Читать книгу Thomas Jefferson, the Apostle of Americanism - Gilbert Chinard - Страница 13

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In 1767, Thomas Jefferson, then twenty-four years of age, was "led into the practice of the law at the bar of the General Court" by his friend and mentor, Mr. Wythe. He was the owner of a substantial estate inherited from his father, and he managed the family property of Shadwell, but he had already formed plans for an establishment of his own and begun preparations to build Monticello on the other side of the Rivanna. The only future open to him seemed to be that of any young Virginian of his social class. He occasionally joined them in fox-hunting and attended the races, enjoyed a dance, a concert, and a good play at the theater. The following year was particularly brilliant at Williamsburg. The governor held stately receptions and the Virginian Company of Comedians presented a rich program: "The Constant Couple or a Trip to Jubilee", a farce called "The Miller of Mansfield", "The Beggar's Opera", "The Anatomist or Sham Doctor", besides the ordinary plays of the repertory, were given during the spring and summer of that year.[20]

Jefferson had his share of all these social pleasures, together with others, but there were also simpler and more austere occupations. First of all he had to look after his plantation. Agriculture, so long a haphazard and empirical affair, was making great strides in Europe, particularly in England. Treatises on the subject and special magazines were read eagerly in Virginia; the choice of cultures, the improvement of seeds, the introduction of new crops greatly concerned the minds of progressive planters like Colonel Washington and the young master of Shadwell.

The "Garden Books" kept by Jefferson and now published only in part, reveal him as a forerunner of modern efficiency engineers. Fences, walls, roads and bridges had to be built on the 1900-acre estate left him by his father; trees had to be planted and vegetables raised for the large family at Shadwell, for the slaves and for the many travelers and visitors who continued to drop in. If all the seeds planted in Jefferson's vegetable garden and orchards did well, he must have had an extraordinary variety of produce, considerably larger than is to be found on the best appointed farms of to-day. For he was not satisfied with the staple vegetables which appear on the American table with clocklike regularity; he sowed "salsifia, peppergrass, sorrel, salmon radishes, nasturtium, asparagus, all sorts of lettuce, cresses, celery, strawberries, snap-beans, purple beans, white beans, sugar beans, cucumbers, watermelons, cherries, olive stones, raspberries, turnips", and—horrors!—garlic. He was led into many such experiments by his neighbor and friend Philip Mazzei, formerly of Tuscany and now of Albemarle County, for many of the entries in the Garden Book are in Italian and "aglio de Terracina (vulgo garlic), radiocchio di Pistoia (succory or wild endive), cavolo broccolo Francese di Pisa, fragole Maggese (May strawberries)" and dozens of other imported varieties appear in his garden lists. Then there were the horses, for, true to the Virginia tradition, Jefferson kept no less than half a dozen blood mares of good pedigree. Above all, the regular crops of wheat, corn and especially tobacco had to be looked after; for tobacco was the only crop that could be marketed for solid cash or sent to London to be exchanged for books, furniture, fine clothes, musical instruments, and the choice wines of Europe. As a practical farmer Jefferson was rather successful, since during these early years his land brought him an average return of two thousand dollars. This was ample for his needs. But his main resources were procured from the practice of law.

He kept a complete memorandum of all the cases in which he appeared before the courts of Virginia and opposite each case entered the fee received for his professional services.[21] These fees would seem very moderate to the least ambitious practitioner of our days. In many cases no fee is mentioned at all, and we are at liberty to suppose that Jefferson took some charity cases, or that the defendants were not always scrupulous in paying their bills. Yet, altogether, the total averaged close to three thousand dollars a year, a nice fat addition to the income from Shadwell and Monticello. Starting with one hundred and fifteen cases in 1768, Jefferson was retained as attorney or counsel in no less than four hundred thirty cases in 1771, and it is no exaggeration to state that no day passed during the twelve years he remained engaged in the practice of law without his giving considerable time to his profession. The moderate amount of these fees and the large number of cases indicate the kind of practice in which Jefferson was employed. Trespassing of cattle on a neighbor's field, destruction of fences, robbery committed by a clerk, wills, administration of estates, interest, quarrels between two goodwives, with a lively exchange of actionable words, assault and battery, all the seamy, sordid, petty side of life, constituted for these twelve years the daily practice of Thomas Jefferson, an apprenticeship of life and a training in the knowledge of human nature enjoyed by very few abstract philosophers.

In the old days of the bar, one of the earmarks of most lawyers was a fluency of speech, unsurpassed except perhaps by the ministers. But words never came easily to Jefferson, or in great abundance. His voice, pleasant and modulated in ordinary conversation, "sank in his throat", if raised higher, and became husky. He was clearly a business lawyer, an office lawyer, whose clear, precise, meticulous presentation of facts fitted him particularly for appearing before a court of appeals like the General Court, rather than for moving and emotionally convincing a jury of twelve men good and true.

His scorn for oratory, long sentences, images, apostrophes may have been a case of sour grapes, for in his youth he admired tremendously Patrick Henry. As we have seen, he was wise enough not to aim higher than he could reach. Not only did he never crave the fame of the popular orator, but, conscious of his limitations, he always showed a real repugnance to addressing a large assembly. Particularly brilliant in conversation, he was destined to be a committee man, to win his ends by the pen rather than by the silver tongue of the politician. Yet if he had been fond of rhetoric, rhetoric would have found its way into his writings, but no man of the period wrote less figuratively, employed fewer artifices of style; metaphors, comparisons were unknown to him. Ideas remained ideas and were never clad in the flowing garments of mythology; facts remained facts and never became allegories. Liberty never appeared before his eyes and was never represented by him as a goddess, and neither America nor Britannia were majestic figures of heroic size that passed in his dreams. He was neither emotional nor imaginative, yet his eyes were keen and quick to note and establish distinctions between different varieties of plants or animals. His mind was alert and always on the lookout for new facts to add to his store of knowledge, after proper cataloguing. Surely he was not the man to make startling discoveries in the realm of natural history, or to propose a new system of the universe, nor was he one to conceive, in a moment of inspiration, a new political gospel and a new system of society; when he took up the practice of law in Williamsburg, the greatest future that destiny had in store for him, promising as he was, seemed to become as upright and sound a lawyer as Mr. Wythe, and a legal authority as good and learned as Mr. Pendleton.

He was admitted to the Bar in 1767, and two years later was chosen as a member of the House of Burgesses and placed on the committee appointed to draw up an answer to the Governor's speech. His draft was rejected, however, and Colonel Nicholas' address substituted.[22] A few days later Governor Botetourt, unable to endorse the spirited remonstrance to the King on the subject of taxation, dissolved the Assembly.