Sally Heming (26 page)

On the eighth of October the gale had dropped and the
packet stood out of Le Havre for Cowes, where we would board the ship for home.
It was not until the seventeenth that we reached our destination because of
contrary winds, and as we approached the Isle of Wight, we encountered a
virtual armada of sailing ships, all collected there and unable to sail because
of the storm. More than thirty tall ships lay at anchor as our packet
approached the shore.

We were met by John Trumbull, who had been waiting for us
to arrive for two weeks. He had farewell letters from the master's friends in
London and parting gifts for all of us. Together we stood and looked out at all
the ships anchored in the somber gray sea. I stood near the slender,
black-eyed, black-haired figure of John Trumbull, whose affectation of dressing
only in black, but of the richest, most elegant cloth, made him stand out
amongst the multicolored, brightly dyed velvets and satins of the large group of
waiting passengers on the shore.

As if sensing my inner turmoil, Master Trumbull turned to
me, fixing his endearing, slightly amiss gaze upon me. "Are you going
home, 'Sallyhemings'?" he asked me. We both smiled. The way he said my
name was our own private joke. When he had asked me my name that winter now two
years past, I had replied, as my mother had taught me, with my first and last
names. Master Trumbull thought it all one name, and had continued even after I
had laughingly corrected him to call me "Sallyhemings." Now all the
affection he stirred in me turned into a kind of self-pity.

"We will be coming back," I said.
"Indeed?"

"Yes, it is promised. Virginia is only... an interval."

"I hope you are right," replied John Trumbull. He
frowned, and I knew what he was thinking. "And you?" I asked.

"Oh, I doubt that I will return to London. I must make
my way in my own country." And in his usual wordy fashion he went on:
"To earn a living as an artist is no easy matter. If my affairs were as I
would wish, I would stay, and accept the offer of your employer to replace Mr.
Short as his private secretary. Nothing would make me feel more honored, but,
as an artist, I need the patronage of my countrymen—that is, if I am ever to
proceed in my work. My future depends on my reception in America and as that
shall be cold or cordial, I shall only decide then whether or not to abandon my
country, or perhaps my profession. I hope for better things than perpetual
though voluntary exile. I do hope that America will encourage me in producing
monuments, not only of heroes but of those events on which their title to the
gratitude of the nation is founded."

I had great affection for this man. He was a sentimental
and dreamy young artist, as bone-proud as my brother James. Both clung to their
small eccentricities and obsessions. To stand alone with only a frail
sable-hair brush in hand to meet the world took a lot of courage, I thought. I
guarded the sketches he had done of me with my life.

"At any rate, Sallyhemings, just in case we don't meet
again, I have something for you. I did it these past weeks."

Master Trumbull was looking down at me.

"Mr. Short suggested it would be a gallant thing to
make a copy of my portrait of Thomas Jefferson for Martha, which I have done,
as I had already done for other ... London ladies. And for some reason, one
afternoon, I did another."

He took something from his pocket and offered it to me. I
could not believe my eyes. It was a replica of Martha's new miniature of her
father, taken from the portrait made for Master Trumbull's painting of the
Declaration of Independence. I did not trust myself to speak.

"Sallyhemings. Don't I even get an 'Ah' or an 'Oh'
over the brilliant likeness, the fine shading, the delicate color, the
inimitable expression?" He smiled.

"God bless you, John Trumbull."

"I sincerely hope he will, Sallyhemings ... and you
too," he whispered softly. And he was gone.

I clutched the tiny painting to my breast, and looked out
over the harbor. Beyond was the sea, rolling and unfathomable. All the great
ships in the harbor had their huge sails unfurled like the wings of the
sky-darkening flocks of sea gulls that circled overhead, waiting for the wind.

It was a warm and clear twenty-third of November,
1789,
when we landed at Norfolk, Virginia. My child stirred, and
James let out a string of curses as we stepped off our ship and back into
slavehood. The docks were crowded with hustling, sweating bodies of the
dockworkers of every hue, from yellow to blue-black. All slaves. The
provincially dressed whites who mingled with them seemed pocks on a sea of
colored flesh. The low slurred slave dialect reached my ears without meaning
and the Virginia accent sounded harsh and uncouth to my ears so long attuned to
French.

For some moments I stood bewildered and foreign in my own
country. Only my master seemed to comprehend my confusion. He took my arm
gently and led me through the melee of orders and shouts that accompanied the
unloading of the vessels, toward an inn where I could rest. But before we had
gone more than twenty paces, a delegation of Norfolk citizens accosted him,
excitedly greeting him as the new secretary of state of the United States of
America. Stunned, I was quickly thrust aside. The first promise had been
broken.

The looks directed my way were polite and curious until it
was discovered I was maid to Master Jefferson's daughters. Then the looks
ceased to be those directed at a living person and became the looks one fastens
on a crate or a sack of meal. I felt faint with the shock of those looks, so
well remembered but also so well forgotten. It was Polly who took my hand and
held it tightly until the carriages and horses had been arranged for and we
were safe inside. Trembling, I was helped into the rented phaeton by James, who
was also energetically supervising the loading of our hand baggage, his own
distress lost in the rush of activity. My master was still being held by the
press of the anxious, noisy delegation.

In the darkness of the carriage, I pulled my veil over my
face, and let Polly sink her head on my shoulder. We both slept, I think,
because it was hours before the carriages started up for Monticello.

It took us a month to get home. The slave telegraph, I
knew, would communicate not only our arrival but every detail of our journey—our
whereabouts, our baggage, clothes, state of health ... including and above all,
my impending confinement, which I could no longer conceal. My mother would know
long before I reached home.

At Eppington, a more official notice of his appointment, from
the United States government, awaited Thomas Jefferson, and finally, at
Shadwell, the nearest plantation, four weeks later, the Monticello slaves
poured down the mountain to meet us. It was a scene that I would remember
forever. The dream of Marly was gone. I knew I would never see Paris again.

The slaves had discovered the approaching carriage as soon
as it had reached Shadwell and had come as one body; a flux of undulating black
and brown and copper and yellow and white bodies flowing toward us, covered
with cheerful ragged clothing. I recognized the unbleached Monticello woven
woolen shirts of the field hands, the red-and-blue gingham head rags of the
house servants, the brown and black linen dresses of the housemaids with stiff
white aprons, the rough, shapeless Mother Hubbards of the female field hands,
punctuated now with a red or blue blanket, now with a brightly dyed coat.

Old, shapeless felt hats and beavers were thrown into the
air or waved wildly, skirts and petticoats were snatched up, showing bare feet.
Most of the men were coatless as the day was warm and bright. The slaves were
shouting. Some were singing, waving handkerchiefs and red bandannas; the cries
and cheers were a blanket of sounds following us up the mountain. The horses
were unhitched and the carriage was opened and we were received into the arms
of the singing crowd, my master's servants and my fellow slaves. I sat
horrified. Maria and Martha were caught up as well in the pandemonium, lifted
out of the carriage, and carried by strong arms into the crowd.

They were happy. This adulation pleased my master, and the
veneer of French refinement seemed to be rubbed off by the press of warm flesh.

Only James and I remained untouched by the celebration:
James out of shame and bitterness; I out of fear. A wave of nausea overwhelmed
me, the nausea of defeat as well as of pregnancy.

I recognized Hemingses among the crowd. And standing in the
doorway, rising like a giant accusing finger above the tumult and shouting, was
my mother, her hands on her hips, filling the doorway of the mansion like the
stone frescoes on the facade of the Hotel de Langeac.

Suddenly, eager hands reached for me within the carriage; I
would have to face the multitude. I put the miniature which hung around my neck
on a velvet ribbon, inside my dress, lest it be torn off me in the excitement.
The black velvet pressed against my neck with a special softness ... it seemed
to be speaking to me, slowly. If I was ashamed to be home, no one would know it
except me. I appeared at the door of the carriage, my veil lifted, a smile on
my face, tears rolling down my cheeks. A murmur of "ahs" went out,
like the rings of a tossed pebble upon water. "Dashing Sally" had
come home! Gently I was lifted from black arms to black arms, my voluminous
yellow cloak wrapped tightly around me hid the new life I carried. Joy at
seeing Monticello again washed over me.

Then I saw the small figure in the doorway turn her back
and walk into the Big House. The wind bit deep into my face as I was handed from
slave to slave into the darkness of the now empty doorway.

She would have chosen freedom.

"Mama!" I cried against all the other cries and
commotion. But, if she heard me, she did not turn back. "Mama!" I
screamed again and again. It was years before she answered that call.

Within three months, I had my first child and named him
Thomas; my master had gone to New York with James, to take up his post as
secretary of state; Martha had married her cousin, Thomas Mann, and left the
mansion; Polly had gone to live with her beloved Aunt Eppes, a hundred miles
away; and I was left alone, having just passed my seventeenth birthday, the
mistress of Monticello.

PART III

1833

The Census Taker

CHAPTER 21

WASHINGTON CITY,
1833

And what, therefore, is loyalty proper, the life breath of
all Society, but an effluence of Hero-Worship, submissive admiration for the
truly great? Society is founded on Hero-Worship.... What we may call
Heroarchy—Government of Heroes.

thomas carlyle
, Lecture on "Heroes and Hero-Worship," Albermarle Street,
London,
1840

John Quincy Adams
took another long
look at the tall blond young man with the clear innocent eyes. He certainly
knows a lot, he thought, and he is out for blood in the name of his lady....
Quincy Adams was undecided. Jefferson and his father had finally patched up
their long feud, in the face of impending death, but his mother, Abigail, had
never forgiven Jefferson for Sally Hemings, nor for James Callender and
Callender's attacks on her husband. Should he give in to a sudden urge to voice
his true opinions of Jefferson, though he never engaged in gossiping? He
wondered whether this once he should let the chance to recount a fascinating
parable of Jeffersonian duplicity get the better of his principles.