by Max Byrd
“Next year he plants a hectare of tobacco, yes,” Clérisseau asked, “and the Comte de Vergennes will smoke it?”
“Your model,” Short said, and tugged at the linen sheet that covered the library table. Clérisseau helped him draw the sheet to one side, and then fell back into a silent study of the scale-model plaster building before them.
Outside, a wagon passed. A solitary Parisian crow cawed in the garden. Short glanced at his pocket watch; walked to the window; returned with a black-and-white engraving that Jefferson had left on a shelf.
“The Maison Carrée,” he said finally, just to be saying something. He propped the engraving on a chair.
Clérisseau glanced at it, then knelt and frowned at the tiny columns that ran across the porch of the plaster model; he penned a series of numbers in his pocket notebook. “At Nîmes, yes. That was the design we started from.”
He fell silent again and Short cleared his throat. “And Jefferson has made changes?”
Clérisseau scribbled another entry in his notebook, stood up, and crossed his arms over his chest, looking for all the world, Short thought, like a pop-eyed Jefferson.
“He puzzles me, you know.” Clérisseau tapped the front of his nose with his metal architect’s pen. “Is he a great universal genius, or simply the most complete mediocrity in history? Look.” He aimed the pen at the plaster model. “This is to be the state capitol at the city of Richmond, yes?” Short nodded. “The revolutionary new city, the revolutionary new country. But where does he turn for his inspiration? Not to the new—to the old! To Rome—Rome the unfree, Rome the tyrannical. A Roman temple. I show my drawings of the Maison Carrée, purely as a starting point for discussion, and he seizes them out of my hand—the very thing!”
“But he’s changed it?”
“Well, he has. But is it a good change?”
Short looked at the black-and-white engraving; then at the model.
“You need spectacles,” Clérisseau said sardonically. “Too much wine and women. The columns first—look, look, look; here they’re Corinthian; in the model they’re Ionic.”
“Windows?”
“He’s added windows.” Clérisseau made an indescribably French sound like the pop of grease on a skillet. “He had to, I suppose. For offices. Even revolutionaries need offices. But there—the portico’s reduced from three columns’ width to two, and the pilasters are gone. And what is this?”
Short followed the pen. “A monument hall. The statue of Washington goes there.”
“By Houdon?” Clérisseau sniffed. “Mathematics. Jefferson draws and alters everything by mathematics—he’s like a machine, he applies the numbers and does exactly what they say, so that the effect is austere, severe, pure—”
“Roman,” Short said.
Clérisseau shook his head. “Not a bit. My question is, why does such an apostle of freedom bind himself to such arbitrary rules and numbers?”
He sat down on the window bench and fanned himself with one of Jefferson’s rolled architectural drawings. “Williamos is gone.”
Short nodded once and busied himself with reexamining the model, intending to look brisk and uninterested. It was one of the secrets of the house that Jefferson had written his disreputable boarder Williamos a furious confidential letter and sent him away. What could make Jefferson furious? Disloyalty? Ingratitude? Downstairs he distinctly heard voices now.
“And so Trumbull is here and you don’t like him.” Clérisseau began to sketch something in his notebook.
“Of course I do. He’s a painter, he’s an artist.”
“I know what he is. A painter of dull historical scenes, come all the way from London just to study Jefferson’s head, which he means to include in some vast patriotic tableau.”
“The ‘Signing of the Declaration of Independence.’ ”
“Precisely. Yards of canvas, inches of talent. He and Jefferson go everywhere together. And you don’t like him. You grind your teeth at his name. Is there—dare I hope?—some scandal?”
“C’est dommage. No scandal.” In fact, of course, the rather self-righteous and priggish John Trumbull, now about thirty, had fathered an illegitimate son in Connecticut five or six years earlier, but in Clérisseau’s world, Short knew, that would hardly count. “I hear voices downstairs.”
Clérisseau twisted on the window bench. “There’s a carriage.”
On the stairway landing the voices grew louder; then a door slammed—like a gunshot in the heat—and Short heard nothing at all.
Jefferson’s new maître d’hôtel appeared in the hallway, a boneless but intelligent Frenchman named Adrien Petit. Marc had been mysteriously dismissed by letter, rather like Williamos. Petit crossed the carpet, wiping his forehead with a white handkerchief.
“Visitors?”
“Deux personnes, pour Monsieur.”
Still in his shirt-sleeves, Short opened the front door to see for himself. At the foot of the steps, just settling back into the seat of their carriage, was the elderly Duc de La Rochefoucauld, one of Jefferson’s particular political friends, and beside him a woman, very young, slender, with jet-black hair and a pale white face—Short stopped and blinked. In the cavernous black interior of the carriage the woman’s features were indistinct, tremulous; a soft oval of light.
Short hurried forward, fastening his cuffs. The duc held up one hand—gloved, in this heat; French decorum was truly incredible—and greeted Short by name. At the open door of the carriage the glare of sunlight and paint was so strong that it took Short a moment to realize that he had seen the young woman before. “Your daughter?” he was on the verge of asking.
“My wife,” the duc said. He added something else, but Short was turning his head to bring his memory and vision into perfect focus. At the nuns’ ceremony of “dying to life” she had worn a veil. Then, at Lafayette’s house, she had stood in a corner near Madame de Tessé, elegantly dressed, watching him. Today she wore a soft blue cap, a modest blue-and-green redingote à la mode. She stared down into her lap without a trace of smile or greeting.
“My name is William Short,” he repeated to her, like an idiot. “William.”
The duc was patient. “My wife, la duchesse.”
“Madame la Duchesse. Of course. Excuse my state of dress. This heat … we Americans can never learn to be formal.” Short knew that he was blushing or staring or both. He straightened and faced the duc, losing his perfect focus on the wife. “Monsieur Jefferson has gone to Versailles, but he ought to return by five or six.”
“We were merely passing,” the duc said, “on our way to my mother’s house, and I thought we might just stop and call, without sending ahead.” A little shrug. In contrast to his wife’s, the due’s hair was as fine and gray as cinders.
The young duchesse finally raised her eyes. “So you see, Monsieur Short, we French can also be informal,” she said shyly.
The duc smiled at her, then saluted Short with the incredible glove and signaled his driver. The carriage had actually reached the Grille de Chaillot and passed through a gate before Short turned to see Clérisseau lounging against the rail in front of the door. He grinned down at Short.
“A lovely couple,” Clérisseau said. “Like December and May.”
In the evening, when Clérisseau had gone away with his notes and his model, John Trumbull joined Short and Jefferson in the garden and promptly set about making one of his numerous social proposals.
“There is no one,” he said, “I would rather have you meet.”
“I think,” Jefferson began. He took a few steps along the row of corn and stopped to study a yellowish leaf, all concentration. “I have so much business to take care of, I think I really must say no.”
“But consider,” Trumbull insisted, following him down the row. “Just an hour to meet them; an hour, no more.” Nearby, Short sat down on a wooden bench and crossed his legs. The heat of the August day had vanished miraculously, as it did every night in Paris, and now he wore his co
at and even permitted himself a shiver or two, though the sky was still milky white with the long summer sun and Jefferson and Trumbull were lightly dressed in cotton shirts and riding trousers.
“I’ve neglected everything.” Jefferson emerged from a different row, not ten feet from Short’s bench. “Ask Mr. Short.”
“There is Lester Asquith …” Short said.
Jefferson stopped and turned to Trumbull. “An American sailor. He arid his crew blew ashore in a storm at Dieppe, and the French promptly clapped them in prison on suspicion of bringing in contraband tobacco for sale. I must write the Comte de Vergennes again, to humbly ask their release.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Cosway,” Trumbull said. But Jefferson was holding up his left hand—a black paw to Short’s vision—and evidently counting on his fingers.
“Lester Asquith first,” he said. “Then instructions to Mr. Lamb, who serves badly as ambassador to Algiers for us.”
“And a copy to Jay.” Short was pleased to interfere with anything that Trumbull proposed. He was also fascinated by Jefferson’s continued fury at the Barbary pirates. The Roman naturally counseled patience and stolid diplomacy in all international quarrels; but the taking of American hostages somehow brought out the most fearsome Rebel. Adams was still willing to negotiate; Jefferson wanted to wage holy war.
“And then Ledyard has to be answered,” Short added.
Jefferson held up another finger. “John Ledyard,” he told Trumbull. “One of Nature’s great eccentrics. He wants to march across the Russian Empire, by himself, into Siberia, and down to the western coast of America, or rather, where he surmises the western coast lies. As you know, I have a weak spot for explorers.”
“DeMeunier’s article,” Short said.
A third finger went up. “A little article on the United States,” Jefferson said, “for a new edition of the Encyclopédie. Some mistakes I ought to correct before it’s published.”
Short crossed his legs the other way and watched Jefferson’s sharp profile against the blue-gray sky. The “little article” was fifty pages long, a tissue of factual errors, and Jefferson had rewritten it twice for the obstinate young Frenchman who was its nominal author.
“And Paul Jones has submitted his accounts for his prize money,” Jefferson continued. “At last. And finally”—dropping his hand to his side—“whale oil, my office is awash in whale oil. I must write a treatise for Vergennes on the commercial types of whale oil.”
Trumbull had a Yankee pugnacity of manner that Short instinctively resented. “The Cosways are grand friends of David.” He lowered himself to sit on the arm of Short’s bench, but without looking at Short. “They see him almost every day.”
Jefferson crossed, then recrossed his arms. Of all the artists in Paris, Short knew he admired the cool, reserved historical painter Jacques-Louis David most, though foreigners rarely met him.
“In fact,” Trumbull drawled—if you closed your eyes, Short thought, and simply listened to his voice, the man was an obvious hypocrite—“this morning we all met at David’s studio for coffee. I told them you had finished your architectural model and could turn to painting at last.”
“I know next to nothing of painting.” Jefferson spoke with a rueful intonation.
“My dear sir, you have an eye, you have an artist’s eye. And two years in Paris have made you a connoisseur. Look at the things you’ve bought—those Caravaggios, that little bronze statue of Diana by Houdon. The Cosways can be your tutors in painting.”
“William?”
Short shrugged to indicate that he had no opinion. Overhead the sky had grown plumy with stars, and the face of the young Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld had slipped imperceptibly among them.
“Cosway is the most renowned miniaturist in England,” Trumbull was saying, to Jefferson, not Short. “He paints everybody’s portrait. He travels in the most amazing circle—the Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, tout Londres.” Jefferson had started to move up the rows of corn again, humming to himself and fingering the dark leaves. James Hemings had declared that he would take the first ripe ears to his culinary school and see what French cooking could do with them.
“And his wife,” Trumbull said into the gathering darkness, “—also a painter. An Anglo-Italian. The most beautiful, fair, charming woman. The Cosways propose we meet at the Halle aux Bleds day after tomorrow, at two in the afternoon, to tour it, no more than that.”
Jefferson reappeared carrying a bouquet of five or six corn leaves. “Friday?”
“You have a dinner engagement Friday with the old Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld d’Enville,” Short told him. “The duc’s mother.”
“The Halle aux Bleds,” Trumbull said, “has been on your list for months. I know it.”
Jefferson nodded thoughtfully. The new Parisian grain market, located not far from the Palais Royal, had been given the grandiose name of the Halle aux Bleds—Hall of Wheat—to honor its innovative architecture. An enormous dome evidently, combined somehow with a series of glass skylights. Jefferson loved skylights, as he said he loved everything to do with the sun. Once or twice he had talked to Short about designing a farmer’s market for Richmond to blend with the new capitol building; the Halle was a structure to study.
“The company will be most, most amusing,” Trumbull added. “I promise it.”
“If Mr. Short went along, to remind me of business.…” Jefferson said slowly.
“I was about to ask him,” Trumbull said.
Friday, August twelfth, dawned hot and clear. By the time Short finished his breakfast at seven, Jefferson had already been working in their office for two hours, writing letters, running his new copy press. As Short walked in one door, Jefferson was leaving by the other, and before Short had fairly settled into his chair, he heard the sound of his violin upstairs.
“Did Trumbull already eat?” Short rocked a little in his swivel chair and watched James Hemings pour coffee into his cup. Jefferson disapproved of the habit—one takes one’s meal at table—but whenever Short had the office to himself, he called for a steady flow of James’s coffee.
“Mr. Trumbull came in late,” James said. He wiped the silver spout with the white linen napkin he had taken to carrying folded on his forearm, a French affectation. Short nodded and as usual found himself uncertain whether to look directly at James—with his “bright” skin, his curly reddish hair, his uncanny resemblance to Martha Wayles Jefferson—or whether to look rudely away and avoid his eyes.
“Stayed out with the artists,” James added. He frowned as he obviously tried to make out the title of one of Short’s books. He could read and write English, Short knew, but French? Short’s mind made an odd connection. The American sailors taken hostage by the Barbary pirates had been placed in literal chattel slavery, just like southern blacks. Just like James. Was Jefferson’s intransigence on hostages somehow connected to that?
“Out with the artists,” James repeated. “Came back at two in the morning. Mr. Jefferson long gone to bed, after his concert.”
They both listened for a moment to the strains of Jefferson’s violin.
“These artists,” James said, “got the constitution of a plow horse.”
“You don’t like Mr. Trumbull?”
James allowed himself the smallest, the most discreet of smiles. He refilled Short’s cup, then reached in his coat pocket for a sheet of paper. “This is the note when the first string beans come on the market, rue Saint-Honoré. He wanted it before, but Petit just gave it to me.”
Short placed the sheet of note paper unread on the desk blotter, and when James had left the room, he stood and transferred it to Jefferson’s desk, inserting it in the little cloth-bound volume where Jefferson recorded his first sightings of vegetables and flowers. On the lined pages, in Jefferson’s neat, regular hand, the numbers and dates looked like so many inky birds on a fence. Upstairs the violin came to a sudden stop.
Promptly at one-thirty the carriage arrived at the front door, and the
three men converged from different corners of the house. Jefferson had dressed almost casually for him, in pale blue coat and thin brown trousers. One hand held his little personal sketchbook—how many different little books did he have?—the other his watch. The old Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld expected them early for dinner, she was not a person to disappoint. Trumbull, last into the carriage, gave an easy drawling command in English to the driver, and they rattled their way onto the Champs-Élysées.
The Halle aux Bleds took up a square block not far north of the Pont Neuf, which they reached by a straight but tedious route along the river; the carriage swayed like a metronome, the day was hot. Short closed his eyes and allowed a series of associations to march Locke-step through his brain: night, watch, time; dinner; old duchesse, young duchesse. Old husband.
He opened his eyes to see that they were going past the gray-green plane trees of the Tuileries Gardens. Would the young duchesse be at the dinner that night?
Trumbull had begun to lecture Jefferson. The original Halle aux Bleds, he announced, had been no more than a two-story circular wall enclosing a central market area: grain stalls, offices, a couple of oversize entrances and exits for farmers’ wagons. Ten years ago two architects named Legrand and Molinos had accepted a commission to put a roof on the circular wall. Like all French architects, of course, they stole from the Italians. A Florentine dome was the thing, they decided, not a flat roof; and because the grain merchants, with their vast stalls of dried grain, needed interior light but not fire, a dome that would somehow open to the sky.
Jefferson was visibly impatient, regretting already, Short assumed, that he had left his work for this. Turning away from Trumbull, he penciled an entry in his book and frowned through the window at the labyrinthine old palace of the Louvre, now on their right, where Clérisseau, David, and a hundred other artists had their apartments, not to mention Talleyrand’s mistress and her tolérant spouse. Then he closed his book and eyes. He was known to abhor the Louvre, with its dank, cramped medieval cells, in almost the same proportions as he loved the wide vistas of Monticello. The truth was, Short thought, Jefferson was bored with France, bored with his life here. If not for the lure of the skylights, he would certainly have stayed home today. Short closed his eyes and tried again to devise a third name for his code: Surveyor; Spartan.
