Oh, the papers were wrong about many of the details. But Sally’s children were living, breathing proof of the scandal. My father’s reputation would suffer amongst those who had no understanding of how it was with our slaves. This had a salacious element to it.
I knew perfectly well how damaging scandals like that could be. William’s affair had tarnished him and limited his career. A marital infidelity had damaged the once-formidable Alexander Hamilton’s reputation beyond repair. And an incestuous liaison had nearly sent my sister-in-law and brother-in-law to the gallows.
But there was more to this than bedroom matters. This was about race. The papers emphasized how my father’s relationship with Sally was long-standing. It was to be read as an insult to whites that my father could prefer Sally when he could have his choice of any white woman. Sally had been branded a slut as common as the pavement to imply my father must have a degraded character to have cared for her or enjoyed her for more than one night.
It was a calamity, and I couldn’t imagine how my father remained so calm. “There must be some reply, Papa.”
“No reply is owed. If I’ve stood for anything, it’s that the essence of liberty is to be found in the sanctity of a man’s home and private life.”
My father always held back some part of himself. He didn’t belong to the people wholly. Maybe he belonged to no one, wholly. Not even my mother or me. But I took his reluctance for a desire not to serve up Sally to a slobbering, condemning, Federalist party. “Deny it. Just deny it all.”
Papa said nothing. He merely stared at me with shock and surprise.
“Papa, you must deny it! If you won’t, then let Tom do it. He can publish a letter in the papers saying—”
“Patsy.” My father said my name with such a quiet agony that it silenced me. “I won’t answer the charges. I won’t deny it. The storm will pass, just as all the others do. I don’t care what people think.”
I did not believe that for one moment. My father was, like all Virginians, extraordinarily sensitive to censure. Neither could I agree that the storm would pass. For my father was still tarnished by the lie that he’d fled the British in cowardly fashion when they invaded our mountaintop, a story that had originated more than twenty years before. He was still pained by that, too.
Trying to protect him, I said, “If you won’t deny it, at least send Sally and her children to live with me at Edgehill.”
“Monticello is her home.”
And that’s all he had to say on the subject. He wouldn’t send Sally away, not even long enough to quiet a scandal that threatened the reputation of his whole family. His presidency was meant to prove that we could live freely in a republic, but he was willing to endanger that, too.
He hadn’t been able to let Sally go in Paris and he wasn’t going to give her up now. He wouldn’t send her away. He wouldn’t speak of her or against her. And I didn’t know whether to count him a stubborn, selfish old fool or to admire him for it.
Here we were, once again, in the little chamber where I once watched him pace, fighting with madness when my mother died. When he believed that every private happiness had been torn from him because of his commitment to the cause. But now he’d found some measure of contentment in a woman who ought to have posed no threat to anyone.
He was right, I decided. This part of him belonged to no one but Sally Hemings.
I had decided this even before he said, “I can bear the contempt of others, but the children. . . .”
My children, he meant. His adoring grandchildren.
“They’ll never know,” I said.
He wouldn’t deny it, but I would. To my dying breath.
His shoulders rounded and his head drooped. “Patsy, I am heartsick to know how this must lessen your love for me—”
“Never,” I said, tears brimming. “You must never think that, Papa. Whenever you come home, I look forward to it with raptures and palpitations not to be described. The heart swellings convince me of the folly of those who dare to think that any new ties can weaken the first and best of nature. The first sensations of my life were affection and respect for you and nothing has weakened or surpassed that.”
Papa’s eyes misted. “Please believe that my absence from you always teaches me how essential your society is to my happiness.” Reaching for my hand and bringing it to his lips with more than courtly emotion, drawing the warm palm of it against his cheek, he said, “When it comes to my character, I offer you and your sister as my defense. Neither of you have ever by a word or deed given me one moment’s uneasiness; on the contrary, I have felt perpetual gratitude to heaven for having given me, in you, a source of so much pure and unmixed happiness and pride. That is why I need you in Washington City. Your sister, too.”
We’d been in a very long sulk over his return to public life, but I decided then and there that if he needed us in Washington City, that’s where we would go.