Peter Boody's Blog: Inside Out: a not-so-smalltown editor's life - Posts Tagged "monticello"
Poetic license and Monticello
My wife and I went back to Monticello for the first time since I wrote "Thomas Jefferson, Rachel & Me." (We are at UVA's Cavalier Inn as I write this - Oct. 19, 2012.)
I was stunned to see no huge tulip poplar tree in the angle of the north terrace.
TJRM readers will recall that this magnificent tree is an important element in the opening scene and in a climactic scene late in the book.
Had I got that totally wrong as I wrote the book back home in Sag Harbor, NY? Had I imagined it being there when in fact I was really remembering another big tree, a cedrela, not a tulip poplar, very near the office at the end of the terrace?
No. I hadn't imagined that unforgettable tree. Turns out they cut the poplar down within the past year, afraid it could destroy the house if it fell in a storm as did two other trees in the east front of the house without hitting anyone or anything.
The old poplar was planted in Jefferson's time, it turns out. The foundation had believed it was a later addition but analysis done after it was felled proved its age. The tree balanced another poplar the foundation had known Jefferson planted (he mentions it in his notes) at the angle of the south terrace.
It was cut down in 2008 because it was sick and a threat to the house.
Now there are two big stumps cut close to the ground where those trees had stood sentry through the centuries. The house looks naked from the west lawn — as it did in TJ's time. He fretted about the absence of majestic trees near the house. They were all too young to be grand then.
Tragic, Those poplars, trees TJ knew himself, grew to a majestic height and size and now they are both gone.
Does it matter in terms of the book? Does it spoil those scenes, which are now even more fictional than they were before?
I don't think so. Not only does TJ survive in TJRM, so does that vanished tree.
I was stunned to see no huge tulip poplar tree in the angle of the north terrace.
TJRM readers will recall that this magnificent tree is an important element in the opening scene and in a climactic scene late in the book.
Had I got that totally wrong as I wrote the book back home in Sag Harbor, NY? Had I imagined it being there when in fact I was really remembering another big tree, a cedrela, not a tulip poplar, very near the office at the end of the terrace?
No. I hadn't imagined that unforgettable tree. Turns out they cut the poplar down within the past year, afraid it could destroy the house if it fell in a storm as did two other trees in the east front of the house without hitting anyone or anything.
The old poplar was planted in Jefferson's time, it turns out. The foundation had believed it was a later addition but analysis done after it was felled proved its age. The tree balanced another poplar the foundation had known Jefferson planted (he mentions it in his notes) at the angle of the south terrace.
It was cut down in 2008 because it was sick and a threat to the house.
Now there are two big stumps cut close to the ground where those trees had stood sentry through the centuries. The house looks naked from the west lawn — as it did in TJ's time. He fretted about the absence of majestic trees near the house. They were all too young to be grand then.
Tragic, Those poplars, trees TJ knew himself, grew to a majestic height and size and now they are both gone.
Does it matter in terms of the book? Does it spoil those scenes, which are now even more fictional than they were before?
I don't think so. Not only does TJ survive in TJRM, so does that vanished tree.
Dazzled kids and their Monticello find
Here's my theory on the surprising sale of 19 paperback copies of TJRM Nov 9 -10 thru individual Amazon orders, one after the other (a thrill to see after weeks with almost no paperback sales).
I've convinced myself those buyers were the classmates of the girl, maybe a 7th grader, who found the signed copy I purposely left atop a brick buttress in the dim all-weather passageway under Monticello, during a visit my wife and I made in October.
I brought the book along with the plan of leaving it somewhere in Charlottesville or on the mountain; it was my wife's idea to leave it in the passageway, which I instantly realized was a cool concept for a lot of reasons — one being a little detail at the end of the book.
A couple of hours after leaving it in there, I spotted her with the book, sitting on a bench outside the passageway with a classmate — obviously they were with a group of school kids milling all around them.
It's my guess that her teacher, after checking out this curious find from the bowels of Monticello, assigned it to the class. (Must have been a private school for that to happen so fast or at all.)
Several people have suggested it should be marketed as a YA book — something I never intended when I wrote it. They say it's a fun way to teach some history. (See Joan Baum's review in Dan's Papers in May, 2012.)
So. That's my little fantasy. I'm hoping there will be 19 people out there who will, as the grow up, fondly remember TJRM as a very engaging experience.
If anyone out there knows who that group of 19 buyers is, I'd love to know.
I've convinced myself those buyers were the classmates of the girl, maybe a 7th grader, who found the signed copy I purposely left atop a brick buttress in the dim all-weather passageway under Monticello, during a visit my wife and I made in October.
I brought the book along with the plan of leaving it somewhere in Charlottesville or on the mountain; it was my wife's idea to leave it in the passageway, which I instantly realized was a cool concept for a lot of reasons — one being a little detail at the end of the book.
A couple of hours after leaving it in there, I spotted her with the book, sitting on a bench outside the passageway with a classmate — obviously they were with a group of school kids milling all around them.
It's my guess that her teacher, after checking out this curious find from the bowels of Monticello, assigned it to the class. (Must have been a private school for that to happen so fast or at all.)
Several people have suggested it should be marketed as a YA book — something I never intended when I wrote it. They say it's a fun way to teach some history. (See Joan Baum's review in Dan's Papers in May, 2012.)
So. That's my little fantasy. I'm hoping there will be 19 people out there who will, as the grow up, fondly remember TJRM as a very engaging experience.
If anyone out there knows who that group of 19 buyers is, I'd love to know.
Inside Out: a not-so-smalltown editor's life
Bits and pieces from my newspaper column as well as some riffs on the horrors of novel writing and trying to get one's work the attention it deserves.
...more
- Peter Boody's profile
- 8 followers
