Stephen O'Connor - Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

“How did you get away?” Thomas Jefferson asks.

“ La dame helped me. La dame with the onion cart and the jerky. She called the man fou and cochon. And when she picked me up off the ground, the crowd called her traîtresse , too. And the man. ‘À mort! À mort!’ he kept saying. I thought he would—” Sally Hemings looks down at her glass.” But la dame said she wasn’t afraid of stupid children. ‘Crétin!’ she said. Everyone was shouting at her. They all seemed to have gone mad. But then she picked me up and helped me walk out of the market. And no one did anything or followed us. They just let us go. None of it made any sense. They just let us go, and they were still shouting when la dame bade me good-bye on the next street. I didn’t understand any of it. She didn’t either.”

“These are remarkable times, Sally,” says Thomas Jefferson. “Do you know what the tiers état is?”

“No.”

“It is the French term for common people. The French common people are rising up against their monarch. Our spirit of republicanism is a great wave rolling around the world, and right now it is cresting here in France.”

Sally Hemings is quiet. She does not meet Thomas Jefferson’s eye, and he realizes he has been insensitive.

“I’m sorry, Sally. I don’t mean to imply that what you experienced was not… terrible. I only hoped that you might… I don’t know—” Thomas Jefferson falls silent.

There is a long moment during which he wonders if it is time for her to leave.

“But why did the man attack me?” she says at last. “I am not the king. I am not a princess or an aristocrat. Moi aussi, j’appartiens au tiers état. ”

“Perhaps he was only angry. Perhaps he saw your clothes and decided you were the servant of an aristocrat. Though that is still madness. Revolutions become necessary when one people is oppressed by another. But that does not mean they are an unalloyed good. There is no such thing as moral purity in history. Even the most beneficent of revolutions necessarily entails injustice and the shedding of innocent blood. Our one consolation during moments like this is that they shall be followed by the dawning of a better world—” He cuts himself off, once again feeling he has been insensitive. “I am terribly, terribly sorry, however, that you should have suffered as you did today. I feel as if it is my fault.”

Sally Hemings looks Thomas Jefferson straight in the eye. “Why?”

He is blushing. He shrugs. “Mrs. Adams and Captain Ramsey both thought that you should have returned to Virginia straight from London, and… Well, I, too, have often thought that would have been better—”

“I am glad I stayed here,” says Sally Hemings. She is still looking Thomas Jefferson straight in the eye. “I have become a different person in Paris, and I am glad of it.”

Thomas Jefferson is standing up. A restlessness has come into his legs and eyes. “I am very happy to hear that, Sally. Still, I think it might be best if you did not go to the market alone for the next week or so. I doubt that these difficulties will last very long. But caution is advisable for the time being. Venture outside only in the company of another servant. I’ll speak to Petit about it immediately.”

Sally Hemings is standing up. She puts her tumbler down on Thomas Jefferson’s desk. “Thank you. That did help me feel better.” She smiles but avoids Thomas Jefferson’s gaze. “Well, I better let Jimmy know about the onions.”

Thomas Jefferson continues to stand behind his desk for a long moment after she leaves, his smile gradually fading. He takes his frock coat off the hook behind the door. His work is done for the day. It is time to see what is happening in the streets.

A day has passed. Sally Hemings is standing in the doorway to Thomas Jefferson’s study, but so silently that he doesn’t notice until she draws her breath to speak. “Mr. Jefferson,” she says, softly but emphatically. She looks stunned. Her eyes are wide but focused on nothing. The rest of her face seems frozen.

“Are you all right, Sally?” he says. “Is something wrong?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“Certainly.” Thomas Jefferson has been writing a letter. He wipes the tip of his quill with a rag and flips shut the top of his inkwell. “Sit down.” He gestures at the chair in front of his desk.

“No, thank you.”

He places a piece of blotting paper atop the letter he has been writing and smooths it down with the side of his fist.

Sally Hemings has taken a couple of steps into the room, and when he looks at her, she takes a couple more, but not toward him, only away from the door.

“What is the matter?” he says.

She swallows. And when she speaks, her voice is trembling. “I have something to say.”

“All right.” He folds his hands on top of his desk, in part to conceal his own slight trembling. When she doesn’t speak, he asks, “What is it?”

“I have been struggling with my conscience.” She is silent a long moment, then takes a deep breath. “And I have realized that I must… that unless I tell you—”

Her words cut off as if she has been grabbed by the throat. Her wide eyes and still face express something closer to fear.

“Go ahead, Sally,” Thomas Jefferson says softly, his own throat going dry. “What is it you have to say?”

“I have to tell you that you shouldn’t—”

Again she stops, looking so frightened and lost.

Her face hardens. “I have to tell you,” she says, “that—” Another pause, but this time she is only gathering strength. Her words come all in a burst. “I will never forgive you for what you did.”

A tremor runs through her whole body, and then she is looking at him with a fierce alertness.

For reasons that Thomas Jefferson does not comprehend, he is glad at what she has said. He has stopped trembling.

“You are perfectly justified,” he says at last. “I neither deserve nor expect your forgiveness. But I am sorry. Very sorry.”

Sally Hemings continues to stare into his eyes, breathing heavily — and looking utterly beautiful. She says nothing.

“I don’t expect you to accept my apology,” he says. “I only want you to know what I feel.”

Once again her words come in a burst. “Why did you do it?”

Thomas Jefferson gasps. “Hah!”

“Why are you laughing?”

“I’m sorry. I was just surprised.”

Sally Hemings has taken another step toward the center of the room.

“I had no good reason,” he says. “I was a fool. And I had had too much wine. Also…” He looks away from her, picks up his quill and gives it a turn. Then he puts it back on its tray, looks at her and shrugs. “The most foolish thing of all, I suppose, is that I hoped that you might”—he looks away again—“welcome my… attentions.”

When he looks back at her, her expression has softened, though she is still looking him straight in the eyes. Her voice is so quiet he can hardly hear it.

“I didn’t.”

“I know.”

They look into each other’s eyes for a long moment. Then Sally Hemings turns her gaze toward a framed map of France on the wall.

“Perhaps you had better go, Sally,” he says.

“Yes, Mr. Jefferson.”

She is gone from the room in three steps.

The 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.