That they all were members of the appropriations committee attested to her shrewdness. The First Lady gently suggested where
improvements might be made, and lo and behold, funds were found for paint, draperies, carpeting, and furnishings more suitable for the home of the president.

Once decorated, she opened the White House to the public. Her Wednesday evenings were religiously attended by brows high and low. It was her particular genius to mix all levels: congressmen, diplomats, military officers, clergy, merchants, the rank and file, and any decently attired citizen who was passing through town and had left his card. Women were always included. Her style stood the president in good stead, since she had a gift for remembering names and faces. A genial and delightful conversationalist in small gatherings,
the shy Madison was content to let his outgoing wife take center stage.

Dolley greeted the guests herself. No platforms and no seats. She made sure everyone was introduced to someone else, and since she knew just about everyone, the introductions were always between people with commonalities. She was alert to wallflowers and carried a book with her as a conversation starter if things lagged. If she passed along important information, it was people information: nothing salacious, nasty, discriminatory, gossipy, or even politically controversial. And she never betrayed a confidence. That was the essence of Dolley’s philosophy. Politics by people. She was also exceptionally aware of politics by nation. Dolley and several of her lady friends were regular observers in the congressional gallery. But she never interfered.

In an age before women’s magazines, Dolley Madison was the style setter of a generation. Since she favored turban hats with ostrich feathers and yellow was her color of choice, every milliner in the country created yellow turbans. She also used rouge and took snuff, habits that ordinarily would shock polite society. But if Dolley did it, it couldn’t be that terrible.

Most famous for rescuing the Gilbert Stuart full-length portrait of George Washington when the British burned the White House during the War of 1812, Dolley did something even more important only a short time later. The executive mansion had been badly burned, water damaged, and uninhabitable, but the Madisons insisted that the government would continue
in Washington.
They borrowed a nearby house
suitable for their needs. The very first day they moved in, Dolley was back in business, hosting one of her receptions. The message was unmistakable: if Mrs. Madison was giving a party, then all must be well with the country. But James and Dolley Madison would never again live in the White House.

In their retirement, the Madisons’ Virginia estate became a popular stopping-off place for friends, family, well-wishers, public officials of all kinds, foreign emissaries, and even strangers. With their customary hospitality, all were made welcome. But the cost of running a large plantation and the infirmities of old age took its toll. Shortly after Madison’s death at eighty-five, Dolley discovered she could no longer support the place. She was nearly seventy herself and lonely. She moved back to Washington, and it is said that the day she moved into a small rented house near the executive mansion, there were more than a hundred calling cards waiting for her. Seriously impoverished, she could only afford to open her house once a month, and the refreshments were limited. But everybody came. Dolley was back where she belonged.