Maria Cosway to Thomas Jefferson, 10 October 1805
From Maria Cosway
Lyons 10th of October 1805
It is very difficult to give up some friends, tho’ time goes apace with distance, we cannot forget those we have once highly esteem’d. It is so seldom I have an oportunity of enquiring whether I am forgoten tho’ the reasons are not the same to be rememberd. The Brother of a Lady who lives with me, Mr: Philippe is going to America and I have ask’d him to take this short letter [may it?] be received at least with half the pleasure [it is?] written. Here I have been two years, & my establishment goes on extremely well & have the Consolation of being Mother of 60 children. Nothing is more interesting, than rendering oneself usefull to our fellow creatures, & what better way than that of making their education! What is become of my Brother he never writtes to any of his family, I have however taken every oportunity to write to him.
Believe dear Sir ever the same Most affte. & Obliged
M. Cosway
RC (DLC); torn; endorsed by TJ as received 25 Apr. 1806 and so recorded in SJL.
my establishment: after the death of her six-year-old daughter and only child in 1796, Cosway invested her energies in religion and the education of young girls. She befriended Napoleon’s uncle Joseph Fesch, who became archbishop in Lyons in 1802 and a cardinal the following year. His patronage enabled Cosway to found a school for both well-off and disadvantaged girls in Lyons, which she ran in a wing of the Palais de Saint Pierre from 1803 until 1809. She left the school in 1811, but not her educational philosophies, which focused on mutual education using pupils who had acquired some knowledge to teach what they had learned to other students. When Francesco Melzi d’Eril invited Cosway to open a similar institution in Italy and purchased a convent for it in Lodi, she established the Collegio della Beata Vergine della Grazie in 1812. She wrote to TJ again in April 1819, remarking that “To the lenght of Silence I draw a Curtain.” TJ finally replied in December 1820. For Cosway’s efforts in Lodi, Emperor Francis I of Austria gave her the title of baroness in 1834. She continued to teach at her school until her death in 1838 (Delia Gaze, ed., Dictionary of Women Artists, 2 vols. [Chicago, 1997], 1:415; Elena Cazzulani and Angelo Stroppa, Maria Luisa Caterina Cecilia Hadfield Cosway: La donna e l’educatrice [Lodi, Italy, 1997], 54-87; George C. Williamson, Richard Cosway R.A. [London, 1905], 68-75; Francis Beretti, ed., Pascal Paoli à Maria Cosway: Lettres et documents, 1782-1803 [Oxford, 2003], 14-17; Gerald Barnett, Richard and Maria Cosway: A Biography [Cambridge, Eng., 1995], 161-3; Stephen Lloyd, Richard & Maria Cosway: Regency Artists of Taste and Fashion [Edinburgh, 1995], 90-1; , 731; , 14:207–8; 16:497–9; TJ to Cosway, 24 Oct. 1822).
my Brother: George Hadfield.