A glimpse of his unfamiliarity with the emotions of romantic love and loss—and his idealization of Jefferson—can be seen in an exchange of letters with Randolph concerning the death of Jefferson’s beloved wife, Martha Wayles Skelton, who died in September 1782, several months after giving birth to their sixth child. Randolph wrote to Madison that Martha’s death “has left our friend inconsolable.” He passed along a “circulating report” that Jefferson’s “grief [was] so violent” that he had been “swooning away, whenever he sees his children.”
