Read Ebook: Christmas at Monticello with Thomas Jefferson by Miller Helen Topping

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Ebook has 306 lines and 19254 words, and 7 pages

"And what brings you here so early, my dear Patsy?" he inquired. "I thought you would be starting out for Richmond and Charlottesville on the next coach?"

"I knew you'd never finish this packing alone or let any one help you." She kissed his forehead, smoothing back his rough motley of hair. "I declare, Burwell, if you don't cut his hair soon, he'll be riding the country looking like a mangy old lion!" she scolded. "Trim this on top and fix him a proper cue, or I shall go out and buy you a stylish wig, Mr. Ex-President."

"Can't stand the things! They're dirty," he snorted. "I'll get everything packed, Patsy. These boys will help me. You go along home and get a good fire going to thaw out my old bones after that long three days in that drafty coach."

"You will never finish packing," she fussed. "You'll find some book or paper you haven't seen in a long time and spend hours poring over it. I know you, Thomas Jefferson. You gentlemen bring in all those boxes and, Burwell, see that Mr. Jefferson's trunks and carpetbag are packed. This baggage will be taken off the barge at Shadwell, Father, and we'll have wagons sent down to carry it to Monticello."

"Nothing must be lost!" worried Jefferson. "Nothing! Every paper and pamphlet I've saved is important. They contain the history of an era, the story of the birth of this nation."

"Then," said Martha, "it would seem that most of them should be in the Library of Congress."

"Never, while they house that library in such makeshift quarters," he argued. "Patsy, my dear, I beg of you, go on to Monticello as we planned. I shall arrive later with everything I own intact. Just remember that your father has knocked about the world on his own for a long time, and I am not yet senile nor decrepit."

"But you will admit that you are tired to the bone," she persisted, "and that long trip in this cold weather is not going to be easy."

"I'll admit anything, only get out of here now so that I can get out of this dressing gown and into my breeches! Burwell, see that my satin breeches and the broadcloth coat are well aired before you pack them. It will be a long day before I shall want to be dressed up and elegant again."

"You were quite the beau at that dance last night," Martha remarked. "Several women said to me that they had never before seen you so witty and gay. And more than one remarked that it was a great pity that you were leaving Washington."

"They had never seen me before without the sad old albatross of responsibility hung on my back," he retorted. "When I gave it over to Jemmy Madison, I felt twenty years younger in twenty minutes and even several pounds lighter. Once I'm back on my own mountain you'll see, I shall be merry as a grig--whatever a grig is."

"In my youth, when you were feeding me huge, nauseous doses of Plato and Livy, you would have ordered me to go and look that word up," Patsy reminded him. "I can hear you very sternly directing me never to use a word unless I knew its exact meaning. Fortunately, I know what a grig is."

"It's a cricket," spoke up one of the aides. "My granny told me a long time ago, a grig is a cricket. When I was a young-un, sir."

"It's a kind of grasshopper," disputed the other aide. "A little grasshopper that fiddles tunes with its hind legs, Mr. President, sir."

"Mr. Ex-President, Carver. An ex being something that has been crossed out, obliterated, ignored. I'm obliterated but I can still go on being a grig. Even though I can't fiddle any more since I broke this wrist in France. I miss my music, too.--Well, good-by again, Madam Randolph. Be sure you take along a warm robe and a shawl. That coach can be mighty damp and dreary."

"And you do the same, Papa, and don't you climb down halfway home and start out on horseback in this foul weather. Nothing ever created by Heaven is so treacherous and mean as this month of March. If they would leave it off all the calendars, it would please me well."

"Keep plenty of elmbark stewing on the hob till I get home," he ordered. "It will cure any phthisic ever contracted."

"He's so stubborn," he heard his daughter say to the aide as she went out. "I shan't be surprised at all to see him come riding home on that horse. If he wants to do it, he'll do it if it kills him."

"It won't kill him, ma'am," the man murmured. "Mister Jefferson is still a mighty stout fellow."

Why, why had he saved so many things? Yet they were all important, all precious. One small box full of rocks, little packets of earth, dried leaves, and the desiccated bodies of insects. These George Clark and Meriwether Lewis had brought back to him from the long exploring journey they had made, crossing the country to the Pacific Ocean. Jefferson held out one small, rattling mummy of a creature in his palm.

"Ever see a bug like this, Burwell?" he asked.

"Looks like some kind of scawpin. Got he tail in air like one too." The old Negro studied the dried object skittishly. "Stinger in that tail, I bet you. You watch out, Mister Tom, mought be p'ison even if he daid."

"There are desert places out there, they told me, where everything has thorn and stings or stinks." Jefferson wrapped the desert scorpion carefully in cotton lint. "I'll have to have a glass case built at home to display all these things. These trophies from Europe too. And this piece of cannonball that was fired at Ticonderoga. I suppose every president from this time on will be sent weird mementoes of some battle or discovery or other. John Adams got an Iroquois scalp and a jawbone some settler had plowed up in his field, but nothing quite so gruesome has ever come to me. Now we must count all these boxes and I must see that they all go aboard the boat."

The storm did not abate. Rather, it grew worse, changing from snow to sleet and then to icy hostile rain that made quagmires of the roads and treacherous slippery deadfalls of every slope. The coach horses slipped and stumbled, the coach swayed and lurched in the ruts, splashing muddy water everywhere. Jefferson's bones ached from the jolting; his elbows were sore from being continually slammed against the hard leather of the seats. The floor was cold and wet.

At Shadwell, where the barge landed, having made inquiry and been assured that all his baggage had been transferred to wagons, he left the coach and mounted his bay horse, the patient animal having been led behind at a dragging pace for many miles. Snow was still thick in the air, but once in the saddle Jefferson leaned into the wind, gave the bay his head, and let him warm his sluggish blood in a brisk canter. Sensing that he was heading home, the horse loped along, shaking his head in irritation at the snow that stung his eyelids, but keeping steadily on until the mountains loomed at last, dark blue and chill upon the horizon.

Martha's husband, Thomas Randolph, had written that all the people of Albemarle County would be out to meet him with fife and drum and banner, but Jefferson had urged Martha to see that there was no public demonstration. "I'll likely be delayed on the way. I may even get home in the middle of the night. Head off any hoorah. This is no hero; this is plain Farmer Jefferson coming home."

When he turned off the highway into the narrow winding road up his hill, he could restrain the bay no longer. Weary as the animal was, he broke into a reaching gallop, and now the brick house was in sight, and streaming out from every door came people running, bareheaded and shouting through the storm. His daughter, his son-in-law, all his grandchildren, and every slave on the place, he was certain. They swarmed about him, lifting him off his horse, the jubilant Negroes pressing forward to kiss his hands, his boots, even his horse.

The children screamed joyfully, "Grandfather is home for ever and ever!" With so many arms lifting him, he was half carried in to the house. In the lofty hall, the ceiling almost two full stories high, a great fire burned on the hearth and shone on the trophy-covered walls and the great clock over the door that worked by cannon ball weights and faced both indoors and out.

Jefferson sank wearily into a deep chair. He was more worn and chilled than he wanted to admit, but a great sigh of contentment made his lips tremble. All around him were all the things he loved, that he had built, contrived, designed, invented. The weather indicator on the ceiling that was controlled by a vane on the roof outside--his eyes turned up toward it.

"Still works," he remarked, "and from the set of the wind there'll be no good weather for another day at least. Did the wagons get here?"

"No, Papa, not yet. But the roads are mighty bad, as you know."

"Freezing mud. Makes slow traveling. Now, baby," he protested to a young granddaughter, "Grandpapa can take off his own boots."

"No, you can't," insisted young Cornelia, "because I'm going to do it for you. Ellen's fetching some wool socks she knit--and, Grandpa, one is too long but please don't mention it."

"I won't, I promise. Not if it reaches halfway to my neck."

"I found these old slippers in your wardrobe. A mouse had started to build a nest in one but I brushed it out and aired it. Thank goodness, he hadn't gnawed any holes in it." She jumped up.

"Ah, my dear sir," he looked up gratefully at Thomas Randolph, who was followed by a servant with a steaming mug on a server, "you save my life!"

"Just what you need to heat up your blood, sir." said Randolph. "Another log on the fire, Cassius, and tend the fires in Mr. Jefferson's library and bedroom."

Jefferson sipped the warm punch slowly while his granddaughters busied themselves dressing his feet in warm hose and old slippers.

"Your breeches are damp, Grandpa," one said. "But we can't do anything about that."

"I am marvelously served already." He pulled them close to kiss their flushed young faces. "Burwell will find me some dry clothes presently as soon as I am warmed and rested. I see that our Paris lamp hasn't tarnished very much, Patsy." He looked up at the ceiling. "Remember what a time we had packing that thing? I remember you stuffed the globes full of hose and shirts and winced every time the box was moved."

"I expected it to arrive here a mass of scraps and splinters," she said, "and after you had paid such an outrageous price for it, too."

"It was that painting you made the worst fuss about." Jefferson emptied the bowl, handed it to the waiting servant, and got to his feet. "Ah, my old knees are stiff! But they still seem willing to support me. Now, I want to see everything. Yes"--he halted at the door of the high-ceiled drawing room--"there's poor old John the Baptist whom you hated, Patsy." He went nearer to study the painting over the mantel.

"It was Polly who loathed it most," Martha said. "Not poor old John, all head and no body, but Salome lugging him on that charger wearing modern clothes and a very proper turban at that. I'd still like to throw that picture away, Papa. It used to give little Francis Eppes the horrors. Every time he had to pass through this room he'd have nightmares."

"Nice polish on this floor, Patsy," commended Jefferson, artfully turning her mind away from criticism of one of his favorite paintings by complimenting the gleam of the parquet floor. It was the first such oak floor laid in America and he was very proud of the way it reflected the glitter of the gilt chairs and sofas he had brought from Paris. They had cost fabulous amounts too, more than he could afford, but in his philosophy the things a man wanted and admired, that made life richer, were worth whatever they cost.

A brief nagging jerk of realism struck him--that now he would have to count the cost of things. Let that wait, let it wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow he would look over his lands, his farms; he would see how Randolph's management had benefited them, and study what more must be done to the still unfinished house. Martha, catching his roving look, interrupted it with a protest.

"Papa, please! Don't begin right away tearing down something and building it over. The house is fine as it is and we all love it--and you are so tired."

"My dear, I should be even more tired with no occupation," he argued. "Of course it will take me some little time to arrange and dispose of all my books and papers. Did they build those shelves I wrote you about in November?"

"Yes, Papa, come and see. I gave them the drawing you made and I'm quite sure they followed it exactly." She walked ahead of him through the great hall and the narrow passage that led to the southern wing of the house which contained the library, Jefferson's study, and his bedroom, with the bed alcove between and the steep winding stairs to the mezzanine-like second story.

There in the familiar rooms were all the homely things he had missed--his shabby old revolving chair, the painted wooden bench with its leather cushion that just fitted his lean, weary legs, the round revolving table he had had built with the legs set right so that the bench would slide under them and make of table, chair, and bench a comfortable kind of chaise longue with a high back to shut out the drafts. There was his file table with octagonal sides, each side holding a filing drawer labeled with a group of letters, and his high drawing table with drawers and shelves that could be adjusted at any angle.

Beside the library fireplace stood a high-backed leather chair, a pompous and official looking piece of furniture. Jefferson glared at it.

"And how came that thing here?" he demanded.

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