In contrast, Jefferson’s “Notes of a Tour of English Gardens” makes no mention of their visit to Stratford, which simply shows that Jefferson wrote what he did with a specific purpose in mind: to observe and analyze the gardens they visited in terms of both practical matters and aesthetics. The purposeful notes he took during his travels through other parts of Europe contain many similar gaps.
Jefferson did have other ways to show his appreciation. He had already begun to acquire a new edition of Shakespeare’s works. In 1785, John Bell began publishing a new fine-paper, petite-format edition of Shakespeare with detailed scholarly annotations. Each of the plays was issued separately. The annotations following the text were separately issued, too. Jefferson began acquiring the separate numbers of Bell’s Edition of Shakespeare when publication began. He continued expanding the set through 1788, when the last number was issued. Jefferson not only acquired the plays, he also purchased their accompanying annotations. To Jefferson’s ear, these annotations had a familiar ring to them: many were written by his old friend Samuel Henley.31
Shortly after he returned to Paris from London, Jefferson ordered a copy of The Beauties of Shakespeare, a selection of memorable lines and speeches from the plays and sonnets. He also purchased the quarto edition of Edward Capell’s Notes and Various Readings to Shakespeare, which contained explanatory notes, variant readings, and a glossary.32 While the earlier work suggests a dilettantish interest in Shakespeare, the latter shows Jefferson’s scholarly bent.
Two years later he ordered A Concordance to Shakespeare. Compiled by Andrew Becket and published in 1787, this work is the first concordance to Shakespeare ever published. In his introduction, Becket quoted Samuel Johnson’s comment that Shakespeare’s plays “are filled with practical axioms and domestic wisdom; and that a system of civil and economical prudence may be collected from them.”33 The comedian John Bernard, who enjoyed much literary conversation with Jefferson, provided further testament to his fondness for Shakespeare. Bernard observed, “In poetry his taste was thoroughly orthodox; Shakespeare and Pope, he said, gave him the perfection of imagination and judgment, both displaying more knowledge of the human heart—the true province of poetry—than he could elsewhere find.”34 The year he left Paris to return to America, Jefferson was trying to obtain an accurate portrait of Shakespeare to hang at Monticello.
He also took the opportunity to see Shakespeare in performance while in London. One evening he saw a production of Macbeth starring Sarah Siddons, Britain’s leading actress, in the role of Lady Macbeth. Contemporary theater-goers raved over her. David Humphreys told George Washington, “I have frequented the Theatres very often and have found an exquisite pleasure in seeing the famous Mrs Siddons perform who is far superior to any thing I had ever beheld on the stage.”35 Jefferson also saw Mrs. Siddons in The Merchant of Venice. By all accounts, her performance as Portia was inspiring, especially her enactment of the character’s most famous speech, which had a rare, natural quality to it. Listen:
The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
’Tis mightiest in the mightiest, it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
As one contemporary observer attending this performance commented, “Mrs Siddons spoke the speech on mercy as it certainly should be spoken—but as in truth we never heard it spoken—as a reply to ‘On what compulsion must I?’ From every other Portia it has always appeared as a recitation, prepared for the occasion.”36
Jefferson’s exposure to the arts in London also involved visiting the studios of several expatriate American artists. Having had his own portrait painted by Mather Brown, Adams convinced Jefferson to sit for him. The copy of Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia depicted in Adams’s portrait offers one indication of his deep affection for Jefferson; Adams’s desire to obtain a portrait of his friend to hang in his home offers another.
The original portrait Brown painted has disappeared, but from a copy made before its disappearance, Jefferson, at forty-three, still looks like a young man. He is neatly coiffed, his hair curled at the sides and thickly powdered. His always-ruddy cheeks give him a glow. His eyes constitute the most striking feature of the painting. Paradoxically, they have a dreamy yet penetrating quality. They seem to stare into the distance, looking beyond the horizon and deep into the future.
Brown’s portrait forms the surest indication of Jefferson’s contact with London’s world of art. Jefferson’s correspondence hints that he immersed himself deeply enough within the artistic community to speak with all of the leading American painters in London. Lately he had been corresponding with George Washington regarding the statue of the president that Jean-Antoine Houdon would create as the centerpiece for the Virginia State Capitol. There was some question whether Washington should be depicted in modern or classical dress. Upon learning Washington’s preference for modern garb, Jefferson was “happy to find that modern dress for your statue would meet your approbation. I found it strongly the sentiment of West, Copeley, Trumbul, and Brown in London, after which it would be ridiculous to add that it was my own. I think a modern in an antique dress as just an object of ridicule as a Hercules or Marius with a periwig and a chapeau bras.”37
Thomas Jefferson, by Mather Brown. (National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; bequest of Charles Francis Adams)
This brief comment reveals that Jefferson had spoken about art not only with Mather Brown, but also with John Singleton Copley, John Trumbull, and Benjamin West. His contact with John Trumbull—the artist, not to be confused with John Trumbull the poet—proved beneficial to them both. By the time they met, Trumbull had embarked on a series of paintings depicting important people and events from the Revolutionary War, including The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill and The Death of General Montgomery in the Attack on Quebec. Unsure whether he should continue the series, Trumbull sought Jefferson’s opinion. Jefferson, as Trumbull recorded in his invaluable autobiography, “encouraged me to persevere in this pursuit, and kindly invited me to come to Paris, to see and study the fine works there, and to make his house my home, during my stay.”38 It would not be long before Trumbull took him up on his offer and joined him at the Hôtel de Langeac.
Before leaving London, Jefferson also visited Sir Ashton Lever’s Museum. Having written what Charles Thomson called the finest natural history of America yet, Jefferson wanted to see this, the most extensive collection of curiosities from the natural world England had ever seen. “Natural History … is my passion,” Jefferson informed one correspondent a few years later.39 Though some contemporary critics found fault with Lever’s collection because it was not organized according to any established scheme for classifying nature, the sheer breadth and depth of the collection made it impressive. From the rotunda of the museum, Jefferson, among numerous other visitors, could have seen hundreds and hundreds of stuffed birds. Lever’s Museum helped inspire Jefferson to cover the walls beneath his rotunda at Monticello with numerous specimens from the natural world.
Lever went so far as to add a touch of whimsy to his collection, specifically, to his display of monkeys. Good for him. The world deserves more whimsy. Despite their humor, the displays that filled Lever’s Monkey Room were not without serious implications. Stuffed chimpanzees and orangutans were posed in human attitudes. Tailor Monkey, for one, sat cross-legged threading a needle. Carpenter Monkey was planing a bench. Clerk Monkey sat at a writing desk. The sight of these manlike apes led some to chuckle, others to guffaw, and at least one to reconsider the theories of Lord Monboddo, who first posited the idea of evolution.40
Leaving England, Jefferson crossed the channel without incident and soon found himself in Calais. The expenses he recorded in his account book include the following: “gave the successor of Sterne’s monk at Calais 1f
4.”41 Jefferson, of course, was referring to the Franciscan monk Laurence Sterne described in A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. His passion for Sterne’s work was well known among his friends. Earlier that year Abigail Adams had written to complain about their situation in the American embassy in London, alluding to a caged bird in A Sentimental Journey and knowing that Jefferson would get the reference: “At present we are in the situation of Sterne’s starling.”42
Inspired by Sterne’s own travels through France, A Sentimental Journey is nevertheless a fictionalized account that parodies other contemporary travel narratives. Jefferson himself recognized the work’s fictional nature and shelved it among romances and novels. Sterne, more than any other modern English novelist in Jefferson’s opinion, had the capacity to combine his powers of imagination with his capacity for expressing truth. As Jefferson observed, “We neither know nor care whether Lawrence Sterne really went to France, whether he was there accosted by the poor Franciscan, at first rebuked him unkindly, and then gave him a peace offering; or whether the whole be not a fiction.”43 If the essence is true, the plot need not be.
Identifying a parallel between his own personal experience and something he read in a novel, Jefferson projected himself into the pages of fiction. Before visiting England, he referred to the nation as the land of literature, and of books. During the four weeks he spent here, England ceased being a place in Jefferson’s imagination and became real. Upon leaving, however, his English experience took on the quality of a fable. With a king like a mule, a pig like a scholar, and apes like men, London did seem rather like a fantastic place in retrospect. If Jefferson’s attitude toward London softened at all in the coming years, it was because of what he read in his books and in the letters of his British correspondents. This, Jefferson’s first trip to London, would also be his last.
CHAPTER 23
Summer of ’86
Jefferson’s springtime activities in London helped shape his summertime activities in Paris. After returning to France in May, he caught up his correspondence, writing several friends to tell them about his trip and inform them of his return. To one he described the painterly skill of John Trumbull, who was planning to visit Paris soon, though not as soon as Jefferson imagined. Trumbull did not reach Paris until late July. Before then, Jefferson had much that required his attention, including some unfinished literary business. The friendship he and William Stephens Smith had formed, combined with new contacts in London’s literary world, had given him an idea for marketing Dr. David Ramsay’s History of the Revolution in South Carolina, a problem that had been preying on his mind for months.
For almost a year, in fact, Jefferson had been involved with the publication of Ramsay’s history. The two men had become acquainted when both were serving in Congress. Upon completing his manuscript, Ramsay had written Jefferson, asking him to find a French translator and publisher. Ramsay asked a lot, but Jefferson was willing to do what he could. The history had been a pet project of Ramsay’s ever since he had been taken prisoner after the fall of Charleston and exiled to a British P.O.W. camp in St. Augustine, Florida. Incensed by his treatment at the hands of the British during his incarceration, Ramsay decided to write a history of the war in South Carolina. By the time he was through, he had created a work that went far beyond its original scope. Ramsay’s two-volume History of the Revolution of South Carolina amounts to a history of the Revolutionary War in the South.
The usual way of issuing such a substantial work was to publish it by subscription, which typically involved having a prospectus printed in order to give potential subscribers an idea of the work. Ramsay found this method of publication distasteful. As he explained to Jefferson, he avoided publishing his book by subscription because of “principles of delicacy perhaps excessive.”1
Ramsay’s reluctance to publish his history by subscription resembles Jefferson’s reluctance to publish Notes on the State of Virginia. During the late eighteenth century, attitudes toward commercial publishing were in a state of flux, especially among Southern gentlemen. The tradition of circulating a written work in manuscript persisted much longer in the South than it did elsewhere in America. If an author wrote something and a friend expressed interest in it, then the author would have a manuscript copy made to present to the friend. Somehow, the idea of putting a written work in printed form for anyone to read was indecorous.
Venturing the cost of publication himself, Ramsay was getting his work into print yet doing so in a way that resembled the manuscript tradition, in which the author bore the cost of making manuscripts. The expense Ramsay incurred and the disappointment he experienced with his History suggest that the delicate principles he was clinging to had lost their validity. In terms of the history of books and printing, it was time for authors to set aside whatever feelings of delicacy they may be having and, for better or worse, plunge into the marketplace.
To print The History of the Revolution in South Carolina, Ramsay had engaged Isaac Collins, a careful yet relatively unambitious printer working out of Trenton, New Jersey. When Ramsay approached Jefferson about the possibility of a French edition, the American edition was in press but unfinished. For Jefferson, Ramsay went to the trouble of having a partial manuscript copy of his history prepared. A manuscript copy of an author’s work still made a heartfelt gift that could endear the recipient to the author. The one Ramsay presented to Jefferson clearly functioned in this manner. Ramsay sent printed sheets of the history to Paris as its gatherings came through the press. In letters accompanying these printed gatherings, Ramsay reiterated his desire for a French edition, but he did so in an ingratiating manner. Ramsay told him: “If a translation is thought proper you shall not in any event lose by it: if it is not I shall have the pleasure of furnishing you with the reading of the first copy of my work that crossed the Atlantic.”2
Jefferson wrote from Paris, expressing much satisfaction with Ramsay’s work, the first history of the war published from an American perspective. He assured Ramsay that he would do what he could: “I am much pleased to see a commencement of those special histories of the late revolution which must be written first before a good general one can be expected.”3
Though an offhand remark phrased as a cordial note of appreciation, Jefferson’s comment says much about his attitude toward history writing. By “special histories,” he meant narrowly focused studies written by experts in different fields of inquiry. Once several individual specialists have published their own focused histories of the Revolutionary War, he implied, then a general historian could synthesize these various studies into one authoritative, comprehensive history. History-writing is a cumulative effort requiring many minds.
As promised, Jefferson began seeking a French publisher for Ramsay’s History. His untiring efforts in this regard display the profound sense of responsibility he felt toward his nation and his countrymen. Dissatisfied with one offer he received, Jefferson sought others but found few that could top it. French publishers were reluctant to compensate authors adequately for translated works because there was no way one publisher could legally prohibit another from issuing a different translation of the same work.
Confident he could do better, Jefferson continued to seek a more lucrative offer for Ramsay. He could not wait too long: he feared that a lengthy delay would open the door for a competing French translation. Eventually, Froullé offered him slightly better terms. Despite his respect for Froullé, Jefferson hesitated to accept the offer. Only after Chastellux assured him that Froullé’s was the best offer he could expect did Jefferson close the deal. Froullé’s handling of Ramsay’s History confirmed the respect Jefferson had already developed for him. He would return to Froullé with similar projects. When John Adams sent Jefferson a copy of the first volume of his Defence of the Constitutions of the United States, Jefferson took the initiative and arranged with Froullé to have it translated and printed.
With Jefferson hard at work on the French edition, Ramsay was doing w
hat he could to market his book in England, but his naiveté led him astray. Instead of trying to find a London publisher who would edit and publish an edition specifically for British readers, Ramsay sent a huge quantity of the American edition—sixteen hundred copies—directly to the prominent London publisher and bookseller Charles Dilly.
Considering the partisan nature of Ramsay’s work, Dilly hesitated to sell it. Ramsay’s harsh treatment of Cornwallis, Tarleton, and other British officers would subject Dilly to accusations of libel were he to sell Ramsay’s History as its text stood. Before putting the book up for sale, Dilly sought the advice of legal counsel. His lawyers strongly advised against selling it. Since the portion of Ramsay’s History most offensive to British readers was largely restricted to an eighteen-page section, Dilly devised a way to make the book suitable for his local clientele: he asked Edward Bancroft to rewrite this section, which Dilly could have printed as a substitute for the supposedly offensive pages. His lawyers advised against this course of action, too. Dilly slowly realized that he had on hand sixteen hundred copies of a book he could not sell.4
When Bancroft let Jefferson know what Dilly was considering, Jefferson was aghast. How could any self-respecting bookseller deliberately tear the guts from a book before selling it? Gutting a book—the phrase is Jefferson’s—would help no one. As he informed William Stephens Smith, “They tell me that they are about altering Dr. Ramsay’s book in London in order to accommodate it to the English palate and pride …. The French translation will be out in a short time. There is no gutting in that. All Europe will read the English transactions in America, as they really happened. To what purpose then hoodwink themselves? Like the foolish Ostrich who when it has hid its head, thinks its body cannot be seen.”5
Jefferson devised an alternate plan: he would have Dilly send copies of Ramsay’s History to Paris, where he could have Froullé sell them from his shop. Any Englishman who wished to read Ramsay’s History complete and unaltered could obtain a copy from Paris. He wrote Smith, asking him to visit Dilly’s shop and have fifty copies sent to Froullé. Jefferson even drafted an advertisement informing British readers that they could obtain a complete and unexpurgated copy of Ramsay’s History of the Revolution in South Carolina by writing directly to Froullé. He ended his advertising copy by assuring British readers that though the book would be coming from France it would be delivered promptly. Jefferson’s forward-thinking effort to promote inter-European commerce was far ahead of its time, as the fruitless results of this venture proved. British consumers hesitated to take advantage of his offer. Nearly two years later, Froullé had sold only nine of the original fifty copies Smith had sent from London. The French translation fared little better.
The Road to Monticello Page 43