January 13, 1803
RICHMOND
Maria sensed that the savage beating and the one-week jailing had taken more out of Callender than he would admit. Not merely physically, though he moved more slowly, but the intensity had gone out of his eyes. She wondered if what he had written about “seeking asylum somewhere else” had been more than a play for sympathy. He was drinking more now, insisting that at least a pint at breakfast was needed to dull the pain. She did not believe that. He despaired of ever seeing his sons and confided to her his fear that they would grow up as field hands taking in Leiper’s tobacco crop, all the while hating their father for killing their mother. She believed that.
“And I am out of ammunition, Maria. You cannot fight a war without gunpowder.”
“What does that mean?” They were in the kitchen of the Mathew house.
“For three months now, the artillery of the press has been thundering upon my Recorder. The republicans are as zealous as the aristocrats.” He poked at a stack of newspapers on the kitchen table. “You cannot open a single one of them without seeing a personal attack on me. As you know, all at once there has been cast open every porthole of scurrility, falsehood and execration.” He pulled himself out of his chair and tried to warm himself at the wide fireplace. “In all other disputes of this kind, an editor was certain to have a posse of like-minded editors to support him. But the situation is now that every printer of both parties has thought it necessary to begin his performances by declaring ‘Callender is a rascal!’ Nobody in America or Scotland has ever had to endure such a terrible tempest of papershot.”
She could understand the melancholy brought on by the constant derision by newspapers on both sides, on top of the physical battering and the threat of more such attacks from others in the angry gentry. But his demeaning self-pity and his sudden dependence on the bottle was too much for Maria to take.
“And so you want to give up and run away? Go home to Scotland where they’re waiting to put you in jail? Go out West and get besotted every day and live with the savages?” That sat him back; she had never talked that way to him, or any man, before. “You talk about the artillery of the press. I know what it was like to have that artillery trained on me, and be defenseless against it. But you, you have the biggest gun in all that artillery. You can silence anybody—the Aurora, the Examiner, anybody—with your own barrage.”
“So long as I had the ammunition.” He explained his predicament. “Long ago, I had the shot from Beckley to use against Hamilton. After the election, when they cheated me out of my postmaster office, I was able to thunder back with Jefferson’s letters transmitting money to me through Madison and Monroe. And then when they sent Duane after me with his horrendous lie about my dear dead wife, I had the information about black Sally to blaze back against Jefferson.”
He began to pace, more slowly than usual, but cracking his knuckles as before. “That information was the hair of Samson. That made me as powerful as the high and mighty, but now, Maria, I am shorn. They sent a man to beat my head in, and they waited to see how I would respond. All I could do was to insist on going to jail, which embarrassed them, but they must know that was just a trick. They want to see what I have left.” He spread his palms. “But now I have nothing left, just some leads that will take months to explore. My readers will see I have no ammunition in my fine artillery and they will go elsewhere for their news. What is a scandalmonger without a scandal? Only the threat of some new exposure wards off the men in power. When they see me helpless, they will silence my paper and then come and kill me.”
Maria shook her head, no; she could not stand to see him in despair. “I know where there could be a tempest of papershot, as you call it.” She thought about what she could do to provide him the protection he needed. “Tomorrow is Saturday. You stay at home and rest. I will borrow the doctor’s horse and carriage and pay a visit to a woman I was told about who lives in Albemarle County.” Long ago, when Colonel Hamilton needed a threat that he thought might stop Jefferson’s men from exposing the Reynolds affair, she had heard him mention the woman’s name.
Chapter 42
January 20, 1803
ALBEMARLE COUNTY , VIRGINIA
The tall young woman in the fine wool coat who drew up to the front door driving her own black carriage was obviously a lady. Though the name on the card she sent up—Mrs. Maria Lewis Clement, with a London address—meant nothing to Betsey Walker, the mistress of the mansion readily told one of her house slaves to admit the lady to the parlor.
She identified herself as Maria Clement, a former New Yorker related to the Livingston family. She was presently resident with her husband in London and on an extended visit to Richmond at the home of a family friend, the eminent physician Dr. Thomas Mathew.
“I could tell that your dress was not made in America,” Betsey told her visitor, motioning for the slave to bring tea with biscuits and jam. “It’s elegant.”
“It was made in France a few years ago,” she replied modestly. “I fear these bows at the hem are no longer the style.”
“Your kinsman is our Minister there,” Betsey Walker offered, who recalled having heard her husband say something about “that republican fool Livingston” representing us in Paris.
“It cannot be easy for him, not knowing the language as his predecessors did, and being hard of hearing as well. Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Monroe were fluent in French, I understand.”
Betsey let her displeasure show, as she did on most occasions when Jefferson’s name was mentioned. “Mr. Walker and I are not admirers of either the President or the Governor. A facility with foreign languages is no indicator of character.” With the leaves now off the trees, she could see Monticello from her bedroom window upstairs. She often looked at it and imagined the worst of what had gone on there.
“In truth, that is what brought me here, Mrs. Walker. A friend of mine in New York, a great and famous statesman, once told me of an ignoble action taken by Mr. Jefferson many years ago. It was in regard to a respectable young lady here in Albemarle County.”
Betsey felt her heartbeat speed up and put her hand to her breast. She had hoped someone would ask her about this for years.
“By coincidence,” Mrs. Clement continued, “only a few days ago a writer I know mentioned that he had heard of a similar incident. He said it reflected poorly on the character of our President.”
“And that it most certainly did,” Betsey blurted out. Then she thought it would be more ladylike to be discreet, at least at first. “I mean, I think I know what you are referring to.”
“Because of the delicate nature of the matter, and your position as a lady of honor and high reputation, I did not want to mention your name to him until discussing it with you. I hope you don’t find my coming here too intrusive.”
“Who is your writer friend?”
“James T. Callender, editor of the Richmond Recorder,” her charming visitor said forthrightly.
“Dusky Sally!” Betsey clapped her hands. “Everybody in the county clear to Charlottesville knew about her being Jefferson’s concubine. She dropped a colt nine months after whenever the great man came back to Monticello. Must be half a dozen of their little octoroons running around, and they lord it over all the rest of the blacks.”
“Then it’s true?”
“Everybody knows it. But nobody had the courage to write about it until Callender did. We are subscribers to the Recorder, Mrs. Clement. It prints the truth.”
“But that shocking matter about the slave is not what drew me here,” said Mrs. Clement. “I really don’t know how to begin—”
“It started back in 1768, before the Revolution.” She drew her chair closer to her guest. “The year before, I had married Jack, who was Tom Jefferson’s best friend. Tom was one of his bridesmen at the wedding, for God’s sake. Jack’s father was Tom’s guardian and the executor of his father’s will.”
“Your husband’s father was Mr. Jefferson’s guardian?”
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“They all couldn’t be closer. We were living at Belvoir, just a stone’s throw from Tom, who was still single then, no more than twenty-five, at Shadwell.” She took a deep breath as the memory came back vividly. “Then Jack was asked by the Virginia Commission to go to Fort Stanwix to draw up a treaty with the Indians, and he asked Tom to watch over me and my new baby. He looked after us, all right.” She stopped. Should she be telling this to a total stranger?
“What happened then?”
It was not really a secret any more, Betsey Walker decided; Harry Lee, who knew about it ever since he married Betsey’s niece, despised Jefferson just as much as she and her husband did. Light-Horse Harry must have told a dozen Virginia neighbors of this evidence of the character of our new President, with Betsey’s tacit approval. With no names mentioned, it had even been hinted at in Bronson’s Gazette, the Bee and obliquely denied in the Examiner. She tore out the articles and saved them all.
“Tom Jefferson came to our house in Belvoir. With my new baby sleeping upstairs, mind you, he made advances toward me.”
“Are you certain, Mrs. Walker? As we know, sometimes a man can be affectionate, or avuncular, without—”
“He wanted to take me to bed with him. He took hold of me, and Tom’s big, you know—I was little, then, with a waist like yours. When I pushed him away, he wouldn’t stop. It wasn’t until I picked up a scissors that he finally backed away. And I was his best friend’s wife.” She wasn’t really sure about the part about the scissors, but she vaguely recollected it, and she had told the story so often over the years that the scissors had become real in her own mind.
“When your husband came home, did you tell him what Jefferson had done?”
“Of course not. Mrs. Clement, you’re from the North, so you may not be familiar with our code duello. A gentleman whose wife has been so insulted must demand satisfaction or a public apology. Jack would have had to challenge Tom to a duel and one of them would have been killed. I didn’t want that. And I had made myself absolutely clear to Tom. I was sure he would never bother me again.”
“Did he? Ever bother you again?”
Her visitor was surely persistent in her questioning. She found it good to talk about this with a lady so interested. “There was the time, a year or so later, Tom pressed a note into the cuff of my sleeve. I showed it to my husband and he ordered Tom out of our house.”
“What did the note say? You kept it, of course—”
“I tore it to pieces after the first glance. It sought to persuade me of the innocence of promiscuous love. Can you imagine? Trying to make it seem that there was nothing wrong with—with adultery?”
The word hung in the air. She hoped she had not shocked Mrs. Clement by using it.
“Adultery,” repeated Mrs. Clement in a whisper.
“Yes. But the note wasn’t so specific that it required a duel. After that—but I’ve said too much already. None of this, of course, is to be repeated in the press.”
“It’s hard to keep these things quiet,” Mrs. Clement replied, “especially when so many people in Albemarle know it. Let’s leave it up to Mr. Callender. He’s most careful to preserve a lady’s reputation, even when he castigates dishonorable men.”
Betsey Walker was not so sure. “He didn’t preserve the reputation of the Reynolds woman. She could never show her face again.”
“James Callender tells me that was Colonel Hamilton’s doing in that awful pamphlet, and not his own. Indeed, as I remember it, Callender was the only defender of Mrs. Reynolds’s virtue.”
“I forgot that,” said Betsey. She paused; if Mrs. Clement was friendly with the famous writer, perhaps she knew some delicious details of that old scandal. “Do you suppose that Hamilton—”
“Colonel Hamilton as an adult was no more a gentleman than the Jefferson you knew as a young man, Mrs. Walker. Some handsome and ambitious men believe they are above all morality, and a woman’s virtue becomes a mere challenge to them.” She added, “At least that’s what I hear from the editor of the Recorder. And I respect his writing as highly as you do.” The young woman frowned, thinking, as she finished her cup of tea.
“There is something else on your mind,” Betsey said. “I can tell. Out with it, now.”
“After your husband saw the improper note that Mr. Jefferson put in your sleeve, Mrs. Walker, did you mention his previous attack on you?”
Betsey sighed and shook her head, no. “Not for years. But then when Jefferson sailed for France to be our Minister, Jack told me he was going to name Tom the executor of his will. I pleaded with him not to, and was forced to give the reason. It was awful.”
January 20, 1803, evening
RICHMOND
A rejuvenated if still somewhat battered James Callender read and re-read the notes that Maria made of her conversation in Albemarle. She wrote clearly and in a fair hand, reporting in detail as much as she could remember of what had been said. One day, he thought, she would have to write a pamphlet of her own answering Hamilton.
He sent a message to his adversaries with a single line of type in capital letters in the Recorder. It read: “NEXT WEEK: MRS. WALKER.”
Then he went to the tavern to find and compare notes with Light-Horse Harry Lee.
Chapter 43
January 28, 1803
WASHINGTON, D . C .
James Madifon was puzzled. “What does he mean, ‘Next week: Mrs. Walker’?”
Monroe had ridden to the capital to consult first with Madison and then with Jefferson about his mission to Napoleon Bonaparte in Paris and the latest threatened calumny from Callender. “He means Jack Walker’s wife Betsey, Jemmy, and that concerns me. Do you know her?”
“Of course. She was a great beauty in her day,” Madison recalled. “She and Jack Walker were close friends and neighbors of the Jeffersons for years. But then it cooled for some reason.”
“There is some rumor about that reason,” Monroe told him.
“I know Jack wanted to stay on as Senator and thought he had our support,” said the Secretary of State, “but we needed you in the Senate in Philadelphia. The Walkers were put out about that, I remember.”
“That is not why Callender is interested in Betsey. You may recall that Betsey’s niece married Harry Lee.”
“Oh. Harry is in financial trouble, and no friend of ours.”
Madison apparently still did not grasp the import of the single line of bold type in the Recorder. “I suspect Harry Lee was Callender’s source of the lies about—” Monroe reached for a suitable phrasing—“the living arrangements of the slaves at Monticello. And Lee may be talking to that blackguard again, this time about Betsey and Jefferson.”
Madison seemed to shrink into his coat, fluffing out the ruffles on his shirt with nervous fingertips. “What about them?”
“When Muhlenberg and I were investigating Hamilton—hard to believe it was ten years ago—I recall some message Hamilton wanted me to take to Jefferson. If we made public his financial scandal, he supposedly would reveal some scandal involving the Walkers.”
“I had no idea—”
“I don’t involve you in everything, my friend.” Madison was a political naïf; he never should have transmitted money from Stevens Mason to Monroe for Callender years ago, but he did, thereby directly involving Monroe in the benighted payment. Preserve us from the blunders of innocents, he thought; they caused more trouble than the sins of the guilty. “I transmitted Hamilton’s message to Jefferson at the time, but he assured me it did not worry him.” As he said that, Monroe recalled how Jefferson was filled with certitude more recently that he was impervious to Callender’s charges. The President, confident of his rectitude, was blind to his vulnerabilities. “We need to warn the President of the impending slanders. Will you come with me?”
The Secretary of State, looking miserable, rose and followed the retiring Governor out to cross the street to the President’s palace. “I want to talk to you about your mission to France,” he r
eminded him. “We cannot recall Livingston; his family is too important to us in New York. But if you could talk to Talleyrand about the purchase of New Orleans, we could assure France we will make no claims beyond the west bank of the Mississippi. Those troops of Napoleon’s on Hispaniola—”
“Some of our slaves say the French force there has been decimated by the yellow fever,” Monroe reported. “If that means he cannot conquer the New World, he may want to sell us New Orleans.” He hoped to get around Talleyrand to speak to Napoleon himself, explaining that it would be in the interest of France to have America as the commercial competitor of Britain. “But we’ll worry about Talleyrand later. This Walker matter is more pressing.”
“It is true,” Jefferson confessed. “I plead guilty to one of his charges. When young and single, I offered love to a handsome lady.”
They did not look directly at Jefferson or he at them.
“I acknowledge its incorrectness,” the President said painfully. “It is the only one founded on truth among all their allegations against me.”
The first thought to race through Monroe’s mind was that it was nearly twenty months until the next election. If this youthful indiscretion was revealed now and could be laid to rest quickly, all the diatribes in the Federalist press about Jefferson’s “character” would have dissipated by election time.
Scandalmonger: A Novel Page 42