Jessie

by Judy Alter

  "John! Mr. Polk has called for us both to meet him at the White House tomorrow afternoon at two o'clock."

  John beamed his pleasure, but I was angry. "Am I not to go?" I asked, wanting to point out that I had ghostwritten the report and that I, as much as the two men who stood before me, believed in expansion and that new concept of manifest destiny.

  Father silenced me with a look that told me clearly what I already knew: this was men's business. I had my silent revenge, for they returned from the White House the next day a chastened pair.

  "How was the meeting?" I asked innocently.

  "Fine, fine," Father said, waving a hand in the air.

  But John told the truth. "He thought me young and impulsive, because he wants to buy California from Mexico—he doesn't understand that will never happen. I only wanted to show the importance of exploration so that we will know the lay of the land when the times comes... but he didn't want to hear the truth. Our present maps contain more errors than truth, but he chose not to believe that."

  "He's afraid of war with Mexico," my father said bluntly.

  "And well he should be," I added.

  "We will get Texas and California by treaty," Father predicted, "and remain a protector of Mexico. They need friends, not warlike enemies."

  Since John was going again to California, I prayed Father was right.

  * * *

  "John," I foolishly asked in one of our rare moments of privacy, "must you go on another expedition? Can you not stay at home and be a husband to me and a father to Lily? Father could find you an appointment in Washington." I hated myself even as I said it, for the words sounded weak and pleading.

  Where I might readily have expected him to be angry, he was instead patient.

  With a light finger he stroked the length of my arm, raising goose bumps. "I can't," he said simply, "and I have always thought you understood that. It is... it is in my nature."

  "What is?" I asked. "The need to wander, never to stay in one place?"

  "No, not that so much. But the need to explore, to discover, to make my mark in the world in the way that few if any other men can. You understand that."

  I nodded, for I did understand that about him. I had known it forever, and I wondered if I would have loved him if he had been different. Probably not. I could not have it both ways-—a stay-at-home, devoted husband and one who accomplished grand and glorious things. I would not have traded the latter for the former.

  Once published, the second report made John such a hero that we had no private time together before he left. The lady in the park, so overwhelmed with his achievements, proved but a precursor of things to come—men and women alike called at C Street at all hours of the day.

  John reveled in the attention. Sometimes I would catch him looking across the room at me, and his look seemed to say, "See, Jessie? I told you... I've made up for it. I've done something spectacular."

  I, meanwhile, was no longer Senator Benton's daughter. I had become John Charles Frémont's wife. I gloried in the role... and quieted the small doubts that sometimes rose in my mind.

  * * *

  Father, as chairman of the Senate Military Committee, and his fast friend George Bancroft, secretary of the navy, saw to it that John's orders from the War Department for the third expedition could be loosely interpreted. He was to explore the area of the Great Salt Lake again and then survey the chains of mountains west of the Rockies—the Cascade Range in Oregon and the Sierras in California—looking for passages to the Pacific. In other words, he was to step deliberately beyond the boundaries of the United States. It was, of course, to be a peaceable expedition, but the men John hired were mostly sharpshooters, not mapmakers, and in those evening discussions around the table—discussions I refused to abandon, though Mother had long since retired to her room—hints were dropped here and there about "being prepared" for the "eventuality of war." There was no question this time of the legality of taking a howitzer.

  Lily and I would stay in Washington, rather than venture to St. Louis, though I regretted the decision in part. St. Louis would be so much closer to welcome John when he returned home. Still, being in St. Louis, cut adrift, as it were, from most of my friends and family, had made the last wait nearly unbearable, and I thought I should stand up to it better in the house on C Street. The reason I gave aloud was that Mother needed me, and she was no longer able to travel west.

  The night before John left, when we should, I thought, have been sharing private and intimate moments, found me in the library, taking John's rapid-fire dictation as he answered letters that had been stacked on his desk for weeks. "I have been pressed by business...," he wrote to one, while to another he said, "Things here are very hectic...." Amen, I thought. I was to be left in charge of his correspondence, which would keep me happily occupied but would not near make up for his absence.

  Once again, on May 14, 1845, we spent a sleepless and passionless night together, wrapped in each other's arms, occasionally murmuring how we would miss each other, I trying all the while to hide my tears. Once John reached a tender hand to wipe away a tear, but he never uttered acknowledgment of its presence. To have admitted that I was anything less than stalwart and brave might somehow have weakened him for the journey. He preferred to think that we were soldiers in a war together, and I kept up the fantasy.

  He left early on the morning of the fifteenth, with Lily, Father, and me standing on the veranda to wave him off as he strode down the street alone, a glorious figure in his full-dress uniform. It would be a month before he left St. Louis, and three months before he left Bent's Fort—the point at which he might really be said to have launched this third expedition—but for my purposes he was gone from our lives in April.

  "Daddy come back?" Lily asked.

  "Yes, my darling," I assured her. "Daddy will come back as soon as he can."

  "Where does he go?" she asked.

  "On a great adventure," I told her. "A great adventure."

  Father looked at me over her head and gave me one of his crooked smiles, a look that seemed to share the mixture of pride and loneliness that I felt.

  That night, alone in my bed, I gave vent to the tears that had been building for weeks. The next morning I arose with eyes swollen and puffy and with a pronounced patch of reddened skin by my mouth. It would stay there for months, and I learned to look around it in the mirror.

  * * *

  As we sat at breakfast one morning shortly after John's departure, Father having long gone off to the Capitol and Lily happily prattling in the kitchen with Mathilde, Mother seemed to shudder—not the slight shiver of a chill but the great convulsive shudder that bespeaks illness. Her eyes glazed and became vacant, or so it seemed to me, and she seemed unable to rise. When I went to assist her, she managed to mutter, "My arm... so heavy."

  Frantic, I called for Mathilde, but by the time she came running from the kitchen, the episode, whatever it was, had passed, and Mother seemed returned to normalcy.

  "Mother?" I asked. "Are you perfectly all right?"

  "Yes, of course," she said in a snappish tone of voice. And then, "Where's Mother? Doesn't she know I want her?"

  I froze, my hand halfway outstretched toward her. Slowly, I said, "Grandmother McDowell is at Cherry Grove, as always." Why, I wondered, would Mother expect her to be in Washington? She rarely came to visit and, indeed, had not written of visiting in over a year, preferring to let the family come to her.

  Mother's face contorted as though in grief, and she asked hoarsely, "She's not dead, is she?"

  "No, Mother," I said soothingly, "she is just fine. But... she is not here."

  Her eyes took on a hard look, as though she were terribly displeased, and she rose from her chair. "Well, I must go to her at once. I need my mother."

  Mathilde nodded at me and stepped forward. "There, now, missus, you let Mathilde help you up to rest. You need your rest before you go on that long journey."

  Mother looked as though that were a
new and clever idea. "Yes, of course, Mathilde, you're so right. Jessie would never have thought of that."

  I opened my mouth to protest, but Mathilde silenced me with a look and began to help Mother out of the dining room. "We'll just go on and take a little rest," she said soothingly.

  When I tried to follow, she motioned me away, and when she found me waiting in the hall outside Mother's room, Mathilde said matter-of-factly, "Just wait. She'll likely be back to herself when she wakes up."

  I accomplished nothing that morning, pacing the hall outside Mother's room and leaving only when Mathilde nearly dragged me to the kitchen for coffee.

  "Grandma's sick?" Lily asked.

  "Yes, darling," I murmured absently, wondering if I should send a message to Father.

  "She'll be all right. Mathilde says so."

  And true enough, Mother awakened herself. "I have had a bad dream, Jessie," she said. "I was looking for my mother, and you....You wouldn't let me go to her."

  Fine, I thought, I am to be the villain in this madness.

  "My arm," she went on, "it... it feels sore and heavy."

  It was, of course, another stroke—a tiny one that lasted only an instant—but it warned me that such could happen at any time. I would have to pay constant attention to Mother.

  My sense of freedom evaporated, and I knew the vigil for John would again be long.

  "You don't know the impatience that rages within me," I wrote to Sally McDowell. "I fear that I do not treat her as gently as I might, but sometimes when she doesn't know where she is, or who Father is I want to shake her and say 'Mother, behave yourself.' "

  Writing to Sally McDowell was a godsend for me, especially because I could be honest with her about Mother. I did not want to fill my letters to John with such tales of woe, and Father did not want to hear about Mother's illness or episodes. I hardly could be discussing them with the servants or Lily, Randolph was off at Cherry Grove more than he was at home those days, and Liza was in love.

  "I hope William won't be frightened if Mother does something... you know, something foolish," she said one day, and I nearly flew in a rage at her. Then I had to calm myself—she was twenty-three and William was the first real prospect she'd had. But I couldn't ever imagine worrying about John's reaction, so great was my trust in him. I just shook my head over Liza.

  "I don't know that I could be so patient," Sally wrote. "You are truly a saint." I was grateful for her faith and glad she wasn't privy to my inner thoughts. She, on the other hand, wrote bittersweet letters. Behind the bright chatter about her daily activities I sensed a growing sadness, and I feared it was true that she had married a "trifling poor fellow."

  "Francis," she wrote, "is very attentive. He cannot bear for me to talk to another man." I thought that a bad sign.

  In late June I read in the newspaper of John's arrival in St. Louis earlier that month. Now he was such a national hero that the newspapers would track him as long as he was in reach of civilization. Somehow that made me feel oddly more distant from him, as though the man I read of were a stranger.

  Still, I hung on every word and laughed aloud over a misadventure in St. Louis. He had, it seems, an encounter with mountain men there, or at least with a group of men who wanted to be mountain men and go west with him. According to the Weekly Reveille several hundred men gathered to hear of John's expedition—though only a handful could be signed on—and John, to satisfy them, mounted the nearest podium to speak briefly about his plans. That podium, however, was a rickety fence, and even boosted that high above the crowd, he could not be heard. Those in the back began to press forward, pushing mercilessly on those in front until the fence gave way... and John and several others went crashing to earth.

  "He could have been hurt badly," Father grumbled, "a stampede or something."

  "But he wasn't," I said brightly. "It says here that his description of the hardships to be faced discouraged many men."

  "Yes, but I'm glad to hear Basil Lajeunesse is with him again," Father said. "I have great confidence in that man."

  "So does John," I said, remembering the burly man who had once carried my message to John and, later, brought me news of him when I was desperate. I too had faith in Basil Lajeunesse.

  "I imagine Carson's waiting for them at Bent's Fort," Father said, and I added my fervent hope that this was true, since John relied so heavily on Kit Carson.

  Even as I read about John, I wrote to him constantly, my letters skirting the things that worried me—his safety, Mother's health—and dwelling instead on the things I thought would be cheering to him. During the summer immediately after he left, I wrote mostly of the praise the second report was receiving. Newspapers across the country counted him a hero, his accomplishments equal to those of Lewis and Clark, and they praised the language of the report, the very human terms in which John had managed to recount his exploration of a wild and uninhabited land.

  I could not resist speculating in one letter on his status as a hero. "For you to be so lauded at your young age"—if I was twenty-one, he was about thirty-two, though he had never told me his exact age, which sometimes struck me as strange—"leaves a great puzzle. Whatever can you do next? Will you all our lives have to be going on to ever greater adventures? A part of me hopes so, my darling, for I am so proud of all you do. But there is another part of me that longs for that California home you promised me."

  I could almost hear John's voice whispering in my ear that he must make California ours before he could provide a home there for Lily and me. But I never could hear him promise to settle down in that home.

  * * *

  Although it was a hot and sticky summer in Washington, I was amazed at how fast time flew by. Mother continued to be up and down—one evening she wandered in while Father entertained guests, her hair askew and her expression confused, only to seat herself grandly in a chair and say, "Pray continue, gentlemen, do not let me interrupt you."

  While I rose in haste to shepherd her back to her room, Father held out a hand to slow me. "Elizabeth," he said kindly, "it's good of you to join us. We will continue."

  And then, though his guests squirmed with discomfort, he said, "Now, gentlemen, about this problem with Mexico..."

  This problem with Mexico was ever on our minds. Since Congress had voted to annex Texas, there was always the possibility that Mexico would declare war to retrieve its errant colony. True, Texas had fought hard to win its independence almost ten years earlier, but Mexico could still consider it merely a rebellious province and act to assert its control. Meantime, we were besieged with rumors—fortifications in Matamoros, armed troops gathering at various points throughout Mexico, guns and fortresses along the border.

  Father did not believe in war with Mexico over either California or Texas, but of the tension over the Lone Star territory he said, "At least it diverts attention from California for the time being."

  That slight hope soon was dashed too, as rumors came that more troops from Mexico were being sent to California—with British support—to strengthen the government there. "They say," Father said, "that the Americans in California are calling for revolt, and they must be prepared."

  "And how will they react to John's arrival?" I asked.

  He just shook his head, and I shivered a little in fear. I had to remind myself that I knew—I absolutely knew—that John would return home safely.

  My attention was soundly diverted in the fall when Father impatiently called to me one afternoon. "Jessie! Jessie, where are you? I need you right now."

  I rushed into his library to find him more disheveled and unhappy than I had seen him, even when Mother was at her worst.

  "Father? What is it?"

  "It's a great calamity for this family, that's what it is!" he ranted.

  "Randolph?" I asked. "Is he all right?" Randolph, still exiled to Cherry Grove, had not mended his wild and reckless ways, and I worried always about his well-being, though I was never sure if he would be thrown from a horse o
r shot by a jealous husband. At sixteen he was precocious in many ways.

  "Randolph?" he thundered. "Who in blazes said anything about Randolph?"

  "Father," I said, my voice nearly as loud as his and my temper as short, "calm down and tell me what has upset you so."

  "Sally!" he said, his tone indicating clearly that I should have known that—by prescience, I suppose. "That fool she married is taking her to court."

  I had only once in my life fainted, in childbirth, but for just a moment there the world seemed to grow fuzzy, and I felt the need to grope quickly for the back of a chair to steady myself. "To court?" I echoed dumbly.

  "Never trusted him," Father said, "never thought he had the sense he was born with. But now he's accusing her of... of..." He could not bring himself to say it.

  "Of affairs with other men?" I asked.

  "Yes, by damn," he thundered, "among them my good friend Senator Linn, who is no longer on this earth to defend himself."

  "Oh, good heaven," was all I could say. Francis Thomas was now governor of Maryland, surely a man of responsibility and judgment. Still, to accuse Senator Linn....Father's good friend and ally in Congress had died while John was on his second expedition. I knew that the senator's reputation was not one of loyalty to his wife—a great, fat woman who ate bonbons constantly and laced herself too tightly, leading to a great indisposition of the spirit. She had accused almost every young woman in Washington of having a flirtation with her husband, and I had often wondered that I myself had escaped such accusation. Sally had been but one among two dozen named by the spiteful Mrs. Linn.

  When I ventured that thought to Father, he growled, "It makes no difference. That jealous husband of hers has chosen to make a case of it."

  Sally and her father, James McDowell, arrived at our house the next day, he in high anger and she in tears. Her father had gone to Maryland to fetch her home to Virginia, but they had come instead to Washington for Father's counsel. They got, along with his support, his anger.