By Jordan Thomas Hall
The beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia was the center of my travel this month. One of the largest antique shows in this part of the country was being held there with excellent offerings. Also in the Valley is Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello. Touring the masterpiece I was able to learn a lot about Jefferson and enjoyed a wine festival held there that evening.
Series continued from last week
The fine wine was still being poured at Monticello’s third annual wine festival when my girlfriend Morgan and I left in a comfortable, small coach bus to Thomas Jefferson’s home atop the hill.
Jefferson’s autobiography can be found on a hill overlooking Virginia’s beautiful Piedmont. Not in the form of his written text, but in the magnificent home he crafted. Nowhere does a home speak more about its occupants than it does at Monticello.
The principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson was born to planter parents near present-day Charlottesville, Virginia in 1743. He was a diligent, well-educated student who went on to practice law. At the age of 25, he began construction on his home overlooking the 5,000 acres he inherited from his father, and soon married his wife Martha- a happy union. He served his county in the Virginia House of Burgesses (Representatives) and as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress, soon after the outbreak of the Revolutionary War.
Jefferson befriended John Adams, a friendship that would last the rest of their lives, and the two became leaders of the convention. Jefferson drafted the declaration stating that “all men are created equal” and have a right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. At age 36, he was elected governor of Virginia and later a member of Congress. He traveled extensively abroad for five years in France and Italy as a Minister to France, bringing back many ideas and theories. He served as our country’s first secretary of state, second vice president, and third president (1801-1809) while acquiring much of the central part of the United States in the Louisiana Purchase. Following his presidency he retired to his beloved Monticello where neoclassical renovation had been completed based on ideas collected from extensive travel in France.
I arrived at the East Portico to be greeted by Thomas Jefferson, rather a very convincing portrayer of one of our most important Founding Fathers. Jefferson was an avid collector and displayed his collection in the Indian-themed entrance hall. Entering the home, you find yourself standing among Native American objects that were given to Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their famed expedition, planned by Jefferson during his presidency. Fossils, plaster busts, antique maps and European artwork also take residency along the walls. Here Jefferson’s butler, Burwell Colbert, would have received guests in what served in the same function it has today- a museum.
Meals at Monticello were an event. Like most Americans of their time, the Jefferson family ate two main meals a day: breakfast was served around eight in the morning and dinner at about four in the afternoon. However, their table was a spread of French and American delicacies. Fine wine was brought to the table by servants who accessed an early dumbwaiter from the wine cellar beneath.
The walls of the room were painted chrome yellow, which was appropriate, for it was Thomas Jefferson who introduced macaroni and cheese to America after a visit to Paris and modified it to the comfort food we know today. While he imported many fine foods he held his large vegetable garden dear to him and experimented with 330 varieties of 99 species of vegetables and herbs. He also was one the first in the country to enjoy ice cream- making it on-site at Monticello and serving the vanilla dessert inside warm pastry.
Guests and family were entertained before and after meals in the parlor. Games and musical instruments were played on the elegant parquet floor, as well as pleasing conversation and reading. Amid the unpainted plaster walls with detailed Roman frieze carvings hang over two-dozen paintings, many of which are portraits of well known early American politicians and European scholars.
Prominent guests such as President James Madison and his wife Dolley stayed in the Octagonal Room. The octagon-shaped bedroom features French wallpaper and an alcove bed to save space. Triple-sash windows open to serve as doorways and a comfortable ventilation system.
A circular-elliptical arched doorway that took 15 days to carve and hang leads to the Book Room. Education was important to Jefferson, feeling it was essential for the growth of the nation and at age 76, he founded the University of Virginia. The Book Room connects to Jefferson’s cabinet where he spent a great deal of time each day. Here he read from his vast library and drafted around 12 letters a day (some 19,000 in his lifetime). Ever the innovative man, he created a polygraph device used for copying letters. The room overlooks the informal floral garden that Morgan and I enjoyed walking to, along with the dependencies inside the long, open-air cellar passageway at dusk before our long drive home.
Jefferson’s alcove bed opened to his bedchamber on one side and his study on the other. In his retirement he had a clock above the foot of his bed and awoke when there was enough daylight to read the time. His first order of business was to put his feet in cold water, a routine he believed warded off colds. It was always his practice to record the temperature each morning and it is from this that we know that on July 4, 1776 the temperature was 76 degrees in Philadelphia. Jefferson spent the majority of the day overseeing his plantation before returning home in the evening to write letters and retiring at usually 11 p.m.-1 a.m.
Thomas Jefferson died at the age of 83 in his bedchamber on the same day as fellow Founding Father and friend John Adams. He left this world on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the succeeding of his greatest gift to the world: the Declaration of Independence. Today, his home is a microcosm of the greatness of a man who worked to realize a vision for a better America.
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Monticello (Photo by Jordan Thomas Hall)