The application of this rule on one occasion gave rise to an incident which convulsed Washington society. President Jefferson had invited to dinner the new British Minister Merry and his wife, the Spanish Minister Yrujo and his wife, the French Minister Pichon and his wife, and Mr. and Mrs. Madison. When dinner was announced, Mr. Jefferson gave his hand to Mrs. Madison and seated her on his right, leaving the rest to straggle in as they pleased. Merry, fresh from the Court of St. James, was aghast and affronted; and when a few days later, at a dinner given by the Secretary of State, he saw Mrs. Merry left without an escort, while Mr. Madison took Mrs. Gallatin to the table, he believed that a deliberate insult was intended. To appease this indignant Briton the President was obliged to explain officially his rule of "pole mele"; but Mrs. Merry was not appeased and positively refused to appear at the President's New Year's Day reception. "Since then," wrote the amused Pichon, "Washington society is turned upside down; all the women are to the last degree exasperated against Mrs. Merry; the Federalist newspapers have taken up the matter, and increased the irritations by sarcasms on the administration and by making a burlesque of the facts." Then Merry refused an invitation to dine again at the President's, saying that he awaited instructions from his Government; and the Marquis Yrujo, who had reasons of his own for fomenting trouble, struck an alliance with the Merrys and also declined the President's invitation. Jefferson was incensed at their conduct, but put the blame upon Mrs. Merry, whom he characterized privately as a "virago who has already disturbed our harmony extremely."
A brilliant English essayist has observed that a government to secure obedience must first excite reverence. Some such perception, coinciding with native taste, had moved George Washington to assume the trappings of royalty, in order to surround the new presidential office with impressive dignity. Posterity has, accordingly, visualized the first President and Father of his Country as a statuesque figure, posing at formal levees with a long sword in a scabbard of white polished leather, and clothed in black velvet knee-breeches, with yellow gloves and a cocked hat. The third President of the United States harbored no such illusions and affected no such poses. Governments were made by rational beings—"by the consent of the governed," he had written in a memorable document—and rested on no emotional basis. Thomas Jefferson remained Thomas Jefferson after his election to the chief magistracy; and so contemporaries saw him in the President's House, an unimpressive figure clad in "a blue coat, a thick gray-colored hairy waistcoat, with a red underwaist lapped over it, green velveteen breeches, with pearl buttons, yarn stockings, and slippers down at the heels." Anyone might have found him, as Senator Maclay did, sitting "in a lounging manner, on one hip commonly, and with one of his shoulders elevated much above the other," a loose, shackling figure with no pretense at dignity.
In his dislike for all artificial distinctions between man and man, Jefferson determined from the outset to dispense a true Southern hospitality at the President's House and to welcome any one at any hour on any day. There was therefore some point to John Quincy Adams's witticism that Jefferson's "whole eight years was a levee." No one could deny that he entertained handsomely. Even his political opponents rose from his table with a comfortable feeling of satiety which made them more kindly in their attitude toward their host. "We sat down at the table at four," wrote Senator Plumer of New Hampshire, "rose at six, and walked immediately into another room and drank coffee. We had a very good dinner, with a profusion of fruits and sweetmeats. The wine was the best I ever drank, particularly the champagne, which was indeed delicious."
It was in the circle of his intimates that Jefferson appeared at his best, and of all his intimate friends Madison knew best how to evoke the true Jefferson. To outsiders Madison appeared rather taciturn, but among his friends he was genial and even lively, amusing all by his ready humor and flashes of wit. To his changes of mood Jefferson always responded. Once started Jefferson would talk on and on, in a loose and rambling fashion, with a great deal of exaggeration and with many vagaries, yet always scattering much information on a great variety of topics. Here we may leave him for the moment, in the exhilarating hours following his inauguration, discoursing with Pinckney, Gallatin, Madison, Burr, Randolph, Giles, Macon, and many another good Republican, and evolving the policies of his Administration.
CHAPTER II. PUTTING THE SHIP ON HER REPUBLICAN TACK
President Jefferson took office in a spirit of exultation which he made no effort to disguise in his private letters. "The tough sides of our Argosie," he wrote to John Dickinson, "have been thoroughly tried. Her strength has stood the waves into which she was steered with a view to sink her. We shall put her on her Republican tack, and she will now show by the beauty of her motion the skill of her builders." In him as in his two intimates, Gallatin and Madison, there was a touch of that philosophy which colored the thought of reformers on the eve of the French Revolution, a naive confidence in the perfectability of man and the essential worthiness of his aspirations. Strike from man the shackles of despotism and superstition and accord to him a free government, and he would rise to unsuspected felicity. Republican government was the strongest government on earth, because it was founded on free will and imposed the fewest checks on the legitimate desires of men. Only one thing was wanting to make the American people happy and prosperous, said the President in his Inaugural Address "a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned." This, he believed, was the sum of good government; and this was the government which he was determined to establish. Whether government thus reduced to lowest terms would prove adequate in a world rent by war, only the future could disclose.
It was only in intimate letters and in converse with Gallatin and Madison that Jefferson revealed his real purposes. So completely did Jefferson take these two advisers into his confidence, and so loyal was their cooperation, that the Government for eight years has been described as a triumvirate almost as clearly defined as any triumvirate of Rome. Three more congenial souls certainly have never ruled a nation, for they were drawn together not merely by agreement on a common policy but by sympathetic understanding of the fundamental principles of government. Gallatin and Madison often frequented the President's House, and there one may see them in imagination and perhaps catch now and then a fragment of their conversation:
Gallatin: We owe much to geographical position; we have been fortunate in escaping foreign wars. If we can maintain peaceful relations with other nations, we can keep down the cost of administration and avoid all the ills which follow too much government.
The President: After all, we are chiefly an agricultural people and if we shape our policy accordingly we shall be much more likely to multiply and be happy than as if we mimicked an Amsterdam, a Hamburg, or a city like London.