America's First Daughter: A Novel

by Stephanie Dray

  “I’ve never met one either,” I said.

  She turned to me, astonished. “Not even in France?”

  I was charmed that my children seemed to believe I’d seen and done and knew everything because I’d been to France. What I did know about the visiting Tunisian envoy, Sidi Suliman Mellimelli, was salacious. Dolley had whispered over tea that the ambassador was perfumed like a woman. And her husband had been obliged to provide concubines for the Tunisian delegation at a nearby hotel, which had set tongues wagging. Papa insisted that the cause of making peace with the Barbary pirates was too important for us to balk at the “irregular conduct” of their ministers. That’s why I’d postponed dinner from late afternoon to after sunset in honor of the religious practice of Ramadan.

  “We’re to be the only ladies in attendance?” my daughter asked.

  I nodded. “Ambassador Mellimelli is unaccustomed to the calming presence of women in political society, and we’ll have to ease him into it.”

  There was much bowing and greeting when the ambassador and his two secretaries arrived, and upon seeing me and my daughter, he begged our pardon, through an interpreter, to retire to smoke his pipe.

  “Feel free to smoke here,” Papa said, and the gold-and-scarlet-clad ambassador stroked his long beard, thoughtfully. Looking first to his two secretaries, who wouldn’t partake of wine, he nodded, then lit his wonderfully unusual four-foot pipe.

  I was painfully worried of giving offense—especially considering the company. Amongst our American guests—John Quincy Adams and our own snarling kinsman, Congressman Randolph of Roanoke. After making snide quips implying that my husband and Jack Eppes held their congressional seats only through my father’s influence, John finally leaned over to me at the table and whispered, “I’m so glad you didn’t bring the vampire with you.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Nancy,” he hissed. “She’s sucked the best blood of my race.”

  Whether he was accusing her of murdering his brother or making some lewder accusation, I couldn’t guess. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I’m sure you do. You and your husband are harboring her. Don’t think I’ll forget it.”

  He had the Randolph. He was irritable, jealous, suspicious, and habitually indulgent of the meanest little passions. But I was a Jefferson, so I merely announced, “Ann and I will retire now to leave you gentlemen to your business. Ambassador Mellimelli, I look forward to spending a lively winter with you.” Having observed that even a perfumed man wished to be thought manly, I added, “I’m sure you’ll be the lion of the season.”

  Lion. The ambassador liked that word. He liked the comparison. I could see the pleasure of it light in his eyes when the interpreter whispered it in his ear. And later, he joined me and Ann in the drawing room, leaving the other gentlemen behind.

  Ann and I started to rise, but he waved us back into our chairs and surprised us with nearly perfect English. “We’re not the only delegation here in Washington, no? I’ve seen bands of people, not so fair.” For a moment, I thought he meant the slaves. But then he gestured to the feather in his turban. “Ornaments and buckskin. Long dark braids.”

  “Indians,” I answered. And when he squinted, I added, “Our Indians. They’ve come from the western territories to speak with my father.”

  “Which prophet do they follow?” he asked, showing Ann a diamond snuffbox to charm her. “Moses, Jesus, or Mohammed?”

  “None,” my timid Ann offered, and I was so proud of her for finding courage to speak to the man. “The Indians worship … the great spirit, as I understand it.”

  The ambassador took a pinch of the snuff, which smelled like roses. “Then they’re vile heretics. Another thing interests me, Mrs. Randolph. In your Congress, where your husband serves, everyone has the right to speak?”

  “The members do, yes,” I replied.

  He laughed. “Then it will take years to finish any business! In my country, all matters are decided swiftly and with final resolution. In fact, if I don’t succeed in my mission here, they’ll behead me.”

  I wasn’t sure I believed him, but he was such a colorful character that everyone was eager to meet him. Invitations to every fashionable ball in Washington City were extended to the delegation, and curious onlookers gawked near the hotel to get a peek at turbans, long mustaches, and ceremonial garb. Given the fascination, I worried we wouldn’t be able to admit all the guests who flocked to Papa’s annual New Year’s Eve gala.

  “Will you dance?” Tom asked at the gala, dressed in his best blue tailcoat.

  “I’m quite near my time now,” I told my husband. “I’d feel like a stampeding buffalo.”

  Tom brought my fingertips to his lips for a brief but very earnest kiss. “Never.”

  Nearby, Jack Eppes was laughing with a flirtatious woman from Annapolis. He was courting again, and Papa said we must be happy for him. I agreed, because I feared we might never see my sister’s children again if we didn’t lavish approval on her widower.

  But Jack’s laughter—and the music—were interrupted dramatically by the ambassador of Tunisia, who stopped dancers midtwirl. With a flourish of his colorful cape that mesmerized the crowd, he let his interpreter speak for him. “The ambassador has heard that the Madisons desire children, but have been unable to conceive them!”

  Rarely shy of attention, Dolley smiled and murmured something about how she’d welcome any blessing God were to bestow.

  Striding to her, the bearded ambassador said, “If you want a child, I’ll give you one.” Then he wrapped the cape around her with such intimacy that her husband, the diminutive secretary of state, stiffened and went white.

  Confused by the reaction, the ambassador explained, “It’s a magic cape.”

  But his words didn’t carry, accented as they were. And as the room went silent, men reached for their ceremonial swords in anticipation of violence. I swallowed, wondering which of the men would break the mounting tension in the room. And when I realized that none of them would, I knew that there was no choice but to take it upon myself. Clapping my hands, as if delighted in the way of a child, I cried, “Oh, a magic cape!”

  My father—the man of science who had decried a reign of witches—looked entirely appalled. But upon seeing me smile and clap, all the other ladies quickly followed suit. Papa could scarcely keep the displeasure from his presidential expression, but he would simply have to endure it. It was a New Year’s Eve party, a night for frivolity, and if offense could be avoided by laughter and merriment, why not?

  Besides. I was the hostess here, so I pretended at great fascination when the ambassador murmured an incantation over Dolley, declaring, “I promise you, Mrs. Madison, you’ll soon give your husband a son!”

  Everyone applauded the spectacle. Dolley was very amused. When everyone else had gone home for the night, she grabbed at my elbow, grinning. “Why, I’ve never seen Mr. Madison go so white before. As exciting as it might’ve been to see men duel over my honor, I suppose I must thank you for averting an international incident. But, I must know one thing… .”

  Still holding Tom’s arm, I asked, “What’s that?”

  Dolley grinned mischievously. “Is that your secret? A magic cape? Given your brood of children, I suppose you must have a closet full of them!”

  “There are no capes involved,” Tom said, quite seriously.

  Dolley and I found this so terribly funny that we exploded with laughter.

  Which prompted him to accuse, “You’ve been drinking, both of you!”

  For whatever reason, that seemed terribly funny, too. I hadn’t laughed since my sister’s death, and it felt disloyal to do so. But Dolley was irrepressible. “I’m afraid I don’t put much stock in the ambassador’s incantation.”

  “Well, you ought to give it a try anyway,” I said, scandalizing my husband utterly. “With or without the capes.”

  Days later, I gave birth to the very first baby ever born in the pre
sident’s mansion. A boy, at last. And Tom had no objection to the name that would give Dolley the most pleasure: James Madison Randolph.

  “A son,” my husband kept saying, as if astonished that it’d finally come to pass. At long last, Jeff had a little brother. And we were happy.

  For a brief, enchanted winter in the spacious rooms of the President’s House, we forgot our troubles in Virginia. I hosted nearly sixty-three dinners at my father’s side, including one before the day I gave birth and one after. But when I couldn’t be there to soothe partisan tempers, my daughter Ann was there in my place—more beautiful and less sarcastic than me in every way. And I made certain she was aware that every dinner and every lady’s tea was a mission to beat back the calumny heaped upon Papa’s head by his enemies.

  “Have you seen this?” my father’s new secretary asked, timidly offering me a clipping from some newspaper. “I apologize for bringing something so indelicate to your attention but—”

  “You did quite right to show me,” I said, burning to read the filthy poem.

  The patriot, fresh from Freedom’s councils come,

  Now plea’d retires to lash his slaves at home;

  Or woo, perhaps, some black Aspasia’s charms,

  And dreams of freedom in his bondmaid’s arms.

  There was a cartoon, too, called “A Philosophic Cock.” A drawing of my father as a French rooster and Sally as his hen. All part of a campaign to tarnish his image as a devoted father, doting grandfather, and father of this nation.

  I went straight to Papa with it in a flash of temper, stunned to hear him laugh. “How can you laugh at this, Papa?”

  “What else is there to be done? It’s demeaning. It’s petty. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the business of the country. And they’re spilling their ink on it while Republicans trounce them in every election. Unless you think I should call them out onto a field of honor, there’s nothing to do but laugh.”

  Soothed, I gave a soft smile. “We’re done with pistols now, aren’t we?”

  He stood, still tall and straight, grasping my hand. “Yes, we’re done with pistols now.”

  But in that, we couldn’t have been more mistaken.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Washington, 23 June 1806

  From Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph Jr.

  Should they lose you, seven children, all under the age of discretion and down to infancy would be left without guide or guardian but a poor broken-hearted woman, doomed herself to misery the rest of her life. And should her frail frame sink under it, what is to become of them? The laws of dueling are made for lives of no consequence; not for fathers of families. Let me entreat you then, my dear Sir, take no step in this business but on the soberest reflection.

  A SHADOW OF DEATH hung over us that summer in Virginia. A neighbor was found dead in his carriage—he’d drunk himself to death. More devastating was the murder of Papa’s law teacher, Judge Wythe, whose jealous nephew poisoned him, his manumitted black housekeeper, and her freeborn mulatto son—to whom Judge Wythe intended to leave his fortune.

  The judge lived only long enough to tell physicians, “I am murdered.” The nephew stood trial, but black witnesses weren’t permitted to testify—not even the housekeeper who survived the poisoning. And the villain had been promptly acquitted.

  Papa took it hard.

  Not only, I think, because he’d lost a friend and justice was thwarted. But also because it was a repudiation of Judge Wythe and Mr. Short’s idealistic dreams of racial coexistence in Virginia. A warning almost tailor-made to discourage my father from bringing Sally and their children out from the shadows.

  And then, of course, there was Randolph of Roanoke. Was there ever a more deranged example of Virginia gentry in decay? The spiteful creature had singled out my family to torment. In protest of my father’s programs for public education, canals, bridges, and roads, he broke with the Republicans to create a brand-new political party called the Quids. And when that didn’t achieve his aims, he provoked a quarrel with my husband on the floor of Congress.

  Admittedly, Tom had been rash, putting himself forth as a more true patriot, and when his apology was deemed insufficient, adding, “Lead and steel make more proper ingredients in serious quarrels.”

  Sensing an opportunity to provoke two very public men to duel, the papers took sides, spilling a barrel of ink on the subject. The National Intelligencer defended Tom while the Richmond Enquirer championed John Randolph. And the dangerous intensity of my husband’s temper sent all the children fleeing whenever he entered a room. They knew to stay out of their father’s way while he paced, fulminating at every new accusation.

  I didn’t blame my husband for his anger, truly I didn’t. I felt certain John Randolph had been trying to goad my husband into a duel for a very long time. I only wished Tom wasn’t so easy to goad.

  “It’s because of me,” Nancy said, packing up her meager belongings. “If I’m not living here, John might leave my brother alone.”

  I think she hoped I’d stop her, reassure her that she was mistaken in leaving us, but she had the right of it. “Where will you go?”

  “To Richmond,” Nancy said. “We have other relations there. I’ll go visiting for a time and see about seeking employment as a housekeeper there.”

  Tom was appalled by the very idea that any sister of his should seek employment, but given Nancy’s ruined reputation, she had few options. Tom was a Randolph; he saw himself as wealthy landed gentry even if our house at Edgehill had fallen to pieces in our absence. It needed repairs and plaster if it was to prove good against any kind of weather. And with the new baby, Edgehill felt smaller and more cramped than ever.

  That’s to say nothing of the drought. The oats were lost. The peaches and cherries, too. We might only have another sickly wheat crop and apples. We weren’t in any position to support his sister, so Tom gave Nancy money—more than we had to give—and let her go off to Richmond.

  Before climbing into the carriage, Nancy gave me a quick hug and whispered, “Try not to worry about the duel. The Randolph temper burns hot, but sometimes burns itself out.”

  I hoped she was right, but when my husband returned from Richmond, he was in a worse state than before. He considered it his sacred duty to care for his sisters and felt unmanned by his inability to do so. And when I found my husband in the yard sighting his pistols and practicing his paces, I realized his temper wasn’t going to burn out. He was going to kill or be killed, and I could no longer keep my peace. “So you’re going to let him murder you and leave me a widow?”

  Tom turned on me. “You think I’ll fail at this like I’ve failed at everything. It’s a wonder you don’t want me dead.”

  Given how happy we’d been only months before, this caught me utterly by surprise. “Tom, how could you ever think that I wish such a thing? What would I do without you?”

  Tom gave a bitter twist of his beautiful mouth. “Turn to your father like you always do. He can do no wrong in your eyes, whereas I… .”

  “Well, my father found a way to avoid a senseless duel, didn’t he?”

  I shouldn’t have said it. Should never have taken that tone. And the reward for my foolishness was a resounding slap to the face. It didn’t knock me to the ground. It wouldn’t bruise me. But because it made me feel like both a desperate wife and a chastened child I stood there gawping in shock, holding my face where it turned red.

  My husband hadn’t struck me since the last time he was in a fit of rage inspired by one of the Randolph brothers of Bizarre. And now Tom seemed just as shocked as I was, his eyes filling with shame at the sight of me holding my stinging cheek. With tears in his eyes, he shouted, “God dammit, Martha. Look what you’ve made me do! Look what you made me do.”

  He never dueled John Randolph.

  But it wasn’t because of my father’s letter, or my pleas, or because good sense prevailed. It was because he’d struck me, in spite of his promise never to do so again.
He’d dishonored himself in his own eyes and, in so doing, lost all appetite for a duel of honor. I knew this, deep down where we know such things about the men we marry, and counted it well worth the price. I would’ve provoked him to strike me a thousand times to keep him from dooming our family to utter ruin.

  But the price I didn’t understand was one exacted from Tom’s soul. For he was never without his pistols ever after, and I feel certain he was keeping a bullet ready for himself.

  He had inside him the kind of wound that left a man staring at pistols in the night. The kind of wound that left a man without a head, lying on the ground with a gun in his hand. The kind of wound the men in my life all seemed to suffer. And for the first time, I wondered if those wounds were put there by God or if it was something about me that brought them about.

  Washington City, 2 July 1807

  A Proclamation by Thomas Jefferson

  During the wars among the powers of Europe, the United States of America have observed neutrality. At length a deed, transcending all we’ve hitherto seen or suffered, brings our forbearance to a necessary pause. A frigate of the United States, trusting a state of peace, has been attacked by a British vessel of war. This was not only without provocation, or justifiable cause, but committed with the avowed purpose of taking by force, a part of her crew.

  An attack. An insult. An act of war.

  Publicly, my father prepared for battle. Privately, he confided we weren’t ready.

  The fate of our nation was, as always, caught between England and France, and my father no longer harbored a preference for either, observing, “France is a conqueror, roaming over the earth with havoc. And Britain is a pirate, spreading misery and ruin over the ocean. Fortunately for us, the Mammoth cannot swim nor the Leviathan move on dry land. And if we keep out of their way, they cannot get at us.”

  Thus came about the Embargo Act of 1807.

  Did Papa know he put the fate of the nation in the hands of its ladies? If we couldn’t buy tea, clothes, or goods from overseas, then wives and daughters would have to make them at home. And if women weren’t willing, the embargo would fail. After all, what did men know about making homespun?