Sally Heming (14 page)

"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?"

"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 overreacting, 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.