MONTICELLO:—PLAN OF THE FIRST FLOOR.
1. Mr. Madison's room.
2. Abbé Correa's room.
3. Turning Buffet.
4. Niche in tea-room, intended for a statue.
5. Jefferson's chair and candle-stand.
6. Mrs. Randolph's harpsichord.
7. Globes.
8. Work-bench.
9. Couch on which Jefferson reclined while studying.
10. Jefferson's dressing-table and mirror.
11. A convenient contrivance on which to hang clothes.
12. Jefferson's chair, with a small book-case near it.
13. Great clock over the hall-door.
14. Reclining statue of Ariadne.
15. Gallery connecting the upper stories of the house.
PORTRAITS.
a. Americus Vespucius.
b. Columbus.
c. Locke.
d. Bacon.
e. Washington.
f. Adams.
g. Franklin.
h. Madison.
16. Bust of Napoleon.
17. Ceracchi's Bust of Jefferson.
18. Bust of Hamilton.
19. Bust of Voltaire.
20. Bust of Turgot.
21. Bust of Alexander, Emperor of Russia.
The parlor projects twenty feet beyond the body of the house, covered by a portico one story, and surmounted by the billiard-room. The original plan of the projection was square; but when the cellar was built up to the floor above, the room was projected beyond the square by three sides of an octagon, leaving a place beyond the cellar-wall not excavated, and it was in this space that the faithful Cæsar and Martin concealed their master's plate when the British visited Monticello.[57] The floor of this room is in squares, the squares being ten inches, of the wild cherry, very hard, susceptible of a high polish, and the color of mahogany. The border of each square, four inches wide, is of beech, light-colored, hard, and bearing a high polish. Its original cost was two hundred dollars. After nearly seventy years of use and abuse, a half-hour's dusting and brushing will make it compare favorably with the handsomest tessellated floor.
From the same pen are the following graphic descriptions of the views seen from Monticello:
Monticello is five hundred and eighty feet high. It slopes eastward one-and-a-half miles by a gentle declivity to the Rivanna River. Half a mile beyond is Shadwell, the birthplace of Jefferson, a beautiful spot overlooking the river. The northeastern side of the mountain and slope is precipitous, having dashed aside the countless floods of the Rivanna through all the tide of time.
On the southwest, it is separated from the next mountain of the range, rising three hundred feet above it, by a road-pass two hundred and twenty feet below. This obstructs the view to the southwest. From the southwest to the northeast is a horizon unbroken, save by one solitary, pyramid-shaped mountain, its peak under the true meridian, and distant by air-line forty-seven miles. Northeast the range pointing to the west terminates two miles off, its lateral spurs descending by gentle slopes to the Rivanna at your feet, covered with farms and green wheat-fields. This view of farms extends northeast and east six or seven miles. You trace the Rivanna by its cultivated valley as it passes east, apparently through an unbroken forest; an inclined plane descends from your feet to the ocean two hundred miles distant. All the western and northwestern slopes being poor, and the eastern and southeastern fertile, as the former are presented to the spectator, and are for the most part in wood, it presents the appearance of unbroken forest, bounded by an ocean-like horizon.
Turn now and look from the north to the west. You stand at the apex of a triangle, the water-shed of the Rivanna, the opposite side, at the base of the Blue Ridge, forty miles in length; its perpendicular twenty, descending five hundred feet to the base of your position, where the Rivanna concentrates its muddy waters over an artificial cascade, marked by its white line of foam.
West and southwest, the space between the Southwest Mountains and the Blue Ridge is filled by irregular mountains, the nearer known as the Ragged Mountains. At the northeast base of these, distant two and three miles, are Charlottesville and the University of Virginia, forming nuclei connected by a scattered village. From west to northeast no mountain interposes between your position and the base of the Blue Ridge, which sinks below the horizon eighty or one hundred miles distant. Two mountains only are seen northeast—one ten, the other forty miles off. The country, ascending from your position, and presenting to you its fertile slopes, gives the view of one highly cultivated. The railroad train is traced ten miles. This is the view so much admired.
The top of the mountain has been levelled by art. This space is six hundred by two hundred feet, circular at each end. The mountain slopes gently on every side from this lawn; one hundred feet from the eastern end stands the mansion. Its projecting porticoes, east and west, with the width of the house, occupy one hundred feet each way. It approaches on either hand within fifty feet of the brow of the mountain, with which it is connected by covered ways ten feet wide, whose floors are level with the cellars, and whose flat roofs, forming promenades, are nearly level with the first floor of the dwelling. These, turning at right angles at the brow, and widening to twenty feet, extend one hundred feet, and terminate in one-story pavilions twenty feet square, the space beneath these terraces forming basement offices. From this northern terrace the view is sublime; and here Jefferson and his company were accustomed to sit, bare-headed, in the summer until bed-time, having neither dew nor insects to annoy them. Here, perhaps, has been assembled more love of liberty, virtue, wisdom, and learning than on any other private spot in America.
Jefferson's grandson, Colonel Jefferson Randolph, writes of his appearance and manners thus:
His manners were of that polished school of the Colonial Government, so remarkable in its day—under no circumstances violating any of those minor conventional observances which constitute the well-bred gentleman, courteous and considerate to all persons. On riding out with him when a lad, we met a negro who bowed to us; he returned his bow; I did not. Turning to me, he asked,
"Do you permit a negro to be more of a gentleman than yourself?"
Mr. Jefferson's hair, when young, was of a reddish cast; sandy as he advanced in years; his eye, hazel. Dying in his 84th year, he had not lost a tooth, nor had one defective; his skin thin, peeling from his face on exposure to the sun, and giving it a tettered appearance; the superficial veins so weak, as upon the slightest blow to cause extensive suffusions of blood—in early life, upon standing to write for any length of time, bursting beneath the skin; it, however, gave him no inconvenience. His countenance was mild and benignant, and attractive to strangers.
While President, returning on horseback from Charlottesville with company whom he had invited to dinner, and who were, all but one or two, riding ahead of him, on reaching a stream over which there was no bridge, a man asked him to take him up behind him and carry him over. The gentlemen in the rear coming up just as Mr. Jefferson had put him down and ridden on, asked the man how it happened that he had permitted the others to pass without asking them? He replied,
"From their looks, I did not like to ask them; the old gentleman looked as if he would do it, and I asked him."
He was very much surprised to hear that he had ridden behind the President of the United States.
Mr. Jefferson's stature was commanding—six feet two-and-a-half inches in height, well formed, indicating strength, activity, and robust health; his carriage erect; step firm and elastic, which he preserved to his death; his temper, naturally strong, under perfect control; his courage cool and impassive. No one ever knew him exhibit trepidation. His moral courage of the highest order—his will firm and inflexible—it was remarked of him that he never abandoned a plan, a principle, or a friend.
A bold and fearless rider, you saw at a glance, from his easy and confident seat, that he was master of his horse, which was usually the fine blood-horse of Virginia. The only impatience of temper he ever exhibited was with his horse, which he subdued to his will by a fearless application of the whip on the slightest manifestation of restiveness. He retained to the last his fondness for riding on horseback; he rode within three weeks of his death, when, from disease, debility, and age, he mounted with difficulty. He rode with confidence, and never permitted a servant to accompany him; he was fond of solitary rides and musing, and said that the presence of a servant annoyed him.
He held in little esteem the education which made men ignorant and helpless as to the common necessities of life; and he exemplified it by an incident which occurred to a young gentleman returned from Europe, where he had been educated. On riding out with his companions, the strap of his girth broke at the hole for the buckle; and they, perceiving it an accident easily remedied, rode on and left him. A plain man coming up, and seeing that his horse had made a circular path in the road in his impatience to get on, asked if he could aid him.
"Oh, sir," replied the young man, "if you could only assist me to get it up to the next hole."
"Suppose you let it out a hole or two on the other side," said the man.
His habits were regular and systematic. He was a miser of his time, rose always at dawn, wrote and read until breakfast, breakfasted early, and dined from three to four ... ; retired at nine, and to bed from ten to eleven. He said, in his last illness, that the sun had not caught him in bed for fifty years.
He always made his own fire. He drank water but once a day, a single glass, when he returned from his ride. He ate heartily, and much vegetable food, preferring French cookery, because it made the meats more tender. He never drank ardent spirits or strong wines. Such was his aversion to ardent spirits, that when, in his last illness, his physician desired him to use brandy as an astringent, he could not induce him to take it strong enough.
In looking over his correspondence, I select the following extracts, which the reader will find most interesting:
To Governor Langdon, March 5th, 1810.
While in Europe, I often amused myself with contemplating the characters of the then reigning sovereigns of Europe. Louis the XVI. was a fool, of my own knowledge, and despite of the answers made for him at his trial. The King of Spain was a fool; and of Naples, the same. They passed their lives in hunting, and dispatched two couriers a week one thousand miles to let each know what game they had killed the preceding days. The King of Sardinia was a fool. All these were Bourbons. The Queen of Portugal, a Braganza, was an idiot by nature; and so was the King of Denmark. Their sons, as regents, exercised the powers of government. The King of Prussia, successor to the great Frederick, was a mere hog in body as well as in mind. Gustavus of Sweden, and Joseph of Austria, were really crazy; and George of England, you know, was in a strait-waistcoat. There remained, then, none but old Catherine, who had been too lately picked up to have lost her common sense. In this state Bonaparte found Europe; and it was this state of its rulers which lost it with scarce a struggle. These animals had become without mind and powerless; and so will every hereditary monarch be after a few generations. Alexander, the grandson of Catherine, is as yet an exception. He is able to hold his own. But he is only of the third generation. His race is not yet worn out. And so endeth the book of Kings, from all of whom the Lord deliver us, and have you, my friend, and all such good men and true, in his holy keeping.