 JEFFERSON
WROTE INTIMATE LETTERS TO MARRIED WOMAN
(posted on http://genforum.genealogy.com/church
April 11, 2001, posting no.1736 of 2180)
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) -- She was beautiful and independent with
a razor-sharp intellect. Her patrician upbringing was tempered by sensitivity
and tenderness.
Add exquisite good taste and a fashionably understated style of dress,
and she became a thief of hearts, a woman simply irresistible to a lonely
widower in a foreign land, a man destined to become the third president
of the United States.
The morning you left us, all was wrong, even the sunshine was provoking,
with which I never quarreled before, he wrote. I took it into my head
he shone only to throw light on our loss: to present a cheerfulness not
at all in unison with my mind. I mounted my horse earlier than common.
I took by instinct the road you had taken.
It was in Paris, the winter of 1788, and Thomas Jefferson, the author
of the Declaration of Independence and now America’s ambassador to
France, was smitten with the formidable Angelica Schuyler Church, the
already married daughter of a Revolutionary War hero.
"I think I have discovered a method of preventing this dejection
of mind on any future parting," he wrote her on Feb. 17, the
same day she left Paris to return to London.
"It is this," he explained. "When you come again
I will employ myself in finding or fancying that you have some faults.
& I will draw a veil over all your good qualities if I can find one
large enough."
 Angelica
Church likely came closest to meeting Jefferson’s feminine ideal
after his beloved wife, Martha Wayles Jefferson, died in 1782, when he
was only 39, said Jefferson scholar William Howard Adams. [Ed. note:
cameo at left shown only to suggest a likeness of Angelica Church.]
They were quite simpatico, Adams said in an interview.
Adams devotes a chapter to Jefferson’s female friends in The Paris
Years of Thomas Jefferson to be published in the spring of 1997 by Yale
University Press. He gave the Associated Press an advance look at the
chapter titled, The Women in His Life.
New insights into Jefferson’s relationship with Angelica come from
Jefferson letters recently purchased by the University of Virginia, the
school he founded.
Angelica, sister-in-law of Jefferson’s bitter political enemy, Alexander
Hamilton, corresponded with many of the young country’s most prominent
figures, among them Hamilton, George Washington, and the Marquis de Lafayette.
Her family kept the letters she received, but in February contacted a
book dealer in Hadley, Mass. about selling them.
The dealer offered them first to the University of Virginia, which paid
$275,000 for a total of 13 letters from Jefferson and 64 more from Hamilton,
Washington, Lafayette and some lesser lights.
Angelica, 13 years younger than the tall red-haired Virginian, filled
a real emotional need for Jefferson, says Adams, a fellow at the International
Center for Jefferson Studies in Charlottesville.
A New Yorker, she replaced the beautiful and temperamental English artist
Maria Cosway as the object of Jefferson’s affections while he was
American ambassador to France, Adams says.
At one point, Angelica gave Jefferson a handsome silver tea urn, a perfect
beauty, according to the recipient. Angelica said she hoped the urn will
sometime at Monticello remind you of your friend.
A small portrait of Jefferson by painter John Trumbull enthralled both
women, and each obtained copies from the artist.
Angelica’s note accompanying the tea urn said that while Maria’s
copy was better, she held a better likeness of Jefferson in her heart.
Was Jefferson in love with either of the women, both of whom were married?
There is something going on, some sort of attraction between Jefferson
and Angelica, says Jan Lewis, professor history at Rutgers University
and author of The Pursuit of Happiness: Family and Values in Jefferson’s
Virginia.
Ms. Lewis, however, believes Jefferson was head over heels in love with
Maria, not Angelica.
He was deeply depressed for years after his wife’s death. Once he
got France he pulled out of it, she says, primarily because of Maria.
Still, Jefferson’s ardor for Angelica remained undiminished for
many years after their first meeting in Paris in the winter of 1787. At
the time, his infatuation with the flashier but more demanding and complex
Maria was waning, and they eventually lost touch.
Six months after they met, Jefferson begs Angelica to return to Paris
and in August 1788 he seductively proposes that she accompany him on a
vacation to America.
Think of it, my friend, and let us begin a negotiation on the subject.
You shall find in me all the spirit of accommodation with which Yoric
began his with the fair Piedmontese.
The characters Jefferson mentioned are in a sexually charged scene in
Sentimental Journey, a best-selling novel of the day by English writer
Laurence Sterne. Yoric is forced to share a room at a crowded Italian
country inn with the lovely stranger Piedmontese, and the two eventually
have sex.
The unexpected allusion in Jefferson’s letter remain ambiguous,
his intentions disguised by hinting at other possibilities, Adams says
in his book.
In an earlier letter, Jefferson also urged Angelica to return with him
to America: "Let’s go back together then. you intend it a
visit; so do I. While you are indulging with your friends on the Hudson,
I will go to see if Monticello remains in the same place, or I will attend
you to the falls of Niagara, if you will go with me to the passage of
the Potowmac, the Natural Bridge, etc.," he wrote.
Said Mrs. Lewis: If you were a guy trying to make an impression on a
woman (in the late 18th century) you would take her to Niagara Falls or
Natural Bridge.
A decade later, Jefferson was still trying. Writing from Philadelphia,
the vice president of the Unites States pines: "Tho you have taken
so great a step, there is still a wide space between us. I shall entertain
the hope that we may meet at this place, as on a middle ground. perhaps
you may find it not unpleasant in winter to get this much nearer to the
sun. but whether we meet or not, I shall for ever claim an esteem which
continues to be very precious to me, and hope to be, at times, indulged
with the mutual expression of it."
Adams says it is impossible to know for certain if Jefferson ever had
a love affair with Angelica, Maria Cosway, or other women.
WHO WAS 'MR.' ANGELICA CHURCH?
(Replies)
Date: Sat, 26 May 2001
Subject: Angelica S. Church/hubby
To: (Dan Bornt)
Hi,
I just happened to see your genforum posting about Angelica Schuyler
Church.
There is info on her in the book "Duel" by Thomas Fleming.
The book is about Hamilton and Burr. Fleming wrote - "Witty, intelligent,
rambunctious, in 177? she eloped with John Barker Church, a wealthy
Englishman who had fled to America under an assumed name, probably to
escape jail for his gambling debts. Church eventually persuaded General
Schuyler to help him obtain the post of commissary to the French army
that came to America in 1780. The Englishman made a fortune. He spent
it freely to give Angelica every imaginable luxury and let her roam high
society in London, Paris and New York as a flirtatious woman of fashion,
while he concentrated on the one thing that seemed to interest him - making
more money in business and at gaming tables."
There is an illustration of Angelica and the note that her husband
was dull, gouty and extremely wealthy.
Interesting book.
Priscilla
Her husband was John Barker Church. Church was English,
and was a commissary to the American forces in the Revolution. He was
also a notorious gambler.
In 1799, he accused a New York politician of corruption and was challenged
to a duel. Ironically, that duellist was Aaron Burr. Church was unscathed
in this encounter, Burr took a bullet through his coat that missed his
body.
Five years later, it was Church's set of duelling pistols that were employed
in the Hamilton/Burr duel. Angelica Church was at Hamilton's bedside when
he expired. It is interesting that Angelica had affairs with both Hamilton
and Jefferson, as the two were political enemies.
Thomas Fleming's book "Duel: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and
the Future of America," which I highly recommend, has recently been
issued in paperback and contains numerous references to the two Churches.
- Richard W. Gifford, June 5, 2001
John Barker Church also served in the British Parliament after
the American Revolution, and the Churches entertained the Prince
of Wales on at least one occasion. It must have been quite strange for
Angelica, since her father, General Philip Schuyler, was a prominent American
patriot who fought at the Battle of Saratoga. At any rate, Angelica eventually
returned home to America and died in 1818. She is interred at Trinity
churchyard, NYC, not far from her brother-in-law Alexander Hamilton.
For those wanting to know more about Angelica Church, the University
of Virginia has an online exhibit titled "Muse and Confidante,"
where one can read and learn much more about this absolutely fascinating
American woman.
- Linda Hoffman, July 2, 2001
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