Since the Library Company had numerous titles in common with Jefferson’s personal library, it could have served him as a home library away from home. The Library Company granted borrowing privileges to all delegates to the Continental Congress while it was in session. No specific evidence documents Jefferson’s use of the Library Company holdings, but more than likely he took advantage of the facility. Many other members of Congress used the collection during their time in the city. Altogether, nine signers of the Declaration of Independence held shares in the Library Company of Philadelphia.
The story of Jefferson’s literary life in Philadelphia involves not only what he read, but also what he wrote. In addition to the writings required in his role as a delegate to the Continental Congress and active Congressional committee member, he also maintained a lively personal correspondence. While he remained in Philadelphia, Mrs. Jefferson and their three-year-old daughter, Martha, stayed with her brother-in-law, Francis Eppes. Keeping in contact with the family required much letter-writing on Jefferson’s part, and he addressed separate letters to his wife and to Eppes. Like all good letter writers, Jefferson shaped his letters to suit his correspondents. Though the letters he and his wife exchanged are lost, the surviving correspondence with Eppes offers clues about what Jefferson wrote his wife.
To Eppes he explained, “I wrote to Patty on my arrival here, and there being then nothing new in the political way I inclosed her letter under a blank cover to you.”11 This remark suggests a division of subject matter appropriate to his correspondents: with his brother-in-law, he discussed politics; with his wife, he discussed people, places, and the details of daily life.
Relating Peyton Randolph’s death to Eppes, Jefferson presented the matter as fact. For details, he referred Eppes to his wife: “Our good old Speaker died the night before last. For the particulars of that melancholy event I must refer you to Patty.”12 Jefferson realized that a sad story about the death of an old friend was more suitable in a letter to his wife than in a letter to his brother-in-law. He wrote a detailed account of the episode for her. For Eppes, he found the latest intelligence about the war more pertinent. Stories of personal tragedy were for women, stories of national crisis for men.
Since he could supply information about the war more accurately and expeditiously than the newspapers could, Jefferson assumed responsibility for conveying the latest developments to his family and friends. Though he recognized the newspaper as an essential medium of communication in any democracy, he also understood that the press could propagate much misinformation, especially in times of war, when people are eager for news and, consequently, when rumors run thick and fast. Relating some Congressional news in a letter to another correspondent that summer, Jefferson assured him of its reliability by asserting that the information was “not newspaper, but Official.”13
Assuming the role of war correspondent in his letters to Eppes from Philadelphia that summer, Jefferson had little good news to report. Read in chronological order, his letters seem darkly foreboding. Anticipating Admiral Howe’s next move, George Washington had marched his forces south from Boston to fortify New York against the British. Jefferson did not know how many troops Washington had in New York, but in a mid-July letter to Eppes, he estimated troop strength at around thirty or thirty-five thousand. As Washington had predicted, Howe soon reached New York, established camp at Staten Island, built up his troop strength, and started menacing the city.
In this same letter to Eppes, Jefferson related a threatening incident that had occurred in New York: “The enemy the other day ordered two of their men-of-war to hoist anchor and push our batteries up the Hudson River. Both wind and tide were very fair. They passed all the batteries with ease, and, as far as is known, without receiving material damage.” American forces continued firing on the British vessels throughout their progress but with little effect. Jefferson conjectured that the British ploy revealed their intentions of landing above New York. Closing this episode in his letter, he wrote, “I imagine General Washington, finding he cannot prevent their going up the river, will prepare to amuse them wherever they shall go.”14 The light-hearted tone of this sentence rests uneasily atop the episode it concludes. Jefferson’s cavalier attitude seems forced, and his deep-seated concern for the troops and their leader shows through the veneer of levity.
A week later Jefferson dropped the light-hearted tone altogether to inform Eppes of the humiliating defeat of the American forces in Canada: “The ill successes in Canada had depressed the minds of many; when we shall hear the last of them I know not; everybody had supposed Crown Point would be a certain stand for them, but they have retreated from that to Ticonderoga, against everything which in my eye wears the shape of reason.” Jefferson also had to correct his statistics regarding troop strength from the earlier letter. “When I wrote you last, we were deceived in General Washington’s numbers,” he explained. “By a return which came to hand a day or two after, he then had but 15,000 effective men.”15
The second week of August Jefferson predicted to Eppes that an attack on New York would occur within three or four days. He expressed a modest amount of confidence in an American victory, but such was not to be. Instead, the British took New York and forced Washington south and west through New Jersey.
With the Declaration of Independence adopted, signed, and published, Jefferson grew anxious to leave Philadelphia for Monticello. He disliked the political wranglings that had been going on in Congress since July 4 and thought that his fellow Congressional delegates were devoting entirely too much time to trivialities and ignoring the most important issues facing the new nation. He wrote Richard Henry Lee, “The minutiae of the Confederation have hitherto engaged us; the great points of representation, boundaries, taxation etc. being left open.”16
His current Congressional term was scheduled to expire the second Sunday in August, but at the Virginia Convention in June, his countrymen had reelected him to another term. He wrote Edmund Pendleton, then serving as Convention president, and asked him to find a substitute. Ultimately, Richard Henry Lee would return to Philadelphia to relieve him. As the end of Jefferson’s term approached, he wrote Lee an anxious letter urging him to come as soon as possible. Contributing to his anxiety, news that Martha was quite ill had reached Philadelphia that summer. In his letter to Lee, Jefferson pleaded, “For god’s sake, for your country’s sake, and for my sake, come. I receive by every post such accounts of the state of Mrs. Jefferson’s health, that it will be impossible for me to disappoint her expectation of seeing me at the time I have promised.”17
Lee was anxious to return to Philadelphia to fulfill his responsibilities, but mechanical problems slowed him down. His old carriage wheels shattered, and he was having trouble finding competent workmen to make new ones. Once he got his wheels repaired, Lee hurried to Philadelphia.18
Jefferson had promised Martha that he would leave the city by mid-August, but as August gave way to September he had yet to depart. Finally, on September 3, after completing some last-minute tasks—settling accounts with his barber and his booksellers, getting his horse shod, hiring a peddler to haul some boxes to Virginia—he left Philadelphia to return to Monticello.
The peddler reached Monticello a few days after Jefferson. The boxes from Philadelphia contained items Jefferson had brought to the city that spring and summer. His accounts suggest that he had been buying presents for his wife and daughter: toys, a doll, several pair of women’s gloves, butter prints, a thimble. The accounts also show that he had been buying items for himself that would allow him to continue his pursuit of literature and science at home: in addition to numerous books and pamphlets, he purchased a new thermometer and a barometer.
When it came to opportunities for book-buying, the time he spent in Philadelphia had spoiled him. The nearest bookstore to Monticello was in Williamsburg; only during his twice-yearly visits there to serve in the Assembly could he pop into a bookshop and make purchases on impulse. After growing accustomed
to Philadelphia’s fine bookshops, the Virginia Gazette office was disappointing, but he continued buying books there occasionally. Williamsburg did offer some unusual book-buying opportunities, but these depended upon pure chance—people leaving or dying. Over the next two years, however, Jefferson did obtain books formerly in the possession of several others who had spent at least part of their lives in Virginia.
One of the most distinguished collections of books to come up for sale in the mid-1770s was that of Lord Dunmore. After he fled the Governor’s Palace in Williamsburg, the Virginia Convention decided to raise funds by auctioning his personal estate, including his books. The auction apparently took place in late June 1776. Though Jefferson was in Philadelphia, several books from Lord Dunmore’s library became a part of Jefferson’s. Either he had a friend bid for him, or he acquired unsold volumes upon his return to Williamsburg.
Despite their political differences, Jefferson and Dunmore shared similarly eclectic literary tastes. Jefferson obtained Dunmore’s copy of Charles Rollin’s Histoire Ancienne; the Oeuvres of Vincent Voiture, the seventeenth-century academician who made a literary reputation for himself as the author of sophisticated yet playfully witty social verse and finely crafted letters; François Pétis’s Histoire du Grand Genghizcan, the work that initiated the modern study of the Mongol empire and significantly influenced subsequent treatments of the subject; the two-volume General Collection of Treatys, Declarations of War, Manifestos, and Other Publick Papers, Relating to Peace and War; and other works pertaining to common law.19
Like the colonial governors, the Anglican clergymen and the faculty members of William and Mary generally brought fine personal libraries when they came to Virginia. The Reverend James Horrocks, for one, brought a very good collection of books with him when he came to Virginia to serve as president of William and Mary. Sadly, Horrocks passed away during a trip to England in the 1770s. Remembered as “a Gentleman well versed in several Branches of sound Learning, particularly the Mathematicks,” Horrocks left his library in Virginia, which was catalogued and put up for sale. No catalogue survives, so its precise contents remain a mystery, but the books the College of William and Mary acquired from his estate affirm Horrocks’s knowledge of mathematics and suggest that his scholarly interests extended to other sciences, as well.20 Jefferson took advantage of the opportunity to purchase a selection of books formerly in Horrocks’s possession. The precise titles he acquired from the Horrocks estate in late 1776 are unknown, but Jefferson likely augmented his own scientific holdings at this time.
Much more is known about the books he acquired from Samuel Henley’s library. Prior to his departure for England, Henley had boxed his books in two huge containers and left them in care of the current college president, Jefferson’s longtime friend the Reverend James Madison. The fact that Henley left his valuable collection behind when he fled Virginia suggests that he planned to return. A few years after his departure, Madison decided to transport the boxes to the college library for safekeeping but found them so cumbersome that he ordered some men to bring them to the president’s house instead. As they were moving them, one of the heavy boxes accidentally burst open, revealing the sorry condition of its contents. Reporting what had happened to Henley, Jefferson told a story to break any bookman’s heart: “This accident discovered them to be in a state of ruin. They had contracted a dampness and stuck together in large blocks, insomuch that they could not sometimes be separated without tearing the cover.”21 The notorious heat and humidity of Tidewater Virginia had taken their toll on Henley’s prized collection.
Trying to decide what to do with the books, Madison consulted Jefferson, who suggested that they should be overhauled and aired out. As the two discussed the matter, they agreed that it would be in Henley’s best interest “to have them sold, as books are now in considerable demand here.”22 Besides, as property of a British subject, Henley’s library was subject to confiscation by the Americans, who could seize his books, sell them, and refuse to pay him anything. Madison wrote Henley, who authorized him to sell the books. Even before receiving Henley’s approval, Madison set a price for each title, and Jefferson chose which ones he wanted for himself.
The books Jefferson obtained from Henley’s library are consistent with the study of science and literature he was cultivating at Monticello. He acquired numerous works to fuel his interest in different languages, both ancient and modern: Anglo-Saxon, Arabic, old French, Greek, Italian, and Latin. Acquiring a book entitled Poeseos Asiaticae Commentariorum, a Latin work by Sir William Jones containing a historical and critical survey of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish poetry, Jefferson revealed his interests in the languages of the Near East, an interest initiated by his attention to the Qur’an many years earlier and perpetuated through his contact with Henley. Jefferson would remain intrigued with the subject for years to come. During his presidency, he clipped from the newspapers multiple translations of Persian poetry, including “A Persian Song,” which Jones had translated from the original of Hafiz.23
Jefferson acquired a number of literary classics from the Henley collection, including John Hoole’s English translation of Torquato Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, one of three editions of Tasso’s great epic of the First Crusade in his library, the other two being in the original Italian. Some of the books Jefferson obtained from Henley’s library were quite rare, including his prized copies of Paradise Lost and Pierce Plowman. To use Henley’s words, these were good books in good editions. Jefferson also acquired from Henley’s library a variety of works on art, music, and poetry, including some in-depth critical studies. Elizabeth Montagu’s Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespeare, for example, favorably compared Shakespeare with ancient Greek dramatists and modern French ones, refuted Voltaire’s attacks on Shakespeare, and critiqued Samuel Johnson’s neglect of Shakespeare’s dramatic genius.24
In addition, Jefferson purchased many botanical works from Henley’s library including a ten-volume set of Linnaeus and John Clayton’s Flora Virginica. Jefferson knew much about botany from firsthand observation; his acquisition of these authoritative works suggests an attempt to systematize his knowledge. He became a great advocate of the Linnaean system of classification. He especially appreciated the Linnaean system for its capacity to expand and incorporate new information.25 He also came to know Clayton’s work well. Paying homage in Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson said of Clayton, “This accurate observer was a native and resident of this state, passed a long life in exploring and describing its plants, and is supposed to have enlarged the botanical catalogue as much as almost any man who has lived.”26
The rest of Henley’s books remained unsold and were later destroyed with Madison’s personal library when the college president’s house burned to the ground. The only volumes from his fine collection that survived were those Jefferson acquired. When he wrote Henley after the fire to tell him what had happened to his unsold books, Henley responded, “I am sorry to learn the fate of my books, prints, etc., and exceedingly regret that no more of them fell into your hands. The pleasure I once took in them, made me feel the more pain for their loss, which however is in some measure alleviated by the consideration that some of them escaped the flames and are in the possession of a friend I so much respect.”27
The Reverend William Willie of Sussex County, another clergyman with a passion for collecting, passed away in 1776. Upon learning from his executor what Willie had in his library, Jefferson became eager to obtain the prize of his collection, a complete or near-complete set of the Virginia Gazette. Currently, Jefferson did not have enough ready cash to pay for the entire set, but he recognized its importance and wanted very much to secure the collection. He put a down payment on the lot and made arrangements to pay off the balance some months later.28
His purchase of this multivolume collection represents the first of many sets of newspapers he would add to his library over the course of his life. Jefferson’s interest in collecting newspapers shows t
hat he recognized how the quotidian could contribute to history. Some years later, he would assert, “It is the duty of every good citizen to use all the opportunities which occur to him, for preserving documents relating to the history of our country.”29 Jefferson single-handedly rescued much early Virginiana from the waste bin. In many cases, the newspaper issues he preserved now survive in unique copies—if he had not saved them, they would be lost forever.
The most substantial collection of books and manuscripts Jefferson acquired in 1776 came from the Peyton Randolph estate, which included many books from the library of his kinsman Sir John Randolph. The library contained many more books than Jefferson could currently afford, so he signed two bonds to finance his purchase, a smaller one for almost forty pounds, which would come due in February and a huge one, nearly two hundred pounds, which would be due nine months later. Jefferson purchased not only Peyton Randolph’s books, but also the bookcases in which they stood.
Volumes he acquired from the Randolph estate affirm his dedication to preserving documents pertinent to the history of Virginia: several contain unique manuscript collections of Virginia laws. If he did not acquire these manuscripts, Jefferson feared that they, too, would be lost forever. Recalling his acquisition of Randolph’s legal library many years later, he wrote, “Very early in the course of my researches into the laws of Virginia, I observed that many of them were already lost, and many more on the point of being lost, as existing only in single copies in the hands of careful or curious individuals, on whose deaths they would probably be used for waste paper. I set myself therefore to work to collect all which were then existing.”30 Jefferson understood an important truth: preserving the documents of the past broadens the possibilities for the future.
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