In Pursuit of Jefferson: Traveling through Europe with the Most Perplexing Founding Father (Historical Nonfiction Travel Memoir)

By Derek Baxter

A debut that combines historical nonfiction with travel books, for fans of Bill Bryson and Tony Horwitz, In Pursuit of Jefferson is the story of an American on a journey through Europe, following the epic trail of Thomas Jefferson.

A controversial founding father. A man ready for a change. And a completely unique trip through Europe.

In 1784, Thomas Jefferson was a broken man. Reeling from the loss of his wife and stung from a political scandal during the Revolutionary war, he needed to remake himself. To do that, he traveled. Wandering through Europe, Jefferson saw and learned as much as he could, ultimately bringing his knowledge home to a young America. There, he would rise to power and shape a nation.

More than two hundred years later, Derek Baxter, a devotee of American history, stumbles on an obscure travel guide written by Jefferson—Hints for Americans Traveling Through Europe—as he's going through his own personal crisis. Who better to offer advice than a founding father himself? Using Hints as his roadmap, Baxter follows Jefferson through six countries and countless lessons. But what Baxter learns isn't always what Jefferson had in mind, and as he comes to understand Jefferson better, he doesn't always like what he finds.

In Pursuit of Jefferson is at once the story of a life-changing trip through Europe, an unflinching look at a founding father, and a moving personal journey. With rich historical detail, a sense of humor, and boundless heart, Baxter explores how we can be better moving forward only by first looking back.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sourcebooks
• Release date: Mar 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781728225395

Derek Baxter

Derek Baxter is a labor and human rights lawyer who lives in Virginia. You can follow his adventures with Thomas Jefferson at www.jeffersontravels.com.

Book preview

Thank you for downloading this Sourcebooks eBook!

You are just one click away from…

• Being the first to hear about author happenings

• VIP deals and steals

• Exclusive giveaways

• Free bonus content

• Early access to interactive activities

• Sneak peeks at our newest titles

Happy reading!

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

Books. Change. Lives.

Copyright © 2022 by Derek Baxter

Cover and internal design © 2022 by Sourcebooks

Cover design by Ploy Siripant

Cover images © wilatlak villette/Getty Images, Dai Yim/Shutterstock, IdeaBug/Getty Images

Map illustration by Travis Hasenour

Internal image © Druzhinina/Getty Images

Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional service. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. —From a Declaration of Principles Jointly Adopted by a Committee of the American Bar Association and a Committee of Publishers and Associations

All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

Published by Sourcebooks

P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

[phone]

sourcebooks.com

Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress.

To William, John, Thomas Lee,

Liana, Miranda, and Nico,

my fellow followers of Hints.

I respect all of you,

admire four of you,

and love three of you.

TABLE OF

Contents

Chapter One: The Starting Line

Chapter Two: Something New Under the Sun

Chapter Three: Traveling like Jefferson

Chapter Four: Paris, Springtime

Chapter Five: The Earth Belongs Always to the Living

Chapter Six: Rambles through the Vineyards

Chapter Seven: Jefferson’s Dream

Chapter Eight: Sitting in an English Garden

Chapter Nine: Behind the Fence

Chapter Ten: A Continued Feast through Italy

Chapter Eleven: The Rice Smuggler

Chapter Twelve: Remedial Education

Chapter Thirteen: The Architecture of Dreams

Chapter Fourteen: Those Who Labor for My Happiness

Chapter Fifteen: Hard Truths

Chapter Sixteen: Look Closer: Stories of the Enslaved

Chapter Seventeen: The Long Walk to Freedom

Chapter Eighteen: The Last Days of the Ancien Régime

Chapter Nineteen: French Revolutions

Chapter Twenty: A la Recherche du Moose Perdu

Chapter Twenty-One: As If Both Sides of the Atlantic Were Not Warmed by the Same Genial Sun

Chapter Twenty-Two: We’ll Always Have Paris

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Never-Ending Pursuit of Happiness

Acknowledgments

Reading Group Guide

A Conversation with the Author

Illustration Credits

Abbreviations

Notes

About the Author

• CHAPTER ONE •

The Starting Line

Napoleon loosens up to my left and Roman legionaries stretch in front of me, but I am the only Thomas Jefferson at the starting line. Not the spitting image of him, mind you. He was six foot two, straight as a gun barrel, with red hair and gray-green eyes, built like a fine horse with no surplus flesh, it was said.¹ I am six inches shorter, with chestnut hair and an un-Jeffersonian beard and blue eyes, more of a donkey than a thoroughbred. I’m wearing a tricornered hat, colonial leggings, and a cape with Thomas Jefferson helpfully embroidered in gold lettering on the back. Instead of the small notebook with ivory pages he used to record his endless observations,² I’m clutching an iPhone.

So the comparison is imperfect. But I doubt the costumed runners around me, preparing for one of the strangest marathons in the world, know what he was supposed to look like anyways. And I do have some things in common with my favorite Founding Father. We’re both Virginians who made their way here to the Médoc, a sandy peninsula on the left bank of the Gironde estuary in Bordeaux in southwest France. We were both around age forty when we traveled far from home in search of something missing in our lives.

Let’s start with Jefferson—he did come first.

You might think of Thomas Jefferson as the smooth, confident Renaissance man who could do most anything, respected (even beloved) throughout America in his time as the leading voice of liberty. That wasn’t the Jefferson of 1784. He sailed from Boston for Paris that year a broken man. Dark clouds hung over his political career; his time as governor of Virginia during the American Revolution, from 1779–81, had been a disaster. Jefferson was a brilliant writer and thinker but not the kind of decisive leader to guide a state successfully through war. He failed to prevent British troops from overrunning Virginia and, embarrassingly, had nearly been captured himself. Stung by fierce criticism from his political opponents, he announced his retirement from public life and didn’t budge from this stance, even after the war concluded. Frustratingly, his greatest accomplishment to date—that he wrote the Declaration of Independence—was known only to a few.³ Other American leaders kept his authorship under wraps to make the document appear as the consensus work of the entire Continental Congress, not that of a lone genius.

Jefferson was sensitive, and the criticism hurt. But it paled in comparison to the tragedy he suffered in 1782. Martha, his wife of ten years, died some months after a difficult pregnancy. Jefferson was devastated. He had three daughters to raise by himself in a state that he felt had turned its back on him. He didn’t know where to turn.

This is not sounding like a man who will be on the front of the nickel.

And he probably wouldn’t be on it if he hadn’t gotten on that ship to France. He brought his oldest daughter with him, entrusting his two younger ones with relatives, and began a new life. Jefferson spent five years based in Paris, a city—once he got used to it—that fascinated him. He haunted bookstalls, matched wits with other intellectuals in salons, viewed art, listened to music, planned social reforms, and became an expert on every subject that caught his fancy. He returned home in 1789 famous, a leader in government, brimming with observations on architecture, agriculture, gardening, politics, and more. Rather than mimicking what he came across in Europe, he planned to take the best of what he saw and improve the concepts in America. Jefferson had a purpose again—more purposes than any one man could hope to accomplish in a lifetime, in fact. Back home he would rise.

His greatest insights came on three trips he took away from the French capital, traveling the wide, wide world. The first was a two-month sojourn in England in 1786, where he assisted John Adams in diplomatic dealings but more profitably spent his time exploring the gentle English countryside.⁴

The next was a three-and-a-half-month-long voyage to Aix-en-Provence in the south of France in 1787, ostensibly to take mineral waters to help heal a broken wrist.⁵ The trip was really an excuse to get away from his desk; Jefferson gave up on the treatment after just a few days and instead roamed across northern Italy and along the French Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts. Here in Bordeaux, where I am now, he tasted wines and made contacts with producers who would send him their best vintages for years to come.⁶

His final journey was a seven-week work trip to Amsterdam in 1788.⁷ He left Paris for the Dutch port city heading east through what is now Belgium. When he finished his diplomacy, he returned via a leisurely route through Germany and Alsace, boating down the Rhine. I am constantly roving about, Jefferson wrote to the Marquis de Lafayette (the French aristocrat who had fought in the American Revolution) about his travels, to see what I have never seen before and shall never see again.⁸

While on the road, he took copious notes on the people he met, from peasants to princes. He learned how to make cheese in Italy, discovered the sweetest figs in the Mediterranean, and found inspiration for the architecture of his home, Monticello, in Roman ruins and contemporary Parisian domes. He crossed the Alps while charting the elevations at which olive trees survived. He wrote lyrical letters on the road, sketched inventions from his carriage, made lifelong friends, and dreamed revolutionary thoughts again. Jefferson was back.

These travels meant so much to him that when two young Americans asked him what to do on their own trip through the continent, Jefferson responded with a five-thousand-word letter—in effect a small, unpublished guide—which he entitled Hints to Americans Traveling in Europe.⁹ Worrying that men in their twenties were apt to spend too much time studying the pleasures of spas and the voluptuary dress and arts of European women,¹⁰ he crafted a sober travel regime with themes to explore and questions to answer, designed to keep them on the straight and narrow, turning them into mini-Jeffersons.

The original Jefferson had much invested in the success of this planned trip. The travelers, John Rutledge, Jr., and Thomas Shippen, were sons of acquaintances of his. They and other young men from the States had the chance to shape the just-started American Experiment. Europe was a vast tableau that Americans could mine for inspirational models and cautionary tales alike. But, he emphasized, a voyager must choose wisely. Jefferson’s worst fear was that Americans would return home with a love for foppish aristocracy or smoky industrial mills. Better to find things that would help our country, like a useful new crop or building technique, or even a decent wine suitable for importing.

And so Jefferson set down a detailed itinerary, drawing from his own travels. Hints starts in Amsterdam, then sends the traveler south through Germany and Switzerland down to Rome. The route then tracks back north to the Alps and crosses France westward along the Mediterranean. It meanders northwards along the Atlantic coast and finally ends in Paris. Along the way, travelers were to focus on eight Objects of Attention—subjects worth investigating—during their journey. It’s a fascinating read, strangely overlooked in many of his biographies. As far as I know, no one since those young Americans in 1788 has actually taken Hints and followed it.

Until now.

• • •

A copy of Hints to Americans is stashed in the trunk of our rental, parked a mile or so from the starting line of the race. I can’t believe we’re doing this, honey, says the racer behind me, my wife, Liana. Her eyes are flashing. Although she’s a generally confident person—she’s Cuban, as she’d be quick to tell you (or anyone), and Cubans are not known for being shy—neither one of us has run a marathon before. She’s in costume, too, wearing a homemade colonial woman outfit, a bonnet, and a loose-fitting skirt.

Well, we have to now. We couldn’t leave if we wanted to, I reply. There are thousands of runners compressed around us, all waiting for the gun to go off. Nearly all are in costume as well: Vikings, chimney sweeps, knights, and so many others. Following the travel advice of a man who’s been dead for nearly two centuries, while racing against cavemen and pharaohs, seems a dubious solution to my midlife crisis. But here we are.

For the last couple of years before this race I’ve felt stuck in a rut. I’m OK with my job as a lawyer dealing with technical matters in a government agency—it does pay the mortgage—but after such a long time there I’ve pretty much figured the work out. My days are the same. Get up, ride the commuter train, spend nine to five tapping on my computer and sitting in meetings, then take the train back to our town house in the northern Virginia suburbs, where we live along with our kids and Liana’s parents. Repeat. Look forward to my next raise in precisely one year, ten months, and twenty-three days. I perform like a professional at the office, but deep down I know some side of me isn’t being tapped.

At home I switch to being an overwhelmed father. We have two small kids: Miranda, age five, and Nico, age two. Both are joys. But by the time we get them to sleep I’m ready to crash myself, taking my vague dissatisfaction with my life to bed with me, still unexplained, unresolved. The roles I’ve backed into—dutiful employee, exhausted parent—seem as inflexible as the course of the stars in the sky.

Walking to the starting line: no turning back now.

Walking to the starting line: no turning back now.

When I’m riding the commuter train, my thoughts return to one of the last times I tried to find out who I was and wanted to be: when I studied at the University of Virginia, the school founded by Jefferson in Charlottesville. As a history major, I loved how the university’s Grounds, with their serpentine walls and statues of the founder, made the past seem present. Understanding history gave my own life meaning; it situated me in time and let me appreciate how I was following in the footsteps of those who came before. Back then, I dreamed of being an historian and writer—I hadn’t yet been convinced of the sensibility of going to law school.

For me, the only thing that could compete with history was travel. While history grounded me, travel allowed me to test my assumptions about the world, to discover what I shared with others and what made me different. I spent my third year in college studying abroad in Aix-en-Provence, Jefferson’s destination when he went to take the waters on his 1787 tour of France. Called the city of a thousand fountains, Aix has been a university town since the Middle Ages, known for its elegant cafés, honey-colored Renaissance buildings, springs bubbling over moss-covered rocks, and winding streets, which led to surprises.

I took classes in an American school housed in what once had been an eighteenth-century chapel and lived with a French family who ran a theater. I studied in the cafés, joined a local hiking club, and went to concerts with my hosts’ teenage son. French food was a source of constant revelation for me; I had my first encounters with the strong yet seductive flavors of truffles, escargots, and salt cod with tangy aioli sauce. Taking advantage of my twenty-year-old metabolism, I gorged on pain au chocolat as if they were about to be banned and lunched on baguettes stuffed with steak and frites.

Even better than the meals, if that were possible, was the town’s past—whenever I had the chance of combining history with travel in some way, I was in heaven. On weekends I’d take the bus to the nearby Mont Sainte-Victoire with a small guidebook in hand until I finally located all the spots from which Cézanne painted the craggy white mountain, his greatest muse. For a paper for school, I sought out elderly French people and captured their recollections of the liberation by the Americans during World War II—it was the fiftieth anniversary of both D-Day and the Allied invasion of Provence two months later. One old woman clung to my arm and told me the story of how she, a teenager at that time, took in a young American parachutist (he could not have been any older than you) who had crash-landed in the woods near her farmhouse.

Most enjoyable of all—although I didn’t volunteer this when my fellow American students recounted their beery weekend escapes—were the quiet Saturdays I spent on my own with my favorite book, Evocations of Old Aix-en-Provence, a history of every street in the medieval-era town. I’d tramp down each rue, book in hand, visualizing what had once happened there: this lane was where tanners worked, here was the ancient Roman road out of town, that square was where hangings occurred. Acquiring this knowledge made me feel like I possessed a superpower; I knew what really had happened here, perhaps even better than the French themselves did.

On school breaks I slipped away to places new to me: Paris, Strasbourg, Corsica, Valencia, Lisbon, and Tangier, filling up my journals with impressionistic descriptions. Each trip I took during that unforgettable year fueled my drive to take another. I explored Prague and shared pints with Czech college students, listening to their stories about the secret police under Communism. And what about that time the boisterous Italian family gave my sister and me (as we backpacked through Tuscany) a ride in their VW bus high up into the mountains, singing at the top of their voices as they ascended, then invited us to join them in a cookout? Or that trip to the prehistoric caves of Lascaux with my friend Laura, a fellow student, where we picnicked on fresh strawberries and pâté sandwiches in a Cro-Magnon shelter we found in the woods? (Whatever happened to her? I looked her up: she followed her dream and now she’s a writer.)

What I wouldn’t give to travel like that again. That year wasn’t just about encounters with history; it was also one of personal transformation as I learned to live with the unexpected. When I arrived, wearing my Reeboks and Orioles cap, I stuck out like a sore thumb, un pouce douloureux. I felt helpless, barely able to order food. By the end I was comfortably chatting with French students in cafés about the latest political news out of Paris, bringing food to my mouth with the fork in my left hand as they did. My crowning achievement came the night my host mother called home from her theater and, when I answered, thought for a few moments that it was her own son speaking.

Not to say that I had turned French—I did miss home—but my outlook on life expanded. There were different ways of doing things, I found out, and what to adopt and what to discard was up to me. At night I journaled about my new discoveries and plotted my next travels. The world was a blank canvas and filling it in was a joy.

Was all that destined to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience? Will I ever find that sense of wonder again? Recently, I returned to a long-discarded pursuit: spending nights reading travel journals, writings of the explorers, descriptions of long-ago trips to far-off lands. Yarns involving travel and history, tales of people conquering challenges, moving forward into the unknown, living the kind of life I once fantasized that I might lead.

And I might be reading them still if, surfing the internet late one night some three months ago, I hadn’t stumbled across Hints to Americans Traveling in Europe.

Jefferson’s itinerary fascinated me. A few of the places I had been to and would love to see again. Most I had not. Their names rolled off my tongue: Amsterdam, Heidelberg, Porto Fino, Vercelli, Carcassonne. How I would have made use of this guide if I had had it when I was a student in Aix—I would have put Evocations down and taken to the road with it in hand. I smiled when I saw the practical travel advice Jefferson included, too. Who knew a Founding Father gave tips on hotels? (Don’t miss The Wildman in Koblenz but stay away from the most unconscionable rascal of a tavern keeper in Tains.) Abundance, abundance to be seen here, Jefferson wrote in Hints on Genoa. He might as well have said that about the entire journey he designed, the best the Old World had to offer.

The eight Objects of Attention for an American particularly intrigued me; I was fascinated by which subjects Jefferson thought most useful for travelers to learn about, improving their minds so they could then better their communities back home. The fledgling republic back home was teetering financially.¹¹ Many farmers hadn’t recovered from the recent war; new ideas might help. Three Objects thus focused on economic issues, starting with agriculture, so important that everything in near relation to it should be investigated, including useful and agreeable animals which might be transported to America and plants of note. Jefferson separated the mechanical arts into two Objects of Attention. One consists of items that Americans necessarily had to construct themselves, like bridges. The other includes manufacturing, which the traveler need only pay a superficial view to since the new nation would likely be importing manufactured goods for the foreseeable future.

Three Objects belong to the realm of culture. Architecture was the most important of these, worth great attention since the new country was growing, and thus building, rapidly. Painting and statuary together form one Object, although Jefferson dryly noted that they were too costly for most Americans to afford. A surprising inclusion for me was landscape gardening, which he considered to be an art form peculiarly worth the attention of an American. Since plants abounded in the New World, all a canny landscaper had to do was remove the weeds and voilà: instant garden.

The final two Objects deal with political issues. One recommends familiarizing oneself with the monarchies of Europe, but only as examples of the worst part of mankind, dark reminders of what America broke away from. The other asks the traveler to investigate how governmental policies influence the happiness of the people by getting a firsthand look at how commoners live on a daily basis. Taken together, these missives make clear that anyone following Hints might enjoy the ride, but there was real work required on the road—Jefferson didn’t do vacations.

But even more than the specifics of the guide, what captivated me most was the identity of its author. Since I was a boy growing up in Virginia, I had looked up to Thomas Jefferson and marveled at his many talents. I checked out biographies on him from the library and visited Monticello, only two and a half hours from our house, with my parents. When our fourth-grade class staged the musical Tall Tom Jefferson, I of course played the lead, my hair powdered, singing about wanting to be remembered as one whose heart did care. To me, he was the brainy Founder, the one who wanted to change the world. There seemed to be nothing he could not do.

I took my prom date to dinner at Gadsby’s Tavern, where Jefferson celebrated his first inauguration as president in 1801, then on for a nightcap at, yes, the Jefferson Memorial. (Not surprisingly, she broke up with me not long after.) For college, I was torn between going to William and Mary—which Jefferson attended and where I could slip away after class to roam Colonial Williamsburg—or UVA, what Jefferson called his academical village. Naturally, I picked the latter, often studying on the university’s Lawn, sitting quite literally at the feet of my mentor’s statue.¹²

I looked up to him for writing the Declaration of Independence, of course, for voicing our national aspiration for freedom and sticking up for the common man. But his practice of slaveholding certainly bothered me. Having written that all men are created equal, why hadn’t he freed his own slaves? I couldn’t explain that failure, that disappointing blot on his character.

But the rest of the package seemed worthy of admiration. I was especially in awe of how he seemed to do it all. Jefferson never settled. He wasn’t locked into a routine or a single narrow career for decades. He had an insatiable curiosity and a desire to wriggle out of the traps set by the ordinary world. He elevated every situation he was in, looking deep into the subjects before him and turning himself into a Renaissance Superman in the process. Surprisingly athletic, he would measure his pace by an odometer, covering a mile in a brisk fourteen and a half minutes.¹³ Every day, he’d find time to explore his world,¹⁴ recording observations and musings: the weather, flora and fauna, snatches of music rattling in his brain, and ideas for a new America. Called a walking encyclopedia,¹⁵ Jefferson could supposedly calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, dance a minuet, and play a violin.¹⁶

Playing the role of Jefferson as a boy, looking up to him as a man. The bust of TJ is modeled after the 1789 sculpture by Jean-Antoine Houdon

Playing the role of Jefferson as a boy, looking up to him as a man. The bust of TJ is modeled after the 1789 sculpture by Jean-Antoine Houdon.

I stayed up most of the night I first came across Hints diving into Jefferson’s travel writings online and plotting paths on Google Maps. What would I discover if I followed his itinerary? Adventure, new fields of learning, hidden truths? Would any of the subjects contained in Jefferson’s guide inspire me—architecture, gardening, traveling itself? My purpose might be hidden in plain sight.

I dreamed of not a mere trip but a journey, a quest of discovery. Of sharing experiences with Jefferson that might lead to a deeper understanding about him. What I wanted to rub off on me was Jefferson’s never-flagging sense of wonder about the world. Would emulating his desire for knowledge gained through travel tamp down my gnawing dissatisfaction? I wanted the wines, the Roman architecture, the Dutch canals. Even encounters with rascally tavern keepers would at least be memorable.

Most importantly, I wondered what I might find out about that truly uncharted and fearsome territory, myself. What would happen if I just picked up his guide and went?

I checked Jefferson’s Hints. They had no expiration date.

By the time I showed up bleary-eyed to the office the next morning, though, I had mostly returned to my senses. Following Jefferson’s travels was a pipe dream, wasn’t it? I had had those before. Kicking the tires on other careers. Trying out hobbies, hoping they would push me out of my malaise. (Remember that banjo that’s now in the attic? The Italian language CDs now gathering dust?) The latest idea sounds like a blast but totally impractical given my responsibilities. I had my moment—all those travels back in college—but I’ve long since grown up.

Someday I might just chuck it all in and follow Hints. Sure. After all, now it was just one year, ten months, and twenty-two days until that next raise.

Someday.

But still I kept returning to the internet after the kids fell asleep, fascinated by the destinations Jefferson set out in his guide. Weeks later, I came across a second surprising revelation.

One of the many practical difficulties that worried me about following Hints was making the same connections to subjects that Jefferson did. Take Bordeaux, for example. How would I access the ultra-exclusive wineries he recommended visiting? That’s when I landed on a website for the Marathon du Médoc. Nearly ten thousand runners race in costume and drink wine at the twenty-one refreshment stops in vineyards along the route. It’s the longest marathon in the world, the organizers wrote, tongue in cheek, because tipsy competitors don’t run straight; they faire le zig-zag, adding miles to the requisite 26.2 (42.2 km). Even the food provided along the course was gourmet—steak, cheese, ice cream, and, at km 38, oysters freshly pulled from the nearby Atlantic.

All this astonished me. These vineyards produced thousand-dollar-a-bottle Bordeaux; they didn’t allow just anyone to stroll up for a tasting, reserving visits for discriminating critics and big spenders (as Jefferson, who was both, did two centuries earlier). They even included the famed Château Lafite Rothschild,¹⁷ whose red reached a light perfection after repose, Jefferson wrote. They were an essential destination for an American Traveling in Europe. And now I knew that one day a year these vineyards opened their gates and uncorked their vintages for the commoners, comme moi.

The website for the Marathon du Médoc featured a cartoon logo of a smiling tipsy runner tripping past the grapevines, and it called out my name as clearly as Jefferson’s Hints had weeks earlier. These wineries were not out of reach after all; I’d just have to pay a modest registration fee and run my way in. Wouldn’t Jefferson have approved? He wanted to better the lives of the common man, his beloved yeoman farmers, not just the elite.

The theme of this year’s marathon, the 2012 version, was history; 8,500 runners would dress as their favorite characters from the past. It seemed like a sign. The perfect link to Jefferson, the perfect entrée into this exclusive world of wine. I can’t put this project off anymore—wait too long and this history-themed race will have passed.

It’s more than that, though. Time won’t wait forever. Dad, who worked so hard in a bureaucratic job for his family, finally retired a few years back, ready to get back to his gardening and canoeing and writing fun pieces to share with the family. Yet now he’s having short-term memory issues. His own father died from Alzheimer’s; the memory of his decline haunts us all.

I can’t count on deferring my dreams forever, I thought. They might not be there when I’m finally ready. Or I might not be there to catch them.

How many times will your calling come for you? I stared at the cursor blinking on the screen, hovering over the Marathon du Médoc website. As midnight approached, my heart suddenly, decisively settled on an answer. Yes.

Over breakfast the next morning, I breathlessly told Liana about my plans—subject to her buy-in.

Of course, you must do this, she said calmly. That’s what I expected. From her own experience, she certainly knew something about the long road to personal growth.

Liana is three years younger than me and three inches shorter, with wavy brown hair and coffee-colored eyes. She clicks with people easily; by contrast, I can be a little reserved and detached, bemusedly observing the players in the game of life. She came over from Cuba at the age of twenty-three—how she finagled her way out is a complicated tale that deserves to be told over a beer. She arrived with a law degree earned in Havana and only a spotty command of English. Liana loves to tell the story of how when the Soviet Union, the benefactor of the Cuban communist regime, collapsed in August 1991, her middle-school Russian teacher overnight became an English teacher, a language as new to the educator as to her students. Theee peen-seel eees rrrred, she would solemnly intone to her confused class.

In America, Liana had to start all over again. She worked part-time in a day care in Charlottesville, the city where we first lived together, while simultaneously enrolling at the Jefferson School taking English as a Second Language classes. And it wasn’t just English: she had to learn everything from typing to driving to—unused to actually having a choice—picking out a bottle of shampoo from a supermarket shelf. Through sheer determination, she’s advanced to a position as an immigration policy analyst. Her career is on the rise, thanks to her drive and high energy—while mine has glided to rest on a plateau.

What about you, honey? Do you want to run a race while drinking? I asked. I’m at least a weekend jogger; Liana’s yoga won’t help her much.

Count me in. Bring on the wine, she replied.

We’re not going to do the full Hints journey all at once, far from it. I’m not quitting my job, just taking a week’s leave. I couldn’t take months off work to do the trip from start to finish, much less afford such a splurge. Most obviously of all, we can’t abandon the kids for that long. But there’s no better place to begin following Hints than Bordeaux, one of Jefferson’s favorite destinations.

If this trip goes well—if I find a glimpse of what I’m looking for, if I’m able to live a bit of what Jefferson did—then I’ll find a way to continue on the journey, even if it takes me years to complete the whole thing. Later I can brainstorm how to chop the travels up into manageable segments, to figure out how to return to the Old World and what my itinerary should look like. And to start studying these Objects of Attention so I’ll understand what Jefferson wanted me to find.

If not—if the trip feels forced or ridiculous, Jefferson’s advice just too dated—then I’ll stop and cut my losses. And at least we’ll have had some good wine. So for me, this race is more than a marathon: it’s a true trial run.

Liana and I booked tickets for five days in France. We spent a couple of months running, sometimes pushing the kids in strollers before us. I read some books on Jefferson and tried to get to know his world (basically I listened to a lot of harpsichord music). Then it was onto the plane, into the rental, and down here to the Médoc. We put on our costumes and arrived at the starting line. For the first time in over two centuries, Thomas Jefferson will be traveling through France.

• CHAPTER TWO •

Something New Under the Sun

I’m so nervous! says Liana at the starting line. But it’s a good kind of nervous. Her eyes sparkle as we bounce up and down in place. An official launches into an obligatory speech, for along with wine, cheese, and romance, France is known for its stifling bureaucracy, even at loose events like this. "Messieurs, Mesdames, welcome to the Marathon du Médoc!" Great cheers.

A reminder that the winning male and female will each receive their weight in wine as a prize. More cheers. But then the tone turns ominous. It is unexpectedly hot today. We ask you drink much water. It is greatly recommended. Silence. Don’t tell the French to drink water.

The organizer explains that an extra half hour has been allotted due to the heat, but any runner who does not finish within seven hours will be disqualified, their complimentary bottle of Bordeaux revoked. A trio of volunteers called the Sweepers will run at the slowest allowed pace—fall behind them at your peril. I look at Liana. That’s a long time for a real runner at a real marathon. Even Jefferson, at his rapid walking rate, could finish in that time. Nonetheless, our training didn’t come close to this distance. And we do need time to drink all that wine.

The starting gun cracks, two fighter jets fly over, confetti rains down, and we surge forward: Vikings waving swords, Jesus carrying his cross, and a pair of extroverted Elvises. And one eager Thomas Jefferson.

Thronged with crowds, the narrow streets of Pauillac make for slow going. We take a last glance at the mighty Gironde; we’re leaving this port town and won’t see it again until we complete our marathonic loop. After just one kilometer comes our first break. A bemused volunteer pours us La Rose Pauillac in real stem wineglasses, and I gulp mine down. My kind of race.

Take it easy, Derek, Liana says, the voice of reason. We have to pace ourselves.

We run on hard-packed dirt through vineyards steaming in the growing heat, stopping to imbibe at châteaux that looked ripped from the pages of fairy tales. No experts, we nonetheless taste the wines on offer, trying not to drip sweat into the glasses. Then it’s back to running alongside Crusaders with shields, kilted Scottish Highlanders, ahistorical penguins, and a man wearing a revolutionary red bonnet and carrying a guillotine on his back. Surrounded by these fellow travelers, I feel like a peasant on carnival day finally able to mock his lord. Château owner after owner personally hands us a glass of rarefied wine as if tossing liquid euros to the riffraff.

At km 12.5 we reach Château Gruard Larose, where we have an in. This is a rare Bordeaux winery open to the public, and the day before the race, having decided it was too late to improve our running, Liana and I had visited it to practice drinking. Patrick, the young guide for our small group tour, had a long nose that appeared to be genetically selected for sniffing wine. The vines have to suffer, he said, explaining how they penetrate deep into the rocky soil in search of water, resulting in flavorful but not overly juicy grapes.

While we were tasting the wines (a little like black cherry, Liana pronounced), Patrick asked if anyone was racing the next day. We raised our hands, as did a Japanese man who would be running as a Buddhist monk. The other tour group members stared at us, dumbfounded, unaware of the madness that would descend on the Médoc the next day.

Drinking fine Bordeaux and listening to a band in the courtyard of a château—what kind of race is this?

Drinking fine Bordeaux and listening to a band in the courtyard of a château—what kind of race is this?

What are you going as? asked Patrick.

Thomas Jefferson.

"That’s great! He came here to Bordeaux, you know. He took notes and included our winery. That was a help when it came to

Reviews for In Pursuit of Jefferson

[ladycato · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I received an advance copy of this book via NetGalley.In Pursuit of Jefferson is a travelogue through both the late 1700s and the modern age, with an increasingly deep personal journey along the way. Derek Baxter grew up in Virginia with an adoration of Thomas Jefferson. That continued into adulthood. Sure, he knew about Sally Hemings, but Jefferson did so many other things! He was a genius, a polymath, a Founding Father! He also wrote what is now a rather obscure advice book called Hints for Americans Traveling Through Europe. Baxter hit upon the idea of traveling where Jefferson traveled, chronicling how things changed and stayed the same. That alone makes for an intriguing read, but I really appreciated the narrative the most when it reached the halfway point and the author realized he couldn't try to ignore that Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal, yet owned and sold slaves--that he owned his own children. Baxter does a deep dive into how Jefferson, largely absent from Monticello for 40 years as he traveled and worked elsewhere, started out as a young idealist well-aware of the corruptive influence of slave ownership, who became the very thing he warned about. Jefferson lived luxuriously while abroad and reached a point where his slaves were his financial stability. The details around that--from the nailery shop to his escaped slaves to what the Hemings family horrifically endured in France and in Virginia--is enlightening and disturbing.What begins as a kind of worshipful exploration of Jefferson becomes a profound effort to understand the man and his frustrating contradictions. Along the way, you get to read a lot about wine in France, Jefferson's rigorous scientific hobby and how it provides a perspective on climate change, why we should all be proud of the grand North American moose, and more. The story gains even more because Baxter's family with two young kids essentially grows up within their dad's obsession. Seeing how they learn and mature through their experiences truly shows the benefits of education through travel, uncomfortable as it may be at times.This truly is a stand-out nonfiction title for the year. What I learned from this read will linger with me for a long time.