America's First Daughter: A Novel(180)
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.
We could hope patriots in other parts of the nation were hungrier for it, but I was afraid to hope. My life had become such a tissue of privations and disappointments that it was impossible to believe any of my wishes would be gratified, or if they were, not to fear some hidden mischief flowing from their success.
And on the day Jeff delivered the news we hoped would be our salvation, he was as ashen as the day Bankhead stabbed him. He came in from the drizzly cold, tracking mud on the floor from his riding boots, and we went together to knock on my father’s door. Where Sally was, I couldn’t guess, but Burwell let us in, leading us to Papa, seated at his desk, his legs raised up to keep the blood in them, squinting through his spectacles as he tried to write with his own withered hand.
Jeff cleared his throat. “The lottery has been approved with a condition that Monticello must be the prize.”
Papa went white from his snowy white hair to the tips of his fingers. So white I feared he’d become a statue before my eyes. His lottery scheme had been meant to save our home, but might prove to be no better than if we’d auctioned it off. When Papa finally spoke, he asked, “That’s the only way?”
Jeff nodded, scarcely able to meet his grandfather’s eyes. “You’d be able to live here until your death, and my mother until hers. But after that, Monticello will pass out of the family. I need to know what answer to carry back to Richmond.”
My father swallowed. Removed his spectacles. Set down his pen.
“I need some time to think and consult with your mother,” he said.
Jeff pulled a chair for me then found one for himself.
My father stopped him. “Only your mother.”
There was a moment—a heartbeat of confusion—before Jeff nodded, and went out. Then Papa and I were alone together. We sat together in silence for a time.
Papa finally said, “I never believed it could come to this.”
It’s only a house, I wanted to say. But I knew better. “We’ll manage somehow—”
He stopped me midthought, bringing my hand to his lips. “I’ve been in agony watching you sink every day under the suffering you endure, literally dying before my eyes. Do you remember, Patsy, when we first started playing music together?”
I smiled a bittersweet smile, remembering Paris, where I had learned to play the harpsichord. Where we’d made music together. And where I played for him when he could no longer play, due to his enfeebled hand. “Oh, yes. I remember all our duets.”
“I have been hearing them, lately. In my sleep. Realizing that my whole life has been, in some sense, a song that could never be sung without you. There is almost nothing I’ve ever been that I could’ve been without my dear and beloved daughter, the cherished companion of my early life, and nurse of my old age. And your children as dear to me as if my own from having lived with me from their cradle . . . that’s why I leave it all to you.”
Unless the lottery wildly surpassed our expectations, there’d be nothing to leave, I thought. And worse, anything he gave to me would be taken by Tom’s creditors. “Papa, Tom’s debt’s—”
“I’ll settle the remains of my estate upon Jeff to hold in trust for your sole and separate use, until your husband’s death, in which case the property should go to you as if you were a femme sole.”
This would shield everything from Tom’s creditors, but was also an acknowledgment, at long last, that I needed no man to rule over me. And as if to underline his trust, he said, “I’ll need you to look after Sally.”