by Judy Alter
Jessie
Real Women of the American West
Book Four
by
Judy Alter
Award-winning Author
JESSIE
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A novel based on the life of Jessie Benton Frémont
Dedication
For Bobbie Simms, who had a part in this book from the beginning, with thanks.
Prologue
I was the son my father never had, the child who would follow his dreams of an America expanding westward to the Pacific Ocean. And I was the parent that my husband longed for, the one who gave him the love, acceptance, and respectability he needed. I was a daughter and a wife, conscious always of the proper role of a woman... and always chafing against it. And yet I was myself—only I learned that lesson almost too late in life.
My father was Thomas Hart Benton, for forty years a United States senator from Missouri, one who fought for westward expansion and who fought equally hard against slavery, to the final destruction of his political career. He was a man of towering strength who brought me up in his shadow, wanting me to be both the helpmate he missed in my invalid mother and, still, the dainty, beautiful daughter he thought all men should have.
My husband was John Charles Frémont, explorer, topographer, soldier of fortune, presidential candidate, senator, governor, mining king, and, sometimes, bankrupt failure, court-martialed soldier, disgraced businessman—a man whose whole life was shadowed by the fact of his illegitimacy. That I loved him passionately has never been in doubt, nor that he loved me equally. But ours was a rocky relationship, with him away more than he was at home, filled with dreams and visions of what could be, while I coped too often with what really was. Our marriage was a series of good-byes—sometimes he returned to me in glorious triumph, but there were also days of dark disgrace. I saw two of my infant children die, watched my husband flirt with the temptation of a lover—a temptation I myself once put firmly behind me for his sake—and suffered a devastating estrangement from the father who had taught me all I knew—all this for the man I'd impulsively eloped with at the age of seventeen.
Without my father and my husband, the course of American history would be vastly different—less dramatic, I believe, and less triumphant. Westward expansion, even the crossing of the continent with the railroad, would have come without them but perhaps not so soon nor so effectively. The world should not judge such men as it does ordinary mortals... and yet it judges them more harshly. When I think of the part they had in the course of history, I like to believe that I, too, had a hand in the shaping of our country's history. I know I was of inestimable help to my father and, perhaps more important, I shaped the life of my husband. I was a good wife and a good mother to our children... but my life went beyond those roles, and I was not typical of my time, more's the pity.
John died nine days ago in New York—we were apart more than we were together these last years, but I still needed him, still hoped he would settle down here in California. His death, so sudden and so shocking, has forced me to look at myself... and at our life together. It is time to figure it all out, to untangle the raveled skeins of love and need, power and control, greed and good that went into our lives. I can only bring it all back to life in writing, as I brought vitality to the written reports of John's expeditions all those years ago. Lily, the daughter who has protected me all her life, tries to discourage me, saying my memoirs will be too sad, so I often write secretly, even furtively, when she is busy with her chores. But the story is not sad, really, and tell it I must, lest the world forever misunderstand Father, John... and, most of all, me.
Chapter 1
"Miss English's Seminary!" I exploded. "That's for spoiled rich girls without any brains in their heads."
We were in my father's library. No matter which Washington boardinghouse we lived in—and there were several—Father always had his own private room, where he worked surrounded by his law books and exploration journals and maps—always maps, on every surface, rolled and stood in the corners, a few prize ones hanging on the walls. Now Father sat at his desk, the top rolled back and the pigeonholes exploding with notes, letters, and the clutter of his daily life. A vial of ink and a quill lay carelessly on the desk. Father had never yet adjusted to pen points and much preferred to use his penknife to sharpen a quill when he began to compose the lengthy speeches for which he was noted in Congress.
He was a big man—more than six feet tall—with heavy features that spoke of strength and eyes that looked directly at you, as he did now at me. Father's hair was already white, though he was only in his early fifties, and I thought he looked like the king of the jungle, like the lions in the book I'd just read. Father seemed to have the same strength and power... and I knew even then that he had the power to send me to boarding school.
Still, I would not be talked out of protesting, just because of Father's stern look. I was used to that.
I sat at the smaller desk that he had fixed for me years earlier and where I'd spent more hours than could be counted, every one of them happy. A girl's school was the last place I wanted to go. I belonged at my father's side, where I'd been since I was three.
"Your mother and I have talked about it," Father said, his voice bringing me back to reality and the dreaded thought of Miss English's Female Seminary. "You're young... and we don't think you're ready for marriage...."
"Marriage!" I exploded again. "Father, I'm only fifteen. Of course I'm not ready for marriage. And who would I marry? The only men I meet here are politicians... and they are old."
"Thank you, Jessie," he said, chuckling and smoothing the rumpled cravat he wore and tugging at his linsey waistcoat. "I know I'm old, and so are my colleagues. But there have been one or two men who have... ah... admired your skills as a hostess...." He paused, as though deciding not to cloak his words, and then, running a hand through his hair, he said, "You know so much about politics that some would find you not only attractive but a boon to their careers."
"You taught me," I said forthrightly.
"I know, I know"—he shook his head—"and I'm proud of your capabilities. But now I want you to learn the things that... well, the things every young girl should know."
"Liza?" I asked. My sister, two years older than I, was my temperamental opposite,
content where I was curious, docile where I was angry.
"Your sister will go with you. She is much more... compliant... about this matter."
"I'm sure," I said bitterly.
"Now, your mother is waiting for you." He dismissed me.
I turned and left the room, mustering all the dignity I could to keep from crying, and headed up the stairs to my invalid mother's room.
Mother lay on the fainting couch, in the darkened bedroom where she spent most of her days. Today she was wearing a soft mauve wrapper with a pale-green cashmere shawl pulled around her shoulders against the cold, though a fire burned strongly in her fireplace. The dark-green blanket over her legs lay almost flat to the couch, so thin was she. But her face brightened when I walked into the room, and the smile brought just a bit of color to her paleness. Mother was as fair as Father was dark—Liza and our younger brother, Randolph, took after her, while Father's dark hair and coloring were given to me. Sometimes I thought it was as though we were two separate families—Father and I together by looks and temperament and interests, with Mother, Liza, and Randolph joined in the same way. My littlest sisters—Sarah and Susie—had yet to declare themselves in the matter of looks, but I secretly hoped they, too, would favor Mother, leaving me, in a sense, Father's only child.
I was never clear why my mother was an invalid. In my early years she was more active around the house, though she never partook of the society that Washington offered. Still, when we were little, she was more a part of our daily life. I can yet see her sitting by Father's desk in the evening, her hands busy with knitting or embroidery while Father worked. Between them there was a companionable silence.
But as we grew into our teen years, Mother grew less and less a part of the household, though she continued, from her bedroom, to exert a firm control over the running of the house and the affairs of her children. She had good days and bad, though I never heard of a specific ailment. Sometimes I thought she had given up on life—perhaps because of the death of my younger brother, James, at the age of four from consumption, or maybe, I sometimes supposed, because she found Father's rigorous dedication to government too tiring. At any rate, she had no interest in his speeches, his passion for westward expansion, his devotion to Andrew Jackson; and I, who cared so much about these things at an early age, wondered how she could put them from her mind. It never seemed to occur to Father that she should be other than she was. They obviously loved each other, but I knew there was something of a minor key—just slightly dissonant—about the relationship between my mother and father. As I grew older, I knew it was not a relationship after which I would pattern my own married life.
"I've been waiting for you, dear," she said now, reaching out a thin hand.
"I know, Mother. Father told me. How are you today?" With an effort I kept the anger out of my voice. Father had cautioned me often enough about upsetting Mother.
"I'm fine, thank you, Jessie. Your father has told you about the school?"
I took the hand that was still stretched toward me. "I'm not happy about it, Mother. I... I belong with Father, helping him."
"No, Jessie," she said, her voice firmer than usual. "Your father's business is a thing apart from us. It is men's business, and you are a lady... a well-born lady. I pray that someday you will be mistress of a large home... something like Cherry Grove...." Her eyes took on that faraway look they always did when she talked of her childhood home in Virginia, where an enormous, graceful house, set in a mountain valley, was surrounded by apple and peach orchards and meadows where cattle grazed. I was always restless and impatient at Cherry Grove, longing for the bustle of the capital, but Liza much preferred it to Washington. And Mother, I sensed, would have given almost anything to be living at Cherry Grove.
I sat with her a few minutes longer, making desultory conversation. When she dozed at last, I slipped out of the room for the privacy of my own bedroom, where I could give in to the anger building inside of me. Boarding school indeed!
Strangely, there were no guests that evening for dinner. Often Mother would come down for the evening meal if it were just family, but I guess that night the rigor of telling me I was going to boarding school had been too much for her. She remained in her room.
"Tonight," Father said, when we were all gathered at the table at five o'clock, "we will discuss Hamlet. Eliza... Jessie... Randolph, I believe you have all three read the play."
While we mumbled, "Yessir," Sarah and Susie were quick to chorus, "We haven't. We don't know about it."
"Listen, and you shall learn," Father said patiently, and the little girls obediently fell silent. "Randolph, what was Hamlet's most outstanding characteristic?"
Randolph thought a moment, and then he said, falteringly, "He made a botch of everything."
"Splendid," Father boomed. "That he did."
"He... he had a chance to do something great, and he... well, he thought too much." Liza's opinion was tentatively offered, but it, too, met with Father's approval.
My sister looked pretty tonight, wearing a lavender muslin dress with an embroidered collar, and it struck me that she always looked softer and more delicate than I did. More, I thought, like Mother. My dress was muslin too, but it was darker—a shade of green—and I had not added the dainty touch of the collar.
"He had," I said, "no one who believed in him. I don't think it is possible for people to achieve great success unless others believe in them."
Father looked startled for a moment. "You may be right, Jessie. And I am lucky to have all of you." His voice included all of us, but his eyes rested on me.
The discussion continued over roast beef and potatoes, wandering into the nature of Polonius and, finally, the presence of evil in mankind—as evidenced by Gertrude. But I listened with only half my attention, for my mind was occupied with my own importance to Father as the one who believed in him enough to make his success possible.
Late that night as I lay curled under a pile of blankets—Father insisted we sleep with the windows open for the sake of our health—my mind still boiled with resistance to boarding school.
I was convinced Father needed me to believe in him—and how could I do that from the distance of school? But worse yet, how would I myself survive school and its isolation? What would I do if I weren't privy to Father's speeches and plans, caught in the whirlwind of politics, attuned, as I was accustomed, to the various winds of change that blew through the capital?
I looked resentfully at Liza, who slept peacefully next to me as though her life were not about to change dramatically.
* * *
In a way, my duties as my father's assistant had begun in late 1828, while he was working hard to get Andrew Jackson elected to the presidency. I was three at the time. Liza and I had new purple capes to show off, and we had headed directly for Father's library once Mama fastened the clasps for us. As I danced down the stairs, in my imagination I could already hear Father's boom of pleasure as "his girls," as he called us, pirouetted before him.
To my dismay the library was empty. Already I was fascinated by this room. I adored my father—and his library seemed to hold the secrets of his existence. Frequently, I peeked around the door to watch him covering page after page with his bold, sprawling handwriting.
Liza would whisper, "Father will scold you for bothering him," and I would reply confidently, "No, he won't. He'll smile at us." And he usually did.
So when I found the library empty this day, my disappointment soon turned to intrigue. It was my turn to act like Father. I spotted a stack of foolscap on the desk and, near it, some red and blue chalks. Nothing would do but that I help Father with his writing, so I licked the chalk and began making my own marks on the paper, right over his.
"Jessie!" Liza whispered in horror, ready to run for the door.
"Write to Father, Liza," I said as I made marks as bold as his all over the paper.
"I can't....I'm afraid he'll be angry."
"Father doesn't get angry at us,"
I told her, and pretty soon she was making tentative light marks on another sheet of the foolscap.
I was wrong about Father's anger. By the time he found us, we had thoroughly dirtied our new capes with chalk and, worse, had ruined the pages of a speech he'd planned to deliver in the Senate the next day.
His voice was like thunder. "Who did this?" he demanded, though it was plain for all to see who had done it.
Eliza began to cry, but I went to stand in front of Father and ask, "Do you really want to know?"
He stared at me, the edges of his mouth quivering as though he were trying hard to hold on to his anger. "Yes, I want to know," he said, his voice still loud and terrible.
"A little girl that says 'Hurrah for Jackson,' " I told him.
Father stood frozen a moment, while I held my breath and, behind me, Liza sobbed in anticipation of a spanking.
The spanking never came. Father began to chuckle, and then he had to sit down to roar and slap his knee. When he finally had control again, he drew each of us to him with a big arm and said gently, his anger gone, "That was the speech I am to deliver tomorrow. The only copy."
"Father," I said, "you can say it by heart."
He nodded. "Yes, Jessie, I probably can."
Soon after, a small table and chairs appeared in his library. "So you can practice writing and helping me," he said. Ostensibly the table and chairs were for both Liza and me, but Liza preferred other pursuits.
Andrew Jackson was elected, of course, and I became a regular visitor at the White House, tagging along behind Father as he went to see the President almost daily on national business. Father had told the President the story of the ruined speech, and it gave me a place in the old man's heart. He was the saddest man I ever knew. Father and I would find him in a rocking chair, staring absently out the window, his shoulders sunk in despair. More than once we found him with his head buried in his hands. Then Father would back quietly out and start in again, making a lot of noise so Mr. Jackson had time to compose himself.
