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Head
Heart Letter
In
the spring of 1786, while serving as the US minister to France, Jefferson
met—and probably fell in love with—“a young, married Englishwoman
named Maria Cosway. Just after Cosway left Paris in October, Jefferson
composed this remarkable letter to her in which his head argued with his
heart.
by Thomas Jefferson
To
Maria Cosway
My
Dear Madam,--Having performed the last sad office of handing you into
your carriage at the pavillon de St. Denis, and seen the wheels get
actually into motion, I turned on my heel & walked, more dead than
alive, to the opposite door, where my own was awaiting me. Mr.
Danquerville was missing. He was sought for, found, & dragged down
stairs. WE were crammed into the carriage, like recruits for the
Bastille, & not having soul enough to give orders to the coachman, he
presumed Paris our destination, & drove off. After a considerable
interval, silence was broke with a "Je suis vraiment afflige du
depart de ces bons gens." This was a signal for a mutual
confession of distress. We began immediately to talk of Mr. & Mrs.
Cosway, of their goodness, their talents, their amiability; & tho we
spoke of nothing else, we seemed hardly to have entered into matter when
the coachman announced the rue St. Denis, & that we were opposite Mr.
Danquervilles. He insisted on descending there & traversing a short
passage to his lodgings. I was carried home. Seated by my fireside,
solitary & sad, the following dialogue took place between my Head
& my Heart:
Head.
Well, friend, you seem to be in a pretty trim.
Heart.
I am indeed the most wretched of all earthly beings. Overwhelmed with
grief, every fibre of my frame distended beyond its natural powers to
bear, I would willingly meet whatever catastrophe should leave me no more
to feel or to fear.
Head.
These are the eternal consequences of your warmth & precipitation.
This is one of the scrapes into which you are ever leading us. You
confess your follies indeed; but still you hug & cherish them; &
no reformation can be hoped, where there is no repentance.
Heart.
Oh, my friend! This is no moment to upbraid my foibles. I am rent into
fragments by the force of my grief! If you have any balm, pour it into my
wounds; if none, do not harrow them by new torments. Spare me in this
awful moment! At any other I will attend with patience to your
admonitions.
Head.
On the contrary I never found that the moment of triumph with you was the
moment of attention to my admonitions. While suffering under your
follies, you may perhaps be made sensible of them, but, the paroxysms
over, you fancy it can never return. Harsh therefore as the medicine may
be, it is my office to administer it. You will be pleased to remember
that when our friend Trumbull used to be telling us of the merits &
talents of these good people, I never ceased whispering to you that we
had no occasion for new acquaintance; that the greater their merits &
talents, the more dangerous their friendship to our tranquillity, because
the regret at parting would be greater.
Heart.
Accordingly, Sir, this acquaintance was not the consequence of my doings.
It wa one of your projects which threw us in the way of it. It was you,
remember, & not I, who desired the meeting at Legrand & Molinos.
I never trouble myself with domes nor arches. The Halle aux bleds might
have rotted down before I should have gone to see it. But you, forsooth,
who are eternally getting us to sleep with your diagrams & crotchets,
must go & examine this wonderful piece of architecture. And when you
had seen it, oh! It was the most superb thing on earth. What you had seen
there was worth all you had yet seen in Paris! I thought so too. But I
meant it of the lady & gentleman to whom we had been presented; &
not of a parcel of sticks & chips put together in pens. You then,
Sir, & not I, have been the cause of the present distress.
Head.
It would have been happy for you if my diagrams & crotchets had
gotten you to sleep on that day, as you are pleased to say they eternally
do. My visit to Legrand & Molinos had public utility for its object.
A market is to be built in Richmond. What a commodious plan is that of
Legrand & Molinos; especially if we put on it the noble dome of the
Halle aux bleds. If such a bridge as they skewed us can be thrown across
the Schuylkill at Philadelphia, the floating bridges taken up & the
navigation of that river opened, what a copious resource will be added,
of wood & provisions, to warm & feed the poor of that city? While
I was occupied with these objects, you were dilating with your new
acquaintances, & contriving how to prevent a separation from them.
Every soul of you had an engagement for the day. Yet all these were to be
sacrificed, that you might dine together. Lying messengers were to be
despatched into every quarter of the city, with apologies for your breach
of engagement. You particularly had the effrontery to send word to the
Dutchess Danville that, on the moment we were setting out to dine with
her, despatches came to hand which required immediate attention. You
wanted me to invent a more ingenious excuse; but I knew you were getting
into a scrape, & I would have nothing to do with it. Well, after
dinner to St. Cloud, from St. Cloud to Ruggieris, from Ruggieri to
Krumfoltz, & if the day had been as long as a Lapland summer day, you
would still have contrived means among you to have filled it.
Heart.
Oh! My dear friend, how you have revived me by recalling to my mind the
transactions of that day! How well I remember them all, & that when I
came home at night & looked back to the morning, it seemed to have
been a month agone. Go on then, like a kind comforter & paint to me
the day we went to St. Germains. How beautiful was every object! The Port
de Reuilly, the hills along the Seine, the rainbows of the machine of
Marly, the terrace of St. Germains, the chateaux, the gardens, the
statues of Marly, the pavillon of Lucienne. Recollect too Madrid,
Bagatelle, the Kings garden, the Dessert. How grand the idea excited by
the remains of such a column! The spiral staircase too was beautiful.
Every moment was filled with something agreeable. The wheels of time
moved on with a rapidity of which those of our carriage gave but a faint
idea. And yet in the evening when one took a retrospect of the day, what
a mass of happiness had we travelled over! Retrace all those scenes to
me, my good companion, & I will forgive the unkindness with which you
were chiding me. The day we went to St. Germains was a little too warm, I
think; was it not?
Head.
Thou art the most incorrigible of all the beings that ever sinned! I
reminded you of the follies of the first day, intending to deduce from
thence some useful lessons for you, but instead of listening to these,
you kindle at the recollection, you retrace the whole series with a
fondness which shews you want nothing but the opportunity to act it over
again. I often told you during its course that you were imprudently
engaging your affections under circumstances that must have cost you a
great deal of pain: that the persons indeed were of the greatest merit,
possessing good sense, good humour, honest hearts, honest manners, &
eminence in a lovely art; that the lady had moreover qualities &
accomplishments, belonging to her sex, which might form a chapter apart
for her: such as music, modesty, beauty, & that softness of
disposition which is the ornament of her sex & charm of ours, but
that all these considerations would increase the pang of separation: that
their stay here was to be short: that you rack our whole system when you
are parted from those you love, complaining that such a separation is
worse than death, inasmuch as this ends our sufferings, whereas that only
begins them: & that the separation would in this instance be the more
severe as you would probably never see them again.
Heart.
But they told me they would come back again the next year.
Head.
But in the meantime see what you suffer: & their return too depends
on so many circumstances that if you had a grain of prudence you would
not count upon it. Upon the whole it is improbable & therefore you
should abandon the idea of ever seeing them again.
Heart.
May heaven abandon me if I do!
Head.
Very well. Suppose then they come back. They are to stay two months,
& when these are expired, what is to follow? Perhaps you flatter
yourself they may come to America?
Heart.
God only knows what is to happen. I see nothing impossible in that
supposition. And I see things wonderfully contrived sometimes to make us
happy. Where could they find such objects as in America for the exercise
of their enchanting art? especially the lady, who paints landscapes so
inimirably. She wants only subjects worthy of immortality to render her
pencil immortal. The Failing Spring, the Cascade of Niagara, the Passage
of the Potowmac through the Blue Mountains, the Natural bridge. It is
worth a voyage across the Atlantic to see these objects; much more to
paint, and make them, & thereby ourselves, known to all ages. And our
own dear Monticello, where has nature spread so rich a mantle under the
eye? Mountains, forests, rocks, rivers. With what majesty do we there
ride above the storms! How sublime to look down into the workhouse of
nature, to see her clouds, hail, snow, rain, thunder, all fabricated at
our feet! And the glorious sun when rising as if out of a distant water,
just gilding the tops of the mountains, & giving life to all nature?
I hope in God no circumstance may ever make either seek an asylum from
grief! With what sincere sympathy I would open every cell of my
composition to receive the effusion of their woes! I would pour my tears
into their wounds: & if a drop of balm could be found on the top of
the Cordilleras, or at the remotest sources of the Missouri, I would go
thither myself to seek & to bring it. Deeply practised in the school
of affliction, the human heart knows no joy which I have not lost, no
sorrow of which I have not drunk! Fortune can present no grief of unknown
form to me! Who then can so softly bind up the wound of another as he who
has felt the same wound himself? But Heaven forbid they should ever know
a sorrow! Let us turn over another leaf, for this has distracted me.
Head.
Well. Let us pur this possibility to trial then on another point. When
you consider the character which is given of our country by the lying
newspapers of London, & their credulous copyers in other countries;
when you reflect that all Europe is made to believe we are a lawless
banditti, in a state of absolute anarchy, cutting one anothers throats,
& plundering without distinction, how can you expect that any
reasonable creature would venture among us?
Heart.
But you & I know that all this is false: that there is not a country
on earth where there is greater tranquillity, where the laws are milder,
or better obeyed: where every one is more attentive to his own business,
or meddles less with that of others: where strangers are better received,
more hospitably treated, & with a more sacred respect.
Head.
True, you & I know this, but your friends do not know it.
Heart.
But they are sensible people who think for themselves. They will ask of
impartial foreigners who have been among us, whether they saw or heard on
the spot any instances of anarchy. They will judge too that a people
occupied as we are in opening rivers, digging navigable canals, making
roads, building public schools, establishing academies, erecting busts
& statues to our great men, protecting religious freedom, abolishing
sanguinary punishments, reforming & improving our laws in general,
they will judge I say for themselves whether these are not the
occupations of a people at their ease, whether this is not better
evidence of our true state than a London newspaper, hired to lie, &
from which no truth can ever be extracted but by reversing everything it
says.
Head.
I did not begin this lecture my friend with a view to learn from you what
America is doing. Let us return then to our point. I wished to make you
sensible how imprudent it is to place your affections, without reserve,
on objects you must so soon lose, & whose loss when it comes must
cost you such severe pangs. Remember that last night. You knew your
friends were to leave Paris to-day. This was enough to throw you into
agonies. All night you tossed us from one side of the bed to the other.
No sleep, no rest. The poor crippled wrist too, never left one moment in
the same position, now up, now down, now here, now there; was it to be
wondered at if its pains returned? The Surgeon then was to be called,
& to be rated as an ignoramus because he could not divine the cause
of this extraordinary change. In fine, my friend, you must mend your
manners. This is not a world to live at random in as you do. To avoid
those eternal distresses, to which you are forever exposing us, you must
learn to look forward before you take a step which may interest our
peace. Everything in this world is a matter of calculation. Advance then
with caution, the balance in your hand. Put into one scale the pleasures
which any object may offer; but put fairly into the other the pains which
are to follow, & see which preponderates. The making an acquaintance
is not a matter of indifference. When a new one is proposed to you, view
it all round. Consider what advantages it presents, & to what
inconveniences it may expose you. Do not bite at the bait of pleasure
till you know there is no hook beneath it. The art of life is the art of
avoiding pain: & he is the best pilot who steers clearest of the
rocks & shoals with which he is beset. Pleasure is always before us;
but misfortune is at our side: while running after that, this arrests us.
The most effectual means of being secure against pain is to retire within
ourselves, & to suffice for our own happiness. Those, which depend on
ourselves, are the only pleasures a wise man will count on: for nothing
is ours which another may deprive us of. Hence the inestimable value of
intellectual pleasures. Even in our power, always leading us to something
new, never cloying, we ride serene & sublime above the concerns of
this mortal world, contemplating truth & nature, matter & motion,
the laws which bind up their existence, & that eternal being who made
& bound them up by those laws. Let this be our employ. Leave the
bustle & tumult of society to those who have not talents to occupy
themselves without them. Friendship is but another name for an alliance
with the follies & the misfortunes of others. Our own share of
miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of
another? Is there so little gall poured into our cup that we must needs
help to drink that of our neighbor? A friend dies or leaves us: we feel
as if a limb was cut off. He is sick: we must watch over him, &
participate of his pains. His fortune is shipwrecked; ours must be laid
under contribution. He loses a child, a parent, or a partner: we must
mourn the loss as if it were our own.
Heart.
And what more sublime delight than to mingle tears with one whom the hand
of heaven hath smitten! To watch over the bed of sickness, & to
beguile its redious & its painful moments! To share our bread with
one to whom misfortune has left none! This world abounds indeed with
misery: to lighten its burthen we must divide it with one another. But
let us now try the virtues of your mathematical balance, & as you
have put into one scale the burthen of friendship, let me put its
comforts into the other. When languishing then under disease, how
grateful is the solace of our friends! How are we penetrated with their
assiduities & attentions! How much are we supported by their
encouragements & kind offices! When heaven has taken from us some
object of our love, how sweet is it to have a bosom whereon to recline
our heads, & into which we may pour the torrent of our tears! Grief,
with such a comfort, is almost a luxury! In a life where we are
perpetually exposed to want & accident, yours is a wonderful
proposition, to insulate ourselves, to retire from all aid, & to wrap
ourselves in the mantle of self-sufficiency! For assuredly nobody will
care for him who care for nobody. But friendship is precious, not only in
the shade but in the sunshine of life; & thanks to a benevolent
arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine. I will recur
for proof to the days we have lately passed. On these indeed the sun
shone brightly. How gay did the face of nature appear! Hills, valleys,
chateaux, gardens, rivers, every object wore its liveliest hue! Whence
did they borrow it? From the presence of our charming companion. They
were pleasing, because she seemed pleased. Alone, the scene would have
been dull & insipid: the participation of it with her gave it relish.
Let the gloomy monk, sequestered from the world, seek unsocial pleasures
in the bottom of his cell! Let the sublimated philosopher grasp visionary
happiness while pursuing phantoms dressed in the garb of truth! Their
supreme wisdom is supreme folly; & they mistake for happiness the
mere absence of pain. Had they ever felt the solid pleasure of one
generous spasm of the heart, they would exchange for it all the frigid
speculations of their lives, which you have been vaunting in such
elevated terms. Believe me then my friend, that that is a miserable
arithmetic which, could estimate friendship at nothing, or at less than
nothing. Respect for you has induced me to enter into this discussion,
& to hear principles uttered which I detest & abjure. Respect for
myself now obliges me to recall you into the proper limits of your
office. When nature assigned us the same habitation, she gave us over it
a divided empire. To you she allotted the field of science; to me that of
morals. When the circle is to be squared, or the orbit of a comet to be
traced; when the arch of greatest strength, or the solid of least
resistance is to be investigated, take up the problem; it is yours;
nature has given me no cognizance of it. In like manner, in denying to
you the feelings of sympathy, of benevolence, of gratitude, of justice,
of love, of friendship, she has excluded you from their controul. To
these she has adapted the mechanism of the heart. Morals were too
essential to the happiness of man to be risked on the incertain
combinations of the head. She laid their foundation therefore in
sentiment, not in science. That she gave to all, as necessary to all:
this to a few only, as sufficing with a few. I know indeed that you
pretend authority to the sovereign controul of our conduct in all its
parts: & a respect for your grave saws & maxims, a desire to do
what is right, has sometimes induced me to conform to your counsels. A
few facts however which I can readily recall to your memory, will suffice
to prove to you that nature has not organized you for our moral
direction. When the poor wearied souldier whom we overtook at
Chickahomony with his pack on his back, begged us to let him get up
behind our chariot, you began to calculate that the road was full of
souldiers, & that if all should be taken up our horses would fail in
their journey. We drove on therefore. But soon becoming sensible you had
made me do wrong, that tho we cannot relieve all the distressed we should
relieve as many as we can, I turned about to take up the souldier; but he
had entered a bye path, & was no more to be found; & from that
moment to this I could never find him out to ask his forgiveness. Again,
when the poor woman came o ask a charity in Philadelphia, you whispered
that she looked like a drunkard, & that half a dollar was enough to
give her for the ale-house. Those who want the dispositions to give,
easily find reasons why they ought not to give. When I sought her out
afterwards, & did what I should have done at first, you know that she
employed the money immediately towards placing her child at school. If
our country, when pressed with wrongs at the point of the bayonet, had
been governed by its heads instead of its hearts, where should we have
been now? Hanging on a gallows as high as Hamans. You began to calculate
& to compare wealth and numbers: we threw up a few pulsations of our
warmest blood; we supplied enthusiasm against wealth and numbers; we put
our existence to the hazard when the hazard seemed against us, and we
saved our country: justifying at the same time the ways of Providence,
whose precept is to do always what is right, and leave the issue to him.
In short, my friend, as far as my recollection serves me, I do not know
that I ever did a good thing on your suggestion, or a dirty one without
it. I do forever then disclaim your interference in my province. Fill
papers as you please with triangles & squares: try how many ways you
can hang & combine them together. I shall never envy nor controul
your sublime delights. But leave me to decide when & where
friendships are to be contracted. You say I contract them at random. So
you said the woman at Philadelphia was a drunkard. I receive no one into
my esteem till I know they are worthy of it. Wealth, title, office, are
no recommendations to my friendship. On the contrary great good qualities
are requisite to make amends for their having wealth, title, &
office. You confess that in the present case I could not have made a
worthier choice. You only object that I was so soon to lose them. We are
not immortal ourselves, my friend; how can we expect our enjoyments to be
so? We have no rose without its thorn; no pleasure without alloy. It is
the law of our existence; & we must acquiesce. It is the condition
annexed to all our pleasures, not by us who receive, but by him who gives
them. True, this condition is pressing cruelly on me at this moment. I
feel more fit for death than life. But when I look back on the pleasures
of which it is the consequence, I am conscious they were worth the price
I am paying. Notwithstanding your endeavours too to damp my hopes, I
comfort myself with expectations of their promised return. Hope is
sweeter than despair, & they were too good to mean to deceive me. In
the summer, said the gentleman; but in the spring, said the lady: & I
should love her forever, were it only for that! Know then, my friend,
that I have taken these good people into my bosom; that I have lodged
them in the warmest cell I could find: that I love them, & will
continue to love them through life: that if fortune should dispose them
on one side the globe, & me on the other, my affections shall pervade
its whole mass to reach them. Knowing then my determination, attempt not
to disturb it. If you can at any time furnish matter for their amusement,
it will be the office of a good neighbor to do it. I will in like manner
seize any occasion which may offer to do the like good turn for you with
Condorcet, Rittenhouse, Madison, La Cretelle, or any other of those
worthy sons of science whom you so justly prize.
I
thought this a favorable proposition whereon to rest the issue of the
dialogue. So I put an end to it by calling for my night-cap. Methinks I
hear you wish to heaven I had called a little sooner, & so spared you
the ennui of such a sermon. I did not interrupt them sooner because I was
in a mood for hearing sermons. You too were the subject; & on such a
thesis I never think the theme long; not even if I am to write it, and
that slowly & awkwardly, as now, with the left hand. But that you may
not be discouraged from a correspondence which begins so formidably, I
will promise you on my honour that my future letters shall be of a
reasonable length. IO will even agree to express but half my esteem for
you, for fear of cloying you with too full a dose. But, on your part, no
curtailing. If your letters are as long as the bible, they will appear
short to me. Only let them be brimful of affection. I shall read them
with the dispositions with which Arlequin, in Les deux billets
spelt the words "je taime," and wished that the whole
alphabet had entered into their composition.
We
have had incessant rains since your departure. These make me fear for
your health, as well as that you had an uncomfortable journey. The same
cause has prevented me from being able to give you any account of your
friends here. This voyage to Fontainebleau will probably send the Count
de Moustier & the Marquise de Brehan to America. Danquerville
promised to visit me, but has not done it as yet. De la Tude comes
sometimes to take family soup with me, & entertains me with anecdotes
of his five & thirty years imprisonment. How ferrile is the mind of
man which can make the Bastile & Dungeon of Vincennes yield
interesting anecdotes! You know this was for making four verses on Mme de
Pompadour. But IO think you told me you did not know the verses. They
were these: Sans esprit, sans sentiment, Sans etre belle, ni neuve, En
France on peut avoir ie premier amant: Pontpadour en es l epreuve."
I have read the memoir of his three escapes. As to myself my health is
good, except my wrist which mends slowly, & my mind which mends not
at all, but broods constantly over your departure. The lateness of the
season obliges me to decline my journey into the south of France. Present
me in the most friendly terms to Mr. Cosway, & receive me into your
own recollection with a partiality & a warmth, proportioned, not to
my own poor merit, but to the sentiments of sincere affection &
esteem with which I have the honour to be, my dear Madam, your most
obedient humble servant.
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