Remembering James
“I have long intended to have some memento made for you and our beloved sister Stevenson,” Dolley Madison wrote her cousin Edward Coles on July 4, 1837, the anniversary of the birth of the nation and a year and a week after the death of her husband, James Madison. She asked Coles to have some jewelry made. For Edward, who was not only Dolley’s first cousin, but had been James’ private secretary during his presidency, she asked that he provide himself with “a seal, breast pin or ring in which the name & hair [of James Madison] was inserted.” To be “worn by you would be a gratification to me.” For her cousin Sarah Coles Stevenson, she asked him to have made a “breastpin or ring . . . with some words and the name engraved on it.” James had not included them in his will, so perhaps the Madisons had even discussed what to give her two cousins after James was gone.
Dolley had originally intended to take care of this task herself, but as was the case with so much of her life in the first year after James died, she was overwhelmed by failing health and multiple obligations. “I feel,” she told Edward, “that it would be more becoming in me to superintend myself - yet is my confidence in your indulgence undiminished.”
Edward was deeply moved. Eight days later he wrote Dolley from his home in Philadelphia that he felt “at a great loss to know how to reply to yours of the 4th inst.” While he felt impressed at the mission he added that “such a memento from such a source, & containing such a precious relict, would be prized above all price, and be handed down to my children, and I would fondly hope to my childrens children to the latest generation.” It was, he said, not only an honor and a great gesture of friendship from his cousin Dolley, but a statement of “the confidential connection & intimate relations which had so long existed between me and the great & good Madison.”
And so we know how the gesture was made and how it was received. What seems foreign to us one hundred and sixty years later is not so much the need to express love and to honor the dead, as the means of so doing: a piece of jewelry containing James Madison’s hair.
Hair contains the embodiment of the person, with none of the cumbersome, overly physical aspects of personal clothing or effects. In 19th century America people sent news of a beloved’s death in a letter — containing a lock of that person’s hair. This was a staple of 19th century practice and literature. In the antebellum bestseller Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote of the despicable Simon Legree, that “the next Legree heard of his mother was one night, when he was carousing among his drunken companions, a letter was put into his hand. He opened it, and a lock of long, curling hair fell from it, and twined around his fingers. The letter told him his mother was dead; and, dying, she blessed and forgave him.” Frances Lichten in her study of British culture, Decorative Art of Victoria’s Era wrote that “hair is at once the most delicate and lasting of our materials and survives us, like love.”
Following British practice, Americans made jewelry with pieces of hair enclosed in them. Initially it was, at least in part, worn to remind the wearer of the ever-present possibility of death. But its meaning shifted over time. From memento mori, it became an expression of a 19th century culture that sentimentalized and romanticized death and the dead. Mourning jewelry, and the feelings the pins, rings, and earrings both inspired and expressed, had begun to appear by the 1830s.
The fascination with ritualized mourning clothes and accessories has generally been considered an outgrowth of Queen Victoria’s intensely private, but socially influential bereavement of her husband, Prince Albert. But Albert did not die until 1861, and Dolley wrote her cousin in the summer of 1837. We can assume that in her practice and assumptions about memorializing the dead, Dolley was not alone among her friends and family in Virginia. These letters inform us about their practices of mourning. It indicates a shift in how the dead were remembered, and it locates the tradition of creating jewelry with hair enclosed to the 1830s. We can link it to the rural cemetery movement of the same period, often dated to Mount Auburn in Boston, established in 1831. Especially in urban areas, the graveyard became a garden, fashioned to house the beloved deceased. They were no longer gloomy churchyards, but as Gary Wills writes, they were “a return to nature, a pantheistic identification of dissolution with initiation.” They were created for the living by instilling messages of healing truths, “of natural death and rebirth, in the cycle of seasons.” Graves were clothed in the beauty of nature. We can still visit these monuments to the dead at Mount Auburn, or Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, or any other number of such sites.
This exchange of letters also bears witness to Dolley’s love for James, and how she shared both her love and her grief with others. It expresses how James felt about Edward Coles and Sally Stevenson, and at least how greatly Edward reciprocated those emotions. It paints a picture of Dolley’s pain, for as we read her letter, we can imagine her bending over her dead husband, clipping his curls, and folding them into a piece of paper to be saved for a later use.
How do we remember those we have loved after they die? As academics we know that the rituals surrounding death are culturally, and often religiously, determined. Different societies have their own distinct rituals, which reflects the inner workings of their own traditions. In my religion, Judaism, we continue to honor our dead for all of our lives by reciting specific prayers at preordained times, both at home and in our houses of worship. In the 21st century many of us have photographs dotted around our living spaces, genealogy groups to help us locate those whom we never knew, and artifacts of our parents and grandparents, our children and spouses that we cannot bear to give away.
For Dolley one of the ways she preserved her husband’s private, intimate, family memory was through hair. It is a little moment, a domestic gesture. It is quiet, not grand. It is like a whisper easily missed in all the sounds of her times. It was not done to memorialize the great founder, a president during war, the architect of the constitution. It was for James, husband and friend, by Dolley, wife and lover, to intimate friends and family.
See: David E. Stannard, ed., Death in America (Philadelphia, 1975), especially the essays by Ann Douglas, Stanley French, and Lewis Saum; Pat Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family (New York, 1996); Barbara Jones, Design for Death (Indianapolis, IN, 1967); Frances Lichten, Decorative Art of Victoria’s Era (New York, 1950); Martha Pike, “In Memory of: Artifacts Relating to Mourning in Nineteenth Century America,” Journal of American Culture (Winter, 1980); Stephen Railton, Uncle Tom’s Cabin & American Culture: a Multi-Media Archive (http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/index2f.html) as viewed on 28 January 2008; Esther Schor, Bearing the Dead: The British Culture of Mourning from the Enlightenment go Victoria (Princeton, NJ, 1994); Gary Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg (New York, 1992).
levitra
buy levitra
cheap levitra
levitra online
buy levitra online
order levitra
cipro
cipro online
buy cipro
zithromax
buy zithromax
zithromax online
viagra soft
viagra soft tabs
buy viagra soft tabs
cialis
Buy Cialis
Buy Cialis Online
cialis online
Online Cialis
Order Cialis
Cheap Cialis
Discount Cialis
rimonabant
buy rimonabant
cialis soft
cialis soft tabs
cialis soft tab
buy cialis soft tab
amoxil
buy amoxil
amoxil online
order amoxil
voltaren
buy voltaren
order voltaren
voltaren online
finasteride
buy finasteride
finasteride online
flagyl
flagyl online
buy flagyl
vardenafil
buy vardenafil
vardenafil online
sildenafil citrate
sildenafil
buy sildenafil citrate
buy sildenafil
propecia
buy propecia
order propecia
cheap propecia
propecia online
buy propecia online
lasix
buy lasix
lasix online
purchase lasix
accutane
buy accutane
accutane online
cheap accutane
buy accutane online
diflucan
buy diflucan
diflucan online
viagra
buy viagra
buy viagra online
viagra online
discount viagra
order viagra
cheap viagra
acomplia
buy acomplia
buy acomplia online
acomplia online
tadalafil
buy tadalafil
soma
soma online
buy carisoprodol
order carisoprodol
carisoprodol online
buy soma
order soma
levitra
buy levitra
cheap levitra
levitra online
buy levitra online
order levitra
cipro
cipro online
buy cipro
zithromax
buy zithromax
zithromax online
viagra soft
viagra soft tabs
buy viagra soft tabs
cialis
Buy Cialis
Buy Cialis Online
cialis online
Online Cialis
Order Cialis
Cheap Cialis
Discount Cialis
rimonabant
buy rimonabant
cialis soft
cialis soft tabs
cialis soft tab
buy cialis soft tab
amoxil
buy amoxil
amoxil online
order amoxil
voltaren
buy voltaren
order voltaren
voltaren online
finasteride
buy finasteride
finasteride online
flagyl
flagyl online
buy flagyl
vardenafil
buy vardenafil
vardenafil online
sildenafil citrate
sildenafil
buy sildenafil citrate
buy sildenafil
propecia
buy propecia
order propecia
cheap propecia
propecia online
buy propecia online
lasix
buy lasix
lasix online
purchase lasix
accutane
buy accutane
accutane online
cheap accutane
buy accutane online
diflucan
buy diflucan
diflucan online
viagra
buy viagra
buy viagra online
viagra online
discount viagra
order viagra
cheap viagra
acomplia
buy acomplia
buy acomplia online
acomplia online
tadalafil
buy tadalafil
soma
soma online
buy carisoprodol
order carisoprodol
carisoprodol online
buy soma
order soma
levitra
buy levitra
cheap levitra
levitra online
buy levitra online
order levitra
cipro
cipro online
buy cipro
zithromax
buy zithromax
zithromax online
viagra soft
viagra soft tabs
buy viagra soft tabs
cialis
Buy Cialis
Buy Cialis Online
cialis online
Online Cialis
Order Cialis
Cheap Cialis
Discount Cialis
rimonabant
buy rimonabant
cialis soft
cialis soft tabs
cialis soft tab
buy cialis soft tab
amoxil
buy amoxil
amoxil online
order amoxil
voltaren
buy voltaren
order voltaren
voltaren online
finasteride
buy finasteride
finasteride online
flagyl
flagyl online
buy flagyl
vardenafil
buy vardenafil
vardenafil online
sildenafil citrate
sildenafil
buy sildenafil citrate
buy sildenafil
propecia
buy propecia
order propecia
cheap propecia
propecia online
buy propecia online
lasix
buy lasix
lasix online
purchase lasix
accutane
buy accutane
accutane online
cheap accutane
buy accutane online
diflucan
buy diflucan
diflucan online
viagra
buy viagra
buy viagra online
viagra online
discount viagra
order viagra
cheap viagra
acomplia
buy acomplia
buy acomplia online
acomplia online
tadalafil
buy tadalafil
soma
soma online
buy carisoprodol
order carisoprodol
carisoprodol online
buy soma
order soma
levitra
buy levitra
cheap levitra
levitra online
buy levitra online
order levitra
cipro
cipro online
buy cipro
zithromax
buy zithromax
zithromax online
viagra soft
viagra soft tabs
buy viagra soft tabs
cialis
Buy Cialis
Buy Cialis Online
cialis online
Online Cialis
Order Cialis
Cheap Cialis
Discount Cialis
rimonabant
buy rimonabant
cialis soft
cialis soft tabs
cialis soft tab
buy cialis soft tab
amoxil
buy amoxil
amoxil online
order amoxil
voltaren
buy voltaren
order voltaren
voltaren online
finasteride
buy finasteride
finasteride online
flagyl
