CHAPTER III
THE PHILOSOPHY OF OLD AGE
Old people are often accused of being too conservative, and even reactionary. They seem out of step with the younger generations, and very few preserve enough resiliency to keep in touch with the ceaseless changes taking place around them. But a few men who, born in the second half of the eighteenth century, lived well up into the nineteenth, were able to escape this apparently unavoidable law of nature. After witnessing political convulsions, commotions and revolutions, they clung tenaciously to the faith of their younger days. They refused to accept the view that the world was going from bad to worse; they looked untiringly for every symptom of improvement and thought they could distinguish everywhere signs foretelling the dawn of a new era. The growing infirmities of their bodies did not leave them any illusion about their inevitable disappearance from the stage and they were not upheld by any strong belief in personal immortality. But however uncertain and hazy may have been their religious tenets, they had a stanch faith in the unlimited capacity of human nature for improvement and development. They believed in the irresistible power of truth, in the ultimate recognition of natural principles and natural laws, in the religion of progress as it had been formulated by the eighteenth-century philosophers. Thus, rather than follow the precept of the ancient poet and unhitch their aging horses, they had anticipated the advice of the American philosopher by hitching their wagon to a star.
Du Pont de Nemours, experimenting with his sons to develop American industries in order to make America economically independent from Europe; Destutt de Tracy, almost completely blind, dictating his treatise on political economy and appearing in the streets of Paris during the glorious days of 1830; Lafayette, yearning and hoping for the recognition of his ideal of liberty during the Empire and the Restauration—all of these were more than survivors of a forgotten age. Even to the younger generations they represented the living embodiment of the political faith of the nineteenth century. It is not a mere coincidence that most of them were friends and admirers of the Sage of Monticello, whose letters they read "as the letters of the Apostles were read in the circle of the early Christians."
Jefferson could complain that "the decays of age had enfeebled the useful energies of the mind",[550] but he kept, practically to his last day, his alertness, his encyclopædic curiosity and an extraordinary capacity for work. A large part of his time was taken by his correspondence. Turning to his letter list for 1820 he found that he had received no less than "one thousand two hundred and sixty-seven communications, many of them requiring answers of elaborate research, and all of them to be answered with due attention and consideration."[551] I may be permitted to add that a large part of the letters he received as well as those he wrote deserve publication and would greatly contribute to our knowledge of the period.
Among them essays and short treatises on every possible subject under heaven will be found. With Du Pont de Nemours, Jefferson discussed not only questions of political economy, education and government, but the acclimation of the merino sheep, the manufacturing of woolen goods and nails, the construction of gunboats and the organization of the militia. With Madame de Tessé, Lafayette's aged cousin, he resumed the exchange of botanical views, interrupted by his presidency and the continental blockade. He undertook to put together the scraps of paper on which he had scribbled notes during Washington's and Adams' administrations and compiled his famous "Anas"; he wrote his "Autobiography", furnished documents to Girardin for his continuation of Burke's "History of Virginia"; he answered queries on the circumstances under which he had written the Declaration of Independence, the Kentucky Resolution, on his attitude towards France when Secretary of State and President; he criticized quite extensively Marshall's "History of Washington" and one of his last letters, written on May 15, 1826, was to inform one of his friends of the facts concerning "Arnold's invasion and surprise of Richmond, in the winter of 1780-81."[552]
His interest in books was greater than ever; he had scarcely sold his library to Congress when he undertook to collect another, going systematically through the publishers' catalogues, writing to booksellers in Richmond, Philadelphia, New York and even abroad, requesting his European friends to send him the latest publications and asking young Ticknor to procure for him, in France or Germany, the best editions of the Greek and Latin classics. He drew up the plans for the University of Virginia and supervised the construction of the building. Between times he took upon himself the task of rewriting entirely the translation of Destutt de Tracy's "Review of Montesquieu" and directed the printing of his treatise on "Political Economy." After writing letters, regulating the work of the farm, he spent several hours on horseback every day and during the balance of the afternoon read new and old books, played with his grandchildren, walked in the garden to look at his favorite trees, listened to music and, during the fine weather, received the visitors who flocked to Monticello by the dozens. Some were simply idlers coming out of curiosity, many were old friends who stayed for days or weeks; but all were welcomed with the same affable courtesy and the same generous hospitality, according to the best traditions of old Virginia.
They came from all nations, at all times—wrote Doctor Dunglison—and paid longer or shorter visits. I have known a New England judge bring a letter of introduction and stay three weeks. The learned abbé Correa, always a welcome guest, passed some weeks of each year with us during the whole time of his stay in the country. We had persons from abroad, from all the States of the Union, from every part of the State—men, women, and children.... People of wealth, fashion, men in office, Protestant clergymen, Catholic priests, members of Congress, foreign ministers, missionaries, Indian agents, tourists, travellers, artists, strangers, friends.[553]