From Thomas Jefferson to David Rittenhouse, 7 January 1793
To David Rittenhouse
Jan. 7. 1793.
Th: Jefferson, beginning to pack his useless furniture, finds nothing more so than the article he now sends to Mr. Rittenhouse. He wishes he could propose it to his acceptance for a better reason: but if two bad reasons will make one good one, to that of the uselessness of the thing he will add (what will be equally useless to him) the sincere affection of the giver; as a testimony of which he desires Mr. Rittenhouse to give it house-room.
PrC (DLC); addressed: “Mr. Rittenhouse.” Tr (DLC); 19th-century copy.
The article sent by TJ was undoubtedly one of the plaster busts of himself executed by Houdon, which TJ had purchased in 1789. The bust remained in the Rittenhouse family until 1811 when Elizabeth Rittenhouse Sergeant donated it to the American Philosophical Society, which had it bronzed and placed on exhibit ( , 3 July 1789; Alfred L. Bush, The Life Portraits of Thomas Jefferson, rev. ed. [Charlottesville, 1987], 11–14; , Proceedings, xxii, pt. 3 [1885], 427, 430; Fiske Kimball, “The Life Portraits of Jefferson and their Replicas,” same, lxxxviii [1944], 505–7, with illustration; Brooke Hindle, David Rittenhouse [Princeton, 1964], 336).