Extract from Virginia J. Randolph (Trist) to Nicholas P. Trist, 5 June 1823
Extract from Virginia J. Randolph (Trist) to Nicholas P. Trist
Monticello June 5th 1823
Dear Nicholas
As you have had an explanation of1 this silence of rather more than three weeks, you can have felt no uneasiness, or conceived yourself neglected atall, I shall therefore make no excuses, but proceed to tell you what a pleasant visit we have had to Bedford, and that Grand-Papa bore the fatigue of the journey as well as usual: he took a walking stick, on our return, to assist him when he got out of the carriage, having got a fall when we were going, which I believe was occasioned rather by his having been cramped in that dreadful carriage, than any diminution of his strength, though he thinks himself weaker than he was. I found Sister Ellen looking better than when I left her, and Mama upon the eve of a sick-head-ache, which confined her only one day to her bed, and is now quite gone. Aunt Marks’s health appears to be declining, and we have become quite uneasy about her; Papa believes that the total inactivity of2 her body & mind will kill her, and as she has no mind to employ, and keeps up the fiction of her blindness to indulge her habits of indolence without censure (of which she is dreadfully afraid, and often suspicious) nothing can be done to excite, & give her an object in life. She takes a short ride in the carriage every day, which perhaps will give her strength & better spirits than She has at present. Poor Old lady, life can have no charms for her, but I should be very much shocked at her death, and reproach myself much for having borne her folly with so little patience, and so often made it a subject of derision.
I have never told you of the nice little cuddy that has become my haunt, and from which I am now writing. do you recollect the place over the parlour Portico into which the dome room opened? since the columns to the portico have been completed, Grand Papa has had the great work bench removed from it, and a floor layed, Cornelia’s ingenuity in conjunction with mine formed steps from the dome into this little closet with a pile of boxes, and having furnished this apartment with a sopha to lounge upon, though Alas! without cushions, a high & low chair & two small tables, one for my writing desk, the other for my books; and breathing through a broken pane of glass and some wide cracks in the floor, I have taken possession with the dirt daubers, wasps & humble bees; and do not intend to give it up to any thing but the formidable rats which have not yet found out this fairy palace.—
RC (DLC: NPT); extract, consisting of opening of letter and beginning of final paragraph; addressed: “To Nicholas P. Trist Esqr Donaldsonville Lafourche Louisiana”; stamped; postmarked Charlottesville, 8 June; endorsed by Trist. In the unextracted portion of this letter, Randolph (Trist) explains that she spent the spring “occupied in visiting, having company at home, sewing and keeping house,” but that she wishes to “become a well educated woman” and is “just recommencing my industrious habits”; hopes that Trist enjoys good health and can concentrate on his “law studies”; reports of the recent weather, which has been “dry, and cold, with the exception of two or three days of intense heat,” that “The drought has been very injurious to the corn & Tobacco, and the hessian fly is destroying the wheat; of course all the farmers are very much out of spirits, and my wonder greatly encreased that any one, who has an alternative, should entrust their peace of mind to the wind and weather of so capricious a climate as ours seems to be”; complains that Elizabeth Trist, who is expected to visit soon, cannot be trusted to see his letters without reading them aloud to others; acknowledges receipt of his letter enclosing a check, but explains that her brother Thomas Jefferson Randolph “refuses to take it Until he has seen, or heard from Judge Carr, who will be in the neighbourhood the 20th of this month”; shares news of “the marriage of Susan Bolling and John Scott and their intended removal to Alabama, in a few days”; and indicates that her aunt Mary Randolph will visit in July and that her aunt Harriet Hackley will leave soon to join her husband in New York.
An image of the cuddy is reproduced elsewhere in this volume. dirt daubers: “mud daubers.”
1. Manuscript: “of of.”
2. Randolph (Trist) here canceled “both.”
Index Entries
- bees search
- blindness search
- Carr, Dabney (1773–1837) (TJ’s nephew); mentioned search
- carriages; at Poplar Forest search
- carriages; mentioned search
- clothing; walking sticks search
- Coolidge, Ellen Wayles Randolph (TJ’s granddaughter); health of search
- corn; effect of weather on search
- furniture; chairs search
- furniture; sofas search
- furniture; tables search
- glass, window; for Monticello search
- Hackley, Harriet Randolph (Richard S. Hackley’s wife); family of search
- health; blindness search
- health; headaches search
- Hessian fly search
- insects; bees search
- insects; effect of on agriculture search
- insects; mud daubers search
- insects; wasps search
- Jefferson, Thomas; Health; injured in fall search
- law; study of search
- Marks, Anne Scott Jefferson (TJ’s sister; Hastings Marks’s wife); health of search
- Monticello (TJ’s Albemarle Co. estate); cuddy at search
- Monticello (TJ’s Albemarle Co. estate); Dome Room search
- Monticello (TJ’s Albemarle Co. estate); furnishings at search
- Monticello (TJ’s Albemarle Co. estate); rodents at search
- Monticello (TJ’s Albemarle Co. estate); Visitors to; Randolph, Mary search
- Monticello (TJ’s Albemarle Co. estate); Visitors to; Trist, Elizabeth search
- Monticello (TJ’s Albemarle Co. estate); West Portico search
- Monticello (TJ’s Albemarle Co. estate); windows at search
- mud daubers search
- Poplar Forest (TJ’s Bedford Co. estate); TJ visits search
- Poplar Forest (TJ’s Bedford Co. estate); TJ’s grandchildren visit search
- Randolph, Cornelia Jefferson (TJ’s granddaughter); and cuddy at Monticello search
- Randolph, Martha Jefferson (Patsy; TJ’s daughter; Thomas Mann Randolph’s wife); health of search
- Randolph, Mary (Thomas Mann Randolph’s sister; David Meade Randolph’s wife); visits Monticello search
- Randolph, Thomas Jefferson (TJ’s grandson; Jane Hollins Nicholas Randolph’s husband); and N. P. Trist search
- Randolph, Thomas Mann (1768–1828) (TJ’s son-in-law; Martha Jefferson Randolph’s husband); family of search
- rats; at Monticello search
- Scott, John (of Albemarle Co.); marriage of search
- Scott, Susan Bolling (John Scott’s wife); marriage of search
- tobacco; effect of weather on search
- Trist, Elizabeth House; visits Monticello search
- Trist, Nicholas Philip; and legal education search
- Trist, Nicholas Philip; correspondence with V. J. R. Trist search
- Trist, Nicholas Philip; letter to, from V. J. R. Trist search
- Trist, Virginia Jefferson Randolph (TJ’s granddaughter); and cuddy at Monticello search
- Trist, Virginia Jefferson Randolph (TJ’s granddaughter); correspondence with N. P. Trist search
- Trist, Virginia Jefferson Randolph (TJ’s granddaughter); education of search
- Trist, Virginia Jefferson Randolph (TJ’s granddaughter); letter from, to N. P. Trist search
- Trist, Virginia Jefferson Randolph (TJ’s granddaughter); on A. S. J. Marks search
- Trist, Virginia Jefferson Randolph (TJ’s granddaughter); on TJ’s health search
- Trist, Virginia Jefferson Randolph (TJ’s granddaughter); visits Poplar Forest search
- wasps search
- weather; cold search
- weather; drought search
- weather; effect on crops search
- weather; heat search
- wheat; effect of insects on search
- women; letters from; V. J. R. Trist to N. P. Trist search