Page 18 of America’s First Daughter

Chapter Seventeen

S ALLY H EMINGS GAVE BIRTH TO A BOY .

A boy named after my father. A boy who was both my cousin and my brother—and neither. Here on my father’s secluded mountain, where Papa’s wishes reigned supreme, no one would ever acknowledge Sally’s boy as my father’s son unless he did. But the Hemingses were as tightly knit a family as ever lived. They all knew, which meant all the slaves knew. And probably some of our nearest neighbors, too.

But it wasn’t our only scandal.

Papa’s debts were such that he had to sell our mother’s favorite plantation—Elk Hill. He’d been forced to sell land. Land, which meant everything to a Virginia planter. Everything to him. And I understood that in his perilous financial situation, the only asset I had to contribute was myself.

I’d have to marry, and I’d have to marry well.

Given that my heart was already shattered to pieces, love need be of no consideration in my decision to marry. Sally’s words from that day in the foyer at the Hotel de Langeac played back to me. Women have to give hard thought to the men we’ll wind up with. . . . Her words held a relevance now that I couldn’t have known then, and it made me all the more regretful for the way I’d treated her.

So, yes, let my choice of husband be a wealthy man, but also a kind one. A country neighbor and friend. Someone with whom my family shared a history.

If I was to marry, why not Tom Randolph?

I could never hope for a man to see me the way William had, but Tom wanted me. And that would have to be enough.

I saw no reason to delay.

William and I had parted in September. It was now January of a new year, and he’d still not written to my father or me. William had waited two years before declaring that he’d wait no more. I doubted the young Mr. Randolph would wait that long. And if we didn’t marry soon, my father wouldn’t be there for the wedding, because William’s predictions had proved to be true—President Washington had, indeed, named my father secretary of state. And Papa’s friends, like Mr. Madison, convinced him that it was an honor he couldn’t refuse.

None of us would return to France. Instead, my father would ride off to the new capital to serve in the president’s cabinet before springtime and would send me and Polly to live at Eppington, where we’d learn housewifery from Aunt Elizabeth.

Or . . . I could marry now and be my own mistress. So, I accepted Tom’s proposal, and the wedding was planned a few weeks hence.

Tom never smiled at my answer. Instead, standing beneath the pillars of my father’s neglected house, he took my hands and crushed them to his chest so I might feel the throbbing pulse beneath my fingers to prove his happiness. “My heart is yours, Patsy. It’s racing for you. Galloping with eagerness to make you mine.”

I might’ve hesitated, in that moment, if my own heartbeat hadn’t answered in kind. “I’d like to know your plans for our future,” I said.

Tom nodded, his gaze serious. “My father is settling on me a plantation near Tuckahoe called Varina, with forty Negroes. Your father is settling on you his best plantation in Bedford and twenty-five Negroes, little and big.”

Slaves . My father was giving me slaves.

They wouldn’t be mine, of course, not truly. Everything would belong to my husband the moment we wed. Tom would be the slaveholder—not me. And I knew it was considered only right and proper for every genrty bride to be given not only a settlement like this, but also a maid. Usually the girl that had attended her during her youth and courtship. By all the traditions of our country, this was no more than Papa ought to have given me, plus Sally Hemings besides. But there was no question that he’d keep her for himself, just as he’d promised.

And I didn’t know how I should feel about any of it.

The idealism of France was an ocean away. I’d chosen Virginia and a way of life that William had said was stained with evil. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know what I was returning to. But faced now with it, I found myself more troubled than I ever thought I might be.

Tom must’ve seen the shadow of my conflicted emotions in my expression, but he mistook its cause. “Colonel Randolph intends for us to live at Varina, near Tuckahoe. But you’ve a right to know that isn’t my intention. I hope to buy my father’s holding at Edgehill and settle closer to Monticello. I’d like a small farm that I can manage myself while pursuing an honorable life of public service. I’ve no ambition to gobble up lands that can’t be farmed without an army of slaves. Such a life would weigh on my conscience more heavily than I could bear. Unlike my new brother-in-law, I don’t make wedding toasts to embarrass my hosts about the evils of the institution, but I cannot abide slavery, Miss Jefferson.” He frowned, the ferocity in those dark eyes softening until he seemed shamed. “I should’ve told you this before now. Though I’m violently smitten with you, I should never agree to start a life on a lie. So I consider it entirely pardonable if this revelation changes your mind about marrying me.”

For the first time, I kissed Tom Randolph with something more in my heart than carnal desire. I brought my lips to his with an exquisite tenderness and replied, “With all my heart, Tom, you’ve only made me more certain in my decision.”

O N A T UESDAY IN MID- F EbrUARY , wearing the bronze silk I wore to my first ball, I pledged my life to Tom Randolph under the watchful eyes of my father and all our country friends.

For music, my father hired the talented mixed-race Scott family to play. But my father’s mixed-race mistress and her son could have no place at my wedding. In France, if Sally had been a woman of any social standing, even as notorious courtesan, her presence might be expected. But here we hid her away in the slave cabins to care for her newborn out of sight of the guests.

In truth, I remember very little about my wedding day except for the way my father relinquished my hand to the groom, and I felt in that moment, a nearly unbearable tearing asunder.

More curious, I suppose, is how well I remember the wedding night .

Tom descended upon me like a storm, sweeping me up in the violent rapture of our coming together as man and wife. He wanted my love and I think some part of him believed he could squeeze it from me with the power of his hands alone. He was superbly athletic—elastic as steel—and his hands and body crowded out everything but basic animal instinct.

I was the daughter of a rational but passionate philosopher. I’d spent my life contemplating the debate between head and heart. But never before had I contemplated the demands of a ravenous body and the ecstatic escape to be found in surrendering to its appetite.

Tom’s lovemaking gave me a pleasure devoid of sentimentality, wrapping a thick gauze of self-delusion over still-bleeding wounds. His tireless passion was an opiate so potent that I became intoxicated on the power I had to arouse. He knew, I think, that though he’d married me, he hadn’t mastered me.

So he had to try again and again.

Thus, I awakened the next day, exhausted, dewy eyed, and a bit in awe that the impossibly handsome heir to Tuckahoe was, indeed, my husband.

Papa was delighted to see me smile. Polly was less so. While Papa took a measurement of the wall in the entryway to plan where he would display his natural artifacts, Polly said, “Well now that Patsy’s wedding is over, it’s so very dull here at Monticello.”

“Perhaps your new brother will take you riding,” Papa suggested, still pondering the space, as if he meant to tear it all out and start again.

My husband, eager to please my father or to win my sister’s affection, awkwardly promised he’d race Polly down the mountain and that if she lost, he’d give her a dunking in the pond. I could see that levity didn’t come easily to Tom, but I appreciated his effort. So did Polly, who dashed away to get a head start in their race. Then Tom followed.

Left alone with my father, I said, “When I complained of boredom at her age you gave me chores and lectured me on the dangers of ennui !”

“You think I coddle her,” Papa said, his tone light and amused before his expression became grave. “And I do. Because I realize now that I was far too exacting with you, Patsy.” He reached for my hand, squeezing it, his throat bobbing with emotion. “After your mother died—what did I know about bringing up children? You taught me more than I taught you, and I thought we’d have more time. If I’d realized how soon I was to lose my precious little girl, I’d have cherished every moment.”

“Papa,” I said, quite exasperated, an odd pressure behind my eyes. “You haven’t lost your precious little girl; she’s merely grown up.”

“If only that were true,” he said, pulling me close. “Having had yourself and dear Polly live with me so long, I’ll feel heavily the separation from you. But it consoles me to know that you’re happier now.” He patted my hand, clearing his throat to give sage advice. “Your new marriage will call for an abundance of little sacrifices. But they’ll be greatly overpaid by the affections they’ll secure you. The happiness of your life depends now on pleasing a single person. To this, I know all other objects must be secondary, even your love for me.”

Hearing sadness in his voice, I rushed to reassure him. “Oh, Papa. I’ll make it my study to please my husband and consider all other objects as secondary except my love for you.”

He smiled, sheepishly, as if it shouldn’t please him so much to hear it. “Neither you nor your husband can ever have a more faithful friend than me. Continue to love me as you’ve done, and render my life a blessing by the prospect that I may see you happy.” He kissed my cheek and smoothed it with his fingers. “Be assured of my constant and unchangeable love. Especially now that I must put such a burden on your shoulders. Polly, and Sally, and the little one—I’ll sleep easier knowing you’re looking after them for me while I’m away.”

“Sally?” I asked, more than a little confused.

My father’s smile tightened. “I can’t leave her to fend for herself. Better for Sally and the baby to stay under your watchful eye until I return. There’s no one but you that I trust with such a precious charge.”

Though he’d kept Sally from the house during my wedding, I’d seen them exchange looks, both tender and intimate. I’d seen, too, the gleam of pride in his eyes for Sally’s newborn boy—the son Papa had always wanted—and I’d feared that he’d take Sally to the capital, where such an arrangement might make him infamous. But now I understood that whether I lived here, or at my husband’s new plantation, I was still the guardian of Papa’s secrets.

Marriage did not—and would not—end my duty to protect my father.

Just like that, my resentments evaporated. “Oh, Papa,” I said, embracing his neck.

He patted my back. “My dear Patsy . . . But no, I suppose we must call you by your given name now. Martha, or, more properly, Mrs. Randolph.”

Hearing that name made me marvel anew that I was some man’s wife. But a little part of me grieved to think Patsy Jefferson was no more. A thing brought home to me most painfully that afternoon, when a letter finally arrived from William Short.

I found it left open at my father’s seat, a sure invitation to read it. And I pored over every line of William’s decidedly hurried scrawl, searching for my name. Instead, I found nothing but old news from France about how Lafayette bravely risked his life to save people from the angry mob. A part of me still longed to go back. To witness the struggle in the cause of liberty. But I’d made my choice.

And William Short had made his.

He closed the letter with a simple: Present my compliments to the young ladies. So I was just a young lady, now. The same to him as Polly. A daughter of his mentor. Which meant William could be no more than my father’s friend. Perhaps it was just as well.

For Patsy Jefferson had loved William Short.

Martha Jefferson Randolph would make herself feel nothing for him at all.

“I SN’T HE ADORABLE?” Polly asked, cuddling Sally’s infant son. “As sweet as an angel.”

Fortunately, no one at Tuckahoe looked askance at my sister sharing a bed in the dormitory with Sally, who they believed was her lady’s maid. And if Colonel Randolph or any of Tom’s family guessed the mewling baby was closer kin to us than any other Hemings, they didn’t say a word.

Papa had gone off to serve as secretary of state with James Hemings at his side, and Tom intended for us to stay with his family a few weeks before making the traditional round of honeymoon visits to all our friends and country neighbors. But I hoped our stay at Tuckahoe would be brief, because Colonel Randolph reigned over his family like an aging despot.

He cut my husband with casual insults. And the old man’s daughters—my new sisters—fared worse. Colonel Randolph spared hardly a glance for his littlest girls and left the older ones quaking in fear of his temper. Especially Nancy, who’d taken on the role of mistress of Tuckahoe for her widowed father. “Keep your pickaninny quiet,” Nancy snapped at Sally. “Or my father will rage at the noise.”

Seated with Polly on the divan, Sally looked up with only a flicker of indignant anger. In France she’d been an exotic beauty and cosseted mistress. Here in Virginia, she was just a slave again, and it must’ve been difficult for her to swallow down. Still, she did it, whispering a soft, “Yes, Miss Nancy.”

The next day, Nancy glanced nervously at Colonel Randolph’s retreating form. “We’ll take our tea in the garden when Judith visits. This way we won’t call attention to ourselves and give him a reason to scold us.”

“I’d rather take tea inside,” Polly complained. “Otherwise bees will buzz around our biscuits!”

Nancy huffed. “It’s a tea for ladies . You’ll take your biscuits in the kitchen with your maid.”

Though I bristled at Polly being excluded, I wanted desperately to be embraced by my husband’s family, so I didn’t raise a fuss. Still, I feared what I’d do or say if my father-in-law vented his temper on Polly, so I told her, “Keep out of the colonel’s way.”

Then I went with Nancy to meet her sister in the drive. When Judith stepped out of her husband’s carriage, she cried, “Why Martha! If I’d known you were going to marry my brother, I’d have waited to make it a double-wedding.”

Nancy scoffed, leading us to the tea table set up in the garden. “Oh, Judy. As if you could wait.” When Judith glared, she added, “I’m just saying you’re too vain to share your day with anyone else!”

“Well, I might have—” Judith broke off, stooping to pull some plants up by the root. “You’re a disaster as a housekeeper, Nancy. Just look what you’ve let happen to Mama’s herb garden. It’s overrun with weeds!”

Nancy cried, “How am I to know the difference between the herbs and weeds?”

Judith sniffed imperiously. “Well, if you paid attention to the medicinal arts instead of burying your nose in tawdry romance novels . . .”

I took my seat on a lawn chair, disheartened to hear the way my husband’s sisters bickered, smiling as though they were just teasing, but with a nasty undercurrent. And I was downright scandalized when Judith pointed to a patch of greenery and said, “If you’d had some clippings of that, Patsy, you wouldn’t have had to marry my brother in such haste.”

My mouth fell quite agape. “I beg your pardon?”

“Gum guaiacum,” Judy chirped. “Part of my mother’s special recipe for easing colic, but it’s also known to bring on a woman’s flow. So if you feared you were with child—”

“I beg your pardon,” I said, again, this time more sharply.

“Oh, don’t take offense,” Judith cooed. “You’re married now, and all the gossip in the world can’t undo that.”

With a flail of my hand that nearly upset the tea service, I cried, “What gossip?”

Judith put a hand to her hip. “You were scarcely betrothed to my brother a month. It’s only natural for everyone to speculate.”

“ Judy, ” Nancy said, in harsh reprimand.

“Oh, I’m not judging.” Judy lowered onto a seat beside me. “I confess I’m nothing short of pleased at the outcome. I always feared Tom would marry one of those pretty, empty-headed girls who titter behind their fans at the mere sight of him. I never thought he’d take a sensible bride. Why, Patsy, I don’t care how you landed my brother, only that you did! Never mind if people start counting back the months from when your first child is born.”

My first child. The thought of it nearly stunned me into silence. I knew, of course, it was the duty of a wife to give her husband children. But the reality that I might have a baby growing inside me hadn’t struck me until that very moment. Of course, if I was with child, there was nothing scandalous about it, and the gossips could count backward all they liked.

S ALLY’S BABY DIED AT T UCKAHOE .

One spring morning, Sally came to me in a panic, holding her infant against her breast. “He won’t suckle and he’s coughing something terrible.”

We went to Colonel Randolph for help, but he didn’t care one whit about a slave girl’s baby. He didn’t want to send for a doctor, and though there was a cupboard full of dried herbs and medicines, Nancy didn’t know what any of them were for.

Only my husband offered any real help. A student of science who had learned medicine at the University of Edinburgh, he put his ear to the little baby’s chest. By the fire in the front parlor, cramming his long body into a small rocking chair, he cradled the infant boy, trying to get him to suck at milk from a cloth. But whatever ailed Sally’s baby, the poor little boy wasted away fast. And when he stopped breathing, Sally gave a howl that echoed through that big plantation house like wind in a dead winter forest.

I’d never heard her make a sound like that. Never before or since. And in spite of the coolness between us since Paris, I found myself holding her tight in my arms, as if I could keep her from flying apart.

“Poor little baby,” Polly sobbed.

Poor little baby, indeed. My poor little cousin, brother, and neither. I was to look after him. Both him and Sally. Papa had entrusted them to me. Now my father’s son was gone without ever having become a man, and there was nothing we could ever say to comfort his mother.

Sally Hemings had returned to Virginia, to slavery, to this life—all for the sake of my father and this baby. Now my father was off serving the president and their baby was gone. She’d made choices she could never take back. Choices none of us ever could. And I had to fight off my own tears to stay strong for her and my sister both.

“What’s all this carrying on?” Colonel Randolph shouted when he heard our lamentations echoing throughout the halls. When Tom told him, his father snorted with a dismissive flick of his hand. “Put a buck on that girl in a few weeks and she’ll breed another.”

At those words, my chin snapped up. I gave Colonel Randolph a look that could’ve set his whole house on fire, hoping to make him ashamed of himself. It didn’t mean anything to him to see Sally in pain, but it meant something to us. It meant something to me.

Sensing a brewing rebellion in his parlor, Colonel Randolph snapped, “Do something about your womenfolk, Tom.” Then he stalked away.

Choked with tears, Sally asked, “Where will we bury my baby? Can’t leave him with strangers.”

Trying to take the tiny body from Sally, Nancy Randolph said, “He won’t know any different. Why, a little baby like this was only in this world for a few breaths. He won’t remember anything in heaven. It’ll be as if he was never here at all.”

My sister-in-law meant to comfort, but Sally recoiled from Nancy as if she were the devil. It was Tom who had to reason with her. “Sally, your boy won’t be buried amongst strangers. When my father passes on, I’ll be master of Tuckahoe and Patsy will be mistress here. We’ll be buried here and our children, too. With your baby nearby.”

That’s what it took to make Sally surrender her baby for burial. And I felt a flare of pride in my husband. He wasn’t good at laughter and levity—what he did best, he did in the dark—but there was a decency about him.

He said those words to ease the heart of a grieving mother. But when those words got back to Colonel Randolph, they did more damage than I could’ve imagined.

Maybe it was Nancy who ran telling tales, but it could’ve been any of the miserable souls in that big old house. Whoever reported the conversation must’ve made Tom’s words sound ugly and entitled, like we were wishing for Colonel Randolph’s demise.

That night in the dining room, my father-in-law eyed Tom over a glass of liquor and said, “You and your fancy new convent-educated wife have made yourselves quite at home here at Tuckahoe.”

“We’re very grateful for your hospitality, sir,” Tom replied, stiffly. “Now that the snows are gone, we’ll take Miss Polly to Eppington and make our rounds.”

Colonel Randolph threw back a gulp of the amber liquid and gestured to a slave to refill his goblet, then he held out his hands, as if in question. “When Mr. Jefferson asked you to call on his relations, did he leave you any horses to take you there or did he expect you to take mine?”

An awkward tension, one that was sadly common at Tuckahoe, settled over the room like the air growing heavy before a storm. Tom swallowed. “I suppose with all the excitement of the wedding, we didn’t give it much thought.”

Colonel Randolph sneered. “Well, that is a conundrum for you then, isn’t it?”

It wasn’t about the horses. And to this day, I’d argue that it wasn’t even about our sense of presumption. The truth was, that for some reason I could never surmise, nothing Tom or his siblings ever did satisfied or pleased that old man.

“Your new father-in-law is the sort of man who assumes every thing will all work out,” Colonel Randolph continued. “Sunny disposition, those Jeffersons. But ice water in their veins.”

It was an insult. To me, to my father, and to Tom. For a moment, I thought my husband might actually raise a fist to his father; instead, an emotional chill settled between father and son beyond even that which was there before.

Tom was still seething by the time we went to bed. “We’re moving to Varina, straightaway.”

“Aren’t we going visiting at Eppington?” I asked, pouring water into a basin to wash my face and hands.

“Your sister and Sally can stay there, but we’re going to Varina to make a home. Better than relying upon the generosity of my father one more day!”

I wondered if Tom had given this plan enough thought. I didn’t know if there was time to get crops in the ground at Varina. I didn’t even know if there was a habitable home there, and without my sister or a maid, what would I do? Why, the only things James Hemings had taught me to cook were French delicacies. “I’m very much averse to this plan. I thought you intended to buy Edgehill from your father and settle near Monticello?”

“My father’s in no mood to sell anything to me right now,” Tom snapped. “And I didn’t ask your opinion on the matter.”

I’d lived too long with Frenchwomen to lower my eyes and apologize for daring to have thoughts on the matter of where I should live. But I didn’t want to quarrel. So I used the charms I’d learned in the ballrooms of Paris, and the more natural ones I was only beginning to discover in myself. “Well, if you find it necessary to go to Varina,” I began, crawling into bed and reaching for him under the blankets, “I will, of course, comply.”

“Yes,” he said, gruffly, touching his nose to mine. “You will.”

But the touch of my fingers turned the heat of his anger into a different kind of heat, which I found gratifying. Tom was an ardent lover, easily distracted by pleasure. So I forced a wide, sweet smile. “It’s my desire and duty, after all, to please you.”

The edge of Tom’s anger melted away as he glanced at me from beneath lowered lids. “You do, Mrs. Randolph. You please me very well.”

Later, spent of seed and rage, he laid his head back on the pillow and spoke softly. Regretfully. “I shouldn’t have been harsh with you. It’s only . . . I’ll always be a boy under his roof, Patsy. That’s why we have to go to Varina. Can’t stay here another day or it’ll come to blows.”

It seemed an exaggeration, but I suppose family quarrels never look the same from the outside as they do from within. I was only starting to understand the Randolphs; I wasn’t privy to the thousands of injuries they’d done one another, real and imagined. It just seemed to me a silly quarrel over horses between a controlling father and his headstrong son.

Would that it had been.

The next morning, I found Sally staring out the window in the direction of the woods where we put her baby in the ground. An unmarked grave at the edge of the tree line—not far from the Randolph family cemetery—where the ground was carpeted in blue wildflowers.

Softly, I asked, “Should I write to Papa?”

Her eyes still vacant with shock and grief, Sally gave a quick shake of her head. “I’ll get word to him through my brothers.”

I’m ashamed to say how relieved I was to hear it, because I didn’t have the first idea of how to tell my father. That was the way of it in Virginia; for all the things we never said aloud, there were even more we never put to paper.

So when next I wrote Papa, I sent him only reassurances of my love. I wanted to say more, because something felt terribly wrong about this silence. But in the end, that’s all I wrote.