The manuscript of Notes in person

I had the extraordinary privilege this morning of working with the original manuscript of Notes on the State of Virginia, in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society. The Jefferson scholar Douglas Wilson examined the watermarks of the base pages of the manuscript, and listed the eight different marks he found. My purpose was to inspect the paper on which Jefferson's inserts--his "Post-It Notes," so to speak--were written, for the same purpose. (More later on why this is significant.)

It quickly became evident why Wilson had not analyzed the watermarks of the inserts: they almost never appear on the small slips of paper Jefferson employed for them.

Here's an exception: note the fleur-de-lys (lower left)
from the watermark of J. Honig & Zoonen, a well-known
Dutch manufacturer. Notes mss., p. 19, tab 1. MHS

I was able to extract some valuable information about the paper, but the most powerful revelation about the pages was how small they were, and how small and precise Jefferson's handwriting is on them. Because the MHS scans are of such high resolution, I can hone in on a sentence or a word and fill the screen of my 32-inch monitor--or connect my laptop to my 42" television if I need to zoom in closer to decipher a crossed-out phrase. So I'm used to viewing the mss at a high magnification. In person, however, the script is small, and the interlineations are tiny--much smaller, and just as precise, as the fine print in a credit card contract.

Notes mss., p. 16. MHS

The MHS's scan of Notes is here.