Writing Monroe in March, he explained, “I have had a very bad winter, having been confined the greatest part of it. A seasoning, as they call it is the lot of most strangers: and none, I believe have experienced a more severe one than myself. The air is extremely damp, and the waters very unwholesome. We have had for three weeks past a warm visit from the sun (my almighty physician) and I find myself almost reestablished. I begin now to be able to walk 4.or 5. miles a day, and find myself much the better for it.” By April, he reported being able “to walk six or eight miles a day, which I do very regularly.”35
Big changes were taking place in the diplomatic world that spring. Congress had appointed John Adams minister to the court of England and Jefferson minister to the court of France, taking over Franklin’s position upon his retirement. Adams would leave for England in May, and Franklin would leave for Philadelphia in July. Even with Franklin’s departure, Adams and Jefferson retained their responsibilities to negotiate treaties of amity and commerce with other nations. The commission would not expire until the following year, and the two remaining commissioners would make additional efforts to sign treaties with other nations.
John Adams, by Mather Brown. (Boston Athenaeum)
Shortly before Adams and his family left Paris, Pierres, at long last, had finished printing Notes on the State of Virginia. Jefferson presented a copy to Adams. Though they had read Johnson’s Lives of the Poets during their trip from London to Paris the year before, they read Notes on the State of Virginia on their way from Paris back to London. On the road, Adams wrote Jefferson a letter to express his gratitude: “I thank you kindly for your Book. It is our Meditation all the Day long. I cannot now say much about it, but I think it will do its Author and his Country great Honour.” John Quincy Adams liked the book so well that he read it again the next year. Describing one summer night’s activity in his diary, he wrote, “In the evening I read about one half of Mr. Jefferson’s Notes upon Virginia, and was very much pleased with them; there is a great deal of learning shown without ostentation, and a spirit of philosophy equally instructive and entertaining.”36
John Adams paid further tribute to Notes on the State of Virginia, not in words but in images. The following year Adams engaged the services of Mather Brown, a young New England portrait painter who, after studying with Gilbert Stuart and Benjamin West, had recently established a London studio of his own. Eighteenth-century portrait painters often depicted their subjects with books and even went so far as to letter in spine titles. It was up to the sitter to decide which title or titles were depicted in the portrait.37 Adams chose to be depicted with his copy of Notes on the State of Virginia or, as the volume appears in the portrait, “Jefferson’s Hist: of Virginia.” Like Charles Thomson, Adams, too, thought the book deserved a more expansive title than the one Jefferson had given it. Associating himself with Jefferson’s book, Adams honored his friend and conveyed his respect for his intellectual accomplishments. Though Jefferson had been reluctant to have his book printed, Adams clearly recognized that the book was not only a vehicle for Jefferson’s thought, it was also as an icon of his mind.
CHAPTER 21
Talking about Literature
Jefferson traveled to Versailles in May 1785 to assume his position as American minister to the Court of France. Presenting his credentials to King Louis XVI and the Comte de Vergennes, he underwent what he called the “ceremonies usual on such occasions.” His matter-of-fact description of the experience shows how little he cared for such pomp. Neither his contemporary correspondence nor his subsequent reminiscences reveal anything further about this visit to Versailles. However, there was one aspect of becoming ambassador Jefferson frequently recalled. Informing French acquaintances and officials of his new position in the forthcoming weeks, he had to endure the same question time and again.1
“C’est vous, Monsieur, qui remplace le Docteur Franklin?” they asked. “It is you, sir, who replaces Doctor Franklin?”
“No one can replace him,” Jefferson generally replied, “I am only his successor.”
The question became tiresome. “The succession to Dr. Franklin, at the court of France,” he remembered, “was an excellent school of humility.”
Franklin’s shoes were tough ones to fill. Not only had he established a scientific reputation that extended to all corners of Europe, but he also had an international reputation as a diplomat and statesman. In short, he was the most famous American in the world. But his lively wit and convivial personality helped make Franklin the darling of Paris. He had become a literary leader in this, the most cosmopolitan city in the world. His French bagatelles were the finest in the language, and his presence in a Parisian salon lent much prestige to the salonnière. Though Jefferson lacked Franklin’s flair, he slowly realized that joining the Parisian social scene was a part of the job, and he eventually took the plunge. To some extent, Franklin helped introduce his successor to the literary salons and scientific circles. For the most part, Jefferson found his own place among the literati of Paris.
Even before he left America, Jefferson had made several friends among France’s intellectual elite. Crèvecoeur, whose Letters from an American Farmer had earned him a honored place among the philosophes, was serving as French consul to New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut when Jefferson left the United States for France. Crèvecoeur had written letters of introduction for him to his Paris friends, including the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, whose friendship could provide much pleasure and influence. “The pearl of all the Dukes,” Crèvecoeur called him in a letter to Jefferson. “His House is the Center of reunion where Men of Genius and abilities often Meet,” he continued. “You have therefore a great Right To Share his Friendship.”2
The Marquis de Lafayette, who was also in America when Jefferson reached Paris, wrote his friends and family urging them to help Jefferson. Philip Mazzei was well connected among the intellectual elite of Paris, too. He wrote several letters of introduction and offered Jefferson much personal advice about whom to meet. He also recommended getting to know Rochefoucauld, whose house “is devoted to Philosophy” and whose “garden to experiments for the improvement of knowledge.” Chastellux, Jefferson’s best friend in Paris, helped introduce him to many different philosophes and litterateurs. Overall, Paris offered someone with Jefferson’s interests and abilities plentiful opportunities for intellectual diversion. As Crèvecoeur told him, “I hope You’ll be pleas’d with our Social Scene, which is the Shining Side of our nation.”3
During his first year in France, Jefferson became acquainted with the distinguished people his friends had recommended, but he hesitated to enter the world of the Paris salons. After a year in Paris, he told a correspondent, “I am savage enough to prefer the woods, the wilds, and the independence of Monticello, to all the brilliant pleasures of this gay capital.”4 Not until the time for Franklin’s departure neared did Jefferson accept the necessity of joining a salon.
There were definite personal benefits to entering the social scene, as one of Jefferson’s anecdotes about Franklin reveals.5 As he watched Franklin say goodbye to his French friends, Jefferson noticed the ladies smother him with embraces. When Franklin introduced him as his successor to them, Jefferson, referring to their affectionate embraces, wished that Franklin “would transfer these privileges to me.”
“You are too young a man,” Franklin told him.
Jefferson did make friends with many influential women during his time in Paris. His position as minister to the Court of France required more social activity than he usually enjoyed. But proper conduct in the finest social circles, he slowly realized, would favorably influence French attitudes toward the United States. By establishing a presence in a prominent salon, he could not only assert his own intellectual and social standing among France’s literary elite, but also assert his nation’s intellectual and social standing. Nearly a year after he arrived in Paris, Jefferson accepted an invitation to visit the country house of the Comtesse d’Houdetot at Sannois.
Considered one of the great romantic figures of her era, the Comtesse d’Houdetot became so despite the defects in her personal appearance. With crossed eyes and a sallow, pock-marked complexion, she hardly had the physical beauty to sustain her reputation, but the Comtesse nonetheless had a sexual appeal men found irresistible. The author of Les Liasons Dangereuses said of her, “She knew that the great affair of life is love.”6 The Comtesse also had a keen mind, which accounts for her particular appeal among the philosophes. For decades she had a steady lover in the Marquis de Saint-Lambert, who was a fixture in her salon. But her devotion to Saint-Lambert did not stop Jean-Jacques Rousseau from falling in love with her. Rousseau’s love went unrequited, but the Comtesse inspired the heroine of La Nouvelle Héloïse, and Rousseau revealed his love for her in the second part of his Confessions.
On Monday, June 20, Jefferson left Paris to make his first visit to Sannois. That morning was fairly cool, 55 degrees Fahrenheit to be precise: Jefferson took time before leaving to check his thermometer and record the temperature in his daily weather log. Reaching Saint Denis, he stopped to have breakfast and to see the Basilica before completing the remaining distance to Sannois, where he spent most of the day with the Comtesse and her other house guests. He did not return to Paris until late: the blank space in his weather log suggests that he was not around to take his usual end-of-the-day temperature reading.
He came away from the Comtesse’s country house quite pleased with his visit. The next day he wrote Abigail Adams to tell her about it: “I took a trip yesterday to Sannois and commenced an acquaintance with the old Countess d’Hocquetout. I received much pleasure from it and hope it has opened a door of admission for me to the circle of literati with which she is environed.”7
As Jefferson predicted, his friendship with the Comtesse helped introduce him to other important literary figures. And he would return to Sannois. The Comtesse had a fine garden there and asked his help in obtaining some American plants for cultivation. He also became a frequent visitor to her townhouse. After returning to America, he wrote a heartfelt letter thanking her for the “manifold kindnesses by which you added so much to the happiness of my stay in Paris.”8
Beyond a few brief references in his correspondence, the record of Jefferson’s friendship with the Comtesse is quite sparse. Some comments he made in conversation with Daniel Webster reveal much about his place in her salon. After visiting Monticello and speaking with him at length, Webster noted that Jefferson’s French experience was a favorite topic of conversation. Others who recorded conversations with Jefferson confirm the pleasure he took in talking about his time in France, but Webster’s account forms one of the most important documents detailing Jefferson’s personal life in France.9
“Madame Houdetot’s society was one of the most agreeable in Paris, when I was there,” Jefferson told Webster. “She inherited the materials of which it was composed, from Mad. de Tencin, and Mad. de Geoffrin. St.-Lambert was always there, and it was generally believed that every evening on his return home, he wrote down the substance of the conversations he had held there, with D’Alembert, Diderot, and the other distinguished persons, who frequented her house. From these conversations, he made his books.”10
According to Webster’s notes, Jefferson, even in conversation, said virtually nothing about his personal presence in the Comtesse’s salon. Instead, he offered what amounted to a brief history of the Paris salon as it had developed over the course of the eighteenth century. Marquise de Tencin established the most prestigious salon of the early eighteenth century. Upon meeting Marie-Thérèse Geoffrin, Madame de Tencin began grooming the younger woman as her successor. Madame Geoffrin’s salon, in turn, became the most influential one of the midcentury and she one of the most powerful women of her day. The Comtesse d’Houdetot took over from Madame Geoffrin, inheriting both her prestige and the membership of her salon.
This line of succession meant much to those who attended these salons. Madame Geoffrin had attracted the likes of Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond D’Alembert to her salon, and the Comtesse d’Houdetot brought them to hers. Even after inheriting such distinguished philosophes, the salonnière could not rest on her laurels. To sustain her reputation, she had to maintain and enhance the quality of her salon by luring new regulars to it. The Comtesse d’Houdetot’s greatest coup may have been luring Benjamin Franklin to her salon. Bringing Jefferson into her fold was less impressive, but as the highest ranking American official in France and the author of the increasingly well-respected Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson did add prestige to the Comtesse’s salon at a crucial moment.
He joined the Comtesse’s literary circle during a period of transition: Franklin was leaving France that year; Diderot had died the year before and D’Alembert the year before that. Discussing the place of Diderot and D’Alembert in the Comtesse d’Houdetot’s literary circle, Jefferson was describing social activities he knew only secondhand from Saint-Lambert. But he had great respect for Saint-Lambert, who would translate his Act for Establishing Religious Freedom into French and publish it in a parallel French/English edition. Asserting that Saint-Lambert wrote his books on the basis of what he heard from Diderot and D’Alembert in the salon of Comtesse d’Houdetot, Jefferson was not critiquing him. Rather, he was emphasizing how important conversation within the salons was to French literary culture. As his remarks to Webster suggest, Jefferson realized that some of the finest literature produced in France during the eighteenth century was inspired by and could be traced to conversations that occurred within its salons.
Jefferson’s responsibilities as a diplomat and his foray into the world of the Parisian salons frequently coincided. He came to know the great finance minister Jacques Necker, whose wife also had a well-respected salon—despite her awkwardness in conversation. She was what was known in Virginia as a “budge”—a nervous, fidgety person. Jefferson recalled: “She could rarely remain long in the same place, or converse long on the same subject. I have known her get up from table five or six times in the course of a dinner, and walk up and down her Saloon, to compose herself.”11
Germaine, the Neckers’ precocious daughter, grew up within her mother’s salon, where she developed a reputation for brilliant conversation and keen philosophical insight. With her marriage in 1786 to Baron de Staël, the Swedish ambassador to Paris, she established a salon of her own in their home on the Rue du Bac. Jefferson visited Madame de Staël’s salon as he had visited her mother’s. Sometimes he had diplomatic business to transact with the baron, but often he came to enjoy her conversation.12
Jefferson fondly remembered the time he spent with Madame de Staël. One Monticello visitor reported, “He amused us very much with an account of interviews which took place between Madame de Staël and himself when he was in Paris and of the laughable mistakes which she would make in her attempts to speak English.”13 This observation makes it sound like Jefferson was making fun of her, but he had great respect for Madame de Staël. She was in her early twenties when he came to know her in Paris. She had not perfected her English, but she had obviously learned to laugh about her mistakes. Their friendship endured after Jefferson left Paris, and they exchanged several letters in the coming years. His regard for her intellect shows in one letter to her: he called France the only country offering “elements of society analogous to the powers of your mind.”14
Another compliment Jefferson gave Madame de Staël reveals much about what they discussed in Paris. Writing him in 1807, she promised to send a copy of her novel, Corinne, ou l’Italie. Jefferson responded, “I shall read with great pleasure whatever comes from your pen, having known its powers when I was in a situation to judge, nearer at hand, the talents which directed it.”15 Jefferson does not say what writings of hers he had previously read. The only work she had published before he left Paris was Lettres sur les Ouvrages et le Caractère de J.-J. Rousseau, her controversial defense of Rousseau’s writings, especially La Nouvelle Héloïse. Jefferson’s frie
ndship with Madame de Staël encouraged his interest in the writings of Rousseau. He acquired Pierre Alexandre Peyrou’s edition of Rousseau’s Oeuvres Completes as well as an edition of Rousseau’s correspondence, which together formed a thirty-eight-volume collection.16
Having been a part of Professor Small’s Williamsburg circle in college and having attempted to make Monticello the center of a small intellectual circle himself, Jefferson’s salon experiences reinforced the value of the intellectual circle as both a pleasurable diversion and a catalyst for new ideas. He did form a circle of his own in Paris, but as the American ambassador, his Parisian circle was more national in scope than literary or intellectual. His home became a gathering place for Americans in Paris and Parisians with American interests.
William Short, who arrived at the summer’s end, quickly became the most constant and loyal member of Jefferson’s Paris circle. A Virginian born and bred, Short had attended the College of William and Mary and afterward read law under George Wythe. Jefferson, who recognized Short’s “peculiar talent for prying into facts,” had helped oversee his education, going so far as to consider him his “adoptive son.”17 Through Jefferson’s influence, Short became a member of the Virginia Executive Council, a position he resigned to travel through Europe. In Paris, Jefferson appointed him his private secretary. Short’s friendship for his mentor offers yet another example of the personal devotion Jefferson inspired in the talented, intelligent men he encountered. Short would remain a lifelong friend and steady correspondent. As a young man, Short received much encouragement from Jefferson. Once Jefferson eventually retired from public office, no one would encourage his literary ambitions more than Short.
One of the most unusual characters to enter Jefferson’s Paris circle was John Ledyard, who makes his first appearance in the memorandum books in June 1785. More is known about Jefferson’s contact with this wayward American than his contact with more distinguished Parisians because, unlike Ledyard, Jefferson’s French friends did not visit him begging for money. Ledyard had great ambition yet lacked the means to explore the world as he wished. He is mentioned several times in the memorandum books, as Jefferson accounted for the various sums he gave or loaned this daring countryman of his.
The Road to Monticello Page 39