Stephen O'Connor - Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

As a child I had little comprehension of how much harder the laborers worked than did my mother or any of the other skilled servants among whom I lived, and so whenever I happened upon them being marched along the roads at sunrise and sunset, I tended to see their filthy clothing, their lowered heads and sullen expressions as manifestations of their fundamental character, rather than of their exhaustion, their bitterness and the injustice of their lot. I was curious about these people and especially about their children, who seemed louder, tougher and more daring than the children who lived near the great house, but I was also afraid of them and kept my distance. At night, when we would hear the laughter and songs, and sometimes the screams and angry bellowing that would come up the hill from the field laborers’ cabins, my mother would mutter, “Heathen savages,” and offer a prayer of thanks to Jesus for having saved her.

Like most small children, I never doubted that what my mother told me was the truth, and so I shared both her pride and her disdain. If I had imagined that anyone at Monticello might have been slaves, it would have been the field laborers, but certainly not us. I considered myself lucky to have been born into a family of such intelligent and industrious men and women, and to be leading what I could only believe was a good life. When my mother told me to get down on my knees and thank Jesus, the gratitude I offered up was sincere. And yet from a very early age, a small part of me knew — or rather felt, for I could not allow myself to truly know — that my good and fortunate life was not what it seemed.

When I was five or six, a circus came to Charlottesville and my mother decided to take me to it on a Sunday — her day off from her duties as Mrs. Jefferson’s body servant. Everyone was talking about the circus’s dancing bear and trick riders, but I was most eager to see the acrobats, who, from my mother’s description, I thought could actually fly and so must have had wings like angels. I was also very excited because my mother dressed me in my favorite gown, which was dark blue with red trim on the hems of the sleeves and skirt. It had been passed down to me from my sisters Thenia and Critta, but it had originally belonged to Mrs. Jefferson when she was a girl.

We were in the kitchen of the great house getting some water and bread to take with us on the ride into town when Mrs. Jefferson suddenly appeared. I all but ran up to her, hoping that she would notice that I was wearing her gown.

“Ah, Betty!” she said, not giving me a glance. “I’ve been looking for you all over. I need your help.”

My mother put her hand on my shoulder. “But I’m taking Sally to the circus.”

Mrs. Jefferson seemed to notice me for the first time and gave me a curt smile before speaking to my mother in a firm voice. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid this is an emergency, and there won’t be time for that.”

My mother darted her eyes at me, and for an instant she looked shocked, as if she had just been slapped — but in the next instant she shook my shoulder, her face knotted with irritation, and said firmly, “You be good, baby girl!” She followed Mrs. Jefferson out of the room, as if the whole idea that she and I might have gone to the circus had been my own foolish fancy.

This was the moment when I had my first intimation that my proud and strong mother was afraid of Mrs. Jefferson — a woman whom I had always thought of as elegant and kindly. And as that stunning realization dilated within my consciousness, my mother’s fear instantly became connected to dozens of other odd events, many of them ordinary (a grimace turning into a smile, a heavy sigh followed by a cheerful “I’m coming!”) and a few so troubling that they seemed inscribed with fire upon my brain (the time my sister Mary, who was already a grown woman when I was born, cried out and clutched my mother’s arm when she saw Mr. Corbet, one of the overseers, walking toward her and then calmly let him lead her away; or the night my mother’s friend Johnny sat in the corner of our cabin, speechless, his face like stone, his eyes fixed on something invisible). All of these events seemed to be instances of adults not allowing themselves to admit to plain, if very troubling, facts. Even as I stood in that kitchen after my mother had gone, I experienced another such evasion, though a far more modest one: Ursula crouched beside me and said, “Don’t worry, honey pie — that circus isn’t any fun anyway!”

All of these recognitions came together in a mind too young to make sense of them, but I do believe that they were the origin of an unsettling feeling or vision with which I became afflicted not long afterward. Night after night throughout my childhood, as I lay upon the verge of sleep, the events of my day — conversations, squabbles, games and chores — would come back to me but seem to be surrounded by something that I came to think of as “the deadness.” I didn’t have a clear conception of the deadness, except that it was bleak, dark and profoundly frightening. And in its shadow all the events of my day, which had seemed so vital and real as they were happening, would become thin and pale — a pathetic charade. There were nights when the deadness was so all-encompassing that I would writhe in panic, feeling I could not take enough air into my lungs and wanting desperately to escape….

Facts

The average life expectancy at birth in late-eighteenth-century Virginia was thirty-eight years for males and forty-one years for females. The equivalent figures for nonwhite men and women were thirty-three and thirty-five years, respectively. If a white male were to survive adolescence, his life expectancy rose to about fifty years, whereas the female life expectancy did not increase appreciably, in part because four percent of women died in childbirth. The average woman, white or black, had six or seven children, a third of whom would die in infancy. One factor contributing to these high mortality rates is that doctors and midwives did not habitually wash their hands before procedures until the late nineteenth century.

Women’s finances were controlled by their fathers before marriage and, afterward, by their husbands. If a widow or unmarried woman was not independently wealthy or being supported by relatives, she could become a governess, shop clerk, seamstress, domestic servant, field-worker or prostitute. The wages for most legitimate jobs were so low, however, that many single women, especially if they had children, had no choice but to make money on the side by prostitution. It is also true that female domestic servants were commonly expected to grant their masters sexual favors — discreetly, of course. Those who were not discreet enough generally lost their jobs and, their reputations ruined, often could find no other work than prostitution. On average a woman lived four years after becoming a prostitute, with the most common causes of death being venereal disease, murder, suicide and alcoholism.

The male head of a household was called “master,” as were male shopkeepers and teachers. One attribute all of these men had in common was that they were allowed to beat their subordinates. Although violence within the home was generally looked down upon, husbands were understood to have the right to physically punish their wives for such transgressions as adultery and persistent insubordination, and most people considered the occasional beating a necessary incentive in children’s moral and even academic education, so much so that teachers often had a rack of canes behind their desk or a paddle leaning against the wall in the corner.

Shopkeepers — craftsmen especially — were allowed to beat their employees for moral failings such as laziness or stealing — although the term “employee” does not adequately represent the relationship between the master and the one or more boys or girls who worked for him as apprentices or indentured servants and who were bound to him, generally until the age of twenty-one, receiving no compensation for their work other than food, clothing and a place to sleep — often just the floor of the shop. Industrial workers of the time got a mere pittance for their labors and worked in brutal and dangerous conditions that could make today’s sweatshops seem luxurious.