Jessie

by Judy Alter

  "Come," Father said. "It's time for us to leave. Your mother will want a full report before she will sleep tonight."

  * * *

  I married John Charles Frémont the next day.

  Chapter 4

  It was not the wedding a girl dreams of. John and I were married October 19, 1841, in the parlor of Maria Crittendon's home, by Father Van Horsleigh of the Catholic Church. Father Horsleigh's presence pleased John, for he had been raised a Catholic, but would have even further enraged Father had he known. Maria was our only witness, and I wore the tartan-plaid gingham dress I'd been working in that morning, with a cashmere shawl thrown over my shoulders because of the chill. To have even dressed in a Sunday silk would have aroused suspicion in the Benton household, and I thought that what I wore mattered little in the long run. I was seventeen years and five months of age. John was twenty-nine.

  John wore his army uniform, which only made him the more handsome, and I thought him on the losing end of this bargain. I got a handsome army officer, full of dignity and pride, and he got only a scrivener wearing a gingham dress.

  Maria had lit the small fire in the parlor and filled the room with pots of dried ferns, a modest attempt to add a festive air. She had also baked a wonderful tea cake and after the ceremony served us tea and cake and brandy to warm our souls—or perhaps fortify them against the inevitable storm that would brew when our marriage became public knowledge.

  The words are similar in any religion, and I can yet hear Father Horsleigh intoning, "Do you, John Charles, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife...?" Fearing that my knees would buckle, I grasped John's arm fervently. The father tactfully left out the part about "Who gives this woman?" thereby saving all of us, particularly Maria, a difficult moment.

  This was not a spur-of-the-moment wedding, planned in frustration during our exhilarating waltz the night before. Indeed, we had been planning it for over a month. We felt sure that at the end of the prescribed year, Father would have another injunction to serve, another stumbling block to put before us. If John were able to make a miraculous discovery or accomplish some other brilliant advance in the name of the United States, Father would look more kindly on our union, but we could not count on that. Nor could we count on winning parental approval.

  "We'll be too old to have children if we wait for your father's word," John once lamented with a laugh.

  I thought it only half a joke.

  But after John's confession about his illegitimacy, I saw the need more clearly than ever for us to marry in haste. Only by marrying this terribly insecure man could I restore his self-confidence, make of him the whole man he must be to accomplish the great things that lay ahead of him.

  "We shall elope," I said one afternoon in late September.

  "Elope?" he yelped, so loudly that I was sure every passerby for miles heard him.

  "Elope," I whispered.

  Given a moment to adjust, he took to the idea wholeheartedly, and we began to plan. First we enlisted Maria's willing help, though I cautioned her that my father would be furious at her. She shrugged at that and implied he was often furious at people and got over it.

  "The senator"—I meant her husband this time, not my father—"will be displeased. He will be afraid it will make an enemy of my father for him."

  "I am not afraid of that," she said with a knowing smile. "But I will not invite him to the wedding."

  John went to several ministers before he found one who would agree to perform the secret ceremony. Most were, with good reason, afraid of Father and of the publicity. They would, they said, be pleased to marry us at a traditional public ceremony, but they would have nothing to do with secrecy.

  "I have friends in Baltimore," John said, "who would find a priest...."

  "That won't be necessary," Maria interrupted. "I know a priest here in Washington."

  And that was how Father Horsleigh came to pronounce us man and wife. "You may kiss the bride," he said gently, and John wrapped me in his arms. For the first time our embrace was passionate and sanctioned, but it was so prolonged that once again I heard that tactful cough of Maria's.

  Father Horsleigh left as soon as his duties were performed, as though he were nervous about discovery. We thanked him profusely and assured him of our complete silence. It struck me as funny that he said, "Bless you, my children," as he left.

  After we visited with Maria in a most civilized fashion, John and I kissed good-bye demurely at her doorstep and went our separate ways.

  Father was waiting for me when I returned home. "Jessie!" he bellowed from his library. "Come here!"

  With faint heart I mounted the stairs. "Yes, Father?"

  "Where have you been?" he demanded. "I've got a speech on California nearly done, and I need you to listen to it."

  Relief flooded over me, nearly making me giddy. "I'm sorry I've been so long, Father. I stopped to visit Maria Crittendon." It wasn't even a white lie.

  "That silly woman," he muttered, and once again I thought If only you knew....

  Life went back into its routine, though for me there was always a difference—that secret, wholly satisfying knowledge that I was Mrs. John Charles Frémont. Being uninitiated in such matters, I could not wholly understand John's anxiousness to consummate our union. But I did know about the fire in my stomach caused by his kisses.

  "John," I asked one afternoon, "have you... have you ever...?" I blushed and could go no further.

  "Have I ever made love to a woman?" he asked dryly.

  "Uh... yes... I guess that's what I wanted to know."

  He laughed aloud, a great, uproarious laughter that came from deep within him. Finally he calmed enough to inquire, "Are you asking out of jealousy... or to be sure I'll know what I'm doing?"

  Embarrassment nearly overcame me, and, resisting an urge to slap him soundly, I turned away.

  He reached a gentle arm for my shoulder and said softly, "I... I'd like to tell you about it, Jessie, though it's not a story I'm particularly proud of."

  He was seventeen and a student at Charleston College when he fell passionately—his word—in love with a dark-haired girl named Cecilia. She was from a large French family, and John began to neglect his studies to spend long days with Cecilia and her brothers. Charleston was still surrounded by wild and tangled woods where they could hunt. Some days they took a sailboat down the bay to the islands to fish, and on truly exciting days they went beyond the bar and far out to sea. "Those were the days that first taught me to love the outdoors," he said. "In a way, Cecilia was responsible for my becoming an explorer."

  Jealousy flashed through me.

  "The college gave me a warning... something about habitual irregularity and incorrigible neglect... but nothing stopped me from spending every waking moment with Cecilia. They warned me that I had disappointed my family and friends, that I would be disgraced, but none of it mattered. Cecilia and her family were all the world to me, even her angry old grandmother, who used to yell at me in French—which I understood just well enough to know that she was not being complimentary." He chuckled at the memory.

  "What happened to Cecilia?" I asked, breathless.

  He shrugged. "The faculty at the college were right. Eventually, I tired of her, and I began to hate the bad reputation I had earned for myself. I, as they say, 'came to myself' and began to study."

  "You tired of her?" I nearly screeched, and now it was John's turn to put a silencing finger to my lips. I brushed it away to demand, "And will you tire of me?"

  He laughed again. "Of course not, Jessie. I was but seventeen, and now I am twenty-nine. I know my course... and you are at the center of it."

  How lucky I am, I thought, to have the love of a man who is so sure and who has already sown his wild oats. Aloud I said, "I am jealous of Cecilia."

  "If we can ever behave like regular married folk, I assure you there'll be no cause for your jealousy, my darling."

  We intended to keep the marriage secret for the prescribed
year, but such was our naiveté that we failed to realize that once a marriage is recorded, it becomes a matter of public record. And once it was public, the gossip began. It was only a matter of time until word reached Father, and we lived in dread of an eventual explosion of anger.

  Inevitably, the strain began to show on both of us. John was sometimes short of temper, even with me, though he was always profuse in his apologies and declarations of love afterward. Still, most days he saw no end to the limbo in which we lived.

  For my part the strain made me occasionally inattentive to Father's business, something that had never happened before. He was completely puzzled when, copying a speech, I omitted an entire page or, searching out a book from his library, I stood staring out the window motionless. "The book, Jessie?" he would ask impatiently.

  But the strangest of all the signs of our difficulty appeared on my face—a rash at the corner of my mouth. The skin grew coarse and reddened, making it appear that my mouth was lopsided, pulled down and to the side. I began to hate looking in the mirror, and I was afraid John would no longer want to share those stolen kisses. Though the redness was fairly well contained, I was fearful it would spread to cover half my face.

  Mother was so perceptive that it alarmed me. "Reminds me of your great-grandmother," she said. "You'll remember that her scar turned red and swollen when she was upset. Perhaps you have your own King George's mark." She stared thoughtfully at me, an unspoken question lying between us.

  "I cannot imagine whatever I would be upset about," I lied and then cursed myself for not having seized the opportunity to take Papa Joe's advice and confess the whole truth. I would rather at that point have told Mother than Father.

  It was Mother, not Father, who first heard the news. On one of her better days Mother was in the parlor, wrapped in a shawl but talking brightly with Mrs. Poinsett, wife of the secretary of war who had sent John on that trumped-up expedition. Though I knew Mrs. Poinsett shared my parents' disapproval of my "fascination" for John, I thought little of finding her in the parlor. She and Mother were close friends, and Mrs. Poinsett was among the few Washington women Mother saw frequently. When I passed by the parlor a time or two, they seemed to be chatting amiably over tea, and their light voices followed me into Father's library, where I was doing some research for him while he was on an extended trip, planning to go from Kentucky to St. Louis.

  But then the voices fell, and a hush seemed to settle over the house. At first, occupied with my work, I paid no attention, but gradually the changed atmosphere became apparent to me. Within minutes I heard the guest leaving, and almost immediately Mother's voice summoned me into the parlor.

  She sat like stone in her chair, chin in the air, eyes out the window. "You have married that lieutenant," she said, forming her words slowly and deliberately, as though the statement were painful for her.

  "Yes, Mother, I have," I replied, suddenly determined to make my stand and defend both my marriage and my husband.

  "He is no gentleman," she said, now nearly spitting out the words, "to have taken advantage of a girl your age."

  "I am the one who suggested we elope," I said boldly. "I had to persuade him."

  "Jessie! No girl suggests an elopement!" Finally she turned to look at me. If she expected to see me weeping or repentant, she was disappointed, for I stood proudly before her.

  "Mother," I said, "I love John Charles Frémont, and we shall have a magnificent life together....He will make you and Father proud. If Father weren't so stubborn, he would see...."

  "That's enough, Jessie. You will not criticize your father when he acts in your best interests."

  "But I know my best interests better than he does," I said, working desperately to keep a pleading tone out of my voice. "I only ask that you give John a chance."

  "What other choice do we have?" she asked bitterly. "Your marriage is apparently already the talk of Washington....Your father and I are the last to know. The entire government will be watching to see how we react."

  "And how will you?" I asked.

  "I will send for your father immediately," was her only reply.

  Father was angrier than even I had anticipated, much angrier than he had been the time I whacked off my hair, and long gone were the days when I could charm him out of his anger, as I had done as a child. He was stunned that I would directly disobey him, and his anger made him stonily silent in my presence. We passed not even the merest of civilities for the first twenty-four hours that he was home, twenty-four hours in which I did not leave the house, though I managed to send a message to John. Too stubborn to beg and too determined to recant, I matched his silence, though I continued my work on his various projects and speeches.

  Late the afternoon after he returned home, Father summoned John to his library. Rushing to beat Micah, the butler, when I heard the knocker on the front door raised, I opened the door to see my husband—how the words echoed in my heart—pale but determined looking, wearing his army uniform, as he always did on what he saw as important occasions. He gave me a thin, tight smile—but no kiss—and we both approached Father's library.

  "Jessie, I asked to see Lieutenant Frémont," Father said icily. "Not you."

  "We are married, Father, and you must see both of us or neither."

  Father was not used to being crossed by anyone, let alone his rebellious daughter. His face turned so red that for a moment I worried about apoplexy. John's face, by contrast, was ashen white, for even he was a little taken aback by my boldness.

  "Sir," John began, his voice a trifle tremulous, "we would not have angered you... or disobeyed your wishes..."

  "If they had been reasonable wishes," I said.

  John held up a hand in my direction as though to quiet me, and I realized that he was telling me he was the man—the head of our household, as it were, though we had no household—and I should let him do the speaking.

  "I'm sorry," I murmured, and my apology startled Father almost as much as my rebellion had. How could I explain to him that I intended to be a proper wife to John, not the unsuitably rebellious woman that he often feared I would be?

  "We meant no disrespect, sir," John said. "I would not cause you any grief or embarrassment... and I would do anything to protect Jessie. But I must have her with me as my wife."

  "And I must be with him," I said, taking his arm.

  Father shot me a look and then said angrily, "If you must both be together, go and do so. But you will not be together in this house."

  Now it was my turn to be stunned. Father was sending me away. Never in my wildest imagination did I think that his anger would carry to that extreme. I clasped John's arm tighter for support, and he put a comforting hand over mine.

  "Very well," he said formally, "Jessie and I will leave immediately. I will send word when we have settled, so that you will not have to worry about your daughter."

  "I'm done worrying," Father said. "She has literally made her own bed...."

  I fled before he could see the tears forming in my eyes.

  I struggled to maintain my composure during my farewell with my brother and sisters—Liza, Randolph, Sarah, and Susie—the little girls, too young to understand, thought I was off on a great adventure.

  "Will you write to us, Jessie?"

  "Of course, my darlings, I will write you long letters and tell you of wonderful adventures."

  "We will miss you," Sarah said solemnly, while Susie bobbled her head in agreement.

  Stooping to catch them both in my arms, I murmured, "And I will miss you ever so much."

  Randolph, being older, knew that things were not as they should be, though he didn't know the full story and was too proud to ask.

  When he formally held out his hand, I took it in one of mine and tousled his hair with the other. "You must behave," I said, and he promised.

  Liza was cool, angry because I had brought turmoil to the household, jealous a little—I think—of my boldness and the new life waiting for me, puzzled because s
he could never see herself taking such a step. "I... I wish you happiness, Jessie." She held herself aloof until I put my arms around her.

  "Thank you, Liza. I shall miss you more than you know." Then, brushing away a tear, I smiled. "But I won't miss the seminary. I am glad to have school behind me. You must represent the Bentons there."

  Liza, always in her element at the school, would stay there until she was thirty, I thought, if someone didn't marry her.

  My farewell with my mother was tearful and hard on both of us. She had retreated to her bedroom again after Mrs. Poinsett's visit and had not emerged since. When I went to tell her I was leaving, she lay on the chaise, a robe over her, and I thought again how frail she looked.

  "Jessie? Your father...?"

  "He is angrier than either you or I thought he would be, Mother," I said, kneeling beside her lounge. "John and I are leaving."

  "Leaving?" She sat up in alarm. "Leaving for where?"

  "I don't know, but I will write as soon as I do. Father does not want us here."

  With a moan she fell back on the chaise and covered her eyes with her hands. She was silent so long that I worried, but then she said, "I will talk to him. I was angry with you, Jessie, but never this angry. I cannot bear for the two of you to be... estranged."

  "I can bear it, Mother, only because I must, because my love for John takes precedence. And I'm not sure that talking to Father will have any effect."

  "I must try," she said, and determination gave her voice some of the firmness it had been lacking.

  Amid hugs and tears we babbled about our love for each other and how soon we would be together again. As I turned to leave, she held out her hand for mine and whispered, "Give my regards to the lieutenant. And, Jessie, make him a good wife."

  I promised, both aloud to her and silently to myself.

  * * *

  We fled Washington, going to Baltimore, where Papa Joe Nicollet was then in ill health and being cared for by the clergy at St. John's College. John had other friends in that city, and it seemed a logical place—indeed, the only place—for us to go. We spent our first married night—our honeymoon, as it were—in a small and not very grand hotel. I had necessarily left home with only a few belongings—one small satchel—and so looked suspicious to the desk clerk. Or at least I thought that was the way he looked at me. I could hardly explain that, yes, I was married, but that I had just run away from home and my wardrobe would follow me when I knew where to have it sent.