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 Colo nel 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. Some day, 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.”