Intense Application as a Student.—Habits of Study kept up during his Vacations.—First Preparations made for Building at Monticello.—Letters to his College Friend, John Page.—Anecdote of Benjamin Harrison.—Jefferson's Devotion to his eldest Sister.—He witnesses the Debate on the Stamp Act.—First Meeting with Patrick Henry.—His Opinion of him.—His superior Education.—Always a Student.—Wide Range of Information.—Anecdote.—Death of his eldest Sister.—His Grief.—Buries himself in his Books.—Finishes his Course of Law Studies.—Begins to practise.—Collection of Vocabularies of Indian Languages.—House at Shadwell burnt.—Loss of his Library.—Marriage.—Anecdote of his Courtship.—Wife's Beauty.—Bright Prospects.—Friendship for Dabney Carr.—His Talents.—His Death.—Jefferson buries him at Monticello.—His Epitaph.

Great as were the charms and delights of the society into which Jefferson was thrown in Williamsburg, they had not the power to draw him off from his studies. On the contrary, he seemed to find from his intercourse with such men as Wythe and Small, fresh incentives to diligence in his literary pursuits; and these, together with his natural taste for study, made his application to it so intense, that had he possessed a less vigorous and robust constitution, his health must have given way. He studied fifteen hours a day. During the most closely occupied days of his college life it was his habit to study until two o'clock at night, and rise at dawn; the day he spent in close application—the only recreation being a run at twilight to a certain stone which stood at a point a mile beyond the limits of the town. His habits of study were kept up during his vacations, which were spent at Shadwell; and though he did not cut himself off from the pleasures of social intercourse with his friends and family, yet he still devoted nearly three-fourths of his time to his books. He rose in the morning as soon as the hands of a clock placed on the mantle-piece in his chamber could be distinguished in the gray light of early dawn. After sunset he crossed the Rivanna in a little canoe, which was kept exclusively for his own use, and walked up to the summit of his loved Monticello, where he was having the apex of the mountain levelled down, preparatory to building.

The following extracts from letters written to his friends while he was a college-boy, give a fair picture of the sprightliness of his nature and his enjoyment of society.

To John Page—a friend to whom he was devotedly attached all through life—he writes, Dec. 25, 1762:

You can not conceive the satisfaction it would give me to have a letter from you. Write me very circumstantially every thing which happened at the wedding. Was she[4] there? because if she was, I ought to have been at the devil for not being there too. If there is any news stirring in town or country, such as deaths, courtships, or marriages, in the circle of my acquaintance, let me know it. Remember me affectionately to all the young ladies of my acquaintance, particularly the Miss Burwells, and Miss Potters; and tell them that though that heavy earthly part of me, my body, be absent, the better half of me, my soul, is ever with them, and that my best wishes shall ever attend them. Tell Miss Alice Corbin that I verily believe the rats knew I was to win a pair of garters from her, or they never would have been so cruel as to carry mine away. This very consideration makes me so sure of the bet, that I shall ask every body I see from that part of the world, what pretty gentleman is making his addresses to her. I would fain ask the favor of Miss Becca Burwell to give me another watch-paper of her own cutting, which I should esteem much more, though it were a plain round one, than the nicest in the world cut by other hands; however, I am afraid she would think this presumption, after my suffering the other to get spoiled.

A few weeks later, he writes to Page, from Shadwell:

To tell you the plain truth, I have not a syllable to write to you about. For I do not conceive that any thing can happen in my world which you would give a curse to know, or I either. All things here appear to me to trudge on in one and the same round: we rise in the morning that we may eat breakfast, dinner, and supper; and go to bed again that we may get up the next morning and do the same; so that you never saw two peas more alike than our yesterday and to-day. Under these circumstances, what would you have me say? Would you that I should write nothing but truth? I tell you, I know nothing that is true. Or would you rather that I should write you a pack of lies? Why, unless they are more ingenious than I am able to invent, they would furnish you with little amusement. What can I do, then? Nothing but ask you the news in your world. How have you done since I saw you? How did Nancy look at you when you danced with her at Southall's? Have you any glimmering of hope? How does R. B. do? Had I better stay here and do nothing, or go down and do less? or, in other words, had I better stay here while I am here, or go down that I may have the pleasure of sailing up the river again in a full-rigged flat? Inclination tells me to go, receive my sentence, and be no longer in suspense; but reason says, If you go, and your attempt proves unsuccessful, you will be ten times more wretched than ever.... I have some thoughts of going to Petersburg if the actors go there in May. If I do, I do not know but I may keep on to Williamsburg, as the birth-night will be near. I hear that Ben Harrison[5] has been to Wilton: let me know his success.

In his literary pursuits and plans for the future, Jefferson found a most congenial and sympathizing companion, as well as a loving friend, in his highly-gifted young sister, Jane Jefferson. Three years his senior, and a woman of extraordinary vigor of mind, we can well imagine with what pride and pleasure she must have watched the early development and growth of her young brother's genius and learning. When five years old, he had read all the books contained in his father's little library, and we have already found him sought out by the royal Governor, and chosen as one of his favorite companions, when but a college-boy. Like himself, his sister was devoted to music, and they spent many hours together cultivating their taste and talent for it. Both were particularly fond of sacred music, and she often gratified her young brother by singing for him hymns.

We have seen, from his letters to his friend Page, that, while a student in Williamsburg, Jefferson fell in love with Miss Rebecca Burwell—one of the beauties of her day. He was indulging fond dreams of success in winning the young lady's heart and hand, when his courtship was suddenly cut short by her, to him, unexpected marriage to another.

In the following year, 1765, there took place in the House of Burgesses the great debate on the Stamp Act, in which Patrick Henry electrified his hearers by his bold and sublime flights of oratory. In the lobby of the House was seen the tall, thin figure of Jefferson, bending eagerly forward to witness the stirring scene—his face paled from the effects of hard study, and his eyes flashing with the fire of latent genius, and all the enthusiasm of youthful and devoted patriotism. In allusion to this scene, he writes in his Memoir:

When the famous resolutions of 1765 against the Stamp Act were proposed, I was yet a student of law in Williamsburg. I attended the debate, however, at the door of the lobby of the House of Burgesses, and heard the splendid display of Mr. Henry's talents as a popular orator. They were indeed great; such as I have never heard from any other man. He appeared to me to speak as Homer wrote.

It was when on his way to Williamsburg to enter William and Mary College, that Jefferson first met Henry. They spent a fortnight together on that occasion, at the house of Mr. Dandridge, in Hanover, and there began the acquaintance and friendship between them which lasted through life. While not considering Henry a man of education or a well-read lawyer, Jefferson often spoke with enthusiasm to his friends and family of the wonders and beauties of his eloquence, and also of his great influence and signal services in bringing about unanimity among the parties which were found in the colony at the commencement of the troubles with the mother-country. He frequently expressed admiration for his intrepid spirit and inflexible courage. Two years before his death we find him speaking of Henry thus:

Wirt says he read Plutarch's Lives once a year. I don't believe he ever read two volumes of them. On his visits to court, he used always to put up with me. On one occasion of the breaking up in November, to meet again in the spring, as he was departing in the morning, he looked among my books, and observed, "Mr. Jefferson, I will take two volumes of Hume's Essays, and try to read them this winter." On his return, he brought them, saying he had not been able to get half way into one of them.

His great delight was to put on his hunting-shirt, collect a parcel of overseers and such-like people, and spend weeks together hunting in the "piny woods," camping at night and cracking jokes round a light-wood fire.

It was to him that we were indebted for the unanimity that prevailed among us. He would address the assemblages of the people at which he was present in such strains of native eloquence as Homer wrote in. I never heard any thing that deserved to be called by the same name with what flowed from him; and where he got that torrent of language from is inconceivable. I have frequently shut my eyes while he spoke, and, when he was done, asked myself what he had said, without being able to recollect a word of it. He was no logician. He was truly a great man, however—one of enlarged views.

Mr. Jefferson furnished anecdotes, facts, and documents for Wirt's Life of Henry, and Mr. Wirt submitted his manuscript to him for criticism and review, which he gave, and also suggested alterations that were made. We find, from his letters to Mr. Wirt, that when the latter flagged and hesitated as to the completion and publication of his work, it was Jefferson who urged him on. In writing of Henry's supposed inattention to ancient charters, we find him expressing himself thus: "He drew all natural rights from a purer source—the feelings of his own breast."[6]

In connection with this subject, we can not refrain from quoting from Wirt the following fine description of Henry in the great debate on the Stamp Act:

It was in the midst of this magnificent debate, while he (Henry) was descanting on the tyranny of the obnoxious act, that he exclaimed, in a voice of thunder, and with the look of a god, "CÆsar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third—" ("Treason!" cried the Speaker. "Treason! treason!" echoed from every part of the House. It was one of those trying moments which are so decisive of character. Henry faltered not an instant; but rising to a loftier altitude, and fixing on the Speaker an eye of the most determined fire, he finished his sentence with the firmest emphasis)—"may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it."[7]

When we think of the wonderful powers of this great man, whose heaven-born eloquence so stirred the hearts of men, how touching the meekness with which, at the close of an eventful and honorable career, he thus writes of himself: "Without any classical education, without patrimony, without what is called the influence of family connection, and without solicitation, I have attained the highest offices of my country. I have often contemplated it as a rare and extraordinary instance, and pathetically exclaimed, 'Not unto me, not unto me, O Lord, but unto thy name be the praise!'"[8]

Jefferson continued to prosecute his studies at William and Mary, and we have in the following incident a pleasing proof of his generosity:

While at college, he was one year quite extravagant in his dress, and in his outlay in horses. At the end of the year he sent his account to his guardian; and thinking that he had spent more of the income from his father's estate than was his share, he proposed that the amount of his expenses should be deducted from his portion of the property. His guardian, however, replied good-naturedly, "No, no; if you have sowed your wild oats in this manner, Tom, the estate can well afford to pay your expenses."

When Jefferson left college, he had laid the broad and solid foundations of that fine education which in learning placed him head and shoulders above his contemporaries. A fine mathematician, he was also a finished Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian scholar. He carried with him to Congress in the year 1775 a reputation for great literary acquirements. John Adams, in his diary for that year, thus speaks of him: "Duane says that Jefferson is the greatest rubber-off of dust that he has met with; that he has learned French, Italian, and Spanish, and wants to learn German."

His school and college education was considered by him as only the vestibule to that palace of learning which is reached by "no royal road." He once told a grandson that from the time when, as a boy, he had turned off wearied from play and first found pleasure in books, he had never sat down in idleness. And when we consider the vast fund of learning and wide range of information possessed by him, and which in his advanced years won for him the appellation of a "walking encyclopÆdia," we can well understand how this must have been the case. His thirst for knowledge was insatiable, and he seized eagerly all means of obtaining it. It was his habit, in his intercourse with all classes of men—the mechanic as well as the man of science—to turn the conversation upon that subject with which the man was best acquainted, whether it was the construction of a wheel or the anatomy of an extinct species of animals; and after having drawn from him all the information which he possessed, on returning home or retiring to his private apartments, it was all set down by him in writing—thus arranging it methodically and fixing it in his mind.

An anecdote which has been often told of him will give the reader an idea of the varied extent of his knowledge. On one occasion, while travelling, he stopped at a country inn. A stranger, who did not know who he was, entered into conversation with this plainly-dressed and unassuming traveller. He introduced one subject after another into the conversation, and found him perfectly acquainted with each. Filled with wonder, he seized the first opportunity to inquire of the landlord who his guest was, saying that, when he spoke of the law, he thought he was a lawyer; then turning the conversation on medicine, felt sure he was a physician; but having touched on theology, he became convinced that he was a clergyman. "Oh," replied the landlord, "why I thought you knew the Squire." The stranger was then astonished to hear that the traveller whom he had found so affable and simple in his manners was Jefferson.

The family circle at Shadwell consisted of six sisters, two brothers, and their mother. Of the sisters, two married early, and left the home of their youth—Mary as the wife of Thomas Bolling, and Martha as that of the generous and highly-gifted young Dabney Carr, the brilliant promise of whose youth was so soon to be cut short by his untimely death.

In the fall of the year 1765, the whole family was thrown into mourning, and the deepest distress, by the death of Jane Jefferson—so long the pride and ornament of her house. She died in the twenty-eighth year of her age. The eldest of her family, and a woman who, from the noble qualities of her head and heart, had ever commanded their love and admiration, her death was a great blow to them all, but was felt by none so keenly as by Jefferson himself. The loss of such a sister to such a brother was irreparable; his grief for her was deep and constant; and there are, perhaps, few incidents in the domestic details of history more beautiful than his devotion to her during her life, and the tenderness of the love with which he cherished her memory to the last days of his long and eventful career. He frequently spoke of her to his grandchildren, and even in his extreme old age said that often in church some sacred air which her sweet voice had made familiar to him in youth recalled to him sweet visions of this sister whom he had loved so well and buried so young.

Among his manuscripts we find the following touching epitaph which he wrote for her:

After the death of his sister Jane, Jefferson had no congenial intellectual companion left in the family at Shadwell; his other sisters being all much younger than himself, except one, who was rather deficient in intellect. It is curious to remark the unequal distribution of talent in this family—each gifted member seeming to have been made so at the expense of one of the others.

In the severe affliction caused by the death of his sister, Jefferson sought consolation in renewed devotion to his books. After a five years' course of law studies, he was, as we have seen from his Memoir, introduced to its practice, at the bar of the General Court of Virginia, in the year 1767, by his "beloved friend and mentor," George Wythe. Of the extent of his practice during the eight years that it lasted, we have ample proof in his account-books. These show that during that time, in the General Court alone, he was engaged in nine hundred and forty-eight cases, and that he was employed as counsel by the first men in the colonies, and even in the mother-country.

An idea of the impression made by him as an advocate in the court-room is given in the following anecdote, which we have from his eldest grandson, Mr. Jefferson Randolph. Anxious to learn how his grandfather had stood as a pleader, Mr. Randolph once asked an old man of good sense who in his youth had often heard Jefferson deliver arguments in court, how he ranked as a speaker, "Well," said the old gentleman, in reply, "it is hard to tell, because he always took the right side." Few speakers, we imagine, would desire a greater compliment than that which the old man unconsciously paid in his reply.

The works which Jefferson has left behind him as his share in the revision of the laws of the State, place his erudition as a lawyer beyond question, while to no man does Virginia owe more for the preservation of her ancient records than to him. In this last work he was indefatigable. The manuscripts and materials for the early history of the State had been partially destroyed and scattered by the burning of State buildings and the ravages of war. These Jefferson, as far as it was possible, collected and restored, and it is to him that we owe their preservation at the present day.

While in the different public offices which he held during his life, Jefferson availed himself of every opportunity to get information concerning the language of the Indians of North America, and to this end he made a collection of the vocabularies of all the Indian languages, intending, in the leisure of his retirement from public life, to analyze them, and see if he could trace in them any likeness to other languages. When he left Washington, after vacating the presidential chair, these valuable papers were packed in a trunk and sent, with the rest of his baggage, around by Richmond, whence they were to be sent up the James and Rivanna Rivers to Monticello. Two negro boatmen who had charge of them, and who, in the simplicity of their ignorance, took it for granted that the ex-President was returning from office with untold wealth, being deceived by the weight of the trunk, broke into it, thinking that it contained gold. On discovering their mistake, the papers were scattered to the wind; and thus were lost literary treasures which might have been a rich feast to many a philologist.

In the year 1770 the house at Shadwell was destroyed by fire, and Jefferson then moved to Monticello, where his preparations for a residence were sufficiently advanced to enable him to make it his permanent abode. He was from home when the fire took place at Shadwell, and the first inquiry he made of the negro who carried him the news was after his books. "Oh, my young master," he replied, carelessly, "they were all burnt; but, ah! we saved your fiddle."

In 1772 Jefferson married Martha Skelton, the widow of Bathurst Skelton, and the daughter of John Wayles, of whom he speaks thus in his Memoir

Mr. Wayles was a lawyer of much practice, to which he was introduced more by his industry, punctuality, and practical readiness, than by eminence in the science of his profession. He was a most agreeable companion, full of pleasantry and humor, and welcomed in every society. He acquired a handsome fortune, and died in May, 1773, leaving three daughters. The portion which came on that event to Mrs. Jefferson, after the debts were paid, which were very considerable, was about equal to my own patrimony, and consequently doubled the ease of our circumstances.

The marriage took place at "The Forest," in Charles City County. The bride having been left a widow when very young, was only twenty-three when she married a second time.[9] She is described as having been very beautiful. A little above middle height, with a lithe and exquisitely formed figure, she was a model of graceful and queenlike carriage. Nature, so lavish with her charms for her, to great personal attractions, added a mind of no ordinary calibre. She was well educated for her day, and a constant reader; she inherited from her father his method and industry, as the accounts, kept in her clear handwriting, and still in the hands of her descendants, testify. Her well-cultivated talent for music served to enhance her charms not a little in the eyes of such a musical devotee as Jefferson.

So young and so beautiful, she was already surrounded by suitors when Jefferson entered the lists and bore off the prize. A pleasant anecdote about two of his rivals has been preserved in the tradition of his family. While laboring under the impression that the lady's mind was still undecided as to which of her suitors should be the accepted lover, they met accidentally in the hall of her father's house. They were on the eve of entering the drawing-room, when the sound of music caught their ear; the accompanying voices of Jefferson and his lady-love were soon recognized, and the two disconcerted lovers, after exchanging a glance, picked up their hats and left.

The New-year and wedding festivities being over, the happy bridal couple left for Monticello. Their adventures on this journey of more than a hundred miles, made in the dead of the winter, and their arrival at Monticello, were, years afterwards, related as follows, by their eldest daughter, Mrs. Randolph,[10] who heard the tale from her father's lips:

They left The Forest after a fall of snow, light then, but increasing in depth as they advanced up the country. They were finally obliged to quit the carriage and proceed on horseback. Having stopped for a short time at Blenheim, where an overseer only resided, they left it at sunset to pursue their way through a mountain track rather than a road, in which the snow lay from eighteen inches to two feet deep, having eight miles to go before reaching Monticello. They arrived late at night, the fires all out and the servants retired to their own houses for the night. The horrible dreariness of such a house at the end of such a journey I have often heard both relate.

Too happy in each other's love, however, to be long troubled by the "dreariness" of a cold and dark house, and having found a bottle of wine "on a shelf behind some books," the young couple refreshed themselves with its contents, and startled the silence of the night with song and merry laughter.

Possessing a fine estate and being blessed with a beautiful and accomplished wife, Jefferson seemed fairly launched upon the great ocean of life with every prospect of a prosperous and happy voyage. We find from his account-books that his income was a handsome one for that day, being three thousand dollars from his practice and two thousand from his farms. This, as we have seen, was increased by the receipt of his wife's fortune at her father's death.

Of the many friends by whom he was surrounded in his college days Dabney Carr was his favorite; his friendship for him was strengthened by the ties of family connection, on his becoming his brother-in-law as the husband of his sister Martha. As boys, they had loved each other; and when studying together it was their habit to go with their books to the well-wooded sides of Monticello, and there pursue their studies beneath the shade of a favorite oak. So much attached did the two friends become to this tree, that it became the subject of a mutual promise, that the one who survived should see that the body of the other was buried at its foot. When young Carr's untimely death occurred Jefferson was away from home, and on his return he found that he had been buried at Shadwell. Being mindful of his promise, he had the body disinterred, and removing it, placed it beneath that tree whose branches now bend over such illustrious dead—for this was the origin of the grave-yard at Monticello.

It is not only as Jefferson's friend that Dabney Carr lives in history. The brilliancy of the reputation which he won in his short career, has placed his name among the men who stood first for talent and patriotism in the early days of the Revolution. Jefferson himself, in describing his first appearance in the Virginia House of Burgesses, pays a warm and handsome tribute to his friend. He says:

I well remember the pleasure expressed in the countenance and conversation of the members generally on this dÉbÛt of Mr. Carr, and the hopes they conceived as well from the talents as the patriotism it manifested.... His character was of a high order. A spotless integrity, sound judgment, handsome imagination, enriched by education and reading, quick and clear in his conceptions, of correct and ready elocution, impressing every hearer with the sincerity of the heart from which it flowed. His firmness was inflexible in whatever he thought was right; but when no moral principle stood in the way, never had man more of the milk of human kindness, of indulgence, of softness, of pleasantry of conversation and conduct. The number of his friends and the warmth of their affection, were proofs of his worth, and of their estimate of it.

We have again from Jefferson's pen a charming picture of the domestic character of Carr, in a letter to his friend John Page, written in 1770:

He (Carr) speaks, thinks, and dreams of nothing but his young son. This friend of ours, Page, in a very small house, with a table, half a dozen chairs, and one or two servants, is the happiest man in the universe. Every incident in life he so takes as to render it a source of pleasure. With as much benevolence as the heart of man will hold, but with an utter neglect of the costly apparatus of life, he exhibits to the world a new phenomenon in life—the Samian sage in the tub of the cynic.

The death of this highly-gifted young Virginian, whose early life was so full of promise, took place on the 16th of May, 1773, in the thirtieth year of his age. His wife, a woman of vigorous understanding and earnest warmth of heart, was passionately devoted to him, and his death fell like a blight on her young life. She found in her brother a loving protector for herself and a fatherly affection and guidance for her six children—three sons and three daughters—who were received into his family as his adopted children. Among Jefferson's papers there was found, after his death, the following, written on a sheet of note-paper:

INSCRIPTION ON MY FRIEND D. CARR'S TOMB.

Send for a plate of copper to be nailed on the tree at the foot of his grave, with this inscription:

On the upper part of the stone inscribe as follows:

Here lie the remains of
Dabney Carr,
Son of John and Jane Carr, of Louisa County,
Who was born ——, 1744.
Intermarried with Martha Jefferson, daughter of Peter
and Jane Jefferson, 1765;
And died at Charlottesville, May 16, 1773,
Leaving six small children.
To his Virtue, Good Sense, Learning, and Friendship
this stone is dedicated by Thomas Jefferson, who, of all men living,
loved him most.