Sally Hemings

by Barbara Chase-Riboud

  James left Virginia for Spain on an English ship out of Norfolk sailing for Gibraltar. At the end of December, his letters began to arrive. Sometimes his “You coming, Sally Hemings?” would echo like a heartbeat on the page after page of fine script full of adventures and descriptions, plans, hopes, and dreams … always dreams, and the culmination of those dreams, always just one more letter away.

  Many times that winter I thought of Richmond and Gabriel Prosser. The state capital was guarded these days by armed and uniformed sentinels and a permanent cordon of bayonets. This was the lasting memorial to Gabriel’s defeat. The insurrection hung over the valley and all that was in it which was his.

  I thought about what my master had said:

  “An insurrection is easily quelled in its first effects, but far from being local, it will become general and whenever it does, it will rise more formidable after every defeat until one will be forced after dreadful scenes and sufferings to release them in their own way. . . .”

  “And how?” I had asked.

  “I don’t know, but if something is not done, and done soon, we shall be the murderers of our own children. . . .”

  Had he known what he was saying? I felt a numbness come over me.

  “You must be chilled, my dear,” he had said with a concerned voice. “Shall I ask Jupiter to come and light a fire for you?”

  He could speak of murder and his children, and then his slave Jupiter …

  The summer of 1800 that had just passed so quietly at home was also the summer that was, ballot by ballot, crowning my lover president of the United States. The scent of power had seeped into the mansion. The house had been abuzz with messengers, letters, newspapers, and visitors.

  It seemed to me an omen that the duel for power between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr came to an end while Jupiter lay dying. The faithful Jupiter was fifty-seven years old and he shared his birth year with his master, whom he had served since the age of fourteen. The handsome black face, gray now with illness and impending death, flooded with joy as I bent over his still bulky and powerful form to whisper the news of his master’s presidency.

  “I knowed from de beginnin’ at Willam’ an’ Mary dat Masta Jefferson was gon’ be first in de Ian’. . . .”

  The words in their soft slur escaped me at first, and I bent closer to the pain-racked body in order to hear.

  “Uncle Jupiter, I have greetings for you from Master Jefferson. He says you get well and he bring you up to Washington City to the president’s house. . . .” I slipped into the slave dialect: “He say you younger than him by four months and you ain’t got no business gettin’ all sick without his permission. And you shore ain’t got no permission to lay out and die on him. . . . He says ol’ Davey Bowles, he can’t drive his bays like you. Say he tearin’ up dem bays, dat young pip …” My eyes filled with tears as I soothed the old man, the soft Virginia drawl falling as easily from my lips as the French I sometimes spoke with Polly. “Full-blooded bays, Masta Eppes bought fo’ Masta Jefferson’s carriage in Washington. You’ll be seated behin’ dem, Uncle Jupiter. . . . They’s de mos’ spirited, de mos’ showy, de mos’ beautiful. . . . They cost de masta sixteen hundred dollars. Best horses in Washington … first in de Ian’…”

  We had called the black doctor from Milton and the white doctor from Charlottesville. My mother had strained her knowledge of herb remedies to the limit, but nothing had helped.

  “Uncle Jupiter,” I said softly, “you wan’ som’ milk bread? Try a little, Mama made it jus’ fo’ you. . . .” But he could not hear my words; my mother closed his eyes, and, on either side of him, Martha and I knelt. I was going to have to write my master that his beloved Jupiter was dead.

  The news of Jupiter’s death spread throughout the household, and then out toward the slave quarters and outlying plantations. The slaves began to gather for the wake, a low moan lapping up the mountain from the underside of Monticello.

  It was at the funeral of Jupiter that most of the slave population learned that they were now the property of the president of the United States.

  CHAPTER 31

  MONTICELLO, 1801

  HE CAME HOME for the first time as president. Except for Maria, who was too ill to come to Monticello, everything on his mountain was safe and at peace.

  He was proud. He was loved, not only in his own domains but by the whole nation.

  We watched a rainstorm break over Shadwell, far in the distance. From the north terrace, we could see the gray mists resting on the range that stretched for forty miles to the Chesapeake Bay. In the distance, we could see the low-hanging clouds of a spring storm, which looked like a theater set to the two of us standing in the weak April afternoon sun.

  He had built not only power last summer but his mansion, which had taken its final shape. I could feel its space, every foot of its masonry, every inch of its brick and mortar, behind me like a fortress. He had overlooked no detail, had underplayed no effort toward perfection. He had goaded his master builders, John and Joe, into a sublimity of effort. His long-accumulated books, paintings, sculptures, and instruments—some of them in their cases since our return—had at last found their proper places. His curtains and draperies, china, silver, Persian rugs, linens, clocks had also been incorporated. His plants, his trees, his roses stretched in gigantic patterns on the west and south sides of the mansion. The house stood, a one-story brick building facing west, surmounted by an octagonal dome that camouflaged its second story, while the terracing and sloping of the mountain camouflaged the understory. The beautiful and perfectly proportioned façade, with its Doric columns and heavy cornice and balustrades, looked over the vast lawns and gardens down onto the valley, and out onto the world. Behind that facade, which had taken so long to build, his slave and white families lived with his other possessions.

  He looked down at me. “Look at the rain clouds,” he said. “It rains, it storms, and yet we feel not one drop.”

  “It thunders, too,” I said, as the first rumblings of the spring storm’s fury was carried over the distance of the mountain.

  “And it lightens as well,” he laughed as the sky beyond us burst white. “Yes, we are not lit by it.”

  “And thank God,” I said.

  We stood watching the shower. The servants would be lighting the candles in a little while and setting the table for eight places, even for his solitary dinner, in the rosewood-paneled dining room off the center hall.

  I knew what he was thinking.

  His Eden was complete.

  In another month, there would be a new addition to our family. He wanted a girl, so I prayed for one, for him. A president’s daughter.

  “If it is a girl, name her Harriet, after our Harriet,” he had said.

  “And if it is a boy?”

  “Then name him James.”

  I knew he was happy. I begged him to await the birth. He had never been present at the birth of any of my children. Again, he left me to the final weeks of waiting.

  On the eighth of May, the very anniversary of the birth of his last child by my half sister Martha, whose death had begun the journey to my destiny, I gave birth to my fifth child.

  I named her Harriet, as I had promised.

  My mother was not pleased. “Martha Jefferson did the same thing,” she said, “and she lost both of them Lucy Elizabeths. Don’t name this daughter Harriet, Sally.”

  “Her father wants her named Harriet. He’s lost one Harriet, and he wants another. This one will survive.”

  “Not for you or him to say if she gonna live or die. God has still got some rights, even in Virginia. Masta may be president, but he aint’ got that last power—life and death, and well he should know it!”

  “You’re just superstitious, Maman, it doesn’t make any difference what her name is. You sound like one of those Indian squaws who dress their son up like a girl so that God won’t know he’s a male.”

  Yet, even as I argued with Elizabeth Hemings, the sense of doom that
had plagued me since Gabriel’s insurrection took hold of me. I looked down on the ivory-skinned, auburn-haired infant sleeping in my arms, another Harriet, and pressed her to my breast. She would survive. And she would survive to live free.

  “My Martha named that second Lucy Elizabeth after the dead one, when I told her—”

  “I don’t care what you told your precious Martha Wayles. I don’t care what Martha Jefferson did or didn’t do. I’m not Martha Wayles. I am me! Martha Wayles Jefferson is nothing to me, nor do I want her to be.”

  “She’s your sister, if you like it or not, and I told her—”

  “Mama! I don’t care if she was my sister or not! She has nothing, nothing to do with me or my children. This is my Harriet. Mine and Thomas Jefferson’s.”

  “This is the first time in my life, daughter, I ever heard you call him by his name.” There was amazement in her voice. “Lord, child, what’s the matter? I know who you are, I know you not your half sister. I’m your mother, not hers, though it’s true I loved her. But you can’t ever say I loved her more than I love you.”

  “You did, Mama. Admit it. You’ve said it a million times. Your white daughters. Your sweethearts.”

  Anger now hung like a cloud between us. I had hurt her. But I had not been able to stop myself.

  “No, child,” she said, “it’s not like you say. I guess I am like that Indian squaw. I pretend I love you less so that God won’t punish me by bringing hurt on you. I’m only afraid for you. You won’t fight for yourself. You won’t protect yourself. I only want that. That you fight for yourself and your children, that’s all. I didn’t mean no offense.”

  We looked at each other. She didn’t understand. I was fighting. I was fighting him. I was fighting love, slavery, and Virginia.

  “No, Mama, you never mean any offense,” I said.

  “But, daughter, you might suckle her yourself and not give her over to a wet-nurse like you did the others.”

  I tightened my hold on Harriet. Martha Randolph was pregnant and ready to bear. My mother always made it a point to remind me that Martha nursed all her babies.

  “Now don’t go getting resentful about nursing,” she said, as if she had read my mind. “You careful, it won’t hurt your bosom any. Martha Randolph done suckled all her children, and she still got a beautiful bosom. Pretty enough for any man to lay his head on.”

  I don’t know why, but I started to cry. Sobs of rage and scalding resentment shook me. What did I want? He loved me. What did I want? He listened to me. What was it then I wanted?

  My mother took me in her arms. Her face next to mine was dark and cloudy.

  The summer meant the return to Monticello of my master’s white family. Thomas and Beverly were swept up in the ever-increasing swarm of children, slave and white, that mingled in total freedom all the summer months. My Thomas, red-headed and gray-eyed, romped on the west lawn with Thomas Jefferson Randolph, red-headed and blue-eyed; and the Randolph girls, all dark like their father with his Indian blood. Anne and Ellen found in blue-eyed Beverly the perfect doll. Martha Randolph had proudly announced to my mother, much to her vexation, that she was again “expecting.” My mother had wanted only me to give birth this year.

  A test of power at Monticello between Martha and me had been postponed by the simple expedient of letting my mother keep the huge iron ring of house keys that hung at her waist. My mother, now sixty-six, knew her position as dowager queen could not last much longer. Nevertheless, while she ruled, she ruled, and it was to her that all the children, Martha’s and mine, turned to as ultimate arbitrator and bounty-giver. I knew my mother secretly feared that I would never have the will to fight for Monticello. She had often said that once she let the reins of power go, it would be Martha, not me, who would take her place. But she didn’t know that Monticello had been promised to me by my master.

  It was bad enough that I could not take my place at the head of the table at Monticello. But that Martha should wear the keys … never!

  The summer was hot and humid. The heavy perfume of jasmine, honeysuckle, and peach blossoms exuded a sweet, deep, dangerous sensuality. It was the heat, I suppose, and some mysterious chemistry that seemed to combine into a volatile mixture of sullen arrogance and irritability. The mountain reeked of that climate that bred fevers and sudden violence.

  Both Maria and Martha were coming home to give birth. Maria arrived first. She was enduring her second difficult confinement, still a semi-invalid, suffering the complications of her first child’s birth. She brought, as usual, her own servants. They were Monticello slaves that had been given to her on her marriage and who found their friends and family again. They included her personal maid, her coachman, her cook, her outriders, her nurse, and several of their children.

  Next came Martha Randolph, heavy with her sixth child, along with all her children, Anne, Thomas Jefferson, Ellen Wayles, and Virginia. Both her husband and Maria’s were in Washington City and would arrive in August with their body servants, coachmen, horses, and luggage.

  I greeted my nieces with my babe in arms. We were genuinely glad to see one another. The winter had been long and lonely. Maria, ill all of the time, isolated at Bermuda Hundred, enjoyed the added attention, the music, the conversation, and her father’s triumphal presence. After only five years of marriage, her bright beauty had washed away to the almost transparent delicacy of a much older woman. As for Martha, her big-boned and robust body had already settled into middle age. Her face had hardened with the bitter struggle against her husband’s erratic and increasingly uncontrollable behavior. After several years of relative lucidity, Thomas Mann Randolph was again slipping back into the melancholy and depression which were the harbingers of his insanity. All the weary travels from doctor to doctor, from cure to cure, had not helped him. More and more Martha looked forward to summers at Monticello with her father. Like him, she too suffered from violent migraines that disappeared only on the mountain.

  There were now thirty-two servants for six white people, including the children. Before the summer was over, there would be as many sleeping guests.

  We settled into our positions, re-establishing the old accommodation and bonds among ourselves. We girded for the arrival of the men, who must at all cost be recaptured, comforted, redomesticated, and spoiled after their long absences. The air, as always, again became heavy with jealousies and unrealized dreams.

  All this would focus itself on Thomas Jefferson. All the loves and hates and jealousies of Monticello would gravitate toward its center, my master. Calm and possessed, he would ride above the often stormy, half-smothered passions that struggled around him, both at home and in Washington; and by his fierce will, would repress any open violence. He would turn a deaf ear to the problems of all of the women on the mountain. And we dared not intrude upon him. He wanted peace. And he wanted his façade of perfection. He would not tolerate less. And I, I tolerated Martha and Maria on their summer visits, but they were not the mistresses of Monticello. I was. That was our covenant. He had promised.

  Even before the men’s arrival, the first bad news of the summer had filtered into Monticello. Danby Carr, the youngest of the hot-tempered Carr brothers, had been involved in a duel. He had severely wounded his opponent and had been arrested. Danby had rowed across the James River in the early dawn, cocked his pistols at a friend, and half-killed him, then had gone bragging all over Milton and Charlottesville on the quality of his pistols and the cowardliness of his target. Peace? If Thomas Jefferson thinks he is going to have peace, I thought, he had better think again. Depressed, I began trying to keep order among the slaves, to find rooms for the ever-increasing white family, which now included the Carrs and Jefferson’s sister, a poor relative. I suppressed the dark foreboding of the months to come and lifted my own burdened and disappointed heart to my task.

  The August sun beat down on his back and bared head. It was the second time he was riding up his mountain as president. He had taken his saddled horse and mounted u
p at Shadwell, leaving the phaeton with Davey Bowles and Burwell, and had gone galloping ahead, his still reddish hair brushed back by the wind. Thomas Jefferson returned depressed and convinced that his robust constitution had finally failed him, stricken with a dysentery that had not left him since he had taken office. He had also begun to keep track of the deaths of the signers of the Declaration of Independence with the same precision as he noted the singing of Dick, his mockingbird.

  The death of Jupiter had struck fear into his own heart. . . . Not without bitterness, he remembered that neither Martha nor Maria had written to congratulate him on his election as president. He had won by a hairbreadth over Burr, and now he would have to crush his power as well as the lingering residue of Federalist influence.

  Thomas Jefferson looked up at the tall Virginia pines. He was haunted with death. The bursting mountainside underlined the tragedy of that other summer, so many years ago, when his great love had let life go, after giving birth to a girl child, now also dead. It was the nineteenth anniversary of Martha Jefferson’s death. And now, in fear, he clung to the image of his slave wife who gave birth easily.

  He reined in his bay Wildair, and sat slumped under the arched green vaults of his own forest, the bridle paths leading up the west slope, etched by the years of riding his own favorites. The dappled sunlight played about his broad shoulders, and the flanks of his horse.

  He had left Washington City in a state of weariness. His illness, the unfinished president’s house, the strain of political life had taken a toll on his state of health. His migraines, which had not tormented him since he had left France more than ten years before, were plaguing him again. His estates were slipping, and the Wayles legacy of debt was still not resolved. Yet, he thought, raising his head, the mountain was still there; a young mother waited for him at the top; his two daughters, and his grandchildren were within his embrace. He dug his spurs into the sweating flank of Wildair, urging him faster and faster up the mountain.