The President's Daughter (28 page)

Happily, country living was much simpler than life in London, and although Mrs. Willowpole and I knew that we would be obliged to change our clothes four times a day, the meagerness of our respective wardrobes would be less apparent, since the ladies would all affect “country” simplicity. But we had each brought the one article of clothing absolutely essential to country living—a red cloak in which to walk to church. They were famous in Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire, and were great, ample capes of crimson or scarlet of finest wool, double-milled and of such an intense dye that they threw a phosphorescent glimmer whenever they moved. They could be seen from miles away on the heaths, and on Sundays, it was beautiful to behold the women in them, assembled for church in the yard, reflecting every ray of the sun and glimmering like a stand of poincianas. In a few years they would disappear from fashion, but in 1825 they were worn over the calicos, velvets, and silks of both the aristocracy and the gentry classes. As Americans, we were considered exotic nobility, the highest rank possible, and treated with the deference reserved for visiting sultanas.

Mrs. Willowpole and I had time to speak to each other in low voices before Amelia Opie, in a magnificent tea gown, arrived to greet us. We had been talking of what all the world might hear, but it was the common effect of such a room as we were in to oblige us to speak low, as if a loud voice would distort the painted murals on the ceiling, or shatter the excellent chandeliers hanging amongst them, or make one of the meticulous leatherbound books that lined the walls and the circular library tables to fall over on their sides.

“Children,” cried Amelia Opie, “what a lovely time we're going to have!” This was not the antislavery, political-pamphlet Amelia Opie, but another, up until now unknown to us, creature called the English chatelaine. And we were about to embark on a ronde called the English country-house party. I use
ronde,
but I could have used
etude, mazurka, waltz,
or even
variations on a theme, concerto,
or
symphony,
for a country-house party resembled nothing if not the changing rhythm, tempos, rigorous beat, and flogging execution of a piece of music. In fact, the English country-house party was opera, sometimes more comic than anything else. As when the sandwiches left outside a countess's door as a signal to her lover that the way was clear were eaten by another houseguest who had gotten hungry on the long road to his room. But sometimes the country house erupted in tragic little pieces of reality.

On our last day in the country, Lorenzo and I sat at the edge of the artificial lake and watched the swans sail back and forth, eyes alert for food, predatory beaks ready to strike any land creatures that moved within range. Amongst them was one magnificent black male who moved amid the others with remote and ironic dignity.

“You make fun of me. I love that, you know,” said Lorenzo.

A carefully arranged perspective fanned out behind the black swan like a tapestry, arranged in the current fashion of meticulously imitating the chaos of nature by having a slew of gardeners torture the landscape back into a vision of a primitive Eden. The ideal garden was now considered to be irregular, comprising sloping, undulating expanses of grass, sinuous walks and streams, classical temples and follies, and, if possible, at least one genuine ruin. Artificial brooks and lakes like this one abounded, spanned by romantic stone bridges and moats. Amelia Opie's husband had spent a fortune making his park resemble the best landscape paintings.

“A swan's bite can break the arm of a grown man,” said Lorenzo.

“Hum,” I said, staring instead at the imitation lake, in the fake landscape, surrounded by artificial ruins, all placed on a man-made knoll which then dipped into a forged wood, while swans swam about under a counterfeit Roman arch.

“I could almost wish, Harriet—” He stopped suddenly and hesitated. It was so unusual for Lorenzo to falter that I looked up at him in surprise. At that instant, something about him, although I couldn't say what, made me wish I was back with my mother, or my father, anywhere but where I was, for I was sure he was going to ask a question to which I did not know, and would never know, the answer.

I remained calm, as if I had been condemned and was merely awaiting execution, my prayers and confessions already hanging in the air along with the noose. It was despicable of me to shrink from hearing any speech of Lorenzo's, for I had the power to put an end to it. I would simply tell him who I was and what I was and count on his surprise and humiliation to guarantee his silence. It would be more a war cry than a confession—more a retaliation than an answer. After all, I couldn't keep running away every time a man asked me to marry him. I pulled my red cloak around me closer, despising myself. Hadn't I deliberately led Lorenzo into admiring me? Hadn't I practiced on Lorenzo, on Sydney—even on Brice? I wondered idly if he had written out his proposal of marriage, or if he was going to ask me now, in person, in this fake Eden.

“Harriet, do you love anyone else?”

“Lorenzo, before you go any further, let me say this: I am not what you
think I am or what I
appear
to be. When you find out, you'll regret this moment as I do now. I did not know you cared for me in that way.” But of course I knew; how could I not know? “I have always thought of you as a friend, and would rather go on thinking of you as that.”

“Ah, Harriet. Forgive me . . . I've been too abrupt with such a subject. Only ... let me hope that one day you might accept a declaration. Give me the poor comfort of telling me you have never seen anyone else whom you could—”

“Oh, Lorenzo, if only you had not gotten this fancy into your head!”

I was shocked by my cold, calculated decision to use Lorenzo's love as a test for confessing my secret to Thance. They were enough alike. And in my callous naiveté, I really believed I would be doing them both a favor. They were both white, weren't they? Then their reactions would be the reactions of
all
white men. . . .

“I am not what you think I am,” I repeated. “I cannot listen to what you want to say without forewarning you. I am the illegitimate daughter of the third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, and a slave, Sally Hemings. I am therefore, as you must realize from your travels in America, not only a bastard, but a Negro ... an African, if you like. Is there . . . anything, now, that you wish to tell me?”

It was a much more brutal revelation than even I had intended. Lorenzo's total disbelief turned it into the punchline of a joke. I almost laughed myself.

Instead, contempt mingled with pain at my having astonished him in this way, and my lip curled in slight disdain.

With an imperious air, he said, “You, a colored woman? You're about as black as I am.” I hung my head. “Good God, look at me. You can't be serious, Harriet!” he exploded. “Why not King George's bastard, while you're at it? Is this some kind of American-style humor?”

But he knew I wasn't joking. I had discovered a submerged streak of rage and cruelty I hadn't known I possessed. It now blew around poor Lorenzo, someone who had become a friend and the person who understood me almost as well as Thance. Yet I wasn't sad.

“Harriet,” he groaned, his voice a reservoir of pain. “You should make allowances for the mortification of a lover.”

“The fact of my birth is not your mortification, nor mine. I don't feel sorry for either of us.”

And then he said something so human, so pathetic, and so pitiful, I almost loved him.

“You must love me a bit to have told me something so prejudicial.”

“To my happiness?”

“To everything. To your future ... to your very survival!” he sputtered, loosing his cool intonation.

“Do you think that all Negroes are unhappy because they are not white?” I said.

“But you
are
white!”

“If I'm white, then why do I see pity in your eyes?”

It was like the story of the Eastern potentate who dipped his head into a basin of water at the magician's command, and ere he took it out, saw his whole life pass before his eyes.

“Because of your illegitimate birth,” he whispered. “That's not to be forgiven.”

My eyes widened.

“There is an injury where reparation is impossible,” murmured Lorenzo. “Neither wealth nor education can repair the wrong of dishonored birth. It's a matter of geography . . . illegal aliens crossing an inviolable frontier.”

This time I did laugh, because he was perfectly sincere. It was not my drop of black blood, nor even my role as an impostor; it was my rank as a bastard from which he recoiled. It was so English. And so absurd.

Illegal alien,
I thought, burning with shame. What a perfect name. What a perfect name for what I was in my own country. It had been self-deception to believe I could escape. I could be as fair as a lily, as beautiful as a houri, and as chaste as ice, and I would never be anything more than black contraband.

“He . . . your father sent you away . . . here?”

“No.”

“There is another man. Someone you love, whom you are protecting as you haven't protected me.”

Suddenly I sensed that he was as anxious to leave me as I was for him to do so. We swayed over the abyss of my revelation like two drunks.

Almost as one, like automates, we turned at the sound of the dinner gong, the silvery sound reminding me of the funeral bells that had tolled my arrival in London.

“Come,” he said, not unkindly, his voice rough with unspoken grief.

“No,” I whispered. “I'll follow in a moment. I want a few moments alone . . . please.”

He bowed, and as he straightened, our eyes met unaccountably. There was no recrimination in his, and no recollection in mine. Only sadness. Had I, despite everything, been a little bit in love with Lorenzo? As soon as he was out of sight, I turned and leaned weakly against a juniper tree that must have been a thousand years old. Once, long ago at Montpelier, I had prayed that
the bark of a juniper tree would scrape my white skin from my bones. No tears came. I felt my first streak of defiance. I was young. The world was open. There would be others.

8
P.M.

Roxborough

My dear Lorenzo,

I have never thought of you but as a friend. Nor will I ever. Please, let us both forget this afternoon ever took place. If you think my deception has tormented you heartlessly and without reason, think a bit of my dilemma and forgive me. You are grieved, but not irreparably. You are wronged, but not indelibly. I release you from the promise
you made to yourself,
not to me, in a moment that will never fade from my memory. What are we anyway, at this moment? A brother and sister. For you know me better now than any person on earth!

I don't have to ask you never, never to speak of me again. Your pride will do that, and you will probably have no more opportunity. In a few weeks, I leave for Paris with Mrs. Willowpole and Brice (who are as innocent of my lie as you were). Even though I wrong them, leave me this possibility. I have trusted you with the power to ruin my life in exchange for the unhappiness I've caused you. I beg you only for silence. Remember I am a fugitive.

Good-bye.

H.

We are not immortal ourselves, my friend, how can we expect our enjoyments to be so? We have no rose without its thorn; no pleasure without alloy. It is the law of our existence: and we must acquiesce.

Thomas Jefferson

Our little group, Dorcas, Brice, Sydney, and I, spent the rest of the winter in London. The absence of Lorenzo, which no one dared question, added to my melancholy. It was as if I had been living in a coma up until now, sleeping in the dust of Monticello, while a cosmic struggle of life and death, blood and commerce, had been raging right over my head for three hundred years. I now copied with familiarity the great names of antislavery: Wilberforce, Clarkson, Benez and John Wesley, Abbé Raynal, Nathaniel Peabody, and Granville Sharp. Places that had only been shapes Lorenzo had drawn for me were now as real as my trembling hand as I copied Cuba, Antigua, Santo Domingo, Haiti, Jamaica, Brazil, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Tobago.

I had read the latest tracts, knew the titles of the famous associations: Society for the Abolition of Slavery, Society for Mitigating and Gradually Abolishing the State of Slavery, Society for Promoting the Emigration of Free Persons of Color, Society for the Civilization of Africa, Society for the Suppression of the Slave Trade. I knew all about the king's plans for compensated emancipation, the Seamen's Act, the Emancipation Act, the Fugitive Slave Act, the crusade against slave-trade piracy and for immediate abolition. In five months I had become a walking encyclopedia of suits and countersuits, court cases, and hundreds of petitions, evasions, imprisonments, alliances, parliamentary censures, manumission laws, and the internal slave trade in the United States.

Slavery was not eternal.

The pain of Lorenzo faded, and I almost forgot the possibility of his denunciation or even his blackmail. I was surprised by the number of rich English Quakers leading the antislavery organizations in Britain: the Gurneys and the Buxtons, the Forsters, Sturgeses, Aliens, Braithwaites. They urged Dorcas Willowpole to consolidate her efforts with abolitionists in England and France. Almost as if to make up for her lack of official acceptance, we were lavishly entertained and squired about on sightseeing trips to view hospitals, working-class neighborhoods, and the shocking, fetid slums of London. Distinguished Britons called at our boardinghouse. Even the famous debonair Thomas Clarkson visited us with his daughter-in-law and bestowed on Mrs. Willowpole a lock of his hair, which she was to preserve carefully and take back to the States, where she distributed it strand by strand.

By March, all our reports were in, our letters written or answered, our good-byes said. We left for Paris, taking a coach from Hatchett's New White Cellar. Just before we left, Lorenzo answered the letter I had written to him at Roxborough House.