It was not wholly affectation, therefore, when Jefferson wrote,
"Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by
rendering them my supreme delight. But the enormities of the
times in which I have lived, have forced me to take a part in
resisting them, and to commit myself on the boisterous ocean of
political passions." One can readily picture this Virginia
farmer-philosopher ruefully closing his study door, taking a last
look over the gardens and fields of Monticello, in the golden
days of October, and mounting Wildair, his handsome thoroughbred,
setting out on the dusty road for that little political world at
Washington, where rumor so often got the better of reason and
where gossip was so likely to destroy philosophic serenity.

Jefferson had been a widower for many years; and so, since his
daughters were married and had households of their own, he was
forced to preside over his menage at Washington without the
feminine touch and tact so much needed at this American court.
Perhaps it was this unhappy circumstance quite as much as his
dislike for ceremonies and formalities that made Jefferson do
away with the weekly levees of his predecessors and appoint only
two days, the First of January and the Fourth of July, for public
receptions. On such occasions he begged Mrs. Dolly Madison to act
as hostess; and a charming and gracious figure she was, casting a
certain extenuating veil over the President's gaucheries.
Jefferson held, with his many political heresies, certain
theories of social intercourse which ran rudely counter to the
prevailing etiquette of foreign courts. Among the rules which he
devised for his republican court, the precedence due to rank was
conspicuously absent, because he held that "all persons when