Though Jefferson enjoyed reading melancholy literature, he was too much of an optimist to indulge his melancholy sensibilities in his own writings. But in this letter to Barton, he temporarily gave way to such feelings. The destruction of his manuscripts was a grave disappointment, but the image of the individual leaves of his irreplaceable manuscript floating atop the surface of the James River and washing ashore is beautiful.
For the most part, it was great to be home. The only negative aspect of living at Monticello was the steady stream of visitors who came to see him. Jefferson’s visitors were both a blessing and a curse—depending on who they were and how many of them there were. Edmund Bacon’s reminiscences provide a good indication of the traffic that streamed through Monticello:
After Mr. Jefferson returned from Washington, he was for years crowded with visitors, and they almost ate him out of house and home. They were there all times of the year; but about the middle of June the travel would commence from the lower part of the state to the Springs, and then there was a perfect throng of visitors. They traveled in their own carriages and came in gangs—the whole family, with carriage and riding horses and servants; sometimes three or four such gangs at a time. We had thirty-six stalls for horses, and only used about ten of them for the stock we kept there. Very often all of the rest were full, and I had to send horses off to another place. I have often sent a wagonload of hay up to the stable, and the next morning there would not be enough left to make a hen’s nest. I have killed a fine beef, and it would all be eaten in a day or two. There was no tavern in all that country that had so much company. Mrs. Randolph, who always lived with Mr. Jefferson after his return from Washington and kept house for him, was very often greatly perplexed to entertain them. I have known her many and many a time to have every bed in the house full, and she would send to my wife and borrow all her beds—she had six spare beds—to accommodate her visitors.12
As Bacon’s remarks suggest, Jefferson’s hospitality knew no bounds. Some guests were welcomed with open arms. Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Harrison Smith, for example, had promised to visit Monticello that summer, and Jefferson was overjoyed on their arrival. On Friday, August 4, the Smiths ascended the road to Monticello. Before they reached the house, they met Jefferson on horseback. Returning home from his morning ride, he had recognized them from the distance and hurried to their coach to greet them. Mrs. Smith recorded in her diary, “He received us with one of those benignant smiles, and cordial tones of voice that convey an undoubted welcome to the heart.”13
Combined with a handful of accounts by other visitors, Mrs. Smith’s diary makes it possible to reconstruct a typical day in the life of Thomas Jefferson in retirement. On her first night at Monticello she had difficulty sleeping, so she rose in time to see the sun rise. As early as she arose, Jefferson was up before her. Toward the end of his life, he boasted that the sun had not caught him in bed for fifty years.14 Upon rising, he would read or catch up his correspondence. Mrs. Smith’s sleeping difficulties allowed her to watch the sunrise on successive mornings, a beautiful sight from atop Monticello. She mentioned in her diary “the various appearances the landscape assumed as the fog was rising. But the blue and misty mountains, now lighted up with sunshine, now thrown into deep shadow, presented objects on which I gaze each morning with new pleasure.”
Breakfast was more modest than she had imagined. With tea or coffee, they enjoyed “excellent muffins, hot wheat and corn bread, cold ham and butter.” After breakfast, as Mrs. Smith learned her first morning at Monticello, “it was the habit of the family each separately to pursue their occupations. Mr. J. went to his apartments, the door of which is never opened but by himself and his retirement seems so sacred that I told him it was his sanctum sanctorum.”
This daily routine worked well for a family whose patriarch had continually impressed upon his children and grandchildren the value of reading and the importance of staying busy. Some houseguests found the interval between mealtimes too long, however. As Mrs. Smith observed, “Visitors generally retire to their own rooms, or walk about the place; those who are fond of reading can never be at a loss, those who are not will some times feel wearied in the long interval between breakfast and dinner.”
For about two hours after breakfast one morning, Jefferson welcomed the Smiths into his library. Mrs. Smith had heard so much about his library beforehand that she eagerly looked forward to seeing it. Her reaction was ambivalent. Jefferson’s library was distributed throughout a suite of three rooms. She observed that the collection would be much more impressive if it were contained within one large room, but even as she made this observation, she greatly overestimated the size of the library at 20,000 volumes—about three times more than it actually contained.
Monticello, West Front. (Monticello, Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc.)
Jefferson relished the opportunity to show off some of his most prized volumes to his visitors. He showed the Smiths examples from his early Americana collection, his architectural collection, his collection of Middle English literature, and his collection of Greek romances. Historia de Nueva España contained Archbishop Francisco Antonio Lorenzana’s collection of Hernán Cortés’s letters from Mexico. Robert Castell’s Villas of the Ancients Illustrated Mrs. Smith called a volume of fine views of ancient villas around Rome, with maps of the grounds, and minute descriptions of the buildings and grounds. Engraved architectural works made ideal conversation pieces. Another visitor to Monticello recorded that Jefferson showed him his copy of Robert Wood’s Ruins of Balbec.15 Wood included dozens of engravings illustrating what was left of the renowned City of the Sun, a set of melancholy images that allowed readers to imagine the grandeur of the ancient past.
Library and Book Room. (Robert C. Lautman, Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc.)
To demonstrate his collection of Middle English literature, Jefferson chose to show the Smiths his copy of William Langland’s Vision of Pierce Plowman. There’s no telling precisely why he chose Pierce Plowman to display on this occasion. He had other sixteenth-century black letter editions of classic English literature, including Chaucer’s Workes and John Lydgate’s History of Troy. Perhaps the personal association made Langland’s Vision of Pierce Plowman more special than the others: Jefferson had acquired the volume from the library of his old friend Samuel Henley. The Henley-Jefferson copy of Pierce Plowman does not survive, and there has been some question about the precise date of the edition. Mrs. Smith’s description of the work—“an old poem written by Piers Plowman and printed 250 years ago”—confirms that the copy Jefferson owned must have been the 1550 London edition.16
A handsome volume printed in black letter, Pierce Plowman was more than just a bibliographical curiosity. It was also important to both literary history and the history of the English language. Jefferson did not just show this book to the Smiths—he also read from it. Perhaps he began at the beginning. Pierce Plowman is structured as a dream vision. As it starts, the speaker of the poem, dressed as a hermit, is wandering through the Malvern Hills on a summer morning. Growing weary, he stops to rest on the bank of a river, falls asleep, and starts to dream. Listen:
In a somer season, when set was the sunne
I shope me into shroubs, as I a shepe were
In habyte as an hermet, unholy of werkes
Went wyde in thys world wõders to here
And on a May morning, on Malverne hilles
Me befell a ferly, of a fayry me thought.
I was wery of wandering, and went me to rest
Under a brode banke, by a bourne side
And as I lay and lened, and loked on the water
I slombred into a sleping …
Jefferson continued reading for about a page. When reading Langland’s Pierce Plowman or Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales aloud, he tried to assimilate its pronunciation to modern-day English. Still, he could only go so far. Mrs. Smith, though proud of her knowledge of English literature, found Pierce Plowman “almost as unintelligible as i
f it was Hebrew.”
Perhaps sensing Mrs. Smith’s dislike of Pierce Plowman, Jefferson tried to find something more to her tastes: a Greek romance. She explained, “He took pains to find one that was translated into French, as most of them were translated in Latin and Italian.” Previous readers have hesitated to credit Mrs. Smith’s powers of observation, but her description precisely coincides with the catalogue of Jefferson’s great library.17
Mrs. Smith’s diary does not say for sure that Jefferson read from Xenophon of Ephesus, but he must have. It was the only Greek romance in French he had. Xenophon told the story of a young married couple from Ephesus who are separated during a voyage. They endure attacks by pirates and robbers, shipwreck, enslavement, and seduction. Throughout their trials and tribulations, the two remain faithful to each other. Eventually, they are reunited. They return to Ephesus and live happily ever after.18
Her diary also indicates Jefferson’s playfulness. One day during their visit he offered to take her on a carriage ride around the grounds of Monticello. She thought it was a good idea at first, but the longer the ride lasted, the more she questioned her decision. Jefferson led her down some pathways that scarcely seemed as if they were wide enough to accommodate the carriage. In places, she was terrified that they would not make it through safely. Once they passed the most treacherous spots, Jefferson spoke to reassure his passenger.
“My dear madam,” he said, “you are not to be afraid, or if you are you are not to show it; trust yourself implicitly to me, I will answer for your safety; I came every foot of this road yesterday, on purpose to see if a carriage could come safely; I know every step I take, so banish all fear.”
Mrs. Smith also enjoyed seeing Ellen, her favorite among Jefferson’s granddaughters. But perhaps no one enjoyed the grandchildren more than Jefferson himself. For their summer games, he took on the role of chief referee. His granddaughter Virginia recalled:
One of our earliest amusements was in running races on the terrace, or around the lawn. He placed us according to our ages, giving the youngest and smallest the start of all the others by some yards, and so on, and then he raised his arm high with his white handkerchief in his hand, on which our eager eyes were fixed, and slowly counted three, at which number he dropt the handkerchief and we started off to finish the race by returning to the starting-place and receiving our reward of dried fruit—three figs, prunes or dates to the victor, two to the second, and one to the lagger who came in last. These were our summer sports with him.19
The Jeffersons typically had dinner in the late afternoon. Reporting his daily habits to a correspondent, Jefferson said, “I have lived temperately, eating little animal food, and that not as an aliment, so much as a condiment for the vegetables, which constitute my principal diet.” Enough recipes survive from the Monticello kitchen to fill a good-sized cookbook. They enjoyed such dishes as Mexican black bean soup. They got the recipe from the grocer who sold them the beans. Pumpkin soup was another favorite, and Martha had a good recipe for okra soup, with lima beans and tomatoes.20
As had been his habit throughout his adult life, Jefferson served no wine until after dinner. Dr. Benjamin Rush enjoyed a glass and a half of wine each day. Jefferson told a correspondent that he would usually double “the Doctor’s glass and a half of wine, and even treble it with a friend; but halve its effects by drinking the weak wines only. The ardent wines I cannot drink, nor do I use ardent spirits in any form.”21
The time after dinner Jefferson devoted to conversation or reading. Warm summer evenings often drew friends and family outdoors. Francis Walker Gilmer, who became a frequent visitor during Jefferson’s retirement, left the most poetical description of evenings at Monticello. His night thoughts provide a companion to Mrs. Smith’s description of mornings at Monticello. Gilmer observed:
The prospect from Monticello is most interesting on a summer’s night. The elevation prevents or at least very much diminishes the descent of dews, and you walk with impunity at all hours on the lawn or terrace. The distant summits reflecting the silvery light, the moon beams floating on the mists below, the pale clouds hanging lightly on the declivities of the mountains, the motionless leaf, the softly murmuring wave, the glittering tapers in the surrounding vale, altogether remind one of that beautiful description of night in the Iliad.
As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night:
O’er heaven’s clear azure spreads her sacred light,
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene
And not a cloud o’ercasts the solemn scene;
Around her throne the vivid planets roll
And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole.
O’er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed
And tipped with silver every mountain head
Then, shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies.22
Jefferson went to bed fairly early, around nine or ten, but he often spent hours reading before he fell asleep. He slept between five and eight hours a night, depending upon how “the book I am reading interests me.”23
That summer Jefferson received the kind of request that any great writer longs to receive—any great writer besides Jefferson, that is. John W. Campbell, a publisher from Petersburg, Virginia, wrote to ask if he could publish a collected edition of Jefferson’s works. Though flattered, Jefferson was unsure whether Campbell’s editorial project would be a worthwhile commercial venture. However, Jefferson did take the request as an opportunity to reflect on his life as a writer.
Outside of official writings, he told Campbell, he had really only published two works: Notes on the State of Virginia and A Summary View of the Rights of British America. He downplayed the significance of A Manual of Parliamentary Practice, which he called “a mere compilation, into which nothing entered of my own but the arrangement, and a few observations necessary to explain that and some of the cases.”24
His official papers had historical value, but he questioned their commercial prospects: “Many of these would be like old news papers, materials for future historians, but no longer interesting to the readers of the day. They would consist of Reports, correspondencies, messages, answers to addresses.” As he thought about his writings as secretary of state, he saw some potential interest in them for contemporary readers. Though his official reports for the State Department were written for practical purposes, they could be read now as “Essays on abstract subjects.” He was thinking specifically about the following works: “Report on Commerce,” “Report on Copper Coinage,” “Report on Desalination of Sea Water,” “Report on Fisheries,” and Report … on the Subject of Establishing a Uniformity in the Weights, Measures and Coins.
The numerous reports, resolutions, and declarations he drafted in the Virginia legislature and the Continental Congress, including the “Act for Establishing Religious Freedom” and the Declaration of Independence, do not belong in a collection of his writings, he told Campbell. Since they were public writings, Jefferson denied any personal claims to them. “So that on a review of these various materials,” he concluded, “I see nothing encouraging a printer to a re-publication of them. They would probably be bought by those only who are in the habit of preserving state-papers, and who are not many.”25
Reviewing his literary output, Jefferson was again reminded that he was no continuator of Sterne, but he also realized the profound influence of his writings on the formation and perpetuation of American democracy. His writings helped bring the Enlightenment into the realm of politics and government.
Campbell was not discouraged by Jefferson’s response, but he did reconceive the project in light of it. He wrote back proposing an octavo volume that included A Summary View, his reports as secretary of state, and his presidential messages to Congress. Campbell also made arrangements to co-publish the work with the experienced Philadelphia firm, Hopkins and Earle. Jefferson approved the plan and sent Campbell his personal copy of A Summary View and also a
bound volume containing his reports as secretary of state. Campbell held onto them for two years before deciding that, after all, the proposed volume “would at this day not be interesting to the mass of readers.”26
Though Jefferson downplayed the significance of A Manual of Parliamentary Practice in his letter to Campbell, there had been considerable demand for it. The first edition, too small to meet the demand, was quickly exhausted. William Dickson, a publisher in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, reprinted the Manual in 1810. The following year, Joseph Milligan wrote Jefferson, asking if he could publish a new edition of the work.
“I am perfectly willing that you should print another edition of the Parliamentary Manual,” he told Milligan. “I have no right to refuse it, because no copy right was retained, or would have answered any view I had in publishing it. If it can be made to promote order and decorum in debate it will do great good.” Jefferson did take the chance to revise and update the Manual for Milligan’s edition. When he originally compiled the work, John Hatsell’s three-volume Precedents of Proceedings in the House of Commons had been one of his most important reference works. Hatsell had added a fourth volume to his collection, which Jefferson had not seen before completing the first edition. Revising the Manual became another writing project for Jefferson’s retirement. For the Milligan edition, he made many changes and additions, some inspired by Hatsell, and others made to sharpen the rules of order he had originally written.27
The Road to Monticello Page 68