Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (64 page)

J
EFFERSON
O
NCE
GENTLY
REBUKED
TDLTJ,
343.

“M
Y
DEAR
,
A
FAULT
IN
SO
YOUNG
”
Ibid., 344.

“
WARM
GUSH
OF
GRATITU
DE
”
IbID.

“M
Y
GRANDMOTHER
J
E
FFERSON
”
TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/martha-wayles-skelton-jeffeRSOn.

“M
UCH
BETTER
 … 
IF
OUR
COMPAN
ION
VIEWS
A
THING
”
PTJ,
XXX, 15.

HAD
RISEN
FAR
IN
V
IRGINIA
Gordon-Reed,
Hemingses of Monticello,
57–90, is a brilliant, groundbreaking account of John Wayles's background in England, his life in Virginia, and his relationship with Elizabeth HEMINgs.

POOR
,
UNDISTINGUISHE
D
FAMILY
Ibid., 59.

T
HE
CHILD
LIVED
BUT
THE
MOTHER
DID
NOT
Ibid., 77. The first Mrs. Wayles lost a set of twins before giving birth to Patty. (IBID.)

NEVER
WANT
ED
HER
OWN
CHILDREN
TO
FACE
Ibid., 145. Gordon-Reed wrote: “Her reported words do not appear to have been motivated by a desire to die knowing that her husband would in some perverse way always belong just to her. This was not about him. It was about her children. She was concerned about the prospect of her daughters' growing up under the control of a woman who was not their mother.” (IBID.)

W
AYLES
WAS
A
DEBT
COLLECTOR
Ibid., 68–69.

“M
R
. W
AYLES
WAS
A
LAWYER
”
Jefferson,
WritiNGS,
5.

PROVOKED
ANXIETY
AMONG
THE
PLANTERS
Gordon-Reed,
Hemingses of Monticello,
69–71. One day Wayles was trying to track down Jefferson kinsman Thomas Mann Randolph only to be informed that Randolph had (conveniently, given the nature of Wayles's business) “gone to some springs on the frontiers to spend the summer.” (IBID.)

A
MOCKING
POEM
IbiD., 74.

A
CONTROVERS
IAL
MURDER
TRIAL
Ibid., 74–76. In the frenzy of the hour, Wayles clearly had enemies with a motive to say the most extreme and negative things they could. He did, however, come from obscurity—there are suggestions in the written record that he arrived in America as a “servant boy” to a richer family—and debt collecting and slave trading were not considered entirely gentlemanly lines of work. (Ibid., 75.)

Understanding that he was not engaged in business calculated to endear him to the elite of his time and place—an elite to which he very much wanted to belong—Wayles had a political sense of his own. One of the things political people do (whether they are political in the vote-seeking sense or simply in the context of seeking status among one's neighbors) is take advantage of whatever avenue may be at hand. Along with the purchase and sale of slaves, the church was one of the most widely shared aspects of life among rich Virginians. Believers or not, prominent men—including Jefferson—were expected to play a role in the life of one's parish. Wayles apparently decided that he would assume such a role, thus building up social capital among those who may have seen him mainly as the face of the creditor enemy or as, in the words from
The
Virginia Gazette,
“ill-bred.” He took pains to help fill the pulpit on different occasions. In a letter, a contemporary reported these efforts of Wayles's, writing: “Mr. Wayles is extremely kind in doing what he can.… He has engaged Parson Masson already and designs likewise to get Parson Duglish, he says to make us laugh.” (Ibid., 67.)

UNDERTOOK
LE
GAL
WORK
FOR
W
AYLES
MB,
I, 64.

MARRIED
B
ATHURST
S
KELTON
JHT,
I, 157.

AND
THEIR
S
ON
, J
OHN
,
DIED
TJF, http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/martha-wayles-skelton-jefFErSON.

AN
ATTR
ACTIVE
WIDOW
TDLTJ,
43.

S
UITO
RS
LURKED
ABOUT
IbiD., 44.

QUE
STIONS
OF
BLOOD
,
SEX
,
AND
DOMINION
As noted, Gordon-Reed,
Hemingses of Monticello,
is the masterwork on this subject. I also learned much from Lewis and Onuf,
Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson;
Joshua D. Rothman,
Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families Across the Color Line in Virginia, 1787–1861
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 2003); and Elise Lemire,
“Miscegenation”: Making Race in America
(Philadelphia, 2002).

A
MAN
NAMED
H
EMINGS
Lewis and Onuf,
Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson,
255. The source is Madison Hemings's oral history. See also Gordon-Reed,
Hemingses of Monticello,
49–50.

THE
E
PPES
FAMIL
Y
OF
B
ERMUDA
H
UNDRED
Gordon-Reed,
Hemingses of Monticello,
50–51.

BECAME
W
AYLES
'
S
PRO
PERTY
IbiD., 57.

GAVE
BIRTH
TO
SEVERAL
CHILDREN
IbiD., 59.

H
IS
DAUGHTER
'
S
TWO
ST
EPMOTHERS
JHT,
I, 432–33. Wayles's two other wives were Tabitha Cocke and Elizabeth LOMAX.

“
TAKEN
B
Y
THE
WIDOWER
W
AYLES
”
Lewis and Onuf,
Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson,
255.

E
LIZABETH
H
EMINGS
BORE
FIVE
CHILDRE
N
Gordon-Reed,
Hemingses of MonticellO,
80.

I
N
1773
CAME
A
SIXTH
IBiD.

“A
NY
LADY
IS
ABLE
”
Ibid., 346. As Gordon-Reed notes, the members of a white master's official family—that is, the one sanctioned by custom and law and the church—would pretend that the head of their household was not doing what he was self-evidently doing. And so mixed-race children lived in a cultural twilight in which they were denied yet fought over as white family members worried that guilt or love or duty (or all three) would lead the master to give his nonwhite children some part of his estate. (IBiD.)

THE
YEAR
HE
TURNED
U
P
MB,
I, 209.

A
“
ROMANTIC
,
POETI
CAL
”
DESCRIPTION
PTJ,
I, 65.

AN
ELDERLY
WOMAN
IbiD., 66.

DEST
INED
FOR
EACH
OTHER
TDLTJ,
44.

“I
HAVE
WHAT
I
HAVE
BEEN
TOLD
”
PTJ,
I, 62.

ORDERED
A
CL
AVICHORD
Ibid., 71.

“L
ET
THE
CA
SE
BE
”
IBiD.

HALF
-
DOZEN
WH
ITE
SILK
COTTON
STOC
KINGS
Ibid., 71–72.

THE
R
EVEREND
W
I
LLIAM
C
OUTTS
MB,
I, 285. See also Gordon-Reed,
Hemingses of Monticello,
101.

T
HE
V
IRGINIA
G
AZETTE
REPORTED
THE
MARRIAGE
The Virginia Gazette,
January 2, 1772.

REFERRED
TO
HER
AS
A
“
SPINSTER
”
PTJ,
I, 86–87.

BORN
AT
ONE
O
'
CLOCK
IN
THE
MORNING
MB,
I, 294.

THE
J
EFFERSONS
REMAINED
AT
THE
F
OREST
GB,
35.

SNOW
HAD
GROWN
TOO
DEEP
Randall,
Jefferson,
I, 64.

PRESSED
ON
THROUGH
THE
FORESTS
IBID.

A
T
SUN
SET
IBId.

FIRES
WERE
OUT
IBiD.

“T
HE
HORRIBLE
DREARINESS
”
IBID.

DISC
OVERED
PART
OF
A
BOT
TLE
OF
WINE
Ibid., 65. On the subject of Monticello, Jefferson had been worried for some months about the seeming inadequacy of the nascent estate to receive a new bride. “I have here but one room, which, like the cobbler's, serves me for parlor for kitchen and hall,” Jefferson said on Wednesday, February 20, 1771. “I may add, for bed chamber and study too. My friends sometimes take a temperate dinner with me and then retire to look for beds elsewhere. I have hopes however of getting more elbow room this summer.” (
PTJ,
I, 63.) His vision for Monticello was mythic. “Come to the new Rowanty,” he wrote Robert Skipwith, Patty's brother-in-law, in August 1771. “A spring, centrically situated, might be the scene of every evening's joy. There we should talk over the lessons of the day, or lose them in music, chess, or the merriments of our family companions. The heart thus lightened, our pillows would be soft, and health and long life would attend the happy scene.” (Ibid., 78.)

MOVED
ON
TO
E
LK
H
ILL
MB,
I, 286.

AT
I
TS
PEAK
E
LK
H
ILL
WAS
669
A
CRES
Ibid., 366.

“T
HE
TENDER
AND
THE
SUBLIME
”
PTJ,
I, 96.

O
SSIA
N
'
S
EPIC
IMAGERY
Thomas M. Curley,
Samuel Johnson, the Ossian Fraud and the Celtic Revival in Great Britain and Ireland
(New York, 2009) offers a full-scale treatment of the literary decepTiON.

“
A
S
TWO
DARK
STREAMS
”
Jefferson's Literary Commonplace Book,
ed. Douglas L. Wilson (Princeton, N.J., 1989), 142–43.

A
CAREFUL
HOUSEKEEPER
Scharff,
Women Jefferson Loved,
93–94.

“M
RS
. J
EFFERSON
WOULD
”
Bear,
Jefferson at MonticellO,
3.