Stephen O'Connor - Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

First Sally Hemings is puzzled. Then she is hurt. Now disappointment is slowly suffusing her face. In a moment she will look away. Thomas Jefferson knows this. She will turn her face into the wind. She will forget him. It will be as if he’d never lived.

In the days that follow their writing lesson, Thomas Jefferson notices that Sally Hemings is watching him. He walks into a room, and she instantly looks up from her sewing or dusting — sometimes it would seem expectantly, though almost always she immediately looks away, as if embarrassed or ashamed. It is perfectly ordinary, he tells himself, for one person to look up when another enters the room and mere vanity to imagine anything else afoot, especially as he is a man on the verge of old age and she but a girl of sixteen. Why would she even give him a second glance? The problem is that she does give him second glances. And third glances. If, by any chance, he and she should be in the same room for any length of time, it is perfectly common for him to look up from whatever he might be doing four, five or six times — and, on each occasion, notice her eyes darting away.

Perhaps it is my fault, he thinks. Perhaps she has noticed that I am always staring at her, and she only looks up involuntarily to see if my gaze — no doubt unwanted — is once again turned in her direction. On most occasions this explanation seems entirely sensible — but then there are times when their glances meet and she will hesitate a half second before looking away, or when he will think he sees a faltering smile on her lips. And on such occasions the effect upon him can be so powerful that he will have to leave the room.

Thomas Jefferson tells Patsy that he has decided she and Polly should have a maid with them at Penthemont. Other girls have servants lodging with them, but heretofore Patsy said she didn’t want to have one herself, because she is an American, and a democrat, and so it is better that she learn to manage on her own. While Thomas Jefferson finds this sentiment wholly commendable (indeed, Patsy is only repeating what he has said to her himself), he tells her that he is worried she is not spending enough time on her Greek and Latin and believes that she would do better work if Sally Hemings were there to attend to her domestic needs.

“What do you think, then?” he asks.

“C’est comme vous voudrez, cher Papa,” she answers. “My duty is to accede.”

“Excellent! I will inform the abbess of our decision this week, and Sally will return to the school with you next Sunday.”

But Sally Hemings does not return to the school with Patsy and Polly the following Sunday, nor the one after. And on both occasions, when Patsy asks her father why, he tells her that he has been too busy to write to the abbess but that he will do so immediately. He never does do so, however, and Patsy finally concludes that either he has changed his mind or he has simply forgotten.

Thomas Jefferson contemplates the rock that is his self. There are days when it seems massive: not a planet but possibly a lesser moon or a comet. What most troubles him about his self is a quality that might be referred to as its weight, or its rigidity, or its implacable constancy. There are times when Thomas Jefferson feels there is no greater limit on his freedom than his self.

Here is a definition of life, or of the world, or of this medium in which being elaborates: an infinity of possibilities —and it is Thomas Jefferson’s self that prevents him from fully inhabiting this medium.

Oh, the noble sentiments he wishes he were capable of feeling! Oh, the moments of golden contentment that he has turned into debaucheries of self-loathing! Oh, the cherubic unities of actuality and belief that his self has suffocated in the crib with a pillow!

The Princess Lubomirsky will be throwing a ball on New Year’s Eve, and Patsy and Polly insist that they must have new gowns. Thomas Jefferson agrees — especially as Patsy has reached that age when, as he puts it, “impressions are of the highest consideration.” He also says that if Sally Hemings is going to attend them at so lavish an event, she, too, needs to make a suitable impression.

The dressmaker, Madame Palatin, has a nose like a hawk’s beak, a figure like a pigeon and she hoots like an owl as she measures Patsy and Polly, telling Thomas Jefferson she has never seen two such pretty girls. “Comme des princesses!” she adds. “Vraiment!” Her voice descends to one of the lower mammalian registers, however, when it is time to measure Sally Hemings. “Dépêche-toi!” she grunts, and although Sally Hemings leaps from her chair by the door, the old woman grunts again, “Dépêche-toi!”

As she jabs her thumb into Sally Hemings’s armpit and runs her measuring strip down the girl’s ribs to her waist, she complains to Thomas Jefferson about the character of modern serving girls. “Elles sont toutes si paresseuses,” she says with a sigh.

Then she is grunting again. “Tourne-toi! Vite!” She grabs Sally Hemings by the elbow and yanks her around. “Tourne-toi donc! Tu as les oreilles bouchées, ou quoi?”

When Thomas Jefferson suggests that it is not necessary to be so rough, Madame Palatin tells him that he is spoiling the girl and that there is only one thing servant girls understand. Then she flicks her cupped hand in the air, just missing the back of Sally Hemings’s head.

A month later Thomas Jefferson, his daughters and Sally Hemings are back in Madame Palatin’s studio. Polly, who is now eleven, is the first to try on her gown, and when she comes out of the dressing room and takes a turn in front of the mirrors, Madame Palatin exclaims that she has never seen a more beautiful child. Polly’s gown is very plain — blue silk, with a high, square neck and a lace vest — but her father and sister applaud as she grins and rocks from foot to foot. From her seat by the door, Sally Hemings also applauds.

Patsy’s gown is truly spectacular: rose pink silk with rose red trim, an embroidered band around the base of the petticoat and a lace bodice cut to reveal the uppermost swellings of her bosom. She swirls in front of the mirror, the skirt of her gown swaying in a waltzlike rhythm, even after she has stopped and is stepping toward her grinning, applauding family. She curtsies with a shy smile that reminds Thomas Jefferson of her mother on the night that, for the one and only time, she and he performed a duet in front of an audience. But Martha’s shyness that night was partly due to the fact that she knew she had not played her best. She hated public events of any kind, in fact. Patsy has no such anxiety. A good thing, Thomas Jefferson thinks. He cannot help but connect Martha’s almost constant fearfulness with her early death.

Madame Palatin seems to feel that there is no need for Sally Hemings to try on her gown, but Thomas Jefferson insists she have her turn.

“Oh, no!” the girl cries from her chair by the door. Her face is bright red, and she can’t lift her eyes from her lap. “Really! There’s no need.”

“On the contrary,” says Thomas Jefferson. “If we find at home that something is wrong with it, then we will have to come all the way back, and that would be a waste of valuable time.”

Madame Palatin holds the gown out by its shoulder so that its dangling skirt just clears the floor. It will fit like a second skin, she declares, but if the gentleman insists, “C’est comme vous voudrez.”

The gown is less intricately ornamented than Polly’s and in yellow silk with a slightly higher neckline and a full, lace-frilled underskirt. Sally Hemings emerges in small steps from the dressing room, her gaze lowered to the floor, her forehead and cheeks crimson and, Thomas Jefferson can just make out, her lips crumpled and white in an attempt to suppress a grin.