‘Twilight at Monticello’ Sheds New Light on Jefferson’s Legacy

By Michelle Wolford, The Dominion Post, Morgantown, W.Va.

Jan. 23–Thomas Jefferson wanted to be remembered for three things.

Those three things, etched on his gravestone for all the world to see, are “author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.”

When you finish reading Alan Pell Crawford’s “Twilight at Monticello,” you’ll likely remember Jefferson for much more.

Published just two weeks ago, “Twilight in Monticello: The Final Years of Thomas Jefferson” is a Book of the Month Club selection and a History Book Club selection.

In his third book, Crawford offers an amazingly detailed account of Jefferson’s life following his second presidential term and return to Monticello.

Crawford said the book came out of research on 2000′s “Unwise Passions: A True Story of a Remarkable Woman — and the First Great Scandal of Eighteenth-Century America.” That book looked at Nancy Randolph, a woman accused of murdering a child born out of wedlock. The Randolphs had been one of the leading Virginia families. Crawford said that led him to Jefferson, whose mother was a Randolph, and whose daughter, Martha, married a Randolph.

“I realized there was a similar story to be told about Thomas Jefferson’s own family and life,” he said.

“He’s got this optimism and is frustrated and can’t wait to go home to his family and what he sees as this picture of domestic love,” Crawford said. “It’s all going to be great … and then he’s disabused of all these notions.”

Crawford said he wanted to include as many details as he could. Unlike present-day Monticello, which he characterises as “a museum to an idea,” he wanted to “tell the gritty reality of it.”

“There’s a reason that in the first pages of the book, I’m dealing with boils on his backside and privy vents. That’s the only way you can show that — people take Jefferson at his word, and I wanted to show it in a material reality.”

The journey was not without revelations. Crawford said one thing he found surprising was that though Jefferson “had this amazing garden, well-crafted and laid out in perfect rows,” the plantation owner bought vegetables from his slaves’ gardens to sustain his extended family.

Much of Crawford’s book is taken up with tales of debts. Jefferson — who, as president, took out loans so he could entertain — continued to borrow money when he returned home. He began building another home, Poplar Forest, some 90 miles from Monticello.

“He had an odd sense of obligation,” Crawford said. “He viewed Monticello as a showplace. You will hear, ‘Oh, poor Jefferson. Fifty strangers drop in on him and expect to be fed.’ That’s not true. He’d insist that they stay for dinner. It was ‘I won’t take “no” for an answer.’ And he’s pulling up the Italian wine from the cellar. It’s my belief he wanted to show the possibilities of enlightenment on the American frontier.”

And so it went, even when banks were calling in loans.

Then Jefferson had an idea. He would, with approval of the Virginia legislature, sell lottery tickets.

“He thought, ‘We can hold this lottery and raise a lot of money and the winner gets some of my land,’ ” Crawford said. “But the idea was that the family could get more than the land was worth because there would be this outpouring of generosity and support.”

So Jefferson sent his grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, to pitch the idea. The legislators approved it, but said there had to be more in it for the winner.

The prize? Monticello.

Jefferson was flummoxed by the idea, but was assured he’d not be thrown off his property — no prize would be awarded until after he and his daughter’s death.

As it turned out, the very idea of a lottery brought money to Jefferson from citizens who did care about him. Donations poured in, the book says. “… When news of their plight had spread beyond Virginia, the newspapers were covering the lottery with approval, and officials in a number of cities began raising funds to give directly to the family. Before the end of the year, the mayor of New York City sent $8,500, collected from his constituents. Philadelphia sent $5,000, and Baltimore contributed another $3,000.”

Jefferson died before the lottery took hold — fortunately, as without the former president, tickets would not have sold. “You can drum up a lot of support for Jimmy Carter,” Crawford said, “but not for Amy and Chip. People don’t want to pay their bills.”

The author presents more than just a daily accounting of Jefferson’s expenditures. We also learn of his grandson’s stabbing by Jefferson’s grandson-in-law, tof he former president’s failing body and of his determination to get a college built in Charlottesville, Va.

And, through it all, Jefferson maintained his correspondence with John Adams, who would also expire on the Fourth of July, 1826. But Crawford debunks the legend that Adams’ last words were “Thomas Jefferson lives.” (It wasn’t true any way: Adams died some six hours after Jefferson.) Though he allows that Adams may have uttered his old friend’s name that last day, his last words, whispered to his granddaughter, were “Help me, child. Help me.”

Crawford’s “Twilight at Monticello” is No. 7 on the Washington Post best-sellers list and a USA Today “hot book” for January. A review in the Wall Street Journal asserts “Alan Pell Crawford treats his subject with grace and sympathetic understanding and with keen penetration as well, showing the great man’s contradictions (and hypocrisies) for what they were.”

Crawford, the former editor-in-chief of The Dominion Post, left Morgantown in the late 1970s to return to Washington, D.C. He wrote “Thunder on the Right: The ‘New Right’ and the Politics of Resentment,” his first book, in 1980. He credits the newspaper and his time outside the Beltway with giving him the perspective he needed to write the book.

“TWILIGHT AT MONTICELLO: THE FINAL YEARS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON” by Alan Pell Crawford; Random House; $27.

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