In addition to inculcating piety in young Jefferson and teaching him the fundamentals of Latin grammar, his teacher may have exposed him to other intellectual currents. At Glasgow Douglas had studied with Gershom Carmichael, who introduced his students to the names of Locke and Grotius and the ideas they represented. Carmichael not only incorporated their thought in both his lectures and writings, but also pioneered a new approach to moral philosophy prefiguring subsequent intellectual developments that flourished with the Scottish Enlightenment. Most important, he propagated an innovative approach to the study of natural law.
Carmichael is best known for his annotations and supplements to the Glasgow edition of Samuel Pufendorf’s De Officio Hominis et Civis. This annotated edition was adopted as a textbook by contemporary professors, and it became standard reading in moral philosophy courses through the mid-eighteenth century. Francis Hutcheson, to name Carmichael’s most distinguished pupil, found his edition even more useful than Pufendorf’s original.15 There is no telling precisely how much Carmichael influenced Douglas in the matter of natural law or, in turn, how much Douglas influenced Jefferson, but the possibilities are intriguing. The subject of natural law would profoundly shape Jefferson’s thought; his exposure to such ideas could have come as early as his adolescence.
Regardless of his teacher’s miscellaneous knowledge, Jefferson was unimpressed with his linguistic accomplishments. Remembering his adolescent education, he called Douglas “a superficial Latinist” who was even “less instructed in Greek.”16 Despite his small Latin and less Greek, Douglas managed to teach his eager student the rudiments of these languages, which then served as a basis for learning French. Jefferson would sustain a profound love of Latin and Greek and would continue to devote a portion of his leisure time to the study of the classical tongues throughout his life.
Though previous biographers have taken Jefferson at his word and downplayed Douglas’s influence on him, the animosity Jefferson expressed toward his teacher seems unduly harsh. It is important to note that his critique is directed only toward Douglas’s linguistic abilities, not his overall scholarly accomplishments. Other evidence suggests that Douglas was a good teacher. Recommending him for Holy Orders to the Bishop of London, William Dawson, the commissary of Virginia—the highest ranking official of the Anglican Church in the colony—stated that Douglas had “behaved himself exceedingly well in the Office of a private Tutor.”17
Jefferson left little indication regarding what books he read either at the English school or at Douglas’s, but the evidence shows that during his schooldays he was starting to assemble his first library. Peter Jefferson’s accounts indicate payment for several books for his son during the time he boarded with Douglas.18 Though these accounts list no titles, there were certain basic texts that formed an essential part of the curriculum.
Later references to basic schoolbooks in Jefferson’s writings may offer a clue to what he read during his adolescence. His letters show him overseeing the education of his nephews during the 1770s and 1780s after the unexpected death of his best friend and brother-in-law, Dabney Carr, who had married his younger sister Martha. One letter mentions some specific works Jefferson found suitable for the three Carr boys that may indicate books he read himself as part of his own education.19
The boys, aged eight, ten, and twelve at the time of Jefferson’s letter, received an education at the hands of their uncle that closely parallels the one he had received. Peter, the oldest, was reading Virgil and would soon begin studying French. Dabney Junior, the youngest, was concentrating on English, but Jefferson hoped he would be ready for Latin within the next year or so. His educational plan must have worked, because Dabney Carr, Jr., became a learned man who would later distinguish himself as a prominent Virginia jurist during the early nineteenth century. Ten-year-old Samuel, with his uncle’s help, was making it through his grammar and had made it halfway through his Cordery.
By Cordery, Jefferson meant the colloquies of the sixteenth-century Genevan schoolmaster Maturin Cordier. Designed as a Latin conversation manual for beginning students, Cordier’s Colloquia went through countless editions from the sixteenth into the nineteenth century. Many thousands of Corderies were imported into British North America during the colonial era, and the work is listed in numerous Virginia library inventories from the period. During the eighteenth century, selected editions, generally consisting of precisely one hundred colloquies, became more popular than the complete work, which contained more than double that number. At the same time Jefferson was studying with Douglas, John Page was reading his Cordery at the grammar school of the College of William and Mary, the use of which was mandated by statute: “Because nothing contributes so much to the Learning of Languages, as dayly Dialogues, and familiar Speaking together, in the Languages they are learning; let the Master therefore take Care that out of the Colloquies of Corderius and Erasmus, and Others, who have employed their Labours this Way, the Scholars may learn aptly to express their Meaning to each other.”20 In combination with other basic works, the Cordery gave students a working vocabulary sufficient to allow them to read Latin prose and verse without having to run to the dictionary to look up every other word.
Jefferson’s literary commonplace book indicates the books he turned to next, after mastering the fundamentals of Latin. The earliest entries in the commonplace book date from the last two years he spent at Douglas’s school. Planning its contents before making any entries, Jefferson allotted space for quoting passages from Virgil, Horace, and Ovid. Though the planned entries from Virgil are missing, the commonplace book contains several Latin quotations from Horace’s Odes and Satires and Ovid’s Heroides.21
One of the most striking Latin entries from Horace that Jefferson made in his commonplace book can be translated as, “O rural home: when shall I behold you! When shall I be able, now with books of the ancients, now with sleep and idle hours, to quaff sweet forgetfulness of life’s cares!” This entry, inscribed by Jefferson in his adolescence, anticipates a sentiment he would echo time and again over the course of his political career. Copying this passage from Horace, he may have anticipated his enduring love of books and learning as well as the responsibilities that would take him from his studies for long periods of time.
Jefferson acquired Greek more slowly than Latin. After learning to read Latin verse, he was still mastering the fundamentals of Greek orthography, diction, and syntax. Conventionally, French was introduced after Greek but was generally acquired more rapidly. A copy of Rerum Romanorum Epitome, Florus’s synopsis of Roman history in a French and Latin parallel text edition, survives among Jefferson’s books at the Library of Congress with his early title-page inscription. This edition of Florus offered him a useful methodology. Parallel text editions not only facilitated language acquisition, but also let their readers compare the relationship between language and meaning.
At some point in his education, Jefferson turned to Fénelon’s Les Aventures de Télémaque, a late-seventeenth-century fictional work that formed part of the education of nearly everyone who learned French in eighteenth-century America.22 Recommending several French books to Peter Carr, who was just starting to study the language, Jefferson placed Télémaque first. Written for Fénelon’s pupil, the young Duke of Burgundy, this didactic novel narrates the adventures of Ulysses’ son and, in so doing, offers a pleasant guide to leadership to help the young duke.
This work, too, may have exerted an influence on Jefferson’s nascent political thought. It not only emphasized the responsibilities rulers have to their subjects, but also affirmed the congruence between the government of man and the harmony of nature. Fénelon articulated similar ideas in Télémaque that could be found in other works Jefferson read in his boyhood. Asked what man is free, young Telemachus responds that man is free only when fear and desire have no sway over him and when he is subject only to reason and the gods.23 Ideas Jefferson was encountering in his reading were starting to recur and coalesce. They would
keep doing so as his education continued.
Another French book Jefferson owned also dates from this period, Charles Drelincourt’s Les Consolations de l’Ame Fidèle, Contre les Frateurs de la Mort or, as it was known in its English translation, The Christian’s Defense against the Fears of Death. Jefferson’s copy, which survives at the Library of Congress, is missing its title page. Apparently, the title page was already gone by the time it came into his hands. His inscription, which appears on the first page of the book’s dedication, suggests that he acquired the volume in his teens. An inscription on the book’s flyleaf, also in Jefferson’s hand, details it provenance:
The gift of
Mrs Rachael Gavin widow of the revd Anthony Gavin, a Spaniard,
author of the Master key to Popery and Rector of Saint James’s
Northam parish, Goochland Virginia,
to Th: Jefferson.
These words reveal Jefferson’s cognizance of the Reverend Gavin’s reputation as both author and clergyman. Some years after publishing his virulent anti-Catholic treatise, A Master-Key to Popery, Gavin had received the King’s bounty for Virginia. He preached briefly in Henrico Parish before taking the position in St. James-Northam Parish. After his death in 1749, his wife, Rachel, inherited his property, including his books.24
Though neither of Jefferson’s inscriptions in his copy of Drelincourt’s Consolations is dated, he likely received the book in 1757. The work is one of a number of popular books designed to help readers cope with death. William Sherlock’s Practical Discourse Concerning Death was better known in colonial Virginia, but copies of Drelincourt, mostly in English translation, were not unusual. Drelincourt’s Consolations had a fine contemporary reputation. Daniel Defoe, in his short story “A Relation of the Apparition of Mrs. Veal,” called it the best book on the subject ever written; its author “had the clearest notions of death and of the future state of any who had handled that subject.”25 A prefatory note to the English translation of Drelincourt’s text suggests that the book made an ideal present for the bereaved, an aspect of it that helps date Jefferson’s acquisition. The custom of giving appropriate books as funeral presents was a well-established tradition in colonial America by the time Peter Jefferson died on August 17, 1757.26
Peter Jefferson’s death was not unanticipated. Though only forty-nine, he had been quite ill throughout the summer months. Starting the last week of June, Dr. Thomas Walker, friend, neighbor, and family physician, was making professional visits to Shadwell on an increasingly frequent basis. In July, Peter felt concerned enough about the state of his health to make a will. Around the time of his father’s death, Thomas broke off his studies with Douglas to return to Shadwell.
No firsthand accounts of Peter Jefferson’s funeral survive, but his Book of Common Prayer, which details the actions that should be taken and the words that must be spoken during the burial of the dead, functions as a record of the event in retrospect. As the ceremony neared its end, the coffin was lowered into the grave and those in attendance cast earth upon the coffin.
“Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother here departed,” the priest intoned, “we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body, that it may be like unto his glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself.”
Thomas Jefferson retained fond memories of his father throughout his life, but he remembered him more for his strength and judgment than for his intellect. Trained as a surveyor, Peter Jefferson had not had a great deal of formal education, yet he had made an effort to acquire a modicum of literary refinement. Thomas later expressed pride in his father’s curiosity and desire for knowledge. Being, in his son’s words, “eager after information, he read much and improved himself.” In his will, Peter stipulated that Thomas would receive “my books, mathematical instruments, and my cherry tree desk and bookcase.” Peter Jefferson’s library, though slight by the impressive standards set by well-to-do gentlemen in Tidewater Virginia, was one of the largest in Albemarle County then, though it contained fewer than fifty volumes.27
The library Thomas Jefferson inherited from his father formed a curious collection of practical and pleasurable works. He received the few law books his father had owned, the most substantial being A Collection of Proceedings and Trials against State Prisoners by the prolific historical writer Thomas Salmon. Apparently the work did not survive the fire at Shadwell, but Jefferson later acquired another copy of Salmon’s Collection—from his father-in-law. With complete editions of The Spectator, The Tatler, and The Guardian and a three-volume edition of Joseph Addison’s Miscellaneous Works, Peter Jefferson’s collection was rich in belletristic essays. As a popularizer of many current philosophical ideas, Addison gave Thomas Jefferson a solid foundation upon which he could build a superstructure of knowledge.
His father’s library also included some influential works of history, travel, and geography, including John Ogilby’s important compilation, America, a good portion of which is devoted to the story of the exploration and settling of Virginia. This, along with his father’s copy of Laws of Virginia, constitute the first known items of Virginiana Thomas Jefferson acquired for his library. Throughout his life he would keep collecting books about Virginia and eventually assemble a fine collection of Virginiana.28 Alas, Ogilby would not be part of it. His father’s copy of Ogilby’s America did not survive the fire at Shadwell, and Jefferson’s subsequent correspondence reflects the loss. Finding a copy of the work listed in a bookseller’s catalogue many years later, he tried to purchase it but was unsuccessful. Despite his best efforts, he never could replace his father’s copy of Ogilby’s America.
Two works from his father’s collection were well known throughout colonial America, Paul de Rapin-Thoyras’s History of England and Lord Anson’s Voyage. Thomas inherited a two-volume folio edition of Nicolas Tindal’s translation of Rapin’s History of England and also Tindal’s two-volume sequel to it, which continued the story of England to the accession of King George II. Rapin’s History introduced Jefferson, and many others of his generation, to Whig history. Most important, the work affirmed the Saxon roots of liberal democracy and the idea that Saxon kings could not change the laws or levy taxes at their will.29
Peter Jefferson’s copy of The History of England perished in the Shadwell fire, too, but his son eventually replaced it with a ten-volume edition in the original French. One visitor to Monticello noticed this edition of Rapin in Jefferson’s library and recorded what Jefferson said about it: “Rapin was here in French, though very rare in that language. Mr. Jefferson said that after all it was still the best history of England, for Hume’s tory principles are to him insupportable.” Once the French edition went to the Library of Congress with the rest of his books, Jefferson acquired another copy of Tindal’s English translation, the fifteen-volume octavo edition published in the late 1720s and early 1730s. Toward the end of his life, he reiterated his opinion of Rapin, asserting that “of England there is as yet no general history so faithful as Rapin’s.”30
Travel literature added much excitement to Jefferson’s boyhood reading. First published at a time when the novel was making a significant impact on the literary marketplace, George Anson’s Voyage Round the World provided contemporary readers with a nonfiction alternative that contained as much action and pathos as any novel.31 It brought the war between England and Spain alive, set it on a world stage, and gave readers an insider’s view of the strategies involved in sea battles. Anson’s stories of death, privation, suffering, and perseverance were touching, and his frequent references to latitudes and out-of-the-way places allowed readers to follow his route as he circumnavigated the globe.
“When young,” Jefferson wrote, “I was passionately fond of reading books of history,
and travels.”32 Anson’s Voyage fed this youthful passion and helped it endure. In the organizational scheme Jefferson later devised for his library, voyages and travels would be subsumed under the general category of “Geography.” His copy of Anson’s Voyage—either this or a replacement copy—would take its place in his library next to a universal gazetteer.33
The white spaces in the copy of the Book of Common Prayer Thomas Jefferson inherited from his father presented a convenient place for keeping vital family records—births, deaths, marriages. Jefferson’s family records reveal a level of meticulousness reminiscent of his teacher’s. The relative permanence of the Book of Common Prayer made sure these family records would last. It is not coincidence that this prayer book survived while so many other books perished in the fire at Shadwell.
Though the vital records within the book’s covers remain important to Jefferson family history, the other inscriptions Thomas made in the volume are more pertinent to the story of his literary and intellectual growth. To the tenth verse of Psalm 10—“The days of our age are threescore years and ten, and though men be strong that they come to fourscore years: yet is their strength then but labour and sorrow; so soon passeth it away, and we are gone”—he supplied a footnote in Greek from the first book of Herodotus. Roughly translated it means: “For I set the limit of man’s life at seventy years.”
Brief as it is, this note reveals much about its author. For one thing, it shows Jefferson’s scholarly bent. Learned annotations were characteristic of well-respected editions of classic texts. This annotation reveals a student in the process of replicating the efforts of his scholarly progenitors. The note also shows Jefferson’s interest in comparing similar ideas emanating from different cultures, a comparative impulse that recurs through much of his scholarly writings. Authors from both the Greek and Judeo-Christian traditions, Jefferson noticed, set the term of man’s life at threescore years and ten. The similar diction between the different texts may suggest a possible influence. Marginal comments in Jefferson’s hand in other surviving books present many similar comparisons.
The Road to Monticello Page 4