They dragged themselves up the last few turns in the stair and came out blinking into the air at the top with only the blue sky above them.
‘I must carve your name here too. I must carve it everywhere we have loved.’
‘Oh, we must not leave such a trail. I am already worried about the one in the rue de Seine. I could blame it on the servants, but none of their names begins with W, though it looks quite like an N, I suppose, and there is a boy called Nicolas who works in the stables, but I would not wish to get him into trouble.’
She looked like a schoolgirl whose jape has gone wrong and Wm was so enchanted that he could hardly speak.
There was a pond in the hazelwood by the ruins of the old fortress, not much bigger than the pool in Paris where he had carved their initials. They splashed water over their faces and took off their shoes and stockings and paddled their bare legs. Then they lay in the sun to dry.
‘It’s too hot here. Let’s go into the shade.’
They lay down in the shade of the bushes and he turned to her and she said yes, or perhaps she did not say it but only smiled assent to the question he had not asked and he slipped inside her and this time they were not at all like birds skittering on a branch but were long and slow at it. She said afterwards that she felt there was nothing else in the world but the two of them and he said he felt so too.
Slowly they came back down the chalk staircase, turning and turning in the sleepy afternoon as though they were performing some semi-aerial dance. When they halted at the embrasures to look out over the vast hazy landscape, they might have been planing across it in one of Montgolfier’s balloons, their legs beneath so giddy with fucking and their heads empty of everything but pleasure.
As they came out of the long passage into main gallery, they almost collided with two, no, three servants staggering under some heavy load that Wm could not immediately identify.
‘What’s that you’re carrying?’ Rosalie asked rather sharply, startled by the near-collision.
‘It’s the marble, madame. You know, the big one from the table in the salon in Paris. Madame had us bring it down here, so we can put it up in the attics, didn’t say why. It’s the devil of a weight, madame, that I can tell you.’
In the half-light of the corridor the Condor’s features looked sulky and full of menace. Monsieur Houdon had never meant his bust to be seen in such a light.
Even now their meetings were snatched and shadowed by impending departures: his to Antwerp, Brussels, Amsterdam, anywhere there were bankers with deep enough pockets to help refloat the struggling USA; hers to Paris with the Duke, the pale anxious Duke (was it Wm’s fancy or was he paler still now that he had another anxiety close to home, or was he as trusting as ever?), then back to La Roche-Guyon to see to her grandmother/mother-in-law, leaving William in a delirious fret to wait for letters from Mr Jefferson, which never came, and from her, which did:
No, I shall never be able to express the delicious tenderness which your letter awoke in me. How you have found the road to my heart! I cannot and must not hold back the deepest of my feelings for you and I willingly subscribe to your demand never to hide from you anything that is passing through my heart where the image and memory of you are present every moment of the day, softening the darkness which melancholy reflections often bring to it. I cannot describe the pleasure I find in writing to you, in telling you everything I feel and think.
Monsieur de La R. has spent twenty-four hours here and has just gone. The post will be following close behind him. The purpose of his visit was to talk to my grandmother to persuade her to write a letter breaking off with Monsieur de Condorcet. This unhappy letter has finally been written and is ready to be sent. The effort has cost her a great deal and she is really suffering from it. He is to come here no more.
I will address this letter to Amsterdam where you will be when it arrives. Perhaps when I am in Paris I will not be able to write to you so often, because I won’t have so many ways of getting letters to the post. But I will write to you at least once a week and you must not write to me more often, because I have to receive your letters in front of everybody and they could make remarks which would embarrass me. Please be careful about the address and put ‘Madame’ in big letters, so that the footman doesn’t make a mistake and give it to my husband. You cannot imagine how much these little precautions cost me and how little they suit my character and my feelings for you, which I would like to tell everyone about and enjoy openly.
When you go to Brussels, you will surely see my relations and you will be able to tell them all sorts of things about us, which can hardly be put in letters. I would especially like you to talk to my brother Charles, because his absence gives me much pain, it is our longest separation since we were born. You know that Charles has taken on a challenge, which I am delighted about. He has asked the King for permission to enlist in the new guard as an ordinary soldier. That will protect him from having to serve in the army, which would be horrible if it meant fighting against his friends and even his family.
William had never had such letters before. Girls in Virginia did not pour out their souls in prose alexandrines. But it was not simply her outpouring of love that touched him, it was the anxiety she felt for all who were close to her in this ravaging time: for her grand Rohan aunts and cousins, now mere émigrés like half their class, sitting numb and bewildered in drab lodgings somewhere behind the Grand Place in Brussels, for her brother Charles, that bold, sweet boy whom she loved more than any man in the world except Wm, for her poor grandmother who was almost as fond of Wm as she was of her son and grandson and then, no, not least, for the Duke still trying to navigate through the vicious currents with the noise of the terrible weir growing louder all the time.
Sitting in Amsterdam looking out over the stagnant canals and fretting to be so long separated from Rosalie and growing more anxious for her safety by the day, William relieved his feeling by writing a letter to Mr Jefferson:
I should not be surprised to hear of the present leaders being hung by the people. Such has been the march of this revolution from the beginning. The people have gone faster than their leaders. The new tribunals were supposed to protect the accused from immediate massacre by the mob. But Robespierre and others of that atrocious and cruel cast compose the tribunal. We may expect therefore to hear of such proceedings under the cloak of égalité and patriotism as would disgrace the most inflamed assembly. Humanity shudders at the idea.
But Mr Jefferson did not shudder. In fact, he did not reply to this or any of the other warnings that Wm had sent him since he left Paris. When TJ wrote at all, his anxieties were reserved for the packing of articles he had left behind. Every one of his books was to be wrapped singly in paper. Delorme was to be employed for the specialist packing work – the clocks, busts and marble pedestals. The chairs were to be lapped one into the other, according to Mrs Adams’s method, the silk seats being previously covered with coarse linen. Ditto for the bodies of the chariot and the new cabriolet. The gilt frames of all pictures and looking-glasses to be covered with slips of oilcloth, for the gilt would fall off if the least damp got to them. The cotton bed-curtains to be washed before packing, because they washed so much better in the Parisian laundries.
And that was only the packing up. There was also the shopping. In the months since he had arrived back in America Mr Jefferson’s ingenious mind had begun to fill with afterthoughts of all the stuffs and volumes and objets d’art and de vertu that he had neglected to buy while he was in Paris: rouleaux of wallpaper of every colour and pattern in the book – sky-blue, pea-green, plain crimson, brick, latticed – all to be got from Arthur’s on the boulevards now that the luckless Réveillon’s manufactory had been burnt in the opening days of the Revolution. There was the little clock with obelisks that had been stolen and must be replaced as near the original as possible. Two more sky-blue silk screens to be fitted up like those he already had and an oval glass to be the exact fellow to the one which was br
oken in Polly’s and Patsy’s room, he suspected by Sally though she never confessed to it. A set of the works of Tacitus, and of Buffon and the King of Prussia. And the missing volumes of the Encyclopédie.
Then there was the livestock. When Petit the valet came over, he was to bring with him on the ship two or three pair bantam fowls, a pair of Angora cats, ditto of Angora goats (only to be had from the King’s own stock), and as many red-legged partridge and skylarks as he could manage. Then a dozen or so plants of the Buree pear, red and white alpine strawberries, and several botanical afterthoughts to add to the sizeable collection Mr Jefferson had taken back with him. There was no end to his interests.
Well, in fact there was. What he was not much interested in any more was William Short Esquire, his anxieties, interests and above all his prospects. The adoptive son had been relegated to the margin of Thomas Jefferson’s otherwise inexhaustible mind. Was Wm to be made up to full minister at Paris, as all his friends and admirers there hoped and expected? Or was he to be relegated to some lesser capital, The Hague perhaps, or sent in some junior capacity to London or Madrid? Again and again Wm wrote to his adoptive father. He did not scruple to expatiate on the merits he knew he had and any successor might lack: his knowledge of France and the French language, his unique experience of these tumultuous years, his financial experience unrivalled by anyone in the public service, save perhaps Mr Hamilton. He wrote so often that when Mr J did finally write him a letter he had wearily to acknowledge the receipt of half a dozen of Wm’s.
And when he finally got down to the subject of Wm’s future, his tone was frigid. All he would say was that a minister would be appointed and from among the veterans on the public stage, to judge by the names mentioned, which obviously ruled out W. Short. TJ wrote as if he had only the remotest connection with public affairs, but he was Secretary of State for heaven’s sake, and one whom the President had had to drag almost forcibly to accept the post. Surely he could nominate pretty much whomever he liked.
I had fondly flattered myself, Wm wrote back in anguish, that I should be employed here because I was known to you, that this would give me an opportunity of being known to my country in such a manner as to be employed by it at home at a future period. But I find too late that it is the illusion of a misplaced vanity and that I must endeavour to wipe it off as soon as possible and take precautions against such illusions in future … and so on and on for pages in his neat hand. The wonder is that the writing was not obscured by the tears of chagrin spurting from his eyes.
It was some time before TJ condescended to reply to this outburst, and he took the opportunity to enquire what had become of the clock and of the President’s wine. These last two words were written in cipher, as it would not have done for the spies and censors who generally passed their squinty eyes over such letters to know that the President was no flincher from the glass. The second half of the letter was in cipher too:
I have thought it better to let your claim ripen itself in silence. Delay is in your favour. I have done what little I could towards getting an appointment rather to please than to serve you. For I see fully that the leading interests of your life are lost if you do not come home ere long and take possession of the high ground so open to you.
I am with great and constant esteem, Dear Sir, Your sincere friend and servant,
Th. Jefferson
Ripen in silence! Only TJ could announce so blithely that he was not prepared to lift a finger and make it sound like a noble action. In his desperation Wm even consulted Gouverneur Morris.
The wily one-legged tobacco agent was as full of himself as ever. ‘So you think Condorcet’s a scoundrel now, do you? I could have told you that straight away, you only had to look at the fellow. As for La Rochefoucauld, you express surprise that he is so terribly puzzled about the tax question. That is always the case with these men who bring metaphysical ideas into business. The only people who know how to govern are those who have been used to it all their lives and such men have rarely either time or inclination to write about it. So the books on the subject contain only Utopian ideas which influence the next generation of metaphysical men and so the world wags on to its doom. Quod erat demonstrandum. Heard anything yet from Jefferson? Depend upon it, we shall all of us get what we least expect. I would bet two to one against my being appointed anywhere. These ministerial seats resemble electrical charges, which give every occupant a kick in the breeches.’
All the same, Gouverneur encouraged Wm not to give up hope. It was coming close now to the time when Congress must at last, after endless deliberations and delays, agree the final list of ministerial appointments and Wm himself had caught a whisper a week or two earlier that had encouraged his hopes. He had even confided to Gouverneur that he was thinking of employing a maître d’hôtel and buying some plate.
It was only ten days later that he wished from the pit of his being that he had never uttered such words. In fact, he wished he had never been born.
At long last Congress had advised on and consented to the old General’s list of appointments. Mr Short was appointed to The Hague, by fifteen votes to eleven. And appointed to France, after more than two weeks of ill-tempered discussion, by a similar margin (sixteen to eleven), was … Gouverneur Morris.
Everyone thought it a terrible choice. Mr Jefferson worried that Gouverneur had been poisoning the President’s mind with his sarcastic private letters. But nobody thought it a more dreadful appointment than William Short. He bit his lip, congratulated his supplanter, presented him to the new foreign minister. But all the time he was going through these rigmaroles he was thinking: they are all laughing at me, the whole of Paris is laughing at me. There is no American anywhere who knows this country better, who has followed the twists and turns of its fortunes for seven years with more unremitting attention, and they have rejected me in favour of a one-legged tobacco merchant who has no more knowledge of diplomacy than a turnip and whose acquaintance with public affairs comes solely from sharing Talleyrand’s mistress.
How everyone had marvelled at the intimacy between Mr Jefferson and his protégé, what a superb partnership of minister and secretary they had seemed. Now it was revealed as a sham. TJ had no more real interest in his secretary than he had in his valet; rather less, in fact, since Mr Jefferson’s letters had devoted more space to the difficulty of luring the admirable Adrien Petit to act as maître d’hôtel at Monticello than to the question of Wm’s future.
In that trembling spring, when the war that had been so long budding finally blasted through and what few restraints that remained snapped with a terrifying noise, Wm felt he was more desperately unlucky, more callously betrayed, his talents more ignominiously ignored than any man in or out of America. Yet when she put her head round the door of his study or she led him across the garden to the little summer house, he knew he was also the luckiest man alive. And these two extremes were surely linked together. For he had given up his worldly ambition for the sake of love, had he not? If he had followed Mr J’s advice, he would be back in Richmond by now, grubbing around for votes to succeed Mr Lee in the Congress, chewing tobacco with the dull squires of the Tidewater.
‘Ah no, dearest, not – not so hard. Ah, ah.’
‘How I love you, you must forgive me, I would not hurt you for the world.’
He spun out his departure as long as he could.
By the time he set off for The Hague, French troops were already singing the thrilling new anthem that had just come up from Marseilles as they marched off to the eastern frontier. He left behind an adoring household. They had all come to regard him as the rightful emissary of the American nation. Madame d’Enville was not too frail or disheartened by Condorcet’s defection to write to TJ scolding him for his failure to have Wm appointed in his place. And then there were the letters from Rosalie, the first dated the day after his departure:
Ever since you left, my whole family has been thinking of you, they regard you almost as a child of theirs, which is a gre
at jouissance for me. I really suffered the other day when I had to go in to my grandmother just after leaving you. I had a real struggle to collect myself and recover my calm, but luckily the dim light of the salon, which I managed to keep out of by staying in the shadow, allowed me to escape the gaze of the curious …
We often speak of you and you are even more often in my thoughts. Almost every day I go to see the tree by the fountain in the garden, those carved initials give me the greatest pleasure, it is the most precious monument in Paris …
And then the next Sunday from La Roche-Guyon:
I am writing to you from my little house on the island, where I have come by myself and shut the gate of the bridge, and so I am shut up in this pretty pleasaunce, which is now full of the loveliest flowers you can think of. But I would rather talk about you and me, and remind you of our sweet memories. It is haymaking time now, two years ago exactly since we worked side by side piling up the stooks. It was all hope then, we were cheerful and almost happy. How far we are from all that now!
There’s no news from Paris. Things follow their ordinary course. We are very quiet here and we are staying here. Today is the village festival and I promise you there is no hint of the Revolution, people dance and play and laugh as if no one in the world were suffering …
We went walking last night until nine in the evening across to the island and into the meadow, under the brightest moon you can imagine. The walk made us even sadder that you were not with us, but at least we had the pleasure of talking about you and saying how well you and the evening would have gone together.
How remote their little household felt from the worsening riot and bloodshed, and from the early disasters on the battlefield. They had with them now Madame d’Astorg, the friend who had been rowing with Rosalie that first day at Versailles (her husband, an army officer, had emigrated two years earlier) and Monsieur Patricolas who was teaching Rosalie English, besides several old associates of the Duke who needed a bolthole now. The Duke himself had resigned. He had lost control. What use was there carrying on as President of the Paris Directory when he was scarcely presiding over and nowhere near directing the affairs of the city?
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