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To Ezra Stiles Paris, Sep. 1, 1786
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. Danquerville's. 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 paroxysm 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 was 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 it's 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 shewed 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 Ruggieri's, 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 King's
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 inimitably. She wants
only subjects worthy of immortality to render her pencil immortal.
The Falling 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 put 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 another's 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
the 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 it's
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 it's tedious & it's painful moments! to
share our bread with one to whom misfortune has left none! This
world abounds indeed with misery: to lighten it's 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 it's 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 cares
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 it's 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 to 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 it's heads instead of it's hearts,
where should we have been now? Hanging on a gallows as high as
Haman's. 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 it's
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 it's 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. I
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 t'aime," 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 fertile 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 I 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 le
premier amant: Pompadour en est 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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