Authors: Barbara Chase-Riboud
In seven more days we were to reach England. I was happier
with every passing day. Everything in my former life grew smaller as we put
more and more ocean between our ship and Virginia. Monticello became farther
and farther away.
I felt myself breaking a barrier, leaving childhood for
adulthood. I already knew that I looked much older than my age, and something
happened on board which brought home to me the fact that I was no longer a child.
It was June nineteenth, and Polly was busy playing cards
and learning curse words from Captain Ramsay. The sea was navy blue, with lacy
frills of soft waves made by a gentle easterly wind. The sky was bright blue
without a cloud. We had had nothing but good weather. When I told the captain
that I too would have loved just one storm at sea, he had laughed and said
beautiful girls shouldn't make wishes that beautiful girls might regret, as
beautiful girls usually got what they wanted in life. Considering my place in
life, I thought he was making fun of me, and my eyes filled with tears. I
started to speak, but he had already turned away, occupied with his affairs.
Later that day, one of the five gentlemen passengers,
Monsieur LaFaurie, a Frenchman, spoke to me for the first time. I was
delighted, for on my own I could not have addressed him. I was anxious to ask
him about Paris, the French people. We had often had French visitors at
Monticello. My mother always took special care with the food on those occasions,
since she said the French put great store in what they ate. And always Mistress
Jefferson took special care with what she wore because, as with their food, she
said, the French cared a great deal about what they put on their backs. This, I
found out, was a contagious disease, for never was I so consumed with envy for
clothes and despondent not to have them as in Paris.
It seemed to me too that the French were very careful about
the way they spoke, for Monsieur LaFaurie hemmed and hawed for over an hour
before he finally asked me: Why did people refer to me as being a Negro slave?
Since obviously I was neither a Negro nor a slave. "Why, you are whiter
than I," I remember him saying in astonishment.
I could have told him that I was a slave not because of my
color, but because my mother was a slave and her mother before her. But I was,
I found myself lying, a Spanish orphan from New Orleans (that sounded distant
and foreign enough), engaged as a lady's maid for Miss Jefferson. I was on the
seven seas, far from Monticello, and I let my imagination take me through a
most convincing childhood. I had had much practice with Martha at home, making
up imaginary childhoods.
But, of course, he asked Captain Ramsay later, who told him
the truth, plus my age. He also gave me a scolding I would never forget. After
the gentlemen had had their brandy and cigars, Captain Ramsay sent for me.
"Sally, I want to know why you deliberately lied and
misled Monsieur LaFaurie this morning."
"Because he wouldn't have believed me if I had told
the truth."
"I can't believe that a slave at Monticello has been
brought up to lie. Your master would be shocked, and what an example to set for
young Miss Jefferson!" He sighed and waited for me to say something. When
I didn't, he continued. "You know it is very difficult to have two female
passengers on this ship. Of course, Miss Jefferson is a child, but you are not,
and you should be careful how you conduct yourself. I know that at home you
have all kinds of freedom and license and that you are ... are ... are even
encouraged ... but you must remember in the close quarters of a ship, you
cannot... I will not permit that you give ... provocation to my gentleman
passengers. You may look sixteen, but I know you are but fourteen, and you
invite ... something you are not prepared for, to be sure.... You are a child,
and I might add a not very well-brought up slave and servant, and if you have
not been taught as yet your place in life, then I will confine you to your
cabin until we reach shore."
All my pretensions of womanhood dropped like so many
petals. I had wanted to impress Monsieur LaFaurie because he hadn't treated me
any differently for being "black." I supposed French people didn't
know any better.
"I have not said anything to Miss Jefferson, nor do I
intend to. Nor do I intend to punish you myself. That is, if you behave
yourself. Am I understood?"
"Yes, Master."
"Now, another thing, Miss Hemings. You have the habit
of sitting on the first platform of the forward mast. Sitting there, you may
not be aware, but you are in
full view
of the sailors working beneath the upper deck. You cannot see them, but
they can see you. You sit there for hours, and undo your hair and let it stream
down your back, and this is dire provocation for the sailors who call you the
'siren.' I know you don't know what that means, but let me say, for a sailor, a
siren... is someone who makes ... who provokes."
"What's that?"
"Provocation ... flirting ... frolicking," he
said.
I almost fainted with shame. Captain Ramsay, who had been
getting redder and redder, paused, and I began to sob. I was suddenly lonely
and miserable.
For the first time in my life I realized that I was truly
alone. I had never had a father, and might never see my mother again. I had no
rights before society, whatever Monsieur LaFaurie said. I had no rights even
over my own body, which was changing and unnatural to me. I could be coveted or
punished at the whim of any white man, not just my master. No kin of mine could
protect me, for they had no rights either. This horrified, tobacco-smelling
white man before me could beat me or confine me or take me to his bed and I had
no redress: no man would step forward to protect me, and I had no right to
protect myself if I could.
I was a slave. A female slave. I felt sick.
Poor Captain Ramsay was utterly undone. He sat me down.
Then he stood me up again. He poured me a glass of some kind of spirits and
made me drink it. But it did nothing against that great dark desolation that
crouched in my soul that day.
We would get to Paris; Polly would find her father, but I
would not find mine. I was a slave. Captain Ramsay sat with me in the dark
cabin a long, long time. He said how sorry he was for having been so stern. He
hadn't realized how innocent I was, how young. He tried to take me in his arms,
but I let out a scream of terror. So we sat there like two stones, me with
tears rolling down my cheeks. Finally, he let out a big tobaccoish sigh and got
up. He paced around for a while, lit a cigar, and stared out of the porthole,
so that I saw only the broad blue of his back.
After a time he left, saying he was going to fetch Miss
Jefferson. Polly finally came much later, bringing Washington with her, and she
took me in her arms.
The next two days, Polly and I spent the afternoons
listening to stories about Paris from Monsieur LaFaurie. It didn't seem
possible that such a city could exist on the same planet with Charlottesville,
Virginia. We never tired of hearing the descriptions of the ladies and their
dresses, the coiffures, the gardens of the Tuileries and Versailles, the
palaces of the king, the Royal Palace, Marly, Fontainebleau.
I
dreaded that
I
would be sent back to Virginia once Polly was safely delivered to
London. Polly said she wouldn't allow it, but
I
had already learned not to put too much faith in the
promises of mistresses.
Captain Ramsay announced that we would reach our
destination the next day, the twenty-sixth of June, and little Polly understood
that she would be separated from Captain Ramsay, to whom she had become so
attached. She too made everybody laugh by announcing that she would not leave
the ship until she had her storm at sea. That she felt cheated, after being
practically kidnapped onto this ship, not to have had a real storm and waves
that
high. Captain Ramsay laughed and
said he would ask the cook if he would "stir" up a storm for Polly
that night.
The last night I dressed Polly in white muslin and put her
hair up. I dressed myself in red with a dark blue girdle and I let my hair out
and tied it with a red ribbon. The gentlemen seemed quite pleased. Captain
Ramsay seemed relieved that I was myself again, and all the officers and
gentlemen rose when we left the table.
The next morning we saw birds and smelled land. After a
long voyage even the inexperienced can smell land. Everybody was up early so as
not to miss the first glimpse of the shore and the famous Cliffs of Dover. We
were to go up the Thames to London. We had spent six weeks on the sea. I had
stored up those six weeks of freedom, of being at no one's beck and call,
making lists in my diary and entries in my heart. I had read and I had written
and I had dreamed. And I had grown up.
When land was sighted, a great cheer went up from everybody
on deck, and Captain Ramsay appeared resplendent in still another new dress
uniform. He was a vain and beautiful man! The sailors too had on their best
tunics. The ship's orchestra started playing a very gay tune as the banks of
the river closed in on us. We slipped along the narrow channel toward the port
of London Town.
I had never seen such a place filled with more white people
than I had ever imagined in one place. Not one black face anywhere. It was for
me a strange and new sensation. There were no slaves. This was another world.
We had dressed in white that day. Polly was trembling in
agitation, and clinging to Captain Ramsay as he led us down the gangplank
toward a bright-yellow carriage with magnificent horses, in front of which
stood a couple dressed in black. The couple was Abigail and John Adams. They
had come to fetch us. They seemed a pretty couple as we approached them. They
looked stern and straight in front of their pretty carriage, with a splendid
liveried footman atop in scarlet. Abigail Adams was short but still slightly
taller than her husband, slim and in black silk. Her husband, holding her arm,
was short, round, and portly, with a large square head that seemed especially
bald because of the abundance of his side-whiskers. His face was ruddy, his
mouth stern, his eyes direct, and his expression happy.
I followed slightly behind Polly and Captain Ramsay, and
stood apart while the greetings were exchanged. The Adams couple seemed to know
Captain Ramsay and greeted him warmly. I could tell from the set of Polly's
body that she was about to burst into tears. She was clinging to Captain Ramsay
with both hands, as he and the handsome couple tried to coax her into the
waiting vehicle. She called my name in terror and Abigail Adams, in one swift
movement, turned her gaze toward me.
I got a good look at her, too. She had an oval face with a
long regular nose, a pointed, almost fleshless chin, and a thin mouth. It was
her eyes that made her face; they were tear-bright and sparkling, closely
spaced and quick, like the eyes of a small animal. From beneath her bonnet
sprang bright-red curls. Her eyebrows were arched high, giving her whole face a
mischievous look. It was a face that had no age, although at the time she was
middle-aged. Her color was high, as in people with that color hair, and, as she
turned, there were two bright spots of exasperation on her cheeks.
"And who are you, Miss?"
"I am Mistress Polly's slave, Ma'am."
Several expressions passed quickly across her face, but the
one that settled there was one I already knew well: that of a rich white lady
eyeing a poor darky slave. She looked first at her astonished husband, then at
Captain Ramsay, who still had hold of one of Polly's hands while I had taken
the other in mine.
"What!" she said.
It was the first time, I am sure, Abigail Adams had ever
seen or addressed a slave of her own country.
CHAPTER 10
LONDON, JULY
1787
I cannot feel but sorry that some of the most Manly
Sentiments in the Declaration are Expunged from the printed copy. Perhaps wise
reasons induced it....
abigail adams, 1
776
I have had for a fortnight, a little daughter of Mr.
Jefferson's, who arrived here with a young Negro girl, her servant from
Virginia.
abigail adams, july 1
787
"A
white slave
!" Abigail Adams would never get over the shock of seeing the
image of Thomas Jefferson's late wife descending the gangplank of Captain
Ramsay's ship in the guise of a Negro slave. "So it seems. Since we are
hosts to one."