Boswell’s anecdote of Johnson and the newspaper verse indicate that the very idea of a learned pig regaled the spirit and fired the literary imagination. The day Jefferson saw the pig, he, too, found himself in the mood for versifying. As he, Smith, and Richard Peters—another American lawyer in London—were walking the city streets, they approached a signboard displaying a large joint of beef, which turned out to be the sign of a famous London eatery, Dolly’s Chop House. Long a fixture on Paternoster Row, Dolly’s dated back to the time of Queen Anne, and its steaks were legendary.
John Wilkes, who had become a symbol of liberty for many Americans the previous decade, was known to have visited Dolly’s, according to a widely circulated anecdote: “Mr. Wilkes going to Dolly’s chop-house, in Paternoster-row, with a friend, in order to observe the humours of the place, accidentally seated himself near a rich and purse-proud citizen, who almost stunned him with roaring for his stake, as he called it. Mr. Wilkes in the mean time, asking him some common question, received a very brutal answer: the steak coming at that instant, Mr. Wilkes turned to his friend, saying, ‘See the difference between the City and the Bear-Garden; in the latter the bear is brought to the stake, but here the steak is brought to the bear.’ ”15
Dolly’s was also known as a place for literary inspiration. Summoning the nine muses to inspire his composition of The Lousiad, Peter Pindar observed that some contemporaries preferred the din of Dolly’s over more classical forms of inspiration. “Blest with beef, their ghostly forms to fill,” these modern bards “Make Dolly’s chop-house their Aonian hill, / More pleas’d to hear knives, forks, in concert join, / Than all the tinkling cymbals of the Nine.” James Boswell, among the writers who sought both inspiration and sustenance at Dolly’s, had devoured “a large fat beef-steak” here some years earlier and duly recorded the event for posterity.16
Spying Dolly’s Chop House, Jefferson and his two companions decided to patronize the place. Once inside, it seems that one thing led to another, and the three found themselves lingering within Dolly’s doors far longer than they planned. Before they knew it, they were scandalously late for a dinner meeting with some unknown person, likely John Adams. As their tardiness neared the point of unforgivableness, they felt the need to draft an apology to their slighted host. They, too, let the sound of knives and forks be their muse.17 To make their apology as endearing as possible, they wrote it in the form of rhyming couplets. The resulting poem bears the unmistakable smell of Madeira:
One among our many follies
Was calling in for steaks at Dolly’s
Whereby we’ve lost—and feel like Sinners
That we have miss’d much better dinners
Nor do we think that us ’tis hard on
Most humbly thus to beg your pardon
And promise that another time
We’ll give our reason not our rhime
So we’ve agreed—our Nem: Con: Vote is
That we thus jointly give you notice
For as our rule is to be clever
We hold it better late than never.
Since entering public life, Jefferson seldom dropped his guard in his writings, so this poem comes as a delightful surprise within the pages of his collected works. The rhyme of “pardon” and “hard on” is worthy of Hudibras, and the adverb jointly in the third to last line offers a fine double entendre as it refers to their communal decision as well as the place where they made it, at the sign of a joint of beef.
None of the three were willing to take individual credit for these lines, so they signed their names in the form of a Round Robin—signatures arranged in a circle so that no name would appear above the others. The great object of a Round Robin is, in the words of a subsequent American author who found himself in need of anonymity on a similar occasion, “to arrange the signatures in such a way, that, although they are all found in a ring, no man can be picked out as the leader of it.”18
Opportunities for levity came to an abrupt halt as Jefferson and Adams sat down with Abdrahaman to try and reach an agreement between the United States and Tripoli. The Americans wanted assurances that the Muslim pirates from Tripoli would no longer accost American merchant vessels; Tripoli, as Jefferson suspected, wanted money, and lots of it.
The North African nations of Tripoli, Algiers, Morocco, and Tunis constituted the Barbary Coast, a land whose pirates had been terrorizing American merchant vessels: attacking ships, taking sailors hostage, threatening their lives, and holding them for ransom. The Muslim states of the Barbary Coast endorsed the practices of piracy and hostage-taking provided they were carried out against infidels in the name of Islam. In colonial times, American vessels had been protected from the Islamic corsairs because Great Britain paid the Barbary states tribute, or protection money to guard against the piracy. With American independence, the Barbary pirates felt free to attack the new nation’s merchant vessels because the American government refused to pay tribute to the nations of the Barbary Coast. Sanctioned by their government, the attacks of the Barbary pirates on American merchant vessels represent an early example of state-sponsored terrorism aimed at civilian American targets.
Adams and Jefferson asked Abdrahaman on what grounds his nation made war upon other nations that had done their people no harm. They let him know that as representatives of the United States, they considered friends everyone who had done them no wrong or had given them no provocation. The response they received was darkly foreboding. The conduct of the Barbary Coast pirates, the ambassador explained,
was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.19
Even now, especially now, it is difficult to read the response of the Tripoline ambassador without a chill. At the time, his words clashed with Jefferson’s most heartfelt beliefs. A man of politics, a man of reason, and a man of conscience, Jefferson knew that justifying armed conflict on the basis of a religious text was wrong. As a scholar, he knew that relying on a single text as a source of information or belief led to poor judgment. Throughout his adult life, he had been living by these ideals. Besides having drafted legislation separating church and state, he had made a personal habit of reading many different texts on any and every subject, including religion, to achieve a broad and deep perspective on it.
The ambassador’s words gave Jefferson a reminder of the profound danger that could come from relying on a single text without recourse to supplementary texts and alternative interpretations. Surely, if a religious text seemed to sanction war, its readers ought to research how others interpreted that text as a means of achieving some clarity before rushing into battle. Abdrahaman and the Muslim pirates whose behavior he sanctioned saw no need to consult other texts to justify their behavior. Everything they needed to know was in the Qur’an, and what was not in the Qur’an they did not feel a need to know.20
Upon returning to Paris, Jefferson sought Vergennes’s advice regarding what possible courses of action could be taken against the Muslim states of the Barbary Coast.
Money and fear are the only things they understand, Vergennes told him.
Vergennes’s brief comment summarized the dilemma the United States faced. Jefferson and Adams took opposite sides over the issue: Adams was in favor of paying the Barbary states tribute money to protect American merchant ships; Jefferson, who staunchly refused to bargain with nations that sponsored such terrorism, thought war would be a more effective solution. He and Adams weighed the pros and cons in a series of letters they exchanged throughout that year.
Adams was pragmatic; Jefferson took the moral high ground. In his fullest letter on the subject, Adams sets forth a detailed argument for paying the tribute money. Before finishing the letter, he wavered and be
gan to see value in a military response, which would help him pursue a pet project: the development of the U.S. Navy. Adams realized that the European policy of giving in to the Muslim demands had weakened their military forces significantly. Developing this line of thought, Adams rose to eloquence, all the while damaging his own argument against a military solution: “The Policy of Christendom has made Cowards of all their Sailors before the Standard of Mahomet.”21
Responding to Adams, Jefferson enumerated all of the reasons justifying a military solution:
1. Justice is in favor of this opinion.
2. Honor favors it.
3. It will procure us respect in Europe, and respect is a safe-guard to interest.
4. It will arm the federal head with the safest of all the instruments of coercion over their delinquent members and prevent them from using what would be less safe.
5. I think it least expensive.
6. Equally effectual.22
Developing his argument, Jefferson refuted Adams’s claim that paying tribute would be more economical by arguing that the United States would not have to combat the Muslim states of North Africa alone. He proposed a coalition of nations willing to battle the Islamic states of the Barbary Coast. In the short term, Adams’s argument won out: the United States negotiated treaties with the Barbary states that stipulated annual payments for protecting American merchant vessels from the Muslim pirates. This was not a lasting solution, however, and the problem with the Barbary states would continue for years.
The efforts of Jefferson and Adams to negotiate a treaty with Portugal also went for naught. The meetings with the Portuguese envoy extraordinary, the Chevalier de Pinto, took much longer than expected, but through effort and perseverance, they hammered out a treaty, only to have it end, ultimately, in an impasse. Not until after they had prepared the treaty did Jefferson and Adams learn that though de Pinto had the power to negotiate a treaty, he did not have the power to sign it once negotiated. The carefully drafted treaty went unsigned.
Jefferson’s excursion to London proved a disappointment in terms of official business, but in terms of pleasurable diversion, it was a rich and rewarding personal experience. Roaming the London streets, he took advantage of the numerous book-buying opportunities the city offered. As the German traveler Karl Moritz observed during his visit to London a few years earlier, “The quick sale of the classical authors, is here promoted also, by cheap and convenient editions. They have them all bound in pocket volumes; as well as in a more pompous stile …. At stalls, and in the streets, you every now and then meet with a sort of antiquarians, who sell single or odd volumes; sometimes perhaps of Shakespear, &c. so low as a penny; nay even sometimes for an halfpenny a piece.”23
While in London, Jefferson frequently visited the bookshops of James Lackington, John Stockdale, and others. He added to his library one of the most popular books of 1786, Richard Jodrell’s Persian Heroine, a tragedy based on an episode from Herodotus. Jodrell’s play is better known for its detailed explanatory notes than for its dramatic value. Jefferson would continue to order books from both Lackington and Stockdale after he returned to Paris and would make arrangements with Stockdale to publish the first London edition of Notes on the State of Virginia, which would be issued the following year. One day, Jefferson bought a new reading lamp to facilitate what had long been a favorite habit: reading long into the night. Ever a great shopper, he purchased much else in London. The splendor of its shops, he decided, constituted the city’s greatest attribute.24
Beyond what pleasures Jefferson found on the streets of London, he and Adams had the opportunity to spend much time together visiting England’s most renowned pleasure gardens. For a guidebook during their excursions into the countryside, Jefferson brought his copy of Thomas Whately’s Observations on Modern Gardening, a work he had obtained earlier from another William and Mary professor who had left Virginia to return to England. Jefferson also drafted a narrative of their sight-seeing tour, “Notes of a Tour of English Gardens,” which he structured as a set of one-paragraph discussions of each garden they visited.
The opening paragraph provides a general description of his method of sightseeing. Nearly always he walked through the gardens with Whatley’s Observations in hand. Seeing the originals, he was further impressed with the book. He found the gardens “so justly characterised by him as to be easily recognised, and saw with wonder, that his fine imagination had never been able to seduce him from the truth.” Brief as it is, this comment characterizes Jefferson’s attitude toward the literary imagination more generally: it should serve to enhance truth, not mask it.
Closing his first paragraph, Jefferson described the purpose underlying his scrupulous attention to the English gardens: “My enquiries were directed chiefly to such practical things as might enable me to estimate the expence of making and maintaining a garden in that style.” He did not stick to this purpose consistently. Despite his practical justification for this garden tour, Jefferson’s initial observation of Chiswick, the Duke of Devonshire’s estate, is aesthetic: “The Octagonal dome has an ill effect, both within and without; the garden shews still too much of art; an obelisk of very ill effect. Another in the middle of a pond useless.”25
One estate in Shropshire Jefferson was especially anxious to see was Leasowes, the former property of William Shenstone, whose elegiac verse and landscape designs had significantly influenced Jefferson’s elegiac verse and landscape designs. Compared with what he had imagined, Leasowes was disappointing. The cascades were beautiful, and from one lookout point there was a fine prospect, but otherwise Leasowes failed to meet his expectations. The gardens had not been properly maintained, and many of the inscriptions about the place had disappeared. Happily, Shenstone had preserved these inscriptions within the pages of his Works. In this case, the printed page had outlasted what was written in stone.
Reflecting on the trip, Jefferson told John Page that, all things considered, England had disappointed him: “Both town and country, fell short of my expectations.” But its gardens made up for England’s other shortcomings. The English pleasure garden, he observed, “is the article in which it surpasses all the earth.”26
Adams also recorded their tour of English gardens. The differences between the notes both men took reveal important differences in their personalities. Whereas Jefferson was scrutinizing the gardens with an eye toward making improvements at Monticello, Adams had no plans to improve his property in Massachusetts, at least not in terms of its aesthetics. Adams found that the country estates and pleasure gardens provided “the highest Entertainment” of their trip, but he did little beyond name the gardens they visited in his notes. The only ones that called forth appreciative comments on his part were those with literary associations. For its beauty and its grandeur, he especially enjoyed the estate of Lord Lyttelton. He also appreciated the gardens of Alexander Pope and James Thomson.
Leasowes pleased Adams more than Jefferson. He called it “the simplest and plainest, but the most rural of all. I saw no Spot so small, that exhibited such a Variety of Beauties.” Adams had no desire for such pleasure gardens himself, nor did he desire to see them developed in the United States: “It will be long, I hope before Ridings, Parks, Pleasure Grounds, Gardens and ornamented Farms grow so much in fashion in America. But Nature has done greater Things and furnished nobler Materials there. The Oceans, Islands, Rivers, Mountains, Valleys are all laid out upon a larger Scale.”27
One particular place called forth lengthier comments on Adams’s part than any other: Stratford-upon-Avon. Adams’s detailed description of Stratford is not unusual. Numerous other Shakespeare-loving travelers made this literary pilgrimage and described their visits at length. Karl Moritz observed, “The River Avon is here pretty broad; and a row of neat, though humble, cottages, only one story high, with shingled roofs, are ranged all along its banks. These houses impressed me strongly with the idea of patriarchal simplicity and content.” Moritz noted that Shakespeare’s h
ouse was the worst one in town. Adams concurred. From the inn where he and Jefferson were staying, they walked three doors down to enter Shakespeare’s birthplace, a house, in Adams’s words, “as small and mean, as you can conceive.”28
Typically, the guide within the house showed visitors a dilapidated wooden chair in the chimney corner. Moritz observed, “Shakespeare’s chair, in which he used to sit before the door, was so cut to pieces that it hardly looked like a chair; for every one that travels through Stratford, cuts off a chip, as a remembrance which he carefully preserves, and deems a precious relique.”29 Despite the sorry condition of the chair, Moritz could not avoid whittling off a sliver for himself, nor could Jefferson and Adams. They, too, cut chips off the old chair, which to literary devotees were akin to pieces of the true cross.
Outside the house, a mulberry tree Shakespeare supposedly planted had been cut down and put up for sale. The house where Shakespeare died had been taken down, too. The spot where the house once stood was preserved as a small garden. In the nearby graveyard, they saw Shakespeare’s gravestone and read the famous curse upon anyone who should disturb the bard’s bones:
Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare!
Blese be the man that spares these stones
And curst be he that moves my bones
Overall, Adams found unsettling the incongruity between the greatness of Shakespeare’s work and the meanness of his home and the meager relics remaining there: “There is nothing preserved of this great Genius which is worth knowing—nothing which might inform Us what Education, what Company, what Accident turned his Mind to Letters and the Drama. His name is not even on his Grave Stone. An ill sculptured Head is sett up by his Wife, by the Side of his Grave in the Church. But paintings and Sculpture would be thrown away upon his Fame. His Wit, and Fancy, his Taste and Judgment, His Knowledge of Nature, of Life and Character, are immortal.”30
The Road to Monticello Page 42