WEBVTT 00:00.433 --> 00:04.166 [Forged in fire: the Thomas Jefferson collection at the Library of Congress 2008] 00:07.133 --> 00:10.099 [Elizabeth Fee:] The Library and I'd like to welcome 00:10.100 --> 00:13.300 you to the HMD Seminar series. 00:13.300 --> 00:19.833 We recently decided to expand the series beyond strictly History of 00:19.833 --> 00:24.766 Medicine and to include some of the leading lights in the worlds of 00:24.766 --> 00:30.732 rare books and Special collections. And so I'm delighted today to have the 00:30.733 --> 00:35.799 chance to introduce to Mark Dimunation, who is chief of the Rare Book 00:35.800 --> 00:42.333 and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress. As Chief, he is responsible for 00:42.333 --> 00:47.366 the development and management of the Rare Book Collection, the largest collection of rare 00:47.366 --> 00:54.399 books in North America. Mark came to the Library of Congress from Cornell University, 00:54.400 --> 01:00.066 where he served as Curator of Rare Books, Associate Director for Collections in the 01:00.066 --> 01:05.999 Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, and taught in the English Department. 01:06.000 --> 01:11.033 He earlier attended the graduate program in American history at the University of California, 01:11.033 --> 01:16.233 Berkeley. Mark Dimunation has lectured extensively 01:16.233 --> 01:21.166 about book collections and has authored a number of exhibition catalogs, 01:21.166 --> 01:27.832 including a recent study of Andrew Dixon White as the 19th century book collector. 01:27.833 --> 01:32.233 He is on the faculty of the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia, 01:32.233 --> 01:38.099 where he teaches the history of the book. He is currently completing an extensive 01:38.100 --> 01:43.500 project to reconstruct the Thomas Jefferson Library at the Library of Congress, 01:43.500 --> 01:49.800 which will be the subject of his talk today. Let me just also mention that the 01:49.800 --> 01:55.800 next History of Medicine seminar is going to be held next week, Tuesday, February the 5th, 01:55.800 --> 02:01.000 from 2:00 to 3:00 here in the Lister Hill Auditorium. 02:01.000 --> 02:06.333 And this will be in celebration of African American History Month. Samuel Roberts of Columbia 02:06.333 --> 02:12.933 University will speak on the topic New histories for new Politics, 02:12.933 --> 02:18.566 Making African American Health history matter. 02:18.566 --> 02:22.666 So you are all invited to that lecture. 02:22.666 --> 02:30.166 And now we have forged in fire, reconstructing Thomas Jefferson's library. 02:30.166 --> 02:33.532 Mark Dimunation. 02:33.533 --> 02:38.633 [ Applause ] 02:38.633 --> 02:44.133 [Mark Dimunation:] We were playing with the mics earlier. Can you hear me? 02:44.133 --> 02:46.566 See, that's one of those questions you ask when you talk. 02:46.566 --> 02:49.732 And then you realize that that's absolutely the wrong way to ask the question 02:49.733 --> 02:53.899 because the people who can't hear you can't tell you that they can't hear you. 02:53.900 --> 02:57.100 Okay, I'll assume that you can all hear me. I'm very pleased to be here. 02:57.100 --> 03:02.166 Thank you very much that I colleagues in HMD to offer the invitation. 03:02.166 --> 03:07.166 I'm rather pleased to be here. We had a lovely morning doing shop talk, 03:07.166 --> 03:11.532 and while walking through collections and doing what rare book 03:11.533 --> 03:16.433 types like to do a lot which is talk about books and look at books but also 03:16.433 --> 03:22.366 finding the the points of similarity. What we discover of course is that 03:22.366 --> 03:26.332 we're all about the same business. Our responsibility of special collections, 03:26.333 --> 03:29.966 librarians in particular, whether we're documenting the history of a subject 03:29.966 --> 03:31.332 like the history of medicine 03:31.333 --> 03:37.066 or whether we have a larger more universal style collection, is to gather and preserve and 03:37.066 --> 03:40.866 interpret a physical culture and to keep those stories alive for the 03:40.866 --> 03:45.399 generations of researchers that come. It's a responsibility that I take very seriously. 03:45.400 --> 03:51.066 It's my passion. I believe that whether they're fundamentally grand or mundane, 03:51.066 --> 03:56.932 these materials represent the story of the past, and our ability to understand past 03:56.933 --> 04:01.499 is limited unless we maintain a physical presence to work with. 04:01.500 --> 04:08.166 It's what my predecessor Frederick [?Argoth?], called our destiny. To keep the world of the past alive 04:08.166 --> 04:12.466 and keep the expectations and the hopes of the future intact. 04:12.466 --> 04:16.699 I live and work in the world's largest library, 04:16.700 --> 04:22.366 which also happens to be the nation's oldest extant federal cultural institution. 04:22.366 --> 04:26.299 That phrase is sort of like what we used to say. Gutenberg's Bible was the first book printed, 04:26.300 --> 04:32.433 and now we say it's the first book printed in Western Europe with movable metal type. 04:32.433 --> 04:36.999 We used to just say we were the oldest federal cultural for oldest federal cultural institution, 04:37.000 --> 04:42.233 and then we sort of was our oldest cultural institution in America, that it was the oldest extant 04:42.233 --> 04:45.166 cultural institution of America. Now we've become the oldest extant 04:45.166 --> 04:51.799 federal cultural institution in America, as concerned citizens have come forward to correct us. 04:51.800 --> 04:57.133 At any rate, as you can well imagine, this is a vast and complicated landscape in which I exist. 04:57.133 --> 05:02.599 Our collections now number somewhere in the neighborhood of 180 million pieces-- 05:02.600 --> 05:07.700 in all imaginable formats. We're currently are cataloging 05:07.700 --> 05:13.400 in 450 different languages. So you can see that the universe of the National Library is 05:13.400 --> 05:15.433 a rather extraordinary one. 05:15.433 --> 05:21.399 Its story-- begins with Thomas Jefferson. 05:21.400 --> 05:26.433 Washington was scorched, the blazing of houses, ships and stores, 05:26.433 --> 05:30.899 the report of exploding magazines. The crash of falling roofs informed 05:30.900 --> 05:36.866 them of what was going forward. You can conceive of nothing finer than the site which met them 05:36.866 --> 05:41.799 as they drew near the town. This is how George Gleig, a member of the English 05:41.800 --> 05:48.766 troop of the War of 1812, recalled his experience as he invaded Washington City. 05:48.766 --> 05:54.199 "The sky was brilliantly illuminated by the different conflagrations, and a dark red light was thrown 05:54.200 --> 05:58.233 upon the road, sufficient to permit each man to view distinctly his 05:58.233 --> 06:03.566 comrades face heaps of smoking ruins." 06:03.566 --> 06:09.666 On an unbearably hot and muggy day, August 24th 1814, 06:09.666 --> 06:14.499 an exhausted advance guard of an English army marched to Capitol Hill. 06:14.500 --> 06:17.633 They had arrived by ship some 50 miles away, 06:17.633 --> 06:22.799 along with 4000 other troops, including Mr. Greek, only days before, 06:22.800 --> 06:27.066 but now found themselves in the somewhat abandoned city of Washington. 06:27.066 --> 06:32.899 That's because all the male residents had fled. They fled to Georgetown. 06:32.900 --> 06:36.333 For those of us who live in Washington, we understand the notion of all 06:36.333 --> 06:42.333 the men fleeing to Georgetown. This is a Capitol Hill phenomenon. When everyone goes home at night, 06:42.333 --> 06:45.566 they all go to Georgetown. Meeting only limited resistance. 06:45.566 --> 06:49.966 The troops set about their appointed task, which was to destroy every single public 06:49.966 --> 06:56.966 building in the city of Washington. This was part of a retaliation, a payback for what had happened 06:56.966 --> 07:02.166 the year previously in 1813, when the American forces destroyed every public building in York, 07:02.166 --> 07:06.066 which is now Toronto, including the Houses of Parliament. By the day's end, 07:06.066 --> 07:10.932 the House and the Senate building of the Capitol were smoldering shells. The White House was burned, 07:10.933 --> 07:14.399 as was the Treasury and numerous other public buildings. 07:14.400 --> 07:19.933 The English Admiral Cockburn, who was often jeeringly referred to 07:19.933 --> 07:24.333 as the ruffian by the DC newspaper The National Intelligencer, 07:24.333 --> 07:30.166 capped the devastation by dismantling the newspaper's office brick by brick. 07:30.166 --> 07:34.899 And this is why I like the man. In addition, he ordered that the entire type font 07:34.900 --> 07:40.100 be removed and every letter C be burnt, melted, so that the newspaper could 07:40.100 --> 07:45.533 never again print his name. [ Laughter ] Amidst the smoke and the rubble, 07:45.533 --> 07:51.766 the remnants of the Congressional Library smoldered and then disappeared. 07:51.766 --> 07:55.866 The nucleus of the Library of Congress, therefore, was forged in fire. 07:55.866 --> 08:00.099 In 1815, Congress purchased Thomas Jefferson's personal library, 08:00.100 --> 08:04.533 what was then the largest private book collection available in North America, 08:04.533 --> 08:08.233 to replace the 3000 volume Congressional Library that had been destroyed 08:08.233 --> 08:13.099 when the British burned the capital. Although he faced financial difficulties at the time, 08:13.100 --> 08:19.133 Jefferson generously offered his entire collection for whatever price found appropriate by Congress, 08:19.133 --> 08:22.999 with the intention to replace the devastations of British vandalism 08:23.000 --> 08:29.600 and enhance congressional resources. Well, as you would well expected with any gesture to Congress, 08:29.600 --> 08:34.866 it was immediately met with rank partisan debate. One Federalist opponent, 08:34.866 --> 08:39.132 Cyrus King of Massachusetts. At this point, he's representing everything from 08:39.133 --> 08:43.299 Maine down to Massachusetts-- claim that the library was symbolic of 08:43.300 --> 08:49.066 Mr. Jefferson's infidel philosophy. Mr. Jefferson's library, he warned, 08:49.066 --> 08:54.599 contain the good, the bad, the indifferent, the old, the new, the worthless, 08:54.600 --> 08:59.066 in languages which many cannot read and most of us ought not. 08:59.066 --> 09:01.266 [ Laughter ] 09:01.266 --> 09:05.566 It's surprising how some of this language reads very contemporary in 09:05.566 --> 09:09.899 our experience currently on the Hill. Others objected to the expense given 09:09.900 --> 09:15.333 it's given the circumstances of the time, any amount spent on the library could 09:15.333 --> 09:18.866 muster 210 men in the regular army. 09:18.866 --> 09:23.466 In anticipation of this rancorous debate, Jefferson defended his broad 09:23.466 --> 09:28.766 collecting interests in an 1814 letter countering that there was in fact no 09:28.766 --> 09:33.299 subject to which a member of Congress may not have occasion to refer. Those of you who actually do 09:33.300 --> 09:35.966 research in the Library of Congress, you'll see this all over the place, 09:35.966 --> 09:41.699 but many of us also wear it around our necks as part of our ID's. The Congressional decision took 09:41.700 --> 09:46.566 months and in the end the members acquiesced in January of 1815, 09:46.566 --> 09:49.866 voted to purchase the 6487 volumes 09:49.866 --> 09:55.632 for nearly $24,000, very cheap. This sum was determined by a Georgetown 09:55.633 --> 10:00.399 book dealer by the name of Joseph Mulligan, who basically just prize the collection 10:00.400 --> 10:04.300 by size, a dollar for 12 mos, $3 for an octavo, 10:04.300 --> 10:09.866 $6 for an a quarto $10 for a portfolio. With that decision, 10:09.866 --> 10:16.999 the National Library was restored. Jefferson received word of the approval while out at Monticello, 10:17.000 --> 10:20.333 where he happened to be entertaining two young gentlemen from Boston, 10:20.333 --> 10:26.366 George Ticknor and Francis Gray, young scholars who with introductions from John Adams. 10:26.366 --> 10:30.532 We're paying a visit to the former president and his library, and they had the great fortune 10:30.533 --> 10:34.499 to witness the moment. Both of course, we're doing what many had done before, 10:34.500 --> 10:39.166 which was to seek out the intellectual counsel and reading advice from the 10:39.166 --> 10:45.499 great mind of the American Enlightenment in the midst of his great library. By 1815, 10:45.500 --> 10:51.533 Jefferson's library was itself a destination. The sheer size of over 6000 volumes 10:51.533 --> 10:57.833 was a sight to behold. Mr. Ticknor, who was a Dartmouth graduate, was soon after retained by 10:57.833 --> 11:01.666 Jefferson to acquire books when he traveled through Europe. Mr. Gray, 11:01.666 --> 11:05.932 who went on to become a very famous and influential connoisseur of prints, 11:05.933 --> 11:12.099 thought that the library was rather comprehensive and in classical authors. 11:12.100 --> 11:16.333 He was also the recipient of a now very famous and important letter from Jefferson, 11:16.333 --> 11:21.633 where Jefferson tries to define the race formula and argues that slavery has nothing to do with race. 11:21.633 --> 11:27.433 This is his claim to fame now in modern history. But at the time he did an 11:27.433 --> 11:32.066 assessment of Jefferson's library, claiming that although Mr. Jefferson was very careless 11:32.066 --> 11:36.032 about his additions, his holdings of Americana were without 11:36.033 --> 11:41.899 question the greatest in the world. It's true that in his lifetime 11:41.900 --> 11:48.700 Thomas Jefferson accumulated not one but three libraries. His first private library burned 11:48.700 --> 11:55.233 with Shadwell, a home in 1770. Very few books escape the flames. Actually, fire seems to 11:55.233 --> 12:01.166 follow Thomas Jeffery-- fire and debt seem to follow Thomas Jefferson around his books in spite 12:01.166 --> 12:05.432 of the disruptions of the pending revolution and the obvious cost of 12:05.433 --> 12:10.833 rebuilding his Shadwell collection. The 26 year old lawyer set out to build an even more extensive 12:10.833 --> 12:15.466 collection to replace the one he lost in 1770. One that would, as he would say, 12:15.466 --> 12:22.099 modestly encompass the whole of recorded knowledge. Jefferson's intentions were ambitious 12:22.100 --> 12:28.500 and he indicated at the time and intense desire to build a practical collection that chronicled human endeavor. 12:28.500 --> 12:32.700 Acquiring large numbers of books in 18th century colonial 12:32.700 --> 12:39.066 America was a task, a difficult one. It was actually an issue in terms of the undertaking. 12:39.066 --> 12:45.532 The availability of stock was small, the expense was great, especially for someone of of 12:45.533 --> 12:50.766 Jefferson's young means at the time, even though he had money. We do know, however, 12:50.766 --> 12:53.632 that Jefferson began to acquire books in earnest, though modestly, 12:53.633 --> 12:59.933 once he started at William and Mary in 1760. Long before this Shadwell fire. 12:59.933 --> 13:03.099 Off and on for the next seven years, through coursework in the law school, 13:03.100 --> 13:07.200 Jefferson obtained books from the office of the Virginia Gazette in Williamsburg. 13:07.200 --> 13:11.433 This was the place in which you would buy books in this period of time because of paper tax, 13:11.433 --> 13:17.166 because of the availability of printing, oftentimes your materials we purchased at newspaper offices. 13:17.166 --> 13:22.166 In 1765, for example, he acquired over 32 titles that would 13:22.166 --> 13:27.366 characterize his lifetime collection. Law, History, Italian, Dictionaries, 13:27.366 --> 13:33.499 Poetry, Classical Literature, Agriculture, Surgery, and, as we recently witnessed, 13:33.500 --> 13:38.700 at least in Washington, DC, a copy of the Quran [Qur'an]. By 1773, 13:38.700 --> 13:44.266 Jefferson had already amassed the library of more than 12 thousand 1250 titles. 13:44.266 --> 13:48.166 The books came from many sources. He bought up Planters, book collections. 13:48.166 --> 13:54.099 He bought up book collections from faculty at William and Mary. He even bought up the books that 13:54.100 --> 13:58.833 had been abandoned by the fleeing royal Governor of Virginia. And of course, 13:58.833 --> 14:01.833 by the time he went to Philadelphia, had opened an entire new market for him. 14:01.833 --> 14:06.833 While he was busy at the convention writing the Declaration. 10 years later, 14:06.833 --> 14:12.866 he had doubled the size of his collection, now at 2640 volumes. 14:12.866 --> 14:17.799 When he departed for Europe, he looked greatly forward to the opportunity to actually play in the 14:17.800 --> 14:23.533 real market and developed lists and bibliographies with his cohort James 14:23.533 --> 14:28.466 Madison to prepare himself for the trip. This is when Jefferson began to 14:28.466 --> 14:35.132 organize his books into subject areas. He spent five years in Paris, fundamentally important to his 14:35.133 --> 14:40.599 collection and as a result, fundamentally important to my life today. To Jefferson, 14:40.600 --> 14:45.200 the French were more advanced in science in his mind and in philosophical discussions than, say, 14:45.200 --> 14:50.633 the English. His own academic training had pushed him in this direction, and it was only further 14:50.633 --> 14:53.999 influenced by the availability of books in Paris at the time. 14:54.000 --> 14:59.600 He arrived with a list and began to buy. Whenever he had a free moment, he was out in the book stalls 14:59.600 --> 15:05.000 in Paris to serve to expand his coverage of European topics. But most interestingly, 15:05.000 --> 15:09.200 this is where the Americana collections of the Library of Congress grew. 15:09.200 --> 15:15.766 Because most Americana was available in France and not in the colonies. He sent back trunk loads of 15:15.766 --> 15:22.699 books not only to his own library but to Madison to help Madison write The Federalist Papers. 15:22.700 --> 15:29.466 Interestingly enough, Jefferson had to acquire his copy of The Federalist Papers in Paris. 15:29.466 --> 15:34.666 He did buy an extraordinary number of books in in Paris, De Buffon Natural History, 15:34.666 --> 15:40.366 as well as Catesby's book on the Carolinas. He after purchasing the Encyclopedia Methodique, 15:40.366 --> 15:44.832 Jefferson elicited himself as a representative of the work, not only as an author but as a very 15:44.833 --> 15:48.333 aggressive salesman of the Encyclopedia. There are letters to Jeff, 15:48.333 --> 15:52.899 from Jefferson to the Planters around him 15:52.900 --> 15:57.166 saying, I understand the times are tough, but you subscribe to attend volume 15:57.166 --> 16:01.399 work and you've only paid before, and I insist that you continue-- yours truly, 16:01.400 --> 16:06.433 Thomas Jefferson. It was rather heavy-handed about the the sales of this. 16:06.433 --> 16:10.433 He acquired numerous classical authors. A hodgepodge of additions. 16:10.433 --> 16:15.433 Obviously he acquired the underpinnings of the forthcoming French Revolution, 16:15.433 --> 16:21.733 but there were travels and voyages, scattered authors and titles. The History of Peru, Spinoza, 16:21.733 --> 16:27.833 Krebakur, Study of Roman Law, Books on Bibliography, a Study of American Indians, 16:27.833 --> 16:33.766 Ramsey's History of South Carolina. The list is sort of a frenzy, and you can only envision this 16:33.766 --> 16:38.799 sort of bibliographic frolic that was going on in Paris at the time. Clearly, 16:38.800 --> 16:42.300 the French book market had a profound impact on Jefferson's collection. 16:42.300 --> 16:45.900 Not only did it give him the opportunity to elevate his Americana holdings 16:45.900 --> 16:50.333 and round out the representation of contemporary 18th century thought, 16:50.333 --> 16:55.066 it also transformed his entire notion of collecting across the board. All in all, 16:55.066 --> 17:02.666 he purchased 1850 titles in his period and five year stint in Paris. He had doubled again the size 17:02.666 --> 17:07.566 of his collection. Years later, our friend Cyrus King from Massachusetts 17:07.566 --> 17:12.632 had a few thoughts about this as well. "It might be inferred from the character 17:12.633 --> 17:17.899 of the man who collected it and France, where the collection was made, that 17:17.900 --> 17:22.433 the library contains irreligious and immoral books, works on French philosophers 17:22.433 --> 17:28.299 who caused and influenced the volcano of the French Revolution, which had desolated Europe, 17:28.300 --> 17:32.400 and threatens this country as well." This is part of the conversation on 17:32.400 --> 17:36.500 the floor of Congress while they're debating Thomas Jefferson's collection. 17:36.500 --> 17:41.733 Upon returning to America in 1789, Jefferson possessed the library twice the size of the one he 17:41.733 --> 17:46.133 had owned in his departure, and he had a considerable debt to show for it. 17:46.133 --> 17:50.833 This debt would remain with him for the rest of his life. From this point on, 17:50.833 --> 17:56.366 Jefferson's life was about paying one debt off in order to avoid the next. By 1850, 17:56.366 --> 18:01.666 and the Jefferson Collection had grown to the 6487 volumes that he offered Congress for its 18:01.666 --> 18:08.366 time and utterly vast and almost incomprehensible collection. A substantial investment, 18:08.366 --> 18:15.032 perhaps even an incautious one. Given his own sources of wealth. Jefferson acknowledged that 18:15.033 --> 18:19.666 perhaps it was the largest library, but he took his greatest pride in the fact that it was well 18:19.666 --> 18:25.266 chosen and intelligently chosen. This was to become the Library of Congress. 18:25.266 --> 18:30.732 This was the collection that had nursed the Declaration of Independence. 18:30.733 --> 18:34.499 This had guided American diplomacy that had fueled innovations in 18:34.500 --> 18:41.400 American technology and that assisted a Virginia planter with his fields. And now this collection, 18:41.400 --> 18:44.633 which had been built around Jefferson's notion of universal knowledge, 18:44.633 --> 18:50.733 was to serve as the source of inspiration and ideas for the New Republic. 18:50.733 --> 18:56.666 Jefferson's books began their journey to Blodgett's hotel, which served as the temporary Capitol 18:56.666 --> 19:02.866 building following the fire, in May of 1815. The the library was shipped in the 19:02.866 --> 19:08.199 same pine bookcases that had that they had been shelved in for over 50 years. 19:08.200 --> 19:11.100 They'd simply been wrapped, taken off the shelf, wrapped, replaced, 19:11.100 --> 19:14.633 and then they nailed the board over the front of the bookcase and loaded 19:14.633 --> 19:18.266 them up into horse drawn wagons. Jefferson was extremely fastidious 19:18.266 --> 19:22.532 about this aspect of his collection and insisted that they take two 19:22.533 --> 19:26.566 separate routes so that should any kind of tragedy or worse yet I suppose 19:26.566 --> 19:31.899 if Cyrus King got his hands on them were to happen that only half of the collection would be damaged. 19:31.900 --> 19:37.966 So they took two separate routes to get to Washington. These horse drawn wagons with 19:37.966 --> 19:43.432 nailed bookcases loaded up on them. This is the collection that Jefferson had 19:43.433 --> 19:47.566 built and lived with for nearly fifty years. And as it pulled away, 19:47.566 --> 19:51.532 he sat down and wrote a note to his friend and newspaper man and the man who 19:51.533 --> 19:56.933 helped barter the sale of the collection, Samuel Smith, reflecting that it was unquestionably 19:56.933 --> 20:01.399 the choicest collection of books in the United States, and I hope it will not be without 20:01.400 --> 20:06.466 some general effect on the literature of our country. I have a lot of. 20:06.466 --> 20:09.532 This is the moment that I most connect with Thomas Jefferson, 20:09.533 --> 20:15.999 because I live with the same size collection that we've now restored. And I have a sense of what it 20:16.000 --> 20:23.100 would mean to have that taken away from my life in a single day, which is how they were loaded up, 20:23.100 --> 20:29.100 nailed up and moved and gone. And when the horse buggies left, Thomas Jefferson sat at 20:29.100 --> 20:35.000 Monticello without books. It's a very poignant moment, and I think really for me begins 20:35.000 --> 20:41.100 the story of of the passion behind the Library of Congress collections as they still stand today. 20:41.100 --> 20:47.233 When the books arrived in Washington, the library found its center and its impetus. 20:47.233 --> 20:52.866 Throughout his life, Jefferson had gathered books across a vast spectrum of topics and languages, 20:52.866 --> 20:57.232 a collecting urge prompted by what he would later typify in an understated fashion. 20:57.233 --> 21:04.066 As a [?] for the diffusion of knowledge, The nation's library today continues to 21:04.066 --> 21:08.832 mirror this universal approach to collecting. The world's largest library is 21:08.833 --> 21:13.699 also the only National Library that collects extensively internationally 21:13.700 --> 21:15.833 in all subjects except for medicine. 21:15.833 --> 21:18.433 [ Delayed laughter ] 21:18.433 --> 21:22.399 And even there we kind of 21:22.400 --> 21:27.666 threatened at the corners. Jefferson strategy for building his library was a practical one. 21:27.666 --> 21:31.666 This collection was a working tool rather than a bibliophiles monument. 21:31.666 --> 21:36.899 This was a touchstone for him. It's the muse for him as a statesman, 21:36.900 --> 21:42.566 as a politician as an architect, as a classicist, as an inventor, as a planter, as a scientist. 21:42.566 --> 21:48.099 All of these can be found on his shelves. Well, you would well expect, 21:48.100 --> 21:52.166 and it's true that politics and law and history predominate as major subjects. 21:52.166 --> 21:56.966 The Jefferson Collection includes domestic sciences, foreign language, 21:56.966 --> 22:01.432 dictionaries, rhetoric, poetry, routine working manuals, lumber 22:01.433 --> 22:06.133 measurement manuals, brewing manuals. The library's arrangement with Jefferson, 22:06.133 --> 22:12.033 described as sometimes analytical, sometimes chronological, sometimes a combination of both, 22:12.033 --> 22:15.799 followed a modified version of Francis Bacon's Organization of Knowledge, 22:15.800 --> 22:20.433 a system that had been used by d'Alembert and Diderot in the encyclopedia. 22:20.433 --> 22:23.866 And that's what you're seeing here. Memory, reason, and imagination. 22:23.866 --> 22:29.499 The great triad of the enlightenment, Jefferson turns into history, philosophy, and fine arts. 22:29.500 --> 22:33.966 This is Jefferson's manuscript that you're looking at. It's the introduction to the 22:33.966 --> 22:40.032 organization of his library. He divides them into these three categories and then they're 22:40.033 --> 22:46.466 further parsed into 44 chapters. I believe this is a 4012. This is the first page. This is, 22:46.466 --> 22:52.499 I think, the copy that only has 42 or the 44 chapters. But immediately you're introduced 22:52.500 --> 22:58.566 to some interesting notions of how intellectual endeavors are divided. 22:58.566 --> 23:00.532 We're looking at the page for history or 23:00.533 --> 23:06.199 memory. Divided into civil and natural. 23:06.200 --> 23:11.833 Physics, Natural History-- can't even read that. What does that say? 23:11.833 --> 23:15.766 Can anyone read that? Technical arts. It must be something. 23:15.766 --> 23:19.199 Physics then turns into natural philosophy, 23:19.200 --> 23:25.433 agriculture, chemistry, surgery and medicine. So in the beginning, which starts with history, 23:25.433 --> 23:31.699 you will find the history of classical Rome only a few shelves away from the history of the physical 23:31.700 --> 23:37.833 contents of the earth. Geology. This is done, and it's true. If you reconstruct his library 23:37.833 --> 23:42.799 and live with it and put it in the same circle that he had. It's possible to stand there when 23:42.800 --> 23:46.266 you work with these long enough and understand what this is about, 23:46.266 --> 23:51.766 because it allowed Jefferson to turn and reach for a book and understand 23:51.766 --> 23:56.432 implicitly where it would be. Given the breakdown of these topics, 23:56.433 --> 24:00.499 they tell us a good deal about him. Of course, some of them are familiar to us. 24:00.500 --> 24:06.166 Ancient history and American history fall under the broad category of history. But as I was saying, 24:06.166 --> 24:12.232 agriculture and surgery and mineralogy do the same thing fall under history. 24:12.233 --> 24:17.266 Other groupings speak to Jefferson's own preoccupations. Religion, politics, 24:17.266 --> 24:23.466 and ethics all fall under the rubric of what he called moral philosophy. Perhaps the most surprising, 24:23.466 --> 24:28.766 or maybe more to the point, the most Jeffersonian aspect of the classical scheme is the 24:28.766 --> 24:34.999 relegation of religion to Chapter 17, which is philosophy, moral, jurisprudence, dash, dash, 24:35.000 --> 24:41.866 religion. We go back to Cyrus King on this one. 24:41.866 --> 24:45.832 This is a gesture that moves well beyond Bacon or d'Alembert or Diderot. 24:45.833 --> 24:52.133 This is Thomas Jefferson having experiencing his own enlightenment, I guess. Other categories such as 24:52.133 --> 24:56.966 physical mathematics and dialogue epistolary are just 18th century conventions that don't really play 24:56.966 --> 25:02.599 out in contemporary disciplines as much as we would like them to. 25:02.600 --> 25:08.166 Jefferson's book, book collection, his organization stood as a well 25:08.166 --> 25:12.966 source of fact from which he could pull together information and apply it to a 25:12.966 --> 25:17.799 changing and shaping society and world. This was not a library of casual learnedness. 25:17.800 --> 25:21.366 This was not a gentleman's library. 25:21.366 --> 25:27.032 This was the universe of practical and useful thought from which he could alter the world. 25:27.033 --> 25:33.699 He referred to it as his own enlightenment. Certainly his beloved classical authors, 25:33.700 --> 25:37.400 Greek and Latin, were there, Tacitus and Thucydides as well as Plato, 25:37.400 --> 25:43.366 who he summarily dismissed as such nonsense. Alongside books of education, 25:43.366 --> 25:48.799 shorthand, gardening, accounting, military strategy, brewing and beekeeping, bookkeeping. 25:48.800 --> 25:55.166 Their works on the technical arts, such as Green's work on speech and language for the deaf. 25:55.166 --> 26:00.732 James Weston's book on stenography and shorthand. Cryptography, is a great period point of 26:00.733 --> 26:07.299 fascination for Jefferson. Caslon's type specimen book is there. There are even two books 26:07.300 --> 26:13.066 on aerial station or flying. In several instances. Jefferson actually strikes up an engaging, 26:13.066 --> 26:18.032 productive, and sometimes rather learned correspondence with scientists and inventors. 26:18.033 --> 26:23.933 Take the case of Robert Fulton. In 1810, Fulton sent 4 copies of his pamphlet on 26:23.933 --> 26:30.599 torpedo warfare to Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was already aware of Fulton's work and wrote and 26:30.600 --> 26:35.700 responded to his pamphlet. Jefferson had this ability, 26:35.700 --> 26:40.033 certainly by 1810, former president, to sort of ponder on people's work 26:40.033 --> 26:43.833 and then sort of casually take their work and turning into a metaphor. 26:43.833 --> 26:48.799 So his discussion of of torpedoes turned into a long discussion about the idea of progress, 26:48.800 --> 26:52.766 the danger of living in the past. Why Connecticut will forever be a lesser 26:52.766 --> 26:56.899 state to Virginia because they've not let go of their interactions with the 26:56.900 --> 27:02.366 people that they discovered there, only to conclude by saying your torpedoes will be to cities what 27:02.366 --> 27:08.832 vaccination has been to mankind. This is Jefferson at his best and his worst, 27:08.833 --> 27:14.433 his most stimulating and most vexing. To Fulton, he said, 27:14.433 --> 27:20.099 have you thought of working with steam? So--[ Laughter ] 27:20.100 --> 27:24.400 so this is a man who takes seriously his role, probably only second to 27:24.400 --> 27:30.100 Doctor Franklin in terms of being one of the great minds of America. 27:30.100 --> 27:34.533 Nowhere do we find that more so than this particular piece. There are moments, and Thomas 27:34.533 --> 27:41.333 Jefferson is a very complicated man, very difficult to, so to speak, live with in our work. 27:41.333 --> 27:45.033 But there are moments when you just absolutely adore him, and this is one of them. 27:45.033 --> 27:49.799 You're looking at title page from Buffon's Natural History. 27:49.800 --> 27:53.366 It's a 10 volume work. 27:53.366 --> 27:59.199 Buffon embraced a particularly irritating French attitude in his Natural 27:59.200 --> 28:03.133 History by describing the notion of 28:03.133 --> 28:08.733 the inferiority of American nature. He asserted that all animal and plant life, 28:08.733 --> 28:14.033 including humans, degenerated while in America. [ Laughter ] 28:14.033 --> 28:17.633 This was a serious theory. These theories, of course, 28:17.633 --> 28:23.233 irritated Jefferson to no end. To refute the assertions by Buffon 28:23.233 --> 28:29.666 and others that animal and plant life in America was a faint and smaller shadow of European species, 28:29.666 --> 28:34.299 Jefferson asked his friends in America to send Buffon the hides 28:34.300 --> 28:41.566 and bones of several large animals. Buffon was inundated with animal parts. Jefferson wrote, 28:41.566 --> 28:46.499 "I'm happy to be able to present to you at this moment the bones in the skin of a moose, 28:46.500 --> 28:51.633 the horns of another individual of the same species, the horns of the Caribou, the elk, 28:51.633 --> 28:55.799 the deer, the spiked horn buck, and the roebuck of America." 28:55.800 --> 29:02.133 And then diplomatically concludes by asking the Frenchman to reconsider his views. 29:02.133 --> 29:06.599 Jefferson's correspondence is littered with this kind of interaction with the 29:06.600 --> 29:10.800 the the academic and thinking world of the 18th and and early 19th century, 29:10.800 --> 29:17.700 which would be his place. Regardless of what it's about. Agriculture, the making of a harpsichord, 29:17.700 --> 29:22.166 in which he actually has a bespoke harpsichord built for him after he's been unhappy with the plans 29:22.166 --> 29:27.266 that have been sent to him. So he corresponds with the harpsichord maker that is best known 29:27.266 --> 29:31.299 in France and and orders especially designed harpsichord for himself. 29:31.300 --> 29:36.000 He's just a man who worked with his collection in a way to rebuild his 29:36.000 --> 29:41.300 world the way he wanted to see it. Catastrophic fire unfortunately again 29:41.300 --> 29:48.200 struck the Capitol on Christmas Eve 1851, and it destroyed 2/3 of Thomas 29:48.200 --> 29:54.833 Jefferson's book collection. The surviving volumes, which are now housed in the Rare Book 29:54.833 --> 29:58.966 and Special Collections Division, still serve Jefferson's driving purpose 29:58.966 --> 30:04.166 to have the sum of philosophical and practical endeavor readily available. 30:04.166 --> 30:09.666 In celebration of the library's bicentennial in the year 2000, we launched a project to reconstruct 30:09.666 --> 30:14.499 the 1815 Thomas Jefferson Collection. 30:14.500 --> 30:17.700 That fell to me. I had to find 2/3 30:17.700 --> 30:22.000 of the 6487 volumes matching exactly editions 30:22.000 --> 30:26.166 and issues. Some of the matching additions we actually found 30:26.166 --> 30:29.666 elsewhere in the library's holdings. We are, after all, at origin, 30:29.666 --> 30:34.699 a late 18th early 19th century library. Other missing works we've accumulated 30:34.700 --> 30:40.933 through gifts and mostly through purchases. This is a fairly complicated and ambitious project, 30:40.933 --> 30:46.699 but I would say we've made rather good progress from the original desiderata. 30:46.700 --> 30:52.400 After all was said and done of 1012 items that we unable to locate quickly, 30:52.400 --> 30:55.466 the list has been reduced to less than 300. 30:55.466 --> 31:00.699 Not bad, right? From 2/3 down to 300. The remaining titles are being sought 31:00.700 --> 31:06.733 out on the antiquarium market. We're seeking the scarce as well as just the utterly common, 31:06.733 --> 31:12.899 the arcane as well as the mundane. This is the nature of the Antiquarium book market. 31:12.900 --> 31:15.366 I'm looking for an a 12 page Italian pamphlet 31:15.366 --> 31:21.566 on the nature of the pomegranate tree. We're looking actually looking for 31:21.566 --> 31:25.132 books in nine different languages from three centuries, published in all 31:25.133 --> 31:30.533 corners of Europe and the New Republic. So far we have accumulated books on 31:30.533 --> 31:36.533 education, agriculture, forestry, horse breeding, chemistry, typography, military discipline. 31:36.533 --> 31:41.466 As you can see, Jefferson had trouble setting boundaries for his collection. 31:41.466 --> 31:47.499 We're still trying to locate an 1804 copy of The Theory and Practice of Brewing. 31:47.500 --> 31:53.933 A book that Jefferson had once lent to Captain Merriweather. As in that Merriweather and later 31:53.933 --> 32:00.799 urgently recalled from him, this is a note sent via runner with a note saying "we are this very day 32:00.800 --> 32:06.266 beginning the business of brewing malt liquor. Send the book." [ Laughter ] 32:06.266 --> 32:10.632 Jefferson's collection tells us a great deal not only about him as a collector, 32:10.633 --> 32:16.233 but how he viewed the world, his world, the American world. You're looking at a copy from 32:16.233 --> 32:22.133 Thomas Jefferson's collection. This is one that survived the fire, a bound set of two pamphlets that 32:22.133 --> 32:25.699 originally had been owned by Ben Franklin. This is not uncommon. 32:25.700 --> 32:29.866 Actually, you'll see this later on that Jefferson was not a bibliophile collector. 32:29.866 --> 32:34.566 At the level of connoisseurship, primacy and condition were not his concern. 32:34.566 --> 32:40.799 Content in some cases association as we find here. But it also points out something 32:40.800 --> 32:44.000 very different between the two men, which is not hard to discern if 32:44.000 --> 32:48.666 you know much about either of them. The 2 pilots that we have here are both 32:48.666 --> 32:54.199 in opposition really to the colonies. One is called Reflections, Moral and Political on Great Britain 32:54.200 --> 32:58.300 and Her Colonies by Matthew Wheelock, and the other is Thoughts on the Origin 32:58.300 --> 33:03.066 and Nature of Government by Alan Ramsey. Jefferson rarely wrote in his books. 33:03.066 --> 33:07.332 You could almost say never wrote in his books, doesn't sign his name to the cover, 33:07.333 --> 33:12.666 only puts small initials on certain pages, doesn't conveniently highlight 33:12.666 --> 33:19.299 passages and say good idea using the Declaration of Independence. He's very blank. 33:19.300 --> 33:23.666 And yet we know his correspondence is such that we know that he's read his material. 33:23.666 --> 33:26.832 Well, here we have Ben Franklin, who's quite the opposite. 33:26.833 --> 33:33.266 Holds nothing back when reading his material. And so Franklin, there. These notes are not you can see 33:33.266 --> 33:39.699 only some of them here on the side. This looks dark to me. From here, can you see this? OK, good. 33:39.700 --> 33:45.166 You can see here. But there are he sums at the end, you know, nice attempt by a fairly articulate 33:45.166 --> 33:50.732 the grossly misled young man you know, he summarizes. But here and this page is a 33:50.733 --> 33:54.999 perfect example of Franklin who is who explodes in his marginalia. 33:55.000 --> 33:59.666 The gentleman has just he's meandering around the argument of letting go of 33:59.666 --> 34:05.399 taxation of the colonies and says, I think if I can find this, a better mode of election may be 34:05.400 --> 34:08.933 established to make representation more equal and therefore we might be 34:08.933 --> 34:12.833 able to ease off on taxes in the future. This is his sort of throat clearing, 34:12.833 --> 34:17.799 that this irritating Franklin to no end and he writes in the in the margin, 34:17.800 --> 34:23.933 why don't you just go about and do it. And throughout the pamphlet you see this sort of ha ba, 34:23.933 --> 34:29.933 you know, and it's so contrary to Jefferson that it immediately raises in your mind of 34:29.933 --> 34:35.099 the question of this the presence of this book and what it means to him. But what it means to him, 34:35.100 --> 34:38.500 in fact, is that he purposely acquired this 34:38.500 --> 34:43.700 from a Philadelphia book dealer as a memorial to Benjamin Franklin because 34:43.700 --> 34:49.066 he was the man he most admired. Jefferson organized 34:49.066 --> 34:52.599 everything in his collection, including his political tracks, 34:52.600 --> 34:57.400 And on an annual basis he would gather together the pamphlets 34:57.400 --> 35:04.333 from the year that he thought were most influential in America, 35:04.333 --> 35:10.633 and he would bind them together in a binding called Political Pamphlets. And of the Date in Political 35:10.633 --> 35:15.533 Pamphlets 1774 Political Tracks, 1774, we find this Thomas Jefferson's 35:15.533 --> 35:21.533 own copy of his own work, A Summary View of the Rights of British America, 35:21.533 --> 35:27.166 the work that in 1774 brought Jefferson to the attention of the rest of 35:27.166 --> 35:31.366 the colonies at a level that have ultimately led to his being the author 35:31.366 --> 35:36.232 of the Declaration of Independence. It's an amazing and very scarce pamphlet, 35:36.233 --> 35:41.133 very scarce pamphlet today printed in Williamsburg by Clementina Rind. 35:41.133 --> 35:47.366 So we have one of the Williamsburg publication which is scarce, even more scarce, printed by a woman. 35:47.366 --> 35:50.766 But what's interesting about it is that Jefferson never intended for this to be published, 35:50.766 --> 35:55.399 in fact had nothing to do with the publication. So in one of the few moments in his life, 35:55.400 --> 36:01.366 he's actually written by Thomas Jefferson here because the pamphlet is labeled by a native and 36:01.366 --> 36:05.632 member of the House of Burgesses. Why is that? This was originally going to be 36:05.633 --> 36:11.199 a speech that he was going to present to the House of Burgesses. He fell sick on the on the trip 36:11.200 --> 36:17.233 to the convention, handed his talk to somebody and said, would you please read this at the session? 36:17.233 --> 36:21.733 This young gentleman being no fool, read it and said there's no way I'm 36:21.733 --> 36:26.633 standing in front of these people in reading this because it's merit, according to Jefferson, 36:26.633 --> 36:31.733 was that it was the first publication and he's correct about this, that carried that 36:31.733 --> 36:36.866 the claim to the rights of the Americans have nothing in common with the claim of rights for 36:36.866 --> 36:42.899 Englishmen other than that we live under the same tyrannical king. It's revolution. 36:42.900 --> 36:47.600 So rather than read it, they "published for table", as they called it, 36:47.600 --> 36:51.700 and had it printed up in Williamsburg. What you're looking at is one of the 36:51.700 --> 36:57.400 rare moments in which Jefferson, extremely unhappy about how his prose appeared, 36:57.400 --> 37:04.266 writes in every copy he can get his hands on every correction. 37:04.266 --> 37:07.666 He never intended this to be published. One of the great disappointments 37:07.666 --> 37:13.032 goes on later to have it published, sent off to be printed as part of his own collected works, 37:13.033 --> 37:15.499 and talks about the fact that this was 37:15.500 --> 37:22.700 much too difficult for people to cope with, but brings him to the attention of the Convention. 37:22.700 --> 37:25.966 We can find in Jefferson's collection some of the origins of the thought 37:25.966 --> 37:30.866 directly of the thought of the Declaration of Independence. This is Lord Lord Kames or Henry Home, 37:30.866 --> 37:35.832 Essays on the Principles, Morality, and Natural Religion, published in 1751. 37:35.833 --> 37:41.866 This is an example in which Jefferson has drawn from the the Scottish jurist certain ideas. 37:41.866 --> 37:48.699 Kames was part of the Moral Sense school and advocated that men had an inner sense of right or wrong. 37:48.700 --> 37:52.366 This is still a part of that Enlightenment conversation at the time. 37:52.366 --> 37:57.332 But Kames actually provides the foundation and the language for the 37:57.333 --> 38:03.699 notion of the pursuit of happiness that Jefferson appropriates and employs in the Declaration 38:03.700 --> 38:08.366 of Independence and a great fan of of Kames-- 38:08.366 --> 38:13.366 has every book published. Well. The Jefferson Collection, of course, 38:13.366 --> 38:19.166 was the book collection that Jefferson turned to in concocting and developing 38:19.166 --> 38:23.166 and writing the draft, finally, of the Declaration of Independence. 38:23.166 --> 38:27.799 It's the wrong readings, if you will, and certainly the workshop for his ideas. 38:27.800 --> 38:34.066 You're looking at the rough draft of the Declaration in Jefferson's hand. 38:34.066 --> 38:38.332 There are certain things that are going on here right away. You can see the word certain 38:38.333 --> 38:44.766 has been edited to change, inherent and inalienable to certain inalienable rights. 38:44.766 --> 38:50.032 There are changes throughout the text. Jefferson brings his books 38:50.033 --> 38:55.399 with him to Philadelphia, later writes about what was useful for him in terms of coming 38:55.400 --> 38:59.866 up with these joint selections. I was asked to write a rough draft. 38:59.866 --> 39:05.399 Franklin and Adams read it and make 42 changes which just killed him, 39:05.400 --> 39:10.100 only to have it go to committee where 39 more changes were made. 39:10.100 --> 39:14.533 And he later writes in his in his letters that this was the most painful and 39:14.533 --> 39:19.599 excruciating event of his political career with they have his prose altered in this fashion. 39:19.600 --> 39:24.400 But nonetheless it becomes the forerunner on July 3rd, 39:24.400 --> 39:30.133 late that night of 1776, when this is carried across the street to get turned into this, 39:30.133 --> 39:33.566 this is the Dunlap copy, the Dunlap broadsides of the Declaration 39:33.566 --> 39:39.399 of Independence printed at night from the draft copy that Jefferson wrote. 39:39.400 --> 39:42.800 The um [?Glorial Louia?] copy that you associate 39:42.800 --> 39:49.033 with all the signatures is done later, after the fact that you find in the National Archives. 39:49.033 --> 39:54.299 The actual announcement of the revolution is here. Enough copies were printed of 39:54.300 --> 39:58.133 the Broadsides so that members of the convention could take them back to their constituents, 39:58.133 --> 40:02.133 where it'd be red glued to walls, published in newspapers passed around. 40:02.133 --> 40:07.999 You're looking at George Washington's copy. The fold marks are there because it was given to him. 40:08.000 --> 40:14.366 He folded up, got on horseback and went to the hill and read to the troops, the volunteer troops. 40:14.366 --> 40:19.266 Telling them that we've just declared war on the greatest power in the history of the world. 40:19.266 --> 40:22.432 So when you think about revolution. 40:22.433 --> 40:27.699 In America, you have to think about print, because the only way the Revolution is 40:27.700 --> 40:33.200 announced in the 18th century is via this, the signed document. 40:33.200 --> 40:39.800 The rough draft is an idea that's unannounced. So there's an intimacy for Jefferson, 40:39.800 --> 40:45.600 for revolution, for America, between print and idea and the way in which we lead our lives. 40:45.600 --> 40:49.833 And this is a document that's incredibly loaded with that kind of passion 40:49.833 --> 40:53.266 and understanding of the period. This is Jefferson's copy of the 40:53.266 --> 40:57.866 Federalist Papers is one of his copies. This is a secondhand copy that came to him from Mr. 40:57.866 --> 41:02.899 Church, which originally came from his sister 41:02.900 --> 41:07.733 Elizabeth Hamilton, who happens to be married to Alexander Hamilton. 41:07.733 --> 41:11.166 Those of you who stayed around for your civic lessons remember that the 41:11.166 --> 41:14.966 it's a series of pseudonymous essays, all signed "Publius" and the great parlor 41:14.966 --> 41:19.799 game of the period was to figure out who had written which essay. Jefferson succumbs, 41:19.800 --> 41:23.800 and one of the few times he writes in his books and on the verso of this 41:23.800 --> 41:31.300 title page he has essays 3456 by Mr. Hamilton, essays number da da da by Mr. J, 41:31.300 --> 41:35.633 the rest are by Mr. Madison. We have Madison's copy, where he's done the same thing, 41:35.633 --> 41:36.766 and they don't agree. 41:36.766 --> 41:39.399 [ Laughter ] 41:39.400 --> 41:43.600 I told you that Jefferson was fond of 41:43.600 --> 41:49.866 code and stenography and cryptography and this is the perfect example. 41:49.866 --> 41:54.532 Here is a code sheet that Jefferson developed with numbers and letters that 41:54.533 --> 41:58.966 he presented to Lewis and Clark that they should take with them on their famous 41:58.966 --> 42:05.732 expedition so that if they felt moved, so moved to report to the president via along the road, 42:05.733 --> 42:10.099 they could write their message in code. At least it fall into the hands of 42:10.100 --> 42:15.233 I'm not sure. So the scheme is a little complicated but 42:15.233 --> 42:19.799 just he's concerned that they may not quite understand how to to utilize the code. 42:19.800 --> 42:25.366 So on the back he's he's giving them a way of how you translate and then how you number 42:25.366 --> 42:28.666 and at the end gives you a full-fledged 42:28.666 --> 42:33.832 version of how to code your message. This tells us more about Jefferson's notion 42:33.833 --> 42:37.933 of what the Lewis and Clark expedition is than anything else I've seen because 42:37.933 --> 42:42.699 of the message he translates for us is "I'm at the head of the Missouri, all's 42:42.700 --> 42:49.400 well and the Indians so far friendly." Needless to say, this was 42:49.400 --> 42:55.266 never used by Lewis and Clark. And then just as a gesture 42:55.266 --> 43:03.132 to Thomas Jefferson, his recipe for ice cream. Why? Well, there happened to be 9 gastronomy 43:03.133 --> 43:07.899 books in Jefferson's collection. The New York Post sneered at them 43:07.900 --> 43:12.933 because most of them were in foreign languages of the French and dealt 43:12.933 --> 43:19.566 with such things as pigs and potatoes, rabbits and pigeons, 43:19.566 --> 43:25.299 but nonetheless of course became the foundation for it is now 2 very famous gastronomy collections 43:25.300 --> 43:32.766 in the Library of Congress. I have only a few minutes left. I want to just give you a quick taste 43:32.766 --> 43:37.832 of the collections that have come to us and now make up the library that was 43:37.833 --> 43:43.833 first initiated by Thomas Jefferson. 43:43.833 --> 43:47.733 When Jefferson let go of his books, John, when it was announced that 43:47.733 --> 43:53.499 they were selling the collection, John Adams wrote to Jefferson saying, 43:53.500 --> 43:59.066 by the way, I envy you this immortality. 43:59.066 --> 44:04.766 There, the 18th and early 19th century America. The correspondence between the young 44:04.766 --> 44:09.132 presidents is always interesting to me. Here's Adams and Jefferson 44:09.133 --> 44:13.833 are both finished being president. They've done what they've going to do politically. 44:13.833 --> 44:17.733 And here is Adams acknowledging that if all the work that they've done, 44:17.733 --> 44:21.499 the great immortality for Thomas Jefferson will be the fact that his book collection, 44:21.500 --> 44:27.266 because he comes ensconced, as does the Library of Congress. Jefferson doesn't respond at first, 44:27.266 --> 44:33.866 waits until everything is over with, and then writes, "I cannot live without books," and goes on to say, 44:33.866 --> 44:38.366 "but fewer of them will suffice if I'm building a collection only 44:38.366 --> 44:44.832 for my amusement and my old age." That, by the way, translated into 1000 more books that he bought, 44:44.833 --> 44:49.733 which is called his retirement library. So that's the fast story of how the 44:49.733 --> 44:53.066 choicest collection of books in the United States laid the foundations 44:53.066 --> 44:59.032 for the world's greatest library. It's possible today to select any type of material or format in the 44:59.033 --> 45:05.333 collections and somehow relate it back to Jefferson's vision. I'm going to stop here rather than go 45:05.333 --> 45:12.233 through a march of materials because of time. But I can say with great earnestness 45:12.233 --> 45:15.766 that almost any subject matter that 45:15.766 --> 45:20.399 researchers look at today has its origin, in some fashion or another, 45:20.400 --> 45:25.733 with Thomas Jefferson's book collection. Whether it be laws regarding women, 45:25.733 --> 45:32.233 whether it be gastronomy, agriculture, engineering, physics, poetry, whatever the source, 45:32.233 --> 45:38.466 it's present in the spirit of Thomas Jefferson's book collection. He said to Abigail Adams in 1813 45:38.466 --> 45:44.932 that reading was the greatest of all of his amusements. And I think it's his passion and 45:44.933 --> 45:51.899 earnest passion around reading that prompted Jefferson to build the library the way he did. 45:51.900 --> 45:57.466 And for 50 years it he lived with it. It served him mostly his political vision, 45:57.466 --> 46:04.499 but also it shaped his daily life in Monticello, and then became the foundation 46:04.500 --> 46:10.100 for a fledgling nation, and for centuries since has served as the nation's library. 46:10.100 --> 46:15.333 Reconstructing this provides fresh insights, I believe, into the mind of Thomas Jefferson, 46:15.333 --> 46:21.866 reconstructing his book collection, and certainly tells us the world from which he drew his ideas. 46:21.866 --> 46:27.599 It was the wellspring to one of the deepest thinkers that America had produced, 46:27.600 --> 46:33.800 author of the Declaration of Independence, the third President, a true visionary. In the richly 46:33.800 --> 46:39.200 ornamented hall in the building named in his honor, and in its thousands of volumes. 46:39.200 --> 46:43.200 We're soon going to make permanent the display of Thomas Jefferson's book collection, 46:43.200 --> 46:49.600 so that anyone can rediscover the dialogue Jefferson had with his books, 46:49.600 --> 46:56.066 gain a sense of his ideas, his time, the context of his thought. Perhaps most important, 46:56.066 --> 47:00.232 it will symbolize and revitalize, I hope, the principle on which the 47:00.233 --> 47:06.299 Library of Congress had been built, that knowledge and free access to it by both leaders and the 47:06.300 --> 47:09.933 governed is essential to democracy. Thanks. 47:09.933 --> 47:16.666 [ Applause ] 47:16.666 --> 47:19.232 Do you want to do questions? [Elizabeth Fee:] Yes. 47:19.233 --> 47:24.533 Thank you for a wonderful presentation. You all have a microphone in front of you. 47:24.533 --> 47:29.866 If you could lean in and speak to the mic everyone will be able to hear you. 47:29.866 --> 47:33.899 [Mark Dimunation:] You didn't realize all those asides that you were making to 47:33.900 --> 47:38.266 your friend sitting next to you, we're all being picked up on the mic, did you? Yeah, hi. 47:38.266 --> 47:43.599 [Audience] What list did you use to reconstruct the library [?]. 47:43.600 --> 47:47.900 And was it detailed enough in all cases to know that you got the right 47:47.900 --> 47:51.300 addition and the issue of a title. [Mark Dimunation:] This is a really complicated 47:51.300 --> 47:56.233 topic. We are using as the basis of reconstructing Thomas Jefferson's 47:56.233 --> 48:01.099 Library a 5 volume bibliography done by Millicent Sowerby in the 50s, 48:01.100 --> 48:05.666 starting about 1950 through 1959. It is a difficult process 48:05.666 --> 48:08.399 because Jefferson's list was 48:08.400 --> 48:13.633 very truncated. Very 18th century 48:13.633 --> 48:19.899 Sterling Octavo 4 volumes. You pray that there's only one 48:19.900 --> 48:24.533 octavo 4 volume edition of Sterling, otherwise you have to do a lot of research. 48:24.533 --> 48:29.333 And that's what she did. It took her nine years. She read every scrap of paper in the 48:29.333 --> 48:33.099 Thomas Jefferson Manuscript Collection. She transcribed anything in any 48:33.100 --> 48:37.000 document that related to any author or book that she found present in the 48:37.000 --> 48:40.966 list and put together one of the great bibliographies of the 20th century. 48:40.966 --> 48:46.032 We are maintaining that because that's the origin of the Jefferson Collection 48:46.033 --> 48:51.133 reconstitution at the Library of Congress. She was often incorrect and we've made 48:51.133 --> 48:55.633 a lot of of of Corrections to that. But it was a a mammoth project and a 48:55.633 --> 49:01.633 really magnificent piece of work on her part. Since then, since that's publication, 49:01.633 --> 49:07.333 there has been discovered tryst list. It's referred to then the first 49:07.333 --> 49:11.166 librarian of Congress is demonized in the world of bibliography because 49:11.166 --> 49:16.532 he lost Thomas Jefferson's book list. And in the process, when he arranged Jefferson's collection 49:16.533 --> 49:21.166 when I first came in, muddled. Now you see you've heard enough about Thomas Jefferson. 49:21.166 --> 49:25.466 You know how this is going to go over. He mixed up the chapters, the 44 chapters, 49:25.466 --> 49:29.732 and kind of did his own little version. And Jefferson wrote a letter that 49:29.733 --> 49:35.366 he was quite unhappy. And this list then got even 49:35.366 --> 49:39.632 more truncated, more confounded. As time went by. It was, I think, 49:39.633 --> 49:44.266 in the 80s that the Trist list was found. We realized that there's some errors in the organization. 49:44.266 --> 49:47.299 But we're so ensconced with Sour be that we're staying with Sour Bee 49:47.300 --> 49:50.500 and owning up to the fact that the Trist list is probably more accurate. 49:50.500 --> 49:55.733 Yeah. Well, it needs this material 49:55.733 --> 49:59.766 be available online so that more people can connect with it. 49:59.766 --> 50:04.566 Well, right. Yes. In fact, 50:04.566 --> 50:08.732 the. Was that something I did 50:08.733 --> 50:13.466 00 K? Sorry, I thought. I pressed the 50:13.466 --> 50:19.932 button. The the library will be up online and we're slowly digitizing. We've digitized chunks of it. 50:19.933 --> 50:26.299 We're not going to digitize all 6487 at the moment because some of these really are just not 50:26.300 --> 50:31.400 interesting in that fashion. There are other books to do. But when the exhibition goes up, 50:31.400 --> 50:38.000 yes, there'll be a lot of of multimedia page by page. And in fact I can show you what 50:38.000 --> 50:41.533 the exhibition looks like. I was getting long winded so I stopped. 50:41.533 --> 50:46.466 But I had lots of pretty pictures for you. But I can show you at least what the 50:46.466 --> 50:52.099 display looked like will look like. So you get a sense of it because it's really pretty. Gosh, golly, 50:52.100 --> 50:55.100 [no speech detected] 50:55.100 --> 50:58.100 [no speech detected] 50:58.100 --> 51:01.100 [no speech detected] 51:01.100 --> 51:04.100 [no speech detected] 51:04.100 --> 51:07.100 [no speech detected] 51:07.100 --> 51:10.100 [no speech detected] 51:10.100 --> 51:16.300 you've got the lights on. 51:16.300 --> 51:19.966 So it mimics the circle and it stands. 51:19.966 --> 51:26.166 It stands in one of the great corner rooms of the Library of Congress and follows 51:26.166 --> 51:31.599 the order of chapters of these white sections that you see are dummies that 51:31.600 --> 51:35.766 we place for books that were missing, that will be replaced as we accumulate them. 51:35.766 --> 51:39.932 Obviously this is the first time I did the exhibition and we had about 900 books missing. 51:39.933 --> 51:44.799 Now we're down to this 300, but nonetheless we label every book that actually was Thomas 51:44.800 --> 51:49.033 Jefferson's and the rest. So all this will the visually will be there. 51:49.033 --> 51:54.733 We can we can see the world again. Thanks for Downing the lights 51:54.733 --> 51:57.533 but some of the books will be there digitized as well and all the panel 51:57.533 --> 52:01.599 text and all that will be there. I think even I'm talking but I'm not 52:01.600 --> 52:07.000 so sure that'd be all that interesting. But me? I think I'm there, yacking away, and some download. 52:07.000 --> 52:11.700 [no speech detected] 52:11.700 --> 52:15.766 This is perhaps a little beyond the Library of Congress's concerns. 52:15.766 --> 52:21.466 But are the final retirement library of 1000 volumes still at Monticello? 52:21.466 --> 52:25.966 Well, no. The retirement library 52:25.966 --> 52:31.832 was sold after Jefferson's death. 52:31.833 --> 52:35.833 It was auctioned off by a man named Poor. It's referred to as the poor sale, 52:35.833 --> 52:42.166 but everyone thinks it means because he was so broke. But it's the poor sale and the books 52:42.166 --> 52:46.566 were distributed, so they're available. You should know. I don't know how many of you 52:46.566 --> 52:51.232 work with 18th century books, but in 18th century books you'll notice at the bottom of a page, 52:51.233 --> 52:57.966 often times a letter appears, so A then next page A1 or A2A3A4. They're called signatures. 52:57.966 --> 53:01.599 It's a way of putting the book together so that the binder doesn't have to 53:01.600 --> 53:04.900 read the book or understand the book, and it helps the printer keep track 53:04.900 --> 53:09.433 of how they're printing the book. They're called signatures. Jefferson would not write in his books, 53:09.433 --> 53:15.233 but he would go to the J signature, which is really an I in the 18th century, 53:15.233 --> 53:19.766 and put a T in front of it. And then he'd flip to the back where 53:19.766 --> 53:24.499 there's a T Signature and put a J next to it. So anyone who deals with their books, 53:24.500 --> 53:27.533 you immediately fall in love with Thomas Jefferson. You see this, and it's just, 53:27.533 --> 53:32.133 it's sweet and it's adorable and it's completely perfect. It's perfect. 53:32.133 --> 53:38.099 And that means they're about 1000 books floating around in the book market that have Jt's in them. 53:38.100 --> 53:43.633 And of course, there's also prompted a lot of forgeries. Monticello is not trying to 53:43.633 --> 53:48.299 buy back Jefferson Provenance. As far as I know, 53:48.300 --> 53:54.500 they are in the process of creating a massive database of every book Jefferson owned, 53:54.500 --> 54:00.500 which is really a big project. I have some. We're talking to them because there's 54:00.500 --> 54:03.600 some lack of clarity as to which book represents which library, 54:03.600 --> 54:09.833 and since 6487 of them represent my holdings. I don't want people thinking 54:09.833 --> 54:15.899 that they're Monticello, but there are books from the retirement library that other people hold. 54:15.900 --> 54:21.866 I own about 150 of the retirement library books. The Library of Congress does. 54:21.866 --> 54:27.266 Yeah. So it's possible. If you go, it's a great if you know if you're in the right section. 54:27.266 --> 54:32.232 18th century thought mostly open up and look for a T signature. If you see A J, 54:32.233 --> 54:36.533 you might be holding one of the Jefferson books, probably from a dealer who 54:36.533 --> 54:42.066 doesn't know what they're doing, which is even better because you can get it cheap. 54:42.066 --> 54:46.599 So that's it. I would love to. They're going to recreate it virtually, but they're not going to go 54:46.600 --> 54:51.933 out and accumulate the books. It's a shame, actually. I wish they would. 54:51.933 --> 54:57.099 Yeah. I'm curious, what what is the world of 18th century book collectors like? 54:57.100 --> 55:02.466 How many are there in the colonies? Is Jefferson notable among them? Well, it's. Yeah, it's it's. 55:02.466 --> 55:06.866 Yeah, there are a number that are notable. 55:06.866 --> 55:12.332 It's a different world in the sense that it's your only access to to text collecting. 55:12.333 --> 55:16.566 What we would call collecting is in fact access to text in the 18th century. 55:16.566 --> 55:21.399 There are, there are none to speak up really. Libraries, your only access is through 55:21.400 --> 55:26.633 whatever comes from Europe and what's printed in the colonies and the fairly 55:26.633 --> 55:30.533 fledgling Press of colonial America. And so almost every plant, 55:30.533 --> 55:35.366 every planter has a collection. There are a good number. Peter Forest Collection, 55:35.366 --> 55:40.299 The Reynolds Collection. There are a number of collections that are Rab Adams in this very 55:40.300 --> 55:45.366 sweet letter in which Adam says I envy you this immortality. He later just can't help himself but 55:45.366 --> 55:50.099 enter back into competition and say, I only own half the number of books you own. 55:50.100 --> 55:56.500 But so Adams has about 3000. It's the only way in which learned 55:56.500 --> 56:01.333 individuals in the colonies could really live in the world of ideas was 56:01.333 --> 56:06.466 to buy the books and bring them in. So that's the nature of 18th 56:06.466 --> 56:11.632 century collecting in the colonies, which is why colonial provenance books 56:11.633 --> 56:16.066 always they look like workaday books, as opposed to the royal collections 56:16.066 --> 56:22.066 or the landed collections or the gentlemen collections of 18th century England where they're all 56:22.066 --> 56:26.799 dressed up with no place to go. These are workaday books by and large. Only in Philadelphia, 56:26.800 --> 56:33.600 a couple of New York collections do you have the dress up dressed up kind of connoisseur collections. 56:33.600 --> 56:38.333 One of our young graduate students visiting Jefferson becomes famous 56:38.333 --> 56:43.233 because he develops a sense of connoisseurship about prints. So it's the emergence of that kind 56:43.233 --> 56:47.066 of level of consourship in America. Comes with the generation after Jefferson. 56:47.066 --> 56:53.499 Yep. Hi. Hi. Yes. 56:53.500 --> 57:00.000 So I'm wondering up how soon after the library was purchased, did it become available 57:00.000 --> 57:04.233 to the public for use? They published a catalog in 1815. 57:04.233 --> 57:10.266 I'm not sure if in this period 57:10.266 --> 57:14.732 of time the flight, the, the, the renamed Congressional Library, 57:14.733 --> 57:21.366 now Library of Congress was at that point a Public Library. 57:21.366 --> 57:24.499 It's the first time I've ever been asked that question and I don't know the answer to that. 57:24.500 --> 57:29.266 Maybe somebody here does. We of course, now, when we go on the road, always remind people that 57:29.266 --> 57:32.599 every single thing you've seen, you can come into the Bear Book division, 57:32.600 --> 57:38.100 if you're over 18 and call it up and look at it medieval manuscript and cunable, 57:38.100 --> 57:44.500 whatever. We're a Public Library. But in 1815, I don't know, you'd have to go to Blodgett Hotel. 57:44.500 --> 57:49.700 I'm not sure they were quite set up for that. But the catalog was published relatively early. 57:49.700 --> 57:53.433 There's another one that comes out again in response to Jefferson's objection 57:53.433 --> 57:59.399 when the librarian loses the list, and that sets off a whole 57:59.400 --> 58:04.100 wave of bad catalogs. But the first Library of Congress catalog is fairly early 58:04.100 --> 58:09.100 letterpress, very short entry, 58:09.100 --> 58:17.066 last name, 1st 5 words of title, city format 58:17.066 --> 58:22.266 when I called. When I was looking for the collective works of Thomas Stern for this collection, 58:22.266 --> 58:28.132 I called Quart, which is a very famous book dealer in in London. For those of you who don't live in 58:28.133 --> 58:31.733 this world renowned for especially English literature and I'm looking for 58:31.733 --> 58:36.633 the collective works of Thomas Stern, language author. And I called and I said I'm 58:36.633 --> 58:41.699 trying to find the the, the 4th Dublin edition of Thomas Stern's collected works, 58:41.700 --> 58:47.333 thinking this would be one of the fast ones. I could just pick up and move on, right? 58:47.333 --> 58:51.733 And there's dead silence on the phone. I'm like, did I say that right? 58:51.733 --> 58:56.399 And I'm looking to make sure I've got it, you know it's right. And I said is there a problem? 58:56.400 --> 59:02.066 And this is the expert on the century of the century of that literature. 59:02.066 --> 59:06.366 I didn't know there was a first double in addition of Thomas Stern's works, let alone a fourth. 59:06.366 --> 59:11.099 What are you looking for? And I said, this is Thomas Jefferson's book collection. Oh my God. 59:11.100 --> 59:17.200 That started a long conversation about the love, the kind of collecting which was 59:17.200 --> 59:22.800 sometimes books by the box as far as Jefferson was concerned. 59:22.800 --> 59:26.233 So sometimes these truncated entries are 59:26.233 --> 59:28.966 difficult to cope with. Because of that. 59:28.966 --> 59:33.199 [Elizabeth Fee:] Any other comments or questions? 59:33.200 --> 59:35.333 [Mark Dimunation:] Please come see us at the Library of Congress 59:35.333 --> 59:41.966 when you get off this gorgeous campus, lovely campus. And thank you again for a really 59:41.966 --> 59:44.166 delightful day. [Elizabeth Fee:] Thank you. 59:44.166 --> 59:48.499 [ Applause ] 59:48.500 --> 59:49.600 [ Fade to black ]