The President's Daughter (22 page)

“I must.”

“Why break everyone's heart who's come to love you?”

“Perhaps because of that love, Charlotte.”

We looked deeply one into the eyes of the other. Our friendship was intact, as was the mystery.

“I've got you some books for the voyage.
The Poems of Phillis Wheatley;
John Burke's
On Hero Worship;
John Fitzgerald's
The Slave Trade;
and Laclos's
Liaisons Dangereuses
in French. Remember, you read my copy this summer. I've made a list of the books to send me from London.”

“You'll come to see me off tomorrow?”

“I wouldn't miss the adventures of Aunt Harriet as she ruins her life and
throws away her chance of avoiding old maidhood, while welcoming the chance to drown at sea, with open arms.”

“Oh, Charlotte, I do love you.”

“With you as a friend, who needs heartbreak?”

“Take care of Independence for me.”

“I thought Mrs. Latouche was taking her.”

“I prefer you.”

“You're afraid that she'll spay her, and you know I won't! When you come back, we can make her a proud mother.”

On the day of my departure, Petit was still trotting after me with instructions.

“You're sure Charlotte will take good care of Independence?”

“Of course—she likes dogs.”

“Did I give you the address of the American embassy in London? It's in Grosvenor Square, exactly where it was when your mother arrived.”

“Petit, I know. I've heard the story a thousand times. I know the address—”

“I don't imagine you will run into her in London,” he said, “except by reputation, but Maria Cosway has many paintings hanging in London galleries even now, and her miniatures are famous. I believe your father and she still correspond—imagine the Abbess of Lodi and the President!”

Petit, the old gossip, was incorrigible. Cosway had never come to America, and my father had never returned to Europe. They could not have seen each other in forty years. Even the warmest memories paled, I imagined, after so long a time. Or perhaps not. It was quite possible I would never see Thance again. Would his memory fade with time, evaporate with the years?

A dull pain struck my midsection.

“You didn't tell my father?”

“Harriet, I was obliged to. But if he has received the letter, he has not, as yet, responded. So I assume he doesn't know. He has no power to prevent you from leaving, Harriet; you are twenty-three years old.”

“It's not that I need their permission . . . it's just that ... a white slave arriving in London, just like my mother . . .”

“I'm sure your fiancé, even now, would prefer that you did not—”

“You understood James, Uncle. Why not me? I refuse to live my life as a cipher, an outlaw. But then, don't most bastards feel this?”

“The master loves you, Harriet. I know he does. Do not underestimate him.”

“I'm still dreaming that he'll call me daughter, one of these days.”

Petit shook his head, as he often did when confronted with the snarled family history of the Hemingses and the Jeffersons, but to me, it was quite clear my father had not freed me. He had merely acquiesced in my stealing myself.

• The Departure of the
Montezuma •

• Lorenzo's Lessons •

• Doctor Wilberforce •

• A Question by an English Lake •

• Marly •

• The Affidavit of the Abbess of Lodi •

• Sage of Monticello •

• The Slave Auction •

• The Rescue and the Return •

In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or descriptions of persons, have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable not for the rightness, but uprightness of the decision.

Thomas Jefferson

My trunks had been sent aboard the
Montezuma,
and Petit and I decided to walk the few blocks to the docks through the early-morning crowds for the last time. Perhaps it was my own emotion, but the quay, the wharf, the harbor all seemed more chaotic, anarchic, and brilliant than ever. As we descended the white marble steps of the Latouche's, we heard the sounds of Front Street before we saw them. The sighs and groans of the hawkers and the piercing cries of the auctioneers rose like a miasma over the low two-storied row houses, set together like red-coated soldiers, one after the other, identical, white-trimmed, green- or black-shuttered. Then we heard the roar of the traffic—carts and mounted horses, carriage horses and diligences, stagecoaches, mules, donkeys, two-wheeled carts laden with fresh country vegetables; smelled the itinerant pushcarts full of spices, Philadelphia scrapple, German sausages, gumbo soup and sauerkraut, baked pretzels and pickled herring, all mingling with the aromas of whale oil and peanuts, petroleum and Oriental spices, tea and grain, perfumes and incense, hay and horse manure.

Oh, the London docks could not be more exciting than this, I thought, as we finally burst into Front Street and saw the great hulks of the sloops and frigates and their stately, heaven-piercing masts, heard the caterwauling of
seagulls overhead and smelled the brackish water that lapped the freshly painted hulls of every color man could invent—yellow, black, green, and navy blue. They shimmered and were reflected in the water of the Delaware River, while above them rose a horde of painted figureheads: stern, majestic, comic, frivolous, they came in every possible style from Black Sambos to gilded gargoyles, from golden-haired mermaids to salt-smeared death's heads. And the flags ... flags of silk which swept the whitening sky. Merchant flags and banking flags, ships' flags and nations' flags. Coats of arms, bands, stripes, eagles, stars, sunbursts, circles, squares, checks, and rings. They fluttered, dropped, wept, were taken up again by the wind, then floated, waved, flounced, oscillated, curtsied, swaggered, and furled.

Somber, black-frocked bankers and merchants strode the quay from ship to ship, a rigorous contrast to the ships' gaudy rigs. The sailors, too, were decked out in a score of different uniforms, or a riot of civilian finery, with duffel bags and shoes thrown over their shoulders and on their heads wide-brimmed straw hats or elaborate plumed caps, swaggers, sombreros, panamas, and fezzes.

My heart began to beat faster. Music from the ship's orchestra floated on the air, which was already burdened with sound and smell. I would miss my lessons, but the musical world of London would be mine, I thought. Could it be that I was happy?

At the gangplank of the
Montezuma,
we saw Charlotte and Amos drive up in a public hack. Independence on a leash came bounding out of the door first, attached to a straw-hatted Charlotte, who was followed by Amos in uniform. It was not until years later that Charlotte told me that Thance and Thor had both been in the carriage. If this was so, Thance's last sight of me was of my turned back of white muslin and gray silk moiré and a wide green train. My hair was hidden under a wide panama hat, and I snapped my black lacquered fan to heel Independence, who still trailed behind me. If Thance had seen my face, would he have seen my grief, or only the flushed excitement of a young woman facing a journey into the unknown? I climbed up the rough plank steps, stumbling a bit and holding onto Petit and Charlotte.

The rest of our party was already on deck. Robert Purvis and several delegates to the convention and officers of the Philadelphia Religious Committee lounged under canvas canopies. Mrs. Willowpole was with her married niece, Esther, and her dog, Sylvester, who immediately took up with Independence. To my surprise, several schoolmates had shown up. The same girls I would have asked to be bridesmaids at my wedding.

After all the introductions, hugs, and tears were over, and the excellent wine Petit had brought in our hamper was finished, I knelt down to embrace
Independence again. Charlotte knelt beside me, her arm around my shoulders. Her last words to me were, “How can you be this cruel, this selfish, and this stupid?”

“The luck of the Irish, I guess,” I shot back, as she pressed a small package into my hands.

“This is from me . . . and Thance. Remember us.”

She rose and started down the gangplank.

Now it was Petit's turn to offer a farewell gift. He handed me a packet of letters.

“Most of these are copies of James's letters to me, but you'll find a few other surprises as well.”

I put my arm around the little man with whom I had spent a fateful night in a lilac phaeton, my mentor and my Moses, whom I had come to love.

“This is the continuation of our journey, Uncle,” I whispered gently. “It had to be this way. I know that a new destiny is waiting for me in London.”

“Harriet, for heaven's sake, don't go to Paris. There's too much unrest there since the Revolution of twenty-two. Since the last Bourbon, Charles the Tenth, ascended the throne, there's been nothing except political discontent, social unrest, and workers' revolt. The city is a hotbed of radicalism, crawling with Austrian and English spies and talk of a new revolution and a president-king.”

“Why, Petit, other travelers have come back with stories of a fabulous city of light; rich, elegant, and cultivated, fitted with Napoleonic monuments and having wide boulevards—there are theaters, good restaurants, and a happy, fun-loving populace. Why, it's the safest city in the world, with the best police force!”

“A
secret
police, inherited from the Emperor Napoleon, that has almost total power over the population.”

“Petit, I'll only be a tourist, not a military attaché! Why should I have anything to do with the political situation in France?”

“You don't understand the French, Harriet. They'll take to the streets and riot at the drop of a hat! There were pitched battles and barricades in twenty-one.”

“Just like in eighty-nine?” I murmured softly.

“You would just love that, wouldn't you?”

“I can't promise I won't go to Paris, but if I do, I'll be very careful and I'll write to you before ... so you'll have time to worry. And I love you.”

“Promise.”

“Promise.”

The ship's bell rang for visitors to quit the ship. It rang once; it rang twice.
It rang three times; the sound, like large tears, descended slowly, floated on the surface of all the other sounds, then on the oily water itself, and finally sank into the harbor's depths. I thought of Thance's beautiful voice, hollow with grief, yet still clinging to its burnished copper tone. Did I imagine I heard my name?

Our ship had more than a hundred passengers in steerage, thirty in first class, and a crew of forty-six, not including the orchestra. She was a luxury ship built not only for transport and cargo, but tourism and the comfort of her passengers. Mrs. Willowpole and I stayed on deck, as if indeed we were waiting in a darkened theater for the curtains to open on a long-anticipated play we knew nothing of: the plot, the playwright, the actors, whether it was a comedy or a tragedy. The sun outlined our hands on the railings, our profiles, the contours of the brims of our hats, and the fringe of our cashmere-patterned shawls. The moon had won its balancing act with the sun and it stood full and luminous in the sky, outlining the shore, the horizon, and the waves as we pulled out into the Atlantic.

That first evening, Mrs. Willowpole set out our schedule. We had separate cabins, but would meet for breakfast on the bridge. Mrs. Willowpole cherished her privacy, she explained, and ever since her husband had died, she could not bear the thought of sleeping in the same room with another person, not even her own children. She had discovered the enjoyment of waking up alone, and was loath to relinquish what she considered a luxury.

“You'll forgive me, my dear,” she pointed out, “but I'm beginning to enjoy the riches of solitude after thirty years of conjugal bliss. I no longer have to wake up and say good morning to anyone before I've had my coffee.”

After breakfast, she would dictate her correspondence (which was handed over to ships that crossed our course at certain specific rendezvous). We would read together until eleven-thirty, when a prayer meeting was conducted by the ship's captain. I was free to join her in her daily stroll around the decks before lunch or to retire. My afternoons were free and I was to meet the widow at five for afternoon tea, which for first-class passengers was served in the captain's dining room. After tea, I was to read to her until seven, when we would dress for dinner. As she retired early, I looked forward to long evenings by myself, reading until late into the night.

Tears came later. Every night they reigned, hopeless, longing, and bottomless. It didn't seem possible that there were so many tears in one human body. If we were born with a ration, I thought, I surely had used up my allotment
for this earth. But every day I rose and bathed my eyes in chamomile, thankful for Mrs. Willowpole's passion for privacy.

I grew very fond of the widow. I had never, except for a few teachers at Bryn Mawr, come in contact with any woman of a comparable intellectual level. Although Mrs. Willowpole had not been educated formally, as her brothers had, her father had spared no expense or effort to bring her up to their level at home. She had read everything, and her long life with her minister husband had put her in contact with the best minds of America and the Continent. She had been allowed to listen to anyone who came to her father's table, and she had presided over that of her famous husband. She had written essays and articles and published them under her own name. She had even studied medicine during a brief period when the newly founded Jefferson Medical College had admitted women. This had lasted only two years, after which it, like every other medical school in America, became exclusively male.