Friday - worked on talk all day. At 11 o'clock went and poured coffee for the board, as I felt my duty as a fellow I should. Met Andrew Burstein, the author from the book launch last night and he said that when he first read Jefferson's letters to Alexander 20 years ago, he was very touched by the beauty of the language. He would like to see more on Alexander. Here's a review of the book from last night's launch.
Also met with John McCusker - a leading expert of economic history for the period we are looking at. He was great - asked me what I was doing. I talked about the ships mandates I had found - and he started to ask me what I saw. I said I saw a list of goods. He said "so what, what else did you see?" - went on like this for a bit until I said I saw a name next to every item being shipped across from Glasgow. These goods were not coming on spec - they had been paid for up front and this was one of the secrets of the Scottish success in business. Great stuff for this talk - all coming together I think.
Saturday was up first thing and headed off to Poplar Forest - an estate of Jefferson's where Alexander used to take a lot of the tobacco. The house here Jefferson started in 1806 as his country retreat - to get away from the crowds at Monticello. I love the idea that whilst Alexander had been in prison and was signing everything away with a shaky signature, Jefferson was designing this house, complete with not one, but two octagonal privies on either side. What house is complete without one or two for that matter?
The House had burnt down - so a bit like Lulworth Castle inside, all brick walls etc. Wasn't allowed to take pictures inside - not too sure why, sure the bricks wouldn't have minded, but still.
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