Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings (20 page)

T
he air in the ballroom is dense with the odors of meat, burning whale oil and male sweat. More than twenty men are gathered at the round table at the center of the round room, the majority of them standing and all of them shouting. They are also consuming prodigious quantities of duck, salmon and potatoes—new plates of which Sally Hemings and the other servants are constantly ferrying into the room (the entire staff of the Hôtel has been impressed into service for this meeting, including Monsieur Petit), and, of course, the men are also emptying dozens of bottles of Bordeaux.

This morning Monsieur Petit told the staff that a very important meeting would be occurring at the Hôtel that night, that the most courageous and brilliant men in all of France would be coming to discuss matters of utmost importance “to the future of humanity.” He did not say what those matters might be, but as Sally Hemings has moved among the men carrying bottles and trays, she gathers that they are intending some sort of confrontation with the king, and she wonders—though she hardly dares to hope that this might be true—if this meeting isn't like the ones that Thomas Jefferson attended in Philadelphia when she was a baby and that led to the Revolution. The thought that she might be a witness to a great moment of history fills her with an intense excitement that expresses itself as a buoyant sense of well-being—as if she has gotten mildly intoxicated on the fumes of the wine she's been pouring.

Most of the men are crowded at one end of the table, where an old man whose wig rests crookedly on his bald head sits, flanked by candelabras, plume in hand, and occasionally transcribes phrases shouted to him by one or more of the men. The Marquis de Lafayette, standing just behind the old man, sometimes claps his hand on the man's shoulder and gives him commands to write additional phrases or to cross out ones he has already set down. Most of the time, these commands are met by incredulous roars and upraised hands and then a new round of shouting, in which the marquis actively participates, his expression alternating between mischievous delight and the conviction that he is surrounded by imbeciles.

Apart from the elderly scrivener, Thomas Jefferson is the quietest man in the room. He stands beside the marquis, his arms folded tightly across his chest, although his right hand does clutch a wineglass. Every now and then, the marquis will move his mouth close to Thomas Jefferson's ear and they will confer behind a cupped hand. Some of the other men standing around him also address remarks to him or ask questions, but none of his responses are audible above the cacophony. Sally Hemings can't help but feel disappointed that he is not taking a more active role in this important discussion. She feels that he is letting himself down and worries that his moment in history may have passed.

At one point late in the evening, as she is walking down the dark corridor from the kitchen, a bottle of wine in each hand, she hears that the room has gone silent and that Thomas Jefferson is speaking. She stops just inside the door, in the wavery brown dimness, far from the lamps and candles on the table.

He is one of the tallest men in the room, and seems even taller standing next to the much smaller marquis, yet his stature seems diminished by a vagueness in his eyes, as if he can't actually see the people he is addressing, and his voice is pitched higher than normal and sounds thin.

All at once Sally Hemings realizes that he is afraid.

“Le premier principe doit être que tous les hommes sont créés égaux,”
he says.
“Tous les droits découlent de cela.”

He is quoting his own writing: “All men are created equal.” Is he doing that because he is nervous? Do the other people notice? Do they think he is a fool for repeating a phrase they must all have heard a thousand times?

She looks around the room. A couple of men just in front of her are murmuring to each other, but she can't hear well enough to tell if there is anything derisive in their tone. The faces of the other people in the room are unreadable masks. There is a snakelike fixity in the shining eyes of the marquis. Is that his way of trying to hide his embarrassment? Or could it be an expression of his anger that Thomas Jefferson is making a fool of them both?

Sally Hemings cannot move from her spot by the door until Thomas Jefferson, after a pause that reminds her of nothing so much as that of an old man who has forgotten what he meant to say, closes his mouth, looks down and shrugs, and then the men around the table begin to cheer and applaud. The applause isn't so loud that it might not just be polite, but
then she sees that a shy, happy smile has come onto Thomas Jefferson's face. He suppresses the smile, looks up at the crowd and says,
“Nous avons encore beaucoup de travail à faire!”
—sparking a new surge of applause.

To Sally Hemings's utter surprise, her eyes fill with tears.

A short time later, when she is pouring more wine for Lafayette, he grabs hold of her hand and says, “
Merci, ma jolie Sarah!
This is a very good night! You must get your friend Mr. Jefferson to tell you what we are doing.” As he lets go of her hand, he gives it a light squeeze and he smiles at her, his eyes flaring with excitement. “I think the world is changing tonight!”

She glances toward Thomas Jefferson, and, finding that he is already looking right at her, she has to turn her head away. But when she looks back, she manages to hold his gaze just long enough not to appear self-conscious—or so she hopes. “Would you like some more wine, Mr. Jefferson?”

He smiles warmly and holds out his glass. “Thank you, Sally.”

Hours later, as Sally Hemings and Anne are clearing the abandoned table, Thomas Jefferson walks back into the room after having said good-bye to the last of his guests. He seems thoughtful and contented, if very tired.

Anne fills her tray with clinking glasses and walks toward the corridor to the kitchen. Sally Hemings deliberately slows down her collection of glasses but doesn't look in Thomas Jefferson's direction until Anne has left the room.

He gives her a weary smile. “I'm sorry to have made so much work for you, especially so late at night.”

She shrugs and makes a smilelike crinkle of her mouth. She doesn't know what to say.

His smile fades. He takes a step backward, as if he is ready to leave the room.

“Has the world changed?” she asks.

“I don't know.” He pauses thoughtfully, and then his smile returns. “What do you think?”

“It doesn't look much different to me,” she says. “Maybe a bit messier.”

Thomas Jefferson laughs, and Sally Hemings can't stop herself from laughing, too. After a moment he says, “Do you know what we were doing here tonight?”

“Well . . . apart from eating, drinking and shouting, not really.”

“We've been putting together a French document that is a lot like our own Bill of Rights, about which Mr. Madison and I have been corresponding so much lately.”

Sally Hemings has heard Thomas Jefferson talk about the Bill of Rights, but she isn't entirely clear what it is.

“So what does the document say?”

“Well, it starts out by saying, more or less, that all men are created equal. It also says that liberty is the freedom to do everything that will injure no one else.”

“Oh.” She looks away, unsure why Thomas Jefferson has chosen to refer to that very awkward night.

“So you see, Sally, that you, too, played a role in what happened here tonight.”

She is blushing. Her ears go hot. “I didn't.”

“I don't know about that,” says Thomas Jefferson. “I think that the marquis has had you in mind often as he has contemplated the issue of individual liberty.”

“I don't think that's true.” She is still blushing. “Anyhow, I didn't do anything.”

“You're too modest.”

“No I'm not.”

“Yes you are,” he says firmly.

She has been looking down at her tray, but when she raises her eyes, she sees that Thomas Jefferson is looking at her with a smile that is both weary and tender.

“You make a very good impression on people,” he says. “I think you should know that.”

 

1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.

2. The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.

3. The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.

4. Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. . . .

—From the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, introduced at the National Assembly by the Marquis de Lafayette on July 11, 1789

. . . What I am trying to do here is simply pin down the process by which I became complicit in the crime that has brought so much misery to the people I have known and loved—many of them for all of my life. And it becomes ever clearer to me that it happened by a process of twilit thinking—by thoughts behind the thoughts I was aware of, thoughts—and feelings, too—that I could ignore or even pretend I had never had, thoughts whose immorality and gross impracticality might have been blatantly obvious had I ever had the courage or wisdom to drag them into the full light of my awareness. . . .

N
ear noon on a Sunday morning, Sally Hemings is walking home after having escorted Patsy and Polly back to school. It has rained, and although she is carrying an umbrella, the skirt of her gown is wet and hangs heavily against her knees and shins. The clouds have parted. The sun is brilliant white. Leaves on the treetops hiss and turn up their pale undersides in fierce gusts. Bits of blown grit sting her cheek and make her squint.

She is walking along the road between the Tuileries and the Seine when she notices a gentleman about twenty yards ahead running toward the bank of the river. The wind flips his hat off as he runs, and, turning an ungainly pirouette, he grabs it off the ground and resumes running to the edge of the quay. Only once he has stopped does she realize that the man is Thomas Jefferson. Slump-shouldered, he stares down at the water, and then his right arm twitches, as if he were uttering a curse—though Sally Hemings can hear nothing. She comes up beside him just as he is turning away from the river.

“Oh, Sally!” he exclaims. She has startled him.

“What happened?”

His mouth puckers unhappily. He points behind her, at a wooden box—his writing desk—atop a low wall on the far side of the road. “I was doing a drawing, and I'd nearly finished when I stopped to sharpen my pencil, and then a gust of wind picked the drawing up and flipped it end over end into the river.” He turns and points. “There—you see?”

A piece of foolscap rises and falls on the waves, not far from a man rowing a small boat.

“You could ask the man to get it,” she says.

“It's not worth it. The drawing is ruined.” He turns away from the river and shrugs resignedly.

“I'm sorry,” she says.

His eyes meet hers long enough for her to feel an uncomfortable warmth pass through her breast and into her throat. She looks back at the rapidly flowing water. The foolscap is now one hundred feet downstream.

“It's all right,” he says. “I can do another. It wasn't good anyway.” He puts his hat on his head and crosses the road toward his writing desk. Sally Hemings follows.

“I hate to lose things,” she says.

“I do, too.”

“No, I'm ridiculous about it. Sometimes, when I'm coming back from the
marché
or from the school, I kick a stone along the street, and if I manage to kick it all the way home with me, I can't bear to leave it outside. I feel as if I am abandoning an old friend!”

Thomas Jefferson makes a small laugh. “What do you do?”

“I take it inside with me. I have a box up in my chamber full of stones.”

He laughs again, heartily. “You have such a tender heart, Sally.”

She smiles, blushing. “It's stupid.”

“Not at all.”

They are standing beside his writing desk. He picks up a pencil lying against the bottom edge of the desk's sloped top and puts it into a chamois sack. His penknife is lying in the dust at her feet. Sally Hemings picks it up and hands it to him. He puts that into the sack.

“Thank you,” he says.

“It's stupid to care so much about a stone,” she says.

“On the contrary, I think that shows how engaged with life you are and how generous you are with your affections. In my experience most people are so lazy, hurried or frightened that they close themselves off to life. That's such a waste of our brief time on this earth.”

Thomas Jefferson is smiling with an almost paternal tenderness that embarrasses Sally Hemings. She is momentarily flustered.

“Well, I don't know,” she says at last. “It seems to me that we should only care about little things a little bit and save our real feelings for the most important things.”

“Perhaps . . .” Thomas Jefferson is still smiling. “But theologians say that God cares as much for the death of a sparrow as he does for the destruction of a city.”

Now Sally Hemings is the one to laugh.

“Why are you laughing?” asks Thomas Jefferson.

“I shouldn't say.”

He flips open the top of his portable desk and puts the chamois sack inside, then tucks the desk under his arm. “Why not?”

“I just shouldn't.”

They are walking now, back toward place Louis XV and home. The brilliant sun heats the paving and the tops of their heads, but a mountainscape of white and slate gray clouds is advancing over the trees of the Champs-Élysées.

“But I want to know what you think,” says Thomas Jefferson.

“Well . . . I don't know. . . . That just doesn't make any sense to me.”

Thomas Jefferson grunts. “I'd forgotten what a skeptic you are!”

“To me it just seems insane that God would feel exactly the same about the death of thousands of people as he does about one dirty little bird.”

“Well, perhaps I've phrased it badly. I think what theologians say is that God's heart breaks for the death of a sparrow as well as for the destruction of a city.”

“That's just as insane.”

“Not really. What we are talking about is
feeling
, not rational evaluation. The theologians want to draw our attention to the beauty—the
moral
beauty—of the all-powerful creator of the universe being heartbroken at the death of a dirty little bird. Don't you find that beautiful?”

“What I want to know,” says Sally Hemings, “is if God feels so bad about the death of a little bird, why does he kill it? And it's the same with destroying cities.”

“That's the big mystery, of course. But still there's the beauty. It seems to me that the idea of a God caring for a creature as insignificant and humble as a sparrow has a beauty all by itself—maybe in part because it teaches the lesson that all things of this world are important—political revolutions, great works of art, falling in love, dirty little birds and even stones one kicks home on the street.”

“But what I was saying is that I
don't
care about everything. I care much more about some little gray stone than I do about half the beggars I see on the street. In fact, I
hate
some of those beggars and can't bear to look at them. That's what I meant by stupid.”

“I'm sure that's not true.”

“Oh, yes it is.”

“But even the fact that you feel bad about hating beggars proves the point I am making. Think about Christ's injunction to love our enemies. I find that a supremely beautiful moral challenge. It may not be possible for us to truly love our enemies, but the suggestion that we
ought
to love them can help guide us in life, especially if we think that what it really
means is that we should try to understand our enemies, to see the world from their point of view and, most of all, to understand that they are human beings, struggling in a hard and confusing world, just as we are, and that their fundamental rights are exactly equal to ours. They may not do the right things or think the right things, but that does not mean they are inhuman or should be treated so. I think Christ's injunction is, in fact, the foundation of all morality.”

“Well, I don't know about all that. But I do know that it's not possible to love your enemy. And so saying that impossible things are beautiful makes about as much sense to me as crying over a stone.”

“But you
do
cry over a stone.”

“And that's stupid.”

“You don't think there is anything good about tenderheartedness?”

“It's good to be tenderhearted to your children. And to your mother.”

“Not to your father?” Thomas Jefferson smiles wryly.

“Your father, too.” Sally Hemings laughs. “But only if he is a
good
father!”

Thomas Jefferson also laughs. But after only a few seconds, their smiles fade.

They have crossed place Louis XV and are walking amid the colonnades of trees bordering the Champs-Élysées. The sky straight overhead is crystalline blue, but the sun has been obscured by the clouds. The air has grown distinctly cooler, and the wind is continuous. There is a sound in the tops of the trees like air being sucked through teeth.

After a couple of minutes, during which they only stroll, never even exchanging a glance, Sally Hemings speaks. “Mr. Jefferson, might I ask you a question?”

“Certainly.”

“You knew my father well, didn't you?”

The center of Thomas Jefferson's brow furrows. It is a while before he says, “I am not sure.”

Understanding that he is only trying to be discreet, Sally Hemings's throat tightens. She feels a prickling of sweat at her temples and in her armpits. She, too, should be discreet—all the more so because she is a servant. And yet she is so curious to hear what Thomas Jefferson might have thought of this man of whom she has no memory.

“I know who he was,” she says at last. “My mother told me.”

“Oh.” Seeming both surprised and embarrassed, Thomas Jefferson falls
silent, and Sally Hemings decides to let the topic drop. But after a couple of moments, he says, “Yes, I knew him, but not as well—or as
long
, I should say—as I would have liked.”

“Can you tell me about him?”

Thomas Jefferson is silent another extended moment. “He was a good man, and very capable. You would have had every reason to be proud of him.” Thomas Jefferson falls silent again, an indecisive expression on his face.

After a moment Sally Hemings asks, “Is there something else?”

“He was a spirited man, and possessed of many powerful enthusiasms. But like all men, he had his weaknesses. . . . And beyond that I do not feel qualified to speak.”

They traverse the length of the Champs-Élysées in silence, except one time when Thomas Jefferson points to a magpie and says, “That is the only animal, apart from the human race, that can recognize itself in a mirror”—a remark that Sally Hemings responds to with only a grunt.

At the Chaillot Gate, immediately beyond which they can see a southern wall of the Hôtel de Langeac, Thomas Jefferson stops and turns to face Sally Hemings.

“Miss Hemings, there is something on my mind that I suspect I should keep to myself, but . . . Well, I can only hope that it might actually be better for you and . . . for both of us . . . if I speak. . . .”

Sally Hemings looks down at the toes of his black boots on the yellow sand and waits for him to continue.

“. . . I simply want you to know that despite my unforgivable behavior several weeks ago, I have the utmost respect for you. You are a charming and very intelligent young woman, and I regret deeply that my utter foolishness might have led you to believe I had any other opinion.”

Sally Hemings allows her gaze to meet his for half an instant before she says, “Thank you.”