They turned the corner onto High Street, and behind them, Martha could hear the voices of the French sailors, shouting around the taverns: “Vive la Liberté!” and the smashing of glass.
When they reentered the house, with the thick heat of afternoon stifling in the high-ceilinged hall, Martha’s first question of James was, “How is Mrs. Lear?” and then, before she even removed her bonnet, “Is the President home yet?”
“Mrs. Lear’s no better, ma’am, but no worse I don’t think.” The footman’s eyes flickered nervously as he spoke, as if he had heard some kitchen rumor—about the rioting? about Pollie’s sickness?—from other slaves. “The President come in a few minutes ago. He’s up in his study.”
George’s study was part of the private area of the house, divided off from the rest as their bedroom and dressing-room were at Mount Vernon. Since his days as a retired Hero of the Revolution, they had learned that this was the only way in which he could ever get anything done.
“Patsie.” He stood as she came in, then bent his tall height to bestow a kiss on her cheek.
“Did you speak to Mr. Jefferson?”
He nodded. “I found him in his office, with M. Genêt, who seemed to be repeating to him all he had said to me last night. Which was, in effect, that the Proclamation of Neutrality annulled the most sacred treaty with the French people, by which they’d sworn to defend us and which they had honorably kept.”
Martha had suspected as much, but George had been far too angry last night before bed to give her details.
“I suspect he was trying to pump Tom for information about my plans,” George went on, seating himself again at his desk and drawing Martha down to sit on his knee. The office’s curtains were shut, in an effort to keep in some of last night’s fugitive cool. In the shadowed corners of the room Martha could hear the whine of mosquitoes, which hovered in brown clouds around every puddle and rain-barrel in the city.
“When Genêt was gone, Tom offered to resign.”
“He’s been offering to do that,” remarked Martha tartly, “since he himself stepped off the boat from France.”
“This time I accepted.” George rubbed a big hand over his eyes. Every time Martha had waked last night, she’d seen him awake, sitting by the tight-shuttered window, or visible only as the wan ghost of a single candle’s light reflected through the door of his study.
Yet he’d been up as usual in the gluey half-dark before dawn, when through the window the first sounds of milk-carts rattled up from the street and the clank of the well-chain sounded in the yard.
“I don’t believe for a moment the rumors that Tom’s in French pay, any more than I believe the ones that Mr. Hamilton sells information to the English. Yet Jefferson knows Genêt has gone too far. I have asked him to stay on until the end of the year, since he is the man most knowledgeable about the French, and he has agreed. And I’ve called a meeting of the Cabinet for tomorrow. We will draft a formal letter to Danton asking for Genêt’s recall. A letter of which I will not inform M. Genêt,” George added quietly, “until just before the Congress adjourns in September, lest one of his pet privateers should accidentally sink the vessel carrying it, somewhere on the high seas.”
“So what will happen?”
“That remains to be seen. But as I told M. Genêt, neither I nor the Congress will be dictated to by the politics of any nation under Heaven.” He was silent for a moment, gazing into the gloom of the study, and the sharp blade of light where the curtains fell imperfectly together. Then his arm tightened around her waist, as if for reassurance that whatever his Secretary of State might do and however badly the nation to which he had given his life might fracture, Martha at least was there, as she had been through all the years of the War.
“A trying morning,” he said. “I trust you passed a more pleasant one?”
“Well,” said Martha slowly, “not precisely.”
The following morning, the French fleet sailed. For New York, it was said, to refit and reprovision. It was also said, in the newspapers favorable to Washington, Hamilton, and a British alliance, that their intention was to divide, and use New York as a base from which to attack Spanish Florida and Louisiana, and British Canada.
Only a fool would fail to see that it was against New York that the British would counterattack, with the largest and strongest Navy in the world.
The United States had not a single ship.
The same day—muggy, hot, and whining with mosquitoes—Martha ordered the light town-carriage harnessed, and, accompanied by Nelly, was driven down High Street, past the old brown-brick steeple of the former State House where the Congress now met, to the pleasant brick house on Walnut Street where the lawyer John Todd lived with his wife.
“I do thank thee for coming.” Dolley Todd rose from her chair in the neat little parlor—what was locally called a “tea-room”—and held out her hands to Martha as the girl who’d met them at the door showed her and Nelly in. Though fairer and more delicately made than Mrs. Todd, the girl had the same porcelain complexion and tip-tilted eyes. And because, like Mrs. Todd, she, too, wore black, Martha guessed that it was their father who was lately dead. “My mother thanks thee for thy trouble, and for the honor of thy coming. I know ’tis not a usual thing, for the wife of the President to pay calls. Yet Mama sends her regrets, that she is not able to meet thee here. Please excuse her,” the younger woman went on, her blue eyes filled with compassion and concern. “This matter of Lucy hath grieved her deeply. Too deeply, I think, for her to speak to anyone just now. Indeed, she hath said to me, more than once, that my sister is to her as one dead.”
Dolley Todd led Martha to one of the room’s comfortable chairs, upholstered in straw-colored dornick; though plain, as all Quaker dwellings were supposed to be and frequently weren’t, the room radiated simple comfort and exquisite taste. Muslin curtains were hung over the book-case against the city’s summer dust, and also mitigated the glare and heat of the windows. The tea-pot and cups that the young girl—“My dearest sister Anna,” Mrs. Todd introduced her with a smile—brought in were blue-and-white China-ware, and the tea, first-class.
While Anna drew Nelly into quiet conversation on the other side of the room, Mrs. Todd poured out tea for herself and her older guest: “Hast thou heard anything, of thy nephew and Lucy, Lady Washington?”
Martha nodded. “The President sent another of his nephews in pursuit of them. We did manage to find the minister who performed the ceremony, so you can at least reassure your dear mama that a ceremony was performed.”
“I had no doubt that it had been,” replied Dolley softly. “As I said yesterday, I have met young Mr. Washington at Mama’s, and I knew well before thou said it, that he is no seducer—at least not of an innocent girl,” she added, with a wry twinkle of regret with which Martha heartily concurred.
As for roving young matrons or ladies of a certain class, well, thought Martha, that might be a different story. Of course she couldn’t say so, but meeting Dolley’s eye, didn’t think she needed to.
She began to like this young woman tremendously.
“ ‘Minister,’ thou sayst,” went on Dolley after a moment. “Not a Quaker, then?” and Martha shook her head.
“Anglican. But perfectly respectable—”
“Oh, yes, yes of course!” Dolley hastened to agree. “And yet, to the Meeting, a ‘hireling priest,’ as they say.” And she fell silent, caught as her mother was, between her faith and her love. “We are taught—we girls—that we must wed within the Congregation, or if we wed outside of it, as my mother did, we must bring our husbands to the fold.” Her half-bemused smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, as if in spite of her grief something irrepressible inside her couldn’t help catching a glimpse of the joy of life. “I think we may agree that this is, in the case of young Mr. Washington, unlikely in the extreme.”
Martha said slowly, “I understand—at least, I should like to think I understand your mother’s feelings: I should be most upse
t for instance if Nelly took it into her head one day to marry a Mohammedan, though I assume there are good men and bad in every faith. Yet I have lost a daughter myself. And though I would never say as much to your mother, it is one thing to declare ‘She is dead to me’ because she’s left the Church or the house, and another for that child, that daughter, to actually be dead. There is…no coming back from that.”
“No,” whispered Dolley, and laid a hand, in an almost protective gesture, on her belly where her own child slept. “No, I know that.”
“You were fortunate to have found a man you loved within the Congregation,” said Martha after a moment.
The lovely blue glance touched hers for a moment, then ducked away. “Aye,” Dolley said. “For five years poor John courted me faithfully. He is a good man.”
Did Mr. John Todd, like Dolley’s mother, purse up his lips at his wife’s bubbling humor or admonish her on the stylish cut of her gowns? Would he, like the widowed Mrs. Payne, refuse to admit the erring Lucy to his house, when and if she returned to Philadelphia? He is a good man is a very different statement from, I love him, though it was clear that this beautiful, sparkling woman was a loving wife. But the light of joy shone from her face only when she touched her belly again, and smiled at the thought of the baby there.
“When will he be born?” asked Martha, who could never see a baby or a child without a pang of envy, a surge of joy.
“She, if it please thee!” And both women laughed. “Mother, and John, and Anna—” She nodded with a smile at her sister, “—talk as if ’tis inscribed in gold somewhere that I’ll birth another boy. But since I know the child I bear is matchlessly perfect…” She gestured like a tragedienne at the exaggeration, “…it cannot be a son, for I have already borne the most perfect son the world has ever seen, at least for nigh onto eighteen hundred years. Although,” she added with a sigh, “Mama would have it that I do little Payne no good by telling him so. And perhaps she is right.”
The news that there was another child in the house had its usual effect on Martha, and little Payne Todd, seventeen months old, was immediately sent for, accompanied by the fourth Payne sister, a bright-eyed twelve-year-old named Mary. It was wonderful to spend an hour with a toddler, and this one seemed to have inherited all his mother’s considerable charm. Soon Martha found herself calling Dolley “dearest” and slipping into the Quaker “thee” and “thine,” and Nelly, Anna, and Mary gave up trying to carry on ladylike conversation and got out a game of Fox and Geese, at which Anna beat Martha and everyone else soundly.
“It feels like months since I’ve laughed so much,” remarked Martha, as Dolley walked her down the stairs. “It reminds me of how much I miss Mount Vernon, and my niece and her little boy, and quiet evenings out on the piazza instead of holding court every Friday night.”
Dolley’s eyebrows shot up. “I’ve not spoken to a woman in Philadelphia who hath not said thy receptions are marvelous.”
“Thank you, my dear.” Martha tucked up a strand of hair under her cap, which little Payne’s happy fingers had dislodged. “I’m glad people think so, for I do like to do a good job of work. And it is my work, you know, the way it’s your mother’s work to make sure all those poor Senators and Congressmen who’re away from their wives get a decent dinner.”
Dolley nodded, her sunny face thoughtful as she opened the door onto Walnut Street. “Rather like the man who dresses the stage at the theater, in fact. People don’t see just the actor who speaks, but the whole of the stage, though I don’t think but one in a hundred doth realize ’tis so. They’ll listen differently to—and think differently of—a speech if ’tis said on a wild heath or a battlefield, than if it’s spoken in a drawing-room with dirty curtains.”
“Exactly!” This young woman was the first person, Martha reflected, who understood, other than George. Even Nelly—at the moment bidding farewell to Anna and Mary on the flagway beside the carriage, and kneeling to kiss little Payne. Though she strove to be a good organizer, Nelly regarded their task as a social one rather than political. It was something every man’s wife, in good society, must do.
But in the eyes of this Quaker lawyer’s wife, Martha saw something else: the comprehension of how a political theme must be played—and constantly improvised—in a social key.
“It is my work to make the President look his best. It is my work to make those Spanish and Danish lords go away from the mansion saying, He may not have been born a King, but the office—and the nation—has a dignity that I must respect. To make Congressmen say, Here is a man of worth, whose words are not only important, but true. And you can’t get people to say things like that by telling them so, because people frequently don’t believe things they’re told—except by those dreadful newspapers! People must be shown, in order to believe things in their hearts.”
“What a marvelous task.” Dolley’s eyes were shining.
Martha was about to retort, YOU try getting a roomful of politicians to stop arguing when a scoundrel like Citizen Genêt walks in and insults your husband, but she didn’t.
“Yes,” she said softly. “Yes, it is.”
“And one no man could do.”
Their eyes sparkled in mutual complicity, and impulsively, Martha clasped her tall hostess’s hands.
“Steptoe and Lucy will be welcome guests in my home whenever they come to Philadelphia, you know.” Austin helped her into the cream-colored carriage. His livery and powdered wig, and the fineness of the chestnut horses, were yet another unspoken message, for all the town to see. “I shall send you a note, shall I, when they’re in town? Perhaps Mr. Todd might be prevailed upon to dine?”
“I doubt John would,” replied Dolley. “He hath a most conscientious regard for the opinion of the Congregation.” But her blue eyes warmed at the thought of a venue in which she might see her sister again, away from the censure of the disappointed family. “He can have no objection to my paying a morning-call, though.”
“Then you shall pay as many morning-calls as you please. And please bring little Payne, and his new sister, as well.” As Austin clucked to the horses, Martha looked back to see Mrs. Todd in her black dress on the step, holding Payne by the hand, her sisters flanking her, and everyone waving as if they’d all been friends for years.
She would have to write Lucy a note at Harewood, thought Martha, and ask the new bride to come soon. And she needed also to write to poor Fanny, not only sending her the money she’d asked for, but reassuring and advising her. She felt a pang of regret that Dolley Todd would in all probability not be able to visit until after her confinement. It would be good to have babies in the house again.
But before Martha’s letters were even sent, all things had changed, and even the deadly antics of Citizen Genêt came to seem like those of an ill-mannered child banging on a pot.
Two days after Martha’s visit to Dolley, Pollie Lear died.
And within days, other people, rich and poor, black and white, began to die, all over the town.
The fever summer had begun.
ABIGAIL
Boston, Massachusetts
Thursday, September 27, 1793
And you have had no word from your father?” Abigail knew that if Johnny had, the first words out of his mouth when she came into his dark little office on Queen Street would have been, I’ve had word from Pa…
But she couldn’t keep from asking.
The news from Philadelphia had been simply too terrifying.
Yellow fever, the whites called it. Blacks, who had seen it in the Caribbean, spoke of vomito negro, or of Bronze John.
Thirty people were dying a day.
“None save that Congress had adjourned, and that he would start for home within two days. It was but a note, dated the eleventh.” Her son spoke brusquely over his shoulder as he cleared the books from his desk and put his few papers into drawers. John was habitually neat, and Abigail had inculcated into all three of her sons the need for order and system in all their endeav
ors. Johnny was the only one upon whom her efforts seemed to have made a lasting impression, though according to John, Tommy—who had just begun his law practice in Philadelphia—was getting better about it.
Charley, at twenty-four a lawyer in New York, sweet and charming as he was, was hopeless. He always claimed he followed a system of his own.
Her boys. Men now in a world that was turning out very differently from that which she and John had imagined, in the days of the War.
When had things begun to go wrong?
“Father did not say whether he meant to return in Tommy’s company or not.” Johnny fetched his coat from the cupboard. Though the day was unseasonably hot—on her way through the streets from wily Cousin Sam’s house near the Common, Abigail had seen more than one gentleman (if such they could be called) in shirtsleeves outside the coffee-houses and taverns—since the age of ten she’d never seen her eldest son leave so much as his bedroom less than properly dressed.
Indeed a son to be proud of, she decided as she watched him. His old nickname “Hercules” suited him more now as his body settled into a burly strength. As John had done, Johnny had begun his public service, writing for the Columbian Centennial a series of scathing rebuttals when Thomas Jefferson had endorsed Tom Paine’s The Rights of Man with an introduction bemoaning “the political heresies that have sprung up among us.” It was quite clear that Jefferson meant her husband’s criticism of the way the French were conducting their Revolution, and his evasive apology had come far too late to prevent his supporters—who assumed that John had written the rebuttals himself—from jumping in with their own libelous replies.
Yet as she took Johnny’s arm to walk back to Sam’s house on Winter Street, Abigail couldn’t help seeing the sag of a much older man beginning in her son’s shoulders. Though only twenty-six, Johnny had a shuttered look to his eyes, like a house whose inhabitants have gone away, or withdrawn to its innermost rooms.
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