Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-three
Monticello, 28 August 1814
From Thomas Jefferson to Louis H. Girardin
Of the burning of Washington, I believe nothing. When Washington is in danger, we shall see Mrs. Madison and Mrs. Monroe, like the doves from the ark, first messengers of the news.
P.S. Since writing this I receive information undoubted that Washington is burnt.
T HE SHAME OF IT .” Dolley wept, her pink lips quivering as she recalled her flight from the capital. Their escape was such a narrow miss that British officers actually dined on the meal that had been prepared for the Madisons before they put the President’s House to the torch. The house where my father had served as president. Where I’d been his hostess. Where my son James had been born.
The English also burned the Naval Yard, the War Office, the Treasury, and the congressional buildings—including the Library of Congress and all the books therein. And Dolley sniffled, “My poor husband, when he saw the wreckage, was as shaken and woebegone as if someone had cleaved his heart in two.”
My father looked every bit as heartbroken. “Barbarism,” Papa said, pretending to dab at sweat with a kerchief, when I could see plainly there were tears in his eyes.
“I cannot do justice to the destruction with words,” Dolley continued, having stopped at Monticello briefly on her way to Montpelier. “The country’s monuments and architectural triumphs are all ash. The President’s House burned to a charred shell. The capitol building without a roof and gutted to the marble like an ancient ruin. Priceless paintings slashed; their splintered frames nothing more than kindling now.”
I’d hoped Dolley might bring some comforting word of my son and my husband, who would now face the British as they turned their guns south, but instead, I found myself comforting her . “At least you rescued some national treasures.”
“Only trifles,” she said with a dismissive wave. “A wagonload of papers, some silver and velvet curtains. There wasn’t time to save more. I told the servants to cut down the painting of George Washington or destroy it if it couldn’t be cut down, lest it fall into British hands. We hid it in a farmhouse—that’s what we were reduced to. Mr. Madison sought shelter under armed guard while I spent the longest night of my life without him, hearing cannons booming. Explosions, too. I had to disguise myself in someone else’s clothes to sneak back into Washington City.”
I’d never admired her more.
“And the Federalists .” She uttered the word like a curse. “Never let them tell you they’re true patriots. They cared for wounded British soldiers in preference to our own and crowed at the rout of our army and the destruction of our capital.” She finished with a lament. “I wish I could’ve mounted the battle guns that our ill-trained and cowardly militia abandoned.”
It was the most unladylike thing I’d ever heard her say, and it plucked not even a note of censure on the harp of my conscience. “I pray this war ends soon.”
“Have you turned to your Bible, Patsy?” Dolley asked.
“No more than before,” I said with a nervous glance to Papa. There was, of course, bad blood between God and me. I’d forsaken his nunnery and he’d forsaken my sister. I didn’t wish to provoke the Almighty against my husband and son, too.
Papa excused himself on account of a growing headache, while I poured Dolley tea and readied my napkin in case she spilled it in her agitated state. But her hand was steady as she withdrew from her satchel a packet of papers. “I don’t know on what terms you parted with your sister-in-law, but you’d better see this before your husband hears of it.”
Curiously leafing through the pages, I recognized the handwriting of Nancy Randolph—though I supposed she was more properly thought of as Mrs. Morris, now. My infamous sister-in-law had found employment in the northern states as the housekeeper of Gouverneur Morris, whose strange sense of humor seems to have led him to marry Nancy in spite of her reputation, if not because of it. But just as she seemed poised for happiness, Randolph of Roanoke sent warning to Mr. Morris, saying that Nancy killed her bastard baby, killed Richard Randolph, and was likely to kill him, too, to steal his fortune.
“Poor Nancy,” I said, reading that. “This goes back to an incident twenty years past now! I tell you truthfully, I believe Nancy was innocent.”
“Not entirely,” Dolley said, pointing to the passage in which Nancy admitted to having been seduced by Theo. “That might be enough to destroy her marriage. And Randolph of Roanoke is nothing if not a destroyer.” Dolley put scorn behind the name, as if to mock his pretensions. “Nancy sent this letter, hoping I’d defend her reputation, but her husband is a Federalist, and as one first lady to another, I’ll let her sink if you wish.”
I smiled at Dolley giving me that title—a role she created herself—and I spoke from the heart. “In truth, I seethe for her. Nancy has finally found a respectable place for herself, and John can’t leave her in peace.”
Dolley watched me carefully. “So you take her side?”
“Whatever side John takes, I’m on the other.” That made Dolley laugh. But then I added, “No matter where I stand with Nancy, it’d be a disgrace to let that villain harry her to death.”
Dolley rose to stare out the parlor window to the gardens beyond. “That does seem to be his aim. I hope he doesn’t succeed.”
I’d relied altogether too much on hope. Papa’s stubborn faith in the goodness of humanity seemed to bear itself out less and less every day. And after seeing all the ills in the world, I no longer merely hoped justice would come to the wicked. “John Randolph is running in the upcoming election against my former brother-in-law, who’d be far more helpful to your husband in Congress.”
John Randolph had miscalculated the damage ladies could do. We couldn’t fight in the war, but reputations were won or lost on our fields of battle. And Dolley and I were prepared to set our cannons blasting. Tom wouldn’t like my meddling in politics, would like even less my doing anything to help Jack Eppes. But he might approve for the sake of his sister. I’d saved her once before, and he’d been grateful. I was desperate to win back his affections now. So I sat down with Dolley to write some letters to influential ladies, taking up Nancy’s banner and blackening John Randolph’s name. If we’d been men, he’d have called us out. Unfortunately, the only advantage afforded a woman in Virginia was that we couldn’t be challenged to a duel.
“Soldiers!” The cry came from Sally’s thirteen-year-old daughter, Harriet, who came running in with her dark auburn hair streaming behind her, marshaling my younger children into the house. For a moment, I saw my sister in her. It was Polly that I saw in fright, and my heart stopped.
But Dolley had the presence of mind to ask, “Redcoats?”
“ Our soldiers, I think,” the girl said.
We crowded onto the portico steps, watching a ragtag group of boys marching up our mountain wreathed in gray mist. Even from a distance, they looked dirty, lean, half-starved. Some used their muskets like canes. One towered over his compatriots, and I caught a glimpse of auburn hair.
“Jeff!” I cried, wilting with relief. “It’s my boy.”
He broke away from the company, raced up the drive, and clomped up the stairs. He spoke in a rush as he swept me into his arms. “The British went north. We never saw a redcoat!”
That meant the British never met my husband’s regiment, and the men in my life were safe. The British might’ve attacked Richmond and won, but instead they chose Baltimore, where Fort McHenry withstood a bombardment of more than twenty-four hours, leaving our flag, as immortalized by Francis Scott Key, still there .
“Where’s your father?” I asked, overjoyed by the news.
Jeff only shrugged. I learned later that my son and husband had quarreled so violently that Jeff was nearly brought up on charges. My son wouldn’t say why, but the details didn’t seem important if the peace was won.
B Y F EbrUARY OF 1815, everyone was giddy. Southern gentlemen swaggered about, confidence restored, honor defended, reputations built as a new generation of Americans defeated the British once again. Some called it a second American revolution.
“Get on your best dress, Mother,” Jeff said, his spirits high since returning home. “I’m taking you and Ann to visit my lady love.”
With his father’s looks and his grandfather’s charm, Jeff caught the eyes of beautiful women. But I’d heard the name of the governor’s daughter bandied about more than once. And now that the war was at its end, Jeff was eager to see her. I was just as eager to lay eyes on the girl, so I dug through my closet.
Homespun wasn’t in fashion anymore, but we hadn’t had occasion to buy anything new, so Ann and I donned our decade-old dresses from when we played hostess at the president’s table. Mine fit without alteration. But motherhood and marriage to a drunk had made my daughter so thin that her dress positively swallowed her up.
“I’ll take it in,” Sally said, going for her thread and needle. And when she was finished, we went off to meet the girl my son wanted to marry.
Jeff rode ahead on horseback, while Ann and I followed in the carriage, a blanket on our laps to guard against the cold. When we arrived at Mount Warren, Jane Nicholas bid us welcome. I was surprised to find her quite plain, but she had a warm smile.
Her mother, however, did nothing but scowl, apparently flummoxed to see us. As was the custom, Jeff went off to call on the gentlemen, whereas we were left to socialize over tea. And though Mount Warren was a prosperous house, we were offered only tea.
At some point during the surprisingly stiff and chilly conversation, I urged Jane and her mother to call upon us at Monticello, and Mrs. Nicholas asked, “Why ever would we do that?”
Sure that I’d heard her wrong, I only sipped at my tea. But Ann flushed to the tips of her ears.
The rude mistress of the plantation eyed me squarely and said, “My people were merchants. Merchants know that wealth is money. But planters prize land, no matter how useless. And I pray that none of my daughters will bury themselves in Virginia, married to boys who have nothing but an old name and a patch of dirt.”
Jane cried, “Momma!”
Refusing to reveal my own shock, I patted the girl’s hand. “Don’t be upset, dear. Your mother is only speaking her mind, as we’re free to do in the glorious nation my father helped to build.”
Mortified, Jane rose, dragging her mother from the room. “Please excuse us. We must find some biscuits to go with our tea.”
Ann fanned herself furiously against the stifling heat of the fire. “Why, I never .”
From the entryway beyond, where Mrs. Nicholas argued with her daughter, I heard her call me a very vulgar-looking woman . I seethed when I heard her say Ann was a poor stick . And I burned to hear her ask, “Don’t you find it strange that Jeff Randolph, who owns nothing but a small tract of land and five Negroes, thinks he’s ready for a wife? Of all the pretty girls who pant after him, you think he’d choose you ?”
Having heard quite enough, I said, “Come along, Ann.” We didn’t wait for Jeff. While Jane and her mother argued, my daughter and I simply climbed into the carriage and rode off.
All the while, Ann kept saying, “I never ! They think they’re too good for us. They think Jeff’s after her money!”
“If a girl may be judged by her mother, Jeff is better off without her.”
We were still carrying on this way when we reached the top of my father’s mountain, and someone wrenched open the carriage door. Ann shrieked in surprise to see that it was her husband, drunker than usual. And though the air was chilly, his face ran with sweat as he hauled her out. “Where were you?” Charles demanded.
Wide-eyed, Ann stammered, “We—we went to meet Jeff’s girl. I told you—”
“Are you going to lie to me?” He threw her to the cold, hard ground. “Go on, lie to me.”
“Charles!” I cried, scrambling out of the carriage. But I wasn’t fast enough to stop him. He kicked her. He kicked my delicate daughter in the ribs, and when she tried to rise up, he kicked her in the face, sending a spray of blood from her mouth. “You lying little bitch.”
People would say he had a right to do it. He had a right by law. But I was her mother, and there were other laws than the ones made by men. Seeing my baby girl’s bloody mouth, I reached for the coachman’s horsewhip and lashed at Charles. The whip caught him on the side of the face, where he was still scarred from the blow my husband had given him with a fire iron.
And Bankhead seemed so shocked to see that this time I was the one to lay open a stripe of blood on his cheek that he stood like a stunned ox.
“Run, Ann!” I cried, ducking a swing of his arm. I wasn’t afraid for myself; it wasn’t me he wanted to hurt. So I grabbed hold of him, making myself a dead weight. I might be a vulgar-looking woman, but I was sturdy, and my rampaging son-in-law couldn’t easily throw me off. We grappled while Ann staggered to her feet, and while Burwell and Beverly Hemings went running to fetch the overseer.
“You leave her alone, Charles,” I said, gripping his shirt tight. “You’re mad with drink.”
“You may rule your husband,” Charles snarled. “But Ann’s my wife and I’m going to beat her until she remembers it.” With that, he tore himself from my grip, leaving a patch of his shirt in my hand, then took off after Ann at a run.
Monticello was in an uproar, servants shouting, Bankhead kicking everything and everyone in his way. Chickens went squawking. Dogs yelped and growled. And after a few moments, Sally rushed out of the house to help me up from the ground, whispering, “Charles passed her by. She’s hiding in a potato hole.”
The thought of my daughter, my first baby, hiding in the dirt from her husband made me wish that I’d let Tom kill him. As she helped me to my feet, Sally’s long-ago words about the importance of the man a woman winds up with had never rung more true—because Ann was trapped with a cruel drunkard, and there wasn’t a thing that we could do.
Sally was my father’s mistress, not the mistress of the plantation, and yet it felt right to have her at my side. The drunken brute’s shouts echoed from the house, and Sally and I took the stairs two at a time in the vain hope of getting to him before he got to my father.
Meanwhile, Jeff’s horse came galloping up the road, in a cloud of dust. “What the devil is going on?”
We didn’t stop to answer but burst into the house where the madman screamed, “Show yourself, Ann.”
Jeff was on our heels, gripping his horsewhip. One look at his frothing, bloodied brother-in-law, and no one had to tell him what had happened. And my son went white to the tip of his nose.
“Did you do something to my sister, you rabid dog?” Jeff asked, advancing on Bankhead. “Someone ought to put you down. I think that someone is gonna be me.”
Those were words that started duels. Words that demanded satisfaction. But Bankhead was so drunk I’m not sure he heard. Instead, he was transfixed by the sight of my father, who emerged from his rooms in stern disapproval.
“ Enough, ” Papa said, very quietly, very severely. “We value domestic tranquility, here. Charles, I must ask you to reside under your father’s roof for a time, not mine.”
At my father’s quiet show of thoroughly presidential authority, Bankhead seemed to suddenly shake free of his madness, and he sank to his knees and wept. Bankhead was being banished, and he knew it. He begged my father a thousand pardons, sobbing that he’d tried to stop drinking but never was able to. That it was something in him, like a demon.
I didn’t care. I fetched Ann, took her upstairs, bandaged her ribs, and cleaned up her mouth and jaw, which were bruised and swollen. Then I put her in my bed, dosing her with some laudanum so she could rest. Bolting the door, I leaned back upon it like a guard.
That’s when Jeff came up the narrow stairway with murder in his eyes. “You keep away from Bankhead,” I said, keeping my voice low in case children might be eavesdropping from the nearby nursery or their bedrooms on the third floor. “And when your father returns, don’t tell him what happened here today.”
“Why not? Cracking that monster’s skull is the finest thing my father ever did—too bad he botched the job, like always.”
“Stop saying things like that, Jeff. Disrespect from a boy is one thing, but you’re a man now.”
He nodded grimly and leaned back on the door next to me. “Then you won’t object to my taking Jane for a wife?”
“I’d think you’d rather marry someone who’ll bring no more strife into this family.”
“Jane isn’t her mother,” Jeff said, reasonably, staring at his feet. “I’m set on Jane. She’s the prudent choice.”
I stared, remembering my own seemingly prudent choice. “Oh, Jeff, be careful.”
“I know what I’m about. My future prospects from my father I consider as blank. From my grandfather, not very cheering.”
That my husband’s fortunes were negligible, I knew. But since Papa retired from the presidency, Monticello had never seemed more fruitful or alive. “Why would you say that?”
Jeff crossed his freckled arms. “I’ve seen grandfather’s books. Monticello is large but unprofitable and, unless judiciously managed, will probably consume itself.”
My father was a sunny optimist, and I was neither entitled nor desirous to know the extent of his debts. But my son was pragmatic and clear-headed. And I believed him. “Even so, marrying a woman you don’t love—”
“You won’t tell my sisters to marry for love. You want to, but you won’t. You don’t want them to end up at the mercy of a penniless drunk like Bankhead. It’ll be a miracle if they find husbands with their promised thirty cents per annum. Though, with Ellen’s caustic tongue, no amount would be enough.”
“Don’t be sarcastic,” I said, reaching for his hand.
Our shoulders touched in the doorway.
“My brothers are still boys,” he said. “I’m going to have to provide for all of them. My sisters and brothers. So I can’t marry anybody but a rich woman, and Jane’s sweet. If I can make myself love her, you can do the same.”
I glanced up at him, shamed that he should have such burdens. But I’d raised a man who could be relied upon, and that filled me with pride. So I never uttered another word against Jane, not realizing that she’d cost us everything.
T HE NEXT MORNING, I rocked my grand-baby in his cradle as Ann continued to sleep fitfully in the nearby bed. The movement of the rocking was a comfort when so little else was. Everything seemed in a turmoil.
Ann awoke on a gasp. “Where is Charles? I have to go to him,” she said, her words slurred because of the swelling around her mouth.
“He must’ve kicked the senses out of you if you’re even considering going with him,” I said, my heart hurting that this was the reality of my daughter’s life.
She struggled to sit up against the pillows. “Where else can I go?”
“You needn’t go anywhere,” Papa replied from the doorway, surprising us both, for he so seldom mounted the steep stairs that the crowded upper floors in which my family lived must have seemed to him like another world completely.
Papa crossed the room and rested an age-spotted hand on her shoulder. “You’re always welcome here at Monticello, dearest Ann.”
Bravely wiping away the tears that flowed down her bruised face, Ann said, “But my place is with Charles. By law, he can take the children. You know he can.”
“He’ll soften, fearing the loss of you,” Papa said. “His family will talk sense to him.” All his life, I think my father believed, in principle, that a woman belonged to her husband. But now he tried every way possible to encourage Ann’s separation from Charles. Every way but telling her she had a right to do it.
Maybe that would’ve made the difference.
“It was my fault,” Ann insisted. “He worries when he can’t find me.”
My heart sank to my stomach, where it weighed like a stone when, later that day, Ann rode off with Charles, their children, and belongings. “Patsy, I had to send him away,” Papa said from where we stood upon the south terrace, overlooking the garden, the vineyards, and the breathtakingly broad vista beyond.
“I know,” was my truthful reply.
Papa squinted up at the clouds. “Dr. Bankhead will have more authority to deal with his son. And if I let Charles stay here, and Tom found out . . .”
I knew exactly what Tom would do if he found out that Bankhead beat our daughter. And I didn’t know if I should be sorry or grateful that Tom was still too furious with me to come home.
Rounding his shoulders, Papa said, “In the meantime, I’ve sold my library to Congress to replace the one burned by the British. I’ll use the profit to secure property for Ann alone, to make her independent if the worst should come to pass.”
“Oh, Papa,” I said, pressing a grateful kiss against his aging shoulder. It was startlingly generous and also startling because my father had never encouraged independence in any woman before.
“I’ll save some for Ellen, who’ll need to attract a husband of her own soon.”
“Given the fate of her sister, I almost wish Ellen would never marry,” I said. I deny loving any of my children more than the others. But you take more pleasure in some. Ann, Jeff, and Ellen were the children I knew best and to whom I’d formed the first tender attachments. Even amongst those three, Ellen was special. “She feels things too acutely for her own happiness. She’s like her father, but without his temper, and such people aren’t well suited for this selfish world.”
My father smiled because Ellen was his favorite, too. “She’s the jewel of my soul, but we mustn’t be too selfish. We must allow her into society and hope she finds a perfect love.”
“Perfect love?” Ellen asked, swishing her skirts as she came up behind us, not even pretending she hadn’t eavesdropped. “Ann loves Charles, and look how that’s turned out. There may be no such thing as perfect love.”
My father smiled. “There will be for you, pretty girl.”
Dark-haired, sloe-eyed Ellen wasn’t as pretty as Ann, but at the age of nineteen, Ellen was slender and dashing, with supreme confidence. And she used it now to distract us from the sadness of Ann’s departure. “I recently met a handsome gentleman who was so perfectly the victim of ennui that it destroyed every attraction I might’ve felt for him. Truly, I’d bore you to list the suitors I became completely disgusted with visiting Richmond. I’d just as soon become a spinster and devote myself to the care of my beloved grandpapa.”
She was teasing, I hoped, but the marriage prospects of our daughters were very much on my husband’s mind when he finally returned for Jeff’s wedding to Jane with the first hints of spring. Tom had never been a cheerful man, but he returned to me a dour one. He now styled himself Colonel Randolph, and it relieved me that though he’d taken his father’s title and demeanor, he wasn’t unfeeling toward his children. When he crawled into our bed after having been gone so long, he said, “Now that our son has taken a bride, it’s time to think about the girls. Mrs. Madison extended an invitation to have Ellen in Washington City. She’ll find a higher caliber of gentleman to court her there.”
Quietly, I gasped at the expense this would entail. Ellen couldn’t properly go to the capital without new dresses, new shawls, bonnets, and triflings of every sort. She’d be advised by Dolley, whose expensive tastes we could scarcely afford.
But when I confessed my worries, Tom exploded in temper. “What sort of man do you take me for? You think I’d help marry my sisters off but will deprive my own daughter of the few dresses and combs she needs to secure her happiness?”
Lowering my eyes, I said, “I know you’d never deny your daughters a thing if it were within your power. I’m only worried for the expense.”
“Did your father spare any expense for your coming-out in Paris?” Tom asked, staring hard. “I’ve heard the stories, so many balls you had to limit yourself to not more than three a week. Stories your daughters have heard, too.”
With that single, astute observation, Tom leveled me. I’d so often entertained my children with stories about my days in Paris that any one of the older girls could have named my friends at the convent and recounted their exploits. To buoy spirits in hard times, I’d fed my girls a steady diet of opulent tales. How could I deny my vivacious Ellen the opportunities I’d enjoyed? “You’re right, of course. I beg your pardon—”
“It’s not your place to worry about expenses,” Tom ranted, in a fever of anger that’d been brewing since I’d meddled in his military career. “That’s always been the trouble with you, Martha. You don’t know your place.”
He then proceeded to show me my place, by roughly tugging my nightclothes and pinning me to the bed. I made no attempt to refuse him. I didn’t dare. And, in truth, I hoped that our coming together—even in anger—might mend the wounds. After all, Tom’s ardent kisses usually broke through my reserve, and his release usually unraveled the knots inside him.
But on that night, not even pleasure could untangle the trouble between us.
In the dark, I whispered, “Tom, I offer my sincerest apologies. I know I’ve hurt you and offended your sense of honor. But please know that what I did, I only did for fear of losing you. I erred in love.”
To that, he had no reply whatsoever.