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.
President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law
Albany Law School
80 New Scotland Avenue
Albany, NY 12208
518-445-3386 (p)
518-445-3363 (f)
[log in to unmask]
www.paulfinkelman.com
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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?
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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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Have we got a college? Have we got a football team?....Well, we can't afford both. Tomorrow we start tearing down the college.
--Groucho Marx, in "Horse Feathers."
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