Historic Shrines of America Part 31

This story the editor of the Richmond (Virginia) _American Standard_ told in the columns of his paper on Friday, December 27, 1811. He added the fact that among those who perished were the Governor of the State, as well as many of the leaders in the business and social life of the city.

By order of the city council the remains of the victims were buried on the site of the burned building, which was bought for the purpose. At the same time it was ordered that "no person or persons should be permitted for and during the time of four months ... to exhibit any public show or spectacle ... within the city."

By ordinance it was also decreed that a monument should be erected on the site. Later it was suggested that there should be built there, by public subscription, "an edifice to be set apart and consecrated for the worship of G.o.d," and that this should be the monument.

Accordingly, on August 1, 1812, the corner stone of the Monumental Church was laid, the lot having been purchased by the city for $5,000.

The building was consecrated as a Protestant Episcopal church in May, 1814. In April, 1815, the subscribers to the fund for the building, who had organized under the t.i.tle, "The a.s.sociation for building a Church on Shockoe Hill," were notified that one-half of their subscription money would be returned to them on application at the Bank of Virginia.

In the middle of the front or main porch of the church a white marble monument was erected to the memory of the victims of the fire.

To the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal church, which a.s.sembled in Philadelphia on May 18, 1814, report was made that "a magnificent church has sprung up in Richmond from the ashes of the Theatre; it has the patronage and support of men of the greatest talents and highest rank in Virginia."

Among the communicants of the Monumental Church have been numbered many of the most prominent men in the Virginia capital, and men famous in the early history of the country were attendants from time to time.

In February, 1824, General Lafayette worshipped in the building.

LXVII

MONTPELIER, ORANGE COUNTY, VIRGINIA

THE LIFELONG HOME OF JAMES MADISON

James Madison was born at the residence of his mother's parents, at Port Conway, Prince George County, Virginia, but before long he was taken to his father's house, Montpelier, which was the first brick house built in Orange County. And Montpelier continued to be his home to the day of his death. Much of his life was spent in Washington, but his heart was always turning to the old Virginia plantation where he had spent his boyhood, and he took advantage of every possible opportunity to go there for a longer or shorter visit.

The distance to Shadwell, where Thomas Jefferson lived as a boy, was only thirty miles, but these two who were to have such a large place in the early history of America, did not meet until Madison was seventeen years old. Then lost time was made up. For many years the road between Montpelier and the home of Jefferson became quite familiar to the friends.

In the years before he went to college Madison roamed at will over the twenty-five hundred acres of the Montpelier estate. He walked and rode, he hunted and fished, he learned to take delight in the quiet scenery of that beautiful Blue Ridge country. His tutor, who lived on the estate, was his companion on his expeditions.

It was probably due to this outdoor life that his health was so much better in Virginia than it was at the College of New Jersey (Princeton College). Soon after he graduated in 1771 he returned to Montpelier, somewhat broken by reason of overwork and lack of exercise. To a college friend in Philadelphia he wrote rather pessimistically:

"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 pa.s.s one sociable moment with her father. His reply was sympathetic: "n.o.body can ever have felt so severely as myself the prostration of family society from the circ.u.mstances 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.

The time came when walks had to be taken on the veranda; health was failing rapidly. He was not able to oversee the farm as he had long been accustomed to do, but depended on others. In 1835 Mrs. Madison wrote to her daughter: "My days are devoted to nursing and comforting my sick patient, who walks only from the bed in which he breakfasts to another." Still later she wrote: "I never leave my husband more than a few minutes at a time, and have not left the enclosure around our house for the last eight months."

When the owner of Montpelier died, on June 28, 1836, he was buried in the cemetery on the estate. Mrs. Madison spent a few lonely years in the old home, but the property was finally sold to satisfy the debts of her wayward son, Payne Todd. She was sometimes in actual want before she died, but Congress provided for her relief by buying for twenty-five thousand dollars the Madison letters and other papers.

She lived until July 12, 1849, and her body was finally laid by the side of that of her husband.

William Dupont, the present owner of Montpelier, has enlarged the house by the addition of a second story to the wings. So the house that was built in 1760 by James Madison, Sr., and was enlarged by James Madison, Jr., has entered on a new era of hospitality.

LXVIII

OAK HILL, LOUDOUN COUNTY, VIRGINIA

THE HOME OF JAMES MONROE'S OLD AGE

James Monroe, at twenty-eight, wrote from New York to Thomas Jefferson, with whom he had studied law:

"I shall leave this about the 1st of October for Virginia--Fredericksburg. Believe me, I have not relinquished the prospect of being your neighbor. The house for which I have requested a plan may possibly be erected near Monticello; to fix there, and to have yourself in particular, with what friends we may collect around, for society is my chief object; or rather, the only one which promises to me, with the connection I have formed, real and substantial pleasure; if, indeed, by the name of pleasure it may be called."

The "connection" of which the future President wrote was his marriage to Miss Eliza Kortwright of New York. Of this he had spoken in an earlier letter to Jefferson:

"You will be surprised to hear that I have formed the most interesting connection in human life with a young lady in this town, as you know my plan was to visit you before I settled myself, but having formed an attachment to this young lady ... I have found that I must relinquish all other objects not connected with her."

Monroe was not permitted to practice law long. As United States Senator, diplomat, Governor, Cabinet officer, and President, his time was so fully occupied that no one but a man of his fine physique and endurance could have stood the strain. Once, during the War of 1812, according to his friend, Judge E. R. Watson, when the burden of three of the departments of the government rested on him--State, Treasury, and War--he did not undress himself for ten days and nights, and was in the saddle the greater part of the time.

After some years he bought an estate in Loudoun County, Virginia, to which he retired for a brief rest whenever this was possible. For a time the old dormer-windowed house on the property satisfied him, but during his presidential term he built Oak Hill, the house for which Jefferson had prepared the plans. It is said that the nails used in its construction were manufactured on the Jefferson estate.

The house--which was named Oak Hill because of the oaks on the lawn, planted by the owner himself, one for each State of the Union--has been described by Major R. W. N. Noland as follows:

"The building was superintended by Mr. William Benton, an Englishman, who occupied the mixed relation to Mr. Monroe of steward, counsellor and friend. The house is built of brick in a most substantial manner, and handsomely finished; it is, perhaps, about 90 x 50 feet, three stories (including bas.e.m.e.nt), and has a wide portico, fronting south, with ma.s.sive Doric columns thirty feet high, and is surrounded by a grove of magnificent oaks covering several acres. While the location is not as commanding as many others in that section, being in lower Loudoun where the rolling character of the Piedmont region begins to lose itself in the flat lands of tide water, the house in two directions commands an attractive and somewhat extensive view, but on the other side it is hemmed in by mountains, for the local names of which, 'Bull Run' and 'n.i.g.g.e.r Mountain,' it is to be hoped the late President is in no wise responsible.... The little stream that washes the confines of the Oak Hill estate once bore the Indian name Gohongarestaw (the River of Swans), and is now called Goose Creek."

After the expiration of his second term as President Monroe made Oak Hill his permanent home, though sometimes he was with his daughter, Mrs. Gouverneur, in New York.

One who was a member of the household during a part of the six years of the life in Virginia said that he "looked perhaps older than he was, his face being strongly marked with the lines of anxiety and care."

There were many guests at Oak Hill, among these being Madison and Jefferson. Monroe, in turn, was frequently at Monticello and Montpelier. His office as Regent of the University of Virginia also brought him into frequent touch with his two predecessors in the presidency, for they were fellow-members on the Board.

Whenever weather and guests permitted he was accustomed to ride about the estate and through the countryside both morning and evening. One day, when he was seventy-two, his horse fell on him, and his right wrist was sprained so badly that for a time he could not write to his friends, as he had delighted to do. Thus he was able to sympathize with Madison when a letter came from Montpelier a few months later:

"In explanation of my microscopic writing, I must remark that the older I grow the more my stiffening fingers make smaller letters, as my feet take shorter steps, the progress in both cases being, at the same time, more fatiguing as well as more slow."

Monroe's last years of life were saddened by financial difficulties, though even these brought gleams of joy, because of the fidelity of his friends. Lafayette, who visited Oak Hill in 1825, wrote later to his friend a most delicately worded offer of a.s.sistance, indicating that he felt it was his right to offer this, since Monroe, when minister to France, had exerted himself to bring about the release of Lafayette, then a prisoner at Olmutz, and had ministered to the wants of Madame Lafayette.

A measure of relief came when Congress voted to repay, in part, the extraordinary expense incurred by the statesman during his diplomatic career, but not before he had advertised Oak Hill for sale and had planned to go to New York to live near his daughter. The estate was later withdrawn from the market, but the plan to go to New York was carried out: he did not see how he could remain after the death of Mrs. Monroe, which took place in 1830.

He did not stay long in New York. On July 4, 1831, he died.

Twenty-seven years later, on the one hundredth anniversary of his birth, his body was taken to Richmond for burial. There, in his native State, rest the remains of him of whom Thomas Jefferson said, "He is a man whose soul might be turned inside out without discovering a blemish to the world."