A presidential mystery

MONTPELIER STATION — Much can be learned about a couple from their home furnishings, especially when the couple are James and Dolley Madison.

Actually, much has already been revealed about the fourth president and the first lady as the Montpelier Foundation undertakes the second phase of restoration inside their Orange County home.

They’re calling it, “A Presidential Detective Story: Rediscovering the Furnishings of James and Dolley Madison,” an estimated $10 million research and acquisition project that will span years.

The Montpelier Foundation launched the effort Tuesday at the Dolley Madison Legacy Luncheon, an annual event held on the grounds of the vast presidential estate to honor and recognize Dolley for her contributions to democracy. The event also raises funds for continued restoration of Montpelier to its 1820s appearance.

The outdoor luncheon crowd was mostly ladies — many sporting fancy hats and easy Virginia drawls — and the mild spring day proved a perfect complement to the history-rich event.

The gathering began with champagne from nearby Barboursville Vineyards in the elaborately lovely formal garden cultivated by later Montpelier resident Annie duPont. The luncheon then moved under tent to an area just outside the garden and behind the brick house, only recently restored on the outside to its Madison-era appearance through a $25 million project.

Recovering the Madisons
This day, however, was all about the interior and the history of a presidential couple contained therein.

“This is the launch of the presidential story,” said Michael Quinn, president of The Montpelier Foundation, calling the project “a journey to recover the Madisons themselves.”

Lynne Dakin Hastings, Montpelier’s new vice president for museum programs, is helping to oversee the interior restoration, having joined the staff earlier this year after serving as curator of historic interiors at Colonial Williamsburg.

She told the luncheon crowd Tuesday that Montpelier contained many great pieces of art, a collection they are piecing back together and beginning to reacquire through, among other means, newspaper accounts, holes in the walls and a “List of Oil Paintings at Montpelier.”

Made sometime after President Madison died in 1836, apparently as part of Dolley’s preparations to move to Washington, D.C., the list included a 1630s Dutch oil painting, “Pan, Youths and Nymphs,” by Gerrit van Honthorst. The large work hung in the drawing room at Montpelier.

Put up for auction after her death in 1849, the painting spent most of its life in the private collection of a Charlottesville family before it was again sold at auction in 2004 to a Dutch collector. Three years later, The Montpelier Foundation acquired “Pan, Youths and Nymphs,” returning it to the Madison home.

Even more recently, Hastings said, the Foundation rediscovered a shopping list written by Dolley naming various items she wanted for household and personal uses. Among them: “one dozen fanciful but cheap snuff boxes.”

According to the folks at Montpelier, Dolley, like many women of her time, enjoyed taking snuff.

Mr. and Mrs. Madison were also both very fond of bright color and patterns, Hastings said, and they owned at least one Venetian carpet. They also had French carpets, she went on, described in bills and accounts as appearing old — as old as 150 years old — and “gay and bright.”

“So which was it?” asked Hastings, eluding to the detective work ahead, adding that Dolley’s favorite color was crimson. “What do we think Dolley might have seen and liked?”

Natalie Larson, an expert in historic textiles like curtains and bedspreads, is also part of the interior restoration team; she told the luncheon crowd that clues to rediscovering the Madison textiles are sometimes hidden in unusual places.

“It’s really wonderful sometimes to find rats nests,” Larson said, mentioning a piece of fabric found in one in the Madison house. The rodent’s nest discovered behind a second-floor wall also contained a scrap of paper with Madison’s handwriting, a bit of newspaper and pieces of hand-painted wallpaper.

Larson expected tracking down the full collection of Madison fabrics would prove difficult, as the American textile trade has increasingly moved to China.

“It’s getting harder and harder to find replica fabric,” Larson said, reflecting on the puzzles ahead. “Decisions, decisions — maybe it wasn’t easy for James and Dolley either.”

As for the couple’s choice of wallpaper, restoration team member Christopher Ohrstrom, an expert in historic wallpapers and paint finishes, had a hunch about that.

“I’m a great believer that people’s decorating style is a reflection of their personality,” he said. “Dolley was very good at making people feel at ease. She was graceful without being overly dramatic, and I think her wallpaper reflected that.”

Most evidence of wallpaper at Montpelier from the Madisons’ time has been lost, Ohrstrom said, as the wall covering, then like now, was considered temporary and torn out. Yet, wallpaper was in wide use at the time in the Piedmont, much of it of the “very elegant” variety from France.

Then there are the specimens from the rats nests, which, Ohrstrom joked, he didn’t want to handle any time soon. And yet, even a rodent’s lodgings provide clues into the color tastes of James and Dolley Madison. According to Ohrstrom, the chewed-up pieces of wallpaper are black and orange.