With his favourite Chickasaw horses, Arcturus and
Wildair, the President rode two hours every day, Meriwether
often with him, directing the workmen on the new
Capitol, unfinished still amid stone and masonry tools.
Washington himself chose the site, within an amphitheatre of hills overlooking the lordly Potomac where he camped as a youth on Braddock's expedition. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, riding ever to and from Mount Vernon, Monticello, and Montpelier, discussed the plans and set the architects to work. Now it fell to Jefferson to carry on what Washington had so well begun.
Thomas Jefferson was a social man, and loved a throng about him. The vast and vacant halls of the White House would have been dreary but for the retinue of guests. Eleven servants had been brought from Monticello, and half-a-dozen from Paris,—Petit, the butler, M. Julien, the cook, a French chef, Noel, the kitchen boy, and Joseph Rapin, the steward. Every morning Rapin went to the Georgetown market, and Meriwether Lewis gave him his orders.
"For I need you, Meriwether, not only for the public, but as well for the private concerns of the household," said the President affectionately. "And I depend on you to assist in entertaining."
"At the head of the table, please," said the President, handing in Mrs. Madison. "I shall have to request you to act as mistress of the White House."
In his own youth Jefferson had cherished an affection for Dolly Madison's mother, the beautiful Mary Coles, so it became not difficult to place her daughter in the seat of honour.
There were old-style Virginia dinners, with the art of Paris, for ever after his foreign experience Jefferson insisted on training his own servants in the French fashion. At four they dined, and sat and talked till night, Congressmen, foreigners, and all sorts of people, with the ever-present cabinet.
James Madison, Secretary of State, was a small man, easy, dignified, and fond of conversation, with pale student face like a young theologian just out of the cloister.
