America's First Daughter: A Novel (46 page)

Alas, such was the quiet authority of the president that my boy took one look at his grandfather and gulped. “I—I wish to make you proud of me. If you think a university education is right, then I’ll go, but what about my sisters?”

My father removed his spectacles, leaning curiously forward. “Your mother is more qualified to educate your sisters than any other woman in America.”

The compliment made me flush, but Jeff shook his head. “I meant I’m worried to leave my sisters. When my father rages . . . if I’m not there, he might go after Ann or Ellen or—”

“Your father is a Virginia gentleman,” Papa broke in sharply, even more appalled than I was by my son’s fears. “He’d never raise a hand to a woman or a girl.”

That was mostly true—but not as true as my father hoped. And when I looked into my son’s gaze, I saw that Jeff knew it, too, though I didn’t know how. An anguished glance passed between my son and me while I beseeched him with my eyes to keep that secret.

Papa’s hand traced around one of the big spinning wheels. “It does you honor that you’re thinking of your sisters, Jeff. Some day, they’ll be in your care. Which is why you need to spend your youth well. So let’s ride down to the store and get what sundries you need to take to school.”

Jeff was my father’s namesake—the first of his grandsons to reach majority. It wouldn’t reflect well on Thomas Jefferson, or his legacy, to have a blockhead for a grandson. So we couldn’t refuse, even when we knew better.

In the carriage, I warned Jeff, “Philadelphia is a bustling place.”

“I’ve seen cities before,” my son protested, bristling with manly pride.

But, of course, he hadn’t seen cities.
Paris
was a city. Philadelphia was . . . less so. And I realized with a bittersweet pang that at Jeff’s age, I’d seen more of the world than my children were likely to. “Philadelphia will be busier than Charlottesville or Washington City. It won’t be anything you’re used to. Perhaps we can ask Mr. Short to look after you in Philadelphia,” I suggested, reassured to know William would be nearby. Turning to Papa, I said, “I’m sure he’ll take Jeff under his guidance.”

That’s when Papa surprised me by saying, “That won’t be possible. I’m sending Short to Europe on a diplomatic mission.”

I didn’t know if I should be delighted for William or unsettled at the thought of him leaving the country again—perhaps this time for good. We hadn’t seen one another in years, but there was some comfort in knowing he wasn’t an ocean away. “Where will you send Mr. Short?”

“First to France. Then to Russia,” Papa said. “Short will treat with the tsar on behalf of America.”

First to France, where William would, no doubt, be reunited with his duchess. He’d like that. This appointment would be the capstone on his career. And though it pained me to think I might never see him again, I smiled to imagine him charming the ladies of St. Petersburg.

It was, after all, a time for letting go. Letting go of Mr. Short, of my son Jeff, and of my daughter Ann, too, who had accepted a proposal of marriage from Charles Bankhead.

Papa insisted that the wedding be held at Monticello, where the airy design and eighteen-and-a-half-foot ceilings were sure to impress the guests. And on her wedding day, all dewy-eyed in anticipation, Ann asked, “Grandpapa’s house is so beautiful now, isn’t it?”

She
was beautiful. Of all my daughters, Ann was the most delicately rendered, with soft doe eyes and an adorable nose. Ellen’s face was sharper, but then everything about my nearly twelve-year-old second daughter was sharper.

Excited to serve as her sister’s attendant, Ellen declared, “Monticello’s new hall is the most beautiful room I was ever in, even including the drawing rooms in Washington City!”

Monticello had, indeed, come along grandly. The renovation had taken fourteen years; Papa would never be truly finished with it, for he was never finished improving anything. But there was now an excellent road up the mountain right to the house; the dining room grandly boasted Wedgwood ornamentation and dumbwaiters on either side of the fireplace; and while the landscaping was still dismal due to the mean little sheep who ate our orange trees, Monticello was otherwise quite a handsome place.

Before Ann’s wedding, Sally and I both gave birth to boys. Her new son was named after my father’s acquaintance Thomas Eston. Mine more grandly after Benjamin Franklin, my father’s old admired friend.

Dolley visited shortly after the birth. Cooing jealously over my infant as she scooped him from my arms, she said, “Aren’t we a pair? I can’t have children, and you can’t stop having them!”

“Are you saying the ambassador’s cape wasn’t really magical?” I teased.

Her eyes twinkled. “Apparently not, but I was quite taken with his turban. I’ve made it my trademark fashion.”

Quite exhausted, I flopped back upon my pillow, morning sunshine spilling across the floor beneath my childbed. “I pray this babe is my last. I keep my babies at the breast as long as I can to fend off conception, but . . .”

With no apparent shame for the delicacy of the matter, Dolley frankly advised, “If you want no more children, you must discourage Mr. Randolph. Take a separate bed with the children if you must. Say you don’t want to wake him, feeding the new baby. Say whatever you must.”

“I—I don’t see how I have the right.” Besides, I couldn’t fathom how to rebuff my husband’s amorous advances without angering him. If there was anything Tom had a true talent for, it was making babies—and in his arms I felt womanly, desirable, and desired. But what came of that desire had worn me down to the nub. “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

Very quietly, Dolley said, “Some women, in your position, put in the path of their husbands an agreeable Negress.”

Dear God
. That she could make such a suggestion. But hadn’t the same thought occurred to my sister? I was certain Jack Eppes had taken up with Betsy Hemings, just as my father had done with Sally. Just as my grandfather Wayles had done with Sally’s mother. It was the way things were done, and if I hoped to secure my children’s future, it’d be an advantageous arrangement. But even if I could reconcile myself to the heartbreaking thought of my husband’s hands on another woman, I recoiled to imagine my daughters struggling with the emotional turmoil I’d struggled with.

The thought of their confusion over sisters and brothers that were also their slaves was enough to decide me. And even if it hadn’t been, the thought of choosing a girl . . .

My eyes drifted to my window, which overlooked Mulberry Row. Some of the Hemings girls would soon be of age, but the wickedness of the thought was so horrifying to me I immediately thrust it away with a violent shudder. “I couldn’t encourage such a thing. I suppose I was just wishing for some secret way. . . .”

“There is only one secret to anything,” Dolley asserted. “And that’s the power we all have in forming our own destinies.”

Washington, 27 February 1809

From Thomas Jefferson to Martha Jefferson Randolph

In retiring to the condition of a private citizen, I have a single uneasiness. I’m afraid that the administration of the house will give you trouble. Perhaps, with a set of good and capable servants, as ours certainly are, the trouble will become less after their understanding the regulations which are to govern them. Ignorant too, as I am, in the management of a farm, I shall be obliged to ask the aid of Mr. Randolph’s skill and attention.

On a marvelous spring day, my father commemorated forty years of service to his country by surrendering the reins of government—and a brewing war—to the new president. Celebratory cannons fired, ladies flirted with Papa, and a special farewell march was played for him at James Madison’s inaugural ball. The latter was a touch only Dolley would’ve thought to include, and I loved her for it.

Then Papa loaded up wagons with all the belongings he’d acquired as president. Spoons and pudding dishes, coverlets and clocks and shoes. Boxes, books, and furniture strained at the six-mule team pulling the load.

In anticipation of his homecoming, my heart beat with inexpressible anxiety and impatience. I wanted nothing so much as to clasp Papa in the bosom of his family, for the evening of his life to pass in serene and unclouded tranquility in the home he’d spent twenty years rebuilding.

A home in which my entire family would now reside.

The proposal was put to Tom in ways to spare his feelings: What would people say if we left my sixty-five-year-old father to live alone with Sally as his housekeeper? Besides, Papa couldn’t manage without us. He hadn’t Tom’s genius for preventing soil erosion. My husband, whatever else his faults, was a hardwork ing, inventive planter whose failures were due to bad luck and the rotting legacy his father left him.

My husband surprised me by listening to this entreaty in silence, finally nodding his head in assent. And I realize now that it was because he already knew he couldn’t support our still growing family at Edgehill; the arrangement spared him more embarrassment than it gave him, lifting his family from certain poverty with the fig leaf of caring for my aging father. Even Ann and her new husband, Charles, would move in with us so that she could help work in Papa’s gardens to make it just so, for they shared a special bond over flowers and herbs. We’d have the whole family together!

At last, after trials of blizzards and crowds demanding speeches of him in taverns and inns on the way, Papa was
ours
now, and I went running down the road to meet him, in rapture, in joy. We embraced one another, all the children gathered round, hopeful for the family idyll and ignoring the rumble of the coming war in the distance.

Monticello, 21 January 1812

From Thomas Jefferson to John Adams

A letter from you carries me back to the times when we were fellow laborers in the same cause, struggling for what is most valuable to man: his right of self-government. Sometimes I look back in remembrance of our old friends who have fallen before us. Of the signers of the Declaration of Independence I see now living not more than half a dozen on your side of the Potomac, and, on this side, myself alone.

I
T IS DIFFICULT NOT TO SMILE
with a bittersweet pang in reading the letters between my father and John Adams, exchanged in the twilight of their lives. My husband couldn’t fathom how Papa could set aside political acrimony to resume the old friendship, but those were happy years at Monticello, and harmony was our pursuit and our reward.

My bed at Monticello was an alcove, and I slept snug and toasty between my husband’s body and the wall. In the morning, the warm light of dawn spilled from the windows near the floor. They were double-paned; they never leaked. And everything in our sky-blue bedroom was neat and clean, which had a decidedly happy effect on my mood.

“Good morning,” Tom said, his breath warm on the back of my neck, his hand gently cupping my belly under blankets that smelled of lavender.

I knew what he wanted, and his touch ignited something inside me, too, but I feared another child. “Tom, it’s so early.”

“The rooster’s already crowed,” he protested, nuzzling my shoulder. “Besides, I’m riding for Edgehill straightaway this morning. I’ve a long day ahead of me.”

“Then you can’t afford to lose daylight,” I chirped. “Let me up and I’ll see the servants get you a quick breakfast.”

Reluctantly, Tom swung his long legs over to let me rise from the bed. “I’ll take the boy. Hopefully we’ll get the fields prepared for another good crop.”

By “the boy,” he meant Jeff, who had, after a single year’s instruction, returned home from the University of Pennsylvania in near disgrace. Before he could be entrusted to help manage our plantations, Jeff would have to prove himself to his father—a thing he was doing by outworking Tom in the fields and at every other plantation chore.

Having quit Congress, my husband’s luck had turned. We’d had two good harvests, and Tom’s were the only fields in the county that survived the storms because of his new method of plowing. Between that and the fact Papa was housing, clothing, and feeding our children, we were finally making payments on our debts.

But I worried about my father’s largesse, which extended itself to everybody. Papa was more popular now than when he was president, and people felt no shame in prevailing upon our hospitality. Unexpected visitors cluttered up our entrance hall beneath the quirky great clock, powered by cannonball weights on a rope, for which a hole had to be cut in the floor. They marveled at the inventions and curiosities my father collected—everything from maps and soil samples to Indian artifacts, mastodon bones, and classical statuary. And Papa took on the expense of a plentiful table with all the seasonal bounty our plantation had to offer, topped off with Italian and French wines.

Which is why, I think, we always had guests. We had persons from abroad, from all the states of the union, from every part of the state, men, women, and children. In short, almost every day for at least eight months of the year brought people of wealth, fashion, men in office, professional men military and civil, lawyers, doctors, protestant clergymen, Catholic priests, members of Congress, foreign ministers, missionaries, Indian agents, tourists, travelers, artists, strangers, and friends.

They’d line up in the passageways for a glimpse at Papa. One lady even punched a windowpane with her parasol trying to get a better view!

Neverthless, I scolded Ellen when she moped down the narrow staircase in the morning, eyes half-lidded. “Be more cheerful in the morning lest your grandfather’s guests think you’re a sullen girl.”

“You know I hate mornings,” Ellen said, unrepentantly sullen.

I did know. Indeed, since she was a child my father had made a game of catching her in bed long after sunrise. And I also knew her love for him would make her behave. “Your grandpapa relies upon us to leave a good impression.”

Ellen plastered a sarcastic smile on her face as we took our places in Papa’s chrome yellow dining room with its wispy white curtains. My daughters were all practiced hostesses at my father’s breakfast, where we had fried eggs and meat, biscuits, tea, and honey. Then, while our guests amused themselves in my father’s book room or by walking our gardens or horse riding in our woods, I made the girls help me tidy up and find places for the strange little trinkets people sent Papa from all over the country just because he might find them fascinating.

Mary and Cornelia bickered about the proper way to do everything from planning a menu to choosing cloth for the servants, and Ginny goaded them on to avoid doing any of the work herself. Meanwhile, I taught the children from early afternoon until our supper at four or five in the evening. The schoolroom was my sitting room at Monticello, painted a cheerful blue. It’s where I did my sewing, and breastfeeding, too. And where the servants found me to ask for direction at least two dozen times a day.

All except Sally, of course.

Sally and I both worked in proximity to my father’s private rooms, where he emerged each day like the glowing Jove to reign over Mount Olympus. The grand patriarch made all the rules for the house—including that the children were to keep out of the flower beds and that no one but Sally was to venture into his sanctum sanctorum.

Such was my children’s adoration for him that he only had to say
do
or
do not,
and they’d all obey. And he adored them in return, playing games with them in the evening. In returning from overseeing cloth production at the textile mill, I’d see my father throw down his kerchief to set the children off on a race on the lawn—sometimes with hoops. And while Sally’s children only ever looked on, the racers were sometimes joined by my sister’s only surviving child, little Francis, whom Jack Eppes finally consented to let visit.

Jack hadn’t been persuaded by my pleas nor my father’s cajoling. There wasn’t anything any of us could say to convince Jack that his son wouldn’t be exposed to my husband’s lingering ill will. No, it took someone in the Hemings family. My sister’s maid promised that her aunt Sally would watch over the boy. And Jack trusted his concubine in a way he’d never trust me.

But I counted myself grateful for it, because I never tired of hearing my sister’s laugh in her son’s voice. And every night after Tom returned home and the children were all tucked into bed, we had the best fruits from the orchards with our tea and enjoyed the relative quiet.

The only blot on our happiness was our son-in-law. When Ann married Charles Bankhead, he’d been a student at the law with a promising future. He’d since quit the profession to better appreciate my father’s stock of wine, leaving us to worry for Ann and my new grandson. But my father was fond of Charles and optimistic about his future.

Tom was less charitable. “We made a mistake with that one, Martha. He’ll never go farther than a tavern.”

At the time, I thought it an unkind thing to say, and hypocritical, too, considering my husband so often retreated to drink. I reconsidered my opinion, however, the night my twenty-year-old son came to the table after a day of backbreaking work, during which he nearly put his father into the ground.

Serving great portions of ham onto his plate, Jeff asked, “Grandpapa, do you think war with England is inevitable, now? We can make enough to eat and drink and clothe ourselves, but we can’t have salt or iron without money. Without a market for our wheat, we just feed it to the horses. Tobacco isn’t worth the pipe it’s smoked in. And whiskey . . .” He paused, casting a sly glance at Ann’s husband. “Well there aren’t enough drunks in the world to drink it.”

My son should’ve never given that sly, knowing glance to Charles Bankhead, who guzzled down my father’s brandy as if in defiance of Jeff’s remark. Charles and Tom were both good and drunk that night. So much so that my husband fell into a deep, exhausted slumber before I finished tucking my children into bed in their nursery.

I suppose that’s why I was the first to hear the commotion downstairs.

Coming into the dining room in my bedclothes, I found Bankhead hurling abuses at one of the Hemings boys, my father’s new butler, Burwell. The reason? Poor Burwell refused to serve him more brandy or give him the keys to the wine cellar.

I realize now that Ann must’ve been too afraid to intervene, but at the time, I only wondered where my daughter had got herself to while her husband screamed incoherently.

“Charles!” I hissed. “Everyone’s gone to bed. Surely you don’t mean to drink alone?”

“I do,” Bankhead sneered. Then he picked up a silver candlestick. “And I’ll smash this insolent boy’s skull if he won’t give over the keys.”

Fearful of the certain violence in his voice, I stepped between them. “You’ve had enough to drink, Charles.”

Bankhead brought his reddening face close to mine, then gave me such a shove that I fell against the table, sending a tureen crashing to the floor. Shocked and struggling to right myself, I caught a flash of Burwell’s fierce brown eyes just as his fists clenched, as if he meant to come to my defense.

“Burwell!” I snapped the warning, because a black man attacking a white man in Virginia, even for good cause, would end in utter tragedy. “Go fetch Bacon.”

Edmund Bacon was the overseer on our estate—a burly white man who could help me manage my drunk son-in-law. But Burwell glanced at Bankhead, then back at me, and shook his head, as if unwilling to leave me alone with the drunkard. I had to straighten to my full height. “You do as I say, Burwell. You get on!”

Only when Burwell was gone did I face my son-in-law, who was beyond reason. Charles shoved me again, and this time I knocked over a chair before catching my balance. He still had that candlestick in his hand, and he rounded on me, slamming me into the wall, his hand at my throat, nostrils flaring like a bull. Smelling the liquor on his breath, I stayed very still and breathed very shallowly, my pulse pounding in my ears.
He’s going to strangle me,
I thought. And that thought seemed to stretch on for an eternity.

Footsteps finally sounded out from behind us, and my son-in-law cried, “Gimme that key, you lazy, good-for-nothing—”

That’s when we saw Tom, his eyes bloodshot with exhaustion, alcohol, and rage. What happened next happened so swiftly, I heard it more than saw it. Tom grabbed up a fire iron and the air parted with the swoosh of its arc. A heavy thunk sounded as metal cracked on a human skull. A crash as Bankhead crumpled to the floor, leaving me gasping as I grasped my throat, standing over the body of our son-in-law as a pool of blood fanned out under my bare feet.

“Dear God!” I cried, horrified by the sight of flesh split from bone. The blow had peeled the skin off one side of my son-in- law’s forehead and face. I dropped to my knees in terror. “You’ve killed him, Tom. You’ve killed him.”

I was wrong about that.

Tom had swung that iron poker hard enough to kill, but it had glanced slightly off to the side, leaving Charles badly injured, but alive. Groaning and sobbing, Charles tried to get to his feet, slipping on his own blood just as Ann stumbled in. Seeing her husband dripping in gore, she let out a blood-curdling scream that drew the servants and even our children from their beds.

Sally scarcely took two steps into the room before she herded everyone away. Meanwhile, my husband was still in an unthinking and murderous fury, so I threw myself into Tom’s arms before he used the poker to finish the job. “You saved me,” I whispered, holding tight to his waist, using my body to force him back from the scene.

But even Tom’s shock as he came more fully awake did not make him relinquish his desire to murder. “You think you can get away from me, Bankhead? Get back here, you dog.”

“Don’t kill my husband,” Ann sobbed, trying to stop his bleeding.

I put my hand round Tom’s to make him drop the fire iron, and he roared, “I want him out of this house!”

Had this been Edgehill, he’d have been well within his rights to be obeyed. Truthfully, I thought he was within his rights anyway. But Ann was hysterical now, with her husband’s blood staining her nightdress and her hands. “This is my grandfather’s house. He’d never send me out with a dying man into the dark. You’ve nearly killed him. You’ve nearly killed my husband!”

Ann didn’t know—hadn’t seen—how it had happened.

And by morning, Charles was so apologetic and ashamed that Ann felt nothing but pity for him. “He tries to stop drinking, Momma. He swears it off. But then he can’t stop. I don’t know why, but he can’t stop.”

At her words, I pulled the shawl tighter around my neck, hiding the red marks that had bloomed there just as my clothing covered the bruises Charles’s rough handling had caused. I’d been careful as I’d dressed to ensure Tom hadn’t seen them, either. If any of the men in my family saw
my
bruises, the violence would erupt all over again.

Meanwhile, my father suggested Bankhead might be suffering from some sort of illness, that perhaps a doctor could help him. Not knowing the full violence of Charles’s actions, Papa was unfailingly kind to the young man, which infuriated Tom so much, he slammed out of the house and stayed gone for two days.

My son only made matters worse. Jeff had been away on his grandfather’s errands during the altercation—the trust my father increasingly placed in him to conduct matters of business emboldened Jeff and chafed at my husband, who thought our boy wasn’t ready for such responsibility.

When Jeff heard about the fight, he said, “Just two drunks having a row, then. I’m sure they’ll patch it up straightaway.”

I didn’t tell him how it had really been. No one knew but me and Tom and, to some extent, Burwell. To tell my proud and devoted son a thing like that would’ve invited a duel. So I only said, “It breaks my heart to hear you speak of your father that way.”