The President's Daughter (24 page)

“You see, you see, I am not fit for this fight. A man's anger so unnerves me I cannot think. I babble and bluster, I lose my place in my thought, simply because some man, who resembles my father or my husband or my brother, raises his voice.

“I'm too much a product of my upbringing. Never contradict a man in public, never allow him to leave the room angry, express an opinion only when solicited, never deliberately provoke a male of your own class—all those rules one must forget ... in public life.”

“There are ways to get what one wants without outwardly breaking the
rules, Mrs. Willowpole; for women not so fortunately born as yourself, it is a matter of survival,” I answered her, thinking how convenient it was to have learned, very early in life, to face down an angry white man.

“Why, Harriet, what would you know about women of that class?”

“Did you not say that they are our sisters?”

“Pistols, swords, or fishing rods?” Lorenzo Fitzgerald laughed as he rose at our arrival at dinner that night. I had had to persuade Mrs. Willowpole to make an appearance; otherwise we never would have been able to eat in the dining room again. She had been surprised at my equanimity in facing an angry white man. But I had learned to do that at Monticello. Instead, it was Mr. Hammond who had changed tables.

“That was certainly a lively discussion at lunch. I never dreamed that Mr. Hammond had such conservative views of the slavery question, or your chaperon such radical ones.”

“Mrs. Willowpole is not my chaperon, Mr. Fitzgerald. Rather, I'm her traveling companion. Much like ... a lady-in-waiting or a social secretary.”

“Well, they are very different, those two things, and I doubt that Mrs. Willowpole would have a lady-in-waiting if she were English—or for that matter a social secretary.”

“Would ‘friend' be suitable?”

“Now, Miss Petit, don't get huffy about your mentor or guardian or whatever she is to you. The incident at lunch is forgotten, and a jolly good row it was. Your little speech was . . . admirable . . . and for a Virginian, absolutely astounding!”

I smiled, despite myself. Lorenzo Fitzgerald reminded me of Charlotte's brother Dennis, except that he was an Englishman, and an Englishman such as I imagined them all to be.

He was the youngest son, I'd learned, of a military man whom he had disappointed by not embracing the same profession. But he had made up for it by being adopted by a childless uncle, and had been sent to Oxford University to study law, thus escaping the lot of English younger sons who were forced to join the army or the clergy, or to immigrate to America. He had undertaken instead not only the Grand Tour of Europe (two years) but a Grand Tour of the New World as well. Lorenzo Fitzgerald had traveled to the United States and Mexico and Brazil, and had stayed more than three years amongst “cousins,” as he called all Americans. He was going to write a travel book, he told me. In America he had visited the western territories as far as the Missouri; he had been to Mexico City and the Louisiana
Territories. He had seen New Orleans and Atlanta, Richmond and Charlottesville, Boston and Philadelphia. In Latin America he had been to Cuba and the West Indies, Rio de Janeiro, and Caracas. In the coming days, he would tell me about all of them.

“You don't know much about your own country, Miss Petit. Geography was not, I take it, one of your strong points at school. Or were you educated at home?”

“Most of my life I stayed home, but I've attended Bryn Mawr Seminary for Women for the past two years. But you are right. Geography was not one of my strong points.”

“Sometimes it is easier if one can draw the country or the continent one is memorizing. For instance, Virginia is shaped like this,” he said, taking a small pad from his pocket and drawing a rough triangle. “It sits more or less here in the continental United States, which looks like this. Here is Boston. Here is Philadelphia, and here is Richmond. The Louisiana Territory is down here, where Florida almost reaches Cuba, which looks like this. Santo Domingo is here. Three thousand miles away is Buenos Aires, Argentina. Here is Caracas, here is Rio de Janeiro, and here is Mexico City, where the king of France tried to mount an invasion of Louisiana and set himself up as emperor of Mexico.

“Now out here is what the entire continent of the Americas looks like from Greenland to Tierra del Fuego. I've been here and here, here and here, here and here. Now this is the Atlantic Ocean, and this is what the British Isles look like. This is Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and this is England. Over here is the Continent, as the English call Europe. This is the Mediterranean Sea. Here is Africa.”

“Africa?” The melodious name rolled off my tongue.

“Yes. And tomorrow I'll draw Turkey for you, so at least you'll know where you're not going. What did they teach you in Philadelphia?”

“I begin to wonder.”

“Well, my father was a military topographer. By age six, I could draw the outline of any country in the world. By eight, I could place the capitals and major rivers and their longitude and latitude. By eleven, I was up to military fortifications, mountain ranges, and secondary rivers”—he laughed—”and the miles between them. Which is probably why I hate the military and love to travel.”

“May I keep all these?” I asked.

“I drew them entirely for you. I'm determined you'll at least know where the Mississippi is before we reach London.”

“I know where the Mississippi is.”

“Oh, yes—over in Texas.”

“And from there we go . . . have you ever seen a map of the moon? Or the constellations? My father is also a visionary, like Leonardo da Vinci. He's convinced that we will travel to the stars in ships in the next century, if not in this one.”

“Travel to the stars?”

“I'll start with a map of Jupiter. Do you know that in India, at the observatory in Karnatik, they have drawn a map of the planet Mars? It is said that they even have a map of Paradise.”

On the one hand, shake off all the fears and servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because if there be one, He must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.

Thomas Jefferson

We had been at sea two weeks before I opened Petit's letter. With trembling hands, I untied the ribbon and broke the seals one night around midnight when I had already been asleep and had awakened, as if I were myself a burglar and a thief, or as if, at any moment, someone would come bursting into the cabin demanding to know who I was and what I was doing here. My heart had accelerated and pounded in my ears. Perhaps Petit, in a paroxysm of guilt, had confessed my false identity to Thance. Or perhaps in a pique, he was abandoning me to my fate, refusing ever to see me or help me again.

PHILADELPHIA

MIDNIGHT, SEPTEMBER
23, 1825

My dearest Harriet,

These are copies of letters your uncle James wrote to me during his two stays in Paris after his emancipation. They are in turn sad, funny, brilliant, morose, dejected, and full of hope. Very much as you must feel now. Perhaps you will read them before you reach that city. Even if you don't go, they will allow you to know your uncle and his life a little better, and
in turn that of your mother and yourself. Enclosed also is the scarf James wore the day of the Bastille. As you can see, it is perfectly preserved. It scaled the ramparts of the Invalides and the moat of the Bastille and rode about his neck all the way to Versailles. Cherish it.

I imagine you have been on the high seas several weeks now before you open this; I don't know why, but I know you well, Harriet. Perhaps you've changed your mind about your decision. If so, do not hesitate to take the next boat home from London. There will be no reproaches, neither from me nor from Thance, poor boy. You are the light of our lives, and leaving you on the
Montezuma
was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. I had imagined you on my arm, walking down the aisle at the St. Paul's Unitarian Congregation Church in a few weeks. I cannot write of it without pain and even tears. It is a good thing Thor Wellington is home to help Thance, who has taken this even harder than I feared, although I don't think that Thor will allow him to harden his heart against you. But beware, Harriet, you are gambling high and wide. Life is not made only for your convenience, although there are those in it who would wish it so for your joy. I am one of those who misses you and prays for your health and happiness every day.

I have made my last will and testament. It is, along with my other papers, at the notary public Sillbourne and Brothers at Front and Arch. If anything should happen to me, I have left you all my worldly goods except the farm in Champagne, France, where my mother still lives. I would expect that you provide for her in the last few years, nay months, of her already long life. I depend upon it. And I remain, your uncle Adrian and your adopted father. Remember your work. Remember Thance. And remember your parents who love you.

Yours in service and tenderness,

Petit

Slowly I threaded the long red silk scarf around my neck, pulling it tight. I turned the letters over and over in my hand. They were the originals. Petit had kept only copies for himself. I brought them close, under my nose. They had a charred, moldy smell like burned leaves after a rainstorm. The signature was huge, bold, and scrawled across the page. Every free space was crowded with small, meticulous writing, even the margins, which James Hemings used after filling the page itself. When he ran completely out of paper, he wrote between the lines.

The first was dated Paris, 1796. It described how he found the city after the Reign of Terror and his search for his old aristocratic masters, destroyed by the Revolution. “I've found work in one of the great houses not far from the Hôtel de Langeac, but everyone is afraid that the government will soon
fall into the hands of an obscure Corsican general named Napoléon Buonaparte.”

How I lament the passing of the great houses where I had hoped to find work hut which have been gutted and burned during the Terror, their occupants either in exile or guillotined like the poor Queen. “Citizens, “ as Frenchmen now called themselves, are beginning to look askance at the servant class as well. Traitors and spies abound. Many cooks' heads have come off along with their masters'. I congratulate you for having had the good sense to escape when you did.

Robespierre is dead, but nothing can bring back the Hermitage to glory and beauty, or the Tuileries or Marly—all destroyed. Maria Cosway has left her husband run away with an Italian castrato by the name of Luigi Marchese ... the big London scandal of this year.

In letter after letter, James followed the chaos and civil war of the Directory and the rise of Napoléon, as his own career progressed from kitchen to restaurant. He was now working in a restaurant on the Quai d'Orsay called the Varaine. His dream was to open a catering establishment of his own. He kept a strict diary of all his ideas, recipes, and culinary-decorative inventions for that future time. Each letter, I realized, had its own particular flavor and atmosphere, from funereal to burlesque; from melancholy shades of purple to bright magenta; in them, he poured out his hopes and dreams to Petit. But there was one letter which struck me like a blow, for in it he spoke of his love for my mother.

It was dated at the end of 1799 and had been written to tell Petit that he was returning to our shores to reclaim his sister.

PARIS

DECEMBER,
1799

Old friend Adrian,

I've finally booked passage on the
Tartaguilla
for home the beginning of the year. I should have written to you before now, for I may already be
on the high seas when this reaches you, which means I will see your ugly face sooner than you expect me.

These past years have been hard and I am resolved, at last, to take my destiny and that of Sally into my own hands. In all this time, just as I've never ceased to love her, I've never ceased to writhe with shame at her concubinage and resent her slavery with rancor, as I never did my own.

Between us and in the most profound secrecy, I hope soon to tell her this. I should never have left Monticello without her, for without the twin spirit of my sister, I am less than alone, I am desolate, I think of her continuously. If she dies, I die. If she lives in bondage, I live in bondage. For years now, the very sanctuary of my soul has been on fire. My brotherly love trails behind my relation to God, for it was Sally, not God, who always lavished her love on me as a slave, a love all at once simple, faithful, and material. Our hearts merged in childhood, where as a boy I stood my ground against all the mute, incessant attacks against her beauty, her inner fire, her inner self. She was exceptional, Petit, and her betrayal of our childhood, at the behest of Thomas Jefferson, was my extinction as a man. If the person you love most on this earth and in whom you have placed all your confidence betrays you, it produces in you doubt in any divine justice.

Ever since that night at the Hôtel de Langeac, I've never had a quiet place; where none have access, even though the very thing I search for, solitude, is the very thing that is killing me, like the bloody sheets in my nightmare.

And so, to resuscitate my life, I must take a stand against this kidnapping. To love as I love is difficult. It is difficult because it is the highest testimony of your own self. It is the masterpiece that everything else prepares us for . . . and the only emancipation.

Pray for me, Adrian, as I pray for myself. I would gladly kill Thomas Jefferson if I thought that would assassinate her love for him, which rightly belongs only to me, but alas, a murder might even fix it more strongly in her heart. No, she must see him for what he is and despise him.