by Andrea Wulf
Jefferson needed to run a profitable agricultural operation in order to pay off his debts and to sustain his expensive lifestyle, but he also wanted to create something aesthetically impressive. Like Washington, Jefferson belonged to the upper strata of Virginia society. He was a large landowner, having inherited several thousand acres from his father, to which he had added another 5,000 acres when he had married the wealthy widow Martha Wayles Skelton in 1772. Reputedly, his first memory was of being carried on a pillow by a slave and he owned almost 200 slaves. But instead of building his house and plantation in the fertile land of the valley, Jefferson had placed it on the top of a mountain with no water supply. No sensible plantation owner would have done so—plantations from Virginia to Georgia lined rivers on which the harvest was carried to the trading towns and from there to the European markets. Instead of rich yields and easy access to Richmond and Fredericksburg, Jefferson had chosen glorious views over the seemingly endless lines of the Blue Ridge Mountains that stood as the western signposts for the wilderness beyond. By moving onto a mountain, the Heart had triumphed over the Head: Jefferson had sacrificed profit for beauty, seemingly unable to hold on to both.
At Wooburn Farm, however, he saw for the first time how the beautiful could coexist with, indeed complement, the practical. It would be decades before he implemented what he had learned here and in other English gardens, but for the rest of his life Jefferson planned his ornamental farm at Monticello with fields of pasture that were nestled around the mountain like pearls on a necklace next to groves of trees and flowering shrubs—a garden in which colorful flowers vied with experimental crops and vegetable plots for the attention of the visitors. He admired Wooburn so much that he resolved to come back with Adams to show him how the English had masterfully integrated agriculture into the pleasure ground. But before he could even propose the idea, he had to return to London because the British foreign secretary, Lord Carmarthen, had suddenly requested a new draft of the commercial treaty.
ONCE AGAIN Adams and Jefferson labored over the details and wording of a treaty that they knew was unlikely ever to be signed by the British. Adams was frustrated because he had not accomplished much in the past year. Not only was he trying to negotiate with the British about their trade but he also had to deal with the unfulfilled agreements from the peace treaty. There was the issue of compensation for the slaves and property that the British had confiscated during the war, as well as the continuous presence of the British in areas of the United States where they still occupied their garrisons. There had been little progress because the British were reluctant to deal at all with their former colonies and for the most part Lord Carmarthen refused even to acknowledge Adams’s and Jefferson’s letters.
The negotiations with His Excellency Abdrahaman, envoy of the sultan of Tripoli and representative of the Barbary States, had been equally humiliating. Adams had met him several times and had gone to great lengths to please him, smoking a two-meter-long pipe “in aweful Pomp, reciprocating Whiff for Whiff” so perfectly that he had been praised: “Monsieur, votes etes un Turk.” But while arousing this admiration in such woefully undignified circumstances, it had dawned on Adams that the $80,000 Congress had granted for the “tribute” was far from enough. If America did not increase the budget, Adams feared, there would be “a universal and horrible War.” Only in the previous week, just before Jefferson had gone on his garden tour, Abdrahaman warned them that the Barbary States were ready to attack American vessels, for “it was written in their Koran” and therefore their duty to fight the enemies of Islam.
Nor was the British public in any mood to help its former colonies: “An ambassador from America! Good heavens what a sound!” the London Public Advertiser had scoffed upon Adams’s arrival in London the previous summer. Adams had been right to be anxious about his new post: the British hated the Americans. “This People cannot look me in the Face,” he wrote after attending a ball—“there is a conscious Guilt and Shame in their Countenances.” Everybody, Jefferson agreed, was pugnacious toward the Americans—the king, the newspapers, and the courtiers. Even the British government and the opposition agreed for once in their hostility. Putting forward a slightly eccentric theory, Jefferson mused if it was “the quantity of animal food” consumed by the British that “renders their character insusceptible of civilisation.” Jefferson for his part had an aversion toward the British as well, which had deep roots from long before the War of Independence. Like George Washington and other Virginia planters, he had been caught in a tangle of debts and spiraling interest payments with the British tobacco merchants.2 To him England was corrupt and her government despotic. It was a nation that perpetuated inequality, ruled by “nobility, wealth, and pomp,” he sneered. Their rude manners and unwillingness to cooperate with the United States of America had only strengthened this animosity.
Despite their misgivings, Jefferson and Adams went back to the trade treaty, but once they had dispatched the new draft on 4 April, there was nothing much to do other than wait for a reply. Jefferson was keen to continue his excursions. In London, he said, “I have lost a great deal of time in ceremony, returning visits &c.” and knowing that he might never return to Britain, he wanted to inspect as many of the famous gardens as possible.
Adams was a willing companion. Over the previous weeks he would have heard much praise about the English garden because Jefferson was not the only American garden enthusiast in London. Adams and Jefferson had met William Hamilton, a fellow gardener from Philadelphia who had toured England to get some ideas for his own estate, The Woodlands. Jefferson would later describe it as “the only rival I have known in America to what may be seen in England.” Gardens were probably the only topic the three men were able to talk about, as Hamilton had not been a supporter of the revolutionary cause and in 1778 he had even been tried for treason.
Unlike Jefferson and Hamilton, the frugal John Adams never intended to re-create the grand gardens that he visited. Despite being ambitious, he simply would not have been able to afford it because he was not a wealthy landowner. Adams had inherited forty acres in the village of Braintree (which would later become incorporated in the town of Quincy), a few miles outside Boston to which he had added several small parcels over the years. Until his appointments in France and Britain, his main income had come from his work as a lawyer. His garden was not so much an elegant ornamental landscape as a typical kitchen garden with an orchard that supplied fruits and vegetables for his family. Far from being any less appreciative of beautiful gardens, the impetuous and sometimes short-tempered Adams found they had a powerful and therapeutic effect on him. The sturdy trunks of trees with sinuous roots clawed into the soil, wind rustling through the leaves, branches laden with fruit and sweet-smelling flowers created a peaceful world of “tranquil Walks” that Adams found enchantingly relaxing.
Throughout his life Adams felt that cities, with their “putrid Streets,” were harmful to health and mind. He always made it a priority to find time for rural excursions, particularly when the pressures of politics became too much. Like Jefferson and Washington, Adams regarded himself as a farmer first and always preferred being in his fields or in his garden to other pursuits. It was the “zeal at my Heart, for my country,” Adams said, that kept him in politics, not a particular love for it.
When the Continental Congress had discussed the future of the thirteen colonies in 1775, Adams had escaped as often as possible to visit the country estates outside the city. “Such Excursions are very necessary to preserve our Health, amidst the suffocating Heats of the City, and the wasting, exhausting Debates of the Congress,” he had written to Abigail, who had stayed behind to manage the farm. Over the years he had seen many of America’s finest gardens and his diary was peppered with effusive descriptions of what he had seen. In London he and Abigail always invited sea captains from Boston for dinner to hear news from home and in particular “how the Trees flourish in the common.”
Gardens but also forests, f
ields and meadows were places where Adams could be himself. He was never happier than when planting, pruning apple trees or getting his hands dirty in the “old swamp … digging stumps and Roots.” The sturdy New Englander made an awkward figure at Court. He never learned the art of flattery, gracious dancing or small talk and felt more comfortable delving into ditches or ploughing his fields than conversing with European ambassadors in gilded drawing rooms. Social life in Europe, he felt, was “an insipid round of hair-dressing and play,” and he would have preferred to return home “to Farming.”
On 4 April 1786, less than twenty-four hours since Jefferson had walked among the meadows of Wooburn Farm, he and Adams set off in a hired post chaise with their two servants. They drove along the Thames toward the west, passing the villas and gardens that hugged the river. They made quick progress as the network of roads lacing the English countryside was the best in Europe—much envied by foreign tourists who thought that traveling in England was far preferable to continental travel. Their first stop was Wooburn Farm—Jefferson must have talked so enthusiastically about it that Adams was eager to see it too. He agreed that Wooburn Farm was “beautifull,” and couldn’t wait to tell Abigail about it. For, unlike the grand formal parterres they had seen at the aristocratic estates in France, the rustic and modest fermes ornées were more suitable gardens for an agrarian republic. Though certainly enjoyable, the garden tour was not a leisurely excursion. Most days Adams and Jefferson traveled between forty and fifty miles, often visiting several gardens. Some of these covered hundreds of acres, meaning there was little time to stroll along serpentine paths or sit on one of the many alcoves that were scattered around the pleasure grounds. Instead the two enthusiasts hurried to see as many gardens as possible. Jefferson in particular thought that too much detail during sightseeing “will load the memory with trifles, fatique the attention” and thus be a complete waste of time. He was not here to admire tranquil groves and sweet-smelling shrubs for the sake of their beauty but to gather as much knowledge as he could.
Talking to gardeners, Jefferson insisted, was a much more useful occupation than to “waste my time on good dinners and good society.” As a guidebook Jefferson and Adams relied on Whately’s Observations, which described the gardens they wanted to see in great detail as well as explaining the general design principles of the English garden. The descriptions, Jefferson thought, were “remarkeable for their exactness” and “models of perfect elegance.” He carried his copy with him, scribbling comments in the margins as well as taking notes so that he could apply these lessons to his garden at Monticello.3
As Adams and Jefferson walked together through the gardens, they made an odd pair. Where Jefferson was tall and thin, almost gangly, Adams was shorter and rounder—reputedly they had once been compared to a candlestick and a cannonball. At six feet two and a half inches, Jefferson towered about seven inches over the stout Adams, who had put on so much weight that his wife pitied the horse that had to carry him. Jefferson’s powdered hair and elegant Parisian clothes gave him the air of a polished diplomat. He accentuated his sophistication with striped silk waistcoats, starched ruffles and cravats. During their garden tour he even went to the hairdresser. Adams preferred a plainer style. At heart he was a farmer and, unlike the other ambassadors at the courts in Versailles and St. James’s, who were swaddled in ribbons, wrapped in lace and decorated with expensive jewels, Adams wore sturdy broadcloth. He proudly carried the aura of simple republican life and said that he had no drop of blood in his veins “but what is American.”
These differences in appearance reflected deeper contrasts in character. Adams was confrontational, assertive and direct. Franklin thought that Adams was “always an honest Man, often a Wise One, but sometimes and in some things, absolutely out of his Senses.” Many people respected Adams for being forthright but even friends like Jefferson admitted he was sometimes “vain” and “irritable” (though Jefferson also insisted that nothing else was “ill” about his friend). By contrast Jefferson avoided conflict wherever possible because he felt an “abhorrence of dispute.” He was astonished at what Adams had to endure during the protracted treaty negotiations: “Indeed the man must be of rock, who can stand all this,” he confided to Abigail. “It would have illy suited me. I do not love difficulties.” He was intensely private (“I keep what I feel to myself”), a characteristic that Adams had seen firsthand the previous year when Jefferson withdrew from society for several months after receiving the tragic news that his two-year-old daughter, Lucy (who had remained in Virginia), had died of whooping cough. Exhausted with grief, he “confined himself from the world,” just as he had done when his wife, Martha, had died in 1782 after Lucy’s birth.
Jefferson was a quiet, thoughtful man. His composure was always controlled and never “ruffled,” as a contemporary observed. Where he was reserved, Adams was openhearted and chatty. Adams talked a lot—too much, he often realized—and sometimes envied Washington, Franklin and Jefferson for their ability to hold their tongue. Even when he read, Adams entered into a dialogue—with the author—scribbling in his books “Fool! Fool!” or an approving “Excellent!” Adams’s diary was infused with his innermost anxieties, emotions and hopes, while Jefferson’s summaries of the day consisted of detailed account books. “Nothing was too small for him to keep an account of,” his overseer at Monticello later said, as Jefferson filled row after row with neat lists of even his most trivial expenses. In his diary Adams recounted the conversations of the dinner parties he attended, while Jefferson calculated the average cost of the meal per person.
But they also had much in common: their love for the young republic, an insatiable curiosity for the world around them, as well as a passion for books, learning, agriculture and, of course, gardens. While the two had lived in France, Adams’s house in Auteuil had become almost a second home for the widowed Jefferson, and when the Adamses left for London, the lonely Jefferson missed them terribly: “The departure of your family has left me in the dumps,” he wrote to Adams, adding “my afternoons hang heavily on me.” Now at last the two friends had time to enjoy each other’s company once again.
On the second day of their tour Adams and Jefferson headed to the village of Buckingham. Having seen the beauty of the English landscape fused with agricultural utility, they now wanted to see a garden that brought landscape and politics together: Stowe, one of the most famous gardens in England. Stowe had been created fifty years earlier by Lord Cobham,4 who had set out to celebrate liberty, honor and civic duty as well as the strength of a free England. He had turned against the geometrical baroque gardens in which swirling arabesques had been cut into turf and trees had been trimmed into stiff globes, cones and pyramids. Cobham celebrated nature as it was (albeit stylized), with trees left unclipped and paths snaking sinuously through irregularly planted thickets.
He had been a staunch member of the Whigs, a political group that had greatly influenced Adams’s and Jefferson’s political thinking by opposing monarchical tyranny in the name of liberty. In the late seventeenth century the Whigs in Britain had created a constitutional arrangement in which monarchical power was restrained by an elected parliament, thereby elevating the principle of individual liberty above the God-given rights of kings.
At the same time, some of the Whigs had begun to use their gardens to express these political ideas. Mirroring their rejection of tyranny, they had turned against the rigid designs, geometrical patterns and clipped shapes associated with Louis XIV’s lavish Versailles (for them the home of absolutism and despotic rule). Over the course of the eighteenth century they had exchanged the artifice of straight canals and immaculately sheared hedges for serpentine lakes and clumps of unpruned trees. The irregularity of nature had become a symbol of liberty, or, as one of the most influential garden writers would tell Washington a few years later, it “opposes a kind of systematic despotism.” Whig gardeners literally liberated the garden, and in so doing, “Freedom was given to the forms of trees,” H
orace Walpole—Britain’s first garden historian—wrote in 1780. Jefferson adored this style, having read about it extensively in his many gardening books, and complained whenever an owner had not embraced it wholeheartedly enough—one garden “shews still too much of art,” elsewhere a “straight walk” spoiled the landscape, having “an ill effect.”
Stowe was particularly explicit in its political posturing, as Cobham had in the 1730s turned parts of it into a denunciation of Robert Walpole, the first prime minister of Britain. Cobham turned against the centralized power around the court and government, accusing Walpole of corruption and debauchery. In line with this, Cobham’s garden told a story of the choices between virtue and vice, between reason and passion and between civic duty and vanity. His intention was to distance himself from the immorality and flaws associated with Walpole and the court.
Jefferson, who liked to be prepared, purchased a guidebook that illustrated Cobham’s landscapes and monuments. At the entrance to Stowe, visitors faced the choice between a path of vice or virtue. This was a moral dilemma popularized by the classical tale of the Choice of Hercules, in which Hercules was tempted by the Goddess of Pleasure to follow the easy path of dissipation and by Virtue, who promised glory after a life of hardship. At Stowe the path of vice led to the Temple of Venus, which featured busts of famous adulteresses, and to the Temple of Bacchus, with scenes of “Mysterious Orgies”—all of which the frugal Adams thought to be “quite unnecessary as Mankind have no need of artificial Incitements, to such Amuzements.” Not surprisingly he preferred the garden of virtue. This part of the garden had been inspired by a famous essay that both Adams and Jefferson had read. Written by Joseph Addison, an English Whig, it described a dream set in an ideal garden presided over by the Goddess of Liberty herself.