by Max Byrd
Jefferson had not. Politics displaced the Halle aux Bleds. The convention in Philadelphia was over, Jefferson reported, copies of the proposed new constitution were en route—rumored even to be in London already—but for some unfathomable reason Madison had sent nothing yet, though two packet boats had come and gone. No document, no letter. Short glanced at his watch. He privately guessed that Madison had delayed sending the new constitution because he was afraid of Jefferson’s reaction. What political horror could the assembly of demigods have dreamed up?
He lifted the curtain, peered; streaks of nothing. Clérisseau said he should go back to Virginia and make his fortune. Clérisseau said Jefferson was not a man ever to give up an idea, once he had conceived it. Short opened the lid of his watch again, the spidery hands jumped. Five twenty-three, Paris. Bleak, cold, Rosalie-less Paris. Clérisseau said that Maria Cosway had lost interest in Jefferson either because she was ambitious as an artist, trying to establish herself alone, or else because she was a deplorably prudish married woman—that is to say, English. In any case, he had added in a world-weary tone, quoting Horace, Post coitum omne animal triste est After love every animal is sad.
But three miles away, listening to the Princess Lubomirska describe in the most mournful voice and in the most tedious detail in the world the young queen’s newest outrage, Maria had not lost interest. If she closed her eyes, she could see him. If she blocked out the princess’s monotonous voice, she could hear Jefferson naming the trees in the Désert de Retz, explaining the intricate mathematical structure of bridges, the two hundred types of Parisian carriages. A woman might or might not be independent. But a vow was a vow before God, marriage was marriage.
“They say, of course, that the child isn’t the king’s at all, the father was a Swedish count in the embassy. At night, you can hear her moans all over the palace.”
Maria blinked and smiled. Should she tell the princess that she felt a complete, total sympathy with the good, maligned, misunderstood Christian queen? “Shocking,” she murmured. “Terrible.” Last spring Richard had taken a trip to Wales in the company of a woman, an actress—she shivered and smiled at the princess—and written back obscene letters, comparing the actress in bed to her.
The princess was complacent. “The king will send her away,” she said, “or else the throne will collapse.”
“Maria, martyr,” Maria said, and it was the princess’s turn to blink.
There were twenty reasons, Short decided, why Jefferson and Maria Cosway would never be happy lovers.
To his left, as the crowds spilled out of the theater lobby and onto the rainy Place Condé, Jefferson and Patsy stood side by side, father and daughter unmistakably, while Maria and her inevitable Polish duenna looked up at them both with wary interest. Then Maria reached forward, laughing merrily, and placed her small white hand on Jefferson’s great freckled one, and Patsy scowled as if her face would break apart into chunks of granite.
Short stopped to allow another surge of theatergoers to roll past. If he had a sheet of paper he could write down the reasons on the spot.
Reason one: Maria was far too flirtatious and independent (now tilting her pretty chin, calling brightly to the de Cornys), especially without the restraining presence of her little monkey husband. Jefferson liked women who were submissive, feminine, yielding; women who were at once (Short considered his paradox) decorative and invisible.
Reason two: Patsy Jefferson, who now clung fiercely to her father’s arm, hated her; and Jefferson’s ties to Patsy were the unshakable Virginia ones of blood.
Short made another effort to reach them through the crowd. Wigs and bonnets sailed past him like snow-covered galleons. He raised both hands to Patsy in a gesture of frustration.
And finally, how could he put it? For all her bare-shouldered, high-bosomed beauty, her blond tresses and pearl-like teeth, Maria struck him as in reality … not sensual; not a woman who would—his mind veered to the image of Rosalie, Rosalie’s lips. Maria was not a woman who would please; pleasure. Whereas Jefferson, whatever else he might be, was a man of passions, a man of flesh like other men. What a man wanted, Maria might not willingly surrender.
Short found an opening in the crowd and squeezed his way across the lobby.
“I’ve got the carriage, sir.”
Jefferson was by far the tallest man in the room. Next to him, on a high shelf built into the wall, was one of the busts of theatrical “notables” that the directors of the Comedie Française had commissioned from Houdon to look down upon their patrons. In this case it was Voltaire, whose sharp aristocratic features looked uncannily like Jefferson’s beside him, at the same level. Short raised his voice to be heard over the crowd and the rain. “But we need to go around the portico, to the other side.”
“Will you come with us?” Jefferson had bowed close to Maria’s ear, but Short and Patsy could hear every word. “The carriage holds four and we are only three.”
Maria gestured helplessly at her Polish chaperone, who in turn spoke rapidly and cheerfully in a language Short didn’t know. To Jefferson the chaperone added in orotund English: “She will. I have zo many friends here from the Pologne. I see you at home at the princess’s, ma chère.”
On the portico they waited again, dodging splashes from horses and cabs, until Petit himself drove up in Jefferson’s équipage and the four of them clambered inside.
“We will give you mulled wine and toast to dry you off,” Jefferson said decisively. The carriage lurched, stopped, jumped into the pack.
“Ah, no. I should go straight to the princess’s house,” Maria protested.
But Jefferson slid open the coachman’s window and gave his order just the same.
“I have come three times in the last week to your house,” Maria said as he settled back. They were side by side; facing Short and (Short glanced to his right) the Great Stone Face of Patsy. “Three whole times, and you were not at home.”
“And I,” Jefferson said, smiling but firm, “have come at least that often to the Princess Lubomirska, only to find you are away, painting, exhibiting …” His voice trailed away.
“You need to square your accounts,” Short said (stupidly), jumping in to fill the silence. Beside him Patsy’s folded arms communicated an unbreachable disdain.
“Do you hear from anyone?” Maria asked. “Our London friends? John Trumbull?”
Jefferson had momentarily occupied himself with a loose strap on the door. Rain drummed against the roof. The carriage struck a curbstone and rocked. Short said the first thing that came into his head. “We heard from Trumbull yesterday. He’s found three splendid English painters, so our commissions are coming along just fine.”
In the furious pause that followed, before he fully understood his slip, Short could see Maria’s face suddenly drained of all color, Jefferson’s mouth clamp in a thin, icy line.
“Commissions? You have commissions in London?” When excitement took over her voice, Maria had the clipped accent of a Cockney. She swung to stare up at Jefferson.
“I made—I asked Trumbull to order some paintings for me in London, for my private collection.”
“Not me? I am a painter.”
“I thought he would be able,” Jefferson began. Short looked down, up, away; wished himself in Virginia, Chaville, the moon. “He knows my taste, he can advise the framers, shippers.”
“But not me!”
Worse than Short’s blunder was Jefferson’s tone: teasing, un-serious. “You are too charming and pretty to waste your head on such a little business.”
Maria started to reply, closed her mouth. As the lights of the Pont Neuf appeared in the rain, she fixed her gaze straight ahead. Patsy and Jefferson refolded their arms. A moment later, Maria braced herself against the swaying carriage, slid open the coachman’s window, and changed the order.
At the Princess Lubomirska’s, Jefferson climbed out of the carriage with her, and they stood together, speaking intensely in the falling rain. Patsy
glowered at her shoes, then turned her head sharply in the other direction. Through the half-open door Short heard tones, but not words. When Jefferson rejoined them, he wore the air of calm, unruffled benevolence he always assumed at times of stress. “Mrs. Cosway leaves for England in five days, she tells me.”
“I had no idea,” Short said, ambiguously.
“So I have asked her to come to a farewell party the night before, in her honor.” Jefferson wiped his forehead, now plastered with wet red hair and milky powder.
“She won’t come,” Patsy said with undisguised satisfaction.
But in fact, on the appointed Thursday she arrived breathless, stunningly dressed, precisely ninety minutes late.
When she made her entrance, Jefferson was seated at the far end of his book-lined salon, on a crimson couch, beside the ancient, faintly bewhiskered Countess Potocki.
At the sight of Maria he rose like a shot and started toward her.
The countess turned calmly to Short. “I will have another glass of water,” she said, “if you please. The water of the Seine is thought to be lightly purgative.” Short glanced at his watch. The countess leaned forward to tap his knee sharply with her finger. “On dit qu’elle sort de la cuisse d’un ange,” she said, and translated into perfect English: “They say it’s the piss of an angel.”
At the other end of the room Jefferson had already reached Maria’s side. He pressed her hand to his lips. “So you really leave tomorrow?”
“In the early, early morning, by the carriage to Honfleur.” Not a word of reproach for her lateness. Good. She took a step deftly around him and saw that he had, in truth, arranged a brilliant party for her. There were thirty guests at least, all staring toward her with bright expectation. The walls glistened with new paper; new chairs, a crimson sofa, musicians in one corner.
“Stay longer.”
She smiled, shaking her curls, and as if she were onstage, an actress, she began to cross the room briskly, formally, greeting the guests as they bowed and curtsied. Beside her, splendid, handsome in a sky-blue coat and dark brown breeches, Jefferson hurried to keep up with her, bowing like a page, reminding her of names.
At the crimson sofa she stopped and turned graciously to Short and the little countess, drawing them into her circle, then turned in the other direction to include de Corny, his flat-breasted wife, all of them petals, she thought, around the central blossom that was her presence, her performance.
“You’ve installed the new tables aux fleurs,” she told Jefferson gaily, and she indicated with a tilt of her head the cut flowers that appeared to grow, improbably, out of the small tabletop by the sofa. A calculated actress’s pout. “I haven’t been to this house in so long.”
“And we know you leave tomorrow.” Madame de Corny, a Jefferson ally, was cat-faced and polite.
“In the too-early morning, yes,” Maria repeated; “yes, by horrible, horrible carriage to Honfleur.” To her surprise Jefferson had bent over the tabletop and begun to do something mysterious with it. Through the nearest window she could see snow.
“He loves his flowers,” said the little Countess Potocki from her perch on the sofa. “Un homme sensuel.”
“In Virginia, Madame,” Jefferson said, straightening and presenting a primrose blossom first to the countess, next, with a bow, to Maria, “I have orange and acacia plants in my house constantly, in a greenhouse just off my bedroom. Their scent is the first thing that greets me in the morning.”
“You need a wife,” the old lady said. “This is one of those tables, yes? You have a tank of water lined with tin, built right into the wood.”
“For you.” Jefferson bowed and presented Madame de Corny a blossom. “You?” Her husband smiled and took his flower with a solemn, military click of the heels. “At Monticello,” Jefferson said, “I intend to install these tabletops everywhere.”
Maria felt her moment slipping away, changing. Always Monticello. It was she who was about to depart. “You haven’t informed me,” she said in a sharper tone. The de Cornys looked at each other. “Do you have any messages for Mr. Trumbull in London? I can certainly carry your messages.” She flushed and twisted the yellow blossom in front of her dress; looked down at her breasts.
“No messages, thank you. He arrives in Paris on the tenth for a short visit, he writes me. Not even a week away.”
“Then we shall practically pass on the Channel.” In the manner of parties, the others were backing away, leaving them face to face.
“In my bedroom at Monticello,” Jefferson said—it was impossible to read his bland expression—“I want to install an alcove bed like the ones we saw at the Désert de Retz. Do you remember?”
She felt her cheeks grow even warmer. To talk to her of his bedroom …
“I believe I even proposed a return excursion to the Désert,” Jefferson persisted, “but you were too busy this time.”
“It might have been a disappointment, things always are. If my inclination had been my law—”
“Your domestic entourage,” Jefferson said, as explanation or rebuke—his eyes were a thousand miles away; no one could be more polite, no one more remote—“has been so numerous et di impodante that one could not approach quite at one’s ease.”
“I know.” Suddenly miserable.
“When you come again, you must be nearer, and move more extempore.”
“You like flowers,” the Countess Potocki declared, hobbling up between them. She held a red lorgnette to her eyes and showed big yellow teeth nearly the size of Lafayette’s.
“I think of them as a parable,” Jefferson said, bowing to her again, either droll or serious, impossible to tell. “The flowers come forth like the belles of the day, have their brief reign of beauty and splendor, and retire like them to the more interesting office of reproducing their like.”
Maria opened her mouth to speak, but the countess was not to be dislodged. “You went to Rome, I understand. Last spring. Now we are Polish, of course, my family is, but a branch is installed at Rome.”
“Ah, Milan was the spot at which I turned my back on Rome and Naples. It was a moment of conflict between duty, which urged me to return, and inclination urging me forward.”
Maria felt it all going wrong. In the mirror, for the beat of a heart, she saw herself disappear, vanish like a ghost behind a bright, false smile. “Mr. Jefferson,” she heard her voice tell the countess, “always chooses his duty.”
Jefferson’s face flickered, as if in pain.
At dinner, where she sat as guest of honor, though Jefferson knew she hated the subject, Lafayette lectured the table for two eternities on politics.
“In the Netherlands,” he announced, “the rebels have adopted an American slogan—‘Liberty or Death.’ ”
“He raced to the border last summer,” Clérisseau murmured in Maria’s ear, “and demanded to be made general of the liberated Dutch. They sent him packing.”
“And now”—Lafayette had raised his glass without looking; Sally Hemings filled it—“America again, always; we have a new American constitution that takes us into a new world.”
Jefferson was shaking his head; Clérisseau was whispering something else in her ear, an English quotation she had heard before about a brave new world. When she filtered his voice away, Lafayette was leaning intensely across the table, listening to Jefferson, who was—the very opposite of intense—sitting back in his usual informal, casual manner, fingers lightly gripping the stem or his glass, head propped on his right fist.
“I only received a copy of that new constitution two weeks ago, from Mr. Adams in London,” he said.
Lafayette seized on his tone. “You don’t like it? You don’t approve?”
Jefferson studied the glass. “There are very good articles in it, and very bad; I can’t say which preponderate. I confess there are things in it which stagger all my disposition to approve. For one thing, I dislike very much the fact that the President can be reelected—he can become, for all practical
purposes, an officer for life.”
“A king,” Lafayette said.
Jefferson sank deeper into his familiar jackknife slouch. “More important still, I dislike the omission of a bill of rights.”
“A bill of rights to do what?” From the center of the table de Corny had now stretched forward, against all rules of French etiquette, to enter the conversation. Farther down, between Short and Adrienne Lafayette, the old countess was nodding vigorously, Madame de Corny had forgotten her food. Parisian women, Maria thought; an Assembly of Bores, politics. Jefferson had engineered this. She pushed her plate to one side with a clatter.
“Do you hear any news of art?” she asked, too loudly. “The portraits you commissioned in London? Painters here?”
Jefferson hesitated. “None at all,” he said. “No news of painters at all.” He smiled quickly, then turned back to de Corny. “A bill of rights would guarantee religious freedom. Freedom of the press, trial by jury, habeus corpus, protection against standing armies.” He glanced past her, to Lafayette. “It isn’t enough to say, as Adams does, that all these rights are reserved implicitly to the people. It is altogether more prudent, more practical, to state the people’s rights in the beginning, without sophisms. A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, and what no government should refuse them.”
“The British press make much of your late rebellions in Massachusetts,” de Corny said, still leaning forward, both elbows on the cloth, pinching the bridge of his nose with two fingers; Short’s gesture, Maria thought, balling up her napkin. Would they never shut up? She felt more in sympathy with Short every day. All Paris knew why the Rochefoucaulds were not at the party. She took a deep breath. De Corny droned on. “They insist America is in anarchy and needs the strong arm of a king.”
