Kudos to Monticello

I went to Monticello last week for the first time in over 20 years. For those who haven’t been, if you see only one 18th century mansion in America this is the one to visit. I was amazed, favorably, at how much the tour had changed.

In the early 1980s (when I was a teenager and the sun was warmer and tourists still had to stop for mastodons on the way up the little mountain) the guides still spoke of the “servants” who worked in the house and the fields. This was a euphemism that always bugged me: “servants” served but they tend to have some choice in the matter. (Some “servants” were of course just like family except you could sell them.) The guides at that time practically wore a red circle and slash with the words SALLY HEMINGS QUESTIONS in the middle, and when I asked (I was about 16 or so, so that was fascinating to me) was told point blank by the aged docent “That’s based on the work of a historian named Fawn Brodie and she was a liar.” (Point of fact: Fawn Brodie wasn’t by a far stretch the most reliable of biographers or historians, particularly in that book, but her documentation of Jefferson’s whereabouts 9 months before the birth of each of Sally’s children was dead-on.)

I also asked, because I’d heard it on the (admittedly I know now notoriously unreliable) Rest of the Story, that Monticello was abandoned and used as a hay barn. This I was also told was an exaggeration- never happened.

The tour of the grounds of Monticello made mention of the cooks and blacksmiths and the lot, though the word “slave” was seldom if ever used and it was just assumed that they all pitched a sleeping bag in the beautiful big house at the end of their shift and mad Shmorrs and sang Kum Bah Yah until the next morning.

I was really surprised how much things have changed. There is now a tour of “Mulberry Row”, a slave work and residential area, that is as long as the tour of the house. While none of the slave quarters remain other than those that are located under or attached to the main house, you’re shown the ruins and foundations where they stood. You learn so much about the lives of Monticello slaves that if flavors your opinion of Jefferson before you ever set foot in the place (e.g.- one of the remaining cabin sites was of a 20.5" by 12" cabin that housed seven people [admittedly, frontier families didn’t have much more commodious accomodations, but at least the fields they worked in were their own], or that while Jefferson was not a harsh master himself he did knowingly retain an overseer who used the whip, or that field slaves worked 16 hour days in the field and then came home to take care of their families, or Jefferson’s comments on slaves most valuable to him [“those who give birth every two years and have skills in the kitchen and with the crops”] that show he wasn’t as “victimized” by the institution as he sometimes seemed to indicate).

They even discuss Sally Hemings, stating that best evidence (oral, DNA and historical) is that Jefferson was indeed the father at very least of her son Eston and probably of more if not all of her children. The house docent (who was black, also a nice change) respectfully asks that you not ask questions about Sally inside the house because of the “little ears” of the children in attendance but instructs you where to do so and will answer them herself in the yard after the tour.

It’s almost unfortunate that the house is so beautiful and Jefferson such a brilliant man that I felt guilty when the knowledge of the slave populations didn’t flavor my opinion of the tour as much as it should have. Ultimately he was a very flawed and hypocritical man, but a very flawed and hypocritical man who was also one of the greatest and probably the single most brilliant statesmen (Franklin and Hamilton his only near rivals in my estimation) of all early American statesmen and compares favorably to most who came afterwards.

It’s amazing, incidentally, how even after the DNA and circumstantial evidence combine to all but give Jefferson a cigar as Daddy the dissenters remain adamantly opposed to Jefferson’s paternity of the Sally Hemings branch. They’ve gone to lengths and expense to dispute the claims made and published their results in books sold at the Monticello gift shop (citing one of Jefferson’s paternal nephews as the father). Strange.

Anyway, mundane and pointless but I had to share it.

My favorite comment I heard in Monticello: the guide was displaying Jefferson’s library (or the reproduction of same) and discussing his “donation” of it to the rebuilding of the Library of Congress (the only whitewashing of him on the tour- in fact he didn’t donate but sold his library for fair market value because he was desperate for cash). Know-it-all-tourist: “Man that was a generous gifts, cause books was so expensive in those days… they were all still handwritten and some could take years!”

Another (after seeing the dumbwaiter that brought wine from the basement to the side of the fireplace in the dining room): “How did he keep the glasses from falling over on the trip up?”

Oh, and about the hay: the guide was not only aware of this point of the house’s history, but shows where the parquet flooring was damaged when hay and farm implements were stored inside during the Civil War era.

Most pitiful story told on Mulberry Row was that of Minerva, incidentally. She worked 16 hours a day in the fields, raised 7 children, and like all but a half dozen of Jefferson’s slaves went on the auction block the January after his death. Her children and grandchildren were sold away, but at 55 and after a lifetime in the fields and way past the age of childbearing, she was sold for $20 (dirt cheap even then) to a Jefferson family friend who also bought her husband. He essentially did the human equivalent of putting them out to pasture.

That’s really interesting, Sampiro, and I’m heartened to know such considerations are now being given. I’ve not been in over 20 years either and, come to think of it, don’t remember much being made of the issue before, save a few filtered and processed references.

The home itself is a marvelous testimony to his obvious intelligence and many of it’s elements have stuck in my mind over the years; the entry area clock, the bed built into the wall, the recessed stairway, the letter duplication “gadget” he invented. But, per your observation, next time I visit I’ll also be looking forward to some of the more intangiable things on display there now that were not as obvious before. They speak volumes too.

Sampiro do you have an idea why the dissenters are still fighting so hard? It seems such a waste of time, as I think it’s filtered into the American consciousness that Jefferson fathered some of Hemmings’ children.

Is it money?

I suspect that they want to think of Jefferson as a morally pure hero who never did anything wrong.

I think just pride and denial. Since the family and other Jefferson defenders had long claimed that Jefferson’s nephews (by his sister) were the father of the Hemings children, the DNA testing was done from his male line only courtesy of descendants of his uncle and thereby disallowing his sister’s DNA. While the DNA testing only proved that in one instance the descendants of Sally Hemings were the descendants of a male Jefferson, the oral history (of Hemings descendants and other Monticello slaves) and historical record are added in. Thomas Jefferson was the only Jefferson male consistently present 9 months before the births of the children, etc., and also it’s unlikely that a man who loved women as much as he did would have been voluntarily celibate for the last 40 years of his life (as he seemed to have been after Maria Cosway, who he may or may not have had a physical relationship with).

It couldn’t be money as the only property Jefferson’s heirs held onto was the family cemetery. Jefferson died with a negative worth- after his farms, house, furniture, slaves, etc., were sold his estate was still insolvent and his one surviving daughter had to move in with her own daughter.

By money, I meant surely Jefferson’s “name” is worth something, opening doors and all that. Maybe not. So it seemed that having to “dilute” the name even further, especially amongst the decendents of slaves might have been the moviation behind the denials…don’t know.

As one who lives in Charlottesville, I have to tell you that the man is idolized to a degree that is hard to believe if you haven’t been here. His opinions on just about everything are quoted and acted on. It is hard to overstate the pride, and the consequent level of denial. Jefferson was/is a great hero, ergo, he cannot have been so hypocritical.

I suspect I agree with Sampiro. He was brilliant and gifted, and human.

Flawed though he may have been, I think this country would be much better off if Jefferson was as widely discussed and quoted in the entire country as you describe in Charlottesville. Certainly, Jefferson was a man who could be reasoned with and was willing to change his opinions, unlike many of the current crop of politicians we’ve got these days. (The man would have beat the French to the metric system if he hadn’t ran out of money.)

Sampiro, does the tour give a better explaination of how Jefferson’s clock worked? When I took the tour (at roughly the same era in which you first did) the tour guide really didn’t have a clue as to how the thing worked.

More Jefferson related trivia: The release of the current series of nickels was held up until Virginia got it written into law that Monticello was returned to the obverse. Seems that’s what inspires most tourists to visit.

My favorite quote about Jefferson comes from JFK. He had a dinner with all the US Nobel lauriates and said that it was probably the finest gathering of minds that the White House had seen since Thomas Jefferson had last dined alone.

I go up and visit Monticello every year. It is a wonderful place to see - even if you’ve seen it before. There’s always something you didn’t notice before, or a flower or plant that you didn’t know was there. Plus, it is in wine country so there’s always a trip to the vineyards in the offing.

I can attest to Mr. Jefferson’s very real impact on Charlottesville. He’s everywhere.

As to the clock, if I remember correctly, the clock weights hang by the front door and also serve to mark the days of the week (there’s a hole in the floor so the weights can run all the way out).

An amazing man - but flawed just like all men.