You've probably listened to Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac on NPR. I get it in email form every day and it's part of my morning ritual to read it.
Did you know this?
On this day in 1786, conflicted and love-torn U.S. Ambassador to France Thomas Jefferson composed a now-famous love letter to a married English woman named Maria Cosway. It's more than 4,000 words long, more than three times the length of the Declaration of Independence, which Thomas Jefferson had composed 10 years before.
He had to write out this letter with his left hand because he had broken his right wrist while leaping over a fountain in giddy delight during a stroll with the woman. The letter is now referred to as "A Dialogue between the Head and Heart." In it, he records an inner dialogue he had as he sat next to his fireside one evening, solitary and sad, shortly after parting ways with her. His Head and his Heart take turns speaking, one bubbling over with romantic desire and longing, and the other lecturing him about the need for integrity.
His dialogue begins:
Head. Well, friend, you seem to be in a pretty trim.
Heart. I am indeed the most wretched of all earthly beings. Overwhelmed with grief, every fibre of my frame distended beyond its natural powers to bear, I would willingly meet whatever catastrophe should leave me no more to feel or to fear.
Head. These are the eternal consequences of your warmth & precipitation. This is one of the scrapes into which you are ever leading us. You confess your follies indeed; but still you hug & cherish them; & no reformation can be hoped, where there is no repentance.
In the end, Thomas Jefferson's Head wins out, and he concludes that the only "effective security against such pain of unrequited love, is to retire within ourselves and to suffice for our own happiness." And so he apologizes to his beloved reader Maria for the sermon, and promises he'll keep his letters shorter from then on out, and talks about the weather and the casual comings and goings of mutual acquaintances, and about the book that he happens to be reading at the time.
Maria Cosway stayed married to her husband until his death in 1789, and then moved to Italy to start a convent school. Thomas Jefferson became the third president of the United States in 1801, about 15 years after writing this letter.
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By the way, Jefferson was not married at the time, Martha having died in 1782.
Just think of this intelligent, passionate man and the woman who inspired such feelings! Think about the force of will required to put head over heart. Of course, Maria would have been a social pariah and Jefferson's career would have been ruined had she left her husband to be with him. It makes me think of all the times I've come to a fork in my road. Sometimes I wonder what my life would be like if... .
I guess that's why The Road Not Taken resonates so strongly with us.
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