I set about straightaway to oversee the production of cloth both at Edgehill and Monticello, where we transformed the stone workmen’s house into a weaver’s cottage. And in this endeavor, I found an ally in Sally Hemings, who’d always been a talented seamstress and whose six-year-old daughter, Harriet, was becoming one, too. I tried never to think that fair and freckled Harriet was my sister, but was pleased at how well the girl took to the spinning jennies and was so impressed by her deft use of the flying shuttle on the clattering loom that I could scarcely pull my attention away when Sally said, “With the help of the women who don’t get put in the ground come harvest, we can make a thousand yards of cloth by springtime.”
To that end, Sally and her children moved from a slave cabin into the weaver’s cottage, using another room in the southern dependency by the dairy, too, and as naturally as that, she defined for herself on the plantation a home and office of her own.
After that, I decided my children could do no less for the effort than hers. I told Ann, “We’re all going to learn to manufacture cloth. In the meantime, look through your dresses and put away anything that wasn’t made at home.”
My eldest had recently caught the eye of the young and dashing Charles Bankhead, who’d complimented her on the fashionable dresses she’d worn when we’d attended dinners at the President’s House. And now that she had a suitor, Ann wanted nothing to do with my scheme. “Slaves wear homespun. How will we look wearing such things?”
“We’ll look like patriots,” I said, with a reassuring smile.
Ann pouted. “Charles won’t like it. I don’t see why I should have to.”
I kissed the top of her head. “Because you’re the president’s granddaughter.”
And that was that.
From tattered flags and uniforms to friendships strained to the brink, the women of my country had always been the menders to all the things torn asunder. But now we’d do more than patch with needle and thread. We’d have to weave together a whole tapestry of American life with nothing but our own hands, our own crops, and our own ingenuity. And I would prove myself able to the task.
There was no mistaking that my father’s legacy was at stake, because the embargo was deeply unpopular. “You’re the damnedest fool that god ever put life into,” read an anonymous letter to my father. Another accused him of having starved children. Papa was burned in effigy in New York, whereupon he suffered the most violent and painful headache of his life. But a trade embargo had been our only alternative to war, so Papa couldn’t relent.
Not even as we watched the financial calamity swallow up the landed gentry in Virginia. While we were bottling, pickling, and spinning, our neighbors lost their farms. Proud wearers of the Randolph name were reduced to running boardinghouses. My husband’s brother lost every last thing he had. And, unable to find work in Richmond, Nancy had been forced to try her luck in one of the northern states where no one knew of her scandalous past.
Pleas for help came from all quarters, but there was little we could do to help. Tom felt churlish and small turning anyone away, but I did my utmost to convince him that if we avoided new debts, we might finally right our own ship. Neither Tom, nor my father, permitted me to check the ledgers, but at thirty-five years old, having overseen plantations in their absence for nearly six years, I had a suspicion of where matters stood. So I forced myself to be harder and more pragmatic than either man was willing to be—especially now that Sally and I were both pregnant again.
It was with the desperate concern for what sort of future my babies might have that I confronted Papa while showing him the textile mill, where the girls were busy at their spindles. “Papa, I assure you, sending Jeff to the University of Pennsylvania would be money wantonly squandered,” I said, for much as I loved my eldest son, Jeff got by with the good looks he took from Tom, and the breezy southern charm he took from my father. He was a sweet boy, respectful and obedient, but unlike his sisters, he had no head for learning.
Papa ignored my warning. “Jeff must be given the opportunity. You know it’s weighed on your husband all these years that Colonel Randolph never approved of his education.” I knew exactly how it weighed on Tom, but my son wasn’t anything like his father. Papa misread my hesitation. “I’ll incur all the expense for Jeff’s education. Your husband needn’t worry.”
It was a generous offer that’d bruise Tom’s pride when it was already battered—by the strain between us, by our financial struggles, by Tom’s belief that Papa still preferred Jack Eppes to him. Consequently, I was more forceful than I might have otherwise been. “Papa, it’s too great an expense for such uncertain benefit!” Our family might go down in ruin with Tom’s debts, but I couldn’t bear taking Papa with us. So when I saw that my father was stubbornly set upon sending the boy to school, I called Jeff inside from where he was standing in the yard outside the mill. “Go on, tell your grandfather your wishes.”
Alas, such was the quiet authority of the president that my boy took one look at his grandfather and gulped. “I—I wish to make you proud of me. If you think a university education is right, then I’ll go, but what about my sisters?”
My father removed his spectacles, leaning curiously forward. “Your mother is more qualified to educate your sisters than any other woman in America.”
The compliment made me flush, but Jeff shook his head. “I meant I’m worried to leave my sisters. When my father rages … if I’m not there, he might go after Ann or Ellen or—”
“Your father is a Virginia gentleman,” Papa broke in sharply, even more appalled than I was by my son’s fears. “He’d never raise a hand to a woman or a girl.”
That was mostly true—but not as true as my father hoped. And when I looked into my son’s gaze, I saw that Jeff knew it, too, though I didn’t know how. An anguished glance passed between my son and me while I beseeched him with my eyes to keep that secret.
Papa’s hand traced around one of the big spinning wheels. “It does you honor that you’re thinking of your sisters, Jeff. Someday, they’ll be in your care. Which is why you need to spend your youth well. So let’s ride down to the store and get what sundries you need to take to school.”
Jeff was my father’s namesake—the first of his grandsons to reach majority. It wouldn’t reflect well on Thomas Jefferson, or his legacy, to have a blockhead for a grandson. So we couldn’t refuse, even when we knew better.
In the carriage, I warned Jeff, “Philadelphia is a bustling place.”
“I’ve seen cities before,” my son protested, bristling with manly pride.
But, of course, he hadn’t seen cities. Paris was a city. Philadelphia was … less so. And I realized with a bittersweet pang that at Jeff’s age, I’d seen more of the world than my children were likely to. “Philadelphia will be busier than Charlottesville or Washington City. It won’t be anything you’re used to. Perhaps we can ask Mr. Short to look after you in Philadelphia,” I suggested, reassured to know William would be nearby. Turning to Papa, I said, “I’m sure he’ll take Jeff under his guidance.”
That’s when Papa surprised me by saying, “That won’t be possible. I’m sending Short to Europe on a diplomatic mission.”
I didn’t know if I should be delighted for William or unsettled at the thought of him leaving the country again—perhaps this time for good. We hadn’t seen one another in years, but there was some comfort in knowing he wasn’t an ocean away. “Where will you send Mr. Short?”
“First to France. Then to Russia,” Papa said. “Short will treat with the tsar on behalf of America.”
First to France, where William would, no doubt, be reunited with his duchess. He’d like that. This appointment would be the capstone on his career. And though it pained me to think I might never see him again, I smiled to imagine him charming the ladies of St. Petersburg.
It was, after all, a time for letting go. Letting go of Mr. Short, of my son Jeff, and of my daughter Ann, too, who had accepted a proposal of marriage from Char
les Bankhead.
Papa insisted that the wedding be held at Monticello, where the airy design and eighteen-and-a-half-foot ceilings were sure to impress the guests. And on her wedding day, all dewy-eyed in anticipation, Ann asked, “Grandpapa’s house is so beautiful now, isn’t it?”
She was beautiful. Of all my daughters, Ann was the most delicately rendered, with soft doe eyes and an adorable nose. Ellen’s face was sharper, but then everything about my nearly twelve-year-old second daughter was sharper.
Excited to serve as her sister’s attendant, Ellen declared, “Monticello’s new hall is the most beautiful room I was ever in, even including the drawing rooms in Washington City!”
Monticello had, indeed, come along grandly. The renovation had taken fourteen years; Papa would never be truly finished with it, for he was never finished improving anything. But there was now an excellent road up the mountain right to the house; the dining room grandly boasted Wedgwood ornamentation and dumbwaiters on either side of the fireplace; and while the landscaping was still dismal due to the mean little sheep who ate our orange trees, Monticello was otherwise quite a handsome place.
Before Ann’s wedding, Sally and I both gave birth to boys. Her new son was named after my father’s acquaintance Thomas Eston. Mine more grandly after Benjamin Franklin, my father’s old admired friend.
Dolley visited shortly after the birth. Cooing jealously over my infant as she scooped him from my arms, she said, “Aren’t we a pair? I can’t have children, and you can’t stop having them!”
“Are you saying the ambassador’s cape wasn’t really magical?” I teased.
Her eyes twinkled. “Apparently not, but I was quite taken with his turban. I’ve made it my trademark fashion.”
Quite exhausted, I flopped back upon my pillow, morning sunshine spilling across the floor beneath my childbed. “I pray this babe is my last. I keep my babies at the breast as long as I can to fend off conception, but …”
With no apparent shame for the delicacy of the matter, Dolley frankly advised, “If you want no more children, you must discourage Mr. Randolph. Take a separate bed with the children if you must. Say you don’t want to wake him, feeding the new baby. Say whatever you must.”
“I—I don’t see how I have the right.” Besides, I couldn’t fathom how to rebuff my husband’s amorous advances without angering him. If there was anything Tom had a true talent for, it was making babies—and in his arms I felt womanly, desirable, and desired. But what came of that desire had worn me down to the nub. “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
Very quietly, Dolley said, “Some women, in your position, put in the path of their husbands an agreeable Negress.”
Dear God. That she could make such a suggestion. But hadn’t the same thought occurred to my sister? I was certain Jack Eppes had taken up with Betsy Hemings, just as my father had done with Sally. Just as my grandfather Wayles had done with Sally’s mother. It was the way things were done, and if I hoped to secure my children’s future, it’d be an advantageous arrangement. But even if I could reconcile myself to the heartbreaking thought of my husband’s hands on another woman, I recoiled to imagine my daughters struggling with the emotional turmoil I’d struggled with.
The thought of their confusion over sisters and brothers that were also their slaves was enough to decide me. And even if it hadn’t been, the thought of choosing a girl …
My eyes drifted to my window, which overlooked Mulberry Row. Some of the Hemings girls would soon be of age, but the wickedness of the thought was so horrifying to me I immediately thrust it away with a violent shudder. “I couldn’t encourage such a thing. I suppose I was just wishing for some secret way… .”
“There is only one secret to anything,” Dolley asserted. “And that’s the power we all have in forming our own destinies.”
Washington, 27 February 1809
From Thomas Jefferson to Martha Jefferson Randolph
In retiring to the condition of a private citizen, I have a single uneasiness. I’m afraid that the administration of the house will give you trouble. Perhaps, with a set of good and capable servants, as ours certainly are, the trouble will become less after their understanding the regulations which are to govern them. Ignorant too, as I am, in the management of a farm, I shall be obliged to ask the aid of Mr. Randolph’s skill and attention.
On a marvelous spring day, my father commemorated forty years of service to his country by surrendering the reins of government—and a brewing war—to the new president. Celebratory cannons fired, ladies flirted with Papa, and a special farewell march was played for him at James Madison’s inaugural ball. The latter was a touch only Dolley would’ve thought to include, and I loved her for it.
Then Papa loaded up wagons with all the belongings he’d acquired as president. Spoons and pudding dishes, coverlets and clocks and shoes. Boxes, books, and furniture strained at the six-mule team pulling the load.
In anticipation of his homecoming, my heart beat with inexpressible anxiety and impatience. I wanted nothing so much as to clasp Papa in the bosom of his family, for the evening of his life to pass in serene and unclouded tranquility in the home he’d spent twenty years rebuilding.
A home in which my entire family would now reside.
The proposal was put to Tom in ways to spare his feelings: What would people say if we left my sixty-five-year-old father to live alone with Sally as his housekeeper? Besides, Papa couldn’t manage without us. He hadn’t Tom’s genius for preventing soil erosion. My husband, whatever else his faults, was a hardworking, inventive planter whose failures were due to bad luck and the rotting legacy his father left him.
My husband surprised me by listening to this entreaty in silence, finally nodding his head in assent. And I realize now that it was because he already knew he couldn’t support our still growing family at Edgehill; the arrangement spared him more embarrassment than it gave him, lifting his family from certain poverty with the fig leaf of caring for my aging father. Even Ann and her new husband, Charles, would move in with us so that she could help work in Papa’s gardens to make it just so, for they shared a special bond over flowers and herbs. We’d have the whole family together!
At last, after trials of blizzards and crowds demanding speeches of him in taverns and inns on the way, Papa was ours now, and I went running down the road to meet him, in rapture, in joy. We embraced one another, all the children gathered round, hopeful for the family idyll and ignoring the rumble of the coming war in the distance.
Part Three
Mistress of Monticello
Chapter Thirty-two
Monticello, 21 January 1812
From Thomas Jefferson to John Adams
A letter from you carries me back to the times when we were fellow laborers in the same cause, struggling for what is most valuable to man: his right of self-government. Sometimes I look back in remembrance of our old friends who have fallen before us. Of the signers of the Declaration of Independence I see now living not more than half a dozen on your side of the Potomac, and, on this side, myself alone.
IT IS DIFFICULT NOT TO SMILE with a bittersweet pang in reading the letters between my father and John Adams, exchanged in the twilight of their lives. My husband couldn’t fathom how Papa could set aside political acrimony to resume the old friendship, but those were happy years at Monticello, and harmony was our pursuit and our reward.
My bed at Monticello was an alcove, and I slept snug and toasty between my husband’s body and the wall. In the morning, the warm light of dawn spilled from the windows near the floor. They were double-paned; they never leaked. And everything in our sky-blue bedroom was neat and clean, which had a decidedly happy effect on my mood.
“Good morning,” Tom said, his breath warm on the back of my neck, his hand gently cupping my belly under blankets that smelled of lavender.
I knew what he wanted, and his touch ignited something inside me, too, but I feared another child. “Tom, it’s so early.”
“Then you can’t afford to lose daylight,” I chirped. “Let me up and I’ll see the servants get you a quick breakfast.”
Reluctantly, Tom swung his long legs over to let me rise from the bed. “I’ll take the boy. Hopefully we’ll get the fields prepared for another good crop.”
By “the boy,” he meant Jeff, who had, after a single year’s instruction, returned home from the University of Pennsylvania in near disgrace. Before he could be entrusted to help manage our plantations, Jeff would have to prove himself to his father—a thing he was doing by outworking Tom in the fields and at every other plantation chore.
Having quit Congress, my husband’s luck had turned. We’d had two good harvests, and Tom’s were the only fields in the county that survived the storms because of his new method of plowing. Between that and the fact Papa was housing, clothing, and feeding our children, we were finally making payments on our debts.
But I worried about my father’s largesse, which extended itself to everybody. Papa was more popular now than when he was president, and people felt no shame in prevailing upon our hospitality. Unexpected visitors cluttered up our entrance hall beneath the quirky great clock, powered by cannonball weights on a rope, for which a hole had to be cut in the floor. They marveled at the inventions and curiosities my father collected—everything from maps and soil samples to Indian artifacts, mastodon bones, and classical statuary. And Papa took on the expense of a plentiful table with all the seasonal bounty our plantation had to offer, topped off with Italian and French wines.
Which is why, I think, we always had guests. We had persons from abroad, from all the states of the union, from every part of the state, men, women, and children. In short, almost every day for at least eight months of the year brought people of wealth, fashion, men in office, professional men military and civil, lawyers, doctors, protestant clergymen, Catholic priests, members of Congress, foreign ministers, missionaries, Indian agents, tourists, travelers, artists, strangers, and friends.
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