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Editor’s Note: This year marks the Bicentennial, 2024-2025, of Lafayette and his farewell tour, “Guest of the Nation”, which took place August 15, 1824-September 7, 1825. To commemorate the occasion, the LaGrange Daily News will be publishing a series of columns by Richard Ingram, a longtime resident of LaGrange and Chair of Friends of Lafayette.

Week of December 23, 1824

Of the many very talented artists to paint Lafayette’s portrait, his own personal favorite was the full length, life-size portrait by Dutch artist Ary Scheffer.  Known for creating visual versions of the works of Dante, Goethe, and Lord Byron, Sheffer was commissioned in 1819 to paint Lafayette; according to John Becica in “Trail Tales,” the details of the origins of the commission are unknown.  Lafayette likely sat for the portrait at Chateau LaGrange-Bleneau, when Lafayette was 62, Scheffer 24.  Lafayette in the painting stands facing a moor to his right; earthy tones, dusky clouds; knee length wool coat; cane and top hat in right hand; and, I argue, a bow tie as opposed to a cravat, which any self-respecting magnifying glass will confirm.  Lafayette had Jean-Marie Laroux make engravings of the portrait, which Lafayette distributed liberally on the Farewell Tour.  Scheffer made two copies of his original in 1822-1823, one of which went to Chateau-LaGrange.  Scheffer kept the original.  The third, however, he gifted to the United States.  It was transported across the Atlantic aboard the “Cadmus,” the same packet ship which brought Lafayette to America for the Farewell Tour and captained by the very same Captain Allyn.  The letter by Scheffer, dated October 17, 1824, deeding the painting, was read in the House of Representatives December 23, 1824.  The painting was displayed in the Capitol Rotunda on January 18, 1825; when the present chamber opened for the House in 1857, Scheffer’s portrait was hung stage left, house right of the rostrum, where it presides today.  The year Lafayette died, 1834, John Vanderlyn was commissioned to paint a life-size portrait of George Washington, Lafayette’s friend and mentor.  This hangs stage right, house left of the rostrum.

The Farewell Tour, says scholar Marc Miller, was a “creative watershed” for America, its first.  The pageantry and commemorative events were infused by an outpouring of paintings and sculpture.  Ary Scheffer’s painting of Lafayette was a highlight.

Christmas was a difficult time for Lafayette.  His wife of thirty-four years died at 11:45 P.M., December 24, 1807, age forty-eight.  It was an arranged marriage; he was sixteen and she fourteen.  They had four children:  Henriette, Anastasie, George, and Virginnie.  Henriette died before the age of two in 1777 while her father was recovering from a leg wound suffered at the Battle of Brandywine.  Adrienne sent her male child off to Mount Vernon for safe keeping during the Reign of Terror; meanwhile, she with the two girls in tow, convinced Emperor Francis II of Austria to permit the three of them to join Lafayette in prison at Olmutz, a stay that lasted two years.  Her health deteriorated; she refused an offer to go to Vienna to see the finest physicians in the world on condition she not return to Olmutz.  Her health never really recovered.  Still, she was the one who managed to walk the streets of Paris, one ministry to the next in the effort to retrieve ownership of Chateau LaGrange-Bleneau which the state confiscated, and to have Lafayette’s name removed from the émigré roster.  She handled their financial affairs, gave her husband his monthly allowance of forty-eight francs.  She suffered fevers, headaches, swelling, skin abscesses, seizures, and hallucinations, which neither leech nor laudanum could remedy.  Over three months she was given eight prescriptions of a liquid which contained lead.  Not until the late 1800’s was lead toxicity described.  Dr. June K. Burton, University of Akron, with a Ph.D. in history from University of Georgia, suspects Adrienne died of lead toxicity.  It was not the proximate cause of her declining health, but it certainly did not have any restorative effect.  Adrienne’s last words to Lafayette, “I am all yours,” were inscribed in a gold locket he wore around his neck.  He never remarried.

Busy month, the remainder of December.  Dinner with the Russian envoy Christmas Eve.  Visit to Baltimore, where he stayed at the Fountain Inn, dined with Colonel John E. Howard, member of the Continental Congress and former governor of the state of Maryland; brought a sick child, details entirely unknown, to Baltimore’s medical center; visited Baltimore’s Alms House; and attended Dancing Assembly in the evening.  On to Frederick for a couple days before returning to Washington.