——, 1857.
My dear Mr. Randall—.... First, on the subject of Mr. Jefferson's personal appearance. Mr. Webster's description of it did not please me, because, though I will not stop to quarrel with any of the details, the general impression it was calculated to produce seemed to me an unfavorable one; that is, a person who had never seen my grandfather, would, from Mr. Webster's description, have thought him rather an ill-looking man, which he certainly never was....
It would be, however, very difficult for me to give an accurate description of the appearance of one whom I so tenderly loved and deeply venerated. His person and countenance were to me associated with so many of my best affections, so much of my highest reverence, that I could not expect other persons to see them as I did. One thing I will say—that never in my life did I see his countenance distorted by a single bad passion or unworthy feeling. I have seen the expression of suffering, bodily and mental, of grief, pain, sadness, just indignation, disappointment, disagreeable surprise, and displeasure, but never of anger, impatience, peevishness, discontent, to say nothing of worse or more ignoble emotions. To the contrary, it was impossible to look on his face without being struck with its benevolent, intelligent, cheerful, and placid expression. It was at once intellectual, good, kind, and pleasant, while his tall, spare figure spoke of health, activity, and that helpfulness, that power and will, "never to trouble another for what he could do himself," which marked his character.
His dress was simple, and adapted to his ideas of neatness and comfort. He paid little attention to fashion, wearing whatever he liked best, and sometimes blending the fashions of several different periods. He wore long waistcoats, when the mode was for very short; white cambric stocks fastened behind with a buckle, when cravats were universal. He adopted the pantaloon very late in life, because he found it more comfortable and convenient, and cut off his queue for the same reason. He made no change except from motives of the same kind, and did nothing to be in conformity with the fashion of the day. He considered such independence as the privilege of his age....
In like manner, I never heard him speak of Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry with the amount of severity recorded by Mr. Webster. My impression is that here too, Mr. Webster, from a very natural impulse, and without the least intention of misrepresentation, has put down only those parts of Mr. Jefferson's remarks which accorded with his own views, and left out all the extenuations—the "circonstantes attendantes," as the French say. This, of course, would lead to an erroneous impression. Of Mr. Wirt's book my grandfather did not think very highly; but the unkind remark, so far as Mr. Wirt was personally concerned, unaccompanied by any thing to soften its severity, is, to say the least, very little like Mr. Jefferson.
ELLEN W. COOLIDGE.
Of Jefferson's opinion of Henry, Mr. Randall goes on to say:
His whole correspondence, and his Memoir written at the age of seventy-seven, exhibit his unbounded admiration of Henry in certain particulars, and his dislike or severe animadversion in none. Henry and he came to differ very widely in politics, and the former literally died leading a gallant political sortie against the conquering Republicans. On one occasion, at least, his keen native humor was directed personally against Jefferson. With his inimitable look and tone, he with great effect declared that he did not approve of gentlemen's "abjuring their native victuals."[67] This gave great diversion to Jefferson. He loved to talk about Henry, to narrate anecdotes of their early intimacy; to paint his taste for unrestrained nature in every thing; to describe his bonhomie, his humor, his unquestionable integrity, mixed with a certain waywardness and freakishness; to give illustrations of his shrewdness, and of his overwhelming power as an orator.
Mr. Randall's indefatigable industry in ferretting out every account and record of Jefferson has laid before the public Dr. Dunglison's interesting and valuable memoranda concerning his intercourse with Mr. Jefferson and his last illness and death. I make the following extracts:
Dr. Dunglison's Memoranda.
Soon afterwards [the arrival at Charlottesville] the venerable ex-President presented himself, and welcomed us[68] with that dignity and kindness for which he was celebrated. He was then eighty-two years old, with his intellectual powers unshaken by age, and the physical man so active that he rode to and from Monticello, and took exercise on foot with all the activity of one twenty or thirty years younger. He sympathized with us on the discomforts of our long voyage, and on the disagreeable journey we must have passed over the Virginia roads; and depicted to us the great distress he had felt lest we had been lost at sea—for he had almost given us up, when my letter arrived with the joyful intelligence that we were safe....
The houses [the professors' houses, or "pavilions" of the University] were much better furnished than we had expected to find them, and would have been far more commodious had Mr. Jefferson consulted his excellent and competent daughter, Mrs. Randolph, in regard to the interior arrangements, instead of planning the architectural exterior first, and leaving the interior to shift for itself. Closets would have interfered with the symmetry of the rooms or passages, and hence there were none in most of the houses; and of the only one which was furnished with a closet, it was told as an anecdote of Mr. Jefferson, that, not suspecting it, according to his general arrangements, he opened the door and walked into it in his way out of the pavilion....
Mr. Jefferson was considered to have but little faith in physic; and has often told me that he would rather trust to the unaided, or, rather, uninterfered with, efforts of nature than to physicians in general. "It is not," he was wont to observe, "to physic that I object so much, as to physicians." Occasionally, too, he would speak jocularly, especially to the unprofessional, of medical practice, and on one occasion gave offense, when, most assuredly, if the same thing had been said to me, no offense would have been taken. In the presence of Dr. Everett, afterwards Private Secretary to Mr. Monroe, he remarked that whenever he saw three physicians together, he looked up to discover whether there was not a turkey-buzzard in the neighborhood. The annoyance of the doctor, I am told, was manifest. To me, when it was recounted, it seemed a harmless jest. But whatever may have been Mr. Jefferson's notions of physic and physicians, it is but justice to say that he was one of the most attentive and respectful of patients. He bore suffering inflicted upon him for remedial purposes with fortitude; and in my visits, showed me, by memoranda, the regularity with which he had taken the prescribed remedies at the appointed times....
In the summer of 1825, the monotonous life of the college was broken in upon by the arrival of General Lafayette, to take leave of his distinguished friend, Mr. Jefferson, preparatory to his return to France. A dinner was given to him in the rotunda by the professors and students, at which Mr. Madison and Mr. Monroe were present, but Mr. Jefferson's indisposition prevented him from attending. "The meeting at Monticello," says M. Levasseur, the Secretary to General Lafayette during his journey, in his "Lafayette in America in 1824 and 1825," vol. ii., p. 245, "of three men who, by their successive elevation to the supreme magistracy of the state, had given to their country twenty-four years of prosperity and glory, and who still offered it the example of private virtues, was a sufficiently strong inducement to make us wish to stay there a longer time; but indispensable duties recalled General Lafayette to Washington, and he was obliged to take leave of his friends. I shall not attempt to depict the sadness which prevailed at this cruel separation, which had none of the alleviation which is usually felt by youth; for in this instance the individuals who bade farewell had all passed through a long career, and the immensity of the ocean would still add to the difficulties of a reunion."
M. Levasseur has evidently confounded this banquet with that given by the inhabitants of Charlottesville, the year preceding, during the first visit of Lafayette to Mr. Jefferson. At that period there were neither professors nor students, as the institution was not opened until six months afterwards. "Every thing," says M. Levasseur (vol. i., p. 220), "had been prepared at Charlottesville, by the citizens and students, to give a worthy reception to Lafayette. The sight of the nation's guest seated at the patriotic banquet, between Jefferson and Madison, excited in those present an enthusiasm which expressed itself in enlivening sallies of wit and humor. Mr. Madison, who had arrived that day at Charlottesville to attend this meeting, was especially remarkable for the originality of his expressions and the delicacy of his allusions. Before leaving the table he gave a toast—'To Liberty—with Virtue for her Guest, and Gratitude for the Feast,' which was received with rapturous applause."
The same enthusiasm prevailed at the dinner given in the rotunda. One of the toasts proposed by an officer of the institution, I believe, was an example of forcing a metaphor to the full extent of its capability—"The Apple of our Heart's Eye—Lafayette."
[CHAPTER XXI.]
Pecuniary Embarrassments.—Letter from a Grand-daughter.—Dr. Dunglison's Memoranda.—Sells his Library.—Depressed Condition of the Money Market.—Disastrous Consequences to Jefferson.—His Grandson's Devotion and Efforts to relieve him.—Mental Sufferings of Mr. Jefferson.—Plan of Lottery to sell his Property.—Hesitation of Virginia Legislature to grant his Request.—Sad Letter to Madison.—Correspondence with Cabell.—Extract from a Letter to his Grandson, to Cabell.—Beautiful Letter to his Grandson.—Distress at the Death of his Grand-daughter.—Dr. Dunglison's Memoranda.—Meeting in Richmond.—In Nelson County.—New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore come to his Relief.—His Gratitude.—Unconscious that at his Death Sales of his Property would fail to pay his Debts.—Deficit made up by his Grandson.—His Daughter left penniless.—Generosity of Louisiana and South Carolina.