To Dr. Willard.
What a field have we at our doors to signalize ourselves in! The Botany of America is far from being exhausted, its mineralogy is untouched, and its Natural History or Zoology totally mistaken and misrepresented. As far as I have seen, there is not one single species of terrestrial birds common to Europe and America, and I question if there be a single species of quadrupeds. (Domestic animals are to be excepted.) It is for such institutions as that over which you preside so worthily, Sir, to do justice to our country, its productions, and its genius. It is the work to which the young men you are forming should lay their hands. We have spent the prime of our lives in procuring them the precious blessing of liberty. Let them spend theirs in showing that it is the great parent of science and of virtue, and that a nation will be great in both always in proportion as it is free. Nobody wishes more warmly for the success of your good exhortations on this subject than he who has the honor to be, with sentiments of great esteem and respect, Sir, your most obedient humble servant, etc.
Mr. Jefferson, as I have elsewhere noticed, placed his daughters at school in a convent, and they were there educated during his stay in Paris. His daughter Martha was now in her sixteenth year. She had not failed to take advantage of the fine opportunities of being an accomplished and well-informed woman which had been secured to her by the most thoughtful and devoted of fathers. She was a good linguist, an accomplished musician, and well read for her years; and we doubt whether any of her Virginian or even American female contemporaries could boast so thorough an education as could the modest, yet highly-gifted, Martha Jefferson. The gentle and loving kindness lavished on her by the inmates of the convent won for them her warmest affection, while the sweet amiability of her disposition, the charming simplicity of her manner, and the unusual powers of her mind endeared her to them. Thus her school-days flowed peacefully and gently by. But while their father had so carefully secured for his daughters a good mental and moral training by the situation in which he had placed them, he had overlooked the danger of their becoming too fond of it. He was startled, therefore, by receiving a note from Martha requesting permission to enter the convent and spend the rest of her days in the discharge of the duties of a religious life. He acted on this occasion with his usual tact. He did not reply to the note, but after a day or two drove to the Abbaye, had a private interview with the Abbess, and then asked for his daughters. He received them with more than usual affectionate warmth of manner, and, without making the least allusion to Martha's note or its contents, told his daughters that he had called to take them from school, and accordingly he drove back home accompanied by them. Martha was soon introduced into society at the brilliant court of Louis the Sixteenth, and soon forgot her girlish desire to enter a convent. No word in allusion to the subject ever passed between the father and daughter, and it was not referred to by either of them until years afterwards, when she spoke of it to her children.
Getting more and more impatient for leave to return home for a few months, we find Jefferson writing to Washington, in the spring of 1789, as follows:
To George Washington.
In a letter of November 19th to Mr. Jay, I asked a leave of absence to carry my children back to their own country, and to settle various matters of a private nature, which were left unsettled, because I had no idea of being absent so long. I expected that letter would have been received in time to be acted upon by the Government then existing. I know now that it would arrive when there was no Congress, and consequently that it must have awaited your arrival in New York. I hope you found the request not an unreasonable one. I am excessively anxious to receive the permission without delay, that I may be able to get back before the winter sets in. Nothing can be so dreadful to me as to be shivering at sea for two or three months in a winter passage. Besides, there has never been a moment at which the presence of a minister here could be so well dispensed with, from certainty of no war this summer, and that the Government will be so totally absorbed in domestic arrangements as to attend to nothing exterior.
In the same letter we find him congratulating Washington on his election as President, and seizing that occasion to pay a graceful tribute to him of praise and admiration, and also of affection. He says:
Though we have not heard of the actual opening of the new Congress, and consequently have not official information of your election as President of the United States, yet, as there never could be a doubt entertained of it, permit me to express here my felicitations, not to yourself, but to my country. Nobody who has tried both public and private life can doubt but that you were much happier on the banks of the Potomac than you will be at New York. But there was nobody so well qualified as yourself to put our new machine into a regular course of action—nobody, the authority of whose name could have so effectually crushed opposition at home and produced respect abroad. I am sensible of the immensity of the sacrifice on your part. Your measure of fame was full to the brim; and therefore you have nothing to gain. But there are cases wherein it is a duty to risk all against nothing, and I believe this was exactly the case. We may presume, too, according to every rule of probability, that, after doing a great deal of good, you will be found to have lost nothing but private repose.