In spite of this success, inoculation was regarded with suspicion in some parts of British colonial America. In 1721 riots broke out in Boston when the Reverend Cotton Mather and Dr. Zabdiel Boylston introduced inoculation; there was widespread fear that the two men were spreading the disease rather than preventing it. One night an unknown assailant even hurled a homemade hand grenade at Mather’s house. At age twenty-three, Jefferson had traveled to Philadelphia to be vaccinated. Two years later, in 1768, when Dr. Archibald Campbell, a Norfolk County physician, offered inoculations to Virginians, a mob burned his house to the ground. In spite of such violence, the following year, Jefferson—who was then a member of the Virginia assembly—introduced a bill to lift the colonial government’s restrictions on smallpox inoculation.18
Once Sally Hemings was settled at the Hôtel de Langeac, she began to learn French; it would have been impossible for her to converse with any of the other servants if she hadn’t. At one point James, who was serious about becoming fluent in French, hired a tutor named Perrault, and Sally may have sat in on the lessons, too.
Like her brother, Sally found herself immersed in a strange and exciting world: grand buildings unlike anything she had known in Virginia; ostentatious wealth that made the richest plantation owner appear shabby; markets filled with exotic goods. And then there were the public celebrations in honor of a string of previously unknown holy days and holidays. Carnival, the weeks leading up to the penitential season of Lent, was celebrated with feasting, drinking, and dancing (not to mention general bawdiness), much of it occurring right in the streets and squares of Paris. During Holy Week, fashionable Paris society formed a glittering promenade down the Champs-Élysées to the Abbey of Longchamp, in the suburbs. During the Middle Ages, the parade had been a religious procession that concluded with prayer in the abbey church. By the 1780s, the event had taken on a decidedly secular tone (much to the annoyance of the archbishop of Paris), with the “procession” now an opportunity to see and be seen, and the goal at the abbey not religious devotion but a concert. The Longchamp parade went right past the front door of the Hôtel de Langeac. We know that one year Jefferson invited friends to watch the promenade from his balcony; no doubt the servants went out to see it as well.19
On its surface, the hierarchy of French society must have seemed strong and permanent to these visitors from America, but that monolithic appearance was a facade. In fact, the ancien régime was teetering on the edge of an abyss. In a few short years, the French Revolution would bring down the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the Catholic Church. The radicals would attempt to completely reshape life in France, from replacing Christianity with a newly invented cult that worshipped reason to reorganizing the calendar according to the decimal system: the twelve months of the year (each with a new name that reflected the weather typical of that month) would be made up of three ten-day weeks per month (the days of the week were also renamed). The five days left over at the end of the year were declared national holidays. Neither the calendar nor the cult ever caught on.20
The ideas that were at the root of the revolution, however, did find a broad audience. Liberty and modernity were common topics in the salons, in theatrical productions, and in discussions in cafés and arguments in taverns. None of this charged atmosphere would have escaped the servants, and talk of freedom and equality must have been as thrilling for James and Sally Hemings as it was for the most wretched French peasant or slum dweller. Count Mirabeau, who would be influential in the Tennis Court Oath that replaced France’s three estates system with a national assembly, tackled the subject directly. “The free blacks are proprietors and taxpayers, yet they have not been allowed to vote. And as for the slaves, either they are men or they are not; if the colonists consider them to be men, let them free them and make them electors and eligible for seats.”21 Unlike the abstractness of the reformed calendar, here was an idea worthy of support—recognizing gens de couleur, as they were known in France, as human beings deserving of the same rights as whites, including the right to be elected to government office. That was something James and Sally would never have heard proposed in Virginia.
At the time Sally and Polly arrived in Paris, James was in the final months of his apprenticeship. During the spring and summer of 1787, he was studying under the chef for the Prince of Condé, who taught him in the kitchens of the prince’s palace in Paris as well as his country château of Chantilly, situated several hours outside the capital. Everything at Chantilly was magnificent and on a grand scale; the stables—said to be the largest in the world—accommodated 240 horses. Louis-Joseph, Prince de Condé, was a Bourbon, a prince du sang (prince of the blood), meaning that he was a member of France’s royal family; he lived almost as lavishly as the king and Marie Antoinette. On one occasion he gave a supper party at the château, where he and his eight guests were waited on by twenty-five servants. Indeed, meals at Chantilly had been sumptuous since the seventeenth century, when Louis XIV would come to dine. As a result, Hemings’s training in the culinary arts under the prince’s chef meant that he was learning the most sophisticated techniques of French cuisine from an absolute master.22
Of course, training under the tutelage of a master chef did not come cheap. The prince’s chef demanded twelve francs per day, although that sum included James’s room and board at Chantilly. Jefferson balked a bit at the hefty fee. His friend Philip Mazzei had made all the arrangements but failed to inquire exactly how much the chef would charge for private cooking lessons. Even if the lessons cost more than Jefferson had expected to spend, he was certainly getting his money’s worth.23
When he entered Condé’s kitchen, James joined a staff made up exclusively of men. What the French upper classes desired—as did Thomas Jefferson, for that matter—was haute cuisine: refined, imaginative dishes served with style. In the homes of the Prince de Condé, stylish service required a host of additional servants. For example, the meat was carved tableside by the écuyer trenchant, or carver, who appeared in the dining room in opulent formalwear known at the time as court dress. The carver, along with all the other servants who brought food and drink to the table, was supervised by the maître d’hôtel, or steward, who in the prince’s household would have been a nobleman.24
James was studying under the prince’s chef de cuisine, the head or executive chef, who directed all the activity in the kitchen. Below him was the officier de bouche, who supervised the cooks making cold dishes and desserts. Next in line was the maître d’hôtel, who ensured that the kitchen was supplied with everything necessary to prepare superior meals for the prince and his guests. This organizational hierarchy spawned the stereotype of the temperamental chef—the perfectionist who flies into a rage if the least thing goes awry in his kitchen. That label has endured, from Anatole, the overwrought French chef of P. G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster stories, to that bad boy of reality television, Gordon Ramsey.
In late-eighteenth-century France, a chef de cuisine not only had to be a master of his art—and it was not uncommon for fine chefs to be described as artists—he also had to be a gifted manager, with a genius for consistently getting the best work out of a large and diverse staff. In other words, his administrative skills had to be on a par with his culinary skills.
Elaborate meals prepared entirely by men was a phenomenon unknown in America or England, where people of all classes ate the same thing—meat, some fish, cheese, white bread, a few vegetables, and lots of sweet desserts. Furthermore, these meals were prepared by both male and female cooks working side by side.25 In colonial America, it was women—not men—who ran the kitchens and wrote the cookbooks, such as American Cookery (1796) by Amelia Simmons of Hartford, Connecticut, and, later, Mary Randolph’s Virginia Housewife (1824).
Assuming that James Hemings had some experience in the Monticello kitchen, he would have been accustomed to cooking with cast iron pots and pans. Brass and copper cookware were available in America, but these articles were pricey. By contrast, in France,
copper was the cookware of the professional chef, and it came in every conceivable shape and size, from simple sauté pans to kettles to dessert molds to the long lozenge-shaped pans, known as turbotieres, used for cooking fish. Copper conducted heat better than cast iron, and it was more durable. Iron is a fragile metal—dropped on a brick or stone floor, it is likely to crack and thus become useless. The same fall might dent a copper pot, but it wouldn’t ruin it.
James was also shown how to operate kitchen equipment that did not exist in America, such as a macaroni maker. In the eighteenth century, macaroni did not refer solely to elbow-shaped noodles; all forms of pasta were called by this term. Legend claims that Marco Polo brought macaroni to Europe from China, but food writer and James Beard Award winner Clifford A. Wright has discovered that Arabs were the first to make pasta and that it came to Europe via Sicily, where in the twelfth century cultural exchanges among Arabs, Greeks, Normans, and Sicilians were thriving. In addition to becoming adept with new tools and machines, James grew familiar with ingredients unavailable in America, including truffles, olive oil, and the sparkling wine known as Champagne.26
Several weeks after completing his studies with Condé’s chef, Jefferson appointed James chef de cuisine at the Hôtel de Langeac. The kitchen was his domain; he was now a man of authority, with a staff who answered to him. In recognition of James’s new position, Jefferson increased his salary. As a trained chef, James knew of still more ways he could supplement his income. France had a burgeoning market for grease, animal fat, and animal skins, and it was one of the perquisites of a chef to sell these kitchen byproducts and pocket the proceeds. And that’s exactly what James did.27
Jefferson entertained often at the Hôtel de Langeac, and each dinner party was an opportunity for James to display his newly acquired skills. These events could be incredibly stressful. “The French,” as the historian Annette Gordon-Reed has observed, “were as serious about their cuisine as about fashionable attire. In fact, the two were closely related, since the presentation of food—the look—took its place alongside taste as a mark of true distinction. Every dish Hemings prepared invited a judgment by a man who was a perfectionist.”28
One of James’s first dinner parties was given by Jefferson in honor of Maria Cosway, an English artist, musician, and socialite for whom Jefferson developed a serious romantic attachment. (Cosway was married, but her husband was unfaithful; historians still argue whether she and Jefferson had an affair.29) The two became close friends and often went sightseeing together. In the fall of 1786, when Cosway was obliged to leave Paris for a time, Jefferson suffered a bout of melancholy that made him “the most wretched of all earthly beings.” To console himself and amuse Cosway, he wrote “The Dialogue between My Head and My Heart,” in which Jefferson’s reason debates with his emotions regarding how best to react to the departure of a dear friend.
For his party, Jefferson drew up a glittering guest list that was top-heavy with distinguished Polish aristocrats (Cosway had many Polish friends in Paris). Among the guests were Princess Lubomirski, a member of one of Poland’s wealthiest and most aristocratic families; Count Stanislaus Kostka Potocki, a notable art collector; and Julian Niemcewicz, a poet, playwright, and statesman. Jefferson also invited Baron Pierre-François Hugues d’Hancarville, a successful dealer in art and antiquities, particularly those freshly plucked from the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
We do not know what James prepared for Jefferson’s guests, but we can assume the dinner was a success because he retained his position as chef de cuisine. At another such soirée, Jefferson entertained the Duke de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, an aristocrat who was sympathetic to democracy. The duke left us no appraisal of the meal, but he did share something of his impression of his host: “In private life Mr. Jefferson displays a mild, easy and obliging temper, though he is somewhat cold and reserved. His conversation is of the most agreeable kind, and he possesses a stock of information not inferior to that of any other man.”30
We also know a few of the recipes that James mastered in France—eight of them, written in his own hand, have survived. There were many more, of course, which he prepared for Jefferson, and about one hundred fifty of them have come down to us, passed down by Jefferson or his granddaughters. Some of these dishes have become American classics: fried potatoes, better known as French fries; burnt cream, or crème brûlée; and macaroni with cheese. There is no consensus among culinary historians whether James Hemings and Thomas Jefferson were the first to introduce macaroni and cheese to America; perhaps they did not, but Jefferson served it often at Monticello and later at the White House, which went a long way toward establishing its popularity in the United States. The Library of Congress preserves the manuscript of Jefferson’s recipe for making fresh macaroni, the basis for any great mac and cheese dish:
6 eggs. yolks & whites.
2 wine glasses of milk
2 tb of flour
a little salt
work them together without water, and very well.
roll it then with a roller to a paper thickness
cut it into small pieces which roll again with the hand into long slips, & then cut them to a proper length.
put them into warm water a quarter of an hour. drain them.
dress them as maccaroni.
but if they are intended for soups they are to be put in the soup & not into warm water31
As for French fries, Jefferson knew them as pommes de terre frites à cru, en petites tranches, or potatoes deep-fried while raw, in small cuttings. Of course, baking macaroni with cheese and frying potatoes were among the humbler dishes Hemings had mastered, and they would be among the easiest recipes he would teach to his apprentice when he and Jefferson returned to Monticello.
Undated “maccaroni” press design by Thomas Jefferson. The text reads, in part: “The best pasta in Italy is made with a particular sort of flour called [illegible], in Naples: but in almost every shop a different sort of flour is commonly used; for, provided the flour be of a good quality, & not ground extremely fine, it will always do very well.” (Courtesy Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Thomas Jefferson Papers)
Chapter 6
BOILING POINT
The year Patsy Jefferson turned sixteen, she decided to convert to Catholicism and become a nun. The news caused a sensation among Jefferson’s friends and acquaintances, in France as well as in the United States. As the archbishop Antonio Dugnani, papal nuncio to the French court, wrote to Father John Carroll (soon to be the first bishop of Baltimore): “The eldest seems to have tendencies toward the Catholic religion. She is only sixteen. Her father, without absolutely opposing her vocation, has tried to distract her.”1
Anti-Catholicism was one of the most deeply rooted prejudices in England, and the colonists successfully transplanted it to America. Since the reign of Elizabeth I (1559–1601), English Catholics had been barred from practicing their faith and were heavily fined each time they failed to attend Protestant church services. It was against the law for parents to have their children baptized by a Catholic priest, to teach their children the Catholic faith, or to send their children overseas for a Catholic education. Catholic priests who entered the country, said Mass, heard confessions, performed marriages, gave last rites to the dying, or reconciled Protestants to the Catholic church risked the death penalty. English Catholics who welcomed priests into their homes risked the same punishment. By the 1780s these laws were still on the books in England, but they were rarely enforced. English Catholics lived quietly on the fringe of society. They were barred from attending Oxford or Cambridge universities and could not participate in the political life of their country, but the more punitive Elizabethan penal laws were no longer imposed upon them.
Life for Catholics in America was a different story. When the American Revolution began in 1775, the practice of the Catholic faith was illegal in all thirteen colonies but one—Pennsylvania. Priests from Pennsylvania traveled in disguise and under an alias
to minister to scattered congregations in those colonies where priests and Catholicism were outlawed. Even after the ratification of the Bill of Rights, with its guarantee of freedom of religion, some states tried to circumvent the Constitution and bar American Catholics from public office. In New York state, this movement was led by John Jay, future first chief justice of the Supreme Court.2 Even Jefferson succumbed to the old suspicion that all Catholic priests were hypocritical schemers. In a letter to Horatio Spafford he wrote, “In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.”3
On April 18, 1788, Patsy formally requested her father’s permission to join the nuns at the Abbaye de Panthemont. Jefferson sent no reply. Instead, he took her shopping and spent more than one thousand francs on new clothes and shoes for her.4 He also permitted her to attend balls and other entertainments. If his aim had been to make his daughter give up her religious vocation by enticing her with the pleasures of the world, it worked; Patsy abandoned any thought of changing her religion and becoming a nun. Once the problem was resolved, Jefferson visited the Abbaye de Panthemont and, after a brief conversation with the abbess, withdrew Patsy and Polly from the convent school.
Soon afterward, Jefferson found himself facing a complication involving James Hemings. After twenty months of supplemental private French lessons with Monsieur Perrault, James had suspended his studies, which he had paid for out of his own pocket. James still owed Perrault twenty-four livres but refused to pay (no one knows why). On January 6, 1789, Perrault showed up at the Hôtel de Langeac to collect the money owed to him. The meeting between the teacher and his former pupil did not go well. In a letter to Jefferson, Perrault (who refers to himself in the third person), described what ensued: “[James] attacked him [Perrault] with kicks and punches, which forced him to take to his bed since that time, and tore an overcoat from him which is the only article of clothing he has against the rigors of the season, thus putting it out of his power to earn his living, since it is so cold and he daren’t appear with his clothes in pieces. Please help him recover his salary, he having always acted well in your respectable house.” Then, switching to the first person, Perrault added: “Your porter was a witness, as were others of the ignominious treatment I received at your hotel.”5
Thomas Jefferson's Creme Brulee Page 9