“[Thomas Jefferson] could calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, dance a minuet, and play a violin.”
This week, we ask President Jefferson to confirm or deny these reported talents.
Further Reading:
- Life of Thomas Jefferson, Third President of the United States by James Parton (Public domain on archive.org)
- Founders Online: From Thomas Jefferson to David Rittenhouse, 19 July 1778
Order a Pizza, Tie my Shoes, Sing in the Shower, Overdraw my Checking Account, Change a Printer Cartridge
The Jefferson Watch
From Clay:
Jefferson’s early biographer James Parton famously said the third president could “Calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, dance a minuet, and play the violin.”
A version of that famous list of talents has been in my stage-performance introduction for several decades now. But when I actually paused to read Parton’s statement carefully the other day, I realized, all over again, what a remarkable man Jefferson was. And that’s just an abbreviated list of his talents.
It also made me realize, all over again, my own glaring limitations as a man and as a Jefferson impersonator. Let’s go through the list. Calculate an eclipse. I wouldn’t know where to begin. I understand how an eclipse works. I remember at Stonehenge long ago my Oxford friend Douglas, a physicist, explaining an eclipse to a scientifically challenged friend using an orange, a grapefruit, and a tangerine. If the experts tell me there will be a total eclipse of the sun on August 21, 2017, I know how to plan my schedule and get myself somewhere in the eclipse corridor where the summer skies are likely to be clear that day. But if I had all alone to calculate the next total eclipse of the sun, I’d be flummoxed. To put it lightly.
Read this week's Jefferson Watch essay, "Order a Pizza, Tie my Shoes, Sing in the Shower, Overdraw my Checking Account, Change a Printer Cartridge".
What Would Jefferson Do?
“One of the great qualities of the American character was the self-reliance that was thrust upon us by the 3,000 mile ocean that separated us from the skill sets of the Old World.”
Tune in to your local public radio or join the 1776 Club to hear this episode of What Would Thomas Jefferson Do?
Jefferson 101 is a series of biographical shows about the life of Thomas Jefferson that ran from 2016 to 2017.
Jefferson was a pragmatic utopian, and a utopian pragmatist.
I’m a devoted American patriot. I love this country, but I want it to be more like the country I love than the disillusioned, vulgar, and divisive place it has become.
"Two seraphs await me long shrouded in death; I will bear them your love on my last parting breath."
— Thomas Jefferson, July 1826
We conclude our Jefferson 101 biographical series by discussing his final days at Monticello, his legacy, and the deaths of both Jefferson and John Adams on July 4th, 1826 — the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.