Jefferson Quotes & Family Letters

What has become of Cousin Jeff all this time, my dear Cousin? We have been in daily expectation of his arrival, & are very much disappointed at not seeing him, or having any tidings of him. The girls have heard once from their mother, but not a syllable has reached us yet from Ashton—we have been in perpetual turmoil & confusion for the last four days and I see no appearance yet of order in our arrangements or tranquillity in our parturbed brains.—we have done no work & little shopping, and our time is entirely taken up, or rather wasted, in making ourselves decent to receive female visitors that stay only five minutes, or perhaps do not come atall, & gentlemen who are so earnestly engaged in conversation with each other that they have not a word to spare for poor country rustics who are ignorant of the important art of drawing attention from all around. Mr Rootes & the fascinating Charles I. Nicholas, honoured us with their sublime presence for a few minutes; but they were all the time in high dispute about the manner of spelling some name which differed only in a single letter; and as Cornelia & myself were much too [. . .] dignified to take part with either in such a [. . .] trifle (as Aunt Hackley has since schooled us to do) we shut up our mouths, & scarcely opened them again till their departure—We have [. . .] seen, besides the above mentioned gentlemen, F. Gilmer (who report tells us in certainly engaged to Elisabeth [. . .] Coulter) Blair Bolling, the “train band captain”, but a very smart fellow, by the way & likely to become a great favorite with us all, and last, [. . .] tho not least a certain youthful widower whose name & attractions I must leave you to guess.¹ The ladies who have called on us are more numerous, but we shall return none of their visits until after the ball which we expect to attend tomorrow evening. Captn Bolling has offered [. . .] to escort us thither, & we shall have besides, Robert Hackley & Odious Dr Cabel, so that in number at least, we shall not be altogether deficient—the girls [. . .] anticipate a great deal of pleasure from the this ball, and are extremely desirous about this, their first appearance in public but my wishes & expectations are very much moderated by the necessity of going en militaire, with its attendant horrors & disagreeables from which you know we suffer so terribly.—Cornelia is in the same predicament with myself, but time has relaxed the ardour with which she was at first pursued, and I must therefore expect my persecutions to be greater for the present.—Randolph Harrison & his wife have been here, & we are quite pleased with our Cousin Heningham’s manners & appearance—, as to Randolph, I think he looks as consequential & self-satisfied, as young [. . .] married men usually do, but some of the girls say that matrimony has occasioned a very unfavourable change in him—Polly Harrison, who will spend the winter in town, is a fine, [. . .] spirited looking girl, & will be very much admired, I expect when she is better known—[. . .] at the present, Francis Lewis is the reigning belle, & she is such a sweet, lovely creature that I do not wonder at the admiration she has excited—

I have scrawled two pages of insufferable nonsense to you my dear cousin, & if I was not utterly hopeless of being able to do better, I should be tempted to throw it behind the fire—but with the pens which I am forced to use, I really cannot write better than a child who was just in joining hand, and I have been interrupted so often that I have found it impossible to preserve any con[. . .]sion of ideas or to be tolerably coherent.—when my wits are a little brightened by the verifying influence of this place, and when I have seen & heard something, anything, which is worth relating, I shall write again, but in the mean time, I hope you will not forget your promise of letting me hear frequently from you during our absence—Virginia & Harriet both intended to write to you after the ball, but as [. . .] cannot both write the same day, & give you an account of the sam[e thing] I suppose one of them will defer it to a later period—Give my affectionate love to my Aunt, if she is still with you, & to Margaret, & kiss the children for me—Pray write soon, for I am very anxious to hear from you, & from the baby,