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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..21ac6a3 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #65806 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/65806) diff --git a/old/65806-0.txt b/old/65806-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 8d3ac23..0000000 --- a/old/65806-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2110 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Christmas at Monticello with Thomas -Jefferson, by Helen Topping Miller - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Christmas at Monticello with Thomas Jefferson - -Author: Helen Topping Miller - -Release Date: July 9, 2021 [eBook #65806] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Tim Lindell, Stephen Hutcheson, and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was - produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital - Library.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS AT MONTICELLO WITH -THOMAS JEFFERSON *** - - - - - Christmas at Monticello - with - _Thomas Jefferson_ - - - BY - HELEN TOPPING MILLER - - - LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. - NEW YORK · LONDON · TORONTO - 1959 - - LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., INC. - 119 WEST 40th STREET, NEW YORK 18 - - LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., Ltd. - 6 & 7 CLIFFORD STREET, LONDON W 1 - - LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. - 20 CRANFIELD ROAD, TORONTO 16 - - CHRISTMAS AT MONTICELLO - WITH THOMAS JEFFERSON - - COPYRIGHT © 1959 - BY HELEN TOPPING MILLER -ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK, OR ANY - PORTION THEREOF, IN ANY FORM - - PUBLISHED SIMULTANEOUSLY IN THE DOMINION OF CANADA BY - LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., TORONTO - - FIRST EDITION - - LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER 59-11264 - - Printed in the United States of America - - [Illustration: Decorative glyph] - - - _Christmas Tales_ - - _By_ Helen Topping Miller - - _Christmas for Tad_ - _No Tears for Christmas_ - _Christmas at Mount Vernon_ - _Her Christmas at the Hermitage_ - _Christmas with Robert E. Lee_ - - - - - 1 - - - _Washington: March, 1809_ - -Suddenly, as he climbed the long, curving flight of stairs, he knew that -now he was an old man. - -Sixty-six last April, and, though his sandy red hair had merely faded -instead of turning gray, there were twinges in his knees that reminded -him of too many miles in the saddle, in cold rain and sleet, too many -hours standing at his writing table, too much tension, not enough rest. -But now he could rest. - -In the half-furnished rooms of the White House below, the crowd still -danced at the Inaugural Ball, with the wife of the new president, -sparkling, vivacious Dolly Madison, a gay and charming hostess in a -sweeping white cambric dress and the inevitable enormous turban on her -head. - -He was grateful, Thomas Jefferson was thinking as he toiled up the -stairs, that he had been able to see his good friend, Jemmy Madison, -inaugurated president of these new and struggling United States. But he -was even more grateful that his own years of service were at an end. - -“No third term,” he had told them when they importuned him. “No, never! -My work is done. I am going home.” - -If only he could have left a government in peace, but, for this new -nation that he had worked a lifetime to build, it appeared sadly that -there could be no peace. Off the coasts of his country British and -French ships prowled and battled, seizing American shipping, taking off -sailors at gunpoint, confiscating cargoes. Would James Madison be able -to keep the nation out of another war? he worried, as he entered the -disordered bedroom where his half-packed possessions were strewn about, -books stacked on the floor, papers spread over the bed. Down below in -some of the empty rooms of the mansion were piled other boxes of papers -already sorted and made ready to travel by barge and wagon back to his -“Little Mountain” in Albemarle County, his beloved Monticello. - -As he closed the door of the room, there was a little whistle and a whir -of wings, and his pet mockingbird came charging through the air, all -reaching feet and stiffened wings, to perch on Jefferson’s shoulder. - -“We’re going home, boy,” he told the bird, turning his face to avoid the -inquisitive bill. “Burwell will see to it that you get back to -Monticello safely, where all the other mockingbirds will probably be -swollen with envy when they see you lording it over the place. No, I -haven’t any sugar tonight. When we get home my grandchildren will feed -you sugar till you’ll probably die of obesity.” - -He sat wearily on the side of the bed and began turning over papers, -studying each, laying them in neat piles. There were too many of them -but each was important to him. A soft rap came at the door; it opened a -crack and his daughter, Martha Randolph, always called “Patsy,” put a -turbaned head in. - -“Papa, may I come in?” - -“It would seem that you are already in,” he smiled. “You should be -downstairs being gay with the rest of them.” - -“Oh, Papa, I’m an old woman now. I’m thirty-six. Old enough for caps and -a chimney corner, too old for frolicking.” - -“The chimney corner hasn’t been built that can hold you long. You were -born restless like your father. You always want to be on to the next -activity, Patsy, no matter what it is.” - -“I didn’t come away down here through all that cold mud to dance and -frivol,” she argued, arranging her wide skirt so she could sit beside -him on the high bed. “I came to help you pack and fetch you home, but -from the looks of things we’re doomed never to get there. What are all -these pages and pages full of strange words?” - -“Look out!” He rescued some sheets from her hand. “Don’t mix them up.” -He straightened the papers lovingly, his long freckled fingers deft. -“These are my Indian vocabularies. I’ve been setting down words from the -different Indian tongues, comparing them and trying to find a common -origin.” - -“So that’s why someone said the other day that you believed that all the -Indians were originally Russians!” Patsy laid the pages in neat piles. -“Papa, you continually astound me! With all the frightful -responsibilities you’ve had all these years—buying Louisiana, the -country continually in a row with England and France and this bank -business, not to mention Aaron Burr—you’ve found time to learn Indian -languages.” - -“I haven’t learned many—only a few words here and there. It kept my mind -off unpleasant things, like having all the Federalists hate me -vehemently and make no bones about it.” He quirked his long mouth in an -ironic grimace. “Do you know that at this moment there are half a dozen -banquets being eaten in this city where the Federalists are proposing -insulting toasts to the despised ‘Virginian,’ gloating over my -departure, telling each other, ‘Thank God, at last we’re rid of -Jefferson!’?” - -“Papa, please don’t remember those things,” pleaded his daughter. “Leave -every bitter memory right here on the shores of this dirty Potomac. Up -on the Rivanna on your mountain the children are already counting hours, -eager for Grandfather to come home. Now, can’t we lay all these papers -in a box so this bed can be used for the purpose for which it was -intended? I’ll call Burwell. I could drag your boots off myself but it’s -hard for me to stoop or bend over in these murderous stays. Back home I -shall never wear them, no matter if my fashion-minded daughters faint -with horror.” - -“Don’t tell me the Misses Randolph have deserted dolls and toad houses -built of mud and gone running after fur-belows! Maybe I had too many -mirrors sent home from France.” He began obediently to lay the papers in -a stout wooden box. “Come in, Burwell. The tyrannical Madam Patsy -Randolph says this ex-president has to go to bed.” - -“With a hot posset and a warm brick at his feet, Burwell,” Martha -instructed the faithful servant. “I wonder if anybody in the future -history of this nation will ever get this old barn of a mansion really -warm? There are more goose-pimples than dimples and beauty patches on -those bare shoulders downstairs this minute and Dolly Madison whispered -to me that she wished that protocol demanded ermine capes with velvet -linings for officials in this country such as the kings and lords wear -in England. Well, good night, Papa. I’ll see you in the morning before I -leave. I do have to hurry home. Remember there is a large family of -small people there all in need of discipline before you get back to -spoil them all outrageously.” - -“I never spoil children. I teach them to use their eyes and their -minds,” he protested, grunting as Burwell eased off the tight polished -slippers and put shabby old carpet slippers on his feet. “There’s one -thing I determine, Madam. If you can throw away stays when you are back -at Monticello, I shall discard all fancy boots and slippers, stocks and -tight cravats, and those confounded, silly lacy affairs down my front. -You haven’t given away my good green breeches, I hope?” - -“Everything of yours is exactly as you left it, Papa. The moths got at -that awful old homespun coat but I suppose you’ll wear it anyway.” - -“It comforts my old shoulders and the pockets are all in the right -places,” he asserted. - -“Very likely full of rocks and arrowheads and dried leaves and dead -butterflies at this moment.” She bent and kissed him, her fancy -headdress slipping a little. She pulled it off freeing reddish brown -curls to fall over her ears. “I’m going to bed myself. Those fiddles and -trombones can squawk all night but they won’t keep me awake.” - -Left alone, Thomas Jefferson dug a comfortable hollow in his pillow and -tried to sleep. But too much went coursing through his mind. That -resolution passed by the Virginia Assembly, especially the words at the -end: “You carry with you the sweetest of awards, the recollection of a -life well spent in the service of your country.” - -That sentiment assuaged a little some of the bitterer things. Young -Alexander Hamilton, George Washington’s handsome protégé and Thomas -Jefferson’s relentless enemy, dying, after he had fired dramatically in -the air, from the bullet of Aaron Burr. And there had been Burr, as -Jefferson knew, always plotting, dreaming up his grandiose schemes to -set up an empire of his own in the West, fleeing to England when his -treasonable activities were discovered, forfeiting his bail. - -John Marshall had been to blame for that. John Marshall, John Adams’ -midnight appointee, named for petty spite, and the sworn and bitter -enemy of Thomas Jefferson, had so muddled Burr’s trial that a jury had -acquitted the man of treason and altered the charge to some trivial -misdemeanor. And then Marshall had had the effrontery to subpoena the -President of the United States as a witness! - -These are they who had worked all manner of evil against me, the words -ran through the old man’s tired brain. Yet do I stand and my arm -prevails against them. Curious how darkness and silence always brought -back to him some line or other from the thousands of books he had read. -That was something he would do at Monticello to fill up his -days—catalogue all his books, almost ten thousand of them there must be -now, for he had sent home boxes full every year. He would teach his -older grandsons, Jefferson Randolph and Francis Eppes, to appreciate -books too, and some of the girls might show some signs of possessing an -eager mind like his Patsy’s. - -Someone opened a door below and the blare of a marching tune came to his -ears which likely meant that the dancing company were going down the -chilly halls to the unfurnished rooms where the collation was spread on -trestle tables. Jefferson found himself drumming his fingers on his -chest in time to the music. There had been so much martial music in his -life. He thought of Patrick Henry riding into Williamsburg on that -cloudy morning at the head of his militia. Gallant, shabby Patrick, who -had stood so tall in his run-down boots and worn leather breeches, his -coat out at the elbows, who had twice sent great words ringing on the -air of America, words that were so trumpet-strong and stirring that they -still echoed in the ears of men and made a small thrill quiver in the -breast of Thomas Jefferson himself. - -“If this be treason, make the most of it!” And “Give me Liberty or give -me Death!” He would hear them again and again so long as he lived, -remembering that they had challenged the hesitant hearts of rebelling -Virginians until they were ready to dare even the great guns of the -Third George of Hanover. - -But now, Jefferson was thinking, how early the fires of patriotism had -cooled in Patrick Henry. Patrick had been successful at Red Hill, his -plantation. He had made some money, grown old before his time, and been -content the last time Jefferson had seen him to sit under a green tree -with a jug of cool spring water near by and his grandchildren playing -around. Ease and security—were they the drugs that abated the eternal -challenge in the minds of men? And did nations like men grow sluggish -and apathetic when they were well fed and bodily comfortable, Jefferson -wondered? - -Patrick Henry was dead now, and George Washington was dead. One by one -the passionately dedicated builders of the temple of the Republic had -vanished from the arena, leaving the affairs of state to the younger, -noisier men who had not known the travail, the risks, the fiery trials -of the beginning. I am a lone dead leaf hanging on the tree, the old man -told himself. I am that despised democrat who greeted pompous envoys in -a shabby coat, the one they called Infidel. - -That had been his own private joke, his personal secret—his belief, his -relationship with the Almighty. When he was dead, someone would find the -little book in which he had pasted and annotated all the sayings of -Jesus and know how wrong they had been in their hasty judgment. But now -it did not matter. Nothing mattered now that he was going home. He had -refused a third term as president, adhering to the precedent of George -Washington. Turmoil and trouble were hot in the air, but somehow his -nostrils did not dilate with the old war-horse eagerness at the threat -of conflict. Now he felt no stallion urge to go charging armed with -words into the midst of any fray. How well life was organized, he -thought, as he found a softer spot in the pillow. Old age crept on a man -unaware, bringing its own opiate to dull any lingering sense of loss. - -At length, letting the weight of weariness have its way with him, Thomas -Jefferson fell asleep. Martha Randolph, tiptoeing in later, shading a -candle with her hand, saw his face upturned, eyes closed, nose pinched a -little, some brown freckles standing out on the gray, drained cheeks, -and caught the eagle look about him. - -He will look like that when he is dead, she thought, as she blew out the -candle and quietly slipped away. - - -It was snowing hard when Jefferson awoke early in the morning. - -The raw ugliness of this new city of Washington was being charitably -hidden under a blanket of downy feathers. The stumps where the big tulip -poplars and oaks had been cut down to open up streets and clear space -for building were now, all of them, so many thrones cushioned with -ermine. The cutting of those trees had grieved Jefferson’s heart. How he -hated to see a tree go down, though he had slaughtered a young forest in -his younger years to clear the top of his little mountain for the home -he visioned there. - -He looked down at the narrow streets where sleighs and wagons were -already churning up dark mud to profane the virgin beauty of the snow. - -Martha came in early accompanied by two aides. Jefferson, half dressed, -was eating the breakfast Burwell had brought up, picking the meat from a -fried fish with his fingers, dipping bits of corn bread into new cane -syrup. He dried his fingers quickly on his handkerchief, gulped the last -swallow of tea, and motioned Burwell to take the food away. - -“And what brings you here so early, my dear Patsy?” he inquired. “I -thought you would be starting out for Richmond and Charlottesville on -the next coach?” - -“I knew you’d never finish this packing alone or let any one help you.” -She kissed his forehead, smoothing back his rough motley of hair. “I -declare, Burwell, if you don’t cut his hair soon, he’ll be riding the -country looking like a mangy old lion!” she scolded. “Trim this on top -and fix him a proper cue, or I shall go out and buy you a stylish wig, -Mr. Ex-President.” - -“Can’t stand the things! They’re dirty,” he snorted. “I’ll get -everything packed, Patsy. These boys will help me. You go along home and -get a good fire going to thaw out my old bones after that long three -days in that drafty coach.” - -“You will never finish packing,” she fussed. “You’ll find some book or -paper you haven’t seen in a long time and spend hours poring over it. I -know you, Thomas Jefferson. You gentlemen bring in all those boxes and, -Burwell, see that Mr. Jefferson’s trunks and carpetbag are packed. This -baggage will be taken off the barge at Shadwell, Father, and we’ll have -wagons sent down to carry it to Monticello.” - -“Nothing must be lost!” worried Jefferson. “Nothing! Every paper and -pamphlet I’ve saved is important. They contain the history of an era, -the story of the birth of this nation.” - -“Then,” said Martha, “it would seem that most of them should be in the -Library of Congress.” - -“Never, while they house that library in such makeshift quarters,” he -argued. “Patsy, my dear, I beg of you, go on to Monticello as we -planned. I shall arrive later with everything I own intact. Just -remember that your father has knocked about the world on his own for a -long time, and I am not yet senile nor decrepit.” - -“But you will admit that you are tired to the bone,” she persisted, “and -that long trip in this cold weather is not going to be easy.” - -“I’ll admit anything, only get out of here now so that I can get out of -this dressing gown and into my breeches! Burwell, see that my satin -breeches and the broadcloth coat are well aired before you pack them. It -will be a long day before I shall want to be dressed up and elegant -again.” - -“You were quite the beau at that dance last night,” Martha remarked. -“Several women said to me that they had never before seen you so witty -and gay. And more than one remarked that it was a great pity that you -were leaving Washington.” - -“They had never seen me before without the sad old albatross of -responsibility hung on my back,” he retorted. “When I gave it over to -Jemmy Madison, I felt twenty years younger in twenty minutes and even -several pounds lighter. Once I’m back on my own mountain you’ll see, I -shall be merry as a grig—whatever a grig is.” - -“In my youth, when you were feeding me huge, nauseous doses of Plato and -Livy, you would have ordered me to go and look that word up,” Patsy -reminded him. “I can hear you very sternly directing me never to use a -word unless I knew its exact meaning. Fortunately, I know what a grig -is.” - -“It’s a cricket,” spoke up one of the aides. “My granny told me a long -time ago, a grig is a cricket. When I was a young-un, sir.” - -“It’s a kind of grasshopper,” disputed the other aide. “A little -grasshopper that fiddles tunes with its hind legs, Mr. President, sir.” - -“Mr. Ex-President, Carver. An ex being something that has been crossed -out, obliterated, ignored. I’m obliterated but I can still go on being a -grig. Even though I can’t fiddle any more since I broke this wrist in -France. I miss my music, too.—Well, good-by again, Madam Randolph. Be -sure you take along a warm robe and a shawl. That coach can be mighty -damp and dreary.” - -“And you do the same, Papa, and don’t you climb down halfway home and -start out on horseback in this foul weather. Nothing ever created by -Heaven is so treacherous and mean as this month of March. If they would -leave it off all the calendars, it would please me well.” - -“Keep plenty of elmbark stewing on the hob till I get home,” he ordered. -“It will cure any phthisic ever contracted.” - -“He’s so stubborn,” he heard his daughter say to the aide as she went -out. “I shan’t be surprised at all to see him come riding home on that -horse. If he wants to do it, he’ll do it if it kills him.” - -“It won’t kill him, ma’am,” the man murmured. “Mister Jefferson is still -a mighty stout fellow.” - - - - - 2 - - - _Monticello: Spring, 1809_ - -Why, why had he saved so many things? Yet they were all important, all -precious. One small box full of rocks, little packets of earth, dried -leaves, and the desiccated bodies of insects. These George Clark and -Meriwether Lewis had brought back to him from the long exploring journey -they had made, crossing the country to the Pacific Ocean. Jefferson held -out one small, rattling mummy of a creature in his palm. - -“Ever see a bug like this, Burwell?” he asked. - -“Looks like some kind of scawpin. Got he tail in air like one too.” The -old Negro studied the dried object skittishly. “Stinger in that tail, I -bet you. You watch out, Mister Tom, mought be p’ison even if he daid.” - -“There are desert places out there, they told me, where everything has -thorn and stings or stinks.” Jefferson wrapped the desert scorpion -carefully in cotton lint. “I’ll have to have a glass case built at home -to display all these things. These trophies from Europe too. And this -piece of cannonball that was fired at Ticonderoga. I suppose every -president from this time on will be sent weird mementoes of some battle -or discovery or other. John Adams got an Iroquois scalp and a jawbone -some settler had plowed up in his field, but nothing quite so gruesome -has ever come to me. Now we must count all these boxes and I must see -that they all go aboard the boat.” - - -The storm did not abate. Rather, it grew worse, changing from snow to -sleet and then to icy hostile rain that made quagmires of the roads and -treacherous slippery deadfalls of every slope. The coach horses slipped -and stumbled, the coach swayed and lurched in the ruts, splashing muddy -water everywhere. Jefferson’s bones ached from the jolting; his elbows -were sore from being continually slammed against the hard leather of the -seats. The floor was cold and wet. - -At Shadwell, where the barge landed, having made inquiry and been -assured that all his baggage had been transferred to wagons, he left the -coach and mounted his bay horse, the patient animal having been led -behind at a dragging pace for many miles. Snow was still thick in the -air, but once in the saddle Jefferson leaned into the wind, gave the bay -his head, and let him warm his sluggish blood in a brisk canter. Sensing -that he was heading home, the horse loped along, shaking his head in -irritation at the snow that stung his eyelids, but keeping steadily on -until the mountains loomed at last, dark blue and chill upon the -horizon. - -Martha’s husband, Thomas Randolph, had written that all the people of -Albemarle County would be out to meet him with fife and drum and banner, -but Jefferson had urged Martha to see that there was no public -demonstration. “I’ll likely be delayed on the way. I may even get home -in the middle of the night. Head off any hoorah. This is no hero; this -is plain Farmer Jefferson coming home.” - -When he turned off the highway into the narrow winding road up his hill, -he could restrain the bay no longer. Weary as the animal was, he broke -into a reaching gallop, and now the brick house was in sight, and -streaming out from every door came people running, bareheaded and -shouting through the storm. His daughter, his son-in-law, all his -grandchildren, and every slave on the place, he was certain. They -swarmed about him, lifting him off his horse, the jubilant Negroes -pressing forward to kiss his hands, his boots, even his horse. - -The children screamed joyfully, “Grandfather is home for ever and ever!” -With so many arms lifting him, he was half carried in to the house. In -the lofty hall, the ceiling almost two full stories high, a great fire -burned on the hearth and shone on the trophy-covered walls and the great -clock over the door that worked by cannon ball weights and faced both -indoors and out. - -Jefferson sank wearily into a deep chair. He was more worn and chilled -than he wanted to admit, but a great sigh of contentment made his lips -tremble. All around him were all the things he loved, that he had built, -contrived, designed, invented. The weather indicator on the ceiling that -was controlled by a vane on the roof outside—his eyes turned up toward -it. - -“Still works,” he remarked, “and from the set of the wind there’ll be no -good weather for another day at least. Did the wagons get here?” - -“No, Papa, not yet. But the roads are mighty bad, as you know.” - -“Freezing mud. Makes slow traveling. Now, baby,” he protested to a young -granddaughter, “Grandpapa can take off his own boots.” - -“No, you can’t,” insisted young Cornelia, “because I’m going to do it -for you. Ellen’s fetching some wool socks she knit—and, Grandpa, one is -too long but please don’t mention it.” - -“I won’t, I promise. Not if it reaches halfway to my neck.” - -“I found these old slippers in your wardrobe. A mouse had started to -build a nest in one but I brushed it out and aired it. Thank goodness, -he hadn’t gnawed any holes in it.” She jumped up. - -“Ah, my dear sir,” he looked up gratefully at Thomas Randolph, who was -followed by a servant with a steaming mug on a server, “you save my -life!” - -“Just what you need to heat up your blood, sir.” said Randolph. “Another -log on the fire, Cassius, and tend the fires in Mr. Jefferson’s library -and bedroom.” - -Jefferson sipped the warm punch slowly while his granddaughters busied -themselves dressing his feet in warm hose and old slippers. - -“Your breeches are damp, Grandpa,” one said. “But we can’t do anything -about that.” - -“I am marvelously served already.” He pulled them close to kiss their -flushed young faces. “Burwell will find me some dry clothes presently as -soon as I am warmed and rested. I see that our Paris lamp hasn’t -tarnished very much, Patsy.” He looked up at the ceiling. “Remember what -a time we had packing that thing? I remember you stuffed the globes full -of hose and shirts and winced every time the box was moved.” - -“I expected it to arrive here a mass of scraps and splinters,” she said, -“and after you had paid such an outrageous price for it, too.” - -“It was that painting you made the worst fuss about.” Jefferson emptied -the bowl, handed it to the waiting servant, and got to his feet. “Ah, my -old knees are stiff! But they still seem willing to support me. Now, I -want to see everything. Yes”—he halted at the door of the high-ceiled -drawing room—“there’s poor old John the Baptist whom you hated, Patsy.” -He went nearer to study the painting over the mantel. - -“It was Polly who loathed it most,” Martha said. “Not poor old John, all -head and no body, but Salome lugging him on that charger wearing modern -clothes and a very proper turban at that. I’d still like to throw that -picture away, Papa. It used to give little Francis Eppes the horrors. -Every time he had to pass through this room he’d have nightmares.” - -“Nice polish on this floor, Patsy,” commended Jefferson, artfully -turning her mind away from criticism of one of his favorite paintings by -complimenting the gleam of the parquet floor. It was the first such oak -floor laid in America and he was very proud of the way it reflected the -glitter of the gilt chairs and sofas he had brought from Paris. They had -cost fabulous amounts too, more than he could afford, but in his -philosophy the things a man wanted and admired, that made life richer, -were worth whatever they cost. - -A brief nagging jerk of realism struck him—that now he would have to -count the cost of things. Let that wait, let it wait until tomorrow. -Tomorrow he would look over his lands, his farms; he would see how -Randolph’s management had benefited them, and study what more must be -done to the still unfinished house. Martha, catching his roving look, -interrupted it with a protest. - -“Papa, please! Don’t begin right away tearing down something and -building it over. The house is fine as it is and we all love it—and you -are so tired.” - -“My dear, I should be even more tired with no occupation,” he argued. -“Of course it will take me some little time to arrange and dispose of -all my books and papers. Did they build those shelves I wrote you about -in November?” - -“Yes, Papa, come and see. I gave them the drawing you made and I’m quite -sure they followed it exactly.” She walked ahead of him through the -great hall and the narrow passage that led to the southern wing of the -house which contained the library, Jefferson’s study, and his bedroom, -with the bed alcove between and the steep winding stairs to the -mezzanine-like second story. - -There in the familiar rooms were all the homely things he had missed—his -shabby old revolving chair, the painted wooden bench with its leather -cushion that just fitted his lean, weary legs, the round revolving table -he had had built with the legs set right so that the bench would slide -under them and make of table, chair, and bench a comfortable kind of -chaise longue with a high back to shut out the drafts. There was his -file table with octagonal sides, each side holding a filing drawer -labeled with a group of letters, and his high drawing table with drawers -and shelves that could be adjusted at any angle. - -Beside the library fireplace stood a high-backed leather chair, a -pompous and official looking piece of furniture. Jefferson glared at it. - -“And how came that thing here?” he demanded. - -“Why, Papa, don’t you recognize it? It’s the chair you sat in all the -time you were vice-president. Mr. Madison had it sent up by the barge. -He thought you would like to have it,” explained Martha. - -He snorted. “I have spent more eternal hours of boredom in that -miserable chair than in any seat whereon a man has ever rested his -breeches!” he grumbled. “Stick it in a dark corner somewhere. Send it -down to the servants’ quarters. The office of vice-president is about as -tedious an insult to a man’s intelligence as could be conceived. To have -to suffer it for four years is bad enough, but to be reminded of it the -rest of his life is pure persecution. However, I shall take pains to -thank Jemmy Madison properly. He meant this as a handsome gift. I’ll -receive it in the same spirit, but I don’t want it around where I have -to look at it and be reminded of Senator Bingham and of John Adams’s -being urged to slay a thousand Republicans with the jawbone of Thomas -Jefferson.” - -“Oh, Papa, don’t let past times rankle. Look back on the happy ones,” -begged Martha. “We did have fun in Paris, didn’t we?” - -“And you went to school there,” mourned one of her daughters—Jefferson -was not yet entirely sure which was which—“and saw all those fashionable -people and the king and Napoleon and spoke French all the time, and we -have to learn French with that stupid Miss Fraker. You should hear her, -Grandpa. She pronounces French as it is spelled in English.” - -“She says ‘Owy Owy,’ and we know it should be ‘wee wee,’” piped up a -smaller one. Was this Virginia or Ellen? He would have to put his family -tree in order soon before he mortally offended some of them. - -“Grandfather will teach you proper French when he gets time,” promised -their mother. “He spent four years over there and I went to school there -and so did Aunt Maria. But not all that we saw was happy. We saw too -many beggars and hungry people in the streets, something you will never -see in Virginia.” - -“We see blind Remus when we go to church,” said one child. “He sits on -the path with his hat in his hand and says, ‘Please, li’l missy, give -ole Remus a penny?’” - -“And if we put our penny in his hat, then we have nothing when the -verger comes around with the alms basin and he gives us a disgusted -look,” said another. - -“Remus doesn’t have to beg,” said Jefferson. “He is owned by a family -able to take care of him.” - -“Maybe he likes it. Sitting in the sun and hearing people pass.” - -“If he’s sitting there now, he’s being snowed on,” said young Francis -Eppes gravely, standing at the window. It was the first time the quiet, -brown-haired boy had spoken and Jefferson from his seat in the old -revolving chair looked at him sharply. This was his beloved younger -daughter Maria’s only child. Maria, christened Mary, called Polly, and -later changing her name in the convent to Maria, pronounced in the -Italian fashion. Maria was gone now these four years but the pain of her -loss was still a quivering fiber of anguish in Thomas Jefferson’s heart. -She had died, as his own young wife had died, when her daughters were -small, having borne too many children, wasting away after the last -childbirth, fading slowly day by day. Polly’s young husband, Jack Eppes, -still lived at Eppington not far away, but Francis spent a great deal of -time at Monticello with Martha’s healthy, noisy brood. - -“Come here, Francis,” Jefferson called gently. “Come here and let your -grandfather look at you.” - -“He’s always moping and looking out windows,” volunteered a young -Randolph. “It’s because he hasn’t any mother.” - -“Come and talk to me, Francis,” urged Jefferson. “You and I should be -friends. I have no mother either.” - -The boy came obediently and stood by the arm of the chair, his big eyes, -so like Polly’s, very sober. - -“Old people don’t have mothers, sir,” he said. - -“But I did. Till I was a grown up man. I had a handsome mother whose -name was Jane and I still think about her when I stand and look out of -windows. I wonder if I’m the kind of a man she would have wanted me to -be.” - -“I can’t be what my mother wanted me to be,” said small Francis -plaintively. “My father says she wanted me to be a great man like my -grandfather, but how can I be like you, sir? All the things you’ve done -won’t ever be done again, ever, will they? There will never be another -Declaration of Independence and you wrote that. I know. My father told -me.” - -Jefferson circled the lad with an arm. All about, clustered close to the -fire, the young Randolphs were abruptly and amazingly quiet. - -“That’s so,” the old man agreed. “I did write that paper, didn’t I? And -after I’d written it, four other men sat around in Philadelphia for -about a week and picked it to pieces and made changes in it and couldn’t -make up their minds whether to adopt it or not. I guess they never would -have made up their minds and we’d still be British subjects and paying -taxes to the king. But at last they all decided to accept the -Declaration of Independence, leaving out some parts I had labored hard -to make perfect. So—we declared ourselves independent of Great Britain.” - -The small Randolphs were convulsed in a hysteria of giggles but young -Francis kept a grave face. - -“On the fourth of July, 1776,” he said, “and I know the names of those -other men too, Grandfather.” - -“So do I!” piped up a cousin. “One was John Adams and one was Benjamin -Franklin—” - -“And Roger Sherman of Connecticut and Robert Livingston of New York,” -finished Francis, “and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. But you should have -been the first man to sign it, Grandfather. Why did you let John Hancock -beat you?” - -“He was the president of the Congress, my son. It was his right to put -his name first. Have you read the Declaration, any of you?” - -“Ha!” shouted some older ones. “We know it by heart.” And straightway -there began a chanting recitation, the big ones trying to drown out the -smaller ones. - -Jefferson jumped up, waving his hands for silence. “Enough! Enough! You -know it. I concede that you know it. Better than your grandfather no -doubt, for I have to think hard at times to remember parts of it.” - -It was Ann, the oldest Randolph daughter, who broke up the conclave -around the fire. - -“Grandfather, the wagons have come!” she announced from the door. “Do -you want all those boxes brought in here?” - -“All of them.” He jumped up and was quickly at the door. Now he would -open and arrange all his papers at his leisure. Slaves tramped in and -out through the outer library, endlessly piling up heavy parcels. - -“Twenty-nine,” counted Martha finally. “Papa, there should be thirty. I -know. I counted them twice in Washington.” - -“Something has been lost or stolen,” he worried, “and I won’t know what -it is until I have emptied every box.” - -“I know what it is!” she cried, studying the pile. “It’s that wooden box -we packed in your bedroom—there at the last. The one that had all your -Indian writing in it.” - -“My comparative study of all the Indian languages,” he fretted. “Some -one must go back at once. Thomas, send two boys down the river in a -canoe tomorrow to search the bank where all these parcels were unloaded -from the barge. That Indian work could be valuable. I meant to pursue it -further. It must not be lost.” - -The lost box was found a few days later. It had been torn open on the -muddy river bank and obviously the thieves, seeking for money, had been -disappointed in the contents, for the precious papers were torn and -scattered far and wide. What little could be salvaged, Martha dried and -pressed but little was legible on the sodden sheets. - -Thomas Jefferson’s years of study of the Indian tongues was forever -lost. - - - - - 3 - - - _Monticello: Summer, 1809_ - -Spring came burgeoning over the Virginia hills, warming quickly into -promise of summer. The bulbs Thomas Jefferson and his lost wife Martha -had planted so long ago pushed up through the damp earth and the -children came running excitedly to call him whenever a bud showed, tight -and green-sheathed above its protecting sword blades. - -“Grandfather, come quick! The Roman Empress tulip has a big bud showing -and a teeny one.” - -“Fine, Virginia.” She was one of the younger ones, still small enough so -that he could toss her on his shoulder. “We’ll go and see but not -touch.” - -“We know. They turn brown and don’t open out to be flowers. Francis -pinched the Queen of the Amazons last spring and it never bloomed at -all.” - -“And some little girl tattled, which isn’t nice, do you think?” he -teased, waiting for the others who invariably like hungry chicks came -flying out several doors whenever he walked on the lawn. - -“Francis thinks he is kind of special because he doesn’t live here all -the time,” said Ellen, “but he does stay for long times and he has -lessons with us and so he shouldn’t be any different.” - -“Francis,” explained Jefferson, “does not have a lot of people to love -him. He’s not rich in love like all the Randolphs. Now let us look into -the case of this foreign woman, the Roman Empress.” - -He bent over the bed where the nubby little buds ventured up into the -thin, warming sun of spring. An old pain, long kept hidden deep stirred -again in him, stabbing at his heart, clasping icy fingers at his throat -to make an aching cramp there. Martha, his own Martha, so long gone, so -always present and living still in that deep place where no person, no -plaudit, no antagonism or ambition had ever been permitted. He could -almost see her long white fingers now, as they had pressed the warm -earth down lovingly over the dry, somnolent bulbs, always so delicately -careful not to break an embryo root or smother too deep the promise of -the crown. - -She had been heavy with child that spring day, carrying the son who had -only lived a few days, and when he protested that she must not tire -herself she had given him a little push and said, “No, I must do it, I -must plant them. Don’t you know that whatever I plant now will grow?” - -The years—the years! Almost thirty of them now since she had looked at -him with dimming eyes, and said, “Promise that my children will never -have a stepmother.” - -He had kept that promise. No other woman had ever approached the -walled-off chamber of his heart where she was enshrined. There were -times when, observing Patsy’s healthy brood, an impatient bitterness -colored with a haunting kind of guilt would burn in him. Too many -children—six of them in ten years—had been too much for Martha’s frail -strength; yet Patsy had borne eleven easily and naturally. Childbirth to -her had not been the draining, killing ordeal that had taken Martha, and -their well-loved Maria also. He wondered often if Jack Eppes, Maria’s -young husband, felt too that continuing, sickening weight of -self-accusation. - -He got to his feet quickly, bidding the sad ghosts of the past to -depart. “Off with you all now,” he ordered. “It’s time for lessons. Run, -before your mother scolds you and me too.” - -“Race you?” screamed one Randolph to his sisters. - -“No, no—start fair!” they shrieked in protest. - -Jefferson called a halt. “Line up. Smallest one three paces ahead of the -next. You here, Cornelia.” - -“I’m Ellen, Grandfather.” - -“All right. Some day I shall hang labels around all your necks. No -inching forward now! You—big fellow, three paces to the rear. Now, when -I drop my handkerchief—go!” - -Small feet flew, braids flopped, hats fell off, and happy squeals and -shouts made pandemonium. Flushed and hot and breathless they straggled -back to the dreariness of lessons, the older ones knowing that they must -learn history and Latin verbs well, for inevitably before the day ended -their grandfather would be catechizing them and putting on a sober, -disappointed look if they missed the correct answers. - -There were letters waiting for replies and papers to be gone over and -sorted in his study, but Jefferson discovered a reluctance in himself to -begin these tasks. Pacing the long terrace to the south he came to the -door of a little one-room building. This was what had always been called -Honeymoon Cottage, the first room built at Monticello. He had lived a -bachelor’s life in that one room in ’71 and, when Shadwell, his mother’s -home, had burned, it had become his only and permanent home. - -He took from his pocket the big iron key he had carried for so many -years, turned the stiff lock slowly lest some rusted part should snap, -and opened the door. Long unused, as it had been for years, the room -still held a fresh, sweetish smell of femininity. Patsy had obviously -kept it aired and cleaned, knowing that it was still the secret abode of -his tired old heart. At the windows the dimity curtains were fresh and -starched, the valance and tester of the bed still bright with -old-fashioned wool embroidery. His own mother had worked those many-hued -flowers and curious fruits, coloring the wool in her own dye pots with -homemade dyes set with alum and vinegar. - -The slender posts of the bed were polished, as was the brass fender of -the fireplace. An armchair stood on the hearth rug and Jefferson sank -into it, relaxing his long legs, staring into the cold fireplace where -three dry logs rested on the andirons. - -His mind whet, far back in time, thirty-six years back, to a snowy -January night in ’72, when he had brought his bride, Martha Wayles -Skelton, to this room, the only home he had to offer her. - -Monticello had been a beginning then, some walls raised, part of a wing -roofed over, windows boarded up, floors rough laid and strewn with -scraps and sawdust where they were laid at all. But nowhere within the -ambitiously planned structure a room complete enough for a lady, and the -winter snows had halted all work until a thaw came. - -Thomas Jefferson could almost visualize that spindle-legged, -freckle-faced bridegroom, that brash twenty-nine-year-old fiddler who -had charmed his lady with his music and won her away from a swarm of -admirers by tricking them with a clever stratagem. It had never occurred -to him in those courting days at the Wayles’ place, The Forest, that he -might likely be catalogued with some of Martha’s other swains as an -ambitious country boy and embryo lawyer set on improving his state by -marrying a rich young widow. He had cared too much for Martha, loving -her, he was arrogantly certain, as no man had ever loved a woman before, -and he had brought her here to this cold little room so confident of her -love and courage that a chill or two did not matter. - -Now he thought back on that snowy ride up from Blenheim, where, because -of the deepening snow, they had been obliged to leave the chaise in -which they had started out from Williamsburg, as well as the warm robes -and blankets with which it had been loaded. There had been a debate, he -remembered now, about whether they should ride on or wait for morning, -but Martha had laughed his misgivings down. - -“I can weather any storm that you can weather, Thomas Jefferson.” - -So saddle horses had been brought, his own tired team stabled, and the -slave who had driven the chaise sent to bed with orders to drive to -Monticello in the morning. Jefferson recalled now his dubious concern -when he discovered that the snow on the mountain road was eighteen -inches deep. - -He had ridden ahead, breaking a track for Martha’s horse, trying to -shield her as best he could from the storm that stung their eyelids and -sifted inside collars and up sleeves. But Martha had been undismayed. -She had shouted jokes at him through the wind, ordering him to wait now -and then while she wiped the snow off her face. Eight miles they had had -to climb, the horses sliding, stumbling, and blowing through the dark -until at last they saw the brick piles and scaffolding of what was to be -their home through the weird snow light. - -Not a light showed, not a feather of smoke lay on the air. Where were -all the black people who should have been there ready to serve them with -warm fires and a hot meal? Jefferson burned with hot angry impatience; -then common sense prevailed. No one could possibly have expected them -home at this hour. It was far past midnight. - -The honeymoon cottage felt a trifle chilly now to his old bones, but on -that January night long ago it had held a tomblike cold. Just as he had -done on that night, now he rummaged the old brass pot beside the hearth, -finding scraps of slivers of kindling, mounding them into a heap under -the logs, struck flint, and fired a bit of bark. The tiny flame wavered -and grew as he blew upon it and coaxed fire to burn, as he had done for -his beloved. Finally it leaped in a bright blaze to the resinous pine -logs and Jefferson dropped into the chair again, trying to vision her -there, shaking the snow off her riding skirt, holding one foot and then -the other near to the blaze while he held her up with a supporting arm. - -They had been very silly that night, he knew now, and was glad of the -gay nonsense that had lightened the beginning for them. Life had been -grim enough afterward. He was happy now to recall the laughter. There -had been a mouse who came calling and Martha had not screamed or leaped -on a chair as his sisters did. Instead, she had waggled her fingers at -the mouse, as it sat upright blinking at them, and had exclaimed, -“Thomas, it has big brown eyes!” - -He had played the fiddle for her then, the same fiddle faithful Jupiter -had saved from the burning ruin of Shadwell. Now, he could not play any -more. Just as well. His music had belonged to people he loved. To -Martha, to Dabney Carr, who had married his sister and been his heart’s -best friend until his untimely death. Dabney Carr lay now out on this -hill, under the oak where they two had sat together while young Thomas -Jefferson blithely planned the place he would have here someday. They -had sworn then that the two of them would both be buried under those -trees. Jefferson had kept that promise. His music had belonged for a -while with his friendship for Patrick Henry, another fiddler and a -blithe and restless spirit, but most especially it had been for Martha. -He had wooed her with that fiddle—their duets had excluded her other -suitors—now it was as well that it would be forever silent, now that -there were no more loved ears to hear. - -Ten years he had had before she faded away, and he had been too much -away from home in those years. First as a member of the rebellious House -of Burgesses that had been peremptorily dissolved by Governor Dunmore. -That assembly had marched off to hold meetings in the tavern and out of -their angry discussions had grown the idea of the Colonial Congress. - -Their first year had brought him his little daughter, the other Martha -who had been promptly called Patsy because there were already two -Marthas, her mother and her aunt, Jefferson’s sister. - -For too much of the time, Jefferson knew now, he had kept to himself -when he was at home, shut away with his books. Out of the works of the -old and new philosophers and historians he had striven to evolve some -plan that could help a troubled America. While hammering went on around -him, as the house of his dreams slowly took form and shape, he had -struggled to put his ideas into words. But the essay he finally evolved -with much labor was called too bold by the members of the assembly. -Then, in that miasmic summer of ’73, the fever had laid him low and his -best friend, Dabney Carr, had died. - -I left her too much alone, he told himself as he watched the fire burn -low. She had been ill so often, weak and sorrowful because of the loss -of three children, two stillborn, while he was off riding for days to -reach Philadelphia, there to have a part in the birth of the new nation. -Now that nation lived, but a part of his life was forever dead and lay -on that grassy slope down the climbing road. - -A loud knock at the door broke off his gloomy reverie. The door was -pushed open and Burwell pushed his head in hesitantly. - -“Mister Tom, it past one o’clock,” the old Negro complained, “and they -got that horse out here waiting for you so long he done pawed a hole -mighty nigh deep enough to bury hisself.” - -“Sorry, Burwell.” Jefferson jumped up. “I was just sitting here thinking -about old times. I’ll ride now as soon as I change my breeches.” - -“Yes, suh, Mister Tom. I done looked everywhere for you. Then I seen -this little bitty smoke comin’ out this yere chimney. Ain’t been nobody -in this little room for a time now ’cept Miss Martha. She fetch the gals -in here to clean it up good before you come home.” - -“There won’t be anybody in here from now on, Burwell. Cover this fire so -it will be safe. This place is too full of ghosts and ghosts are sad -company when you are getting old.” - -“Law, you ain’t old, Mister Tom,” protested the slave, shoveling ashes -carefully over the dying embers. “You peert as a lot of young men. Might -get you a young wife yet. Out in the quarters the people been saying, -now Mister Tom come home for good likely he get him a lady of his own. -Miss Patsy, she a fine woman but she got Mister Tom Randolph and all -them chillen and you ain’t got nobody.” - -“I’ve got you, Burwell. And all the others. They’re all mine.” He took -out the iron key and carefully locked the door. Ghosts, he was thinking, -had so little respect for locks. Even the grim locks a man closed upon -his own heart. - - - - - 4 - - - _Monticello: Late summer, 1809_ - -The house was almost complete now. He had torn away what did not please -him and rebuilt some parts to suit his matured ideas. New white paint -gleamed on the cornices; the square windows in what he had called his -“sky room” on the third floor had been replaced by round and half-round -openings. But now in what he had wished would be a quiet summer he was -plagued by the same hosts that for several years had made George -Washington’s life miserable. - -Too many visitors came to Monticello. They came uninvited to see the man -who had written the Declaration of Independence. They came from miles -away, some on horseback, some in carriages, some even in ox-drawn -wagons. Patsy, who had hoped to return to her own place at Bedford long -enough to see to the preservation of the vegetables and fruits for -winter, abandoned the idea and stayed on with her children. - -“These people, these strangers—what are we to do with them?” she -worried. “Some of them come great distances. They have to be kept for -the night; they must be fed. Your pet steward, Petit, is getting really -fractious, Papa, and I have to keep the people cooking practically night -and day. They look at this handsome house and believe that Thomas -Jefferson is a rich man, that he can afford to entertain them—people -we’ve never seen before and will likely never see again—and, Papa, you -know it isn’t true. You aren’t rich enough to afford housing and feeding -so many. The farms don’t pay as they should, and we are often hard -pressed to feed and clothe our own people.” - -“I know,” he said heavily, “but what is a Virginia gentleman to do? We -cannot turn people away. There is no inn anywhere near where they can -buy food or lodging.” - -“Why not put up some barriers?” suggested young Jefferson Randolph. -“Charge everyone a shilling to come in. We might make enough to pay the -taxes.” - -“A poor joke, my son. We would outrage every tradition of Southern -hospitality. But I do wish that some part of this house that I built for -my family could be private and belong only to us. They invade every -corner without leave or apology. Yesterday they were all over my study. -They wanted to see everything. They even pulled out the drawers in my -desk and turned over some personal papers. And these were people of some -quality too—from Delaware, they said.” - -In the dining room Jefferson had devised a dumb-waiter at either end of -the mantelpiece. These ingenious carriers descended into the basement -close by the wine cellars and were used to bring things up from the cool -rooms below by an easy pull on the rope. Not long since he had found a -man in the dining room fascinated by the device and happily running the -carriers up and down. - -“What do you reckon he’s got this here for?” he demanded of Jefferson. -“Was he fixing a place to hide quick from the Injuns?” - -Courteously Jefferson explained the working of the device. “It has never -talked back in all the years it has been in operation,” he said, “so we -call it a dumb-waiter.” - -“These rich people got it mighty fine,” commented the stranger. “My old -lady took a fancy to that bed he’s got in yonder,” said the intruder -blandly, “one pulls up out of the way in daytime. We only got a two-room -house. Be mighty handy to have one of them there, put the young-uns in -it, and haul ’em out of sight when we get tired of their racket. All -these young-uns ain’t Jefferson’s, I figure? Got quite a passel of ’em -around, ain’t he?” - -“Most of these are my grandchildren—some are nieces and nephews. Are -those your children in there?” Jefferson pointed with some annoyance to -four towheaded youngsters, none of them too clean, who were bouncing up -and down on the tapestried seats of the gilt chairs in the drawing room. - -“Yeh, them’s my brats. Reckon they’re gettin’ kind of hungry. Old lady -said we’d ought to leave ’em home down Culpepper way but I said, No, -this here Thomas Jefferson was the people’s friend, even if he did get -to be president, and they’d ought to git a chance to see him. He around -here any place?” - -“I am Thomas Jefferson,” said the ex-president coolly. “And I suggest -that you educate your children to have respect for the property of other -people, sir. Those chairs they are jumping about on were brought all the -way from France.” - -The stranger stared incredulously at the elderly figure before him. -Shabby old brown coat. Faded velveteen breeches. Home-knit hose that -showed signs of much mending, and, most unbelievable of all, a pair of -old run-down carpet slippers. - -“Law, sir!” he exclaimed. “I took you for a butler or a footman or -something. You, Caleb and Beulah! Get away from them fancy cheers. Git -outside, all you-uns, and go sit in the wagon.” - -Dreadful as some of them were, they could not be sent away hungry. Food -that should have been sent to market to provide money for the family -expenses, these visitors ate and ate like locusts. Patsy rebelled at -using the beautiful Chippendale table that had been given Jefferson by -his old friend and teacher, George Wythe of Williamsburg. So trestle -tables were set up in the warming kitchens in the basement and picnic -hampers passed about by servants on the lawn on fine days. A few -important and genteel groups were dined in the big dining room, but -there were often too many of those. All those letters that her father -wrote, she thought impatiently, probably half of them were invitations -to people in Philadelphia or Washington or New York to come to -Monticello for long visits. - -“Where shall I sleep thirty-one people?” she worried, on a July night. -“And, Papa, we had better plan on having a lot more linen woven right -away. The woman washed fifty sheets yesterday. They’ll wear out fast at -that rate.” - -Jefferson sighed. “I came home to find peace and there is no peace. What -have I done in my past, my dear, that such hordes of admirers should -descend upon me? I’ve been a very ordinary fellow. I’ve always been -homely, ungainly, entirely unprepossessing. No one was more surprised -than I when your mother agreed to marry me. There she was—a beautiful -and gracious woman with a fortune of her own—and I a struggling young -lawyer, a long-legged shide-poke of a fellow, freckled and coarse-maned -as a lion, with no grace except that I could fiddle. And you know I was -an unpopular president. The number of them that hated me was legion.” - -“Not the good plain people. Not these people who come up here in old -carts or riding raw-boned nags just to get a glimpse of Thomas -Jefferson, champion of the people,” his daughter said. “Two words of -yours will never die in their ears: ‘Free and Equal.’ And because you -made them feel free and equal, they come to see you—in droves!” - -“I haven’t slept in my own bed all summer,” complained Ann, the oldest -daughter. “I’ve slept on hard pallets laid down on the floor till all my -bones are worn raw.” - -“The worst is the curious women—the young ones,” said Ellen. “They open -our wardrobes and finger our clothes. They even open drawers and jewel -boxes. We should have locks on everything, Grandfather. One girl from -away down on the Eastern Shore asked me to give her my chip-straw -bonnet. The one Mrs. Adams sent me last summer. She said we were all -rich and her folks were terribly poor and she hadn’t a decent bonnet to -get married in because they were fishermen and the run of shad had been -bad this year.” - -“You could have given her the bonnet, Ellen. I would have bought you -another one,” said her grandfather. - -And gone in debt for it, thought his daughter, with a tinge of -exasperation—when he had so many debts already! - -Jefferson put his arms about his granddaughters. “Soon, my dears, there -will come a frost and deep snows and sleet and the roads will become -difficult or impassable. Then nobody will come to see us and you will be -moping around the house because you are bored and lonely.” - -“Ann won’t,” declared her sister, “not if young Mister Bankhead has a -horse long-legged enough to wade the drifts.” - -“And you,” flashed back her sister, “will be primping and ordering all -the servants and the children about in case young Mister Coolidge should -decide to come riding down the road.” - -“Mother says I’m too young,” sighed Ellen, “but you know, Grandfather, -that fourteen isn’t terribly young. Why, mother was only seventeen when -she married.” - -“And look what happened to me!” cried her mother. “Six of you great -greedy daughters, all clamoring that you should have beaux before you -are out of pinafores.” - -“When you are seventeen, Ellen,” Jefferson assured the girl, “I -personally shall dispatch a very polite invitation to young Mister -Coolidge, whoever he is, to come calling at Monticello.” - -“He won’t want to come then. He’ll think I’m an old maid and I will be! -He’ll be looking for somebody young and fresh like Virginia.” - -“Hah! I wouldn’t look at him,” sniffed redheaded Virginia, who had a -crop of bright coppery freckles like her grandfather. “By the time he’s -an old man he’ll be fat as a pig and probably grunt when he moves and -squeal when he’s fed.” - -“He will not!” flared Ellen. “Anyway you’re just jealous. She doesn’t -like having red hair, Grandfather, and she hates every one of us who -haven’t got it.” - -“Why, I have red hair and I’m very proud of it!” he exclaimed. “Shame on -you all for quarreling among yourselves. I used to have a wise old -friend named Benjamin Franklin—” - -“We know about him. You told us before.” - -“We know what he said too,” put in Ellen patiently. “If we don’t hang -together we may all hang separately.” Definitely, she was thinking, -grandfather could at times be a bit tiresome. “And a penny saved is a -penny earned.” - -“But not one of us ever sees a penny!” - -“A sad situation,” remarked Jefferson, rummaging through the pocket of -his worn old green breeches. “Ah, I do seem to have a few pennies. Let -me count. There must be one apiece. Now”—he announced as he laid a coin -in each warm eager palm—“you have each the foundation for a fortune. -Guard it well, for there are long years ahead of you.” - -The years ahead of them! Thinking of those years brought back the old -touch of anxiety. What would he be able to do for them, for these young -things, born of his blood, hostages to fortune? - -“He who watches the pence need not be anxious about the pounds,” he -quoted more of his old friend Franklin, dubiously aware that his -audience were no longer listening. Slowly he walked back to his study, -turning to close the door almost in the face of a man who escorted three -women. - -“I am sorry, sir,” Jefferson said as the three stared indignantly. “I am -Thomas Jefferson. You are very welcome in my house but at this moment I -must beg to be excused and be about some urgent business.” And he turned -the key in the lock. - -The letter lay in the drawer where he had left it. He took it out, -lifted the seal again, and let the single sheet slide out into his hand. - -It was a very brief and slightly curt note from a Philadelphia banker. A -friend for whom Jefferson had felt a sudden compassion and whom he had -trusted had abruptly gone bankrupt. The note Jefferson had endorsed for -this friend, with the hope of helping him recoup his fortunes, was now -long overdue, unpaid and collectible; since Mr. Jefferson had put his -personal endorsement upon the paper he was now legally assumed to be -liable for the full amount of payment. - -The note was drawn for twenty thousand dollars. - - - - - 5 - - - _Monticello: Autumn, 1809_ - -With a frantic kind of energy that early autumn, Jefferson forsook his -books and set himself to the job of assaying and recuperating his own -personal estate. During his long absences, Thomas Randolph, and his son, -young Jefferson after him, had done their best by the vast property—the -acres about Monticello, and the farm, Poplar Grove, a few miles away. -But many fields had been neglected and weeds and brush had taken over; -the slaves, having no firm master, had learned to shirk tasks cleverly -and leave much undone. - -Thomas Jefferson had never been a harsh master, but now he became a -stern and demanding one. Nails must be made and bricks burned, both for -his own building plans and for sale in the market. His French friend, Du -Pont de Nemours, on his last visit had brought him a small flock of -merino sheep. Jefferson enjoyed supervising the shearing of these sheep, -and the washing of the wool, and watched the carding, spinning, and -weaving going on under Martha’s supervision. He decided to have a suit -of clothes made from his own fine woolen cloth and busied himself -drawing patterns, measuring, and figuring for days. - -The wrist that had been broken in Paris had never been properly set, and -he found using drawing tools and writing letters more and more of a -painful chore. And always he was interrupted by guests. Some he had -invited, regretting later his hospitable impulse, but the uninvited -continued to find their way up the winding road to his mountain. - -He must, he determined, have a place that was his own where he could -study and work undisturbed either by the family or by these strangers, -most of whom he was certain had only one desire—to be able to go home -and boast that they had seen the great Thomas Jefferson and the fabulous -house he had created. - -He would have a study built at the far end of the north promenade -immediately. So promptly he set about having seasoned lumber hauled from -the sawmill, bricks burned, and nails and hardware forged in the smithy. -He spent a day drawing a plan for a small, one-room building. - -Meanwhile he found an opportunity occasionally to slip away with one or -two grandchildren for a brief stay at Poplar Grove, his farm, where he -could have a little quiet and relaxation. But always an impelling -urgency drove him. He must write letters. He must counsel James Madison -about whether or not it would be wise to keep America out of war, with -conflicts raging all over Europe. Napoleon was running wild and perhaps -the British should be left alone to contain and subdue him. - -He must write, too, to his old friend, the Marquis de Lafayette, and -invite him to Monticello for a visit. Lafayette had been in prison, and -suffered hardships and loss of fortune. The debt America owed Lafayette -had never been paid, and, to Jefferson’s mind, had never been adequately -acknowledged, and he felt responsibility to prod the consciences of men -in power to do something about that. All these ideas possessed him, then -at times were diminished by a kind of inner irony. Who was he, to be so -concerned about a debt owed to any man when he himself was likely faced -with a weight of debts he had not yet had the courage to calculate? - -Some time soon when his private lair was completed he must sit down for -a day or a week and put all his books and accounts in order. It was a -kind of cowardice in him, he knew, that put off the reckoning from one -day to another. - -Meanwhile his new wool suit was finished and he was more pleased than -ever with the fineness of the material. With the coming of winter, -Martha had taken her own brood back to their plantation, but when she -returned for a brief visit Jefferson dressed up in his new clothes and -paraded before her, grinning like a happy boy. - -Martha gave a little surprise shriek. “Papa! Pantaloons! I never would -have believed you would give up those old knee breeches and long -stockings.” - -“They’re warmer,” Jefferson turned and posed naively, “and the London -papers that still come through in spite of the embargo say that they are -the new style in England. Jemmy Madison wrote that he had a pair -made—black broadcloth. Every hair and bit of lint sticks to that stuff. -I’m sending Jemmy enough of this goods to have himself a suit made. With -the president wearing it, we might be able to sell more in Washington. -Some friends who were here last week said the cloth was better than the -finest wool that comes from England.” - -“It will certainly help if you can find a new product to market. All -these visitors this summer devoured so much of our substance that should -have gone for ready money, and money, Papa, is what you need badly, as -I’m sure you know.” - -“Too well, Patsy. Too well! I’m admitting now to you what you must have -surmised or suspected for a long time. I am a fine farmer on paper. I’ve -been full of wonderful plans and theories, and on paper they looked fine -and profitable, but somehow they have all failed to pay off in cash. All -those vineyards and olive groves I planted so hopefully—I have just -compelled myself to compute the cost and returns on that venture. The -whole project adds up to a substantial loss.” - -“And because of this trouble with the shipping your wheat is mildewing -in the bins because it can’t be shipped to market,” she reminded him. - -“And across the ocean people in need of bread are starving,” he added -sorrowfully. “If there were any way to give the stuff away to those who -suffer for lack of it—but alas, there is none!” - -The people, always the people, thought his daughter. A world full of -people, and if he had his way he would free and feed all of them. In the -meantime he was dubious about spending the money for a new pair of -spectacles, but bent close to his desk peering through an old pair that -had one bow mended with black thread stiffened with glue. - -“You’d better have a new cushion in that old chair, Papa,” she -suggested. “If you sit on that thin one in those wool breeches, they’ll -be worn to a shine and show thin spots mighty quickly. I’ll tell one of -the women to stitch up a stout canvas cover and stuff it with plenty of -feathers.” She moved to the high window and looked off across the hill. -“Those mountains look like winter,” she observed. “In spring and summer -a blue haze makes them dim and far and restful to look at, but in winter -their crests stand out sharp and blue and cold and a bit hostile. I hope -you’ve had plenty of wood cut and piled. You’ll need big fires, -especially if everyone comes home for Christmas.” - -He frowned a little, looked startled. “Christmas?” he repeated. “Is it -near—and is it so important?” - -She drew back a little. “Of course it’s important! Don’t tell me, Papa, -that those people who called you Jefferson the Infidel had any truth to -back up their accusations? Don’t tell me that you don’t believe that the -Son of God was born on Christmas day and that it is a holy day to be -remembered?” - -“I am not an infidel,” he said soberly. “I have never denied the -existence and the power of God. And I have studied extensively the -sayings of Jesus. I have also never discovered in all my reading any -proof that he was born on the twenty-fifth of December—especially as the -calendar has been changed several times since the period began that men -call Anno Domini.” - -“It is the day the Church sets apart as a holy day. For me, Papa, and -for my children, that’s enough,” said Martha a bit tartly. “Surely there -have been times when Christmas was important in your life, though you’ve -been at home so little?” - -“Oh, yes.” He was quick to try to mollify her. Patsy in an acid mood, he -remembered, could be a trifle difficult. “I remember times at Shadwell -when my mother was alive. And before my father died there was always -some kind of feasting, a goose saved and fattened and a fat pig killed -for the Negroes, and mother usually had suckets of some sort for the -young ones and opened her best brandied peaches and preserves.” - -“I remember when Mama was alive,” she looked off pensively into the -lonely blue of the hills, “we had one Christmas. The people brought in -holly and you mixed punch in a big bowl and people came, unless the snow -was too deep. And once I remember you took my mother to church, but she -came home unhappy because you stood outside and talked politics all -through the service. But after that you were seldom at home.” - -“I made her unhappy too often,” he reproached himself. “I was trying to -help build a nation, Patsy. We were living in perilous times. Why, you -must remember the war—when Tarleton came to Monticello? I rode sixty -miles in one night to get here in time to get you all safely away from -the British dragoons.” - -“I was five. I remember. Aunt Martha Carr was here with her boys and we -were all piled into the chaise, with some of the servants sitting on -behind with their legs dangling and old Jupiter lashing the horses to a -gallop. Mother cried because she was sure they would capture you and -burn the house down. She said that if Tarleton could capture the man who -wrote the Declaration of Independence, the king would make him a -general.” - -“Not to speak boastfully, that likely was true. But he didn’t capture me -nor burn the house. Instead Captain McLeod made himself very comfortable -in it for two days, while poor old black Caesar was hidden under the -planks of the portico, where he had crawled to hide all our silver. He -had pried up the floor and dropped down under, and black Martin saw some -horsemen galloping up the drive and dropped the planks back, and there -was faithful old Caesar underneath, hungry and scared for two days.” - -“I remember hearing about it,” said Martha, “and about the soldier who -pushed a gun into Martin’s face and ordered him to tell which way you -had gone or he would shoot. Martin said, ‘Go ahead, shoot!’ And after -that he never got tired of telling it. But, Papa, we were supposed to be -talking about Christmas!” - -How could he make himself clear to her, how could he explain to his -literal downright-minded daughter, that harried and anxious Thomas -Jefferson had been turned away by destiny from all the simple folkways -and beliefs? From all the prosaic and ordinary things that were good and -dedicated to wholesome living into a world of desperate struggle, -intrigue, cabal, tragedy, and strife? - -Now that he was becalmed in this quiet backwater of life he could see -his own career and know that it had been always headlong, more than a -little frenzied, and too much of it precipitate and unpredictable and -little under his own control—and in that chaotic whirling by of history -there had been too little time for a man to meditate and even assay his -own beliefs. - -“I,” he said, “have lived, Patsy, like a man snatched up by a whirlwind. -That is why I am so disassociated from simple things like celebrating -Christmas. Give me time to adjust and learn the value of things. You -know that I do not even yet fit smoothly into the rhythms of life, even -here at Monticello. I still want to alter and tear down and rebuild and -that distresses you; but I am trying, my dear—I am sincerely trying. -Ultimately I shall learn to be a quiescent ancient, grateful for a -fireside and an easy chair. And if you wish to celebrate Christmas, by -all means let us celebrate Christmas. Shall we have a great house full -of guests and much feasting and merrymaking?” - -“Oh, no!” she lifted both hands. “Papa, you know you can’t afford it!” - -He laughed. “And how are we to celebrate if we lack the proper materials -and incentive? Shall we merely hang the holly high and slaughter the -goose and carol a few stanzas under the mistletoe?” - -“Do you realize, sir,” she faced him sternly, “that you have not spent a -Christmas day in this house since I was a little girl?” - -“You have kept count all these years?” - -“I have kept count. And so has every one at Monticello. You owe -something to Monticello in my opinion.” - -“Then by all means, that is one debt that I shall pay,” he smiled, -letting his long, thin lips relax, and his voice sink to a caressing -murmur. “Plan it all, Daughter. Plan it all well and then simply tell -your old father what it is that you want him to do.” - - - - - 6 - - - _Monticello: Christmas, 1809_ - -Of all the people on Jefferson’s Little Mountain, old Burwell was -happiest in those lowering, chilly December days. - -This, the old man orated happily in the servant’s quarters below stairs, -was the way things ought to be on a gentleman’s estate in Virginia. -Plenty of cider cooling ready to be sent posthaste up to the dining -room, riding Mister Tom’s dumb-waiter. Women running up and down the -steep, narrow curving stairways at either end of the house carrying -pitchers of hot water and clean sheets, and heating irons in the rooms -below to press voluminous dresses for the young misses. Trula, the -laundress, kept a whole row of sadirons heating on the hearth of her -little brick-floored room, and in the warming kitchens were rows of -clean scrubbed bricks heating too, ready to be wrapped in flannel and -carried upstairs should some members of the family find the clean linen -sheets too icy for their feet. - -Mr. Jack Eppes had come riding up from Eppington, bringing a haunch of -venison that he had hung for days to tender it, and now it was turning -slowly on a great iron spit, with a half-grown Negro boy sitting by with -a mop of clean lint to dip into melted fat and wine vinegar whenever the -meat needed basting. For days the service yard had been full of -squawkings and drifting feathers as the women killed and dressed turkeys -and geese. A fat ham simmered, and plump plum puddings boiled and -bubbled, with sauce being beaten up in earthen bowls. - -“This here now,” stated Burwell, pompously, “is going to be a -sure-enough Christmas.” - -All the fine china had been taken down from the cupboards and washed, -and every wineglass on the place rubbed to a shine. Burwell himself had -polished the silver, not trusting any other servant to that special task -because Mister Tom wanted things right when he took a fancy notion. -Right now he had the notion and had it through and through. - -Cayce, the new young body servant Burwell was training, was pressing his -master’s new wool pantaloons and the old Negro stood by, supervising and -grumbling. - -“Old times in Washington,” he declared, “Mister Tom wouldn’t be seen in -old plain long-leg breeches like them there. Up there we got him up all -dandified in white satin knee breeches and long silk stockings and a -swingy-tail coat. Ruffles all starched.—Boy, did he strut! ‘Mister -President!’ everybody say, and bow, and some ladies scrooch way down -till they petticoats lay all out on the floor. Won’t see no more times -like that. But anyhow, we puttin’ the big pot in the little one, this -Christmas.” - -“He got Dely ironing a ruffled shirt right now,” insisted Cayce, “but he -say he ain’t wearin’ no buckle shoes. They hurt his feet. Dunno how I -git them old slippers off’n him, but Miss Patsy say I got it to do.” - -The young Randolphs and Carrs and Francis Eppes, all red-cheeked and -excited, were running in and out of the house, lugging in branches of -cedar and pine and holly, scattering needles and berries and trash over -the shining floors so that two women had to follow around with brooms -and mops to shine up to suit Miss Patsy. But in the library, where a -great fire burned under the mirrored mantel and bookshelves mounted to -the ceiling on every wall, Thomas Jefferson sat in his revolving chair -and looked long into the gold and scarlet leap of the flames. - -His thin legs were clothed in a disreputable old pair of homemade -linsey-woolsey breeches, his woolen stockings sagging around his ankles. -His daughter looked at him and sighed, forbearing to nag at him, since -he had promised to be properly and elegantly dressed for the Christmas -dinner. - -“I wish he’d dress up,” she murmured to her daughter, Ann. “Aunt Anna -will be driving in soon and whenever he looks shabby and uncared for, -Aunt Anna always looks at me as though it were my fault.” - -“Let him be,” urged Ann. “He’s old, Mother, and tired and he has earned -the right to do as he pleases in his own house. At least he is letting -us have a real Christmas, so maybe people will stop saying Thomas -Jefferson is a great man but that he is also a heathen.” - -“Do they say things like that, Ann?” asked her mother anxiously. “Surely -not.” - -“I’ve heard them. So has Jeff. So I asked him straightway this morning, -‘Grandfather, do you really believe in God?’” - -“And what did he answer?” - -“He didn’t speak at all till he had taken me by the arm and led me over -to that long window. Then he pointed at the far mountains and there was -a cloud lying on top with a little touch of sun like gold shining over -it. ‘Did any man make that?’ he asked me. Then he went back to his book -again and never looked up.” - -“At least you have your answer. Daughter, a great man is like a pillar -that stands a little higher than the commonalty. There is always an itch -in the crowd of lesser humanity to throw rocks and mud at it. It was the -new laws he wrote for Virginia that started that infidel canard. The law -freed the people of the state from being taxed to support the Church. It -left them free to worship and pay tithes where they pleased, and -naturally the bishops and other clergy resented it. So the story was -circulated that Thomas Jefferson had no religion, and to my knowledge he -has never spoken one word to refute that libel.” - -“He disdained to answer it, Mother. He knew what he was and what he -believed and to his mind it was no concern of any one else. He was -Jefferson who belonged to the people, but what was in his heart and mind -belonged only to himself. Now, at Monticello, he belongs to himself and -he is just learning how to live with himself.” - -Martha sighed as she bent to rescue a falling pine cone that had -shattered down on the hearth. “The children haven’t secured these -wreaths very well,” she remarked, “and that one in the drawing room is -hung too low. The fire will dry it out and it might begin to burn. I’ll -tell Burwell to do something about it. Ever since Shadwell burned before -ever father was married, he has been uneasy about fire. He lost all his -precious books and papers then and nothing was saved but his fiddle.” - -“I wish he’d play again,” sighed Ann. “I’ve never heard him since I was -very small.” - -“He and my mother played together constantly,” Martha said. “When you -grow older memories sharpen and sometimes they hurt. I doubt if he will -ever play again. He made both Polly and me learn to play in France, but -after we came home again we could never persuade him to play with us. He -said we couldn’t keep time like Mama, but I knew even then that he -couldn’t bear to remember.” - -“What was she like, Mother—your mama?” - -“Slender and lovely—and she held herself proudly. But in the years I -remember she had children too fast and she was ill and weak a great deal -of the time. And Polly inherited her frailty and faded away so very -young. I’m glad you are all stout and healthy,” said her mother. - -“Ellen is letting herself get fat. She eats too many sweets and won’t -walk ten steps if she can help it. I scold her all the time. Ellen could -be pretty, if she doesn’t ruin her face with too many chins.” - -“Don’t be critical of your sisters.—Ah, here’s Aunt Anna’s carriage now. -Do run and call Cayce and tell him to replenish the fire in the south -bedroom. Aunt Anna has refused to climb our crooked stairs for years.” -Martha hurried away to welcome Thomas Jefferson’s sister and led her -into the library. “Papa, here’s Aunt Anna!” - -Jefferson came forward, his hands outstretched. He loved this younger -sister and pulled her down into a deep chair without giving her time to -take off her bonnet. - -“Toast your feet,” he ordered. “I know how this first cold gets into old -bones.” - -“Old?” she laughed. “Since when did you decide to be old, Tom Jefferson? -You’ll be hammering up things on this hill twenty years from now.—Well, -Randolph wouldn’t come,” she went on in a tone of disgust. “Only twenty -miles and he said it was too hard a trip in cold weather. That’s your -only brother for you, Tom. How long since you have seen him?” - -“Two years,” Jefferson pulled a chair up beside her. “He came over and -brought me a cask of young carp for my fish pond. He stayed one night.” - -“Uncle Randolph said he couldn’t sleep,” put in young Jefferson. “He -said he was expecting every minute that his bed would go crashing up -against the ceiling.” - -“Tom and his tinkering.” She had a hearty laugh. “Well, my bed will have -a stout chore to do if it hoists me to the ceiling tonight. For Heavens’ -sake, Tom, get yourself elected governor again so we can have some -decent roads in Virginia. Even on that turnpike the mud was hub deep and -my horses traveled grunting like oxen. But if you do get elected, Tom,” -she gave him an amiable prod with her knuckles, “get yourself a haircut! -What’s the matter with Burwell? Has old age caught up with him too?” - -“We’ll arrange to be barbered up beautifully this afternoon,” Jefferson -assured her. “The people have all been busy. They are bound this shall -be the most elaborate Christmas ever celebrated in Albemarle County.” - -“Time there was some life in this house,” she said bluntly. “One thing -you must never do is shut yourself up here like a hermit. He will, -Patsy, unless you keep after him. He’ll read ten thousand books and -never know his stockings are bagging down around his ankles.” - -“Papa,” began Martha, hesitantly, “there’s a Christmas Eve service at -the church tonight. It’s not snowing—and it’s only three miles. Would -you go, Papa?” - -He looked up at her with a direct, searching look. “What are you -thinking, Patsy? Though I think I can read it in your face. You think it -would have made her happy. Very well. Order the chaise around—but, as -for me, I shall ride Eagle. I’ll go to church with you.” - -“How people will stare!” whispered Ellen, in their room as the girls -dressed for supper. “Nobody will even look at the minister.” - -“Grandfather won’t even know they are staring,” declared Cornelia. “He’s -been stared at with bands playing and soldiers standing at attention.” - -“Grandfather,” remarked Ann, “is as aloof and untouchable as one of -those mountains out there.” - -“But people love him. Look how they swarmed over this place all summer.” - -“Have you noticed how low and gently he speaks lately? Even to the -servants, some of the stupidest ones, he never raises his voice. And -they scramble like anything to do what he wants done.” - -“It’s because he knows he is great and famous. Like the mountains. They -know they are going to be there forever and nothing can ever destroy -them. Greatness, real greatness, is always simple,” insisted Ann. - -There was the fragrance of evergreens and of many candles burning in the -church and a feebly burning wood fire strove to take a bit of the chill -off the place. Martha wrapped her heavy cloak around her knees, then -lifted a fold of it and spread it over her father’s thin legs as he sat, -stiffly upright beside her on the hard pew. There was a silence as the -minister came in, his vestment and stole very white in the dim light. -Then in the gallery high at the back came a humming, and the slaves -seated there began singing, low at first, then higher and clearer, rich -deep harmony filling the raftered spaces above where candle smoke softly -drifted. - - _Who got weary? Christmas day! Christmas day! - Oh, no, Lawd! Ain’t nobody weary. Nobody weary Christmas day!_ - -Thomas Jefferson gripped his daughter’s hand hard. “She sang that,” he -whispered. “She liked that song.” - -The age-old words rang out: “And there were in the same country -shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. -And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord -shone round about them; and they were sore afraid.” - -Martha Randolph saw her father’s lips moving. Was he praying? No, his -eyes were not cast down and there was no humility in the set of his -shoulders. He was looking straight ahead and upward, into the high lift -of the ceiling above the chancel where a round window framed an -indigo-dark circle of the sky. She caught the faint whisper from his -lips. - -“I am here,” he was saying to some vision unseen, “I am here, beloved.” - - - - - Transcriber’s Notes - - -—Silently corrected a few typos. - -—Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook - is public-domain in the country of publication. - -—In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by - _underscores_. - - - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS AT MONTICELLO WITH THOMAS -JEFFERSON *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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float:left; margin-left:-6em; width:6em; clear:both; } -dl.biblio dt.center { margin-left:0em; text-align:center; text-indent:0; } -dl.biblio dd { margin-top:.3em; margin-left:3em; text-align:justify; font-size:90%; } -p.biblio { margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; } -.clear { clear:both; } -p.book { margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; } -p.review { margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; font-size:80%; } -p.pcap { margin-left:0em; text-indent:0; text-align:center; margin-top:0; font-size:110%; } -p.pcapc { margin-left:4.7em; text-indent:0em; text-align:justify; } -span.attr { font-size:80%; font-family:sans-serif; } -span.pn { display:inline-block; width:4.7em; text-align:left; margin-left:0; text-indent:0; } -</style> -</head> -<body> - -<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Christmas at Monticello with Thomas Jefferson, by Helen Topping Miller</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Christmas at Monticello with Thomas Jefferson</p> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Helen Topping Miller</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: July 9, 2021 [eBook #65806]</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Tim Lindell, Stephen Hutcheson, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)</div> - -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS AT MONTICELLO WITH THOMAS JEFFERSON ***</div> -<div id="cover" class="img"> -<img id="coverpage" src="images/cover.jpg" alt="Christmas at Monticello" width="676" height="1000" /> -</div> -<div class="box"> -<h1>Christmas at Monticello -<br /><span class="smaller">with -<br /><i>Thomas Jefferson</i></span></h1> -<p class="center"><span class="smaller">BY</span> -<br />HELEN TOPPING MILLER</p> -<p class="tbcenter">LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. -<br /><span class="smaller">NEW YORK · LONDON · TORONTO</span> -<br />1959</p> -</div> -<p class="center smaller">LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., INC. -<br /><span class="small">119 WEST 40th STREET, NEW YORK 18</span></p> -<p class="center smaller">LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., <span class="sc">Ltd.</span> -<br /><span class="small">6 & 7 CLIFFORD STREET, LONDON W 1</span></p> -<p class="center smaller">LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. -<br /><span class="small">20 CRANFIELD ROAD, TORONTO 16</span></p> -<p class="center smallest">CHRISTMAS AT MONTICELLO -<br />WITH THOMAS JEFFERSON</p> -<p class="center smallest">COPYRIGHT © 1959 -<br />BY HELEN TOPPING MILLER -<br />ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK, OR ANY PORTION THEREOF, IN ANY FORM</p> -<p class="center smallest">PUBLISHED SIMULTANEOUSLY IN THE DOMINION OF CANADA BY -<br />LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., TORONTO</p> -<p class="center smallest">FIRST EDITION</p> -<p class="center smallest">LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER 59-11264</p> -<p class="center smaller">Printed in the United States of America</p> -<div class="pb" id="Page_5">5</div> -<div class="img"> -<img src="images/p1.jpg" id="ncfig1" alt="Decorative glyph" width="500" height="48" /> -</div> -<h3 id="c1"><i>Christmas Tales</i></h3> -<p class="center"><i>By</i> <span class="sc">Helen Topping Miller</span></p> -<p class="center"><i>Christmas for Tad</i> -<br /><i>No Tears for Christmas</i> -<br /><i>Christmas at Mount Vernon</i> -<br /><i>Her Christmas at the Hermitage</i> -<br /><i>Christmas with Robert E. Lee</i></p> -<div class="pb" id="Page_7">7</div> -<h2 id="c2"><span class="small">1</span></h2> -<div class="verse"> -<p class="lr"><i>Washington: March, 1809</i></p> -</div> -<p>Suddenly, as he climbed the long, curving flight of -stairs, he knew that now he was an old man.</p> -<p>Sixty-six last April, and, though his sandy red hair -had merely faded instead of turning gray, there were -twinges in his knees that reminded him of too many miles -in the saddle, in cold rain and sleet, too many hours standing -at his writing table, too much tension, not enough -rest. But now he could rest.</p> -<p>In the half-furnished rooms of the White House below, -the crowd still danced at the Inaugural Ball, with the wife -of the new president, sparkling, vivacious Dolly Madison, -a gay and charming hostess in a sweeping white cambric -dress and the inevitable enormous turban on her head.</p> -<p>He was grateful, Thomas Jefferson was thinking as he -toiled up the stairs, that he had been able to see his good -friend, Jemmy Madison, inaugurated president of these new -and struggling United States. But he was even more grateful -that his own years of service were at an end.</p> -<p>“No third term,” he had told them when they importuned -<span class="pb" id="Page_8">8</span> -him. “No, never! My work is done. I am going -home.”</p> -<p>If only he could have left a government in peace, but, for -this new nation that he had worked a lifetime to build, it -appeared sadly that there could be no peace. Off the coasts -of his country British and French ships prowled and battled, -seizing American shipping, taking off sailors at gunpoint, -confiscating cargoes. Would James Madison be able -to keep the nation out of another war? he worried, as he -entered the disordered bedroom where his half-packed possessions -were strewn about, books stacked on the floor, -papers spread over the bed. Down below in some of the -empty rooms of the mansion were piled other boxes of -papers already sorted and made ready to travel by barge and -wagon back to his “Little Mountain” in Albemarle County, -his beloved Monticello.</p> -<p>As he closed the door of the room, there was a little -whistle and a whir of wings, and his pet mockingbird came -charging through the air, all reaching feet and stiffened -wings, to perch on Jefferson’s shoulder.</p> -<p>“We’re going home, boy,” he told the bird, turning his -face to avoid the inquisitive bill. “Burwell will see to it that -you get back to Monticello safely, where all the other -mockingbirds will probably be swollen with envy when -they see you lording it over the place. No, I haven’t any -sugar tonight. When we get home my grandchildren will -feed you sugar till you’ll probably die of obesity.”</p> -<p>He sat wearily on the side of the bed and began turning -over papers, studying each, laying them in neat piles. -There were too many of them but each was important to -him. A soft rap came at the door; it opened a crack and -his daughter, Martha Randolph, always called “Patsy,” -put a turbaned head in.</p> -<div class="pb" id="Page_9">9</div> -<p>“Papa, may I come in?”</p> -<p>“It would seem that you are already in,” he smiled. -“You should be downstairs being gay with the rest of -them.”</p> -<p>“Oh, Papa, I’m an old woman now. I’m thirty-six. Old -enough for caps and a chimney corner, too old for frolicking.”</p> -<p>“The chimney corner hasn’t been built that can hold -you long. You were born restless like your father. You -always want to be on to the next activity, Patsy, no matter -what it is.”</p> -<p>“I didn’t come away down here through all that cold -mud to dance and frivol,” she argued, arranging her wide -skirt so she could sit beside him on the high bed. “I came -to help you pack and fetch you home, but from the looks -of things we’re doomed never to get there. What are all -these pages and pages full of strange words?”</p> -<p>“Look out!” He rescued some sheets from her hand. -“Don’t mix them up.” He straightened the papers lovingly, -his long freckled fingers deft. “These are my Indian vocabularies. -I’ve been setting down words from the different -Indian tongues, comparing them and trying to find a -common origin.”</p> -<p>“So that’s why someone said the other day that you -believed that all the Indians were originally Russians!” -Patsy laid the pages in neat piles. “Papa, you continually -astound me! With all the frightful responsibilities you’ve -had all these years—buying Louisiana, the country continually -in a row with England and France and this bank -business, not to mention Aaron Burr—you’ve found time -to learn Indian languages.”</p> -<p>“I haven’t learned many—only a few words here and -there. It kept my mind off unpleasant things, like having -<span class="pb" id="Page_10">10</span> -all the Federalists hate me vehemently and make no bones -about it.” He quirked his long mouth in an ironic grimace. -“Do you know that at this moment there are half a dozen -banquets being eaten in this city where the Federalists are -proposing insulting toasts to the despised ‘Virginian,’ gloating -over my departure, telling each other, ‘Thank God, at -last we’re rid of Jefferson!’?”</p> -<p>“Papa, please don’t remember those things,” pleaded his -daughter. “Leave every bitter memory right here on the -shores of this dirty Potomac. Up on the Rivanna on your -mountain the children are already counting hours, eager for -Grandfather to come home. Now, can’t we lay all these -papers in a box so this bed can be used for the purpose for -which it was intended? I’ll call Burwell. I could drag your -boots off myself but it’s hard for me to stoop or bend over -in these murderous stays. Back home I shall never wear -them, no matter if my fashion-minded daughters faint with -horror.”</p> -<p>“Don’t tell me the Misses Randolph have deserted dolls -and toad houses built of mud and gone running after fur-belows! -Maybe I had too many mirrors sent home from -France.” He began obediently to lay the papers in a stout -wooden box. “Come in, Burwell. The tyrannical Madam -Patsy Randolph says this ex-president has to go to bed.”</p> -<p>“With a hot posset and a warm brick at his feet, Burwell,” -Martha instructed the faithful servant. “I wonder if anybody -in the future history of this nation will ever get this -old barn of a mansion really warm? There are more goose-pimples -than dimples and beauty patches on those bare -shoulders downstairs this minute and Dolly Madison whispered -to me that she wished that protocol demanded ermine -capes with velvet linings for officials in this country such -as the kings and lords wear in England. Well, good night, -<span class="pb" id="Page_11">11</span> -Papa. I’ll see you in the morning before I leave. I do have -to hurry home. Remember there is a large family of small -people there all in need of discipline before you get back -to spoil them all outrageously.”</p> -<p>“I never spoil children. I teach them to use their eyes -and their minds,” he protested, grunting as Burwell eased -off the tight polished slippers and put shabby old carpet -slippers on his feet. “There’s one thing I determine, Madam. -If you can throw away stays when you are back at Monticello, -I shall discard all fancy boots and slippers, stocks and -tight cravats, and those confounded, silly lacy affairs down -my front. You haven’t given away my good green breeches, -I hope?”</p> -<p>“Everything of yours is exactly as you left it, Papa. The -moths got at that awful old homespun coat but I suppose -you’ll wear it anyway.”</p> -<p>“It comforts my old shoulders and the pockets are all in -the right places,” he asserted.</p> -<p>“Very likely full of rocks and arrowheads and dried -leaves and dead butterflies at this moment.” She bent and -kissed him, her fancy headdress slipping a little. She pulled -it off freeing reddish brown curls to fall over her ears. “I’m -going to bed myself. Those fiddles and trombones can -squawk all night but they won’t keep me awake.”</p> -<p>Left alone, Thomas Jefferson dug a comfortable hollow -in his pillow and tried to sleep. But too much went coursing -through his mind. That resolution passed by the Virginia -Assembly, especially the words at the end: “You carry -with you the sweetest of awards, the recollection of a life -well spent in the service of your country.”</p> -<p>That sentiment assuaged a little some of the bitterer -things. Young Alexander Hamilton, George Washington’s -handsome protégé and Thomas Jefferson’s relentless enemy, -<span class="pb" id="Page_12">12</span> -dying, after he had fired dramatically in the air, from the -bullet of Aaron Burr. And there had been Burr, as Jefferson -knew, always plotting, dreaming up his grandiose -schemes to set up an empire of his own in the West, fleeing -to England when his treasonable activities were discovered, -forfeiting his bail.</p> -<p>John Marshall had been to blame for that. John Marshall, -John Adams’ midnight appointee, named for petty spite, -and the sworn and bitter enemy of Thomas Jefferson, had -so muddled Burr’s trial that a jury had acquitted the man of -treason and altered the charge to some trivial misdemeanor. -And then Marshall had had the effrontery to subpoena the -President of the United States as a witness!</p> -<p>These are they who had worked all manner of evil against -me, the words ran through the old man’s tired brain. Yet do -I stand and my arm prevails against them. Curious how -darkness and silence always brought back to him some line -or other from the thousands of books he had read. That -was something he would do at Monticello to fill up his -days—catalogue all his books, almost ten thousand of them -there must be now, for he had sent home boxes full every -year. He would teach his older grandsons, Jefferson Randolph -and Francis Eppes, to appreciate books too, and -some of the girls might show some signs of possessing an -eager mind like his Patsy’s.</p> -<p>Someone opened a door below and the blare of a marching -tune came to his ears which likely meant that the dancing -company were going down the chilly halls to the unfurnished -rooms where the collation was spread on trestle -tables. Jefferson found himself drumming his fingers on his -chest in time to the music. There had been so much martial -music in his life. He thought of Patrick Henry riding into -Williamsburg on that cloudy morning at the head of his -<span class="pb" id="Page_13">13</span> -militia. Gallant, shabby Patrick, who had stood so tall in his -run-down boots and worn leather breeches, his coat out at -the elbows, who had twice sent great words ringing on the -air of America, words that were so trumpet-strong and stirring -that they still echoed in the ears of men and made a -small thrill quiver in the breast of Thomas Jefferson himself.</p> -<p>“If this be treason, make the most of it!” And “Give me -Liberty or give me Death!” He would hear them again and -again so long as he lived, remembering that they had challenged -the hesitant hearts of rebelling Virginians until they -were ready to dare even the great guns of the Third George -of Hanover.</p> -<p>But now, Jefferson was thinking, how early the fires of -patriotism had cooled in Patrick Henry. Patrick had been -successful at Red Hill, his plantation. He had made some -money, grown old before his time, and been content the -last time Jefferson had seen him to sit under a green tree -with a jug of cool spring water near by and his grandchildren -playing around. Ease and security—were they the -drugs that abated the eternal challenge in the minds of men? -And did nations like men grow sluggish and apathetic when -they were well fed and bodily comfortable, Jefferson wondered?</p> -<p>Patrick Henry was dead now, and George Washington -was dead. One by one the passionately dedicated builders -of the temple of the Republic had vanished from the arena, -leaving the affairs of state to the younger, noisier men who -had not known the travail, the risks, the fiery trials of the -beginning. I am a lone dead leaf hanging on the tree, the old -man told himself. I am that despised democrat who greeted -pompous envoys in a shabby coat, the one they called Infidel.</p> -<p>That had been his own private joke, his personal secret—his -<span class="pb" id="Page_14">14</span> -belief, his relationship with the Almighty. When he was -dead, someone would find the little book in which he had -pasted and annotated all the sayings of Jesus and know how -wrong they had been in their hasty judgment. But now it -did not matter. Nothing mattered now that he was going -home. He had refused a third term as president, adhering to -the precedent of George Washington. Turmoil and trouble -were hot in the air, but somehow his nostrils did not dilate -with the old war-horse eagerness at the threat of conflict. -Now he felt no stallion urge to go charging armed with -words into the midst of any fray. How well life was organized, -he thought, as he found a softer spot in the pillow. Old -age crept on a man unaware, bringing its own opiate to dull -any lingering sense of loss.</p> -<p>At length, letting the weight of weariness have its way -with him, Thomas Jefferson fell asleep. Martha Randolph, -tiptoeing in later, shading a candle with her hand, saw his -face upturned, eyes closed, nose pinched a little, some brown -freckles standing out on the gray, drained cheeks, and -caught the eagle look about him.</p> -<p>He will look like that when he is dead, she thought, as -she blew out the candle and quietly slipped away.</p> -<p class="tb">It was snowing hard when Jefferson awoke early in the -morning.</p> -<p>The raw ugliness of this new city of Washington was -being charitably hidden under a blanket of downy feathers. -The stumps where the big tulip poplars and oaks had been -cut down to open up streets and clear space for building -were now, all of them, so many thrones cushioned with -ermine. The cutting of those trees had grieved Jefferson’s -heart. How he hated to see a tree go down, though he had -slaughtered a young forest in his younger years to clear the -<span class="pb" id="Page_15">15</span> -top of his little mountain for the home he visioned there.</p> -<p>He looked down at the narrow streets where sleighs and -wagons were already churning up dark mud to profane the -virgin beauty of the snow.</p> -<p>Martha came in early accompanied by two aides. Jefferson, -half dressed, was eating the breakfast Burwell had -brought up, picking the meat from a fried fish with his -fingers, dipping bits of corn bread into new cane syrup. He -dried his fingers quickly on his handkerchief, gulped the -last swallow of tea, and motioned Burwell to take the food -away.</p> -<p>“And what brings you here so early, my dear Patsy?” he -inquired. “I thought you would be starting out for Richmond -and Charlottesville on the next coach?”</p> -<p>“I knew you’d never finish this packing alone or let any -one help you.” She kissed his forehead, smoothing back his -rough motley of hair. “I declare, Burwell, if you don’t cut -his hair soon, he’ll be riding the country looking like a -mangy old lion!” she scolded. “Trim this on top and fix -him a proper cue, or I shall go out and buy you a stylish -wig, Mr. Ex-President.”</p> -<p>“Can’t stand the things! They’re dirty,” he snorted. “I’ll -get everything packed, Patsy. These boys will help me. You -go along home and get a good fire going to thaw out my -old bones after that long three days in that drafty coach.”</p> -<p>“You will never finish packing,” she fussed. “You’ll find -some book or paper you haven’t seen in a long time and -spend hours poring over it. I know you, Thomas Jefferson. -You gentlemen bring in all those boxes and, Burwell, see -that Mr. Jefferson’s trunks and carpetbag are packed. This -baggage will be taken off the barge at Shadwell, Father, and -we’ll have wagons sent down to carry it to Monticello.”</p> -<p>“Nothing must be lost!” worried Jefferson. “Nothing! -<span class="pb" id="Page_16">16</span> -Every paper and pamphlet I’ve saved is important. They -contain the history of an era, the story of the birth of this -nation.”</p> -<p>“Then,” said Martha, “it would seem that most of them -should be in the Library of Congress.”</p> -<p>“Never, while they house that library in such makeshift -quarters,” he argued. “Patsy, my dear, I beg of you, go on -to Monticello as we planned. I shall arrive later with everything -I own intact. Just remember that your father has -knocked about the world on his own for a long time, and -I am not yet senile nor decrepit.”</p> -<p>“But you will admit that you are tired to the bone,” she -persisted, “and that long trip in this cold weather is not -going to be easy.”</p> -<p>“I’ll admit anything, only get out of here now so that I -can get out of this dressing gown and into my breeches! -Burwell, see that my satin breeches and the broadcloth coat -are well aired before you pack them. It will be a long day -before I shall want to be dressed up and elegant again.”</p> -<p>“You were quite the beau at that dance last night,” Martha -remarked. “Several women said to me that they had never -before seen you so witty and gay. And more than one remarked -that it was a great pity that you were leaving Washington.”</p> -<p>“They had never seen me before without the sad old -albatross of responsibility hung on my back,” he retorted. -“When I gave it over to Jemmy Madison, I felt twenty -years younger in twenty minutes and even several pounds -lighter. Once I’m back on my own mountain you’ll see, I -shall be merry as a grig—whatever a grig is.”</p> -<p>“In my youth, when you were feeding me huge, nauseous -doses of Plato and Livy, you would have ordered me to go -and look that word up,” Patsy reminded him. “I can hear -<span class="pb" id="Page_17">17</span> -you very sternly directing me never to use a word unless -I knew its exact meaning. Fortunately, I know what a grig -is.”</p> -<p>“It’s a cricket,” spoke up one of the aides. “My granny -told me a long time ago, a grig is a cricket. When I was a -young-un, sir.”</p> -<p>“It’s a kind of grasshopper,” disputed the other aide. “A -little grasshopper that fiddles tunes with its hind legs, Mr. -President, sir.”</p> -<p>“Mr. Ex-President, Carver. An ex being something that -has been crossed out, obliterated, ignored. I’m obliterated -but I can still go on being a grig. Even though I can’t fiddle -any more since I broke this wrist in France. I miss my -music, too.—Well, good-by again, Madam Randolph. Be -sure you take along a warm robe and a shawl. That coach -can be mighty damp and dreary.”</p> -<p>“And you do the same, Papa, and don’t you climb down -halfway home and start out on horseback in this foul -weather. Nothing ever created by Heaven is so treacherous -and mean as this month of March. If they would leave it off -all the calendars, it would please me well.”</p> -<p>“Keep plenty of elmbark stewing on the hob till I get -home,” he ordered. “It will cure any phthisic ever contracted.”</p> -<p>“He’s so stubborn,” he heard his daughter say to the aide -as she went out. “I shan’t be surprised at all to see him come -riding home on that horse. If he wants to do it, he’ll do it -if it kills him.”</p> -<p>“It won’t kill him, ma’am,” the man murmured. “Mister -Jefferson is still a mighty stout fellow.”</p> -<div class="pb" id="Page_18">18</div> -<h2 id="c3"><span class="small">2</span></h2> -<div class="verse"> -<p class="lr"><i>Monticello: Spring, 1809</i></p> -</div> -<p>Why, why had he saved so many things? Yet -they were all important, all precious. One small -box full of rocks, little packets of earth, dried -leaves, and the desiccated bodies of insects. These George -Clark and Meriwether Lewis had brought back to him from -the long exploring journey they had made, crossing the -country to the Pacific Ocean. Jefferson held out one small, -rattling mummy of a creature in his palm.</p> -<p>“Ever see a bug like this, Burwell?” he asked.</p> -<p>“Looks like some kind of scawpin. Got he tail in air like -one too.” The old Negro studied the dried object skittishly. -“Stinger in that tail, I bet you. You watch out, Mister Tom, -mought be p’ison even if he daid.”</p> -<p>“There are desert places out there, they told me, where -everything has thorn and stings or stinks.” Jefferson -wrapped the desert scorpion carefully in cotton lint. “I’ll -have to have a glass case built at home to display all these -things. These trophies from Europe too. And this piece of -cannonball that was fired at Ticonderoga. I suppose every -president from this time on will be sent weird mementoes -<span class="pb" id="Page_19">19</span> -of some battle or discovery or other. John Adams got an -Iroquois scalp and a jawbone some settler had plowed up in -his field, but nothing quite so gruesome has ever come to -me. Now we must count all these boxes and I must see that -they all go aboard the boat.”</p> -<p class="tb">The storm did not abate. Rather, it grew worse, changing -from snow to sleet and then to icy hostile rain that made -quagmires of the roads and treacherous slippery deadfalls -of every slope. The coach horses slipped and stumbled, the -coach swayed and lurched in the ruts, splashing muddy -water everywhere. Jefferson’s bones ached from the jolting; -his elbows were sore from being continually slammed -against the hard leather of the seats. The floor was cold and -wet.</p> -<p>At Shadwell, where the barge landed, having made inquiry -and been assured that all his baggage had been transferred -to wagons, he left the coach and mounted his bay -horse, the patient animal having been led behind at a dragging -pace for many miles. Snow was still thick in the air, -but once in the saddle Jefferson leaned into the wind, gave -the bay his head, and let him warm his sluggish blood in a -brisk canter. Sensing that he was heading home, the horse -loped along, shaking his head in irritation at the snow that -stung his eyelids, but keeping steadily on until the mountains -loomed at last, dark blue and chill upon the horizon.</p> -<p>Martha’s husband, Thomas Randolph, had written that -all the people of Albemarle County would be out to meet -him with fife and drum and banner, but Jefferson had urged -Martha to see that there was no public demonstration. “I’ll -likely be delayed on the way. I may even get home in the -middle of the night. Head off any hoorah. This is no hero; -this is plain Farmer Jefferson coming home.”</p> -<div class="pb" id="Page_20">20</div> -<p>When he turned off the highway into the narrow winding -road up his hill, he could restrain the bay no longer. -Weary as the animal was, he broke into a reaching gallop, -and now the brick house was in sight, and streaming out -from every door came people running, bareheaded and -shouting through the storm. His daughter, his son-in-law, -all his grandchildren, and every slave on the place, he was -certain. They swarmed about him, lifting him off his horse, -the jubilant Negroes pressing forward to kiss his hands, his -boots, even his horse.</p> -<p>The children screamed joyfully, “Grandfather is home -for ever and ever!” With so many arms lifting him, he was -half carried in to the house. In the lofty hall, the ceiling -almost two full stories high, a great fire burned on the -hearth and shone on the trophy-covered walls and the great -clock over the door that worked by cannon ball weights -and faced both indoors and out.</p> -<p>Jefferson sank wearily into a deep chair. He was more -worn and chilled than he wanted to admit, but a great sigh -of contentment made his lips tremble. All around him were -all the things he loved, that he had built, contrived, designed, -invented. The weather indicator on the ceiling that -was controlled by a vane on the roof outside—his eyes -turned up toward it.</p> -<p>“Still works,” he remarked, “and from the set of the -wind there’ll be no good weather for another day at least. -Did the wagons get here?”</p> -<p>“No, Papa, not yet. But the roads are mighty bad, as you -know.”</p> -<p>“Freezing mud. Makes slow traveling. Now, baby,” he -protested to a young granddaughter, “Grandpapa can take -off his own boots.”</p> -<p>“No, you can’t,” insisted young Cornelia, “because I’m -<span class="pb" id="Page_21">21</span> -going to do it for you. Ellen’s fetching some wool socks -she knit—and, Grandpa, one is too long but please don’t -mention it.”</p> -<p>“I won’t, I promise. Not if it reaches halfway to my -neck.”</p> -<p>“I found these old slippers in your wardrobe. A mouse -had started to build a nest in one but I brushed it out and -aired it. Thank goodness, he hadn’t gnawed any holes in -it.” She jumped up.</p> -<p>“Ah, my dear sir,” he looked up gratefully at Thomas -Randolph, who was followed by a servant with a steaming -mug on a server, “you save my life!”</p> -<p>“Just what you need to heat up your blood, sir.” said -Randolph. “Another log on the fire, Cassius, and tend the -fires in Mr. Jefferson’s library and bedroom.”</p> -<p>Jefferson sipped the warm punch slowly while his granddaughters -busied themselves dressing his feet in warm hose -and old slippers.</p> -<p>“Your breeches are damp, Grandpa,” one said. “But we -can’t do anything about that.”</p> -<p>“I am marvelously served already.” He pulled them close -to kiss their flushed young faces. “Burwell will find me -some dry clothes presently as soon as I am warmed and -rested. I see that our Paris lamp hasn’t tarnished very much, -Patsy.” He looked up at the ceiling. “Remember what a -time we had packing that thing? I remember you stuffed -the globes full of hose and shirts and winced every time the -box was moved.”</p> -<p>“I expected it to arrive here a mass of scraps and splinters,” -she said, “and after you had paid such an outrageous -price for it, too.”</p> -<p>“It was that painting you made the worst fuss about.” -Jefferson emptied the bowl, handed it to the waiting servant, -<span class="pb" id="Page_22">22</span> -and got to his feet. “Ah, my old knees are stiff! But -they still seem willing to support me. Now, I want to see -everything. Yes”—he halted at the door of the high-ceiled -drawing room—“there’s poor old John the Baptist whom -you hated, Patsy.” He went nearer to study the painting -over the mantel.</p> -<p>“It was Polly who loathed it most,” Martha said. “Not -poor old John, all head and no body, but Salome lugging -him on that charger wearing modern clothes and a very -proper turban at that. I’d still like to throw that picture -away, Papa. It used to give little Francis Eppes the horrors. -Every time he had to pass through this room he’d have -nightmares.”</p> -<p>“Nice polish on this floor, Patsy,” commended Jefferson, -artfully turning her mind away from criticism of one of his -favorite paintings by complimenting the gleam of the parquet -floor. It was the first such oak floor laid in America -and he was very proud of the way it reflected the glitter -of the gilt chairs and sofas he had brought from Paris. They -had cost fabulous amounts too, more than he could afford, -but in his philosophy the things a man wanted and admired, -that made life richer, were worth whatever they cost.</p> -<p>A brief nagging jerk of realism struck him—that now he -would have to count the cost of things. Let that wait, let it -wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow he would look over his -lands, his farms; he would see how Randolph’s management -had benefited them, and study what more must be done to -the still unfinished house. Martha, catching his roving look, -interrupted it with a protest.</p> -<p>“Papa, please! Don’t begin right away tearing down -something and building it over. The house is fine as it is -and we all love it—and you are so tired.”</p> -<p>“My dear, I should be even more tired with no occupation,” -<span class="pb" id="Page_23">23</span> -he argued. “Of course it will take me some little -time to arrange and dispose of all my books and papers. -Did they build those shelves I wrote you about in November?”</p> -<p>“Yes, Papa, come and see. I gave them the drawing you -made and I’m quite sure they followed it exactly.” She -walked ahead of him through the great hall and the narrow -passage that led to the southern wing of the house which -contained the library, Jefferson’s study, and his bedroom, -with the bed alcove between and the steep winding stairs to -the mezzanine-like second story.</p> -<p>There in the familiar rooms were all the homely things -he had missed—his shabby old revolving chair, the painted -wooden bench with its leather cushion that just fitted his -lean, weary legs, the round revolving table he had had -built with the legs set right so that the bench would slide -under them and make of table, chair, and bench a comfortable -kind of chaise longue with a high back to shut out -the drafts. There was his file table with octagonal sides, -each side holding a filing drawer labeled with a group of -letters, and his high drawing table with drawers and shelves -that could be adjusted at any angle.</p> -<p>Beside the library fireplace stood a high-backed leather -chair, a pompous and official looking piece of furniture. -Jefferson glared at it.</p> -<p>“And how came that thing here?” he demanded.</p> -<p>“Why, Papa, don’t you recognize it? It’s the chair you -sat in all the time you were vice-president. Mr. Madison -had it sent up by the barge. He thought you would like to -have it,” explained Martha.</p> -<p>He snorted. “I have spent more eternal hours of boredom -in that miserable chair than in any seat whereon a man has -ever rested his breeches!” he grumbled. “Stick it in a dark -<span class="pb" id="Page_24">24</span> -corner somewhere. Send it down to the servants’ quarters. -The office of vice-president is about as tedious an insult to -a man’s intelligence as could be conceived. To have to -suffer it for four years is bad enough, but to be reminded -of it the rest of his life is pure persecution. However, I -shall take pains to thank Jemmy Madison properly. He -meant this as a handsome gift. I’ll receive it in the same -spirit, but I don’t want it around where I have to look at it -and be reminded of Senator Bingham and of John Adams’s -being urged to slay a thousand Republicans with the jawbone -of Thomas Jefferson.”</p> -<p>“Oh, Papa, don’t let past times rankle. Look back on the -happy ones,” begged Martha. “We did have fun in Paris, -didn’t we?”</p> -<p>“And you went to school there,” mourned one of her -daughters—Jefferson was not yet entirely sure which was -which—“and saw all those fashionable people and the king -and Napoleon and spoke French all the time, and we have -to learn French with that stupid Miss Fraker. You should -hear her, Grandpa. She pronounces French as it is spelled -in English.”</p> -<p>“She says ‘Owy Owy,’ and we know it should be ‘wee -wee,’” piped up a smaller one. Was this Virginia or Ellen? -He would have to put his family tree in order soon before -he mortally offended some of them.</p> -<p>“Grandfather will teach you proper French when he -gets time,” promised their mother. “He spent four years -over there and I went to school there and so did Aunt -Maria. But not all that we saw was happy. We saw too -many beggars and hungry people in the streets, something -you will never see in Virginia.”</p> -<p>“We see blind Remus when we go to church,” said -one child. “He sits on the path with his hat in his hand -<span class="pb" id="Page_25">25</span> -and says, ‘Please, li’l missy, give ole Remus a penny?’”</p> -<p>“And if we put our penny in his hat, then we have -nothing when the verger comes around with the alms basin -and he gives us a disgusted look,” said another.</p> -<p>“Remus doesn’t have to beg,” said Jefferson. “He is -owned by a family able to take care of him.”</p> -<p>“Maybe he likes it. Sitting in the sun and hearing people -pass.”</p> -<p>“If he’s sitting there now, he’s being snowed on,” said -young Francis Eppes gravely, standing at the window. It -was the first time the quiet, brown-haired boy had spoken -and Jefferson from his seat in the old revolving chair looked -at him sharply. This was his beloved younger daughter -Maria’s only child. Maria, christened Mary, called Polly, -and later changing her name in the convent to Maria, pronounced -in the Italian fashion. Maria was gone now these -four years but the pain of her loss was still a quivering fiber -of anguish in Thomas Jefferson’s heart. She had died, as his -own young wife had died, when her daughters were small, -having borne too many children, wasting away after the -last childbirth, fading slowly day by day. Polly’s young -husband, Jack Eppes, still lived at Eppington not far away, -but Francis spent a great deal of time at Monticello with -Martha’s healthy, noisy brood.</p> -<p>“Come here, Francis,” Jefferson called gently. “Come -here and let your grandfather look at you.”</p> -<p>“He’s always moping and looking out windows,” volunteered -a young Randolph. “It’s because he hasn’t any -mother.”</p> -<p>“Come and talk to me, Francis,” urged Jefferson. “You -and I should be friends. I have no mother either.”</p> -<p>The boy came obediently and stood by the arm of the -chair, his big eyes, so like Polly’s, very sober.</p> -<div class="pb" id="Page_26">26</div> -<p>“Old people don’t have mothers, sir,” he said.</p> -<p>“But I did. Till I was a grown up man. I had a handsome -mother whose name was Jane and I still think about her -when I stand and look out of windows. I wonder if I’m the -kind of a man she would have wanted me to be.”</p> -<p>“I can’t be what my mother wanted me to be,” said small -Francis plaintively. “My father says she wanted me to be -a great man like my grandfather, but how can I be like you, -sir? All the things you’ve done won’t ever be done again, -ever, will they? There will never be another Declaration -of Independence and you wrote that. I know. My father -told me.”</p> -<p>Jefferson circled the lad with an arm. All about, clustered -close to the fire, the young Randolphs were abruptly and -amazingly quiet.</p> -<p>“That’s so,” the old man agreed. “I did write that paper, -didn’t I? And after I’d written it, four other men sat around -in Philadelphia for about a week and picked it to pieces and -made changes in it and couldn’t make up their minds -whether to adopt it or not. I guess they never would have -made up their minds and we’d still be British subjects and -paying taxes to the king. But at last they all decided to -accept the Declaration of Independence, leaving out some -parts I had labored hard to make perfect. So—we declared -ourselves independent of Great Britain.”</p> -<p>The small Randolphs were convulsed in a hysteria of -giggles but young Francis kept a grave face.</p> -<p>“On the fourth of July, 1776,” he said, “and I know the -names of those other men too, Grandfather.”</p> -<p>“So do I!” piped up a cousin. “One was John Adams and -one was Benjamin Franklin—”</p> -<p>“And Roger Sherman of Connecticut and Robert Livingston -of New York,” finished Francis, “and Thomas Jefferson -<span class="pb" id="Page_27">27</span> -of Virginia. But you should have been the first man -to sign it, Grandfather. Why did you let John Hancock -beat you?”</p> -<p>“He was the president of the Congress, my son. It was -his right to put his name first. Have you read the Declaration, -any of you?”</p> -<p>“Ha!” shouted some older ones. “We know it by heart.” -And straightway there began a chanting recitation, the -big ones trying to drown out the smaller ones.</p> -<p>Jefferson jumped up, waving his hands for silence. -“Enough! Enough! You know it. I concede that you know -it. Better than your grandfather no doubt, for I have to -think hard at times to remember parts of it.”</p> -<p>It was Ann, the oldest Randolph daughter, who broke up -the conclave around the fire.</p> -<p>“Grandfather, the wagons have come!” she announced -from the door. “Do you want all those boxes brought in -here?”</p> -<p>“All of them.” He jumped up and was quickly at the -door. Now he would open and arrange all his papers at his -leisure. Slaves tramped in and out through the outer library, -endlessly piling up heavy parcels.</p> -<p>“Twenty-nine,” counted Martha finally. “Papa, there -should be thirty. I know. I counted them twice in Washington.”</p> -<p>“Something has been lost or stolen,” he worried, “and -I won’t know what it is until I have emptied every box.”</p> -<p>“I know what it is!” she cried, studying the pile. “It’s -that wooden box we packed in your bedroom—there at the -last. The one that had all your Indian writing in it.”</p> -<p>“My comparative study of all the Indian languages,” he -fretted. “Some one must go back at once. Thomas, send -two boys down the river in a canoe tomorrow to search the -<span class="pb" id="Page_28">28</span> -bank where all these parcels were unloaded from the barge. -That Indian work could be valuable. I meant to pursue it -further. It must not be lost.”</p> -<p>The lost box was found a few days later. It had been -torn open on the muddy river bank and obviously the -thieves, seeking for money, had been disappointed in the -contents, for the precious papers were torn and scattered -far and wide. What little could be salvaged, Martha dried -and pressed but little was legible on the sodden sheets.</p> -<p>Thomas Jefferson’s years of study of the Indian tongues -was forever lost.</p> -<div class="pb" id="Page_29">29</div> -<h2 id="c4"><span class="small">3</span></h2> -<div class="verse"> -<p class="lr"><i>Monticello: Summer, 1809</i></p> -</div> -<p>Spring came burgeoning over the Virginia hills, -warming quickly into promise of summer. The bulbs -Thomas Jefferson and his lost wife Martha had -planted so long ago pushed up through the damp earth and -the children came running excitedly to call him whenever -a bud showed, tight and green-sheathed above its protecting -sword blades.</p> -<p>“Grandfather, come quick! The Roman Empress tulip -has a big bud showing and a teeny one.”</p> -<p>“Fine, Virginia.” She was one of the younger ones, still -small enough so that he could toss her on his shoulder. -“We’ll go and see but not touch.”</p> -<p>“We know. They turn brown and don’t open out to be -flowers. Francis pinched the Queen of the Amazons last -spring and it never bloomed at all.”</p> -<p>“And some little girl tattled, which isn’t nice, do you -think?” he teased, waiting for the others who invariably -like hungry chicks came flying out several doors whenever -he walked on the lawn.</p> -<p>“Francis thinks he is kind of special because he doesn’t -<span class="pb" id="Page_30">30</span> -live here all the time,” said Ellen, “but he does stay for long -times and he has lessons with us and so he shouldn’t be any -different.”</p> -<p>“Francis,” explained Jefferson, “does not have a lot of -people to love him. He’s not rich in love like all the Randolphs. -Now let us look into the case of this foreign woman, -the Roman Empress.”</p> -<p>He bent over the bed where the nubby little buds ventured -up into the thin, warming sun of spring. An old pain, -long kept hidden deep stirred again in him, stabbing at his -heart, clasping icy fingers at his throat to make an aching -cramp there. Martha, his own Martha, so long gone, so -always present and living still in that deep place where no -person, no plaudit, no antagonism or ambition had ever -been permitted. He could almost see her long white fingers -now, as they had pressed the warm earth down lovingly -over the dry, somnolent bulbs, always so delicately careful -not to break an embryo root or smother too deep the promise -of the crown.</p> -<p>She had been heavy with child that spring day, carrying -the son who had only lived a few days, and when he protested -that she must not tire herself she had given him a -little push and said, “No, I must do it, I must plant them. -Don’t you know that whatever I plant now will grow?”</p> -<p>The years—the years! Almost thirty of them now since -she had looked at him with dimming eyes, and said, “Promise -that my children will never have a stepmother.”</p> -<p>He had kept that promise. No other woman had ever -approached the walled-off chamber of his heart where she -was enshrined. There were times when, observing Patsy’s -healthy brood, an impatient bitterness colored with a haunting -kind of guilt would burn in him. Too many children—six -of them in ten years—had been too much for Martha’s -<span class="pb" id="Page_31">31</span> -frail strength; yet Patsy had borne eleven easily and naturally. -Childbirth to her had not been the draining, killing -ordeal that had taken Martha, and their well-loved Maria -also. He wondered often if Jack Eppes, Maria’s young husband, -felt too that continuing, sickening weight of self-accusation.</p> -<p>He got to his feet quickly, bidding the sad ghosts of the -past to depart. “Off with you all now,” he ordered. “It’s -time for lessons. Run, before your mother scolds you and -me too.”</p> -<p>“Race you?” screamed one Randolph to his sisters.</p> -<p>“No, no—start fair!” they shrieked in protest.</p> -<p>Jefferson called a halt. “Line up. Smallest one three paces -ahead of the next. You here, Cornelia.”</p> -<p>“I’m Ellen, Grandfather.”</p> -<p>“All right. Some day I shall hang labels around all your -necks. No inching forward now! You—big fellow, three -paces to the rear. Now, when I drop my handkerchief—go!”</p> -<p>Small feet flew, braids flopped, hats fell off, and happy -squeals and shouts made pandemonium. Flushed and hot and -breathless they straggled back to the dreariness of lessons, -the older ones knowing that they must learn history and -Latin verbs well, for inevitably before the day ended their -grandfather would be catechizing them and putting on a -sober, disappointed look if they missed the correct answers.</p> -<p>There were letters waiting for replies and papers to be -gone over and sorted in his study, but Jefferson discovered -a reluctance in himself to begin these tasks. Pacing the long -terrace to the south he came to the door of a little one-room -building. This was what had always been called Honeymoon -Cottage, the first room built at Monticello. He had -lived a bachelor’s life in that one room in ’71 and, when -<span class="pb" id="Page_32">32</span> -Shadwell, his mother’s home, had burned, it had become -his only and permanent home.</p> -<p>He took from his pocket the big iron key he had carried -for so many years, turned the stiff lock slowly lest some -rusted part should snap, and opened the door. Long unused, -as it had been for years, the room still held a fresh, sweetish -smell of femininity. Patsy had obviously kept it aired and -cleaned, knowing that it was still the secret abode of his -tired old heart. At the windows the dimity curtains were -fresh and starched, the valance and tester of the bed still -bright with old-fashioned wool embroidery. His own -mother had worked those many-hued flowers and curious -fruits, coloring the wool in her own dye pots with homemade -dyes set with alum and vinegar.</p> -<p>The slender posts of the bed were polished, as was the -brass fender of the fireplace. An armchair stood on the -hearth rug and Jefferson sank into it, relaxing his long legs, -staring into the cold fireplace where three dry logs rested -on the andirons.</p> -<p>His mind whet, far back in time, thirty-six years back, -to a snowy January night in ’72, when he had brought his -bride, Martha Wayles Skelton, to this room, the only home -he had to offer her.</p> -<p>Monticello had been a beginning then, some walls raised, -part of a wing roofed over, windows boarded up, floors -rough laid and strewn with scraps and sawdust where they -were laid at all. But nowhere within the ambitiously planned -structure a room complete enough for a lady, and the -winter snows had halted all work until a thaw came.</p> -<p>Thomas Jefferson could almost visualize that spindle-legged, -freckle-faced bridegroom, that brash twenty-nine-year-old -fiddler who had charmed his lady with his music -and won her away from a swarm of admirers by tricking -<span class="pb" id="Page_33">33</span> -them with a clever stratagem. It had never occurred to him -in those courting days at the Wayles’ place, The Forest, -that he might likely be catalogued with some of Martha’s -other swains as an ambitious country boy and embryo lawyer -set on improving his state by marrying a rich young -widow. He had cared too much for Martha, loving her, he -was arrogantly certain, as no man had ever loved a woman -before, and he had brought her here to this cold little room -so confident of her love and courage that a chill or two did -not matter.</p> -<p>Now he thought back on that snowy ride up from Blenheim, -where, because of the deepening snow, they had been -obliged to leave the chaise in which they had started out -from Williamsburg, as well as the warm robes and blankets -with which it had been loaded. There had been a debate, -he remembered now, about whether they should ride on or -wait for morning, but Martha had laughed his misgivings -down.</p> -<p>“I can weather any storm that you can weather, Thomas -Jefferson.”</p> -<p>So saddle horses had been brought, his own tired team -stabled, and the slave who had driven the chaise sent to bed -with orders to drive to Monticello in the morning. Jefferson -recalled now his dubious concern when he discovered -that the snow on the mountain road was eighteen inches -deep.</p> -<p>He had ridden ahead, breaking a track for Martha’s horse, -trying to shield her as best he could from the storm that -stung their eyelids and sifted inside collars and up sleeves. -But Martha had been undismayed. She had shouted jokes -at him through the wind, ordering him to wait now and -then while she wiped the snow off her face. Eight miles -they had had to climb, the horses sliding, stumbling, and -<span class="pb" id="Page_34">34</span> -blowing through the dark until at last they saw the brick -piles and scaffolding of what was to be their home through -the weird snow light.</p> -<p>Not a light showed, not a feather of smoke lay on the -air. Where were all the black people who should have been -there ready to serve them with warm fires and a hot meal? -Jefferson burned with hot angry impatience; then common -sense prevailed. No one could possibly have expected them -home at this hour. It was far past midnight.</p> -<p>The honeymoon cottage felt a trifle chilly now to his -old bones, but on that January night long ago it had held a -tomblike cold. Just as he had done on that night, now he -rummaged the old brass pot beside the hearth, finding scraps -of slivers of kindling, mounding them into a heap under the -logs, struck flint, and fired a bit of bark. The tiny flame -wavered and grew as he blew upon it and coaxed fire to -burn, as he had done for his beloved. Finally it leaped in a -bright blaze to the resinous pine logs and Jefferson dropped -into the chair again, trying to vision her there, shaking the -snow off her riding skirt, holding one foot and then the -other near to the blaze while he held her up with a supporting -arm.</p> -<p>They had been very silly that night, he knew now, and -was glad of the gay nonsense that had lightened the beginning -for them. Life had been grim enough afterward. He -was happy now to recall the laughter. There had been a -mouse who came calling and Martha had not screamed or -leaped on a chair as his sisters did. Instead, she had waggled -her fingers at the mouse, as it sat upright blinking at them, -and had exclaimed, “Thomas, it has big brown eyes!”</p> -<p>He had played the fiddle for her then, the same fiddle -faithful Jupiter had saved from the burning ruin of Shadwell. -Now, he could not play any more. Just as well. His -<span class="pb" id="Page_35">35</span> -music had belonged to people he loved. To Martha, to -Dabney Carr, who had married his sister and been his heart’s -best friend until his untimely death. Dabney Carr lay now -out on this hill, under the oak where they two had sat -together while young Thomas Jefferson blithely planned -the place he would have here someday. They had sworn -then that the two of them would both be buried under those -trees. Jefferson had kept that promise. His music had belonged -for a while with his friendship for Patrick Henry, -another fiddler and a blithe and restless spirit, but most especially -it had been for Martha. He had wooed her with that -fiddle—their duets had excluded her other suitors—now it -was as well that it would be forever silent, now that there -were no more loved ears to hear.</p> -<p>Ten years he had had before she faded away, and he had -been too much away from home in those years. First as a -member of the rebellious House of Burgesses that had been -peremptorily dissolved by Governor Dunmore. That assembly -had marched off to hold meetings in the tavern and -out of their angry discussions had grown the idea of the -Colonial Congress.</p> -<p>Their first year had brought him his little daughter, the -other Martha who had been promptly called Patsy because -there were already two Marthas, her mother and her aunt, -Jefferson’s sister.</p> -<p>For too much of the time, Jefferson knew now, he had -kept to himself when he was at home, shut away with his -books. Out of the works of the old and new philosophers -and historians he had striven to evolve some plan that could -help a troubled America. While hammering went on around -him, as the house of his dreams slowly took form and shape, -he had struggled to put his ideas into words. But the essay -he finally evolved with much labor was called too bold by -<span class="pb" id="Page_36">36</span> -the members of the assembly. Then, in that miasmic summer -of ’73, the fever had laid him low and his best friend, -Dabney Carr, had died.</p> -<p>I left her too much alone, he told himself as he watched -the fire burn low. She had been ill so often, weak and sorrowful -because of the loss of three children, two stillborn, -while he was off riding for days to reach Philadelphia, there -to have a part in the birth of the new nation. Now that -nation lived, but a part of his life was forever dead and lay -on that grassy slope down the climbing road.</p> -<p>A loud knock at the door broke off his gloomy reverie. -The door was pushed open and Burwell pushed his head in -hesitantly.</p> -<p>“Mister Tom, it past one o’clock,” the old Negro complained, -“and they got that horse out here waiting for you -so long he done pawed a hole mighty nigh deep enough to -bury hisself.”</p> -<p>“Sorry, Burwell.” Jefferson jumped up. “I was just sitting -here thinking about old times. I’ll ride now as soon as I -change my breeches.”</p> -<p>“Yes, suh, Mister Tom. I done looked everywhere for -you. Then I seen this little bitty smoke comin’ out this yere -chimney. Ain’t been nobody in this little room for a time -now ’cept Miss Martha. She fetch the gals in here to clean -it up good before you come home.”</p> -<p>“There won’t be anybody in here from now on, Burwell. -Cover this fire so it will be safe. This place is too full of -ghosts and ghosts are sad company when you are getting -old.”</p> -<p>“Law, you ain’t old, Mister Tom,” protested the slave, -shoveling ashes carefully over the dying embers. “You -peert as a lot of young men. Might get you a young wife -yet. Out in the quarters the people been saying, now Mister -<span class="pb" id="Page_37">37</span> -Tom come home for good likely he get him a lady of his -own. Miss Patsy, she a fine woman but she got Mister Tom -Randolph and all them chillen and you ain’t got nobody.”</p> -<p>“I’ve got you, Burwell. And all the others. They’re all -mine.” He took out the iron key and carefully locked the -door. Ghosts, he was thinking, had so little respect for locks. -Even the grim locks a man closed upon his own heart.</p> -<div class="pb" id="Page_38">38</div> -<h2 id="c5"><span class="small">4</span></h2> -<div class="verse"> -<p class="lr"><i>Monticello: Late summer, 1809</i></p> -</div> -<p>The house was almost complete now. He had torn -away what did not please him and rebuilt some parts -to suit his matured ideas. New white paint gleamed -on the cornices; the square windows in what he had called -his “sky room” on the third floor had been replaced by -round and half-round openings. But now in what he had -wished would be a quiet summer he was plagued by the -same hosts that for several years had made George Washington’s -life miserable.</p> -<p>Too many visitors came to Monticello. They came uninvited -to see the man who had written the Declaration of -Independence. They came from miles away, some on horseback, -some in carriages, some even in ox-drawn wagons. -Patsy, who had hoped to return to her own place at Bedford -long enough to see to the preservation of the vegetables -and fruits for winter, abandoned the idea and stayed on -with her children.</p> -<p>“These people, these strangers—what are we to do with -them?” she worried. “Some of them come great distances. -<span class="pb" id="Page_39">39</span> -They have to be kept for the night; they must be fed. Your -pet steward, Petit, is getting really fractious, Papa, and I -have to keep the people cooking practically night and day. -They look at this handsome house and believe that Thomas -Jefferson is a rich man, that he can afford to entertain them—people -we’ve never seen before and will likely never see -again—and, Papa, you know it isn’t true. You aren’t rich -enough to afford housing and feeding so many. The farms -don’t pay as they should, and we are often hard pressed to -feed and clothe our own people.”</p> -<p>“I know,” he said heavily, “but what is a Virginia gentleman -to do? We cannot turn people away. There is no -inn anywhere near where they can buy food or lodging.”</p> -<p>“Why not put up some barriers?” suggested young Jefferson -Randolph. “Charge everyone a shilling to come in. -We might make enough to pay the taxes.”</p> -<p>“A poor joke, my son. We would outrage every tradition -of Southern hospitality. But I do wish that some part -of this house that I built for my family could be private -and belong only to us. They invade every corner without -leave or apology. Yesterday they were all over my study. -They wanted to see everything. They even pulled out the -drawers in my desk and turned over some personal papers. -And these were people of some quality too—from Delaware, -they said.”</p> -<p>In the dining room Jefferson had devised a dumb-waiter -at either end of the mantelpiece. These ingenious carriers -descended into the basement close by the wine cellars and -were used to bring things up from the cool rooms below by -an easy pull on the rope. Not long since he had found a man -in the dining room fascinated by the device and happily -running the carriers up and down.</p> -<p>“What do you reckon he’s got this here for?” he demanded -<span class="pb" id="Page_40">40</span> -of Jefferson. “Was he fixing a place to hide quick -from the Injuns?”</p> -<p>Courteously Jefferson explained the working of the device. -“It has never talked back in all the years it has been in -operation,” he said, “so we call it a dumb-waiter.”</p> -<p>“These rich people got it mighty fine,” commented the -stranger. “My old lady took a fancy to that bed he’s got -in yonder,” said the intruder blandly, “one pulls up out of -the way in daytime. We only got a two-room house. Be -mighty handy to have one of them there, put the young-uns -in it, and haul ’em out of sight when we get tired of their -racket. All these young-uns ain’t Jefferson’s, I figure? Got -quite a passel of ’em around, ain’t he?”</p> -<p>“Most of these are my grandchildren—some are nieces -and nephews. Are those your children in there?” Jefferson -pointed with some annoyance to four towheaded youngsters, -none of them too clean, who were bouncing up and -down on the tapestried seats of the gilt chairs in the drawing -room.</p> -<p>“Yeh, them’s my brats. Reckon they’re gettin’ kind of -hungry. Old lady said we’d ought to leave ’em home down -Culpepper way but I said, No, this here Thomas Jefferson -was the people’s friend, even if he did get to be president, -and they’d ought to git a chance to see him. He around here -any place?”</p> -<p>“I am Thomas Jefferson,” said the ex-president coolly. -“And I suggest that you educate your children to have -respect for the property of other people, sir. Those chairs -they are jumping about on were brought all the way from -France.”</p> -<p>The stranger stared incredulously at the elderly figure -before him. Shabby old brown coat. Faded velveteen -breeches. Home-knit hose that showed signs of much mending, -<span class="pb" id="Page_41">41</span> -and, most unbelievable of all, a pair of old run-down -carpet slippers.</p> -<p>“Law, sir!” he exclaimed. “I took you for a butler or a -footman or something. You, Caleb and Beulah! Get away -from them fancy cheers. Git outside, all you-uns, and go -sit in the wagon.”</p> -<p>Dreadful as some of them were, they could not be sent -away hungry. Food that should have been sent to market -to provide money for the family expenses, these visitors ate -and ate like locusts. Patsy rebelled at using the beautiful -Chippendale table that had been given Jefferson by his old -friend and teacher, George Wythe of Williamsburg. So -trestle tables were set up in the warming kitchens in the -basement and picnic hampers passed about by servants on -the lawn on fine days. A few important and genteel groups -were dined in the big dining room, but there were often too -many of those. All those letters that her father wrote, she -thought impatiently, probably half of them were invitations -to people in Philadelphia or Washington or New York to -come to Monticello for long visits.</p> -<p>“Where shall I sleep thirty-one people?” she worried, on -a July night. “And, Papa, we had better plan on having a -lot more linen woven right away. The woman washed -fifty sheets yesterday. They’ll wear out fast at that rate.”</p> -<p>Jefferson sighed. “I came home to find peace and there is -no peace. What have I done in my past, my dear, that such -hordes of admirers should descend upon me? I’ve been a -very ordinary fellow. I’ve always been homely, ungainly, -entirely unprepossessing. No one was more surprised than -I when your mother agreed to marry me. There she was—a -beautiful and gracious woman with a fortune of her own—and -I a struggling young lawyer, a long-legged shide-poke -of a fellow, freckled and coarse-maned as a lion, with -<span class="pb" id="Page_42">42</span> -no grace except that I could fiddle. And you know I was -an unpopular president. The number of them that hated me -was legion.”</p> -<p>“Not the good plain people. Not these people who come -up here in old carts or riding raw-boned nags just to get a -glimpse of Thomas Jefferson, champion of the people,” his -daughter said. “Two words of yours will never die in their -ears: ‘Free and Equal.’ And because you made them feel -free and equal, they come to see you—in droves!”</p> -<p>“I haven’t slept in my own bed all summer,” complained -Ann, the oldest daughter. “I’ve slept on hard pallets laid -down on the floor till all my bones are worn raw.”</p> -<p>“The worst is the curious women—the young ones,” said -Ellen. “They open our wardrobes and finger our clothes. -They even open drawers and jewel boxes. We should have -locks on everything, Grandfather. One girl from away -down on the Eastern Shore asked me to give her my chip-straw -bonnet. The one Mrs. Adams sent me last summer. -She said we were all rich and her folks were terribly poor -and she hadn’t a decent bonnet to get married in because -they were fishermen and the run of shad had been bad this -year.”</p> -<p>“You could have given her the bonnet, Ellen. I would -have bought you another one,” said her grandfather.</p> -<p>And gone in debt for it, thought his daughter, with a -tinge of exasperation—when he had so many debts already!</p> -<p>Jefferson put his arms about his granddaughters. “Soon, -my dears, there will come a frost and deep snows and sleet -and the roads will become difficult or impassable. Then -nobody will come to see us and you will be moping around -the house because you are bored and lonely.”</p> -<p>“Ann won’t,” declared her sister, “not if young Mister -<span class="pb" id="Page_43">43</span> -Bankhead has a horse long-legged enough to wade the -drifts.”</p> -<p>“And you,” flashed back her sister, “will be primping and -ordering all the servants and the children about in case -young Mister Coolidge should decide to come riding down -the road.”</p> -<p>“Mother says I’m too young,” sighed Ellen, “but you -know, Grandfather, that fourteen isn’t terribly young. -Why, mother was only seventeen when she married.”</p> -<p>“And look what happened to me!” cried her mother. -“Six of you great greedy daughters, all clamoring that you -should have beaux before you are out of pinafores.”</p> -<p>“When you are seventeen, Ellen,” Jefferson assured the -girl, “I personally shall dispatch a very polite invitation to -young Mister Coolidge, whoever he is, to come calling at -Monticello.”</p> -<p>“He won’t want to come then. He’ll think I’m an old -maid and I will be! He’ll be looking for somebody young -and fresh like Virginia.”</p> -<p>“Hah! I wouldn’t look at him,” sniffed redheaded Virginia, -who had a crop of bright coppery freckles like her -grandfather. “By the time he’s an old man he’ll be fat as -a pig and probably grunt when he moves and squeal when -he’s fed.”</p> -<p>“He will not!” flared Ellen. “Anyway you’re just jealous. -She doesn’t like having red hair, Grandfather, and she -hates every one of us who haven’t got it.”</p> -<p>“Why, I have red hair and I’m very proud of it!” he -exclaimed. “Shame on you all for quarreling among yourselves. -I used to have a wise old friend named Benjamin -Franklin—”</p> -<p>“We know about him. You told us before.”</p> -<div class="pb" id="Page_44">44</div> -<p>“We know what he said too,” put in Ellen patiently. “If -we don’t hang together we may all hang separately.” Definitely, -she was thinking, grandfather could at times be a bit -tiresome. “And a penny saved is a penny earned.”</p> -<p>“But not one of us ever sees a penny!”</p> -<p>“A sad situation,” remarked Jefferson, rummaging -through the pocket of his worn old green breeches. “Ah, -I do seem to have a few pennies. Let me count. There must -be one apiece. Now”—he announced as he laid a coin in each -warm eager palm—“you have each the foundation for a -fortune. Guard it well, for there are long years ahead of -you.”</p> -<p>The years ahead of them! Thinking of those years -brought back the old touch of anxiety. What would he be -able to do for them, for these young things, born of his -blood, hostages to fortune?</p> -<p>“He who watches the pence need not be anxious about -the pounds,” he quoted more of his old friend Franklin, -dubiously aware that his audience were no longer listening. -Slowly he walked back to his study, turning to close the -door almost in the face of a man who escorted three women.</p> -<p>“I am sorry, sir,” Jefferson said as the three stared indignantly. -“I am Thomas Jefferson. You are very welcome in -my house but at this moment I must beg to be excused and -be about some urgent business.” And he turned the key in -the lock.</p> -<p>The letter lay in the drawer where he had left it. He took -it out, lifted the seal again, and let the single sheet slide out -into his hand.</p> -<p>It was a very brief and slightly curt note from a Philadelphia -banker. A friend for whom Jefferson had felt a -sudden compassion and whom he had trusted had abruptly -gone bankrupt. The note Jefferson had endorsed for this -<span class="pb" id="Page_45">45</span> -friend, with the hope of helping him recoup his fortunes, -was now long overdue, unpaid and collectible; since Mr. -Jefferson had put his personal endorsement upon the paper -he was now legally assumed to be liable for the full amount -of payment.</p> -<p>The note was drawn for twenty thousand dollars.</p> -<div class="pb" id="Page_46">46</div> -<h2 id="c6"><span class="small">5</span></h2> -<div class="verse"> -<p class="lr"><i>Monticello: Autumn, 1809</i></p> -</div> -<p>With a frantic kind of energy that early autumn, -Jefferson forsook his books and set himself to -the job of assaying and recuperating his own -personal estate. During his long absences, Thomas Randolph, -and his son, young Jefferson after him, had done their -best by the vast property—the acres about Monticello, and -the farm, Poplar Grove, a few miles away. But many fields -had been neglected and weeds and brush had taken over; -the slaves, having no firm master, had learned to shirk tasks -cleverly and leave much undone.</p> -<p>Thomas Jefferson had never been a harsh master, but -now he became a stern and demanding one. Nails must be -made and bricks burned, both for his own building plans -and for sale in the market. His French friend, Du Pont de -Nemours, on his last visit had brought him a small flock of -merino sheep. Jefferson enjoyed supervising the shearing -of these sheep, and the washing of the wool, and watched -the carding, spinning, and weaving going on under Martha’s -supervision. He decided to have a suit of clothes made from -<span class="pb" id="Page_47">47</span> -his own fine woolen cloth and busied himself drawing -patterns, measuring, and figuring for days.</p> -<p>The wrist that had been broken in Paris had never been -properly set, and he found using drawing tools and writing -letters more and more of a painful chore. And always he -was interrupted by guests. Some he had invited, regretting -later his hospitable impulse, but the uninvited continued to -find their way up the winding road to his mountain.</p> -<p>He must, he determined, have a place that was his own -where he could study and work undisturbed either by the -family or by these strangers, most of whom he was certain -had only one desire—to be able to go home and boast that -they had seen the great Thomas Jefferson and the fabulous -house he had created.</p> -<p>He would have a study built at the far end of the north -promenade immediately. So promptly he set about having -seasoned lumber hauled from the sawmill, bricks burned, -and nails and hardware forged in the smithy. He spent a -day drawing a plan for a small, one-room building.</p> -<p>Meanwhile he found an opportunity occasionally to slip -away with one or two grandchildren for a brief stay at -Poplar Grove, his farm, where he could have a little quiet -and relaxation. But always an impelling urgency drove him. -He must write letters. He must counsel James Madison -about whether or not it would be wise to keep America out -of war, with conflicts raging all over Europe. Napoleon was -running wild and perhaps the British should be left alone to -contain and subdue him.</p> -<p>He must write, too, to his old friend, the Marquis de -Lafayette, and invite him to Monticello for a visit. Lafayette -had been in prison, and suffered hardships and loss of -fortune. The debt America owed Lafayette had never been -paid, and, to Jefferson’s mind, had never been adequately -<span class="pb" id="Page_48">48</span> -acknowledged, and he felt responsibility to prod the consciences -of men in power to do something about that. All -these ideas possessed him, then at times were diminished by -a kind of inner irony. Who was he, to be so concerned about -a debt owed to any man when he himself was likely faced -with a weight of debts he had not yet had the courage to -calculate?</p> -<p>Some time soon when his private lair was completed he -must sit down for a day or a week and put all his books and -accounts in order. It was a kind of cowardice in him, he -knew, that put off the reckoning from one day to another.</p> -<p>Meanwhile his new wool suit was finished and he was -more pleased than ever with the fineness of the material. -With the coming of winter, Martha had taken her own -brood back to their plantation, but when she returned for -a brief visit Jefferson dressed up in his new clothes and -paraded before her, grinning like a happy boy.</p> -<p>Martha gave a little surprise shriek. “Papa! Pantaloons! -I never would have believed you would give up those old -knee breeches and long stockings.”</p> -<p>“They’re warmer,” Jefferson turned and posed naively, -“and the London papers that still come through in spite of -the embargo say that they are the new style in England. -Jemmy Madison wrote that he had a pair made—black -broadcloth. Every hair and bit of lint sticks to that stuff. -I’m sending Jemmy enough of this goods to have himself -a suit made. With the president wearing it, we might be able -to sell more in Washington. Some friends who were here -last week said the cloth was better than the finest wool that -comes from England.”</p> -<p>“It will certainly help if you can find a new product to -market. All these visitors this summer devoured so much of -our substance that should have gone for ready money, and -<span class="pb" id="Page_49">49</span> -money, Papa, is what you need badly, as I’m sure you -know.”</p> -<p>“Too well, Patsy. Too well! I’m admitting now to you -what you must have surmised or suspected for a long time. -I am a fine farmer on paper. I’ve been full of wonderful -plans and theories, and on paper they looked fine and profitable, -but somehow they have all failed to pay off in cash. -All those vineyards and olive groves I planted so hopefully—I -have just compelled myself to compute the cost and -returns on that venture. The whole project adds up to a -substantial loss.”</p> -<p>“And because of this trouble with the shipping your -wheat is mildewing in the bins because it can’t be shipped -to market,” she reminded him.</p> -<p>“And across the ocean people in need of bread are starving,” -he added sorrowfully. “If there were any way to -give the stuff away to those who suffer for lack of it—but -alas, there is none!”</p> -<p>The people, always the people, thought his daughter. -A world full of people, and if he had his way he would -free and feed all of them. In the meantime he was dubious -about spending the money for a new pair of spectacles, but -bent close to his desk peering through an old pair that had -one bow mended with black thread stiffened with glue.</p> -<p>“You’d better have a new cushion in that old chair, Papa,” -she suggested. “If you sit on that thin one in those wool -breeches, they’ll be worn to a shine and show thin spots -mighty quickly. I’ll tell one of the women to stitch up a -stout canvas cover and stuff it with plenty of feathers.” She -moved to the high window and looked off across the hill. -“Those mountains look like winter,” she observed. “In -spring and summer a blue haze makes them dim and far and -restful to look at, but in winter their crests stand out sharp -<span class="pb" id="Page_50">50</span> -and blue and cold and a bit hostile. I hope you’ve had -plenty of wood cut and piled. You’ll need big fires, especially -if everyone comes home for Christmas.”</p> -<p>He frowned a little, looked startled. “Christmas?” he repeated. -“Is it near—and is it so important?”</p> -<p>She drew back a little. “Of course it’s important! Don’t -tell me, Papa, that those people who called you Jefferson -the Infidel had any truth to back up their accusations? Don’t -tell me that you don’t believe that the Son of God was born -on Christmas day and that it is a holy day to be remembered?”</p> -<p>“I am not an infidel,” he said soberly. “I have never denied -the existence and the power of God. And I have studied -extensively the sayings of Jesus. I have also never discovered -in all my reading any proof that he was born on the -twenty-fifth of December—especially as the calendar has -been changed several times since the period began that men -call Anno Domini.”</p> -<p>“It is the day the Church sets apart as a holy day. For me, -Papa, and for my children, that’s enough,” said Martha a -bit tartly. “Surely there have been times when Christmas -was important in your life, though you’ve been at home so -little?”</p> -<p>“Oh, yes.” He was quick to try to mollify her. Patsy in -an acid mood, he remembered, could be a trifle difficult. -“I remember times at Shadwell when my mother was alive. -And before my father died there was always some kind of -feasting, a goose saved and fattened and a fat pig killed for -the Negroes, and mother usually had suckets of some sort -for the young ones and opened her best brandied peaches -and preserves.”</p> -<p>“I remember when Mama was alive,” she looked off -pensively into the lonely blue of the hills, “we had one -<span class="pb" id="Page_51">51</span> -Christmas. The people brought in holly and you mixed -punch in a big bowl and people came, unless the snow was -too deep. And once I remember you took my mother to -church, but she came home unhappy because you stood -outside and talked politics all through the service. But after -that you were seldom at home.”</p> -<p>“I made her unhappy too often,” he reproached himself. -“I was trying to help build a nation, Patsy. We were living -in perilous times. Why, you must remember the war—when -Tarleton came to Monticello? I rode sixty miles in -one night to get here in time to get you all safely away from -the British dragoons.”</p> -<p>“I was five. I remember. Aunt Martha Carr was here with -her boys and we were all piled into the chaise, with some -of the servants sitting on behind with their legs dangling -and old Jupiter lashing the horses to a gallop. Mother cried -because she was sure they would capture you and burn the -house down. She said that if Tarleton could capture the -man who wrote the Declaration of Independence, the king -would make him a general.”</p> -<p>“Not to speak boastfully, that likely was true. But he -didn’t capture me nor burn the house. Instead Captain -McLeod made himself very comfortable in it for two days, -while poor old black Caesar was hidden under the planks -of the portico, where he had crawled to hide all our silver. -He had pried up the floor and dropped down under, and -black Martin saw some horsemen galloping up the drive -and dropped the planks back, and there was faithful old -Caesar underneath, hungry and scared for two days.”</p> -<p>“I remember hearing about it,” said Martha, “and about -the soldier who pushed a gun into Martin’s face and ordered -him to tell which way you had gone or he would -shoot. Martin said, ‘Go ahead, shoot!’ And after that he -<span class="pb" id="Page_52">52</span> -never got tired of telling it. But, Papa, we were supposed -to be talking about Christmas!”</p> -<p>How could he make himself clear to her, how could he -explain to his literal downright-minded daughter, that harried -and anxious Thomas Jefferson had been turned away -by destiny from all the simple folkways and beliefs? From -all the prosaic and ordinary things that were good and dedicated -to wholesome living into a world of desperate struggle, -intrigue, cabal, tragedy, and strife?</p> -<p>Now that he was becalmed in this quiet backwater of life -he could see his own career and know that it had been -always headlong, more than a little frenzied, and too much -of it precipitate and unpredictable and little under his own -control—and in that chaotic whirling by of history there -had been too little time for a man to meditate and even -assay his own beliefs.</p> -<p>“I,” he said, “have lived, Patsy, like a man snatched up -by a whirlwind. That is why I am so disassociated from -simple things like celebrating Christmas. Give me time to -adjust and learn the value of things. You know that I do -not even yet fit smoothly into the rhythms of life, even here -at Monticello. I still want to alter and tear down and rebuild -and that distresses you; but I am trying, my dear—I -am sincerely trying. Ultimately I shall learn to be a quiescent -ancient, grateful for a fireside and an easy chair. And -if you wish to celebrate Christmas, by all means let us celebrate -Christmas. Shall we have a great house full of guests -and much feasting and merrymaking?”</p> -<p>“Oh, no!” she lifted both hands. “Papa, you know you -can’t afford it!”</p> -<p>He laughed. “And how are we to celebrate if we lack the -proper materials and incentive? Shall we merely hang the -<span class="pb" id="Page_53">53</span> -holly high and slaughter the goose and carol a few stanzas -under the mistletoe?”</p> -<p>“Do you realize, sir,” she faced him sternly, “that you -have not spent a Christmas day in this house since I was a -little girl?”</p> -<p>“You have kept count all these years?”</p> -<p>“I have kept count. And so has every one at Monticello. -You owe something to Monticello in my opinion.”</p> -<p>“Then by all means, that is one debt that I shall pay,” -he smiled, letting his long, thin lips relax, and his voice sink -to a caressing murmur. “Plan it all, Daughter. Plan it all -well and then simply tell your old father what it is that you -want him to do.”</p> -<div class="pb" id="Page_54">54</div> -<h2 id="c7"><span class="small">6</span></h2> -<div class="verse"> -<p class="lr"><i>Monticello: Christmas, 1809</i></p> -</div> -<p>Of all the people on Jefferson’s Little Mountain, old -Burwell was happiest in those lowering, chilly -December days.</p> -<p>This, the old man orated happily in the servant’s quarters -below stairs, was the way things ought to be on a gentleman’s -estate in Virginia. Plenty of cider cooling ready to be -sent posthaste up to the dining room, riding Mister Tom’s -dumb-waiter. Women running up and down the steep, -narrow curving stairways at either end of the house carrying -pitchers of hot water and clean sheets, and heating irons -in the rooms below to press voluminous dresses for the -young misses. Trula, the laundress, kept a whole row of -sadirons heating on the hearth of her little brick-floored -room, and in the warming kitchens were rows of clean -scrubbed bricks heating too, ready to be wrapped in flannel -and carried upstairs should some members of the family -find the clean linen sheets too icy for their feet.</p> -<p>Mr. Jack Eppes had come riding up from Eppington, -bringing a haunch of venison that he had hung for days to -tender it, and now it was turning slowly on a great iron -<span class="pb" id="Page_55">55</span> -spit, with a half-grown Negro boy sitting by with a mop -of clean lint to dip into melted fat and wine vinegar whenever -the meat needed basting. For days the service yard had -been full of squawkings and drifting feathers as the women -killed and dressed turkeys and geese. A fat ham simmered, -and plump plum puddings boiled and bubbled, with sauce -being beaten up in earthen bowls.</p> -<p>“This here now,” stated Burwell, pompously, “is going -to be a sure-enough Christmas.”</p> -<p>All the fine china had been taken down from the cupboards -and washed, and every wineglass on the place rubbed -to a shine. Burwell himself had polished the silver, not -trusting any other servant to that special task because Mister -Tom wanted things right when he took a fancy notion. -Right now he had the notion and had it through and -through.</p> -<p>Cayce, the new young body servant Burwell was training, -was pressing his master’s new wool pantaloons and the -old Negro stood by, supervising and grumbling.</p> -<p>“Old times in Washington,” he declared, “Mister Tom -wouldn’t be seen in old plain long-leg breeches like them -there. Up there we got him up all dandified in white satin -knee breeches and long silk stockings and a swingy-tail coat. -Ruffles all starched.—Boy, did he strut! ‘Mister President!’ -everybody say, and bow, and some ladies scrooch way -down till they petticoats lay all out on the floor. Won’t see -no more times like that. But anyhow, we puttin’ the big pot -in the little one, this Christmas.”</p> -<p>“He got Dely ironing a ruffled shirt right now,” insisted -Cayce, “but he say he ain’t wearin’ no buckle shoes. They -hurt his feet. Dunno how I git them old slippers off’n him, -but Miss Patsy say I got it to do.”</p> -<p>The young Randolphs and Carrs and Francis Eppes, all -<span class="pb" id="Page_56">56</span> -red-cheeked and excited, were running in and out of the -house, lugging in branches of cedar and pine and holly, scattering -needles and berries and trash over the shining floors -so that two women had to follow around with brooms and -mops to shine up to suit Miss Patsy. But in the library, -where a great fire burned under the mirrored mantel and -bookshelves mounted to the ceiling on every wall, Thomas -Jefferson sat in his revolving chair and looked long into the -gold and scarlet leap of the flames.</p> -<p>His thin legs were clothed in a disreputable old pair of -homemade linsey-woolsey breeches, his woolen stockings -sagging around his ankles. His daughter looked at him and -sighed, forbearing to nag at him, since he had promised to -be properly and elegantly dressed for the Christmas dinner.</p> -<p>“I wish he’d dress up,” she murmured to her daughter, -Ann. “Aunt Anna will be driving in soon and whenever he -looks shabby and uncared for, Aunt Anna always looks at -me as though it were my fault.”</p> -<p>“Let him be,” urged Ann. “He’s old, Mother, and tired -and he has earned the right to do as he pleases in his own -house. At least he is letting us have a real Christmas, so -maybe people will stop saying Thomas Jefferson is a great -man but that he is also a heathen.”</p> -<p>“Do they say things like that, Ann?” asked her mother -anxiously. “Surely not.”</p> -<p>“I’ve heard them. So has Jeff. So I asked him straightway -this morning, ‘Grandfather, do you really believe in God?’”</p> -<p>“And what did he answer?”</p> -<p>“He didn’t speak at all till he had taken me by the arm -and led me over to that long window. Then he pointed at -the far mountains and there was a cloud lying on top with -a little touch of sun like gold shining over it. ‘Did any man -<span class="pb" id="Page_57">57</span> -make that?’ he asked me. Then he went back to his book -again and never looked up.”</p> -<p>“At least you have your answer. Daughter, a great man is -like a pillar that stands a little higher than the commonalty. -There is always an itch in the crowd of lesser humanity to -throw rocks and mud at it. It was the new laws he wrote -for Virginia that started that infidel canard. The law freed -the people of the state from being taxed to support the -Church. It left them free to worship and pay tithes where -they pleased, and naturally the bishops and other clergy -resented it. So the story was circulated that Thomas Jefferson -had no religion, and to my knowledge he has never -spoken one word to refute that libel.”</p> -<p>“He disdained to answer it, Mother. He knew what he -was and what he believed and to his mind it was no concern -of any one else. He was Jefferson who belonged to the -people, but what was in his heart and mind belonged only -to himself. Now, at Monticello, he belongs to himself and -he is just learning how to live with himself.”</p> -<p>Martha sighed as she bent to rescue a falling pine cone -that had shattered down on the hearth. “The children -haven’t secured these wreaths very well,” she remarked, -“and that one in the drawing room is hung too low. The -fire will dry it out and it might begin to burn. I’ll tell Burwell -to do something about it. Ever since Shadwell burned -before ever father was married, he has been uneasy about -fire. He lost all his precious books and papers then and -nothing was saved but his fiddle.”</p> -<p>“I wish he’d play again,” sighed Ann. “I’ve never heard -him since I was very small.”</p> -<p>“He and my mother played together constantly,” Martha -said. “When you grow older memories sharpen and sometimes -<span class="pb" id="Page_58">58</span> -they hurt. I doubt if he will ever play again. He made -both Polly and me learn to play in France, but after we -came home again we could never persuade him to play with -us. He said we couldn’t keep time like Mama, but I knew -even then that he couldn’t bear to remember.”</p> -<p>“What was she like, Mother—your mama?”</p> -<p>“Slender and lovely—and she held herself proudly. But -in the years I remember she had children too fast and she -was ill and weak a great deal of the time. And Polly inherited -her frailty and faded away so very young. I’m glad -you are all stout and healthy,” said her mother.</p> -<p>“Ellen is letting herself get fat. She eats too many sweets -and won’t walk ten steps if she can help it. I scold her all -the time. Ellen could be pretty, if she doesn’t ruin her face -with too many chins.”</p> -<p>“Don’t be critical of your sisters.—Ah, here’s Aunt -Anna’s carriage now. Do run and call Cayce and tell him to -replenish the fire in the south bedroom. Aunt Anna has -refused to climb our crooked stairs for years.” Martha -hurried away to welcome Thomas Jefferson’s sister and led -her into the library. “Papa, here’s Aunt Anna!”</p> -<p>Jefferson came forward, his hands outstretched. He loved -this younger sister and pulled her down into a deep chair -without giving her time to take off her bonnet.</p> -<p>“Toast your feet,” he ordered. “I know how this first -cold gets into old bones.”</p> -<p>“Old?” she laughed. “Since when did you decide to be -old, Tom Jefferson? You’ll be hammering up things on this -hill twenty years from now.—Well, Randolph wouldn’t -come,” she went on in a tone of disgust. “Only twenty -miles and he said it was too hard a trip in cold weather. -That’s your only brother for you, Tom. How long since -you have seen him?”</p> -<div class="pb" id="Page_59">59</div> -<p>“Two years,” Jefferson pulled a chair up beside her. “He -came over and brought me a cask of young carp for my -fish pond. He stayed one night.”</p> -<p>“Uncle Randolph said he couldn’t sleep,” put in young -Jefferson. “He said he was expecting every minute that his -bed would go crashing up against the ceiling.”</p> -<p>“Tom and his tinkering.” She had a hearty laugh. “Well, -my bed will have a stout chore to do if it hoists me to the -ceiling tonight. For Heavens’ sake, Tom, get yourself -elected governor again so we can have some decent roads -in Virginia. Even on that turnpike the mud was hub deep -and my horses traveled grunting like oxen. But if you do -get elected, Tom,” she gave him an amiable prod with her -knuckles, “get yourself a haircut! What’s the matter with -Burwell? Has old age caught up with him too?”</p> -<p>“We’ll arrange to be barbered up beautifully this afternoon,” -Jefferson assured her. “The people have all been -busy. They are bound this shall be the most elaborate Christmas -ever celebrated in Albemarle County.”</p> -<p>“Time there was some life in this house,” she said bluntly. -“One thing you must never do is shut yourself up here like -a hermit. He will, Patsy, unless you keep after him. He’ll -read ten thousand books and never know his stockings are -bagging down around his ankles.”</p> -<p>“Papa,” began Martha, hesitantly, “there’s a Christmas -Eve service at the church tonight. It’s not snowing—and -it’s only three miles. Would you go, Papa?”</p> -<p>He looked up at her with a direct, searching look. “What -are you thinking, Patsy? Though I think I can read it in -your face. You think it would have made her happy. Very -well. Order the chaise around—but, as for me, I shall ride -Eagle. I’ll go to church with you.”</p> -<p>“How people will stare!” whispered Ellen, in their -<span class="pb" id="Page_60">60</span> -room as the girls dressed for supper. “Nobody will even -look at the minister.”</p> -<p>“Grandfather won’t even know they are staring,” declared -Cornelia. “He’s been stared at with bands playing -and soldiers standing at attention.”</p> -<p>“Grandfather,” remarked Ann, “is as aloof and untouchable -as one of those mountains out there.”</p> -<p>“But people love him. Look how they swarmed over this -place all summer.”</p> -<p>“Have you noticed how low and gently he speaks lately? -Even to the servants, some of the stupidest ones, he never -raises his voice. And they scramble like anything to do -what he wants done.”</p> -<p>“It’s because he knows he is great and famous. Like the -mountains. They know they are going to be there forever -and nothing can ever destroy them. Greatness, real greatness, -is always simple,” insisted Ann.</p> -<p>There was the fragrance of evergreens and of many candles -burning in the church and a feebly burning wood fire -strove to take a bit of the chill off the place. Martha -wrapped her heavy cloak around her knees, then lifted a -fold of it and spread it over her father’s thin legs as he sat, -stiffly upright beside her on the hard pew. There was a -silence as the minister came in, his vestment and stole very -white in the dim light. Then in the gallery high at the back -came a humming, and the slaves seated there began singing, -low at first, then higher and clearer, rich deep harmony -filling the raftered spaces above where candle smoke softly -drifted.</p> -<div class="verse"> -<p class="t0"><i>Who got weary? Christmas day! Christmas day!</i></p> -<p class="t0"><i>Oh, no, Lawd! Ain’t nobody weary. Nobody weary Christmas day!</i></p> -</div> -<div class="pb" id="Page_61">61</div> -<p>Thomas Jefferson gripped his daughter’s hand hard. “She -sang that,” he whispered. “She liked that song.”</p> -<p>The age-old words rang out: “And there were in the -same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch -over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord -came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round -about them; and they were sore afraid.”</p> -<p>Martha Randolph saw her father’s lips moving. Was he -praying? No, his eyes were not cast down and there was -no humility in the set of his shoulders. He was looking -straight ahead and upward, into the high lift of the ceiling -above the chancel where a round window framed an indigo-dark -circle of the sky. She caught the faint whisper from -his lips.</p> -<p>“I am here,” he was saying to some vision unseen, “I am -here, beloved.”</p> -<h2 id="trnotes">Transcriber’s Notes</h2> -<ul> -<li>Silently corrected a few typos.</li> -<li>Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook is public-domain in the country of publication.</li> -<li>In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by _underscores_.</li> -</ul> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTMAS AT MONTICELLO WITH THOMAS JEFFERSON ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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