James Madison's Montpelier We The People Spring 2013 | Page 6

We The People
6

In the

Mansion and Galleries
NEW ARRIVAL

CURATORIAL NOTES
In diaries, memoirs, and letters sent home, visitors
to James and Dolley Madison’s Montpelier often
described the drawing room, the home’s central
public space, in great detail. The room “had more
the appearance of a museum of the arts than of
a drawing room,” wrote friend Margaret Bayard
Smith. “It was a charming room, giving activity to
the mind, by the historic and classic ideas that it
awakened.”
As a key component of our ongoing mission,
Montpelier staff are continuing efforts to restore
the interior of the mansion in the same careful and
authentic manner as the exterior architecture of
the home was restored. This spring, we will return
several significant details to what Dolley called her
“country drawing room.”
Nail holes in the historic plaster of the room confirm extensive documentary evidence that two very
large gilt looking glasses hung on either side of the
grand pedimented entry to the room. One visitor
referred to them as “splendid mirrors,” and many
others noted their sheer size and predominance in
a room otherwise covered in works of art. We can
imagine the mirrors enlarging the room, adding
light, and reflecting the flowers creeping up the
columns on the colonnade.
While neither James nor Dolley Madison played
the piano, we know that in 1794, James Madison
acquired a piano forte in Philadelphia for use at
Montpelier. The Madisons purchased two pianos for
the President’s House, before and after the British
attack on Washington, and accounts of “squeezes”
and large parties often featured music. In 1813,
one young woman remembered, “Mrs. Madison
insisted on my playing on her elegant grand piano
a waltz.” The return of a piano to the room, much
like the restoration of works of art and furnishings,
bring us closer to experiencing the home James
and Dolley Madison knew and bring us closer understanding ѡ