THE GOVERNOR’S MANSION WAS A MESS. My husband had been living like a lonely bachelor. Everything was in disorder, windows unwashed, carpets unshaken. I couldn’t find a square inch of the place not coated in a layer of dust. That was the first thing I set right that Christmas season. Then, of course, was the matter of sociability.
Tom was thought to be an irascible hermit by Virginia legislators, so I determined we’d make the rounds of parties and dinners and holidays balls. I acquired for these functions a beautiful white crepe robe, a lace turban and ruff, and looked fashionable for the first time in more than a decade.
I’d played the part of first lady for my father. Now I played that role for Tom. I went with him to academic lectures, to see an exhibit of jaguars and elephants, and together we strolled the cobblestone streets where we might be noticed by newspapermen. On his arm, I smiled so persuasively I almost convinced myself that we were happy.
But that illusion came unraveled after a supper at the Governor’s Mansion one evening in early December. “Your turban is very becoming,” said a courtly gentleman, David Campbell, a dashing man of great political future, who knew my husband from their service during the war. “It’s as though you mean to become the incarnation of Dolley Madison.”
I smiled, flattered. “I can think of no better lady to emulate.”
“Can’t you? I suppose you hope to be as popular.”
I sensed in him some hostility, and wondered at his angle. “I hope to be anything that will do honor to my husband.”
Mr. Campbell sipped coolly from his glass. “You’re going to get him reelected.”
I smiled more brightly. “Oh, Governor Randolph’s own conduct will secure his reelection for him, not mine. His ideas are right-thinking, courageous, and worthy of the greatest consideration.”
Mr. Campbell raised a brow. “You’re going to stand loyally beside him? I suppose you owe him that much.”
My head tilted as I tried to form a genial reply. “As do all his friends.”
“It wasn’t his friends who destroyed his military career.”
My smile froze upon my face, so shocked was I to be confronted on such a matter. “I beg your pardon, sir.”
Mr. Campbell’s eyes were cold, though he spoke with a chuckle. “You ought to beg your husband’s pardon.”
I had begged my husband’s pardon. I’d begged it a hundred times. But never did I think Tom would confide our troubles to an outsider, especially when no one need ever have known that I took part in his reassignment. Tom might have spared himself the greater part of the humiliation he felt if only he’d kept quiet about it!
But alas, self-command was never one of Tom’s virtues. And in that moment, I feared it wasn’t going to be mine. “Mr. Campbell, during my visit I’ve become acquainted with a number of rare creatures. They’re my favorite curiosities. So I’m afraid you must excuse me, as I’m in search of that rare creature still left in Richmond called a gentleman.”
With that, I left him.
Mr. Campbell later wrote that I was cold, vain, and sarcastic.
But I was satisfied, there in the crowded gallery on the cold winter day when my husband was reelected to the governorship, feeling within myself a stoic satisfaction in my duty well done.
Would that I could’ve been as effective when it came to my husband’s policies. Papa had worked the levers of power with geniality and personal charm, but he’d always properly gauged the public mood. I remembered a time no gentleman of Virginia would ever advocate for slavery, even if none of them took steps to change it. But that was all changed now within a generation. My husband’s proposal to emancipate the slaves was met with fierce and bitter opposition, even though it promised to compensate slave owners for the loss of their property. No matter what Tom said to the legislators and no matter what I said to their wives, our efforts to cleanse Virginia of slavery fell upon deaf ears.
For Virginians now argued that slavery was a moral good, encouraged by the Bible. I thought it had more to do with the fact they were discovering that slaves were more than an asset in and of themselves; they could be bred. They could be bred for sale to barbarous plantations in Georgia and South Carolina. Though Tom was ready to empty the state’s treasury to bring about an end to the evil, the gentry resisted the antislavery movement as nothing but northerners bent on consolidating power by taking advantage of the virtuous feelings of the people.
I was ashamed of Virginia that year.
Tom’s proposal would’ve failed even if my father had supported it. But because it failed without Papa’s support it further embittered Tom.