The inscription in Jefferson’s copy of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire occurs nowhere near Gibbon’s skeptical reference to Ossian. Instead, it occurs late in the History, adjacent to a passage describing when Mahomet II visited St. Sophia during the fifteenth century and transformed the church into a mosque. Gibbon wrote:
By his command, the metropolis of the Eastern church was transformed into a mosch: the rich and portable instruments of superstition had been removed; the crosses were thrown down; and the walls, which were covered with images and mosaics, were washed and purified, and restored to a state of naked simplicity. On the same day, or on the ensuing Friday, the muezin or crier ascended the most lofty turret, and proclaimed the ezan, or public invitation in the name of God and his prophet, the imam preached; and Mahomet the second performed the namez of prayer and thanksgiving on the great altar, where the Christian mysteries had so lately been celebrated before the last of the Caesars. From St. Sophia he proceeded to the august, but desolate, mansion of an hundred successors of the great Constantine; but which in a few hours had been stripped of their pomp of royalty.
Upon reading this passage, Jefferson recalled the following lines from “Carthon,” which he inscribed onto this page: “I have seen the walls of Balclutha, but they were desolate. The stream of Clutha was removed from its place by the fall of the walls. The thistle shook there its lonely head. The moss whistled to the wind. The fox looked out from the windows: the rank grass of the wall waved round his head.” Reading about this Muslim takeover of a Christian cathedral, Jefferson compared it to watching an ancient edifice being reversed to a state of nature. For Jefferson, Mahomet II and his followers are like the fox and thistle in Ossian: symbols of decay, not progress.22
He continued to read, recommend, and refer to the works of Ossian throughout his life. Entertaining John Adams and his family in Paris one evening, Jefferson devoted a part of their conversation to literature; a teenage John Quincy Adams wrote in his diary that Jefferson was “a great admirer of Ossian’s poems.” Ossian remained on Jefferson’s mind after the Adamses had left Paris for London. He wrote John Adams, “The departure of your family has left me in the dumps. My afternoons hang heavily on me.” In another of his deliberate exaggerations, he told Adams that he was almost “ready for the dark and narrow house of Ossian.”23
To members of his own family Jefferson recommended Ossian multiple times. Responding to his daughter Mary many years later, he used an Ossianic simile to characterize the letter she had sent him: “It was, as Ossian says, or would say, like the bright beams of the moon on the desolate heath.” Later, he sent his granddaughters a versification from Ossian by Royall Tyler, “Versification of Ossian’s Description of the Palace and Power of Fingal, after Death.”24 He presented a copy of a two-volume Paris edition of The Works of Ossian to his oldest granddaughter, Anne Cary Randolph. Anne’s sister Ellen—his favorite granddaughter—learned the work well enough to quote appropriate lines from memory.25
Jefferson never lost his enthusiasm for the works of Ossian even after he acknowledged their dubious authenticity. When the Marquis de Lafayette presented him with a copy of Frances Wright’s A Few Days in Athens—a fictitious defense of Epicureanism supposedly translated from a Greek original discovered at Herculaneum—Jefferson wrote the Marquis to convey his fondness for that work and, in so doing, made an appreciative comment about the poems of Ossian that recognized their circumspect origins. He called Wright’s book a work “of the highest order. The matter and manner of the dialogue is strictly ancient; and the principles of the sects are beautifully and candidly explained and contrasted; and the scenery and portraiture of the interlocutors are of higher finish than anything in that line left us by the ancients; and like Ossian, if not ancient, it is equal to the best morsels of antiquity.”26
Judith Lomax, a local poet, visited Monticello during the early nineteenth century after developing a fondness for Ossian herself. “I love to read of Fingal’s time,” she admitted in one of the poems in her collection of personal verse, The Notes of an American Lyre, which she dedicated to Jefferson. She found his home reminiscent of the mist-filled Highlands in Ossian, an idea she expressed in another poem in the collection, “Written at Monticello, Albermarle County, and Composed While Viewing the Clouds Gathering and Rolling about the Mountain.” It begins:
A cloud rests on the Mountain’s brow,
And thro’ it “dim seen forms” appear
Floating in air, or stationed now
In gloomy grandeur near.
These forms fantastic, bring along,
To Fancy’s mental eye,
Those times when Ossian, “Son of Song,”
Awaked the tender sigh.
And still the vision’d scene untrue,
My mind with transport fills;
For still methinks I seem to view
The “Spirit of the hills.”
And Fancy too, in Selma’s hall,
Awakes the Hero’s name;
Methinks I hear the Bard recall
The deeds of Fingal’s fame.
Judith Lomax recognized that one reason Ossian appealed to Jefferson was because his often fog-bound home was reminiscent of the scenery Ossian describes.
Overall, Jefferson’s lifelong fascination for the poems of Ossian emerged from a number of intertwining influences: biographical, literary, and anthropological. A similarity between the imaginative Scottish landscapes of Ossian’s day and the Virginia Piedmont predisposed Jefferson to appreciation. The deaths in the family, which occurred as his enthusiasm for Ossian was reaching its peak, affirmed the value of the sentiments Ossian expressed. The utility of the Ossianic collections as mourning books gave them additional value. The supposedly ancient origins of Ossianic poetry let Jefferson indulge in the literary trends of melancholy and sentimentality while avoiding forms of literature that he disdained, such as sentimental novels.
Finally, the figure of Ossian let him indulge his fascination with primitive cultures. Though Charles Macpherson suggested that he travel to the Scottish Highlands to hear Ossianic lays still being sung, such a journey was not really possible given Jefferson’s personal predilections and political responsibilities. His fascination with Indian oratory, on the other hand, partly arises from his fondness for Ossian. Instead of looking to the north, as Charles Macpherson recommended, Jefferson would look to the west to find in Chief Logan a rude bard of his own.
CHAPTER 11
A Summary View of the Rights of British America
In 1773, Virginia welcomed one of the most colorful characters yet to reach its shores, the Florentine viticulturist Philip Mazzei, whose personal memoirs provide a unique glimpse into Jefferson’s world, despite their occasional errors.1 With an eye for detail and an ear for dialogue, Mazzei brought his Virginia experience alive as he wrote his life story. Having left Tuscany the previous decade, he had been living in London, where he befriended many Americans, including Thomas Adams and Benjamin Franklin. Adams came to know Mazzei well and spoke with him at length about Virginia and its leading citizens. Conversing with Mazzei—a great talker—people sometimes found it difficult to get a word in edgewise, but Adams managed to tell him about Thomas Jefferson, whose presence in the colony confirmed that Virginia was not without men of refinement and intellect. Before long, Mazzei—a great dreamer as well as a great talker—made up his mind to immigrate to Virginia, where he hoped to establish vineyards and olive orchards and start producing wine and olive oil on a grand scale. From England, he returned to Tuscany to prepare for his voyage to the New World. After recruiting several men to accompany him, he set sail in September and reached Virginia in late November.
Almost immediately Mazzei established contact with the Jefferson family: upon his arrival he stayed with Jefferson’s brother-in-law Francis Eppes. Thomas Adams, having reached Virginia before him, greeted Mazzei and arranged to escort him beyond the Blue Ridge to Augusta County, where he could find land
suitable for his ambitious agricultural projects adjacent to Adams’s own holdings. On the way there, Adams stopped at Monticello, spent a few days with Jefferson, and introduced him to Mazzei.
The evening they arrived, Mazzei informed his host of his ambitious agricultural plans. Always willing to encourage local agricultural development, Jefferson was impressed and intrigued with what Mazzei planned. Jefferson’s interest in viticulture is well known.2 He also approved Mazzei’s scheme for planting olive orchards in Virginia. Mazzei did not record what his host said this evening, but it might have resembled something he said the following decade. In what may be the finest paean to the olive ever written, Jefferson stated: “The Olive is a tree the least known in America, and yet the most worthy of being known. Of all the gifts of heaven to man, it is next to the most precious, if it be not the most precious. Perhaps it may claim a preference even to bread; because there is such an infinitude of vegetables which it renders a proper and comfortable nourishment.”3
The next morning Jefferson and Mazzei arose before the rest of the household and took the opportunity for a quiet walk while the others slept. Jefferson showed his guest the adjoining property and suggested that if Mazzei purchased it, he would supplement the tract with a parcel of his own land as a way of assisting his project. Mazzei needed no more convincing and agreed to purchase the land right then and there. The following year Mazzei formed an agricultural company to underwrite the cost of his vineyards and orchards, and Jefferson put his name on the list of the company’s original subscribers. By the time these two returned to Monticello from their walk, the rest of the household had risen. Adams looked at Jefferson, who could not mask his delight.
“I see by your expression that you’ve taken him away from me,” Adams observed. “I knew you would do that.”
“Let’s have breakfast first and then we’ll see what we can do,” Jefferson replied nonchalantly.
His knowledge of Italian was one aspect of Jefferson’s learning that his new neighbor appreciated. Mazzei explained, “Jefferson understood the Tuscan language very well, but he had never heard it spoken. Nevertheless, he could converse with my men in Italian, and they were so pleased by the fact that he could understand them that I was touched.” Jefferson’s graciousness and hospitality also impressed Mazzei. He invited his new neighbor to live at Monticello until he could build a home at Colle, as Mazzei decided to call his new plantation. The widow Martin (the future Mrs. Mazzei) and her daughter, who had accompanied him from Europe, joined Mazzei at Monticello. These additional guests brought Jefferson’s hospitality and graciousness near their breaking point, but he endured the presence of these unexpected visitors until the house at Colle became habitable.
Mazzei was also responsible for bringing Carlo Bellini and his wife to Virginia. The Bellinis lived at Monticello for a time, too. A kind-hearted man and a keen linguist, Bellini had much in common with Jefferson, and the two became good friends. Later, Bellini was appointed the first professor of modern languages at William and Mary. When he and Jefferson were apart, they exchanged a lively, if sporadic, correspondence.
Mazzei’s activities in Virginia went beyond the realm of agriculture. He became intrigued with all things American and watched with fascination the Revolution unfold. Jefferson informed him of many new developments, including the creation of an intercolonial network of committees of correspondence. He also told Mazzei how Dabney Carr contributed to this development. Caught up in the revolutionary fervor, Mazzei planned to establish a new periodical as a forum to express his ideas. He wrote some essays in Italian, which Jefferson translated into English. Dissatisfied with his translations, and presumably irked by the amount of time these translations were taking, Jefferson asked Mazzei to write his essays in English, which he would then correct.
“You have a way of expressing yourself in your own tongue,” Jefferson told him, “which I cannot translate without losing the effect.”
So, Mazzei drafted his essays in English, and Jefferson corrected them. “By the time he got through making the corrections on the first sheet,” Mazzei recalled, “it looked as if a plague of flies had settled on it.” A half dozen times later, Jefferson finally returned Mazzei’s work to him without having to blot a line.
“That phraseology,” Jefferson told him, “is not pure English, but everyone will understand you, and the effect will be more forceful. That is what matters.”
Jefferson’s words convey a literary idea he would express many times over: a forceful voice is more important than grammatical correctness. Though not a stickler for the finer points of English grammar, Jefferson was a perfectionist who critiqued his own writings as roughly as he treated Mazzei’s first English essay, if not more so. Surviving drafts of letters and legislation in Jefferson’s hand also look like they have been settled by plagues of flies. The year after Mazzei arrived, Jefferson entered a period of his life during which he would draft some of his greatest political documents.
Through much of 1773, relations between colonial America and Great Britain had been fairly quiet, but one Act Parliament passed that year, which became known as the Tea Act, led to an event destined to become a classic episode in American history. This piece of legislation reduced the tax on imported British tea, giving British merchants an unfair advantage. Many colonists condemned the Act and boycotted the tea. As all American schoolchildren know, the Boston patriots were especially strenuous in their protests. When British tea ships arrived in the harbor that December, many Bostonians insisted the tea be sent back to Great Britain without payment of taxes. In a meticulously planned and carefully orchestrated effort, a group of patriots disguised as Indians boarded the ships and dumped the tea into the harbor. Parliament reacted swiftly to punish the colony of Massachusetts, passing a series of retaliatory Acts, including the Boston Port Bill, which banned the loading or unloading of any ships in the harbor. It was scheduled to take effect June 1.
News of these punitive Acts spread rapidly through the colonies in the spring of 1774, reaching Williamsburg when the House of Burgesses was in session, finally in session, that is. Partway through the Assembly the previous spring, the one during which Dabney Carr had delivered his memorable speech proposing colonial committees of correspondence, Governor Dunmore had prorogued the Assembly. The governor continued proroguing the Assembly for over a year but now permitted the House of Burgesses to meet. For the most part, Dunmore had simply been ignoring the colonial challenges to the crown’s authority. He was managing the colony largely by refusing to entangle himself in local political issues. In so doing, he was avoiding the inevitable. Ultimately, Dunmore had no choice but to confront the colonists.
Dunmore or, properly, John Murray, fourth Earl of Dunmore, had first come to America to fight in the French and Indian War, during which he distinguished himself as a soldier. He subsequently became governor of New York, but after Governor Botetourt’s sudden and unexpected death in 1770, Lord Dunmore was transferred to Virginia to assume the governorship of the wealthiest and most populous colony in North America. He reached Williamsburg in September 1771.
Around forty years of age, he was a short, muscular man with ruddy cheeks and a massive chin whose head of prematurely gray hair contrasted with his generally athletic appearance. Unlike his immediate predecessor, Dunmore did not possess the aura of a cultivated gentleman. However, his fine library and collection of musical instruments did give him the trappings of sophistication and suggested that he might be able to fit into Virginia society. His activities during his first few years in the colony primarily involved finagling as much land for himself and his heirs as he could. Though a good soldier, he was in no way qualified to engage in the ensuing political battles.
Reacting to the Boston Port Bill, the House of Burgesses split between older and younger members. Since the older ones lacked the wherewithal to tackle the revolutionary events that were unfolding, it fell to the younger members to assume leadership. Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry L
ee, and a handful of others agreed that Virginia had to stand up for Massachusetts. To decide a proper course of action, these young men met in the Council chamber, where they took advantage of its library.
The relative uneventfulness of the preceding year had lulled many people into a state of political lethargy from which they needed to be aroused. Patriotism was waning. The best way to reinvigorate the Virginians, remind them of the seriousness of their situation, and assert colonial solidarity, the committee decided, would be to set aside June 1, 1774, the day the Boston Port Bill was scheduled to take effect, as a day of “fasting and prayer to the supreme being, imploring him to avert the calamities then threatening us, and to give us one heart and one mind to oppose every invasion of our liberties.”4 Virginia had not experienced such imposed solemnity since the start of the French and Indian War nearly twenty years earlier, a time outside the memory of many young men and women. Unaware precisely how to word a resolution proclaiming a day of fasting and prayer, the committee consulted the Council’s copy of John Rushworth’s Historical Collections.5
The Road to Monticello Page 20