The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (106 page)

3.
Ibid.

4.
TJ to Abigail Adams, Feb. 22, 1787,
Papers
, 11:174; TJ to James Monroe, Aug. 9, 1788, ibid., 8:489.

5.
Doyle,
Origins
, 76–90; Lefebvre,
The Coming of the French Revolution,
102–9.

6.
TJ to Anne Willing Bingham, May 11, 1788,
Papers
, 8:151.

7.
Garrioch,
The Making of Revolutionary Paris
, 291: "In the last years of Louis XV’s reign and under Louis XVI there was a growing condemnation of ‘despotism,’ even though the government was more responsive to ‘public opinion’ than ever before." See also Doyle,
Origins
.

8.
See Robin Blackburn,
The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848
(London, 1988), 173–75; Dubois,
A Colony of Citizens
, 99–104, discussing the effort to allow
gens de couleur
a measure of representation in the National Assembly.

9.
Mirabeau quoted in Dubois,
Colony of Citizens
, 99–100. See also his useful "Chronology" at the end of the book. See, generally, Shelby T. McCoy, "Further Notes on Negroes and Mulattoes in Eighteenth-Century France,"
Journal of Negro History
39 (Oct. 1954): 284–97.

10.
Malone,
Jefferson
, 2:221; Dubois,
Colony of Citizens
, 100.

11.
TJ to Maria Cosway, Oct. 12, 1786,
Papers
, 10:443. TJ and Cosway have been written about in numerous works. Perhaps the best treatment of the story is in Brodie,
Thomas Jefferson
, 199–215. Although at times she makes too much of the couple’s dealings when Cosway returned to Paris after a time in London after their initial meeting, Brodie’s informed depiction of the romantic mores of ancien régime Paris, and TJ’s response to it, is nuanced, insightful, and lively—even when she overreaches. See also Marie Kimball,
Jefferson: The Scene of Europe, 1784 to 1789
(New York, 1950), 168–69; Malone,
Jefferson
, 2:70–78; Burstein,
The Inner Jefferson
, 75–99; John P. Kaminski, ed.,
Jefferson in Love: The Love Letters between Thomas Jefferson and Maria Cosway
(Madison, Wis., 1999).

12.
When he was in his twenties, TJ propositioned—she claimed repeatedly—Elizabeth (Betsey) Walker, the wife of one of his best friends, John Walker. Walker’s father, Thomas, had been TJ’s guardian after Peter Jefferson’s death. The younger men became like brothers, with TJ standing as a groomsman at his friend’s wedding and acting as godfather to his child. When Walker found out about TJ’s actions many years later, a duel was only narrowly averted when mutual friends of the two men acted as intermediaries in intense negotiations to resolve the dispute; it was an intervention perfectly in keeping with the tightly knit world of upper-class communities in eighteenth-century Virginia. Some years after the resolution, in the early 1800s, TJ and Walker achieved a rapprochement of sorts, with TJ making small gestures at the right moment that seemed designed to show that he was genuinely sorry about what had happened. Walker accepted them. See Malone,
Jefferson
, vol. 4, appendix "The Walker Affair"; Brodie,
Thomas Jefferson
, 57, 79; Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 141–46.

13.
Brodie,
Thomas Jefferson
, 225, 253; Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 187; D. S. Neff, "Bitches, Mollies, and Tommies: Byron, Maculinity, and the History of Sexualities,"
Journal of the History of Sexuality
11 (2002): 431. Neff argues that Byron understood that "castrati and eunuchs had a very real proclivity for heterophilic and homophilic sexual attachments." The poet claimed that "Italian women preferred castrati ‘for two reasons—first they do
not impregnate
them—and next as they never…spend—they go on "in eterno" and serve an elderly lady at all times.’" See also n. 136, citing Angus Heriot,
The Castrati in Opera
(London, 1956), confirming castrati’s status as "lady-killers" who were in demand because "their embraces could not lead to awkward consequences."

14.
For example, the Royers and their daughter do not figure in either Malone’s or Brodie’s biographies of Jefferson, although both discuss his affair with the duchesse de La Rochefoucauld. Short’s biographer George Green Shackelford, in an otherwise detailed biography does not mention Short and Royer either:
Jefferson’s Adoptive Son: The Life of William Short, 1759–1849
(Lexington, Ky., 1993).

15.
Yvon Bzardel and Howard C. Rice Jr., "Poor in Love Mr. Short,"
WMQ,
3d ser., 21 (1964): 516–33.

16.
Ibid., 518, 523.

17.
Ibid., 520, 519, 523, 523–26, 526–28.

18.
Ibid., 531–33.

19.
James Maury to TJ, Sept. 17, 1786,
Papers
, 10:389. Maury notes that his mother "some how or other" had heard that Patsy was "in a Convent, which has made her very uneasy and I am afraid she will not easily forgive you"; TJ to James Maury, Dec. 24, 1786, ibid., 628, asking him to assure his mother that the convent was a "house of education only" and that the nuns did not attempt to influence the girls.

20.
Ellen (Eleanora) Randolph Coolidge’s Recollections of Martha Jefferson Randolph, [after 1826], Family Letters Project.

21.
See
MB
, 730 n. 47; Brodie,
Thomas Jefferson
, 239; Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 110.

22.
MB
, 730 n. 47; Ellen Coolidge,
Recollections,
Family Letters Project.

23.
Daniel Roche,
The People of Paris: An Essay in Popular Culture in the Eighteenth Century
(Berkeley, Calif., 1987), 66.

24.
Ibid.

25.
Archibald Bolling Shepperson,
John Paradise and Lucy Ludwell of London and Williamsburg
(Richmond, Va., 1942), 202–5; Herbert E. Sloan,
Principle and Interest: Thomas Jefferson and the Problem of Debt
(New York, 1995), 41–42. See Lucy Ludwell Paradise to TJ, Aug. 2, 1788,
Papers
, 13:457, calling Jefferson "My dear Protector" and, Aug. 17, 1788, ibid., 522, "What happiness should I enjoy, could I see Mr. Paradise as thoughtful, regular, Active and Industrious as you are"; Lucy Ludwell Paradise to TJ, Aug. 21, 1788, ibid., 533–34.

26.
See above, chap. 2.

27.
TJ to John Jay, Nov. 19, 1788,
Papers
, 14:215–16.

28.
MB
, 279, entries for April 6, 16; 734, entry for May 25. It is very likely that he bought other items of clothing for her that were included in his occasional listings of his payments for clothes "for servants." See, e.g., 694, entry for Feb. 21, 1788; 729, entry for April 23, 1789.

29.
Brodie,
Thomas Jefferson
, 239; O. J. Wister and Agnes Irwin, eds.,
Worthy Women of Our First Century
(Philadelphia, 1877), 20.

30.
Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 110.

31.
Wister and Irwin,
Worthy Women
, 20

32.
Mary Jefferson Eppes to TJ, Feb. 2, 1801,
Papers
, 32:537; TJ to Mary Jefferson Eppes, Feb. 15, 1801, ibid., 593.

33.
MB
, 734. See also n. 57.

34.
Clifford D. Panton Jr.,
George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower, Violin Virtuoso and Composer of Color in Late 18th Century Europe
(Lewiston, N.Y., 2005), 5, 17.

35.
See Londa Schiebinger, "Anatomy of Difference: Race and Sex in Eighteenth-Century Science,"
Eighteenth-Century Studies
23 (Summer 1990): 387–405. Schiebinger notes that as scientific "‘evidence’ mounted that women and blacks lacked native intelligence, proponents of equality collected examples of learned European women and learned Africans" (p. 399). These exceptional people had to meet standards set by people who were their opposites. "Of course, European males generally set the standards of scholarly excellence. Learned women or blacks had to excel in those arts and sciences recognized by the white male academy—fields such as classical music, astronomy, Latin or mathematics" (p. 400).

36.
"Bridgetower, George (August Polgreen),"
Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians
, rev. ed. (1992). See also Panton,
Bridgetower
.

37.
Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 245; Stanton,
Free Some Day
, 101.

38.
TJ to Nathanial Burwell, March 14, 1818,
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson
, ed. Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert E. Bergh, 20 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1903), 15:165–67, quoted in Brodie,
Thomas Jefferson
, 447.

1.
Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 246. See also below, chap. 20.

2.
TJ to Martha Jefferson Randolph, Dec. 23, 1790,
Papers
, 18:350.

3.
TJ to Francis C. Gray, March 4, 1815, LOC, 36173; TJ,
Notes
, in
Writings
(New York, 1984), 267.

4.
TJ to James Madison, May 25, 1788,
Papers
, 8:202.

5.
Elizabeth Fox Genovese,
Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South
(Chapel Hill, 1988); Catherine Clinton,
The Plantation Mistress: Woman’s World in the Old South
(New York, 1984).

6.
Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 246; Burstein,
Inner Jefferson
, 144–49;
Republic of Letters
, 1:7, quoting Jefferson.

7.
Campbell, "Life of Isaac Jefferson," 573; TJ to Isaac MacPherson, Aug. 13, 1813, in TJ,
Writings
(New York, 1984), 1286. This contains TJ’s very famous statement against patents on ideas.

8.
Malone,
Jefferson
, 2:17.

9.
Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 254; Campbell, "Life of Isaac Jefferson," 567–68. Among other comments, Henry Randall remembered TJ’s grandson saying that SH was "decidedly good looking."

10.
There is no official record of when SH died, but her son Madison gave his mother’s year of death as 1835, linking it to the time before he left Virginia. It is possible that the sixty-eight-year-old Hemings misspoke or that the newspaper that carried his story made a mistake in recording what Hemings said about the date. In his memoir of his trip through the United States, Count Francesco Arese, a visiting European who spent time in Charlottesville in 1837, claimed to have seen her and referred to her as "very pretty…although she was no longer young." She would have been in her sixties. Apparently SH, or at least the story of "his pretty Negress," as she was described in the book’s index subheading under "Jefferson, Thomas," surely one of the more arresting index entries for him in any historical work, had become an important enough part of the town’s history to be talked about to visitors as if she were a natural wonder. Count Francesco Arese,
A Trip to the Prairies and in the Interior of North America [1837–1838], Travel Notes
, trans. Andrew Evans (New York, 1834), 29, 214.

11.
Gordon-Reed,
TJ and SH
, 54.