“The chimney corner hasn’t been built that can hold you long. You were born restless like your father. You always want to be on to the next activity, Patsy, no matter what it is.”
“I didn’t come away down here through all that cold mud to dance and frivol,” she argued, arranging her wide skirt so she could sit beside him on the high bed. “I came to help you pack and fetch you home, but from the looks of things we’re doomed never to get there. What are all these pages and pages full of strange words?”
“Look out!” He rescued some sheets from her hand. “Don’t mix them up.” He straightened the papers lovingly, his long freckled fingers deft. “These are my Indian vocabularies. I’ve been setting down words from the different Indian tongues, comparing them and trying to find a common origin.”
“So that’s why someone said the other day that you believed that all the Indians were originally Russians!” Patsy laid the pages in neat piles. “Papa, you continually astound me! With all the frightful responsibilities you’ve had all these years—buying Louisiana, the country continually in a row with England and France and this bank business, not to mention Aaron Burr—you’ve found time to learn Indian languages.”
“I haven’t learned many—only a few words here and there. It kept my mind off unpleasant things, like having all the Federalists hate me vehemently and make no bones about it.” He quirked his long mouth in an ironic grimace. “Do you know that at this moment there are half a dozen banquets being eaten in this city where the Federalists are proposing insulting toasts to the despised ‘Virginian,’ gloating over my departure, telling each other, ‘Thank God, at last we’re rid of Jefferson!’?”
“Papa, please don’t remember those things,” pleaded his daughter. “Leave every bitter memory right here on the shores of this dirty Potomac. Up on the Rivanna on your mountain the children are already counting hours, eager for Grandfather to come home. Now, can’t we lay all these papers in a box so this bed can be used for the purpose for which it was intended? I’ll call Burwell. I could drag your boots off myself but it’s hard for me to stoop or bend over in these murderous stays. Back home I shall never wear them, no matter if my fashion-minded daughters faint with horror.”
“Don’t tell me the Misses Randolph have deserted dolls and toad houses built of mud and gone running after fur-belows! Maybe I had too many mirrors sent home from France.” He began obediently to lay the papers in a stout wooden box. “Come in, Burwell. The tyrannical Madam Patsy Randolph says this ex-president has to go to bed.”
“With a hot posset and a warm brick at his feet, Burwell,” Martha instructed the faithful servant. “I wonder if anybody in the future history of this nation will ever get this old barn of a mansion really warm? There are more goose-pimples than dimples and beauty patches on those bare shoulders downstairs this minute and Dolly Madison whispered to me that she wished that protocol demanded ermine capes with velvet linings for officials in this country such as the kings and lords wear in England. Well, good night, Papa. I’ll see you in the morning before I leave. I do have to hurry home. Remember there is a large family of small people there all in need of discipline before you get back to spoil them all outrageously.”
“I never spoil children. I teach them to use their eyes and their minds,” he protested, grunting as Burwell eased off the tight polished slippers and put shabby old carpet slippers on his feet. “There’s one thing I determine, Madam. If you can throw away stays when you are back at Monticello, I shall discard all fancy boots and slippers, stocks and tight cravats, and those confounded, silly lacy affairs down my front. You haven’t given away my good green breeches, I hope?”
“Everything of yours is exactly as you left it, Papa. The moths got at that awful old homespun coat but I suppose you’ll wear it anyway.”