Another early-twentieth-century biographer similarly highlights his romantic life and emphasizes that Jefferson found himself in exciting social circles as a young man, where he "met lovely and refined ladies, felt the pleasure and temptation of social entertainments." He positions Jefferson as normal in his desires and romantic orientation: "In common with the vast majority of young men, Jefferson had known what it was to fall in love with handsome girls. At college he had tenderly nursed a passion for a sweetheart or two, and while he was studying law he had been sorely smitten. Just how many of these adventures the young man had weathered before he met the charming Widow Skelton is not clear, but there were several."" Another early-twentieth-century biographer writes, "He did his share of dancing and flirting with the pretty girls at Williamsburg and Rosewell, thought fondly of Belinda, sent gallant messages to Betsy Moore and Judy Burwell, bet a pair of garters with Alice Corbin, [and] pinch-hit as a beau for Sally Nicholas."15 Illustrating the earlytwentieth-century expectation for love and romance, one account explains, "The love affairs of Thomas Jefferson were perfectly normal: he experienced the usual youthful infatuation before the right one came along."" This account includes a chapter on Jefferson that describes Burwell as his first love.
Although we know little about her, his early correspondence with Burwell has been mined to speak of an early love that could well have blossomed into marriage. Seven letters written by Jefferson to a male friend, John Page, and several to another, Will Fleming, preserve the interactions that have been read by many as "anguished affection."17 Jefferson met Burwell in 1762, when he was nineteen and she was sixteen. For his biographers, the letters written to his friend Page reveal playfulness, wit, and anxiety about love. But at least one biographer has long pointed out that "in trying to make up his mind to follow her he was a laggard."" Journalist Albert Jay Nock in his biography of Jefferson explains that he could have married an early crush but did not-"Rebecca Burwell did not take the young man's attentions any too seriously. No question she might have married him if she had liked."" In the early twentieth century, one biographer sums it up thusly: "His most serious flirtation" during his college years "was with a Miss Rebecca Burwell.... [T]he lover was too cool, or the courtship too protracted.... Miss Burwell cut the courtship short by marrying another in 1764."20
This emphasis on Jefferson as sociable and amorous only increased through the century. One mid-century author notes, "One gathers that he was not so much enchanted with a girl as with girls" and that "the college days of Jefferson were not entirely free from the entanglements of Cupid," adding that he was "a favorite with the girls." This biographer also argues that as Jefferson matured, he became increasingly appealing to women: "That he was a prime favorite among the charming belles in and about Williamsburg we may assume from the record, and he was no stranger to the ballrooms and the flowering grounds of the country seats near-by... [H]e appealed to the young women by his appearance and manner. Physically he was now impressive and distinguished.... [H]is ability as a dancer was not lost on the young ladies."" Similarly, decades later, another biographer asserts, "Had all the women Jefferson invited to make the tour of America with him accepted his offer, he would have suffered from an embarrassing plethora of female company"22
By the mid-twentieth century, this presentation of Jefferson was in overdrive. One author stretches the bounds of his analysis by declaring that Jefferson's healthy sexuality could be determined simply by looking at his masterpiece, Monticello. "Anyone who has visited Monticello," he explains, "realizes that Jefferson had a sharp eye for alluring lines and arresting curves. At times he was particularly interested in feminine architecture.... He was always aware of the attraction of a well-turned ankle, a prettily rounded breast, or a soft, inviting voice that set one's nerves on urge. In other words, Jefferson was not only a philosopher."23 Burwell was the early flirtation that simultaneously blew up into a first serious possible wife (and then at the same time authors almost shrugged their shoulders in disappointment that he failed the test of manly sexuality)-"in Jefferson's courtship of her, cau tion had replaced ardor."24 Despite Jefferson's apparently rather awkward approach to her, biographers have seized on this relationship as one of youthful and intense love. In the 1990s, journalist Willard Sterne Randall would also highlight the Burwell story and point to her as evidence of Jefferson's deep passions for women, as well as someone whose "awkwardness" could get in the way of his successfully "courting" her. For Randall, Burwell was a "first flame" of Jefferson's, one who filled him with "infatuation," a girl he was "stunned by."25 Journalist Christopher Hitchens similarly repeats the lore and crafts it as part of Jefferson's "early instability," when he was a reckless youth who spent his time chasing "loose company."26
Martha: Marriage and Loss
As we have already seen, interest in Jefferson's personal life dates back to his lifetime and was expressed in images, poetry, and the written word. Jefferson's very earliest biographers, however, following the style of the day, include relatively little information about his romantic life or even his marriage. In 1826, T.P.H.Lyman only mentions Jefferson's marriage with little comment on the nature of the relationship.27 Several early publications portray his life primarily through original letters rather than the voice and analysis of a biographer. In such accounts, Jefferson is, however, described as a man with a "mild and amiable wife."28 By 1843, several writers began to include additional commentary on the marriage. Thus, lawyer, author, and son of the famed first chaplain of the U.S.House of Representatives William Linn remarks that Jefferson married the "daughter of Mr. John Wayles of Virginia, an alliance by which he at once gained an accession of strength and credit, and received, in the intervals of public business, that domestic happiness he was so well fitted to partake and enjoy"29
Randolph expands the discussion of her great-grandparents' courtship: "So young and so beautiful, she was already surrounded by suitors when Jefferson entered the lists and bore off the prize." Randolph's account illustrates the Victorian-era emphasis on domesticity and romantic love: "A pleasant anecdote about two of his rivals has been preserved in the tradition of his family. While laboring under the impression that the lady's mind was still undecided as to which of her suitors should be the accepted lover, they met accidentally in the hall of her father's house. They were on the eve of entering the drawing-room, when the sound of music caught their ear; the accompanying voices of Jefferson and his lady-love were soon recognized, and the two disconcerted lovers, after exchanging a glance, picked up their hats and left."30 The account serves to rescue Jefferson from being merely the rejected suitor of Belinda and establishes him as having bested other suitors for the desirable Martha Skelton.
Randolph also includes an anecdote about the Jeffersons' first arrival at Monticello as husband and wife, in heavy snow, "late at night" after all the "servants" had "retired to their own houses for the night." Having glossed over slave life at Monticello, the account proceeds to depict a charming scene of the young couple, who were "too happy in each other's love" to be bothered by the cold and who quickly, according to Randolph, "refreshed themselves" with wine they found "behind some books," warming themselves with "song and merry laughter.""
Virtually all late-nineteenth-century accounts focus on portraying Jefferson in harmony with the Victorian ideals of marriage and family. For example, Parton's 1874 biography includes a chapter entitled "Jefferson in Love."32 Parton was a newspaperman who "self-consciously defined his identity as America's first professional biographer," insisting that he was not a "hack-biographer" at a time when high-brow/low-brow distinctions were being drawn for the genre.33 Parton's biography of Jefferson began as a series for Atlantic Monthly, a notable popular achievement for the "first modern American biographer" who had already tasted success with biographies of Aaron Burr and Benjamin Franklin.34
By 1878, Parton's account had gone through several editions. Drawing on family stories first told to Henry Randall, his Life of Thomas Jefferson
gives the fullest description of his marriage and loss of his wife. He describes Jefferson's wife as "Martha Skelton, childless, a beauty, fond of music, and twenty-two." Using the metaphor of musical instrument, he playfully notes "how delightfully the piano and the violin go together," adding coyly "when both are nicely touched." Jefferson, he explains, "grew better looking as he advanced in life" and had "now advanced from the bashful student to the condition of a remarkably successful lawyer and member of the Assembly."35 John Torrey Morse's 1883 account also emphasizes charm and beauty: "The bride had every qualification which can make woman attractive; an exquisite feminine beauty, grace of manners, loveliness of disposition, rare cleverness, and many accomplishments."36 In these tellings, such qualities reflect as much on Jefferson as they do on Martha.
Parton also includes the cozy story of Jefferson and Martha's first approach to Monticello as a married couple: "No voice welcomed them. No door opened to receive them. The servants had given them up long before, and gone home to bed. Worst of all, the fires were out, and the house was cold, dark, and dismal. What a welcome to a bride on a cold night in January!" This version leaves out the bottle of wine and focuses solely on the couple's exuberance: "They burst into the house, and flooded it with the warmth and light of their own unquenchable good-humor!" Parton remarks, "Who could wish a better place for a honeymoon than a snug brick cottage, lifted five hundred and eighty feet above the world, with half a dozen counties in sight, and three feet of snow blocking out all intruders?"37 The scene delightfully emphasizes their privacy while providing for the reader an exceptional vantage point from which to view their love.
For Parton, the marriage brought Jefferson great joy: "The year 1772, which was the first of Jefferson's married life, I think he would have ever after pronounced the happiest of all his years." But as we know, the joy would not last forever. Jefferson's painful deathbed promise to Martha is described in detail and yoked to the pleasure of their love: "At last she said that she could not die content if she thought her children would ever have a step-mother; and her husband, holding her hand, solemnly promised that he would never marry again." But Parton adds what would become a romanticized barometer of the depths of his love for his wife, his terrible grief at her passing. Parton explains, "Towards noon, as she was about to breathe her last, his feelings became uncontrollable. He almost lost his senses. His sister, Mrs. Carr, led him staggering from the room into his library, where he fainted, and remained so long insensible that the family began to fear that he, too, had passed away. They brought in a pallet, and lifted him upon it. He revived only to a sense of immeasurable woe."38
Other writers read deeply into his wife's death and her deathbed scene, yoking them to his faithfulness to her after her death. Describing the scene in tender prose, one account explains, "Holding her other hand in his, Mr. Jefferson promised her solemnly that he would never marry again. And he never did. He was then quite a young man, and very handsome, and I suppose he could have married well; but he always kept that promise."" As Linn writes, the marriage would end in tragedy: "Its duration, however, was but short; in little more than ten years, death deprived him of his wife, and left him the sole guardian of two infant daughters; to whose education he devoted himself with a constancy and zeal, which might, in some measure, compensate for the want of a mother's care and instruction."4o
In early-twentieth-century biographies, Jefferson's marriage emerges as, above all else, the most important aspect of the view of him as a red-blooded American man. One biographer concedes that "the general poverty of fact and record concerning Mr. Jefferson's early years is threadbare in the matter of his marriage. No one knows how he met his wife or what she was like."" And another explains, "He saw to it that no mementos of hers were preserved for posterity. There are many relics of the Jefferson family, but none of Martha not one ringlet of her hair, not a garment she may have worn, not a piece of jewelry she may have prized."42 But many of the same biographers nonetheless claim to know the most intimate and hard-to-document aspect of the relationship-their true regard for each other. One writer captures the essence of how public memory has revered the marriage: "Mr. Jefferson's marriage was one of the most successful known to biographical literature." But the author does not stop there: "In the harmony of the relation between himself and wife there never seems to have been a discord. No shadow ever fell between them chilling their perfect, trustful devotion."" Another notes, "The wooing had not been perfunctory nor cold," although we have no evidence either way, and continues, "The profound love that marked their married life makes more than questionable any such conclusion."44 Through the century, the depiction remains largely unchanged. According to one typical account, "For a decade, all their dreams had come true."45 Writes another, "They were to remain lovers to the end. It was a happy household."46 This depiction would only strengthen as the century passed. The 1969 musical 1776, which was so successful that it became a popular film in 1972, depicts Jefferson and Martha as nearly sexcrazed and utterly in love. Although we know that she was suffering from a difficult pregnancy at the time, in the film they cannot contain their passion: Jefferson is shown actually taking a break from writing the Declaration of Independence to make love. In addition to celebrating his virility, the film suggests that sex not only served as a distraction from his work but also informed his belief in individual liberty and pursuit of happiness. This depiction delighted fans of the musical, who saw the presentation as echoing that generation's view of sexual desire as natural and the censorship of the 1950s as an allegory for Victorianism. The image of the Jeffersons as exceptionally loving has remained constant, and the bond was poignantly underscored by Martha Jefferson's death in 1782 at the age of thirty-three.
In the late twentieth century, many biographers repeat the oft-told story of the Jeffersons' first arrival to Monticello as husband and wife "snug in their picturesque honeymoon retreat" and just at the "start of their domestic life." "Whether it be fact or fiction," explains one author, it "properly conveys the spirit of their marriage."47
As is typical of such accounts, an emphasis on her attractiveness helps establish his credentials as a desirable man and as one whose desires were consistent with societal norms. "She was beautiful" writes one authoralthough we have no contemporary images of her and we should ask the relevance-" better educated than the average Virginia belle of the day and her mind was superior."48
Given the general paucity of information about how the Jeffersons met or how their relationship developed, biographers mobilize his reaction to the loss of his wife as evidence of their bond. One turn-of-the-twentieth-century account, typical of most, remarks, "Undoubtedly Mr. Jefferson loved his wife with an extraordinary depth of devotion. It must have been so, for there is a clear record that when she died, he was inconsolable, and that he remained always quietly faithful to her memory, never finding room in his heart for any other woman."49 A 1960s account notes that he never found another: "Jefferson's affection for Martha was as deep as it was exclusive."" By the 1990s, the depiction of Jefferson's love for Martha continues to be evidenced by courtship tales of when they "fell in love," the threadbare lore about their first arrival to Monticello, and the alleged deathbed promise that Mrs. Jefferson solicited from her husband before passing away.51
In his review of The Hemingses ofMonticello, preeminent historian Edmund Morgan writes of the marriage (with veiled contrast to George Washington), "No one believes that dynastic succession was of huge importance to Jefferson. He married for love." He also states, "Fidelity and felicity were the themes of the married life of Thomas and Martha Jefferson. When she died he was utterly undone. It is said, and there is no reason to doubt it, that the happy intimacy of this marriage was so nearly complete that he promised Martha to take no wife in her place. And to that he held."52 Other academic historians confidently assert the same, despite the lack of complex documentation. "Thomas Jefferson loved his wife with all his heart," assures one historian.53
Cosway:
A "Legitimate" Object of Affection
Twentieth-century writers also add descriptions of a new romance with Maria Cosway. In the nineteenth century, biographers depict Cosway as a friend, but for most twentieth-century biographers, Cosway is a woman with whom Jefferson fell passionately in love. Jefferson met her while a relatively young widower in Paris, and although their story is generally discussed as a scandal, it is worth noting that she was married at the time of their association. His earliest biographers avoid discussion of Maria Cosway as a romantic relationship, focusing instead on only his wife, Martha. The evidence for the relationship comes to us from eighteenth-century correspondence, and many early biographers, perhaps finding a relationship with a married woman distasteful, dismiss it as "flirtation." Only later would the letters serve as evidence for an entirely new interpretation-that she became his "lover and mistress."54 Jefferson famously broke his wrist while with Cosway, and (in the absence of any evidence) many paint romantic visions of the scene-his gallantly dashing over a fountain to impress her or leaping a log. By the 1940s, there is division among biographers about how to treat the relationship-as flirtation or a clear signal of "adultery."
But this omission would end by the mid-twentieth century. Although recent accounts also point out that Jefferson began his relationship with the enslaved Herrings while in Paris, virtually all twentieth-century biographers highlight Cosway as the Paris romance. Undoubtedly, this is in part because Cosway was white and Herrings was black. Biographers often assert that this relationship was intensely passionate and punctuate the story with an image of the "beautiful" Cosway. Recently the affair has been unequivocally embraced and sincere love declared. "If ever a man fell in love in a single afternoon it was he," writes one biographer about Jefferson's instant emotional state after meeting Cosway.55
Sex and the Founding Fathers: The American Quest for a Relatable Past (Sexuality Studies) Page 7