The same quiet splendor of spirit and bearing reigned through Mrs. Monroe in the unfinished “White House.” Mrs. Madison maintained the courtly forms copied from foreign courts—but the richness of her temperament and the warmth of her heart pervaded all the atmosphere around her with a genial glow. Mrs. Monroe mingled very little in the society of Washington, and secluded herself from the public gaze, except when the duties of her position compelled her to appear. Her love was for silence, obscurity, peace, not for bustle, confusion, or glare. Yet, even in her courtly reign, “the dear people” were many and strong enough to arise and push on to their rights in the “people’s house.”
James Fennimore Cooper has left on record a letter describing a state dinner and levée, during Mr. Monroe’s time, and any one who has survived a latter-day jam at the President’s house, will say it was precisely what a Presidential reception was in the stately Monroe day. Says Mr. Cooper:
The evening at the White House, or drawing-room, as it is sometimes pleasantly called, is in fact, a collection of all classes of people who choose to go to the trouble and expense of appearing in dresses suited to an evening party. I am not sure that even dress is very much regarded, for I certainly saw a good many there in boots....Squeezing through a crowd, we achieved a passage to a part of the room where Mrs. Monroe was standing, surrounded by a bevy of female friends. After making our bow here, we sought the President. The latter had posted himself at the top of the room, where he remained most of the evening, shaking hands with all who approached. Near him stood the Secretaries and a great number of the most distinguished men of the nation. Besides these, one meets here a great variety of people in other conditions of life. I have known a cartman to leave his horse in the street, and go into the reception room, to shake hands with the President. He offended the good taste of all present, because it was not thought decent that a laborer should come in a dirty dress on such an occasion; but while he made a mistake in this particular, he proved how well he understood the difference between government and society.
It is very doubtful, however, if a cartman would have found it possible to have paid his respects to the government in the person of Washington, in such a plight. Such a visitor in the Blue Room, to-day, would make a sensation. In spite of the “cartman,” we read that at Mrs. Monroe’s drawing-rooms “elegance of dress was absolutely required.” On one occasion, Mr. Monroe refused admission to a near relative, who happened not to have a suit of small-clothes and silk hose, in which to present himself at a public reception. He was driven to the necessity of borrowing.
When the Monroes entered the White House, it had been partly rebuilt from its burning in 1814, but it could boast of few comforts, and no elegance. The ruins of the former building lay in heaps about the mansion; the grounds were not fenced, and the street before it in such a condition that it was an hourly sight to see several four-horse wagons “stalled” before the house. In the early part of the administration, the East Room was the play-room of Mrs. Monroe’s daughters. It was during her reign here that the stately furniture, which now stands in the East Room, was bought by the government in Paris. Each article was surmounted by the royal crown of Louis XVIII. This was removed, and the American Eagle took its place. These chairs and sofas have more than once been “made over, good as new,” but the original eagles remain, more brightly burnished than ever. May they gleam forever, and let no “modern furniture,” with surface gilding and thin veneering, take the place of this historic furniture, in the Nation’s house, fraught, as it is, with so many memories of the illustrious dead.
CHAPTER XXII.
NOTED WOMEN OF WASHINGTON—A CHAPTER OF GOSSIP.
Quaint Habiliments—Portrait of a President’s Wife—A Travelling Lady—Life in Russia—A Model American Minister—A Long and Lonely Journey—When Napoleon Returned from Elba—The Court of St. James—“Mrs. Adams’ Ball”—Mr. John Agg’s[Agg’s] Little “Poem”—Verses which Our Fathers Endured—Peculiar Waists—Costume of an Ancient Belle—Fearful and Wonderful Attire of a Beau—“A Suit of Steel”—“Smiling for the Presidency”—Attending Two Balls the Same Evening—An Ascendant Star—A Man who Hid his Feelings—The Candidate at a Cattle Show—“She Often Combed Your Head”—“I Suppose She Combs Yours Now”—Giving “Tone” to the Whole Country—A Circle of “Rare” Women—A “Perpetual Honor to Womanhood”—Charles’s Opinion of His Mother—How a Lady “Amused” Her Declining Days—Lafayette’s Visit to Washington—His Farewell to America—“A Species of Irregular Diary”—“For the Benefit of My Grandfather”—Mrs. Andrew Jackson—A Woman’s Influence—Politics and Piety Disagree—Why the General Didn’t Join the Church—A Head “Full of Politics”—Swearing Some—The President Becomes a Good Boy—Domestic Tendencies—His Greatest Loss—Sad News from the Hermitage.
The portrait which Leslie gives us of Louisa Catharine Johnson, the wife of John Quincy Adams, reminds us in outline and costume of the Empress Josephine and the Court of the first Napoleon.
She wears the scanty robe of the period, its sparse outline revealing the slender elegance of the figure, the low waist and short sleeves trimmed with lace and edged with pearls. One long glove is drawn nearly to the elbow, the other is held in the hand, which droops carelessly over the back of the chair. There is a necklace round the throat. From over one shoulder, and thrown over her lap, is a mantle of exquisite lace. The close bands of the hair, edged with a few deft curls, and fastened high at the back with a coronet comb, reveals the classic outline of the small head; the face is oval, the features delicate and vivacious; the eyes, looking far on, are beautiful in their clear, spiritual gaze. This is the portrait of a President’s wife, whose early advantages of society and culture far transcended those of almost any other woman of her time.
The daughter of Joshua Johnson, of Maryland, she was born, educated and married in London. As a bride she went to the court of Berlin, to which her husband was appointed American Minister on the accession of his father to the Presidency. In 1801 she went to Boston, to dwell with her husband’s people, but very soon came to Washington as the wife of a senator. On the accession of Madison, leaving her two elder children with their grandparents, she took a third, not two years of age, and embarked with her husband for Russia, whither he went as United States Minister.