MARTHA JEFFERSON RANDOLPH.
Tradition, says Randall, has preserved one anecdote of the wooers who sought her hand. It has two renderings, and the reader may choose between them. The first is that two of Mr. Jefferson’s rivals happened to meet on Mrs. Skelton’s door-stone. They were shown into a room from which they heard her harpsichord and voice, accompanied by Mr. Jefferson’s violin and voice, in the passages of a touching song. They listened for a stanza or two. Whether something in the words, or in the tones of the singers appeared suggestive to them, tradition does not say, but it does aver that they took their hats and retired to return no more on the same errand! The other, and, we think, less probable version of the story is, that the three met on the door-stone, and agreed that they would “take turns” and that the interviews should be made decisive; and that by lot or otherwise Mr. Jefferson led off, and that then during his trial they heard the music that they concluded settled the point. After the bridal festivities at the Forest, Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson set out for Monticello, and they were destined to meet some not exactly amusing adventures by the way. A manuscript of their eldest daughter (Mrs. Randolph) furnished Mr. Randall by one of her granddaughters and published in his “Life of Jefferson”—says: “They left the Forest after a fall of snow, light then, but increasing in depth as they advanced up the country. They were finally obliged to quit the carriage and proceed on horseback. Having stopped for a short time at Blenheim (the residence of Colonel Carter) where an overseer only resided, they left it at sunset to pursue their way through a mountain track rather than a road, in which the snow lay from eighteen inches to two feet deep, having eight miles to go before reaching Monticello.
“They arrived late at night, the fires all out and the servants retired to their own houses for the night. The horrible dreariness of such a house, at the end of such a journey, I have often heard them both relate.” Part of a bottle of wine, found on a shelf behind some books, had to serve the new-married couple both for fire and supper. Tempers too sunny to be ruffled by many ten times as serious annoyances in after life, now found but sources of diversion in these ludicrous contretemps, and the horrible dreariness was lit up with songs, and merriment and laughter.
Nine years afterward, Mrs. Jefferson, the mother of five children, was slowly declining, and her husband, refusing a mission to Europe on that account, determined to give up all other duties to soothe and sustain her. She had borne her fifth child in November, and when it was two months old, she had fled with it in her arms as Arnold approached Richmond. “The British General Tarleton sent troops to capture Governor Jefferson, who was occupied in securing his most important papers. While thus engaged, his wife and children were taken in a carriage, under the care of a young gentleman who was studying with him, to Colonel Coles, fourteen miles distant. Monticello was captured (if a residence occupied by unresisting servants may be said to be captured), and the house searched, though not sacked by the enemy. Many of the negroes were taken, and but five ever returned, while the greater part of those left behind sank under the epidemics raging at the time. The house was robbed of nothing save a few articles in the cellar, the farm was stripped of valuable horses, and many thousand dollars’ worth of grain and tobacco. An anecdote is told of two of Mr. Jefferson’s slaves—Martin and Cæsar, who were left in charge of the house and were engaged in secreting plate and other valuables under the floor of the front portico, when a party of British soldiers arrived. The floor was then of planks. One of these was raised, and Martin stood above handing down articles to Cæsar, in the cellar improvised by the faithful slaves in the emergency. While he was finishing his packing, Martin heard the tramp of horses’ feet, and looking in the direction indicated saw the red coats coming. For Cæsar to get out was to inform the British where the valuables they were trying to save were secreted, and without a word of warning the plank was put down. Cæsar understood the sudden action to mean danger, and very soon he knew by the noise overhead that the enemy had come. For eighteen hours he remained in the dark hole, and was not released until Martin was sure of the departure of the last one of the raiders.”
In April, the loss of her infant, together with constant anxiety for the safety of her husband, shattered the remaining strength of Mrs. Jefferson. Toward the close of 1781, she rallied. Her last child was born the 8th of May, 1782. Greater apprehensions than usual had preceded the event and they were fatally verified. The delicate constitution was irrevocably sapped. “A momentary hope for her might sometimes flutter in the bosom of her lonely husband, but it was in reality a hope against hope, and he knew it to be so. That association which had been the first joy of his life, which blent itself with all his future visions of happiness, which was to be the crowning glory of that delightful retreat he was forming, and which was to shed mellow radiance over the retirement to which he was fondly looking forward, was now to end; and it was only a question of weeks, or, possibly, months, how soon it would end. Mrs. Jefferson had returned her husband’s affection, with not only the fervor of a woman whose dream of love and pride (for what woman is not proud of the world’s estimation of her husband?) has been more than gratified, but with the idolatrous gratitude of a wife who knew how often that husband had cast away the most tempting honors without a sigh, when her own feeble health had solicited his presence and attentions. And now, as the dreadful hour of parting approached, her affection became painfully, almost wildly absorbing. The faithful daughter of the church had no dread of the hereafter, but she yearned to remain with her husband with that yearning which seems to have power to retard even the approaches of death. Her eyes ever rested on him, ever followed him. When he spoke, no other sound could reach her ear or attract her attention. When she waked from slumber, she looked momentarily alarmed and distressed, and ever appeared to be frightened, if the customary form was not bending over her, the customary look upon her. For weeks Mr. Jefferson sat at that bedside, only catching brief intervals of rest.”
She died on the 6th of September. Her eldest daughter, Mrs. Randolph, many years afterward, said of the sad scene: “He nursed my poor mother in turn with Aunt Carr and her own sister, sitting up with her and administering her medicines and drink to the last. For four months that she lingered, he was never out of calling; when not at her bedside he was writing in a small room which opened immediately into hers.”
To her were denied the honors that later in life crowned the brow of her gifted husband. Had she survived, no more pleasant life could have been traced than this gentle, cultivated woman’s. Hers was no passive nature, swayed by every passing breeze, but a loving, strong heart, a rare and gifted intellect, cultivated by solid educational advantages, experience, and the society of the greatest statesman and scholar of his day. In the midst of all happiness, vouchsafed to humanity, she died; and her husband, faithful to her memory, devoted himself to their children, and lived and died her lonely-hearted mourner.
Martha Jefferson, after the death of her mother, was placed at school in Philadelphia, at the age of eleven years, where she remained until her father took her, in 1784, to Europe. His other two daughters, being too young for such a journey, were left with their maternal aunt, Mrs. Eppes, wife of Francis Eppes, Esquire, of Eppington, Chesterfield County, Virginia. Mary, the second of his surviving children, was six years old, and Lucy Elizabeth, the third, was two years old. The latter died before the close of 1784. The child of sorrow and misfortune, her organization was too frail and too intensely susceptible to last long. Her sensibilities were so precociously acute, that she listened with exquisite pleasure to music, and wept on hearing a false note.
After a short period of sight-seeing, Martha Jefferson was placed at a convent, and continued to reside there during her father’s stay in Europe. In July, 1787, “the long-expected Mary (called Marie in France, and thenceforth through life, Marie) reached London.” She had crossed the Atlantic with simply a servant girl, though doubtless they were both intrusted to the charge of some passenger friend, or some known and trusted ship commander, whom we do not find named. They were received by Mrs. Adams, and awaited an expected opportunity of crossing the Channel with a party of French friends of Mr. Jefferson. These continued to defer their return, and Mr. Jefferson became too impatient to await their movements. Accordingly, his steward, the favorite and trusty Petit, was sent to London after Marie, and she reached her father’s hotel in Paris, on the 29th of July, just three days before her ninth birthday.