Word: dolley
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...Hoover had to leave his Christmas party to oversee the removal of important papers from the Oval Office. (But the Marine Band played on, and the First lady kept the party going.) The doozy, of course, was in 1814, when the invading Brits set the White House on fire. (Dolley Madison had to smuggle out the famous Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington before the British troops got to the mansion.) Only the outside walls remained standing - and that was probably because of a timely thunderstorm that helped contain the fire. Scorch marks from that blaze are still apparent...
...international incident. In 1803, when the new British ambassador, Anthony Merry, and his wife Elizabeth arrived for their first official dinner, Jefferson, no friend of the Crown, determined to insult them. He not only invited their French counterparts, though the two countries were at war, but also escorted Dolley Madison, rather than Mrs. Merry, to the dinner table. The ambassador's personal secretary claimed that the affront caused the War of 1812. Though that's a stretch, "the Merry Affair" certainly contributed to the continued bad blood between the young U.S. and the former mother country...
With the widower Jefferson setting such an unpropitious social tone, the wife of his Secretary of State established an alternate "court" that she presided over for close to a half-century. Dolley Madison was the first to assume the role of what came to be dubbed "the Washington hostess," and she provided the model for the rest to follow. Dolley's dinners--used at first to promote her husband's career and then to solidify her own--delighted the politicians, and she made every guest feel like the most important person there. Living well into the middle of the 19th...
...Dolley's acolytes, Rose Greenhow, turned her dining room (and perhaps her bedroom) into a venue for sources for a Confederate spy ring. A well-liked widow known for entertaining both sides in the tense years before the Civil War, Greenhow understood the ways of Washington. She advised a friend seeking a favor that Congressmen were "honorable men who could not be bribed, but they discern much more clearly the justice of a case, when they have dined and supped well in pleasant company." When the war started, the Union politicians who continued to sup with Greenhow let slip intelligence...
...with these factoids humanizing figures that have become emblazoned in our historical memory. Lonely hearts at Harvard may take some solace in knowing that it was only through the clever machinations of Aaron Burr and Martha Washington that James Madison’s five-foot five-inch bod landed Dolley Payne, a “buxom brunette with remarkably fair skin.” The future Mrs. Madison would later spark a fashion trend as each of her dresses were “set off with ostrich plumes and feathery birds of paradise and topped those creations with matching headdresses...