A more substantial note in his hand occurs later in the Book of Common Prayer, which was bound with a copy of the psalms by Nicholas Brady and Nahum Tate, A New Version of the Psalms of David, Fitted to the Tunes Used in Churches. Adjacent to verses 9 and 10 of Brady and Tate’s metrical rendering of Psalm 18, Jefferson inscribed the corresponding passage from an earlier metrical English version of the psalms, that of Thomas Sternhold. Like the Herodotus note, this, too, shows the hand of a scholar, one who takes seriously the translation of texts from one language to another.
This marginal annotation implies an aesthetic preference on Jefferson’s part, too. The Brady and Tate version reads:
He left the beauteous Realms of Light,
whilst Heav’n bow’d down its awful Head;
Beneath his Feet substantial Night
was, like a sable Carpet, spread.
The Chariot of the King of Kings,
which active Troops of Angels drew,
On a strong Tempest’s rapid Wings,
with most amazing Swiftness, flew.
The Sternhold version, as inscribed by Jefferson, reads:
The Lord descended from above
And bowed the heav’ns most high
And underneath his feet he cast
The darkness of the sky
On Cherubim and Seraphim
Full roially he rode
And on the wings of mighty winds
Came flying all abroad.
One crucial difference between the two involves the metrical form. The Brady and Tate version is written in iambic tetrameter, whereas the Sternhold version is written in the traditional ballad stanza form: alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter. Sternhold had a pragmatic reason for structuring his psalms as ballads: he wished to turn people away from vulgar ballads and toward loftier forms of expression. Sternhold’s version is also marked by a much greater simplicity in terms of diction and imagery. Drafting their version, Brady and Tate used consciously poetic diction and a variety of poetic devices, including personification and simile.
Jefferson’s marginal inscription suggests a possible preference for the more folksy, down-to-earth psalms of Thomas Sternhold over the more refined versions of Brady and Tate. In “Thoughts on English Prosody,” his fullest piece of literary criticism, Jefferson reiterated his preference for English psalms written in traditional ballad stanzas. And in a letter to John Adams, he stated that Sternhold, at least in this instance, rises to the “sublimity of his original, and expresses the majesty of God descending on the earth, in terms not unworthy of the subject.”34
Regardless of the numerous inscriptions Thomas Jefferson made in his copy of the Book of Common Prayer, his father’s flyleaf autograph may have been the book’s most important inscription to him. A book formerly in the possession of a loved one and inscribed by him takes on the power of a talisman. There are few more powerful reminders of a person’s existence than handwriting. The traditional identification rhymes people inscribed on their flyleafs during the eighteenth century reinforced the importance of a book as a personal, yet permanent object.35 Book ownership guarantees a kind of immortality. Once the book owner is dead and buried, he will live on as long as others have the opportunity to read the book he had kept for a lifetime. Peter Jefferson’s cherry bookcase was a handsome relic, yet Thomas appreciated the books he inherited far more. A father lives on in the books he leaves to his son.
CHAPTER 3
A Correct, Classical Scholar
As much as the books he inherited meant to Thomas Jefferson, they were no substitute for the father he had lost. He took his father’s death hard and, for a time, felt helpless without him. Years later he told his grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph: “When I recollect that at 14.years of age, the whole care and direction of my self was thrown on my self entirely, without a relation or friend qualified to advise or guide me, and recollect the various sorts of bad company with which I associated from time to time, I am astonished I did not turn off with some of them, and become as worthless to society as they were.”1 Without Peter Jefferson’s guidance, his son’s upbringing was consigned to committee. The men who formed the group of Thomas’s guardians and the executors of his father’s estate included Peter Randolph, his mother’s cousin; John Harvie, a family friend and business associate who would serve as the estate’s working executor; and Dr. Thomas Walker, neighbor and family physician.
Dismissing both relatives and friends as unqualified, Jefferson seems hard on his guardians, but his dismissal cannot be taken too literally. Written to inculcate a sense of self-sufficiency in a grandson, Jefferson’s words should not be interpreted as an indictment of his guardians, all of whom were intelligent, ambitious, and generally well read. Dr. Walker, for instance, exemplified many qualities Jefferson admired. Though a professional man, he devoted considerable effort exploring the western parts of Virginia. You can tell a man by the books in his library. The inventory of Walker’s library reveals his knowledge of such authors as William Shakespeare and Jonathan Swift.2 In other words, Dr. Walker combined the fortitude and vision of a western explorer with the professionalism of his calling and the refinement of a man of letters.
His guardians sent him to study with one of the finest classical scholars in Virginia, the Reverend James Maury, whom Jefferson succinctly characterized as “a correct classical scholar,” an epithet suggesting that Maury could provide the proper classical education that seemed beyond the capacity of his former teacher, William Douglas. Exactly five months after his father’s death, Thomas left Shadwell to live and learn with Maury, whose school has been called one of the finest private schools in the colonial South.3
Jefferson’s new teacher had come from a devout Huguenot family. Matthew Maury and Mary Anne Fontaine had immigrated to Virginia when their son was in short pants. James Maury enjoyed telling friends how he and his family had come to Virginia. The Reverend Jonathan Boucher warmly remembered the way he told his personal history: “Mr. Maury was of French parents; begotten, as he used to tell, in France, born at sea, reared in England, and educated in America.”4 As recorded by Boucher, Maury’s tale is colorful yet not entirely accurate; he was born in Dublin in April 1718. The following year his parents brought him to Virginia and settled in King William County, where his uncle, the Reverend Francis Fontaine, was serving as rector of St. Margaret’s Parish.
Maury attended the College of William and Mary in the late 1730s, where he ingratiated himself to James Blair, president of the college and commissary of Virginia. Blair found Maury “an ingenious young man” and a generally excellent student, proficient “in the study of Latin and Greek authors” and knowledgeable of “some systems of philosophy and divinity.”5 He earned the commissary’s favor to such an extent that Blair presented him with a copy of his four-volume edition of sermons selected from those he had delivered over the course of his lengthy career as a clergyman, Our Saviour’s Divine Sermon on the Mount … Explained. Maury’s copy of this work, which survives at the University of Virginia, is inscribed: “James Maury Willm and Mary Coll. March 17. 1740. The gift of the Reverd. James Blair, Commissary of Virginia &c.” Possibly through Maury’s influence, Christ’s “Sermon on the Mount” became one of Jefferson’s favorite biblical texts. In July Blair appointed Maury usher of the grammar school at William and Mary, a position that also involved overseeing the college library. By early 1742, Maury had decided to sail to London to take Holy Orders.
Blair wrote a letter of recommendation to the Bishop of London, whose diocese included Virginia. Since the Anglican church refused to give Virginia its own bishop, all local men wishing to serve as ordained Anglican ministers in Virginia had to make the arduous trip to London to take Holy Orders. The inconvenience rankled colonial church leaders—none moreso than Commissary Blair, who believed Virginia should have its own bishop and who very much wanted to be the first Bishop of Virginia. In his letter of recommendation Blair praised Maury’s classical education ye
t expressed uncertainty regarding the depth of his professional knowledge. After stating that Maury had studied some systems of divinity, Blair wrote, “I confess as to this last I could have wished he had spent more time in it before he had presented himself for holy orders, that his judgment might be better settled in the serious study of the Holy Scriptures and other books both of practical and polemical Divinity.”6
Despite Blair’s misgivings, Maury was ordained by the Bishop of London, received the King’s Bounty in June 1742, and returned to Virginia.7 He first preached in King William County and eventually became rector of Fredericksville Parish in Louisa County, where he remained until his death in 1769. Whatever shortcomings Maury may have had in terms of his knowledge of divinity when his career started, he made up for them over its course. The author of his obituary in the Virginia Gazette observed, “It might have been hard to say whether he was more to be admired as a learned man or reverenced as a good man.”8
In 1743 Maury wed Mary Walker, niece to Dr. Thomas Walker. Overall, she bore him thirteen children, twelve of whom survived into adulthood. By the middle of the 1750s, Maury, in part to support his growing family, acquired a plantation of his own near the estate of Mary’s uncle. Writing to one correspondent, he described the location of his home as follows: “I am planted about two miles to the northeast of Walker’s under the South West Mountains in Louisa, close by one of the head springs of the main northern branch of Pamunkey, which runs through my grounds—a very wholesome, fertile, and pleasant situation, where, I thank God, I enjoy more blessings and comforts than I deserve.”9 To supplement his income as preacher and planter, Maury took on the role of teacher.
When Jefferson arrived at Maury’s school in January 1758, he was something of a weedy youth, tall and slim with a shock of sandy red hair. His classmates included Dabney Carr and James Maury, Jr. A few years later James Madison, not the future president of the United States but the future president of the College of William and Mary, entered Maury’s school. Jefferson’s surviving comments about his school chums suggest that they formed a close-knit group of friends and compatriots who enjoyed exercise in the open air as much, if not more, than they enjoyed their bookish studies.
In a character sketch—a literary genre at which Jefferson excelled—he spoke highly of Dabney Carr. His description indicates the moral and intellectual caliber of his childhood friend and Jefferson’s devotion to Carr:
His character was of a high order. A spotless integrity, sound judgment, handsome imagination, enriched by education and reading, quick and clear in his conceptions, of correct and ready elocution, impressing every hearer with the sincerity of the heart from which it flowed. His firmness was inflexible in whatever he thought was right: but when no moral principle stood in the way, never had man more the milk of human kindness, of indulgence, of softness, of pleasantry of conversation and conduct.10
Writing in 1812 to James Maury, Jr., then serving as U.S. Consul to Liverpool, Jefferson addressed him as “My dear and ancient friend and classmate” and imagined what might happen were they to reunite: “We would beguile our lingering hours with talking over our youthful exploits, our hunts on Peter’s mountain, with a long train of et cetera, in addition, and feel, by recollection at least, a momentary flash of youth. Reviewing the course of a long and sufficiently successful life, I find in no portion of it happier moments than those were.”11
Peter Jefferson had taught his son the value of fresh air and vigorous exercise, and Thomas’s good health and longevity were due in part to his daily exercise regime. Small of stature, Maury lacked Peter Jefferson’s athleticism, but he did not discourage the athletic pursuits of his students. Recognizing the importance of physical fitness, he advocated the healthfulness of the Piedmont in comparison to Tidewater Virginia: “Persons who have been either born in the mountainous country hereabouts, or resided in it long enough to acquire what we call a mountain constitution, on their removal to the flatter lands and the large rivers, are infallibly unhealthy there, however healthy and robust they used to be here, so that, in the course of a few years, an athletic habit degenerates and dwindles into one valetudinary and cachectic.”12 Elsewhere Maury observed, “A sound mind in a sound body, with a competent share of the comforts of life, is doubtless the highest pitch of happiness to which a reasonable man could aspire.”13 His most prominent student would often express similar sentiments.
Though his school generally provided a good atmosphere for learning, Maury was occasionally distracted from the life of the mind. He grumbled about the Two-Penny Act. Passed the same year Jefferson began attending his school, this legislation fixed the parsons’ salaries at two pence per pound of tobacco and effectively reduced their salary by two-thirds. By no means alone in his dissatisfaction with the Virginia legislature, Maury would become the central figure in the Parson’s Cause, as the issue came to be called. He apparently did not let his politics get in the way of his teaching, at least not very much. Jefferson vaguely remembered Maury inveighing against the Two-Penny Act but otherwise scarcely remembered the Parson’s Cause.14
Maury owned a substantial library that offered his students opportunities for further study. The person who inventoried his estate counted four hundred volumes, excluding pamphlets. The few volumes that survive with evidence of Maury’s ownership reveal his interests in divinity and history, but the absence of a detailed catalogue makes it impossible to determine how his personal library may have influenced Jefferson’s thought. During the time he studied with Maury, Jefferson continued to augment his own personal library. The surviving accounts of guardian John Harvie indicate that in late 1759, Jefferson received a substantial shipment of books.15 These accounts do not mention specific titles, however.
A catalogue of Dabney Carr’s personal library, which survives as part of his estate inventory, offers the best evidence regarding the books Jefferson read while studying with Maury.16 Carr’s inventory lists numerous schoolbooks. Since Carr died before any of his children reached the age for formal schooling, the schoolbook titles listed in his inventory represent those he read in his youth and, therefore, those Jefferson read, too.
The classical authors and titles in Carr’s inventory provide a good indication of the Latin and Greek curricula at Maury’s school. Carr’s inventory suggests that Maury had his students reading complete texts in Latin while they were still mastering the fundamentals of Greek. Latin authors and works listed include Cicero’s De Officiis and Orationes, a collection of Horace’s verse, Cornelius Nepos’s De Vita Excellentium Imperatorum, Ovid’s Epistolae, Quintilian, and Virgil’s Opera. Discussing suitable reading for schoolchildren many years later, Jefferson suggested, “Nothing would interest them more than such works as Cornelius Nepos.”17 Nepos gave Jefferson and his fellow students an inspiring collection of patriotic biographies detailing the lives of Greek and Roman soldiers.
Greek is represented by more basic works: a Greek grammar, a Greek dictionary, and a Greek Testament. Jefferson fondly remembered studying his Greek grammar as a schoolboy. Francis Walker Gilmer, who befriended him in the early nineteenth century, recorded an anecdote Jefferson related about his behavior at school in comparison with that of his classmates: “Even when at school he used to be seen with his Greek Grammar in his hand while his comrades were enjoying relaxation in the interval of school hours.”18
The Carr inventory also suggests that he and Jefferson studied French. Given Maury’s personal background, it makes sense that he taught his students French. Whoever inventoried Carr’s estate, however, could not read French or, at least, lacked the patience to list each of the French titles. The inventory lists only one French work separately, Charles Rollin’s four-volume De la Manière d’Enseigner et d’Étudier les Belles-Lettres or The Method of Teaching and Studying the Belles Lettres. Rollin’s work emphasizes the importance of learning French and advocates an open-minded, humanist approach to the study of literature. Rollin stressed the importance of cultivating the teacher�
�student relationship, an idea Maury took to heart.
The remaining French books Carr owned are listed simply as five French books. Though the inventory provides no additional clues to identify these books, other evidence permits the identification of one. J. D. Matthieu’s Dialogues Rustiques, a fundamental work designed for learning how to speak French, survives among Jefferson’s books at the Library of Congress. Its vellum covers besoiled, its pages bethumbed, the inside cover of this book nonetheless bears a clearly legible inscription: “Dabney Carr son Livre.”
Other titles in Carr’s library indicate that Maury taught a wide variety of subjects. One such title is Robert Dodsley’s Preceptor, which James Boswell called “one of the most valuable books for the improvement of young minds that has appeared in any language.”19 Dodsley outlined a general course of education covering such topics as astronomy, chronology, commerce, drawing, ethics, geography, geometry, history, logic, manners, natural history, poetry, reading, rhetoric, and writing. Additional schoolbooks Carr owned taught more specific subjects: Nicolas Lenglet Dufresnoy’s Geography for Children: or A Short and Easy Method of Teaching and Learning Geography, Isaac Watts’s Logick: or, The Right Use of Reason in the Enquiry after Truth, and Benjamin Martin’s Philosophical Grammar, which contains introductory information regarding cosmology, geology, meteorology, physical anthropology, and physics. Maury’s correspondence verifies his interest in natural history and geology, and evidence shows that he once sent his brother-in-law fossil specimens he had found near his home.
Whereas the list of Dabney Carr’s schoolbooks provides an indication of the specific authors and subjects he and his classmates read at school, Maury’s correspondence describes his general ideas about education and thus establishes the theoretical framework underlying the education Jefferson, Carr, Madison, and others received from him. Written on one hundred half sheets of paper in the form of a letter to Jonathan Boucher, Maury’s “Dissertation on Education” refutes Boucher’s defense of classical learning and provides an educational program specifically designed for the needs of Virginia’s youth.20
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