The Road to Monticello

by Hayes, Kevin J. ;

  Jefferson wrote several letters to Page over the ensuing months but made little effort during that time to see Miss Burwell or to contact her directly. Having left Williamsburg before Christmas, he spent the first nine months of 1763 away from the city. Belinda’s charms, it seems, were insufficient to bring him back any sooner. He did have a justifiable reason for staying away so long. He had planned to return in May, but hearing a rumor that smallpox was in town, he delayed his return until September.

  It is disappointing to learn that Jefferson was away from the city that spring: during that time the Williamsburg circle expanded to welcome the most distinguished scientist in colonial America, Benjamin Franklin. Though Franklin’s surviving papers say little about the week and a half he spent in Williamsburg, his activities here likely paralleled his activities in other places where groups of intellectuals gathered socially. Visiting Annapolis the preceding decade, for example, Franklin came in contact with the men of letters in colonial Maryland who formed the Tuesday Club. He greatly enjoyed their sprightly conversation and contributed to their bawdy repartee.25

  In Virginia, Franklin had professional, intellectual, and social reasons for contacting Fauquier. Visiting Williamsburg in his capacity as Postmaster General gave him an official reason to meet the lieutenant governor. Furthermore, Thomas Foxcroft, Fauquier’s secretary, was Franklin’s deputy postmaster. Like Fauquier, Franklin, too, had been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and thus had earned the right to place the letters F.R.S. after his name.

  Franklin met William Small for the first time during this visit to Williamsburg. They became fast friends and renewed their friendship in England later that decade. There may be no better confirmation of their closeness than a question that occurs in a letter from Small to Matthew Boulton in June 1772: “Will you ask Dr. Franklin to repose himself chez moi for some time?” Jefferson’s absence from Williamsburg deprived him of the opportunity to meet Franklin, about whom Jefferson would observe, “No one of the present age has made more important discoveries, nor has enriched philosophy with more, or more ingenious solutions of the phaenomena of nature.”26 Another dozen years would pass before very different circumstances would bring the two men together.

  By the first week of October 1763, Jefferson had finally returned to Williamsburg. Page was out of town, but Jefferson wrote urging his friend to return as soon as possible: “The court is now at hand, which I must attend constantly, so that unless you come to town, there is little probability of my meeting with you any where else.”27 When either the Virginia legislature or the General Court met, Williamsburg, in Burnaby’s words, was “crowded with the gentry of the country; on those occasions there are balls and others amusements; but as soon as the business is finished, they return to their plantations; and the town is in a manner deserted.”28 Jefferson’s legal education compelled him to return before court convened, but the “balls and other amusements” also drew him back.

  The Raleigh Tavern, located on the Duke of Gloucester Street between the Palace Green and the Capitol, was the most congenial place in Williamsburg. On the first floor, the tavern held a large assembly room known as the Apollo, a room that would be the site of many important political gatherings in the coming years. Here Jefferson renewed his acquaintance with Rebecca Burwell.29 Their meeting did not go well. He wrote Page the following day:

  Last night, as merry as agreeable company and dancing with Belinda in the Apollo could make me, I never could have thought the succeeding sun would have seen me so wretched as I now am! I was prepared to say a great deal: I had dressed up in my own mind, such thoughts as occurred to me, in as moving language as I knew how, and expected to have performed in a tolerably creditable manner. But, good God! When I had an opportunity of venting them, a few broken sentences, uttered in great disorder, and interrupted with pauses of uncommon length, were the visible marks of my strange confusion!

  Allowance must be made for hyperbole, of course, but these comments do provide an early hint of Jefferson’s natural shyness. He would attempt to renew his affection for Miss Burwell once or twice more in the ensuing weeks but all to no avail. Before another year would pass, she would become Mrs. Jacquelin Ambler.

  Though the surviving information about Small’s Williamsburg circle suggests one facet of Jefferson’s personality and his correspondence with Page conveys another, the best documentary evidence of his whereabouts during the mid-1760s is found in the surviving ledgers or daybooks from the office of the Virginia Gazette. Joseph Royle, the newspaper’s proprietor, imported a wide variety of books, and his printing office, located on the north side of the Duke of Gloucester Street, attracted any and all with literary interests. No ledgers survive for the first few years of the decade, but the daybooks for 1764 and 1765 provide a wealth of detail regarding who visited the shop and what they bought. Unlike Jefferson’s letters to Page, these ledgers leave no room for hyperbole. Yet the day-books do not entirely exclude the possibility of posing, for any wealthy Virginia planter could strike an intellectual pose by visiting the shop with friends and buying a book he did not intend to read. There is no indication that Jefferson made purchases in this manner—his pursuit of knowledge was both sincere and profound.

  The first Saturday in February 1764 he visited the Gazette office to pick up what must have been a special order. On this day he acquired a one-volume folio edition of Johann Scapula’s Lexicon Graeco-Latinum; Giuseppe Baretti’s Dictionary of the English and Italian Languages; a two-volume quarto edition of Enrico Davila’s Guerre Civili Francia, a work he appreciated for its dramatic retelling of the assassination of Henry IV at the hands of the Catholic fanatic François Ravaillac; a two-volume folio edition of Francesco Guicciardini’s Della Istoria d’Italia; the recently published two-volume quarto edition of Machiavelli’s Opere Inedite in Prosa e in Verso, with notes by the distinguished Italian jurist Giovanni Maria Lampredi; and A Practical Treatise of Husbandry, by Henri Louis Duhamel du Monceau.

  This list of purchases confirms that Jefferson was pursuing his linguistic studies even as he was studying law. Scapula’s sixteenth-century Greek and Latin dictionary commanded respect from all serious scholars. Philadelphia bookman James Logan, the finest classicist in colonial America, had annotated his copy of Scapula’s Lexicon heavily and had corrected or expanded numerous entries. Even while recognizing some errors in Scapula, Logan admitted its great scholarly value. Sending a Greek ode of his own composition to Robert Hunter, colonial governor of New York and New Jersey, Logan confessed, “I must not pretend that it is without Scapulas Assistance.”30 Jefferson would add two more editions of Scapula to his library in the coming years.

  Other books he acquired from the printing office verify his interest in the classical languages. In September he purchased a copy of Selecta Poemata Italorum, a two-volume collection of Latin verse edited by Alexander Pope. Jefferson’s surviving copy of William Cheselden’s Anatomy of the Human Body, which he purchased in April, contains evidence that he was continuing his study of Greek. In the margin of the first page of chapter 1, “Sutures and Bones of the Cranium,” he inscribed a long Greek passage from Herodotus concerning the bodies of the Persian dead on the battlefield at Plataea, where a skull was found with no sutures in it, the bone being seamless and continuous. Jefferson’s annotation shows him engaged in a processing of questioning historical and scientific information: To what extent can history be brought to bear on the study of medicine? Is it the scientist’s responsibility to reconcile empirical evidence with documentary evidence from the past?

  Cheselden’s Anatomy also suggests a relationship between science and art. The book is illustrated with a number of handsome plates keyed to lists naming parts of the human anatomy. One plate in the volume contains no such list, however: at the end of the chapter on muscles is a plate showing the musculature of two intertwined male figures patterned after a well-known image. The text adjacent to the plate explains that the illustration “is done after the famous statue o
f Herculus and Antaeus. The muscles here exhibited being all explained in the other plates, the figures are omitted to preserve the beauty of the plate.” Anatomical knowledge not only helped to advance science, but also enhanced aesthetic appreciation. Before going abroad, Jefferson made a list of statuary he wanted to decorate Monticello; the list includes Herculus and Antaeus.

  Other works Jefferson acquired that February day suggest that he was broadening his study of languages to include Italian. Baretti’s Dictionary, the most complete Italian–English dictionary available, contains a useful Italian grammar. The presence of this dictionary on his list of purchases may suggest that Jefferson was just beginning his study of Italian, but other evidence hints that he had begun reading Italian a few years earlier. His surviving copy of La Storia di Tom Jones, Pietro Chiari’s translation of the Henry Fielding novel, contains Jefferson’s ownership inscription on the title page. The inscription is dated 1761. Reading a familiar novel in a new language offered a more amenable way to learn a language than reading weightier, unfamiliar works. Hopefully, Jefferson was not trying to learn Italian by starting with Davila, Guicciardini, and Machiavelli in the original.

  Duhamel’s Husbandry seems anomalous on this otherwise erudite list of books, but it serves as a reminder that Jefferson’s ongoing prosperity depended upon the continuing success of his plantation. Despite his various intellectual interests, he well understood that he could not ignore the land that gave him his wealth. Inspired by Jethro Tull, Duhamel visited England, where he observed recent British agricultural developments. Duhamel’s Husbandry is basically Jethro Tull rewritten for a French readership, integrating Duhamel’s own extensive knowledge of French agronomy and the results of his unique agricultural experiments.31 Around the same time Jefferson was reading Duhamel, he also acquired a copy of the 1762 edition of Jethro Tull’s Horse-Hoeing Husbandry. Although the precise date is not known, his name inscribed upon the title page indicates that he acquired the book before the Shadwell fire. Jefferson subsequently admitted reading Jethro Tull “while I was an amateur in Agricultural science.”32

  The daybooks also show him acquiring works he needed to pursue his legal studies. As he would say, “A lawyer without books would be like a workman without tools.”33 The third week of February he visited the Gazette office and purchased several fundamental legal texts. The Attorney’s Practice in the Court of King’s Bench and The Attorney’s Practice in the Court of Common Pleas, both compiled by Robert Richardson, offered considerable information regarding civil and criminal procedure. Joseph Harrison’s Accomplish’d Practiser in the High Court of Chancery informed Jefferson about the fundamentals of equity pleading and procedure. He also considered buying a copy of the basic introduction to law known as The Attorney’s Pocket Companion but decided against it at that time. Before another week had passed, however, he had second thoughts and sent Jupiter to the Gazette office to pick up a copy of the work.

  Jupiter and Jefferson had been companions since boyhood. The two were born the same year, and they had grown up together. Neither could forget their master–slave relationship, yet each had come to rely on the other. Serving in the capacity of personal servant and coachman, Jupiter did his best to help his master. Occasionally absent-minded, Jefferson sometimes found himself without pocket change. Jupiter always had coin on hand to loan him. Furthermore, Jupiter was always ready and able, though not always willing, to fetch whatever articles his master needed at the moment. Time and again Jefferson sent him out for a variety of items—biscuits, bread, butter, candles, corn, eggs, pomade, soap, wig powder, anything. The information that survives about Jupiter suggests that he had made himself essential to Jefferson. After his death, Jefferson wrote that even “with all his defects, he leaves a void in my domestic arrangements which cannot be filled.”34

  Jefferson seldom sent Jupiter to the Gazette office to purchase books. He enjoyed that pleasure too much to give it over to a surrogate. Other members of the Williamsburg circle also frequented the Gazette office. Sometimes they came there together. In the ledger for one particular day, the names of Jefferson, Wythe, and Small appear adjacent to one another, suggesting that the three friends had come to the shop together. This day, Wythe and Small received letters from New York with postage due, and Jefferson bought a few quires of writing paper.35

  None of his friends purchased as many books as Jefferson did in these years. Still, their purchases are significant for several reasons. The books Wythe bought are important not only because they indicate his personal impulses during the time he was Jefferson’s teacher, but also because Wythe would bequeath his library to Jefferson. The first week of February, for example, Wythe purchased Robert Nelson’s popular manual of Anglican theology, A Companion for the Festivals and Fasts of the Church of England. This copy of Nelson’s Festivals came into Jefferson’s possession upon Wythe’s death many years later.

  Small’s purchases suggest possible topics of dinner conversation within the Williamsburg circle. The second week of February, for example, he bought a copy of Matthew Stewart’s Tracts, Physical and Mathematical, Containing, an Explication of Several Important Points in Physical Astronomy and a New Method for Ascertaining the Sun’s Distance from the Earth, by the Theory of Gravity. Stewart’s Tracts was a landmark work in the study of analytic and celestial mechanics. He demonstrated his ingenuity by using geometrical proofs for theorems that had formerly been established by algebraic and analytic methods.36 Think about the new ideas Stewart articulated and imagine the spirited discussion that went round the governor’s dinner table that week.

  If Jefferson felt intimidated by Stewart’s ingenuity or, in more general terms, by the breadth of scientific topics discussed within Small’s Williamsburg circle, he remedied deficiencies in his knowledge with John Barrow’s New and Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences. The title page of this work lists the scientific topics it contains at considerable length. Its two-line epigram by John Dryden succinctly conveys the intellectual value of its contents:

  Happy the Man, who, studying Nature’s laws,

  Thro’ known Effects can trace the secret Cause.

  In terms of number of volumes, Jefferson purchased more history books from the printing office in 1764 than books in any other area of study. In addition to the historical works in Italian, he acquired several significant histories in English: David Hume’s History of England, William Robertson’s History of Scotland, and William Stith’s History of Virginia, a work he would consult frequently when he composed his Notes on the State of Virginia. Jefferson’s copy of Stith, which survives at the Library of Congress, contains much marginalia in his hand. His overall attitude toward the historian was mixed. He called Stith “a man of classical learning, and very exact, but of no taste in style. He is inelegant, therefore, and his details often too minute to be tolerable, even to a native of the country, whose history he writes.”37 This critical comment indicates a standard of writing Jefferson set for himself. The historian not only must be precise, but also must possess an elegant style and a sense of proportion.

  Much more than a record of who bought what, the Virginia Gazette daybooks occasionally register emotion. The entries for August 1764, for example, convey a twinge of sadness. Within a list of advertisements in the Gazette that month there occurs the following entry adjacent to the name of William Small: “Adv of Departure.”38 After a falling out with the College of William and Mary, Small had decided to return home. In September, he settled his sundry accounts at the Gazette office. Two months later he was in London. By early 1765, he was already becoming the center of Birmingham’s Lunar Circle.

  Jefferson kept in contact with his teacher after he returned to Great Britain, but his only known letter to Small is dated May 7, 1775. Remembering the refreshments that went around the governor’s table, Jefferson sent his former teacher a present of three dozen bottles of well-aged madeira: “I hope you will find it fine as it came to me genuine from the island and has been kept in my
own cellar eight years.” Jefferson closed this letter to Small by expressing hope that “amidst public dissension private friendship may be preserved inviolate.”39 His hopes went for naught: Small had died months before his student’s best wine and wishes arrived.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Limits of English Law

  Though busy reading law and helping George Wythe prepare the cases he would argue before the General Court in the autumn of 1764, Jefferson still managed to find time for himself. On several occasions, the printing office of the Virginia Gazette lured him inside its doors. The first Wednesday of October, for example, he visited the Gazette office with several volumes to be rebound and gilt, yet not all his trips to the printing office involved purchasing books or having them bound. Sometimes he came to buy paper, other times to pay for postage or to buy sundries—pens, ink, stationary, all things concerned with the business of being a law student.