Freedom’s Home

Jefferson’s Moticello is just one reason to visit Charlottesville, Va.

By: Jodi Thompson

Staff photo by Jodi Thompson

Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home, ramains an impressive testimony to legacy on an American Patriot.

   Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s Charlottesville, Va., home, is the only house in the United States on the United Nations World Heritage List of sites "that must be protected at all costs." Monticello is visible every day on the back of the nickel, but to travel there and actually visit it is worth the nearly six-hour drive.
   I first toured our third president’s "Little Mountain" with my parents. I was taken with Jefferson. The mind that wrote the simply wonderful words — "all men are created equal" and have a right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" — designed an impressive home. It is full of little things that make it so intriguing: 13 skylights, a clock that also tells the day of the week, dumbwaiters, alcove beds.
   I had always wanted to return with my sons, the older one interested in architecture and the younger taken with inventions, but central Virginia never seemed to be on the way to or from anything. When discussing colleges with our 16-year-old, it suddenly hit my husband and me that we are only going to have him around for family trips another 18 months. Monticello became a now-or-never proposition.
   We decide on camping and, because there is a chance of rain, book a cabin at a KOA (the McDonald’s of campgrounds) only 10 minutes from Monticello. We spend the first evening setting up camp, burning dinner, collecting firewood and playing air hockey in the game room. We finish the evening with a fire, roasted marshmallows and an early bedtime. I want to arrive at Monticello early and make a full day of it.
   Visitors are given two pamphlets to read while waiting for the shuttle that takes you up the hill to wait for the tour. At this hour and so early in the season, the house-tour line is already long, but only the smallest fraction of what it could be judging by the amount of space intended for teeming throngs that winds around the brick structure.
   We read the glossy brochure about Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello on one side, the Monticello Mountaintop on the other. A smaller, simpler foldout tells of Mulberry Row, where the plantation’s workers, enslaved and free, lived and toiled. We struggle with the idea that such a great person actually owned up to 200 slaves, many of them children. Jefferson freed only two slaves in his lifetime and five in his will. Those people still enslaved by Jefferson at the time of his death were sold to help pay the debts of his estate.
   "How can you admire someone like that?" my husband asks rhetorically.
   It is hard to swallow. I don’t recall this much information being offered when I visited as a child, and it’s hard to reconcile with the man we’ve so long admired. It’s a quandary which Jefferson struggled with his entire life. Most likely, it won’t be answered by a visit to Monticello.
   The line for the house tour moves quickly. We gather at the East Front portico with our tour guide, Liz Tidwell, a small woman dressed in a red suit. Before we enter, she points out some of the details I remember so well from my first visit to Monticello. A weather vane on the cupola is attached to an indicator under the portico. No wandering down the path to see the wind direction — important information for a farmer before the Weather Channel. The outdoor clock sports only an hour hand.
   "Jefferson said that was efficient enough for outside," Ms. Tidwell says.
   She tells us a gong chimed the hour and could be heard for six miles. She admonishes visitors to rid themselves of gum and open containers, turn off beepers and cell phones, and not to touch or lean on anything once inside. You get the feeling that the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation that owns the site takes that "protected at all costs" thing seriously.
   The Entrance Hall is amazing. The clock on this side of the wall has an hour, minute and second hand. Iron weights show the day of the week on the wall by way of a system of wires and pulleys. Saturday is in the basement. It’s a seven-day clock on a six-day wall, Ms. Tidwell says.
   Some of Jefferson’s collection of 350 atlases, globes and maps fill the room, reminding visitors that this was the man who sent Lewis and Clark out to double the size of our country. Native American items sent back from the pair’s travels line the balcony railings. Ms. Tidwell tells us that in Jefferson’s time, even more items would be hanging from the antlers on the wall and draped throughout the room. The entrance hall was Jefferson’s in-house museum.
   Another group passes through the room on their way to the parlor. We are herded into the sitting room next door. It’s a tiny room. The main points of interest are the framed silhouettes on the walls. We’re stuck in this room longer than we’d care to be, because the next group hasn’t vacated the book room yet, though Ms. Tidwell is careful not to let on as that is the reason and fills the time with an admission that the foundation believes there was indeed a "long-standing relationship between (slave) Sally Hemings and Jefferson, resulting in several children.
   "Isn’t it interesting," she says, "that the man who wrote ‘all men are created equal’ was a slave owner and died a slave owner. He never reconciled that."
   Once we are free to enter the book room, or cabinet, it feels as though Ms. Tidwell needs to make up time. We speed through Jefferson’s private quarters, the location of some of his most interesting items, such as his architect’s desk, scientific equipment and personal things in his connecting bedroom. There is a "polygraph," or early copy machine in the cabinet, that we fly by. She tells us that Jefferson copied all his letters.
   I want to say, "Wait a minute, it took a long time to get here, let me look a bit." But we continue on to the parlor. We barely get a peek at the greenhouse. The parlor is overwhelming. The chess set catches Dylan’s eye, until he spies the huge portrait of Salome holding John the Baptist’s head on a platter.
   "Eew," he says. I agree. To the left is a nude, and to the right is a copy of "The Ascension of Christ." Our guide tells us the only original in the room of many reproductions is the Gilbert Stewart portrait of Jefferson. She points out that Jefferson covered nearly every surface of his parlor walls with copies of the old masters to enlighten his friends, who didn’t travel as much as he did.
   The dumbwaiter on either side of the fireplace in the next room, the dining room, allowed Jefferson to serve 25-30 guests by himself. I’ve read elsewhere that this was not to save work for his household staff, but instead to provide absolute privacy for the dinner party. What secrets were discussed under the busts of Benjamin Franklin and others?
   The tour goes outside after viewing a guest bedroom. The upstairs is not open to visitors. The steps would pose a fire hazard for touring crowds. Jefferson made the stairways narrow to save heat and space but rarely used them, as his rooms are on the first floor.
   Outside, we can see the rotunda of the original library of the University of Virginia, founded by Jefferson in 1819. We’re released from the tour to roam "the dependencies" and grounds ourselves. We’re eager to take a family photograph in front of the nickel view, showing the first domed house in America.
   We wander through the stables, wine and ice cellars, cooks’ quarters and kitchen beneath the home. We leave the cool, damp basement rooms for the sunny gardens. Jefferson was an avid gardener. The graveyard is down the hill from the gardens and is still owned by the Jefferson family. We walk the long and lovely path to the parking lot, where we enjoy a picnic lunch.
   Two miles up the road is Ash Lawn-Highlands, the home of our fifth president, James Monroe. When we arrive, we wish we’d waited and had our picnic here. The tables are closer to the parking, less crowded, and the view is better. We waffle on whether to take the tour of Highlands. Turns out, it’s worth it. The College of William and Mary owns the clapboard home. Our tour guide, Chris Owens, is friendly and full of trivia that gives a look into Monroe’s life. She’s lively and patient. You don’t get rushed through the Highlands. As with Monticello, we tour the grounds and outbuildings on our own. It’s a full day.
   We only have two days in Virginia but there is much to do. A visit to Charlottesville could easily take a week or more. Nearby is Michie Tavern, the oldest Virginia homestead and a popular tourist stop. There are vineyards every mile. Visitors can tour the University of Virginia, ride Skyline Drive in the Blue Ridge Mountains or walk the Appalachian Trail.
   There’s no easy route to Charlottesville. Still, many people manage to visit the area, with good reason. Thomas Jefferson’s hilltop home is just one of the reasons to make the long drive.
Monticello, Route 53, Thomas Jefferson Parkway, Charlottesville, Va., is open
daily 8 a.m.-5 p.m.; Nov.-Feb. 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Admission costs $11, $6 ages 6-11;
free under age 6. For information, call (434) 984-9800. On the Web: www.monticello.org
Charlottesville Albemarle County information is available at (877) 386-1102.
On the Web: www.charlottesvilletourism.org