James Hemings absently gestured to the lackey who had been standing in front of him patiently waiting for the platter to be ready. It was the sixth and last meat dish of the meal and now, along with the other cooks, James hurried to fill the vegetable platters while calculating how much time he had to finish the six desserts that would be served.
It was the third large noisy party of the week. It seemed to him that there had been nothing but an endless round of dinners, teas, suppers, balls, operas, and concerts all season. All of Paris seemed to be in the throes of one long season of pleasure, ignoring the undertow of civil disconent which lapped at the satin and brocade skirts and high-heeled red shoes of his master’s aristocratic friends. “The Revolution is completed,” his master insisted as each new crumb was thrown by the nobles to the discontented. It must be because of his sister, thought James. He seemed bathed in happiness and determined to ignore the political intelligence all around him. His confidence knew no bounds. His elegant dinners had become famous in Paris thanks to his, James’s, cooking. Leonard, the footman, had just delivered the entire list of guests now seated around his master’s table devouring the dinner it had taken fourteen hours to prepare.
There was Lafayette, rouged and red-heeled dandy, a hero to both the Americans who had made their Revolution and to the French who were starting theirs. He was surely the guest of honor. He had been the subject of lively debate in all of Paris since his command had been taken away from him by the king. There was Buffon, the famous scientist and hero of the French philosophers; the Baron and Baronne de Staël, arbitrators of style and taste in Paris. There was the Abbé Morellet, who with his friends the Abbés Chalut and Arnaud, was preparing a French edition of his master’s Notes on the State of Virginia. A famous mathematician, the Marquis de Condorcet—the whitest man James had ever seen—was also there with his wife, Sophie, a celebrated beauty. And, finally, the Due and Duchesse de la Rochefoucauld completed the table.
James was disappointed. Missing was one of his favorites, Monsieur de la Tude, who dined out on his adventures of having spent thirty-five years on and off in the Bastille and a dungeon of Versailles, and had lived to tell of it. The last time, it had been for making up verses about Madame de Pompadour. He recounted his life as a convict more as a good story than a tragedy, and so ate well and often on his tales.
James Hemings loaded the desserts onto their platters. There were at least four women upstairs in the pale-yellow-and-gold high-ceilinged dining room, he reminded himself, who were having illicit affairs with men who were not their lawful husbands and who were also present. The young wife of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld was having an affair with the pleasant but dull Mr. Short, his master’s faithful secretary, Madame de Hunolstein with General Lafayette. The poet Saint Lambert lived with his mistress the Comtesse d’Houdetot and her husband in a happy ménage à trois. . . . At least Madame de Stael’s latest lover was not at the table, he thought. He counted the succession on his fingers. The Baronne Germaine Necker de Stael was twenty-three years old and had been married for three years to the Swedish ambassador. Her first lover had been Charles de Talleyrand, now the Bishop of Autun. Her present lover was Comte Louis de Narbonne, who was said to be the illegitimate son of King Louis XV by his own daughter, Madame Adelaide. And if his own sister, mused James, had entered the room to do some small task—which she often did in order to spy on her master’s brilliant gatherings—then there would be five concubines in the same room, he concluded bitterly.
Why didn’t he leave this place? What bond held him here in the underworld when above him, rank and privilege and riches consumed his labor? Twenty-three years of servitude. . . . Why didn’t he doff his starched chef’s bonnet, take off his apron, walk out, and be gone by one of the forty-seven gates of Paris? Why, why was he unable to do this? Why could he not take his freedom like a man, instead of crouching and waiting to be given it like a slave? No, not like a slave, for James Hemings wanted his master to acknowledge his existence and his debt, instead of simply allowing him to “stroll” away. He wanted him to give back what he had taken. Until then James Hemings knew he could never leave, he would never steal himself.
It was still early April, not long after one of his master’s elegant dinner parties. This Sunday night was one of the rare nights Thomas Jefferson had neither a dinner to give nor one to attend. As was the custom, he dined “en famille” with his daughters before they returned to the convent.
James Hemings stood behind Martha Jefferson’s chair in the small octagonal salon, which served as a dining room for family dinners. There had been much gentle laughter and now, as James Hemings, contrary to French protocol, poured the demi-tasses of strong coffee at the table and offered one to Martha, he discreetly studied the eldest daughter of his master.
It was to Martha that James always directed his services and his sympathy. He saw her rarely now. They had grown up together, Martha and he. He was seven years older than Martha, and more than any of the other Hemings boys, he had been the right age to play the role of elder brother. He had played this role well and lovingly. They had ridden together over the plantation fields and forests, exploring the woods around Monticello, fishing and eating wild berries. It was he who always helped her up after her frequent tumbles off her pony. Whenever she had lost some treasures, it was he who always found them for her. He and his uncle had built her dollhouse, carved its furniture. He had been the one who had driven her pony cart, keeping it spic and span with coats of blue and white paint. When they played, he let himself be tormented, teased, kissed, and generally used, misused, as well as loved by her, as he would in turn do the same to her. Even when she had reached the age of twelve and their relationship would have, according to the mores of the South, come to an end, they had remained in their roles as brother and sister, passing these last four years in the same familiarity of their earlier years.
Martha, like her younger sister, was listening intently to her father.
“My dear Martha, do you not look forward to the tranquil pleasures of America and find them preferable to the empty bustle of Paris?”
Sally Hemings entered the room and stood quietly apart from the group from which she was excluded. Was he going to announce that they were going home? Had the permission finally come to leave?
Thomas Jefferson flashed his frank and charming smile. “For to what does the bustle tend?”
The small group exhaled. This was not the announcement they were all waiting for.
“At eleven o’clock, it is day chez madame. The curtains are drawn. Propped on bolsters and pillows and her head scratched into a little order, the bulletins of the sick are read, and billets of the well, she writes to some of her acquaintances and receives the visits of others. If the morning is not very thronged, she is able to get out and hobble around the cage of the Palais Royal … As for royalty and royal courts, they should be regarded as you would the Tower of London or the menagerie of Versailles with their lions and tigers and other beasts of prey, and standing in the same relation to their fellows—a slight acquaintance with them will suffice to show you that, under the most imposing exterior, they are the weakest and the worst part of mankind. . . . Furthermore, she must hobble quickly, for the coiffeur’s turn is come, and a tremendous turn it is! Happy if he does not make her arrive when dinner is half over! The torpitude of digestion is a little past, when she flutters for a half hour through the streets, by way of paying visits, and then to the spectacles. These finished, another half hour is devoted to dodging in and out of doors of her very sincere friends, and away to supper. After supper, cards, bed, rise at noon the next day, and tread, like a millhouse, the same trodden circle over again. Thus the days of life are consumed, one by one, without an object beyond the present moment; ever flying from ennui of that, yet carrying it with us; eternally in pursuit of happiness, which keeps eternally ahead of us.”
Martha Jefferson laughed her low melodious laugh, one of her few charms, but she glanced at her fa
ther with some apprehension. There was a touch of melancholy to his amusing recital, a wistfulness with an edge; she even detected some bitterness. Was he tiring of Paris life? Homesick? Was he displeased with the kind of education she was receiving at the convent? Did he think, heaven forbid, that she was becoming like those women he described? She frowned. The mere shadow of her father’s disapproval sent a wave of misery through her. She stared at him, cup raised, but his face was almost devoid of expression, except for a slight crinkling around the eyes.
He looked up at James as the servant poured another cup of coffee.
“And if death or bankruptcy happens to trip us out of the circle … think of poor Monsieur Saint-James—taking asylum in the Bastille as protection against his irate creditors. Well, poor Monsieur Saint-James’s bankruptcy is merely the matter for the buzz of an evening and is completely forgotten the next morning … like mine would be.”
“Oh, Papa,” Martha replied.
Could he really have enough of the glamorous elegant lady friends she so envied? Women who spent their lives in just the manner he described? Not just mistresses like Madame de Pompadour or Du Barry, but women like Madame de Deffand and Madame Geoffrin, ladies of intellect with the most famous salons of the day like … Madame de Stael, Madame Sullivan, the Duchesse d’Anville.
She and little Polly stared at him as he continued. Sally Hemings was listening, hoping not to be sent from the room.
“In America, on the other hand, the society of your husband, the cares of children, the arrangements of the house, the improvements of the grounds fill every moment with useful and healthy activity. Every exertion is encouraging, because it also joins the promise of some future good. Leisure is spending time with real friends, whose affections are not thinned to cobwebs by being spread over a thousand objects.”
The staid and faithful adolescent that was Martha Jefferson thought of the flighty Maria Cosway and she suppressed a smile. So, she thought, her father was over his infatuation at last with that dangerous and seductive creature.
“This is the picture, in the light it is presented to my mind. Now let me have it in yours. If we do not concur this year, we shall the next or, if not then, in a year or two more. You see I am determined not to suppose myself mistaken. . . .”
Mistaken about what? Martha Jefferson wondered in alarm. What was it he was trying to tell her? He seemed to be almost pleading with her. Didn’t he know he could ask anything on earth of her? That her only wish in life was to make him happy? She would agree to any sacrifice he asked of her. If he wanted her to give up her aristocratic friends … if he wanted to leave Paris tonight, she was ready.
“Papa! Really! You sound like you want to drop everything and turn into a hermit. Goodness knows, you already go all the time to your hermitage at Valerian … you don’t want to give up society completely, do you?”
Although her tone was light, Martha’s eyes were troubled and she glanced quickly at Polly, who was staring at her father, then she looked at James. What was he asking her to accept, James thought bitterly, sensing rather than seeing the small, silent, discreet figure of his sister.
Martha’s face became even paler under the white powder that covered the freckles James Hemings had known and practically counted since childhood. She is going to disagree with her father, he thought, and he held his breath.
“I agree, Papa, that many of the fashionable pursuits of the Parisian ladies are rather frivolous and become uninteresting to a reflective mind … but the picture you have exhibited, dearest Papa, is surely overcharged. You have thrown a strong light upon all that is ridiculous in their characters and you have buried their qualities in the shade. These women, your friends, are not ordinary women. They are a race apart, with all the dispassion, the irony, the intuitive sense of measure and moderation of their breed. The state of society in different countries requires corresponding manners and qualifications. Those of the French women are by no means calculated for the meridian of America. …”
Martha paused. She had been choosing her words carefully. What did he want to hear? she wondered. Conscious of the silence in the room and the impervious expression on her father’s face, she continued:
“You must admit, Papa, that the Frenchwomen are more accomplished and understand the intercourse of society better than in any other country. Their education is of a higher caliber. True, the women of France interfere with the politics of the country and often give a decided turn to the fate of the empires. . . . They have obtained that rank and consideration in society which our sex is entitled to and to which they in vain contend for in other countries … including our own! Perhaps,” Martha said timidly, “I went too far.”
At this, her father burst into laughter. “My dear, I’ve never heard a better speech in defense of the rights of womanhood. Bravo! Mrs. Bingham couldn’t have put it better!”
Thomas Jefferson almost involuntarily glanced to where Sally Hemings stood. Although there was no visible agitation on his master’s face, his natural high color, now ruddy in the glow of the candles, James Hemings knew his master well enough to know that he was not at all pleased with his daughter’s outburst. She, on the other hand, was visibly frightened.
Martha Jefferson sighed. She was relieved that her father had taken her inexplicable outburst as he had, but she knew he didn’t agree with her. His displeasure was concealed as usual behind that benign expression she knew so well. Why had she let herself be carried away like that? Had it been because of the strange urgency in her father’s voice? He was hiding something from her, and even the thought of his secret gave her a pang of jealousy. If only he would treat her as a woman instead of a child … at least as he treated those frivolous Frenchwomen he was so busy condemning. She would ask for nothing more. She no longer wished to be shielded, shut out of his private thoughts.
The handsome trio rose and moved into the small salon. All were in motion, except for Sally Hemings. She felt at that moment great admiration for Martha. James pulled out Martha’s chair and as she turned, her bewildered eyes met those of her maid. The two young girls held each other’s eyes until the benevolent glance of Thomas Jefferson flicked between them.
It was a week later that Martha found herself standing in her maid’s room in the attic of the Hôtel de Langeac. Not being able to find Sally Hemings, she had climbed the steep back stairs to the servants’ quarters with the dozen chemises and bloomers that needed mending. Now she stood in the center of the small cramped room transfixed, her elaborate coiffure almost touching the low ceiling and making her stoop unconsciously. The room was crammed with silk and muslin dresses and petticoats. There were delicate chiffon shawls and laces piled in one corner on a chair. The moment before, she had opened a large green morocco leather trunk at the foot of the narrow bed. In it she had found dozens of pairs of silk stockings, kid gloves, ribbons, plumes, delicately embroidered cambric underclothes and petticoats, and pairs upon pairs of silk and leather shoes.
She turned and fingered the dress nearest her. It was of fine yellow silk with delicate white stripes and embroidered white roses. She was so transfixed that she had not noticed her maid’s presence behind her as she stood rooted there, silent in utter consternation. Martha turned, brushing the skirt of one of the dresses out of the way, and stared at her maid. She took in the coiffured hair, and the pale-blue silk dress over green petticoats. This dress too was new. She had never seen it before.
“Where did you get all this?” she asked in something like awe.
Sally Hemings paled but did not answer immediately. Anger had overwhelmed her at seeing her friend in her room without permission and without an invitation. Then she realized that Martha was not her friend, but her mistress and that she had every right to enter at will the room of her slave—to finger and touch those precious possessions she found there because by all rights they did belong to her.
“I said, where did you get all this?”
“It … it’s mine. It belongs to me, Mis
tress. It doesn’t concern you.”
“Doesn’t concern me! Doesn’t concern me! Since when does the fact that my maid has the wardrobe of a lady not concern me? I asked you where you got all these things. Did you steal them?”
“No.”
“No, who?”
“No, Mistress.”
“Then someone gave you all this?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“Who?”
“I cannot say, Mistress, please … don’t ask me. . . . Some I bought with my wages. . . .”
“Wages?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“Since when have you been receiving wages?”
“Since last year. . . . Twenty-four francs a month.”
“Even a hundred years’ salary would not buy these … these exquisite things. Tell me”—Martha’s mouth set itself in a hard line; the ways of French society were no mystery to her—“it is a lover, is it not?”
“I don’t know what you mean, Mistress.”
“You know perfectly well what I mean! I mean you have a man as a lover. You have attracted the eye of a gentleman and you have … become his mistress!”
“I—”
“You think I don’t know of such things! After four years at Panthémont. Tell me or I’ll beat it out of you!”
“Yes.” Sally Hemings’ eyes glowed fierce and dry. Her fear had been replaced with outrage. If Martha struck her, she was ready to strike back and her small hands curled into fists of revolt.
“I demand to know who it is.”
Martha Jefferson had suddenly taken on all the airs and long-forgotten drawl of a Virginia-plantation mistress. She took her servant’s chin and lifted her face so that she could look into her eyes. “I demand to know who the gentleman … or rather rascal … is!”
“I cannot tell you.” She turned her head away from the revolting female hand that touched her.
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