“MADEMOISELLE JEFFERSON, WOULD you do me the honor of a dance?” The question was put to me in the opulent gilded ballroom, following a regal bow, by the Marquis de Lafayette. He was, at that time, an elegant man of thirty-one, at the height of his power and his beauty. The heroic soldier, who was no less handsome for the long slope of his forehead beneath his powdered wig, had rescued us from the British when I was but a child. Now he rescued me again by singling me out for attention at my debut, and I couldn’t help but wonder if Papa had put him up to it.
In the days after my withdrawal from the convent, Papa undertook what I believed to be a campaign to distract me from my desire to take my vows. He gifted me with a gold watch on a chain. He arranged for riding lessons so that we could ride together as we used to, just the two of us. And he spent three hundred francs on new ball gowns for my coming-out during the social season, jesting that I would be limited to only three balls a week. . . .
Already bewitched by the glow of the many candles burning in glittering crystal chandeliers overhead, my friends giggled and exclaimed in wonder behind their fans. All evening, we’d been gathered against a wall of gilded paintings, watching ladies and lords pass us by in powdered wigs and swishing petticoats. The Tufton sisters wore matching pink brocade and Marie a patterned dark blue silk with lace frothing at her elbows. I towered above my friends in shimmering bronze, my hair styled in a wild halo of red curls, a braid looped behind, all ornamented with ribbons and peacock feathers.
To Lafayette, I curtseyed my gratitude and acceptance. “Merci.”
On the dance floor, we circled one another with intricate footwork, touching hands, then retreating. When we came together with the music, the aristocrat said, “I should envy you for your graceful dancing, Mademoiselle. Yet, because I’m dancing with you, I am the envy of every man on the floor.”
I didn’t know how to reply to such courtly flattery, except by blushing furiously.
When the music next brought us close, Lafayette insisted, “Send my regards to your father. I see too little of him of late . . . and I hear disturbing rumors that he intends to return to Virginia.”
I didn’t want to confirm it, in part because I didn’t want it to be so myself. Instead, I smiled as if I hadn’t heard over the music.
When the dance was done, Lafayette led me back to my friends, saying, “Tell your papa I’ll call upon him soon. Mr. Jefferson is still very much needed here in Paris, where his revolution remains undone. In my study, I have a copy of his Declaration of Independence in half a frame. The other half of the frame is empty. One day, with his help, it will house a Declaration of French Rights and they’ll stand side by side, like proud brothers. Like France and America. Like your father and me.”
Ordinarily, a man’s importance can be judged only by the pas sage of time. But in those years of convulsive political change, we knew we walked amongst living legends, and my father was one of them. That’s why Lafayette’s worshipful words echoed long after our dance, a lingering reminder that my father had never belonged only to me, or to me and my sisters, or even to my mother. . . .
His true mistress had always been the Revolution.
The Republic.
The Enlightenment.
Given that profound calling, and all the people who looked to my father for inspiration, was it really so silly or selfish that I desired a calling of my own? I couldn’t help but wonder. And yet, as much as I still thought about my desire to take my vows, I very much enjoyed French society.
As the daughter of a foreign minister, I was welcomed into the highest circles. As an American, I was a curiosity, which garnered me invitations to many balls. I accepted them all, and not only because I loved to dance. I also went because the ballroom reunited me with my bosom friends from the convent. We filled our cards, danced late into the night, and dined past midnight, returning home at unorthodox hours. Marie flirted with gentlemen by dangling her white gloves and taught me to fend them off with a slow wave of my fan. Together, we mastered the subtle language of the ballroom in which entire conversations took place in gestures.