alt="3rd President Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809): Monticello in Charlottesville, VA"/>
Thomas Jefferson's Monticello may well be the most beautiful house in the United States. It is more than a presidential home. It is, as one writer has observed, “the visible projection of its resident" (Hyland xvi). And, since the first time I traveled here to see this architectural marvel, I have felt that the spirit of Thomas Jefferson is remarkably present in this place—not in any spiritualistic sense, of course, but rather in the vivid display of his kaleidoscopic interests, his restless intellect, and his unending pursuit of knowledge. From the artifacts sent by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in the front hall to the removable shelves of books in his study, from the dumbwaiters concealed in the dining room mantels to the polygraph machine that made ink copies of his letters, Jefferson has left an indelible impression here at Monticello of what it means to have been an inspired thinker in the Age of Enlightenment.
In the spring of 2012, Carol and I traveled to Virginia to revisit several of the great plantations owned by some of our early Presidents. Monticello was right at the top of our list of homes that I wanted to experience again before writing about Thomas Jefferson. But our first historical stop had the distinction of being a completely new site for us: Jefferson's Poplar Forest.
For many years I had known nothing of this house. Several of the books I had read about our third President had never mentioned the site, nor the fact that Jefferson himself had been its architect and had intended this locale to become a post-retirement haven for him, apart from the bustle and crowded conditions of Monticello. Only open to public view since 1998, this restored gem—the interior of which is still very much under construction—provides a wonderful glimpse into the mind of its creator.
As we turned off SR 661 into the entrance of Poplar Forest, a narrow unpaved road led us through dense woodlands for quite some time. Finally, as the road rose up a gradual hill, there on the left, Poplar Forest came into view. There could be no question as to the man who had conceived this home. It looked like a downsized Monticello: a brick structure with Doric columns holding up an architrave and frieze, crowned with a classic Greco-Roman pediment. It was pure Thomas Jefferson. And if a building's design can truly be said to reflect the consciousness of its architect, then the simplicity and modest scale of this home illustrated a key quality that must have lain at his very heart: a deep desire for balance and order.
Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon The maker's rage to order words of the sea, Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred And of ourselves and of our origins....
So wrote the great American poet, Wallace Stevens, in “The Idea of Order at Key West," and Poplar Forest immediately sent this verse coursing through my mind. This house is a hymn to symmetry, even more than Monticello, itself a most orderly structure.
Arranged around a central dining area that measures 20' by 20' by 20', the interior of Poplar Forest is comprised of a front entrance hall, flanked on each side by three octagonal bedrooms and, opposite the entryway on the other side of the dining room, a library sitting area, creating the building's external octagonal configuration. If ever a dwelling reflected a “Blessed rage for order," it is Poplar Forest, and, while its maker had no apparent interest in the “words of the sea," too far from this location to be heard, there is plentiful evidence of a desire for personal balance, equilibrium, and harmony. Nothing here is off center. The two chimneys on the right side of the home are counterbalanced by the two chimneys on the left side. The front porch is symmetrically echoed by the back porch, each with four columns set equidistant from each other, and each supporting a classic pediment. Both sides of the house feature identical projecting enclosed stairway pavilions with half arched windows to provide light for their interior passageways.
Nothing is out of place, no design element haphazard.
Throughout his life, Thomas Jefferson had experienced both great personal joy and agonizing tragedy. He had faced the rigors and stresses of foreign diplomacy as well as contentious political battles at home. Even his Presidency had yielded very mixed results. His first term had been a stunning success, the most notable achievement of which had been the Louisiana Purchase. His second term, however, had forced him to deal with both foreign and domestic treachery. Finally, in an effort to avoid a war, he had instituted an ill-advised and ineffective embargo that had made him extremely unpopular. By the end of his eight years as President, Thomas Jefferson was exhausted. In a now famous letter to a friend, he wrote, “Never did a prisoner released from his chains, feel such relief as I shall on shaking off the shackles of power." Poplar Forest, he believed, would be his refuge, his harbor from the storms of life where he could enjoy, in his own words, the “solitude of a hermit."
Sadly, enough, it was not to be. Perhaps because of his advancing years, or, even more understandably, perhaps because of his deep desire to feel himself surrounded by his remaining family and friends, Jefferson would not retire here, but rather to his beloved Monticello. Poplar Forest, his octagonal monument to symmetry, balance, and classical grace, would pass into other hands and would burn in 1845.
Today, the restoration and preservation of Poplar Forest have kept intact Jefferson's dream of an ideal retirement, a world of perfect order. But the man himself is not to be found here. He resides, still, ninety miles north, in Charlottesville.
On many occasions I have had to search diligently for a revealing symbol or sign of a President lying undiscovered or unheralded in some artifact on display in his home. At other times the residence itself may have suggested subtle truths that a casual visitor might overlook. Monticello poses no such challenges. Thomas Jefferson is present almost everywhere in this place. The home is a living testament to his interests, to his achievements, and to his character.
This is all the more remarkable because, unlike some other presidential homes, Monticello has had to have been completely reconfigured and reconstituted over the years. Jefferson's accumulated debt at the time of his death in 1826 was estimated to have been in the vicinity of $100,000. This was a colossal sum, easily more than a million in 21st century dollars. As the result, “A dispersal sale [was] held in 1827 [that] included his slaves, crops, household items, and furniture" (Clotworthy 45). The estate at Poplar Forest was sold. Lastly, in 1831, Monticello itself.
Happily for future generations, a Navy Commodore named Uriah P. Levy purchased the property in 1834, and he, and later his son, Jefferson Monroe Levy, worked tirelessly to restore Monticello. When in 1923 the Levy family finally sold it to the newly established Thomas Jefferson Foundation, this precious national architectural legacy had been saved from decay and destruction. Since that time the Thomas Jefferson Foundation has continued to maintain the home and has also worked to restore its interior and replace the long lost furnishings and objects d'art which records show had been present here with retrieved original pieces or authentic replicas. The result, as one book on presidential residences puts it, is that “Today Jefferson's Monticello is much as it was when he retired to enjoy his last years among his family and flowers" (Haas 29).
As Carol and I stood on the famous front porch of Monticello, together with a group of about twenty other guests, we listened closely to our articulate and entertaining docent, a man named Bill. He began our tour by informing us of the legacy that Jefferson had most wished to leave his nation: “Political liberty, religious freedom, and public education," Bill intoned. “These were the greatest, the most important values for Thomas Jefferson. These were the values that he chose to list on his tombstone, as he identified the accomplishments of which he was most proud—'Author of the Declaration of American Independence'—that's political liberty—'Of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom'—that's religious freedom—'And Father of the University of Virginia'—that's education." Bill beamed at us, and I knew that we were in the hands of a docent who not only was knowledgeable, but who revered his
