The Road to Monticello

by Hayes, Kevin J. ;

  By the time he left London for New York, Gilmer was quite pleased with the books he had bought. He had acquired all of the Anglo-Saxon books Jefferson had requested. He may have contacted Anna Gurney, the Anglo-Saxon scholar who had translated the Saxon Chronicle in 1819 and issued it in a limited impression for private circulation. Learning about the need for books at the fledgling university, she donated a copy of her edition.2 The mathematical library, Gilmer boasted, “is superior to any I saw in G. B. and yet it was not expensive.” The classics and the works of modern language were the most expensive books.3

  In his quest for books, Gilmer had worked under a disadvantage. Though Jefferson had supplied him with a list of Anglo-Saxon titles and had suggested some general subject areas, he largely let Gilmer decide what to buy. It was not until after Gilmer went to Great Britain that Jefferson compiled a catalogue of necessary books for the library. The project turned out to be more work than he had anticipated. The second week of August 1824, he wrote James Madison, telling him that the catalogue “has been laborious far beyond my expectation, having already devoted 4. hours a day to it for upwards of two months, and the whole day for some time past and not yet in sight of the end.” He asked Madison to help him compile the section on divinity. Later he wrote George Ticknor, asking him to compile a list of important works in German literary history.4

  Once Jefferson finished compiling the catalogue, it listed nearly seven thousand volumes he wanted to acquire for the university. Like his previous catalogues, this one, too, is divided into three sections according to Francis Bacon’s memory-reason-imagination scheme. Each section is divided into different subject areas, each major subject area receiving its own chapter. Altogether, the catalogue contains forty-two chapters.5

  While working on his catalogue in the summer of 1824, Jefferson received a letter from William Hilliard, a partner in Cummings, Hilliard, and Company, a Boston bookselling firm. Hilliard’s letter was not unexpected. Earlier that year, a friend of his, Joseph Coolidge, Jr., had visited Monticello. Speaking with Jefferson about his plans for the university library, Coolidge highly recommended the firm, which had been instrumental in supplying books to Harvard and other schools. Hilliard had numerous correspondents in all the big publishing centers of Europe, from whom he could obtain virtually any book he wished. When Coolidge returned to Boston, he encouraged Hilliard to write Jefferson. Hilliard took his friend’s advice and offered to supply the University of Virginia with whatever books it needed. He also informed Jefferson that he had been on an extensive book-buying tour of Europe. With his letter, Hilliard enclosed a recent catalogue to give Jefferson an indication of his stock.6

  Coolidge was also friends with George Ticknor. In fact, Ticknor was the one who had written Coolidge a letter of introduction allowing him to visit Monticello and make Jefferson’s acquaintance. Coolidge could not thank Ticknor enough. He and Jefferson became good friends. In Coolidge, Jefferson found another cultured, intelligent, well-educated young man from Boston. Perhaps there was hope for New England yet. But it was the friendship Coolidge formed with another member of the Jefferson family that made him most grateful. When he visited Monticello in the spring of 1824, he fell in love with Jefferson’s granddaughter Ellen. Before leaving Monticello that spring, he made plans to return in the fall. Upon his return, he and Ellen were engaged. Together they began to plan a spring wedding.

  Love was in the air at Monticello that year. Nicholas Trist and Ellen’s sister Virginia were already engaged, and had been for years. He was back in New Orleans early that year. Virginia’s sisters were wondering when Nicholas would ever settle down. Ellen wrote him a charming letter in March, ending it by reminding him that Virginia’s “character, temper and understanding as she has advanced to complete womanhood have developed themselves in a way to render her the darling of her family.” Ellen explained that in terms of magnanimity, warmth, and purity of heart, Virginia was unsurpassed.7

  Ellen’s words may have had an effect. Trist returned to Monticello that summer, determined now more than ever to get serious about his life. He and Virginia were wed the second Saturday in September. The newly married couple settled down at Monticello. Trist read law under his grandfather-in-law and worked as his personal secretary, an invaluable experience. Trist’s notes form an important record of Jefferson’s final years. With his grandfather-in-law’s guidance, Trist was able to channel his restless energy. He went on to have a distinguished diplomatic career.

  The month Nicholas and Virginia were wed, Jefferson wrote Cummings and Hilliard, proposing that the firm establish a bookstore in Charlottesville, where they could sell textbooks to the students. Jefferson was not yet willing to hire them as booksellers to the University of Virginia, but he strongly suggested that if their bookstore went well, they would be able to expand their business significantly.8 Jefferson could not really make any large-scale acquisitions for the university library until he learned what Gilmer had purchased. He did order a few books from the catalogue Hilliard had sent, including Bryan Walton’s Biblia Sacra Polyglotta, a six-volume folio edition of the Bible with text in Arabic, Aramaic, Ethiopic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Persian, and Syriac. He also ordered Edmund Castell’s two-volume Lexicon Heptaglotton, a dictionary of Hebrew, Latin, Persian, and the Semitic languages.9 Jefferson held great hopes for his students. He was ordering books that would let them pursue studies that went far beyond the established curriculum.

  In January 1825, eight boxes of books from London reached Charlottesville. The books Bohn ordered from the Continent were being shipped to Virginia directly and would not arrive for months. Comparing what Gilmer had purchased with what he wanted for the library, Jefferson realized that he needed to order many more books and decided to take Hilliard up on his offer. He wrote him a letter, enclosing it with a letter to Coolidge. Jefferson asked Coolidge to deliver the letter in person, so he could answer any questions Hilliard or Cummings may have had.10

  For the moment, Jefferson’s advice to Hilliard mainly concerned the shop they would establish in Charlottesville. He recommended that it stock “respectable books, leaving only novels and poetry to the other bookshops generally.” Once the university opened, there would be much demand for schoolbooks. It would also attract business from nearby classical schools. Coolidge called on Hilliard, delivered the letter, and answered all the questions he could. Hilliard still had more questions, but those could wait until either he or a partner reached Charlottesville to ask Jefferson directly. The bookstore Hilliard and Cummings established near campus was only partly successful. Its manager, Mr. Jones, had little knowledge of books. The professors complained that it never stocked enough textbooks for the students.11

  Almost a member of the family, Coolidge told Jefferson that he wanted to help the University of Virginia any way he could. Jefferson took him up on the offer and sought his help obtaining a clock and a bell for the Rotunda. Coolidge also donated several books from his personal collection to the university library. Some were books he had read in school: a Greek grammar, a Greek reader, a Hebrew grammar, a Hebrew lexicon, a number of scholarly editions of Latin classics, and textbooks treating every major field of mathematics from arithmetic to calculus. Coolidge also donated a variety of other books, including Henry Aldrich’s Elements of Civil Architecture, a work that had been instrumental in encouraging the Palladian movement, and Andrea Palladio’s I Cinque Ordini di Architettura. Among the science books he donated were Jacob Bigelow’s Florula Bostoniensis, the standard manual of New England botany, and Parker Cleaveland’s Elementary Treatise on Mineralogy and Geology, the first American textbook on the subject.12

  Not to be outdone by his future brother-in-law, Nicholas Trist donated some books, too: Louis Hennepin’s New Discovery of a Vast Country in America and William Smith’s History of New York. Jefferson wanted to assemble a good collection of American history, so both of these books were welcome gifts. He also encouraged others to donate books to the library. In Virginia, donating
books became a fashionable way to support the university. Theodore Hansford of King George County donated what he called “some books of rare occurrence and ancient edition.” Actually, the books he donated, mainly seventeenth-century editions of classical authors—Epictetus, Isocrates, Plautus, Sophocles—were not as rare as he imagined, but they were useful books for students taking Professor Long’s course in ancient languages. Lafayette donated a copy of Augustin Thierry’s three-volume Histoire de la Conquête de l’Angleterre par les Normands, a forward-thinking work exemplifying the author’s belief that the writing of history must be continually reviewed and revised.13

  J. Evelyn Denison, a Member of Parliament from Newcastle-under-Lyme, was another who donated books to the University of Virginia. His donation, like Lafayette’s, was inspired by a visit to Virginia. In April 1825, Denison and some fellow Members of Parliament called at Monticello. They had arrived in New York the previous July and had been traveling around the United States ever since. Announcing their arrival, one American newspaper reporter observed, “If the object of these members be to travel in the new world, they may see many novelties, and learn many wise lessons.”14 While in Virginia, they saw the university and learned about it from its rector. Denison was pleased that Jefferson had recruited professors from England, but he recognized the animosity the imported professors had caused. Throughout his time in America, Denison had read numerous newspaper articles—“puny squibs,” in Jefferson’s words—snidely criticizing Jefferson’s supposed neglect of American intellectuals.

  The contract that Jefferson signed with William Hilliard in April stipulated that he supply Hilliard’s firm with a catalogue of requested titles. Since Jefferson had prepared a catalogue the previous year, getting it ready for Hilliard did not seem like much work at first, but it was. He had to reconcile the books Bohn had sent with the catalogue and cancel duplicate listings. His granddaughter Virginia helped out considerably. She rewrote the entire catalogue, finishing it in June.15

  Jefferson could not wait until the catalogue was finished to place some orders. Writing to Hilliard on Sunday, May 22, 1825, he requested three works in particular and asked them to send the books immediately: George Brodie’s History of the British Empire, John Lingard’s History of England, and Sharon Turner’s History of the Anglo-Saxons.16 Jefferson hated the thought that his students might learn English history solely from reading Hume, and he wanted to counteract that possibility fast: Turner offered an alternate version of early English history that refuted Hume’s; Brodie’s history contained a critical examination of Hume’s description of the English government; and Lingard’s was the first serious, thorough, scholarly English history to appear since Hume’s History of England. Lingard had set out, unostentatiously and inoffensively, to refute Hume historical era by historical era. Throughout his multivolume History of England, Lingard established a reputation for rigorous research and the critical use of original sources.17

  Henry Tutwiler, a distinguished University of Virginia student who had the pleasure to dine with Jefferson and speak with him on multiple occasions, vividly remembered his comments about Hume: “He used to say that the reading of Hume would make an English Tory, and that the transition to an American Tory was an easy one. He never failed to recommend to the youthful student, as an antidote to Hume, Brodie’s British Empire; the latter, he said, had ‘pulverized’ Hume.”18

  Along with these three works of English history, Jefferson also ordered several works of Americana. Hilliard had recently sent him a catalogue of duplicates from Harvard. Jefferson noticed several titles in the catalogue that he wanted for the University of Virginia, but he hesitated to purchase them due to their cost. He found a few that were reasonably priced, including Francisco Alvarez’s Noticia del Establecimiento y Poblacion de las Colonias Inglesas en la America Septentrional, which surveyed the English colonies from a Spanish perspective, and Henri Joutel’s Journal Historique du Dernier Voyage que Feu M. de LaSale Fit dans le Golfe de Mexique. The most comprehensive account of La Salle’s expedition available, Joutel’s Journal contained important information regarding the history of Texas and the Mississippi River Valley. American history was not a part of the curriculum, but French and Spanish were. Students could improve their foreign language skills by reading about America.

  The week he placed his order to Hilliard, Jefferson took a break from the enormous amount of work he was doing on behalf of the university and its library. On Friday, May 27, all library business, all university business, all everything business was set aside: it was on this day that Ellen Wayles Randolph and Joseph Coolidge were wed. The wedding took place in the drawing room at Monticello. Thomas Jefferson was happy to see his favorite granddaughter marry such a bright and kind young man, but his joy was tinged with sadness as he realized that Ellen would be leaving for her husband’s home in faraway Boston. Once she and Joseph left on their honeymoon, a circuitous, thousand-mile journey, her grandfather often gazed wistfully toward her empty chair. Whenever her sisters saw him doing this, one of them would hurry and take her seat. However, none of them could take Ellen’s place in her grandfather’s heart.19

  Saddened by her absence, Jefferson was pleased to gain a lively correspondent in the bargain. Some of the best letters he wrote the last year of his life were to Ellen, and some of the best he received that year were by her. After her grandfather, Ellen was the best writer in the family, though Cornelia came a close second. Almost as soon as she reached Boston, Ellen wrote to tell him about their honeymoon. To give her “an idea of the beauty and prosperity of the New England States,” Joseph Coolidge had arranged a trip that took them all around New England.20 Upon reaching New York, they sailed up the Hudson to Albany. From there, they proceeded overland to Saratoga, Lake George, and Lake Champlain, reaching as far north as Burlington, Vermont. They traveled overland from Burlington to the Connecticut River, down which they sailed to Springfield and from there proceeded to Boston.

  Ellen went well beyond merely listing the places she visited. She also described the people she met and the sights they saw. A visit to a cotton factory prompted a comparison between factory workers and farmers. Her words suggest that the United States was entering a new era, an era that neither she nor her grandfather was anxious to see:

  I have visited one only of the great cotton factories which are beginning to abound in the country; and, although it was a flourishing establishment, and excited my astonishment by its powers of machinery, and the immense saving of time and labor, yet I could not get reconciled to it. The manufacturer grows rich, whilst the farmer plods on in comparative poverty; but the pure air of heaven, and the liberty of the fields in summer, with a quiet and comfortable fire-side in winter, certainly strikes the imagination more favorably, than the confinement of the large but close, heated, and crowded rooms of a factory; the constant whirl and deafening roar of machinery; and the close, sour and greasy smells emitted by the different ingredients employed in the different processes of manufacturing cotton, and woollen cloths: also, I fancied the farmers and labourers looked more cheerful and healthy than the persons employed in the factories, and their wives and daughters prettier, and neater, than the women and girls I saw before the looms and spinning jennies.21

  Ellen apparently learned travel writing from her grandfather. In terms of its content, this letter closely resembles his own, yet in a way, Ellen’s travel writing goes beyond her grandfather’s, for it embodies a keen pictorial sensibility he often excluded from his accounts of travel. Describing the country girls in New England, she said that they “are well looking, healthy and modest, and the cows laden with their milky treasures might, any one of them, serve as a study for a painter who desired to express this sort of abundance.”22 Her idyllic depiction of the farmers’ daughters makes it sound like she is describing a Constable painting. Ellen’s preference for the farming life over the life of the factory girls also shows that she shared her grandfather’s outlook toward the superiority of the agri
cultural life.

  Jefferson received her letter with excitement. Responding to Ellen, he admitted how much he missed her: “We did not know, until you left us, what a void it would make in our family. Imagination had illy sketched its full measure to us: and, at this moment, every thing around serves but to remind us of our past happiness, only consoled by the addition it has made to yours.”23 The details of her itinerary brought back fond memories of the trip he had taken with James Madison in 1791. Recalling the journey to Ellen, Jefferson revealed a twinge of nostalgia, but he had little time to dwell on the past. His eyes were fixed on the future: he foresaw the graduates of the University of Virginia as the new leaders of the nation.

  In his letters to Ellen, Jefferson offered an idealized view of the university. She received a different picture from her mother and sisters. Writing in mid-July, Cornelia told her, “The news of the neighborhood is the chit chat and scandal of the University and every thing that passes there.”24 The influx of college students had changed the whole social dynamic of Albemarle County. Initially, the local girls welcomed the college boys, but before long the liberties the boys took offended them. Because of the students’ improper behavior, the girls now refused to attend any on-campus barbecues.

  In one letter that summer, Cornelia offered Ellen a general survey of the faculty. Ever since he first started building Monticello, their grandfather had imagined it as the center of a tight-knit intellectual circle. Now it had become so. Jefferson frequently invited the professors and their wives to Monticello, and his family came to know them well. Cornelia told Ellen that Professor Key was considered “the finest fellow that ever trod the earth.” Professor Bonnycastle was quite amiable, too. Professor Emmett was “warm in his likings and dislikes; fiery, and so impetuous even in lecturing that his students complain his words are too rapid for their apprehension; they cannot follow him quick enough; to which he answers, they must catch his instruction as it goes, he cannot wait for any man’s understanding.” Professor Blaettermann was a bit gruff at first but had apparently mended his ways and become “very popular among the students.”25 The only person Cornelia could not stand was Mrs. Blaettermann. A “vulgar virago” she called her. To give Ellen an idea of Mrs. Blaettermann, Cornelia quoted from William Shenstone’s poem “A Proposal to Advice”: “There’s not such a b——in king George’s dominion / She’s peevish, she’s thievish, she’s ugly, she’s old / And a liar, and a fool and a slut and a scold.”26