Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty
Washington, 1 July 1805
From Thomas Jefferson to Robert Smith, United States Secretary of the Navy
You will perceive that I plead guilty to one of their charges, that when young and single I offered love to a handsome lady. I acknowledge its incorrectness; it is the only truth among all their allegations against me.
T HIS LETTER IS A DENIAL OF S ALLY . Or at least, it will be read as one. Which is why I don’t burn it, even though it contains an admission of dishonor.
The handsome lady my father attempted to seduce was Mrs. Walker. And I learned of the incident in the spring of 1805, when, after having been reelected to the presidency, my father sent to me at Edgehill a carefully sealed letter in the care of my husband, with instructions that it should be delivered directly into my hands, and shown to no other.
I’d never received such a mysterious letter, folded quite small, heavy with its wax seal. And it was a letter that struck terror into my heart, because it was a message of love and repentance . . . and farewell.
“Get me a horse,” I said to the nearest servant, still clutching the letter as I left my babies in their beds and rushed out of the house. I was up and into a saddle without so much as a cloak before Tom could stop me.
“What the devil are you doing?” he shouted after me. “Patsy, you can’t go riding off into the night. It’s dusk. I’ll take you to your father in the morning.”
“Monticello is only a few miles,” I said, kicking my heels into the horse’s side. Tom shouted for his own horse as I galloped off, but I never looked back. Instead, I rode with the sureness of the trained horsewoman I’d nearly forgotten I had inside me, racing up Papa’s mountain like Jack Jouett did in raising the alarm that the British were coming. Breathless by the time I swung down in front of my father’s house and still stinging from the lash of tree branches, I hurried into the entryway. “Sally?” I called, but heard no answer. And in a place like Monticello, where it was never quiet, I found myself instantly alarmed.
I found Papa—secretly returned from Washington City—alone at his table with a glass of sherry, perusing a box of curiosities from Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, whom he’d sent on a grand expedition. Inside the chest were the preserved skeletons of all manner of creatures. Wolves, weasels, and elk. And I had a sudden memory of my father in his much younger days, feverishly scribbling down the correct way to preserve dead birds.
“Patsy.” He shook his head, as if he wished I hadn’t come.
I fought for both breath and composure. “Papa. You can’t just send me a letter like that and—”
“Spoken words fail me where my pen rarely does.”
I held the back of a gilded chair for steadiness. “You cannot mean to fight a duel.”
Just the summer before, my father’s old nemesis had died in a duel. Alexander Hamilton was dead before the age of fifty, and it was my father’s vice president who killed him.
Hamilton—whose reputation had also been sullied by the revelation of an affair with a married woman—had tangled with Aaron Burr, who demanded satisfaction upon a field of honor. And as if seeking an end to his life, Hamilton dueled upon the very same spot where his son had died, using the very same pis tols. Blood for reputation. Blood for honor. And now my father intended to follow in his footsteps. “You’re the president of the United States. Surely you don’t intend to dignify—”
“It’s true, Patsy,” my father broke in. “I did try to seduce Mr. Walker’s wife. It happened before you were born or conceived. Before your mother. I regret that you should have to know the truth of it.”
After all the other truths to which I was privy, did he really think this truth would matter to me? He clearly condemned himself, because his posture was stiff, tortured, and guilty indeed. Guiltier, I think, than when I asked him to deny Sally Hemings. He believed he had a right to his relationship with Sally. In some ways, he’d become defiant about it—allowing her to name their new baby James Madison Hemings, after both her beloved brother and my father’s closest political ally.
If Papa felt shame for Sally anymore, he never showed it. But this matter with Mrs. Walker was something else altogether because he had lied to me. He had told me that his quarrel with the Walkers had arisen over money matters, a thing I had repeated, unwittingly fanning the flames of the scandal. Now he stood shamed for that, and I could see, in the bleakness of his eyes, that he feared an irreparable breach between us.
Poor Papa. Didn’t he know that a breach between us was not possible?
Taking a deep breath, I pulled the crinkled letter from the bosom of my dress where I’d tucked it away. “What matter can it possibly make that it’s true? I’m happy to throw your confession on the fire and forget such an incident. As you should.”
Papa gave a slight shake of his head. “For years, I’ve tried to suppress the stories. Alas, they’re in the papers now, saying I made a cuckold of Mr. Walker. He’s demanding satisfaction.”
What a farce to imagine my elderly father taking up his pistols to duel with the elderly Mr. Walker over a matter nearly forty years in the past. “Let Mr. Walker demand satisfaction. You don’t have to give it to him.”
My father downed his sherry in one gulp—something I’d never seen him do before. “Mr. Madison has already attempted to negotiate a peaceful resolution. I’m afraid it cannot be escaped this time.”
This was madness. We lived in a world where a sitting vice president had murdered the former secretary of the treasury. That my father should open himself up to die the same way, shot over some trivial matter—was tempting fate’s sense of irony.
But I had judged Alexander Hamilton to be an intemperate man. My father was, in almost all matters, a man of cool reason. How could he let himself be goaded to such foolishness? Perhaps he didn’t require much goading. Once, I’d put myself between him and his pistols. Perhaps now that my sister was dead, he was still, after all this time, trying to keep an appointment with them.
Dragging a chair close to my father, I collapsed into it, then took his aging hand in mine—the one that had been broken and disfigured for foolishness in France over a different married woman. “Papa, I’ll never let you do this thing.”
His chin bobbed up. He was the president. The most powerful man in the country, and a master of his own destiny. Who could stop him from doing anything? Certainly, it wasn’t the place of a daughter to tell a father what he must or must not do. But it was my place. It had always been my place to pull him back from the abyss.
Perhaps he knew it, because his expression crumbled. “Oh, Patsy.”
“You wrote to me because you knew I’d never let you duel Mr. Walker. So what does he want other than your blood?”
My father’s shoulders rounded and drooped. “He wants me to publicly admit my fault and declare his wife innocent—which she was. She rebuffed my advances. The wrongdoing was entirely mine.”
“Perhaps then, you ought to confess it.” I’d advised him to deny Sally Hemings, but Mrs. Walker was a white woman, and the circumstances were not ongoing. An appeal to pragmatism was unlikely to move him, given his guilty heart, so I argued, “Admit it for Mrs. Walker’s sake. If she’s innocent, a gentleman would do no less than clear her name.”
His gnarled fingers tightened on mine, but he didn’t answer.
“That will have to be enough for Mr. Walker, Papa. Because dueling isn’t for fathers or for those charged with other great moral concerns. Do you remember in Paris how you pleaded with me to choose you over a life in the nunnery, though I felt called by God?”
He nodded, made sheepish by the reminder.
“Well, you’re only being called by Mr. Walker.”
My father sputtered in soft laughter, and brought my hand to his lips to kiss. “He’s one of a thousand hounds baying for my blood.” He still felt besieged. He had virulent enemies in Congress, not least of whom was the pretentiously styled Randolph of Roanoke . “I need you there with me, Patsy. In Washington City. I hesitate to ask it of you, because I know you’ve long wished that I wouldn’t seek public office . . . but I need you with me.”
“You must never hesitate to ask anything of me, Papa,” I said, making my mind up at once. Your father needs a first lady, Dolley Madison had once said to me. I hadn’t wanted to hear it. I’d spent half my life resenting my father’s political career. Why, I hadn’t even congratulated him when he was elected to the presidency.
Some part of my resentment was worry for how public service had dwindled our family fortune. Another part was the sullen memory of a young girl in France whose father answered her every political inquiry with silence. But I was no longer a girl, and he’d never dream of discouraging my political curiosity now; if anything, he filled his letters to me with all the news of the day to ensure I was informed.
My father had changed, and so must I.
My mother, in her final breaths, had tried to make me understand that my father was a great man. But he might not be remembered as one if his presidency failed. I couldn’t let it fail— not if everything my family had suffered and sacrificed were to mean something in the end.
Papa and I were seated like that, close and affectionate, when Tom burst in the door. “Martha!” Tom cried, fixing me with a glower. Then, to my father, he said, “She rode out like a madwoman before I could stop her.”
“Just in time to pull me back from the edge,” Papa murmured.
I’d always done it and I always would.
T OM DIDN’T WANT ME TO GO TO W ASHINGTON C ITY .
He had good reason, in that our financial situation was bleak. As a congressman, Tom only made six dollars a day, and saved on expenses only by living in the President’s House with my father and Jack Eppes. Meanwhile, the Hessian fly had come to Virginia and laid waste to our wheat, leaving us nothing to sell, and scarcely enough to make bread or lay grain away to feed us for the year. Tom’s sister Jenny found an upright man to marry, which meant my husband felt honor bound to pay an enormous dowry.
And because Tom wasn’t willing to sell Varina, our creditors were at the door. Add the fact that I was pregnant again, and my husband had good reason to worry about the expense of bringing his growing family to Washington City.
By this time, baby Mary was talking. Six-year-old Cornelia was already an artist with her pencils. Whip-smart Ellen had moved on from Latin to debating with her grandpapa. Jeff was old enough to run errands but not yet strong enough to be a real help to his father. And my pretty Ann was now a lady of fourteen, of age to come out into society.
They were growing up fast—faster than we could keep them clothed, in truth. Certainly not in a style befitting their status as the president’s grandchildren. But to have me near, my father insisted on taking upon himself the entire expense of our trip.
He sent half a dozen pairs of shoes for Ann. He had Dolley buy me hats and dresses and wigs for my hair. Tom didn’t like it and took my father’s every generous gesture as a comment on his own inability to provide for his family in wealth and luxury. But I was overjoyed when he finally consented. “Thank you, Tom. It’s going to mean so much to my father.”
“I’m sure it will,” he said, digging his hands down into his pockets. “But that’s not why I’m allowing it. I’m taking you with me to Washington City because when your sister died, I cursed myself a thousand times, knowing that it could’ve been you.” He gave an emphatic, pained shudder, repeating, “It could’ve been you . Maybe Jack Eppes can smile and laugh again, now that his wife is more than a year in the ground. But that’s not the man I am. If I should lose you, Patsy, it would destroy me. So I’ll keep you with me in Washington City, and watch over you in your pregnancy, even if it’s financially unwise. Even if it should bankrupt us.”
He said all this with his head hanging down, as if it unmanned him shamefully to confess such tender sentiments, but I was deeply moved. I supposed the same thing in his nature that made him so temperamental and morose was what let him pour out his heart in such a way. So I kissed his cheeks, one side, then the other, finishing with a tender kiss to his lips that I hoped might tell him how my heart swelled to know his true feelings.
Then I set out that autumn, six months pregnant, with all my children crowded together in a carriage, making our way slowly over bumpy roads to Washington City.
“Look at the capitol building,” Ellen said, wrestling Cornelia to see out the window.
“One day it will have a great dome atop it. Your grandfather designed this city, you know,” I told my girls, and watched their eyes widen. Even now when I look at the great capital Washington has become, I see the bones of it as my father laid them. And I marvel. But Jeff wasn’t as impressed as his sisters by his grandfather’s handiwork—he was merely disappointed that the Mammoth Cheese no longer occupied the downstairs of the President’s House. Fortunately, my son gorged his curiosity on Papa’s new camera obscura, which made silhouettes, and the collection of fossil bones my father had all in one room, displaying the artifacts of the America he was building and exploring.
The capital had grown since I last visited, but the more important change was the society in which Dolley Madison now reigned as queen, spearheading numerous charity events at which people fluttered about me, hanging unnaturally upon my every word.
“Your father’s plans are ambitious,” Dolley explained. “They won’t be passed without the support of the congressmen’s wives. We’ll have to win them over.”
I realized after only a single luncheon that these ladies were introducing a new version of the parlor politics I’d become so well acquainted with in France. When last I was here with my sister, I hadn’t embraced the role Dolley had advised me to play. Not truly. That had been a mistake I intended to rectify.
I couldn’t rival Dolley’s bright sense of fashion—especially when I was so big and round with child. But I ornamented my darker, more sedate gowns with yellow sashes and red ribbons and white bonnets with gauzy trim. I quietly informed the chef and the secretaries and staff that I’d be hostess at all my father’s events from the moment Congress convened until it adjourned. From seating arrangements to etiquette, from soup to dessert wine, to conversation and music—I took my place at my father’s side, where he needed me. Where I was meant to be.
E ARLY IN D ECEMBER, my daughter excitedly pulled on long white gloves over her delicate arms and exclaimed, “I heard the guns from the frigate at the Navy Yard!”
It was to be Ann’s first formal dinner in the President’s House, one at which we’d greet the envoy from Tunisia. And though she could be a shy, tremulous thing, tonight Ann vibrated with excitement. “I’ve never met a Muslim.”
“I’ve never met one either,” I said.
She turned to me, astonished. “Not even in France?”
I was charmed that my children seemed to believe I’d seen and done and knew everything because I’d been to France. What I did know about the visiting Tunisian envoy, Sidi Suliman Mellimelli, was salacious. Dolley had whispered over tea that the ambassador was perfumed like a woman. And her husband had been obliged to provide concubines for the Tunisian delegation at a nearby hotel, which had set tongues wagging. Papa insisted that the cause of making peace with the Barbary pirates was too important for us to balk at the “irregular conduct” of their ministers. That’s why I’d postponed dinner from late afternoon to after sunset in honor of the religious practice of Ramadan.
“We’re to be the only ladies in attendance?” my daughter asked.
I nodded. “Ambassador Mellimelli is unaccustomed to the calming presence of women in political society, and we’ll have to ease him into it.”
There was much bowing and greeting when the ambassador and his two secretaries arrived, and upon seeing me and my daughter, he begged our pardon, through an interpreter, to retire to smoke his pipe.
“Feel free to smoke here,” Papa said, and the gold-and-scarlet-clad ambassador stroked his long beard, thoughtfully. Looking first to his two secretaries, who wouldn’t partake of wine, he nodded, then lit his wonderfully unusual four-foot pipe.
I was painfully worried of giving offense—especially considering the company. Amongst our American guests—John Quincy Adams and our own snarling kinsman, Congressman Randolph of Roanoke . After making snide quips implying that my husband and Jack Eppes held their congressional seats only through my father’s influence, John finally leaned over to me at the table and whispered, “I’m so glad you didn’t bring the vampire with you.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Nancy,” he hissed. “She’s sucked the best blood of my race.”
Whether he was accusing her of murdering his brother or making some lewder accusation, I couldn’t guess. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’m sure you do. You and your husband are harboring her. Don’t think I’ll forget it.”
He had the Randolph . He was irritable, jealous, suspicious, and habitually indulgent of the meanest little passions. But I was a Jefferson, so I merely announced, “Ann and I will retire now to leave you gentlemen to your business. Ambassador Mellimelli, I look forward to spending a lively winter with you.” Having observed that even a perfumed man wished to be thought manly, I added, “I’m sure you’ll be the lion of the season.”
Lion . The ambassador liked that word. He liked the comparison. I could see the pleasure of it light in his eyes when the interpreter whispered it in his ear. And later, he joined me and Ann in the drawing room, leaving the other gentlemen behind.
Ann and I started to rise, but he waved us back into our chairs and surprised us with nearly perfect English. “We’re not the only delegation here in Washington, no? I’ve seen bands of people, not so fair.” For a moment, I thought he meant the slaves. But then he gestured to the feather in his turban. “Ornaments and buckskin. Long dark braids.”
“Indians,” I answered. And when he squinted, I added, “ Our Indians. They’ve come from the western territories to speak with my father.”
“Which prophet do they follow?” he asked, showing Ann a diamond snuffbox to charm her. “Moses, Jesus, or Mohammed?”
“None,” my timid Ann offered, and I was so proud of her for finding courage to speak to the man. “The Indians worship . . . the great spirit, as I understand it.”
The ambassador took a pinch of the snuff, which smelled like roses. “Then they’re vile heretics. Another thing interests me, Mrs. Randolph. In your Congress, where your husband serves, everyone has the right to speak?”
“The members do, yes,” I replied.
He laughed. “Then it will take years to finish any business! In my country, all matters are decided swiftly and with final resolution. In fact, if I don’t succeed in my mission here, they’ll behead me.”
I wasn’t sure I believed him, but he was such a colorful character that everyone was eager to meet him. Invitations to every fashionable ball in Washington City were extended to the delegation, and curious onlookers gawked near the hotel to get a peek at turbans, long mustaches, and ceremonial garb. Given the fascination, I worried we wouldn’t be able to admit all the guests who flocked to Papa’s annual New Year’s Eve gala.
“Will you dance?” Tom asked at the gala, dressed in his best blue tailcoat.
“I’m quite near my time now,” I told my husband. “I’d feel like a stampeding buffalo.”
Tom brought my fingertips to his lips for a brief but very earnest kiss. “Never.”
Nearby, Jack Eppes was laughing with a flirtatious woman from Annapolis. He was courting again, and Papa said we must be happy for him. I agreed, because I feared we might never see my sister’s children again if we didn’t lavish approval on her widower.
But Jack’s laughter—and the music—were interrupted dramatically by the ambassador of Tunisia, who stopped dancers midtwirl. With a flourish of his colorful cape that mesmerized the crowd, he let his interpreter speak for him. “The ambassador has heard that the Madisons desire children, but have been unable to conceive them!”
Rarely shy of attention, Dolley smiled and murmured something about how she’d welcome any blessing God were to bestow.
Striding to her, the bearded ambassador said, “If you want a child, I’ll give you one.” Then he wrapped the cape around her with such intimacy that her husband, the diminutive secretary of state, stiffened and went white.
Confused by the reaction, the ambassador explained, “It’s a magic cape.”
But his words didn’t carry, accented as they were. And as the room went silent, men reached for their ceremonial swords in anticipation of violence. I swallowed, wondering which of the men would break the mounting tension in the room. And when I realized that none of them would, I knew that there was no choice but to take it upon myself. Clapping my hands, as if delighted in the way of a child, I cried, “Oh, a magic cape!”
My father—the man of science who had decried a reign of witches—looked entirely appalled. But upon seeing me smile and clap, all the other ladies quickly followed suit. Papa could scarcely keep the displeasure from his presidential expression, but he would simply have to endure it. It was a New Year’s Eve party, a night for frivolity, and if offense could be avoided by laughter and merriment, why not?
Besides. I was the hostess here, so I pretended at great fascination when the ambassador murmured an incantation over Dolley, declaring, “I promise you, Mrs. Madison, you’ll soon give your husband a son!”
Everyone applauded the spectacle. Dolley was very amused. When everyone else had gone home for the night, she grabbed at my elbow, grinning. “Why, I’ve never seen Mr. Madison go so white before. As exciting as it might’ve been to see men duel over my honor, I suppose I must thank you for averting an international incident. But, I must know one thing. . . .”
Still holding Tom’s arm, I asked, “What’s that?”
Dolley grinned mischievously. “Is that your secret? A magic cape? Given your brood of children, I suppose you must have a closet full of them!”
“There are no capes involved,” Tom said, quite seriously.
Dolley and I found this so terribly funny that we exploded with laughter.
Which prompted him to accuse, “You’ve been drinking, both of you!”
For whatever reason, that seemed terribly funny, too. I hadn’t laughed since my sister’s death, and it felt disloyal to do so. But Dolley was irrepressible. “I’m afraid I don’t put much stock in the ambassador’s incantation.”
“Well, you ought to give it a try anyway,” I said, scandalizing my husband utterly. “With or without the capes.”
Days later, I gave birth to the very first baby ever born in the president’s mansion. A boy, at last. And Tom had no objection to the name that would give Dolley the most pleasure: James Madison Randolph.
“A son,” my husband kept saying, as if astonished that it’d finally come to pass. At long last, Jeff had a little brother. And we were happy.
For a brief, enchanted winter in the spacious rooms of the President’s House, we forgot our troubles in Virginia. I hosted nearly sixty-three dinners at my father’s side, including one before the day I gave birth and one after. But when I couldn’t be there to soothe partisan tempers, my daughter Ann was there in my place—more beautiful and less sarcastic than me in every way. And I made certain she was aware that every dinner and every lady’s tea was a mission to beat back the calumny heaped upon Papa’s head by his enemies.
“Have you seen this?” my father’s new secretary asked, timidly offering me a clipping from some newspaper. “I apologize for bringing something so indelicate to your attention but—”
“You did quite right to show me,” I said, burning to read the filthy poem.
The patriot, fresh from Freedom’s councils come,
Now plea’d retires to lash his slaves at home;
Or woo, perhaps, some black Aspasia’s charms,
And dreams of freedom in his bondmaid’s arms.
There was a cartoon, too, called “A Philosophic Cock.” A drawing of my father as a French rooster and Sally as his hen. All part of a campaign to tarnish his image as a devoted father, doting grandfather, and father of this nation.
I went straight to Papa with it in a flash of temper, stunned to hear him laugh. “How can you laugh at this, Papa?”
“What else is there to be done? It’s demeaning. It’s petty. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the business of the country. And they’re spilling their ink on it while Republicans trounce them in every election. Unless you think I should call them out onto a field of honor, there’s nothing to do but laugh.”
Soothed, I gave a soft smile. “We’re done with pistols now, aren’t we?”
He stood, still tall and straight, grasping my hand. “Yes, we’re done with pistols now.”
But in that, we couldn’t have been more mistaken.