“If he’s sitting there now, he’s being snowed on,” said young Francis Eppes gravely, standing at the window. It was the first time the quiet, brown-haired boy had spoken and Jefferson from his seat in the old revolving chair looked at him sharply. This was his beloved younger daughter Maria’s only child. Maria, christened Mary, called Polly, and later changing her name in the convent to Maria, pronounced in the Italian fashion. Maria was gone now these four years but the pain of her loss was still a quivering fiber of anguish in Thomas Jefferson’s heart. She had died, as his own young wife had died, when her daughters were small, having borne too many children, wasting away after the last childbirth, fading slowly day by day. Polly’s young husband, Jack Eppes, still lived at Eppington not far away, but Francis spent a great deal of time at Monticello with Martha’s healthy, noisy brood.
“Come here, Francis,” Jefferson called gently. “Come here and let your grandfather look at you.”
“He’s always moping and looking out windows,” volunteered a young Randolph. “It’s because he hasn’t any mother.”
“Come and talk to me, Francis,” urged Jefferson. “You and I should be friends. I have no mother either.”
The boy came obediently and stood by the arm of the chair, his big eyes, so like Polly’s, very sober.
“Old people don’t have mothers, sir,” he said.
“But I did. Till I was a grown up man. I had a handsome mother whose name was Jane and I still think about her when I stand and look out of windows. I wonder if I’m the kind of a man she would have wanted me to be.”
“I can’t be what my mother wanted me to be,” said small Francis plaintively. “My father says she wanted me to be a great man like my grandfather, but how can I be like you, sir? All the things you’ve done won’t ever be done again, ever, will they? There will never be another Declaration of Independence and you wrote that. I know. My father told me.”
Jefferson circled the lad with an arm. All about, clustered close to the fire, the young Randolphs were abruptly and amazingly quiet.
“That’s so,” the old man agreed. “I did write that paper, didn’t I? And after I’d written it, four other men sat around in Philadelphia for about a week and picked it to pieces and made changes in it and couldn’t make up their minds whether to adopt it or not. I guess they never would have made up their minds and we’d still be British subjects and paying taxes to the king. But at last they all decided to accept the Declaration of Independence, leaving out some parts I had labored hard to make perfect. So—we declared ourselves independent of Great Britain.”