The velvet glove
The velvet glove
ISBN: 9780840764720
定价: 0.00
内容简介
A few hours after his
James K. Polk walked
inauguration, President
a few blocks from the
White House to pay his respects to the for-
midable widow of a predecessor. He found
seventy-seven-year-old Dolly Madison running
a foot race with two teen-aged girls.
This lively old woman was the most influ-
ential First Lady in the history of the Repub-
lic. Indeed, the term "First Lady" was first
applied to the wife of James Madison, the
country s fourth President. And she earned it.
Gourmet cook, fashion plate, wit, Dolly brought
glamour to hick-town Washington, D.C. Hero-
ine of the 1814 British raid, she coolly saw to
the saving of priceless documents from the on-
coming invaders. Prot6g~e of George and
Martha Washington, companion of the John
Adamses, friend to eight of their successors,
Mrs. Madison was a powerful personage in her
country s capital for half a century.
Yet Polk rebuked a man who called her a
Washington institution. "I stand with my good
friend and mentor, President Jackson," said
Polk, "who called her a national institution."
Her beginnings were modest, however. The
oldest daughter of Virginia Quakers who sold
their plantation because they could no longer
justify owning slaves, Dolly grew up in genteel
poverty. Taking over the running of their im-
poverished home from an ailing mother, she
taught herself the arts of fine cooking and in-
spired dress design. Married to a sober young
Quaker and mother of their ne er-do-well son,
she braved yellow fever to nurse her husband
through his final illness. It was as a young
widow that she caught the eye of that con-
firmed bachelor and dry-as-dust stick James
Madison. Who could have guessed it would be
a love ~
match?
In this warm and lively biography veteran
writer Noel B. Gerson brings a most engaging
woman charmingly to life.