New museum reflects character of nation's 3d president
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. - The new museum that will open here, at Thomas Jefferson's home, on April 15, is dedicated to the idea that the third president's character is best expressed through Monticello, the plantation that is his "autobiographical masterpiece," as its website declares.
And, indeed, the character of each of the Founding Fathers helped define the American Dream, the values and aspirations they encoded in the new nation.
George Washington's determination to balance monarchical dignity and democratic modesty in setting a tone for the new republic is visible at Mount Vernon, his grand but not grandiose plantation. Washington expanded the simple frame house he inherited from his half-brother into a model colonial-style mansion of its day, adding new farms and products along the way, to create both an impressive residence and a workable business.
But no founder's home reveals nearly as much about his character as Monticello, Jefferson's mountaintop masterpiece. A self-taught architect of extraordinary skill, he personally oversaw the creation of every room, outbuilding, path, and planting.
Whenever the young Jefferson was off on one of his frequent trips, work ground to a halt. Supervising plantations in Colonial Virginia was often the work of the master's wife, but Jefferson's bride Martha, who died at 33, is almost invisible at Monticello, with only a harpsichord to attest to her pleasures.
All else - from the intricate plumbing system, to the wine in the cellars, to the Indian artifacts in the hall - is a testament to her husband's overpowering vision.
And of Jefferson's brilliance there can be no doubt. The mathematical calculations, neatly devised in his tiny handwriting on the architectural plans for Monticello, test out perfectly by today's digital measurements. His boundless curiosity extended from meticulous observations of the natural world to the study of music to collecting books in each of six languages that he spoke.
Jefferson was born into wealth and married even more money, but privilege alone doesn't remotely account for his accomplishments. As an inventor who bridged the gaps between art and science and industry, Jefferson, along with Benjamin Franklin, was a progenitor of all the self-taught Americans who would outpace the better-educated Europeans, among them Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and the Wright brothers.
But unlike those inventors and the peripatetic Franklin, Jefferson sought to merge his industrial skills, aesthetic views, social ideas, and personal relationships into a perfectly ordered lifestyle, centered at Monticello. The breathtaking audacity of that ambition - and the way it served to regulate the lives of those around him - is also visible at Jefferson's home.
From Shadwell, his nearby birthplace, Jefferson saw the looming Monticello Mountain like the "fresh, green breast of the new world" that F. Scott Fitzgerald would imagine the Dutch sailors contemplating as they entered the Hudson River, "face to face for the last time with something commensurate with [their] capacity for wonder."
And Jefferson took possession of the landscape with a fervor, leveling the mountaintop, constructing his magical neoclassical villa, and attempting, with minute precision, to create an ideal atmosphere. His private apartment contained his library, his special writing desk, his unique alcove bed, his busts of famous friends, and even a cleared spot on the floor where a servant placed the water for his ritual morning foot-bath.
He lured his married daughter and son-in-law to live with him, bringing along his 13 grandchildren, whom he installed, many to a bedroom, on the third floor. Everyone else had his or her place: The 11 Italian peasants he utilized in a futile attempt to create a winery, the students who shared quarters in an outbuilding with Jefferson's extensive collection of legal books. Recent acceptance of accounts of Jefferson's fathering of his slave Sally Hemings' children - four of whom survived infancy - adds another window on his world; they and their many relatives, already in-bred with his late wife's family and those of other area planters, lived in cabins on Mulberry Row, the slave's quarters along the edge of the mountain.
Jefferson's dream of reordering his environment, of putting everyone in their proper place - even while acting seemingly out of kindness, yearning for their betterment - is also an aspect of his character and the American character that he helped create.
The builders of the new museum at the entrance to Jefferson's estate can justifiably claim that a part of the American way of life was forged at Monticello.
Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond. He can be reached at canellos@globe.com. 