Letters to John Adams.--Number of Letters written and
received.-- To John Adams.--Breaks his Arm.--Letter to Judge
Johnson.--To Lafayette.--The University of Virginia.--Anxiety
to have Southern Young Men educated at the South.--Letters
on the Subject.-- Lafayette's Visit to America.--His Meeting
with Jefferson.-- Daniel Webster's Visit to Monticello, and
Description of Mr. Jefferson.
In the following letter to Mr. Adams we find Mr. Jefferson not
complaining of, but fully appreciating the rapidity with which old
age and its debilities were advancing on him:
_To John Adams._
Monticello, June 1st, 1822.
It is very long, my dear Sir, since I have written to you. My
dislocated wrist is now become so stiff that I write slowly
and with pain, and therefore write as little as I can. Yet it
is due to mutual friendship to ask once in a while how we do.
The papers tell us that General Stark is off at the age of 93.
Charles Thompson still lives at about the same age--cheerful,
slender as a grasshopper, and so much without memory that he
scarcely recognizes the members of his household. An intimate
friend of his called on him not long since; it was difficult to
make him recollect who he was, and, sitting one hour, he told
him the same story four times over. Is this life--
"With lab'ring step
To tread our former footsteps?--pace the round
Eternal?--to beat and beat
The beaten track?--to see what we have seen,
To taste the tasted?--o'er our palates to decant
Another vintage?"
It is at most but the life of a cabbage; surely not worth a
wish. When all our faculties have left, or are leaving us,
one by one--sight, hearing, memory--every avenue of pleasing
sensation is closed, and athumy, debility, and malaise left
in their places--when friends of our youth are all gone, and a
generation is risen around us whom we know not, is death an evil?
"When one by one our ties are torn,
And friend from friend is snatched forlorn,
When man is left alone to mourn,
Oh! then how sweet it is to die!
When trembling limbs refuse their weight,
And films slow gathering dim the sight,
When clouds obscure the mental light,
'Tis nature's kindest boon to die!"
I really think so. I have ever dreaded a doting old age; and
my health has been generally so good, and is now so good, that
I dread it still. The rapid decline of my strength during the
last winter has made me hope sometimes that I see land. During
summer I enjoy its temperature; but I shudder at the approach of
winter, and wish I could sleep through it with the dormouse, and
only wake with him in spring, if ever. They say that Stark could
walk about his room. I am told you walk well and firmly. I can
only reach my garden, and that with sensible fatigue. I ride,
however, daily. But reading is my delight. I should wish never
to put pen to paper; and the more because of the treacherous
practice some people have of publishing one's letters without
leave. Lord Mansfield declared it a breach of trust, and
punishable at law. I think it should be a penitentiary felony;
yet you will have seen that they have drawn me out into the
arena of the newspapers.[65] Although I know it is too late for
me to buckle on the armor of youth, yet my indignation would not
permit me passively to receive the kick of an ass.
[65] Alluding to a reply which he made to an attack made on him
by one signing himself a "Native Virginian."
To turn to the news of the day, it seems that the cannibals of Europe
are going to eating one another again. A war between Russia and
Turkey is like the battle of the kite and snake. Whichever destroys
the other leaves a destroyer the less for the world. This pugnacious
humor of mankind seems to be the law of his nature, one of the
obstacles to too great multiplication provided in the mechanism of
the universe. The cocks of the hen-yard kill one another. Bears,
bulls, rams, do the same. And the horse, in his wild state, kills
all the young males, until, worn down with age and war, some vigorous
youth kills him, and takes to himself the harem of females. I hope we
shall prove how much happier for man the Quaker policy is, and that
the life of the feeder is better than that of the fighter; and it is
some consolation that the desolation by these maniacs of one part of
the earth is the means of improving it in other parts. Let the latter
be our office, and let us milk the cow, while the Russian holds her
by the horns, and the Turk by the tail. God bless you, and give you
health, strength, and good spirits, and as much of life as you think
worth having.
In another letter to Mr. Adams he gives really a pitiable account of
the tax on his strength which letter-writing had become. Mr. Adams
had suggested that he should publish the letter just quoted, by way
of letting the public know how much he suffered from the number of
letters he had to answer. Jefferson, in reply, says:
_To John Adams._
I do not know how far you may suffer, as I do, under the
persecution of letters, of which every mail brings a fresh
load. They are letters of inquiry, for the most part, always
of good-will, sometimes from friends whom I esteem, but much
oftener from persons whose names are unknown to me, but written
kindly and civilly, and to which, therefore, civility requires
answers. Perhaps the better-known failure of your hand in its
function of writing may shield you in greater degree from this
distress, and so far qualify the misfortune of its disability.
I happened to turn to my letter-list some time ago, and a
curiosity was excited to count those received in a single year.
It was the year before the last. I found the number to be one
thousand two hundred and sixty-seven, many of them requiring
answers of elaborate research, and all to be answered with due
attention and consideration. Take an average of this number
for a week or a day, and I will repeat the question suggested
by other considerations in mine of the 1st. Is this life? At
best it is but the life of a mill-horse, who sees no end to
his circle but in death. To such a life that of a cabbage is
paradise. It occurs, then, that my condition of existence,
truly stated in that letter, if better known, might check the
kind indiscretions which are so heavily depressing the departing
hours of life. Such a relief would, to me, be an ineffable
blessing.
The reader can form some idea of the extent of this correspondence,
which, in his old age, became such a grievous burden to the veteran
statesman, from the fact that the letters received by him that were
preserved amounted to twenty-six thousand at the time of his death;
while the copies left by him, of those which he himself had written,
numbered sixteen thousand. These were but a small portion of what he
wrote, as he wrote numbers of which he retained no copies.
Mr. Jefferson's estimate of Napoleon's character is found in the
following interesting extract from a letter written to Mr. Adams,
February 24, 1823:
_To John Adams.--Character of Napoleon._
I have just finished reading O'Meara's Bonaparte. It places him
in a higher scale of understanding than I had allotted him. I
had thought him the greatest of all military captains, but an
indifferent statesman, and misled by unworthy passions. The
flashes, however, which escaped from him in these conversations
with O'Meara prove a mind of great expansion, although not of
distinct development and reasoning. He seizes results with
rapidity and penetration, but never explains logically the
process of reasoning by which he arrives at them.
This book, too, makes us forget his atrocities for a moment,
in commiseration of his sufferings. I will not say that the
authorities of the world, charged with the care of their country
and people, had not a right to confine him for life, as a lion
or tiger, on the principle of self-preservation. There was no
safety to nations while he was permitted to roam at large. But
the putting him to death in cold blood, by lingering tortures
of mind, by vexations, insults, and deprivations, was a degree
of inhumanity to which the poisonings and assassinations of
the school of Borgia and den of Marat never attained. The book
proves, also, that nature had denied him the moral sense, the
first excellence of well-organized man. If he could seriously
and repeatedly affirm that he had raised himself to power
without ever having committed a crime, it proved that he wanted
totally the sense of right and wrong. If he could consider
the millions of human lives which he had destroyed, or caused
to be destroyed, the desolations of countries by plunderings,
burnings, and famine, the destitutions of lawful rulers of
the world without the consent of their constituents, to place
his brothers and sisters on their thrones, the cutting up of
established societies of men and jumbling them discordantly
together again at his caprice, the demolition of the fairest
hopes of mankind for the recovery of their rights and
amelioration of their condition, and all the numberless train
of his other enormities--the man, I say, who could consider all
these as no crimes, must have been a moral monster, against whom
every hand should have been lifted to slay him.
You are so kind as to inquire after my health. The bone of
my arm is well knitted, but my hand and fingers are in a
discouraging condition, kept entirely useless by an œdematous
swelling of slow amendment. God bless you, and continue your
good health of body and mind.
The broken arm alluded to at the close of this letter was caused
by an accident which Mr. Jefferson met with towards the close of
the year 1822. While descending a flight of steps leading from one
of the terraces at Monticello, a decayed plank gave way and threw
him forward at full length on the ground. To a man in his eightieth
year such a fall might have been fatal, and Jefferson was fortunate
in escaping with a broken arm, though it gave him much pain at
the time, and was a serious inconvenience to him during the few
remaining years of his life. Though debarred from his usual daily
exercise on horseback for a short time after the accident occurred,
he resumed his rides while his arm was yet in a sling. His favorite
riding-horse, Eagle, was brought up to the terrace, whence he mounted
while in this disabled state. Eagle, though a spirited Virginia
full-blood, seemed instinctively to know that his venerable master
was an invalid; for, usually restless and spirited, he on these
occasions stood as quietly as a lamb, and, leaning up towards the
terrace, seemed to wish to aid the crippled octogenarian as he
mounted into the saddle.
I make the following extracts from a letter full of interest, written
to Judge Johnson, of South Carolina, early in the summer of 1823. He
writes:
_To Judge Johnson._
What a treasure will be found in General Washington's cabinet,
when it shall pass into the hands of as candid a friend to truth
as he was himself!...
With respect to his [Washington's] Farewell Address, to the
authorship of which, it seems, there are conflicting claims,
I can state to you some facts. He had determined to decline a
re-election at the end of his first term, and so far determined,
that he had requested Mr. Madison to prepare for him something
valedictory, to be addressed to his constituents on his
retirement. This was done: but he was finally persuaded to
acquiesce in a second election, to which no one more strenuously
pressed him than myself, from a conviction of the importance of
strengthening, by longer habit, the respect necessary for that
office, which the weight of his character only could effect.
When, at the end of this second term, his Valedictory came out,
Mr. Madison recognized in it several passages of his draught;
several others, we were both satisfied, were from the pen of
Hamilton; and others from that of the President himself. These
he probably put into the hands of Hamilton to form into a whole,
and hence it may all appear in Hamilton's handwriting, as if it
were all of his composition....
The close of my second sheet warns me that it is time now to
relieve you from this letter of unmerciful length. Indeed, I
wonder how I have accomplished it, with two crippled wrists,
the one scarcely able to move my pen, the other to hold my
paper. But I am hurried sometimes beyond the sense of pain,
when unbosoming myself to friends who harmonize with me in
principle. You and I may differ occasionally in details of
minor consequence, as no two minds, more than two faces, are
the same in every feature. But our general objects are the
same--to preserve the republican forms and principles of our
Constitution, and cleave to the salutary distribution of powers
which that has established. These are the two sheet-anchors
of our Union. If driven from either, we shall be in danger of
foundering. To my prayers for its safety and perpetuity, I
add those for the continuation of your health, happiness, and
usefulness to your country.
Towards the close of the year 1823 he wrote a long letter to
Lafayette, the following extracts from which show how well he felt
the infirmities of old age advancing upon him:
_To the Marquis de Lafayette._--[_Extracts._]
Monticello, November 4th, 1823.
My dear Friend--Two dislocated wrists and crippled fingers
have rendered writing so slow and laborious, as to oblige me
to withdraw from nearly all correspondence--not however, from
yours, while I can make a stroke with a pen. We have gone
through too many trying scenes together to forget the sympathies
and affections they nourished....
After much sickness, and the accident of a broken and disabled
arm, I am again in tolerable health, but extremely debilitated,
so as to be scarcely able to walk into my garden. The hebetude
of age, too, and extinguishment of interest in the things around
me, are weaning me from them, and dispose me with cheerfulness
to resign them to the existing generation, satisfied that the
daily advance of science will enable them to administer the
commonwealth with increased wisdom. You have still many valuable
years to give to your country, and with my prayers that they may
be years of health and happiness, and especially that they may
see the establishment of the principles of government which you
have cherished through life, accept the assurance of my constant
friendship and respect.
Early in the following year, in a reply to a request of Isaac
Engelbrecht that he would send him something from his own hand,
he writes: "Knowing nothing more moral, more sublime, more worthy
of your preservation than David's description of the good man, in
his 15th Psalm, I will here transcribe it from Brady and Tate's
version:" he then gives the Psalm in full.
[Illustration: THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA.]
In alluding to this year of his life, his biographer says, "Mr.
Jefferson's absorbing topic throughout 1824 was the University." He
had first interested himself in this institution in the year 1817.
The plan originally was only to establish a college, to be called
the "Central College of Virginia;" but in his hands it was enlarged,
and consummated in the erection of the University of Virginia, whose
classic dome and columns are now lit up by the morning rays of the
same sun which shines on the ruin and desolation of his own once
happy home.[66] The architectural plans and form of government and
instruction for this institution afforded congenial occupation for
his declining years, and made it emphatically the child of his old
age. While the buildings were being erected, his visits to them were
daily; and from the northeast corner of the terrace at Monticello he
frequently watched the workmen engaged on them, through a telescope
which is still preserved in the library of the University.
[66] The accompanying illustration presents the University of
Virginia, as it appeared in 1856.
His toil and labors for this institution, and the obstacles which he
had to overcome in procuring the necessary funds from the Virginia
Legislature, served to distract his thoughts, in a measure, from
those pecuniary embarrassments which, though resulting from his
protracted services to his country, so imbittered the closing years
of his honored life. None appreciated more highly than himself the
importance of establishing Southern institutions for the instruction
of Southern young men. We find allusions to this subject scattered
through the whole of his correspondence during this period of his
life.
How entirely he was absorbed in this darling project of his old age,
may be seen from the following extract from a letter written by him
to Mr. Adams, October 12, 1823:
_To John Adams._
I do not write with the ease which your letter of September 18th
supposes. Crippled wrists and fingers make writing slow and
laborious. But while writing to you, I lose the sense of these
things in the recollection of ancient times, when youth and
health made happiness out of every thing. I forget for a while
the hoary winter of age, when we can think of nothing but how
to keep ourselves warm, and how to get rid of our heavy hours
until the friendly hand of death shall rid us of all at once.
Against this _tedium vitæ_, however, I am fortunately mounted on
a hobby, which, indeed, I should have better managed some thirty
or forty years ago; but whose easy amble is still sufficient to
give exercise and amusement to an octogenary rider. This is the
establishment of a University, on a scale more comprehensive,
and in a country more healthy and central, than our old William
and Mary, which these obstacles have long kept in a state of
languor and inefficiency.
The following extract from a letter to a friend, inviting him to
Monticello, shows what little interest he took in politics:
You must be contented with the plain and sober family and
neighborly society, with the assurance that you shall hear no
wrangling about the next President, although the excitement on
that subject will then be at its acme. Numerous have been the
attempts to entangle me in that imbroglio. But at the age of
eighty, I seek quiet, and abjure contention. I read but a single
newspaper, Ritchie's _Enquirer_, the best that is published or
ever has been published in America.
In one of his letters to J. C. Cabell, written about the appointment
of Professors for the University, we find the following passage,
which sounds strangely now in an age when nepotism is so rife:
In the course of the trusts I have exercised through life
with powers of appointment, I can say with truth, and with
unspeakable comfort, that I never did appoint a relation to
office, and that merely because I never saw the case in which
some one did not offer, or occur, better qualified; and I
have the most unlimited confidence that in the appointment of
Professors to our nursling institution every individual of my
associates will look with a single eye to the sublimation of its
character, and adopt, as our sacred motto, "_Detur digniori!_"
In this way it will honor us, and bless our country.
In August, 1824, the people of the United States were, as Jefferson
wrote to a friend, thrown into a "delirium" of joy by the arrival in
New York of Lafayette. He had left their shores forty years before,
loaded with all the honors that an admiring and victorious people
could heap upon a generous and gallant young defender. Filled with
all the enthusiasm inspired by youth, genius, and patriotism, he
had returned to his beloved France with a future full of promise
and hope; and now, after having passed through the storms of two
Revolutions, after having seen his fairest hopes, both for himself
and his country, perish, he came back to America, an impoverished
and decrepit old man. His misfortunes, in the eyes of the Americans,
gave him greater claims on their love and sympathy, and his visit
was really triumphal. Jefferson, in describing his tour through the
country, wrote: "He is making a triumphant progress through the
States, from town to town, with acclamations of welcome, such as no
crowned head ever received."
In writing to Lafayette to hasten his visit to Monticello, where he
was impatiently expected, Jefferson says:
_To Lafayette._
What a history have we to run over, from the evening that
yourself, Mousnier, Bernan, and other patriots settled, in my
house in Paris, the outlines of the constitution you wished. And
to trace it through all the disastrous chapters of Robespierre,
Barras, Bonaparte, and the Bourbons! These things, however,
are for our meeting. You mention the return of Miss Wright to
America, accompanied by her sister; but do not say what her stay
is to be, nor what her course. Should it lead her to a visit of
our University, which in its architecture only is as yet an
object, herself and her companion will nowhere find a welcome
more hearty than with Mrs. Randolph, and all the inhabitants of
Monticello. This Athenæum of our country, in embryo, is as yet
but promise; and not in a state to recall the recollections of
Athens. But every thing has its beginning, its growth, and end;
and who knows with what future delicious morsels of philosophy,
and by what future Miss Wright raked from its ruins, the world
may, some day, be gratified and instructed?... But all these
things _à revoir_; in the mean time we are impatient that your
ceremonies at York should be over, and give you to the embraces
of friendship.
To Monticello, where "the embraces of friendship" awaited him,
Lafayette accordingly went, and the following description of the
touching and beautiful scene witnessed by those who saw the meeting
between these two old friends and veteran patriots has been furnished
me by his grandson, Mr. Jefferson Randolph, who was present on that
memorable occasion:
_Lafayette and Jefferson in 1824._
The lawn on the eastern side of the house at Monticello contains
not quite an acre. On this spot was the meeting of Jefferson
and Lafayette, on the latter's visit to the United States. The
barouche containing Lafayette stopped at the edge of this lawn.
His escort--one hundred and twenty mounted men--formed on one
side in a semicircle extending from the carriage to the house.
A crowd of about two hundred men, who were drawn together by
curiosity to witness the meeting of these two venerable men,
formed themselves in a semicircle on the opposite side. As
Lafayette descended from the carriage, Jefferson descended the
steps of the portico. The scene which followed was touching.
Jefferson was feeble and tottering with age--Lafayette
permanently lamed and broken in health by his long confinement
in the dungeon of Olmutz. As they approached each other, their
uncertain gait quickened itself into a shuffling run, and
exclaiming, "Ah, Jefferson!" "Ah, Lafayette!" they burst into
tears as they fell into each other's arms. Among the four
hundred men witnessing the scene there was not a dry eye--no
sound save an occasional suppressed sob. The two old men entered
the house as the crowd dispersed in profound silence.
At a dinner given to Lafayette in Charlottesville, besides the
"Nation's Guest," there were present Jefferson, Madison, and
Monroe. To the toast: "_Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of
Independence--alike identified with the Cause of Liberty_," Jefferson
responded in a few written remarks, which were read by Mr. Southall.
We find in the following extract from them a graceful and heartfelt
tribute to his well-loved friend:
I joy, my friends, in your joy, inspired by the visit of this
our ancient and distinguished leader and benefactor. His deeds
in the war of independence you have heard and read. They are
known to you, and embalmed in your memories and in the pages of
faithful history. His deeds in the peace which followed that
war, are perhaps not known to you; but I can attest them. When I
was stationed in his country, for the purpose of cementing its
friendship with ours and of advancing our mutual interests, this
friend of both was my most powerful auxiliary and advocate. He
made our cause his own, as in truth it was that of his native
country also. His influence and connections there were great.
All doors of all departments were open to him at all times; to
me only formally and at appointed times. In truth I only held
the nail, he drove it. Honor him, then, as your benefactor in
peace as well as in war.
Towards the close of the year 1824 Daniel Webster visited Monticello,
and spent a day or two there. He has left us an account of this
visit, containing a minute description of Jefferson's personal
appearance, style of dress, and habits. After giving extracts from
this account, Mr. Randall, in his Life of Jefferson, says: "These
descriptions appearing to us to lack some of those gradations and
qualifications in expression which are essential to convey accurate
impressions, we sought an opinion on them from one as familiar with
Mr. Jefferson, with his views and modes of expression, as any person
ever was, and received the following reply:
----, 1857.
My dear Mr. Randall--.... First, on the subject of Mr.
Jefferson's personal appearance. Mr. Webster's description
of it did not please me, because, though I will not stop to
quarrel with any of the details, the general impression it was
calculated to produce seemed to me an unfavorable one; that is,
a person who had never seen my grandfather, would, from Mr.
Webster's description, have thought him rather an ill-looking
man, which he certainly never was....
It would be, however, very difficult for me to give an accurate
description of the appearance of one whom I so tenderly loved
and deeply venerated. His person and countenance were to me
associated with so many of my best affections, so much of my
highest reverence, that I could not expect other persons to
see them as I did. One thing I will say--that never in my life
did I see his countenance distorted by a single bad passion
or unworthy feeling. I have seen the expression of suffering,
bodily and mental, of grief, pain, sadness, just indignation,
disappointment, disagreeable surprise, and displeasure, but
never of anger, impatience, peevishness, discontent, to say
nothing of worse or more ignoble emotions. To the contrary, it
was impossible to look on his face without being struck with its
benevolent, intelligent, cheerful, and placid expression. It was
at once intellectual, good, kind, and pleasant, while his tall,
spare figure spoke of health, activity, and that _helpfulness_,
that power and will, "never to trouble another for what he could
do himself," which marked his character.
His dress was simple, and adapted to his ideas of neatness and
comfort. He paid little attention to fashion, wearing whatever
he liked best, and sometimes blending the fashions of several
different periods. He wore long waistcoats, when the mode was
for very short; white cambric stocks fastened behind with a
buckle, when cravats were universal. He adopted the pantaloon
very late in life, because he found it more comfortable and
convenient, and cut off his queue for the same reason. He made
no change except from motives of the same kind, and did nothing
to be in conformity with the fashion of the day. He considered
such independence as the privilege of his age....
In like manner, I never heard him speak of Wirt's Life of
Patrick Henry with the amount of severity recorded by Mr.
Webster. My impression is that here too, Mr. Webster, from
a very natural impulse, and without the least intention of
misrepresentation, has put down only those parts of Mr.
Jefferson's remarks which accorded with his own views, and left
out all the extenuations--the "_circonstantes attendantes_,"
as the French say. This, of course, would lead to an erroneous
impression. Of Mr. Wirt's book my grandfather did not think very
highly; but the unkind remark, so far as Mr. Wirt was personally
concerned, unaccompanied by any thing to soften its severity,
is, to say the least, very little like Mr. Jefferson.
ELLEN W. COOLIDGE.
Of Jefferson's opinion of Henry, Mr. Randall goes on to say:
His whole correspondence, and his Memoir written at the age of
seventy-seven, exhibit his unbounded admiration of Henry in
certain particulars, and his dislike or severe animadversion in
none. Henry and he came to differ very widely in politics, and
the former literally died leading a gallant political sortie
against the conquering Republicans. On one occasion, at least,
his keen native humor was directed personally against Jefferson.
With his inimitable look and tone, he with great effect declared
that he did not approve of gentlemen's "abjuring their native
victuals."[67] This gave great diversion to Jefferson. He
loved to talk about Henry, to narrate anecdotes of their early
intimacy; to paint his taste for unrestrained nature in every
thing; to describe his _bonhomie_, his humor, his unquestionable
integrity, mixed with a certain waywardness and freakishness; to
give illustrations of his shrewdness, and of his overwhelming
power as an orator.
[67] The Republicans were accused of being adherents of
France--the _cookery_ of Monticello was French.--_Randall's Note._
Mr. Randall's indefatigable industry in ferretting out every account
and record of Jefferson has laid before the public Dr. Dunglison's
interesting and valuable memoranda concerning his intercourse with
Mr. Jefferson and his last illness and death. I make the following
extracts:
_Dr. Dunglison's Memoranda._
Soon afterwards [the arrival at Charlottesville] the venerable
ex-President presented himself, and welcomed us[68] with that
dignity and kindness for which he was celebrated. He was then
eighty-two years old, with his intellectual powers unshaken by
age, and the physical man so active that he rode to and from
Monticello, and took exercise on foot with all the activity of
one twenty or thirty years younger. He sympathized with us on
the discomforts of our long voyage, and on the disagreeable
journey we must have passed over the Virginia roads; and
depicted to us the great distress he had felt lest we had been
lost at sea--for he had almost given us up, when my letter
arrived with the joyful intelligence that we were safe....
[68] The professors of the University, who were all foreigners,
and brought by Mr. Jefferson from Europe, with the exception of
two only.
The houses [the professors' houses, or "pavilions" of the University]
were much better furnished than we had expected to find them, and
would have been far more commodious had Mr. Jefferson consulted his
excellent and competent daughter, Mrs. Randolph, in regard to the
interior arrangements, instead of planning the architectural exterior
first, and leaving the interior to shift for itself. Closets would
have interfered with the symmetry of the rooms or passages, and hence
there were none in most of the houses; and of the only one which was
furnished with a closet, it was told as an anecdote of Mr. Jefferson,
that, not suspecting it, according to his general arrangements, he
opened the door and walked into it in his way out of the pavilion....
Mr. Jefferson was considered to have but little faith in physic;
and has often told me that he would rather trust to the unaided,
or, rather, uninterfered with, efforts of nature than to physicians
in general. "It is not," he was wont to observe, "to physic that I
object so much, as to physicians." Occasionally, too, he would speak
jocularly, especially to the unprofessional, of medical practice,
and on one occasion gave offense, when, most assuredly, if the same
thing had been said to me, no offense would have been taken. In the
presence of Dr. Everett, afterwards Private Secretary to Mr. Monroe,
he remarked that whenever he saw three physicians together, he
looked up to discover whether there was not a turkey-buzzard in the
neighborhood. The annoyance of the doctor, I am told, was manifest.
To me, when it was recounted, it seemed a harmless jest. But whatever
may have been Mr. Jefferson's notions of physic and physicians, it
is but justice to say that he was one of the most attentive and
respectful of patients. He bore suffering inflicted upon him for
remedial purposes with fortitude; and in my visits, showed me, by
memoranda, the regularity with which he had taken the prescribed
remedies at the appointed times....
In the summer of 1825, the monotonous life of the college was broken
in upon by the arrival of General Lafayette, to take leave of his
distinguished friend, Mr. Jefferson, preparatory to his return to
France. A dinner was given to him in the rotunda by the professors
and students, at which Mr. Madison and Mr. Monroe were present, but
Mr. Jefferson's indisposition prevented him from attending. "The
meeting at Monticello," says M. Levasseur, the Secretary to General
Lafayette during his journey, in his "_Lafayette in America in 1824
and 1825_," vol. ii., p. 245, "of three men who, by their successive
elevation to the supreme magistracy of the state, had given to
their country twenty-four years of prosperity and glory, and who
still offered it the example of private virtues, was a sufficiently
strong inducement to make us wish to stay there a longer time; but
indispensable duties recalled General Lafayette to Washington, and
he was obliged to take leave of his friends. I shall not attempt to
depict the sadness which prevailed at this cruel separation, which
had none of the alleviation which is usually felt by youth; for
in this instance the individuals who bade farewell had all passed
through a long career, and the immensity of the ocean would still add
to the difficulties of a reunion."
M. Levasseur has evidently confounded this banquet with that given
by the inhabitants of Charlottesville, the year preceding, during
the first visit of Lafayette to Mr. Jefferson. At that period there
were neither professors nor students, as the institution was not
opened until six months afterwards. "Every thing," says M. Levasseur
(vol. i., p. 220), "had been prepared at Charlottesville, by the
citizens and students, to give a worthy reception to Lafayette. The
sight of the nation's guest seated at the patriotic banquet, between
Jefferson and Madison, excited in those present an enthusiasm which
expressed itself in enlivening sallies of wit and humor. Mr. Madison,
who had arrived that day at Charlottesville to attend this meeting,
was especially remarkable for the originality of his expressions and
the delicacy of his allusions. Before leaving the table he gave a
toast--'_To Liberty--with Virtue for her Guest, and Gratitude for the
Feast_,' which was received with rapturous applause."
The same enthusiasm prevailed at the dinner given in the rotunda. One
of the toasts proposed by an officer of the institution, I believe,
was an example of forcing a metaphor to the full extent of its
capability--"_The Apple of our Heart's Eye--Lafayette_."