Jefferson's Daughters Page 4

  The inoculation procedure probably followed the method developed by the famous English doctor Robert Sutton in the mid-eighteenth century. Earlier versions of inoculation involved taking a sample from the sores of an already infected person and inserting it into a deep incision on the patient. There were considerable risks in this method, of course, either death or the permanent scarring George Washington suffered. But Sutton took the inoculum from a previously inoculated person and avoided deep incisions. As a result, he and his doctor sons enjoyed phenomenal success in defeating a fearsome disease: little scarring and only a 1 percent fatality rate among the thousands they treated. The Suttons also insisted upon outdoor exercise for their patients. Familiar with the Suttons’ methods, Jefferson took his daughters away from Monticello. While contagious, his patients needed to live in the quarantine that Ampthill provided.

  However solicitous of his daughters and grief-stricken by his wife’s death Jefferson was, he could not contain his eagerness to start for France. His daughters’ recovery from fever, aches, and pains could hardly be rushed, so the preparations that could only be done from Monticello would just have to wait. But, he assured Madison, he would lose no time in preparing once he got home. “From the calculations I am at present enabled to make,” he estimated, “I suppose I cannot be in Philadelphia before the 20th. of December, and that possibly it may be the last of that month.” There, he knew, he would need several days to prepare for his mission, “as I could not propose to jump into the midst of a negotiation without a single article of previous information.” His mind raced his pen as he planned ahead. Could he be ready in time to take advantage of a French naval officer’s offer to carry him and the Marquis de Chastellux to France? He fired off a letter to Chastellux the same day. Maybe luck would favor him with a delay in the ship’s departure, he hoped, so that he could catch Chastellux before he left Philadelphia for home. He anticipated the pleasures of their voyage, the chess games and the continued conversations begun that spring at Monticello with his new friend. “My only object now is so to hasten over those obstacles which would retard my departure as to be ready to join you in your voiage,” he wrote with anxious urgency.

  On December 2, he tipped the slaves who had served them at no small risk to themselves—we have no idea if they had been inoculated or not—and left Ampthill for home. Within two weeks, Maria had joined her sister Lucy at Eppington; so, too, very likely, had her nine-year-old maid, Sally Hemings. With his affairs in order, Jefferson left Monticello with Martha and twenty-year-old Robert Hemings, another of Elizabeth Hemings’s children, arriving in Philadelphia on the twenty-seventh. It was not Robert’s first trip to the city; he had accompanied Jefferson in 1775 and been safely inoculated there.

  They boarded at the home of Mary House and her daughter, Eliza Trist, probably at the recommendation of James Madison, who also rented there. They stayed for a month, delayed by threats of capture by the vigilant British, who, smarting from their unsuccessful attempts in Virginia to capture the author of the Declaration of Independence, still had not issued him safe passage on the seas. Jefferson and Martha then made their way to Baltimore, hoping that the French ship that had been outfitted for him was ready for departure. Three weeks later, they returned to Philadelphia, having been warned that British attacks on French shipping continued to render a winter crossing hazardous for the American minister. Finally, in early April 1783, after this series of creeping delays and false starts, sufficient progress had been made in the peace negotiations being held in Paris to reinforce the American commitment to their French ally that Congress informed him that his services were no longer needed.

  Formally released by Congress, Jefferson collected Martha and headed for home. It was a leisurely trip. They stopped when the phaeton needed to be repaired, or the washing done, or a horse shod, or people visited, or business conducted. In Richmond, Jefferson met up with James Hemings, Robert’s eighteen-year-old brother, and gave him ferry money to go to Elk Hill. Did Martha look wistfully after him, wishing that she too could see her mother’s beloved home again, or was she consoled by the prospect of their next stop, seeing her Randolph cousins at their plantation home of Tuckahoe? Jefferson and Martha finally arrived home at Monticello on May 15.

  Within weeks of their arrival, they knew that the stay would be temporary. In June Jefferson was elected to Congress, a position to which he would report that fall. Although the distance separating family members obviously would be considerably shorter than if he had gone abroad, the arrangements would be the same: Martha would head north with him, while Maria and Lucy would return to Eppington. Exactly where Jefferson himself would be was another question. Fearing a mutiny by Pennsylvania soldiers to force payment for their service, Congress had bolted from Philadelphia to Princeton. But by the time Jefferson arrived there, he found that Congress had adjourned to the safety of Annapolis, where it would receive the Treaty of Paris in January 1784 that would formally end the American Revolution.

  The best place for Martha was clear, however: Philadelphia. At eleven years old, Martha Jefferson was poised to begin her education as a young lady; as the largest city in the United States and its cultural center, Philadelphia was the perfect place to begin to acquire the polish required of young women of her class. As her father put it, “Her time in Philadelphia will be chiefly occupied in acquiring a little taste and execution in such of the fine arts as she could not prosecute to equal advantage in a more retired station,” like the tiny village of Charlottesville. True, he also wanted her to know something of “the graver sciences” in the event that she was responsible for educating her children because she had married a “blockhead”—a possibility that Jefferson had calculated “at about fourteen to one.” But he intended to supervise her science education himself when she was once again under his roof. In the meantime, two popular novels, Gil Blas and Don Quixote, would suffice. As one historian observed, while Jefferson insisted on what he called the “natural equality” of women, he meant women’s duty to serve men, as nature intended. Thus, enhancing Martha’s ability to sing, dance, draw, and converse—that is, to be pleasing to men—would be the prime object of her time in Philadelphia.

  There was, then, the question of where Martha would live and be schooled. During their fruitless stay in the city the winter before, her father had displayed some sensitivity in thinking ahead to arrangements for her once they arrived in France. He had written to John Jay, already settled in Paris as one of the American peace negotiators, to inquire about housing that would be suitable for a motherless girl. Now preparing for his return to Philadelphia for the extended stay of the congressional term, he asked Madison to intercede for him with Mrs. House and her daughter, Eliza Trist, with whom they had boarded the previous winter. At first he hoped Martha could lodge with her again. If it turned out that Congress sat elsewhere, however, he still wanted Martha to stay in the city. But where? He knew Eliza was planning on leaving Philadelphia eventually to join her husband in New Orleans, but Martha required a more permanent place to stay. Trusting the warm friendship that had developed the year before among them all, Jefferson decided, “I will ask the favor of Mrs. Trist to think for me on that subject, and to advise me as to the person with whom she may be trusted. Some boarding school of course,” he ventured, “tho’ I am not without objections to her passing more than the day in such a one.” Dislocated yet again from her home, his daughter would fare better, he believed, in the embrace of a congenial household than among strangers in a boarding school.

  Eliza Trist agreed. On November 19, Martha moved to the home of Mary Hopkinson, the mother of Jefferson’s much-admired friend Francis Hopkinson. In accordance with Jefferson’s wishes, Martha followed a traditional curriculum for elite eighteenth-century girls that continued in the track of her mother’s tutelage, her school days punctuated by music, dancing, French, more music, reading, and writing. Her father had hired a range of exclusive tutors: a dancing master from Paris, a Swiss artist, an Engli
sh musician, and on the recommendation of French diplomat François de Barbé-Marbois, a Frenchman to instruct her in the language. By the time he repaired to Annapolis, Jefferson was confident that Martha’s education was in good hands. The thought consoled him greatly. “The conviction that you would be more improved in the situation I have placed you than if still with me, has solaced me on my parting with you, which my love for you has rendered a difficult thing,” he admitted to her.

  But Martha Jefferson would have received much more training than her schedule suggests. Mary Hopkinson was a formidable woman. Widowed at thirty-three and responsible for the care of her seven children (Francis, the eldest, was fourteen at the time), Mary won the admiration of Benjamin Franklin for her ability to educate her children and launch them into the world “without much diminishing their portions,” that is, their inheritance. Her children were devoted to her and taught their children to be so as well. When her youngest daughter, Anne, married and moved to Baltimore in 1775, she remained bound to her mother by letters and regular visits. Although growing rapidly, Baltimore could not yet match the cultural milieu of Philadelphia, but the letters and literary extracts composed by Anne’s daughters make clear that Anne conveyed her mother’s passion for reading, reflecting, and writing to her own children. Letters flew from Baltimore to their dear “GrandMama” in Philadelphia, reinforcing a female network in which the younger generation learned from the strong models before them. Mary Hopkinson also embraced her daughter’s friends. One of Anne’s correspondents was warmed by the memory of “the many happy hours I have spent in your agreeable society and the Worthy Circle of friends who were accustim’d to meet at your dear Momma’s.” Martha’s own passion for reading and writing was certainly nurtured in Mary Hopkinson’s home.

  Even so, Martha’s mentor apparently held religious views decidedly at odds with Jefferson’s. A devout Anglican (one of her daughters married the rector of the prestigious Christ Church, whose spire made it the tallest building in colonial America), Mary Hopkinson no doubt brought Martha to services frequently. Although Anglicans stressed reason as well as revelation in their theology, Hopkinson evidently harbored some notions that natural phenomena could predict future catastrophe and passed them on to Martha. Jefferson would have none of it. “Disregard those foolish predictions that the world is to be at an end soon,” he told his daughter bluntly. “The almighty has never made known to any body at what time he created it, nor will he tell any body when he means to put an end to it, if ever he means to do it.” Hopkinson’s alarming forecasts may explain why Martha never warmed up to the woman her father urged she “consider…as your mother.” She never wrote to Mary Hopkinson after her departure from Philadelphia, although she did form a lifelong friendship with the good-natured Eliza Trist.

  Mary’s son Francis, a fellow signer of the Declaration of Independence with Jefferson in 1776, also took an active interest in Martha’s progress and happiness. Son of Thomas Hopkinson, first president of the American Philosophical Society and trustee of the College of Philadelphia (later, the University of Pennsylvania), Francis’s interests ranged widely in politics, music, and the literary arts. He loved music, wrote satirical essays, songs, and poetry, and built a distinguished career that included serving as a lawyer and jurist. His home, which still stands on Spruce Street, was a center of political and social conviviality. The lively young Martha would have found the cheerful society of her father’s like-minded friend and his children more appealing than that of the well-meaning older woman whose doomsday warning was so frightening. That winter, Francis hosted a New Year’s Eve gathering that Martha attended; she “danced out the old Year in Company with Mr. Rittenhouse’s Daughters and my Children. A Forte Piano served for a Fidle and I for a Fidler,” Francis added playfully. “I was much indisposed the whole Evening, but their mirth alleviated my Pains.” His son Joseph, three years older than Martha, may well have been one of her dance partners that evening.

  As a father of a daughter about Martha’s age, Francis Hopkinson could understand Jefferson’s anxiety about her education; but in his sprightly way, he also knew how to temper it. “I have the Pleasure to inform you that your Girl comes on finely in her Education; but Mr. Simitiere”—the drawing instructor—“declares he will leave her at the End of the Month,” Hopkinson reported. Insisting that “he is no School-Master,” Simitiere had sniffed disdainfully that he was “not obliged to go thro’ the Drudgery of teaching those who have no Capacity.” Hopkinson dismissed the artist’s imperiousness, softening the sting of his words. “You will not be disappointed at this,” he soothed Jefferson, “as you know the Man.” Martha enjoyed her visits with the Hopkinson family; four days after the New Year’s Eve revels, she was back at their home again for another visit.

  In addition to his larger family home in Bordentown, New Jersey, Francis Hopkinson maintained a Philadelphia town home on Spruce Street between Third and Fourth streets. Here Martha Jefferson spent many happy hours during her stay in that city, visiting with Hopkinson’s children.

  In the meantime in Annapolis, Jefferson was preoccupied with trying to collect the nine required state signatures mandated by the Articles of Confederation to ratify the peace treaty Congress had received from Britain in September 1783. Only seven states had sent delegates to Annapolis, and a delegate’s impending departure threatened to reduce that number to six. A six-month deadline imposed by Great Britain caused an additional degree of urgency. Jefferson did not get his quorum until March, the month of the deadline. Legislatively paralyzed until then, the congressional session was marked by contentious squabbling; hardly a surprise, Jefferson thought, for lawyers “whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing and talk by the hour.” But substantive conversations on the organization of the western lands to be gained in the treaty did begin, laying the groundwork for new states to be admitted on equal terms with the original thirteen. And Congress agreed with Jefferson’s practical suggestion to decimalize a dollar-based currency.

  It is difficult to say how Martha felt through the better part of this six-month absence from her father; none of her letters from this period remain. Certainly Francis Hopkinson’s five children, and the two daughters of David Rittenhouse (an eminent astronomer and inventor), were good and animated company, and Martha was probably eager to accept Rittenhouse’s offer to meet the dreaded Mr. Simitiere for her drawing classes at his home, rather than her own. His daughters, born between 1767 and 1772, were just a bit older than she was, and part of the group that provided so much merriment for Francis Hopkinson that he forgot his indisposition. Drawing lessons with the temperamental Simitiere, whose pocketbook obliged him to continue teaching whether he liked it or not, would be more pleasant for Martha taken in the company of friends, as the kindly Rittenhouse realized.

  Martha Jefferson’s time with the Hopkinsons gave her a richer education than most young girls in the early republic would have enjoyed. A poet and songwriter—in fact, the first white native-born American to write a secular song in colonial America—who delighted in entertaining children, Francis Hopkinson would have done more than relieve her loneliness with his cheer. In his household, she would also have heard serious conversations about science and politics, such as those he shared with his famous friends Benjamin Franklin and David Rittenhouse. Two years after he left Philadelphia, Jefferson would sigh for the Wednesday evening conversations he used to enjoy with Rittenhouse and Franklin. “They would be more valued by me,” he recalled, “than the whole week at Paris.” In their homes, Martha enjoyed the company of young people and the society of the most important Enlightenment figures in Philadelphia. If Mary Hopkinson did not teach her how the Church could coexist with reason and science, her son and his friends certainly could.

  Martha’s sojourn in Philadelphia came to an abrupt end in May 1784. Although the Congress meeting in Annapolis agreed on little, they did agree on the appointment of Jefferson as minister plenipotentiary to France. John Jay was returnin
g to the United States, and the southern contingent—warily eyeing Franklin and John Adams, northerners both—wanted their interests represented in the ongoing trade agreements with the various European states. After preparing a final report to the Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, Jefferson resigned his seat in Congress and returned to Philadelphia.

  Preparations for their departure were frantic. On May 7, the day of his appointment, Jefferson sat down to dash off a flurry of letters. There was no time for a quick trip to Eppington for goodbyes to Maria and Lucy. Instead he had to settle for a series of what his letter journal called “valedictory” letters (none of which survive): to his sister Martha Jefferson Carr and brother-in-law Henry Skipwith, invitations to make themselves at home at Monticello during the “hot season” when he was away; and farewells to Elizabeth Eppes, with an enclosure for little Maria, and to his other sister-in-law, Anne Skipwith. He wrote urgently to his friend William Short in Virginia. Could Short drop everything to join him as his secretary in Paris, as he had earlier hinted might be a possibility? And would he also track down James Hemings and either bring or send him to Philadelphia immediately? Two days later, he prepared a power of attorney for his trusted friend and brother-in-law Francis Eppes, and for Nicholas Lewis, a friend and neighbor in Charlottesville, to conduct business in his name during his absence.