by Elihu » Thu Feb 25, 2016 9:52 pm
1784-1789
So, with his little daughter and his violin, Mr. Jefferson
set out. His journey up from his home to Boston,
where his ship lay, was a matter of nearly two months,
because he wished to get acquainted with the principal
interests of the Eastern States, "informing myself of the
state of commerce of each." Heretofore he had only a
hearsay acquaintance with these matters, no more than
would come in the way of any intelligent Virginian planter.
He made a leisurely progress through New Jersey, New
York, Connecticut and Rhode Island, wrestling valiantly
with the different State currencies as he went along. His
pocket account-book shows a reasonable ground for gratitude
that in all his wide range of early studies, mathematics
was "ever my favorite one." With "New York currency,
Dollars 8/" and "Connecticut, Dollars 6/" and "Rhode
Island State" currency at still another rate of sterling exchange,
paying for a dinner or a night's lodging was an
appalling business. He reached Boston on the eighteenth
of June, deposited his heavy luggage, and then left for
a side trip of two weeks in New Hampshire and Vermont.
The voyage from Boston to the English port of Cowes
was uncommonly fast—twenty-one days. Mr. Jefferson
made his usual thrifty use of it by studying navigation.
He had nothing else to do, and one can never know by
what off-chance new learning will some day come handy.
He calculated courses, read charts, took the sun, and kept
a workmanlike log, becoming a pretty fair theoretical
navigator by the end of the voyage. On landing at Cowes,
he got on as far as Portsmouth, where his poor little daughter,
seasick and bored, having had no special interest in
navigation to sustain her against ship's fare, discomfort
and tedium, took to her bed. After looking out for her
as best he could for three days, Mr. Jefferson capitulated
to the distrusted profession by calling in a physician, a
Dr. Meek, who charged him two guineas sterling for two
visits. Towards the end of July, Patsy had picked herself
up enough to face the last leg of her journey, and on
the thirtieth she and her father set out on the wretched
crossing from Portsmouth to Havre.
Like all green travellers, Mr. Jefferson learned by experience
as he went along. Practically a vegetarian, fond
of fruit and nuts, he invested heavily in these luxuries
during his first few days on land, welcoming the change
from the restricted diet of the ship. He bought a couple
of shillings worth of nuts and a good deal of fruit as soon
^ a s he landed in England, and he did the same at Havre.
Then, in about the time it would normally take for a
brisk run of tourist's summer-complaint to set in, these
entries in his account-book abruptly cease, and he seems
hardly to have eaten another nut or piece of fruit for five
years.
The entries for charity run a like course. Mr. Jefferson
was always so open-handed that, in Philadelphia especially,
his easiness became known and he was greatly pestered by
beggars. When he had no money with him, he would
borrow for the purpose. An item put down in 1784, for
instance, records a joint investment with Monroe in an
opportunity of this kind, which probably turned up as
they were walking together on the street. "March 7.
Borrowed Colo. Monroe 4/2—gave in charity 4/2, remember
to credit him half." But although American
cities spawned a measure of distress in those days, there
was hardly such a thing known as hopeless involuntary
poverty. In 1782, when Mr. Jefferson had already seen
a good deal of American town life, he wrote in reply to
the queries of the Marquis de Barbé-Marbois, "From
Savannah to Portsmouth you will seldom meet a beggar.
In the larger towns, indeed, they sometimes present themselves.
These are usually foreigners who have never obtained
a settlement in any parish. I never yet saw a native
American begging in the streets or highways." There was
always the land for them to turn to, and with a little
temporary tiding-over they would soon be on their own
feet. "We have no paupers," Mr. Jefferson wrote Thomas
Cooper as late as 1814, "the old and crippled among us
who possess nothing and have no families to take care of
them, being too few to merit notice as a separate section
of society or to affect a general estimate."
But as soon as he set foot in France, Mr. Jefferson
faced the real thing in involuntary poverty. After a year,
he writes despondently to an American correspondent that
"of twenty millions of people supposed to be in France,
I am of the opinion there are nineteen millions more
wretched, more accursed in every circumstance of human
existence than the most conspicuously wretched individual
of the whole United States." The people had been ex-
proprîated from the land, and huddled into vast exploitable
masses. "The property [i.e., the land] of this country
is absolutely concentrated in a very few hands, having
revenues of from half a million guineas a year downward"
5 and the consequence was that the majority lived
merely on sufferance. Involuntary poverty, one might
say, was so highly integrated as to erect mendicancy into
an institution. This was new to Mr. Jefferson. "I asked
myself what could be the reason that so many should be
permitted to beg who are willing to work, in a country
where there is a very considerable proportion of uncultivated
lands," and his conclusion was that "whenever there
is in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor,
it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended
as to violate natural rights. The earth is given as
a common stock for man to labour and live on."
However, this was France's problem, not his and not
America's—thank Heaven. He writes in a fervent strain
to Monroe, "My God! how little do my countrymen
know what precious blessings they are in possession of,
and which no other people on earth enjoy. I confess I
had no idea of it myself." America had no end of land,
and hence no problem of poverty. Nevertheless, he was
just now in France, and France's swarming paupers were
nagging him at every turn. What could one do? Out of
habit, he did for a while as he had always done 5 he gave
away small amounts here and there on the moment, without
question, as he happened to be importuned. This
worked well in America; it really did some good, and at
worst it was only an occasional matter. But here it did
no good and was a matter of every hour in the day. Aside
from its doing no good, moreover, one was so often swindled.
The economic system that bred mendicancy also
bred roguery, and there were many rogues among the
mendicants. They too were very much to be pitied, no
doubt, but to be taken in by them only encouraged them,
and they were an incessant pest. The "hackneyed rascals"
of France were even waiting at the wharf at Havre j the
account-book takes note of the demands of a swindling
commissionaire: "Broker attend2 me to Commandant 6 f."
The upshot was that after a couple of weeks of indiscriminate
giving, he shut down on charity, save where he knew
something about the applicant, as when he records giving
"the poor woman at Têtebout 12 f."
He found much to please him, however, in his new surroundings
he was especially attracted by the people's
natural sense, so much in accord with his own, of social
life and manners. "The roughnesses of the human mind
are so thoroughly rubbed off with them that it seems as
if one might glide through a whole life among them
without a jostle." He had little trouble, even, with the
degeneration of this quality into the official folitesse sterile
et ram†antey the defensive formalism of the diplomat
and statesman. The case-hardened old Foreign Minister,
Vergennes, infirm and tired but clear-headed, could still
match protective coloration with any diplomat put up
against him. The diplomatic corps warned Mr. Jefferson
that he was a formidable old fellow, "wary and slippery
in his diplomatic intercourse." All this might be true, no
doubt, when he was playing the game by the rules "with
those whom he knew to be slippery and double-faced
themselves." But Mr. Jefferson had no axe to grind, in
the diplomatic sense. He was not a propagandist, as
Franklin had been he was an honest broker, not in crowns,
colonies and protectorates, but in sound commodities like
salt codfish, tobacco and potash. As soon therefore as
Vergennes "saw that I had no indirect views, practiced no
subtleties, meddled in no intrigues, pursued no concealed
object, I found him as frank, as honourable, as easy of
access to reason, as any man with whom I had ever done
business; and I must say the same of his successor, Montmorin,
one of the most honest and; worthy of human
beings."
His enthusiasm was kindled at once by the contemplation
of French proficiency in the arts and sciences. The
music of Paris, which at that time was perhaps at the
height of an unmusical people's possibilities, was so much
better than anything he had ever heard that he was delighted
by it as "an enjoyment the deprivation of which
with us [he writes this to an American correspondent]
cannot be calculated. I am almost ready to say it is the
only thing which from my heart I envy them, and which
in spite of all the authority of the Decalogue I do covet."
He is without words to tell how much he enjoys their
architecture, sculpture and painting. In science, he discovers
that their literati "are half a dozen years before
us. Books, really good, acquire just reputation in that
time, and so become known to us and communicate to us
all their advances in knowledge." America, however,
really misses nothing by being behindhand. Having few
publishers and presses, American intelligence is saved the
chance of suffocation under huge masses of garbage, such
as are shot from the many presses of France. "Is not this
delay compensated to us by our being placed out of reach
of that swarm of nonsensical publications which issues
daily from a thousand presses and perishes almost in
issuing?"
Yet, making the most of all that was good in French
life, admiring its virtues, delighting oneself in its amenities,
one could not feel oneself properly compensated for
the missing sense of freedom. There was no freedom in
France, and therefore there was no real happiness. The
immense majority was in bondage to its masters•} the masters
were in bondage to vices which were the natural fruit
of irresponsibility, and which kept them in a condition
really worse and more hopeless than that of those whom
they exploited. "I find the general fate of humanity
here most deplorable. The truth of Voltaire's observation
offers itself perpetually, that every man here must be
either the hammer or the anvil." Even the sense of taste
and manners, so admirable, so interesting and prepossessing,
is superficial and ineffectual in the absence of liberty.
It controlled polite usages; it made imperative "all those
little sacrifices of self which really render European manners
amiable and relieve society from the disagreeable
scenes to which rudeness often subjects it." It held the
minor routine of life in a generally agreeable course. "In
the pleasures of the table they are far before us," temperate,
fastidious, discriminating. "I have never yet seen
a man drunk in France, even among the lowest of the
people." All this was much to the good, and "a savage
of the mountains of America" might well look on it with
the keenest envy, perceiving how profoundly the fresh
and simple charms of his native society might be enhanced
by even this limited play of the sense of taste and
manners.
But it was not enough. Good taste did not see eye to
eye with justice in viewing the social structure of France
as "a true picture of that country to which they say we
shall pass hereafter, and where we are to see God and his
angels in splendour, and crowds of the damned trampled
under their feet." Such a civilization was not only iniquitous,
but essentially low. Good taste did not ennoble
the pursuits of the privileged minority. "Intrigues of
love occupy the younger, and those of ambition the elder
part of the great." This was not only vicious, but vulgar.
To a man for whom conduct was three-fourths of life
and good taste nine-tenths of conduct, this failure in the
primary sanctions of taste was peculiarly repulsive. The
rough society of America was more hopeful. "I would
wish my countrymen to adopt just as much of European
politeness" as might sweeten and temper their wholesomeness,
and mould them into a nation of Fauquiers.
But however far from realization that millennial dream
might be, "I am savage enough to prefer the woods, the
wilds and the independence of Monticello to all the brilliant
pleasures of this gay capital. I shall therefore rejoin
myself to my native country with new attachments
and with exaggerated esteem for its advantages."
Europe, especially, was no place for young Americans
they were sure to go bad under its influence. Sending a
youth to Europe for an education was utter futility. "If
he goes to England, he learns drinking, horse-racing and
boxing. These are the peculiarities of English education.
. . . He is fascinated with the privileges of the
European aristocrats, and sees with abhorrence the lovely
equality which the poor enjoy with the rich in his own
country. . . . He recollects the voluptuary dress and arts
of the European women, and pities and despises the chaste
affections and simplicity of those of his own country."
Summing up a long and earnest disquisition on this topic
he declares that "the consequences of foreign education
are alarming to me as an American." Thinking of the
Wythes, Franklins, Rittenhouses, Adamses, Pendletons
and Madisons of his acquaintance, urging his correspondent
to cast an eye over America to see "who are the men of
most learning, of most eloquence, most beloved by their
countrymen, and most trusted and promoted by them,"
he assures him that they are "those who have been educated
among them, and whose manners, morals and habits
are perfectly homogeneous with those of the country."
IV
Mr. Jefferson regarded with profound distrust and
disfavour the phenomenon of the political woman, which
he here confronted for the first time. After four years'
experience he writes to President Washington that without
the evidence of one's own eyes one could hardly "believe
in the desperate state to which things are reduced
in this country from the omnipotence of an influence which,
fortunately for the happiness of the sex itself, does not
endeavour to extend itself in our country beyond the domestic
line." He was continually shocked by the coarseness
and vulgarity, let alone the scandalousness, of the
custom which permitted women in search of favours not
only to visit public officials, but to visit them alone, without
the presence of a third person to guard the proprieties
and he was outraged to observe that "their solicitations bid
defiance to laws and regulations." The easy-going Franklin
had been enough of an opportunist to accept this custom
and turn it to the profit of his country. In a good
cause he was not above doing some things that neither
John Adams nor Mr. Jefferson would do, Adams, as
result of a "process of moral reasoning," and Mr. Jeffer
son out of sheer repugnance. Mr. Jefferson was little
tempted; he was not the type that women set their cap
for. Besides, even a riggish French noblewoman could
hardly throw a glamour of romance over so prosaic an
interest as the Franco-American trade in fish-oil and salt
cod. Still, he could not quite avoid these women; he
owed them civility, and he punctiliously paid the debt
He disliked Mme. de Staël, but having been kind to him
she was not to be snubbed j nor yet was she to be courted
for her youthful charms—she was then twenty-one—0r
for being the daughter of Neckar. He moved in her so
cial circle with the high step and arched back of feline cir
cumspection, and it does not appear that she ever took his
attitude as a challenge to her hankering for conquest
After his return to America he wrote a kind of bread-and
butter letter to several French ladies who had made some
thing of him in a social way; and in these, at the safe dis
tance of three thousand miles, he risks a^few ceremonious
compliments. He assures Mme. de Corny, whom he
really liked, that her civilities were "greatly more than
I had a right to expect, and they have excited in me
warmth of esteem which it was imprudent in me to have
given way to for a person whom I was one day to be sep
arated from." In the Duchesse d'Auville's character "
saw but one error; it was that of treating me with a de
gree of favour I did not merit." Corking down his ef
fervescent horror of the bas-bleu, he declares to the Duchesse
de la Rochef oucault, with a touch of irony, that if
her system of ethics and of government were generally
adopted, "we should have no occasion for government at
all" and he expresses to the Comtesse d'Houdetot his
rather attenuated gratitude for lionizing him in her salon,
and begs her to accept "the homage of those sentiments
of respect and attachment with which I have the honour
to be, Madame la Comtesse, your most obedient and most
humble servant." This was all very well; the language
of compliment and ceremony was always acceptable at its
face value. It was good, one might say, for this day and
train only. His reservations were well understood. Still,
if French women must go in for politics, it was at least
something that the younger ones coming on after Calonne's
regime were beginning to go in on the right side. "All
the handsome young women of Paris are for the Tiers
Etat" he writes David Humphreys in 1789, on the outbreak
of the revolution, "and this is an army more powerful
in France than the 200,000 men of the King." In an
emergency any stick will do to beat a dog and a reflective
American might hold his nose and survey the prospect
with equanimity, since it concerned another country than
his own.
But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” John 16:33
