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22. Travels in France
r. Jefferson's watchfulness over the interests of America while in Europe was intense. Nothing escaped his notice which he thought could be made useful in his own country. The southern States are indebted to him for the introduction of the culture of upland rice. In 1790, he procured a cask of this species of rice from the river Denhigh in Africa, about latitude 9 deg. 30 min. north, which he sent to Charleston in the hope that it would supersede the culture of the wet rice which rendered South Carolina and Georgia so pestilential through the summer. The quantity was divided at Charleston and a part sent to Georgia by his directions. The cultivation of this rice soon became general in the upper parts of Georgia and South Carolina and was highly prized. It was supposed by Mr. Jefferson that it might be raised successfully in Tennessee and Kentucky. He likewise endeavored to obtain the seed of the Conchin-China rice for the purpose of introducing its cultivation in the same States, but it does not appear whether he was successful or not. In the same spirit of attention to the interest of his country, he transmitted from Marseilles to Charleston a great variety of olive plants to be planted by way of experiment in South Carolina and Georgia. "The greatest service," said he, "which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture, especially a bread grain. Next in value to bread is oil." These plants were tried and also flourished in the South. Though not multiplied extensively, they introduced that species of cultivation in those States.
All the powers of Mr. Jefferson seemed to kindle in the pursuit of acquiring objects of profitable agriculture in America and of improving the husbandry of those already established as staples. With this view, he made a tour into the south of France and the northern parts of Italy, in which he passed three months. His plan was to visit the ports along the western and southern coast of France, particularly Marseilles, Bordeaux, Nantes, and L'Orient, to obtain such information as would enable him to judge of the practicability of making further improvements in our commerce with the southern provinces of France; to visit the canal of Languedoc and possess himself of such information upon that kind of navigation as might be useful to his countrymen; and thence to pass into the norther provinces of Italy to examine the different subjects of culture in those munificent regions and ascertain what improvements might be made in America in the culture and husbandry of rice and other staples common to both countries, and what other, if any, productions of that climate might be advantageously introduced into the southern States. Another object with him was to try the mineral waters of Aix in Provence for a dislocated wrist, unsuccessfully set.
He left Paris, therefore, on the 28th of February, 1787, and proceeded up the Seine through Champagne and Burgundy and down the Rhone through the Beaujolais, by Lyons, Avignon, Nismes, to Aix. Receiving no benefit from the mineral waters of that place, he bent his course into the rice countries of Italy. On his return, he extended his journey through the south of France and arrived at Paris.
The novelty and variety of the scenes through which he passed, the multitude of curious and interesting objects which he encountered, presented a perpetual feast to his enquiring mind. From Nice, under date of April 11th, 1787, he wrote to the Marquis de Lafayette:
"I am constantly roving about to see what I have never seen before and shall never see again. In the great cities, I go to see what travelers think alone worthy of being seen; but I make a job of it and generally gulp it all down in a day. On the other hand, I am never satiated with rambling through the fields and farms, examining the culture and cultivators with a degree of curiosity which makes some take me to be a fool and others to be much wiser than I am... From the first olive fields of Pierrelatte to the orangeries of Hieres, it has been continued rapture to me. I have often wished for you. I think you have not made this journey. It is a pleasure you have to come and an improvement to be added to the many you have already made. It will be a great comfort to you to know from your own inspection the condition of all the provinces of your own country, and it will be interesting to them at some future day to be known to you. This is, perhaps, the only moment of your life in which you can acquire that knowledge. And to do it most effectually, you must be absolutely incognito; you must ferret the people out of their hovels as I have done, look into their kettles, eat their bread, loll on their beds under pretense of resting yourself but in fact to find if they are soft. You will feel a sublime pleasure in the course of this investigation and a sublimer one hereafter, when you shall be able to apply your knowledge to the softening of their beds or the throwing a morsel of meat into their kettle of vegetables." (ME 6:106)
From Lyons to Nismes, Mr. Jefferson was "nourished with the remains of Roman grandeur." He was immersed in antiquities from morning to night. He was transported back to the times of the Caesars, the intrigues of their courts, the oppressions of their praetors and prefects. To him, the city of Rome, as he averred, seemed actually existing in all the magnificence of its meridian glory, and he was filled with alarm in the momentary anticipation of the irruptions of the Goths, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and Vandals. Under date of Nismes, he wrote to the Countess de Tesse in a mood which evinced the extravagance of his passion for ancient architecture:
"Here I am, Madam, gazing whole hours at the Maison Quarree like a lover at his mistress. The stocking weavers and silk spinners around it consider me as a hypochondriac Englishman, about to write with a pistol the last chapter of his history. This is the second time I have been in love since I left Paris. The first was with a Diana at the Chateau de Laye-Epinaye in Beaujolais, a delicious morsel of sculpture by M. A. Slodtz. This, you will say, was a rule to fall in love with a female beauty: but with a house! It is out of all precedent. No, Madam, it is not without a precedent in my own history. While in Paris, I was violently smitten with the Hotel de Salm and used to go to the Thuileries almost daily to look at it. The loueuse des chaises, inattentive to my passion, never had the complaisance to place a chair there, so that sitting on the parapet and twisting my neck round to see the object of my admiration, I generally left it with a torti-colli." (Mar. 20, 1787. ME 6:102)
Mr. Jefferson kept a diary of his excursion into Italy in which he noted with minuteness every circumstance which he thought might be made useful or instructive to his countrymen. Of these notes, which covered about fifty printed octavo pages, he made copies on his return and transmitted them to General Washington and others in America as containing hints capable of being improved to the benefit of the United States. His course of observation supplied him with materials for benefiting the commerce of the United States in some essential particulars, for improving the quality in articles of staple growth, and increasing the subjects of cultivation in some States. At Turin, Milan, and Genoa, he satisfied himself of the practicability of introducing our whale oil for their consumption and that of the other great cities of that country. The merchants with whom he asked conferences met him freely and communicated frankly, but not being authorized to conclude a formal negotiation, he could only cultivate a general disposition to receive our oil merchants. He put matters into a train for inducing their governments to draw their tobacco directly from the United States and not, as heretofore, from Great Britain. He procured the seeds of three different species of rice from Piedmont, Lombardy, and the Levant, divided each quantity into three separate parcels, and forwarded them by as many different conveyances to Charleston in order to ensure a safe arrival. He questioned the utility of engaging in the cultivation of the vine in the southern States under the present circumstances of their population. Wines were so cheap in the European countries that a laborer with us employed in the culture of any other article might exchange it for wine more and better than he could raise himself. Nevertheless, it might hereafter become a profitable resource to us when a more dense population shall have increased our supply of raw materials beyond the demand at home and abroad. Instead of augmenting the useless surplus of them, the supernumerary hands might then be employed on the vine. The introduction of the fig, the mulberry, and the olive he strongly recommended to the cultivators in the southern parts of the United States. With the olive tree in particular he was so pleased that he declared it next to the most precious, if not the most precious, of all the gifts of heaven to man. He thought, perhaps, it might claim a preference even to bread, considering the infinitude of vegetables to which it added a proper and desirable nutriment.
As in commerce and agriculture, so in the manufacturing interest, Mr. Jefferson was indefatigable in endeavoring to benefit his country. Of every new invention and discovery in the arts, he was prompt to communicate the earliest intelligence to Congress or to individual artists and professors. Among these the most remarkable were the principle of stereotyping, which he communicated in 1786, and the mode of constructing muskets, which he communicated about the same time. The latter consisted in making all the parts of the musket so exactly alike as that mixed together promiscuously, any one part should serve equally for every musket in the magazine. [note] Of those improvements which were claimed as original in Europe but of which America was entitled to the merit of a prior discovery, his knowledge enabled him to detect the imposition, and his patriotism incited him to vindicate the honor of his own countrymen.
In the sciences and the fine arts, Mr. Jefferson was equally assiduous to advance the reputation of his rising country. His letters to President Stiles, to the president of William and Mary College, to the president of Harvard University, to Rittenhouse, Charles Thompson and others, are illustrations of his zeal and efficiency in these pursuits.
Their advances in science and in the arts of sculpture, painting, and music were the only things, he declared, for which he envied the people of France; and for these he absolutely did envy them. His passion for the few remains of ancient architecture which existed was unbounded, and his efforts unremitting for introducing samples of them in America for the purpose of encouraging a style of architecture analogous to the Roman model. In June, 1785, he received a request from the directors of the public buildings in Virginia to procure and transmit them plans for the capitol and other public buildings. He immediately engaged an architect of great abilities for this purpose and directed him to take for his model the Maison Quarree of Nismes, which he considered "the most beautiful and precious morsel of architecture left us by antiquity." But what was his surprise and regret on learning a short time after that the buildings were actually begun without waiting for the receipt of his plans. "Pray try," he wrote to Mr. Madison, "if you can effect the stopping of this work... This loss [in bricks already laid] is not to be weighed against the saving of money which will arise, against the comfort of laying out the public money for something honorable, the satisfaction of seeing an object and proof of national good taste, and the regret and mortification of erecting a monument of our barbarism which will be loaded with execrations as long as it shall endure... You see I am an enthusiast on the subject of the arts. But it is an enthusiasm of which I am not ashamed, as its object is to improve the taste of my countrymen, to increase their reputation, to reconcile to them the respect of the world, and procure them its praise." (Sept. 20, 1785. ME 5:136)
he specimens we have given exhibit but a slender outline of a series of correspondence, public and private, comprising more than three hundred letters, chiefly to his friends in the United States, all breathing the same devotion to the interests of his country in every imaginable department from the most intricate points of abstract science and the most momentous questions of national policy down to essays on the most simple processes in agriculture and domestic economy. He was at the same time in habit of correspondence with many distinguished characters, literary and political, in most of the nations of Europe. His philosophical reputation and powers established him in ready favor with the constellation of bold thinkers which then illuminated France, and much of his attention was necessarily, perhaps advantageously, occupied in the metaphysical discussions of the day. He was on terms of intimacy with the Abbe Morellet, Condorcet, D'Alembert, Mirabeau, etc., and he renewed his discussion in natural science with M. de Buffon, to whom he had already given such a foretaste of his abilities in his Notes on Virginia. The ladies of that gay capital who maintain so powerful an ascendancy in all its circles were delighted in his society and pressed him into their correspondence. At the solicitation of the authors of the Encyclopedie Methodique, the most popular work then publishing in Paris, Mr. Jefferson prepared for insertion several articles on the United States, giving a history of the government from its origin to the adoption of the Constitution. One of the authors of that work had made the society of the Cincinnati the subject of a libel on our government and its great military leader. But before committing it to the press, he submitted it to Mr. Jefferson for examination. He found it a tissue of errors, a mere philippic against the institution, in which there appeared an utter ignorance of facts and motives. He rewrote the whole article, in which he vindicated the motives of General Washington and his brother officers from every liability to reproach. His own opinions, however, of the ultimate effects of that institution underwent such a change during his residence in Europe as induced him to recommend its total extinction, which he did in a letter to General Washington of November 14, 1786.
Such are some of the numerous and diversified services performed by Mr. Jefferson in his private, unofficial capacity. The circumstance ought not to be overlooked that these attentions to the general interests of the United States were exercised amidst the labors and anxieties of a multiplicity of public avocations. His diplomatic correspondence with the Count de Vergennes, the most subtile and powerful minister in Europe, was uninterrupted, and in point of urgency in behalf of America, remains unrivaled. His correspondence with the bankers of the United States at Amsterdam and Paris to preserve the credit of the United States was constant and laborious, and his exertions for the redemption of American captives at Algiers, for establishing a general coalition of all the civilized powers against the piratical States, and, on failure of that, for negotiating treaties of peace with them on the most favorable terms have seldom been equaled.
But of all the private labors of Mr. Jefferson in behalf of his country, none were more useful, none more praiseworthy and patriotic than those which were directed to the moral improvement of the rising generation. It was to them he looked, and not to those then on the stage, for the completion of the political work which he had expended so many resources and sacrificed so many comforts in advancing; and his efforts appeared inexhaustible to inform their minds and to encourage them to model their principles after those of the generation of 1776.
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