Note 7 — NO. I.—SATURDAY, JANUARY 24, 1807.
Reading edition
In this instance, as well as on several other occasions, a little innocent pleasantry is indulged at Mr. Jefferson’s expense. The allusion made here is to the red velvet small clothes with which the President, in defiance of good taste, used to attire himself on levee days and other public occasions.—Paris Ed.
In one of his splenetic moods in Virginia, John Randolph once vented his complaint of Jefferson, with an allusion to the old scandal. “I cannot live,” said he, “in this miserable undone country, where, as the Turks follow their sacred standard, which is a pair of Mahomet’s green breeches, we are governed by the old red breeches of that prince of projectors, St. Thomas of Cantingbury; and surely, Becket himself never had more pilgrims at his shrine, than the saint of Monticello.”
As for the proboscis of Paine, “I shall secure him to a nicety,” said Jarvis, when he was about to take the bust of Paine, now in the New York Historical Society, “if I can get plaster enough for his carbuncled nose.” Dr. Francis, who relates the anecdote in one of the interesting historical sketches which he has given to the public, also furnishes a couplet sung by the boys in the street:—
“Tom Paine is come from far, from far;
His nose is like a blazing star!”