Thomas Jefferson: Part II
Praise and Pain
In my previous post, I tried to convey the humanity behind the historical figure of our third president. I highlighted Jefferson’s proclivities as a polymath—what areas of information concerning the world and all its contents didn’t attract his active interest? An ornithologist, an architect (Monticello and the University of Virginia), an inventor (a wheel cipher, a spherical sundial, a hideaway bed, a two-faced mirror, a swivel chair, dumbwaiters, enthusiastic modifier of the polygraph mechanical writing instrument), a farmer, a philosopher, Bible translator, and an inveterate reader of books—once declaring “I cannot live without books.” Was the guy a walking Renaissance all by himself? Kennedy seemed to think as much.
But just as the Renaissance experienced the bitter pangs of the Black Death, so did our man Jefferson suffer the sorrows of great loss. Things far more devastating than the sight of his beloved books going up in smoke.
In one ten-year period (1774-1784) he buried four of his six children and his beloved wife.
Second daughter Jane Randolph passed away at 17 months of age in September 1774.
An unnamed son born on May 28, 1777, died after only 17 days of life.
Lucy Elizabeth (1) born on November 3, 1780, perished from a respiratory illness five months later on April 15. A distraught Jefferson recorded the tragic event in his account book: “Our daughter Lucy Elizabeth died at 10 o’clock A.M. this day.”
Lucy Elizabeth (2) the replacement child born on May 8, 1782, and named after her sister who’d passed thirteenth months before, died from whooping cough on October 13, 1784.
And most devastating of all—his beloved wife Martha (“Patty”) died on September 6, 1782, just four months after giving birth to their last child, Lucy.
Martha had never physically recovered from Lucy’s birth. Her health steadily declined causing her husband untold misery and distress. The husband Jefferson never strayed far from Martha’s bedside throughout her painful deterioration. Always there to administer medicine and drink to soothe her thirst. Distraught, he swore off politics forever.
Jefferson recorded the shattering event in his account book: “My dear wife died this day at llH-45’ AM.” Family, friends, and many of the estate’s slaves were reportedly in attendance at the final moment.
He was instantly undone. His daughter Martha (“Patsy”) recalled (from details provided by her aunt) that her father was escorted to his library where he fainted for so long it was feared he would not revive. She would later write: “The scene that followed I did not witness; but the violence of his emotion, when almost by stealth I entered his room at night, to this day I dare not trust myself to describe. He kept to his room three weeks, and I was never a moment from his side. He walked almost incessantly night and day, only lying down occasionally,” when he was completely exhausted…after three weeks he left the room only to “ride incessantly on horseback, rambling about the mountain… In those melancholic rambles I was a solitary witness to many a violent burst of grief.”
Jefferson would later remember this period as a time when he felt “dead to the world.” He burned all the correspondence between Martha and himself. Friends feared for his sanity. No pictures of Martha have survived so little is known of her physical appearance. It is told that in her last moments, Martha tearfully issued instructions concerning the children. Here’s how Jefferson biographer John B. Boles describes the scene:
Finally she held up her hand, and spreading out her four fingers, told him she could not die if she thought her four children were ever to have a stepmother brought in over them. Holding her other hand in his, Mr. Jefferson promised her solemnly that he would never marry again.
He kept that pledge. We also know that he kept in a coat pocket a lock of her hair wrapped in folded paper. To commemorate the depth of their marital bond, Jefferson transcribed in Greek on her gravestone the words in Homer’s Iliad spoken by the grieving Achilles for the loss of his soul mate, Patroclus: “Though the dead forget their dead in the House of Death, I will remember, even there, my dear companion.”
As if this much tragedy weren’t enough. The Jefferson’s fourth child, daughter Mary (Maria), known as “Polly” during her teen-age years, died at age 25 while giving birth on April 4, 1804, at Jefferson’s Monticello home. Like her mother, she had endured a difficult pregnancy and delivered a premature baby on February 15. Jefferson arrived to witness the awful scene—which he described in a letter to James Madison: “[she was] so weak as barely to be able to stand, her stomach so disordered as to reject almost everything she took into it, a constant small fever, and an imposthume [abscess] rising in her breast.” Again, recording another passing in his memorandum book.
Writing to a friend, he confided his private sorrows: “Others may lose of their abundance, but I, of my want, have lost even the half of all I had. My evening prospects now hang on the slender thread of a single life” (referring to daughter Martha, who would be his closest companion until his death on July 4, 1826, the 50th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence).
Jefferson's eldest daughter: Martha (called Patsy). She would be his constant companion and later serve as 'first lady' when he was president.
I don’t mean to suggest that Thomas Jefferson’s legacy is to be measured by the travails he personally endured or how well he handled his ‘painmanship.’ I do believe, however, that it is important as students of history—especially our own history—to see our national role models ‘unbedaubed with patriotic rouge’ (to quote historian Richard Hildreth) and in their human skin. Yes, Mr. Jefferson authored the Declaration of Independence, the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, and the Kentucky Resolves (introducing the idea of state nullification of federal law). Yes, he finagled the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon and sent an infant navy to the Mediterranean to battle the Barbary pirates. Yes, he founded West Point and the University of Virginia. Yes, he was a slave owner who fathered children with one of his slaves. All these things are true. But it is equally true that, like every human being, he went through hell and kept going.
Let’s finish this story by following Jefferson in France…