The Wealth of Thomas Jefferson's Library

Photograph by Langdon Clay  |  Jefferson's Monticello, William Howard Adams, 1983

There is a great difference between being schooled and being educated, and while Thomas Jefferson was not the best schooled American of his day, he was very likely the best educated. His pursuit of knowledge was relentless, and along the way, he amassed the country's largest book collection.

The average American family of Jefferson's day likely owned only one book, the Bible. A person of success might own three or four or five, and don't forget that two generations after Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln was walking miles to borrow just one book. Thomas Jefferson owned thousands.

One way to gauge the extent of Jefferson's library is by the number of books that he sold to the Library of Congress. When much of the library was destroyed by fire during the War of 1812, Jefferson offered to sell his entire collection to make up the difference. Jefferson's mounting debts made such a sale mutually beneficial.

Below is the number of books with which Jefferson parted.

The 6,487 books that Jefferson sold to the Library of Congress

With the sale of those 6,487 books (for $23,950), Jefferson still retained a couple thousand! He kept them under lock and key in his private quarters — a suite of bedroom, study and library. Truly honored guests at Monticello were invited into the inner sanctum for a private tour.

At his death, Jefferson was again hugely in debt, and his family was required to sell what remained of the library, as well as Monticello itself.

In 1851, a second fire at the Library of Congress destroyed approximately two-thirds of Jefferson's books. Today, with a generous grant from Jerry and Gene Jones, the Library of Congress is in the process of rebuilding Jefferson's collection as it was originally sold.

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What's in Your Pocket?

Some years ago, a friend gave me a photograph of all Mahatma Gandhi's worldly possessions at the time of his death, in 1948. The photo was remarkable in that there were less than two dozen items total, including a 1910 Zenith pocket watch and his spectacles.

The Moderate Voice

This past March, five of those items were auctioned off in New York, causing much concern in India that ownership might pass to another country. There was an intense bidding war which was finally won by the Indian billionaire, Vijay Mallya, chairman of United Breweries Group and Kingfisher Airlines. Gandhi's relics would stay in India after all. The five items sold for $1.8-million.

The image of those items got me to thinking of a couple of similar photographs.

Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation

Above are the contents of Thomas Jefferson's pockets, found after his death. They include (clockwise from upper right): a key ring and trunk key, a gold toothpick, a goose quill toothpick, a pocket knife, an ivory rule, a watch fob, steel pocket scissors, and a red leather pocketbook.

National Park Service

Above are the contents of Abraham Lincoln's pockets the night he attended Ford's Theater. They include (clockwise from the right): newspaper clippings, a pocket knife, a monogrammed button, eyeglasses and eyeglass case, a watch fob, an eyeglass buffer, a monogrammed handkerchief, a wallet with a Confederate bill, and a second pair of eyeglasses and case.

Library of Congress

Library of Congress

One need not be famous for such collections to be of interest. My friend John Atkinson sent me images of a few of the many items that were found in the wallet of his grandfather, Dr. Harry H. Atkinson (1880-1932).

Dr. Atkinson was an avid hunter and outdoors man.

One of the more interesting articles found in Dr. Atkinson's wallet was a Civil War letter from his grandmother to his father and uncle. The uncle was killed weeks later. Dr. Atkinson must have carried this for decades.

Would the contents of your pockets or wallet reveal your character, or a provide a window into your personality?

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Thomas Jefferson's Trompe l'Oeil

Thomas Jefferson makes for very interesting reading because he was both brilliant and quirky. There can be no denying that he was obsessive/compulsive. He had an odometer on his carriage, literally had every bean from his gardens counted, and thought nothing of tearing down his house and starting over. Jefferson's pursuit of architectural perfection for his home was endless, and accounts from Monticello's steady stream of guests reveal that the place was a busy construction site and in constant upheaval throughout Jefferson's life. Only in our time is it complete and serene.

Now I'll share one of my favorite details from Monticello, a clever solution to a problem that would have eaten away at our third president's perfect vision.

Jefferson wanted a balustrade to go completely around the roof line of the house. I've shown that by color coding it blue. The problem is that the balustrade would be interrupted as it met the exterior wall of the dome (shown in red).

Jefferson's solution was to have a very thin, flat balustrade affixed to the side of the dome, so that there would be an optical continuity.

And from the ground level, it works perfectly. Incidentally, Jefferson was an avid billiards player, and the dome originally housed a billiards table. Unfortunately for Jefferson, Virginia outlawed billiards, and the dome fell into disuse. Susan R. Stein, author of The Worlds of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello, writes of Margaret Bayard Smith's impression of the dome, when Smith visited Monticello in 1809:

'[Jefferson] afterwards took us to the drawing room, 26 or 7 feet diameter, in the dome. It is a noble and beautiful apartment, with eight circular windows and a sky-light. It was not furnished and being in the attic story is not used, which I thought a great pity as it might be made the most beautiful room in the house."

The image of the dome interior is from the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation.

All other images are from Jefferson's Monticello, William Howard Adams, 1983.

Photography by Langdon Clay.

Thomas Jefferson and Paint

As you can see, I am a great fan and student of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. So it was with great interest that I read the July/August edition of Elle Decor. It features the makeover of Jefferson's dining room, which has been bathed in a subdued Wedgewood blue for more than 70 years. New research indicates that around 1815 the dining room was painted, at great expense, a chrome yellow. The yellow that Jefferson used was 33 times the cost of white paint (Imagine what Jefferson would have done with a credit card!).

Jefferson and Monticello, the Biography of a Builder, by Jack McLaughlin, is a particularly interesting book. It talks in part about the problems of painting at Monticello. Of course Jefferson didn’t have the luxury of running to Lowe’s or Home Depot. Instead, he hired a master painter by the name of Richard Barry to come and paint for two full years. From Jefferson and Monticello comes this account:

“House painting during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries took much more skill than is required in our age of manufactured paints and high-speed application techniques. Paints and varnishes were mixed by hand, and colors were created by eye. The only method of application was by brush or spatula. Like most of the building trades, painting technology had changed little in hundreds of years. Paint was made possible by the properties of certain vegetable oils, particularly linseed oil, which is derived from pressed flax seed. When most other oils are spread thin and allowed to dry, they form a sticky, gummy residue, but linseed oil will spread into a hard, tough film. If resins are added, it becomes a varnish; the addition of white lead and pigment produces paint. Master painters such as Barry were expert at mixing linseed oil, white lead, color pigment, and turpentine into a high-quality paint. They were also skilled in applying paint, not only in single colors, but in an imitation of grained wood, marble or stone. Barry painted imitation wood grain and stone at Monticello, and quite possibly artificial marble for the fireplace fascias, which were later replaced by the real thing ...”

Mr. McLaughlin also mentions that Jefferson painted some of his floors, including the entrance hallway, a grass green. It was a stylish floor treatment at the time, and a great advocate was Gilbert Stuart. He supplied Jefferson with a hand-painted “chip,” which Jefferson passed on to the house painter.