America's First Daughter: A Novel(138)
Days later, I gave birth to the very first baby ever born in the president’s mansion. A boy, at last. And Tom had no objection to the name that would give Dolley the most pleasure: James Madison Randolph.
“A son,” my husband kept saying, as if astonished that it’d finally come to pass. At long last, Jeff had a little brother. And we were happy.
For a brief, enchanted winter in the spacious rooms of the President’s House, we forgot our troubles in Virginia. I hosted nearly sixty-three dinners at my father’s side, including one before the day I gave birth and one after. But when I couldn’t be there to soothe partisan tempers, my daughter Ann was there in my place—more beautiful and less sarcastic than me in every way. And I made certain she was aware that every dinner and every lady’s tea was a mission to beat back the calumny heaped upon Papa’s head by his enemies.
“Have you seen this?” my father’s new secretary asked, timidly offering me a clipping from some newspaper. “I apologize for bringing something so indelicate to your attention but—”
“You did quite right to show me,” I said, burning to read the filthy poem.
The patriot, fresh from Freedom’s councils come,
Now plea’d retires to lash his slaves at home;
Or woo, perhaps, some black Aspasia’s charms,
And dreams of freedom in his bondmaid’s arms.
There was a cartoon, too, called “A Philosophic Cock.” A drawing of my father as a French rooster and Sally as his hen. All part of a campaign to tarnish his image as a devoted father, doting grandfather, and father of this nation.
I went straight to Papa with it in a flash of temper, stunned to hear him laugh. “How can you laugh at this, Papa?”
“What else is there to be done? It’s demeaning. It’s petty. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the business of the country. And they’re spilling their ink on it while Republicans trounce them in every election. Unless you think I should call them out onto a field of honor, there’s nothing to do but laugh.”
Soothed, I gave a soft smile. “We’re done with pistols now, aren’t we?”
He stood, still tall and straight, grasping my hand. “Yes, we’re done with pistols now.”
But in that, we couldn’t have been more mistaken.
Chapter Thirty-one
Washington, 23 June 1806
From Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph Jr.
Should they lose you, seven children, all under the age of discretion and down to infancy would be left without guide or guardian but a poor broken-hearted woman, doomed herself to misery the rest of her life. And should her frail frame sink under it, what is to become of them? The laws of dueling are made for lives of no consequence; not for fathers of families. Let me entreat you then, my dear Sir, take no step in this business but on the soberest reflection.
A SHADOW OF DEATH hung over us that summer in Virginia. A neighbor was found dead in his carriage—he’d drunk himself to death. More devastating was the murder of Papa’s law teacher, Judge Wythe, whose jealous nephew poisoned him, his manumitted black housekeeper, and her freeborn mulatto son—to whom Judge Wythe intended to leave his fortune.
The judge lived only long enough to tell physicians, “I am murdered.” The nephew stood trial, but black witnesses weren’t permitted to testify—not even the housekeeper who survived the poisoning. And the villain had been promptly acquitted.
Papa took it hard.
Not only, I think, because he’d lost a friend and justice was thwarted. But also because it was a repudiation of Judge Wythe and Mr. Short’s idealistic dreams of racial coexistence in Virginia. A warning almost tailor-made to discourage my father from bringing Sally and their children out from the shadows.
And then, of course, there was Randolph of Roanoke. Was there ever a more deranged example of Virginia gentry in decay? The spiteful creature had singled out my family to torment. In protest of my father’s programs for public education, canals, bridges, and roads, he broke with the Republicans to create a brand-new political party called the Quids. And when that didn’t achieve his aims, he provoked a quarrel with my husband on the floor of Congress.
Admittedly, Tom had been rash, putting himself forth as a more true patriot, and when his apology was deemed insufficient, adding, “Lead and steel make more proper ingredients in serious quarrels.”
Sensing an opportunity to provoke two very public men to duel, the papers took sides, spilling a barrel of ink on the subject. The National Intelligencer defended Tom while the Richmond Enquirer championed John Randolph. And the dangerous intensity of my husband’s temper sent all the children fleeing whenever he entered a room. They knew to stay out of their father’s way while he paced, fulminating at every new accusation.
I didn’t blame my husband for his anger, truly I didn’t. I felt certain John Randolph had been trying to goad my husband into a duel for a very long time. I only wished Tom wasn’t so easy to goad.
“It’s because of me,” Nancy said, packing up her meager belongings. “If I’m not living here, John might leave my brother alone.”
I think she hoped I’d stop her, reassure her that she was mistaken in leaving us, but she had the right of it. “Where will you go?”
“To Richmond,” Nancy said. “We have other relations there. I’ll go visiting for a time and see about seeking employment as a housekeeper there.”