The President's Daughter (13 page)

“May I invite you ladies to a meeting of the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society next Thursday, for I am sure you must get your families' permission,” he continued. “It will be held at the Benjamin Franklin Library on South Street, and there will be foreign as well as Negro speakers. The ladies' auxiliary sits in a cordoned-off section totally segregated from the men.”

I blushed deeply. We were two white women speaking on equal terms and quite freely to a Negro. I saw Charlotte out of the corner of my eye, trying to signal to Purvis. What was she trying to tell him? That I was a Virginian, daughter of a slaveholder? Orphan of a Tidewater first family? I stood there staring not at Purvis but at his friend, whose eyes had drawn mine into his.

He wore his dark, lustrous hair combed straight back and tied with a ribbon. The eyes that focused on mine were extraordinarily long and narrow and so dark they could have been midnight blue. I found myself staring into a gaze of singular intensity, which, despite its fathomless depths, transmitted some far distant felicity like that of a happy childhood.

“Miss . . . Miss Waverly, help me out, please.” He smiled.

“I'd like to introduce you to Miss Petit, of Virginia,” Charlotte emphasized.

“Miss Petit, Mr. Wellington, a friend of my brothers,” she concluded.

“Delighted, Miss Petit.” Wellington smiled, his eyes melting. “You'll have to forgive us. We're late for practice,” he said as he took Purvis's arm a little too roughly to be entirely innocent.

“Listen; they've started without us,” he said as he hurried Purvis, who was looking over his shoulder at me in admiration.

The music wafted out into the corridor, and Charlotte and I, not daring to enter the hall, stood outside listening. Suddenly a single, beautiful voice, taking the solo part in an oratorio I was not familiar with, raised itself above the rest. It was the voice of a tenor baritone, of such depth and tenderness that the sound rushed over me like water, bathing my eyes and lips, running down my throat and over my shoulders and down my back to the base of my spine.

“That's old Wellington,” laughed Charlotte as she noticed the expression on my face. “The voice of an archangel and the reputation of an atheist.”

But at that moment he could have been Satan himself. I had never heard such a glorious voice.

Would the world be more beautiful were all our faces alike? Were our tempers and talents, our tastes, our forms, our wishes, aversions, and pursuits cast exactly in the same mold? If no varieties existed in the animal, vegetable, or mineral creation, but all more strictly uniform, catholic, and orthodox, what a world of physical and moral monotony it would be.

Thomas Jefferson

“I strenuously contend,” Purvis told us at the next meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society, “for the immediate emancipation of our slave population. I will be as harsh with the truth and as uncompromising as justice itself. I am in earnest. I will not equivocate. I will not excuse. I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard. I take it for granted slavery is a crime—a damning crime. I am a crime. Therefore, my efforts shall be directed to the exposure of those who practice it.”

I stared in horror at Robert Purvis. No one had ever told me in so many words that slavery was a crime.

“And,” he added, “if anyone objects that the Constitution—the beloved Constitution—stands in the way of such a program, I can only reply that if the Constitution sanctions slavery, then the Constitution is wrong. The Constitution is in league with death and in covenant with hell.”

I looked around in alarm. Father's Constitution. It was like damning the Bible. It was like predicting the end of the world. Slavery was God's will. Slavery was eternal!

“And,” he continued, “I regard all slaveowners, including my own father, as guilty of that crime and therefore as vile, despicable men.”

Purvis had not recognized a fellow traveler in color, if I could be so called. I had nothing to fear from him, even if he knew the truth. A man without guile and incorruptible, his life was laid out in a grid as straightforward as William Penn's city.

“Generally speaking,” he said, “men must make great and unceasing efforts before permanent evils are created, but there is one calamity which penetrated furtively into the world. At first scarcely distinguishable amid the ordinary abuse of power, it originated with an individual whose name history has not preserved, then wafted like an accursed germ and spread within the society. This calamity is slavery.

“Christians of the sixteenth century reestablished it as an exception, indeed, to the social system, and restricted it to the race of mankind; but the wounds thus inflicted upon humanity, though less extensive, are far more difficult to cure. This arises from the circumstance that among the moderns, slavery is fatally united with color. No African has ever voluntarily immigrated to the New World, whence it follows that all blacks who are now here are either slaves or freedmen. Thus the Negro transmits the eternal mark of his ignominy to all his descendants, even though the law will abolish slavery. Wherever the Negroes have been strongest, they have destroyed the white; this has been the only balance that has taken place between the two races. I see that in a certain portion of the United States, the legal barrier separating the two races is falling away, but not that barrier existing in the manners of the country: slavery recedes, but the prejudice to which it has given birth is immovable. In those parts of the Union where Negroes are no longer slaves, they have in no wise drawn closer to the whites. On the contrary, the prejudice of race appears to be stronger in the states that have abolished slavery than in those where it exists; and no states are so intolerant as those where servitude has never been known.”

I began to study abolitionist literature and the narratives of escaped slaves. I read memoirs of reformed slave traders and ship captains like my greatgrandfather. Mesmerized, I stared at posters of slave auctions, rewards for fugitives, and maps upon which were traced the contours of the continent called Africa. I realized how small the world of Monticello was, and how enormous the wound that poisoned the wholeness of my country. I learned of slave revolts in Cuba, Santo Domingo, and Jamaica. For the first time, I contemplated my father's double life, as dangerous in its own way as my own.
I plundered books, newspapers, and pamphlets for news of him. I memorized his public life, looking for clues to myself. I read about him as ambassador, as Secretary of State, as President, trying to assimilate the image of the stranger who had written the Declaration of Independence, bought half of the United States, and never freed my mother.

One day, Mrs. Latouche took me to task over attending so many meetings.

“My dear, as much as I partake of the progressive ideas of abolitionism and antislavery, I must, in the name of your guardian who is not here at the moment, point out to you that these meetings are no place for young girls. You and Charlotte should think seriously about how you compromise your reputation as serious and sheltered young ladies by attending them.

“The conservatory is one thing, and bad enough, I might add. But that Library Company! It is a hotbed of abolitionism and radicalism. I know you follow Charlotte in everything, but being a member of one of Philadelphia's first families, the equal of the Biddies, the Ingersolls, the Girards, the War-tons, and the Rittenhouses, Charlotte can do what she well pleases and get away with it. You, an orphan with no fortune, must be a lot more careful. You have only your beauty, your health, and your respectability. Your talent as a musician is simply nice icing on the cake. There's no question of your getting mixed up in any radical movements with ... mixed public meetings.”

“You mean interracial meetings, Mrs. Latouche.” My voice took on its most lush and seductive sweetness.

“I mean meetings where the two sexes are represented promiscuously in the same hall.”

I see.

In spite of my boldness in attending the abolitionist meetings, fear was never far from me. One day I turned into Hamilton Alley having slipped out of the house early for a walk along the quay, my only moment of the freedom of movement I had enjoyed as a slave, for now I had to be chaperoned everywhere. I sensed a tall man following me. Sykes! I tried not to hurry, so as not to provoke him into a pursuit. His footsteps echoed along the long, painted brick corridor with high, shuttered windows and hitching posts of white marble. It was broad daylight: I knew I would soon hit the wharf with its milling crowds and merchandise stocked stories-high to be loaded into the waiting clippers. My heels clicked on the fired-brick pavement, my hand went deep into my pocket, my fingers clutched the knife as I stopped short, took a deep breath, and turned around. The man stopped ten paces in front of me. I was almost faint with fright.

“Mr. Wellington!”

“Miss Petit. I didn't mean to frighten you.”

“Well, I don't know who has frightened whom,” I said, my heart pounding.

“I've seen you many times in this neighborhood.”

“Well, I live around here. What are you doing in this . . . neck of the woods?” I said, trying to control the tremor in my voice.

“The pharmacy school of the University of Pennsylvania is just at the corner there”—he pointed behind him. “I'm a teaching assistant there, and that's where I have my laboratory. Our . . . our warehouse and apothecary is down on Front Street, about a five-minute walk. My father founded our company in 1789 ... if you walk by you'll see the sign, ‘Wellington Druggist and Apothecary Supplies.' Isn't it fortunate we met that day of the rehearsal? Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to address you on the street. God bless Charlotte Waverly.”

He said this with such fervor and such sincerity that I laughed in relief.

“I thought you were about to attack me.”

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God—so I did frighten you. How stupid. How cowardly of me. I just couldn't get up the nerve to speak to you. Let me walk you home .. . but first let me restore your good spirits with a .. . water ice? Tea? Chocolate?”

“Tea, please. I love tea.”

“There's a place near the depot called the China, India, and Orient Emporium, which has a tearoom where they serve their own teas, hot or iced or in sherbet.”

“I know it,” I said, delighted to go to a favorite place.

“You do forgive me?”

“Yes,” I replied, almost bursting with joy.

Arm in arm, we turned into Chestnut Street at Sixth and started toward Dock Street, walking beneath the canopied stalls of the booksellers and publishers that were concentrated along those six blocks. We passed Independence Hall and the United States Post Office to arrive at the Wharf and Walter Street, where excursion boats sailed for New York and Cape May. Mansions, warehouses, and tradesmen's shops were all crowded into the block running south along Front Street. There we found Beck's China, India, and Orient Emporium along the waterfront overlooking the harbor, bearing on its top story the iron plates advertising the Insurance of Houses from Loss of Fire Company. Under the awnings, which stretched out to the thoroughfare, sat ladies and gentlemen, sampling Mr. Beck's teas from around the world.

The harbor, in the early-morning light, was a forest of masts and furled
sails. The sailcloth awnings cast a golden hue over the crowd, the rough board tables and chairs. The tables were covered with white tablecloths, and on them sat huge blue-and-white porcelain samovars which were filled with the customers' special order. The heavy traffic of merchants, insurers, dockers, hawkers, strollers, gentlemen, ladies, washerwomen, and sailors glided on foot between the bales, crates, and cargoes of the world: rice and cotton and tobacco from Virginia, spermaceti oil from New Bedford, horsehides from Montevideo, coffee from Brazil, dollhouses from Cologne, linen from Finland, rum from St. Croix, brandy from France, and opium from Turkey. Bales of tea were stacked about everywhere in front of the Emporium— Hyson and Indian, Gunpowder, Imperial, and Souchong.

Seated, we too took on the amber color of the awnings. I was happy I had taken, for no particular reason, great pains with my toilet. I wore a Scottish plaid taffeta of green, black, and gray, trimmed in black grosgrain, and a porcupine hat trimmed with green ribbon and a whale green swallow which curved around my ear. The dress had a white Irish lace cravat and white ruffles at the sleeves. I had bought some music from Can's Publishing House and now put it down on the extra seat beside me. Its bright yellow cover turned ochre in the light.

“The pharmacy school is just down there,” repeated Mr. Wellington, pointing northward toward Swanson Street. “The school's only ten years old and the first in the United States. Pharmacy is just now being recognized as part of the medical profession, thanks in part to my father. Before, we were just druggists selling tea like Mr. Beck.”

“At home, we had quite an apothecary.”

“You southern girls are so well versed in herbal medicine. I always listen to home remedies. You learn a lot.”

“My grandmother was the expert in our family.” Stick as close as you can to the truth, I thought. Then I thought: Oh Lord. One day I'm going to have to tell him.

“Country medicine holds a great many surprises for us.”

Thance Wellington was wearing a top hat and his heart on his sleeve. He looked baffled yet happy as he set his hat down on top of my sheet music. His strong, handsome face held an expression not far from that of Independence, that same puppy-dog warmth to his grin. A single black lock of hair strayed over his forehead, and I noticed how brown his face, hands, and wrists appeared, set off and surrounded by his white linen. Even seated, his long, rangy body seemed to spring from the ground with a force of its own. Nothing in my life had prepared me for the effect this somber, innocent-eyed northerner had upon me.