The First Ladies Forum (episode 243)

Transcript

Music

Jake:
[0:04] Welcome to hub history where we go far beyond the freedom trail to share our favorite stories from the history of boston, the hub of the universe.
This is episode 243. The First Ladies’ Forum.
Hi, I’m jake. In just a few minutes I’ll be joined by a group of actors who portray four of America’s first ladies, including both actors and first ladies with ties to boston.
We’ll discuss the lives of these famous women and how the actors choose to embody them.
We’ll also talk more broadly about what it’s like to be a costumed historical interpreter and the role of historical interpretation, helping people understand the people and events of America’s past.
But before I sit down with the members of the First lady’s forum, I just want to pause and say a special thank you to everyone who supports the show on Patreon.
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I’m joined now by the members of the 1st Lady’s Forum. Before we go on, so our listeners know what voices they’re hearing. Can I have each of you just briefly introduce yourselves and say which first lady you each portray.

Leslie (Jackie Kennedy):
[2:37] Sure my name my name is Leslie Goddard I portray Jackie Kennedy.

Judith (Dolly Madison):
[2:42] My name is Judith Kalaora and I portray Dolly Madison.

Laura K (Mary Todd Lincoln):
[2:47] My name is Laura Keyes and I portray Mary Lincoln.

Laura R (Louisa Catherine Adams):
[2:51] I’m Laura Rocklyn and I portray Louisa Catherine Adams.

Jake:
[2:56] And setting up this interview. I know that we, I learned that a couple of you are based in the boston area and a couple of you aren’t.
And then we have a couple of our first ladies who are boston area based.
So I’m curious do the, the actors of the people who are portraying our boston based First ladies are Kennedy and Adams. Are you guys boston based?

Leslie (Jackie Kennedy):
[3:20] I am not I me Leslie.
I live in the Chicago land area, although interestingly, Jackie Kennedy did not really live in the boston area. She grew up in new york city and summers at Newport’s and Washington, D. C. Area.
But but the Kennedys are so associated.

Jake:
[3:40] Right. Right.

Laura R (Louisa Catherine Adams):
[3:43] And for me, laura I am based in boston. Um I first discovered Louisa when I was living in Washington D. C. And sort of studying the life of that city during the federal era.
And she was one of the women who sort of created society there in the early 19th century.
Um, but now being in boston, I love discovering that other part of her life um here in the city and out on the Adam’s farm, which was a very different experience for her. And when I was studying at Emerson from my M. F. A.
I love that I walked by every day the plaque to the house that john Quincy and Louisa had lived in over there on Tremont Street. So that was always great fun as I was working on this program.

Jake:
[4:18] And also a first lady who more tenuous connections to the boston area. Yes, she lived here, but she she discovered our region a little bit later in life, right.

Laura R (Louisa Catherine Adams):
[4:27] Exactly when she was born in England, she studied in France, She went to a convent school when she was younger um and didn’t come to America at all until after she’d married john Quincy.
They even spent the first few years of their marriage in Berlin.
Um So she certainly came here later in life and it took a little bit of adjusting.

Jake:
[4:46] I always like to think of those two is probably the most highly qualified, may be overqualified. First couple, Maybe in american history.

Laura R (Louisa Catherine Adams):
[4:54] They certainly have had the most diplomatic experience.

Jake:
[4:58] We heard a little bit about what attracted you to, um, Louisa Catherine Adams. I’m curious from the rest of you. What attracted you to to these 42 or to the three remaining, I guess.

Judith (Dolly Madison):
[5:11] I’ll take the helm here. I was actually working in boston at the time, as a historical interpreter and I had already started,
working with my company history at play, which we chronicle the lives of many influential and often forgotten figures.
And I’ll describe it by being recruited, so to speak.
I was getting out of my 18th century garb and I noted that my cellular telephone rang.

Jake:
[5:42] Very non 18th century device.

Judith (Dolly Madison):
[5:43] And there’s this fellow on the other end who introduces himself as, as Kyle jenks an interpreter of James Madison.
And he says, I found your website history of play and I need a dolly Madison and I think you’d make a great dolly Madison.
And I said, it’s, you know, not really, um, something I have time for at present.
And I will admit he was persistent and just like James was toward dolly in their courtship.
And I finally sort of said, okay, I’ll have a look.
And then it was dolly that mesmerized me.
It was her complexity. It was,
the hardship that she came from the, the loss of a husband and a son on the same day from the yellow, one of the yellow fever epidemics in philadelphia.
And then the insane courtship like suitors lined up outside of her door to try to win over this newly widowed woman and the eventual,
Courtship between her and James.
And that just is the start of it. It was and there was a 17, approximately 17 year difference between them and I found that to be really intriguing as well.
So there was a lot of aspects of her personality beyond the, you know, saving up the portrait of George Washington that I was drawn to.

Laura K (Mary Todd Lincoln):
[7:08] Yeah, for me, what, what drew me to mary Lincoln was um,
I was actually cast in a play In 2008, the state of Illinois was celebrating the sesquicentennial of the Lincoln Douglas debates and a local community theater.
Wanted to do a play that was all about mary Lincoln and um, I was very surprised to be cast in the play.
I have been involved in community theater for over a decade, but still, um, The play was set in 1875 when Mary Lincoln was roughly 56 years old.
Um, I was not 56, I was younger than I am today, but I can’t remember how old I was, but I wasn’t 56 And so, um, I was surprised to be cast in that role.
It took um an hour and 20 minutes each night for two makeup artists to age me enough to make me look like a very stressed out 56 year old, um, which is what they were going for, the look they were going for.

[8:14] But I was, I was a librarian, I was newly graduated with my master’s degree.
I did research, I did not want to just portray what was the words on the script, I wanted to portray mary Lincoln as accurately as I could.
And so I dove into research and because of that and because of what the,
The director and and other people involved saw in that,
um, I was part of articles in local papers,
and I had, I had phone calls from aerial libraries to come and,
give a talk on Mary Lincoln and and where where address and you look great and uh well, it’s it’s been about 14 years and the calls keep coming.

Jake:
[9:02] You said the play was set in 1875. Is that what I heard? It’s interesting that your first immersion into her life was 10 years after Lincoln’s presidency, when most of us are used to hearing about Mary Todd Lincoln.

Laura K (Mary Todd Lincoln):
[9:05] Yes.

[9:15] Yes. Um and that is true. I I did have um a lot, a very big learning curve.
And because of how the play was set, which was, I mean, the play, of course was fiction.
Um because of where the play was set, I immediately started learning about mary Lincoln after uh link Abraham’s death.
And that actually drew more compassion and pity from me, learning about what this woman had suffered since the moment Abraham was um was shot,
and how the public,
how the public saw her.
And then of course, even after her death, how the public saw her, which um it was still very negative.
Um to this day, it’s still very negative. So, that is one uphill battle that I have found immediately.
And I am very slowly but surely trying to share her story and to tell people what her story really was.
And perhaps that will change their mind about how she has been viewed in pop culture. Up to this day.

Leslie (Jackie Kennedy):
[10:30] It’s really funny listening to you because there’s there’s overlap among the three of us about kind of what, what pulled us in like Judith.
I was recruited to do a portrayal of Jackie Kennedy and it was really, it was a group.
I had only been doing portrayals for I don’t know, four, maybe five years and they had had me in to do a Chicago socialite portrayal and they really wanted to have tea and a fancy event in this beautiful historic house.

[11:00] So they asked me, well next year, would you come back and do Jackie Kennedy? Just put on a bouffant hairdo and a pillbox hat and you’ll be great and right.
Exactly. And and it was really interesting because I I understand that that desire, you know, you step back in time and that’s often a great way to get people interested in history.
But I was a little worried because I’m you know, I’m a historian and I’m interested in like, you know, what’s going on there.
So like laura Keys. I got fascinated when I started researching Jackie that you know, she’s very well known for her fashion and for you know, glamour and youth.

[11:38] But there really was a very skillful diplomat underneath there.
She was really good at the construction of public image, cultural diplomacy, you know, the way that she would dress uh for example, going to a big event in France and she would wear french couture clothing.
And when she went to Canada she was dressed in bright red, like the Canada mounties in this very diplomatic way of negotiating how the Kennedy administration presented itself.
And the more I did, the more I thought, you know, there’s a lot more to this woman than a clothes horse.
Not that everybody thinks of her as a clothes horse, but you know, she was using her language skills to give speeches in french or in spanish to specific american populations.
And I just thought, you know, there’s a depth and a and a,
political skillful nous to her that I’m not even sure she would have admitted, but but that makes her a lot more fascinating than just what people might think. So that’s what got me interested.

Jake:
[12:42] Yeah, I know for a slightly different maybe my parents generation, there’s still just a lot of nostalgia and fondness for that Camelot, that that projection of the Kennedy white house as being sort of a new era that I’ve.

Leslie (Jackie Kennedy):
[12:51] Yeah.

[12:55] Yeah.

Jake:
[12:56] I’ve never fully understood, but I know that it was a real thing at the time.

Leslie (Jackie Kennedy):
[12:59] Well you know what’s fascinating is that um I was not alive at the time of the Kennedy assassination, but when I get to talking about the Kennedy assassination, the the emotions that people had at that time are are pretty accessible.
I mean, all I have to do is I pick up the the record cover of Camelot and and the pillbox hats and the pearls.
It’s a way in. And I think the advantage that that in this respect I have compared to the other three first ladies is that it was within living memory.
So there’s that opening to kind of tap into people’s memories and and hopefully go deeper. But yeah, it’s huge.

Jake:
[13:43] Yeah, so some of those iconic outfits are still very present in sort of the cultural awareness. So it seems like it’s very easy to draw the line, too. Jackie or Jackie Kennedy at that point, not Jackie O.
It may be quicker to to spark that awareness in a viewer’s mind than it is for some of the other first ladies here.

Judith (Dolly Madison):
[14:04] I think fashion is is a huge part of all of our programs and I know with the demographic that we generally cater to.
There is an appreciation for this accuracy in historical Garmin tree of with Louisa Catherine Adams and Dolly Madison.
They are quite different, but they’re also still technically regency era dresses,
and there’s such a shift where we, you know, we think of the pride and prejudice and,
that’s a really popular look where we keep re seeing um the cyclical nature in our television shows of that fashion over and over.
But what we’ve recognized as for first ladies is that we all have very indicative fashions.
For example, Dolly Madison was adamant on procuring headwear that gave her the appearance of you know, authority but not royalty.
So she popularized the turban At that same time, India is also imperial.

Jake:
[15:09] That’s really neat, yeah.

Judith (Dolly Madison):
[15:14] Ized by the British. So there is this aspect of like crossover between these cultures and then still the the integration of the American culture,
kind of not breaking away from British history, even though they’ve politically and diplomatically broken.
So I think it’s really neat that she, and almost every portrait you see her and she has headwear except for the Gilbert Stuart portrait, which is really the first official portrait that’s done over in 1804.
But it’s interesting because almost immediately when she takes office, she assumes headwear and it’s a turban.

Jake:
[15:49] So I know that I know that john Quincy was the first president to be inaugurated in long pants instead of breaches. So that kind of indicates that men’s fashion was really in a transitional time, then was Louisa. Catherine also was women’s fashion changing as much at that time.

Laura R (Louisa Catherine Adams):
[16:04] It was very much so. And you know, Louisa had this challenge because so much of her life with john Quincy was feeling different diplomatic,
positions in the courts in europe of dressing appropriately for the rules of each court, which were very specific, but also maintaining john Quincy’s idea of her as a republican woman.
Um there’s one story about Queen Louise in Berlin giving Louisa present of rouge, which she thought was a very kind thing to give to Louisa,
and you know, luisa put it on for a party one night and they were about to leave and john Quincy was having none of it, sat her down on his knee and what wiped it off of her face.
Um so she had this difficulty, you know, especially once they got to Russia of, you know, living up to the Russian court, which was incredibly extravagant and doing it on the salary of an American diplomat, which was incredibly tight.
So there are also stories of her trying to rework her gowns to make you know, it appropriate to wear to court, but not buying something entirely new.
And all of this, as you say, is in a transitional period. I mean, the first portraits you see of her in the 1790s are in the very popular.

[17:10] Band from that period, but rapidly as she was traveling around Europe, the waistlines are going up, it’s getting increasingly influenced by, you know, the French revolution in this classical revival.
And by the time you get the state portraits of her there back to the 1820s.
And so the waistline is going down, the sleeves are getting bigger.
So it’s definitely an era when it’s a challenge to be a fashionable woman, because the silhouette is constantly changing and it’s not just frivolous, it’s for very political reasons, especially in europe.

Jake:
[17:40] Yeah, I’m more familiar with the papers of john Adams, the her father in law than with her papers or john Quincy’s.
But I know that in his time as a diplomat in europe, the expense of especially in France.
But the the expensive outfitting himself to be appropriate in court was,
a real concern that the first thing you do upon arriving in paris is called for the, the wig maker and I think the taylor was what he always said, but things didn’t come cheap.

Laura R (Louisa Catherine Adams):
[18:08] So many difficulties. I mean, also in Russia, there was one event at which luisa showed up wearing the same colors as the Jack Rogers Arena, which was clearly not to be done, and someone had not appropriately informed her ahead of time.
I mean, there were so many minefields just in your sartorial decisions.

Jake:
[18:24] These women are obviously such and they leave these long, complex, rich lives are very involved in politics.
And for the Adamses diplomacy, how do you portray such a long rich life in sort of the limited engagements you have with an audience?

Judith (Dolly Madison):
[18:42] It is tough an hour does give you enough time if you so choose to what I call telescope the life where you kind of start at one place and then kind of go backwards,
either heading to the point where you are at the start of the program or sort of offering a shift that provides an epilogue of what happens later in life.
But when I decided to tackle dolly, dolly lives very long life, she is the 1st 1st lady to be photographed.
Um And she’s approximately 80 wearing, you know, she was penniless at that point and wearing the only gown that she owned that was worth, you know, anything.
And I don’t feel yet as a, you know, I can say I’m nearly middle aged now um as an almost 40 year old woman.
I don’t think I can say that I can portray someone who is double my age with authenticity.
So I decided that I would embark upon her story from a time when she was my age, which is when she is escaping the white house.

[19:57] For me dolly is uh, she’s more flexible, it’s not a rigid script so I can kind of fluctuate from one period to the next based on the audience and what their interests are.
So I either portray her as the actual,
you know, attack is kind of taking place and she’s setting the table for dinner and then, you know, this thing happens and she’s sort of running away and giving the attempt with the audience as to what they’re going to do and how they’re going to find the president.
Because at that point she is not with James and she doesn’t want to leave the executive mansion until he returns, but they are at war and he is not returning.
But then sometimes I choose to bring a more calm tone to the program by portraying her after they’ve left Washington city and they’ve moved back to James Madison’s family estate, which is Montpelier in Virginia.
And that gives her the opportunity to reflect and also to sort of project onto the future.
And I do like that because although it might not be as dramatic, it’s super conversational and very intimate.

Leslie (Jackie Kennedy):
[21:02] It’s so funny that you say, you know the same age when I started doing Jackie Kennedy, I was right around my mid thirties when, um, which is the era.
I portray her in 1964 as she is deciding what to do next. And of course she is perpetually 34 I keep getting older every year.
But, but I keep it at that age because I find that you’re really fascinating for Jackie because she has to decide where is she going to live?
Because she had, you know, what, what do you do? They sold their house in Georgetown and do they move away and she made the choice to move to new york? So I, I put it where she’s trying to make this decision, which is a good excuse to look back over your life.
But I think it also lets me talk about how she wants to live the rest of her life, which is to not be looking back constantly at,
the assassination, but to be looking forward and to be taking care of her Children.

[21:59] But what’s really fascinating to me about, about all of it is that it’s um, it’s an opening for the audience to, you know, it’s a way that they can talk about the assassination.
But I can also kind of set the scene as, as Jackie as a kind of inspirational figure, which I think all of these first ladies,
in their own way, there’s a really inspirational element to them and there’s a real sense of each found a way to be her own woman whether happily or not, But my thought is,
I can’t cover every little detail about her life and that’s not really um what theater performances, theatrical performances do.
But what I hope I can do is maybe give a sense of who she was and maybe maybe like light a spark, get people interested in reading more.
I’m sure this will speak to you know, librarians, but the hoping, you know, maybe someone’s gonna want to go and read a biography or find out more and you know, someone said working in a museum is like you’re there to light a candle,
and you hope you’ll get the flame going and then,
maybe that’s not a good analogy, but but you are kind of spark, sparking interest.
Right. Right, laura keys.

Laura K (Mary Todd Lincoln):
[23:14] Yes, yes, indeed. Um like uh Judith mentioned my presentations as mary Lincoln are are set in different times.
Um I actually, I write scripts for my presentations currently I actually have five different uh programs as mary Lincoln.
The one that I’m highlighting for First Ladies forum is, is called mary Lincoln and Love,
And it is set on January 31 in 1862,
And I have said it very specifically in late January of 1862 because that’s the last weeks that she’s ever happy.
Um a couple of weeks later her son Willie dies, which there’s a lot of evidence that that was her favorite son,
and a few years after that when she is just just starting the emotional process of putting her son’s death,
um behind her and and looking onto a positive future with her husband, her husband is shot,
and she is never happy again.

[24:30] And so that’s why I set that there And uh I made, I made a conscious effort of that.
I, I actually have an entire presentation set in 1847, long before she even visits the white house and it’s, it’s not one that’s very popular.
I’ll admit, as you mentioned earlier, jake a lot of people think of mary Lincoln while in the White House, but I wrote it just the same.
I researched and wrote it just the same so that people could see that she was, she had a whole life before she even went to the White House.

Jake:
[25:07] I have a much more clear picture of Jackie Kennedy during sort of the post presidency years, because I was alive during a good portion of her life, and she was on the front pages of tabloids throughout that portion of her life in ways that weren’t always positive.
What do people know or think they know about her?

Laura K (Mary Todd Lincoln):
[25:25] Oh they think she was immediately committed to an insane asylum. They think she died in an asylum asylum.
They think that she went crazy and her poor beleaguered son had to deal with that.
Some combination of of those statements.

Jake:
[25:43] For some reason, I have the impression of her as having been involved in spiritualism and visiting mediums is that.

Laura K (Mary Todd Lincoln):
[25:50] That is accurate. That is accurate. She did visit um mediums actually while she was in the White House.
It was, she started that after her son Willie died.
Um which a lot of people forget was actually pretty popular. She was she was not um uh the the odd outlier of of interest in this subject.
It was relatively popular at that time. Um for many different reasons.
The first and foremost was the America was dealing with an unprecedented number of deaths um from disease and war.
And the humans that are left over have to have an explanation of these deaths.
Some humans turned to religion and some humans turned to spiritualism which for a lot of people was convinced um continuous with religion.
It was not one or the other. It was it was another form of religion.

[26:55] And so uh she she did host at least two sciences while she was residing in the Executive Mansion as she called it during her time.
And um and I know that she at least visited mediums after she left the executive Mansion.
She was desperately trying to make sense of all of the loss in her life again. She she not only lost her son and husband while she was in the executive Mansion.
She lost um half brothers and brothers in law and plenty of other friends.

Jake:
[27:33] It’s a lot of loss.

Laura K (Mary Todd Lincoln):
[27:33] Uh a lot of loss.

Jake:
[27:36] I’ll leave the listeners with the teaser that we’ll talk a little bit more about spiritualism and it’s very well accepted place in american life into the 1920s and 30s in in a few weeks on the podcast as well.

Judith (Dolly Madison):
[27:49] Hmm, interesting. I’m so intrigued because I am hearing laura speak about this for the first time and I was not as aware,
of the connection to the sort of spiritualism in the Lincoln household or at least with mary.
And I think it’s very also similar parallel.
Dali has this religious transformation as well.
Uh Dolly is born a Quaker and her father is so determined to be accepted by the society of the friends that he up and moves their family from Virginia,
and move some to philadelphia with his starch business and releases all of his enslaved peoples because it was mandatory that you monument or emancipate your enslaved peoples by the Quakers.
But he immediately discovers that his company is not fiscally feasible without enslaved labor.

[28:58] So he loses the company and he goes bankrupt.
And the society, the friends immediately vote him out because he’s bankrupt and in debt and you must man umit your slaves, but you must not be in debt. That is the rule.
And it’s a harsh and stark reality for the uh for the, you know, Dolly Payne taught at that point, Dolly Payne was her um name.
And so it was a really, really stark realization and her father fell into this horrific depression and didn’t leave his room for years.

[29:40] And the Dollies mother was forced to run the household and support the family on her own and opened a boarding house in the, in the wing of the family’s home.
But it really turned dolly off to the Quakers and she speaks in her letters of,
you know how certain situations where she’s put in a bad place, where she feels like she’s being um,
chastised, reminds her of when the,
Quaker headmistress at her school would just be constantly at her because she would daydream and we get bored, you know, as many precocious students do, they’re almost too smart for their own good.
And she kind of, this wandering mind. She was a bit of a, you know, a rebel in multiple ways in terms of what she, you know, who she envisioned herself to be.
And the Quaker image, it didn’t fit her, it didn’t fit her at all. And she really felt a lot of animosity from the Quaker educators that she had.
And so when she married um john Todd, he was part of the Quaker society, but when he passed away, she made a very conscious decision when she married James Madison, he was anglican and she was going to have to leave the faith.

[30:54] And not only was her father voted out, but she was literally shunned uh and the only time she saw these Quaker folks again was when she went back to philadelphia because she had an ulcer serous Nishi had a tumor.
That was really horrific, that she almost lost her leg.

[31:11] And so James sent her down to philadelphia with dr physic who leeched her and lead her and did all horrific things and the,
Quakers came to visit her again, her old friends from that, that community and she said, you know, she didn’t really want to see them. It was kind of brought back.

Jake:
[31:27] Washed their hands of it at that point, almost.

Judith (Dolly Madison):
[31:29] She yeah, she was having anxiety attacks when she saw them again and it’s very interesting to read her writings about that.

Jake:
[31:38] Well, Laura Rockland, I know. We talked a little bit about Louisa Catherine, but we didn’t talk about the avenue you take into her life for the the era you portray in her life.

Laura R (Louisa Catherine Adams):
[31:47] Yes, so, I mean she’s fascinating and I think, you know, Laura and Judith have both brought up things that I could expand upon, had me more time.
But what I try to do with all of my programs is find a moment in the life of the woman when they have to make a life changing decision.
But I also do try to to find a time in their life when I can conceivably play them so somewhat close to my own age.
So for Louisa, we meet her the morning of john Quincy’s inauguration.
And historically we know that Louisa does not attend the inauguration.
Um We know the excuses that she has a headache and she had been unwell the night before, but there has been much speculation about what caused that decision.
And so for me, the impetus into the program is for her to look back over her life with john Quincy and say in this moment,
am I going to stand beside him or if it’s it seems that she’s being told she cannot stand beside him but must stand behind him. Is she willing to do that?

[32:46] So because you know, her role changes dramatically all during his campaign.
She is front and center and she is throwing the balls, you know, for Andrew Jackson, that won them so much acclaim and notice she’s, you know, entertaining rapidly and doing all these wonderful things.
And then the minute he becomes president, essentially, he and his advisers say to her, your job is done your job now is to stay out of the limelight.
Um and this does not go down very well with Louisa.
However, she does begin when she’s in the White House writing her memoirs, which are fascinating.
But so my program does go from her childhood in England and France through their diplomatic missions and takes her up to that day in 1825.

Laura K (Mary Todd Lincoln):
[33:26] Mary Lincoln did um encounter a lot of the same situation that Louisa Catherine Adams did.
Um mary Lincoln was also very well educated for her uh for the time and place where she grew up.
Um mary Lincoln spoke french um mary Lincoln was a very accomplished hostess.
She uh she enjoyed uh and she was good at uh receiving many of the um newspaper reporters who were suddenly learning about this Illinois lawyer,
Abraham Lincoln as soon as he was nominated by the Republican Party.
Um and and she was complemented at that.
And not only that throughout the 18 years of Abraham and Mary’s uh marriage, we know that mary was.

[34:25] Part of his political conversation,
it’s unknown exactly to what extent she helped him.
Some scholars would argue that she wrote his speeches for him, other scholars would argue, Well, she was just a sounding board.
I’m certain the truth is somewhere between those two statements.
But the point is, Abraham saw her as one that he could have deep political discourses and conversations with.
And that’s the important point. That’s what Abraham saw her as.
And that’s what she she was used to a marriage of pretty close to equals.
And as soon as he entered the executive mansion and started his administration, he no longer sought her opinion.
Um He had plenty of of advisers and cabinet members around him to give opinions and absolutely no one wanted her to even share her opinion, no one asked her for it and she was told not to share it.
That was a huge change and one that she was very much not prepared for.

Jake:
[35:36] You have a sense of how she adjusted or how she reacted to that.

Laura K (Mary Todd Lincoln):
[35:40] She didn’t always react well. Um she battled um frustration and uh and a depression of sorts because she was not accepted.
She was, she’s not really accepted many places in um Washington city society.
She was not accepted into these discussions by all the men, of course, all the men who made all of the laws and decisions.
She was not accepted into those societies and she was not accepted into all of the circles of society, of all the ladies, um the wives and and hostesses of all of these aforementioned men.
She was not accepted into all of those circles because she was seen as um pushy or just uncouth. She was from that crazy wild new state of Illinois.
They’re all rude and and you know, backwards farmers out there and there was, there was a lot of that prejudice going on.
Um and so you know, she, the people that she did meet um did not always were not always true friends and she just had a very hard time.

Jake:
[36:54] It must be very difficult to suddenly go from being seen as an equal to this great political mind, to not having a seat at the table with the famous team of rivals, as Doris kearns, Goodwin would have said.

Leslie (Jackie Kennedy):
[37:07] What’s really, really cool and and Jake, I think what you just touched on is it doing these programs these women are so different in so many ways.
They’re different in the time period. They’re different in their marriages, their relationship with their presidential spouse, but there’s an immediate connection to today, right?
I mean we we have the first lady right now. We have had first ladies all our lives. We we know a little bit about what that job entails.
So it is this kind of way that that audiences can get into it and and what’s really neat about,
I think what we’re doing here, the First lady’s forum, we’re offering this series of four virtual programs with these four very different women.

[37:53] And yet all of them have to negotiate the same job, right?
It’s this very nebulous position. There’s no, I always say there’s no job description for first lady, it’s not mentioned in the constitution, there’s no pay.
You have a whole lot of influenced with, you know, the President of the United States, um well more or less, I guess we could say.
But um but but how how do these different women negotiate this position and and make it their own because they all make it their own in completely different ways.
And like you were talking about in terms of how they’re used in the elections, it’s really, really different and their their their usefulness to their husbands was really, really different.
So I think once we start as we’re doing here today. Once we start putting them side by side,
there’s these fascinating parallels that start coming up and we’ve already touched on them right with fashion,
and with negotiating the role of where do you stand once the presidency begins because your relationship with your husband changes when he’s president?
It’s I find it fascinating.

Jake:
[39:05] Is there any way to Glean insight about just the changing role of women in American Society? We have first ladies in this group from the turn of the 19th century through the swinging 60s.

Laura R (Louisa Catherine Adams):
[39:18] I think there is and about how they’re accepted being involved in politics as well.
I mean for lee Louisa, one of the biggest sort of whiplash moments was that in europe, she is the wife, you know, was central to the court because court life included the wives of the diplomats and the politicians and the Royals,
whereas in America, I mean Jefferson famously said there would have been no revolution in France had there been no queen.
So in America, the idea of women being involved in politics was very much frowned upon.
Um but I think that as we look at these four women, that does change and even for America in the 1st 20 years of the 19th century dollies, administration and Louisa’s are wildly different.
Um So it does sort of show the way different time periods view women’s involvement in politics.

Judith (Dolly Madison):
[40:08] What’s really compelling to me about how dolly immerses herself in the world of politics.
She inserts herself in such a way that,
she can’t be offensive to the men because she is still on a public,
forum only presenting herself as the genteel hostess who organizes parties and collects recipes from her husband’s.

[40:38] Frenemies.
Let’s call them their their soon to be allies, but they haven’t become allies yet. Their foes still politically.
And she’ll go to their their wives and she’ll ask the wife of a frenemy of James for their favorite recipe and then compiles them into a book which he binds and distributes amongst all of the ladies of Washington city.
You know, in some say this is one of the first cookbooks.
So she is quintessentially effeminate, but at the same time she’ll take a parade,
of women into the capital while Congress is in session and she’ll have them sit in the balcony because she immediately recognizes the men, the congressman treat each other horrifically.
Which of course we see as years go on. Right, Clay is, you know, beating Sumner later on and almost to death.
So people think that the situation in congress today,
is uncivil and people were literally dying on Congress floor,
and she sees that there’s this horrific manner of speaking to one another,
obscenity laced speeches and she brings this group of women sits them in the gallery and immediately these men start behaving themselves and acting like gentlemen.
And she realizes that they’re sort of feminine prowess is the the key to making bipartisanship a reality.

Jake:
[42:04] I’ll just put in a huge plug for anybody who wants to hear more about sort of the day to day violence in the halls of Congress for Joanne Freeman’s book, Field of Blood. Really great treatment of that.
I’d like to build on something Leslie sediment and ago about how the first person portrayal lets audiences connect to the present day.
What is it about this kind of historical interpretation that allows people to make the connections to their own lives more so than reading about it in a book or watching a documentary?

Laura K (Mary Todd Lincoln):
[42:34] I think a way to answer that is actually to go off with some something that Leslie said earlier, It’s an emotional connection.
Even talking about um a figure like uh Louisa Catherine Adams or dolly Madison who do not have um you know that there is no one in living memory today who has a memory of those two women.
However, there is still an emotional connection because um Laura Rockland and Judith tell Laura,
portray their stories, portray those women with such uh an emotional um not just emotional acting.
It’s it’s more than that. They’re showing that those women have the same emotions as women do today, as humans do today.
And I think that um Leslie and I do the same things.
It’s it’s the emotional connection which for so many people is a good way to to spark the interest in that subject in history.

Jake:
[43:38] That speaks to the power of historic sites and why people visit historic homes and battlefields and anything else.
Because when you walk in the sunken lane and at Antietam or the old house at peace field or you know, any of these iconic american sites, you can really put yourself into the footsteps of the people who walked there before. At least I can. I love going to historic sites.

Laura R (Louisa Catherine Adams):
[43:59] You know, one of the most interesting things during research for Louisa was visiting the church in London where she and John Quincy were married, which is on the same foundation that’s been on since 675, definitely puts history into perspective.

Jake:
[44:07] That’s amazing.

[44:11] John Quincy’s diary entry from his wedding days.
So low key, so like blase, went to cousin so and so’s house and then to the church. At which point I was married to Louisa Catherine and then back to whoever’s house. I think our father’s house for lunch.

Laura R (Louisa Catherine Adams):
[44:28] And visiting that church. Having read that diary entry and Louisa’s diary entry.
I mean, it was such an emotional experience because you walked down the hill from where Louisa’s house was, and imagine her doing this on this sunny july morning.
It’s this tiny little brick church completely dwarfed by the tower of London and imagining this young girl who’s marrying this man who she later writes about saying, you know, I was well aware that I was not in love.
Um but he’s a diplomat, he’s a good match. Her father has always put pressure on her to marry an american because he’s a proud american patriot. She’s doing her duty.
But just imagining knowing history as well as Louisa did. And just walking to this church and staring tower of London is an emotional gut punch.

Jake:
[45:12] Must have been just looking at the clock. I know I’ve kept you guys here longer than I said I would necessarily. So what’s next for the First Lady’s Forum?

Laura K (Mary Todd Lincoln):
[45:25] Oh goodness. I think, I think we’re still working on what’s first for the First lady’s Forum,
we’re taking the time to seek out connections to some specific venues, which we think would really enjoy the programs that we have to offer.
And um, we’re happy to have conversations with any other venues of any size that would be interested in the virtual programs that we have to offer.

Jake:
[45:52] So for a venue or a group or an event who wants to have a visit from some first ladies, how should they reach out and make that happen?

Judith (Dolly Madison):
[46:03] So we are only at this point doing virtual programming, uh, and they will reach us through one streamlined site.
Uh Social media is definitely the fastest way to reach us on our social media handle is at first Ladies Forum.
Important thing to note is first is one S.
T Ladies forum and that’s on twitter, instagram facebook, you name it our website, Historic voices dot info.
There is a tab that will get you to First Ladies forum directly on there.
Email First ladies forum at gmail dot com.
The kicker is that is spelled out First Ladies Forum.
Um but you can also call 6177522859.

Jake:
[46:53] I just want to say thank you very much to all four of you for joining me today, sharing your insight on these fascinating women and how you approach their lives.

Leslie (Jackie Kennedy):
[47:02] Thanks for having us, it’s fascinating.

Judith (Dolly Madison):
[47:04] Thank you, Jake. I appreciate your time.

Jake:
[47:07] Well, that’s about all for this week. Be sure to check out this week’s show notes at hubhistory.com/243.
We’ll have links to the website and social media for the First Lady’s forum as well as a brief video giving a sneak peek of their work.
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Jake:
[48:16] Apple podcasts is still how most people listen to the show.
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Jake:
[48:31] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there listeners.