Jefferson’s efforts to keep his private edition private represent a throwback to an earlier time, a time when it was indecorous or unseemly for respectable people to put their words into print. Through much of the seventeenth century, the colonial South had done without printing presses. Maryland did not get its first press until the last decade of the century, and Virginia did not get its first press until the 1730s. Those who wished to publish their writings sent their manuscripts to London. For many, doing so smacked of Grub Street, that dark region of eighteenth-century London where too many writers working for too little money issued a steady stream of books for the sole purpose of turning a profit. More respectable authors circulated their works in manuscript. If one friend wanted to read something another had written, the author simply had a manuscript copy made for the friend. In this way, writers could control who read their works and ensure that only the most sensitive, convivial souls cast their eyes on them.
Traditionally, the presentation of a manuscript copy of a work functioned as a sign of friendship. The privately printed edition of Notes worked in a similar manner. Jefferson explained to Chastellux that the copy he was sending him would serve as a “testimony of the sincere esteem and affection” he felt. Hoping to receive a copy of Notes on the State of Virginia, Francis Hopkinson wrote Jefferson: “If you should have any Copies of your Account of Virginia struck off, I shall be much mortified if you do not consider me as one of those friends whom you would wish to gratify.”20 Rest assured, Jefferson earmarked a copy of the first edition for Hopkinson and chose no less a messenger to deliver it than Benjamin Franklin.
Because of its unique circumstances of composition and publication, Notes on the State of Virginia occupies a transitional place in literary history. It stands at the crossroads of manuscript culture and print culture. With the early version he completed for Marbois, Jefferson had a few manuscript copies made for friends, including Chastellux. Once the work tripled in bulk, Jefferson realized it had become too long to keep having manuscript copies made, so he reluctantly decided to have the work printed. But even with the first edition, he still treated it like a manuscript work. Instead of publishing it, that is, having a publisher undertake the cost of printing the work and assume the tasks of marketing and distribution, Jefferson assumed the cost of printing and distributed the work himself. The first edition of Notes on the State of Virginia was printed, but it was not published in the sense that it was made available to the reading public at large. Jefferson carefully tried to control his readership.
Keeping the work private, he had more freedom to speak his mind. Within his text, Jefferson critiqued both the Virginia constitution and the practice of slavery. The passages against slavery, John Adams said, “are worth Diamonds. They will have more effect than Volumes written by mere Philosophers.”21 Jefferson feared that his critiques would offend Virginia readers, but he hoped that his book would eventually influence political and social behavior in the South. Discussing his reluctance to publish Notes on the State of Virginia, he explained to Monroe, “I have taken measures to prevent its publication. My reason is that I fear the terms in which I speak of slavery and of our constitution may produce an irritation which will revolt the minds of our countrymen against reformation in these two articles, and thus do more harm than good.”22 With the first Paris edition, he sent only a few copies to his closest friends in Virginia. Optimistically, he had enough copies printed so that he could send one to every underclassman at William and Mary and thus influence the rising generation of Virginia gentlemen.
Jefferson’s actions were well intended, but he was naïve to think that he could control the dissemination of two hundred printed copies the same way an author controlled a few manuscript copies. Once a copy got into the hands of a man who saw profit in the thing, Jefferson realized that the only way he could stop others from publishing surreptitious editions of Notes on the State of Virginia would be for him to oversee publication himself. He arranged with the Abbé Morellet to translate the work into French, and eventually found a London publisher to issue an English edition.
Much as the circumstances of its composition and publication mark the Notes on the State of Virginia as a transitional work in terms of its relationship to its readers, its contents brand it as a transitional work connecting the Augustan Age to the Romantic Era. A masterpiece of the Enlightenment, it presents an articulate and rational delineation of its subject spoken by the Man of Reason. Occasionally, however, the Man of Feeling takes over from the Man of Reason and imbues the narrative with passion.
Take, for example, Jefferson’s description of the Natural Bridge, one of the most famous parts of the book. The subject of the Natural Bridge is not really even pertinent to the fifth query, which asks about Virginia’s cascades and caverns, but Jefferson included a detailed description of his favorite geographical landmark in his answer. After carefully delineating its size, providing precise measurements of height, width, and thickness, and describing the Natural Bridge in geometrical terms, Jefferson expressed what it felt like to crawl atop it and gaze downward: “Though the sides of this bridge are provided in some parts with a parapet of fixed rocks, yet few men have resolution to walk to them and look over into the abyss. You involuntarily fall on your hands and feet, creep to the parapet and peep over it. Looking down from this height about a minute, gave me a violent head ach.”23 Over the course of these three sentences, Jefferson switches from the third person (“few men”) to the second (“You”) to the first (“me”). He thus creates a sense of immediacy, making it seem as if the reader has gone from reading about the Natural Bridge to experiencing it in Jefferson’s shoes.
He balanced the description from atop with a view from beneath:
If the view from the top be painful and intolerable, that from below is delightful in an equal extreme. It is impossible for the emotions arising from the sublime, to be felt beyond what they are here: so beautiful an arch, so light, and springing as it were up to heaven, the rapture of the spectator is really indescribable! The fissure continuing narrow, deep, and streight for a considerable distance above and below the bridge, opens a short but very pleasing view of the North mountain on one side, and Blue ridge on the other, at the distance each of them of about five miles.24
An unusual geological formation, the Natural Bridge derived its beauty not only from itself but also from its surroundings. As Jefferson’s description suggests, the Natural Bridge was beautiful partly because it framed the beauty of the Virginia wilderness.
The Natural Bridge, Virginia (1852), by Frederick Edwin Church. (University of Virginia Art Museum, Thomas H. Bayly Building, Charlottesville)
To compose this description, Jefferson referred to his memorandum books, in which he had described the Natural Bridge upon seeing it for the first time. This early description contains plenty of measurements and observations but little emotion. Going from the memorandum books to Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson abbreviated the physical description but enhanced the aesthetic appeal of the Natural Bridge. The delight, the rapture, the sublime terror were all added as Jefferson re-wrote his description.
The combination of neoclassical and Romantic elements in Notes on the State of Virginia helps explain the diverse reactions to the book. Whereas Charles Thomson had called it an excellent natural history, the English traveler John Davis suggested that the work went well beyond the bounds of natural history. He called Notes on the State of Virginia “the book that taught me to think.”25 These two interpretations are not irreconcilable. As a neoclassical work, the book seeks to describe in an encyclopedic way the various features of Virginia: natural, political, and social. Simultaneously, it anticipates the Romantic return to nature. Notes on the State of Virginia taught John Davis and others to think because it gave them license to see the world afresh and make their own conclusions about what they observed without regard to what others had said before them.
These classical and Romantic elements of the book also
help explain the paradoxical nature of the two queries that begin the work. Whereas Jefferson methodically established the boundaries that contain his subject in his first query, he let his imagination run wild in the second, not only seeing the rivers as geographical features but also foreseeing what they could become in terms of the development of North America. It is the man of Enlightenment in Jefferson that made Notes on the State of Virginia into a fine work of natural history and geography, but it is the Romantic dreamer in him that made it one of the classics of early American literature.
CHAPTER 18
The Narrow House
For the Chevalier de Chastellux, the second Saturday in April 1782 “commenced, like every other day in America, by a large breakfast”: “ham, butter, fresh eggs, and coffee with milk.”1 Having left Williamsburg five days earlier, Chastellux was headed toward the home of Thomas Jefferson this morning. He had first come to America as a major general in the French Expeditionary Forces, third in command under General Rochambeau. A professional soldier, polished author, and brilliant conversationalist, Chastellux was equally at home on the battlefield, at his desk, or in the salons of Paris. As an author, he had already written a number of works including, most important, De la Félicité Publique, a groundbreaking study of social history and the history of social institutions.
During the American Revolution, Chastellux occasionally obtained leave from the service to travel through the United States and witness democracy in its genesis. A year and a half earlier he had ventured from Newport, Rhode Island, to Philadelphia. Since the French navy sailed with a printing press, Chastellux had a small edition of his travel journal printed in quarto to distribute to friends. Voyage de Newport à Philadelphie, as he titled this volume of travels, shows that he had already developed a good understanding of the American way of life before he began his tour of Virginia. Later, he combined the text of the Newport edition with his Virginia journal and published them together as Voyages … dans l’Amérique Septentrionale or, as the English translation was titled, Travels in North America. A delightfully picaresque account of his American experiences, Chastellux’s Voyages is the finest travel narrative to emerge from the era of the Revolutionary War.
Throughout Virginia, Chastellux traveled with a good-sized entourage: his aide-de-camp, his second aide-de-camp, the Chevalier d’Oyré, and a half dozen servants, all on horseback. Unsure of the precise route to take this morning, they luckily encountered an Irish immigrant and horse trader, who led them to the foot of the Southwest Mountains. Before the day’s end, they parted company with the Irishman and came within view of Monticello. Seeing Jefferson’s home for the first time, Chastellux could sense the manner of the man who had built it. Its name, Monticello or “Little Mountain,” he thought “a very modest name indeed, for it is situated upon a very high mountain, but a name which bespeaks the owner’s attachment to the language of Italy; and above all to the Fine Arts, of which Italy was the cradle and is still the resort.”2
François Jean de Beauvoir, Marquis de Chastellux, from Life, 1782, by Charles Willson Peale. (Independence National Historical Park)
What Chastellux wrote in his Travels about Jefferson’s home constitutes the most detailed account of Monticello as it stood in the early 1780s. His description indicates what Jefferson had completed up to this point as well as what he had yet to complete. Furthermore, Chastellux’s account verifies that Jefferson not only designed the building, but also helped to build it:
This house, of which Mr. Jefferson was the architect, and often the builder, is constructed in an Italian style, and is quite tasteful, although not however without some faults; it consists of a large square pavilion, into which one enters through two porticoes ornamented with columns. The ground floor consists chiefly of a large and lofty salon, or drawing room, which is to be decorated entirely in the antique style; above the salon is a library of the same form; two small wings, with only a ground floor, and attic, are joined to this pavilion, and are intended to communicate with the kitchen, offices, etc. which will form on either side a kind of basement topped by a terrace.
Including such lengthy detail within his narrative, Chastellux found it necessary to justify the inclusion: “My object in giving these details,” he continued, “is not to describe the house, but to prove that it resembles none of the others seen in this country: so that it may be said that Mr. Jefferson is the first American who has consulted the Fine Arts to know how he should shelter himself from the weather.”3 Chastellux’s description provides a good indication of how Monticello looked before Jefferson remodeled it during the 1790s.
When the two had met earlier, Jefferson had invited Chastellux to Monticello, so this visit was not unexpected. Consequently, Chastellux was somewhat surprised by the diffidence Jefferson displayed upon his guest’s arrival. Chastellux first found his host’s “manner grave and even cold.” Jefferson’s initial reaction reflects his natural shyness but also shows how special his private, domestic world was to him. He so enjoyed the time he spent in his fine, if unfinished, home amid his family and his books that it took him a little while to adjust himself to a visitor, especially one who arrived with nine men and ten horses. But it did not take long for Jefferson to warm to his companionable guest. “But I had no sooner spent two hours with him,” Chastellux explained, “than I felt as if we had spent our whole lives together. Walking, the library—above all, conversation which was always varied, always interesting, always sustained by that sweet satisfaction experienced by two persons who in communicating their feelings and opinions invariably find themselves in agreement and who understand each other at the first hint.4
Reconstructing the intimate conversations that took place between these two is impossible, but comments made by others who enjoyed the pleasure of Chastellux’s company, together with the contents of his Travels and the subsequent correspondence he and Jefferson exchanged, partly reveal what they discussed within Jefferson’s comfortable home and during their pleasant walks through its environs. Testament to Chastellux’s conversational ability survives by no less an authority than Jean-François Marmontel, who said of him: “Never has a man made better use of his own understanding to enjoy that of others. A witticism, a clever remark, a good story opportunely told, delighted him; you might see him leap for joy upon hearing them; and as conversation became more brilliant, the eyes and countenance of Chastellux would become more animated: all success flattered him as if it had been his own.”5 In other words, Chastellux was a good conversationalist not only because he was a good talker but also because he was a good listener.
In Travels, Chastellux explains in a general way what he and Jefferson discussed: “Sometimes natural philosophy, at others politics or the arts, were the topics of our conversation, for no object had escaped Mr. Jefferson.” After including a lengthy digression in his travel narrative, Chastellux recalled the time he spent at Monticello: “But I perceive that my journal is something like the conversation I had with Mr. Jefferson. I pass from one object to another, and forget myself as I write, as it happened not unfrequently in his society.”6
The two discussed literature at length, and the depth and breadth of Jefferson’s literary knowledge greatly enhanced their conversation. “A man having read a book through,” Chastellux observed, has a great advantage in conversation “over him who is only at the beginning.”7 Since Jefferson was so well read, he had something to say about nearly any topic. Though the prose poems of Ossian provided their most notable topic of conversation, the two men also discussed various theories of poetry. Their disagreement over the way poetic meter functioned in English verse sparked a lively discussion. An expert at languages and a great enthusiast of English literature, Chastellux had already authored a book titled Essai sur l’Union de la Poésie et de la Musique. Still, Chastellux was unable to sway Jefferson. Their discussion ended unresolved, but their friendship endured. They would take up the topic again at a later time.
Other American conversations C
hastellux recorded confirm his literary bent and suggest what else he and Jefferson discussed at Monticello. Staying with a Connecticut family during his New England travels, Chastellux noticed their fine collection of classics and conversed with the eldest son “on various points of literature, and particularly on the manner in which the dead languages should be pronounced.” The correct pronunciation of ancient Greek was something Jefferson discussed with others, so it is not hard to imagine him and Chastellux mulling over the subject at Monticello. Traveling through Upstate New York, Chastellux had visited a family whose capacious parlor table held many books and authors worth discussing: Addison, Milton, Richardson, and several other books by important English authors. “The cellar was not nearly so well supplied as the library,” he said of this New York home, “for there was neither wine, cider, nor rum, but only some bad cider-brandy, with which I had to make grog.”8 He could not make the same complaint about Monticello, where the wine cellar was stocked nearly as well as the library. In Jefferson’s company, Chastellux liberally partook of both.
Not all the time the two spent together at Monticello was filled with conversation. They also played chess, as their subsequent correspondence confirms. Whether talking about literature, playing games of skill, or walking through the woods, Chastellux came to know Jefferson well enough during his time at Monticello to write a flattering character sketch, which Jefferson, as he told its author, “read with a continued blush from beginning to end, as it presented me a lively picture of what I wish to be, but am not. No, my dear Sir,” he continued, “the thousand millionth part of what you there say, is more than I deserve.”9
The Road to Monticello Page 33