was the way things ought to be on a gentleman’s estate in Virginia.
Plenty of cider cooling ready to be sent posthaste up to the dining
room, riding Mister Tom’s dumb-waiter. Women running up and down the
steep, narrow curving stairways at either end of the house carrying
pitchers of hot water and clean sheets, and heating irons in the rooms
below to press voluminous dresses for the young misses. Trula, the
laundress, kept a whole row of sadirons heating on the hearth of her
little brick-floored room, and in the warming kitchens were rows of
clean scrubbed bricks heating too, ready to be wrapped in flannel and
carried upstairs should some members of the family find the clean linen
sheets too icy for their feet.
Mr. Jack Eppes had come riding up from Eppington, bringing a haunch of
venison that he had hung for days to tender it, and now it was turning
slowly on a great iron spit, with a half-grown Negro boy sitting by with
a mop of clean lint to dip into melted fat and wine vinegar whenever the
meat needed basting. For days the service yard had been full of
squawkings and drifting feathers as the women killed and dressed turkeys
and geese. A fat ham simmered, and plump plum puddings boiled and
bubbled, with sauce being beaten up in earthen bowls.
“This here now,” stated Burwell, pompously, “is going to be a
sure-enough Christmas.”
All the fine china had been taken down from the cupboards and washed,
and every wineglass on the place rubbed to a shine. Burwell himself had
polished the silver, not trusting any other servant to that special task
because Mister Tom wanted things right when he took a fancy notion.
Right now he had the notion and had it through and through.
Cayce, the new young body servant Burwell was training, was pressing his
master’s new wool pantaloons and the old Negro stood by, supervising and
grumbling.
“Old times in Washington,” he declared, “Mister Tom wouldn’t be seen in
old plain long-leg breeches like them there. Up there we got him up all
dandified in white satin knee breeches and long silk stockings and a
swingy-tail coat. Ruffles all starched.—Boy, did he strut! ‘Mister
President!’ everybody say, and bow, and some ladies scrooch way down
till they petticoats lay all out on the floor. Won’t see no more times
like that. But anyhow, we puttin’ the big pot in the little one, this
Christmas.”
“He got Dely ironing a ruffled shirt right now,” insisted Cayce, “but he
say he ain’t wearin’ no buckle shoes. They hurt his feet. Dunno how I
git them old slippers off’n him, but Miss Patsy say I got it to do.”
The young Randolphs and Carrs and Francis Eppes, all red-cheeked and
excited, were running in and out of the house, lugging in branches of
cedar and pine and holly, scattering needles and berries and trash over
the shining floors so that two women had to follow around with brooms
and mops to shine up to suit Miss Patsy. But in the library, where a
great fire burned under the mirrored mantel and bookshelves mounted to
the ceiling on every wall, Thomas Jefferson sat in his revolving chair
and looked long into the gold and scarlet leap of the flames.
His thin legs were clothed in a disreputable old pair of homemade
linsey-woolsey breeches, his woolen stockings sagging around his ankles.
His daughter looked at him and sighed, forbearing to nag at him, since
he had promised to be properly and elegantly dressed for the Christmas
dinner.
“I wish he’d dress up,” she murmured to her daughter, Ann. “Aunt Anna
will be driving in soon and whenever he looks shabby and uncared for,
Aunt Anna always looks at me as though it were my fault.”
“Let him be,” urged Ann. “He’s old, Mother, and tired and he has earned
the right to do as he pleases in his own house. At least he is letting
us have a real Christmas, so maybe people will stop saying Thomas
Jefferson is a great man but that he is also a heathen.”
“Do they say things like that, Ann?” asked her mother anxiously. “Surely
not.”
“I’ve heard them. So has Jeff. So I asked him straightway this morning,
‘Grandfather, do you really believe in God?’”
“And what did he answer?”
“He didn’t speak at all till he had taken me by the arm and led me over
to that long window. Then he pointed at the far mountains and there was
a cloud lying on top with a little touch of sun like gold shining over
it. ‘Did any man make that?’ he asked me. Then he went back to his book
again and never looked up.”
“At least you have your answer. Daughter, a great man is like a pillar
that stands a little higher than the commonalty. There is always an itch
in the crowd of lesser humanity to throw rocks and mud at it. It was the
new laws he wrote for Virginia that started that infidel canard. The law
freed the people of the state from being taxed to support the Church. It
left them free to worship and pay tithes where they pleased, and
naturally the bishops and other clergy resented it. So the story was
circulated that Thomas Jefferson had no religion, and to my knowledge he
has never spoken one word to refute that libel.”
“He disdained to answer it, Mother. He knew what he was and what he
believed and to his mind it was no concern of any one else. He was
Jefferson who belonged to the people, but what was in his heart and mind
belonged only to himself. Now, at Monticello, he belongs to himself and
he is just learning how to live with himself.”
Martha sighed as she bent to rescue a falling pine cone that had
shattered down on the hearth. “The children haven’t secured these
wreaths very well,” she remarked, “and that one in the drawing room is
hung too low. The fire will dry it out and it might begin to burn. I’ll
tell Burwell to do something about it. Ever since Shadwell burned before
ever father was married, he has been uneasy about fire. He lost all his
precious books and papers then and nothing was saved but his fiddle.”
“I wish he’d play again,” sighed Ann. “I’ve never heard him since I was
very small.”
“He and my mother played together constantly,” Martha said. “When you
grow older memories sharpen and sometimes they hurt. I doubt if he will
ever play again. He made both Polly and me learn to play in France, but
after we came home again we could never persuade him to play with us. He
said we couldn’t keep time like Mama, but I knew even then that he
couldn’t bear to remember.”
“What was she like, Mother—your mama?”
“Slender and lovely—and she held herself proudly. But in the years I
remember she had children too fast and she was ill and weak a great deal
of the time. And Polly inherited her frailty and faded away so very
young. I’m glad you are all stout and healthy,” said her mother.
“Ellen is letting herself get fat. She eats too many sweets and won’t
walk ten steps if she can help it. I scold her all the time. Ellen could
be pretty, if she doesn’t ruin her face with too many chins.”
“Don’t be critical of your sisters.—Ah, here’s Aunt Anna’s carriage now.
Do run and call Cayce and tell him to replenish the fire in the south
bedroom. Aunt Anna has refused to climb our crooked stairs for years.”
Martha hurried away to welcome Thomas Jefferson’s sister and led her
into the library. “Papa, here’s Aunt Anna!”
Jefferson came forward, his hands outstretched. He loved this younger
sister and pulled her down into a deep chair without giving her time to
take off her bonnet.
“Toast your feet,” he ordered. “I know how this first cold gets into old
bones.”
“Old?” she laughed. “Since when did you decide to be old, Tom Jefferson?
You’ll be hammering up things on this hill twenty years from now.—Well,
Randolph wouldn’t come,” she went on in a tone of disgust. “Only twenty
miles and he said it was too hard a trip in cold weather. That’s your
only brother for you, Tom. How long since you have seen him?”
“Two years,” Jefferson pulled a chair up beside her. “He came over and
brought me a cask of young carp for my fish pond. He stayed one night.”
“Uncle Randolph said he couldn’t sleep,” put in young Jefferson. “He
said he was expecting every minute that his bed would go crashing up
against the ceiling.”
“Tom and his tinkering.” She had a hearty laugh. “Well, my bed will have
a stout chore to do if it hoists me to the ceiling tonight. For Heavens’
sake, Tom, get yourself elected governor again so we can have some
decent roads in Virginia. Even on that turnpike the mud was hub deep and
my horses traveled grunting like oxen. But if you do get elected, Tom,”
she gave him an amiable prod with her knuckles, “get yourself a haircut!
What’s the matter with Burwell? Has old age caught up with him too?”
“We’ll arrange to be barbered up beautifully this afternoon,” Jefferson
assured her. “The people have all been busy. They are bound this shall
be the most elaborate Christmas ever celebrated in Albemarle County.”
“Time there was some life in this house,” she said bluntly. “One thing
you must never do is shut yourself up here like a hermit. He will,
Patsy, unless you keep after him. He’ll read ten thousand books and
never know his stockings are bagging down around his ankles.”
“Papa,” began Martha, hesitantly, “there’s a Christmas Eve service at
the church tonight. It’s not snowing—and it’s only three miles. Would
you go, Papa?”
He looked up at her with a direct, searching look. “What are you
thinking, Patsy? Though I think I can read it in your face. You think it
would have made her happy. Very well. Order the chaise around—but, as
for me, I shall ride Eagle. I’ll go to church with you.”
“How people will stare!” whispered Ellen, in their room as the girls
dressed for supper. “Nobody will even look at the minister.”
“Grandfather won’t even know they are staring,” declared Cornelia. “He’s
been stared at with bands playing and soldiers standing at attention.”
“Grandfather,” remarked Ann, “is as aloof and untouchable as one of
those mountains out there.”
“But people love him. Look how they swarmed over this place all summer.”
“Have you noticed how low and gently he speaks lately? Even to the
servants, some of the stupidest ones, he never raises his voice. And
they scramble like anything to do what he wants done.”
“It’s because he knows he is great and famous. Like the mountains. They
know they are going to be there forever and nothing can ever destroy
them. Greatness, real greatness, is always simple,” insisted Ann.
There was the fragrance of evergreens and of many candles burning in the
church and a feebly burning wood fire strove to take a bit of the chill
off the place. Martha wrapped her heavy cloak around her knees, then
lifted a fold of it and spread it over her father’s thin legs as he sat,
stiffly upright beside her on the hard pew. There was a silence as the
minister came in, his vestment and stole very white in the dim light.
Then in the gallery high at the back came a humming, and the slaves
seated there began singing, low at first, then higher and clearer, rich
deep harmony filling the raftered spaces above where candle smoke softly
drifted.
_Who got weary? Christmas day! Christmas day!
Oh, no, Lawd! Ain’t nobody weary. Nobody weary Christmas day!_
Thomas Jefferson gripped his daughter’s hand hard. “She sang that,” he
whispered. “She liked that song.”
The age-old words rang out: “And there were in the same country
shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord
shone round about them; and they were sore afraid.”
Martha Randolph saw her father’s lips moving. Was he praying? No, his
eyes were not cast down and there was no humility in the set of his
shoulders. He was looking straight ahead and upward, into the high lift
of the ceiling above the chancel where a round window framed an
indigo-dark circle of the sky. She caught the faint whisper from his
lips.
“I am here,” he was saying to some vision unseen, “I am here, beloved.”
Transcriber’s Notes
—Silently corrected a few typos.
—Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook
is public-domain in the country of publication.
—In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by
_underscores_.