Page 18 HIGH GEAR JUNE 1981

Sally Hemmings: Thomas Jefferson's slave and mistress

SALLY HEMMINGS by Barbers Chase Riboud, 10.55, Viking Press, hardbound, 2.75 Avon, paperback.

By Loretta Ashyk Sally Hemmings is a superbly written historical novel. Like the finest of its genre, it explores the hearts and minds of historical figures so that we come to know them as human beings, complete with strengths and weaknesses. We also discover things we never knew before, and therefore, have to rethink our perception of those we've revered.

The most famous historical figure in this story by Barbara Chase-Riboud is Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence. The principal character is Sally Hemmings, his mistress for nearly half his life and mother of his seven children. Their relationship has been documented.

Though this is a work of fiction, the author has researched her subject thoroughly and many of the events occurring in the book are true, which makes them all the more remarkable. The author has made them deeply moving.

In addition to Jefferson and the woman he secretly called his wife, Chase-Riboud's work is rich in complex and fascinating characters. Among the unknowns in history are: Elizabeth Hemmings, the wise matriarch who ruled Monticello; Sally's brother

James, who committed suicide after he was freed; and Martha Jefferson Randolph, Jefferson's legitimate daughter, enslaved in her own way by a mentally deranged husband and ten children.

The more well-known characters include Abigail Adams and her husband John (who remarked "power is the great deceiver"); Aaron Burr, Jefferson's (and Sal-ly's) arch enemy; the painter John Trumbellan admirer of Sally's beauty; and George Wythe, who, like Jefferson, fathered a slave son, but who, in contrast, freed his son and the slave who was his mistress shortly after the child's birth.

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There are no walls now to run and hide behind, nowhere to stay hidden.

`Dawn will always come have no fear of darkness. Have fear only if you realize you don't like what all you have become.

-Lee

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All of these characters know of

Jefferson's relationship with Sally; their function in this novel is to place it in both historical and human perspectives. Their reactions tothe affair shed a new light on what was then the crime of miscegenation.

The Jefferson-Hemmings liaison was one which reflected the experience of generations before white masters, black slave mistresses, light-skinned, yet slave children, a "legitimate" daughter being served at dinner by her "illegitimate" brother. A young niece bellowing orders to her slave aunt. Plantation owners selling their kin on the auction block.

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Were the circumstances of he began his affair with her. their personal story not so shockyounger sister, Sally Hemmings. ingly real, "the master's" and SalHistory was repeated. ly's family ties would have constiThough Jefferson continued tuted the basis for a modern-day the practices of his peers and soap opera. To briefly summarmentors, his affair with Sally was ize the blood connections, Salunique for its duration (38 years) iy's mother, Elizabeth, was misand its genuine, binding. tress to John Wayles, Sally's emotion. father. After Wayles' death, EliIt began in Paris in 1788 when zabeth Hemmings and some of Jefferson was minister to France her 14 children were sent to Monand 15-year-old Sally was servticello, Jefferson's palatial esting as maid to his daughter. (She ate, as part of the inheritance of was also being educated and Wayles' legitimate daughter, paid a salary). Within months, Martha. Martha, who died at the Sally believed Jefferson loved age of 34 from childbirth, washer. Within years, it was evident Jefferson's first, legal wife. Several years after her death,

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he could not live without her. When his appointment was nearing an end, Jefferson promised his young lover that someday they would return to France, a country in which she would be free. However, that promise was the first of many he would break. Slowly, painfully, Sally realized their love, his love, would not set _her free.

As Sally Hemmings matures and relives the experiences of her mother and other slave women before her, she bitterly acknowledges that her lover will always be her master. Though they shared many intimacies and happiness, they would never share equal rights and power, hence their love was farcical.

Some of the most stirring scenes in Sally Hemmings are those in which she sees the deplorable truth of her situation. In these, Chase-Riboud gives us remarkable insights into the dichotomies of love and slavery, power and submission..

These insights apply to everyone whose lives have been subjected to the will of others who "love" them. As we feel with Sally Hemmings, the frustration of dependency and the pain of unwillful submission become piercingly real.

This is what Sally Hemmings, the novel, is about. History as human experience, not lofty declarations or staid treaties. History in which proud individuals make mistakes, refuse to correct them, and, as a result, perpetuate cruelty and suffering. Our forefather, Thomas Jefferson, is depicted as not an altogether evil man, but as a man with a hunger to control other's lives, oblivious to the cost to his victims.

Sally Hemmings is the woman who, despite her status, believes in love and consequently tries to please her man. In the end, her reward is broken promises, supressed rage, bitter memories, and an unrecognized place in history.

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