America's First Daughter: A Novel(195)

Laura: Oh, William’s shaving kit was such a find! And exactly the kind of thing that made the visit to Monticello so valuable. We learned details not often remarked upon or recorded in the documentary record. Like how Patsy’s daughters made necklaces out of berries from the stinky chinaberry trees, how small the dining room is despite them somehow fitting in fifty guests during Lafayette’s reunion visit, and how Patsy’s bedroom overlooked Mulberry Row—which seemed so fitting and even symbolic given both her ambivalence about slavery and tendency to see things about the world that her father preferred to block out.

Steph: Yes, I remember staring out Patsy’s window, trying to see with her eyes. And I’m so glad that you brought up Patsy’s daughters, because we had another great find involving them. We really got a feel for their personalities in exploring the attic cuddy office that they fashioned for themselves in the eaves behind the dome room. There wasn’t a lot of privacy in that noisy house where children shared beds under sloped ceilings on the third floor, and where Jefferson’s unending stream of guests made demands on the family below. That Jefferson’s granddaughters wanted a place to themselves at the top of the house—even if they had to share it with the wasps—so that they could study instead of manage a household tells us a lot about them. And speaking of the top of the house, it was from this vantage point that we first realized just how far Tom Randolph’s own secluded study in the North Pavilion was. Patsy put him about as far away from her bedroom as she could get him when their marriage deteriorated, and we thought there was some significance in that.

Laura: We learned a lot about Tom from this trip, too, especially on our visit to Tuckahoe Plantation, the Randolph family seat near Richmond. From the moment we made the very long drive up the shadowy tree-lined driveway, Tuckahoe had a dark, heavy feeling that neither of us could shake. It was like the Randolph survived there despite the fact that four other families have lived in the house since. And, then, as if Tom was acknowledging our presence, right after we parked, a dust devil whipped up and slammed into the side of the car. We looked at each other and both offered Tom some acknowledgment right back!

Steph: We already knew, of course, that some very unhappy people had lived at Tuckahoe, and that dark and heavy mood was reflected in both the restored black walnut paneling in the house’s foyer and the false windows on the brick sides. But nothing illustrated the oddness of Tuckahoe more than the date etched into a pane of glass in what may have once been a sitting room. Our tour guide told us it was part of a family tradition where the Randolph girls would carve into the glass to prove their engagement rings were made of diamond. But there was only one date in the glass—March 16, 1789, the day Tom’s mother died. Back outside, Laura was all but scaling the facade to get a decent picture of that pane, because we came up with an alternate explanation pretty much on the spot: It was Nancy Randolph’s vindictive departing gesture to Gabriella Harvey.

Laura: That house left such a strong impression on us! And, as if all of that wasn’t strange enough—the Randolph cemetery lies within a totally enclosed brick wall with no gate or door and not a single Randolph burial is marked with a headstone, only a shared plaque on one of the walls. It’s possible the original cemetery was destroyed by natural elements long ago, but it gave us the impression that the Randolphs took no more care of one another in death than they had in life. So in spite of its beauty, Tuckahoe gave us a sad, heavy, troubled feeling that seemed to fit Tom so well—and maybe all the trauma and anger that existed within those walls helps explain the troubles Tom had. Tuckahoe definitely had a “feeling” that informed our writing.

Steph: And the difference at Monticello was noticeable. It’s important to remember that Jefferson spent a part of his childhood at Tuckahoe, which must have informed his ideas about what a great house should be. Though it sits on a bluff above the James River, Tuckahoe’s face is on a flat plain, everything about it exhibiting a bleak, near-militant control over the landscape. And yet, Monticello, by contrast, sits at the top of a mountain, where Jefferson’s fields, orchards, and roads are carved gracefully into the slopes, as if he were in a continuous negotiation with nature. From zigzag rooftop gutters that collected water in the cistern, to the fifty-mile view of the countryside, everything about Monticello seems to have sprung from a vision. It was a reminder that Jefferson strove to find a balance between his idealism and his sense of ruthless reality, not just on his plantation but in the vast nation unfolding below it. Sometimes he succeeded in that, and sometimes he didn’t.

Laura: Which brings us to one thing both sites had in common: the presence of spaces related to the history of slavery. Tuckahoe has one of the oldest remaining plantation streets in Virginia, complete with slave quarters, kitchen, smokehouse, storehouse, and stable. Archaeologists at Monticello have found the remains of numerous workshops and quarters, which are now marked, interpreted, and in some cases rebuilt for visitors to see. One cannot visit either plantation and forget that enslaved labor made the social life, economy, and business of these places possible. Mulberry Row was the heart of the enslaved community at Monticello. It was where countless boys began their labor in the nailery and where numerous women manufactured cloth in the textile factory. It was where the Hemings family had their cabins, and where Sally Hemings lived and raised her children—Jefferson’s children. Just imagining how Sally made her way each day to Jefferson’s chambers—either through the private spaces of his greenhouse or past the kitchen, under the south terrace, into the basement, and up the stairs that came to the first floor right outside his rooms—reinforced to us how slavery was both ubiquitous and hidden in plain sight, how some of the people who were most important to not only Patsy’s life but to the founding of this nation were hidden.