Young William Steuben Smith had just begun to raise his head from the pillow, when the first letters reached John from his old Continental Congress friend, birdlike little Elbridge Gerry, concerning the initial sessions of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. The news from Massachusetts had been unsettling: rebellion in the western counties, rumors of separate governments, even, forming in the Ohio Valley, demands for more paper currency, for equal distribution of property, for summary annihilation of all debts. That at least would put paid to any hope of the British living up to their side of the Treaty of Paris. The Tories in London, who had begun their mockery of John Adams the moment he’d become Minister, jeered that the nation of rabble was clearly showing its true colors and speculated as to how long it would be before they either were conquered by England or returned to the fold of their own chastened accord.
“I should be there,” said John. There was bitterness in his voice.
“In a way, you are.” Abigail set down her pen: a note to Sophie Sparling in Paris, another to her niece Bettie, a third to Cousin Sam’s wife Bess. All the friends whose love sustained her, when one too many Englishwomen exclaimed, “But surely you must prefer it here!” and when the newspapers commented snidely on how “fat and flourishing” the “so-called Ambassador” looked, considering the paltry poverty of his official entertainments.
“Hoping that some member of the Convention will have read my book,” said John drily, “is hardly the same as ‘being there.’ ” In January, John’s Defense of the Constitutions of Government in the United States had been published in London, and copies sent home—a distillation of all John’s experience in the Continental Congress and as a diplomat, of his voracious reading in the field of government and history. Abigail, who had read it over his shoulder, thought it disorganized and prolix. She feared, too, that those who read it would see in his impassioned demand for “a strong executive” a thinly veiled euphemism for an American monarchy to sort out the mess.
When she’d said so to John, however, he’d snapped back at her that the book said nothing of the kind. He defied her to show a connection between a necessarily strong central administrator and the well-meaning blockhead that currently disgraced the throne of France. Abigail had said no more. Privately, she suspected that someone like Tom Jefferson, who believed men were nobler at heart than she had ever actually seen them behave, would make the connection, too.
“I am sure the Convention will see things put right.”
John sniffed. “Oh, you’re sure, are you?” he mocked. “If you’d ever sat through a session of Congress, my girl, you wouldn’t be ‘sure.’ If you’d listened to that pipsqueak Rutledge back in ’76, whining that we should wait until the populace was ‘ready’…How much readier could we have been, with British bayonets at our very throats? If you’d met some of the men who sit in Congress now, you’d be upstairs under the bed tearing your hair out.”
“Then it’s just as well that I haven’t,” responded Abigail mildly, and shook sand over her note. “And I can only hope that while they’re about it, the gentlemen meeting in Philadelphia will have the sense to make it possible for people of my gender to sit through a session of Congress—”
“God save the mark, what a mess we’d be in then!” But it was an old argument between them, and even as he said the words he gave her the quickest glint of a smile. “Bad enough we have some of the men in Congress that we do. And God knows what will happen if they decide to combine all the functions of the government into one Assembly, like that fool Frenchman Turgot is preaching. That way lies nothing but chaos and corruption, the way—”
“Mr. Adams?” The drawing-room door opened. Edward the footman stood framed in it.
“What is it?” barked John, interrupted mid-tirade.
“Sir, there’s a Captain Ramsay downstairs, with a Miss Jefferson to see you. From America, sir.”
Abigail heard their voices as she and John descended the stair.
“I won’t stay here! You go to Hell, God blast your eyes!”
“Miss Jefferson, there’ll be no more of that kind of talk!”
“You don’t care! I hate you!”
And as Abigail, with a startled look at John, opened the door of John’s receiving-room, she was cannoned into by a very disheveled little girl in a much-stained dress of white-and-green chintz, who drew back the next instant and started slapping furiously at Abigail’s skirts, crying, “I hate you! I hate you all!”
“Now, Polly, that’s enough!” The tall girl who’d been standing by the windows, gazing out into Grosvenor Square in amazed delight, reached the child in two long strides just as Abigail caught Polly’s hands in her own. “You swear at me all you please, sugarbaby, but you don’t swear at Mrs. Adams. I am so sorry, ma’am, please don’t blame—”
“I HATE Mrs. Adams!” Polly jerked away from Abigail’s grip and flung herself on the tall girl, hiding her face in her neat blue skirts and bursting into tears.
The girl cupped the back of Polly’s head with one long-fingered hand, and met Abigail’s gaze. Her eyes, Abigail saw, were a clear blue-green, like jewels.
At the same moment Captain Ramsay reached the group, caught the little girl by the arm, and jerked her gently but firmly around to face Abigail again. “Miss Jefferson, this is no way for a young lady to behave. Mrs. Adams is going to take care of you, you know, and we don’t hate those who care for us. Mrs. Adams,” he said, “may I present to you Miss Mary Jefferson? Miss Mary Jefferson, Mrs. Adams; Mr. Adams.”
“Now, Miss Mary, whatever you feel in your heart is of course not my business,” said Abigail, and held out her hand. “But we do have a rule that no one swears in this house. Even Mr. Adams has to obey it.”
Polly raised velvet-brown eyes, profound suspicion dimmed by swimming tears. “Captain Ramsay, too?”
“Captain Ramsay, too.”
Far prettier than her sister Patsy would ever be, Polly Jefferson bore the marks of considerable rough play on her porcelain-fine skin: scratches on her nose and temple, a bruise where she’d bumped her chin. Being Thomas Jefferson’s daughter she had his fair redhead’s skin, now covered with freckles from the sun, and her nails were bitten to the quick. Abigail glanced again at the tall girl she’d flown to for comfort, wondering where Polly’s actual nurse was and how she’d been looking after the girl during the voyage, to let her get into this state. This girl, probably the nursery-maid, was—
Ramsay said, a touch of dryness in his voice, “This is Sally, Polly’s—Miss Jefferson’s—nurse.”
Abigail’s first shock was that this girl, who looked no more than sixteen, should have been put in charge of a child under any circumstances, much less in the dangers and discomforts of an ocean voyage. Only in the next moment did she realize belatedly that the girl was a Negro.
She’d heard Jefferson—and her own father, for that matter—refer to “light” or “bright” Negroes, though her father’s two servants, more indentures than actual slaves, had been chocolate-dark of skin. Most of the black sailors she’d seen on the streets of Boston had been the same, with African features marking their ancestry. The single servant Jefferson had brought from Virginia, Jimmy, though very light of skin, had been unmistakable as to his race.
Sally, watching Abigail with a calm wariness under the long, curling lashes of her eyes, was only a little darker than some of the Italian beauties she’d seen in Paris. Her hair, which hung down her back in a style fashionable in both Paris and London, was a river of dark brown, silky curls.
Abigail said the first thing that came into her mind. “Good God, don’t tell me they sent a chit your age across the ocean as Polly’s only companion?” How dared “Aunt Eppes” be so blithe about the safety of this tiny, too-thin girl?
“Yes, ma’am.” Sally’s speech, like Jefferson’s, reflected the soft inflection of Virginia; otherwise there was in it only a whisper of the sloppy, almost slurring usage Abigail had heard among Boston’s few slaves. “My
aunty Isabel was going to come with her, but her time was near, so Mrs. Eppes asked, would I come instead?” She rested her hands on Polly’s thin shoulders. “It was because Polly knew me best, ma’am, and so wouldn’t be afraid.”
“It sounds to me as if several persons should have been a great deal more afraid on Polly’s behalf,” Abigail snapped. “Edward, please tell Esther to have Miss Nabby’s old room made up for Miss Mary, and ask Mr. Briesler to bring up her trunk there at once. Tell him to prepare a truckle-bed there for…for her nurse. While he’s doing that, would you be so good as to take up some hot water for her? Sally, I’m sure Miss Jefferson will feel much better when her face has been washed and her hair combed, and she’s in a clean frock.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Sally took Polly’s hand. Polly wrenched away instantly and seized Captain Ramsay’s red, calloused fingers in a frantic grip. Defiance blazed in her eyes.
“I’ll stay right here, child,” promised the captain.
Polly’s grip tightened. She began to tremble, and tears leaked down her face.
“Go,” Ramsay ordered gently, and with inexorable strength turned his hand out of the little girl’s grip. “I’ll be waiting right here for you, when you come down.”
Abigail saw his glance cross Sally’s. The tall girl flinched the tiniest bit, and her green eyes turned aside. Polly Jefferson gazed back over her shoulder as Sally led her out of the room.
“The girl’ll have her work cut out for her, just washing the bairn’s face, never mind her dress,” prophesied Ramsay, picking up his battered leather hat from the sideboard. “She wore that same dress when Mrs. Eppes and her family brought her aboard. Since her father’s been writin’ for her to come to France, she’s said she wouldn’t leave the Eppeses, so they told her they were just going for a picnic on board. They left as soon as she fell asleep, and damn—dashed if we could get her to change her frock for nigh onto a week. Sally’s fond of the child, but the girl’s never to be found when you want her: always off lookin’ over the rail, or gettin’ the mate to tell her how to shoot the sun or what the names of the sails and ropes are, or askin’ the hands about places they’ve been. You’ll need to keep a sharp eye on her, and keep her at her job. It’s my opinion she should be sent back.”
He shrugged, and held out his hand. “It’s been good making your acquaintance, Mr. Adams, Mrs. Adams. Don’t be too hard on the bairn,” he added, as he strode into the hall, John and Abigail in his wake. “She and Sally have been pets of the whole ship, passengers and crew, and I’m afraid the men weren’t as careful as they ought to have been about their language—not that they’d know how to speak proper if you clapped a gun to their heads. She’ll lose her tongue-roughness as quick as she picked it up.”
“Thank you,” said Abigail, struggling with shocked outrage. “But won’t you remain and bid your good-byes to the child, as you said? It’s clear she is most fond of you.”
“Aye, and if I stayed for a good-bye you’d be all the morning getting her to let go of me. It’d be more grief for her in the long run. Believe me, this way’s best, ma’am. Your servant, sir.” He clasped John’s hand again and slipped out through the front door. Through the windows Abigail saw him striding away across Grosvenor Square.
“Of all the blackguards!” Abigail rounded on John, breathless at this casual betrayal. “I daresay that’s how he takes leave of every woman in his life: ‘If I stayed to say good-bye she’d only cry and make a fuss, so I’ll just disappear and let someone else pick up the pieces.’ Isn’t that just like a man!”
John drew back in alarm. “Dearest, in all the years we’ve been together—”
“In all the years you’ve been deserting me for months—or years—at a time,” retorted Abigail, “no, you’ve never skimped on honorable good-byes….” She heard genuine anger flare in her voice, and made herself stop, and breathe. “And God knows you had plenty of practice at them, sir.” She put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him, as running footsteps sounded on the stair, and Polly Jefferson’s voice sang out.
“Captain Ramsay, come look! I’m to have the prettiest room, with flower curtains on the windows, and—”
The little girl stopped at the foot of the stair, looking in startlement at John and Abigail. Then, like a baby animal, she wheeled and plunged through the door back into John’s receiving-room. Abigail heard her scream, “Captain Ramsay!” In a belated rush of skirts Sally came down the stair and made for the receiving-room door, as Polly came bursting out—face washed, hair combed, but still in the torn and dirty green dress—and flung herself at the front door. “Captain Ramsay!” Sally and Abigail caught her at the same time, as she seized the door handle to pull it open. Polly clung to the curving brass, howling—in grief, in betrayal, in despair at being only eight years old and the dupe of adults who’d trade her happiness for their convenience. When Abigail gently prized the child’s fingers loose Polly struck at her, wordlessly sobbing, then turned and flung herself into Sally’s arms.
DOLLEY
Washington City
August 24, 1814
Now I think on’t,” said Dolley, with what she hoped was an expression of bright thoughtfulness, “I think I saw the mirror last week in one of the drawers of the sewing-table in the parlor upstairs. Wouldst go seek it, whilst I clear up here?”
Sophie is my friend, she chided herself as the other woman disappeared through the parlor door. She is no spy! But even as she thought this, Dolley strode to the writing-desk and pulled out Jemmy’s most recent letters. Her hands shook with haste as she folded them into a tight packet, bound them with the first piece of string she could find. And even were she so, what think I she’ll do? Take Jemmy’s letters from me at pistol-point? She realized she was mentally timing Sophie’s probable progress across the hall, up the stairs, into the big oval parlor. She was still wondering where she could thrust the letters that would be out of sight, when Sukey’s voice nearly startled her out of her skin.
“Ma’am—”
She whirled, breathless, to see the maidservant standing in the doorway.
“Ma’am, the men along the walls? They’s gone.”
Dolley reached the window in a swirl of muslin, and saw that the maid spoke true. The top of the wall was empty. She thrust Jemmy’s papers back into the writing-desk and turned the key, kept it in her hand as she hastened across the cavernous hall to the vast “East Room.” From its long windows she could see Pennsylvania Avenue.
The knots of watchers had gone. A cloud of dust now hung over the Avenue, through which carriages, wagons, and hurrying forms could dimly be made out. Fleeing toward Georgetown.
The sky above the eastern hills was still clear.
Trembling, Dolley crossed back through the hallway. From the entry-hall by the Mansion’s great front doors she could hear her majordomo, M’sieu Sioussat—French John, the servants called him—talking to the butler, his voice measured and calm. French John had trained for the priesthood, sailed the seven seas, and had been held up by his father over the heads of the crowd to see the French King’s execution, twenty years ago: Not much troubled him.
He will stand by me, thought Dolley. And he’ll know what to do, should worse come to worst.
Surely I am not the first beneath this roof, who hath known trouble and fear.
To her left, through the door of the oval drawing-room, General Washington’s portrait was visible. Someone had pulled from it the gauze that protected all the house’s paintings and mirrors in summer, and from its rich, muted background of reds and grays, the General gazed out at the world. The throne he had refused stood in shadow behind him, the sword he had wielded transferred to his left hand while his right—the hand of power and intent—stretched out over the pens and papers of due process and law.
He seemed to wait calmly for the army that he had once defeated to make its appearance on the threshold of the house he had built.
And he looked remarkably, thought Dolley, as he had the first tim
e she’d seen him.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Sunday, May 13, 1787
The church bells began to ring while the family was still in Meeting. Hearing them through the walls of the Pine Street Meeting-House, nineteen-year-old Dolley Payne reflected that if she were a better-disciplined soul, the arrival of General George Washington in Philadelphia would be a matter of sublime indifference to her. Yet at the sound, her glance shot sidelong and caught that of her best friend Lizzie Collins, and saw in her eyes the reflection of the excitement effervescing in her own.
General Washington was coming to Philadelphia!
A buzz riffled the stuffy gloom of the meeting-house as every child in the gallery whispered, poked, and was silenced by the adults whose turn it was to keep order up there. On the way to Meeting that morning one of her ten-year-old sister Lucy’s friends had dashed past them, calling out, “General Washington’s coming today! The cavalry went out to meet him!”
“And why doth Andrew think that the assembly of soldiers to go greet another soldier—and a slave-owner to boot—would interest thee, Lucy?” their father had asked, when Lucy’s blond head snapped around to follow her friend down Third Street.
Lucy had quickly faced front again, her younger siblings following suit like toys on a string: Anna, Mary, and Little Johnnie. Even the older boys, eighteen-year-old Isaac and William, who was twenty-one, kept their mouths shut.
Dolley, the eldest daughter, had turned to say something about the General to her mother, but saw her mother’s glance cut to her father’s face. A year ago, or two, her father would have put his question mildly, even playfully. It was the harsh note of danger that silenced the four youngsters and put the fear in her mother’s eyes.
Now as the bells of Philadelphia rollicked above the city’s low red roofs, Dolley’s eyes went to her father’s face. In the muted light of the meeting-house it seemed to have grown dark and lumpy with anger. So frightening, so alien, was the glare of his eyes that she returned her gaze swiftly to the whitewashed front wall, her heart beating hard. For a moment she wondered if he would stand up, break the meditative silence of the Meeting with the furious words he’d muttered all morning: Vanity of vanities, all is vanity! What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, if he lose his soul?
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