Stephen O'Connor - Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

Thomas Jefferson asks these people how it is possible that this machine, moving so rapidly hundreds of feet above the countryside, should itself be a sort of countryside, but none of them seem to hear, or even to notice him standing upon the road.

M. de Corny and five others were then sent to ask arms of M. de Launay, governor of the Bastile. they found a great collection of people already before the place, and they immediately planted a flag of truce, which was answered by a like flag hoisted on the Parapet. the deputation prevailed on the people to fall back a little, advanced themselves to make their demand of the Governor, and in that instant, a discharge from the Bastile killed four persons, of those nearest to the deputies. the deputies retired. I happened to be at the house of M. de Corny, when he returned to it, and received from him a narrative of these transactions. on the retirement of the deputies, the people rushed forward & almost in an instant, were in possession of a fortification, defended by 100. men, of infinite strength, which in other times, had stood several regular sieges, and had never been taken. how they forced their entrance has never been explained. they took all the arms, discharged the prisoners, and such of the garrison as were not killed in the first moment of fury, carried the Governor and Lt. Governor to the Place de Grève (the place of public execution,) cut off their heads, and sent them thro’ the city in triumph to the Palais royal. about the same instant a treacherous correspondence having been discovered in M. de Flesselles, prevot des marchands, they seized him in the Hotel de ville, where he was in the execution of his office, and cut off his head. These events, carried imperfectly to Versailles, were the subject of two successive deputations from the assembly to the king, to both of which he gave dry and hard answers for nobody had as yet been permitted to inform him truly and fully of what had passed at Paris. but at night the Duke de Liancourt forced his way into the king’s bedchamber, and obliged him to hear a full and animated detail of the disasters of the day in Paris. he went to bed fearfully impressed.

— Thomas Jefferson

The Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson

January 6, 1821

“Be reasonable,” Thomas Jefferson tells Sally Hemings. They are walking along the Seine, just beside the place Louis XV, where, less than two weeks earlier, a crowd had stoned a detachment of German cavalry and the fall of the Bastille had become inevitable. There are small piles of stones all around the square, but otherwise the horse and pedestrian traffic moves with all the tranquil chaos of an ordinary evening in July. The setting sun has turned the buildings on the far shore goldfish bright. The clouds overhead are fire-colored, and the sky behind them is tinged with green. “All I am saying,” says Thomas Jefferson, “is that in regard to the issue of slavery, French law is ambiguous.”

“But slavery is forbidden—”

Thomas Jefferson shakes his head and speaks in a low, measured voice. “The law also upholds the rights of property owners.”

“But how can two laws—”

“The law is not coherent,” says Thomas Jefferson. “Laws are enacted by different people for different reasons at different times. But once laws exist, their only function is to give us the vocabulary by which we may conduct our disputes. And when that vocabulary is ambiguous or contradictory, laws can be interpreted to mean almost anything, which is one reason this country — despite having abolished slavery — has made more money from the slave trade than any nation on earth.”

Sally Hemings’s eyebrows buckle and her mouth falls open. “But the marquis—”

Thomas Jefferson silences her by giving her smooth, soft hand a quick squeeze. She turns her head away and looks out over the river. He feels a deep quiet growing within her, which is answered by an aching weakness within his own chest.

“But the law is not the chief consideration,” he says. “Think about the life you would lead were you to remain here.”

Sally Hemings swings her head back around and opens her mouth to speak, but he cuts her off.

“What sort of freedom would you actually have? As Patsy and Polly’s companion, you have friends and access to the finest drawing rooms. But were you to stay on here alone, you could not continue living at the Hôtel, nor in arrangements even remotely comparable. And do you think that Madame de Corny would invite you to her Sunday afternoons? Who would pay for your gowns and shoes once these wear out? How would you feed yourself?”

Thomas Jefferson licks his lips, which have become dry.

“But I don’t want to stay here,” says Sally Hemings. “I was only asking why I could not be free.”

“What have you to gain by freedom? I have already told you that within the bounds of discretion you will live as if you are free at Monticello. Were I to formally give you freedom and you were to remain at my home, the whole world would know why, and we could have no life together. And were you to leave Monticello, it would be the same in Virginia as it is here: You would have to make your way in the world entirely alone.”

With these words Thomas Jefferson knows he has won, that Sally Hemings cannot refute any aspect of his argument. And yet merely by stating the simple facts, he feels he has done her a great cruelty and that the deep quiet within her has grown so big it has become a cold, dark world in which she might dwell but where he can never follow.

Thomas Jefferson has entirely misunderstood Sally Hemings — in part because she would not allow her true meaning to be clear, even only to herself. The real reason she broached the topic of her freedom was that she thought that only if she were free might it one day be possible for her to become his wife. And now she knows that this is one eventuality that will never come to pass.

The eye, like the camera, sees the idiot leers that afflict the lover’s lips, the drunken discoordination between his right eye and his left and the puffing of his cheeks in the winds of speech. But all such manifestations of ungainliness and deformity transpire unperceived amid those countless other accidents and expressions that, one after another, are combined within the mind into the lover’s perfect beauty.

Sally Hemings holds on to nothing but her book on the roaring subway. Every now and then, a shimmy or lurch of the car might cause her shoulder to touch a stainless-steel pole or her back to bump against the door, but she seems oblivious. Thomas Jefferson notices the faint freckling on her cheeks and nose, the fullness of her lips and that distinct line — almost a ridge — where her upper lip meets the skin of her face. He remembers how he used to cover those lips with many tiny kisses. He remembers the taste of her mouth, and her breath, and the feeling of her tongue moving. He remembers how one time when he leaned forward to kiss her, his forehead bumped the stiff brim of her military-style cap, which afterward he took to calling her “chastity cap.” He remembers her smiling the first time he said that. He can hear the sound of her laughter.

“Come in!” says Betty Hemings, stepping through the door of her own cabin. “Come in! Come in! Come in!” She is carrying a leather bag, which she puts down on the dirt floor. Sally Hemings stops in the doorway to look around the cabin, with its knocked-together furniture and mud-chinked walls.

“My Lord!” says Betty, stepping back and putting her hands on her hips to really take her daughter in, now that they are finally alone. “Look at those fine clothes you wearing! Anybody think you Mr. Jefferson’s daughter, they see you wearing clothes like that!”