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Subject Area: Political Theory
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

TO MRS. CHURCH 1 - Thomas Jefferson, The Works, vol. 7 (Correspondence 1792-1793) [1905]

Edition used:

The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Federal Edition (New York and London, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904-5). Vol. 7

Part of: The Works of Thomas Jefferson, 12 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


TO MRS. CHURCH1

Philadelphia, Oct. 1792.

Dear Mad.—

Your favor of July 6. was to have found me here but I had departed before it reached here. It followed me home, & of necessity the enquiries of our frd M.d de Corny was obliged to await mrs M’s arrival at her own house. This was delayed longer than was expected so that by the time I could make the enquiries, I was looking again to my return to Philada. This must apologize for the delay which has taken place. Mrs M tells me that M. de C. was at one time in extreme distress, her revenue being in rents & then pd in assignats worth nothing. Since their abolition however, she receives her rents in cash & is now entirely at her ease. She lives in hired lodgings furnished by herself and everything about her as nice as you know she always had. She visited mrs M familiarly & freely in a family way, but would never dine when she had company nor remain if company came. She speaks seriously sometimes of a purpose to come to America, but she surely mistakes a wish for a purpose. You & I know her [illegible] too well, & her horror of the sea, to believe she could pass or attempt the Atlantic. Mrs M could not give me her address, so as to enable me to write to her, in all events it is a great consoln that her situation is easy. We have here a mr Niemcewitz a polish gent. who was with us at Paris when M Cosway was there, and who was of her society in Lond. last summer. He mentions the loss of her daur the gloom into which that & other circumstances have thrown her, that it has taken the hue of religion, that she is solely devoted to religious exercises & superintendt of a school she has instituted for catholic chdrn. but that she still speaks of her friends here with tenderness & desire. Our lres have been rare, but they have let me see that her gaiety was gone, & her mind entirely placed on a world to come. I have recd. from my young frd Cath a letter which gratifies me much as it proves that our friendly impressions have not grown out of her memory. I am indebted to her too for an acqu with your son whose connections suffice to raise the strongest prepossessions with me in his favor. Be so good as to present my respects to mr C. I hope he will find the state of society different in N. Y. from what it is in this place. Party animosities here have raised a wall of sepern between those who differ in political sentimts.1 They must love misery indeed who would rather at the sight of an honest man feel the torment of hatred & aversion than the benign spasms of benevolence & esteem. Accept assurances of the unalterable attachment of your sincere & affect friend & servt.

[1 ]From a copy in the possession of Miss S. N. Randolph.

[1 ]Jefferson has here struck out the following lines: “the oldest friends will cross the street to avoid meeting each other. People must have a wonderful propensity to self-torment who can prefer the harsher feelings of the mind, who would rather that.”

There is a tradition to this day in Philadelphia that so strongly ran the class feeling against Jefferson that Logan, Thomson, and Rittenhouse were his only social equals who did not exclude him from the hospitality of their homes.