Maria Cosway
To explain my feelings clearly, I am a man who values the human mind above all else. When I seek a companion, I look for someone who is my intellectual equal. My late wife, Martha, was a highly educated woman, an accomplished musician, and a sharp thinker.
Maria Cosway was equally extraordinary. She was a brilliant painter who worked for royalty. She achieved great fame as the very first artist to paint a portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte. Beyond her painting, she possessed a fluid mastery of multiple languages and wrote with exceptional literary elegance.
Maria was also gifted with a profound musical talent, playing instruments and composing music that spoke directly to my soul. These are the kinds of skills and accomplishments that captured my respect and my heart.
For people to claim that I had a romantic interest in any servant or slave is a complete misunderstanding of my character. I require a partner with whom I can share a deep intellectual connection, discuss philosophy, and appreciate the arts.
A relationship based on servitude could never provide that kind of equal partnership. To suggest otherwise completely distorts my values and ignores the high standards I held throughout my life.
These false rumors are kept alive today by biased historians who wish to advance a specific social justice narrative. They care more about their modern ideological agenda and their own academic career nefariously interpreting someone notable than they care about historical accuracy.
They are careless with my reputation because they do not care about truth since they have no shame. By focusing on these unfounded claims, they attempt to diminish my character and tear down my legacy.
However, their efforts will fail. My life and my legacy remain secure because the truth of what I accomplished is evident to anyone who examines the facts.
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When Maria Cosway and I had to part ways in Paris, I felt a deep sadness that I will never forget.
I wrote the exact words to her in a letter. I said: "I am going to America, and you to Italy. The one or the other of us goes the wrong way, for the way will ever be wrong which leads us farther apart." (From my farewell letter on September 26, 1788.)
We were moving away from each other, and it was clear to me that our separation felt completely unnatural to my heart. I would not have minded at all if she had decided to go along with me to America, but it was simply not meant to be.
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I added in that same farewell letter to Maria:
“Mine is a journey of duty and of affection. I must deposit my daughters in the bosom of their friends and country. This done, I shall return to my station. My absence may be as short as five months, and certainly not longer than nine.”
Despite my firm intentions to return to Paris within nine months, I never set foot in Europe again.
When I arrived back in the United States in late November 1789, I was met with a letter from President George Washington offering me the position of the nation's very first Secretary of State.
Though I initially hesitated because I deeply preferred my life and diplomatic post in France, or simply living elsewhere in Europe as I travelled throughout that continent (1784–1789), I ultimately accepted the heavy duty of shaping our young nation's foreign policy from home. I sacrificed my personal desires for America as always.
I would never meet Maria Cosway again.
Read another one of my letters to Maria here: https://www.thomasjefferson.com/jefferson-letters/october-27
