THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 29, 1995 TAG: 9501270563
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E5 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: TRAVEL: DESTINATIONS
SOURCE: BY STEPHEN HARRIMAN, TRAVEL EDITOR
LENGTH: Long : 181 lines
AN INVITATION came the other day to visit Monticello, to tour that remarkable dwelling on the little mountain outside Charlottesville during the winter season when visitors are fewer and they are escorted at a slower pace and enlightened by guides to an extent impossible when crowds reach 3,000 a day.
``It's the only time of the year when we have the opportunity to play `small museum' and offer thematic tours,'' said director of guides Elizabeth Dowling Taylor.
I responded with delight, as if the invitation had come from Thomas Jefferson himself.
It would be an opportunity to renew acquaintances with Jefferson - I had last visited in the spring two years ago on the occasion of his 250th birthday - but also to make acquaintances with another extraordinary man with whom Jefferson had formed a deep relationship in his old age - the man who is the subject of this winter's thematic tour.
The man was the Abbe Jose Correia da Serra, a Portuguese, who first came to Monticello in 1813 bearing letters of introduction from the Marquis de Lafayette, Du Pont de Nemours and Alexander von Humboldt.
Jefferson could hardly contain his delight with this new friendship. He called Correia ``one of the most learned men of the age'' and the ``best digest of science in books, men, and things that I have ever met with; and with the most amiable and engaging character.''
They were kindred spirits.
Correia, seven years Jefferson's junior, was educated in Italy, where he received a law degree. In 1775, he took holy orders, although in his life he appears to have been strikingly unclerical in his approach to just about everything - a fact that undoubtedly must have endeared him to Jefferson.
Later, Jefferson would say of Correia: ``Modest, good-humored, familiar, plain as a country farmer, he becomes the favorite of everyone with whom he becomes acquainted. He speaks English with ease.''
Correia in fact spoke five languages; Jefferson spoke French and Italian and read in seven languages.
To give this intellectual achievement some perspective, this was at a time - Europeans called it the Age of Enlightenment - when many Americans were signing legal documents with an X and the large slave population was even less educated, by law.
The Abbe, as he was often called in deference to his clerical training, was a natural scientist, especially interested in botany and geology, a philosopher, diplomat and teacher. One of his coterie of American friends called him ``our Socrates.'' Strangely, Correia is not particularly well-known today, even in his native Portugal.
In relative intellectual isolation at his mountaintop retreat in central Virginia, Jefferson wrote after his first meeting with Correia that ``the idea of losing him again filled me with regret.''
Soon he wrote a long letter to Correia urging him to return to Monticello, saying, ``come then, my dear Sir, and be one of our family for as long as you can bear a separation from the sciences of the world'' offering ``a comfortable room . . . for retirement when you choose it, and a sociable family, full of affection and respect for you, when tired of being alone.''
Correia, based mostly in Philadelphia, accepted with delight. In all, he made seven lengthy visits to Monticello.
A room was set aside as his, and despite the hundreds of other guests who must have occupied it on other occasions, it was referred to half a century later by Jefferson's granddaughter Cornelia as the ``Abbe Correia's room.'' This bedroom and ``Mr. Madison's'' (where James and Dolly often stayed) were the only guest chambers sharing the first floor with Jefferson's living quarters.
Curator Susan Stein says that Correia is the only person outside the family invited to make Monticello his permanent home. The Madisons, of course, had a permanent home at Montpelier in nearby Orange County.
The Abbe's room, which was recently restored, is a part of the special tours that will continue through Feb. 28. It features window draperies to Jefferson's own design, a bed cover and bed hangings made of specially loomed blue silk damask. An 18th century, hand-embroidered Arraiolos carpet from Portugal lies beside the alcove bed.
A table contains botany books. On the mantle, under a portrait of the Abbe by Rembrandt Peale, are stalks of lily and wheat - as if Correia had left them there before going to dine with Jefferson and his family.
The Abbe's Room will not be a part of the daily tours during Monticello's busy season, because crowd-flow patterns make it impractical.
The Jefferson that Correia first met is the Jefferson we see standing in the dramatic, trophy-filled entrance hall he used as sort of a museum - the aging but ever erect ``Sage of Monticello'' that Thomas Sully captured in oils.
He wears a fur-collared coat to ward off the chill of this half-balconied room with large windows, an 18 1/2-foot ceiling and a single fireplace. His hair, once red, is now yellow-white and is slightly disheveled as if he had just removed the beaver-fringed cap he often wore in winter.
His face is very nearly square, his cheeks ruddy, his nose long and sharp. His deep-set hazel eyes have the melancholy look of a man who has lost his wife and five of his six children, yet his thin mouth seems to be shaping a smile.
This is the man I would like to have known more than any other in history, except possibly for Leonardo da Vinci.
I'd like to have felt his handshake, heard the sound of his voice. I'd like to know how well he really played the violin, how tolerant he was of those with lesser intellect.
I'd like to know if it really bothered him that there were those who detested him for political and personal reasons.
Because he was a voluminous writer and record keeper, because there are many skillful and scholarly interpreters of those writings and records and because Monticello has been restored to appear much as it did in Jefferson's day, it is still possible to become somewhat ``acquainted'' with the man.
Touring Monticello, one gets the feeling that the master has only left for awhile, perhaps gone out for a ride on Caractacus, probably singing in the saddle as he inspects his crops.
I imagine him singing because Isaac, one of Jefferson's slaves, said so. Isaac said, ``Mr. Jefferson always singing when ridin or walkin; hardly see him anywhar out doors but what he was a-signin.''
Isaac went to Philadelphia with Jefferson to learn the tinner's trade, but, according to him, that venture failed at Monticello, and he became a nail-cutter and blacksmith. In later years, about 1847, Isaac's reminiscences were recorded by Charles Campbell in an engaging book titled ``Memoirs of a Monticello Slave.''
It offers some of the most interesting glimpses of Jefferson.
Entering Jefferson's private suite, his ``intersanctum sanctorum,'' and looking at the library - he had about 6,700 books, four or five times what is here today - I recall Isaac's vision of that place as Campbell recorded it.
``Old master had abundance of books; sometimes would have 20 of 'em down on the floor at once. Read fust one, then tother. Isaac has often wondered how old master came to have such a mighty head. Read so many of them books and when they go to him to ax him anything, he go straight to the book and tell you all about it.''
Most of Jefferson's books went to form the Library of Congress. Some of them are back today in their place in the intellectual heart of Monticello. There's his original four-volume set of Cervantes' ``Don Quixote.'' I'm told he taught himself Spanish reading this classic aboard ship on the way to France.
Adjacent is a greenhouse, where, according to Isaac, Jefferson also kept blacksmith and carpenter tools. Isaac, who ``went up thar constant - been up thar a thousand times,'' said, ``My master was as neat a hand as ever you see to makes keys and locks and small chains, iron and brass.''
Jefferson's study is perhaps the most fascinating place of all. Through the tall shuttered windows you can see the little two-room brick ``honeymoon cottage'' at the end of the east wing. That was all there was of Monticello when he brought his bride, Martha, here so many years ago.
Here, surrounded by busts of John Adams, George Washington and Madison, the man of the pen wrote between 19,000 and 20,000 letters. This was Jefferson's summer White House during Washington's ``sickly season,'' the place where he conducted the business of the presidency, without a clerk, for a month or more each year.
There is his high-back, red-leather chair, his revolving bookstand, his writing desk and polygraph for copying letters and his spectacles.
And there, beside the chair, are his tall leather riding boots, black with mahogany tops. I have the feeling he's just back from his ride and perhaps is - well, somewhere close by.
Probably in the sky-blue dining room, sitting in one of those remarkably low wooden armchairs beside the hearth waiting for supper, his 6-foot-2 1/2 frame stretched out, slippered feet to the grate. Probably reading, waiting for a companion and conversation.
I wish it were so. MEMO: Also at Monticello
During February, African-American History Month, there will be
several Sunday events focusing on slave life at Monticello. All are free
and open to the public; call (804) 984-9822 for more information on the
following programs:
Feb. 5 and 19 at 2 p.m., head guide Elizabeth Taylor will lead
visitors along Mulberry Row, the plantation ``street'' where slaves
lived and worked.
Feb. 12 at 2 p.m., at Monticello Visitors Center (Va. 20, just south
of Interstate 64 at Exit 121), Lucia Stanton, Monticello director of
research, will present a slide lecture titled ``The African-American
Families of Monticello.''
Feb. 26 at 2 p.m., at the Visitors Center, Stanton and historian
Dianne Swann Wright will present a program titled ``Getting Word: The
Oral History of Monticello's African-American Community.''
Charlottesville is about three hours by car from Hampton Roads via
I-64.
For regular tours of Monticello, general admission is $8 for adults,
$7 for over 60, $4 for children 6-11, free for under 6. The house and
grounds are open daily from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. through February and
from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. beginning in March.
And remember, pronounce Monticello ``Mon-ti-CHELLO'' - the Italian
way, as Jefferson did. It means little mountain.
by CNB