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V irginia Moore’s biography of James and dolley would have been unusual—even impossible—in the old days. With most biographers , the presidents’ wives were given short shrift. there were a few books devoted to the wives themselves, but the conventional books about the presidents contained only a page of two about their wives. Moore’s “dual biography” showed how important James and dolley were for each other. during the War of 1812, James went off to the front, and dolley rescued a famous Gilbert stuart painting of George Washington from the White house when the British began burning the Federal buildings in the nation’s capital. today, no one would write the biography of a president without including many pages on the part his wife played in his life and work. H H H in The Madisons: A Biography, Virginia Moore, author of books on Emily Brontë and William Butler yeats, presents a biographical study of James Madison, the “least known of the founding fathers,” and his charming wife dolley. there have been numerous biographies of Madison (notably irving Brandt’s), and there have also been several books about his wife, but this is the first “dual biography.” Moore’s aim is twofold: to “put blood back into the veins” of both Jemmy (as he was called) and dolley, and to examine their “reciprocal relationship.” there are difficulties involved in this approach, and Moore has not surmounted all of them. still, she writes in a sprightly fashion, knows her material well, likes her protagonists very much, and by following The Madisons: James and Dolley CHAPTER 15 142 The Madisons: James and Dolley 143 closely the leading events, public and private, in their lives, convinces us that a marriage which began somewhat inauspiciously ended by being almost ideal in the eyes of all their friends and associates. Moore begins her book with the Madisons’ marriage in 1794, and then pauses to recount first dolley’s background and then Jemmy’s. Even within this framework she utilizes flashbacks from time to time, and it isn’t really until Madison becomes secretary of state for thomas Jefferson in 1801 and then president himself in 1809 that the narrative begins to move ahead in a straightforward fashion. the marriage, Moore tells us, was one of opposites: “the groom was forty-three, the bride twenty-six; the groom an intellectual, the bride a woman who ran largely on her feelings; the groom a bachelor, the bride a widow with a little boy two and a half years old.” in a letter to her best friend right after the wedding, the bride signed her name “dolley Payne todd”; then she corrected herself and wrote, “dolley Madison; alas! alas!” But despite dolley’s misgivings at first, the marriage turned out to be a good one both for her and for Jemmy. dolley became Jemmy’s “anchor in the storm”: she took charge of his social life, planned official dinners , decided which invitations to accept and which to reject, saw that their clothes and living quarters were kept in order, and arranged her Wednesday evening levees (which were the talk of the town) so that he could slip out any time duty called him. at official dinners she eased her husband’s burdens by placing him at the side of the table while she sat at the head and took the lead in the conversation herself. sometimes Madison would sit with her for an hour or so before these dinners and then tell her, “My dear, you have rested me and helped me to go on.” But dolley did more than assume responsibility for her husband’s social life. she also familiarized herself with the problems he faced as a public official and came to identify herself strongly with his positions on various political and social issues. one of the best chapters in the book, dealing with the War of 1812, describes dolley’s conscientious efforts to rescue the famous Gilbert stuart portrait of George Washington before the British, who were invading the capital city, got to the president’s mansion. Madison himself was in the field with american forces at the time. he took his duties as commander in chief more literally than our other presidents have done. in 1817, when James Monroe succeeded Madison as chief Executive , the Madisons left Washington and retired to Montpelier, Virginia, where Madison, with dolley’s help, managed a fairly sizable plantation and assumed the role of elder statesman...

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