“I’ve got you, Burwell. And all the others. They’re all mine.” He took out the iron key and carefully locked the door. Ghosts, he was thinking, had so little respect for locks. Even the grim locks a man closed upon his own heart.
4
Monticello: Late summer, 1809
The house was almost complete now. He had torn away what did not please him and rebuilt some parts to suit his matured ideas. New white paint gleamed on the cornices; the square windows in what he had called his “sky room” on the third floor had been replaced by round and half-round openings. But now in what he had wished would be a quiet summer he was plagued by the same hosts that for several years had made George Washington’s life miserable.
Too many visitors came to Monticello. They came uninvited to see the man who had written the Declaration of Independence. They came from miles away, some on horseback, some in carriages, some even in ox-drawn wagons. Patsy, who had hoped to return to her own place at Bedford long enough to see to the preservation of the vegetables and fruits for winter, abandoned the idea and stayed on with her children.
“These people, these strangers—what are we to do with them?” she worried. “Some of them come great distances. They have to be kept for the night; they must be fed. Your pet steward, Petit, is getting really fractious, Papa, and I have to keep the people cooking practically night and day. They look at this handsome house and believe that Thomas Jefferson is a rich man, that he can afford to entertain them—people we’ve never seen before and will likely never see again—and, Papa, you know it isn’t true. You aren’t rich enough to afford housing and feeding so many. The farms don’t pay as they should, and we are often hard pressed to feed and clothe our own people.”
“I know,” he said heavily, “but what is a Virginia gentleman to do? We cannot turn people away. There is no inn anywhere near where they can buy food or lodging.”
“Why not put up some barriers?” suggested young Jefferson Randolph. “Charge everyone a shilling to come in. We might make enough to pay the taxes.”
“A poor joke, my son. We would outrage every tradition of Southern hospitality. But I do wish that some part of this house that I built for my family could be private and belong only to us. They invade every corner without leave or apology. Yesterday they were all over my study. They wanted to see everything. They even pulled out the drawers in my desk and turned over some personal papers. And these were people of some quality too—from Delaware, they said.”
In the dining room Jefferson had devised a dumb-waiter at either end of the mantelpiece. These ingenious carriers descended into the basement close by the wine cellars and were used to bring things up from the cool rooms below by an easy pull on the rope. Not long since he had found a man in the dining room fascinated by the device and happily running the carriers up and down.