[The newspaper was started up with a Whig orientation in 1851. Here is a sampling of the third part of Johnston's article. Extra paragraph breaks for easier reading.]
Dressed, within doors, as I saw him last, no longer in the red breeches, which were once famous as his favorite and rather conspicuous attire, but still vindicating by a sanguine waistcoat; his attachment to the Republican color; in gray shorts, small silver kneebuckles, gray woolen stockings, black slippers, a blue body-coat, surmounted by a gray spencer; tall, and though lithe of person and decidedly graceful and agile of motion and carriage, yet long and ill-limbed, MR. JEFFERSON's figure was commanding and striking, though bad, and his face most animated and agreeable, although immensely ugly.
His legs, you perceive, by no means shunned observation; yet they were scarcely larger at the knee than in the ankle, and had never been conscious of a calf. Still, without strength, they had always borne him along with vigor and suppleness.
These bodily qualities and a health almost unfailing; he preserved, in a singular degree, to the very close of his long life.
At the time I speak of, when he was in his eighty-first year, he not only mounted his horse without assistance and rode habitually some ten miles a day, but, dismounting at a fence breast-high, would leap over it, by only placing his hand on the topmost rail.
He walked not only well and swiftly, but with lightness and springiness of tread, such as few young men even have.
It was a restless activity of mind, which informed all this unusual mobility of body; and the two, I think were, in him, greatly alike. For his intellect had, like his person, more size than force, more suppleness than solidity, and affected its ends by continuity of action not mass of power; by manipulation not muscularity. You may batter to pieces with a small hammer than which a cannon-ball would not shiver.
He was never idle: nay, hardly a moment still. He rose early and was up late, through his life; and was all day, whenever out on foot or a horse-back, at study, at work, or in conversation.
If his legs and fingers were at rest, his tongue was sure to be a-going.
Indeed, even when seated in his library in a low Spanish chair, he held forth to his visitors in an almost endless flow of fine discourse, his body seemed impatient of keeping still for his mind, shifted its position all the while, and so twisted itself about that you might almost have thought he was attitudinizing . . .
[Next post: final part of article.]
[Edward William Johnston (1799-1867)
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)]
[Image credit: Michel Sokolnicki (1760–1816) after Thaddeus Kosciuszko (1746-1817). Thomas Jefferson A Philosepher A Patriote and a Friend. Copyprint of colored aquatint. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. Here is a link]
[Many thanks to Sue Davis, William Myers, Mary Davy and Sally Young for their ongoing research collaboration.]
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