A provocative, but not thought-provoking, play.
When I first heard about Thomas Bradshaw’s play Thomas and Sally opening at Marin Theatre Company, I was intrigued.
Showing posts with label Thomas Jefferson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thomas Jefferson. Show all posts
10 Things Thomas Jefferson Loved
"He could not live without something to love."
–Margaret Bayard Smith, on Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson had more passions than most people have socks. As I move forward on my presidential biography quest, I bid adieu to Mr. Jefferson by looking at just ten of the many things he loved.
#1
I hate to break it to conservatives, but Jefferson was a bona fide tree-hugger. He planted over 160 species of tree at Monticello and was dubbed the “father of American forestry.”He wished the government could protect trees more than the law allowed at the time. “The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the growth of centuries,” he said, “seems to me a crime little short of murder, it pains me to an unspeakable degree.”
#2
Jefferson collected Jameses like Ben Affleck collects Jennifers. Two of his closest friends and protégés were fellow Virginians James Madison and James Monroe. Both had indispensable impacts on his legacy.Madison helped him form the Democratic-Republican Party, the nation's first political party and the ancestor of today's Democratic Party. Monroe helped him broker the Louisiana Purchase, more than doubling the size of the United States at the bargain price of four cents an acre.
Jefferson’s friendship and support helped both Jameses succeed him as president, maintaining the Virginia Dynasty for 24 straight years.
#3
A pet mockingbird named Dick was Jefferson’s “constant companion,” following him around the White House and even taking food from his lips. Margaret Smith wrote, “Often when he retired to his chamber it would hop up the stairs after him and while he took his siesta, would sit on his couch and pour forth its melodious strains. How he loved this bird!”Dick was his favorite, but Jefferson loved all mockingbirds. When he heard the species reached Monticello in the wild, he wrote:
“Learn all the children to venerate it as a superior being in the form of a bird, or as a being which will haunt them if any harm is done to itself or its eggs.”I'm not sure if those kids grew up with a healthy respect for mockingbirds or in sheer terror at the mere thought of the winged demons, but Virginia's mockingbird population flourished.
#4
Actually, Jefferson loved casual everydays. After visiting the White House a French ambassador wrote, “Mr. Jefferson has put aside all showing off. He greets guests in slovenly clothes and without the least formality.”Jefferson often wore a frock coat and bedroom slippers, looking more like The Dude from The Big Lebowski than a president. This was a mixture of his Virginia upbringing, which emphasized intellect and manners over ostentatious dress, and a conscious decision to throw out the stuffy trappings of Washington and Adams’s administrations.
#5
Thomas Jefferson knew how to throw a party. He was a poor public speaker, but he shone as a conversationalist at his intimate dinner parties, which one guest referred to as “a mental treat.” Aside from the obligatory delicious food and wine, Jefferson’s parties had three rules: 1. No healths (long boring toasts) 2. No politics and 3. No restraint.Jefferson also used his soirees for political gain. Author Jon Meacham wrote, “It tends to be more difficult to oppose – or at least to vilify – someone with whom you have broken bread and drunk wine. Caricatures crack as courses are served; imagined demonic plots fade with dessert.” His plan worked, as Senators opposed to his agenda were heard saying “the President’s dinners had silenced them.”
#6
Jefferson loved macaroni (he called all pasta “macaroni” in the same weird way Brits call all desserts “pudding”) and helped popularize it in America at his famous dinner parties. The inventor even drew up specs for a macaroni machine along with a recipe for pasta. To give you an idea of how Thomas Jefferson's mind worked, this is one of the ingredients of his pasta: 2 wine glasses of milk.A White House guest in 1802 described Jefferson’s macaroni: “It was an Italian dish, and what appeared like onions was made of flour and butter, with a particularly strong liquor mixed with them.” Like I said, the dude knew how to throw a party.
#7
One of Jefferson's greatest loves was the home he painstakingly designed, and never stopped redesigning. Monticello was a work in progress for over 50 years. “Putting up and pulling down is one of my favorite amusements,” he said.He obsessed over its details – double doors where both opened when you pushed on one, a dumbwaiter inside a fireplace – and he had written plans with measurements to an impossible-to-measure one millionth of an inch. “I suspect it was just a kind of intellectual exercise,” Monticello’s architectural conservator Bob Self said. “There isn’t anything else it could be really.”
Built on a mountaintop (Monticello is Italian for little mountain), it allowed Jefferson to look down at the surrounding landscape like a god. “And our own dear Monticello, where has nature spread so rich a mantle under the eye?" he wrote. "Mountains, forests, rocks, rivers. With what majesty do we there ride above the storms!”
Today Monticello is the only house in the United States designated a UNESCO World Heritage site.
#8
No love could rival Jefferson's late wife Martha, but one came close. After four years of grieving Martha's loss, Jefferson met Maria Cosway in Paris and described her as “the most superb thing on earth.” Multi-talented like himself, she was a skilled painter who spoke several languages and played and composed music. She was perfect, except for the minor inconvenience of having a husband. Good thing this was France.Maria inspired Jefferson to write a 4,000 word love letter with his left hand, after he mysteriously broke his right wrist, likely in her company. "How the right hand became disabled would be a long story for the left to tell," he told a friend. "It was by one of those follies from which good cannot come, but ill may." Oh Jefferson, you coy cuckold-maker.
Upon leaving France Jefferson wrote Maria, “I am going to America and you are going to Italy. One of us is going the wrong way, for the way will ever be wrong that leads us further apart.” They continued their correspondence for the rest of Jefferson’s life, each keeping a painting of the other in their homes.
#9
Jefferson once told John Adams, “I cannot live without books.” He fell in love with reading as a child and developed an addiction to buying books to feed his insatiable thirst for knowledge. His collection came in handy after the War of 1812 when the British burned the Capitol Building and its 3,000 volume library. He offered to sell his library to Congress, but they almost turned him down because Federalists feared Jefferson's books might spread his “infidel philosophy.” Good sense prevailed, and Congress more than doubled its library when Jefferson’s 6,707 books were delivered.
#10
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams went from being BFFs to arch-rivals and back like a pair of soap opera divas. They worked together on the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and were practically family while diplomatting together in France, but everything fell apart during Washington’s first administration. Vice-President Adams seemed to favor some monarchical ideas, which Secretary of State Jefferson considered a vile threat to keeping power in the hands of the people. These differences culminated in one of the bitterest elections in American history, which Jefferson called the “Revolution of 1800.” Jefferson beat the incumbent Adams, and Adams skipped out on Jefferson’s inauguration. The two did not speak for 12 years and never saw each other again.
Then in 1812 their mutual friend Dr. Benjamin Rush orchestrated a rekindling of their friendship. “You and I ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other,” Adams wrote Jefferson.
The old men exchanged 158 letters about everything from books, family, politics, education, and religion, to their roles in the American Revolution. The renewed correspondence lasted the rest of their lives. The Founding Frenemies died within hours of each other on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
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Jefferson loved far more than these ten things – his family, wine, science, France, horseback riding, the violin, and contradicting himself, to name just a few – but all those things are hard to illustrate with a doll whose knees don't bend. I'm sure I'll revisit Jefferson as my future plodding explores his legacy on the country and slavery, but for now it's time to move on to his protégés, James I and James II.
You may also like:
10 Things George Washington Loved
8 Things John Adams Loved
8 Things James Madison Loved
Sources:
Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham
The First Forty Years of Washington Society by Margaret Bayard Smith
Monticello.org
John H.B. Latrobe and His Times (1803 - 1891) by John E. Semmes
At Home by Bill Bryson
The Many Faces of Thomas Jefferson
Not all Thomas Jefferson faces are created equal.
Pictured above are two very different Thomas Jefferson action figures. Technically the one on the left is a doll – a lovingly sculpted piece from Effanbee my wife gave me for my birthday. She got it so I wouldn’t have to use the abomination on the right. Hastily purchased from eBay, this glorified chew toy was spawned by someone in China who clearly hated America.
Somehow it feels right to own two disparate figures of TJ. If any president is too complicated to be encompassed in a single action figure, it's Thomas Jefferson. He was a man of many faces, and I shall explore a few of them here.
The Two-Faced Face
Jefferson is famous for being a walking contradiction because his greatest beliefs are tainted by egregious examples of him doing exactly the opposite.Some modern groups, like the Tea Party, revere Jefferson as a champion of small government and a huge proponent of states rights. They're absolutely right. He was all those things, especially when he was governor of Virginia. The real test of whether he believed in a small federal government would come when he was elected the leader of it. Spoiler alert: he failed that test.
As president, Jefferson treated federal power like my five-month-old daughter treats her Poppin' Play Piano – with haphazard blunt force.
He expanded federal power to a tyrannical level with the Embargo Act of 1807, forbidding all U.S. exports in a misguided effort to avoid war with Britain and France. The man who claimed government shouldn't interfere with the private business of its citizens suddenly ended the livelihoods of thousands of them with what historian Leonard Levy considers "the most repressive and unconstitutional legislation ever enacted by Congress in time of peace." After more than two years of the economy tanking and people starving, Jefferson repealed the act, right before he left office.
Jefferson is also celebrated as a great defender of the Constitution and strong advocate for a Bill of Rights, but the man dubbed "the apostle of democracy" did not always practice what he preached. He won the election of 1800 against John Adams in part because he condemned Adams's Alien and Sedition Acts, which made it illegal for journalists to speak out against the government. Once in office, Jefferson repealed the acts like he said he would, but he actually oversaw more prosecutions for sedition than Adams ever did – he just did it behind the scenes using state libel laws.
Those hypocrisies are like little baby hypocrisies – itty bitty kitten-in-a-teacup hypocrisies – compared to the greatest contradiction of Thomas Jefferson's life. It's one I still struggle to wrap my head around. In fact, I need to enlist my action figure friends to address this one. Together, they can help me channel my complicated feelings about him in a safe way. Like a child survivor on Law & Order: SVU, I can point to where on these dolls Thomas Jefferson confounded me.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you:
A Conversation About Slavery Between Two Thomas Jefferson Action Figures
I don't know if Jefferson's reluctance to do anything meaningful in his lifetime to end slavery was a calculated move because he thought he could accomplish more if he didn't rock the fledgling America-boat, or if he was just a weak, selfish man who didn't want to compromise a damned thing about his cushy way of life.
What I do know is he was a man of tremendous influence living in a time when his neighbors were freeing their slaves. Jefferson was absolutely brilliant enough to have found a way to do something more about the problem, but instead he chose to kick the can down the road until it erupted past the point of no return in The Civil War.
That, to me, is despicable.
You might think I really hate Jefferson based on nearly everything I've said about him, but that’s not exactly the case. I definitely do not think he should be held up as a bastion of liberty and limited government, and I think his ideas about freedom are only great when applied to far more people than he intended. On the other hand, I would be honored to shake the hand of the man who invented the swivel chair. If that makes me a hypocrite, then I guess I'm in pretty good company.
The Facebook Face
Political posts on Facebook aren't known for their subtlety, so it makes sense that one of the more popular versions of Thomas Jefferson on Facebook would lack the finesse of its namesake.This Facebook Thomas Jefferson exists to inform people of "PROPER and HONEST American history" which to him means "Thomas Jefferson WAS AND IS NOT A MODERN DAY LIBERAL." That's true, because Thomas Jefferson is not a modern day anything. He led the country 200 years ago when it was 2% its current size, so accurately transposing his views onto today's political arena is impossible.
But who cares about accuracy when you have an agenda? When not writing in all caps or posting Jefferson memes, Facebook Thomas Jefferson takes breaks to ask his fans insightful questions like:
Randomly apostrophizing the possessive "its" and baiting people's prejudices are equal sins in my book, but being unwilling or unable to do a simple internet search is unforgivable.
Full disclosure: I’m probably just upset because of the reaction I got when I tried to share one of my posts on his page:
Ouch! Excuse me for sharing, Facebook Thomas Jefferson. I’m sorry my well-researched treatise on the mysterious death of Elizabeth Jefferson wasn't to your taste. Maybe if I’d shared a page about “taking back” the government from the oppressive evil regime you believe we’re under, you would have liked and shared it.
Oh well. There are enough Jefferson beliefs for all of us to cling to. As for me, I prefer this quote:
Oh well. There are enough Jefferson beliefs for all of us to cling to. As for me, I prefer this quote:
Those aren't the thoughts of a young idealist; this was Thomas Jefferson in 1813, the wise 73-year-old sage of Monticello. The quote is engraved on the wall of the Jefferson Memorial, but it would fit just as well in a university, a courtroom, or on a rainbow flag.Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
Facebook Thomas Jefferson helped me realize that it's tempting to pick out things on which we agree with Jefferson, or any Founding Father, and use those to flesh out the characters we'd like them to be. If we align ourselves with the people who founded the country, we can convince ourselves America was meant to be what we think it should be, that this country was meant for people like us.
That divisive thinking doesn't help anyone, but it reminds me of one thing America really was designed to be: a place where we can disagree about what this country was meant to be until we're blue, or red, in the face.
The Plaster Face
Pinning down Jefferson’s one “true” face is not only impossible; it's dangerous. Literally.
In 1825 an artist tried to make a life mask of Jefferson’s face, but the plaster hardened too quickly and nearly suffocated him. He couldn't call out for help, but he managed to grab a chair and slam it against the floor, getting the attention of a slave who saved his life.
Behold – the true face of Thomas Jefferson, made from that life mask. I think the artist did a great job capturing Jefferson's feelings about narrowly escaping assassination by plaster.
He reminds me of another great patriot.
Efforts to represent Jefferson in a single way are as messy as that effort to take a mold of his face. He cannot and should not be defined solely by the words of the Declaration of Independence or by his hypocritical views on slavery. As much as Thomas Jefferson's accomplishments define him, so do his contradictions. His true face is that of both the apostle of democracy and our barbarous ancestor.
Sources: Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham, Alberti's Window: Browere's Life Mask of Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson, Recarving Rushmore by Ivan Eland
What the First 5 Presidents Taught Me About Raising My Newborn Daughter
3 presidential lessons that made fatherhood slightly less terrifying
Now instead of learning about the Jay Treaty and the War of 1812, I’m reading What to Expect in the First Year and asking the internet stuff like "newborn eyes roll back in head normal?" (normal).
The reading and blogging part of me must adapt as I acclimate to this new world of sleep deprivation, diapers, feedings, and a surreal sense of disbelief and awe that this beautiful creature is here to stay and my identity and priorities must shift. Forever.
Stealing moments as both daughter and mother sleep to write this, I reflected on the lessons I gleaned from the first five presidents that I’m applying to raising my newborn daughter – the do’s and don’ts of what it means to be a father of 8 pounds of an utterly dependent micro-human waiting to be shaped by my love and neuroses.
These are the 3 main lessons I’ve learned.
1. Be there.
It’s getting easy to be there when she’s making eye contact or showing early attempts to smile, or sleeping in my arms. It’s harder to be there when she’s wailing at the top of her lungs, spitting up like some kind of milk volcano, or writhing in gassy pain when we just want her to sleep. Those are the times I want to tap out and pass her to mommy or any halfway trustworthy-looking stranger nearby.Reading about the early presidents was more of a lesson in what not to do when it came to being there for my daughter. The first presidents (except Washington and Madison who had no children of their own but both had disappointing stepsons) spent much of their pre-presidential years in Europe as ambassadors and diplomats. That meant missing out on much of the formative years of their young children's lives.
John Adams spent years in Europe away from his family. The son he took with him, John Quincy, went on to become president and lived to 80. The son he spent less time with, Charles, died of alcoholism at 30. I wonder what difference it would have made if John had been there alongside Abigail to steer Charles in the right direction. Those sons seem like extreme ends of the stick, and I’d like to think there’s a happy medium in there somewhere that will allow my daughter to be a successful social drinker.
After serving in France for years, Thomas Jefferson finally brought his 9-year-old daughter Polly over to join him and she didn’t even recognize him. The poor girl was torn from her home against her will, put on a boat for weeks, and finally delivered to a man she didn’t know. As painful as that was for her, I wonder how Jefferson felt when they reunited and he saw no love in her eyes. I understand service to one's country still separates families, but I could never handle being a stranger to my child.
I started thinking being apart from your young children was normal, essential even, if you wanted to be politically successful in the early 1800s. Then I read about James Monroe. Even though he was sent to Europe multiple times, he always brought his wife and daughter with him – where he went, they went, as a family. He gives me hope that work-life balance is achievable for my wife and I who want to be equal parents and providers.
Monroe also died penniless after a lifetime of public service and needed his children's help to support himself at the end. So the real takeaway for us might be Be there...and have a 401(k).
2. Learn to love poop.
American farmers like George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson were among the first to use manure as fertilizer. They knew its value, and fully understood the dung concoction was something to be studied, cultivated, and revered. John Adams even had a recipe for it in his diary. If I still lived in the Midwest with easy access to all the ingredients, I might have tried to recreate it in an attempt to copy the model of the popular Julie & Julia blog. |
| It involved freezing over the winter and thawing it in the spring – this recipe was serious shit. |
Now I've learned to have a love-hate relationship with her poop. Once the maternity nurses showed me how, changing her diapers was one of the few times I actually knew what to do with her in those first days; my purpose was as clear as her diapers were soiled. It's actually a relief now to open those Pampers and see a big load because it means she's digesting her food and growing and thriving, and her awful gas pain has a real, solvable cause.
When George Washington was looking for a farm manager, he said he wanted “above all, Midas like, one who can convert everything he touches into manure, as the first transmutation towards Gold.” My newborn definitely has that Midas touch, but her poop doesn’t look like gold. On the best of days, it looks like basil pesto. On the worst of days, it looks like basil pesto sprayed five feet across the room. She's too young to draw pictures or make macaroni art; poop is all she has to give at this point and she's incredibly generous.
3. Read.
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| We may get through this biography project sooner than I thought. |
Parenting should be approached the same way.
I know (and I’ve heard a million times) that no book can prepare you for what it’s like having a baby. You don't say? I’ve had books that were so good they kept me up at night, but that was on my terms, not at random intervals for weeks straight sucking out my soul.
Obviously real-life experience is different from the advice and warnings you read about, but books have armed me and my wife with knowledge that gives us an inkling of what's normal and helped us form some kind of plan. There is no “what feels right” in the moment when everything is tortuous and you're plagued with deranged insecurity. You can go ahead and wing it, but I’m diving headfirst into Harvey Karp's 5 S's of calming a crying baby and binge-read babycenter.com. Even if our eat-play-sleep plan is literally shit all over by our strong-willed baby, it helps us feel a little less helpless.
All the books in the world won't stop us from making our own mistakes with our poopy little nation-state, but I'd like to avoid some mistakes other people already made. I know my wife and I aren't founding a country, but we’re raising a human being and sometimes it feels like the same thing.
Thomas Jefferson's Head, Heart, and Wrist
The dangerous liaison that broke Thomas Jefferson's heart
– and wrist.
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| Detail of Thomas Jefferson, circa 1786 by Mather Brown |
Jefferson's rebellion was not ignited by a band of angry citizens, but by a single woman: Maria Cosway. The battleground was his own head and heart, and the casualties numbered two broken hearts and one broken wrist.
Maria Luisa Caterina Cecilia Hadfield Cosway was such a total package of sexiness and brilliance that she needed six names. With eyes as blue as violets, curly golden hair, a slim figure, and (according to biographer Dumas Malone) "kissable" pouting lips, Maria Cosway was the perfect femme fatale.
She spoke several languages, played and composed music, and was raised in Florence as a real-life Catholic school girl. When she was young, an insane nursemaid murdered four of her siblings but was caught before she could get to Maria. I’m pretty sure God stepped in and said, “Not that one! I want to watch her sexy life play out. Go forth, hot Maria, and drive men crazy.”
She spoke several languages, played and composed music, and was raised in Florence as a real-life Catholic school girl. When she was young, an insane nursemaid murdered four of her siblings but was caught before she could get to Maria. I’m pretty sure God stepped in and said, “Not that one! I want to watch her sexy life play out. Go forth, hot Maria, and drive men crazy.”
Just how hot was Maria Cosway? This is a painting of her:
Thomas Jefferson's wife Martha had died four years earlier, and he grieved inconsolably for months before accepting an appointment to France to remove himself from the pain. He was sightseeing in Paris when his friend John Trumbull (painter of the famous fantasy version of the signing of the Declaration of Independence) changed his life forever by introducing him to Maria Cosway.
There were instant sparks. The 43-year-old widower called the sight of the 26-year-old bombshell "the most superb thing on earth." The electricity was mutual. Plans were canceled on both sides so Jefferson could spend the rest of the day with Maria...and her husband.
Unfortunately, Maria was married, to the famous miniature artist Richard Cosway. But you shouldn't waste any pity on him, because no one else ever did. Contemporaries describe Richard as an absurd, ridiculous little man who cheated on Maria with other women (and men) and looked "very like a monkey in the face."
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| Richard Cosway probably toned down his monkeyness in this self-portrait, but the resemblance is clear. |
Their frolicking came to a sudden, painful end around September 8, 1786 when Jefferson somehow broke his right wrist. We know very little about the cause of the injury due to Jefferson's mysterious secrecy, but he was almost certainly with Maria at the time.
When a friend asked him how it happened, Jefferson wrote back with his left hand:
How the right hand became disabled would be a long story for the left to tell. It was by one of those follies from which good cannot come, but ill may. As yet I have no use of that hand, and as the other is an awkward scribe, I must be sententious and not waste words.What a long-winded way of saying “It’s none of your business.” I wouldn’t accept a non-answer like that. I’d write back saying, “Listen, Tommy. I didn’t ask you to waste words, and I didn’t ask you to wax poetic either. I asked how you broke your damn wrist. Could your left hand maybe string together three or four words into a complete thought? ‘Fell off skateboard’ or ‘Texting, didn’t see manhole.’"
But that's the only explanation we have in Jefferson's words about what happened, and it's worse than no explanation because he's so damn coy about it, practically teasing that it's a really great story he's not telling.
So what’s the truth behind this wrist mystery, or wristery, if you will? (I understand if you won’t.) There are a few possibilities.
William Franklin (Ben’s son) wrote that Jefferson “dislocated his right wrist when attempting to jump over a fence in the Petit Cours.” This led historians to believe Jefferson may have been jumping a fence to greet Maria or impress her. An odd mistranslation in a subsequent letter changed the fence into both a fountain and a “large kettle,” so some sources believe Jefferson broke his wrist trying to jump over a tea pot. Unless Jefferson was tea-bagging the fence when he broke his wrist, I’m not sure how you could confuse a fence with a kettle. Something is awry.
The Merchant-Ivory film Jefferson in Paris had another theory. The filmmakers must have thought fences and kettles were too…iron or something, so they imagined Jefferson broke his wrist while trying to impress Maria in another way. By jumping over a pile of logs.
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| Jefferson logging out. |
Jefferson’s heartbreak inspired him to write an epic love letter to Maria – his famous Dialogue of the Head and the Heart. Writing “slowly & awkwardly” with his left hand, he cranked out 12 pages of a playful, passionate chat between his head and his heart. His head was upset with his heart for letting them get too involved with Maria, but his heart reveled in the memory of the experiences while they lasted. He said in 4000 words what Alfred, Lord Tennyson said in 14 words sixty years later, “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
He should have just kept his best quotes and sent her a PowerPoint deck instead.
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| Jefferson told Maria he was no connoisseur of art, just "a son of nature, loving what I see and feel." For this reason I believe he would have loved Clip Art. Loved it. |
She didn’t take his advice. “I could not resist the desire to read it at once,” she wrote, “even at the cost of committing an act of disobedience. Forgive me, the crime merits it... I honestly think my heart is…full or ready to burst with all the variety of sentiments… Oh, Sir, if my correspondence equaled yours how perfect it would be!”
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| Other men pale in comparison to Thomas Jefferson. |
This letter gives us a glimpse into a humanity and self-awareness of his own contradictions we don’t see anywhere else. Jefferson is famous and fascinating for his contradictions – fighting for states’ rights vs. expanding federal power, writing about abolishing slavery vs. living off of it, appearing above the political fray while being deeply entrenched in it. His life was a battle between what he thought ideal and what he thought necessary.
Unlike his letters with the late Martha which he burned, Jefferson carefully saved his copy of this letter for posterity. The always-calculating man who cared so much about his image wanted us to see both sides of him – his intelligence and his passion – and the mad literary skills it took to poetically pit these contradictory parts of himself against each other.
Or maybe he just wanted to show off how well he could write with his left hand.
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| Thomas Jefferson's left-handed writing is clearly superior to my own. |
Jefferson set a very high standard with the Dialogue of the Head and the Heart, one even he couldn't live up to. Upset with the comparable shortness of Jefferson’s subsequent letters, Maria scolded him, “Are you to be painted in future ages sitting solitary and sad, on the beautiful Monticello tormented by the shadow of a woman who will present you a deformed rod, twisted and broken…” He may have been tormented by her and his wrist may have been a deformed rod, but he was not "solitary" when he returned to Monticello. In fact, it was just a few months later that Jefferson’s 8-year-old daughter Polly arrived in France with her maid, the 14-year-old slave known as Sally Hemings.
The following year, Jefferson wrote Maria a letter that may have alluded to his scandalous liaison with the young Sally. He described a beautiful painting he saw called "Sarah Presenting Hagar to Abraham" where a nude slave woman is presented to Abraham to birth his children. He called the painting "delicious" and said he would have gladly taken Abraham's place.
The following year, Jefferson wrote Maria a letter that may have alluded to his scandalous liaison with the young Sally. He described a beautiful painting he saw called "Sarah Presenting Hagar to Abraham" where a nude slave woman is presented to Abraham to birth his children. He called the painting "delicious" and said he would have gladly taken Abraham's place.
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| Detail of Adriaen van der Werff's Sarah Presenting Hagar to Abraham |
He wrote this after the start of his relationship with Hemings, the slave woman who would go on to bear several of his children and serve him for the rest of his life. If Jefferson already found the idea of being with a slave "delicious," he may have found Sally even more tempting, as it's likely she resembled Jefferson's late wife, Martha. Because (are you sitting down?) Martha Jefferson and Sally Hemings had the same father.
Excuse me a moment, I have to write a letter back in time.
Excuse me a moment, I have to write a letter back in time.
Dear Pulitzer-Prize winning Jefferson biographer Dumas Malone,
When you referred to Maria Cosway and said if Jefferson ever engaged in illicit love-making “this was the time,” I think you were a little off. I know the compelling DNA evidence that Jefferson fathered Sally Hemings’s children didn’t come out until 1998, and you yourself passed away in 1986, but I wanted to send this letter back in time to tell you the good news about Thomas Jefferson.Nobody ever painted Sally Hemings's portrait. She wasn’t an accomplished artist or a celebrated member of high society, and she may not have known how to read or write. But she was a product of Jefferson’s beloved home and reminded him of his late wife.
It turns out his only chance at illicit love-making was not just in the fall of 1786 with Maria Cosway! That is, of course, if you consider “illicit love-making” to include intercourse with your 15-year-old slave who also happens to be your dead wife’s half-sister. If you do, then there were actually many, many more times over 40 years. If you don’t consider that to be illicit love-making (and instead consider it, say, rape), then yes, Maria was probably his best opportunity for naughty intercourse.
Your most humble servant,
HD
The relationship or at least its formation is as inexcusable as the institution of slavery itself, but the choice makes sense for the man who said life was about avoiding pain and he couldn't bear parting with those he loved. Maria could never be his and her departure left him “overwhelmed with grief.” That pain could be avoided with Sally, who was his and his alone.
His relationship with Sally Hemings didn’t stop Jefferson from thinking about Maria. Just before his departure from Europe, he wrote to her, “I am going to America and you are going to Italy. One of us is going the wrong way, for the way will ever be wrong that leads us further apart.”
In 1789 Jefferson returned to America to serve as the first Secretary of State under George Washington. Back in Europe, Maria’s marriage to Richard Cosway was annulled. How and why is unclear, but things went downhill for our monkey friend after that. He went insane and spent most of his time in institutions after he lost the use of his right hand. His right hand.
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that two men who were intimate with Maria ended up with similar grave injuries, but I don’t want to rule anything out so I’ll add it to the list.
After leaving a trail of limp-wristed men in her wake, Maria went on to found a convent in Italy. She lived there for the rest of her life and served as its director. She and Jefferson continued corresponding sporadically until his death.
Each kept these images of the other in their homes.
Each kept these images of the other in their homes.
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| The engraving of Maria Cosway (by her husband Richard) still hangs in Monticello today. The miniature of Jefferson now resides in the White House, a gift to the American people from the Italian government. |
Jefferson soon regained the use of his right hand for writing, but not much else. French surgeons botched the setting of the bone, and the injury never completely healed. The pain served as a lifelong reminder of Maria Cosway, the breaker of hearts and wrists whom he loved with his head and his heart – a woman who could not be owned.
Sources:
Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham, Jefferson and the Rights of Man by Dumas Malone, Jefferson: A Revealing Biography by Page Smith, John Adams by David McCullough, Head and Heart Letter on pbs.org, Monticello.org, Richard Cosway, "The Macaroni Miniature Painter" from The Art Amateur, Vol. 8, No. 2 (January 1883), The Franklin Papers
Thomas Jefferson's 7 Step Guide to Successful Emails
Applying Jefferson's Letter-Writing Skills To Your Outbox
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| Thomas Jefferson never actually wrote emails, but he did write 19,000 letters. With inflation, that's almost 260,000 emails today. |
Blood had already been spilled in the Revolutionary War, and Jefferson's Loyalist cousin John Randolph was packing his bags for the motherland. Using his letter-writing kung-fu, Jefferson wrote his king-loving cousin what seemed like a friendly personal note but was in truth a shrewd political play to change Britain's perception of America.
I dig deeper into that letter to uncover the psychological techniques Jefferson employed two hundred years ago, and I lay them out in a step-by-step manual you can use today in emails, instant messages, and texts. Following Jefferson's lead, it's possible to not only get others to do what you want, but like it.
Step 1: Ask about something they love.
Jefferson started his letter by bringing up Randolph’s fine violin, which he was selling to Jefferson, and recommending material to wrap it. This created an instant feeling of familiarity and connection much more effective than a generic “hope you’re doing well,” and it was a nice disarming move that subtly said we care about the same things, so we must be on the same side.This tactic isn’t about fooling anyone. People know when you’re writing because you want something, but making that extra effort upfront to connect with them personally will put them in a better mood to give it to you.
When to ask about something they love:
● If it’s been a while since you’ve written and you want to set a friendly tone.
● When you want to hide your sociopathic lack of interest in other humans.
When not to do this:
● When your message is so short it seems insincere: “Hi Steve, how's your indoor soccer league doing? Can I have one of your kidneys?”
Step 2: Pretend you don’t want to get involved.
Like George Washington and Michael Jordan, one of Jefferson's greatest skills was false retirement. He told Randolph his second wish (his first being a restoration of America’s just rights) was:“a return of the happy period, when, consistently with duty, I may withdraw myself totally from the public stage, and pass the rest of my days in domestic ease and tranquility, banishing every desire of ever hearing what passes in the world.”That was total bullshit. This was a year before he wrote the Declaration of Independence, and 26 years before he became president. He very much wanted to get involved, but to be a successful politician back then you had to pretend you wanted nothing to do with politics and all you really wanted to do was farm.
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| Thomas Jefferson loved to |
When to pretend you don't want to get involved:
● When it’s bad news or not really your business but you can’t help yourself.
When not to do this:
● Thank you notes and cover letters.
Step 3: Set out to clear up confusion.
The world is a scary and confusing place. Or it was until you came along, Reluctant Hero. By stepping in and declaring, “I just want to clear up any confusion” or “I want to make sure everyone’s on the same page,” you offer everyone a beacon of hope guiding them to the safe haven of your Utopian world of understanding and clarity. Of course what you’re really saying is, “This is all just a misunderstanding that can be cleared up by you doing what I say.”Jefferson’s entire purpose was to clear up Britain’s confusion and make sure they knew America was totally united and totally badass:
“I think it must be evident to yourself, that the Ministry have been deceived by their officers on this side of the water, who (for what purpose I cannot tell) have constantly represented the American opposition as that of a small faction, in which the body of the people took little part. This, you can inform them, of your own knowledge, is untrue. They have taken it into their heads, too, that we are cowards, and shall surrender at discretion to an armed force. The past and future operations of the war must confirm or undeceive them on that head.”He wanted Randolph to pass on the message that America was a serious threat, but he did it by presenting himself like a wise family doctor prescribing a gentle laxative: friendly, knowledgeable, and there to help because you’re full of crap.
When to clear up confusion:
● When misperceptions might be hurting you.
● When an email chain becomes so tangled and confusing it needs a reset.
● When the strength of your revolutionary forces are underestimated.
When not to do this:
● When you could achieve the same thing by saying nothing.
Step 4: Stress how they are the chosen one.
After buttering his cousin up with fancy violin talk and making it clear his cause was important enough to stop farming and pick up his pen, Jefferson focused on what he wanted Randolph to do. He told him, “looking with fondness towards a reconciliation with Great Britain, I cannot help hoping you may be able to contribute towards expediting this good work.” Positive words like fondness, reconciliation, and good elevate Jefferson's real message of "Be my willing pawn and do my bidding, quickly."Singling out your recipient and letting them know exactly what to do is key. This is why I’ve never started a forest fire; Smokey the Bear was very specific about my role in preventing them, and I was so flattered he recognized my special talent for not committing arson that I continue to oblige him to this day.
Jefferson was telling Randolph, “Only you can prevent revolutionary wars.” Spoiler alert: Randolph couldn't pull that off. But he did manage to get Jefferson's letter to the British Secretary of State for the Colonies. Through flattery, manipulation, and the keen ability to predict his audience's response, Jefferson got a personal letter to his cousin all the way up the ranks of the British empire.
When to stress they are the chosen one:
● When you want one person to do something they’re uniquely positioned to do but might not realize it.
When not to do this:
● When it’s already obvious how they can help and restating it makes you look like an idiot for telling them what their job is.
Step 5: Lay out the stakes, and the consequences.
Jefferson expressed his desire for Randolph to spread the word about America's unity and strength. Now, he had to explain why this was necessary. He did that by making it clear what hung in the balance – Britain’s place on top of the world:“it will, perhaps, be in your power…to render service to the whole empire, at the most critical time, certainly, that it has ever seen. Whether Britain shall continue the head of the greatest empire on earth, or shall return to her original station in the political scale of Europe, depends, perhaps, on the resolutions of the succeeding winter.”If you’re asking for something important, your audience wants to know why it’s important to you, what's in it for them, and what's at stake. Jefferson made it clear helping him meant helping Britain, too, and that reconciliation (still a possibility at that point) was in everyone’s best interest. But, Jefferson warned, if it wasn’t the kind of hands-off reconciliation he wanted, he “would lend my hand to sink the whole Island in the ocean.”
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| Also money. Oh, and cannons! Money and cannons, those are very important. And ships, too. But the ships had cannons on them, so do I count both? Actually the ships probably had everything else on them, too. So there we have it: money, cannons, and ships, plus what's in the picture. Those are the weapons that won the American Revolution. |
When to lay out the stakes and consequences:
● If the stakes aren’t already clear, or you have compelling reasons for asking for something that won’t make you look bad.
When not to do this:
● Don’t threaten people or give them ultimatums in writing. That’s best handled in unrecorded conversations.
● Love letters. People are much more attracted to confidence than a list of bad things that could happen if they won't go out with you.
Step 6: Ask a small favor.
This tip might be the easiest and most effective if done right.In the post-script of his letter, Jefferson changes the subject completely by asking if Randolph might be willing to sell him some of his books: “P.S. My collection of classics, & of books of parliamentary learning particularly is not so complete as I could wish. As you are going to the land of literature & of books you may be willing to dispose of some of yours here & replace them there in better editions.”
What he is really doing is employing a psychological phenomenon later known as the Ben Franklin effect. As Franklin put it in his autobiography, “He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.” Franklin recounted how he completely won the favor of a political rival by asking him to borrow a “certain very scarce and curious book” from his library.
Two things are clear from these examples – 1) books are powerful things, and 2) our country owes its existence to some brilliant conniving bastards.
People love doing things for others when it’s easy, and especially when it appeals to their intellectual vanity. The thinking goes that if you do something nice for someone, your brain tells you that you must like them. You can try this technique, sparingly, to help people associate doing things for you with warm fuzzies.
When to ask a small favor:
● With people you haven’t dealt with much directly, so you can shape their perception of you.
● If you’re borrowing something you know you’re going to take care of and return promptly.
When not to do this:
● When the favor doesn’t require their unique resources or knowledge.
● If the favor involves driving you to the airport. That's not giving anyone warm fuzzies.
Step 7: Remove salt and add sugar.
In Jefferson’s time, people made two copies of every letter – one to send and one to keep. By the time they wrote the second copy, they had a chance to rethink their words. Jon Meacham found that Jefferson deleted an “interesting threat” from the version he sent off.If Britain took over the existing colonies, Jefferson said it could “mean the dereliction of our lower Country and establishment beyond the mountains.” The sentence was likely cut because the if-Britain-wins contingency wasn’t relevant to his main purpose, and threatening to run for the hills didn’t sound very badass.
Whenever I’m writing an important email, I always add the recipient’s email address last. That way there’s no way I can possibly screw up and send the email before I’m finished with the final stage: sugarcoating. This is your chance to remove anything that’s not relevant to your main point and soften any harshness or emotion that could overshadow your objective.
Sugarcoating isn’t about watering down your message – it’s about managing your audience’s reactions. You don’t want to sound angry, and you don’t want to make the other person angry. Whether you’re removing the profanity from an office email or proofreading your fiancee’s passive-aggressive texts to her mother during the wedding planning process, your life will be easier when you realize anger doesn’t get things done. You might think, “sure it does, people do what I want when I yell at them!” Maybe they do, but guess what? They hate you, and there are a billion things they’re not doing for you because you’re an asshole.
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| Jefferson knew the pen was mightier than the sword and must be wielded responsibly. |
When to sugarcoat:
● Always.
When not to do this:
● Never. If your message is important, it deserves better than your first draft.
Sources: Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham
Jefferson the Virginian by Dumas Malone
founders.archive.gov
The Earthquake That Drowned Thomas Jefferson's Sister
The mysterious death of Elizabeth Jefferson
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| The Rivanna River ©Scott Clark |
We don’t know how much the shaking may have startled Jefferson’s little sister Elizabeth, who disappeared after the quake. What we do know, according to Jefferson’s account book, is that she was found three days later and buried eleven days after that.
After reading about her death in Jon Meacham’s Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, I wanted to know everything I could about this story that had all the makings of a Girl with the Dragon Tattoo-style family mystery – a bizarre disaster, a missing sister, even a body of water!
What I found was that only a few scant details survived. What surprised me even more was how that didn’t stop two biographers – one a Pulitzer Prize winner – from sensationalizing the facts with their own scintillating details. These authors also jumped to some egregiously shaky conclusions about Elizabeth Jefferson's life and death.
PERILOUSLY CLOSE
One tantalizing piece of evidence we have about 30-year-old Elizabeth indicates she was “feeble minded.” Most of what we know about her comes from a single letter written almost a hundred years after her death.Jefferson’s great-granddaughter Sarah Randolph was writing a book about him based on letters and family memories, and she wrote to family friend Wilson Miles Cary about Elizabeth’s death. He responded, “I have always understood that she was very feeble minded if not an idiot – that she and her maid drowned together while attempting to cross the Rivanna in a skiff.”
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| Jefferson's Monticello is located just across the Rivanna River from Shadwell, his birthplace and the home of his sister in 1774. |
This includes Page Smith, author of Thomas Jefferson: A Revealing Biography. Smith plugged Cary’s “very feeble minded if not an idiot” quote into his tawdry thesaurus and decided the best possible way to describe Elizabeth was by saying she was “perilously close to being mentally retarded.”
Is it just me, or does that sound way worse than plain old retarded? Smith’s book came out in 1976, so perhaps he was too perilously close to missing his Bicentennial deadline to rein in the adverbs.
A more famous Jefferson biographer, Dumas Malone, also danced ineptly around Elizabeth’s intelligence in his Pulitzer Prize winning six-volume “Jefferson and His Time.”
Whether [Jefferson’s mother Jane] exhausted herself in bearing Thomas, or there was some mishap in the delivery, the child she bore just after him was subnormal. The later story of this unfortunate girl can wait, but at least it can be said here that Elizabeth Jefferson afforded little companionship to her well-endowed brother.
Jefferson was so damn brilliant, you see, that his mother was simply exhausted after pushing out his giant well-endowed brain. So exhausted that the “unfortunate girl” who fell from her loins a year later couldn’t possibly provide any companionship to the extraordinary Thomas Jefferson, by far the best thing that ever came out of Jane Jefferson’s tired vagina.
Years later as president, Jefferson had a pet mockingbird named Dick who would follow him around the house, eat from his mouth, and make music with him. Dick was his “constant companion." Just to be clear, Malone couldn't imagine Thomas finding any companionship with his subnormal sister, but Dick the Bird was just the ticket.
The irony of a brainiac future president having a mentally challenged sister was just too great for these writers to resist. The problem is the evidence is so miniscule – a letter written a century after her death, and the fact that Jefferson handled his sister’s finances. His account books show he had to check with the executors of their father’s estate to approve purchases ensuring she “should be well dressed.” This would be an unusual arrangement for a typical adult woman, but it surely doesn’t mean she was bad company.
What these exaggerations from Smith and Malone insinuate but never directly ask is the question that makes this story so compelling. Did Elizabeth Jefferson’s intellectual disability have something to do with her death? Maybe that's what Smith meant by “perilously close” – she didn’t fully qualify for the R word, but she was impaired enough to be a walking time bomb.
But even if Elizabeth’s limitations somehow led to her death, it doesn’t explain how her maid (presumably of typical intelligence) also managed to drown in an earthquake. The maid’s odd presence solely in Cary’s letter makes me wonder if she ever existed at all. Jefferson never mentioned finding and burying anyone but his sister. If Elizabeth was disabled, it might seem neglectful to leave her unattended. If she ran off by herself and ended up dead, rumors of neglect could be avoided by saying her trusty maid was with her the whole time. With the fictional caretaker off the map, no one could refute the story.
Years later as president, Jefferson had a pet mockingbird named Dick who would follow him around the house, eat from his mouth, and make music with him. Dick was his “constant companion." Just to be clear, Malone couldn't imagine Thomas finding any companionship with his subnormal sister, but Dick the Bird was just the ticket.
The irony of a brainiac future president having a mentally challenged sister was just too great for these writers to resist. The problem is the evidence is so miniscule – a letter written a century after her death, and the fact that Jefferson handled his sister’s finances. His account books show he had to check with the executors of their father’s estate to approve purchases ensuring she “should be well dressed.” This would be an unusual arrangement for a typical adult woman, but it surely doesn’t mean she was bad company.
What these exaggerations from Smith and Malone insinuate but never directly ask is the question that makes this story so compelling. Did Elizabeth Jefferson’s intellectual disability have something to do with her death? Maybe that's what Smith meant by “perilously close” – she didn’t fully qualify for the R word, but she was impaired enough to be a walking time bomb.
But even if Elizabeth’s limitations somehow led to her death, it doesn’t explain how her maid (presumably of typical intelligence) also managed to drown in an earthquake. The maid’s odd presence solely in Cary’s letter makes me wonder if she ever existed at all. Jefferson never mentioned finding and burying anyone but his sister. If Elizabeth was disabled, it might seem neglectful to leave her unattended. If she ran off by herself and ended up dead, rumors of neglect could be avoided by saying her trusty maid was with her the whole time. With the fictional caretaker off the map, no one could refute the story.
MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE
Another mystery in this family drama is what exactly Thomas Jefferson meant when he wrote in his account book, “My sister Elizabeth was found last Thursday being Feb. 24.” Page Smith was one of the first biographers to connect the earthquake to Elizabeth’s death, and he gleefully filled in his own details about Elizabeth’s state:On February 21, 1774, Monticello was shaken by a strong earthquake, which drove everyone from the house. In the excitement Jefferson’s afflicted sister, Elizabeth, then in her thirtieth year, disappeared. It was two days before she was found, more dead than alive. She died a few days later and was buried in the family plot near Dabney Carr.I have to admire Smith's style. He knows history can only be recounted with the action-packed language of Lifetime TV movie titles like Shaken, Disappeared, and Buried or awesome band names like "Afflicted Sister."
But Smith’s most outrageous phrase, and the literary darling he should have killed, is "more dead than alive." Because it’s completely pulled out of his ass. It can only be a guess based on the ambiguity of Jefferson’s notes – was Elizabeth dead or alive when she was “found” on February 24th? Smith didn't know, so he hedged his bets on some quasi-state of being that's more bullshit that fact.
One problem with the killer earthquake story is that we can't even be sure Elizabeth's death happened after the quake. An entry in the family prayer book believed to have been written by Jefferson himself listed the date of her death as January 1, 1773 – 14 months earlier than his account book. If he couldn't nail that down, what hope do we have of piecing together a few disparate notes?
Jon Meacham, also a Pulitzer-winner, had the same source material as Malone and Smith, but wisely chose not to embellish the supposed facts. He wrote:
In the furor, Elizabeth Jefferson, Thomas’s reputedly mentally disabled sister, disappeared from Shadwell. She was found, dead, three days later, after apparently drowning in the Rivanna.If the cause of death choices were a) earthquake or b) drowning, Meacham chose c) all of the above. But with qualifying words like “reputedly” and “apparently” he's really saying "seriously though, who the hell knows?"
I'd like to imagine a scenario where everything fits together, but I have trouble with an earthquake strong enough to shake someone out of a boat later that day. Throw in the slave maid and it's even more implausible, like an all-female version of Huckleberry Finn with the ending from Thelma and Louise. As titillating as it sounds, the earthquake to drowning sequence is just too hard to swallow as anything but a possible coincidence.
FRESH FALLACY
I used to think biographers were bound by facts, but using facts as a springboard to jump to conclusions sounds way more fun. I want in on this game.Let me take a look at one of the primary sources for this story – Thomas Jefferson’s account book for March 1774. Like my biographer friends above, I'll do my best to take a closer look at the facts and then distort them.
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| From Dumas Malone's "Jefferson the Virginian." |
But take another look at the top two notes:
Clearly, Elizabeth Jefferson – the feeble-minded girl who Dumas Malone felt had less value to her family than a bird – ended life as a grisly (and gristly) gift from Thomas Jefferson to his unsuspecting mother.
So there you have it. I found two pieces of evidence and connected them to come up with a salacious theory. I’m not sure what happens next. Do I have to reach out to the people at Pulitzer, or will they just leave my award in the comments?
Unfortunately, the only undisputed fact here is that we’ll never know exactly what happened to Elizabeth Jefferson. The truth is likely buried along with her in the Monticello cemetery, and that might be how her family wanted it. Maybe it was too painful for them to write about, or maybe they felt some need to cover up whatever tragedy occurred that winter. Every family has secrets, and this was the South, where they have to use armoires because their closets are so full of skeletons.
Questions like this are part of what makes history so thrilling to me. Even though I’m hopelessly addicted to having instant access to answers at my fingertips, I also love a good unsolved mystery. Especially one I can really sink my teeth into.
Sources: Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham
Jefferson: A Revealing Biography by Page Smith
Jefferson the Virginian by Dumas Malone
The Domestic Life of Thomas Jefferson by Sarah N. Randolph
Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History by Fawn M. Brodie
monticello.org
usgs.gov
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