CHAPTER 10

LONDON, JULY 1787

I cannot feel but sorry that some of the most Manly Sentiments in the Declaration are Expunged from the printed copy. Perhaps wise reasons induced it....

abigail adams, 1776

I have had for a fortnight, a little daughter of Mr. Jefferson's, who arrived here with a young Negro girl, her servant from Virginia.

abigail adams, july 1787

"A white slave!" Abigail Adams would never get over the shock of seeing the image of Thomas Jefferson's late wife descending the gangplank of Captain Ramsay's ship in the guise of a Negro slave. "So it seems. Since we are hosts to one."

"I won't have a slave, black or white, under my roof. It's ... abhorrent to me."

"I know, Abigail, but the child is here, and we cannot do much about it until we have further instructions. Now, if she had been middle-aged and black..."

"Oh, John. It's not that... or maybe it is that, I don't know. Her color only underlines the horror of her condition because it's our color. But, even more serious, I can't in good conscience entrust the care of a child to another child. The girl is a child, a beautiful one, but one with undoubtedly no training as a nurse or even a maid. Why, she needs more care than Polly herself!"

"She seems very sweet—clean and good-natured."

"I insist she go back to Virginia. She is of no use to me and I don't see how she could possibly be of any earthly use to Mr. Jefferson."

John Adams, shifted his rotund body in the stiff, uncomfortable, new English furniture they had ransomed their lives to buy, and looked at his wife. She was the very essence of his life and his good fortune. The long years of separation—first when he left for the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, then to Europe—were over now, forever. He would never leave Abigail again. His life was comfortable, happy, and so well-run with her here in London. He wouldn't want anything to mar this perfect felicity. He knew Abigail could be stubborn in matters which she considered principles. She was a staunch abolitionist, as he was, but without any of his compromising instincts. God—the child did look like Jefferson's dead wife Martha, thought John Adams. Years later, they would learn that Sally Hemings was Thomas Jefferson's half-sister-in-law.

"Abigail, we can't do anything until we have instructions from Thomas Jefferson. Which, I should think, will be forthcoming."

"Mr. Jefferson! Where is he? Why isn't he here to fetch his daughter? I've already written him about Sally."

"Well, we'll have to wait for an answer then."

"Captain Ramsay's ship sails shortly. She ought to be on it."

Abigail was being particularly stubborn about this, thought John Adams. Why? The poor girl had just endured a long sea voyage.

"First of all, Abigail, if Sally leaves before Jefferson arrives, Polly will be stricken with grief. She is wholly attached to Sally, who is her only link with the loved ones she's left in Virginia. She's a sensitive child. She'll be upset. You don't want that, surely?"

"I would do anything for Polly's happiness. I have taken her to my heart, John—so gay, so fragile, so beautiful. Like Nabby as a child. But when Mr. Jefferson comes—"

"If he comes. Meanwhile, we can't deprive Polly of Sally. Besides, I don't like the idea of sending Sally back unescorted on another dangerous journey. We haven't the right. She is, after all, under our protection until her master comes. Jefferson himself may be expecting her. He may have sent for her, for all we know. We can't dispose of her. She is," Adams continued wryly, "his own property, and we have no legal right to tamper with his rights over her."

"Property!" Abigail Adams stifled an outraged cry. John was baiting her, to be sure, in his lawyerly way, but she couldn't help it, the word fled to the top of her head and burst there like a shell. It was the most iniquitous scheme God had ever invented! How she wished there wasn't a slave in the States! They had fought and won for themselves what they were daily robbing and plundering from those who had just as good a right to freedom as they did; who had set foot on the soil of their blessed nation at the same time their forebears had; who had fallen in battle against England first!

"You know, my dear," Adams continued, "if Sally does get to Paris with Polly, she is, by French law, free. Slavery has been abolished on French soil. By sending her back, we may be depriving her of her only chance for emancipation. She has only to claim it." John Adams knew this would clinch his argument and he had saved it until last. His wife had an acute sense of justice, which he cherished and admired, and slavery had a moral and physical repugnance for her. She felt, as he did, that it corrupted not only the fiber of the best class of the South but threatened the very existence of the nation.

"I didn't know that, John." Abigail was stunned by this news. Had it been fate, then, that had chosen Sally out of the hundreds of Monticello slaves for this potential blessing?

"It is true, Abigail. Think about it."

But Abigail was thinking about something else. She had a strange sense of foreboding, and the obvious origins and extraordinary beauty of Sally Hemings did nothing to dilute her alarm.

Those Southern white planters lived like the patriarchs of old. Even as she thought this, she realized that her own motives were not entirely pure. It was not only the presence of a slave in her household, however temporary, that was so upsetting.

Abigail Adams was nothing if not honest. It was an honesty so total and so dulcet it gave her whole person a kind of brilliant transparency that more than made up for her lack of physical beauty. The maid was a charming and docile child. But the maid was also an affront to white womanhood, she thought, a living and most visible proof of the double standard of white male conduct. The master-slave relationship appalled her not only because the dignity of both master and slave were destroyed but the exercise of total power over other human beings who lived in the closest possible intimacy with them provoked the kind of reciprocal sensuality Abigail Adams both feared in herself, recognized as part of human nature, and read in the face of Sally Hemings. This girl was both a provocation and a victim, she thought. In her still unformed personality there resided the innate arrogance of the totally possessed ... an elusive disinterestedness that was both an insult and an invitation. How to explain these ambiguous feelings to a man? How to explain powerlessness to any man who had never experienced it? Abigail Adams bit her lip and finally looked up at her husband. "Why didn't you tell me before of this chance for her in France?"

"I hadn't thought of it, actually. There is something disloyal to Jefferson about it."

"I know. And I would sooner be disloyal to myself than to him. But... shouldn't we tell her?"

"We'll talk about it again, Abigail. We have nothing to decide just yet. We can decide later. Jefferson, at any rate, knows the law."

"No, I don't think we should discuss it again, John. Let fate decide."

John Adams knew from the tone of his wife's voice, and from her face, that he had won. It was the moment for concessions.

"Of course, you should do whatever you think best," he said. "This is your domain."

"She is devoted to Polly. If we can improve her lot in life, we have the duty to do so, now that I know what Paris might mean to her..." Abigail's voice trailed off. She knew her feelings about Sally Hemings. What she didn't know was Sally Hemings's feelings about her. She would have preferred outright hostility in a slave. A sense of injustice ... of rebellion ... but this mixture of abject love, indifference, and unquestioning, nay luxurious acceptance, disturbed the neatness of her soul. There was a feral self-satisfaction in the submissiveness of this adolescent, she thought, that was more than that of a servant. It was demeaning to a woman and addicting to a man.

"Besides," her husband's voice continued, "it is pleasant to hear an American accent among the servants."

John Adams liked Sally Hemings. He liked her reserve and the limpid good character he sensed in her. And her voice: he had never heard a more pleasing one—fresh, lovely, and melodious.

Abigail Adams said nothing. She had no desire, she thought to herself, to upset her domestic tranquility over so trivial a matter. Her nine years of separation from John Adams had marked in her a feverish desire for harmony. She had spent those years alone, running the farm and raising the children, six of those years separated from him by the Atlantic Ocean. After so long a wait, so deep a commitment to public service, so passionate an attachment of the heart, she thought, she looked forward only to peace and love in her middle years. Besides, she herself would discuss the problem with Jefferson when he arrived. They were old friends, weren't they? They understood each other, and her admiration for him knew no bounds. He was one of the choice of the earth. She remembered their happy days in Paris together, just after she had been reunited with John, and she remembered the awe of her son, seventeen-year-old John Quincy, who had come with them, for the great Thomas Jefferson.

The affection Abigail Adams lavished on Polly didn't extend to me, although I was also of a tender age and I too had left everything I loved behind me. She was kind to me, but with every effort I made I seemed to provoke more than please her.

Abigail Adams was a Yankee, the first I had ever met. She knew nothing about slavery. I doubt if she had seen a slave before. She knew only that she did not want "one" under her roof. When I came to understand that it was my origins she disliked and not my person, I began to respect and even like her, although I knew she was determined to send me back to Virginia.

Master Adams seemed to understand better. I know he was the one who argued against sending me back to Virginia. But Abigail Adams was adamant. Back to Virginia I would go. So I spent my days in the great house on Grosvenor Square under a cloud of apprehension. Captain Ramsay's ship was making ready to return to America, and Master Jefferson had not yet come for his daughter and me.

I had learned as a slave never to hope, never to anticipate, and never to resist, so I lived from day to day with the other servants, trying to please Mistress Adams—taking care of Polly and keeping as quiet as possible. I took every opportunity to get out of the house and see London, which appeared to me both terrifying and wonderful. Paris, I thought, could not be greater than this!

When we traveled on foot, the carriages and porte-chaises of the gentry would pass us as we made our way past the great town houses, which were palaces compared with the mansions I knew in Virginia. I had never seen such beautiful people, clothes, and carriages. The London ladies walked a great deal and very fast. I was used to long walks at Monticello, so I managed many miles a day through London. The sides of the streets were laid with flat stones, and the streets were filthy, but they were always crowded with people laughing and cursing.

Finally, the word came that Master Jefferson was not coming for Polly and me, but that he was sending his valet de chambre, Monsieur Petit. Abigail Adams was fit to be tied and Polly refused to leave. With Polly so upset, there was no longer any question of my returning to Virginia. Why Master Jefferson did not come to fetch Polly, I learned later, but for Mistress Adams it was unforgivable.

Abigail Adams' thoughts were on Jefferson now. That his sex was naturally tyrannical was a truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but men who wished to be happy, she muttered to herself, should be willing to give up the harsh title of "Master," and all such power of life and death over female souls.

Jefferson wasn't a cruel man, Abigail Adams thought, not by any measure. He was especially tender and gallant with the female sex. Why, then, this cavalier attitude and heartlessness toward his own small dear child, whom he hadn't seen since she was four. Why had he submitted her to the perils of a long sea voyage, uprooted her from those she loved and knew, only to insult her by sending a servant to fetch her! What could be holding Thomas Jefferson in Paris?

"I have written Thomas Jefferson and told him how deeply I regretted his not coming in person for his daughter." John Adams was also trying to calm the furor of his wife.

"I've endured all kinds of heartbreak because of long separations, John. The canceled visits, sickness in solitude away from my heart's partner, and other cruel infractions on my hopes and plans deemed necessary by duty or misfortune ... have swallowed my grief in silence and self-abdication. But this I will not abide!"

"I'm afraid Adrien Petit is arriving to fetch her."

"Well, he'll have to leave without her if she doesn't want to go," said Abigail Adams stubbornly.

John Adams gazed at his wife in silence. There was something too excessive in her reaction to little Polly's plight. Mightn't she be overreacting, compensating for her own secret hurts all these years? Was she projecting onto this situation her own concealed rage at having been "abandoned" by him, John Adams, in the name of Public Duty and the fate of the newborn United States? He had left her alone so many years.... Had he seriously neglected his children in favor of his country? One thing was certain. He would never leave Abigail alone again.

True to her word, Mistress Adams made Monsieur Petit cool his heels for two weeks, while Polly refused to leave with a man "she couldn't understand." But no more messages came from Master Jefferson.

And Petit was unmovable. He would not leave without us; he had his orders. Finally, through the combined efforts of Mistress Nabby, Master Adams, and me, Polly Jefferson was finally detached from the skirts of Mistress Abigail Adams and bundled into the carriage that would take us on our road to Paris.