Retreat to Poplar Forest

          Jefferson considered his governorship to have ended on June 1, but when he fled from Monticello the next day, the Assembly, now convened in the western town of Staunton, had not been able to elect a successor. Nor was it able to until June 12, when it followed Jefferson’s recommendation and elected militia commander Thomas Nelson, Jr., investing him with both the military and civil leadership, and thus the authority Jefferson had lacked. Technically, then, Virginia had been without a head for ten days, and because Jefferson declined to join the Assembly when it regrouped in Staunton, many members considered that he had deserted his post at the time of his state’s greatest danger.
          For his part, Jefferson seemed to have vanished. For two weeks after his arrival at Poplar Forest, he drafted not a single letter. Even more extraordinary, he did not enter a single entry in his memorandum book, his daily accounting of expenses that provides the most complete record of his activities and whereabouts. Then, after a notation on June 30 of a payment of £600 to a Dr. Brown for two visits, two more weeks of silence.  Later he explained these days of isolation as recuperation from a fall from his horse, which may well be true; but it is equally certain that he passed through an agony of shame, humiliation, and self-reproach that would haunt him for a lifetime.
        Jefferson did more during these six weeks at Poplar Forest than just nurse his injuries, physical and psychic; it was here that he drafted the main part of his answers to the queries of M. Marbois about Virginia, the supremely-troubled, unmanageable country that he had failed so conspicuously to govern. “The subjects are all treated imperfectly; some scarcely touched on,” he would attest six years later in his introduction to the published version. “To apologize for this by developing the time and place of the circumstances of their composition, would be to open wounds which have already bled enough." In this passage at least, we can trust that Jefferson was being completely candid.
Jefferson buffs imagine him and his family in the charming octagonal country house, a kind of mini-Monticello, which he designed and built at the site. It would be hard to conceive of a more perfect writer’s retreat. But that beautiful Palladian dwelling would not be constructed for another quarter century. The estate in 1781 was bare of buildings besides the slave quarters and one or perhaps two overseers’ cabins. The Jefferson family took up residence in one of these for the better part of two months.
        The replies to Marbois’ Queries provided Jefferson with an opportunity to reimpose order on a world over which he had lost control, and which had cut him to the quick. It evidently had begun to serve this purpose even before he left office. Famous for his imperturbability, Jefferson displayed an uncanny degree of detachment from the several crises surrounding him during his work on the Notes. Scholars have indulgently recounted the evident eagerness and enthusiasm with which Jefferson turned to the task of compiling facts about his home state for the French diplomat. It is disconcerting, however, to realize that these absorbing researches were conducted while that state was under invasion, and its governor under attack for his inattention.