Nor was Shadwell exactly in the "howling wilderness", even if there was no large city near it. It was located on the road to Williamsburg, and many travelers stopped at the house on their way to the capital. Hospitality to friends and strangers was a sacred rite and most scrupulously observed. Much visiting was done in Virginia, and men particularly spent considerable time traveling from house to house; slaves were put up, horses were sent to the stable, while the best was spread on the table for the master. During the summer months, when roads were not made impassable by deep mudholes, one visitor had hardly left when another came. They had to be entertained, sometimes at a considerable expense, always at a considerable loss of time. Young Jefferson soon realized, after returning to Shadwell, that he would never amount to much and would probably become an idler, if he stayed on the estate like so many of his young friends. The wasting of precious moments irritated and disturbed him when he wanted to do some reading or some study, and he felt that the condition of the estate hardly warranted such a generous hospitality. He therefore decided to leave, and the letter he wrote on this occasion to his guardian, Mr. John Hervey of Bellemont, shows him fully aware of his responsibilities and perfectly definite in his plans.[4]
In the spring of 1760, the young man, then exactly seventeen, went to Williamsburg and enrolled in the College of William and Mary. Quite possibly it was his first visit to the capital of Virginia, his first contact with urban life. It was, for the time, a place of very respectable size and considerable activity. Old Professor Hugh Jones, a man much traveled and much read, described it enthusiastically in his "Present State of Virginia", published in London in 1724:
Williamsburg is a market town, and is governed by a mayor and aldermen. It is a town well stocked with rich stores, all sorts of goods, and well furnished with the best provisions and liquors. Here dwell several good families, and more reside here in their own houses at publick times. They live in the same neat manner, dress after the same modes, and behave themselves exactly as the Gentry in London; most families of note having a coach, chariot, Berlin, or chaize.... Thus they dwell comfortably, genteely, pleasantly, and plentifully in this delightful, healthful, and (I hope) pleasant city of Virginia.
Great occasions were receptions given by the Governor, meetings of the Assembly, occasional performances by regular companies from New York, semi-professional players and later, by the Virginian Company of Comedians. Horse races attracted every year a large concourse of people, for every true Virginian is a lover of horseflesh. Betting was active and large sums of money changed hands, particularly for the four-mile heat race given each year on the course adjoining the town.
Ladies in all the glory of their imported dresses, gentlemen in brilliantly colored knee breeches and coats, with elegantly chased swords at their sides and the best beaver hats made in London under their arms, attended the receptions, the dances, the theater, and more than once adjourned to the famous Apollo room in the Raleigh Tavern, where they indulged in much drinking of "punch, beer, Nantes rum, brandy, Madeira and French claret." The first time young Jefferson went to the Raleigh he was probably shown the largest punch bowl in the house, which had played a part in the purchase of Shadwell, for had not Colonel Jefferson bought the site from William Randolph of Tuckahoe, for "Henry Weatherbourne's biggest bowl of arrack punch"?
The college itself was no less an attraction than the town. Built originally on the plans of Christopher Wren, it had unfortunately been remodeled after a fire, "a rude, misshapen pile, which but it had a roof would be taken for a brick-kiln", wrote Jefferson in his "Notes on Virginia." Such as it was, however, with the Capitol, of much better style, it was the first large building and monument the young man had ever seen and he probably admired it at the time as much as most Virginians did.
It was by no means a university, not even a real college. Like most institutions of learning in the colonies, it had been established "to the end that the church of Virginia may be furnished with a seminary for ministers of the gospel, and that the youth may be piously educated in good letters and manners, and that the Christian faith may be propagated amongst the Western Indians, to the glory of the Almighty."
The lack of preparation of the students, the fact that the sons of the wealthiest were sent to England to finish their education, perhaps also an aristocratic scorn for specialized and intensive learning among the gentry of Virginia, all had contributed to keep down the standards of the institution. Much to his disgust, Jefferson found
... that the admission of the learners of Latin and Greek had filled the college with children. This rendering it disagreeable and degrading to young gentlemen, already prepared for entering on the sciences, they were discouraged from resorting to it, and thus the schools for mathematics and moral philosophy, which might have been of some service, became of very little. The revenues, too, were exhausted in accommodating those who came only to acquire the rudiments of the sciences.[5]
Thus the problem of caring for the many, the danger of keeping together in college the prepared and the unprepared students, which is still with us, existed already in America one hundred and fifty years ago. Evidently Jefferson considered himself as one of those young gentlemen who were prepared for entering upon the study of the sciences; he was certainly more mature for his years than most of his fellow students and looked down upon them as well, we may surmise, as upon the teachers themselves. On the other hand, the town offered many temptations and he probably yielded to some of them. He was often thrown into the society of horse-racers, card-players, fox-hunters, and at the end of his first year in college it appeared to him that he had spent more than his share of the income of the estate. He therefore wrote to his guardian to charge his expenses to his share of the property: "No," Colonel Walker is reported to have said,—"if you have sowed your wild oats thus, the estate may well afford to pay the bill."