If I could not go to Heaven but with a Party, I would not go
there at all.
--Jefferson, in a Letter to Madison
[Illustration: THOMAS JEFFERSON]
William and Mary College was founded in Sixteen Hundred Ninety-two by the
persons whose names it bears. The founders bestowed on it an endowment
that would have been generous had there not been attached to it sundry
strings in way of conditions.
The intent was to make Indians Episcopalians, and white students
clergymen; and the assumption being that between the whites and the
aborigines there was little difference, the curriculum was an ecclesiastic
medley.
All the teachers were appointed by the Bishop of London, and the places
were usually given to clergymen who were not needed in England.
To this college, in Seventeen Hundred Sixty, came Thomas Jefferson, a
tall, red-haired youth, aged seventeen. He had a sharp nose and a sharp
chin; and a youth having these has a sharp intellect--mark it well.
This boy had not been "sent" to college. He came of his own accord from
his home at Shadwell, five days' horseback journey through the woods. His
father was dead, and his mother, a rare gentle soul, was an invalid.
Death is not a calamity "per se," nor is physical weakness necessarily a
curse, for out of these seeming unkind conditions Nature often distils her
finest products. The dying injunction of a father may impress itself upon
a son as no example of right living ever can, and the physical disability
of a mother may be the means that work for excellence and strength. The
last-expressed wish of Peter Jefferson was that his son should be well
educated, and attain to a degree of useful manliness that the father had
never reached. And into the keeping of this fourteen-year-old youth the
dying man, with the last flicker of his intellect, gave the mother,
sisters and baby brother.
We often hear of persons who became aged in a single night, their hair
turning from dark to white; but I have seen death thrust responsibility
upon a lad and make of him a man between the rising of the sun and its
setting. When we talk of "right environment" and the "proper conditions"
that should surround growing youth, we fan the air with words--there is no
such thing as a universal right environment.
An appreciative chapter might here be inserted concerning those beings who
move about only in rolling chairs, who never see the winter landscape but
through windows, and who exert their gentle sway from an invalid's couch,
to which the entire household or neighborhood come to confession or to
counsel. And yet I have small sympathy for the people who professionally
enjoy poor health, and no man more than I reverences the Greek passion for
physical perfection. But a close study of Jefferson's early life reveals
the truth that the death of his father and the physical weakness of his
mother and sisters were factors that developed in him a gentle sense of
chivalry, a silken strength of will, and a habit of independent thought
and action that served him in good stead throughout a long life.
Williamsburg was then the capital of Virginia. It contained only about a
thousand inhabitants, but when the Legislature was in session it was very
gay.
At one end of a wide avenue was the Capitol, and at the other the
Governor's "palace"; and when the city of Washington was laid out,
Williamsburg served as a model. On Saturdays, there were horse-races on
the "Avenue"; everybody gambled; cockfights and dogfights were regarded as
manly diversions; there was much carousing at taverns; and often at
private houses there were all-night dances where the rising sun found
everybody but the servants plain drunk.
At the college, both teachers and scholars were obliged to subscribe to
the Thirty-nine Articles and to recite the Catechism. The atmosphere was
charged with theology.
Young Jefferson had never before seen a village of even a dozen houses,
and he looked upon this as a type of all cities. He thought about it,
talked about it, wrote about it, and we now know that at this time his
ideas concerning city versus country crystallized.
Fifty years after, when he had come to know London and Paris, and had seen
the chief cities of Christendom, he repeated the words he had written in
youth, "The hope of a nation lies in its tillers of the soil!"
On his mother's side he was related to the "first families," but
aristocracy and caste had no fascination for him, and he then began
forming those ideas of utility, simplicity and equality that time only
strengthened.
His tutors and professors served chiefly as "horrible examples," with the
shining exception of Doctor Small. The friendship that ripened between
this man and young Jefferson is an ideal example of what can be done
through the personal touch. Men are great only as they excel in sympathy;
and the difference between sympathy and imagination has not yet been shown
us.
Doctor Small encouraged the young farmer from the hills to think and to
express himself. He did not endeavor to set him straight or explain
everything for him, or correct all his vagaries, or demand that he should
memorize rules. He gave his affectionate sympathy to the boy who, with a
sort of feminine tenderness, clung to the only person who understood him.
To Doctor Small, pedigree and history unknown, let us give the credit of
being first in the list of friends that gave bent to the mind of
Jefferson. John Burke, in his "History of Virginia," refers to Professor
Small thus: "He was not any too orthodox in his opinions." And here we
catch a glimpse of a formative influence in the life of Jefferson that
caused him to turn from the letter of the law and cleave to the spirit
that maketh alive. After school-hours the tutor and the student walked and
talked, and on Saturdays and Sundays went on excursions through the woods;
and to the youth there was given an impulse for a scientific knowledge of
birds and flowers and the host of life that thronged the forest. And when
the pair had strayed so far beyond the town that darkness gathered and the
stars came out, they conversed of the wonders of the sky.
The true scientist has no passion for killing things. He says with
Thoreau, "To shoot a bird is to lose it." Professor Small had the gentle
instinct that respects life, and he refused to take that which he could
not give. To his youthful companion he imparted, in a degree, the secret
of enjoying things without the passion for possession and the lust of
ownership.
There is a myth abroad that college towns are intellectual centers; but
the number of people in a college town (or any other) who really think, is
very few.
Williamsburg was gay, and, this much said, it is needless to add it was
not intellectual. But Professor Small was a thinker, and so was Governor
Fauquier; and these two were firm friends, although very unlike in many
ways. And to "the palace" of the courtly Fauquier, Small took his young
friend Jefferson. Fauquier was often a master of the revels, but after his
seasons of dissipation he turned to Small for absolution and comfort. At
these times he seemed to Jefferson a paragon of excellence. To the grace
of the French he added the earnestness of the English. He quoted Pope, and
talked of Swift, Addison and Thomson. Fauquier and Jefferson became
friends, although more than a score of years and a world of experience
separated them. Jefferson caught a little of Fauquier's grace, love of
books and delight in architecture. But Fauquier helped him most by
gambling away all his ready money and getting drunk and smoking strong
pipes with his feet on the table. And Jefferson then vowed he would never
handle a card, nor use tobacco, nor drink intoxicating liquors. And in
conversation with Small, he anticipated Buckle by saying, "To gain
leisure, wealth must first be secured; but once leisure is gained, more
people use it in the pursuit of pleasure than employ it in acquiring
knowledge."
* * * * *
Had Jefferson lived in a great city he would have been an architect. His
practical nature, his mastery of mathematics, his love of proportion, and
his passion for music are the basic elements that make a Christopher Wren.
But Virginia, in Seventeen Hundred Sixty-five, offered no temptation to
ambitions along that line; log houses with a goodly "crack" were quite
good enough, and if the domicile proved too small the plan of the first
was simply duplicated. Yet a career of some kind young Jefferson knew
awaited him.
About this time the rollicking Patrick Henry came along. Patrick played
the violin, and so did Thomas. These two young men had first met on a
musical basis. Some otherwise sensible people hold that musicians are
shallow and impractical; and I know one man who declares that truth and
honesty and uprightness never dwelt in a professional musician's heart;
and further, that the tribe is totally incapable of comprehending the
difference between "meum" and "tuum." But then this same man claims that
actors are rascals who have lost their own characters in the business of
playing they are somebody else. And yet I'll explain for the benefit of
the captious that, although Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry both
fiddled, they never did and never would fiddle while Rome burned. Music
was with them a pastime, not a profession.
As soon as Patrick Henry arrived at Williamsburg, he sought out his old
friend Thomas Jefferson, because he liked him--and to save tavern bill.
And Patrick announced that he had come to Williamsburg to be admitted to
the bar.
"How long have you studied law?" asked Jefferson.
"Oh, for six weeks last Tuesday," was the answer.
Tradition has it that Jefferson advised Patrick to go home and study at
least a fortnight more before making his application. But Patrick declared
that the way to learn law is to practise it, and he surely was right. Most
young lawyers are really never aware of how little law they know until
they begin to practise.
But Patrick Henry was duly admitted, although George Wythe protested. Then
Patrick went back home to tend bar (the other kind) for Laban, his
father-in-law, for full four years. He studied hard and practised a little
betimes--and his is the only instance that history records of a barkeeper
acquiring wisdom while following his calling; but for the encouragement of
budding youth I write it down.
* * * * *
No doubt it was the example of Patrick Henry that caused Jefferson to
adopt his profession. But it was the literary side of law that first
attracted him--not the practise of it. As a speaker he was singularly
deficient, a slight physical malformation of the throat giving him a very
poor and uncertain voice. But he studied law, and after all it does not
make much difference what a man studies--all knowledge is related, and the
man who studies anything if he keeps at it will become learned.
So Jefferson studied in the office of George Wythe, and absorbed all that
Fauquier had to offer, and grew wise in the companionship of Doctor Small.
From a red-headed, lean, lank, awkward mountaineer, he developed into a
gracious and graceful young man who has been described as "auburn-haired."
And the evolution from being red-headed to having red hair, and from that
to being auburn-haired, proves he was the genuine article. Still he was
hot handsome--that word can not be used to describe him until he was
sixty--for he was freckled, one shoulder wets higher than the other, and
his legs were so thin that they could not do justice to small-clothes.
Yet it will not do to assume that thin men are weak, any more than to take
it for granted that fat men are strong. Jefferson was as muscular as a
panther and could walk or ride or run six days and nights together. He
could lift from the floor a thousand pounds.
When twenty-four, he hung out his lawyer's sign under that of George Wythe
at Williamsburg. And clients came that way with retainers, and rich
planters sent him business, and wealthy widows advised with him--and still
he could not make a speech without stuttering. Many men can harangue a
jury, and every village has its orator; but where is the wise and silent
man who will advise you in a way that will keep you out of difficulty,
protect your threatened interests, and conduct the affairs you may leave
in his hands so as to return your ten talents with other talents added!
And I hazard the statement, without heat or prejudice, that if the
experiment should be made with a thousand lawyers in any one of our larger
cities, four-fifths of them would be found so deficient, either mentally,
morally or both, that if ten talents were placed in their hands, they
would not at the close of a year be able to account for the principal, to
say nothing of the interest. And the bar of today is made up of a better
class than it was in Jefferson's time, even if it has not the intellectual
fiber that it had forty years ago.
But at the early age of twenty-five, Jefferson was a wise and skilful man
in the world's affairs (and a man who is wise is also honest), and men of
this stamp do not remain hidden in obscurity. The world needs just such
individuals and needs them badly. Jefferson had the quiet, methodical
industry that works without undue expenditure of nervous force; that
intuitive talent which enables the possessor to read a whole page at a
glance and drop at once upon the vital point; and then he had the ability
to get his whole case on paper, marshaling his facts in a brief, pointed
way that served to convince better than eloquence. These are the
characteristics that make for success in practise before our Courts of
Appeal; and Jefferson's success shows that they serve better than bluster,
even with a backwoods bench composed of fox-hunting farmers.
In Seventeen Hundred Sixty-eight, when Jefferson was twenty-five, he went
down to Shadwell and ran for member of the Virginia Legislature. It was
the proper thing to do, for he was the richest man in the county, being
heir to his father's forty thousand acres, and it was expected that he
would represent his district. He called on every voter in the parish,
shook hands with everybody, complimented the ladies, caressed the babies,
treated crowds at every tavern, and kept a large punch-bowl and open house
at home. He was elected. On the Eleventh of May, Seventeen Hundred
Sixty-nine, the Legislature convened, with nearly a hundred members
present, Colonel George Washington being one of the number. It took two
days for the Assembly to elect a Speaker and get ready for business. On
the third day, four resolutions were introduced--pushed to the front
largely through the influence of our new member.
These resolutions were: