New novel reveals the lost years of 'A man of contrasts'
Lynn Bonney
Saturday, May 3, 2008
“Twilight at Monticello: The Final Years of Thomas Jefferson,” by Alan Pell Crawford, Random House, 2008, $27.
Thomas Jefferson was a man of contrasts: author of liberty and owner of slaves, a public visionary who was short-sighted in private affairs, an idealist whose beliefs collided with his personal life. So much has been written about Jefferson that it’s hard to imagine another book that could add to our knowledge.
But historian Alan Pell Crawford has written such a book, “Twilight at Monticello: The Final Years of Thomas Jefferson.” In a slim but copiously documented volume, Crawford focuses on Jefferson’s final years, from his leaving the presidency in 1809 to his death in 1826. These are the years that so often have been overlooked by those who have written about Jefferson.
Crawford introduces in finely drawn detail Jefferson’s extended family, recounting his marriage to Martha Wayles Skelton, their children, their siblings, cousins, nephews and nieces — much of the population of the Albermarle area of Virginia in post-revolutionary America. (Confronted with so many Jeffersons and Randolphs, a reader could be forgiven for wishing that Crawford had included a family tree.)
In the years after his presidency, Jefferson began to doubt the workings of the government he had such a vital role in creating. He wrote that people possessed political power “only on the days of their elections. After that it is the property of their rulers.”
Although he still saw the ideal government as a male-only dominion, Jefferson’s practice at home was to involve women in far more than the day-to-day house tasks. His daughter Martha and her daughters spoke their minds freely, even in the presence of male guests at the dinner table. In his later years, Martha was his most-trusted adviser.
The modern reader may also see conflict in Jefferson’s attitude toward Martha and a favorite granddaughter, Anne Cary Randolph Bankhead. Both were married to men who mistreated them, often violently. Jefferson was aware of this, but he did not intervene, apparently seeing domestic violence as a private matter between husband and wife.
Uncomfortable with the concept of slavery, Jefferson was unable to find a way to separate himself from slave ownership in a nation founded on liberty. He proposed plans that would phase out the practice in Virginia, plans that his descendants revived from time to time, without success.
The Jefferson family constantly battled financial problems that continued beyond his death. Crawford records a visitor’s return to a Monticello stripped of possessions, its once-glorious gardens plowed under. Daughter Martha welcomed him to a home without furniture. A nephew struggled to repay Jefferson’s massive debts.
In some ways, the Jeffersons emerge like many other American families: bound by affection yet torn by discord. They are set apart, however, by the presence of a remarkable man whose faults and attributes shaped not only a family, but a state and a nation as well.
Emporia Public Library staff and volunteers write “On the Shelf.”