Sally Heming (22 page)

He pitied his sister in her enraptured beauty and delusion.
She was nubile and Jefferson was virile. It was only a matter of time before
her fate as a woman caught up with her.

James Hemings absently gestured to the lackey who had been
standing in front of him patiently waiting for the platter to be ready. It was
the sixth and last meat dish of the meal and now, along with the other cooks,
James hurried to fill the vegetable platters while calculating how much time he
had to finish the six desserts that would be served.

It was the third large noisy party of the week. It seemed
to him that there had been nothing but an endless round of dinners, teas,
suppers, balls, operas, and concerts all season. All of Paris seemed to be in
the throes of one long season of pleasure, ignoring the undertow of civil
discontent which lapped at the satin and brocade skirts and high-heeled red
shoes of his master's aristocratic friends. "The Revolution is
completed," his master insisted as each new crumb was thrown by the nobles
to the discontented. It must be because of his sister, thought James. He seemed
bathed in happiness and determined to ignore the political intelligence all
around him. His confidence knew no bounds. His elegant dinners had become
famous in Paris thanks to his, James's, cooking. Leonard, the footman, had just
delivered the entire list of guests now seated around his master's table
devouring the dinner it had taken fourteen hours to prepare.

There was Lafayette, rouged and red-heeled dandy, a hero to
both the Americans who had made their Revolution and to the French who were
starting theirs. He was surely the guest of honor. He had been the subject of
lively debate in all of Paris since his command had been taken away from him by
the king. There was Buffon, the famous scientist and hero of the French
philosophers; the Baron and Baronne de Stael, arbitrators of style and taste in
Paris. There was the Abbe Morellet, who with his friends the Abbes Chalut and
Arnaud, was preparing a French edition of his master's
Notes on the State of Virginia.
A famous
mathematician, the Marquis de Condorcet—the whitest man James had ever seen—was
also there with his wife, Sophie, a celebrated beauty. And, finally, the Duc
and Duchesse de la Rochefoucauld completed the table.

James was disappointed. Missing was one of his favorites,
Monsieur de la Tude, who dined out on his adventures of having spent
thirty-five years on and off in the Bastille and a dungeon of Versailles, and
had lived to tell of it. The last time, it had been for making up verses about
Madame de Pompadour. He recounted his life as a convict more as a good story
than a tragedy, and so ate well and often on his tales.

James Hemings loaded the desserts onto their platters.
There were at least four women upstairs in the pale-yellow-and-gold
high-ceilinged dining room, he reminded himself, who were having illicit affairs
with men who were not their lawful husbands and who were also present. The
young wife of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld was having an affair with the
pleasant but dull Mr. Short, his master's faithful secretary, Madame de
Hunolstein with General Lafayette. The poet Saint Lambert lived with his
mistress the Comtesse d'Houdetot and her husband in a happy
menage a trois...
. At least Madame
de Stael's latest lover was not at the table, he thought. He counted the
succession on his fingers. The Baronne Germaine Necker de Stael was
twenty-three years old and had been married for three years to the Swedish
ambassador. Her first lover had been Charles de Talleyrand, now the Bishop of
Autun. Her present lover was Comte Louis de Narbonne, who was said to be the illegitimate
son of King Louis XV by his own daughter, Madame Adelaide. And if his own
sister, mused James, had entered the room to do some small task—which she often
did in order to spy on her master's brilliant gatherings— then there would be
five concubines in the same room, he concluded bitterly.

Why didn't he leave this place? What bond held him here in
the underworld when above him, rank and privilege and riches consumed his
labor? Twenty-three years of servitude.... Why didn't he doff his starched
chef's bonnet, take off his apron, walk out, and be gone by one of the
forty-seven gates of Paris? Why, why was he unable to do this? Why could he not
take his freedom like a man, instead of crouching and waiting to be given it
like a slave? No, not like a slave, for James Hemings wanted his master to
acknowledge his existence and his debt, instead of simply allowing him to
"stroll" away. He wanted him to give back what he had taken. Until
then James Hemings knew he could never leave, he would never steal himself.

It was still early April, not long after one of his
master's elegant dinner parties. This Sunday night was one of the rare nights
Thomas Jefferson had neither a dinner to give nor one to attend. As was the
custom, he dined
"en famille"
with his daughters before they returned to the convent.

James Hemings stood behind Martha Jefferson's chair in the
small octagonal salon, which served as a dining room for family dinners. There
had been much gentle laughter and now, as James Hemings, contrary to French protocol,
poured the demi-tasses of strong coffee at the table and offered one to Martha,
he discreetly studied the eldest daughter of his master.

It was to Martha that James always directed his services
and his sympathy. He saw her rarely now. They had grown up together, Martha and
he. He was seven years older than Martha, and more than any of the other
Hemings boys, he had been the right age to play the role of elder brother. He
had played this role well and lovingly. They had ridden together over the plantation
fields and forests, exploring the woods around Monticello, fishing and eating
wild berries. It was he who always helped her up after her frequent tumbles off
her pony. Whenever she had lost some treasures, it was he who always found them
for her. He and his uncle had built her dollhouse, carved its furniture. He had
been the one who had driven her pony cart, keeping it spic and span with coats
of blue and white paint. When they played, he let himself be tormented, teased,
kissed, and generally used, misused, as well as loved by her, as he would in
turn do the same to her. Even when she had reached the age of twelve and their
relationship would have, according to the mores of the South, come to an end,
they had remained in their roles as brother and sister, passing these last four
years in the same familiarity of their earlier years.

Martha, like her younger sister, was listening intently to
her father.

"My dear Martha, do you not look forward to the
tranquil pleasures of America and find them preferable to the empty bustle of
Paris?"

Sally Hemings entered the room and stood quietly apart from
the group from which she was excluded. Was he going to announce that they were
going home? Had the permission finally come to leave?

Thomas Jefferson flashed his frank and charming smile.
"For to what does the bustle tend?"

The small group exhaled. This was not the announcement they
were all waiting for.

"At eleven o'clock, it is day
chez madame.
The curtains are
drawn. Propped on bolsters and pillows and her head scratched into a little
order, the bulletins of the sick are read, and
billets
of the well, she writes to some of
her acquaintances and receives the visits of others. If the morning is not very
thronged, she is able to get out and hobble around the cage of the Palais Royal
... As for royalty and royal courts, they should be regarded as you would the
Tower of London or the menagerie of Versailles with their lions and tigers and
other beasts of prey, and standing in the same relation to their fellows—a
slight acquaintance with them will suffice to show you that, under the most
imposing exterior, they are the weakest and the worst part of mankind....
Furthermore, she must hobble quickly, for the
coiffeur's
turn is come, and
a tremendous turn it is! Happy if he does not make her arrive when dinner is
half over! The torpitude of digestion is a little past, when she flutters for a
half hour through the streets, by way of paying visits, and then to the
spectacles. These finished, another half hour is devoted to dodging in and out
of doors of her very sincere friends, and away to supper. After supper, cards,
bed, rise at noon the next day, and tread, like a millhouse, the same trodden
circle over again. Thus the days of life are consumed, one by one, without an
object beyond the present moment; ever flying from ennui of that, yet carrying
it with us; eternally in pursuit of happiness, which keeps eternally ahead of
us."

Martha Jefferson laughed her low melodious laugh, one of
her few charms, but she glanced at her father with some apprehension. There was
a touch of melancholy to his amusing recital, a wistfulness with an edge; she
even detected some bitterness. Was he tiring of Paris life? Homesick? Was he
displeased with the kind of education she was receiving at the convent? Did he
think, heaven forbid, that she was becoming like those women he described? She
frowned. The mere shadow of her father's disapproval sent a wave of misery
through her. She stared at him, cup raised, but his face was almost devoid of
expression, except for a slight crinkling around the eyes.

He looked up at James as the servant poured another cup of
coffee.

"And if death or bankruptcy happens to trip us out of
the circle ... think of poor Monsieur Saint-James—taking asylum in the Bastille
as protection against his irate creditors. Well, poor Monsieur Saint-James's
bankruptcy is merely the matter for the buzz of an evening and is completely
forgotten the next morning... like mine would be."

"Oh, Papa," Martha replied.

Could he really have enough of the glamorous elegant lady
friends she so envied? Women who spent their lives in just the manner he
described? Not just mistresses like Madame de Pompadour or Du Barry, but women
like Madame de Deffand and Madame Geoffrin, ladies of intellect with the most
famous salons of the day like ... Madame de Stael, Madame Sullivan, the
Duchesse d'Anville.

She and little Polly stared at him as he continued. Sally
Hemings was listening, hoping not to be sent from the room.

"In America, on the other hand, the society of your
husband, the cares of children, the arrangements of the house, the improvements
of the grounds fill every moment with useful and healthy activity. Every
exertion is encouraging, because it also joins the promise of some future good.
Leisure is spending time with real friends, whose affections are not thinned to
cobwebs by being spread over a thousand objects."

The staid and faithful adolescent that was Martha Jefferson
thought of the flighty Maria Cosway and she suppressed a smile. So, she thought,
her father was over his infatuation at last with that dangerous and seductive
creature.

"This is the picture, in the light it is presented to
my mind. Now let me have it in yours. If we do not concur this year, we shall
the next or, if not then, in a year or two more. You see I am determined not to
suppose myself mistaken...."

Mistaken about what? Martha Jefferson wondered in alarm.
What was it he was trying to tell her? He seemed to be almost pleading with
her. Didn't he know he could ask anything on earth of her? That her only wish
in life was to make him happy? She would agree to any sacrifice he asked of
her. If he wanted her to give up her aristocratic friends ... if he wanted to
leave Paris tonight, she was ready.

"Papa! Really! You sound like you want to drop
everything and turn into a hermit. Goodness knows, you already go all the time
to your hermitage at Valerian... you don't want to give up society completely,
do you?"

Although her tone was light, Martha's eyes were troubled
and she glanced quickly at Polly, who was staring at her father, then she
looked at James. What was he asking her to accept, James thought bitterly,
sensing rather than seeing the small, silent, discreet figure of his sister.

Martha's face became even paler under the white powder that
covered the freckles James Hemings had known and practically counted since
childhood. She is going to disagree with her father, he thought, and he held
his breath.

"I agree, Papa, that many of the fashionable pursuits
of the Parisian ladies are rather frivolous and become uninteresting to a
reflective mind ... but the picture you have exhibited, dearest Papa, is surely
overcharged. You have thrown a strong light upon all that is ridiculous in
their characters and you have buried their qualities in the shade. These women,
your friends,
are not ordinary
women. They are a race apart, with all the dispassion, the irony, the intuitive
sense of measure and moderation of their breed. The state of society in
different countries requires corresponding manners and qualifications. Those of
the French women are by no means calculated for the meridian of
America...."