by Max Byrd
Outside the window a horse’s hooves clattered on pavement. A water carrier’s voice rose in the peculiar singsong rhythm of the streets. Short disliked Maria as he had never disliked a beautiful woman in his life. She was superficial, ignorant, self-deceiving. On the other hand—his mind flickered for an undisciplined moment to the image of Rosalie de La Rochefoucauld—on the other hand, by living with Jefferson, he was hitching a ride on the coattails of history, he was obligatissimo to the facts.
With a smile not entirely unconnected to his own word self-deceiving, he sat down at the desk and began to copy the letter.
On the twenty-eighth of September, ten full days after the accident, Jefferson’s wrist had still failed to heal. Short walked through a rank of French dignitaries, most of them dressed in a dazzling show of wigs and ribbons and brilliantly colored regimental jackets, explaining to them for the sixth, tenth, twentieth time that Jefferson’s injury was indeed grave—“très, très pénible”—and regrettably prevented the ambassador’s appearing before them.
Secretly, Short thought (he moved to the top of the wooden platform built specially for the occasion and tucked his hat under his arm), secretly he believed that Jefferson’s dislike of public speaking had kept him at home quite as much as the broken wrist.
“Monsieur Chort!” the herald announced.
Short took his place next to Lafayette on the crowded platform. (“I am not yet twenty-nine years old,” Lafayette whispered to him in French, bending very close and breathing some foul combination of perfume and clove into Short’s face.)
“Nor am I,” Short said. A military band was marching into the great hall of the Hôtel de Ville, drums rattling. He deliberately looked away from Lafayette, whose enormous teeth were now fixed in a perpetual grin. In fact, it was only three days ago, while he copied down Jefferson’s dictated letter of presentation, that he had realized how young Lafayette was, how much (by comparison, for example, with a diplomat’s minor secretary) the Frenchman had genuinely accomplished already. Short bowed to Éthis de Corny and allowed himself a moment of conspicuous if false admiration for the bust, still covered at this point by a silken cloth, which he was about to present to the City of Paris on behalf of the State of Virginia.
“My wife, my aunt, my sisters and cousins,” Lafayette hissed in his ear, and as he raised his head, Short saw them all, standing in the first row of guests, beaming up at the boy-patriarch like a box of flowers. He had begun to look around (cynically) for Lafayette’s two Iroquois retainers as well when the band struck up an anthem. The mayor stepped forward.
It was, Short later admitted, a truly grand occasion, though no one in the room except himself knew how much it owed to Jefferson’s tireless diplomatic maneuverings, from the first hint of the idea to the Virginia legislature to the last, nearly comic negotiations on his sickbed with the representatives of the king, including the popeyed éminence blanche Rayneval himself. No small thing, after all, to present a statue of a military hero who had helped overthrow a king to the hero’s own rather suspicious, certainly unpopular monarch. More practical by far, Jefferson had said ironically, to give Lafayette a tract of land in Virginia, which he might need one day as a refuge from said king.
When the mayor—inexplicably titled prévôt des marchands, provost of merchants—motioned Short forward, Lafayette clapped him on the shoulder and, contrary to all protocol, advanced as well, taking a place directly beside him, grinning and smoothing constantly his bright red general’s tunic (like a blazing pineapple, Short thought). In his best French, Short read aloud Jefferson’s flowery letter of presentation, the band broke into another anthem and marched around the platform, and Éthis de Corny, Jefferson’s friend and Lafayette’s former commander, replied on behalf of France, declaring in a voice that rang through the crowded hall that even the ancient republic of Rome would have been honored by such patriots as Washington, Franklin, Adams—he paused—and Jefferson. While the applause broke in wave after wave and the bust was formally unveiled, Short stood with his plumed hat under his arm, hand on the dress sword he had never drawn, and thought that Jefferson’s words, Jefferson’s irresistible phrases, had begun to color French speech as much as American. Only a fellow writer (though Short had written nothing) could appreciate the real Revolution here; the transformation of ideas through language, that had every mouth repeating “all men are created equal,” “the pursuit of happiness,” that made disobedience to kings into a civic virtue. Short glanced with sympathy toward Lafayette. Victories in battle were nothing compared to victories in language.
“Une nation libre!” de Corny concluded with a flourish. A free nation!
Afterward, having drunk far more champagne than was diplomatic, Short murmured a remark to de Corny (too loud, too stupid) that was to be quoted for weeks across Paris: I am persuaded on this happy day, Short said, toasting the hero’s wife, that Madame Lafayette did not receive more pleasure on the night of her marriage.
Early on the morning of October fifth, using only his left hand, Jefferson wrote out a brief note and handed it to James Hemings to deliver.
TH: JEFFERSON TO MRS. COSWAY
I have passed the night in so much pain that I have not closed my eyes. It is with infinite regret therefore that I must relinquish your charming company for that of the Surgeon whom I have sent for to examine into the cause of this change. I am in hopes it is only the having rattled a little too freely over the pavement yesterday. If you do not leave Paris for Antwerp today I shall still have the pleasure of seeing you again. If you do, god bless you wherever you go. Present me in the most friendly terms to Mr. Cosway, and let me hear of your safe arrival in England. Addio. Addio.
Within an hour James brought back an answer, which Short personally carried up to Jefferson’s sickroom.
I am very, very sorry indeed for having been the Cause of your pains in the Night. Why would you go? You repeatedly said it would do you no harm, I felt interested and did not insist. We shall go I believe this Morning, Nothing seems redy, but Mr. Cosway seems More dispos’d than I have seen him all this time. I shall write to you from England.
You will make me very happy, if you would send a line to the poste restante at Antwerp, that I may know how you are.
And then, to the astonishment of everyone, the least impulsive man in Paris came down the stairs, fully dressed, calling loudly for his coachman.
He drove, Short afterward learned, straight to the Cosway residence on rue Coqhéron and, despite the great pain in his wrist (reset moments before by the surgeon), accompanied the two Cosways, their entourage of servants and baggage, and the heavily sighing Monsieur d’Hancarville in a crowded coach as far as the Porte Saint-Denis, where the travelers shifted to a touring carriage.
“The behavior,” Clérisseau commented cheerfully, “of a Frenchman, not an American. We have metamorphosed Monsieur Jefferson in record time. In a few years, who knows, he may become as gallant as Franklin.”
Short ran his finger over the files of correspondence that, as usual, he was sorting and arranging in Jefferson’s system, and debated whether to show it to Clérisseau.
“The picture I like best.” Clérisseau paused to raise the back of his hand to his nose and inhale a microscopic bit of snuff. It was a habit he had recently taken up, he said, to honor America. “I like the thought of the four of them crowded together in the carriage. No doubt the monkey-faced little husband sat facing the lover, knee to knee, sword to sword, while the lady blushed behind a mountain of white crinoline and Hancarville, poor Hancarville discoursed mile after mile on the antique prick.” Clérisseau made a face at the snuff and wiped his hand on his coat. “No doubt Jefferson told Cosway all men are created equal.”
Short tapped the letters into place and closed the file.
“What are you hiding?” Clérisseau demanded.
“A private affair.”
“Not if you lift it halfway out of its envelope, slide it back and forth, lift it again, and generally
dangle it like a worm before a trout.”
Short allowed himself a slow grin. Clérisseau was a trout six feet tall, with an exophthalmic expression (one of Jefferson’s words: it meant pop-eyed), and a white wig and a sword. “It’s nothing. Jefferson has been writing a treatise on English prosody, but I’ve had to copy it for him, because of his wrist.”
Clérisseau lost interest at once. He sniffed delicately and waved the letter back into the file. “Poetry,” he said with well-bred distaste. “Now he passes over the line from gallantry to boredom.”
But Clérisseau, Short thought, had no idea what line Jefferson had crossed. Upstairs, in his own room with the door locked, he spread out the file again and examined the last letter, twelve pages not only written laboriously with the left hand but then copied out all over again for the record. Record of what? If ever there were a personal, private letter, this was assuredly it. If ever Thomas Jefferson came close to abandoning his intense reserve, dropping his high fences—he had simply written, Short thought, the strangest love letter he had ever read.
MY DEAR MADAM,
Having performed the last sad office of handing you into your carriage at the Pavillon de Saint-Denis, and seen the wheels get actually into motion, I turned on my heel and walked, more dead than alive, to the opposite door, where my own wad awaiting me. Mr. Hancarville was missing. He was sought for, found, and dragged downstairs. We were crammed into the carriage, like recruits for the Bad tille, and not having soul enough to give orders to the coachman, he presumed Paris our destination and drove off.… At the rue Saint-Denis Mr. Hancarville insisted on descending and traversing a short passage to his lodgings. I was carried home. Seated by my fire side, solitary and sad, the following dialogue took place between my Head and my Heart.
Head. Well, friend, you seem to be in a pretty trim.
Heart. I am indeed the most wretched of all earthly beings. Overwhelmed with grief, every fibre of my frame distended beyond its natural powers to bear, I would willingly meet whatever catastrophe should leave me no more to feel or to fear.
Head. These are the eternal consequences of your warmth and precipitation. This is one of the scrapes into which you are ever leading us.
Short stopped. Although he had read the letter hastily twice before—unable to believe Jefferson would keep a copy, let alone have him file it with everything else, let alone—he inhaled sharply, brought his thoughts under control; started over. How could Jefferson write to his lover in the form of a dialogue? A dialogue. Short squeezed his left eye halfway shut and tried to bring into focus the candle on the other side of the room. Dialogues had been a popular literary form forty years ago, when David Hume and Bishop Berkeley were writing didactic philosophy; Jefferson the rebel had oddly conservative literary tastes.…
The candle remained stubbornly out of focus, a nebulous white globe against a watery background. Short switched eyes. It was typical of Jefferson to make everything, even love, into a debate, a clash of logic, head versus heart. With mild surprise Short realized that he had begun to think of Maria Cosway as Jefferson’s lover; with rather more surprise he admitted, against all the rules of French life, that this profoundly disturbed him.
Heart.… The Halle aux Bleds might have rotted down before I should have gone to see it. But you, forsooth, who are eternally getting us to sleep with your diagrams and crotchets, must go and examine this wonderful piece of architecture.…
Head. It would have been happy for you if my diagrams and crotchets had gotten you to sleep on that day, as you are pleased to say they eternally do.… Every soul of you and your new friends had an engagement for the day. Yet all these were to be sacrificed that you might dine together. Lying messengers were to be dispatched into every quarter of the city with apologies for your breach of engagement. You particularly had the effrontery to send word to the Duchesse d’Anville that in the moment we were setting out to dine with her, dispatches came to hand which required immediate attention.… Well, after dinner to Saint-Cloud, from Saint-Cloud to Ruggieri’s, from Ruggieri to Krumpholtz, and if the day had been as long as a Lapland summer day, you would still have contrived means, among you, to have filled it.
Heart. Oh! my dear friend, how you have revived me by recalling to my mind the transactions of that day! … Go on then, like a kind comforter, and paint to me the day we went to Saint-Germains. How beautiful was every object! the Port de Reuilly, the hills along the Seine, the rainbows of the machine of Marly.… Recollect the King’s garden, the Désert. How grand the idea excited by the remains of such a column! The spiral staircase too was beautiful. Every moment was filled with something agreeable. The wheels of time moved on with a rapidity of which those of our carriage gave but a faint idea. And yet in the evening, when one took a retrospect of the day, what a mass of happiness had we travelled over! … The day we went to Saint-Germains was a little too warm, I think; was it not?
A phrase tugged at Short’s memory. He turned his head sideways and watched the candle flame leap for once into perfect focus. When Martha Wayles Jefferson had lain dying in her bed, hadn’t she scribbled a few short lines that Jefferson had finished?—Time wastes too fast: every Utter I trace tells me with what rapidity life follows my pen. The same word. Rapidity. The same Jeffersonian sense of time flying, time lost.
Short put down the remaining sheets of paper, vaguely embarrassed. He remembered what followed in the dialogue. The Head said it was better never to make friends than to lose them and suffer; the Heart claimed suffering was part of life, there was no sublime pleasure without it. In the midst of everything, predictably, Jefferson began to talk of America—Maria should come to America and paint it, perhaps someday (sheer fantasy) she would have to seek asylum from wicked old Europe and he could welcome her—welcome them both, husband and wife—to his house.
Of course he would write in dialogue form, Short thought, disgusted with his own obtuseness. The lady was married. No matter how warm it had got at Saint-Germain, the Roman would always observe the outward proprieties. But this attraction for married, for forbidden women—he glanced at the last page of the dialogue as he folded it away. Jefferson was such a perfect machine of contradictions himself, so perfectly balanced, he had left it unresolved who won the debate, Head or Heart. But Short felt certain that Maria, who could barely write a grammatical sentence in English, would have no idea at all of the subtlety of Jefferson’s tribute.
In fact, in Antwerp, Maria sat down with the whole dialogue and read it three times through before looking up. Trumbull, lounging in the corner of the room, his right foot on a low table, his teacup resting on his chest, met her violet-blue eyes and smirked. He had delivered the letter to her himself, confidentially, since Jefferson had enclosed it discreetly in a letter to him; Jefferson would send all his letters thus, he had explained, because of the “infidelities” of the French mails.
Trumbull arched his eyebrow in a disagreeable way he had recently cultivated and lifted his teacup from the saucer, as if making a toast.
“Our friend is well?” he asked in French.
Maria smiled brightly. “He has copied the words to a French song for me,” she said, “such a long song.”
“And which one is it?” Still in French.
“ ‘Jour Heureux,’ ” she said, pretending to look at the letter.
“Not so very long,” Trumbull said in English, with the faintest possible intonation of mockery.
“I shall go into the other room and write him my thanks,” Maria said, but without moving. An English melancholy had descended over her once again, she thought; her face and neck were like stiff sheets of paper cut out with scissors, full of sharp angles and corners; she was an unreal person. In two more days they would be in London. The image of that smoky, gray, stone-faced, fog-smothered city came to her eyes almost like a vision. The wheels of time, Jefferson had written, moved on with a rapidity … She had forgotten the rest of the beautiful sentence. The wheels of time were carrying her back to London. In d
rab, Protestant London there would be no monasteries where men of God prayed at all hours for all those others who did not pray, who were lost and in need of rescue.
“I shall write him my thanks,” Maria said after a long pause.
“When,” Trumbull asked, uncoiling himself from the chair like—she thought—a snake, “when do you think you will return to Paris?”
“I shall probably return next spring,” she said. “To Paris.”
Trumbull no longer bothered to hide his smirk. “With Richard?”
“Or without him,” she said calmly, but closing her eyes.
Memoirs of Jefferson—7
I PICTURE TO MYSELF TWO SCENES.
Identical, contradictory.
One, late May 1765, Williamsburg, the House of Burgesses furiously debating what action to take in response to the infamous Stamp Act just passed by Parliament. Thomas Jefferson, then twenty-two years old and still a gangly red-haired student, all collapsible elbows and knees (as his friends remembered him), standing rooted at the doorsill of the lobby intent upon the speeches. Patrick Henry, dressed as usual in preacher’s black, with a dour, sour kind of look and an habitual farmer’s slouch much like Jefferson’s; a member of the Burgesses, almost thirty years old, but coarse-featured and rustic and virtually unknown in Williamsburg, rising to take the floor in front of the most sophisticated and polished gentlemen in Virginia.
Nobody ever cared less for that kind of polish. Henry’s speech, which started calmly, soon rose to a pitch of furious, terrible invective against the injustice of the Stamp Act and the tyrannical pretensions of the almighty British Parliament, which had assumed for itself the unlawful right of taxation over the king’s free-born, liberty-loving colonies. As Patrick Henry paced back and forth and roared defiance, the assembled legislators, still thinking of themselves as loyal British subjects (and thinking too, no doubt, of the formidable royal governor Lord Botetourt, not half a mile down the street in his brick palace), began to mutter or call out to him. He paid them no mind. Mesmerized, Jefferson pushed to the first row of the crowd.
