Just finished reading: The Women of Chateau Lafayette
I read Becoming Madam Secretary earlier this year and was delighted when Stephanie Dray came to town recently as part of a Lafayette celebration. I learned about The Women of Chateau Lafayette during a fascinating panel discussion moderated by Kiersten Marcil.
This historical novel shares perspectives of three women who protected Chateau Lafayette, including Adrienne Lafayette and Beatrice Chanler, and I didn’t want it to end.
I gathered a collection of doodles this book brought to mind and I’m sharing them in no particular order.
It overlapped with another book I just read: Everything is Tuberculosis. Edgar Allan Poe, Franz Ferdinand, and tuberculosis were in both books.
The Lafayettes believed in human rights
Lafayette once said he “never would have drawn [his] sword in the cause of America” if he knew he was “founding a land of slavery.”
Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy, by Nathaniel Philbrick
His superfluous excellency
Benjamin Franklin came up quite a bit, which gave me an in to share this doodle. He suggested the VP should be addressed as “His Superfluous Excellency.” He was probably joking though. I think.
Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose, by Joe Biden
Neutrality: so delicate and loaded
I never thought about how complicated and loaded “neutrality” was before I read The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution, by Dr. Lindsay M. Chervinsky.
Flip through the rest of the doodles The Cabinet inspired.
La Belle Américaine
I patiently waited for Elizabeth Monroe to show up and rescue Adrienne de La Fayette from la guillotine.
The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation’s Call to Greatness, by Harlow Giles Unger
Theodore and the Spanish-American War
Since both were mentioned, I’m sharing this doodle of the self-proclaimed “damnest ass” who thought bribing the squadron with bottomless beer would improve their drills.
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, by Edmund Morris
I do not have a doodle of John Laurens
I thought I did. Turns out, it’s a doodle about Laurens Hamilton:
Laurens Hamilton was Alexander Hamilton’s grandson
At 23 years old, he drowned while escorting James Monroe’s body to be re-interred in Virginia
Nobody realized he’d fallen overboard until his body was found (everybody just thought he’d disembarked)
While I tried to find out if Laurens Hamilton was named after John Laurens, I kept stumbling on photos of the guy who plays The Hood in Ironheart. Anthony Ramos. You probably already know — he played both John Laurens and Philip Hamilton in Hamilton! I did not know. My kids were not impressed with this fact, so please… I’m hoping at least one person out there has a reaction to this. Also, no spoilers. We haven’t watched the last episode of Ironheart yet.
After a deep dive into Anthony Ramos, I did finally find out — yes. Laurens Hamilton was named after John Laurens. The namesake was one of John Church and Maria Eliza van den Heuvel Alexander’s fourteen kids.
If you want to see the doodles I collected after going to Hamilton, you can find them here.
Tea with mistresses
Advice that one’s husband’s mistress should “be the charming sort with whom a wife enjoys taking tea” made me think of how President Johnson let his mistress borrow Lady Bird’s nightgown and robe when she stayed at the White House once. And then Lady Bird breakfasted with her the next day and declared it “the most stimulating hour of the day” which she “simply loved.”
Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight, by Julia Sweig
Thomas Jefferson … big sigh
A sort of related quote sent me off to find this doodle. Jefferson believed French women “wrinkle their heads with politics” but American women “have the good sense to value domestic happiness above all other.”
The doodle above and the two below were inspired by American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, by Joseph J. Ellis
All clear! Nothing to see here!
Ambassador to France Jefferson wrote to John Jay that “the crisis now being over…”
The next day, it was clear he misread the situation.
Assembly of Notables
King Louis XVI gathered an Assembly of Notables to solve France’s problems. Despite being a delegate, Lafayette joked that they were “not able.”
Franco was mentioned
… in a way that seemed almost casual compared to this:
When Harry Met Pablo: Truman, Picasso, and the Cold War Politics of Modern Art, by Matthew Algeo; check out more doodles
John Jay, Sarah Livingston Jay, and Eleanor Roosevelt
They all came up, giving me the opportunity to include this family tree. (For variations of this family tree and/or an embarrassing confession, check out this post.)
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I didn’t want it to end