America's First Daughter: A Novel(90)
Tom lifted me up, clasping me against him, spinning me round, and in our joy, we left Bizarre plantation without suspecting a thing.
Monticello, 9 September 1792
From Thomas Jefferson to President George Washington
I was duped by the Secretary of the treasury and made a tool for forwarding his schemes, not then sufficiently understood by me; and of all the errors of my political life this has occasioned me the deepest regret. That I have utterly, in my private conversations, disapproved of the system of the Secretary of the treasury, I acknowledge. His system flows from principles adverse to liberty, and is calculated to undermine and demolish the republic.
The summer just before he wrote this letter, Papa returned to Monticello in a state of agitation, telling of all the indignities he’d suffered at the hands of the cunning and ambitious secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton.
At dinner—a meal put together with the freshest vegetables from my new garden—my husband asked, “What kind of fool is this Mr. Hamilton?”
My father set down his spoon and mopped sweat off his brow with a napkin. The infernal heat of that summer had been so stifling that we hadn’t been able to sleep comfortably even with every door and window open. But it wasn’t the heat that vexed him. “The secretary of the treasury is no kind of fool at all. He is a colossus.”
Never had I heard of my father speak of a man this way. Half in awe, half in mortal dread. And because there was a crowd at our table, including my Carr cousins, in thrall with his every word, my father continued. “We are daily pitted in the cabinet like two cocks.” Papa shook his head and pushed away his plate. “I’ve confronted the president, who assures me there are merely desires but not designs for a monarchy.”
A moment of appalled silence fell upon the table as we considered the president’s most unsettling—and scarcely reassuring—reply. None of us wanted to believe our liberty to be in so much danger, but Papa’s sense of betrayal at the way his compatriots had twisted the revolutionary spirit to which he’d best given voice was clear. And seemingly warranted.
“What will you do?” Tom asked, his brow furrowed and eyes serious.
“I’ll resign.” Before anyone could protest, Papa added, “No man has ever had less desire of entering into public offices than me. Only the war induced me to undertake it. Twice before I’ve refused diplomatic appointments until a . . . domestic loss . . . made me fancy a change of scene. Now I want nothing so much as to be at home.”
A domestic loss.
Papa still couldn’t speak of it, I realized. Even in the privacy of his home, even so near to the anniversary of her death, he couldn’t speak of my mother’s passing except as a domestic loss.
I forced a smile and chirped, “We’ll be so happy to have you home for good, Papa. We’ll be together. Everything we always wanted.” And, at long last, it would be everything Mama had always wanted, too.
Of course, I had no way of ensuring that would come to pass without my husband’s consent. But Colonel Randolph had finally agreed to sell Edgehill to us, and I believed, deep in my heart, that Tom would be happier living nearer to my father than his own.
I became more sure of it in early August when we received news that Colonel Randolph’s wife had given him a brand-new baby. A boy named Thomas Mann Randolph—same as my husband.
If I hadn’t hated Colonel Randolph before that moment, I did then, because Tom took it hard, like a bullet to the heart.
It wasn’t uncommon to name a baby after a sibling . . . if they’d died. From which Tom inferred that his father wished he’d never been born. “I’ve been erased,” Tom said, staring bleakly out the open parlor window with a glass of liquor dangling precariously from one hand. Then he drained it, his throat working hard to swallow the poison down. “Replaced.”
With the imminent birth of our own new baby, I was too overcome by my belly and the stifling August heat to rise swiftly up from my chair to comfort him. It was Papa who put a hand on Tom’s shoulder and said, “Nursing this wound can’t remedy the evil, and may make it a great deal worse. Don’t let it be a cankerworm corroding eternally on your mind. Forgive your father, because Colonel Randolph surely meant nothing but to indulge his new wife in this.”
That was putting a shine on manure, and my husband surely knew it.
But then my father added, “You have your own family now, and a new baby to arrive any day. How can anything cloud the joy of that? If you have your wife and children, you have the keystone to the arch of happiness.”
Tom looked down for a long moment. He gave a single nod, but I didn’t miss the sadness that deadened his eyes. And despite my father’s attempt to comfort Tom and make him see all the things he had around him, I feared it was a wound from which my husband might never recover.
I worried over it until my son was born a few weeks later, fearing even as I held him in my arms that Tom would name the child after Colonel Randolph, either from tradition or from provocation, and make his own wound even deeper. But taking our cherub into his own strong arms, Tom proudly named him, “Thomas Jefferson Randolph. We’ll call him Jeff for short.”
I gasped with delight, knowing how much it would please Papa. “Oh, Tom!”
“You’ll be the only one with that name,” Tom promised the boy as he hugged him close against his broad chest. Then little Ann came running into the room to hug Tom’s knees. Chuckling, Tom settled his big hand on Ann’s head and smiled down at her. “You’re a big sister now, Miss Randolph.”