At the age of sixteen, in the spring of 1760, he set out on horseback for Williamsburg, the capital of Virginia, where he proposed to enter the college of William and Mary. Up to this time he had never seen a town, or even a village, except the hamlet of Charlottesville, which is about four miles from Shadwell. Williamsburg—described in contemporary language as “the centre of taste, fashion, and refinement”—was an unpaved village, of about one thousand inhabitants, surrounded by an expanse of dark green tobacco fields as far as the eye could reach. It was, however, well situated upon a plateau midway between the York and James rivers, and was swept by breezes [pg 7]which tempered the heat of the summer sun and kept the town free from mosquitoes.
Williamsburg was also well laid out, and it has the honor of having served as a model for the city of Washington. It consisted chiefly of a single street, one hundred feet broad and three quarters of a mile long, with the capitol at one end, the college at the other, and a ten-acre square with public buildings in the middle. Here in his palace lived the colonial governor. The town also contained “ten or twelve gentlemen’s families, besides merchants and tradesmen.” These were the permanent inhabitants; and during the “season”—the midwinter months—the planters’ families came to town in their coaches, the gentlemen on horseback, and the little capital was then a scene of gayety and dissipation.
Such was Williamsburg in 1760 when Thomas Jefferson, the frontier planter’s son, rode slowly into town at the close of an early spring day, surveying with the outward indifference, but keen inward curiosity of a countryman, the place which was to be his [pg 8]residence for seven years,—in one sense the most important, because the most formative, period of his life. He was a tall stripling, rather slightly built,—after the model of the Randolphs,—but extremely well-knit, muscular, and agile. His face was freckled, and his features were somewhat pointed. His hair is variously described as red, reddish, and sandy, and the color of his eyes as blue, gray, and also hazel. The expression of his face was frank, cheerful, and engaging. He was not handsome in youth, but “a very good-looking man in middle age, and quite a handsome old man.” At maturity he stood six feet two and a half inches. “Mr. Jefferson,” said Mr. Bacon, at one time the superintendent of his estate, “was well proportioned and straight as a gun-barrel. He was like a fine horse, he had no surplus flesh. He had an iron constitution, and was very strong.”
Jefferson was always the most cheerful and optimistic of men. He once said, after remarking that something must depend “on the chapter of events:” “I am in the habit [pg 9]of turning over the next leaf with hope, and, though it often fails me, there is still another and another behind.” No doubt this sanguine trait was due in part at least to his almost perfect health. He was, to use his own language, “blessed with organs of digestion which accepted and concocted, without ever murmuring, whatever the palate chose to consign to them.” His habits through life were good. He never smoked, he drank wine in moderation, he went to bed early, he was regular in taking exercise, either by walking or, more commonly, by riding on horseback.
The college of William and Mary in Jefferson’s day is described by Mr. Parton as “a medley of college, Indian mission, and grammar school, ill-governed, and distracted by dissensions among its ruling powers.” But Jefferson had a thirst for knowledge and a capacity for acquiring it, which made him almost independent of institutions of learning. Moreover, there was one professor who had a large share in the formation of his mind. “It was my great good for[pg 10]tune,” he wrote in his brief autobiography, “and what probably fixed the destinies of my life, that Dr. William Small, of Scotland, was then professor of mathematics; a man profound in most of the useful branches of science, with a happy talent of communication and an enlarged liberal mind. He, most happily for me, soon became attached to me, and made me his daily companion when not engaged in the school; and from his conversation I got my first views of the expansion of science, and of the system of things in which we are placed.”
Jefferson, like all well-bred Virginians, was brought up as an Episcopalian; but as a young man, perhaps owing in part to the influence of Dr. Small, he ceased to believe in Christianity as a religion, though he always at home attended the Episcopal church, and though his daughters were brought up in that faith. If any theological term is to be applied to him, he should be called a Deist. Upon the subject of his religious faith, Jefferson was always extremely reticent. To one or two friends only did he disclose [pg 11]his creed, and that was in letters which were published after his death. When asked, even by one of his own family, for his opinion upon any religious matter, he invariably refused to express it, saying that every person was bound to look into the subject for himself, and to decide upon it conscientiously, unbiased by the opinions of others.
Dr. Small introduced Jefferson to other valuable acquaintances; and, boy though he was, he soon became the fourth in a group of friends which embraced the three most notable men in the little metropolis. These were, beside Dr. Small, Francis Fauquier, the acting governor of the province, appointed by the crown, and George Wythe. Fauquier was a courtly, honorable, highly cultivated man of the world, a disciple of Voltaire, and a confirmed gambler, who had in this respect an unfortunate influence upon the Virginia gentry,—not, however, upon Jefferson, who, though a lover of horses, and a frequenter of races, never in his life gambled or even played cards. Wythe was then just beginning a long and honorable [pg 12]career as lawyer, statesman, professor, and judge. He remained always a firm and intimate friend of Jefferson, who spoke of him, after his death, as “my second father.” It is an interesting fact that Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and Henry Clay were all, in succession, law students in the office of George Wythe.
Many of the government officials and planters who flocked to Williamsburg in the winter were related to Jefferson on his mother’s side, and they opened their houses to him with Virginia hospitality. We read also of dances in the “Apollo,” the ball-room of the old Raleigh tavern, and of musical parties at Gov. Fauquier’s house, in which Jefferson, who was a skillful and enthusiastic fiddler, always took part. “I suppose,” he remarked in his old age, “that during at least a dozen years of my life, I played no less than three hours a day.”
At this period he was somewhat of a dandy, very particular about his clothes and equipage, and devoted, as indeed he remained through life, to fine horses. Virginia im[pg 13]ported more thoroughbred horses than any other colony, and to this day there is probably a greater admixture of thoroughbred blood there than in any other State. Diomed, winner of the first English Derby, was brought over to Virginia in 1799, and founded a family which, even now, is highly esteemed as a source of speed and endurance. Jefferson had some of his colts; and both for the saddle and for his carriage he always used high-bred horses.
Referring to the Williamsburg period of his life, he wrote once to a grandson: “When I recollect the various sorts of bad company with which I associated from time to time, I am astonished I did not turn off with some of them, and become as worthless to society as they were.... But I had the good fortune to become acquainted very early with some characters of very high standing, and to feel the incessant wish that I could ever become what they were. Under temptations and difficulties, I would ask myself what would Dr. Small, Mr. Wythe, Peyton Randolph do in this situation? What course in it will as[pg 14]sure me their approbation? I am certain that this mode of deciding on my conduct tended more to correctness than any reasoning powers that I possesed.”