Sally Hemings

by Barbara Chase-Riboud

  In seven more days we were to reach England. I was happier with every passing day. Everything in my former life grew smaller as we put more and more ocean between our ship and Virginia. Monticello became farther and farther away.

  I felt myself breaking a barrier, leaving childhood for adulthood. I already knew that I looked much older than my age, and something happened on board which brought home to me the fact that I was no longer a child.

  It was June nineteenth, and Polly was busy playing cards and learning curse words from Captain Ramsay. The sea was navy blue, with lacy frills of soft waves made by a gentle easterly wind. The sky was bright blue without a cloud. We had had nothing but good weather. When I told the captain that I too would have loved just one storm at sea, he had laughed and said beautiful girls shouldn’t make wishes that beautiful girls might regret, as beautiful girls usually got what they wanted in life. Considering my place in life, I thought he was making fun of me, and my eyes filled with tears. I started to speak, but he had already turned away, occupied with his affairs.

  Later that day, one of the five gentlemen passengers, Monsieur LaFaurie, a Frenchman, spoke to me for the first time. I was delighted, for on my own I could not have addressed him. I was anxious to ask him about Paris, the French people. We had often had French visitors at Monticello. My mother always took special care with the food on those occasions, since she said the French put great store in what they ate. And always Mistress Jefferson took special care with what she wore because, as with their food, she said, the French cared a great deal about what they put on their backs. This, I found out, was a contagious disease, for never was I so consumed with envy for clothes and despondent not to have them as in Paris.

  It seemed to me too that the French were very careful about the way they spoke, for Monsieur LaFaurie hemmed and hawed for over an hour before he finally asked me: Why did people refer to me as being a Negro slave? Since obviously I was neither a Negro nor a slave. “Why, you are whiter than I,” I remember him saying in astonishment.

  I could have told him that I was a slave not because of my color, but because my mother was a slave and her mother before her. But I was, I found myself lying, a Spanish orphan from New Orleans (that sounded distant and foreign enough), engaged as a lady’s maid for Miss Jefferson. I was on the seven seas, far from Monticello, and I let my imagination take me through a most convincing childhood. I had had much practice with Martha at home, making up imaginary childhoods.

  But, of course, he asked Captain Ramsay later, who told him the truth, plus my age. He also gave me a scolding I would never forget. After the gentlemen had had their brandy and cigars, Captain Ramsay sent for me.

  “Sally, I want to know why you deliberately lied and misled Monsieur LaFaurie this morning.”

  “Because he wouldn’t have believed me if I had told the truth.”

  “I can’t believe that a slave at Monticello has been brought up to lie. Your master would be shocked, and what an example to set for young Miss Jefferson!” He sighed and waited for me to say something. When I didn’t, he continued. “You know it is very difficult to have two female passengers on this ship. Of course, Miss Jefferson is a child, but you are not, and you should be careful how you conduct yourself. I know that at home you have all kinds of freedom and license and that you are … are … are even encouraged … but you must remember in the close quarters of a ship, you cannot … I will not permit that you give … provocation to my gentleman passengers. You may look sixteen, but I know you are but fourteen, and you invite … something you are not prepared for, to be sure. . . . You are a child, and I might add a not very well-brought up slave and servant, and if you have not been taught as yet your place in life, then I will confine you to your cabin until we reach shore.”

  All my pretensions of womanhood dropped like so many petals. I had wanted to impress Monsieur LaFaurie because he hadn’t treated me any differently for being “black.” I supposed French people didn’t know any better.

  “I have not said anything to Miss Jefferson, nor do I intend to. Nor do I intend to punish you myself. That is, if you behave yourself. Am I understood?”

  “Yes, Master.”

  “Now, another thing, Miss Hemings. You have the habit of sitting on the first platform of the forward mast. Sitting there, you may not be aware, but you are in full view of the sailors working beneath the upper deck. You cannot see them, but they can see you. You sit there for hours, and undo your hair and let it stream down your back, and this is dire provocation for the sailors who call you the ‘siren.’ I know you don’t know what that means, but let me say, for a sailor, a siren … is someone who makes … who provokes.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Provocation … flirting … frolicking,” he said.

  I almost fainted with shame. Captain Ramsay, who had been getting redder and redder, paused, and I began to sob. I was suddenly lonely and miserable.

  For the first time in my life I realized that I was truly alone. I had never had a father, and might never see my mother again. I had no rights before society, whatever Monsieur LaFaurie said. I had no rights even over my own body, which was changing and unnatural to me. I could be coveted or punished at the whim of any white man, not just my master. No kin of mine could protect me, for they had no rights either. This horrified, tobacco-smelling white man before me could beat me or confine me or take me to his bed and I had no redress: no man would step forward to protect me, and I had no right to protect myself if I could.

  I was a slave. A female slave. I felt sick.

  Poor Captain Ramsay was utterly undone. He sat me down. Then he stood me up again. He poured me a glass of some kind of spirits and made me drink it. But it did nothing against that great dark desolation that crouched in my soul that day.

  We would get to Paris; Polly would find her father, but I would not find mine. I was a slave. Captain Ramsay sat with me in the dark cabin a long, long time. He said how sorry he was for having been so stern. He hadn’t realized how innocent I was, how young. He tried to take me in his arms, but I let out a scream of terror. So we sat there like two stones, me with tears rolling down my cheeks. Finally, he let out a big tobaccoish sigh and got up. He paced around for a while, lit a cigar, and stared out of the porthole, so that I saw only the broad blue of his back.

  After a time he left, saying he was going to fetch Miss Jefferson. Polly finally came much later, bringing Washington with her, and she took me in her arms.

  The next two days, Polly and I spent the afternoons listening to stories about Paris from Monsieur LaFaurie. It didn’t seem possible that such a city could exist on the same planet with Charlottesville, Virginia. We never tired of hearing the descriptions of the ladies and their dresses, the coiffures, the gardens of the Tuileries and Versailles, the palaces of the king, the Royal Palace, Marly, Fontainebleau. I dreaded that I would be sent back to Virginia once Polly was safely delivered to London. Polly said she wouldn’t allow it, but I had already learned not to put too much faith in the promises of mistresses.

  Captain Ramsay announced that we would reach our destination the next day, the twenty-sixth of June, and little Polly understood that she would be separated from Captain Ramsay, to whom she had become so attached. She too made everybody laugh by announcing that she would not leave the ship until she had her storm at sea. That she felt cheated, after being practically kidnapped onto this ship, not to have had a real storm and waves that high. Captain Ramsay laughed and said he would ask the cook if he would “stir” up a storm for Polly that night.

  The last night I dressed Polly in white muslin and put her hair up. I dressed myself in red with a dark blue girdle and I let my hair out and tied it with a red ribbon. The gentlemen seemed quite pleased. Captain Ramsay seemed relieved that I was myself again, and all the officers and gentlemen rose when we left the table.

  The next morning we saw birds and smelled land. After a long voyage even the inexperienced can smell land. Everybody was up earl
y so as not to miss the first glimpse of the shore and the famous Cliffs of Dover. We were to go up the Thames to London. We had spent six weeks on the sea. I had stored up those six weeks of freedom, of being at no one’s beck and call, making lists in my diary and entries in my heart. I had read and I had written and I had dreamed. And I had grown up.

  When land was sighted, a great cheer went up from everybody on deck, and Captain Ramsay appeared resplendent in still another new dress uniform. He was a vain and beautiful man! The sailors too had on their best tunics. The ship’s orchestra started playing a very gay tune as the banks of the river closed in on us. We slipped along the narrow channel toward the port of London Town.

  I had never seen such a place filled with more white people than I had ever imagined in one place. Not one black face anywhere. It was for me a strange and new sensation. There were no slaves. This was another world.

  We had dressed in white that day. Polly was trembling in agitation, and clinging to Captain Ramsay as he led us down the gangplank toward a bright-yellow carriage with magnificent horses, in front of which stood a couple dressed in black. The couple was Abigail and John Adams. They had come to fetch us. They seemed a pretty couple as we approached them. They looked stern and straight in front of their pretty carriage, with a splendid liveried footman atop in scarlet. Abigail Adams was short but still slightly taller than her husband, slim and in black silk. Her husband, holding her arm, was short, round, and portly, with a large square head that seemed especially bald because of the abundance of his side-whiskers. His face was ruddy, his mouth stern, his eyes direct, and his expression happy.

  I followed slightly behind Polly and Captain Ramsay, and stood apart while the greetings were exchanged. The Adams couple seemed to know Captain Ramsay and greeted him warmly. I could tell from the set of Polly’s body that she was about to burst into tears. She was clinging to Captain Ramsay with both hands, as he and the handsome couple tried to coax her into the waiting vehicle. She called my name in terror and Abigail Adams, in one swift movement, turned her gaze toward me.

  I got a good look at her, too. She had an oval face with a long regular nose, a pointed, almost fleshless chin, and a thin mouth. It was her eyes that made her face; they were tear-bright and sparkling, closely spaced and quick, like the eyes of a small animal. From beneath her bonnet sprang bright-red curls. Her eyebrows were arched high, giving her whole face a mischievous look. It was a face that had no age, although at the time she was middle-aged. Her color was high, as in people with that color hair, and, as she turned, there were two bright spots of exasperation on her cheeks.

  “And who are you, Miss?”

  “I am Mistress Polly’s slave, Ma’am.”

  Several expressions passed quickly across her face, but the one that settled there was one I already knew well: that of a rich white lady eyeing a poor darky slave. She looked first at her astonished husband, then at Captain Ramsay, who still had hold of one of Polly’s hands while I had taken the other in mine.

  “What!” she said.

  It was the first time, I am sure, Abigail Adams had ever seen or addressed a slave of her own country.

  CHAPTER 10

  LONDON, JULY 1787

  I cannot feel but sorry that some of the most Manly Sentiments in the Declaration are Expunged from the printed copy. Perhaps wise reasons induced it. . . .

  ABIGAIL ADAMS, 1776

  I have had for a fortnight, a little daughter of Mr. Jefferson’s, who arrived here with a young Negro girl, her servant from Virginia.

  ABIGAIL ADAMS, JULY 1787

  “A WHITE SLAVE!” Abigail Adams would never get over the shock of seeing the image of Thomas Jefferson’s late wife descending the gang-plank of Captain Ramsay’s ship in the guise of a Negro slave.

  “So it seems. Since we are hosts to one.”

  “I won’t have a slave, black or white, under my roof. It’s … abhorrent to me.”

  “I know, Abigail, but the child is here, and we cannot do much about it until we have further instructions. Now, if she had been middle-aged and black…”

  “Oh, John. It’s not that … or maybe it is that, I don’t know. Her color only underlines the horror of her condition because it’s our color. But, even more serious, I can’t in good conscience entrust the care of a child to another child. The girl is a child, a beautiful one, but one with undoubtedly no training as a nurse or even a maid. Why, she needs more care than Polly herself!”

  “She seems very sweet—clean and good-natured.”

  “I insist she go back to Virginia. She is of no use to me and I don’t see how she could possibly be of any earthly use to Mr. Jefferson.”

  John Adams, shifted his rotund body in the stiff, uncomfortable, new English furniture they had ransomed their lives to buy, and looked at his wife. She was the very essence of his life and his good fortune. The long years of separation—first when he left for the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, then to Europe—were over now, forever. He would never leave Abigail again. His life was comfortable, happy, and so well-run with her here in London. He wouldn’t want anything to mar this perfect felicity. He knew Abigail could be stubborn in matters which she considered principles. She was a staunch abolitionist, as he was, but without any of his compromising instincts. God—the child did look like Jefferson’s dead wife Martha, thought John Adams. Years later, they would learn that Sally Hemings was Thomas Jefferson’s half-sister-in-law.

  “Abigail, we can’t do anything until we have instructions from Thomas Jefferson. Which, I should think, will be forthcoming.”

  “Mr. Jefferson! Where is he? Why isn’t he here to fetch his daughter? I’ve already written him about Sally.”

  “Well, we’ll have to wait for an answer then.”

  “Captain Ramsay’s ship sails shortly. She ought to be on it.”

  Abigail was being particularly stubborn about this, thought John Adams. Why? The poor girl had just endured a long sea voyage.

  “First of all, Abigail, if Sally leaves before Jefferson arrives, Polly will be stricken with grief. She is wholly attached to Sally, who is her only link with the loved ones she’s left in Virginia. She’s a sensitive child. She’ll be upset. You don’t want that, surely?”

  “I would do anything for Polly’s happiness. I have taken her to my heart, John—so gay, so fragile, so beautiful. Like Nabby as a child. But when Mr. Jefferson comes—”

  “If he comes. Meanwhile, we can’t deprive Polly of Sally. Besides, I don’t like the idea of sending Sally back unescorted on another dangerous journey. We haven’t the right. She is, after all, under our protection until her master comes. Jefferson himself may be expecting her. He may have sent for her, for all we know. We can’t dispose of her. She is,” Adams continued wryly, “his own property, and we have no legal right to tamper with his rights over her.”

  “Property!” Abigail Adams stifled an outraged cry. John was baiting her, to be sure, in his lawyerly way, but she couldn’t help it, the word fled to the top of her head and burst there like a shell. It was the most iniquitous scheme God had ever invented! How she wished there wasn’t a slave in the States! They had fought and won for themselves what they were daily robbing and plundering from those who had just as good a right to freedom as they did; who had set foot on the soil of their blessed nation at the same time their forebears had; who had fallen in battle against England first!

  “You know, my dear,” Adams continued, “if Sally does get to Paris with Polly, she is, by French law, free. Slavery has been abolished on French soil. By sending her back, we may be depriving her of her only chance for emancipation. She has only to claim it.” John Adams knew this would clinch his argument and he had saved it until last. His wife had an acute sense of justice, which he cherished and admired, and slavery had a moral and physical repugnance for her. She felt, as he did, that it corrupted not only the fiber of the best class of the South but threatened the very existence of the nation.

  “I didn’t
know that, John.” Abigail was stunned by this news. Had it been fate, then, that had chosen Sally out of the hundreds of Monticello slaves for this potential blessing?

  “It is true, Abigail. Think about it.”

  But Abigail was thinking about something else. She had a strange sense of foreboding, and the obvious origins and extraordinary beauty of Sally Hemings did nothing to dilute her alarm.

  Those Southern white planters lived like the patriarchs of old. Even as she thought this, she realized that her own motives were not entirely pure. It was not only the presence of a slave in her household, however temporary, that was so upsetting.

  Abigail Adams was nothing if not honest. It was an honesty so total and so dulcet it gave her whole person a kind of brilliant transparency that more than made up for her lack of physical beauty. The maid was a charming and docile child. But the maid was also an affront to white womanhood, she thought, a living and most visible proof of the double standard of white male conduct. The master-slave relationship appalled her not only because the dignity of both master and slave were destroyed but the exercise of total power over other human beings who lived in the closest possible intimacy with them provoked the kind of reciprocal sensuality Abigail Adams both feared in herself, recognized as part of human nature, and read in the face of Sally Hemings. This girl was both a provocation and a victim, she thought. In her still unformed personality there resided the innate arrogance of the totally possessed … an elusive disinterestedness that was both an insult and an invitation. How to explain these ambiguous feelings to a man? How to explain powerlessness to any man who had never experienced it? Abigail Adams bit her lip and finally looked up at her husband. “Why didn’t you tell me before of this chance for her in France?”