I don't know why anyone is shocked or surprised by the sexual escapades of people of yore. We needn't look for famous people and decoding their diaries. The actual records tell quite the story all by themselves. And remember, it takes to tango.
My favorite example is the totally unrepentant couple of Rawleigh Chinn and Margaret Ball Downman. He was married, she was a merry widow. They had three children out of wedlock. They were repeatedly sued and hauled before both court and vestry. This did not seem to deter them. And she was not his only mistress. His legal wife (Margaret's cousin), Easter Ball Chinn, was not very amused but her anger was not about these bastard cousins but about money, which was rightfully hers and not his.
So, we need not seek famous people for examples of sensational sexual escapades. There truly is nothing new under the sun.
Craig Kilby
> Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2011 17:27:49 +0000
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] Jefferson and sexuality
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> We should remember that the Founders were not a generation of up-tight Victorians (except for maybe John Adams perhaps, who would have been a proto-Victorian). Franklin had an out of wed lock child and wrote some pretty racy things; Jefferson had children with Sally; Hamilton probably had an affair with his sister-in-law; numerous lesser southern founders (than Jefferson) had sex and children with their slaves; some scholars have suggested that the signs all over New England that "Washington slept here may have a double meaning; pornography was not unknown; this was the age of Tom Jones and Fanny Hill after all. English gentlemen notoriously had mistresses (there is a wonderful half-nude of one in Yale museum of British art). So, why should we be shocked by Jefferson's poetry or his relationships to women?
>
>
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> Paul Finkelman, Ph.D.
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> From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Terry Meyers [[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2011 10:17 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [VA-HIST] Jefferson and sexuality
>
> I happened across a note (April 17, 1769, in Bear and Stanton, Jefferson's Memorandum Books [1997]) by Jefferson about a poem, "The Keekeiad," toward the publication of which in Williamsburg he recorded contributing 2/6 --he said of it that it was a "poem I never saw nor ever wish to see."
>
> That struck me as peculiar--why would someone contribute towards publishing a poem he had never seen and never wanted to see? Turns out the poem is a lascivious one (so much so that I had to seek permission from the state of Virginia to read it when it popped onto my state-owned-computer screen!).
>
> Is this an example of Jefferson's support for freedom of the press, even in subjects bordering (or more) on pornography?
>
> And another question: I also noticed in Jefferson's accounts several entries coded by him in shorthand, read by the editors as "Sukey" at "Smith" or "Stifth" (October 14, 28; 1770; April 16, 1771). Sukey was, seemingly, a slave, and the name in the context suggests she received a payment.
>
> LIke John Kukla who mentions these and payments to a married woman, Molly Dudley, in Mr. Jefferson's Women, I tend to suspect some kind of hanky-panky when I see coded entries in accounts.
>
> Is there general acquiescence as to Jefferson's seemingly sexual escapades in these instances?
>
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Terry L.. Meyers, Chancellor Professor of English, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg Virginia 23187 757-221-3932
>
> http://wmpeople.wm.edu/site/page/tlmeye/
>
> http://www.ecologyfund.com/ecology/_ecology.html
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