America's First Daughter: A Novel (49 page)

“You leave her alone, Charles,” I said, gripping his shirt tight. “You’re mad with drink.”

“You may rule your husband,” Charles snarled. “But Ann’s
my
wife and I’m going to beat her until she remembers it.” With that, he tore himself from my grip, leaving a patch of his shirt in my hand, then took off after Ann at a run.

Monticello was in an uproar, servants shouting, Bankhead kicking everything and everyone in his way. Chickens went squawking. Dogs yelped and growled. And after a few moments, Sally rushed out of the house to help me up from the ground, whispering, “Charles passed her by. She’s hiding in a potato hole.”

The thought of my daughter, my first baby, hiding in the dirt from her husband made me wish that I’d let Tom kill him. As she helped me to my feet, Sally’s long-ago words about the importance of the man a woman winds up with had never rung more true—because Ann was trapped with a cruel drunkard, and there wasn’t a thing that we could do.

Sally was my father’s mistress, not the mistress of the plantation, and yet it felt right to have her at my side. The drunken brute’s shouts echoed from the house, and Sally and I took the stairs two at a time in the vain hope of getting to him before he got to my father.

Meanwhile, Jeff’s horse came galloping up the road, in a cloud of dust. “What the
devil
is going on?”

We didn’t stop to answer but burst into the house where the madman screamed, “Show yourself, Ann.”

Jeff was on our heels, gripping his horsewhip. One look at his frothing, bloodied brother-in-law, and no one had to tell him what had happened. And my son went white to the tip of his nose.

“Did you do something to my sister, you rabid dog?” Jeff asked, advancing on Bankhead. “Someone ought to put you down. I think that someone is gonna be me.”

Those were words that started duels. Words that demanded satisfaction. But Bankhead was so drunk I’m not sure he heard. Instead, he was transfixed by the sight of my father, who emerged from his rooms in stern disapproval.

“
Enough,
” Papa said, very quietly, very severely. “We value domestic tranquility, here. Charles, I must ask you to reside under your father’s roof for a time, not mine.”

At my father’s quiet show of thoroughly
presidential
authority, Bankhead seemed to suddenly shake free of his madness, and he sank to his knees and wept. Bankhead was being banished, and he knew it. He begged my father a thousand pardons, sobbing that he’d tried to stop drinking but never was able to. That it was something
in
him, like a demon.

I didn’t care. I fetched Ann, took her upstairs, bandaged her ribs, and cleaned up her mouth and jaw, which were bruised and swollen. Then I put her in my bed, dosing her with some laudanum so she could rest. Bolting the door, I leaned back upon it like a guard.

That’s when Jeff came up the narrow stairway with murder in his eyes. “You keep away from Bankhead,” I said, keeping my voice low in case children might be eavesdropping from the nearby nursery or their bedrooms on the third floor. “And when your father returns, don’t tell him what happened here today.”

“Why not? Cracking that monster’s skull is the finest thing my father ever did—too bad he botched the job, like always.”

“Stop saying things like that, Jeff. Disrespect from a boy is one thing, but you’re a man now.”

He nodded grimly and leaned back on the door next to me. “Then you won’t object to my taking Jane for a wife?”

“I’d think you’d rather marry someone who’ll bring no more strife into this family.”

“Jane isn’t her mother,” Jeff said, reasonably, staring at his feet. “I’m set on Jane. She’s the prudent choice.”

I stared, remembering my own seemingly
prudent
choice. “Oh, Jeff, be careful.”

“I know what I’m about. My future prospects from my father I consider as blank. From my grandfather, not very cheering.”

That my husband’s fortunes were negligible, I knew. But since Papa retired from the presidency, Monticello had never seemed more fruitful or alive. “Why would you say that?”

Jeff crossed his freckled arms. “I’ve seen grandfather’s books. Monticello is large but unprofitable and, unless judiciously managed, will probably consume itself.”

My father was a sunny optimist, and I was neither entitled nor desirous to know the extent of his debts. But my son was pragmatic and clear-headed. And I believed him. “Even so, marrying a woman you don’t love—”

“You won’t tell my sisters to marry for love. You want to, but you won’t. You don’t want them to end up at the mercy of a penniless drunk like Bankhead. It’ll be a miracle if they find husbands with their promised
thirty cents
per annum. Though, with Ellen’s caustic tongue, no amount would be enough.”

“Don’t be sarcastic,” I said, reaching for his hand.

Our shoulders touched in the doorway.

“My brothers are still boys,” he said. “I’m going to have to provide for all of them. My sisters and brothers. So I can’t marry anybody but a rich woman, and Jane’s sweet. If I can make myself love her, you can do the same.”

I glanced up at him, shamed that he should have such burdens. But I’d raised a man who could be relied upon, and that filled me with pride. So I never uttered another word against Jane, not realizing that she’d cost us everything.

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
I rocked my grand-baby in his cradle as Ann continued to sleep fitfully in the nearby bed. The movement of the rocking was a comfort when so little else was. Everything seemed in a turmoil.

Ann awoke on a gasp. “Where is Charles? I have to go to him,” she said, her words slurred because of the swelling around her mouth.

“He must’ve kicked the senses out of you if you’re even considering going with him,” I said, my heart hurting that
this
was the reality of my daughter’s life.

She struggled to sit up against the pillows. “Where else can I go?”

“You needn’t go anywhere,” Papa replied from the doorway, surprising us both, for he so seldom mounted the steep stairs that the crowded upper floors in which my family lived must have seemed to him like another world completely.

Papa crossed the room and rested an age-spotted hand on her shoulder. “You’re always welcome here at Monticello, dearest Ann.”

Bravely wiping away the tears that flowed down her bruised face, Ann said, “But my place is with Charles. By law, he can take the children. You know he can.”

“He’ll soften, fearing the loss of you,” Papa said. “His family will talk sense to him.” All his life, I think my father believed, in principle, that a woman belonged to her husband. But now he tried every way possible to encourage Ann’s separation from Charles. Every way but telling her she had a right to do it.

Maybe that would’ve made the difference.

“It was my fault,” Ann insisted. “He worries when he can’t find me.”

My heart sank to my stomach, where it weighed like a stone when, later that day, Ann rode off with Charles, their children, and belongings. “Patsy, I had to send him away,” Papa said from where we stood upon the south terrace, overlooking the garden, the vineyards, and the breathtakingly broad vista beyond.

“I know,” was my truthful reply.

Papa squinted up at the clouds. “Dr. Bankhead will have more authority to deal with his son. And if I let Charles stay here, and Tom found out . . .”

I knew exactly what Tom would do if he found out that Bankhead beat our daughter. And I didn’t know if I should be sorry or grateful that Tom was still too furious with me to come home.

Rounding his shoulders, Papa said, “In the meantime, I’ve sold my library to Congress to replace the one burned by the British. I’ll use the profit to secure property for Ann alone, to make her independent if the worst should come to pass.”

“Oh, Papa,” I said, pressing a grateful kiss against his aging shoulder. It was startlingly generous and also startling because my father had never encouraged independence in any woman before.

“I’ll save some for Ellen, who’ll need to attract a husband of her own soon.”

“Given the fate of her sister, I almost wish Ellen would never marry,” I said. I deny loving any of my children more than the others. But you take more pleasure in some. Ann, Jeff, and Ellen were the children I knew best and to whom I’d formed the first tender attachments. Even amongst those three, Ellen was special. “She feels things too acutely for her own happiness. She’s like her father, but without his temper, and such people aren’t well suited for this selfish world.”

My father smiled because Ellen was his favorite, too. “She’s the jewel of my soul, but we mustn’t be too selfish. We must allow her into society and hope she finds a perfect love.”

“Perfect love?” Ellen asked, swishing her skirts as she came up behind us, not even pretending she hadn’t eavesdropped. “Ann loves Charles, and look how that’s turned out. There may be no such thing as perfect love.”

My father smiled. “There will be for you, pretty girl.”

Dark-haired, sloe-eyed Ellen wasn’t as pretty as Ann, but at the age of nineteen, Ellen was slender and dashing, with supreme confidence. And she used it now to distract us from the sadness of Ann’s departure. “I recently met a handsome gentleman who was so perfectly the victim of ennui that it destroyed every attraction I might’ve felt for him. Truly, I’d bore you to list the suitors I became completely disgusted with visiting Richmond. I’d just as soon become a spinster and devote myself to the care of my beloved grandpapa.”

She was teasing, I hoped, but the marriage prospects of our daughters were very much on my husband’s mind when he finally returned for Jeff’s wedding to Jane with the first hints of spring. Tom had never been a cheerful man, but he returned to me a dour one. He now styled himself Colonel Randolph, and it relieved me that though he’d taken his father’s title and demeanor, he wasn’t unfeeling toward his children. When he crawled into our bed after having been gone so long, he said, “Now that our son has taken a bride, it’s time to think about the girls. Mrs. Madison extended an invitation to have Ellen in Washington City. She’ll find a higher caliber of gentleman to court her there.”

Quietly, I gasped at the expense this would entail. Ellen couldn’t properly go to the capital without new dresses, new shawls, bonnets, and triflings of every sort. She’d be advised by Dolley, whose expensive tastes we could scarcely afford.

But when I confessed my worries, Tom exploded in temper. “What sort of man do you take me for? You think I’d help marry my sisters off but will deprive my own daughter of the few dresses and combs she needs to secure her happiness?”

Lowering my eyes, I said, “I know you’d never deny your daughters a thing if it were within your power. I’m only worried for the expense.”

“Did your father spare any expense for your coming-out in Paris?” Tom asked, staring hard. “I’ve heard the stories, so many balls you had to limit yourself to not more than three a week. Stories your daughters have heard, too.”

With that single, astute observation, Tom leveled me. I’d so often entertained my children with stories about my days in Paris that any one of the older girls could have named my friends at the convent and recounted their exploits. To buoy spirits in hard times, I’d fed my girls a steady diet of opulent tales. How could I deny my vivacious Ellen the opportunities I’d enjoyed? “You’re right, of course. I beg your pardon—”

“It’s not your place to worry about expenses,” Tom ranted, in a fever of anger that’d been brewing since I’d meddled in his military career. “That’s always been the trouble with you, Martha. You don’t know your place.”

He then proceeded to show me my place, by roughly tugging my nightclothes and pinning me to the bed. I made no attempt to refuse him. I didn’t dare. And, in truth, I hoped that our coming together—even in anger—might mend the wounds. After all, Tom’s ardent kisses usually broke through my reserve, and his release usually unraveled the knots inside him.

But on that night, not even pleasure could untangle the trouble between us.

In the dark, I whispered, “Tom, I offer my sincerest apologies. I know I’ve hurt you and offended your sense of honor. But please know that what I did, I only did for fear of losing you. I erred in love.”

To that, he had no reply whatsoever.

Poplar Forest, 3 December 1816

From Thomas Jefferson to Martha Jefferson Randolph

We’ve been weather bound at this place. Johnny Hemings and company will set off on Thursday. Our only discomfort is not being with you. The girls have borne it wonderfully. They’ve been very close students and I’m never without enough to do to protect me from ennui.

M
Y FATHER KNEW
I’d go through his letters once he was dead. This letter is proof that he meant to spare me from having to burn more than I already have. The
company
my father mentions in reference to their Uncle Johnny were Sally’s sons: Beverly, Eston, and Madison.

They were almost always with Papa in those days, engaged in a grand project to build a new octagonal house at Poplar Forest, where we once hid from the British. My father fled there now for the same reason: to escape. To escape
Monticello,
which had become, in some respects, a glorified museum and inn.

Though it was a great expense, my father wouldn’t deny his hospitality to visitors. It seemed to him somehow undemocratic, or at the very least, un-
Virginian
. Strangers stopped without even a letter of introduction, expecting supper and a bed. Most of all, they desired to lay eyes on the former president, the sage of Monticello. And, of course, to satisfy their curiosity about
Dusky Sally
.

Under that scrutiny, Papa increasingly withdrew to Poplar Forest, where he could make plans for his new university and enjoy the sons Sally had given him.

But he never wrote their names down in any letter.

He knew better. And so did I.

Perhaps my father also absented himself to give Tom the illusion of being in command, hoping it might ease the strain on our marriage. And I made myself as obedient and accommodating as possible, even though Tom had scarcely a tender word for me. I missed the husband I’d known—temperamental and morose, but fiercely loving. And I despaired of having lost that love, possibly forever.

Meanwhile, from Washington came a steady report on Ellen’s beaux:

Mr. De Roth was “an insignificant little creature.”

Mr. Hughes was “a man of no family or connections.”

Mr. Forney was “aloof.”

Mr. Logan was “not at all clever.”

Though my daughter had success pricing the
Scientific Dialogues
for her grandfather’s library, she made no progress in finding a husband, and I couldn’t find it within myself to encourage her to try harder, given how miserable my own marriage had become.

I tried to count myself content that the love Tom once lavished upon me he now gave to our daughters. But it left me lonely even in a crowded house. I missed Ann unbearably and worried every day what her husband might do to her. As for Ellen, I wanted her to come home straightaway from her husband-hunting trip, but Papa sent her the profit from his tobacco so she could visit Baltimore and then Philadelphia. Which put me in a near depressive state until she returned to regale us with tales of her adventure.

“Everything’s so cheap and good in Philadelphia. And the people were most hospitable. Mr. Short came to see me, too,” Ellen said, working her polishing cloth over one of the silver goblets Papa bought our last summer in Paris.

Nearly the whole of Papa’s silver inventory lay spread out before us on a dining room table, and I looked up from the silver tumbler I’d been polishing, one from a set of eight that Papa had commissioned a silversmith to make per his own design. It must’ve been because Tom and I were so unhappy that I felt wistful to hear William’s name again. And surprised, too, that William had visited my daughter.

Papa had, indeed, given William an appointment that sent him to France and then Russia. But when Mr. Madison became president, he brought about an abrupt end to William’s diplomatic career. For spite, I suppose. No matter the cause, William’s return from Europe had been unheralded and shrouded in mystery. I only knew that he’d settled in Philadelphia—without his duchess—and I was painfully curious to know more.

“Mr. Short called upon you?” I asked, setting the tumbler aside.

“Twice, actually,” Ellen replied. “He took me to see the house you lived in with Mrs. Hopkinson when you were a little girl. It’s now occupied by trades people and has nothing to distinguish it. But I gazed on it with mixed feelings of pleasure and melancholy.”

I, too, had mixed feelings of pleasure and melancholy to think of the man I once loved squiring my daughter about Philadelphia, walking cobblestone streets I once walked, and telling her stories from my youth.

Ellen continued, “We also visited the spot where my grandfather lived as secretary of state. And I strained my eyes to get a distant view of his lodgings while vice president. I was gratified by the sight of these now humble buildings which recall those in whom my fondest affections are placed.”

The swell of my heart made it ache. William had done more than watch over my daughter. He’d taken her places that recalled me and my father. Places I was sure I’d never see again. But William gave these memories to my daughter, and it moved me beyond words to think he was still, after all these years, doing for me what I couldn’t do for myself.

Ellen would do well to find a man like him in the northern states where everything was so cheap and so good. I’d never say it out loud, certainly never in my father’s presence, but like Mrs. Nicholas, I, too, now prayed that none of my daughters would bury themselves in Virginia.

“W
HY DOES
E
LLEN HAVE ALL THE FUN?”
Ginny asked at my old harpsichord. She’d been playing song after song to entertain our company. And once our guests had retired, leaving only family and near-relations, she complained, “First her travels, now Grandpapa intends to take her to Poplar Forest. Not just Ellen, but Cornelia, too!”

My father gave an indulgent chuckle. “Oh, it’s a very monastic sort of existence at Poplar Forest. Ellen and Cornelia are the severest students. In daytime they never leave their room but to come to meals. About twilight of the evening, we go out with the owls and bats, and take our evening exercise. You wouldn’t enjoy it.”

Jeff added, “There’ll be better bachelors at the governor’s mansion than amongst owls and bats at Poplar Forest. I’ve asked Governor Nicholas to host a party for you girls to come out into society in Richmond next winter, when the legislature is in session.”

There were advantages, it seemed, in his having married the governor’s daughter. But I worried that Jeff arranged this for his sisters without asking Tom. Hoping to stave off an argument, that night as I got ready for bed, brushing my hair out in front of the mirror over my marbled dresser, I gently broached the subject with my husband.

He surprised me by saying, “The girls would like that.”

I nodded, abandoning my brush to climb over Tom to get to my side of the alcove bed—a ritual that had once been flirtatious but had now turned to annoyance.

He stopped me, hands on my hips. “What ails you, Martha?”

“What makes you think something ails me?” I was resolved to say nothing about my worries for the expense. My husband would tell me it wasn’t my place, even though his generosity—the dresses, the ribbons, the fripperies—would come out of pockets that were already empty. It
wasn’t
my place to question him; my meddling is what had brought us to this unhappiness, so I bit my tongue.

But Tom’s eyes bored into mine in the candlelight. “I suppose Jeff told you I intend to sell slaves to bolster the family finances, running off to his mother like he always does. He’s still tied up in your apron strings.”

I’m not certain how he could’ve surprised or appalled me more. When Tom proposed marriage, he said he was against slavery. Since then, of course, we’d quietly reconciled ourselves to the evil, convinced that the poor slaves needed us, as children need parents. But selling slaves . . . how could we ever reconcile ourselves to that? “Tell me you’d never do such a thing.”

“I’m only selling one sullen girl,” Tom answered. “She’s difficult to manage, but she could go for more than five hundred dollars. It’ll be an investment in the happiness of our daughters, and maybe the slave will be happier with a new master, too.”

I rolled off him. Turning to the wall, a scream echoed in my mind. I’d held back my news as long as I could, but upon hearing the evil thing my husband planned, I was too upset to dissemble. “We’re having another baby, Tom.”

I heard nothing but silence behind me. It’d been four years since our last child, and we’d assumed my child-bearing days were over. I’d been grateful for it. But now, at nearly forty-five years of age, I was pregnant again and near tears to think it.

I already had ten children—far more than I had the strength to care for. Much as I loved them, I was wrung out with little ones climbing on me night and day. Giving birth to my last had weakened my health. God forgive me, I didn’t
want
another baby. But children were a source of manly pride. So, given a moment or so, maybe Tom would find his composure and tell me how happy he was. Then I’d force a smile and tell him what a joy it’d be.

Except it would all be a lie—all of it.

So I turned and said, “I don’t know what to do about it.”

At these words, Tom eyed me with a mixture of curiosity and horror. Perhaps he was remembering my testimony in which I claimed to have given his sister an abortifacient. I was remembering it, too. It seemed, at the moment, like an answer. We’d never stand trial for it. My father, if he knew, might not even object, for he’d commented almost admiringly on the practice amongst Indians. I’d hate myself, but I already hated myself for bringing another child into the world when we couldn’t provide for the ones we already had.

And yet, I should never have implied such a solution to Tom. Not even as a desperate consideration that I’d talk myself out of. Not even to get my husband’s reassurances. Tom’s lips thinned into a mean line. “There isn’t anything to be done about it, Martha.”

Chastened, I lowered my eyes and murmured what I believed to be the truth. “It’s likely to kill me, this time.”

Then I turned back to the wall, where I lay trapped.

D
URING THAT PREGNANCY,
I was so sick and swollen and sad all the time that I couldn’t stand myself. The birth left me so insensible that I had to be told I’d given birth to a living babe—a fragile little boy, tiny and blue, for whom my father would eventually choose the name George Wythe Randolph.

I was too weak to hold the baby or feed him, consumed with excruciating, debilitating pain and delirium. And though I was grateful to have lived through the ordeal, every time it seemed as if I might recover, I succumbed to a new cough or ailment.

Scarcely able to sit up, I was confined to bed and bedpan, and Ellen moved into the room across from mine so that she could nurse me. In the months that followed, my daughters were forced to take turns at housekeeping in my stead. But the entire estate would have fallen to pieces if not for Sally Hemings watching over my girls and instructing them where I couldn’t. And I simply
couldn’t
. Neither smallpox nor typhus had rendered me so ill. Not even fears for my father’s reputation could get me out of bed. Not even to converse or dine with our guests.

Papa’s brilliant courtship with the public went on below stairs—but my world was suddenly and sharply confined to the warren of attic rooms at the top of the house. Oh, I saw and heard most everything, for Monticello was a noisy place, with creaky hinges and floorboards, and more than twenty family members in residence at any given time. My window overlooked the same expansive vista as my father’s did—but my room was at a higher elevation. I saw more. I saw the reality. I saw, every day, Mulberry Row and all the little nail-shop boys who worked from sunup to sundown for our happiness—which only fueled my sickness and melancholy.

One night, when Cornelia brought my supper up, she burst into tears. “Oh, Mother, you’re so very pale, and I’m such an unworthy daughter!”