Chapter Twenty-Nine
LONDON
England
Jefferson wrote that his youngest daughter would soon arrive and asked me to look after her until he could come from Paris
to fetch her. It was a favor I was glad to do, at least until the little waif arrived at my door . . .
There I found the eight-year-old clinging to the leg of the ship’s captain who delivered her. My frustrated butler had summoned
me, unable to persuade the little girl to cross the threshold.
Now I wasn’t having any more luck.
Whereas her older sister Patsy had the look of her father stamped on her freckled features, the younger Miss Jefferson must’ve
favored her mother—delicate as a sparrow, with darker hair and eyes.
I assumed a girl of such delicate frame would have a soft temperament to match. But I realized how mistaken I was on that
count when Polly refused to come inside. “You’re just going to trick me like everyone else!”
The captain’s cheeks colored at her outburst, explaining, “Miss Polly’s relations enticed her onto the ship with a promise
of picnic and play with her nursemaid here. We were told not to set sail until after the girl fell asleep for a nap.”
With that, the captain’s eyes flicked to the shadowed portion of my stoop, where I was startled to see another girl—this one
a taller copy of the first, and not much older. She must be a relation, but I’d eat my bonnet if she was any older than fourteen.
Why, Mr. Jefferson had said his daughter would be traveling in the company of an old nurse. How could his relations entrust his precious daughter into the charge of another girl scarcely old enough to care for herself?
“This is Sally,” the captain said, drawing the servant girl into the sunlight, at which point I realized that if she were
kin to Polly Jefferson, it could never be acknowledged. For Sally was a mulatto, with amber eyes and a complexion of pale
but unmistakable fawn.
Nevertheless, she had the temerity to correct the captain about her name. “Sally Hemings,” she said, with a curtsey.
I recognized the name and smiled. “In Paris, Mr. Jefferson introduced me to James Hemings. Is there a relation?”
Sally gave a prideful tilt of her chin. “My brother.”
“Well then, you see, we all know each other after a fashion. We shall get to know each other even better over some cakes and
lemonade. Won’t you like that, girls?”
It had been a while since I dealt with children so young, and I practically had to pry Polly’s hand out of the captain’s so
she could take a seat at my table. There, with tears on her face, she gulped down lemonade. Then she shoved bites of cake
into her mouth like a savage. She’d been five weeks at sea and, but for Sally, with men only, so that she was as rough as
a little sailor.
She continued to express how very angry she was at all the deceptions; I was apprehensive that she’d be a troublesome child.
But my heart went out to her when she began to sob all over again.
“Now, Polly,” I said, gently. “Why must you sob? Soon your father will come fetch you to France, which is a marvel. You know,
I met your sister after she crossed the ocean, and I didn’t see her cry one tear.”
“Patsy is older,” Polly blubbered. “She ought to do better, and she had her papa with her besides.”
“He’s your papa, too, is he not?”
“I don’t know him or you. You’re a stranger!”
What was I to say to that? It was a tragedy that in having served his country so well, Mr. Jefferson’s own daughter did not
know him. And I was momentarily struck with a pang for my own boys. They were old enough to know us, but would they grow up
feeling themselves to have been similarly abandoned?
Thankfully, just then, I heard Nabby in the entryway. “What in the world is all that wailing?”
I hustled out of my chair with very little decorum to greet her and my grandson. “Oh, Nabby, I’m so glad you happened by! It may help little Miss Jefferson to see another young person.”
“I’m hardly a young person anymore,” Nabby said, smiling down at her baby. “Unless you mean your grandson. But surely that’s
not Miss Jefferson crying in your parlor?”
“I’m afraid so. Come help me reconcile her to making new friends.”
Nabby surrendered my grandson to a servant and joined me in the parlor, where the younger Miss Jefferson continued to wail.
“More strangers!”
“No, no, Miss Polly,” I insisted. “This is my daughter, and we’re family friends. Your father was our guest here in this very
house not long ago.”
“We have a portrait to prove it,” Nabby said, by way of sudden inspiration. “Your papa posed for it when last he visited.”
We took her to see the portrait and I asked, “Would we have Mr. Jefferson’s likeness in our home if we weren’t the best of
friends?”
Alas, the painting didn’t comfort Polly, who stared forlornly. “I don’t know who that is.”
“I recognize him,” Sally said, helpfully, but without any identifiable emotion.
I reached for Polly’s hand. “Well, you girls may both rely on us to give you every attention and care.”
“And fun,” Nabby promised. “There are so many amusements to be had in London.”
I took up the suggestion. “Yes! We’ll take you to the theater at Sadler’s Wells for puppet shows, treats, and all the fun
you can imagine.”
Polly blinked her tears away, so I thought we were making progress. But then she told me, with raw emotion, “I’d rather see
Captain Ramsay again for just one more moment than have all the fun in the world.”
“Oh, my heart aches for this honest little one,” Nabby murmured.
Mine did, too.
Polly Jefferson was another child who had been sacrificed for her father’s public service. Neither she nor any of my children had any say in it. Though none of them had less say, I supposed, than Sally Hemings.
Once the two Virginian girls were ensconced in their beds for a rest after their travels, my daughter said, “Mr. Jefferson
had better bring Patsy when he comes. Or Polly may not be reconciled to going with him. And you must persuade him to send
Sally back to Virginia.”
I shook my head. “His kin should’ve sent an older woman to help manage things, but after Sally has come all this way, to subject
her immediately again to the sea? That might be too cruel. Besides, Sally seems to be a good-natured girl and fond of Polly.”
Nabby took a deep breath. “Mama, people in France already whisper about Mr. Jefferson’s chef and how unseemly it is for the spokesman of liberty to carry
with him a man in bondage.”
“You’ve heard what Mr. Jefferson has written about slavery. He surely has a plan for the gradual emancipation of his people.”
Nabby tilted her head. “Are you going to pretend you haven’t noticed the resemblance between those girls?”
My cheeks burned. “You cannot think that Mr. Jefferson, of all people . . .” I trailed off, not daring to put into words the
sin for which she apparently suspected him. “There’s a family connection with the Hemingses through his wife’s father.”
Poor Sally was a living example of race-mixing, from which we’d been taught all our lives to recoil. I was still, in fact,
smarting from my own visceral reaction to seeing the play Othello, in which the romance between the dark Moor and the fair Desdemona had disturbed me because of either the prejudices of my
education or a real antipathy for which I ought to be ashamed.
But my words confirmed the true wickedness; masters abused their servants in the most depraved ways—even in families as fine
as the Jeffersons. And this elicited a shudder of disgust from my daughter.
In the end, I reluctantly agreed that Sally should be sent back to Virginia. And I tried to encourage this in the letter I
sent. But while we awaited Jefferson’s reply, it was wonderful to have children in the house again.
After a trip to puppet shows with our grandson Willy Magpie, and a visit to purchase some new clothes for both Polly and Sally, the younger Miss Jefferson decided I wasn’t such a frightening stranger after all.
Polly was promptly restored to the amiable and lovely child one might’ve expected her to be. In fact, she quickly became the
favorite of every creature in the house. Even John, who exclaimed, “Do you know that impudent little filly sidled up to me
in my library today, slipped into my lap without so much as a by your leave, pulled a book down from my desk, and began reading to me!”
Far from being annoyed, John was smitten. “I cannot understand why you so foolishly wrote to tell Jefferson that his child
was here. We should’ve kept it our secret.”
I laughed. “I was foolish indeed. Now I’m loath to part with her.”
Truthfully, I’d have been happy to keep Sally with us indefinitely, too. She was a neat and modest girl who confided that
she had a mother in Virginia who wished her to see the world and considered this a rare opportunity. “My mama volunteered
me to go because she wants for me to set foot in France.”
An odd phrasing, I thought.
But then I wondered if Sally’s mother knew of the French Freedom Principle, which held, in theory, that any enslaved person
was emancipated when setting foot on French soil.
There are no slaves in France, they said. This was, unfortunately, mostly a fiction. But were I Sally’s mother, would I not have jumped at the chance to
test the legal premise?
“Well, then, you must go to France,” I told Sally.
For how many times had I vowed to do all in my power to protect my children? I would not be the one to thwart another mother’s
effort to do the same. So, I no longer tried to persuade Mr. Jefferson to send Sally home—even though I knew it would mean
less embarrassment for our country and our diplomatic corps. Indeed, my indignation over the whole matter grew the more I
got to know the sweet, demure Sally whose quiet reserve so reminded me of my own Nabby. Indeed, our good friend quite deserved
to be embarrassed to still hold people in bondage—and I intended to press him on the matter when he came to London to fetch
the girls.
As it happened, however, Jefferson did not come to fetch the girls. Instead, he sent a French servant, which set Polly again into a frantic state.
Men! Jefferson was as reckless as my husband had been sending Charles home from the Netherlands. And now I wondered if there’d
been some well-meaning Dutch woman warning my husband the way I had warned Jefferson, only to be ignored.
For how was I to answer Jefferson’s daughter when she angrily said, “As I left all my friends in Virginia to see my father,
I did think he’d take the pains to come for me himself and not send a man I cannot understand. So, I will go, but pray don’t
ask me not to cry about it, Mrs. Adams.”
“In your place, my dear, I might cry, too.”
For however great my fondness for Thomas Jefferson—and it was very great indeed—I felt sorry to count him amongst the men
who were better statesmen than they were fathers. My own husband included on that score.