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American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American History, American Philosophical Society, Biography, election of 1796, Government, history, James Bowdoin, John Adams, John Hancock, Jon Meacham, politics, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, U.S. history
“He loved his wife, his books, his farms, good wine, architecture, Homer, horseback riding, history, France, the Commonwealth of Virginia, spending money, and the very latest in ideas and insights. He believed in America, and in Americans. The nation, he said in his first inaugural address in 1801, was ‘the world’s best hope.’ He thought Americans themselves capable of virtually anything they put their minds to. ‘Whatever they can, they will,’ Jefferson said of his countrymen in 1814.
A formidable man, ‘Mr. Jefferson was as tall, straight-bodied man as ever you see, right square-shouldered,’ said Isaac Granger Jefferson, a Monticello slave. ‘Neat a built man as ever was seen … a straight-up man, long face, high nose.’ Edmund Bacon, a Monticello overseer, said that Jefferson ‘was like a fine horse; he had no surplus flesh.… His countenance was always mild and pleasant.’…
A philosopher and a scientist, a naturalist and a historian, Jefferson was a man of the Enlightenment, always looking forward, consumed by the quest for knowledge. He adored detail, noting the temperature each day and carrying a tiny, ivory-leaved notebook in his pocket to track his daily expenditures. He drove his horses hard and fast and considered the sun his ‘almighty physician.’ Jefferson was fit and virile, a terrific horseman and inveterate walker. He drank no hard liquor but loved wine, taking perhaps three glasses a day. He did not smoke. When he received gifts of Havana cigars from well-wishers, he passed them along to friends.
Jefferson never tired of invention and inquiry, designing dumbwaiters and hidden mechanisms to open doors at Monticello. He delighted in archaeology, paleontology, astronomy, botany, and meteorology, and once created his own version of the Gospels by excising the New Testament passages he found supernatural or implausible and arranging the remaining verses in the order he believed they should be read. He drew sustenance from music and found joy in gardening. He bought and built beautiful things, creating Palladian plans for Monticello and the Roman-inspired capitol of Virginia, which he designed after seeing an ancient temple in Nîmes, in the south of France. He was an enthusiastic patron of pasta, took the trouble to copy down a French recipe for ice cream, and enjoyed the search for the perfect dressing for his salads. He kept shepherd dogs (two favorites were named Bergere and Grizzle). He knew Latin, Greek, French, Italian, and Spanish.
He was also a student of human nature, a keen observer of what drove other men, and he loved knowing the details of other lives…
A guest at a country inn was said to have once struck up a conversation with a ‘plainly-dressed and unassuming traveler’ whom the stranger did not recognize. The two covered subject after subject, and the unremarkable traveler was ‘perfectly acquainted with each.’ Afterward, ‘filled with wonder,’ the guest asked the landlord who this extraordinary man was. When the topic was the law, the traveler said, ‘he thought he was a lawyer’; when it was medicine, he ‘felt sure he was a physician’; when it was theology, ‘he became convinced that he was a clergyman.’
The landlord’s reply was brief. ‘Oh, why I thought you knew the Squire.'”
__________
From the prologue to Jon Meacham’s biography Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power.
If you enjoyed the above excerpt, check out a similarly readable and expansive biographical sketch of one of Jefferson’s chief political rivals and late-life companions, John Adams, in an excerpt pulled from David McCullough’s eponymous biography:
Click here for the rest of the Bully Pulpit’s posts relating to Jefferson or the American founders.
JMB said:
Loved this post!
jrbenjamin said:
I did too. It’s such an epic summary of such a peerless human being.
Amarachi Utah said:
Just took a gander at your work…your style and subjects are very engaging. Will definitely be back.
tedrey said:
I do notice that, although you present us with many of the masters of the finest thought and style of the past, your own thought and style in no way falls beneath theirs.
jrbenjamin said:
I really appreciate the compliment. It’s extremely generous of you to say, although I have to say I disagree. I aspire to the heights of some of these men and women, but am nowhere near them — especially when it comes to a man as brilliant as Mr. Jefferson.
Nevertheless, I really appreciate it, and appreciate your reading and commenting.
tedrey said:
Given my impression that you are still far younger than myself, I am willing to await your future trajectory with interest. Tom Jefferson himself was once both brilliant and young, and only improved with age. (:-)> Just continue.
jrbenjamin said:
Thank you very much for the encouragement.
And yes, Jefferson was so precocious (he wrote the Declaration when he was 33, after all); but he also had the stamina to keep learning — and keep leading a fulfilled and dynamic life — right until the end. When he gave away his collection of books to the United States Library of Congress, he wrote Adams saying, “I cannot live without books”. Attestations to that effect are peppered throughout Meacham’s biography of him, too, as grandchildren reported that TJ could never sit idly — he was always reading, talking, listening, working, learning, eating, or drinking.
An example to us all. And again, thanks so much for your compliments.
L. Garza said:
I am really enjoying these latest posts on Jefferson. I almost ordered a biography earlier this week because of it. Now I think I will have to. Great blog John.
jrbenjamin said:
Glad to hear it, and thanks. Pick up Jon Meacham’s biography of TJ. It’s easy to read, and has a lot of information about both his politics and his personal life.
It’s nice to read, too, because of how idiotic and un-Jeffersonian so many in Washington are nowadays.
Thanks for reading and commenting…
navigator1965 said:
jr,
I would first echo the complimentary sentiments expressed by others here. I do so enjoy your posts, though I hail from north of the 49th parallel.
Although it is a bit of an arcane work, “Civilization One – The World Is Not As You Thought It Was” does discuss Jefferson’s inquiry into the issue of weights and measures. It is a more profound topic than it might appear at first glance.
“But the harmony here developed in the system of weights and measures, of which the avoirdupois makes an essential member, corroborated by a general use, from very high antiquity, of that, or of a nearly similar weight under another name, seem stronger proofs that this is legal weight, than the mere silence of the written laws is to the contrary.” (Jefferson, cited by C. Lomas and A. Knight in “Civilization One.”)
jrbenjamin said:
First: thank you for reading and the nice words.
Second, just a question: why exactly do you bring up Jefferson’s work in weights and measures? Are you trying to emphasize how broad his area of knowledge and interest was?
Regardless, I learned a new word — “avoirdupois” — and I have you to thank for it.
navigator1965 said:
I found that Jefferson’s insatiable appetite for knowledge and inquiry resonates with me, however humble I may be in this regard. Were it within my means, I would devote my life to such pursuits. To the rather limited degree to which it is, I do (e.g., my pursuit to unify Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” with Christopher Lasch’s “The Culture of Narcissism”).
Roughly ten years ago I discovered the late Professor Charles Hapgood’s books (e.g., “Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings”) and was mesmerized by both his logic and the implications of his work. From this I’ve considered the works of other “heretical” thinkers (e.g., Brophy, “The Origin Map”) who similarly pursued logical implications regarding our world and its human history without fear of the opinions of others.
“Civilization One” is such a work, and is predicated upon the late Scottish Professor of Engineering Alexander Thom’s 1955 assertion that there existed a standard unit of measure in use for the construction of British megalithic sites. Civ One documents its authors’ Jefferson-like inquiry into Thom’s assertion, and interestingly they reference Jefferson’s inquiry into weights and measures to support their interpretation of the implications of Thom’s research. That the megalithic yard was a geodetic unit of measure in wide use in antiquity and whose existence rationally explains the otherwise unfathomable English system of measure is rather stunning in implication.
I must confess to knowing little of Jefferson beyond the basic fact of his being a major figure in American independence. (I do not revel in my ignorance.) However, when I read your post about him, I was struck by how apropos it was that the contemporary “heretical” authors of Civ One should buttress their arguments with reference to Jefferson’s earlier inquiry. I suspect, were he alive today, that Jefferson would approve.
Your unexpected question did provoke some introspective thought on my part.
navigator1965 said:
Apology – “I FIND that Jefferson’s insatiable … resonates with me.” A little inconsistent with my verb tenses, regrettably.
jjhiii24 said:
John,
We sure could use a fellow like Jefferson in Washington these days….
This is a great posting about him, and I thought to share this little anecdote that caught my eye a while back:
“Drudging at the Writing Table”
After his morning routine, Thomas Jefferson settled into a lengthy
period of letter-writing: “From sun-rise to one or two o’clock,” he
noted, “I am drudging at the writing table.” Jefferson wrote almost
20,000 letters in his lifetime, among them, scholarly musings to
colleagues, and affectionate notes to his family, and civil responses to
admirers. He wrote John Adams that he suffered “under the persecution of
letters,” calculating that he received 1,267 letters in the year 1820,
“many of them requiring answers of elaborate research, and all to be
answered with due attention and consideration.”
A “FULL AND GENUINE JOURNAL”
In 1823 Jefferson wrote that “The letters of a person, especially one
whose business has been chiefly transacted by letters, form the only
full and genuine journal of his life.” His surviving letters give
insight into Jefferson’s vast interests and reveal much about his
personality. He was interested in every branch of applied science and math, but letters were always waiting, and Jefferson returned to what he called “pen and ink
work” more than he would have preferred.
© Copyright 1996, by the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, Inc.
Writing letters…another nearly lost art…..John H.
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