My Thomas - Roberta Grimes (free ereaders txt) 📗

Excerpt of

My Thomas

By Roberta Grimes

The Forest October 7, 1770

I begin to keep this journal at the suggestion of a gentleman who fears I shall lose my life unless I write it down. I think this a peculiar fear, and said so to the gentleman, whereupon he took from his pocket-book a worn Virginia Almanack and said, “For example, I can tell you where I was on Wednesday last.”

I looked, and found that on Wednesday last he had paid 45 shillings to Harry Mullins and settled his accounts with Speirs and Ford and paid two shillings for an entertainment at Byrd’s Ordinary. And he thought this important!

Gentlemen love to think about money and other such too abstract things, and they lose thereby the joy of the moment. I thought he could live better without his book.

“Your third of October is gone,” he said. “Mine I shall recall in some detail forever.”

“Mr. Jefferson, on Wednesday last I rendered a kettle of fat for soap and stuffed the sausages you ate this day and turned beds, I think, to prepare for the ball and rocked my son for the pain in his ears. What might I want to remember of that?”

I had spoken in jest, for I did not know the sensitive nature of this gentleman. He felt reproved. His face went pale, and his cheeks grew pink by the fire’s light. He blinked. I had a terrible thought of the air between us stiff as glass.

“You are right, sir!” I put my hand on his sleeve, the gray brocade I had thought so fine when I first saw it at the ball that night. “I know you are right. Indeed you are right. But some lives are better recorded than others.”

“Mrs. Skelton.”

His voice was gone as stark as his face. He feels an awkwardness in the presence of ladies that has kept him still single at twenty-seven, but we had coddled one another all evening until our words flowed freely. This dance of words at first acquaintance is a very careful minuet, and there I had all of a clumsy moment trod upon his toe.

I opened my fan, for my cheeks were heating. I had made myself believe all evening that I only entertained my Pappa’s guest, yet my own dismay made me know that I most greatly desired Mr. Jefferson’s friendship. This I must not do, for I had resolved that I would not remarry. So my warm delight in Mr. Jefferson’s company as if he shed a radiance into the room served for nothing. It only rose to flame on my face.

So I began to flirt. Flirting is my certain defense against any greater intimacy. Flirting charms a gentleman while it puts him away; it lets the lady lead. There in that moment I first understood the shield that it had become for me. I lowered my eyes and fluttered my fan and said the first artful thing that came to mind.

“You are right. All we may ever keep of each precious day is its memory. So in memory of this evening, sir, I vow to begin to keep a journal. But I shall not record in it shillings spent nor featherbeds turned nor hog-fat rendered. What I shall record will be all that matters. Emotions, Mr. Jefferson. I shall write what I feel.”

Then I lowered my fan and smiled at him, and I saw in his face such a play of emotions that I nearly laughed aloud. He was charmed and distracted and surprised out of words.

“You may read it, Mr. Jefferson,” I boldly said, and then it was my turn to feel abashed. There is a brazenness to blatant flirting that gave me not a care when I was young, but at twenty-two I feel the shame of it. “That is, you might read some part of it,” I corrected myself from behind my fan.

Mr. Jefferson is such a kindly soul that my discomfiture made him forget his own. “I should like that very much,” he said with the warmth of our earlier conversation. “You will read my shillings and pence, and I shall read the gentle thoughts of your soul. I should like that very well indeed.”

That moment recorded and read again, I come to the conclusion that this my emotional journal might serve very well. I proposed it in play, yet the thought compelled me, so today I have begged of my Pappa this blank-book meant for his legal cases. He had it from a binder who wanted his trade but he never bought its fellows, so he gave it me now with all the ease of any valueless gift. Still he said, “Take care of it, Patty, please. Remember that books are very dear,” as if I am ever to remain a child.

So many white pages! The fluttering bulk of them thrills and dismays me out of mind, for journal-keeping in a book so fine seems a duty near to sacred. Shall I search for adventures to feed my journal? Shall I move my thoughts onto a higher plane? I have a thought that I shall live more nobly, so as not to cause my journal embarrassment.

It seems amazing what I can recall when I sit with my journal to write it down. I have written my conversation with Mr. Jefferson as the cat heard it dozing on the hearth, near all of the words, and perfected by the fact that I have thought them through a second time. I did not say, “I shall write what I feel,” but I said instead, "I shall write what I think.” Yet now I prefer my second version, so I shall let my journal believe it true.

And I make a further discovery of journal-keeping. A few words written may stand for many. Reading our conversation brings to my mind the hours of the ball that went before, so I feel again the chill of the ballroom that thickens like ice in my bones. I hear the fiddles tuning to the harpsichord, and the rustle of gowns and the murmur of talk as my Pappa nods and the fiddlers begin Les Petites Demoiselles right merrily.

I had that first minuet with my Pappa. We always open the ball together. He is a gouty dancer, tender of feet, who dances in the fashion of twenty years past, while I dance in the latest fashion that is grandly fancy of step and gesture. We look, we are told, quite comical, and I smile and laugh, and so does he.

When Pappa had danced to the end of his wind, I had reels and country-dances with some few gentlemen who claim that right at every ball and will not be disheartened. I dance once with each and fly to the next with what must seem an excess of gaiety but is nothing more than a wish to be free of them. So I gaily danced with my usual spirit, freeing myself from my chain of beaux, and as I danced I noticed Mr. Jefferson standing tall and quiet by the parlor-door. I had gained my first sight of him only that morning, and had my introduction at dinner-time, yet the sight of him was so pleasing to me that I felt from the first a discomfiting connection. I feared that he thoroughly knew my mind, my rejection of my suitors and my liking for him, so I danced along faster and averted my face that he might not read my thoughts in it.

After I had flown from my last failed beau, I took my turn at the harpsichord. This I played on heartily until I had a thought of eyes on me, and I found Mr. Jefferson standing beside me, wearing a look most warm and kind. I dropped every finger onto the keys. I recovered, but then all the dancers were off so I hastened the measure to catch them up.

“Will you dance again, Mrs. Skelton?”

My cheeks were heating despite the cold. It was indeed so cold that I could see my breath. I had chosen my gown and craped my hair with Mr. Jefferson in mind, yet there in the sight of him I was abashed. All my art in casting suitors aside seemed of a sudden mere artifice, for never had I met a gentleman since Bathurst’s death these two years gone who had seemed to me anything but dim and foolish. To cast aside a beau who seemed warm and wise and who looked at me as if he had determined to love me required a more practiced skill than I possessed.

“Forgive me. Please. I must play on. Now I am behind the fiddles. Please do excuse me.” This and other such things I said when I could say words between the notes.

“Here is your sister, Mrs. Skelton.”

There came Tibby at what she told me was Pappa’s bidding. My Pappa was nursing his gout by the fireplace while he plotted out matches for his daughters. Tibby is but sixteen, so he pulled her from the dance and directed that she replace me at the harpsichord when he saw that his eldest had set her hook into a splendid fish. So I stood and put my hand on Mr. Jefferson’s fingers and curtsied deeply for his bow, and we whirled into the country-dance.

After that first dance came other dances. We had a heating, spirited reel and a country-dance of the handkerchiefs. Mr. Jefferson dances along most fine, light on his feet despite his height, and very loose of limb; there is a happy intensity to all he does, so he bows more deeply and steps more distinctly and speaks and listens with more attention than any other gentleman. Soon we were conversing in the intervals between the tunes, but it was only when the jigs began that I found a reason to slip away. I thought him too shy and dignified to want me to chase him around the room as some of the other ladies were chasing, to the great hilarity of all the gentlemen.

I stood on toes and said to him, “I am warmed too much for the chill of this room. Will you retreat with me to the parlor fire?”

We were alone in the parlor. We sat on the chairs. I tipped the firescreen to shade my face. We talked, I recall, of a mare he hopes to send this season to Partner, the fashionable English stallion from which we have had a promising filly. We talked of apples next, and then he told me he is building his home-farm on the top of a mountain. His servants have leveled the highest height, and there he has built what he assures me is a most unpretentious temporary cottage where he plans, nevertheless, to be living this winter. From there we went to talking of the swift passage of time, and from that exchange arose his thought that I should keep a journal.

So our Friday evening was happily spent. Less promising had been our morning meeting. This being late on a rainy Sunday, with Jack asleep and his ears at peace and an hour to come before candle-time, I shall tell what I can of the rest of that day. And since this venture of journal-keeping seems much like making a new acquaintance, I commence by recording my history. A story is never begun at its middle.

My Pappa is a practical man. When he saw that Providence had blessed him with four daughters to be given in marriage and a home-farm near to Williamsburg, he built to the eastern end of his house a ballroom larger than the house itself. It is, I confess, hardly more than a barn, for which it sometimes serves in summer, and the smell of curing tobacco fills