Books: Precise Touch

JEFFERSON THE VIRGINIAN (484 pp.)—Dumas Malone—Little, Brown ($6).

“A few broad strokes of the brush would paint the portraits of all the early Presidents with this exception, and a few more strokes would answer for any member of their cabinets; but Jefferson could be painted only touch by touch, with a fine pencil, and the perfection of the likeness depended upon the shifting and uncertain flicker of its semi-transparent shadows.”

With the second part, at least, of this famous statement by Henry Adams, Columbia’s Professor Dumas Malone agrees. In this first installment of a four-volume work on Jefferson and his time, Malone has drawn a careful portrait of the tall, sandy-haired young Virginian who drafted the Declaration of Independence and struggled with dignity through two harassing years as Virginia’s war governor. Malone’s touches are precise and measured rather than fine; neither lights nor shadows are handled warmly, and his picture remains academic. But he does supply a sound and scholarly account of Jefferson’s first 41 years.