This house, this glorious house!
When Jefferson labored on its designs he was still some distance from Pennsylvania Avenue, but he was by no means an unknown. The year was 1790. He had already penned the Declaration of Independence, and served in France as the US Minister to the French government. Great words had flowed from his pen. Yet here he is taking time from his duties in Washington, and from work in his own house, to write long letters to my father’s wife, in which the business of constructing this house and the nuances of his heart are exquisitely interlaced.
If that is not extraordinary enough, consider this: Cesaria is a black woman; Jefferson, for all his democratic protestations, was the owner of some two hundred slaves. So how much authority must she have had over him, to be able to persuade him to labor for her as he did? It’s a testament to her powers of enchantment—powers which in this case she exercised, as she was fond of saying, “without the juju.” In other words: in her dealings with Jefferson she was simply, sweetly, even innocently, human. Whatever capacities she possesses to supematurally beguile a human soul—and she possesses many—she liked his clear-sightedness too well to blind him that way. If he was devoted to her, it was because she was worthy of his devotion.
They called the house he built for her L’Enfant. Actually, I believe the full name was L’Enfant des Carolinas. I can only speculate as to why they so named it.
That the name of the house is in French is no big surprise: they met in the gilded salons of Paris. But the name itself ? I have two theories. The first, and the most obvious, is that the house was in a sense the product of their romance, their child if you will, and they named it accordingly. The second, that it was the infant of an architectural parent, the progenitor being Jefferson’s own house at Monticello, into which he poured his genius for most of his life. It’s bigger than Monticello by a rough measure of three (Monticello is eleven thousand square feet; I estimate L’Enfant to be a little over thirty-four thousand) and has a number of smaller service buildings in its vicinity, whereas Jefferson’s house is a single structure, incorporating the slave and servant quarters, the kitchen and toilet facilities, under one roof. But in other regards the houses are very similar. They’re both Jeffersonian reworkings of Palladian models; both have double porticoes, both have octagonal domes, both have capacious high-ceilinged rooms and plenty of windows, both are practical rather than glamorous houses; both, I’d say, are structures that bespeak great confidence and great love.
Of course their settings are radically different. Monticello, as its name suggests, is set on a mountain. L’Enfant sits on a plot of low-lying ground forty-seven acres in size, the southeastern end of which is unredeemable swamp, and the northern perimeter wooded, primarily with pine. The house itself is raised up on a modest ridge, which protects it a little from the creeping damps and rots of this region, but not enough to stop the cellar from flooding during heavy rain, and the rooms getting damnably cold in winter and humid as hell in summer. Not that I’m complaining. L’Enfant is an extraordinary house. Sometimes I think it has a soul all of its own. Certainly it seems to know the moods of its occupants, and accommodates them. There have been times, sitting in my study, when a black thought has crept into my psyche for some reason, and I swear I can feel the room darken in sympathy with me. Nothing changes physically—the drapes don’t close, the stains don’t spread—but I nevertheless sense a subtle transformation in the chamber; as if it wishes to fall in rhythm with my mood. The same is true on days when I’m blithe, or haunted by doubts, or merely feeling lazy. Maybe it’s Jefferson’s genius that creates the illusion of empathy. Or perhaps it’s Cesaria’s work: her own genius, wedded with his. Whatever the reason, L’Enfant knows us. Better, I sometimes think, than we know ourselves.
ii
I share this house with three women, two men, and a number of indeterminates.
The women are of course Cesaria and her daughters, my two half-sisters, Marietta and Zabrina. The men? One is my half-brother Luman (who doesn’t actually live in the house, but outside, in a shack on the grounds) and Dwight Huddie, who serves as majordomo, as cook and as general handyman: I’ll tell you more about him later. Then, as I said, there’s the indeterminates, whose number is, not surprisingly, indeterminate.
How shall I best describe these presences to you? Not as spirits; that evokes something altogether too fanciful. They are simply nameless laborers, in Cesaria’s exclusive control, who see to the general upkeep of the house. They do their job well. I wonder sometimes if Cesaria didn’t first conjure them when Jefferson was still at work here, so that he could give them all a practical education in the strengths and liabilities of his masterpiece. If so, it would have been a scene to cherish: Jefferson the great rationalist, the numbers man, obliged to believe the evidence of his own eyes, though his common sense revolted at the idea that creatures such as these—brought out of the ether at the command of the mistress of L’Enfant—could exist. As I said, I don’t know how many of them there are (six, perhaps; perhaps less); nor whether they’re in fact projections of Cesaria’s will or things once possessed of souls and volition. I only know that they tirelessly perform the task of keeping this vast house and its grounds in a reasonable condition, but—like stagehands in a theater—do so only when our gaze is averted. If this sounds a little eerie, maybe it is: I’ve simply become used to it. I no longer think about who it is who changes my bed every morning while I’m brushing my teeth, or who sews the buttons back on my shirt when they come loose, or fixes the cracks in the plaster or trims the magnolias. I take it for granted that the work will be done, and that whoever the laborers are, they have no more desire to exchange pleasantries with me than I do with them.
There’s one other occupant of the place that I think I should mention, and that’s Cesaria’s personal servant. How she came to have him as her bosom companion will be the subject of a later passage, so I’ll leave the details until then. Let me say only this: he is, in my opinion, the saddest soul in the house. And when you consider the sum of sorrow under this roof, that’s no little claim.
Anyway, I don’t want to get mired in melancholy. Let’s move on.
Having listed the human, or almost human, occupants of L’Enfant, I should make mention perhaps of the animals. An estate of this size is of course home to innumerable wild species. There are foxes, skunks and possums, there are feral cats (escapees from domestic servitude somewhere in Rollins County), and a number of dogs who make their home in the thicket. The trees are busy with birds night and day, and every now and then an alligator wanders up from the swamp and suns itself on the lawn.
All this is predictable enough. But there are two species whose presence here is rather less likely. The first was imported by Marietta, who took it into her head some years back to raise three hyena pups. How she came by them I don’t recall (if she ever told me); I only know she wearied of surrogate motherhood quickly enough, and turned them loose. They bred, incestuously of course, and now there’s quite a pack of them out there. The other oddities here are my stepmother’s pride and joy: the porcupines. She’s kept them as pets since first occupying the house, and they’ve prospered. They live inside, where they roam unfettered and unchallenged, though they prefer on the whole to stay upstairs, close to their mistress.
We had horses, of course, in my father’s day—the stables were palatially appointed—but none of them survived an hour beyond his passing. Even if they’d had choice in the matter (which they didn’t), they were too loyal to live once he’d gone; too noble. I doubt the same could be said of any of the other species. They grudgingly coexist with us while we’re here, but I doubt there would be much grieving among them if we all departed. Nor do I imagine they’d long respect the sanctity of the house. In a week or two they’d have taken up residence: hyenas in the library, alligators in the cellar, foxes running riot under the great dome. Sometimes I wonder if they’re not eyeing it already; planning for the day when it’s theirs to shit on from roof to foundations.