Sarah
1 February 1820
Dear Israel,
How often I have thought of our conversations on board
ship! I read the book you entrusted to me and my spirit was
deeply kindled. There are so many things I wish to ask you!
How I wish we were together again—
3 February 1820
Dear Mr. Morris,
After being away from the evils of slavery for six months,
my mind burst with new horror at seeing it again on my
return to Charleston. It was made all the worse upon
reading the book you gave me. I have nowhere to turn but
you—
10 February 1820
Dear Mr. Morris,
I trust you are well. How is your dear wife, Rebecca—
11 February 1820
Thank you, sir, for the book. I find a bewildering beauty
in your Quaker beliefs—the notion there is a seed of light
inside of us, a mysterious Inner Voice. Would you kindly
advise me how this Voice—
I wrote to him over and over, letters I couldn’t finish. Invariably, I
would stop mid-sentence. I would lay down the quill, fold the letter, and
conceal it with the rest at the back of my desk drawer.
It was the middle of the afternoon, the winter gloom hovering as I
pulled out the thick bundle, untied the black satin ribbon, and added the
letter of February 11 to the heap. Mailing the letters would only bring
anguish. I was too drawn to him. Every letter he answered would incite my
feelings more. And it would do no good to have him encouraging me
toward Quakerdom. The Quakers were a despised sect here, regarded as
anomalous, plain-dressed, and strange, a tiny cluster of jarringly eccentric
people who drew stares on the street. Surely, I didn’t need to invite that kind
of ridicule and shun. And Mother—she would never allow it.
Hearing her cane on the pine floor outside, I snatched up the letters and
yanked open the drawer, my hands fumbling with panic. The stationery
cascaded into my lap and onto the rug. As I stooped to collect it, the door
swung open without a knock and she stood framed in the opening, her eyes
moving across my hidden cache.
I looked up at her with the black ribbon furling from my fingers.
“You’re needed in the library,” she said. I couldn’t detect the slightest
curiosity in her about the contents I’d spilled. “Sabe is packing your father’s
books—I need you to oversee that he does it properly.”
“Packing?”
“They will be divided between Thomas and John,” she said, and
turning, left me.
I gathered up the letters, tied them with the ribbon, and slipped them
back into the drawer. Why I kept them, I didn’t know—it was foolish.
When I arrived in the library, Sabe wasn’t there. He’d emptied most of
the shelves, stacking the books in several large trunks, which sat open on
the floor, the same floor where I’d knelt all those years ago when Father
forbade me the books. I didn’t want to think of it, of that terrible time, of
the room stripped now, the books lost to me, always lost.
I sank into Father’s chair. The clock in the main passage clicked,
magnifying, and I felt the shadows gathering inside of me again, worse this
time. Since returning, I’d slipped further into melancholy each day. It was
the same trough of darkness I’d fallen into when I was twelve and the life
had gone out of everything. Mother had summoned Dr. Geddings back then,
and I feared she might do so again. Every day, I forced myself to come
down for tea. I endured the visitations from her friends. I kept up my
attendance at church, at Bible study, at alms meetings. I sat with Mother in
the mornings, hoops of embroidery on our laps, willing the needle through
the cloth. She’d given me the task of household records, and each week I
sorted through the supplies, writing inventories and procurement lists. The
house, the slaves, Charleston, Mother, the Presbyterians—they were the
woof and warp of everything.
Nina had pulled away. She was angry at me for remaining in
Philadelphia after Father died. “You don’t know what it was like alone
here,” she’d cried. “Mother instructed me constantly in the error of my
ways, everything from church to slavery to my rebellious nature. It was
horrible!”
I’d been the buffer between her and Mother, and my remaining away for
so long had left her exposed. “I’m sorry,” I told her.
“You only wrote to me once!” Her beautiful face was contorted with
hurt and resentment. “Once.”
It was true. I’d been so enamored with my freedom up there, I hadn’t
bothered. “I’m sorry,” I said again.
I knew in time she would forgive the selfish months I’d abandoned her,
but I sensed the estrangement came from more than that. At fifteen, she
needed to break away, to come out from my shadow, to understand who she
was separate from me. My retreat to Philadelphia was only the excuse she
needed to declare her independence.
As she fled to her room the day of our confrontation, she shouted,
“Mother was right, I have no mind of my own. Only yours!”
We passed now like strangers. I let her be, but it added to my despair.
I stared at the trunks of books on the library floor, remembering the
pangs I’d once had for a profession, for some purpose. The world had been
such a beckoning place once.
Sabe still had not returned. I got up from my chair and rummaged
nostalgically among the books, coming upon The Sacred Biography of
Jeanne d’Arc of France. I couldn’t say how many times I’d read that
wondrous little volume of Saint Joan’s bravery before Father had banned
me from his library. Opening it now, I gazed at a sketch of her coat of arms
—two fleurs de lis. I’d forgotten it was there, and it made sudden sense to
me why I’d latched onto the fleur de lis button when I was eleven. I slipped
the book beneath my shawl.
That night, unable to sleep, I heard the clock downstairs bong two, then
three. The rain began soon after, beating without mercy against the piazza
and the windows. I climbed from the covers and lit the lantern. I would
write to Israel. I would tell him how melancholy swallowed me at times,
how I almost felt the grave would be a refuge. I would write yet another
letter I wouldn’t mail. Perhaps it would relieve me.
I pulled open the desk drawer and watched the light tumble inside it.
There, as I’d left it, was my Bible and my Blackstone commentary, my
stationery, ink, pen, ruler, and sealing wax, yet I didn’t see the bundle of
letters. I drew the lamp closer and reached my hand into the empty corners.
The black ribbon was there, curled like a malicious afterthought. My letters
to Israel were gone.
I wanted to scream at her. The need took hold of me with blinding
violence, and I flung open my door and rushed down the stairs, clinging to
the rail as my feet seemed to sweep out from under me.
I battered her door with my fist, then rattled the knob. It was locked.
“. . . How dare you take them!” I shrieked. “How dare you. Open the door.
Open it!”
I couldn’t imagine what she’d thought on reading my intimate
implorings to a stranger in the North. A Quaker. A man with a wife. Did she
think I’d remained in Philadelphia for him?
Behind the door, I heard her call to Minta, who slept on the floor near
her bed. I pounded again. “. . . Open it! You had no right!”
She didn’t respond, but Nina’s scared voice came from the stair landing.
“Sister?”
Looking up, I saw her white gown glowing in the dark, Henry and
Charles beside her, the three of them like wraiths.
“. . . Go to bed,” I said.
Their bare feet slapped the floor and I heard the doors to their rooms
bang shut one by one. Turning back, I lifted my fist again, but my rage had
begun to recede, flowing back into the terrible place it’d come from. Limp
and exhausted, I leaned my head against the door sill, hating myself.
The next morning, I couldn’t get out of bed. I tried very hard, but it was as
if something in me had dropped anchor. I rolled my face into the pillow. I
no longer cared.
During the days that followed, Handful brought me trays of food, which
I barely touched. I had no hunger for anything except sleep, and it eluded
me. Some nights I wandered onto the piazza and stared over the rail at the
garden, imagining myself falling.
Handful placed a gunny sack beside me on the bed one day. “Open it
up,” she said. When I did, the smell of char wafted out. Inside, I found my
letters, singed and blackened. She’d found Minta tossing them into the fire
in the kitchen house, as Mother had ordered. Handful had rescued them
with a poker.
When spring came and my state of mind didn’t improve, Dr. Geddings
arrived. Mother seemed genuinely afraid for me. She visited my room with
handfuls of drooping jonquils and spoke sweetly, saying I should come for a
stroll with her on Gadsden Green, or that she’d asked Aunt-Sister to bake
me a rice pudding. She brought me notes of concern from members of my
church, who were under the impression I had pleurisy. I would gaze at her
blankly, then look away toward the window.
Nina visited, too. “Was it me?” she asked. “Did I cause you to feel like
this?”
“Oh, Nina,” I said. “. . . You must never think that . . . I can’t explain
what’s wrong with me, but it’s not you.”
Then one day in May, Thomas appeared. He insisted we sit on the porch
where the air was warm and weighed with the scent of lilacs. I listened as
he went on heatedly about a recent compromise in Congress that had
undone the ban on slavery in Missouri. “That damnable Henry Clay!” he
said. “The Great Pacificator. He has started the cancer spreading again.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. To my surprise, though, I felt
curious. Later, I would realize that was Thomas’ intention—creating a little
pulley to try and tow me back.
“He’s a fool—he believes letting slavery into Missouri will placate the
firebrands down here, but it’s only splitting the country further.” He reached
for the newspaper he’d brought and spread it out for me. “Look at this.”
A letter had been printed on the front page of the Mercury, which called
Clay’s compromise a fire bell in the night.
It has awakened and filled me with terror. I consider it the knell of the
Union . . . The letter was signed, Thomas Jefferson.
It’d been so long since I’d cared what was happening out there. Some
old wrath sparked in me. Hostility toward slavery must be finding some
bold new footing! Why, it sounded as if my brother himself was hostile to
it.
“. . . You are sided with the North?” I asked.
“I only know we can’t go on blind to the sin of putting people in chains.
It must come to an end.”
“. . . Are you freeing your slaves, then, Thomas?” Asking it was
vindictive. I knew he had no such intention.
“While you were away, I founded an American colonization chapter
here in Charleston. We’re raising money.”
“. . . Please tell me you’re not still hoping to buy up all the slaves and
send them back to Africa?” I hadn’t felt such fervor since my discussions
with Israel during the voyage. My cheeks burned with it. “. . . That is your
answer to the spreading cancer?”
“It may be a poor answer, Sarah, but I can imagine no other.”
“. . . Must our imaginations be so feeble as that, Thomas? If the Union
dies, as our old president says, it will be from lack of imagination . . . It will
be from Southern hubris, and our love of wealth, and the brutality of our
hearts!”
He stood and looked down at me. He smiled. “There she is,” he said.
“There’s my sister.”
I cannot say I became my old self after that, but the melancholy
gradually lifted, replaced with the jittery feeling of emerging, like a creature
without a skin or a shell. I began to eat the rice puddings. I sipped tea
steeped in St. John’s Wort, and sat in the sun, and reread the Quaker book. I
thought often of the fire bell in the night.
At midsummer, without any forethought, I took out a sheet of stationery.
19 July 1820
Dear Mr. Morris,
Forgive my long delay in writing to you. The book you
gave me last November aboard ship has been my faithful
companion for all this time. The Quaker beliefs beckon to
me, but I do not know if I have the courage to follow them.
There would be a great and dreadful cost, of that I’m
certain. I ask nothing, except your counsel.
Yours Most Truly,
Sarah Grimké
I gave the letter to Handful. “Guard it carefully,” I told her. “Post it
yourself in the afternoon mail.”
When Israel’s letter arrived in return, I was in the warming kitchen,
surveying the pantries and writing a list of foods needed at the market.
Handful had waylaid it from Sabe when it arrived at the door. She handed it
to me, and waited.
I took a butter knife from the drawer and ripped the seal. I read it twice,
once to myself, then aloud to her.
10 September 1820
Dear Miss Grimké,
I was gratified to receive your letter and most especially
to learn that you are swayed to the Quakers. God’s way is
narrow and the cost is great. I remind you of the scripture:
“He that finds his life shall lose it, and he that loses his life
shall find it.” Do not fear to lose what needs to be lost.
I regret to say I have grave and sorrowful news to impart.
My dear Rebecca passed away last January. She died of a
malignant influenza soon after our return to Philadelphia.
My sister, Catherine, has come to care for the children. They
miss their mother, as do I, but we are comforted that our
beloved wife and mother is with God.
Write to me. I am here to encourage you in your path.
Your Friend,
Israel Morris
I sat in my room at midday with my eyes closed and my fingers laced in my
lap, listening for the Voice the Quakers seemed so sure was inside of us. I’d
been indulging in this dubious activity since receiving Israel’s letter, though
I doubted the Quakers would’ve called it an activity. For them, this listening
was the ultimate inactivity, a kind of capitulation to the stillness of one’s
private heart. I wanted to believe God would eventually show up,
murmuring little commands and illuminations. As usual, I heard nothing.
I’d responded to Israel’s letter immediately, my hand shaking so badly
the ink lines had appeared rickety on the paper. I’d poured out my
sympathy, my prayers, all sorts of pious assurances. Every word seemed
trite, like the prattle that went on at my Bible studies. I felt protected behind
it.
He’d responded with another letter and our correspondence had finally
begun, consisting mostly of earnest inquires on my part and bits of guidance
on his. I asked him pointedly what the Inner Voice sounded like. How will I
recognize it? “I cannot tell you,” he wrote. “But when you hear it, you will
know.”
That day the silence felt unusually dull and heavy, like the weight of
water. It clogged my ears and throbbed against my drums. Fidgety thoughts
darted through my mind, reminding me of squirrels loose in their trees.
Perhaps I was too Anglican, too Presbyterian, too Grimké for this. I lifted
my eyes to the fireplace and saw the coals had gone out.
Just a few more minutes, I told myself, and when my lids sank closed
again, I had no expectations, no hope, no endeavoring—I’d given up on the
Voice—and it was then my mind stopped racing and I began to float on
some quiet stream.
Go north.
The voice broke into my small oblivion, dropping like a dark, beautiful
stone.
I caught my breath. It was not like a common thought—it was distinct,
shimmering, and dense with God.
Go north.
I opened my eyes. My heart leapt so wildly I placed a hand across my
breast and pressed.
It was unthinkable. Unmarried daughters didn’t go off to live
unprotected on their own in a foreign place. They lived at home with their
mothers, and when there was no mother, with their sisters, and when there
were no sisters, with their brothers. They didn’t break with everything and
everyone they knew and loved. They didn’t throw over their lives and their
reputations and their family name. They didn’t create scandals.
I rose to my feet and paced before the window, saying to myself it
wasn’t possible. Mother would rain down Armageddon. Voice or no Voice,
she would put a swift end to it.
Father had left all his properties and the vast share of his wealth to his
sons, but he hadn’t forgotten his daughters. He’d left us each ten thousand
dollars, and if I were frugal, if I lived on the interest, it would provide for
me the rest of my life.
Beyond the window, the sky loomed large, filled with broken light, and
I remembered suddenly that day last winter in the drawing room when
Handful cleaned the chandelier, the allegation she’d leveled at me: My body
might be a slave, but not my mind. For you, it’s the other way round. I’d
dismissed the words—what could she know of it? But I saw now how exact
they were. My mind had been shackled.
I strode to my dresser and opened the drawer of my Hepplewhite, the
one I never opened, the one that held the lava box. Inside it, I found the
silver button Handful had returned to me some years ago. It was black with
tarnish and long forgotten. I took it in my palm.
How does one know the voice is God’s? I believed the voice bidding me
to go north belonged to him, though perhaps what I really heard that day
was my own impulse to freedom. Perhaps it was my own voice. Does it
matter?
PART FOUR
September 1821–July 1822
