Death of Count de Vergennes.—Jefferson is ordered to Aix by his Surgeon.—Death of his youngest Child.—Anxiety to have his Daughter Mary with him.—Her Reluctance to leave Virginia.—Her Letters to and from her Father.—Jefferson's Letters to Mrs. and Mr. Eppes.—To Lafayette.—To the Countess de Tesse.—To Lafayette.—Correspondence with his Daughter Martha.
In a letter written to Mr. Jay on the 23d of February, 1787, Mr. Jefferson says:
The event of the Count de Vergennes's death, of which I had the honor to inform you in a letter of the 4th instant, the appointment of the Count Montmorin, and the propriety of my attending at his first audience, which will be on the 27th, have retarded the journey I proposed a few days.
The journey above mentioned was a trip to Aix, whither he was ordered by his surgeon, in order to try the effect of its mineral-waters on his dislocated wrist. In the letters which he wrote to his daughter Martha, while absent on this occasion, he alludes frequently to his youngest daughter, Mary, or Polly, as she was sometimes called. As I have before mentioned, she and her younger sister, Lucy, were left by their father in Virginia, with their kind uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Eppes. Lucy died in the fall of the year 1784, and her death was announced to her father in a letter from Mr. Eppes, who writes:
I am sorry to inform you that my fears about the welfare of our children, which I mentioned in my last, were too well founded. Yours, as well as our dear little Lucy, have fallen sacrifices to the most horrible of all disorders, the whooping-cough. They both suffered as much pain, indeed more than ever I saw two of their ages experience. We were happy in having had every experience this country afforded; however, they were beyond the reach of medicine.[31]
The death of this child was felt keenly by Jefferson. After getting established in Paris, he became impatient to have his little daughter Mary with him. She did not join him, however, until the year 1787, her uncle and aunt being loath to part with her, and no good opportunity occurring for getting her across the Atlantic. The child herself could not bear the thought of being torn from the kind uncle and aunt, whom she had learned to love so devotedly, to go to a strange land. I have lying before me a package of her letters to her father, whose sweet, childish prattle must be excuse enough for their appearing here, trivial though they seem. The first was written for her by her aunt. The others are in the huge, grotesque-looking letters of a child just beginning to write. The following was written before her father had left Philadelphia:
Mary Jefferson to Thomas Jefferson.
Eppington, April 11th, 1784.
My dear Papa—I want to know what day you are going to come and see me, and if you will bring sister Patsy and my baby with you. I was mighty glad of my sashes, and gave Cousin Bolling one. I can almost read.
Your affectionate daughter,
POLLY JEFFERSON.
It is touching to see how gently her father tries to reconcile her, in the following letter, to her separation from her good uncle and aunt, and how he attempts to lure her to France with the promise that she shall have in Paris "as many dolls and playthings" as she wants.