Happy 281^st Birthday to someone very special to me!

The picture above is Maria Cosway, and no, it’s not her birthday. It’s Thomas Jefferson’s, a man who was passionately in love with her in Paris in 1786.

Maria was married to a man, Richard, who was blatantly unfaithful to her, but who was very certain in their day and age that she could never leave him. Richard was interested in every woman except the extraordinary beauty who was his wife.

Maria was an intelligent, well-educated, passionate woman, a gifted artist who grew up in Florence, Italy and brought the best of and the liveliness of Italy into all her conversations.

Thomas Jefferson’s head told him not to love Maria. His heart told him otherwise. His head told him to detach himself, to treat her dispassionately, as if he were a monk or a philosopher. His heart said no.

When Richard and Maria were leaving Paris for London and Jefferson was in extreme anguish about seeing her leave, he said goodbye to her before she drove away in her carriage like this:

“Having performed the last sad office of handing you into your carriage at the Pavillon de St. Denis, and seen the wheels get actually into motion, I turned on my heel and walked, more dead than alive, to the opposite door, where my own was awaiting me.”

Then, at home, he wrote Maria a very long letter that started with:

“Seated by my fire side, solitary and sad, the following dialogue took place between my Head and my Heart.”

The dialogue between Jefferson’s Head and his Heart went on for pages.

It’s a dialogue my head and heart have had many times and I understand it well. The heart captures it here:

“Heart to Head: Let the gloomy Monk, sequestered from the world, seek unsocial pleasures in the bottom of his cell! Let the sublimated philosopher grasp visionary happiness while pursuing phantoms dressed in the garb of truth! Their supreme wisdom is supreme folly: and they mistake for happiness the mere absence of pain. Had they ever felt the solid pleasure of one generous spasm of the heart, they would exchange for it all the frigid speculations of their lives, which you have been vaunting in such elevated terms. Believe me then, my friend, that that is a miserable arithmetic which would estimate friendship at nothing, or at less than nothing.” 

Maria and Tom only saw each other very briefly again once, but were friends all their lives, their friendship deep to begin with, deepened even more over time. They wrote to each other until the end. Maria went into an Italian convent after Richard died. She loved Tom deeply and her letters are filled with passionate appreciation and friendship. One of Tom’s last letters to Maria when he knew he didn’t have much time left, written 34 years after they met and sent across a very distant ocean, included this:

“You have many good years remaining yet to be happy yourself and to make those around you happy. may these, my dear friend, be as many as yourself may wish, and all of them filled with health and happiness will be among the last & warmest wishes of an unchangeable friend.”

To read the full Dialogue Between My Head and My Heart (it’s beautiful), you can go here: https://founders.archives.gov/?q=%20Author%3A%22Jefferson%2C%20Thomas%22%20Recipient%3A%22Cosway%2C%20Maria%22&s=1111311111&r=2

On this beautiful Spring day, I wish you many friendships and much love to fill your own heart. And may your Head enjoy them as well!

Love,

Ingrid