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

Introduction

[ix] kkk Introduction thomas jefferson was a funny guy. Whenever I tell people this, they respond with quizzical looks. “What do you mean by funny?” they ask. “How was Jefferson funny?” They react this way because history, which has largely ignored Jefferson’s delightful sense of humor, has conditioned them to react this way. Perhaps no one has been more reluctant to acknowledge Jefferson’s capacity for humor than his most prominent biographer, Dumas Malone. Writing the article about Jefferson for the tenth volume of the Dictionary of American Biography (1933), Malone asserted, “Though sanguine in temperament, he was as serious-minded and almost as devoid of humor as any Puritan.”1 Not only is Malone’s statement unfair to Jefferson , it also slights the New England Puritans, many of whom, starting with William Bradford, did have fine senses of humor. Malone made this statement before he began his six-volume biography of Jefferson, but, having formed a negative opinion toward Jefferson’s sense of humor, he never altered it. As he composed his biography, Malone did encounter some examples of humor, especially Jefferson’s fondness for tall talk, but he downplayed them. In his first volume, Malone wrote, “In Jefferson himself, however, little humor had appeared as yet except in the form of elaborate exaggeration.” Discussing Jefferson’s daughter Martha in his second volume, Malone asserted that she “retained the natural gaiety of youth and manifested a more active sense of humor than her father did.” Even when he could not deny an instance of Jefferson’s humor, Malone interpreted it as a temporary aberration. Discussing a humorous episode in The Anas, Jefferson’s record of conversations during his time as George Washington’s secretary of state, Malone asserted that Jefferson, in this instance , demonstrated “more humor than he normally displayed.” And in volume four, Malone blatantly stated that Jefferson “was not conspicuously a man of humor.”2 Other biographers have followed suit. Typically, popular biographies [x] jefferson in his own time accept the conclusions of scholarly ones. The popularizers take others’ research and abbreviate it, simplifying without essentially changing its impetus . Consequently, many biographers after Malone have accepted without question his conclusions about Jefferson’s humor. Malone himself reinforced his negative attitude toward Jefferson’s humor near the end of his life. When Merrill Peterson asked him to write a biographical sketch for a new reference work in the mid eighties, Malone agreed. This new article, written fifty-three years after his Dictionary of American Biography article, repeats word-for-word the sentence about both Jefferson and the Puritans being devoid of humor.3 Gathered together, the letters, accounts, and reminiscences of those who knew Thomas Jefferson personally tell a much different story. Here’s a sample of what they have to say. Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill,† who frequently dined at the White House, told his wife that President Jefferson could “both hear and relate humorous stories as well as any other man of social feeling.” Elsewhere, Mitchill commented that Jefferson’s “temper was prone at times to mirth and recreative pleasantry.”4 Realizing Jefferson’s fondness for tall talk, John Quincy Adams† observed, “Mr. Jefferson tells large stories.” Stage comedian John Bernard,† also a frequent dinner guest at Jefferson’s table, recalled, “With specimens of his humor I could fill pages.” (Would that he had.) Ellen Randolph Coolidge† boasted about her grandfather: “Mr. Jefferson had decidedly one of the evenest and most cheerful tempers I ever knew. He enjoyed a jest, provided it were to give pain to no one, and we were always glad to have any pleasant little anecdote for him—when he would laugh as cheerily as we could do ourselves, and enter into the spirit of the thing with as much gaiety.” T. P. H. Lyman concurred: “His conversation was instructive and delightful; stately where it should be so, but in general, easy, familiar, sprightly and entertaining; always, however, good humoured, and calculated to amuse without wounding.” And Alexander H. H. Stuart said, “I have never met any one who presided at his own table, with the same playful grace and urbanity.”5 Jefferson’s sense of humor is just one of many different aspects of his personality that surviving letters and reminiscences reveal. The earliest documents that record personal impressions of him are letters written in 1775 by fellow delegates to the Continental Congress. Though Jefferson grew up in Virginia, attended the College of William and Mary, read law under George Wythe...