The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (29 page)

W
HEN
S
ALLY
H
EMINGS
arrived in Paris on July 15, 1787, at least one person was there to welcome her with the enthusiasm and warmth of family: her brother.
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He had last seen his youngest sister when she was eleven years old, and she had probably changed greatly in appearance during that time. While he had gone from age nineteen to twenty-two, the changes in the elder Hemings were likely more psychological and emotional than physical, but nevertheless profound. Sally Hemings met in her older brother a man who had traveled throughout France, lived and worked among people from a completely different culture, and been responsible for himself in this foreign environment. He knew firsthand, as his sister would come to know, that there were different and more varied ways for them to go through the world than existed in Virginia. She also met a man who was about to come into his own as a highly skilled professional. James Hemings was nearing the end of his various apprenticeships, and in the months immediately after his sister’s arrival he became the official chef de cuisine at the Hôtel de Langeac in charge of the kitchen and, thus, a supervisor in his own right.
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With the new title came a larger steady monthly wage for Hemings, instead of the spending money that Jefferson had doled out to him over the years and the smaller salary he had been receiving in the months just before he took on the role of chef.
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He also had available to him now one of the traditional perquisites of the chef in great houses, one that could bring him substantial side income, given the number of people who dined at the Hôtel de Langeac: the right to sell the renderings from the chickens, pork, beef, and any other animals prepared in the kitchen. Nothing was wasted in that era, and there existed a lucrative market in grease and animal skins that might be cast off today. Though he was used to working for wages for other employers, Hemings’s new job marked an evolution in his self-image and in his relationship with Jefferson. He now had a true trade that he could ply for others, though it seems clear that Jefferson expected Hemings’s services, if not for a lifetime, for the foreseeable future. Things did not work out as Jefferson expected, and they ended up working to James Hemings’s advantage, but that was all to come. In that summer of 1787, Sally Hemings brought a new dimension to James’s life. He now had someone to share this adventure, for the present and the future, should they decide to take their freedom in France. For the immediate moment, she could fill him in on the state of things in Virginia, while he could speak to her frankly about all that had happened to him since he had come to France and what it meant to him. And, best of all, probably to his great relief, he could do that in his native language.

For Jefferson’s part, it was not Sally Hemings’s arrival but the reunion with his daughter that ranked uppermost in his mind. He noted with great emotion that neither he nor her sister would have recognized Polly had they encountered her on the street, she had grown so much. With only a dim memory of her father, Polly did not remember her sister at all.
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Making matters even more delicate, Patsy had spent almost three years living in a completely different and more complicated world than her younger sister. The two girls clearly had much ground to cover in getting to know each other again, and their father was eager to see them do that.

What Jefferson initially thought of his daughter’s young companion is unknown. He remembered Hemings as the little girl who was present at his wife’s, her sister’s, deathbed. These were at best bittersweet associations that called forth memories both of loss and of Virginia. Indeed, when Hemings had last seen Jefferson, he was still in the emotional fog brought on by Martha’s loss. Not much time had passed between the day they had gathered together as Martha lay dying and the day he left his daughters at Eppington to begin the journey that would take him to France. What did Hemings make of Jefferson’s now rejuvenated and resplendent self, hair powdered and dressed—when he could sit still for it—outfitted in the French style? However he had thought of Hemings previously, he had to think about her differently now for several reasons, not the least of which was how to fit her into his present household. There was no reason for Hemings to play the role that had brought her to France, at least not in the same way, for Polly almost immediately joined Patsy Jefferson at the abbey, where she would now have the companionship of her sister and the opportunity to make new friends at school while she pursued her studies.
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It has been suggested that Hemings could have gone to live with Patsy and Polly at their school, for some of the girls at the abbey might have brought their servants. Although it is possible she spent time there, Jefferson’s records place her at the Hôtel de Langeac with her brother. No known records—account entries or references in letters to paying for her food and board, which Jefferson would have to have done—link her to Panthemont.
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His very quick placement of Polly in school indicates he felt it important for the young girl to bond with a sister whom she did not remember, make more rapid progress in learning a new language, and find new friends. Having Hemings continue her relationship with Polly might have impeded each one of these desired developments.

Whatever it meant for the Jefferson girls, it might have been much better for Hemings if she had lived at the abbey, even if that meant seeing her brother only on the days when Jefferson’s daughters came home to visit their father. Being at the school, with its religious atmosphere and rituals, would have provided a powerful and educational experience for Hemings. Many people have been moved by the beauty of the rituals of the Catholic Church, even when they did not understand the words of the Latin Mass or adhere to the faith at all. Living at the abbey full-time would also have offered Hemings the chance to be with, and get to know, girls her own age. No one would have expected her to develop true friendships at a school attended by France’s elite. But “true” friendship is not always required. There can be great comfort in the superficial, particularly when one is in a foreign country and simple curiosity about a person from a different culture can often substitute for true affinity.

Just observing the girls and listening to their conversation would have broadened Hemings’s world, exposing her to different ideas and ways of doing things, even though she would not have taken part in the formal lessons. Despite the social and cultural distance that existed between her and elite girls, there were some very important points of commonality—first and foremost, getting used to their changing bodies and coming into womanhood. This was one of the main reasons for having an all-girls school and, no doubt, one of the unstated reasons the widower Jefferson found the abbey attractive. He almost certainly thought it better to have these transformations involving what he referred to as “certain periodical indispositions to which nature has subjected” women (and any awkward conversations about them) take place among females without his involvement.
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Instead, at the Hôtel de Langeac, Hemings was a young girl in a predominantly male environment. Her brother and Jefferson, the people with whom she was most familiar, were very busy with their own tasks and not likely attuned to the preoccupations, tendencies, and needs of girls her age. Jefferson’s letters to his own much loved young daughters show that he sometimes had a poor understanding of these matters, though he was much better by the time he had grandchildren.

Despite the potential benefits to Hemings of living at the abbey, there were significant disadvantages to Jefferson and his daughters beyond the fact that she might slow Polly’s acculturation into French society and her bonding with her sister. The most important benefit of all to Hemings posed the most direct threat to the Jeffersons. If she lived at the abbey, she would make contact with people outside of their circle, who might influence her. She, in turn, might charm them and inspire their sympathy. There is no reason to think he knew anything of this prior incident, but decades before Jefferson and Hemings were in Paris, the sisters in a convent in Nantes refused to turn over an enslaved girl who had been left in their care when her owner came to retrieve her. The case, pivotal to the development of French laws regarding slavery, was decided in favor of the young girl and the nuns.
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That was well before the very public rights of man/anti-slavery rhetoric became a part of the conversation in Paris as it was during Hemings’s time there. Even with no knowledge of that situation, Jefferson was astute enough to see that giving Hemings a life away from the Hôtel de Langeac, under the direction of other adults on a long-term basis, posed significant risks.

There was also the issue of Hemings’s status under French law. That she was African American would have alerted the curious among the residents of the abbey to the fact that she was something other than just a servant to the Jefferson girls. The French believed there were no slaves in France, but they knew there were slaves in America. If asked who Hemings was to them, Patsy and Polly could lie, or tell the truth and perhaps provoke the kind of embarrassment their father tried so hard to avoid. What of the officials at the school? Sending Hemings to live at the abbey would needlessly have involved them in his decision to skirt the law, having them house his unregistered slave in their midst. It is hard to say precisely how law figured into the way Jefferson dealt with Sally Hemings, because when he addressed the issue of slavery in France, he wrote in a manner that was at once clear and cryptic. He lived a good part of his life in letters and understood what tactics and maneuvers to use to protect himself as he moved in that very specialized and enduring world.

As was noted in chapter 8, many people took their chances with the laws regulating the black presence in Paris and managed to get away with it. One does not get the impression that there was great efficiency in carrying out the law’s provisions. Jefferson, however, was not just any person. He was a minister from a new nation trying to establish its bona fides on the world stage. The Americans had thrown off a government by revolution and instituted a new one that claimed its legitimacy through its origins in and adherence to law. There was great skepticism about this new, unprecedented, untried, and still fragile enterprise. Those who represented the country abroad could ill afford to be seen picking and choosing which laws to comply with, because taking laws seriously—whether one thinks them merely irritating or outright inane—shows respect for the concept of the rule of law, the sine qua non of a civilized society. Jefferson “was” the United States in France. Any potential embarrassment he suffered would reflect on the country. For reasons personal and legal, whatever it meant for her, it was better all around for the Jeffersons not to have Hemings living away from the residence full-time.

Forty Days

More important for Jefferson than figuring out what role Sally Hemings would play in France was the pressing issue of her health. In addition to her youth, there was another important way that Hemings did not fit his specifications for the female attendant who was to come to France. He expressly asked that a person who had had smallpox make the journey. The Eppeses complied only partially with this request by having Isabel Hern inoculated.
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They did not have Hemings inoculated, and no extant letters reveal whether the issue was ever raised with Jefferson. This suggests that the decision to send Hemings was made at the very last minute. Inoculating her would have involved several more weeks of waiting, and they opted, one might say, negligently, given Jefferson’s stated concern, to send her anyway. Jefferson had arranged for Hemings’s older brothers to be inoculated—Robert in Philadelphia in 1775 and Martin and James in 1778—but he knew he had no hand in inoculating their little sister.
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This was a quite pressing matter, and he must have asked Hemings as soon as she arrived at the Hôtel de Langeac whether she had, in fact, been inoculated. She had not. Jefferson needed to deal with this issue as quickly as possible, and his concerns about her contracting the disease militated against allowing her to move too freely in her new environs. In those very first months of her time in Paris, Hemings’s life very likely centered on her new residence and immediate neighborhood.

As it had been since ancient times, smallpox was a periodic scourge during the eighteenth century. Seemingly out of nowhere, epidemics swooped down and carried off large numbers of people to excruciating deaths. Thirteen years before Hemings arrived in France, an epidemic at Versailles took the life of many, including King Louis XV, famous for his apocryphal last words,
après moi, le déluge
. Jaded French society reeled upon hearing the horrifying details of Louis’s agonizing death. Voltaire himself was moved to write a pamphlet on the subject, citing the king’s terrible end. Up until that time, France had been slow, compared with England, to adopt the procedure of inoculation. After King Louis’s ordeal the French nobility in particular enthusiastically embraced it.
¹¹

There is no cure for smallpox, and throughout the ages populations across the globe have had to find ways of preventing its spread. Inoculation, also called variolation, after the name of the smallpox virus
Variola major
, was practiced in Africa, the Middle East, and the Far East.
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White Americans first became aware of the procedure from African slaves who described it to them. Cotton Mather brought it to the widespread attention of the American public after an African-born slave, Onesimus, told him that he had undergone the procedure while still in his native land and was thus immune to smallpox. In the mid-1700s, after much debate, the American colonies initiated the procedure with great trepidation. The technique involved taking from an infected person a small amount of the secretions from the pustules (the inoculum) and transferring it to a healthy individual with the aim of creating a milder version of the disease and permanent immunity to it. This was done by creating an incision and placing the inoculum into it. Naturally, this very crude version of the procedure often failed—the healthy person contracted full-blown smallpox and died or lived, but was seriously disfigured by the scarring.
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