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.