The President's Daughter (11 page)

Philadelphia was a pretty seaport, the most populous, extensive, and handsome city in America, according to Mrs. Latouche. For someone who
had never even been to Charlottesville, it was indeed a busy metropolis in the shape of a chessboard, with each street part of a grid, attached at right angles to the others. Its founder, a Quaker named William Penn, had laid out his “city of brotherly love” in strict geometry. The formula had been copied by other cities from the Mississippi to the Great Lakes. Philadelphia's ships and seamen were famous; its riches depended upon the fertile soil of its hinterland and its seaport. The city's coat of arms was a plough and sheaves of wheat over a ship under full sail. The best families, Mrs. Latouche never tired of saying, were merchants and landholders, and the great estates in Lemon Hill and Germantown were as extensive as southern plantations.

In the mornings, Mrs. Latouche and I would venture out on the red brick streets, which, according to Mrs. Latouche, were cleaner than those of any city in Europe except Holland. London was the only capital better lighted at night, and none had so many tree-shaded lanes. The Quaker city had good hotels, theaters, restaurants, circuses, bookshops, libraries, and famous publishing houses. It had once been the capital of the United States, and my father had been sworn in as Vice President here. It was where he had written his Declaration of Independence. Even my mother had paid a visit to Philadelphia.

Shoulder to shoulder, Mrs. Latouche and I would sail by the narrow red brick row houses with their white wood trim and their white granite stoops on our way to the wharves to watch the sailors unload the cargo boats which had sailed from the Pearl River in China to the Delaware harbor, carrying silk and curry powder, window blinds, umbrellas, porcelain, bamboo, fireworks, and tea—tons and tons of tea, Lepchong, Pouchong, Souchong. I quickly became addicted to this fragrant, delicious drink, and Mrs. Latouche began to take me to the China, India, and Orient Emporium for afternoon tea.

Philadelphians taught me my first real perception of race hatred—an all-consuming ignorance and contempt for black people that literally took my breath away. For unlike the South, where the races mixed indiscriminately, in Philadelphia whites and black were strictly separated and segregated. Mrs. Latouche had never even met a black man or woman, nor had one set foot in her house except me.

In the weeks before I left for school, I searched the streets of Philadelphia for signs of my father's passing, or my mother's, or my uncle James's. According to Petit, my uncle James had spent his last days in Philadelphia in a boarding-house from which one could see the forest of masts of the clipper ships that
sailed into the harbor. Sometimes I would wander down to the docks alone, inventing some kind of errand to be done amongst the markets. I would stand leaning into the wind, much as I had seen my mother do, and scrutinize the horizon as if I, too, expected my ship to come in. And it would, I vowed. It would. But of course I first had to learn how to navigate in this new world. And I vowed never to turn back, despite the dawning hostility and loneliness. I would complete this journey into whiteness.

One day, I felt happy and safe enough to write home. Home? Was Monticello my home? Had Monticello ever been my home?

JULY
3, 1822

Master,

As you know from Burwell, I am safely arrived. Adrian Petit has presented your letters of introduction, and your acquaintances (not knowing who I am) have given me a cordial welcome. I have been enrolled in a Unitarian school for women in Bryn Mawr, a village not far from Philadelphia. It is not a convent like Martha's Abbaye de Panthémont in Paris, but a religious institution of high moral teachings which believes that slavery is wrong and contrary to the teachings of Christianity. My teachers are, without exception, abolitionists—how fine a word and how well it sits on my lips—and to them I am an orphan from Virginia whose little schooling was accomplished at home and whose family, except for her uncle Adrian, has been wiped out by yellow fever.

I am much older than the other girls. In the past month, I have visited all the places in Philadelphia you told me about. Mama says you fell and hurt yourself just after I left—that you slipped on a rotten step and rebroke your wrist. My prayers are that it is healed and you are recovered. Which doctor came? Again I thank you for the fifty dollars, which Petit has deposited in the First Bank of Philadelphia. I shed many tears for us all.

Your former servant and daughter,

Harriet

SEPTEMBER
3
RD
,

1822

Dear Harriet,

We received your letter by the usual means Saturday last and are happy for your safety and anxious for your future. The reproach—nay, the bitterness—in the necessary description of yourself as an orphan is well deserved, but believe me, there is no other way. Do not judge your loneliness too harshly. I recollect that at fourteen years of age, the whole
weight and direction of myself was thrown on myself entirely, without a relation or friend qualified to guide me. You are twenty-one. Solitude forms character and invokes independence, for, in the end, one can depend only upon oneself. That, and what one can lay up as treasures of the mind. Therefore, honor and obey your tutors and teachers, for they hold the key to the inner life that no misfortune, no loss, no grief can snatch away from you: a trained mind is real freedom. Depend only upon yourself until you find that other half for which you will forsake all others. Then depend upon him. Where you have passed, I can neither hurt nor help you, I can only remain,

He who loves you—

Th.J.

P.S.: My wrist is healing passably well but with age the process is intolerably slow.

Roaming the red brick streets, looking at myself in anything that reflected my image: the large plate-glass windows of the shops or market streets, the windows of public coaches, the eyes of passersby, I began to smile, first to myself, then at others. And surprisingly, people smiled back. Men doffed their hats. Women nodded. Children stopped to stare. And I thought: If you knew who I really was, would you still be smiling?

Everything in this world is a matter of calculation. Advance then with caution, the balance in your hand. Put into one scale the pleasures which any object may offer; but put fairly into the other the pains which are to follow. . . . The art of life is the act of avoiding pain. . . . Those which depend on ourselves, are the only pleasures a wise man will count on: for nothing is ours which another may deprive us of.

Thomas Jefferson

Once at school, I began to learn how far from Virginia I really was.

The first and the best friend I made was Charlotte Waverly. Music and speed had brought us together. Or vice versa. We were the two tallest girls in the entire college, and Charlotte was the fastest. But I could run, too. I had been racing my brothers through corn and tobacco fields for a decade.

One day we came face-to-face on the school grounds. After eyeing one another for a moment without exchanging a single word, we picked up our skirts and shot off, neck and neck, in a sprint down the knoll which rolled gently away from the main building and ended at a stone wall along the highway. Our hoops were around our waists, our drawers showing, our pigtails flying, and the entire school was cheering us on. I was winning as we approached the gateway which marked the boundaries of the school grounds, when I realized that something more was at stake than a footrace. I had one second to decide whether to win or lose against Charlotte. I chose as a Virginian slave would have chosen. Charlotte won by a hairbreadth, and we fell into each other's arms on the clover-speckled lawn, panting like puppies.

“I'm Charlotte Waverly,” said the tall, strong blonde who had me pinned to the ground.

“I know who you are. I'm Harriet Petit, the new girl.”

“I know you're new and I know you're the oldest girl in the school. A pleasure to meet someone who can give me a run for my money.”

“The pleasure is mine.”

“Your southern accent is not half as terrible as I've been told.”

“You have something against Virginia accents?”

“We've just had a footrace, you don't want to have a fistfight as well, do you?”

“You sound like you grew up with boys.”

“I did. And so did you, otherwise you would never be able to run so fast.”

“True.”

“How many brothers?”

“Four. Thomas, Beverly, Madison, and Eston. And you?”

“Four. Amos, Charles, Zachariah, and Dennis.” She paused, then added, “We've got a lot in common.”

That day I not only secured my place as the second fastest girl in school, but, more important, I initiated a friendship with the most popular and socially powerful girl at Bryn Mawr. The girls who had ignored me as “Aunt Harriet,” because I was so much older than they, now vied for my company. I found them more or less equivalent to the white cousins I had played with since childhood. They held no particular mystery and gave no particular worry since, unlike my Virginian masters, they could not, arbitrarily and at the drop of a hat, turn into violent masters with dangerous tantrums and obstinate demands.

To say I was never homesick would be a lie. How, I asked myself, could I regret slavery? Slavery had been my only family and my only home until now. I yearned for the familiar and evil alike. I disliked this northern climate with its harsh accents, its stiff, strange people. I craved my aunt's warm bosom and the smell of smoked bacon and compone on hickory embers, the pinch of chilled springwater on parched lips, the practical jokes of Daniel and Maynard, the extravagant ghost stories of Uncle Poke, the scent of new-mown hay and of honeysuckle, of fresh-scythed wheat and tobacco blossoms.

I dreamed at night of soft Virginia slave accents echoing along Mulberry Row, the deep bass of a lonely soloist in a potato field, the rumbling laughter of fathers at rest, the soprano cries of mothers commanding children to bed, the feel of smooth-spun cotton as it flowed from the rough raw fibers, the sound of Eston's violin, Matthew's trumpet, Harold's harmonica, and Feller's flute, of Sister's tambourine and Mama's spinet, of the calls of whippoorwills
and wild wolves, the mating song of mountain elk and the thrust of the Blue Ridge against the smoky streaks of twilight sky. How we made happiness out of nothing. How we snatched life out of doom.

A year passed and I gave up letting Charlotte win all the time. At least once a week we tied our skirts up around our waists and raced up the knoll, knees pumping, hair loose, arms flailing pell-mell. We ran like boys, knees up, elbows bent, head down. The fact that we did this in heavy skirts, under which was a layer of petticoats instead of britches, hadn't perturbed any of our male siblings. One of Charlotte's brothers had explained that it was no more unfair than the fact that girls had to learn to dance backwards.

“It's your destiny ... like having babies,” Amos had told her. “If you ever have to run from a man, at least you'll have a fighting chance . . . and you'll have to run in your clothes.”

I reached the top of the knoll first, gulping in air by bending over at the waist, to ease the stitch in my side. As I straightened, Charlotte tackled me from behind, throwing us both onto the cool grass. Charlotte's face was pressed close to mine, and her breath fanned the tendrils of my hair. She flung her arms over mine and, still panting, rested her head on my chest. I had never had a friend like Charlotte, and I experienced a wave of tenderness for her.

Yet how would I forever keep up the careless facade of happiness necessary to retain Charlotte's attention? Even those girls at school who did not like Charlotte had to admit that she was possessed of unlimited charm, which lay not only in her conventional—blond and blue-eyed—appearance, but in her outlook on life, which was as cheerfully shadowless as her face. In fact, she was so fond of the sunny side of things, she was inclined to regard gloominess or introspection as an illness akin to insanity, and she would avoid the company of anyone she felt fell into that category. She believed a witty answer turned away the wrath of teacher and parent, and that the oil of reason should always be poured on trouble or misery. I was always afraid of vexing her and kept my problems and unhappiness from her. I only learned much later that it was this resistance and ferocious mystery that drew her to me. She found me profoundly different from anyone she had ever known, and she often told me this, her wide eyes clouding for a second because she didn't know how to name it.

Charlotte sat up first, and before I could draw up my knees, she noticed my bare ankles. She touched the right one, gingerly tracing its contours. “What's that?” she asked innocently.

It was a sisterly gesture, but I drew back sharply from her touch. Every
gesture, every moment which corresponded to her safe, happy life had a double meaning for me, a kind of elongated shadow of my former life. She had learned to run to beat the males in her own world. I had learned to run to escape a beating or more from those in mine. I realized she could never understand, and any attempt to explain a life in such contrast to her own would be impossible, like impossible love. . . .

“When you were a child . . .” she would begin.
I was never a child, Charlotte; I was a slave child.

“What did your brothers want to be when they grew up?”
Grown-up male slaves, to survive until the age of twenty-one . . . Charlotte, oh Lordy.

“Why do you jump so when I put my arms around you?”
Because I'm afraid. Afraid you'll turn into Ellen or Cornelia. Afraid you'll turn into a white mistress. . . .

“When are you ever going to come home with me?”
When I'm sure I won't be asked to use the back door. . . .

“Why are you so sad, Harriet?”
Because I'm beginning to love, and can't let myself love anyone I'm bound to lose.