Historic Shrines of America / Being the Story of One Hundred and Twenty Historic Buildings and the Pioneers Who Made Them Notable

by John T. Faris

"I am too tired and infirm now to look for extraordinary things in this world, for I think my sensations for many months have intimated to me not to expect a long or a healthy life, though it may be better for me after some time; but I hardly dare expect it, and therefore have little spirit or elasticity to set about anything that is difficult in acquiring and useless in possessing after one has exchanged time for eternity."

He was right in thinking that he was not to have a healthy life, but he was wrong in thinking it was to be neither long nor eventful. For more than sixty years after he wrote the letter from which quotation has been made, he was energetic and devoted in the service of his country. In May, 1776, he entered the Virginia Convention, thus beginning the career that led him to eight years in the White House. And after he retired from the Presidency much of his time and thought was given to the affairs of the nation. During all these years the thought of his Virginia home gave him new strength in the midst of his tasks.

That home meant more to him than ever when, in September, 1794, he entered the doors of Montpelier with his bride, Dorothy Todd, the young Philadelphia widow whom he had married at Harewood, Virginia.

The estate was still the property of Mr. Madison's father, and both his father and mother continued to live there. Before long the house was enlarged. The rooms so long occupied by the old people were made a part of the new mansion.

The two families lived together in perfect harmony. The father lived to see his son President of the United States, and the mother was ninety-eight when she died. William O. Stoddard, in his "Life of James Madison," says that "she kept up the old-fashioned ways of housekeeping; waited upon by her servants who grew old and faded away with her. She divided her time between her Bible and her knitting, all undisturbed by the modern hours, the changed customs, or the elegant hospitality of the mansion house itself. She was a central point in the life of her distinguished son, and the object of his most devoted care to the end of her days."

For Mr. and Mrs. Madison, real life at Montpelier began in 1817, after the close of the stirring period in the White House. They did not have much opportunity to be alone, for guests delighted to come to them, and they liked to have others with them, yet they managed to secure a wonderful amount of joy out of the years spent "within a squirrel's jump of heaven," to use Dolly Madison's expressive phrase.

Among the guests were intimate friends like Jefferson, who was almost a member of the family. Lafayette, too, found his way to the estate, while Harriet Martineau told in her "Recollections" of her pleasant sojourn there. Frequently strangers who were on the way to the Virginia Hot Springs took the five-mile detour merely to reach Montpelier, and they were always made welcome.

The dining-room was large, but there were sometimes so many guests that the table had to be set out of doors. Mr. Madison wrote in 1820 of one such occasion: "Yesterday we had ninety persons to dine with us at our table, fixed on the lawn, under a large arbor.... Half a dozen only staid all night."

After a visit to her parents that was broken into by the presence of guests, a daughter of the house complained to her husband that she had not been able to pass one sociable moment with her father. His reply was sympathetic: "Nobody can ever have felt so severely as myself the prostration of family society from the circumstances you mention.... But there is no remedy. The present manners and ways of our country are laws we cannot repeal. They are altering by degrees, and you will live to see the hospitality of the country reduced to the visiting hours of the day, and the family left to tranquillity in the evening."

When the steward saw that Madison would not curb these guests, he began to cut down on the fodder for the horses, but when the hospitable host learned of this he gave orders that there should be no further attempts of this sort. He realized that he was living beyond his income, but he saw no help for it. He longed for more time in his library or for riding or walking about the estate.