Stephen O'Connor - Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

I wrote earlier that I could have said no to Mr. Jefferson, but that is not true either, because were I to have said no to him, I would have been saying no to myself, and because whatever else I may have gotten from him, I also got the world. I don’t mean only that I went to France, though had I not, perhaps nothing that happened afterward would have been possible. I mean that he opened up the world to me through his conversation, his great, endlessly restless mind, through his brilliant and powerful friends and, perhaps most of all, through his books. To reject all of that would be to reject the person that at so many moments along the way I was so thrilled to be becoming. And even now, the notion of emptying my mind of everything that I have gained through my association with Mr. Jefferson fills me with a sort of panic, as if I am pulling a coffin lid down upon myself.

There should be nothing wrong with what I have done. The right to know, to learn, to be able to investigate, savor and inhabit the world through one’s mind as well as one’s person, ought to be as “unalienable” as any of the other rights Mr. Jefferson enshrined in his Declaration. Yet for me the exercise of this right has come at too high a moral cost. By becoming the woman I am now, I lost my self — if by “self” we mean a way of being in the world that one can recognize as one’s own.

Earlier tonight, after finishing my narrative, I went down to the kitchen and stole a bottle of Mr. Jefferson’s wine — a very good Ledanon. I say “stole” because it had already been packed for auction, as tomorrow everything in this room will be similarly packed. This is the last time I shall ever stay here. After tomorrow this room will be an empty space, containing nothing but echoes and dust. I wanted the wine because I thought it would give me comfort. And when I had finished the bottle without feeling comforted in the least, I “stole” another, hoping it might give me sleep — and that it did, but only the sort of sleep which is a senseless whirling in a dark that is itself whirling with lurid fancies and fears.

And then, only minutes ago, I was awakened by a vivid memory that had come suddenly into my head. I remembered Mr. Jefferson laughing. It was in Paris, not long after our love had truly commenced. We were lying side by side in bed, looking into each other’s face, exchanging small kisses. Then, all at once, he shook his head and said, “Oh, Sally, what are we doing?” And then he began to laugh, out of sheer happiness at what had come to pass between us, and I laughed, too. I laughed for joy.

As soon as that memory took possession of me, I began to sob. I sobbed and sobbed and couldn’t stop, thinking what a hell life is that such moments of goodness and beauty should end up being so damnable and depraved. I sobbed until, exhausted, I turned on my side, hoping for a little more sleep. And as my face pressed into the pillow, I realized that I could still smell Mr. Jefferson. He was still there. Thomas. Tom. My Tom. And I breathed deeply, thinking that this would be the last time I would ever have any part of him inside me.

Beverly left Monticello and went to Washington as a white man. He married a white woman in Maryland, and their only child, a daughter, was not known by the white folks to have any colored blood coursing in her veins. Beverly’s wife’s family were people in good circumstances.

Harriet married a white man in good standing in Washington City, whose name I could give, but will not, for prudential reasons. She raised a family of children, and so far as I know they were never suspected of being tainted with African blood in the community where she lived or lives. I have not heard from her for ten years, and do not know whether she is dead or alive. She thought it to her interest, on going to Washington, to assume the role of a white woman, and by her dress and conduct as such I am not aware that her identity as Harriet Hemings of Monticello has ever been discovered.

Eston married a colored woman in Virginia, and moved from there to Ohio, and lived in Chillicothe several years. In the fall of 1852, he removed to Wisconsin, where he died a year or two afterwards. He left three children.

— Madison Hemings

“Life Among the Lowly, No. 1”

Pike County (Ohio) Republican

March 13, 1873

A drizzle grays the air when Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings visit the Museum of Miscegenation. They approach the columned and domed marble edifice (which Thomas Jefferson cannot help but notice is in the Palladian style) along an avenue of plane trees, all-but-invisible droplets drifting between bare branches tipped with the tiny lettuces of just-bursting buds. The drizzle coats the square cobbles like breath upon a mirror, and Sally Hemings, wearing leather-soled shoes, finds the footing so slippery she has to cling to Thomas Jefferson’s arm until they are inside the museum.

They have come unannounced, but as soon as they step through the glass doors into the cavernous lobby, a security guard nudges a young man in a trim black suit standing next to him and nods in Thomas Jefferson’s direction (no one, of course, knows what Sally Hemings actually looks like). The young man immediately goes over to the information desk, picks up a telephone and dials.

Swimming-pool-size banners hanging from the ceiling advertise two new shows: THE MYTH OF PURITY and EUGENICS: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE, but Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings are interested in neither. They have come, after many second thoughts and much procrastination, to view the entire wing of the museum devoted to their thirty-seven-year relationship.

The young man has put down his telephone and seems on the verge of approaching them, so they turn their backs and hurry across the lobby toward a considerably smaller banner:

THOMAS JEFFERSON & SALLY HEMINGS

AN IMPOSSIBLE LOVE

Just as they pass through the doorway beneath the banner, Sally Hemings looks over her shoulder and sees that the young man has been joined by a stocky gray-haired woman in a magenta suit with a knee-length skirt. She has one hand on the young man’s forearm, as if holding him back. They are both staring at Sally Hemings, but neither budges nor makes any show of greeting.

The interior of the gallery is so dim that the spaces between the spotlit exhibits seem fogged with granulated pencil lead. Thomas Jefferson is already standing beside a vitrine. Sally Hemings rushes over and takes his arm again, feeling less exposed pressed against his side.

It seems that in their hurry to escape notice, they have entered the show through its exit. The vitrine into which Thomas Jefferson is looking contains his silver spectacles, star-shaped inkwell and shoe buckle. Sally Hemings carried these in her bag when she left Monticello, and she gave them to their son Madison shortly before her own death. These items look far too paltry to be arrayed on velvet under a golden spotlight. But seeing them after such a long time, Sally Hemings is so weakened by sorrow that her fingertips and legs go trembly. Thomas Jefferson glances at her with a sad smile.

“I’m glad you kept these,” he says. “The inkwell especially.”

She smiles hesitantly and nods. She cannot answer. She lets go of his arm.

“I don’t recognize the buckle, though,” he says. “Are you sure it’s mine?”

“It was in the lodge. I went there not long before I left Monticello. It was under the night table.”

Thomas Jefferson’s smile has vanished. He gives her hand a long, firm squeeze. “Oh, God, Sally.”

“Do you want to go?”

“No. That would be a waste. We’ve come all this way.”