Note 70 — II SALONA AND THE MAFFITTS
Reading edition
Ibid., August 24, 1814. The portrait was started by Gilbert Stuart and completed by an artist named Winstanley. A footnote on p. 184 quoted from Laura Carter Holloway Langford, Ladies of the White House states:
Half a century later, when the White House was undergoing a renovation, this portrait was sent, with many others subsequently added to this solitary collection, to be cleaned and the frame burnished. The artist found on examination that the canvas had never been cut, since the rusted tacks, time-worn frame, and the size compared with the original picture, was the most conclusive evidence that Mrs. Madison did not cut it out with a carving knife, as many traditions have industrially circulated.
Matilda Lee Love was the daughter of Ludwell Lee of Belmont in Loudoun County, granddaughter of Richard Henry Lee, and niece of Harriotte Lee Turberville Maffitt. Her mother was Flora, sister of Matilda Lee. According to Mrs. Love's memoirs in the Lee Chronicle:
Mr. Madison was a relation of my stepmother, Mrs. Lee, and was always very civil to us, and we dined and stayed at the President's several times. My father never would go there, as he opposed the Madisons to the day of his death ... I inherited from my mother, who was very wealthy, a farm near the little Falls of the Potomac, where we were to reside, and which I named Rokeby, after Scott's poem of that name, as Matilda was the heiress of Rokeby.