“Why, Papa, don’t you recognize it? It’s the chair you sat in all the time you were vice-president. Mr. Madison had it sent up by the barge. He thought you would like to have it,” explained Martha.
He snorted. “I have spent more eternal hours of boredom in that miserable chair than in any seat whereon a man has ever rested his breeches!” he grumbled. “Stick it in a dark corner somewhere. Send it down to the servants’ quarters. The office of vice-president is about as tedious an insult to a man’s intelligence as could be conceived. To have to suffer it for four years is bad enough, but to be reminded of it the rest of his life is pure persecution. However, I shall take pains to thank Jemmy Madison properly. He meant this as a handsome gift. I’ll receive it in the same spirit, but I don’t want it around where I have to look at it and be reminded of Senator Bingham and of John Adams’s being urged to slay a thousand Republicans with the jawbone of Thomas Jefferson.”
“Oh, Papa, don’t let past times rankle. Look back on the happy ones,” begged Martha. “We did have fun in Paris, didn’t we?”
“And you went to school there,” mourned one of her daughters—Jefferson was not yet entirely sure which was which—“and saw all those fashionable people and the king and Napoleon and spoke French all the time, and we have to learn French with that stupid Miss Fraker. You should hear her, Grandpa. She pronounces French as it is spelled in English.”
“She says ‘Owy Owy,’ and we know it should be ‘wee wee,’” piped up a smaller one. Was this Virginia or Ellen? He would have to put his family tree in order soon before he mortally offended some of them.
“Grandfather will teach you proper French when he gets time,” promised their mother. “He spent four years over there and I went to school there and so did Aunt Maria. But not all that we saw was happy. We saw too many beggars and hungry people in the streets, something you will never see in Virginia.”
“We see blind Remus when we go to church,” said one child. “He sits on the path with his hat in his hand and says, ‘Please, li’l missy, give ole Remus a penny?’”
“And if we put our penny in his hat, then we have nothing when the verger comes around with the alms basin and he gives us a disgusted look,” said another.
“Remus doesn’t have to beg,” said Jefferson. “He is owned by a family able to take care of him.”
“Maybe he likes it. Sitting in the sun and hearing people pass.”