Much as he had bought books for Albemarle friends when he was in Williamsburg and for Virginia friends when he was in Philadelphia, Jefferson bought books for American friends now that he was in Paris. These purchases were on a much grander scale than any purchases he had made for friends in the past. He bought more books for Madison than anyone else. Consider me your bookseller, he had told Madison upon his departure. Jefferson purchased nearly two hundred books for him in Paris, most if not all of them from Froullé.
The books he acquired for Madison cover a wide variety of topics, none more important than those treating the subjects of law and government. The ideas these books contained let Madison apply them in the profound task on which he was engaged, drafting the U.S. Constitution. If Jefferson had any regrets about being in Paris, they involved his inability to help draft this essential document. But he may have aided Madison more than he realized. By selecting pertinent books and shipping them as expeditiously as possible, Jefferson exerted a significant influence on the thought of his friend at a time when he was putting the final touches on the Constitution.
Describing his own characteristic behavior in France some years after returning home, Jefferson wrote, “While residing in Paris, I devoted every afternoon I was disengaged, for a summer or two, in examining all the principal bookstores, turning over every book with my own hand, and putting by everything which related to America, and indeed whatever was rare and valuable in every science.”19 Not only does this statement show how wide-ranging his bookish tastes were; it also provides an insightful portrait of Jefferson in the process of buying books, a process that involved not only his sense of sight but also his sense of touch. Deciding which books to buy, he liked to examine them with his eyes and feel them with his hands. For Jefferson, a book was not only a repository of ideas, it was also a material object, something that gave him a thrill when he came into physical contact with it. In the hands of a sensitive reader, a book has the power to transcend the text it contains and become something magical.
Besides acquiring books for Madison and others who had asked him, Jefferson remembered additional friends as he came across books he thought they might like. The acquisitions he made for Ezra Stiles bring his book-hunting skills alive. Besides showing his thoughtfulness, the following passage, from a letter accompanying some books he sent Stiles, reveals how thoroughly he was combing the Paris bookstalls: “But why, you will ask, do I send you old almanachs, which are proverbially useless? Because, in these publications have appeared from time to time some of the most precious things in astronomy. I have searched out those particular volumes which might be valuable to you on this account.”20 Jefferson shrewdly recognized intellectual value in books that others considered worthless.
After several months of book-buying, he was able to provide some generalizations about the Paris trade to his correspondents on the other side of the Atlantic. Writing home, he informed friends about the price of books in Paris and also about local reading tastes. He found many bargains on French works, but volumes in ancient and foreign languages were quite pricey. As he informed Edmund Randolph, “French books are to be bought here for two thirds of what they can in England. English and Greek and Latin authors cost from 25. to 50. pr. cent more here than in England.” Jefferson could speak with some authority about the price of books in England, too, because he was establishing many new contacts in London’s world of books. When Jonathan Jackson—“the Sir Charles Grandison of this age,” John Adams called him—came over from London in late 1784, he brought multiple books for Jefferson. Writing to Madison, Jefferson made observations similar to those he made to Randolph but also offered a reason why the Greek and Latin books were more expensive in France. Somewhat overgeneralizing, he wrote, “No body here reads them, wherefore they are not printed.”21
His experience in the Parisian world of books gave Jefferson a good perspective on the literary climate in the United States. Comparing the two places, he identified a lag time of about six years but found that this interval was sufficient for winnowing what was valuable from the literary chaff. As he told Bellini, the French literati are “half a dozen years before us. Books, really good, acquire just reputation in that time, and so become known to us, and communicate to us all their advances in knowledge. Is not this delay compensated by our being placed out of the reach of that swarm of nonsense which issues daily from a thousand presses and perishes almost in issuing?”22
To see Jefferson on his daily walks, consider a comment he made to Peter Carr in an admonitory letter from Paris. He recommended his nephew to take a long walk every afternoon, not only to exercise the body but also to give his mind a rest: “Never think of taking a book with you. The object of walking is to relax the mind. You should therefore not permit yourself even to think while you walk. But divert your attention by the objects surrounding you.”23 Jefferson himself may not have taken books with him as he left his home in Paris on his daily walks, but he often returned with some. To him, the bookstalls lining the Quai des Grands Augustins were a part of the city’s urban landscape and thus belonged among the objects available to divert his attention as he walked.
Of course, there was much else for him to see throughout the city. Strolling the rues, quais, and boulevards of Paris, Jefferson was a flâneur before that term achieved currency. The sights he particularly enjoyed included the Hôtel de Salm, of which he said, “I was violently smitten with the Hôtel de Salm, and used to go to the Thuileries almost daily to look at it”; the Palais Royal, which gave him possible ideas for developing Richmond; and the Grand Colonnade of the Louvre, which, on Jefferson’s recommendation, would influence the public buildings in Washington, D.C. For Jefferson, Paris was a visual feast, which satiated him never.24
He also began attending the theater during his first few months in Paris, an activity closely allied with his book-buying. For example, four days from the first week of September, his memorandum book records his expenditures for this period as follows:
Sep. 2. Pd. tickets to Italian comedy 18f.
3. Pd. for books 17f4.
4. Ticket to Italian comedy 6f.
5. Pd. Le Gras for books 40f.
—pd. for ditto. 62f10.25
The nature of the surviving evidence permits more to be said about Jefferson’s evenings at the theater than his afternoons at the bookshops. Recording that he purchased tickets for “Italian comedy” reveals that he attended the Théâtre des Italiens. Located along the Boulevards across from the Rue Taitbout, this theater had been completed just the year before. There, on Thursday, September 2, he saw two light operas by the foremost composer of opéra comique, André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry: Aucassin et Nicolette, with libretto by Michel Jean Sedaine, and Silvain, with libretto by Jean-François Marmontel. On Saturday he saw two more operas by Grétry with librettos by Marmontel: Zemire et Azor, a retelling of the traditional story of Beauty and the Beast, and La Fausse Magie, which may be Grétry’s most purely comedic work.26
Having studied musical composition in Rome and seen opéra comique for the first time in Geneva, Grétry was making his reputation in Paris, where he realized the full potential of the genre. He cared less for musical harmony and more for harmony between music and story. He believed that the music should be faithful to the characters portrayed, the words uttered, and the ideas expressed. Putting these beliefs into practice, Grétry succeeded brilliantly. His music complemented the tales his operas told. Furthermore, he did not pander to the crowd. He assumed his audience had sophisticated tastes, and he based his musical compositions on that assumption.27
Attending the theater had been a favorite activity of Jefferson’s since his William and Mary days, but never had he been able to indulge his passion for the theater as much as he wished. The seat he took at the Théâtre des Italiens this Thursday could scarcely contain his excitement. The performance he witnessed was unlike anything he had seen in Williamsburg or, for that matter, in Philadelphia. Based on a thirteenth-century fable,
Aucassin et Nicolette told a familiar story of star-crossed lovers whose families were at war. Grétry richly scored the heroic war scenes for brass instruments. The grandeur of Aucassin et Nicolette was impressive, but so was the moral of the accompanying work, Marmontel’s Silvain, which championed the rights of peasant hunters.
By the brief entries in the memorandum book, there is no telling what books Jefferson bought from Gaspar Théodore Le Gras, a bookseller on the Quai de Conti, but there is a close correlation between what he saw at the theater and the dramatic works he was adding to his library. After seeing Zemire et Azor and La Fausse Magie at the Théâtre des Italiens that Saturday, he added copies of both works to his library. By reading a work he had seen performed, Jefferson could reexperience it through a different medium, thus enhancing his enjoyment and reinforcing his memory.
Despite the high quality of the works of the composers, librettists, and playwrights who plied their trade at the Théâtre des Italiens, they were upstaged that September by three daredevil-scientists, whose balloon ascension was a great scientific event as well as a great display of showmanship.
Jefferson’s interest in hydrogen and hot-air balloons was nearly coeval with their invention. Some balloon experiments had been taking place in Philadelphia when Jefferson was in Annapolis, and Francis Hopkinson kept him informed of the latest exhibitions. More belletrist than scientist, Hopkinson found the hydrogen balloon an apt metaphor for the current political activity. In one letter to Jefferson, he playfully observed, “A high flying Politician is I think not unlike a Balloon—he is full of inflammability, he is driven along by every current of Wind, and those who will suffer themselves to be carried up by them run a great Risk that the Bubble may burst and let them fall from the Height to which a principle of Levity had raised them.”28 Despite Hopkinson’s flippancy, Jefferson recognized the scientific importance of balloon research. To further his knowledge, he had added to his library the fullest contemporary work on the subject, Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond’s Description des Experience de la Machine Aérostatiques.
While in Annapolis, Jefferson had prepared a chart of all of the ascensions that had taken place in France, listing date, location, size of balloon, details of its construction and operation, horizontal and vertical distance traveled, and miscellaneous circumstances. Visiting Philadelphia after leaving Annapolis, he had taken the opportunity to attend Dr. John Foulke’s lecture and balloon exhibition.
But the balloons Dr. Foulke sent up were not manned balloons—the French ones were. Eager to witness the ascension, Jefferson bought his ticket a day in advance and on Sunday, the nineteenth, joined thousands of others gathered at the Tuileries to watch the three men, the two Roberts brothers and their brother-in-law Colin Hullin, ascend into the sky. They began their ascent just before noon. Their balloon quickly ascended high enough that the thousands of Parisians who had not paid the entry fee could tilt their faces skyward to witness the event. To be sure, this afternoon the streets of Paris resounded with cries of “Ballon! Ballon!” The three would remain afloat nearly seven hours and would travel about 150 miles, landing near Bethune and establishing a record for the longest flight to date. When the Roberts brothers published their account of the flight, Mémoires de les Expèriences Aérostatiques, Jefferson bought multiple copies of the pamphlet, one for his own library and others to send home to friends.
Jefferson attended the ascension at the Tuileries with John Adams and his family, who had arrived in Paris two weeks earlier. When Adams had learned of their commission to negotiate treaties of amity and commerce, he was in The Hague while his wife Abigail and their daughter Abigail or Nabby, as she was known among family and close friends, were in London, having recently arrived from America. Learning of his wife’s arrival, John Adams was unable to go to her immediately, but he dispatched his son to join her in London and escort her to The Hague. When Adams learned of Jefferson’s arrival in Paris—about a month sooner than expected—he decided to join his family in London and escort them to Paris without delay. Even before reaching London, Adams was already imagining the trip from there to Paris. He wrote his son, instructing him to purchase a copy of Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, which they would be able to read aloud to amuse themselves on the way from London.
Upon their arrival in Paris, they checked into the Hôtel d’York, which was near the Hôtel d’Orléans, where Jefferson was staying. A few days later they settled at Auteuil, a village on the Right Bank located about four miles west of Paris. Jefferson became a frequent guest in their home and enjoyed their beautiful gardens. Furthermore, Auteuil was near Passy, where Franklin made his home, so Jefferson could meet Adams and travel together with him to Passy, where the three commissioners would plan their strategy.
They held their first meeting on August 30 and met at Passy almost daily for the next several weeks. Joining them was David Humphreys, who had been appointed secretary to the commission. Former aide-decamp to George Washington, Humphreys had been appointed in time to meet Jefferson in Philadelphia. The two had planned to travel to Paris together. Unable to reach Boston before the Ceres set sail, Humphreys had traveled to Paris on his own. Abigail Adams characterized him as a dark-complexioned, stout, well-made, warlike-looking gentleman. She could see industry, probity, and good sense in his face.29
Her description hardly sounds as if she is describing a poet, but Humphreys is best known as one of the Connecticut Wits, a group of American poet-patriots that also included John Trumbull and Joel Barlow. Reaching Paris shortly after Jefferson, Humphreys presented him with a copy of Trumbull’s epic, McFingal. Humphreys himself would continue to write verse in Paris. A Poem, on the Happiness of America, which he would publish two years later, celebrates the greatness of America. Humphreys deeply honored Jefferson in this poem, listing him among the founding fathers of the United States and mentioning both his intellectual accomplishments and his patriotism:
And Jefferson, whose mind with space extends,
Each science woos, all knowledge comprehends,
Whose patriot deeds and elevated views
Demand the tribute of a loftier muse.30
Versifying occupied comparatively little of Humphreys’s time from his arrival through the first half of the following year, but his responsibilities for the commission kept his pen busy in other ways. Corresponding with nations that the United States hoped would sign treaties occupied a considerable amount of time. So did keeping records of the proceedings of the commission. After eight months, the minutes of the proceedings “already more than half filled a large folio volume.”31
The hard work of the three commissioners and their diligent secretary went largely for naught. Generally speaking, the Europeans neither knew nor cared about the United States. Mulling over the difficulties he and his fellow commissioners faced among the European nations, Jefferson observed, “They seemed in fact to know little about us, but as rebels who had been successful in throwing off the yoke of the mother country. They were ignorant of our commerce, which had been always monopolized by England, and of the exchange of articles it might offer advantageously to both parties. They were inclined therefore to stand aloof until they could see better what relations might be usefully instituted with us.”32
The American commissioners did sign a treaty with Prussia, but otherwise their efforts, though time-consuming, bore little fruit. Confidentially informing George Washington of the situation, Humphreys wrote, “As to the state of our own politicks I can only say (and that for your ear alone) that the Treaties in contemplation which extend to all the commercial powers of Europe, tho’ progressive, still they go slowly on; insomuch that I have had occasion to remark that there is no Sovereign in Europe but the King of Prussia who seems to do his business himself or even to know that it is done at all.”33
Abigail Adams, after a painting by C. Schessle. From Rufus Wilmot Griswold, The Republican Court (1854). (Collection of Kevin J. Hayes)
Realizing that the commission w
ould keep him in Paris for a lengthy period of time, Jefferson decided to relocate to more permanent quarters. On October 16, 1784, he signed a lease for a home on the Cul de Sac Taitbout. The proximity of his new home to the Théâtre des Italiens may have been one factor motivating his choice. By taking a house in the heart of Paris, Jefferson distinguished himself from his suburb-dwelling fellow commissioners. His new house gave the Adamses a home base whenever they ventured into the city. John Quincy Adams and sister Abigail sometimes came to Jefferson’s home, dined with him, and then continued to enjoy his hospitality as he treated them to evenings at the theater. Literature was one topic of conversation among them. Young Adams let Jefferson know about his fondness for poetry, especially amatory verses. Speaking of his son many years later, John Adams told Jefferson, “I call him our John, because when you was at the Cul de sac at Paris, he appeared to me to be almost as much your boy as mine.”34
Sickness put a crimp in Jefferson’s activities in late autumn. Toward the end of October, he was struck with a malady that kept him indoors through much of the winter. It is tempting to view his affliction as a sympathetic illness. Back home in Virginia that year the whooping cough was afflicting many children, including his other daughters, Mary and Lucy. Mary recovered, but Lucy did not. Jefferson learned of her death in January. Grief exacerbated his own illness, and it was not until the end of the winter that he recuperated.
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