Chapter Forty-Six #2
“I do not.” After all, what did a speech matter? My husband had lost the electoral college and the presidency. I had no desire
to help write a speech for such an ungrateful nation.
Four years of the presidency gone to waste.
Why stop there? More than twenty years of sacrifice and public service gone to waste. Everything that John and I had loved
and hoped for our entire lives was likely to collapse into bloody anarchy just as in France, where political faction after
faction cut off each other’s heads.
I believed there was still some decency in Thomas Jefferson. That he wouldn’t give us over to a mob to be hauled up on a guillotine.
But I couldn’t seem to care either way because my beloved Charles was cut down in the bloom of life . . .
The tender remembrance of what Charles once was rose before me, when I wished to forget. I wanted to draw a veil over all
that wrung my heart.
What I needed most was distraction, and into that breach, when I needed her most, came Martha Washington with an invitation
to visit her at Mount Vernon.
We were the only women in the world who knew what it was to serve as the lady of first rank in an American republic. And given
that Jefferson was a bachelor, we were likely the only two who would know it for at least four years more. Perhaps as a mother
who had also known griefs, Martha could comfort me in a way John could not.
So I started out for Mount Vernon alone.
Mount Vernon was situated upon a rising ground where a cold winter’s wind attempted to strip the few red and yellowed leaves still clinging to the trees.
It was an isolated spot, without another house or neighbor nearer than nine miles.
But many enslaved persons went about their business among outbuildings in a state of funereal gloom.
As I stepped out of the carriage and onto the drive, the grand lady of the house came to meet me. And I nearly curtseyed to
her before remembering that our roles were changed. For I was now the president’s lady, and she was not. “Thank you for the
invitation, Mrs. Washington.”
“My dear friend,” Martha said, clasping my hands with sympathy.
Like me, Martha was in mourning.
What a miserable pair we might’ve been, but the embrace of the only other woman in the world who understood my torn feelings
in such a moment was a solace beyond measure.
Martha led me inside the mansion, and I was surprised to find the rooms small and low. The greatest ornament about the long-fabled
place was a piazza with a fine view of the river at the bottom of the lawn.
I knew it must require a great deal of money to beautify and cultivate the grounds—but it was now going to decay. And Martha
was apologetic. “They were beautiful once. Unfortunately, we can no longer afford to maintain it with my husband gone. I can
scarcely provide for my family, some three hundred souls.”
Three hundred souls? Not her family, surely, unless she included the enslaved in this number. Harsh judgments must’ve flashed across my expression,
for once we were alone, bundled against the cold in quiet conversation, she said, “One hundred and fifty persons here are
to be liberated soon. You must count that a good thing.”
“I count freedom a very good thing indeed.”
She paused. “President Washington granted our servants their freedom in his will. Some wish for it, but others have begged
me to retain them.”
Having so long opposed slavery, I didn’t believe such pleas could be genuine. “Why should that be?”
“Because men with wives and children who have never seen an acre beyond this farm are about to quit it and go adrift into the world without house, home, or friend. It frightens them. Still, what else can I do?”
She explained that Washington specified in his will that those he held in bondage would go free after the death of his wife, thereby inadvertently putting her life in danger. “How could I ever feel safe in the hands of those who have been told it
is in their best interest to get rid of me? My lawyer advised it’s better to free them now.”
“Indeed,” I said, the complications of her situation only confirming the evils of slavery.
I wished I could do something to help these people—a wish that helped me make sense of my feelings about my husband’s loss
of the presidency.
“There is the humiliation of it, of course. To be turned out,” I confessed when the conversation turned to politics. “Then,
of course, there is the loss of salary. But, I can say truly and from my heart, that the most mortifying circumstance upon
my retirement from public life will be that my power of doing good for my fellow creatures will be diminished.”
“You still have the will and the want?” Martha asked.
“I am as surprised as you to realize I do.”
“Then I’m sorrier than ever that Jefferson is to ascend to the presidency. Indeed, I consider it the greatest misfortune our
nation has ever experienced.”
Martha, too, had reason to be bitter about Jefferson. He’d absented himself from Washington’s funeral. But much worse, he’d
accused Washington of being a monarchist. This, Martha Washington had never been able to forgive. And I would not persuade
her that she should.
“Do you mind if we go in?” Martha finally asked. “Your New England constitution is sturdier than mine against the chill.”
“Not sturdy enough,” I said, following her indoors. “The older I get the more difficult it is to endure cold.”
“Everything becomes more difficult,” Martha said, leading me to a table where warmed cider awaited us. “Thinking back on loved ones who have passed, I grow ever more eager for a reunion with them in heaven.”
With similar pangs, I said, “As I approach that reward myself, I am solaced by my faith. I cannot imagine how those without
religion meet the challenges of age.”
“To faith and friendship, then,” Martha replied, raising her cup in toast.
I toasted her in return.
After that, we enjoyed a warm respite together, reminiscing about days long past, and otherwise soaking up one another’s company—for
both of us knew, given age and distance, that we two who had been the presidents’ ladies would never see one another again . . .