When Papa readied to leave again for Philadelphia—this time to take my little sister and our cousin Jack Eppes with him—Sally and I found ourselves standing on the front steps together to say farewell. Papa gave her a chaste hug good-bye and I heard her sigh. She’d given my father her freedom and a son. Now both were lost to her . . . and perhaps he was, too.
Understand that at eighteen years old, Sally Hemings was more beautiful than ever. Men flirted with her, but I never saw her encourage them, and I had the sense that even if we hadn’t been watching, she never would. I believed that my father was the only man she wanted, and he’d just left her on the steps without so much as a kiss.
I would have sighed, too. And my sympathy for Sally overcame the pang of jealousy that my sister would be living in some tidy town-home in the nation’s capital with Papa. Hopping up into the carriage, my sister reminded me, “You had Papa to yourself in Paris for a long time. Now it’s my turn!”
Conceding, I kissed her nose. “Don’t be too lazy to write, little Polly.”
“Call me Mary, now. Or Maria, if you must.” She wouldn’t have suggested that name if she remembered Maria Cosway, but that woman was an ocean away now, rumored to have abandoned her husband and their newborn daughter to join a convent.
Inhaling the milk scent of my own daughter’s cheek, I couldn’t imagine life without her, much less becoming a nun. If love had shaken my faith in a convent vocation, motherhood had shattered it completely. So I banished all thoughts of Maria in the convent, and as my sister tucked herself into the carriage next to our father, I cried, “Adieu, Papa. Adieu, Maria.”
Sally and I stood there together until the carriage rolled out of sight.
Then it was time to deal with Tom’s sisters.
With the hickory smoke of November rising from smokestacks at every farm, we took Nancy, according to her wishes, to live at Bizarre plantation in Cumberland County. There was nothing especially bizarre about the modest two-story house that sat atop a giant slab of cut stone, though the people who lived there were a bit strange.
Theo Randolph was a thin, sickly young man whose nervous disorder required a dependence on laudanum. Or so he said. Then there was his flamboyant brother John, whose youthful appearance belied his years as a result of a childhood illness. An illness some said occasioned his high voice, dramatic manner, and impotence with women.
Richard and Judith—the master and mistress of the plantation—seemed ordinary enough, but there didn’t seem to be much planting going on here, where they believed themselves far too genteel to embrace any other profession. Tom, grumbling that one of the Randolph brothers of Bizarre had been expelled from school, added, “I feel like I’m leaving her in a bawdy house!”
I tried to soothe him. “Why don’t we take them up on their offer to winter over here?”
As Tom held our daughter’s little arms, teaching her to walk, he grumbled again. “They didn’t mean for us to take them up on it.”
“Nevertheless, they can’t refuse now that they’ve offered. We can help the girls settle in and ease your worries.”
Tom eyed me, as if stunned by the devious turn of my mind, but agreed. And during those blustery cold months, I helped set up housekeeping, since Judith was heavy with her first child. We ended up staying for nearly three months in all, Tom watching—like a hawk—Theo’s every move toward our virginal Nancy.
If only he’d been watching Richard.
I scarcely took notice of the way Nancy giggled whenever our host said something amusing. Or the way, when Richard hugged her, they embraced too long. Holding hands briefly before bed. Whispering in one another’s ear. I suppose I noticed all these things but dismissed them as Nancy’s gratitude to her brother-in-law for taking her in when her own father was so utterly indifferent to her.
“Tom, truly. Neither John nor Theo has an eye for Nancy. And Richard’s watching out for her. You see how attentive he is,” I said as we prepared for bed one night.
I should’ve been more suspicious. I should’ve wondered what those whispers and giggles meant, but by February I was distracted and bursting with happy news. “Mr. Randolph, I’m going to give you the son you so desire.”
Tom lifted me up, clasping me against him, spinning me round, and in our joy, we left Bizarre plantation without suspecting a thing.
Monticello, 9 September 1792
From Thomas Jefferson to President George Washington
I was duped by the Secretary of the treasury and made a tool for forwarding his schemes, not then sufficiently understood by me; and of all the errors of my political life this has occasioned me the deepest regret. That I have utterly, in my private conversations, disapproved of the system of the Secretary of the treasury, I acknowledge. His system flows from principles adverse to liberty, and is calculated to undermine and demolish the republic.
The summer just before he wrote this letter, Papa returned to Monticello in a state of agitation, telling of all the indignities he’d suffered at the hands of the cunning and ambitious secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton.