Spoiler Alert: If you have not read Secrets of an Old Virginia House, you probably will not want to read any further, for there will be spoilers regarding the historical mystery.
Okay, here we go!
If you’ve read Secrets of an Old Virginia House, you know the conclusion is a fictional hypothesis of what could have happened in history, based on real history. Specifically, it involves Thomas Jefferson. I am not going to print the details here, because if you’ve read the book, you know. Instead, I am going to share for those who have read and know the revelations some additional reasons for some choices I made in the book.
- For the names of the historical figures William and Etta/Ettie, I pulled these from the real names, Beverly and Henrietta. Etta/Ettie is just a shortening of Henrietta, and Beverly’s name was actually William Beverly.
- The story of William and Etta’s ancestral home burning in the Piedmont is a reference to the fact that Thomas Jefferson’s childhood home, Shadwell, burned when he was a young man. Thereafter, he built Monticello.
- I mentioned the Etta was prolific, well-reasoned, and eloquent as a letter-writer. I figured that children obviously inherit some traits from their father, so this was a nod to her parentage.
- Etta writes in a letter to her brother something about their earliest lives’ lesson was something to the effect that a Virginia planter could not treat his enslaved children the same. The impetus for this thought from the character is obvious.
- Etta mentions that a Mrs. Trist acted as an emissary for letters to her father. Jefferson did indeed have an enduring friendship with a Mrs. Trist after staying at her mother’s boarding house in Philadelphia. They wrote very often. She struck me as a good emissary, as she and Jefferson shared a close relationship that seemed based purely on real friendship, exchanged letters, and later, their grandchildren would marry one another.
- There are letters from Sally Hemings in French. She learned French in Paris, although we do not know if she had a writing knowledge of it, or of English. Somehow, I almost felt it was more likely that she would have learned to write in French. I felt like she might have retained some knowledge of the language and passed it on to her children, as her son Madison uses the word “enceinte” in his newspaper interview, the French word for “pregnant.” Now, this could have been merely his Victorian sensibilities stating the term delicately, but those were some of my reasons for using French.
- As to the portrait, if there was an existing portrait of Martha Wayles Jefferson (and I think it likely that there was due to Jefferson’s love for her and his proclivity for splashing out on art) I think it is within the realm of possibility that he would ask his daughter, Mrs. Randolph, to find a place of safe-keeping for it where her image would always remain private. Jefferson always seemed a little baffled by the public’s interest in his family, with the public and private spheres being separate. There may be more obvious choices for keeping a portrait private, but I could not think of one. If Mrs. Randolph gave it to Sally Hemings to give to Sally’s daughter, whose connection with Jefferson was entirely unknown, it would seem safe. Whereas, if Mrs. Randolph had given it to one of her own children, the public eventually would see it through estate sales and the like.
- I chose the surname Wayles for William and Etta because, while their mother carried the surname Hemings, Sally’s father’s surname was actually Wayles.
Okay, that’s it for now! I hope you enjoy these little tidbits.
Tara Cowan 