Jefferson

by Max Byrd

  Jefferson was silent. She had no sense at all of what he thought, only the impression of rigid muscles, tension. He rode horses like a soldier; she had seen him swing into the saddle like a boy of twenty. Impulse rose in her throat. “You were married once.”

  Jefferson pushed away the leaves of a shrub with his stick to allow her to go ahead. Behind her she heard him say in a normal tone of voice, “My wife died four years ago.”

  “Ah.” Side by side now. The Bagatelle was a miniature castle, charmingly laid out with flowers, ponds, varnished bits of terracotta that sparkled in the sunlight. John Trumbull had told her that Jefferson was one of the strongest characters he had ever known—a prodigy of learning and will—and the most reserved. He would never say one word beyond his intended effect, beyond what he wanted to say; his self-control was the key to everything else. So, of course, a person of impulse, she thought, watching him, would naturally attempt to turn the key.

  “What was she like?”

  Jefferson looked sideways, squinting, distressed. “She was musical. Gentle.” He hesitated.

  “Did she talk about the famous politics with you?”

  Carefully, painfully, he smiled at her, a face caught in the hard vise of courtesy. “I did not forbid her to talk of politics, you know, but she preferred not. I confess I prefer it when ladies do not.”

  They had stopped in the center of the path, facing each other. Maria was aware of his height, his flushed skin. In the summer heat her heart pounded so fiercely that her head trembled, her legs in her skirt trembled.

  “And when she died, four years ago, were you distraught?” Trumbull had told her he had been like a madman; his friends thought he would die himself or lose his reason.

  He spoke with slow formality, as if he had composed his answer long before. “I entered a great stupor of mind,” he said. “For many months I was as dead to the world as she was, whose loss occasioned it.”

  Then he raised his hand briskly to point at the whitewashed walls of the Bagatelle. “The little château here, you know, was built on a wager by the Comte d’Artois—hence the name ‘trifle.’ His brother the old king bet his wife that it couldn’t be finished in sixty days.”

  The rest of the gardens were tedious. They returned early in Jefferson’s phaeton, stopping only at the Pont de Neuilly, where Jefferson made her observe closely the engineering genius of the low elliptical arches that supported the bridge.

  As they clattered across the Seine and entered Paris again, he suddenly remarked with a puzzled expression that William Short had been out of spirits ever since the day of the Halle aux Bleds, when he had had to dine in their place with the old Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld and her son and his wife. Short would say nothing about the dinner that night, the company; he was silent as a stone.

  Maria smiled and spoke so softly that Jefferson heard not a word. “Poor in-love Mr. Short,” she said.

  Papers and books.

  Papers and books lay spread across both desks, across the two large tables on either side of the door, which were usually reserved for mail and parcels; across two of the six upholstered chairs in the study, even across the slats of Jefferson’s polygraph copying machine. The heavens had opened and rained books, Short thought, squalls and showers of ink. Above the papers and books rose three new bookcases, already full, constructed of dark French oak from Burgundy and fitted into the walls. He remembered a phrase attributed to the old English curmudgeon Samuel Johnson, recently dead, “the epidemic conspiracy for the destruction of paper.”

  “Monsieur Jefferson’s house,” Clérisseau said drolly, “has books the way my own apartment has ants.”

  “Method in our madness,” Short said. Outside the closed door he could hear voices, one mild and even, Jefferson’s; the other higher-pitched and, of all things in Jefferson’s household, angry. “Do you know François Soulé?”

  “The historian. I have seen—but, alas, not bought or, further alas, read—his history of the American Revolution.”

  “Jefferson bought a copy in London—”

  “If I were not an architect”—Clérisseau picked a book at random from the top of Short’s desk—“I would, as long as he is here, become a bookseller. And very rich.”

  “—and he made a memo for Soulé, correcting his facts.”

  “These are his underlinings?”

  “Well, no.” Short felt himself oddly embarrassed. In this too he was different from Jefferson. “I made them. That’s my copy of Buffon. Jefferson actually never puts a mark in a book. He writes notes on separate sheets of paper and inserts them at the back.”

  “In France,” Clérisseau began, but stopped as the door opened and Jefferson stepped partly into the room. Just beyond him, standing on the carpet, as tall as a man and showing carrot-red hair under her blue school cap, arms folded, jaw clenched, Patsy Jefferson glowered at her father. In the seventeen months he had known her, Short had never seen Patsy out of temper. Her father’s darling, pet; a dutiful, self-effacing girl, but fourteen now and taking on the lineaments of a young woman.

  “I would like to see the Bagatelle someday,” she said, staring at Short without the slightest sign of recognition. “With Mrs. Cosway’s kind permission.”

  Jefferson spoke so softly to her that Short and Clérisseau both turned instinctively away, for fear of appearing to eavesdrop. Clérisseau took up the sheet of paper entangled in the copying machine and handed it to Short, who smoothed it on the desk and inserted it into Jefferson’s leather portfolio. When he looked up, Patsy was gone. Jefferson was closing the door, entering the study.

  “You find us in disorganization,” he said genially to Clérisseau, shaking his hand.

  “I have decided to combine architecture and commerce,” Clérisseau said. Short watched him grin at Jefferson and pull at the ends of his little moustache, like a popeyed cat. “I’ll build you a house entirely of books, which I will sell to you first.”

  Jefferson walked calmly along the three new bookcases. “Well. Sunday evenings. We are always informal. My daughter is home from her school. Mr. Short is in his shirt-sleeves. Do you know,” he said to Short, “that my old schoolmaster Maury writes to say his mother has heard Patsy is settled as a nun in a convent?”

  By some species of telepathy—or Mesmerism—that Short had never fathomed, James Hemings appeared in the study bearing a tray of glasses and a decanter of red wine. While he laid them out on a cleared table by Jefferson’s chair, Jefferson talked easily, serenely to Clérisseau. Short’s eye went down the list of corrections on the sheet of paper he still held. Soulé’s page numbers, followed by a sentence or two in Jefferson’s microscopic handwriting.

  Pa. 78. A grand jury cannot be fewer than 12. nor more than 24. Some authorities say it cannot be fewer than 13. nor more than 23.

  Pa. 158. Strike out ‘et probablement’ and insert ‘mais veritablement.’ I remember the fact well and the leading persons of Connecticut, and particularly their delegates in Congress made no secret that their object was to over-awe New York into its duty.

  Pa. 140. The fact that the English commenced hostilities at Lexington has been proved beyond question by us; justice requires it should be plainly asserted and left clear of doubt.

  “You have finally become, my dear sir,” Clérisseau joked, hefting both volumes of Soulé’s Histoire in his hands, “European. You dwell in the past.”

  “The vaunted scene of Europe.” Jefferson shook his head, smiling, and gestured to the chair opposite his. From some prick of impulse Short remained at the desk, sorting papers. “It is—seductive. But I don’t dwell in the past. No American does.”

  “You know, you’ve never told me your impressions,” Clérisseau said, “despite all our conversations. You are always on your guard to spare my feelings. But I see, I observe. You throw yourself into our art, our music, even la cuisine française—tell me frankly, are you not converted? Are you not happy?”

  Jefferson turned the stem of his wineglass s
o that it just caught the glow of the whale-oil lamp behind him. A floating crescent of red. James Hemings was a shadow in shadows; Short scarcely saw him leave the room.

  “You wish me to be frank,” Jefferson said. “You’re curious to know how this new scene has struck a savage from the mountains of America.” A quick, unreadable smile in Short’s direction. “To be truthful, then, I find the general fate of humanity here most deplorable. I think often of the truth of Voltaire’s observation, that every man in this country must be either the hammer or the anvil. Or since it is Sunday evening, I will vary the image: Europe seems to me a true picture of that country to which they say we shall pass hereafter, and where we are to see God and his angels in splendor, and crowds of the damned trampled under their feet.”

  Clérisseau frowned and crossed his legs. Daringly: “You went to the Bagatelle this afternoon, I think?”

  Jefferson leaned forward. “Mrs. Cosway and I did tour that exquisite château and garden—you know, in your arts, in your music, painting, building, I am almost ready to say it is the one thing which from my heart I envy. In spite of all the authority of the Decalogue, I do covet your art. But—and here is the other side of the coin—last autumn about this time of year I had to attend the king’s levee in Fontainebleau. In the afternoon I wanted to see the countryside, so I set out on one of my walks, toward the mountains, and after an hour or so I met a peasant woman on the path. She pointed me in the direction I wanted, and we talked for a time. She told me she was a day laborer at eight sous per day; she had two children to maintain; rent for her cottage was thirty livres a year—that is, she had to work seventy-five days a year to pay it—and that often she could get no work, none at all, for days at a time. Then she was completely without bread, as were her children. Since we had walked together almost a mile, I thanked her for serving as my guide and gave her twenty-four sous. Will you believe, my dear sir, that she burst into tears of gratitude? She could not utter a single word. She had probably never before received such a sum. In such conditions art is truly a bagatelle, a ‘trifle,’ for an afternoon, when the bulk of mankind in this country live in such perpetual and squalid misery.”

  Clérisseau had ceased to pull at his moustache. “Well, you said you would be frank.”

  Jefferson now leaned back so far in his chair that his shoulders slouched and his long legs almost obscured his face. He made a little deprecating gesture with his wineglass. “I think that reading Soulé’s history puts me in mind of home. I may confuse frankness and warmth.”

  Clérisseau glanced over his shoulder. “Our friend Short is uncharacteristically silent. What does he think?”

  Short shook his head firmly. What he thought first was that his hand itched to record in his journal every word Jefferson had just spoken; and second, that Jefferson’s mind must be composed of a dozen separate locked compartments, as a house is composed of separate rooms. Not a reference to his daughter’s deep anger, to the delicate question of Mr. and Mrs. Cosway, to the presence of his mulatto slave, a living symbol of the hammer and anvil, now back and refilling obediently each of their glasses. Sans serveurs, avec esclaves. Aloud, he said, “Comparisons, the poet tells us, are always odorous.”

  Jefferson laughed and shifted comfortably in his chair. “Mr. Short is already further schooled in diplomacy than I am.”

  “He showed me today, at the Palais Royal, a copy of your bill for religious freedom.”

  “My friend Madison saw it through the Assembly in Virginia,” Jefferson said modestly.

  “But you were its author?”

  The Roman asserted his presence. Jefferson lifted his sharp profile and nodded once, impressively. “I hope to see it distributed widely in Europe, and widely discussed. I think it might produce considerable good.”

  “Because we Europeans are so mired in superstition.”

  Jefferson’s eyes were on his books. “If the Almighty had begotten a thousand sons instead of one,” he said, addressing neither Clérisseau nor Short, “they would not have sufficed to free these countries from their present ignorance and superstition.”

  “Mr. Jefferson,” Clérisseau said sardonically, looking at Short, “is much given to hyperbole.”

  On the steps of the house, leading down to the rue de Berri, Clérisseau paused and waited for the carriage that was to carry him back to the Louvre. “You ought to have stayed with me this afternoon to see Cosway’s paintings,” he told Short.

  The younger man shrugged. He had come down to wait with him out of politeness. But his mind was full of what Jefferson had said, his mild answer to Clérisseau’s sarcasm: The American people were the first and last experiment in true liberty; thus far the intervention of a wide ocean had kept them uncontaminated by European vice; they stood now on a high ground of common sense and happiness. But the only sure foundation for their future was knowledge; education alone would keep the common people free. Gently, he had laid his long fingers on Clérisseau’s wrist. Preach, my dear sir, a crusade against ignorance, he had said; in this dangerous world knowledge alone protects us.

  “Look at this.” Clérisseau’s voice still had a sardonic, knowing edge. He held out his palm. In the faint light of the door lamp Short saw a square enameled snuff box half the size of a coffee cup. The outside was covered in thin silver filigree of a typically English design.

  “When Cosway is not occupied with his portrait commissions, he told me that he likes to decorate the inside of these boxes, for his friends.” Clérisseau flipped the lid with his thumb and held the box high in the light. Short’s vision transformed the painted inner lid into a blur of colors. He twisted his head slightly to focus. The lid showed a conventional English pastoral; he could make out a delicately painted tree, a blue-green hillside and a stream, a woman on her hands and knees, wearing nothing but a pink corset, and behind her, advancing, a man with an enormous naked member; in front her red mouth closed around another, its owner’s back arched in pleasure.

  “It crosses one’s mind to ask,” Clérisseau said with his usual dry mockery, “do you think our friend inside would recognize the model?”

  Short found his tongue. “That is not Maria Cosway.”

  “Ah, well.” Clérisseau took one last look, then snapped the lid shut. “As to that, dear Guillaume, neither you nor I could truly say.”

  Memoirs of Jefferson—6

  A LITTLE-KNOWN FACT: THOMAS JEFFERSON could not endure his mother.

  No one acquainted with his history could seriously dispute it. In the impenetrably smooth Virginia manner, of course, which places the golden calf of Courtesy on every domestic altar, you can always find someone to describe Jane Randolph Jefferson as mild, gentle, perpetually sweet of temper, the ideal colonial wife and mother, beloved of her family. But I knew Jefferson all together for more than forty years; in Paris I lived intimately with him for five. I have arranged and sorted his private papers, kept his accounts; in recent months interviewed (subtly, subtly) his oldest friends. In all the thousands of sheets of paper he has preserved and I have seen, his mother appears only three times. In all our thousands of hours of conversation, I never once heard him speak her name.

  Reference one. At the start of 1770, when Jefferson was twenty-seven and still living mostly at home with her in Shadwell, he wrote his friend John Page a long letter containing, in the middle, a laconic announcement:

  My late loss may perhaps have reached you by this time, I mean the loss of my mother’s house by fire, and in it of every paper I had in the world, and almost every book. On a reasonable estimate I calculate the cost of the books to have been 200 sterling. Would to god it had been the money; then it would never have cost me a sigh!

  Not a word about her loss, her cost: only “my mother’s house,” faintly chilling. When the fire destroyed his books, he had already begun building his own house ten miles away at Monticello, where Jane Jefferson would never live; as soon as a room was habitable he moved in; his mother remained with friends.

 
More chilling: on March 31, 1776—the great year of the great Declaration—Jefferson entered a single terse sentence in his pocket account book. Reference two: “My mother died about eight o’clock this morning, in the 57th year of her age.” And to her brother William, then living in England, he wrote offhand and brusquely a month or two later (reference three), not even using her name: “The death of my mother you have probably not heard of. This happened on the last day of March after an illness of not more than an hour. We supposed it to have been apoplectic.” More emotion comes through when he writes about the death of a horse or a slave. (Is this coldness of mother and son a Virginian trait? George Washington’s mother denounced her son publicly during the Revolution—he gives me no money, she complained to Congress, he lets me starve.) Nevertheless, at the beginning of April 1776, a few days after Jane Randolph Jefferson’s death, a few months before the final convulsive separation of colony and mother country, which he had long been demanding, Jefferson fell into another of his strange sunrise-to-sunset “megrim” headaches, bedridden and paralyzed for nearly three weeks of pain, just as he did later when Banastre Tarleton chased him off his mountain, just as he did when his infant daughter died—as if his heart had climbed up and taken revenge on its cool, tyrannical head.

  From far-off college days I remember a Greek myth about a man whom the gods cursed by placing a glass window over his heart: Through it anyone could see at a glance what he was feeling; he had no secrets. But Jefferson—why else am I writing these memoirs, if not because Jefferson put up a stone wall instead of a window around his feelings? He was unfailingly courteous; courtesy is opaque, courtesy is not emotion.