Jefferson in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates

Visiting the President’s Mansion (1802–1803)

[31] kkk [Visiting the President’s Mansion] (1802–1803) Samuel L. Mitchill Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill (1764–1831) exemplified Jefferson’s notion of a natural aristocracy. A bright, well-educated man, he excelled as both a physician and a scientist, yet he also recognized a responsibility to his nation and served in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. Born on Long Island, New York, Mitchill studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, where he took his MD in 1786. Returning home, he practiced medicine, studied law, and became active in local politics. Appointed professor of natural history, chemistry, and agriculture at Columbia College in 1792, he began a career in academia that would last a lifetime. A member of the American Philosophical Society, Mitchill served as its vice president when Jefferson was president of the society. Mitchill brought his learning to his role as legislator. Jefferson called him the “Congressional Dictionary.” Mitchill greatly respected Jefferson and delivered a eulogy upon the request of the New York Lyceum of Natural History, published as A Discourse on the Character and Services of Thomas Jefferson, More Especially as Promoter of the Natural and Physical Sciences (1826). The letters to his wife Catherine reprinted below date from Mitchill’s first two terms in the House, during which time he had several opportunities to visit the White House. When these letters were first published in Harper’s Magazine in 1879, the last one was misdated 4 January 1802. The date is corrected here and the letter restored to its proper chronological order. The following letters reveal much about Jefferson—perhaps more than Mitchill himself realized. Mitchill described Jefferson’s physical appearance and personality, bringing to life the social gatherings at the White House. Though Jefferson’s library has been studied in considerable detail, the precise makeup of the library he kept at the White House remains a mystery. Mitchill identified three books Jefferson had on a mantlepiece at the White House: one volume of L’Encyclopédie méthodique; a Spanish/Latin volume of Tacitus’s works, which Jefferson had created by conflating a Latin text with a separately published Spanish translation; and the handsome Greek and Latin Deuxponts edition of Plato with annotations by the fifteenth-century Italian jefferson in his own time [32] philosopher Marsilio Ficino (Sowerby, nos. 4889, 81, 1311). Mitchill also recorded Jefferson’s capacity for humor, but Jefferson’s humor, even his use of tall talk, could be quite subtle, and, in one instance, Mitchill did not realize when Jefferson was joking. When Mitchill asked about the beautiful prospect Jefferson had described in Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson said that John Adams had troops blow up the precipice from which he had viewed the scene, thus rendering the description in Notes false. Mitchill reacted to what Jefferson said with indignance. He did not realize the president was pulling his leg. Samuel L. Mitchill to Catherine Mitchill, 19 January 1802 I promised you in a former letter some account of Thomas Jefferson, now President of the United States. I have had several opportunities of seeing and conversing with him since my arrival at Washington. He is tall in stature and rather spare in flesh. His dress and manners are very plain; he is grave, or rather sedate, but without any tincture of pomp, ostentation, or pride, and occasionally can smile, and both hear and relate humorous stories as well as any other man of social feelings. At this moment he has a rather more than ordinary press of care and solicitude, because Congress is in session, and he is anxious to know in what manner the Representatives will act upon his Message, and how the communications he expects soon to make to the Senate will be received by that branch of the national legislature. He has been many years a widower, and has never, that I know of, showed any disposition to form a second matrimonial connection. His children are two daughters, one of whom is the wife of an old fellow student with me at the University of Edinburgh, Thomas Mann Randolph. Waiting one morning in the parlor for the President, who at the moment of my arrival was engaged with the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Robert Smith, I amused myself a few minutes in looking at the books which occupied one end of the mantel-piece. There were three volumes—one was a volume of the French Encyclopedia, in...