inspiration for me.
Like most tourists, I was interested in acquiring a two dollar bill (the only paper U.S. currency on which President Jefferson's image appears), and I knew that, if any place would have a supply of them, the shop at Monticello would. I was not disappointed, and, after a helpful worker had changed my two ones for a Jeffersonian two dollar note, I struck up a brief conversation with her.
“I love this home," I began. “It must be wonderful to work here." She was delighted with my enthusiasm and immediately assured me that, for her at least, it was a privilege and a joy. I continued, “Most Americans tend to think of it as some sort of plantation palace. But it's not that. Its rooms are small by comparison to European chateaux. It's not a palace, not even palatial!" She nodded as I spoke. “It's … it's …." My words were failing me. Very gently, she quietly finished my thought: “… a work of art."
“Exactly," I exclaimed. “That's it! A work of art." Monticello, designed and overseen by this man of the Enlightenment, was a gracious and elegant dwelling place. Like the house at Poplar Forest, it was also in its own unique way, a priceless work of art, well worth visiting, well worth preserving. And it is here, as John Adams said with his dying breath on July 4, 1826, that “Thomas Jefferson still survives."
James Madison: "Nothing more than a Change of Mind."
Carol and I have visited James Madison's Montpelier three times now. And for good reason. The place keeps changing, both literally and figuratively.
The first time we stopped to see Montpelier, various architectural additions that had been made to the original home, additions commissioned by the duPont family who had owned the property most recently, were being removed in order to restore the house to its appearance at the time the Madisons resided there. The Montpelier we saw on this first visit, then, resembled a construction site, with large tarpaulins masking off the wings where the deconstruction was under way.
Nevertheless, our first tour of this site resulted in an important lesson for me, a lesson which can benefit any visitor to a historical location: always be sure to confirm questionable information imparted by an inexperienced docent before repeating it to others.
We had arrived in the late afternoon, and we were told at the Visitor’s Center that, if we hurried, we could join the final group of the day. We hastened to the home site and joined a small crowd of tourists already gathered there. Moments later, we were being guided toward the house under deconstruction. Our docent—a dear young woman who was trying to make the best of a difficult situation—informed us that, regrettably, we would not be able to enter the home, as much archeological work, as well as the demolition of the duPont additions, made visiting the interior potentially hazardous. We would be able, however, she assured us, to enter one wing of the home at what had been the kitchen level, and we would thereafter be free to wander the expansive grounds until the closing hour.
Carol and I were disappointed, as might be expected, to learn that the house itself would not be open to us, but we had driven all the way here, and we decided to make the most of our time. Even from the outside, Montpelier was a spectacular setting with a dramatic view of the Blue Ridge on the western horizon and a manicured formal garden on its south side. We were led up a walk to the right wing of the house where there was a cellar entrance to the kitchen area.
As the members of our group entered this lower level, however, I stopped to look at the mansion. I was struck by what appeared to be a sunken walkway that ran completely around the home. It was about seven or eight feet deep and four feet wide, and, for the life of me, I could not understand what function it might have served the Madisons.
“Excuse me,” I called to the docent who was waiting for me to follow the other members of our group. “Could you tell me what was the purpose of this walkway around the circumference of the house?”
The docent looked slightly uncomfortable at this question, but she motioned me to come over to her, and then she answered my query in hushed tones. “Mr. Madison never wanted to be reminded of the …” she paused momentarily, “…workers who made his lifestyle possible. They could move from one end of the mansion to the other by using this walkway, and they would be invisible to anyone strolling around the grounds.”
I nodded understandingly, and we both joined the others who were already waiting in the kitchen for the one room tour of Montpelier’s lower level. Afterwards, as Carol and I circumnavigated the exterior of the house, I informed her of my question and the rather telling response I had been given by our docent. Sure enough, we both noted, the sunken walkway was completely invisible from both the front lawn area and from the beautiful classic temple that Madison and his friends had enjoyed frequenting. “He didn’t want to be reminded of the slave labor necessary to enable his luxurious lifestyle,” I found myself thinking. Like so many of the most thoughtful Virginians, and Madison was nothing if not that, he had found the reality of the slave culture of plantation life at odds with the idealism at the heart of his political vision. Quite an exercise in denial, I concluded.
Weeks later, when I returned to my classroom, I made much of this story. It was the perfect metaphor, I would tell my students, of the southern lifestyle which was at once the ideal of an Arcadian dream and also the reality of the misery of an enslaved labor force. Madison’s solution to such a dichotomy, I noted, was simply to put slavery out of sight and, thus, out of mind. For me the matter was settled.
After two or three years passed, however, I became aware of the progress being made in the restoration of Montpelier. Furthermore, I determined that Carol and I should return in hopes of seeing the interior of the home in addition to our earlier appreciation of its impressive grounds.
This time, of course, we would know what to expect—at least on the outside.
As we arrived at the newly refurbished Montpelier, we were greeted at a well-appointed gatehouse where we purchased tickets while still in our car. Then we were directed to the newly constructed Visitor’s Center where we were to join members of another tour group who were getting ready to view an informative film presentation chronicling Madison’s life and political accomplishments.
One of my chief regrets about our first visit here, aside from not having been able to go inside the mansion proper, was the fact that I had neglected to take a picture of the sunken walkway. This time I was prepared and fully intended to get visual evidence to share with my students. But as we approached the home which looked beautifully restored to its Madisonian splendor, I was shocked to find the carpet of lawn graded right up to the foundation of the house. There was no evidence anywhere of the sunken pathway!
“Oh my," I thought, “not architectural revisionism! How could the renovators dare to erase this piece of history—however painful—simply to make Madison look more acceptable in the eyes of 21st century tourists?"
I was upset and confused, and I immediately questioned our docent about this alteration.
“I don't know what you are talking about, sir," he commented rather stiffly. “The restoration has put the mansion back into its exact state as the Madisons had it. There was no such feature at that time. I rather imagine that the archeological team that oversaw the restoration concluded that this feature, if it ever existed, was the addition of later
