“Robert Penn Warren’s Encounter with Thomas Jefferson”
2
II, p. xv) Between the appearance of these two versions of the poem, Warren
published Brother to Dragons as “a play in two acts” in The Georgia Review.
6
The “tale” told in Brother to Dragons is both grisly and melodramatic.
Lucy Jefferson, younger sister of Thomas Jefferson, married colonel
7
Charles
Lewis. Lewis moved his family, including sons Lilburne and Isham (the younger
by a dozen or so years) and his slaves, from Albemarle County, Virginia, to an
estate along the Ohio River west of Louisville, Kentucky. Shortly after this
relocation Lucy died, and Charles Lewis spent much of his time away from Rocky
Hill, leaving Lilburne in charge. On the night of December 15, 1811,
8
Lilburne and
Isham, in front of their assembled slaves, used a butcher axe to kill and
dismember a young slave for having broken a favorite pitcher of their dead
mother. This murder eventually came to the attention of local authorities, and
Lilburne and Isham were indicted, arrested, and released on bail to await trial.
They agreed to avoid trial by engaging in mutually assisted suicide by shooting
(in one version of the story, over the grave of their mother). But this plan went
awry when Lilburne was shot and killed prematurely, either through his own
hand or that of Isham. Isham was detained for the murder of his brother, but
escaped from jail and disappeared. Legend has it that Isham joined Andrew
Jackson’s forces and fought with Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans, where he
was fatally wounded, and that he was recognized as he lay dying.
While this brutal murder and the bizarre series of events that flow from it
provide the backdrop for Warren’s poem, the real action of the poem is the
encounter between the principals of the historic events and “R. P. W.,” the “writer
of this poem” who also serves as interlocutor. This encounter between R. P. W.
and the shades of the past is set in “no place” at “any time.” (BD I, pp. 2-3; BD II,
pp. 2-3). This particular, and peculiar, placement in time and space is another
way of saying, according to Warren, “that the issues that the characters . . .
discuss are . . . a human constant” (BD II, p. xv). Warren is especially interested
in understanding how the murder committed by Jefferson’s sister’s sons—his
nephews—affected Jefferson’s understanding of human nature. This matter of
understanding Jefferson’s reaction is complicated by the fact that there is no
evidence that Jefferson ever commented on the incident.
9
Jefferson opens the revised version of Brother to Dragons by claiming
that he “Cannot, though dead, set/My mouth to the dark stream that I may
unknow/All my knowing.” (BD II, p. 5) He had set his knowledge against his
hope: “I tried to bring myself to say:/Knowledge is only incidental, hope is all—
/Hope, a dry acorn, but some green germ
10
/May split it yet, then joy and the
summer shade.” (BD II, p. 5) He seeks shelter from his knowledge—his shelter
seems to be “senility/And moments of indulgent fiction”—so that he “might
try/To defend my old definition of man.” (BD II, p. 5)
Jefferson’s “old definition of man” is the “vision” contained in the
Declaration of Independence, a vision of man in which both liberty and equality
are maximized, and reason rules all. “In Philadelphia first it came, my
Convention