HE CAME HOME for the first time as president. Except for Maria, who was too ill to come to Monticello, everything on his mountain was safe and at peace.
He was proud. He was loved, not only in his own domains but by the whole nation.
We watched a rainstorm break over Shadwell, far in the distance. From the north terrace, we could see the gray mists resting on the range that stretched for forty miles to the Chesapeake Bay. In the distance, we could see the low-hanging clouds of a spring storm, which looked like a theater set to the two of us standing in the weak April afternoon sun.
He had built not only power last summer but his mansion, which had taken its final shape. I could feel its space, every foot of its masonry, every inch of its brick and mortar, behind me like a fortress. He had overlooked no detail, had underplayed no effort toward perfection. He had goaded his master builders, John and Joe, into a sublimity of effort. His long-accumulated books, paintings, sculptures, and instruments—some of them in their cases since our return—had at last found their proper places. His curtains and draperies, china, silver, Persian rugs, linens, clocks had also been incorporated. His plants, his trees, his roses stretched in gigantic patterns on the west and south sides of the mansion. The house stood, a one-story brick building facing west, surmounted by an octagonal dome that camouflaged its second story, while the terracing and sloping of the mountain camouflaged the understory. The beautiful and perfectly proportioned façade, with its Doric columns and heavy cornice and balustrades, looked over the vast lawns and gardens down onto the valley, and out onto the world. Behind that facade, which had taken so long to build, his slave and white families lived with his other possessions.
He looked down at me. “Look at the rain clouds,” he said. “It rains, it storms, and yet we feel not one drop.”
“It thunders, too,” I said, as the first rumblings of the spring storm’s fury was carried over the distance of the mountain.
“And it lightens as well,” he laughed as the sky beyond us burst white. “Yes, we are not lit by it.”
“And thank God,” I said.
We stood watching the shower. The servants would be lighting the candles in a little while and setting the table for eight places, even for his solitary dinner, in the rosewood-paneled dining room off the center hall.
I knew what he was thinking.
His Eden was complete.
In another month, there would be a new addition to our family. He wanted a girl, so I prayed for one, for him. A president’s daughter.
“If it is a girl, name her Harriet, after our Harriet,” he had said.
“And if it is a boy?”
“Then name him James.”
I knew he was happy. I begged him to await the birth. He had never been present at the birth of any of my children. Again, he left me to the final weeks of waiting.
On the eighth of May, the very anniversary of the birth of his last child by my half sister Martha, whose death had begun the journey to my destiny, I gave birth to my fifth child.
I named her Harriet, as I had promised.
My mother was not pleased. “Martha Jefferson did the same thing,” she said, “and she lost both of them Lucy Elizabeths. Don’t name this daughter Harriet, Sally.”
“Her father wants her named Harriet. He’s lost one Harriet, and he wants another. This one will survive.”
“Not for you or him to say if she gonna live or die. God has still got some rights, even in Virginia. Masta may be president, but he aint’ got that last power—life and death, and well he should know it!”
“You’re just superstitious, Maman, it doesn’t make any difference what her name is. You sound like one of those Indian squaws who dress their son up like a girl so that God won’t know he’s a male.”
Yet, even as I argued with Elizabeth Hemings, the sense of doom that had plagued me since Gabriel’s insurrection took hold of me. I looked down on the ivory-skinned, auburn-haired infant sleeping in my arms, another Harriet, and pressed her to my breast. She would survive. And she would survive to live free.
“My Martha named that second Lucy Elizabeth after the dead one, when I told her—”
“I don’t care what you told your precious Martha Wayles. I don’t care what Martha Jefferson did or didn’t do. I’m not Martha Wayles. I am me! Martha Wayles Jefferson is nothing to me, nor do I want her to be.”
“She’s your sister, if you like it or not, and I told her—”
“Mama! I don’t care if she was my sister or not! She has nothing, nothing to do with me or my children. This is my Harriet. Mine and Thomas Jefferson’s.”
“This is the first time in my life, daughter, I ever heard you call him by his name.” There was amazement in her voice. “Lord, child, what’s the matter? I know who you are, I know you not your half sister. I’m your mother, not hers, though it’s true I loved her. But you can’t ever say I loved her more than I love you.”
“You did, Mama. Admit it. You’ve said it a million times. Your white daughters. Your sweethearts.”
Anger now hung like a cloud between us. I had hurt her. But I had not been able to stop myself.
“No, child,” she said, “it’s not like you say. I guess I am like that Indian squaw. I pretend I love you less so that God won’t punish me by bringing hurt on you. I’m only afraid for you. You won’t fight for yourself. You won’t protect yourself. I only want that. That you fight for yourself and your children, that’s all. I didn’t mean no offense.”
We looked at each other. She didn’t understand. I was fighting. I was fighting him. I was fighting love, slavery, and Virginia.
“No, Mama, you never mean any offense,” I said.
“But, daughter, you might suckle her yourself and not give her over to a wet-nurse like you did the others.”
I tightened my hold on Harriet. Martha Randolph was pregnant and ready to bear. My mother always made it a point to remind me that Martha nursed all her babies.
“Now don’t go getting resentful about nursing,” she said, as if she had read my mind. “You careful, it won’t hurt your bosom any. Martha Randolph done suckled all her children, and she still got a beautiful bosom. Pretty enough for any man to lay his head on.”
I don’t know why, but I started to cry. Sobs of rage and scalding resentment shook me. What did I want? He loved me. What did I want? He listened to me. What was it then I wanted?
My mother took me in her arms. Her face next to mine was dark and cloudy.
The summer meant the return to Monticello of my master’s white family. Thomas and Beverly were swept up in the ever-increasing swarm of children, slave and white, that mingled in total freedom all the summer months. My Thomas, red-headed and gray-eyed, romped on the west lawn with Thomas Jefferson Randolph, red-headed and blue-eyed; and the Randolph girls, all dark like their father with his Indian blood. Anne and Ellen found in blue-eyed Beverly the perfect doll. Martha Randolph had proudly announced to my mother, much to her vexation, that she was again “expecting.” My mother had wanted only me to give birth this year.
A test of power at Monticello between Martha and me had been postponed by the simple expedient of letting my mother keep the huge iron ring of house keys that hung at her waist. My mother, now sixty-six, knew her position as dowager queen could not last much longer. Nevertheless, while she ruled, she ruled, and it was to her that all the children, Martha’s and mine, turned to as ultimate arbitrator and bounty-giver. I knew my mother secretly feared that I would never have the will to fight for Monticello. She had often said that once she let the reins of power go, it would be Martha, not me, who would take her place. But she didn’t know that Monticello had been promised to me by my master.
It was bad enough that I could not take my place at the head of the table at Monticello. But that Martha should wear the keys … never!
The summer was hot and humid. The heavy perfume of jasmine, honeysuckle, and peach blossoms exuded a sweet, deep, dangerous sensuality. It was the heat, I suppose, and some mysterious chemistry that seemed to combine into a volatile mixture of sullen arrogance and irritability. The mountain reeked of that climate that bred fevers and sudden violence.
Both Maria and Martha were coming home to give birth. Maria arrived first. She was enduring her second difficult confinement, still a semi-invalid, suffering the complications of her first child’s birth. She brought, as usual, her own servants. They were Monticello slaves that had been given to her on her marriage and who found their friends and family again. They included her personal maid, her coachman, her cook, her outriders, her nurse, and several of their children.
Next came Martha Randolph, heavy with her sixth child, along with all her children, Anne, Thomas Jefferson, Ellen Wayles, and Virginia. Both her husband and Maria’s were in Washington City and would arrive in August with their body servants, coachmen, horses, and luggage.
I greeted my nieces with my babe in arms. We were genuinely glad to see one another. The winter had been long and lonely. Maria, ill all of the time, isolated at Bermuda Hundred, enjoyed the added attention, the music, the conversation, and her father’s triumphal presence. After only five years of marriage, her bright beauty had washed away to the almost transparent delicacy of a much older woman. As for Martha, her big-boned and robust body had already settled into middle age. Her face had hardened with the bitter struggle against her husband’s erratic and increasingly uncontrollable behavior. After several years of relative lucidity, Thomas Mann Randolph was again slipping back into the melancholy and depression which were the harbingers of his insanity. All the weary travels from doctor to doctor, from cure to cure, had not helped him. More and more Martha looked forward to summers at Monticello with her father. Like him, she too suffered from violent migraines that disappeared only on the mountain.
There were now thirty-two servants for six white people, including the children. Before the summer was over, there would be as many sleeping guests.
We settled into our positions, re-establishing the old accommodation and bonds among ourselves. We girded for the arrival of the men, who must at all cost be recaptured, comforted, redomesticated, and spoiled after their long absences. The air, as always, again became heavy with jealousies and unrealized dreams.
All this would focus itself on Thomas Jefferson. All the loves and hates and jealousies of Monticello would gravitate toward its center, my master. Calm and possessed, he would ride above the often stormy, half-smothered passions that struggled around him, both at home and in Washington; and by his fierce will, would repress any open violence. He would turn a deaf ear to the problems of all of the women on the mountain. And we dared not intrude upon him. He wanted peace. And he wanted his façade of perfection. He would not tolerate less. And I, I tolerated Martha and Maria on their summer visits, but they were not the mistresses of Monticello. I was. That was our covenant. He had promised.
Even before the men’s arrival, the first bad news of the summer had filtered into Monticello. Danby Carr, the youngest of the hot-tempered Carr brothers, had been involved in a duel. He had severely wounded his opponent and had been arrested. Danby had rowed across the James River in the early dawn, cocked his pistols at a friend, and half-killed him, then had gone bragging all over Milton and Charlottesville on the quality of his pistols and the cowardliness of his target. Peace? If Thomas Jefferson thinks he is going to have peace, I thought, he had better think again. Depressed, I began trying to keep order among the slaves, to find rooms for the ever-increasing white family, which now included the Carrs and Jefferson’s sister, a poor relative. I suppressed the dark foreboding of the months to come and lifted my own burdened and disappointed heart to my task.
The August sun beat down on his back and bared head. It was the second time he was riding up his mountain as president. He had taken his saddled horse and mounted up at Shadwell, leaving the phaeton with Davey Bowles and Burwell, and had gone galloping ahead, his still reddish hair brushed back by the wind. Thomas Jefferson returned depressed and convinced that his robust constitution had finally failed him, stricken with a dysentery that had not left him since he had taken office. He had also begun to keep track of the deaths of the signers of the Declaration of Independence with the same precision as he noted the singing of Dick, his mockingbird.
The death of Jupiter had struck fear into his own heart. . . . Not without bitterness, he remembered that neither Martha nor Maria had written to congratulate him on his election as president. He had won by a hairbreadth over Burr, and now he would have to crush his power as well as the lingering residue of Federalist influence.
Thomas Jefferson looked up at the tall Virginia pines. He was haunted with death. The bursting mountainside underlined the tragedy of that other summer, so many years ago, when his great love had let life go, after giving birth to a girl child, now also dead. It was the nineteenth anniversary of Martha Jefferson’s death. And now, in fear, he clung to the image of his slave wife who gave birth easily.
He reined in his bay Wildair, and sat slumped under the arched green vaults of his own forest, the bridle paths leading up the west slope, etched by the years of riding his own favorites. The dappled sunlight played about his broad shoulders, and the flanks of his horse.
He had left Washington City in a state of weariness. His illness, the unfinished president’s house, the strain of political life had taken a toll on his state of health. His migraines, which had not tormented him since he had left France more than ten years before, were plaguing him again. His estates were slipping, and the Wayles legacy of debt was still not resolved. Yet, he thought, raising his head, the mountain was still there; a young mother waited for him at the top; his two daughters, and his grandchildren were within his embrace. He dug his spurs into the sweating flank of Wildair, urging him faster and faster up the mountain.
My master returned with the news that James was back on these shores. James had written to me all last year, wild incoherent letters filled with impossible dreams of fame and fortune, as he wandered from one European capital to another in the wake of refugees fleeing the wars of Napoleon. He still begged me to leave Monticello. Like some flying eagle, he had dipped and swooped above my head, rattling my nest with the beating of his wings, always with his lure and song of freedom. But I had known he would be back. James had turned his back on his former master, and had refused to come to Monticello, or even send greetings to me, his own sister.
The master ensconced himself in his private apartments, reading and writing in the morning, appearing for dinner, then riding out for hours in the afternoon. Only I was allowed entrance into his chambers where he worked, often morose and depressed. Yet, he appeared without fail at the supper table, cheerful and serene.
All the children, black and white, competed for the attention and love of the master; all fought for their places in the sun.
In August, Martha went into labor. The double-faced clock on the east patio rang hour after hour, as the birth, despite the ease of the previous ones, proved to be a long and difficult one. My mother and I sat on either side of Martha’s plank as the midwife, Ursula, struggled silently to bring forth the new life. Martha’s labor had begun the night before, and now, well into the end of the day, her eyes were glazed with pain and exhaustion. Our dresses clung to us in the August heat, but we could not throw open the windows that were sealed shut, nor douse the fire that burned in the hearth. Martha moaned, filling me with dread. I thought of Maria, no more than a month away from her travail. I had so begged Maria to attempt no more children, just as my mother had begged Maria’s mother before her; but now there was no time to think of Maria. There were only Martha’s moans, and finally only her screams; almost eighteen hours after the first pains, the girl child came at last.
Downstairs, the white family waited as I descended to announce the birth of a girl, who would be named Virginia. During the long hours of labor I had a premonition of the awaited test of power. Two days after Virginia’s birth, when Martha’s milk had not come, it happened.
“You will wet-nurse Virginia, Sally. You have plenty of milk.” Before I could answer my mother answered for me.
“There’s no need for that, Mistress. There’s two newly delivered slave women. I’ll send for Sulky for you.”
“I don’t want Sulky, Mammy Hemings, I want Sally. She will be the one to nurse Virginia. After all, she doesn’t have anything else to do!”
“But, honey, your milk will come, it always do, and meanwhile Sulky, she much better, she’s—”
“I said I want Sally to do it.”
My mother shrugged and turned away. This was between Martha and me. She watched with horror as I took the white infant, and with tears of rage streaming down my cheeks, pressed her to my breast.
Virginia’s birth was celebrated for two days. The school bell rang, the slaves were issued whisky and the children candy; the white family celebrated with French champagne in a state of happy relief.
It was in this festive atmosphere that Danby Carr attempted to seduce my sister Critta. Critta belonged to Peter Carr, who was the father of her children, and neither of the other Carr brothers had ever dared to coerce my haughty and beautiful sister.
I was sorting linen with Elizabeth Hemings when Critta, pale and distraught, burst in on us.
“Mama, Masta Carr messing with me!”
My mother didn’t look up from her sorting.
“Which Masta Carr?” she asked.
“Danby!”
We both knew the danger. Danby had always been jealous of Peter over Critta. Now he was bloodied, he had decided to challenge him, and Samuel, the eldest brother, was probably egging him on. Danby had just fought one duel. . . . Trouble. They were spoiling for trouble.
“He put his hands on you?” Elizabeth Hemings asked.
“He going to?”
“He got a mind to. You know what Masta Peter do to me, he find out?”
“Did you tell him yourself?”
“Tell him?”
“Tell, tell on Danby? Tell Masta Peter he messing with you?” Elizabeth Hemings looked into my sister’s hazel eyes. She was beautiful, but not too bright. Disgust drew down the corners of Elizabeth Hemings’ mouth.
“It’s the only way, Critta, ’less you want real trouble.”
“I ain’t looking for no trouble,” Critta said. “I just want to be left alone.”
“Well, you ain’t going to be left alone with them boys around. Just try to stay out of their way. Don’t get into any close quarters with him. Stick close to Masta Peter.”
“But Peter’s going to Richmond tomorrow.”
“Then come stay with me. You can stay in my room. Don’t sleep alone.”
“He set on it,” Critta said.
“Well, he can get set off it. Them nephews got enough slaves in trouble around here, including you.”
“Why you suppose all a sudden? …”
“Jealous of Peter, feeling his oats with his dueling, showing off to Samuel—how should I know what goes on in white men’s heads?” The helplessness of the situation caused a tremor in the hand Elizabeth Hemings placed on my sister’s shoulder.
“If worse come to worse, I’ll tell Masta Jefferson. There ain’t nothing else I can do to protect you from a white man. Best you tell Peter first, then, if that don’t work, I’ll tell Masta.”
“They’ll fight,” Critta said.
“Better they beat on each other than you! Let them kill each other.” Anger shook my mother’s voice.
“But what old Masta going to say he find out Danby and Peter fightin’ over me?”
“There’s going to be hell to pay,” Elizabeth Hemings said grimly.
I could see Critta hesitate.
“I’ll tell him,” Critta finally said. “I’ll tell him he come messing with me, I’ll tell his brother.”
“They’ll all get thrown off here they make a ruckus. . . .”
Elizabeth Hemings looked at me after Critta had left. I could tell what she was thinking. Bad blood. Bad blood between brothers. Bad blood between Martha and me; all the pauper relatives feeding off the larder. . . . She began to count up the supplies the household had gone through this summer, then stopped. She started to laugh. She sat down hard and laughed until the tears poured down her face.
“White workers running rampant like a herd of goats through the slave quarters, relatives eating me out of house and home, and everybody come to me … the head slave in the harem! I hope … I hope Peter Carr beats the tar out of his brother!”
Elizabeth Hemings looked up at me. I didn’t know if she was laughing or crying.
The fight between Danby Carr and his brother over Critta started in the ice cellar, where Critta had been cornered by Danby. Her son Jamey, who had gone to fetch his father, witnessed the fight of his father and his uncle over his mother. Critta was hurt in the fracas, having been pushed against a wall. Her wrist was broken and she had begged Martin to take Jamey off to Pantops after Jamey had tried to attack his father. Critta took shelter with me, and Maria promised she could go back to Bermuda Hundred with her when she returned. Critta went back to Peter Carr, and Danby left for his plantation.
Maria’s baby came at the end of September, and, as feared, the birth was long and difficult and the child feeble. I didn’t think there was that much blood in a human body, as we fought to stem its flow with teas and herbs. Finally, a doctor was called, and he recommended more bleeding to “rid” Maria of poisons that might lead to infection. On this murderous note, he left, after conferring with a distraught husband and father, who declined to follow his advice.
Little by little Maria fought her way back, willed to live by my mother and me, but the child continued to suffer convulsions. I took the infant Francis to my own breast as well.
No sooner had we suffered through Maria’s recovery, as if God’s own vengeance was sweeping down, a plague of the dreaded whooping cough swept through the children on the hill. Once again all of the women on the mountain were waging the fight against death to the children. All grudges were forgotten then as we joined in the struggle to preserve the fragile lives.
This time no child perished.
Exhausted, we parted, Martha and Maria returning to their plantations, Critta gratefully going along with Maria, leaving Elizabeth Hemings and me alone on the hill to face the winter. Anything the winter would bring, I thought, would be better than the summer just past. But I was wrong.
The preparations for Christmas were under way; my chests of decorations had been taken down from the attic, the housecleaning and baking already started. I was sitting, playing the new harpsichord, when I heard the strangled cry of my mother and the heavy spurred boots of Davey Bowles, who had ridden two days without stopping from Washington City to arrive before the letter.
I had seen Davey Bowles lips moving, but it seemed to have taken forever for the words to reach me.
It was the fourth day of December 1801. Davey had come to bring the news of James’s death.
He had been found dead under mysterious circumstances in Philadelphia, shot, perhaps by his own hand, although the weapon was nowhere to be found. He was already buried in unconsecrated ground up North. There had been no belongings, no letter, no message. Only John Trumbull’s silver-framed portrait of me and a small silver dagger were found near his bedside. Davey handed them to me in silence as I stood screaming James’s name over and over again.
James’s death seemed to herald the final calamity that was to befall us.
From this day on, I would live like a perfect slave, in perfect love, and this slavery and this love would be my strength and my fortress; never would he forgive himself or his world for it, and never would he escape from it. It would be the master who would be branded and bonded to me forever. I would turn love against the possessor and daze him into the everlasting hell of guilt! I vowed Thomas Jefferson would see only what he wanted to in the silver-and-gilt mirror of my love and, with that reflecting force, I would strike him down, blind him, commit arson against him. And what arm would he have against it? If I could not hate him, I would kill him with love. And if I could not kill him, I would maim him forever, cripple and paralyze him, so that he would have no possibility to walk away from me, no voice to deny me. A ruthless joy took hold of me. I fled from the room and from the mansion out of doors.
I would free his sons.