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.
Chapter Thirty-four
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.
MY 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.