The thought of their confusion over sisters and brothers that were also their slaves was enough to decide me. And even if it hadn’t been, the thought of choosing a girl . . .
My eyes drifted to my window, which overlooked Mulberry Row. Some of the Hemings girls would soon be of age, but the wickedness of the thought was so horrifying to me I immediately thrust it away with a violent shudder. “I couldn’t encourage such a thing. I suppose I was just wishing for some secret way. . . .”
“There is only one secret to anything,” Dolley asserted. “And that’s the power we all have in forming our own destinies.”
Washington, 27 February 1809
From Thomas Jefferson to Martha Jefferson Randolph
In retiring to the condition of a private citizen, I have a single uneasiness. I’m afraid that the administration of the house will give you trouble. Perhaps, with a set of good and capable servants, as ours certainly are, the trouble will become less after their understanding the regulations which are to govern them. Ignorant too, as I am, in the management of a farm, I shall be obliged to ask the aid of Mr. Randolph’s skill and attention.
On a marvelous spring day, my father commemorated forty years of service to his country by surrendering the reins of government—and a brewing war—to the new president. Celebratory cannons fired, ladies flirted with Papa, and a special farewell march was played for him at James Madison’s inaugural ball. The latter was a touch only Dolley would’ve thought to include, and I loved her for it.
Then Papa loaded up wagons with all the belongings he’d acquired as president. Spoons and pudding dishes, coverlets and clocks and shoes. Boxes, books, and furniture strained at the six-mule team pulling the load.
In anticipation of his homecoming, my heart beat with inexpressible anxiety and impatience. I wanted nothing so much as to clasp Papa in the bosom of his family, for the evening of his life to pass in serene and unclouded tranquility in the home he’d spent twenty years rebuilding.
A home in which my entire family would now reside.
The proposal was put to Tom in ways to spare his feelings: What would people say if we left my sixty-five-year-old father to live alone with Sally as his housekeeper? Besides, Papa couldn’t manage without us. He hadn’t Tom’s genius for preventing soil erosion. My husband, whatever else his faults, was a hardwork ing, inventive planter whose failures were due to bad luck and the rotting legacy his father left him.
My husband surprised me by listening to this entreaty in silence, finally nodding his head in assent. And I realize now that it was because he already knew he couldn’t support our still growing family at Edgehill; the arrangement spared him more embarrassment than it gave him, lifting his family from certain poverty with the fig leaf of caring for my aging father. Even Ann and her new husband, Charles, would move in with us so that she could help work in Papa’s gardens to make it just so, for they shared a special bond over flowers and herbs. We’d have the whole family together!
At last, after trials of blizzards and crowds demanding speeches of him in taverns and inns on the way, Papa was ours now, and I went running down the road to meet him, in rapture, in joy. We embraced one another, all the children gathered round, hopeful for the family idyll and ignoring the rumble of the coming war in the distance.
Part Three
Mistress of Monticello
Chapter Thirty-two
Monticello, 21 January 1812
From Thomas Jefferson to John Adams
A letter from you carries me back to the times when we were fellow laborers in the same cause, struggling for what is most valuable to man: his right of self-government. Sometimes I look back in remembrance of our old friends who have fallen before us. Of the signers of the Declaration of Independence I see now living not more than half a dozen on your side of the Potomac, and, on this side, myself alone.
IT IS DIFFICULT NOT TO SMILE with a bittersweet pang in reading the letters between my father and John Adams, exchanged in the twilight of their lives. My husband couldn’t fathom how Papa could set aside political acrimony to resume the old friendship, but those were happy years at Monticello, and harmony was our pursuit and our reward.
My bed at Monticello was an alcove, and I slept snug and toasty between my husband’s body and the wall. In the morning, the warm light of dawn spilled from the windows near the floor. They were double-paned; they never leaked. And everything in our sky-blue bedroom was neat and clean, which had a decidedly happy effect on my mood.
“Good morning,” Tom said, his breath warm on the back of my neck, his hand gently cupping my belly under blankets that smelled of lavender.
I knew what he wanted, and his touch ignited something inside me, too, but I feared another child. “Tom, it’s so early.”
“The rooster’s already crowed,” he protested, nuzzling my shoulder. “Besides, I’m riding for Edgehill straightaway this morning. I’ve a long day ahead of me.”