Stephen O'Connor - Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings

Dusk dissolves into midnight and midnight dissolves into dawn and Thomas Jefferson is still walking after having fled James Madison’s library in a state of delirious perplexity. In fact, he doesn’t feel as if he is walking. His progress along roads and even up very steep slopes has become a sort of drifting, as effortless as thought. From a hilltop, he looks out across a green and golden valley in which the improvements of man seem entirely harmonious with the rhythms and proportions of nature. The road along which he is walking, for example, arcs down into the valley and crosses it in a perfect S, with the bottom, or near, part of the S seeming exactly double the size of the top, or far, part, although he is certain that, seen from above, both arcs are equal. And as the road undulates up the far side of the valley, the angles of its incline correspond so exactly to the angle of the hilltop against the sky that they seem the very image of the hilltop’s angle and of its inverse. And so, in this valley glinting with dew under a new sun, we have those relationships between the parts and the whole and between the real and the ideal that constitute the highest form of beauty: that beauty which allows us to feel at one with the mind of God.

Who were the people who laid this road with such attention to its aesthetic and symbolic attributes? Why had he never heard of them? How could this beautiful valley exist so close to Belle Grove without Madison ever having showed it to him, or having mentioned one word about it? Could it be that Madison has never been here, that he knows nothing of this extraordinary place?

At the bottom of the valley there is a river, the flood plain of which is quilted with wheat and cornfields, pastures of clover, vineyards and orchards and gardens. And atop rises all across the valley are houses, humble and august, but all constructed according to the classical symmetries of Palladio — clearly the dwellings of a well-educated populace, who have profited from hard work, cooperation and the discoveries of modern agronomy.

As Thomas Jefferson descends into the valley, he is flattered to discover in a field by the side of the road his own invention — the mathematically perfect moldboard plow — hitched to a pair of fine ginger draft horses, their nostrils wide, their muscular haunches shivering with an eagerness to do their work, though the farmer is nowhere in sight. And in the houses he comes to, he sees more of his own inventions: twenty-four-hour clocks, conveyances for ferrying food and drink through rotating doorways or up from basement kitchens, and studies outfitted with his own revolving book rack, his swivel chair and his modified polygraph, as well as with drawing boards, telescopes, barometers, measuring instruments of all kinds and, of course, libraries (every home he enters has its own library) — confirmations all of his supposition that the owners of these houses are inquisitive, hardworking and ceaselessly looking to understand and improve their world.

Yet the owners themselves are absent. In every farmhouse he enters, he hears nothing but his own footsteps and their echoes off the walls. At first he thinks some great celebration or monumental announcement must have drawn the entire population to a meetinghouse or to the village square, but then, as he tours home after home after home and notices not a single scratched floorboard, not a scuff on a wall or a stain on a carpet, not a child’s hobbyhorse lying in a hallway, not a solitary dish unwashed or a bed unmade, he begins to wonder if it isn’t that the inhabitants of these houses have gone away but that they have never arrived.

And it is the same even in the village, where the columned edifices of the municipal assembly and public school preside at either end of the central square, and where there are more newspaper offices than places of worship, and these latter include not just churches but the temples of Jews, Mohammedans, Hindoos, Buddhists and Jains, and there is not a single bank. Every one of these buildings is open and ready to accommodate the diverse needs of a thriving community, and yet none of them seems to have ever been profaned by a single human breath, apart from that of Thomas Jefferson himself.

It is not, of course, possible to do an emotional taxonomy of color — which is exactly why the idea appeals to Thomas Jefferson and why it might even be important. What he wants is to find a vacant apartment building — or, better yet, an abandoned hospital or asylum — and paint every room a different color and furnish each room with tables, chairs, beds and paintings all exactly the color of the walls, and there would be microphones hidden in every room, recording what people say as they pass in and out. And then this installation could have a second life in a gallery or a museum, where projected video images of the empty rooms would have sound tracks consisting of the words of the people who once passed through them. Or perhaps he could live as a different color every day for a year, dyeing his clothes and his skin and his hair that color, and then have someone follow him around with a video camera, documenting everything said to him by strangers and friends. Or maybe he could give strangers and friends sunglasses with lenses he would color himself, and ask them to spend a day seeing only that color, and then tell him what they did and thought and felt. Or he should put people in a dark room and project ambiguous colors on the wall — bluish green, purplish gray, yellowish orange — and ask them to name the color and then tell him a story, made up or remembered, lived, read or watched. And perhaps every one of these installations and conceptual pieces could have its ultimate life on a Web site, to which people from all over the world would be encouraged to add their own color-related musings and artworks. What he would love most is to have millions of people from all classes and all countries trying to define what cannot be defined and each having an experience of color that only he or she can have, and only once, and never again.

Of my father, Thomas Jefferson, I knew more of his domestic than his public life during his life time. It is only since his death that I have learned much of the latter, except that he was considered as a foremost man in the land, and held many important trusts, including that of President. I learned to read by inducing the white children to teach me the letters and something more; what else I know of books I have picked up here and there till now I can read and write. I was almost 21 1/2 years of age when my father died on the 4th of July, 1826.

About his own home he was the quietest of men. He was hardly ever known to get angry, though sometimes he was irritated when matters went wrong, but even then he hardly ever allowed himself to be made unhappy any great length of time. Unlike Washington he had but little taste or care for agricultural pursuits. He left matters pertaining to his plantations mostly with his stewards and overseers. He always had mechanics at work for him, such as carpenters, blacksmiths, shoemakers, coopers, &c. It was his mechanics he seemed mostly to direct, and in their operations he took great interest. Almost every day of his later years he might have been seen among them. He occupied much of the time in his office engaged in correspondence and reading and writing. His general temperament was smooth and even; he was very undemonstrative. He was uniformly kind to all about him. He was not in the habit of showing partiality or fatherly affection to us children. We were the only children of his by a slave woman. He was affectionate toward his white grandchildren, of whom he had fourteen, twelve of whom lived to manhood and womanhood.