Sally Hemings

by Barbara Chase-Riboud

  “I hadn’t thought of it, actually. There is something disloyal to Jefferson about it.”

  “I know. And I would sooner be disloyal to myself than to him. But … shouldn’t we tell her?”

  “We’ll talk about it again, Abigail. We have nothing to decide just yet. We can decide later. Jefferson, at any rate, knows the law.”

  “No, I don’t think we should discuss it again, John. Let fate decide.”

  John Adams knew from the tone of his wife’s voice, and from her face, that he had won. It was the moment for concessions.

  “Of course, you should do whatever you think best,” he said. “This is your domain.”

  “She is devoted to Polly. If we can improve her lot in life, we have the duty to do so, now that I know what Paris might mean to her...” Abigail’s voice trailed off. She knew her feelings about Sally Hemings. What she didn’t know was Sally Hemings’s feelings about her. She would have preferred outright hostility in a slave. A sense of injustice … of rebellion … but this mixture of abject love, indifference, and unquestioning, nay luxurious acceptance, disturbed the neatness of her soul. There was a feral self-satisfaction in the submissiveness of this adolescent, she thought, that was more than that of a servant. It was demeaning to a woman and addicting to a man.

  “Besides,” her husband’s voice continued, “it is pleasant to hear an American accent among the servants.”

  John Adams liked Sally Hemings. He liked her reserve and the limpid good character he sensed in her. And her voice: he had never heard a more pleasing one—fresh, lovely, and melodious.

  Abigail Adams said nothing. She had no desire, she thought to herself, to upset her domestic tranquility over so trivial a matter. Her nine years of separation from John Adams had marked in her a feverish desire for harmony. She had spent those years alone, running the farm and raising the children, six of those years separated from him by the Atlantic Ocean. After so long a wait, so deep a commitment to public service, so passionate an attachment of the heart, she thought, she looked forward only to peace and love in her middle years. Besides, she herself would discuss the problem with Jefferson when he arrived. They were old friends, weren’t they? They understood each other, and her admiration for him knew no bounds. He was one of the choice of the earth. She remembered their happy days in Paris together, just after she had been reunited with John, and she remembered the awe of her son, seventeen-year-old John Quincy, who had come with them, for the great Thomas Jefferson.

  The affection Abigail Adams lavished on Polly didn’t extend to me, although I was also of a tender age and I too had left everything I loved behind me. She was kind to me, but with every effort I made I seemed to provoke more than please her.

  Abigail Adams was a Yankee, the first I had ever met. She knew nothing about slavery. I doubt if she had seen a slave before. She knew only that she did not want “one” under her roof. When I came to understand that it was my origins she disliked and not my person, I began to respect and even like her, although I knew she was determined to send me back to Virginia.

  Master Adams seemed to understand better. I know he was the one who argued against sending me back to Virginia. But Abigail Adams was adamant. Back to Virginia I would go. So I spent my days in the great house on Grosvenor Square under a cloud of apprehension. Captain Ramsay’s ship was making ready to return to America, and Master Jefferson had not yet come for his daughter and me.

  I had learned as a slave never to hope, never to anticipate, and never to resist, so I lived from day to day with the other servants, trying to please Mistress Adams—taking care of Polly and keeping as quiet as possible. I took every opportunity to get out of the house and see London, which appeared to me both terrifying and wonderful. Paris, I thought, could not be greater than this!

  When we traveled on foot, the carriages and porte-chaises of the gentry would pass us as we made our way past the great town houses, which were palaces compared with the mansions I knew in Virginia. I had never seen such beautiful people, clothes, and carriages. The London ladies walked a great deal and very fast. I was used to long walks at Monticello, so I managed many miles a day through London. The sides of the streets were laid with flat stones, and the streets were filthy, but they were always crowded with people laughing and cursing.

  Finally, the word came that Master Jefferson was not coming for Polly and me, but that he was sending his valet de chambre, Monsieur Petit. Abigail Adams was fit to be tied and Polly refused to leave. With Polly so upset, there was no longer any question of my returning to Virginia. Why Master Jefferson did not come to fetch Polly, I learned later, but for Mistress Adams it was unforgivable.

  Abigail Adams’ thoughts were on Jefferson now. That his sex was naturally tyrannical was a truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but men who wished to be happy, she muttered to herself, should be willing to give up the harsh title of “Master,” and all such power of life and death over female souls.

  Jefferson wasn’t a cruel man, Abigail Adams thought, not by any measure. He was especially tender and gallant with the female sex. Why, then, this cavalier attitude and heartlessness toward his own small dear child, whom he hadn’t seen since she was four. Why had he submitted her to the perils of a long sea voyage, uprooted her from those she loved and knew, only to insult her by sending a servant to fetch her! What could be holding Thomas Jefferson in Paris?

  “I have written Thomas Jefferson and told him how deeply I regretted his not coming in person for his daughter.” John Adams was also trying to calm the furor of his wife.

  “I’ve endured all kinds of heartbreak because of long separations, John. The canceled visits, sickness in solitude away from my heart’s partner, and other cruel infractions on my hopes and plans deemed necessary by duty or misfortune … have swallowed my grief in silence and self-abdication. But this I will not abide!”

  “I’m afraid Adrien Petit is arriving to fetch her.”

  “Well, he’ll have to leave without her if she doesn’t want to go,” said Abigail Adams stubbornly.

  John Adams gazed at his wife in silence. There was something too excessive in her reaction to little Polly’s plight. Mightn’t she be over-reacting, compensating for her own secret hurts all these years? Was she projecting onto this situation her own concealed rage at having been “abandoned” by him, John Adams, in the name of Public Duty and the fate of the newborn United States? He had left her alone so many years. . . . Had he seriously neglected his children in favor of his country? One thing was certain. He would never leave Abigail alone again.

  True to her word, Mistress Adams made Monsieur Petit cool his heels for two weeks, while Polly refused to leave with a man “she couldn’t understand.” But no more messages came from Master Jefferson. And Petit was unmovable. He would not leave without us; he had his orders. Finally, through the combined efforts of Mistress Nabby, Master Adams, and me, Polly Jefferson was finally detached from the skirts of Mistress Abigail Adams and bundled into the carriage that would take us on our road to Paris.

  PART II

  1787

  Paris

  CHAPTER 11

  PARIS, JULY 1787

  I leave to time the unfolding of a drama. I leave to posterity to reflect upon times past; and I leave them characters to contemplate.

  ABIGAIL ADAMS, 1801

  THOMAS JEFFERSON stood in the tall rectangle of the French window looking onto his gardens at the Hotel de Langeac and guessed at the hour. The tall frame stirred in the soft light and the nervous fingers of Jefferson’s left hand groped for his timepiece. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, he lowered his left hand and, with difficulty, raised his right hand to his waistcoat and extracted his watch. For a brief second, he pressed his right wrist against his breast as if in salutation and then he brought the left hand up to cover the exposed wrist and hand which were slightly twisted inward, the hand having an atrophied look. Slowly his left hand caressed his injured right one, his pale eyes blinki
ng away the pain. A slight smile played at the corners of his fine mouth. As he had guessed, it was almost five.

  If Petit and Polly had started out early enough from London, they would be in Dover by now. The thought of London made him pensive. There was still no news of Maria’s arrival. How long had he been waiting for word from her? It seemed like years. He dared not move from Paris lest he miss her. Jefferson turned and walked away from the glowing windows and the multicolored flower beds framed by the windows of his salon. A slender man, with a stiff air, accentuated now by the way he now held his injured wrist, Jefferson’s eyes were his finest feature. A sapphire blue of dazzling clarity, they seemed to look out upon the world like twin mountain peaks from his great height, frosted and glacial, tinged with melancholy, with lashes the same color as his red-gold hair. His complexion was fair, the fine skin almost transparent under a rash of fine reddish-brown freckles that gave him a youthful, innocent look. The face was aristocratic and handsome with its long, slightly turned-up nose, sensual mouth, and firm, protruding, dimpled chin.

  He did not consider himself vain, but he was quite pleased with the likeness the sculptor Houdon had begun of him. He had seen the plaster for the first time a few days before.

  Entering his forty-fourth year, Thomas Jefferson had become, since he had been in Paris, almost dandyish in his manner of dressing, favoring creamy lace and sapphire-blue worsted. Even his injury had a certain romantic elegance. After his mysterious fall last year, which had deprived him of the use of his right hand, he had been forced to re-educate himself, and he now wrote almost as well with his left hand as he did with his right. But he was in pain at the moment. Both the wrist and the steady throbbing in his head had not abated since yesterday noon. He would force himself to work tonight. It did not seem possible that Petit and Polly could arrive before the day after next. He was very fond of his valet de chambre. He did feel slightly guilty that he had not sent James to London when he had learned that his sister Sally had been sent to accompany Polly from Virginia. He had hesitated, knowing the Adamses’ disposition toward Negro slaves; and knowing James’s own temperament, he felt safer with Petit. Of course, he could have sent them both, but the extra cost, simply to please James, seemed excessive, especially now when the ministry and his expensive obligations were taking all his official funds.

  He stood absently in the middle of his magnificent oval salon with its painting of “Dawn” by Berthélemy on the ceiling, backlit by the late-afternoon sun, a figure in black with white linen and a blue waistcoat, the fair hair pulled back in a pigtail and lightly powdered.

  When a servant in pale-yellow livery entered, he was startled. He had forgotten he had asked for the medicines and hot water to bathe his wrist at precisely five. Thomas Jefferson looked into the eyes of his slave James Hemings as if he were contemplating a mathematical equation.

  James Hemings had not seen his sister in four years. She had been ten and he eighteen when he had left Monticello as body servant to Thomas Jefferson. He loved her more than any of his family and now that in two or three days she would be in Paris, the waiting was unbearable. She would bring the sweet breath of Monticello and all that it represented for him—family and the slavehood he had never forgotten.

  He knew he could disclaim his bondage any time he wished on French soil. No one could hold him in slavery and now no one could hold her, either. What providence!

  Thinking himself on the brink of freedom, he could even look on his master now with a certain affection. He did feel affection for Thomas Jefferson. His master had been more of a father to him than his real father, John Wayles, had ever been. When he and his brothers and sisters had not been freed, as Wayles had promised, and were sent to Monticello as part of his half-sister’s inheritance, he had been nine years old. Old enough to work. Old enough to grasp the dream they had been deprived of. His mother, with all her wiles and cleverness, her airs of superiority and her concubinage, had failed. She had failed in the only way that matters to a slave concubine: she had not made his father love her enough to free his children by her.

  When James entered the room, he found Thomas Jefferson standing, as if he had forgotten something. He had been in this mood for days now. He was, James knew, expecting word from London on the arrival of Lady Maria Cosway. The servant felt a wave of affection and pity for his master as he saw him there cradling his wounded wrist. Thomas Jefferson was not a happy man, thought James, despite all his fame and riches and celebrated friends. He was lonely. The death of his wife had made it impossible for him to believe again in happiness or good fortune. Moreover, his master missed his home more than he admitted.

  Personally, James never intended to see Monticello again, nor Virginia for that matter, but he could understand pain and homesickness, especially since the sudden death of Jefferson’s third daughter, Lucy. Now Thomas Jefferson’s two remaining children would both be with him, and he, James, would be reunited with his beloved sister. As if they shared the same thought, Jefferson gave him a strange look, then smiled and squeezed his arm. Without a word, Jefferson sat in one of the armchairs and asked his servant to bathe and massage his wrist.

  Two days later, a public coach drew up to the gates of the hotel, and Petit, a little girl, and a very young woman stepped out. Polly Jefferson burst into tears at the sight of her father, whom she didn’t recognize, while her maid paled at the sight of her brother. The two girls clung to each other, and finally the two of them embraced James Hemings, as Polly would not let go of her maid.

  The joy of seeing the beauty and purity of his sister’s face moved James deeply. She was well dressed, he thought, in new black silk that showed off her pale complexion and her dark hair, and she was fully formed. Her eyes were a pure liquid gold, a color he had not seen on anyone else. He took her in his arms and watched as, shyly, his master approached his daughter and pulled her away from her slave. James knew that the paleness of Jefferson’s face was an indication of great emotion. Thomas Jefferson was intimidated by his own daughter. Later, he said he would not have known her if he had met her on the street, nor she him.

  Polly Jefferson was to make him pay for those four lost years, and Thomas Jefferson paid gladly. He ruled his daughters, as he did everyone, with a fastidious tyranny. It fell hardest on Martha, who loved him most, but all of them were to feel the weight of that demand and its fetters of steel.

  But that day they were a happy and reunited family. Martha, home from her convent, was dazzled by the beauty of her little sister and her maid. After much kissing and embracing, Thomas Jefferson and his two daughters went inside. Brother and sister remained behind in the sunshine.

  Only Petit remained apart from this “family” celebration. How strange were the ways of Americans and their servants, he was thinking. James had explained to the Frenchman that they were literally the same family. This had shocked Petit, for he was the perfect servant: discreet in his service, correct, loyal in his protection of the ruling class and their privileges.

  As they kissed and embraced, Adrien Petit saw more clearly than any of them the farce and the tragedy of that reunion.

  Before the week was over, Polly Jefferson was in the Abbaye de Panthémont with her sister Martha. Sally Hemings was installed at the ministry and being taught by James’s tutor, Mr. Perrault, and Petit began to teach her to be a ladies’ maid.

  Jefferson remembered everything and asked questions about everyone, white and black. Sally Hemings, through her mother, knew everything that had gone on in the intervening years. She delighted him with her stories, her reports on the crops and gardens. She took over from James the duties of nurse, and every day, her small but surprisingly strong hands would bathe and massage his wrist while she kept up a steady stream of conversation in her soft Virginia accent, a relief to his ears from the harsh beauty of the French he had become so accustomed to. Nothing seemed to be too trivial for him to ask about.

  “Tell me everything,” he begged. “Who has died, who has married, who
has hanged himself because they cannot marry?”

  The mansion where she would live now, explained James to his sister, was called the Hôtel de Langeac. James had moved there with his master about a year after they had arrived in Paris, where his master was minister plenipotentiary and ambassador to the French king, Louis XVI. The Hôtel de Langeac was situated halfway up the Champs-Elysées, one of the main thoroughfares leading out of the city. It went up to and then down the bridge leading to Neuilly and thence to Saint Germain-en-Laye, Marly, and the king’s palace of Versailles. The hôtel (which James explained to her was the French name for a private mansion) adjoined the Grille de Chaillot, a large and beautiful wrought-iron and gilded-bronze gate that marked the limits of the city and was one of its exits and entrances at which the city tolls were levied.

  The mansion itself was in creamy white stone with sculptured friezes. The main gate led into a spacious courtyard. To the right were the steps that led up to the front door. To the left of the reception hall was a sweeping pink marble staircase that led to the upper stories. On the ground floor was a circular room with a skylight, and adjoining it was an oval drawing room, one of the most beautiful of the mansion, from which steps led into the garden. It was the ceiling of this oval room which was decorated with the painting of Jean-Simon Berthélemy’s “Dawn,” the master’s favorite.