Poplar Forest, April 28th, 1816.
I am here, my dear Madam, alive and well, and, notwithstanding the murderous histories of the winter, I have not had an hour's sickness for a twelvemonth past. I feel myself indebted to the fable, however, for the friendly concern expressed in your letter, which I received in good health, by my fireside at Monticello. These stories will come true one of these days, and poor printer Davies need only reserve awhile the chapter of commiserations he had the labor to compose, and the mortification to recall, after striking off some sheets announcing to his readers the happy riddance. But, all joking apart, I am well, and left all well a fortnight ago at Monticello, to which I shall return in two or three days....
Jefferson is gone to Richmond to bring home my new great-grand-daughter. Your friends, Mr. and Mrs. Divers, are habitually in poor health; well enough only to receive visits, but not to return them; and this, I think, is all our small news which can interest you.
On the general scale of nations, the greatest wonder is Napoleon at St. Helena; and yet it is where it would have been well for the lives and happiness of millions and millions, had he been deposited there twenty years ago. France would now have had a free Government, unstained by the enormities she has enabled him to commit on the rest of the world, and unprostrated by the vindictive hand, human or divine, now so heavily bearing upon her. She deserves much punishment, and her successes and reverses will be a wholesome lesson to the world hereafter; but she has now had enough, and we may lawfully pray for her resurrection, and I am confident the day is not distant. No one who knows that people, and the elasticity of their character, can believe they will long remain crouched on the earth as at present. They will rise by acclamation, and woe to their riders. What havoc are we not yet to see! But these sufferings of all Europe will not be lost. A sense of the rights of man is gone forth, and all Europe will ere long have representative governments, more or less free....
We are better employed in establishing universities, colleges, canals, roads, maps, etc. What do you say to all this? Who could have believed the Old Dominion would have roused from her supineness, and taken such a scope at her first flight? My only fear is that an hour of repentance may come, and nip in the bud the execution of conceptions so magnanimous. With my friendly respects to Mr. and Mrs. Gilmer, accept the assurance of my constant attachment and respect.
TH. JEFFERSON.
In a letter to John Adams, written at the beginning of the next year (1817), he complains bitterly of the burden of his extensive correspondence.
To John Adams.
Monticello, Jan. 11th, 1817.
Dear Sir—Forty-three volumes read in one year, and twelve of them quarto! Dear Sir, how I envy you! Half a dozen octavos in that space of time are as much as I am allowed. I can read by candle-light only, and stealing long hours from my rest; nor would that time be indulged to me, could I by that light see to write. From sunrise to one or two o'clock, and often from dinner to dark, I am drudging at the writing-table. All this to answer letters into which neither interest nor inclination on my part enters; and often from persons whose names I have never before heard. Yet, writing civilly, it is hard to refuse them civil answers. This is the burthen of my life, a very grievous one indeed, and one which I must get rid of.
Delaplaine lately requested me to give him a line on the subject of his book; meaning, as I well knew, to publish it. This I constantly refuse; but in this instance yielded, that in saying a word for him I might say two for myself. I expressed in it freely my sufferings from this source; hoping it would have the effect of an indirect appeal to the discretion of those, strangers and others, who, in the most friendly dispositions, oppress me with their concerns, their pursuits, their projects, inventions, and speculations, political, moral, religious, mechanical, mathematical, historical, etc., etc., etc. I hope the appeal will bring me relief, and that I shall be left to exercise and enjoy correspondence with the friends I love, and on subjects which they, or my own inclinations, present. In that case your letters shall not be so long on my files unanswered, as sometimes they have been to my great mortification.
From a letter to his son-in-law, Mr. Eppes, written the previous year, I take the following extract:
To John W. Eppes.
I am indeed an unskillful manager of my farms, and sensible of this from its effects, I have now committed them to better hands, of whose care and skill I have satisfactory knowledge, and to whom I have ceded the entire direction.[60] This is all that is necessary to make them adequate to all my wants, and to place me at entire ease. And for whom should I spare in preference to Francis, on sentiments either of duty or affection? I consider all my grandchildren as if they were my children, and want nothing but for them. It is impossible that I could reconcile it to my feelings, that he alone of them should be a stranger to my cares and contributions.
From this extract we learn that Mr. Jefferson had found the cares of his large estates too great a burden for him to carry in his advancing years, and gladly handed them over into the hands of the young grandson, in whose skill and energy he expresses such perfect confidence. From this time until the day of Jefferson's death, we shall find this grandson interposing himself, as far as possible, between his grandfather and his financial troubles, and trying to shield him, at least during his life, from the financial ruin which the circumstances of his situation made unavoidable. With his usual sanguine temper, Jefferson did not appreciate the extent to which his property was involved.
In a letter to his young grandson, Francis Eppes, after alluding to his studies, he says:
To Francis Eppes.