The Women Jefferson Loved by Virginia Scharff

Author:Virginia Scharff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

Part IV

PATSY AND POLLY

Chapter 19

Patsy and Polly

THOMAS JEFFERSON WAS a little nervous about running the Department of State. The United States of America was a frail, fledgling nation, facing a Europe in turmoil and rebellion in the American backcountry. He had only one previous experience with an executive position, as governor of Virginia during the Revolution. That time his public and private lives had crashed together with bloody fatality, bringing him disgrace and misery. He told George Washington that1 “when I contemplate the extent of that office, embracing as it does the principal mass of domestic administration, together with the foreign, I cannot be insensible of my inequality to it: and I should enter on it with gloomy forebodings from the criticism and censures of a public just indeed in their intentions, but sometimes misinformed and misled.” In an ideal world, he would be free to enjoy the fruits of his farm, the labors of his field hands, and the attentions of his family in uninterrupted harmony. But Washington had nominated him. He could not refuse.

Before he went off to do his duty, he meant to settle his family according to his desires. He counted on Patsy and Polly to give him love and comfort, just as surely as he relied on the Hemingses to lay out his clothes, build his fires, clean his house, carry his messages, shell his peas, and fricassee his chickens. He wanted his daughters and their families close by.

He expected his domain to be a peaceful place, but by no means a democracy. At Monticello he ruled as a benevolent patriarch over people whose loyalty should be beyond question. He would be guided by his loving concern for their best interests, and they would understand that to obey him was to return that loving care. Much as he lamented the distance between his home and his political life, he believed that keeping the private separate from the public was the only way to ensure the safety and happiness of his women, his children, his family, his people.

The reality no more resembled Jefferson’s ideal than an unripe persimmon resembles a perfect pear. He left behind a house at Monticello fallen into disrepair, a farm in general neglect, and a scattering of underproducing plantations in Albemarle, Bedford, Goochland, and Cumberland counties. Hundreds of people depended on him, from his daughters and his mistress to his house servants and his field workers. He in turn depended on them to look after his property, to pay his bills with their labor, or to support themselves by finding work elsewhere, until he summoned them back. One of those people was pregnant with his child, or perhaps had already given birth. His two daughters and new son-in-law, meanwhile, were trying to find their place in a world all three had left years before.

THOMAS MANN RANDOLPH, Jr.2, was an intellectual and an aspiring scientist who had seen something of the world. He had spent the years between 1784 and 1788 at the

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