Instead, I went to my father and said, “We must arrange for her burial.”
“Our poor, dear Ann.” My father wept. “My little garden fairy. I’ll never see flowers again but with her in heaven. Though now, heaven seems to be overwhelming us with every form of misfortune, and I expect the next will give me the coup de grace.”
I couldn’t hear it, couldn’t accept how frail and dispirited and heartbroken my father was, because I needed him now as I’d perhaps never needed him before. “Send for Bankhead.”
My father cried, indignant, “Charles?”
“Yes.” My mind was quite made up. “Send for Bankhead and ask him to bring the children and Ann’s best dress.”
“Surely a servant—”
“We must send for Bankhead,” I insisted again, speaking to my father with a commanding tone I’d never employed before, and scarcely recognized within myself. “We must welcome him home to bury his wife. We must offer hope at reconciliation after so many bitter years. We must elicit from him a warm glow of gratitude in his grief and guilt. And in the moment he’s most vulnerable, we must ask him to leave the children with us.”
I said this with perfect clarity of mind and terrible resolve. I wouldn’t lose Ann’s children as I’d lost Polly’s. And not to a man like Charles. I believed, sincerely and utterly, that even if we were fated to abject poverty, my grandchildren would still be better off with me than at the mercy of that drunk, violent monster.
I’d swallow down any poison to wrest Ann’s babies from her murderer. And so I felt no compunction in demanding cooperation from the family. “The natural consequence of our having the children will be a reconciliation with their father. When Bankhead arrives, there’ll be no accusations, no recriminations, no coolness to him in any respect. We’ll smile at him and make up our quarrel—even you, Jeff.”
Something in my voice, something in my dry eyes, seemed to frighten the family into perfect obedience. And when the slaves shoveled dirt over my daughter’s grave, Charles sank to his knees by Ann’s grave, trembling, and retching in guilt and grief. There was no hope for Ann and there was no hope for him. The only hope was that my grandchildren might be saved, so I did the most difficult thing I’d ever had to do in my life.
I forced myself to put a hand upon Bankhead’s accursed shoulder and offered him the solace and forgiveness that would bend him to my will. Then I whispered sweetly in the ear of my daughter’s murderer how her babies would be best left with me . . .
. . . until, at length, he agreed.
And I am not sorry for it to this day.
Chapter Forty-one
Monticello, 17 February 1826
From Thomas Jefferson to James Madison
If a lottery is permitted, my lands will pay everything. If refused I must sell every thing here and move with my family where I have not even a log-hut to put my head into. The friendship which has subsisted between us, now half a century, and the harmony of our political principles and pursuits, have been sources of constant happiness. To myself you have been a pillar of support through life. Take care of me when I’m dead and be assured that I shall leave with you my last affections.
I LEARNED THAT MY FATHER had concocted a lottery scheme from the newspaper. When I confronted him, holding Ann’s orphaned infant in my arms, Papa explained that one night, awake with painful thoughts, a solution to our financial problems came to him like an inspiration from the realms of bliss. “If the state legislature approves the plan, we’ll sell tickets all across the country for a chance to win some of my lands—the most beautiful and valuable property in Virginia. And the profits will save Monticello.”
My father was optimistic that the legislature would approve the scheme. The people had voted Lafayette a pension, he reasoned—they wouldn’t possibly deny a former president the chance to live out his days in comfort.
“Why, there’s every chance that in patriotic fervor, the government will burn all the tickets and simply make a gift to me of Monticello.”
I was too encouraged by my father’s revived spirits to tell him that his faith in his fellow citizens was misplaced. There’d be no bonfire of lottery tickets to honor my father’s service. Virginians would genuflect before my father the monument, but they wouldn’t pay one penny in taxes to support the man. It was against their creed, and so were lotteries. Now, more than ever, the state legislature was filled with ranters and evangelists who thought games of chance were a sin. And even if they approved a lottery, the one thing no one needed in Virginia was land.