There is also a touching tribute to his daughter, declaring that while he “goes to his fathers,” “the last pang of life” is in parting from her; that “two seraphs” “long shrouded in death” (meaning doubtless his wife and younger daughter) “await him;” that he will “bear them her love.”
After this all is sadness. To satisfy creditors, all the property was sold, and the proceeds did not fully meet the debts.
“When it became known that Monticello had gone, or must go out of the hands of Mr. Jefferson’s family, and that his only child was left without an independent provision, another exhibition of public feeling took place. The Legislatures of South Carolina and Louisiana promptly voted her $10,000 each, and the stocks they created for the purpose sold for $21,800. Other plans were started in other States, which, had they been carried out, would have embraced a liberal provision for Mr. Jefferson’s descendants. But, as is usual on such occasions, the people in each locality obtained exaggerated impressions of what was doing in others, and slackened their own exertions until the feeling that prompted them died away.”
Two years passed, and Mrs. Randolph was called upon to see her husband die, and she of all her name remained to link the memory of her ancestors with those of her descendants.
To her daughter, Mrs. Virginia Jefferson Trist, I am indebted for this narrative of the closing eight years of Mrs. Randolph’s life:
“My Dear Mrs. Holloway:
“I wish it were in my power to answer your inquiries more satisfactorily than I am able to do. My recollections of my mother, at so early a period of my life as the one referred to, are altogether childish and imperfect. It is true, my very earliest recollections are connected with a winter passed in the White House during my grandfather’s Presidency, but they are so few and so scanty and childish, as they rise before me in the mists of long past years, that really nothing worth offering you suggests itself to my mind.
“My mother was born in September, 1772, and had therefore entered her 29th year when her father was elected President. She was then the mother of five children, having married at the early age of seventeen. Thus surrounded by a family of young children, she could not pass much of her time in Washington; she did, however, spend two winters there, the first in 1802–3, the second in 1805–6. Her health was very bad on the first of these two occasions of her visiting her father. Having an abscess on her lungs, she was advised by her physician to go to pass the winter in Bermuda, and for this purpose left her home in Albemarle, Virginia, to go as far as Washington in her travelling carriage—the only mode at that day of making the journey of four days’ duration. During this journey the abscess broke, and she felt so much relieved that her going to Bermuda was no longer considered necessary, and she passed that winter with her father. I believe my father was in Congress at that time. My mother’s only sister, Marie Jefferson, then Mrs. John W. Eppes, was also a member of her father’s family that winter, her husband being in Congress. There was a difference of six years in the ages of the sisters; my mother, who was the oldest, had accompanied her father to France, where she was educated under his eyes. My aunt had afterward followed them to Paris under the wing of Mrs. John Adams, in whose correspondence mention is made of her. The three became thus reunited only two years before their return home, after which she (my aunt) was placed at school in Philadelphia. She grew up possessed of rare beauty and loveliness of person as well as disposition; but her health was delicate, and her natural modesty and timidity was so great as to make her averse to society. Undervaluing her own personal advantages, she regarded with the warmest admiration, as well as sisterly affection, her sister’s more positive character and brilliant intellectual endowments. My mother was not a beauty; her features were less regular than her sister’s, her face owing its charms more to its expressiveness, beaming as it ever was with kindness, good humor, gayety and wit. She was tall and very graceful, notwithstanding a certain degree of embonpoint. Her complexion naturally fair, her hair of a dark chestnut color, very long and very abundant. I have always heard that her manners were uncommonly attractive from their vivacity, amiability, and high breeding, and her conversation was charming. These two sisters were the ladies of the White House in 1802–3. My mother was very sociable and enjoyed society. I remember hearing her mention a circumstance which seemed to illustrate the natural difference of their characters. She said one day, laughingly, ‘Marie, if I had your beauty, I should not feel so indifferent as you do about it.’ My aunt looked vexed and pained, and observed, ‘Compliments to a pretty face were indications that no intellectual attractions existed in its possessor.’
“From their contemporary, Mrs. Madison, I have heard, that that winter when the sisters were going together into society, although on entering a room all eyes were turned on the younger, who became a centre of attraction, particularly to the gentlemen, that by degrees my mother’s vivacity and the charms of her conversation and manners drew around her a circle of admirers who delighted in listening to her even more than in looking at her beautiful sister. These two sisters lived in perfect harmony, linked together by the warmest mutual affection, as well as their common devotion to their father, whom both idolized.
“My mother’s second visit to her father was in the winter of 1805–6. She had then lost her sister. My aunt left two children, Francis and Maria Jefferson; the little girl was only a few months old and did not long survive her mother. Francis passed that winter under my mother’s care, his father being still in Congress. One of my brothers was born that same winter; the first birth which took place in the White House. He was called James Madison. Mrs. Madison was an intimate and much valued friend of my mother’s, and her amiable, playful manners with children attracted my sisters and myself and made her a great favorite with us. Among my childish recollections is her ‘running away with us,’ as she playfully expressed it, when she took us away with her in her carriage, to give us a drive and then take us home with her to play with two of her nieces near our ages, and lunch on cranberry tarts. My oldest sister, Anne, completed her fifteenth year that winter, and was not yet going into society; but my mother permitted her to go to a ball under the care of a lady friend, who requested that my sister might go to her house to dress and accompany her own daughter near her age to the ball. My sister excited great admiration on that occasion. She had a ‘remarkably classic head,’ as I remember hearing an Italian artist remark at Monticello upon seeing her there after she was the mother of several children. Her hair was a beautiful auburn, and her complexion had a delicate bloom very becoming to her, and with the freshness of fifteen I can readily imagine how strikingly handsome she was. My mother, accompanied by Mrs. Cutts—the mother of Gen. Richard D. Cutts—went to the ball at a later hour. She was very short-sighted, and seeing my sister on entering the ball-room she asked Mrs. Cutts, ‘Who is that beautiful girl?’ Mrs. Cutts, much amused, answered, ‘Why, woman, are you so unnatural a mother as not to recognize your own daughter?’