He is quite tall, six feet, one or two inches, face streaked and speckled with red, light gray eyes, white hair, dressed in shoes of very thin soft leather with pointed toes and heels ascending in a peak behind, with very short quarters, grey worsted stockings, corduroy small clothes, blue waistcoat and coat, of stiff thick cloth made of the wool of his own merinoes and badly manufactured, the buttons of his coat and small clothes of horn, and an under waistcoat flannel bound with red velvet. His figure bony, long and with broad shoulders, a true Virginian.31
Both Gray and Ticknor were fascinated with his books. The latter’s knowledge especially impressed Jefferson, who called Ticknor “the best bibliograph I have met with.”32 A “bibliograph” is an expert in the history of books—Jefferson invented the term. After breakfast the next morning, their host escorted his guests into the suite of rooms that formed his library and passed an hour or so there pointing out his literary treasures. Gray noted many different aspects of the library. He was impressed with Jefferson’s collection of English literature, noting the sixteenth-century black letter edition of Chaucer’s Workes and the tenbook first edition of Paradise Lost.
Gray’s journal brings alive the conversation that occurred in Jefferson’s library this morning. French language and literature was a prominent topic of discussion. Jefferson told them that the Dictionnaire de Trévoux was better than the Dictionnaire de l’Academie Française. Pierre Charron’s De la Sagesse, an early-seventeenth-century treatise on the relationship between knowledge and practical wisdom, he called “an excellent work.” And he showed them William Duane’s edition of Destutt de Tracy’s Commentary and Review of Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws, which Jefferson told them was “the best book on politics which had been published for a century.”33
Whereas Gray mentioned several different books and authors in his account, Ticknor singled out one particular multivolume collection. Describing the six-volume set titled Book of Kings, Ticknor called it “the most curious single specimen—or, at least, the most characteristic of the man and expressive of his hatred of royalty.”34
The story of this curious multivolume collection goes back at least three years. In April 1812, Madame de Tessé had sent Jefferson a copy of the two-volume Mémoires of Wilhelmine, consort of the Margrave of Bayreuth and sister of Frederick the Great. Thanking her, Jefferson wrote, “I am much indebted to you for this singular morsel of history which has given us a curtain view of kings, queens and princes disrobed of their formalities. It is a peep into the stable of the Egyptian god Apis. It would not be easy to find grosser manners, coarser vices, or more meanness in the poorest huts of our peasantry. The princess shews herself the legitimate sister of Frederic, cynical, selfish, and without a heart.”35 Mentioning the stable of Apis, Jefferson referred to a superstitious practice in ancient Egypt where an ox was chosen to represent Apis, and women engaged in wanton behavior before the ox.
These Mémoires reminded Jefferson of other works he had in his library, such as Authentic and Interesting Memoirs of Mrs. Clarke from Her Infancy to the Present Time; Likewise, a Faithful Account of Mr. Wardle’s Charges Relative to his Royal Highness the Duke of York; Together with a Summary of the Evidence, as Taken in the House of Commons.36 Jefferson was also reminded of The Book, a work so titled because, in his words, “it is the Biblia Sacra Deorum et Dearum sub-coelestium, the Prince Regent, his Princess and the minor deities of his sphere, [which] form a worthy sequel to the memoirs of Bareuth; instead of the vulgarity and penury of the court of Berlin, giving us the vulgarity and profusion of that of London, and the gross stupidity and profligacy of the latter, in lieu of the genius and misanthropism of the former.”37
Associating these various titles in his letter to Madame de Tessé, Jefferson got the idea of collecting them together as a single work. He continued, “The whole might be published as a Supplement to M. de Buffon, under the title of the ‘Natural history of Kings and Princes,’ or as a separate work and called ‘Medicine for Monarchists.’ ”38
Once he devised this idea, Jefferson did not immediately act upon it—but he did not forget it, either. It was not until October 17, 1814, that he gathered these three works, along with a fourth, Comtesse de La Motte’s Mémoires Justificatifs, which retold the story of the infamous diamond necklace affair, and sent them to Joseph Milligan to be bound and lettered. Jefferson’s instructions were very specific: he wanted to make sure all six volumes had a uniform appearance. And there was a sense of urgency, too: “Pray do it immediately and return it by the stage that they may be replaced on their shelves should Congress take my library.”39
Jefferson’s detailed instructions, combined with the timing of this letter—written after the Senate had approved the purchase of his library—show that he was not going to the trouble and expense (it cost him five dollars) of having these volumes uniformly bound and lettered for his own library; he was doing it specifically for the Library of Congress. Instead of either of the collective titles he suggested to Madame de Tessé, he chose a more neutral title, but one that contributes irony to the collection. Though he did not title the collection “Medicine for Monarchists,” there can be no doubt that he intended the Book of Kings to function as such. Jefferson obviously imagined the gilt letters glaring from their spines toward any congressman lured by the idea of a monarchy.
Ticknor’s description captures the glee Jefferson felt as he showed them the Book of Kings: “These documents of regal scandal seemed to be favourites with the philosopher, who pointed them out to me with a satisfaction somewhat inconsistent with the measured gravity he claims in relations to such subjects generally.”40
Gray and Ticknor left Monticello on Tuesday, February 7. Thoroughly impressed with these two promising Bostonians, Jefferson had hoped they would stay longer. He called Gray a young man “of great information and promise” and Ticknor a man “of great erudition, indefatigable industry, and preparation for a life of distinction in his own country.”41 Jefferson would correspond with Ticknor through the remainder of his life.
Once he learned of Congress’s final approval of the sale, Jefferson still had to arrange transportation for his library—a matter easier said than done. He estimated the weight of the books and the number of wagons it would take to transport them. He also devised an ingenious way to pack the books for shipping: since they were shelved in pine bookcases, they could be sent to Washington as they stood. By using the bookcases as shipping crates, Jefferson could make sure the books retained the precise shelf order he had given them. A little waste paper was needed to protect them—individual sheets between each volume and some extra wads of paper stuffed in the empty spaces to prevent them from jostling about on the wagon journey to Washington. Once packed with paper, the bookcases could be enclosed with covers nailed to the front of each case. Finalizing plans for shipping the library, Jefferson explained, “The books should go in their cases, every one in its station, so that the cases on their arrival need only be set up on end, and they will be arranged exactly as they stand in the catalogue.”42
Jefferson’s shipping plans indicate his desire for the Library of Congress to follow his meticulous organizational scheme. His correspondence with the new Librarian of Congress reiterates the importance Jefferson placed on his organization. Accused of dereliction of duty, Patrick Magruder had resigned his position after the original Library of Congress was destroyed, and President Madison appointed George Watterston to succeed him. As Jefferson had wanted to do, Madison separated the position of the Librarian of Congress from the position of Clerk of the House of Representatives, making the librarian a full-time post. Journalist, novelist, poet, travel writer, Watterston was amply qualified for the job. He earned Madison’s respect when he dedicated The Wanderer in Jamaica to Dolley Madison because of her efforts to “promote the cause of general literature.”43 Watterston’s first responsibility was to oversee the installation of the new Library of Congress on the third floor of Blodgett’s Hotel, the temporary location of
Congress at the corner of 7th and E Streets N.W.
Looking forward to his new responsibilities, Watterston wrote Jefferson asking for his thoughts on the organization of the library. Jefferson responded enthusiastically. The letter he wrote to Watterston has been called “one of the fundamental documents in the development of library science in America.”44 Jefferson offered Watterston a detailed comparison between alphabetical and subject organization:
Two methods offer themselves the one Alphabetical, the other according to the subject of the work. The former is very unsatisfactory, because of the medley it presents to the mind, the difficulty sometimes of recollecting an author’s name, and the greater difficulty, where the name is not given of selecting the word in the title which shall determine its Alphabetical place. The arrangement according to subject is far preferable, altho’ sometimes presenting difficulty also, for it is often doubtful to what particular subject a book should be ascribed…. Yet on the whole I have preferred arrangement according to subject, because of the peculiar satisfaction, when we wish to consider a particular one, of seeing at a glance the books which have been written on it, and selecting those from which we expect most readily the information we seek.45
Basically, Jefferson informed Watterston that there was little he needed to do in the way of arrangement: “You will receive my library arranged very perfectly in the order observed in the Catalogue, which I have sent with it. …On every book is a label, indicating the chapter of the catalogue to which it belongs, and the order it holds among those of the same format, so that altho’ the Nos. seem confused on the catalogue, they are consecutive on the volumes as they stand on their shelves and indicate at once the place they occupy there.”46
Before packing them with paper and nailing on the covers, Jefferson went through his entire library a final time, moving volumes that were misplaced and cross-checking the catalogue with the shelf placement. He spent the last two weeks of March and the first two of April straightening the library and making sure the books were ready for shipping. He enlisted the help of his granddaughters Ellen, Virginia, and Cornelia.47
Jefferson also prepared a detailed index of authors or key title words for anonymous works. Some books loaned out had yet to return, but the collection was largely in order by the third week of April, when the wagons began arriving to transport the books and their cases to Washington. Joseph Milligan came down from Georgetown to help prepare the books for shipment.
On May 8, 1815, the day the final wagonload of books left Monticello, Jefferson wrote Samuel Harrison Smith: “Our tenth and last waggon load of books goes off today. …It is the choicest collection of books in the United States, and I hope it will not be without some general effect on the literature of our country.”48 Understatement was another literary device at which Jefferson excelled.
With Milligan’s help, Watterston stood his shelves up in the temporary home of the Library of Congress. Jefferson’s plan to make his system of library organization determine the system of organization for the Library of Congress would seem to have worked. But when it came time to publish a catalogue, Watterston could not leave well enough alone. He retained Jefferson’s general division into chapters but alphabetized the books within each chapter. Some he alphabetized according to author and others according to key title word. Upon seeing the printed catalogue, Jefferson was flabbergasted. He told a correspondent, “The form of the catalogue has been much injured in the publication; for although they have preserved my division into chapters, they have reduced the books in each chapter to alphabetical order, instead of the chronological or analytical arrangements I had given them.”49
Jefferson dwelt on his disappointment with the Library of Congress for altering his meticulous organizational scheme. In his personal copy of the printed library catalogue, he rearranged the titles to restore his original order. He eventually had Nicholas P. Trist make a fair copy of the entire catalogue. Born in Virginia and raised in Louisiana, Trist graduated from the College of Orleans and then came to Monticello in 1817 on Jefferson’s invitation. There he fell in love with Jefferson’s granddaughter Virginia. Her love for him was a stabilizing force in Trist’s otherwise restless young life. He attended West Point without graduating, returned to Louisiana after becoming engaged to Virginia in 1821, and after his mother’s death a few years later, returned to Monticello, where he became Jefferson’s personal secretary.
Having Trist restore the original order of the library he sold to Congress, Jefferson may have overreacted. Though Watterston reorganized the titles in the catalogue, he retained Jefferson’s shelf organization, as the shelf numbers in the printed catalogue indicate. In addition, Watterston titled the printed volume Catalogue of the Library of the United States, a title showing that he understood that the new Library of Congress was not just a library for legislators: it was a library for the nation. Furthermore, the Library of Congress continued to follow Jefferson’s chapter divisions until nearly the end of the nineteenth century. His elaborate organizational scheme and his role in reestablishing the Library of Congress on a new foundation have earned him the title of the “Father of American Librarianship.”50
Though Watterston’s alphabetical rearrangement obscured Jefferson’s analytical organization of books within each chapter, that organization did not disappear. The new cataloguing system at the Library of Congress, which has become the cataloguing system of every important university library in the nation, retains vestiges of Jefferson’s organizational scheme. Any library patron browsing the stacks in, say, American history who notices that the volumes are generally arranged from North to South can see the books through Jefferson’s eyes.
CHAPTER 38
The Retirement Library
Once the last wagonload of books left Monticello for Washington, the suite of rooms that had contained Jefferson’s great library looked desolate. Altogether, about 25,000 pounds of books, which had covered about seven hundred square feet of wall space, were carted from Monticello to Washington. Because Jefferson had sold the bookcases with the books in them, the rooms were now a foot wider on each side. The bare walls, like the walls of Balclutha, had a melancholy look. Standing within this empty suite once the final wagon had left, Jefferson realized an important truth about himself. Well, perhaps he did not realize it at this precise moment. Perhaps he knew it all along. But at this particular moment he could have been reminded of it more poignantly than ever before. As he said in his next letter to John Adams, “I cannot live without books.”1
Jefferson knew what he needed to do next. He had to start a new library. Actually, he had begun making plans for a new collection even before shipping his books to Washington. Earlier that year he had spoken about rebuilding his library at Monticello with George Ticknor, who graciously offered his help. Since Ticknor was going to Europe for an extended stay, he would be in an ideal position to acquire books Jefferson could not readily obtain in America—scholarly editions of ancient Greek and Roman texts.
He prepared a catalogue of desiderata, confining it “principally to the books of which the edition adds sensibly to the value of the matter,” especially in terms of “translations, notes, and other accompaniments.” Jefferson also reiterated his desire for small-format editions. He especially liked octavos because of their convenience and versatility. They were small enough to hold in the hand yet large enough to be opened on a table. The typeface was also important to him, but that feature was difficult to discern without seeing the books in person. Since the booksellers’ catalogues Jefferson used for reference did not mention typeface, Ticknor would be most helpful in selecting well-printed books. Italics Jefferson found “disagreeable to the eye,” and Black Letter tried his patience. He urged Ticknor to compare multiple editions of the same works and evaluate them in terms of format, quality of translation, notes, and typeface and make his judgment by taking all of these factors into consideration. Like his great library, his retirement library would be for reading, not for show. As he told
Ticknor, “I like good bindings and handsome, without being over elegant for use.”2
Ticknor received Jefferson’s catalogue but was puzzled by some of the editions listed, which seemed to him inferior to the newer editions available. He wrote back, conveying his preference for recent German editions over those Jefferson specified. Choosing his words carefully, Ticknor said that if Jefferson insisted, then he would obtain whatever editions he stipulated. Ticknor expressed the matter in a way that would charm any bookman: “An old edition or copy in which we have been accustomed to read is like an old friend, who is not to be set aside for a younger one, even though he should be of more promise.”3
Not nearly as inflexible as Ticknor had feared, Jefferson was happy to trust the young bibliograph’s powers of discrimination. He replied, “I must pray you therefore to avail me of your better opportunities of selecting, and to use your own judgment where you find that there is a better edition than that noted by me.” He did reiterate his preference for smaller formats: “Be so good as to remember my aversion to folios and 4tos and that it overweighs a good deal of merit in the edition. The nerveless hand of a more than Septuagenaire wields a folio or 4to with fatigue, and a fixed position to read it on a table is equally fatiguing.” Jefferson also gave Ticknor his opinion about editorial amenities. He appreciated explanatory notes but did not care for critical interpretations.4
When Jefferson received the volumes Ticknor selected, he was delighted with his thoughtful choices. They included Christian Gottlob Heyne’s nine-volume octavo edition of Homer’s Iliad, Heyne’s fourvolume edition of Virgil, and Georg Alexander Ruperti’s four-volume octavo edition of Juvenal. In Jefferson’s words, all three were “of the first order.” He liked Heyne’s Iliad best. In his letter of thanks, he told Ticknor that the work “exceeds anything I had ever conceived in editorial merit. How much it makes us wish he had done the same with the Odyssey.” Since Jefferson also had a copy of Jean Baptiste d’Angge de Villoison’s Venice edition of the Iliad at Monticello, he compared the two. He recognized Villoison’s influence but still found Heyne’s edition superior. The new edition encouraged him to reread Homer’s Iliad afresh. As he told Ticknor, “This style of editing has all the superiority your former letters have ascribed to it, and urges us to read again the authors we have formerly read to obtain a new and higher understanding of them.”5
The Road to Monticello Page 73