University of Virginia Library

The Year Ends

As the traditional season for building in the handcraft era approached its climax in 1819,
Jefferson could look back upon it with satisfaction in spite of the year's setbacks
(particularly the inability of the stone carvers to keep pace because of the poor quality of
their material). By Christmas eve the approach of winter in the "more genial climate" of his
Virginia south, Jefferson observed to George Ticknor of Harvard, "is scarcely announced by
it's harbingers ice and snow." "Repeated and severed attacks of illness" since his visit to
Warm Springs after the meeting of the Rockfish Gap Commission in the fall of 1818 had not
often prevented his excursions to the university for "daily exercise." With glee Jefferson
could exclaim that the "hobby of his old" age was carried on with "much activity and hope,
and will form an unique and beautiful Academical Villa," in which every professor "will
have a distinct house, or pavilion, to himself," of the "best workmanship of street
architecture, intended as regular and classical models for the lectures on that subject. to each
is annexed a garden and other conveniencies."[366]