Jefferson Quotes & Family Letters

Right worthy Judge,

Richmond Sepr 30. 1820

I reached my Bachelor’s home on yesterday after a months visit to albemarle. But for inroads made upon my plans by Col. Nichola’s embarass’d & hopeless affairs I would have been with you at Shanandale.

You are in the right touching the necessity, comfort, dignity, respectability, honor, & profit of matrimony. I gave early presage to my good opinion of that condition commended by St Paul so highly, and should long ago have been Paterfamilias and entitled to the privileges of the same, but for having been fool enough to believe the cold mountain nymph as sincere & generous as we are. She shall not so far triumph, as to spoil the whole play tho’ she has been a sort of evil genius thro’ the first act. I intend to be a husband god willing yet—I grant you Mrs S now Mrs. M. would not be exactly the woman for a man of taste & sentiment, or as Itobad says in Zadig, for “such a man as I.” There is a the most lamentable dearth of fine women hereabouts, you have seen. Miss J. W. is the only fine girl in Richmond & she will require an ampler fortune than mine to maintain the state & condition in which she has been born & bred. I shall never make any sacrifices of dignity, or peace, on the principle of being married at all hazards. I find myself happier than most of those around me without such connections, tho’ I believe no one has a higher relish for the delights of domestic life; the blazing hearth; the endearing look; the “risu cognoscere matrem’ of children, than I have.

It would have rejoiced my heart to have been with you & Mr Wirt, & Miss Baker ([. . .] whom gallantry should have put foremost) at the Shanandale. I think we must have a bout this winter on some neutral ground, and you may choose Albemarle or Washington. Time Christmas, or when you will. In Albemarle we may recruit Brother P. chase the hair hare—flush the covey—swig the egg nog—by which P. Todd acquired such lasting renown at Ghent. At Washington we may visit the attorney, hear Pinkney—laugh at Geo. Hay swollen like the pod of a ground cherry, with air—& having as little flavor. &c. Either would afford a most agreable divertisement from the din of our bar, & the smoke of Richmond.

You were the subject of so many affectionate inquiries in Albemarle that I suspect that will be your Campus Martius if it accord with your convenience to visit either.

I saw Judge Holmes in albemarle—he is the same good man, & I wished I could have been more with him.

It grieved me full sore to find such a clamour raising against the University as I fear will go hard to choke it in principis. The plan is the most expensive certainly that can be, (and that is wrong) but we must defend the old philosopher. Truly he has imposed a hard task on his friends, to defend extravagance in pecuniary disbursements to a Virginia Legislature—His health is good & his whole soul absorbed in this bantling of his old age.