#thank you for dedicating your heart mr mercer

[chaotic-on-main]

to say I am unwell is an understatement

[sonofhistory]

James Monroe’s Misadventures with Women.

In perfect honesty, James Monroe was not a quote “ladies man”. Monroe’s views on women’s rights and education (which I wrote here) heavily influenced his relationship with women as well as his inclination to obtain female friends rather than anything further. Another reason for Monroe not having any serious “relationships” with women before his marriage to Elizabeth Kortright was his complete shyness and reserve around them. 

In regards to Monroe’s time in college, it was rather tame. Besides the occasionally tavern visits with James Innes (of whom he looked up to), Monroe, receiving this rare opportunity on a scholarship to formally education himself took it up with every form of dedication. During his time at the College of William and Mary, besides becoming submerged by his studies, was also caught in the political fervor of Williamsburg in 1775. There is no documentation of Monroe having any sort of relationships with women during the year and a half he was in college before dropping out to enlist in the 3rd Virginia regiment. 

Vividly, Monroe could recall the night of December 25th, 1776 in which George Washington’s army crossing the Delaware river into Trenton. Sent on an early scouting mission across the water due to a depressing depletion of their regimental numbers (one third were ill), Monroe and his regiment, of which he was in second command under William Washington, crossed the river first. By the morning of the 26th, Monroe was the second soldier to go down after a musket ball was fired through his shoulder a few inches above his heart and he nearly perished if not for the work of Dr. Riker who clamped the wound after Monroe passed out due to blood loss. This eighteen year old was soon passed onto the care of Henry Wyncoop’s family of whom cared for him in his ten weeks of recovery. 

It was at the Wyncoop family that Monroe possibly experienced his first real “crush” (as is documented). There is a family legend, still passed on today from the 18th century that while James Monroe was staying at the house of Henry Wyncoop, he fell in love with Wyncoop’s eldest daughter Christine Wyncoop. Christine would of been the closest in contact with Monroe who remained in bed recovering from his wound. However, because Christine was already engaged to another man, she did not return Monroe’s affections. Even as late at 1823, Monroe sent a letter to the Wyncoop family to thank them for their dedication to his heath of which ultimately saved him from infection. 

There is a false tale, which led to speculation during the 1920s and the involvement of Monroe’s great-granddaughter to quiet the untrue claims. The story goes that after Monroe got shot at the Battle of Trenton, he was brought to the home of Lord Stirling first (untrue, Monroe even says in his autobiography he stayed in one home for one night and then the Wyncoop’s for nine weeks). At the home, Monroe met and fell in love with a Ms. Nannie Brown, an orphaned niece of the Brockholst family. While Nannie nursed Monroe back to health, she shared his affections and when he recovered, he proposed to which she accepted. Unfortunately, her Brockholst relatives disapproved and so did Lord Stirling’s family as they insisted he was not as known as they wanted for her (little did they know he was to be president of the United States one day). Stirling thought Monroe only wanted to marry Nannie because of her family connections. 

After Nannie and Monroe protested that their love was true, Lord Stirling promoted Monroe to captain (this actually happened via George Washington, hence more reason why the anecdote is just a legend) and turned him into his aide de camp. Plans for a wedding proceeded as much as shortages in money would allow. Monroe supposedly presented his wife to be with a gold engagement band that read “consent is content”. He also gave her a locket with his silhouette engraved into it. However, the day of the wedding Monroe sent her a letter stopping the marriage and their engagement. This anecdote, though fun, is untrue considering the timing and facts are completely in correct. Monroe even was in good connections with Stirling until his death which adds more to the falsification of the story. (I’d like to also add that Alexander Hamilton’s son-in law, the one who published the story four generations later, harrassed Monroe’s great granddaughter over it). 

While an aide to Lord Stirling, Monroe came into contact with most all of the generals. His lifelong best friend and roommate in college, John F. Mercer, served as Charles Lee’s aide de camp while in result caused Monroe to be in Lee’s company often. Their first meeting occurred sometime in the month of April 1778. Lee sensed great abilities behind Monroe’s shy exterior and encouraged him to display more self confidence. “I have always asserted that you [would] appear one of the first characters of this Country, if your shyness did not prevent you display of your knowledge and talents you posses,” Lee wrote to him. Another time, Lee wrote to the nineteen year old, “I am extremely concerned that fortune has been so unkind as not to admit of your cultivating the talents which nature has bestowed on you to a greater advantage than your present situation seems to promise.” At Monroe’s thought of studying law when his military career was at its closing, Lee responded that law was “a most horrid narrower of the mind.” Lee also encouraged Monroe to overcame his “mauvaise honte” (French for bashfulness) which he felt was preventing him from establishing himself. 

In the late summer James Monroe accompanied Stirling to Elizabethtown, a site chosen for the brigade headquarters. Monroe, at the residence of Mrs. Theodosia Prevost (later Mrs. Burr) felt at home. Although it was technically illegal for the wife of a British citizen to remain behind the American lines, Monroe and other friends used their influence to prevent her evacuation. The thirty-five-year-old Theodosia was a center of a fascinating and lively social group that included Aaron Burr. Her intellectual interests, her knowledge and freedom of conversation grew her a group of admirers, including Major Monroe himself. 

While at the Hermitage (home of Theodosia), Monroe fell in love for the first time and indulged in a sentimental affaire de coeur with one of the young ladies he met at Mrs. Prevost’s. Of this attachment and its complexities, he confided with Theodosia in half-serious and half-humorous lines:

“A young lady who either is, or pretends to be, in love, is as you know, my dear Mrs. Prevost, the most unreasonable creature in existence. If you looks a smile or a frown, which does not immediately give or deprive you of happiness (at least to appearance), your company soon becomes very insipid. Each feature has its beauty, and each attitude the graces, or you have no judgement. But if you are so stupidly insensible of her charms as to deprive your tongue and your eyes of ever expressing of admiration, and not only to be silent in respecting her, but devote them to an absent object, she cannot receive a higher insult; now would she, if not restrained by politeness refrain from open resentment.”

The young lady in question remains unknown to this day and her name was not marked down in any place. The woman of Monroe’s affection had objected to his intention of completing his studies in France. When Monroe had seen her at Basking Ridge he had attempted to convince her that it was unreasonable that he should go abroad to complete his studies by reminding her of the fortitude Mrs. Prevost was displaying during the long separation from her husband. This had touched the young lady deeply and Monroe begged Theodosia to forgive him for speaking so freely of her difficulties:

“I hope you will forgive me, my dear little friend, if I produced you to give life to the image. The instance, she owned, was application. She felt for you from the heart, and she had a heart capable of feeling. She wished not a misfortune similar to yours; but, if I was resolved to make it so, she would strive to imitate your example. I have no permission to go where I please but you must not forget her . . . Encourage her, and represent the advantage I shall gain from travel. But why would I desire you to do what I know your own heart will dictate? For a heart so capable of friendship feels its own pain alleviated by alleviated that of others.”

The young man also wrote that he was upset of how quickly some were prone to lose interest and asked Theodosia if they could talk about it on his upcoming visit. If there was any type of romance between Monroe and the young lady, as evident, it fizzled out by the time Monroe resigned from Stirling’s staff on December 20th, 1778. 

Besides casual flirtations, Monroe did not establish any real courtships until he met his future wife, Elizabeth Kortright in August of 1785 when he was twenty-seven years old. At a formal ball of which George Washington attended on an occasion, one lady apparently got a “touch” of James Monroe (meaning they got a dance). His flirtations during his time as a congressman gave rise to rumors he was in more serious attachments. June of 1784, Monroe, on congressional interlude took the chance to company Native American commissioners bound for Fort Schuyler in New York. He sailed from New York with the commissioners on a sloop. Catherine “Kitty” Livingston was also there, and so was several other ladies bound for Albany for the summer. Monroe sought to be agreeable to them and reactions ranged from amusement to mild infatuation. Aboard the ship, Monroe also found another woman of which he became interested in. They all enjoyed his company expect for Miss Sarah Vaughan who made comments on him on her return home:

“Poor Col[onel] Monroe! The man is in despair he had written a letter to Gen[eral] Gates telling him that he had lost his heart aboard the Albany sloop, and fills the sheet with a panegyric upon his fair one. I fear his love did not meet with a return, but we were blind and not acquainted with one half of his perfections of person or mind, they were sumed up to me this day and amounted to eight which includes every perfection that a female can wish or a man envy. He is a member of Congress, rich, young, sensible, well read, lively, and handsome. I forgot the other accompaniments, and will not subscribe to the last unless you prove the dimple on his chin to be what constitutes beauty, and I have a doubt about the sixth unless it is agreed that affording [a] subject of gaiety and liveliness to the company you are in, is the same thing as being gay and lively yourself. If you are the goddess at whose shrine he worships inform me of it that I may think higher of his perfection. His being your choice will have great influence upon me, and stop me when I might be saucily inclined, for at present he is more the object of my diversion than admiration.”

Apparently Monroe still was unable to shake off his mauvairse honte that Charles Lee once chided him for. In asking his uncle Joseph Jones for advice in his uncertainty of his attachment to women, Jones said a woman should have “sensibility and kindness of heart--good nature without levity--a modest share of good sense with some portions of domestic experience and economy will generally if united in the female character produce that happiness to be that of the domestic circle; only then did a man acquire a sense of security and stability not to be obtained elsewhere”. In this letter, Monroe also confided his difficulty in becoming attached to women due to a lack of attraction of pure interest. 

Elizabeth Kortright and her sisters in New York made, one night, "made so brilliant and lovely an appearance” at the theater one evening, “as you depopulate all the other boxes of all the genteel male people therein.” It was upon this stage in the early August of 1785 that Monroe met Elizabeth Kortright, his future wife and partner of whom Monroe in his seventies stated had been “the partner of all the toils and cares to which he has since been exposed in his public trusts abroad and at home. When the nature of these is considered, and the duties of a family devoted to the honor and interest of the country and bound to cherish economy, it will readily be conceived that her burdens and cares must have been great. It is a remark, which it would unpardonable to withhold, that it was improbable for any female to have fulfilled all the duties of the partner of such care, and of a wife and parent, with more attention, delicacy and propriety than she has done.”

Interested in more? Read what I wrote on the Life of Elizabeth Monroe 1768-1785

[roseisread]

VINYL VIBES: Blossom Dearie Sings Rootin’ Songs 

Cold weather is great for digging through the crates of vinyl that have been acquired over the last few months and giving those records a proper, dedicated listen. So today, I bring you a random selection from my collection: Blossom Dearie Sings Rootin’ Songs, which was recorded in 1963 in a partnership with Hires Root Beer. 

For the uninitiated, Blossom Dearie was a jazz singer and pianist with a distinctively sweet, breezy vocal style that evoked a youthful innocence and playful spirit. A modern comparison might be made to Zooey Deschanel’s vocal delivery in She & Him, although personally I think Blossom did it better. If you’ve only heard one Dearie song, it’s probably “A Doodlin’ Song” which has been used in a few commercials. However, she’s much more than a novelty act, and her final recording before she died was dedicated to 9/11 victims and survivors, titled “It’s Alright To Be Afraid.” My personal favorite Blossom Dearie tune is in my top ten songs of all time, “I Like You, You’re Nice,” which would have fit nicely on the soundtrack of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunset.  So on to the album at hand. Up to this point, Blossom Dearie had recorded exclusively for Verve, a jazz label, and was known primarily as a jazz singer. This album saw her crossing over into the pop realm, and covering the big hits of the day. It’s very up tempo and one could imagine hearing it in the background of a Mad Men episode. Just the opening bossa nova shuffle of “Days of Wine and Roses” makes me want to summon the nearest bartender to whip me up Tom Collins or San Martin.  Track 2, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” was ten years old by the time Blossom got around to recording her version, but it had been a hit the year before thanks to one Mr. Tony Bennett. It’s hard to touch Tony’s signature song, but I do love the subtle vibrato and unique phrasing of Blossom’s take. Unfortunately for both Tony and Blossom, a human can never equal the wonders of a parrot named Pancho, who recorded his own version of this song and forever established that it belongs to him. I strongly urge you to give Pancho’s version a listen, because it will change your life. And yes, I do own his version on vinyl.  I wasn’t familiar with “I Wanna Be Around” before I gave this a spin, but I dig its shade-throwing vengeance vibes. “I wanna be around... when she breaks your heart to bits; that’s when I’ll discover that revenge is sweet when I sit there applaudin’ from a front row seat,” sings Blossom. Turns out this song was penned by a hairstylist from Ohio who sent it to Johnny Mercer and he retooled it for the likes of Tony Bennett and Brenda Lee. It apparently has an eternal appeal, as evidenced by Michael Buble including it on his latest album.  Next up we have “The Sweetest Sounds,” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella. It occurs to me that Blossom Dearie would’ve been an adorable Cinderella, though I don’t know if she ever tried her hand at acting.  Blossom infuses a real melancholy to her version of “The Good Life,” another Tony Bennett tune, with lines like “The good life lets you hide all the sadness you feel/You won’t really fall in love for you can’t take the chance.” The way she sings it, you can’t help but wonder if this song holds personal meaning for her.  I adore “Lazy Hazy Days of Summer” no matter who sings it. I’m personally partial to Nat King Cole’s rendition, which came out the same year as this album. Blossom gives it a lot of pep, and the imagery of a summer picnic with beer and bikinis really comes to life as you hear her voice cascading along over a lively piano accompaniment.  Side A summation: A fun throwback to the early 60s, with a tinge of Blossom’s dark side coming through on a couple tracks.  As we flip the record over, Side B starts with another bossa nova track, “Desafinado.” This tune mourns a love that has turned lukewarm, but holds out hope that there could be a chance for recovery yet. “We used to harmonize, two souls in perfect time/Now the song is different and the words don't even rhyme,” goes one of the saddest lines. For me, the musical accompaniment doesn’t quite match up to the mood of the lyrics; but I’d love to hear a version with just Blossom and her piano as she muses about this mellowing romance. The Stan Getz/Antonio Carlos Jobim version is probably the most famous, but I love Ella Fitzgerald’s take on it. “Our Day Will Come” was originally by Ruby & the Romantics, and if the title sounds familiar, Amy Winehouse recorded it as well (although her version wasn’t released til after she passed away--it’s an outtake from the Frank sessions, and ended up on her Lioness collection). There’s a little too much flute in this version for my liking... but I do love the sweetness and teenage lovestruck feeling of the lyrics, which Blossom translates very well with her vocals.

Blossom’s version of Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me To the Moon” is so unlike the original that I didn’t recognize it til the chorus. It’s slowed down and intimate, with the kind of yearning not even Ol’ Blue Eyes could capture. Here, it almost sounds like a torch ballad to an unrequited love. I’d say this is the highlight of the entire album, and if I were making a movie about forbidden love, I’d find a way to include this tune. Next up we have “I’ve Got Your Number,” a swinging tune that Tony Bennett also recorded (this could be a Bennett tribute album, as it turns out), which calls out a love interest in a knowing way with a bit of sass. “You ain’t no Eagle Scout,” she sings. “You brag a lot, but you’re unsure a lot, like me.” The sing-songy style of this tune reminds me of “Sixteen Going on Seventeen″ from The Sound of Music, which of course means I’m a fan. I can’t seem to find Blossom’s version on YouTube, but you should definitely give a listen to this awesome cover by Jill Sobule. The introspective, existential sadness of “What Kind of Fool Am I” could end up sounding cheesy and overwrought in the wrong hands, but Blossom keeps it real and raw as she sings lines like, “A lonely cell in which an empty heart must dwell“--I mean, this line on its own is akin to Winona Ryder’s proclamation in Beetlejuice that her “whole life is a dark room, a big, dark room.” And yet, Blossom brings depth and tenderness to this self-loathing ballad. Unfortunately this track is not available online, but for a very different yet equally gorgeous cover, be sure to look up Filipino singer Regine Velasquez. The album closes with “He Loves Me,” a track that rivals “I Will Possess Your Heart” and “Every Breath You Take” for Best Stalker Song. I mean, Mel from Flight of the Conchords should have this as her theme song. Just check out some of these lines: “He loves me/True he doesn’t show it--how could he when he doesn’t know it” and “My teeth ache from the urge to touch him...  it won’t be long now before my love discovers that he and I are lovers/Imagine how surprised he’s bound to be!” All the stalker vibes aside, I actually really love this song and Blossom sings it in such a non-creepy way that I’m willing to accept she is just in love and hoping her secret lover will realize how adorable she is any minute now. Also, this song just happens to originate from the Broadway musical of the same name, and that musical has its roots in the same source material that beget one of my favorite films, The Shop Around the Corner (as well as its modern-day counterpart You’ve Got Mail. So I think in that context, it’s actually a sweet sentiment rather than a bunny boiler. Side B summation: A couple duds but overall a more interesting and varied collection of tunes than side A, delving into some more psychologically fragile territory. So there you have it! Thanks to Hires Root Beer for making this album happen, and thanks to the Discogs Record Fair for helping me get my happy little hands on it at a bargain price.  What have you been listening to lately? Leave me a note with your recommendations.