Thomas Jefferson to Martha Jefferson.—[Extract.]
Annapolis, February 18th, 1784.
I am sorry M. Simitière can not attend you, because it is probable you will never have another opportunity of learning to draw, and it is a pretty and pleasing accomplishment. With respect to the payment of the guinea, I would wish him to receive it; because if there is to be a doubt between him and me which of us acts rightly, I would wish to remove it clearly off my own shoulders. You must thank Mrs. Hopkinson for me for the trouble she gave herself in this matter; from which she will be relieved by paying M. Simitière his demand.
In the spring of this year (1784) Mr. Jefferson received definite orders from Congress to go to Europe as Minister Plenipotentiary, and act in conjunction with Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams in negotiating treaties of commerce with foreign nations. He accordingly sailed in July, taking with him his young daughter Martha. The following description of his voyage, establishment in Paris and life there, is from her pen. The other two children, Mary and Lucy Elizabeth, were left with their good aunt, Mrs. Eppes. Mrs. Randolph says, in her manuscript:
He sailed from Boston in a ship of Colonel Tracy's (the Ceres, Capt. St. Barbe); the passengers—only six in number—of whom Colonel Tracy himself was one, were to a certain degree select, being chosen from many applying. The voyage was as pleasant as fine weather, a fine ship, good company, and an excellent table could make it. From land to land they were only nineteen days, of which they were becalmed three on the Banks of Newfoundland, which were spent in cod-fishing. The epicures of the cabin feasted on fresh tongues and sounds, leaving the rest of the fish for the sailors, of which much was thrown overboard for want of salt to preserve it. We were landed at Portsmouth, where he was detained a week by the illness of his little travelling companion, suffering from the effects of the voyage. Nothing worthy of note occurred on the voyage or journey to Paris.
On his first arrival in Paris he occupied rooms in the Hôtel d'Orléans, Rue des Petits Augustins, until a house could be got ready for him. His first house was in the Cul-de-sac Têtebout, near the Boulevards. At the end of the year he removed to a house belonging to M. le Comte de L'Avongeac, at the corner of the Grande Route des Champs Elysées and the Rue Neuve de Berry, where he continued as long as he remained in Paris. Colonel Humphreys, the secretary of legation, and Mr. Short, his private secretary, both lived with him. The house was a very elegant one even for Paris, with an extensive garden, court, and outbuildings, in the handsomest style.
He also had rooms in the Carthusian Monastery on Mount Calvary; the boarders, of whom I think there were forty, carried their own servants, and took their breakfasts in their own rooms. They assembled to dinner only. They had the privilege of walking in the gardens, but as it was a hermitage, it was against the rules of the house for any voices to be heard outside of their own rooms, hence the most profound silence. The author of Anacharsis was a boarder at the time, and many others who had reasons for a temporary retirement from the world. Whenever he had a press of business, he was in the habit of taking his papers and going to the hermitage, where he spent sometimes a week or more till he had finished his work. The hermits visited him occasionally in Paris, and the Superior made him a present of an ivory broom that was turned by one of the brothers.
His habits of study in Paris were pretty much what they were elsewhere. He was always a very early riser and the whole morning was spent in business, generally writing till one o'clock, with the exception of a short respite afforded by the breakfast-table, at which he frequently lingered, conversing willingly at such times. At one o'clock he always rode or walked as far as seven miles into the country. Returning from one of these rambles, he was on one occasion joined by some friend, and being earnestly engaged in conversation he fell and broke his wrist. He said nothing at the moment, but holding the suffering limb with the other hand, he continued the conversation until he arrived near to his own house, when, informing his companion of the accident, he left him to send for the surgeon. The fracture was a complicated one and probably much swollen before the arrival of the surgeon; but it was not set, and remained ever after weak and stiff. While disabled by this accident he was in the habit of writing with his left hand, in which he soon became tolerably expert—the writing being well-formed but stiff. A few years before his death another fall deprived him in like manner of the use of his left hand, which rendered him very helpless in his hands, particularly for writing, which latterly became very slow and painful to him. … He kept me with him till I was sent to a convent in Paris, where his visits to me were daily for the first month or two, till in fact I recovered my spirits.
Nothing could have been more congenial or delightful to him than the society in which Jefferson moved in Paris. At the head of an elegant establishment, as an American and the friend of Lafayette, his house was the favorite resort of all the accomplished and gallant young French officers who had enthusiastically taken up arms in defense of the great cause of liberty in the New World; while as a philosopher and the author of the "Notes on Virginia," his society was sought for and enjoyed by the most distinguished savants and men of science, who thronged from all parts of Europe to the great French capital. Nor were the ease and grace of his address, the charms of his eloquent conversation, and the varied extent of his learning, lost upon the witty and handsome women who were found at the court of the amiable young Louis the Sixteenth and of his queen, the lovely Marie Antoinette—so sadly pre-eminent for beauty and misfortune. His social intercourse with them, and the pleasant friendships formed for many, we discover in his gracefully-written letters to them.
Mr. and Mrs. John Adams were in Paris with Jefferson, and Mrs. Adams pays a graceful tribute to his talents and worth in her letters home, and in one of them speaks of him as being one of the "choice ones of the earth." His intercourse with his two colleagues, Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams, was of the most delightful character, and by both he was sincerely loved and esteemed. The friendship then formed between Mr. Adams and himself withstood, in after years, all the storms and bitterness of political life, at a time when, perhaps, party feeling and prejudice ran higher than ever before.
When Franklin returned home, loaded with all the honors and love that the admiration of the French people could lavish on him, Jefferson was appointed to take his place as Minister from the United States at the Court of St. Germains. "You replace Dr. Franklin," said Count de Vergennes, the French Premier, to him—"I succeed him; no one could replace him," was Jefferson's ready reply. Perhaps no greater proof of Jefferson's popularity in Paris could be given, than the fact that he so soon became a favorite in that learned and polished society in which the great Franklin had been the lion of the day. I quote from Jefferson's writings the following anecdotes of Franklin, which the reader will not find out of place here:
When Dr. Franklin went to France on his revolutionary mission, his eminence as a philosopher, his venerable appearance, and the cause on which he was sent, rendered him extremely popular—for all ranks and conditions of men there entered warmly into the American interest. He was, therefore, feasted and invited to all the court parties. At these he sometimes met the old Duchess of Bourbon, who being a chess-player of about his force, they very generally played together. Happening once to put her king into prise, the Doctor took it. "Ah," says she, "we do not take kings so." "We do in America," said the Doctor.
At one of these parties the Emperor Joseph II., then at Paris incog. under the title of Count Falkenstein, was overlooking the game in silence, while the company was engaged in animated conversations on the American question. "How happens it, M. le Comte," said the Duchess, "that while we all feel so much interest in the cause of the Americans, you say nothing for them?" "I am a king by trade," said he.
The Doctor told me at Paris the following anecdote of the Abbé Raynal: He had a party to dine with him one day at Passy, of whom one half were Americans, the other half French, and among the last was the Abbé. During the dinner he got on his favorite theory of the degeneracy of animals and even of man in America, and urged it with his usual eloquence. The Doctor, at length noticing the accidental stature and position of his guests at table, "Come," says he, "M. l'Abbé, let us try this question by the fact before us. We are here, one half Americans and one half French, and it happens that the Americans have placed themselves