The letter to Short indicates one reason why he wrote so little during this trip. After describing his adventures briefly, he decided to tell Short about the rest of them in person once he returned to Paris, “having already given you a sufficiency of egoismes, for want of other subjects.”15 Though Jefferson enjoyed sharing personal anecdotes in conversation, he always felt uncomfortable writing about himself. Such discomfort shows why “Notes of a Tour through Holland and the Rhine Valley” contains so few personal details. From his perspective, stories of his own exploits were useless, whereas information about agriculture was useful. Though Jefferson accepted the critical commonplace that the best literature should both delight and instruct, the instructive dominates his own travel writing. The delightful surfaces infrequently and momentarily.
Leaving Amsterdam the last Sunday in March, he began this new inquisitive journey with a good mental attitude. His mind would make up for what the journey might lack. “Imagination,” he wrote Trumbull, “helps me on cheerily over the dull roads of this world.” Jefferson was speaking in reference to his European travels, but in this case his words were figurative because the first stage of this trip did not bring him over a road at all but down a canal. From Amsterdam to Utrecht, he took a type of canal boat known as a track scout, which provided a comfortable, yet scenic passage: “To Utrecht nothing but plain is seen, a rich black mould, wet, lower than the level of the waters which intersect it; almost entirely in grass; few or no farm houses, as the business of grazing requires few labourers. The canal is lined with country houses which bespeak the wealth and cleanliness of the country; but generally in an uncouth state and exhibiting no regular architecture.”16
Back on land, he passed through Cleves, where a hailstorm overtook him. This storm was a sign of things to come. Intermittent showers would persist for the next several days. On Wednesday, April 2, he reached Dusseldorf, “a small pleasant town, pretty well built, paved and fortified,” as Trumbull described it. Jefferson found lodgings at Zimmerman’s, the “best tavern I saw in my whole journey.” Contemporary travelers were similarly impressed. John Owen, a Cambridge scholar who took the same basic route a few years later, also stopped in Dusseldorf, where he found himself “agreeably accommodated by the good offices of Zimmerman.”17
On Trumbull’s advice, Jefferson visited the most important tourist attraction in Dusseldorf, the gallery of paintings in the palace of the Palatine Elector. “I surely never saw so precious a collection of paintings,” he told Maria Cosway. Trumbull, who had spent three days in the gallery, enjoyed the room devoted to Peter Paul Rubens most. He recalled, “The fifth apartment may properly be called the monument of Rubens, and magnificently worthy of him; it contains near fifty of his most extraordinary works, and nothing by any other hand. They are of such variety and style, as would almost inspire a doubt of their being the fruits of one mind, but that we see the hand and the color which are so peculiarly and exclusively his. The subjects vary, from lowest ribaldry and profligacy of human nature, to the most sublime conceptions of religion and poetry.”18
John Owen, too, visited the gallery, where he also enjoyed Rubens’s paintings, especially The Adoration of the Shepherds, The Death of Seneca, and The Last Judgment. Discussing all three, Owen observed, “In the first of these the countenance of the Virgin was wonderfully expressive of solemnity and joy—the looks of the shepherds of surprize and congratulation. The Death of Seneca made me shudder. Of the Last Judgment, I ought to speak in raptures, but shall refer you to those, whose optics are better qualified to do justice to this vast and sublime groupe.”19 Unlike Trumbull or Owens, Jefferson was unimpressed by Rubens. Though aware of the painter’s prestige, he preferred the work of other artists represented in the gallery over what he dismissed as “the old faded red things of Rubens.”20
Making this critique in the letter to Maria Cosway, Jefferson seems a little self-conscious. Aware that his own aesthetic judgment was at odds with the accepted canons of criticism, he prefaced his remark by admitting that he was no connoisseur of art. Jefferson’s words recall Laurence Sterne’s critique of connoisseurs in Tristram Shandy, a work he alluded to elsewhere in this same letter. Connoisseurs, Shandy asserts, “are stuck so full of rules and compasses, and have that eternal propensity to apply them upon all occasions, that a work of genius had better go to the devil at once, than stand bepricked and tortured to death by ’em.” Unlike Sterne’s rule-bound connoisseur, Jefferson let nature be his guide in matters of aesthetics. As he explained to Maria Cosway, “I am but a son of nature, loving what I see and feel, without being able to give a reason, nor caring much whether there be one.”21
Jefferson maintained this same attitude toward artistic appreciation all his life. Three decades later he wrote, “I have always very much dispised the artificial canons of criticism. When I have read a work in prose or poetry, or seen a painting, a statue, etc., I have only asked myself whether it gives me pleasure, whether it is animating, interesting, attaching? If it is, it is good for these reasons.”22 This personal approach to art explains why Jefferson never really developed an extensive critical vocabulary and partly explains his idiosyncratic tastes.
Among the Dusseldorf collection, Jefferson most enjoyed the work of the late-seventeenth-century Dutch painter Adriaen van der Werff: “Above all things those of Van der Werff affected me the most. His picture of Sarah delivering Agar to Abraham is delicious. I would have agreed to have been Abraham though the consequence would have been that I should have been dead five or six thousand years.” Neither Owen nor Trumbull shared Jefferson’s appreciation. Speaking of van der Werff, Owen observed, “The paintings of this master, whose polished pencil defies the strictness of criticism, present little that can move the heart.” Trumbull’s critique is even harsher. “Of all the celebrated pictures I have ever seen,” he said, the paintings of van der Werff “appear to me to be the very worst—mere monuments of labor, patience, and want of genius.”23
Conveying a preference for van der Werff over Rubens, Jefferson revealed much about his tastes in art, which parallel his tastes in literature. Critiquing Rubens, he identified the color red as a defining feature of the artist’s work but derogates the paintings as being old and faded. Jefferson’s choice of words reveals that the paintings of Rubens looked dated to him. He preferred a classical aesthetic that would not go out of style. The Baroque qualities that Rubens’s work exemplifies—the bold use of bright colors juxtaposed with shade, the preference for curves over straight lines and right angles, the dynamic quality suggesting movement—looked passé to this exemplar of the Augustan Age. The paintings of van der Werff, alternatively, exemplified the neoclassical aesthetic Jefferson held dear.
Among the early van der Werff paintings on display in Dusseldorf, Children Playing before a Statue of Hercules reveals the artist developing his neoclassical style. In the foreground, figures of children indicate van der Werff’s capacity for rendering surface textures and his fascination with clothing and other drapery. The statue of Hercules, contrasted against the blue sky of the background, displays the emerging importance of classical myth and motif in late-seventeenth-century art. The artist figure standing to the left of the statue is busy molding a head of clay. His presence in the painting and his behavior make explicit the message that the artist should pattern his work on the classical, a message van der Werff took to heart over the course of his career.
Sarah Presenting Hagar to Abraham, the one painting of van der Werff’s Jefferson mentioned by name in his writings, represents the artist’s later, fully developed neoclassical style. Gone is any sense of movement. The figures in the painting have a still, posed quality reminiscent of statuary. Straight lines and right angles predominate. Jefferson’s appreciation of this painting is consistent with his appreciation of the neoclassical verse of Alexander Pope. Like Pope’s heroic couplets, the composition of this painting is balanced and well proportioned, qualities that lend it a sense of propriety.
Th
e Dusseldorf gallery contained dozens of works by van der Werff, most of which embody this neoclassical aesthetic. Singling out Sarah Presenting Hagar to Abraham, Jefferson not only named a work exemplifying his tastes, but also chose a work to titillate his reader, Maria Cosway. The painting illustrates the biblical story of the still-childless and presumably barren Sarah giving her scantily clad Egyptian slave to her husband Abraham so that he could produce an heir with her. Van der Werff made Hagar voluptuous, emphasizing her smooth, white skin and giving her an unmistakable softness, especially compared to Sarah’s hard, angular features and long, sinewy neck. Though the painting depicts a moment of stillness, Hagar’s sensuality anticipates what will happen next: the productive coupling between her and Abraham.
Though confirming the paucity of Jefferson’s critical vocabulary, the word he used to describe the painting—“delicious”—expresses a combination of artistic beauty and sensual allure. In his playful letter to Madame de Tessé from the year before, he used the same word as a critical term to describe Michael Angelo Slodtz’s Diana at the Chateau de Laye-Epinaye. In this letter to Maria Cosway, he makes his titillation more explicit by personally identifying with Abraham and conveying his desire to change places with him at the moment Sarah presents the voluptuous Hagar.
Jefferson mentioned a third artist in his letter to Maria Cosway, one whose work does not exemplify a neoclassical aesthetic: Carlo Dolci. Jefferson generally enjoyed Dolci’s work, but the time he spent at the Dusseldorf gallery turned Dolci into a “violent favorite.”24 Considered the most important Florentine painter of the seventeenth century, Dolci was an excellent portraitist. Like van der Werff’s, Dolci’s paintings were carefully wrought and highly polished. Similarly, Dolci had a gift for rendering surface textures.25 His paintings differ from those of van der Werff in terms of their emotional tone. Dolci’s work cultivates feelings of contemplative melancholy. Perhaps Jefferson’s literary tastes can also help explain his appreciation of Dolci’s paintings, which anticipate another aspect of the Augustan Age. The theme of melancholy fills an important role in much of the eighteenth-century English literature Jefferson admired, from the verse of James Thomson and Thomas Gray to the Ossianic prose poems.
Given Maria Cosway’s talent as an artist and her close personal relationship with Jefferson, his comments regarding these paintings in the letter to her are doubly appropriate. The description of the Dusseldorf gallery he made in “Notes of a Tour through Holland and the Rhine Valley” is less personal and more cursory. In fact, he described it in a single sentence: “The gallery of paintings is sublime, particularly the room of Vanderwerff.” This sentence begins a paragraph that describes his journey from Dusseldorf to Cologne and also contains a description of the renowned Westphalian ham. Look how much attention the ham gets in comparison:
I observe the hog of this country (Westphalia), of which the celebrated ham is made, is tall, gaunt, and with heavy lop ears. Fatted at a year old, would weigh 100. or 120. lb. At two years old, two hundred pounds. Their principal food is acorns. The pork fresh sells at 2½ d sterl. the lb. The ham ready made at 5½ d sterl. the lb. 106 lb of this country is equal to 100. lb of Holland. About 4 lb of fine Holland salt is put on 100 lb of pork. It is smoked in a room which has no chimney. Well-informed people here tell me there is no other part of the world where the bacon is smoked. They do not know that we do it. Cologne is the principal market of exportation. They find that the small hog makes the sweetest meat.26
The amount of space in his travel journal Jefferson devoted to West-phalian ham compared to the amount of space he devoted to the art gallery should not be interpreted as a personal preference. Instead, these varying descriptions suggest a literary priority. From his perspective, a disquisition on painting was much less useful in a travelogue than a record of the processing and marketing of pork. Such practical information he could put to use himself at Monticello. Furthermore, he could share what he learned of hogs and ham with farmers throughout Virginia. The contrast between the comments on art and those on farming in “Notes of a Tour through Holland and the Rhine Valley” shows the focus and purposefulness with which Jefferson recorded his travel experiences.
Staying at a tavern called the Holy Ghost in Cologne, he remained there long enough to notice several incongruities. The city had much commerce yet many poor people. Though Protestant merchants controlled the markets, Catholics controlled the city government and placed severe limits on the Protestants’ commercial enterprises. Recently, the Catholic-dominated Cologne legislature had licensed the Protestants to erect a church, but lawmakers were now threatening to revoke this privilege. Jefferson saw Cologne as a negative example that confirmed the importance of the separation of church and state: there can be neither freedom nor progress while the precepts of the church, any church, continue to influence the policies of a nation.
Despite recent storms, the roads remained in good condition until Bonn, after which clay roads predominated. When these clay roads got wet, they became, in Jefferson’s words, “worse than imagination can paint.” At Coblenz, he stayed at L’Homme Sauvage or, as it was also known, The Wildman, a very good tavern kept by a very good tavernkeeper who served very good bread. During his stay at Coblenz, this gracious tavernkeeper accompanied Jefferson to a nearby winery, where he introduced him to a Moselle expert. Consequently, Jefferson drafted a lengthy description of Moselle wine, one of many such descriptions that appear in his travelogue. After a fine breakfast roll reminiscent of the French rolls he had enjoyed in Philadelphia, Jefferson left L’Homme Sauvage with a sense of civility. His obliging host had kindly provided him with a road map of Germany to guide him through the next portion of his trip.
On Sunday, April 6, he entered Frankfurt, “a large and beautiful city,” the contemporary British traveler Adam Walker called it. Jefferson stayed at the splendid Red House. Walker stayed there, too, and his account supplies the kind of description absent from Jefferson’s “Notes.” Walker observed: “Our inn is superb; it is called the Maison Rouge, or Red House, and said to be the first Inn in Europe. For my part, I must confess, I never saw such an Inn in all my travels: it is a red house, of three stories, containing thirteen windows long in front, and inclosing behind, a considerable square; one side indeed is a garden, at the head of which is a palace fit for a prince, of beautiful and modern architecture.”27
Here, Jefferson met Baron de Geismar, whom he had befriended during the Revolutionary War when Geismar was among the Hessian troops staying at the barracks in Albemarle County. A career soldier, Geismar was now garrisoned at nearby Hanau, where Jefferson became reacquainted with several of the other Hessian officers he had met during the war. Renewing these friendships, Jefferson recalled the civility he had experienced in wartime Virginia.
Geismar accompanied him on several day trips this week. On Friday, the eleventh, they sailed from Mainz to Rüdesheim and returned by land, stopping at the vineyards along the way. In this region, Jefferson observed, only the area from Rüdesheim to Hochheim produced “wines of the very first quality.” Though the wines do not really become drinkable until they are about five years old, the proprietors, he noted, “sell them old or young, according to the prices offered, and according to their own want of money. There is always a little difference between different casks, and therefore when you chuse and buy a single cask, you pay 3, 4, 5, or 600 florins for it. They are not at all acid, and to my taste much preferable to Hocheim, tho’ but of the same price.” Jefferson purchased several vines, which he planted in his Paris garden and hoped to transplant to Monticello. Inviting Geismar back to Virginia, he promised him “a glass of Hock or Rudesheim of my own making.”28
Over its course, “Notes of a Tour through Holland and the Rhine Valley” develops a clear sense of purpose. What had started as a miscellaneous account of useful information essentially becomes what could be called “Observations on German Viticulture.” From Frankfurt through the remainder of the journey, Jefferson wrote more abo
ut wines and winemaking than any other subject.
Strasbourg conjured up further memories of Tristram Shandy, in which Sterne’s title character tells the story of one Slawkenbergius, a great chronicler of noses, who included within his compilation of nasal lore a series of stories about prodigious proboscises. One such tale tells of a man named Diego, whose extraordinary nose set all tongues wagging upon his entry into Strasbourg. To Maria Cosway, Jefferson wrote, “At Strasbourg I sat down to write you. But for my soul I could think of nothing at Strasbourg but the promontory of noses, of Diego, of Slawkenburgius his historian, and the procession of the Strasburgers to meet the man with the nose. Had I written to you from thence it would have been a continuation of Sterne upon noses, and I knew that nature had not formed me for a Continuator of Sterne.”29
Maria Cosway did not appreciate Jefferson’s remarks. She replied, “How could you [have] led me by the hand all the way, think of me, have Many things to say, and not find One word to write, but on Noses?”30 Like the reference to Abraham and Hagar, the suggestive reference to Sterne’s long-nosed character is tinged with sexual innuendo. Jefferson made similar literary use of Sterne’s Sentimental Journey in a flirtatious letter to Angelica Church, a young, beautiful American woman, later that year.31 Hinting that they share a cabin together on a return voyage to the United States, he recalled the intense negotiations between the Reverend Mr. Yorick and the fulsome Italian woman he shares a room with one evening. Jefferson explained, “I allow myself all the months of April, May, and June, to find a good ship. Embarking in either of these months we shall avoid being out during the equinoxes and be sure of fine weather. Think of it then, my friend, and let us begin a negociation on the subject. You shall find in me all the spirit of accommodation with which Yoric began his with the fair Piedmontese.”32
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