America’s First Daughter

Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

London, 26 June 1787

To Thomas Jefferson from Abigail Adams

I congratulate you upon the safe arrival of your little daughter. She’s in fine health and a lovely little girl, but at present everything is strange to her. I told her that I didn’t see her sister cry once when she came to Europe. Polly replied that her sister was older and ought to do better, and had her papa with her besides. I showed her your portrait, but she didn’t know it. If you could bring Miss Jefferson with you, it would reconcile her little sister to the rest of the journey. The old nurse you expected to have attended her was sick and unable to come. Instead, she has a girl about 15 or 16 with her, one Sally Hemings.

I WAS READY TO FETCH P OLLY AT ONCE . But my father bewildered me by sending a French servant to escort Polly from London instead. And I was outraged when Mr. Short let slip the reason why.

Papa had urged Mrs. Cosway to return to Paris. The shameless woman had agreed, and because she was on her way, Papa didn’t want to chance the trip to fetch Polly for fear he’d miss his paramour!

Maria. Maria. Maria.

That night, when Papa kissed me good night, I bit down on the impudence that tempted my tongue. But Mrs. Adams showed none of my reserve in her next letter, in which she tartly informed us:

Polly told me this morning that since she had left all her friends in Virginia to come over the ocean to see you, you might have taken the pains to come here for her yourself. I haven’t the heart to force her into a carriage against her will and send her from me in a frenzy, as I know will be the case, unless I can reconcile her to going.

I was glad Abigail Adams’s letter shamed Papa.

I took greater solace that Mrs. Adams would reconcile Polly to join us and that I’d soon have my sister with me once more. After all, I knew from experience that people found it extraordinarily difficult to hold out against Mrs. Adams!

Weeks passed before the welcome sound of the hired coach turned from the rue de Berri and into the courtyard of the Hotel de Langeac. Hearing it, I rushed from the salon out to the front steps. As I held my breath, two girls stepped down from the carriage, their eyes wide with wonder and uncertainty.

Oh, dear Polly!

How changed she was. Still petite, with the blue eyes I remembered so well, but now a grown girl that I might’ve passed on the street without knowing. And yet, when I tried, I could see my mother in miniature.

“Dearest Polly, I am overjoyed to see you,” I said, hurrying down the steps.

My little sister turned shy at the sight of me, sucking her lips in as she examined my face. I smiled brightly, holding my arms out to her, but they drooped when I realized that, in fact, she had totally forgotten me.

The pain was an arrow to the heart—as sharp as any wound I’ve suffered.

Reluctantly, Polly accepted my embrace but then squirmed away, her gaze swinging over the house’s facade. “Everything here is so grand. . . .”

I grasped her hand. “I know. Paris is a wonder. You’ll love it here. Come. Papa’s eager to see you.”

As I guided her to the steps, I glanced over my shoulder at the slave girl. I hadn’t seen Sally in many years and she’d changed, too. If I’d ever doubted that Sally was my mother’s half-sister, I was convinced the moment she said hello. She had my mother’s voice. The soft lilt of her greeting was so familiar. And, in truth, her appearance was strikingly similar to my sister’s. Sally was a mulatto of fair complexion, but not so perfectly fair that the French wouldn’t suspect she was a slave. And I worried what our French friends would think. I remembered the words spoken against my father’s reputation as our slaveholding spokesman for freedom . But perhaps Sally’s resemblance to Polly would be to our advantage, for it was perfectly common here for lesser relations to take on positions as servants to their wealthier kin.

Like all our Hemings servants, Sally had been raised at the hearth of our family; she’d make a very fit companion in Paris, where she might learn a good trade, just as her brother had been doing with his cooking. When we entered the entrance hall, Jimmy Hemings stood waiting, dressed in his chef’s toque and work uniform. He bowed and offered a warm welcome to my sister. And his.

While the Hemings siblings celebrated their own reunion, I led Polly into my father’s study, where he leaped to his feet at the sight of us. My little sister stumbled back, still clinging to my hand as my father went down on one knee. “Don’t be frightened, child.” And when she smiled a little, he asked, “You know me, Polly, don’t you?”

She shrugged apologetically. “I think, upon seeing you, I recollect something of you, sir.”

It was another barb that dug its way into me. I had dreamed of restoring the happy little family that had laughed and sung in a wilderness cabin while hiding from the British, yet my sister didn’t even know us.

By evening, Polly and I started to overcome the deep sense of separation, and I hoped she’d spend the night in my bed, but she wanted to sleep with Sally.

“We had to trick Miss Polly onto the ship,” the slave girl explained. “Mrs. Eppes lured her onto the boat for an outing with all their children, then we played with Miss Polly till she was so tuckered out she fell asleep in my arms. When she was asleep, the Eppes family tiptoed off the ship and we set sail. Poor child woke up at sea with no way home but to swim.”

Poor Polly . The sudden surge of sympathy redoubled my determination to do my duty by her. And I instructed myself to take no offense at the closeness she seemed to share with Sally.

By week’s end, we enrolled Polly in school with me where we finally bonded over our studies. I tutored her in French, not wanting her to experience the teasing I had. I enjoyed teaching her and basked when she complimented me as being a patient and encouraging instructor.

Polly was intelligent—if occasionally too strong-willed—and quick to make friends; she adjusted far more easily than I ever did. She had an independence I admired, even if it caused Papa to fret. Indeed, she took him to task, boldly professing her resentment that he did not go to England to fetch her.

She couldn’t know it was because of Mrs. Cosway. I never told Polly how that woman clouded his judgment. No, I held that secret for him with all the others.

S HE DIDN’T LOVE HIM . By God, nor ought she to have loved him. Why couldn’t he see it? Mrs. Cosway returned to Paris at the end of summer without her husband, and I was no longer too naive to understand her liaison with my father was of a passionately carnal nature. Papa rented an apartment in the hermitage of Mont Calvaire on the pretext that he needed privacy from the bustle of our embassy, and it served to excuse his absences when he indulged in clandestine meetings with his mistress.

But Mrs. Cosway was even less faithful to my father than she was to her husband. When unrest fomented in the city, with the king closing all political clubs and dismissing the parlement, Papa was forced to attend American interests in the midst of the growing crisis, and Mrs. Cosway pouted and complained of it over dinner one night.

I had to keep my gaze trained on my cutlet of chicken for fear of her seeing the exasperation and disapproval on my face. One day, when Papa was away debating the merits of the newly proposed Constitution for the United States, I told her she might take comfort in his absence with the miniatures he’d given us, but she brooded that he hadn’t commissioned them from her .

She apparently had a very high opinion of her own artistic talent.

If Mrs. Cosway loved my father, she’d have been his helpmate in this difficult time. If she’d loved him, she’d have been a balm to soothe his agitation. Instead, after only a few weeks, whenever Papa called upon her, she managed not to be at home. Then she called upon Papa at our embassy only when she was sure he’d be out. Because of his bad wrist, he couldn’t play the violin for her anymore. And they stopped going to the follies or to the royal gardens or to the opera. She preferred to hold court at the reputedly beautiful Polish princess’s salon, while Papa was swamped by a storm of political chaos.

I shielded my little sister from all of it, and the convent was our refuge. And I was comforted by the routine of the place, secretly slipping in to attend mass, for I felt the wont of God. Alas, on Sundays we were often at the Hotel de Langeac, where I worried for the lack of moral examples for Polly, especially when Mrs. Cosway was our guest.

One quiet afternoon, I asked my sister, “Would you like to learn from Jimmy how to make a pudding?”

Cheekily, Polly replied, “Isn’t Jimmy our chef? If he knows, why should we learn it?”

“Because Mrs. Adams once told me that every woman ought to know how to make a pudding.” The mention of Abigail Adams was the surest way of convincing my little sister, and so Polly trailed behind me into the kitchen, where we found Sally near tears because Jimmy would only speak to her in French.

Pleading amber eyes turned toward me. “Miss Patsy, I’m supposed to take a tray up to your father’s chambers, but Jimmy won’t tell me in a language I know what’s to be on the tray.”

“Jimmy, don’t be churlish,” I said, feeling sympathy for Sally.

But Jimmy insisted, “Sally must learn to speak the language if she’s to live in Paris. Perhaps she’ll learn it when she’s sent away.”

This forced Sally all the way to tears.

“Hush, don’t cry,” I said, a hand on her shoulder, shooting a sharp look of rebuke at Jimmy. “Your brother has gotten very much above his station since coming to France. Why, he’s become so sullen and secretive Papa jests that he’s forgotten how to speak English but doesn’t know how to speak French, either. You aren’t being sent away, Sally.”

Sally stifled her sob in a napkin. “I am . I’m being sent to take the pox.” This was a surprise to me, though it shouldn’t have been. It made sense; my father believed cities like Paris engendered disease. I only wished he’d informed me of his intentions, because it sent Sally into a rare panic. Glaring at her brother, she said, “And I might die of it, so you might never see me again. Then you’ll be sorry!”

She meant this to induce Jimmy’s guilt for teasing her, but Polly’s beautiful blue eyes filled with terrified tears. “Do you mean you’re going to die? Like my baby sister Lucy?”

“Of course not,” I said, trying to comfort both Polly and the servant girl who shared my little sister’s bed at night. “Polly, we took the treatment years ago. So did Jimmy. What’s more, it didn’t hurt very much.” That was at least mostly true. “Why, Polly, you can scarcely remember it, can you?”

Polly shook her head, clinging to Sally’s skirts.

“There,” I announced. “Do you see? If it was so dreadful, don’t you think you’d remember it?” Polly agreed, comforted. Sally seemed to be, too, and Jimmy hugged her before sending her up to my father’s rooms with coffee and a pastry.

But that night, Sally crept from my sister’s bed to perch at the end of mine. “Miss Patsy,” she whispered. “Your father told me I’m likely to get very sick.”

“Yes.” I remembered what my father said when I took the treatment. “We must take upon ourselves a smaller evil to defend against the greater evil. We must take upon ourselves a smaller pain in order to survive. ”

Sally nodded, gravely. “But if I pass, I want Polly to have the little bell your mama left me.”

I remembered it well. “You still have it?”

“In my bundle,” she said of her small satchel of belongings. Moved, I stroked her back between her trembling shoulder blades. “You’re not going to die, Sally. And I’ll care for you. I’ve already had the pox, so I can stay with you until you’re better.” I imagined myself wiping sweat from her brow, brushing her long black hair, and tending to her as gently as Papa once had tended to me.

Alas, that was never a possibility. It wasn’t legal to give the treatment within the city limits, so Sally was sent away to a physician’s care, where she remained quarantined for the next forty days. Which meant two things. First, that we spent forty days in fright for Sally, not knowing if we’d see her alive again. And second, that Polly finally cleaved to me.

Without Sally between us, Polly climbed into my bed. She let me take her shopping for clothes. She let me style her hair. Together we played a hiding and seeking game in Papa’s greenhouse and plucked dried and overripened Indian corn from Papa’s garden to make a display for the table. In short, now that I was fifteen, I took upon myself Polly’s mothering and cared for her as I promised my own mother I would.

Unfortunately, this only seemed to free Papa to pursue his most dangerous impulses. In spite—or perhaps because—of the way Mrs. Cosway made herself unavailable, Papa couldn’t seem to shake her enchantment. When the weather turned cold during Advent, he planned a dinner in Mrs. Cosway’s honor. Though he usually preferred small gatherings of friends, for her, he invited a large crowd of strangers including exiled Polish and Italian royalty. I hoped at least the crowd would avoid the intimacy of a less grand affair.

Jimmy prepared the feast. He was swiftly becoming an accomplished chef in the French style, whereas I still hadn’t mastered pudding, but because I imagined myself to be the hostess of this dinner, he permitted me to chop carrots and onions while he braised beef in a soup of bacon, wine, and brandy. I tried to take note of the amounts of nutmeg and allspice he sprinkled in, but Jimmy worked fast with a pinch here and there, as if he’d committed it to memory. I was obliged to watch a clock for three hours while the concoction boiled away, and while I should’ve been contemplating a way to ask my father’s permission to become a nun, I imagined I was the wife of my father’s handsome secretary and that we had a house together just outside of Paris.

It was only a fantasy, for Mr. Short had never expressed interest in taking a bride, and rumors hadn’t ceased about his love for a married duchess. But I contented myself with harmless fantasies of domestic bliss, whereas the men in my life were apparently content with nothing but real congress with sinful women.

As I dressed that night, I worried for the scandal Mrs. Cosway might cause, fluttering about my papa like a wounded bird. But when she arrived, Papa bounded toward her to kiss her cheek, whereas she turned her head so the kiss landed upon her ear. At dinner, she took the seat beside him as proffered but slid it closer to a count of some renown, with whom she flirted shamelessly. Though I’d desperately hoped Papa would give up this affair, it was painful to watch it unravel before my eyes. Worse, I witnessed the exact moment my father reached to pat her arm, and she recoiled from the sight of the curled fingers of his injured hand, as if she’d only just realized he was twice her age.

Papa looked away, his lips pressing into a tight line. She’d hurt him. And I felt furiously angry at her for doing so. If a woman was to surrender her virtue and risk eternal damnation, she ought to at least do it for good reason. I might have forgiven her if she’d sinned in the cause of love. But the way she recoiled from my father made me certain it was not her heart that led her to sin; it was her vanity. And I’ve never forgiven her for that. Not for her dalliance with Papa, nor for the way she treated him.

God may forgive her, but I never shall.

The only good to come of her rejection that night was the way it forced Papa to stiffen, as if awakening from a long, fevered dream. Perhaps my father had to suffer this humiliation in order to recover from the fever of Mrs. Cosway. Alas, it seemed that I had to be equally prepared to suffer humiliation when the dinner conversation turned to the Duchess de La Rochefoucauld.

Mr. Short’s association with the woman was the cause of several veiled but ribald jests. I pretended at supreme indifference while I surreptitiously fisted my hands into my skirts, agonized by my awareness of the man so close. I stared at the lace that peeked out from under Mr. Short’s neatly tailored sleeve, wondering how far apart our knees were spaced beneath the table. Wondering, too, when I’d be humiliated enough by my own infatuation to stop wondering such things . . .

The subject of mockery, Mr. Short only sipped at his wine with an enigmatic smile. There was no blush on his cheeks. Only mine. After a bout of raucous laughter, the Polish princess pointed at Mr. Short and accused, “You’re overly fond of French girls!”

He replied, with a sly glance my way. “Oh, I like Virginia girls just as much.”

All at once, my burning embarrassment became a different kind of fire and I died a thousand burning deaths of pleasure. Mr. Short’s amusing retort meant nothing to these people, who laughed at his defiant wit. But his eyes fastened on mine flirta tiously, and I finally knew with certainty that I hadn’t imagined his affection for me after all. . . .

It was real.

The dashing Mr. Short could’ve had any Frenchwoman in Paris. But he was looking at me in my blue gown with the golden sash. He was looking at me, and I felt suddenly as light and warm as the wisps of smoke that floated up from the silver candelabra on the table.

T HAT NIGHT , long after the guests took their leave, I couldn’t stop spinning on my toes. Round and round I went into the bedroom like a whirlwind. Polly peeked up from her goose down pillow in vague alarm. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing at all,” I said, falling into bed on a laugh. I was no longer certain I wished to join the convent, because I might soon have, in Mr. Short, a suitor of my very own.

What’s more, for the first time I could remember, things were just as they ought to be. My family was together under one roof, domestic tranquility the aim of our existence. Exactly what my mother had always wanted—what I’d always wanted, too.

And a few days later, something even more wonderful happened.

Mrs. Cosway left Paris.

I learned this from Papa, who came in from the wintry cold with frost upon his wig and a crumpled piece of paper in his hand. “I was to have breakfast with her this morning,” he bit out. “But I found only a note of farewell.”

Papa marched up to his chambers and stayed there. And though my father was always writing, that whole next week, he sent not a single letter. Seeing me fret over this, Mr. Short asked, “Will you never stop wrinkling your forehead with worry for your father, Patsy? He’s merely lanced a boil.”

Had Mr. Short also believed that Maria Cosway was a plague on our house? If so, why had he stood by and let her happen? “She might return to Paris.”

“He wouldn’t see her again if she did. If nothing else, Mrs. Cosway deprived your father of his good-bye, of a closing scene, of a way to make sense of it, categorize it, and put it in final order. He despises nothing so much as that.”

He had the right of it, for he knew my father well. Papa might be miserable but would soon be purged of it. What he needed was someone to tend to him so that he could distract himself with work, as he’d always done. Sally had returned from her ordeal in the countryside hale and hearty, not a pock mark on her beauty, so I tasked her with being Papa’s chambermaid. It was a cold winter—colder than anyone in Paris could remember—and I instructed Sally to keep the fires blazing at his hearth until Polly and I returned from the convent for Christmastide.

In the meantime, at Jimmy’s insistence, Papa hired a special tutor to teach the Hemingses French. I provided Sally with a new wardrobe from my cast-off clothing, so she’d look like a suitable maid to accompany us on social visits. Together, my sister and I took to the city, bedecked in new, elaborate dresses of our own. And Mr. Short sometimes accompanied us, playing the part of gentleman chaperone while stealing little smiles at me whenever I glanced his way. Between this, the gaiety of the holiday, and the passionate political debates on every street corner, it was all a delight.

When Polly and I returned home the Sunday before Christmas, the embassy was alive with the smell of bread. Low candles and crackling fires warmed every room, and I was filled with an undeniable happiness. Polly and I shared tea and buttered rolls, and I showed her the Cabinet des modes, a popular fashion leaflet in Paris. “Would you like a gown like this?”

I was eager to dress her just as Mrs. Adams had dressed me upon my own arrival in France. And Polly was so much prettier, just like a little doll. What fun it would be for us, two sisters, to choose fabrics and ribbons and shoes, together. But Polly just shrugged. She was less interested in clothes than in playing outside, so I tossed the leaflet aside. “Shall we go out and see the snow?”

Polly’s face immediately brightened. “Oh, let’s!”

We bundled up and went into the courtyard, where we made a game of throwing little balls of snow. To my surprise, Mr. Short joined us in the merriment.

Under threat of slushy snow packed in his gloves, I cried, “You wouldn’t dare!”

Mr. Short, cheeks pink from the cold, grinned at me. “ Mademoiselle, I’m a daring man. The question is whether or not you’ll duck away.”

Light-headed at his flirtation, I fluttered my eyelashes like a coquette. “I could run.”

Packing the snow tighter in his palms, he narrowed his eyes. “If you run from me, Patsy Jefferson, I vow to give chase.”

I didn’t think we were speaking of the snow game any longer.

Nevertheless, I wanted him to prove it. Giddy, I grabbed my skirts and fled down the pathway. Our garden was nothing next to the snow-covered green majesty of the palace grounds, but that day, ours seemed more beautiful. The cold made my lungs tighten as I ran, laughing. But when Mr. Short chased, I began to feel as if it was each thud of my pounding heart that forced the breath out of me.

In moments, Mr. Short caught me by the coat, spinning me to him. Alas, my heel caught a patch of ice and my foot went out from under me. But I didn’t fall. At least, not right away. Mr. Short’s arms came around my waist and I crashed against his chest. Then we both lost our footing and, still laughing, fell together into a drift of snow.

With my head cradled upon his shoulder where he lay sprawled, his hat blown away by a gust of snowy wind, I didn’t feel the cold. Though the frigid melting water seeped into my woolen dress, I felt only the warmth of Mr. Short’s breath on my face. Only the heat banked in his eyes. Only the strange desire that burned in me, to take off my glove and trace his cheek with my bare fingers.

Instead, I let my hand drift near to his, and nearly swooned when he hooked my little finger with his own. We hadn’t touched skin to skin, but there was an unmistakable intimacy as his gloved finger linked, tightly but tenderly, with my own. We breathed in perfect harmony, bound so innocently, finger to finger, even as we ached for more.

It was a still and perfect moment. . . .

Which Polly ruined by pelting us with snow.

Declaring herself the victor, she danced over us. Still breathless and exhilarated, we went inside to change into dry clothes. When we came down, Jimmy set out spiced cider, and Mr. Short suggested that we summon Papa to join us. I wondered—perhaps vainly—if Mr. Short meant to speak to my father about a courtship between us. It was with this question in my mind, veritably floating on air, that I went in search of my father.

His sitting room door stood open, and I stepped into the room. “Papa?” Despite the warm glow from the fireplace, the room was empty. A noise sounded from Papa’s chamber, the door to which was ajar. Crossing to it, I inhaled to call his name again, but what I saw made the words die in my throat.

Sally stood in the center of the room, her back to me, Papa’s coat gripped in her hands. He was smiling softly at her, with an intimacy that stole the breath from me.

After a moment, Papa grasped the jacket from Sally. But, no, he didn’t grasp the material, he held her hands where they curled around the stiff collar. He studied her, as if he couldn’t quite comprehend the contours of her face.

And my heart thundered against my breastbone.

I was frozen there on the threshold of the room, not quite in, not quite out. I didn’t know what was happening, or why every fiber of my body screamed at me to look away. I should have. Or maybe I should have called out to make my presence known.

But I could do neither.

Papa was a tall man, and Sally was small. The way he stared down at her—the girl who looked so much like my mother—it wasn’t the stare of an old man, a humiliated lover, or a widower resigned to bachelorhood.

It was the stare of a man who contemplates damnation and salvation.

Slowly, as if even he wasn’t conscious of his movement, Papa leaned his face down to Sally’s. As his eyes fell closed, her head tilted back and he kissed her.

I could make no sense of the scene unfolding before me. She was a girl my own age. She was my mother’s sister, my own aunt. She was his slave . And though I knew—of course I knew—that Virginia plantation owners took slaves for mistresses, we’d been so long away from home, I couldn’t believe my own eyes.

He couldn ’t be doing this. My mind rejected what I saw clearly until he pursued her lips with more ardor and drew Sally close against his chest. At that embrace, I choked back the cry that worked its way up from my breast, where my heart raced so hard I saw spots.

If Papa saw me . . . he mustn’t see me . Fingers pressed over my lips, I turned away from the private, heartbreaking moment and flew from the room.