To the Hermitage (60 page)

The Virginian is riding into Paris. A grave and ambitious man, recently widowed, he travels across France in his own splendid phaeton, built on his own estate, Monticello, by his own two hundred slaves. The grand vehicle has crossed the Atlantic Ocean with him, first getting unloaded at Plymouth, then taking ship again across an unpleasantly rough and rocking English Channel before the shores of France are revealed. At his side rides his shy, anxious eleven-year-old daughter Patsy. Up on the box is his mulatto servant and house-slave, James Hemings, whose sister, the slave Sarah, will in due time come and join them in the city too. And now they pass over the Seine in Paris by the new bridge, the Pont de Neuilly. He’s happy to confess it’s the most beautiful bridge in the world, as far as he’s ever seen.

Presently he’s travelling splendidly down the wide and tree-lined avenue of the Champs-Élysées, into the heart of surely the world’s most elegant city, certainly the biggest city he’s ever seen. The sandy-haired American – and that is what he most certainly is, thanks to the new Treaty of Paris, signed here last year between the British and Americans, which affirms that the First New Nation truly exists – rides his coach between the great buildings, and books his party into a hotel beside the Palais Royal. Later this year he’ll be all set up in his own grand residence, the Hôtel Taitbout, as befits a Minister Plenipotentiary come to court. ‘Behold me at length on the vaunted scene of Europe!’ he soon writes homeward. Then, fearing this might just sound a tad too enthusiastic for one who is worried over foreign ties, he goes on to qualify things: ‘You are, perhaps, curious to know how this new scene has struck a savage of the mountains of America. Not advantageously, I assure you.’

But Europe still impresses. Though Paris is not America, though cities are bestial places compared with Virginian woods, though the poor are slaves here, and the rich put saddles on their backs, though the water’s polluted, and the women are worryingly powerful and frank in desire, he does have to admit the place has its pleasures. He loves food and he loves wine; the French have both. He simply adores the architecture. There’s the chance to wander the bookstores, inspect great classical buildings now in composition, examine the most beautiful and ancient of ruins. One can dine with philosophers, go to the elegant play, attend the opera. Sometimes it seems a man might pass his life here without a single rudeness. ‘In the pleasures of the table, they are far before us, because with good taste they unite temperance. I have never yet seen a man drunk in France. Were I to proceed to tell you how much I enjoy their architecture, sculpture, painting, music, I should want words.’ But now the world has turned upside down there are so many matters to attend to, so many negotiations for a clever lawyer to perform: alliances, rights, treaties, Dutch bank loans, shipping and trade deals, the import of American tobaccos, the elimination of Barbary pirates. And when old Franklin finishes his term in Paris very shortly, he’ll be the next American Ambassador, staying there till the end of the 1780s, when for the second time in a lifetime he’ll see the world turn upside down.

‘Really, my dear friend, you must meet him,’ says Melchior Grimm. ‘His name is Thomas Jefferson.’

‘Why should I meet him?’ our man says, from his bed. ‘You see how I am.’

‘He wants to meet you.’

‘What does he want? How did you meet him?’

They’re talking together in a most handsome new apartment on the Right Bank. It’s a comfort the Empress in Petersburg arranged for him since the apoplexy, insisting that Grimm moved wife, papers and entire library across from the inconvenient rue Taranne to the smart rue de Richelieu. She has sent her fond wishes, and a warning to Grimm (‘Take care nothing goes astray, not even the least scrap’). She has been truly generous, and the apartment in the Hôtel de Bezons is wonderfully convenient for a man who can hardly rise from his couch now, though it would be even more convenient if he could only summon his powers again, get out into the street and go to the Palais Royal.

‘We’ve been working together on the American negotiations. Oh, didn’t I tell you the French government has appointed me to conclude a treaty over their American affairs?’

‘No, you didn’t. Now you’ll be sporting American titles and honours.’

‘The Americans are a simple and undemanding people. They don’t have any titles and honours.’

‘Believe me, they will one day. Fame and celebrity always insist on their reward. Everyone wants their fifteen minutes in the sun.’

‘Anyway, Jefferson assures me I’m the pleasantest and most companionable fellow he’s met in the entire French diplomatic corps.’

‘I’m not surprised. You did tell him you were German, I hope? Just so there’s no confusion.’

‘He understands my international influence. We’ve become really excellent friends.’

‘You buy his cosmetics for him?’

‘I doubt if he wears any. He comes from the back-country, or so he says.’

‘Well, you’ll be off to America soon, then?’ our man says. ‘I can see you with a naked bosom and turkey feathers stuck in your hair.’

‘Really, old friend, you will have to meet him. He firmly insists, and I’ve promised to arrange it. He says it’s one of the greatest wishes of his life to meet you before you . . .’

‘Before I die. Very well. Bring your noble savage here then, Melchior, if you must.’

And now the Minister Plenipotentiary sits in a chair in the corner, grand in his twenty guinea ministerial suit; no tacky beaver pelt on the head for him. He’s come with a black servant, bearing a basket of sweet potatoes and another of American apricots, which the Great Particularist is now inspecting with evident disgust. ‘I always care to bring some novelties from the New World with me when I visit,’ the sandy-haired minister explains. ‘I gave Condorcet a maple tree, some pecan nuts to Monsieur Malesherbes, and an entire moose to Monsieur Buffon.’

‘Good, better him than me,’ our man says, lying on the fine new bed a Scythian empress has purchased.

‘I can’t explain, sir, what this visit means to me,’ says the visitor. ‘I have one of the biggest libraries in the col . . . in North America. I mean to give it to the nation when I die.’

‘I know the feeling.’

‘I came to tell you, sir, that back in Virginia where I come from, I devoted months of my life to the acquisition of an
Encyclopedia
. I have a canine appetite for learning.’

‘Our
Encyclopedia
truly reached to the lands of America?’

‘It did indeed.’

‘And how much did you have to pay?’

The Minister laughs. ‘How much? A fortune. Guess what, it cost me fifteen hogshead. That’s fifteen hogshead of sotweed, tobacco. In fact it was a good deal more than a poor lawyer could afford. Happily I succeeded in getting the state of Virginia to pay for it.’

‘Tobacco? Maybe you don’t know, but in France we use money.’

‘We do too, sir. But this happened just at a time when the British were advancing. We had to ship the books to the far end of the State for their safekeeping.’

‘I hope the trouble was worth it, Monsieur Jefferson.’

‘Oh, it was, Monsieur Diderot. And one thing leads to another. Books often breed books, or so I find. Your great book started me writing a poorer book of my own. A book of American facts, sir, which I think will be of great interest in your country. I have it here with me in Paris, and mean to publish it while I remain. Monsieur Malesherbes is assisting me. Perhaps you know him.’

‘Indeed. He censored the
Encyclopedia
. Your book, then, have you a title?’

‘Yes,
Notes on the State of Virginia
.’

‘Really? I can hardly wait.’

‘It’s an account of the wonders of American nature, the newest of the wonders of the world. I write it to explain the wonders of the New World to the eyes of the Old.’

‘It’s all really so different?’

‘It would truly amaze you, sir. The great torrent of Niagara. The divine splendour of the Natural Bridge in Virginia, an extraordinary trick of nature I liked so much that I bought it. I mean to make it my Hermitage. The Mississippi river, sir, the longest waterway in the world. But most of what’s there we still have to find out.’

‘The wonderful lands of Louisiana.’

‘Yes, that’s right. But first we need to become a nation. Unite the thirteen states. Create a true constitution. Found a legal system. Construct a police force.’

‘A common currency, perhaps?’

‘True, sir, I’ve already proposed it. The copper cent, the silver dime and the golden dollar.’

‘A supreme court?’

‘Definitely, sir.’

‘Manufacturers and industries?’

‘Yes, sir, but only in due time. First we build a nation founded on the free farmer, and generate the spirit of an independent and republican people.’

‘The emancipation of the serfs?’

‘The slaves, sir. Not at once, but one day, definitely.’

‘Education?’

‘I believe learning is everything. That’s why I have a plan for a university.’

‘You have?’

‘Sure. I intend to found a fine new university in Charlottesville.’

‘I hope no parish priests for professors?’

‘Certainly not. It will be a whole new democratic and practical way of universal learning.’

‘In your country, do you have mulberry and hemp?’

‘Do we, sir? There’s no vegetable resource America is short of. I can give you a list.’

‘Iron and bauxite?’

‘If not yet, in the future, when we’ve settled the land properly.’

‘Population of Virginia?’

‘Look, let me bring you a copy of my book. It’s full of that kind of dry detail. But remember, mine is just one state, admittedly the most beautiful, out of a whole thirteen. That’s not counting the endless territories that reach out and out to the distant Pacific.’

‘Louisiana.’

‘Louisiana, right. Or whatever name we decide to call it. But first what we need is a true union. A just constitution. A civil plan. A relationship of the parts to the wholes. A capital city. A living nation.’

‘You’re building a new capital city?’

‘Yes, sir. Somewhere where no one has ever built before. Every day I survey and measure the new buildings of Paris. Soufflot’s dome, and so on. Maybe that will help make our new Capitol building.’

‘But do make sure your capital city isn’t just a stomach stuck out on the end of a finger.’

‘I’m sorry? I guess that’s a little too metaphorical for me.’

Our man raises himself, points across the room. ‘Go and look in that drawer, monsieur.’

‘What would we look for?’ asks the Minister, waving to James Hemings.

‘There are sixty-six notebooks in there. The plan for the ideal and perfect republic. The description of a whole new land without pain or tyranny. Where light and happiness shine out over all. A great capital city. A new university. A police force.’

‘What, over here, master?’ asks Hemings, hunting round the sideboards.

‘Yes, there, boy, wake up, do you see them?’

‘Sah.’ Hemings lifts out the notebooks, puts them on the table.

‘“The Daydream of Denis the Philosopher”?’ says Jefferson, picking one up. ‘“On Drawing Benefit From Religion and Making It Good For Something”?’

‘
Oui
, monsieur.’

‘But on the front of this book it’s written: For SMI Catherine, Rousse.’

‘Why don’t you change that? Make it to Monsieur Jefferson of Louisiana.’

‘You really want me to have all these?’

‘If you read them carefully and use them well.’

‘Yes, my dear, sir, I will, I most certainly will. Anyway, you’ll excuse me now, I hope, philosopher. Only today I’m meeting a Mrs Cosway and she’s taking me to have my bust done. By this well-known fellow Houdon. I’ve bought six of his things already. Including a really terrific Voltaire.’

That evening our man feels most wonderfully better. In fact he’s never felt as well since the distant day when, heart in mouth, he walked into the throne room in the Hermitage over the Neva, and there saw the great Empress. His spirits soar. He’s sure he’s done it; he’s invented a country. For Jefferson will go home, and the great lands of Louisiana will open. Beyond the coastal stretches where the once British colonials sit in their stockades or their cities, farming the land, inventing electricity, trading with their former home, lie the wonderful spaces of the interior: the unknown landscapes, the untravelled passes, lands wandered by migrant Indians, travelled by Jesuit missionaries, explored by French trappers and Spanish adventurers. There are great rivers, high mountains, vast prairies, great deserts, animals and birds of species not yet recorded, trees and vegetables still not properly described. He knows the wonders, the wealth of unnamed places, the muddy waters of the Mississippi, flowing down from Lake Itashka into the land of the hereafter, the precarious routes and untravelled passages that still have to be found . . .

With a country if not a continent invented, written on, written over, authored, with his imaginary Russia, the best fruit of his daydreams, not wasted after all, he feels well enough this evening to sit down at the table, between his wife and darling daughter. He’s well enough to take some soup, and then even a little mutton stew. At the end he reaches for the great basket of American apricots his two visitors have left.

‘I wouldn’t,
mon mari
, no, I really wouldn’t,’ says the Great Particularist, fussing over him as usual.

‘Nonsense, such fuss. American apricots, the fruit of the New World. What harm can they possibly do?’ He eats. He coughs, his head drops. Good night, ladies, good night . . .

The autopsy required by modern medical science and the great spirit of reason reveals that the bile sac is dry, the liver is hard, and there’s a severe problem of colic cystitis. The first cause of death is apoplexy, but the brain is still that of a man of twenty. The funeral is held not far away, in the fine city church of Saint-Roch, which is close to the Place Vendôme. Grimm and Jefferson are both present. It’s the late summer of 1784. There’s still fresh scent from the lime trees. Beaumarchais’
Marriage of Figaro
is playing at the Comédie-Française, and Rameau’s
Gallant Indians
at the opera. Montgolfier is taking people up in his fire-propelled balloon, and d’Abbans has set an amazing paddle-steamer chugging up and down the Seine. There are still five more sunny years to go before the age of reason turns into the age of bloodletting. Inside the fine church, the incense surges up toward the dome, and fifty hired priests carrying lighted candles accompany the philosopher’s coffin as it is carried toward the altar.