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-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_.
-
-
-
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