Jefferson and the Itty-Bitty Potentate

This blog entry came up in my Google Alert a few days ago – its main focus is actually a cathedral in Saigon, but it incidentally mentions a fascinating little episode in Jefferson’s life of which I was heretofore unaware.

As you may know, TJ was forever in pursuit of superior rice varieties to import to the U.S., and famously smuggled rice grains out of Italy in defiance of Italy’s harsh non-exportation laws.  While in France, a little birdie told TJ that Vietnam had some fabulous rice.  And it just so happened that a representative of Vietnam was then living in exile at the French court – 7-year-old Prince Canh.  Here’s a portrait of Canh on Wikipedia – he is very adorable, non? Apparently he was wildly popular with the ladies at the French court and predictably inspired them to do new and even stranger things to their coiffures.  Jefferson wasted no time in arranging for an audience with the pint-sized foreign dignitary.  Let’s pause a minute to savor the image of overly-dignified Minister Plenipotentiary Jefferson having a diplomatic tête-à-tête with a 7-year-old boy.

Cinder Stanton discusses this incident in fairly fine detail in a 1983 report she did on TJ’s pursuit of rice.  It seems that unfortunately Jefferson never obtained his Vietnamese rice, but the blog post I mentioned above mentions another aspect to this meeting that perhaps bears thinking about: this could well have been the first contact between the U.S. and Vietnam.  Now, I think it depends on how you qualify that – I have a hard time believing that no Americans had ever set foot in Vietnam before, or Vietnamese folks hadn’t at ever stopped off at U.S. ports.  Maybe it was the first diplomatic contact.  My slapdash googling did not turn up any information to the contrary, so I’ll let that one stand unless somebody cares to contradict me.

So, there you go – yet another first on Jefferson’s resume.

I think we’re winning

If you’ve been following this blog, or even talking to me on a regular basis, you know that we went through an extraordinarily obnoxious patch a year or so ago in which we were getting fake Jefferson quotation questions about every 4 minutes or so.  This seemed to be largely due to some sort of chain-email thing that was making the rounds, although we’ve always done quite a brisk business in quotation debunking.  Some day I will compile some actual statistics on this, but off the top of my head I would venture to say that at least half of the questions we answer are to do with quotations.  Until recently, that is.

Since we started the wiki (our pet name for the TJ Encyclopedia), I’ve put up articles on any spurious quote that comes to our attention.  We now have quite the collection – there’s currently 31 infamous non-Jefferson sayings, and I have a list of at least half a dozen that need to be put up.  And I was just reflecting recently that I haven’t had a spurious quotation question in quite some time.   I’m sure that part of the reason for this is that that acursed chain email finally just sort of petered out.  But I like to think that the TJ Encyclopedia also has something to do with it.

Just this morning I received yet another inquiry about whether TJ shot somebody on the White House lawn.  We dealt with this long ago in a wiki article, but like many quotation questions, every time it comes up I like to give it a little Google just to see if any new information turns up.  In times past I’ve even had trouble getting the wiki article to come up, but this morning when I googled “white house” lawn execution “thomas jefferson”, eight of the first 10 results either were our encyclopedia article or quoted from it directly.  In other words, if you heard this story and googled it maybe a year ago, you’d get all sorts of random websites with people asking about it or just repeating the story.  Now, if you google it, it’s likely that you will get the correct answer because our information has crowded out the bad information at the top of Google’s PageRank system.

TJ Encyclopedia: 1

Random crank websites: 0

Really mortified

In case you didn’t know, it was Banned Books Week last week – the American Library Association decreed it.  And if you’re following the Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello Facebook page, you will already have caught a glimpse of what I’m going to be talking about here.  (I should have suspected those guys would scoop me when I told them about this little episode a few weeks ago!  They looked way too interested…)

Anyway, I did some research on this letter exchange for a talk I gave at the Covenant School here in town last week, so I might as well get some more mileage out of it.  The story goes like this:

On November 25, 1812, a man named Regnault de Bécourt wrote to Thomas Jefferson, offering him a copy of his book, La Création du Monde… (Philadelphia, 1813).  Jefferson agreed to buy a copy and asked Bécourt to see Jefferson’s Philadelphia book dealer, Nicolas Dufief, and have Dufief put the cost of the book ($2) on Jefferson’s account there.

All seemed well.  Then, 5 months later, Jefferson received a distraught letter from Dufief.   It’s in French, but you might actually find it even more amusing if you don’t know French, because to us ignoramuses it looks like: “blah blah blah blah le blah two dollars blah blah blah.”  Anyway, the gist is that Dufief has found himself in something of a legal pickle, having been accused of selling a copy of the aforementioned M. de Bécourt’s book to Jefferson, and Dufief asks for Jefferson’s help in exonerating him.   The wily M. de Bécourt neglected to mention that the book contained some inflammatory statements vis-a-vis religion, and now it seems the legal authorities are coming down on Dufief for purveying Bécourt’s blasphemous scribblings.

Anyway, if you know anything about Jefferson you will know that nothing is more guaranteed to elicit a long impassioned screed than an infringement on intellectual freedom.   Stand back!  Jefferson sends back a two-page letter, in which he lays out -  in grand, eloquent Jeffersonian fashion – all of the most basic arguments against banning books.   Here’s the whole thing for your consumption:

Dear Sir

Your favor of the 6th inst. is just recieved, and I shall with equal willingness and truth state the degree of agency you had respecting the copy of M. de Becourt’s book which came to my hands. that gentleman informed me by letter that he was about to publish a volume in French ‘sur la Creation du monde, ou Systeme d’organisation primitive,’ which, it’s title promised to be either a geological, or astronomical work. I subscribed; and, when published, he sent me a copy; and as you were my correspondent in the book-line in Philadelphia, I took the liberty of desiring him to call on you for the price, which he afterwards informed me you were so kind as to pay him for me, being, I believe, 2. Dollars. but the sole copy which came to me was from himself directly, and, as far as I know, was never seen by you.

I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this can become a subject of enquiry, and of criminal enquiry too, as an offence against religion: that a question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. is this then our freedom of religion? and are we to have a Censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? and who is thus to dogmatise religious opinions for our citizens? whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? is a Priest to be our Inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read, & what we must believe? it is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not; and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason. if M. de Becourt’s book be false in it’s facts, disprove them; if false in it’s reasoning, refute it. but, for god’s sake, let us freely hear both sides, if we chuse. I know little of it’s contents, having barely glanced over here and there a passage, and over the table of contents. from this the Newtonian philosophy seemed the chief object of attack, the issue of which might be trusted to the strength of the two combatants; Newton certainly not needing the auxiliary arm of the government, and still less the holy author of our religion as to what in it concerns him. I thought the work would be very innocent, and one which might be confided to the reason of any man; not likely to be much read, if let alone, but if persecuted, it will be generally read. every man in the US. will think it a duty to buy a copy, in vindication of his right to buy, and to read what he pleases.        I have been just reading the new constitution of Spain. one of it’s fundamental bases is expressed in these words. ‘the Roman Catholic religion, the only true one, is, & always shall be that of the Spanish nation. the government protects it by wise & just laws, and prohibits the exercise of any other whatever.’ now I wish this presented to those who question what you may sell, or we may buy, with a request to strike out the words ‘Roman catholic’ and to insert the denomination of their own religion. this would ascertain the code of dogmas which each wishes should domineer over the opinions of all others, & be taken like the Spanish religion, under the ‘protection of wise and just laws.’ it would shew to what they wish to reduce the liberty for which one generation has sacrificed life and happiness. it would present our boasted freedom of religion as a thing of theory only, & not of practice, as what would be a poor exchange for the theoretic thraldom, but practical freedom of Europe. but it is impossible that the laws of Pensylvania, which set us the first example of the wholsome & happy effects of religious freedom, can permit these inquisitorial functions to be proposed to their courts. under them you are surely safe.

At the date of yours of the 6th you had not recieved mine of the 3d inst. asking a copy of an edition of Newton’s principia which I had seen advertised. when the cost of that shall be known, it shall be added to the balance of 4. D 93 c and incorporated with a larger remittance I have to make to Philadelphia. Accept the assurance of my great esteem & respect
Th: Jefferson

TJ’s really at his best when he’s roused to write in defense of freedom, isn’t he?  One couldn’t ask for a more eloquent spokesman for Not Banning Books.  Which is great for our theme this week, but not so great for Dufief.  The beleaguered bookseller received Jefferson’s diatribe and probably concluded that his heated words would only cause more trouble; Dufief wrote back, pleading for just a simple straightforward letter stating that Dufief did not sell Jefferson That Book.   TJ never complied, apparently.

I assume that Dufief was able to wriggle out of the legal charges.  At least, there are no later letters from Dufief postmarked from the slammer, asking TJ to send muffins and pickaxes.  One presumes that Dufief was forced to use the letter above as an affidavit that he did not sell the naughty book in question.  Although it is clearly not the nice straightforward statement that Dufief would have preferred, one has to think: what would the Philadelphia court authorities’ reaction have been when presented with an irate letter from the former President of the United States, arguing circles around them and chastizing them sharply for even contemplating prosecuting such a thing?  One is reminded in this instance that, on top of all the other things that Jefferson had been and done in his long life, he was also a lawyer.  No wonder the whole thing apparently fizzled.

I call it “The Gilded Pig”

That would be a great name for a band, wouldn’t it?  Or a car.  Alas, no, it’s my latest book acquisition, and although I do poke gentle fun at my Gilded Pig, it really is a great little find.  I’ve been scouring the Internets for undiscovered works of genius by Marie Kimball, and came across a book she wrote – more of a pamphlet, really – called Treasured Recipes of the Old South (1941).  There were plenty of copies to be had on used booksellers’ websites, but I wasn’t content with just any old copy.  No!  I bought a specially-bound presentation copy, produced for the author herself!  And inside all the fancy leather cover with its gold-leaf trim and marbled endpapers is a 20-page recipe booklet, published by the Morrill Ham Company, with wall-to-wall Morrill Ham recipes.  Ham cornucopias, anyone?

This little book is certainly a study in contrasts.  On the one hand, we have nightmare-inducing color pictures of food, which look like they’re straight out of the Gallery of Regrettable Food; on the other we have marbled endpapers, gilding, and a personal letter from the president of the Morrill Ham Company to Marie Kimball in the front of the book, declaiming that he was “sure that ‘Treasured Recipes of the Old South’ will continue for many years to shine as one of the brightest stars in the firmament of gastronomy!”

It would be a mean person indeed who would mock such earnestness.  Plus, it’s not just any old corporate-sponsored recipe booklet with scary pictures; it’s a corporate-sponsored recipe booklet with scary pictures, by Marie Kimball! And so we will treasure our new Gilded Pig, in all its amusing contrasts.

Photogallery of Treasured Recipes of the Old South, A.K.A. “The Gilded Pig”

Wishing on a lucky Jefferson

Several years ago, a visitor to Monticello emailed me and asked about something they’d seen in the Jefferson family graveyard, just a short walk down from Mulberry Row: Thomas Jefferson’s gravestone seemed to be covered with coins.  What’s that about? (one might well ask).  Colleagues here quickly informed me that visitors routinely throw them onto Jefferson’s gravestone.  Nobody knows why – they just do.  I created a mini-article on it in our Encyclopedia, in case anybody asked about it again, and then forgot about it.

Well, as it happens, yesterday I looked through every single Monticello Association Annual Report between 1969 and 2006 (don’t ask) – specifically at the graveyard custodian’s reports contained therein – and found something interesting.  In 1978, the custodian first reported an odd phenomenon: visitors seemed to be throwing coins onto Jefferson’s gravestone (accidentally landing on some other lucky dead people as well).  The custodian was puzzled by this, but in the end simply took a philosophical stance and collected the small amount of money “donated” and added it to the fund to help maintain the graveyard.  The following year, the custodian reported the same thing, only more, necessitating frequent bouts of combing through the grass on her hands and knees, while the tourists looked on in puzzlement.  No further mentions of this are made until 1984, when the custodian remarked that “Mr. Jefferson’s grave is used as a wishing well.”  Apparently at this point this activity was feeding on its own momentum; the custodian mentioned that “donations” seemed to increase around Jefferson’s birthday, when the graveyard was decorated conspicuously with wreaths.  And it wasn’t just nickels, which seem most appropriate; all kinds of coins were recovered from the graveyard.  The volume got to be such that the custodian had to get herself an electric coin-sorting and -rolling machine.  Some visitors got creative with their donations; the custodian reported finding “a dead watch battery, a Canadian quarter, a small polished stone, a stamped copper oval and one orange M&M candy” in 1998.

The odd but sweet donations continue; what began with just a few dollars a year in 1978 has steadily grown over the years.  Why do people do this?  The graveyard custodian’s comment about a “wishing well” is interesting – is this some kind of weird cultural vestige, the modern-day equivalent to pleading your case with the gods by throwing something shiny into the water?  Maybe or maybe not, but I happen to have empirical evidence that it’s also self-perpetuating.  I was up at the graveyard not too long ago, and as I stood outside the fence near Jefferson’s gravestone, I heard a young boy ask his mother, “Mommy, why are there coins on his grave?”  And without waiting for her answer, he asked, “Can I have a coin to throw?”

I’m sure there’s an awesome dissertation in there somewhere.

Life Masks and Hearths

Two articles with TJ/Monticello content in the latest issue of Early American Life:

• “The Faces of a Generation,” by Audrey J. Wolfe, about sculptor John Browere (who did a near-deadly life mask of Jefferson – there’s a rather horrifying description of the proceedings by granddaughter Virginia here)
• “Early Cooking Hearths,” by Gregory LeFever, which contains glamor shots of our newly-restored kitchen at Monticello

Impossible Engineering

A new intriguing book on the shelves: Impossible Engineering: Technology and Territoriality on the Canal du Midi, by Chandra Mukerji (Princeton, 2009).

This dovetails nicely with one of our new TJ Encyclopedia articles, which features (among other useful pieces of information), an itinerary of Jefferson’s travels through southern France and Italy – during which, yes, he visited the Canal du Midi.  He rather liked it:

I have passed through the Canal from it’s entrance into the mediterranean at Cette to this place, and shall be immediately at Toulouse, in the whole 200 American miles, by water; having employed in examining all it’s details nine days, one of which was spent in making a tour of 40 miles on horseback, among the Montagnes noires, to see the manner in which water has been collected to supply the canal; the other eight on the canal itself. I dismounted my carriage from it’s wheels, placed it on the deck of a light bark, and was thus towed on the canal instead of the post road. That I might be perfectly master of all the delays necessary, I hired a bark to myself by the day, and have made from 20. to 35 miles a day, according to circumstances, always sleeping ashore. Of all the methods of travelling I have ever tried this is the pleasantest. I walk the greater part of the way along the banks of the canal, level, and lined with a double row of trees which furnish shade. When fatigued I take seat in my carriage where, as much at ease as if in my study, I read, write, or observe. My carriage being of glass all round, admits a full view of all the varying scenes thro’ which I am shifted, olives, figs, mulberries, vines, corn and pasture, villages and farms. I have had some days of superb weather, enjoying two parts of the Indian’s wish, cloudless skies and limpid waters: I have had another luxury which he could not wish, since we have driven him from the country of Mockingbirds, a double row of nightingales along the banks of the canal, in full song.

Mukerji’s book looks like it deals more with the actual construction of the canal in the seventeenth century, but she has an angle which is of particular interest to me. From the book flap:

The Canal du Midi is typically characterized as the achievement of Pierre-Paul Riquet, a tax farmer and entrepreneur for the canal. Yet Chandra Mukerji argues that it was a product of collective intelligence, depending on peasant women and artisans–unrecognized heirs to Roman traditions of engineering–who came to labor on the waterway in collaboration with military and academic supervisors. Ironically, while Louis XIV and his treasury minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert used propaganda to present France as a new Rome, the Canal du Midi was being constructed with unrecognized classical methods.

Did Jefferson recognize the classical pedigree of the Canal du Midi?  I’m not sure, but he was positively sloppy with adulation for the Pont du Gard and the Maison Carrée, so that aspect of the canal would surely have provoked a similar outburst of flowery language.

Jefferson’s UVA Grounds — Legacies and Legends

Our friend Rick Britton is offering a class through the Charlottesville Senior Center entitled “Tales of the University: Great Names & Events in U.Va.’s Early History.” Details are as follows:

Introduction—The beautiful University of Virginia is truly a special gem among institutions of higher learning. The story of its founding along with the fascinating accounts of its first century form the basis for this six-session class. Come join us & hear “Tales of the University!”
The Class—Held at the Senior Center Inc. Time: 5:30 – 7:00 PM. Charge: Senior Center members: $45.00—guests: $55.00. The Senior Center Inc. is located at 1180 Pepsi Place, just off of Greenbrier Drive, two blocks east of 29 North. (Parking is free. Travel Session is a separate charge.)

• Thurs. Sept. 3rd – The Founding of the University of Virginia: Its earlier incarnations, and the many years, sweat, and debate that went into its birthing. The “Hobby” of Jefferson’s old age!
• Thurs. Sept. 10th – Great Names on the Grounds, Lafayette & Madison: The Marquis de Lafayette’s emotionally charged 1824 visit and the story of James Madison’s eighteen years as Rector.
• Thurs. Sept. 17th – Literary Giants, Poe & McGuffey: Edgar Allan Poe’s previously misrepresented attendance and the amazing literary legacy of U.Va. Professor William Holmes McGuffey.
• Thurs. Sept. 24th – The University in the Civil War: John Mosby’s infamous U.Va. career, University students and professors in the conflict, and the institution’s capture by Union horsemen in March 1865!
• Thurs. Oct. 1st – General Cocke & the Rotunda Fire: The momentous life of John Hartwell Cocke, member of the first Board of Visitors, and the 1895 “catastrophe of the first magnitude,” the fire that gutted the Rotunda.
• Thurs. Oct. 8th – A Conqueror & a Fighter, Reed & McConnell: U.Va. alum Walter Reed’s conquest of yellow fever and the thrill-a-minute life of Jimmy McConnell—student, biplane pilot, and brilliant war correspondent.
• Thurs. Oct. 15th – Travel Session: An afternoon tour of the original Grounds plus a very special event at Special Collections. (Separate charge.)

Instructor—Rick Britton is an award-winning author and historian. His Jefferson: A Monticello Sampler—released in 2008 by Mariner Publishing—won a Bronze Medal in the mid-Atlantic region at the 2009 Independent Publishers Book Awards in New York City.

——————–Sign Up Today!——————–
For more information call the Senior Center Travel Office at (434) 974-6538, see the Senior Center Inc. Web-site (http://seniorcenterinc.org/), or e-mail Rick Britton at RHBritton@aol.com

Weekend at Jefferson’s

There was a little mini-explosion of chatter over the last week on What Jefferson Thought About Intelligent Design.  I wasn’t aware that Jefferson thought about intelligent design, but as we all know, if you use Thomas Jefferson’s name in your argument, you automatically win.  Double points for including a relevant quotation.

It’s a bit of a mess at this point, but I believe the fury was unleashed by this op-ed in the Boston Globe on July 15th.  This was countered almost immediately by some guy in the New Scientist.  Then the Grumpy Lion got involved.   And all the while the Discovery Institute is blogging about the bloggers blogging about their guy’s op-ed piece.  Meanwhile, the debate has caught fire in other realms; here’s a self-described “Australian high school student with a bone to pick with creationists and intelligent-design proponents” on his hilariously-named blog, “Homologous Legs: Evidence for a Common Ancestor between Tables and Chairs.”  Wow.  They should have this kid moderate the debate.  Anyway, then some outraged citizens chimed in again at the Boston Globe – one of them none other than Steven Pinker.  The dust now seems to have settled and bloggers are just recounting the whole thing blow-by-blow – er, like me – although the Sensuous Curmudgeon has done a more comprehensive job of it if you are interested.

So where is our Jefferson in all this?  Um, he’s still dead.  I couldn’t help but think of the movie Weekend at Bernie’s during this whole intellectual scuffle.  Poor dead Jefferson, being hauled around and dressed up in other people’s clothing, propped up and his arms rigged to move the way other people want them to.  All the while, he’s totally unaware of all the carrying-on around him.

Well, I’m sure these people all know, intellectually, that Jefferson is dead.  But it doesn’t matter a whit to them.  Now that’s immortality!

If they said it on television, it must be true

Over the July 4th weekend I celebrated by watching a lot of Founding-Fathery patriotic television shows.  This was more disturbing than entertaining, as one particular show – which I shall forebear to mention here – set me off on a Rumpelstilskin-esque fit of rage.   I actually yelled at my television as it, in all earnestness, told me the story of the “Unknown Patriot,” a mysterious figure who appeared at the Continental Congress and exhorted the members to Sign the Declaration!  (Because they never would have, if some guy at the back of the room that nobody had ever seen before hadn’t told them to.)  There was all sorts of discussion on the television of who this mysterious figure might have been, and astral planes and so forth.

Of course, there’s just one problem.  The story of the “Unknown Patriot” is a piece of historical fiction, written by a nineteenth-century novelist named George Lippard.  Seriously.  What if, 100 years from now, people thought that Sam Spade was a real person, and his adventures in pursuit of the Maltese Falcon actually happened?  You get my point.

Immediately following this was a segment on Thomas Jefferson and His Love for Hemp.  Apparently he loved hemp.  He wrote the Declaration of Independence on hemp paper.  He brought back hemp from Europe.  He invented a new method of separating hemp fibers.  (They didn’t actually say that he smoked it, but you know they probably hoped he did.)

Oh, Television!  You are wrong again:

1. The Declaration of Independence was not written on hemp paper.  (Lots of hemp aficionado sites in the Internets will tell you it was, but they would say that, wouldn’t they?)
2. I haven’t found any specific mention of bringing hemp back from Europe, at least in raw or seed form.
3. Jefferson did not invent a new method of separating hemp fibers; they are probably talking about his hemp break, but he certainly didn’t invent that.

So: don’t believe everything the television tells you.  In fact, it’s probably best to assume the television is wrong.