CHAPTER 28

PHILADELPHIA, MARCH 1797

"There is nothing I so anxiously hope as that my name may come out either second or third—the last would leave me home the whole of the year, and the other two-thirds of it...."

With these words, our happiness in retirement came to an end. On Christmas Day 1796.

My master was now the second vice-president of the United States. So loath was he to leave home that he considered having himself sworn in at home in Virginia. As for me, I was in mourning. My third child, Edy, had not survived her first months, and now came the blow that I would lose my master again to his old mistress, politics. Neither Martha nor Maria were to go with him to Philadelphia for the inauguration. To cheer me, he offered to take me with him for the ceremonies.

I looked forward to the eleven long days of journeying; anything to rouse me out of my deep depression. Perhaps I would have news of James, from whom I hadn't heard in over a year.

We departed. Day after day, new landscapes sped by as we traveled farther north. We passed Ravensworth, and Montpelier, Dumfries, Elkridge, and Georgetown. We had taken the Paris phaeton, and Isaac and Israel as outriders were charged with the extra horses. We were drawn by the six beautiful bays of Monticello. On the second of March, after leaving Chester, my master tried to obtain a public carriage to carry us to Philadelphia, but none was to be had. We delayed until evening, with the intention of entering the city in secret, but the yellow-and-lilac carriage with the Monticello coachman had been recognized and our arrival had been reported by messenger. As we entered the city, we were greeted by a large, roaring crowd carrying a banner proclaiming: "Jefferson, Friend of the People," and by a company of artillery that fired sixteen rounds of ammunition in salute. A cold dread seized me, and I clutched at my master's sleeve and buried my face in his shoulder. It had been almost eight years since I had come down off the mountain that was Monticello. I was once again out into the world. That mountain on which I had spent almost all my existence had rolled away like a great stone covering a tomb and let in the light and air of the world, and this world was pounding on the sides of the carriage and screaming slogans and love as my master laughed and disengaged his arm from my clutches, the better to lean forward toward the window and show himself. Burwell, who was inside the carriage, stuck his head out the other side and watched Davey and Jupiter soothing the frightened horses, smiling, and waving at the crowd as if they had been born to do it. I peered out nervously behind the bulk of Burwell onto a sea of white faces cut into by the booted and spurred legs of our outriders. I had not seen so many white people at once since Paris. I remembered James's description of the Bastille mob and the crowds, and I saw myself in the Paris streets. That memory became one as I glimpsed these friendly Americans come to acclaim their vice-president. Had I forgotten, on my mountain, that the world was made up of white people? This howling, laughing, unruly crowd was the white world. I uttered a small cry and clutched at Burwell as I had at my master, but he, like his master, was only interested in those faces swarming around us. He shrugged off my hand and ignored me.

The next day I roamed the streets of Philadelphia, a city that seemed to be made up of only one color and one material: red brick. The streets as well as the houses were made of it. The wetness made the bricks slippery underfoot and, several times, Burwell kept me from falling. We strolled down Market Street looking into the shop windows, at the street vendors and the newspaper sellers. I looked for my master's little house at Seventh Street, noisy and filled with young boys, both black and white, selling broadsides and pamphlets and newspapers, all proclaiming to have the story on the first succession to the presidency of the United States. Burwell bought several of them for the plantation.

In the course of our walk, Burwell would point out the freed men as they crossed our path, and I couldn't help but stare at them. They were all wearing neat clothes, and conveyed the feeling of self-confidence. I knew, of course, that in Charlottesville there were many freed people of color, but this was the first time that I had looked into the faces of Negroes who had never been slaves. Some seemed rich, the women with long elegant skirts trailing the sidewalks, accompanied by dignified men in dark broadcloth and snowy linen. I had put on my best dress, and although it was years out of fashion in Paris, it was not noticeable here. I was looking forward to seeing the elegant ladies tomorrow in their fine gowns, cloaks, hats, and gloves.

The day dawned clear and sunny. We followed our master, walking to the Senate building, where the swearing-in ceremony was to take place. I strained my hearing to the utmost, but was still unable to make out one word, either of the speech or of the prayer he offered for the country. It was the first time I had ever heard my master speak in public, and after the first few words his voice lost all its musical resonance, and became little more than a husky whisper. In order to learn what he had said in a public speech, one had to have recourse to the printed speech in the newspapers. After giving his prayers for the happiness, peace, and prosperity of our country, he led the senators and the crowd to the House of Representatives, where Master Adams was sworn in. It had been almost ten years since I had last seen John Adams from the back window of the phaeton taking Polly and me to Paris. He had not grown slimmer with age, and where he had been square and stout, he was now round and fat. With his prim countenance, long, pinched nose, and tiny piercing blue eyes, he resembled nothing so much as a Virginia hare in his pearl-gray frockcoat, waistcoat, and breeches. I felt an old surge of affection for him, wondering what my life would have been if he had sent me back to Virginia that summer long ago. Abigail Adams was nowhere to be seen. Had she not come to honor her husband on this day?

As I looked around, I realized that there were practically no women at all. All the fine ladies I had hoped to see had stayed home and this gathering looked as if there were only men in this United States.

At the side of George Washington was his slave Samuel, as old and stony as his master. President Washington was dressed all in black: a tall old man with an old-fashioned powdered wig with rolled curls at the sides, and with cold, small blue eyes set in a face so white it seemed blue. The nose was large and his lips were so thin they were invisible until he drew them back in what was meant to be a smile showing his large, black false teeth, which were famous. Now and again he waved stiffly at the crowd, and as he did so, exhibiting his black smile in a pure white face, the slave at his side would also smile, exhibiting his pure-white smile in a black face. The crowd cheered the outgoing president and tears began to slide down the face of the president and that of his slave shadow Samuel. John Adams made a fine speech in his harsh Massachusetts accent. He too was greatly cheered. To this day, I wonder why Abigail Adams did not come to see her husband made president of the United States.

Standing outside the Senate House after the ceremony, Burwell and Jupiter at my side, I looked over the now dispersing assembly, trying to recognize friends of my master whom I had seen at one time or another at Monticello. Suddenly I noticed a short, handsome man. He was magnificently dressed, wearing buff, with yellow lace showing at the neck and wrists.

His curly black hair was pulled back from an abnormally high forehead, the pallor of his skin contrasting with the jet-black hair and eyebrows that were arched in a quizzical expression over deep brown eyes. He headed directly toward us, stopping once or twice to greet people who hailed him, turning swiftly from one side to the other on the balls of his feet in a dancing motion that was most graceful. Finally, he was upon us.

"Davey Bowles! Jupiter! The imperturbable and good Jupiter! Miss?..."

"Masta Burr, suh. A glorious day for the Republic, suh. You looking for Masta Jefferson, suh? He went with a group of gentlemen over to the Representative House ... suh."

Jupiter stepped protectively in front of me as he made his speech. Jupiter was the same commanding height, as well as the same age, as his master. He towered over this Master Burr, who came up to his chest.

"Why isn't Bob Hemings here, Jupiter? Where's that boy?"

"Robert Hemings, he freed, Masta Burr, suh, like James. He done bought his freedom from Masta Jefferson so's he could join his wife and his daughter in Richmond, who's slaves of Master Strauss there. Masta Jefferson, he signed his manumission papers on Christmas Day '94. He regretted thoroughly leavin' Masta Jefferson, Masta Burr, but he jus' couldn't prevail upon hisself to give up his wife and his daughter."

"Well, I wish him well, Jupiter."

"Yassuh."

Aaron Burr didn't take his eyes off me. He waited patiently, apparently used to Jupiter's evasions, and said nothing.

Finally, Jupiter, after more rambling conversation that astounded me by its servility, gave in.

"This here child, she's a servant of Masta Jefferson, too. She's a Hemings, and Burwell here is her nephew. She's called Sally Hemings of Monticello," Jupiter added unnecessarily. It was the longest speech about me that I had ever heard Jupiter make.

"Another Hemings of Monticello! Good God, how many of you are there in this family? And how is James, by the way? I heard he went back to France. Mr. Jefferson's dinner parties haven't been the same since. As a matter of fact, he has spent the last year trying to steal other people's cooks! And this girl, surely she's not a field hand now, is she?"

"She's mistress of Masta Jefferson's wardrobe, suh," Jupiter replied grandly.

This man called Aaron Burr turned his black and burning gaze on me as if I were standing before him naked.

"The ... mistress ... of... Thomas ... Jefferson's wardrobe ... Jupiter?" he uttered slowly.

His eyebrows arched almost up to the hairline of his wide high forehead and gave him the appearance of Satan himself. His eyes raked me with such a mixture of contempt and lewdness that my blood turned cold. Never had a man looked at me thus. I was trembling. When I met his gaze he insolently held it. He threw back his head and laughed—a high, tinkling, peculiar laugh that was most unpleasant. I decided then and there that I detested Master Aaron Burr.

"From the way he dresses, Jupiter, I didn't think he had a wardrobe, let alone a mistress of it. Except for today," he added, "as he is looking most elegant in French blue, possibly because he has his mistress here to dress him ..."

I felt Jupiter tense.

"Je vous en prie, Monsieur. Je suis la femme de chambre de Mademoiselle Maria Jefferson," I interrupted coldly in French. I don't know why I did it. I was flushed with anger and I was glad my face was half-hidden by my hat. Master Burr was as astonished as if a dog had started to speak Latin.

"Ah! Que je fus inspiree...."

"Quand je vous recus dans ma cour," I replied.

It was the first lines from an aria that Piccinni, the singing tutor to Marie-Antoinette, had written. Marie-Antoinette was rumored to have sung it in public to her lover, the Count Fersen, at one of the famous parties at Trianon. It had been made into a limerick by the Parisian populace. Everyone who had been in Paris just before the Revolution knew it by heart. I couldn't help smiling at his astonishment, and he smiled back at me; a wide, handsome wicked grin. I blushed, sorry that I had smiled at him despite myself.

"Vous parlez tres bien le francais," he said with his heavy American accent. "Vous avez bien dit, une sewante de Maitre Jefferson? C'est a dire, une esclave?"

"Oui, Monsieur," I replied.

He looked questioningly at Jupiter, then at Burwell, neither of whom answered since they had not understood what we had said. Burwell too had put his "don't-ask-me-I-just-a-poor-darky" expression on his smooth golden-brown face.

"Eh bien, ton maitre a tant de choses a celebrer en plus de son poste comme vice-president..."

"Que Dieu le protege dans sa tache," I replied, curtsying low and in the French manner.

"Bien dit—well said, indeed. That God protect him. From his enemies and his friends."

So this was my master's rival, I thought, the rich and famous lawyer from New York, Aaron Burr. I loathed him.

"Burwell, take your aunt out of this mob. Jupiter ... Davey, Mademoiselle Hemings of Monticello ..." Again he drew out the words sarcastically.

Outrage filled my breast. If I had been white, he would not have dared address me so, servant or no servant. Despite my rage, I curtsied low, and to my surprise, he bowed expertly. He spun on his heels in a curious dancing movement and walked jauntily away. He spoiled the effect, however, by looking over his shoulder at me, and promptly bumped into a tall handsome man who, Jupiter whispered, was Alexander Hamilton. The comic effect of the formidable Master Burr falling over himself in his attempt to get a last look at me didn't dispel my hatred, nor the sense of dread the crowd had evoked in me. "Enemies"? I had thought that in all this great crowd there were only friends and followers of my master. Who could be an enemy of Thomas Jefferson and why? Who could wish him any harm? Certainly my master had complained at times about the envy and the malice of political life, but mortal enemies seemed impossible to conceive. Master Jefferson, the absolute ruler of Monticello, was so gentle, so serene. He was surrounded by love. Could he be surrounded here by people and forces he could not control? People that could thwart his will as easily as he could that of his servants? I thought of the newspaper articles I had read in the past few days. Yes, there were people here he could not rule, could not order, could not even fight or convince, who were as intelligent, as rich, as powerful as he. There were friends whose support he would need to seek. Mysterious enemies from whom he had to defend or protect himself. And, above all, there was the "public": that dangerous and volatile mass that one could call neither friend nor enemy, for it could change from one day to the next. And this "public" had been given the name "The People" by their government, thereby making it one body, one will, the sole source of power that the great sought with such tenacity. "The People" now stood milling around the blood-red courtyard; "The People" brushed up against Jupiter, Burwell, and me as we stood to one side of our carriage. "The People" could destroy my master. And if my master was destroyed, what would become of me? It was then that I understood that my master's enemies were mine as well. That, in this white world, I had nothing but enemies.

"Jupiter, I'm going into the carriage. I feel faint."

As Jupiter helped me into the carriage, he said, "I expect that Thomas Jefferson don't want you out here minglin' with this mob, being scrutinized. I don't think he'd like the idea of you being exposed to this riffraff. He expected you to go home after the ceremony. You can see there ain't no ladies here." With that he slammed the door of the carriage.

"... and, I told him, my inclination would never permit me to cross the Atlantic again."

I stared at him. With one willful declaration, the spoken and unspoken promises of the last eight years were broken. All my dreams of ever returning to France had vanished. Even now, with James gone without me, and with two children to raise, buried deep, I had always hoped to return to Marly. Now that subject was closed forever.

Three days after the inauguration, my master, accompanied by Jupiter, went to a dinner given by Master Washington. Despite hopes by everybody of a reconciliation between him and the new president, Adams, it had been evident at the dinner that their relations were so cold and so singular as to foment gossip even among the servants in the kitchens. Servants industriously discussed every aspect of the political situation. They sometimes seemed to have more information than the actual participants in the feuds and intrigues that evolved. Jupiter was not surprised, therefore, when his master returned from the dinner in a rare rage that only he and I were ever permitted to witness.

His face was flushed way beyond its usually high color, and he tore at his cravat so brutally that he practically strangled himself. His long legs paced the floor of the tiny room, shaking the floorboards, and his voice trembled with anger.

"The first and only thing John Adams proposed to me was that I return to France!"

He then let out a stream of imprecations against his old friend Adams; against Hamilton, Knox, Pickering, Burr, and the others. They were all against him. I memorized the names. So, I thought, these were my master's "enemies." In great agitation, he called for Jupiter to get a horse saddled, then changed his mind. He sat down long enough for me to pull off his boots. He stood up in his stocking feet and let loose another string of insults.

"If John Adams and his inherited Federalist cabinet think they can shut me out of the government, they had best think again!"

His huge fist came down on a small table beside the bed, smashing it to pieces.

My brief excursion into white America was over. When we returned up the mountain, from Philadelphia, the mountain was in bloom.

He stayed home for almost the whole year.

At the end of the following summer, Maria Jefferson married her cousin Eppes in a small ceremony, amidst the demolition work going on over our very heads at Monticello. The couple would reside at Bermuda Hundred, more than a hundred miles away. For her wedding, her father gave Maria twenty-six slaves, seventy-eight horses, pigs, and cows, as well as eight hundred acres. Our good-byes were tender, for Polly had always treated me as a friend. We had managed to forge an unwritten truce that placed our love for her father as security against our love for each other. There were no secrets between us. When I showed her the room connected with that of her father's, her sigh of relief was as great as mine.

"Oh, Sally, how very nice!"

"He changed his apartments last year to accommodate it, and Joe and John are building the staircase."

"It means you no longer have to cross the public hall to enter and leave."

We never mentioned why this new arrangement would be better for all concerned. Nor would she ever mention this new arrangement to her father or ever allude to it.

"Remember, in Paris," I said, "all the secret stairways and rooms in the mansion? How we would imagine romantic stories about them?"

"We were so young in Paris," Polly said.

"You still are, Mistress. Seventeen is a wonderful age...."

I had a safe harbor at last. But a mother is never safe. My master had been home for almost five months, Polly was still on her honeymoon, when rumors of an epidemic spreading up from Charlottesville struck terror in the heart of every mother, black or white. Both Tom and Harriet fell ill. Martha's daughters were sick at Edgehill, as well as half a dozen slave children. During the next weeks, we worked without sleep, nursing the children, Martha traveling back and forth between Edgehill and Monticello. Dulled by exhaustion, shedding bitter tears, Martha and I watched my little Harriet, only two summers old, slowly suffocate to death.

I laid her next to Edy, in the slave cemetery. Four of his white children lay under their stones in the white cemetery. The dividing line did not even stop at the grave. But what did it change? They were all his children, and they were all dead.

Harriet's death brought me low, undermining the fragile movements of still another new life in my womb. The winter reminded me of Paris in '88, long and cold and nothing like normal Virginia winters, with candles burning in the afternoon, keeping everyone, slave and white, indoors. My first-born, Tom, survived, and I clung to him with all the desolation I felt that winter.

Martha, who had lost a daughter at the same time I had lost Edy, raced back to Edgehill and her children in mortal fear, leaving me alone.

Only one living child left, except the one in my body. I kept Tom indoors the whole winter, never letting his sturdy red-headed figure out of my sight. My heart pounded at every cough, stopped at every complaint.

At the end of March, I sent word that my time was approaching. A few days later, a sofa came made of fine mahogany with carved legs and back in the Jacobean style; a feather mattress and down coverlet of silk arrived as well. He had not forgotten me. When I wrote that I was safely delivered of a boy, the reply came back, "Name him Beverly," and I did.

Not long afterward, a harpsichord arrived from Philadelphia. Martha came up from Edgehill to see it almost immediately. I looked with envy on her four healthy children. I too would have had four ...

"It is for Maria, you know."

"Yes, so I understand."

Martha didn't mention the fact that Maria no longer lived at Monticello, but away at Bermuda Hundred. I was delighted with the harpsichord.

"It is a charming one, I think," she said, "but certainly inferior to mine."

She was looking not at the harpsichord, but at the white, blond, blue-eyed slave child I held in my arms ... her half brother.