wasn’t it? My grandfather thought him to be the greatest silversmith in the country, greater than Mr. Revere.”
Oh, the adroitness of this man! I twisted in my chair the better to see him. In the guise of a compliment, he’d let it be known he was not the only one in the room descended from the merchant class. Of course, the difference was that John Paul Grimké had parlayed the success of his shop into cotton ventures and large land holdings in the low country. He’d been ambitious and prudent, and toiled his way into Charleston aristocracy. Nevertheless, Mr. Williams had landed his punch.
Father eyed him steadily and spoke two words. “I see.”
I think he did see, too. In that moment, he saw Mr. Williams quite well.
Tomfry served Hyson tea and biscuits, and the conversation turned back to trivialities, an interlude cut short when the curfew drums began. Mr. Williams rose, and I felt a sudden deflation. To my wonder, Mother entreated him to visit again, and I saw one of Father’s luxuriant eyebrows lift.
“May I see him to the door?” I asked.
“Of course, dear, but Tomfry will accompany you.”
We trailed Tomfry from the room, but once past the door, Mr. Williams stopped and placed his hand on my arm. “You look enchanting,” he whispered, drawing his face close to mine. “It would ease my regret in leaving, if you favored me with a lock of your hair.”
“My hair?”
“As a token of your affection.”
I lifted the hen feathers to cover the heat in my face.
He pressed a white handkerchief into my hand. “Fold the lock inside my kerchief, then toss it over the fence to George Street. I’ll be there, waiting.” With that titillating directive, he gave me a grin, such a grin, and strode toward the door, where Tomfry waited uncomfortably.
Returning to the drawing room to face my parents’ evaluations, I halted outside the door, realizing they were speaking about me.
“John, we must face reason. He may be her only chance.”
“You think our daughter so poor a marriage prospect she can draw no better than that?”
“His family is not poor. They are reasonably well-to-do.”
“But Mary, it is a mercantile family.”
“The man is a suitor, and he is likely the best she can do.”
I fled to my room, chagrined, but too preoccupied with my clandestine mission to be wounded. Having lit the lamps and turned down the bed, Handful was bent over my desk, frowning and picking her way through the poem Leonidas, which was an almost unreadable ode to men and their wars. As always, she wore a pouch about her neck filled with bark, leaves, acorns, and other gleanings from the oak in the work yard.
“Quickly,” I blurted. “Take the shears from my dresser and cut off a lock of my hair.”
She squinted at me without moving a muscle. “Why do you wanna do something like that?”
“Just do it!” I was a wreck of impatience, but seeing how my tone miffed her, I explained the reason.
She cut a whorl as long as my finger and watched me secret it inside the handkerchief. She followed me downstairs to the ornamental garden where I glimpsed him through the palisade fence, a shadowed figure, leaning against the stuccoed brick wall of the Dupré house across the street.
“That him?” Handful asked.
I shushed her, afraid he would hear, and then I flung the amorous bundle over the fence. It landed in the crushed shell that powdered the street.
The next day Father announced we would depart immediately for Belmont. Because of Thomas’ upcoming nuptials, it’d previously been decided Father would journey to the upcountry plantation alone this spring, and now suddenly the entire family was thrown into a frenzied mass exodus. Did he think no one understood it had everything to do with the unsuitable son of a silversmith?
I penned a hurried letter, which I left for Tomfry to post.
17 March
Dear Mr. Williams,
I am sorry to inform you that my family will leave Charleston in the morning. I will not return until the middle of May. Leaving in such an impromptu manner prevents me saying farewell in person, which I much regret. I hope I might welcome you again to our home on East Bay as soon as I return to civilization. I trust you found your handkerchief and its contents, and keep them close.
With Affectionate Regards, I am
Sarah Grimké
The seven weeks of my separation from Mr. Williams were a cruel agony. I busied myself with the establishment of a slave infirmary on the