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UniversiV Micrxxilms International 300 N. Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Ml 48106
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Challinor, Joan Bidder
LOUISA CATHERINE JOHNSON ADAMS: THE PRICE OF AMBITION
The American University PH.D. 1982
University Microfilms
I nte rn âti 0 n ai300 N. Zeeb Road. Ann Arbor, MI 48106
Copyright 1982
by Chaliinor, Joan Ridder
Aii Rights Reserved
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LOUISA CATHERINE JOHNSON ADAMS:
THE PRICE OF AMBITION
by
Joan Ridder Challinor
Submitted to the
Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences
of The American University
in Partial Fulfillment of
the Requirements for the Degree
of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
H isto ry
Signatures of Committee:
Chairman:
Dean of the College 71 ( / ] ^
Date (I ~ ^
1982
The American University W ashington, D.C. 20016
T O AKERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LOUISA CATHERINE JOHNSON ADAMS:
THE PRICE OF AMBITION
by
Joan R. C h allin o r
ABSTRACT
This biography rescues from obscurity one of the least-known
members of the Adams family, Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams
(1775-1852). M arried in 1797 to John Quincy Adams, her th ree long
memoirs, letters, and other writings are virtually unknown. Yet from
her life we can leam much: about the lives of women whose
personalities were at variance with dictates of the culture; about the
dynamics of the Adams family; about the distaff side of the United
States diplomatic corps; and about the strains placed upon politicians'
fa m ilie s .
This work examines the first half of Louisa's life from 1775 to
1817. Raised in London in an Anglo-American mercantile family, she
served with her husband at three courts: Prussia, Russia, and Great
Britain. Four of her eight years in America from 1801 to 1809, she was
the wife of a United States Senator. By 1817 she was probably the most
travelled and sophisticated woman in America, and John Quincy's
appointment as Secretary of State put within reach his , and her,
ultimate goal—the Presidency.
i i
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Louisa's psychological life was bounded by ambition, denial,
and guilt. She denied a strong ambition because her times prohibited
assertive women. Wracked by guilt because she thought the world
assumed she and her parents had lured John Quincy into marriage with an
impoverished g irl, she denied what was essentially her own accusation.
She disclaimed her delight in social events in conformity to her
husband's stern republicanism. Angry because his career forced her to
choose between her husband and children, she felt guilty at either
choice. Louisa could never pay with grace the exactions her goal
demanded.
Forced by the culture to deflect her strivings on to her
husband, Louisa could not face herself honestly. So insecure was
Louisa that she wrote one memoir to let the world know that she
existed. Since many women of her era also failed to find outlets for
strong, yet prohibited, feelings, historians may find important clues
to women's tensions in nineteenth-century America. Unheeded in her own
lifetim e, overlooked by modern historians, Louisa is here given the
attention she deserves.
i i i
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. We are . . . double in ourselves, so that we believe what we disbelieve and cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn.
Montaigne
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Unlike most- books, dissertations are joint efforts. When
finished, it is the pleasant duty of the author to acknowledge publicly
those who have helped. I particularly relish this task because I
needed an unusual amount of assistance with the writing process.
My first debt is intellectual. Above all others, Roger H.
Brown deserves ray gratitude. A kind and steady mentor throughout ray
graduate career, he supervised this dissertation with unflagging
in d u s try and helped me bring form and th ru s t to an immense amount of
m aterial. Janet Oppenheim's careful comments on my drafts led me to
understand that writing and logic were inseparable and that I had often
disconnected the two. Charles McLaughlin read the entire manuscript
with attention. David F. Musto suggested to me that Louisa Adams's
life was crucial to understanding Adams family history and has been a
very generous colleague. He deserves ray special thanks. Valerie
French, with whom I studied Ancient History, taught me that hard
thinking could be one of life's great pleasures. David Brandenberg,
Chairman of The American University's History Department when I arrived
in the early 1970s, welcomed me to a department with which I have been
proud to be associated. Thomas Hietala, of Dartmouth College,
sharpened the focus and prose of two chapters.
Others, outside academia, have also assisted me. Esther M.
Ridder read the entire manuscript and made very incisive suggestions,
iv
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. almost all of which I incorporated into this biography. At a most
c ru c ia l tim e, Nancy A. W illing came to type the many d ra fts and stayed
to help check footnotes and perform other administrative chores.
Without her, this dissertation would have been six. more months in
preparation. Shirley Simpson typed the final version under a deadline
not of her making and worked with great speed and competence. Celeste
Walker, Assistant Editor of the Adams Papers, answered my questions
w ith u n fa ilin g good humor and was of in estim ab le h elp . The
knowledgeable staff of The American University's library cheerfully
handled my requests for books and information, as did the staff of the
Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress.
For the support of my family I am infinitely grateful. My
children, Julia, Mary, Sarah, and D. Thompson, learned to be
independent at an early age and to cope with a mother whose career
changed in mid-life from domesticity to academics. Without their
generous acceptance of a student-mother, this dissertation could not
have been written. Mary E. Challinor designed the title page. The
person who has lived most closely with Louisa Adams for the past three
years is, of course, my husband, David Challinor. His continual, yet
gentle, prodding kept me at a task I might not have finished but for
his unstinting support. He wanted this dissertation for me as much as
I wanted it for myself. He generously gave up uncounted hours of my
company so that I could achieve my goal. He deserves all my gratitude,
and to him this dissertation is lovingly dedicated.
Lastly, I wish to thank those members of the Adams family who,
in 1956, made the Adams Papers available to scholars. Their gift of
these papers to the nation merits recognition from those who have
V
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. benefited from the incredibly rich store of public and private
historical documents. I have been ever mindful of my responsibility to
use these papers and letters, some of them very private, with care and
re s p e c t.
V i
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. table of contents
ABSTRACT...... i i
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...... iv
LIST OF MAPS...... v i i i
FAMILY CODE NAM ES...... ix
LOCATION SYMBOLS ...... x
A NOTE ON PAGINATION ...... x i
INTRODUCTION ...... 1
Chapter I . A TANGLED S K E IN ...... 17
I I , DEVOTED TO THE P U B L IC ...... 83
I I I . AN UNUSUAL ENGAGEMENT...... 142
IV. MARRIAGE AND AFTERWARDS...... 206
V. REPUBLICAN LIFE AT THE COURT OF K IN G S ...... 252
VI. "NOAH'S ARK"...... 311
V II. A SENATOR'S WIFE ...... 366
V III. WHEN AT ROME...... 425
IX. ALONE IN R U S S IA ...... 490
X. AN ENGLISH IDYLL...... 544
THE SOURCES...... 591
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 607
v i i
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LIST OF MAPS
I. Louisa Adams's Account of Her Journey from St. Petersburg to P a r i s ...... 526
v i i i
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. FAMILY CODE NAMES
Johnson Family
JJ Joshua Johnson (1742-1802)
CJ Catherine Johnson (1757? - 1811)
LCJ (1775-1797) Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams LCA (1797-1852)
Adams Family
First Generation
JA John Adams (1735-1826)
AA Abigail Adams (1744-1818)
Second Generation
AA2 Abigail Adams (1765-1813)
JQA John Quincy Adams (1767-1848)
CA Charles Adams (1770-1800)
TBA Thomas B oylston Adams (1772-1832)
Third Generation
GWA George Washington Adams (1801-1829)
JA2 John Adams (1803-1834)
CFA Charles Francis Adams (1807-1886)
XX
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LOCATION SYMBOLS
APM Microfilms of the Adams Papers owned by the Adams Manuscript Trust and deposited in the Massachusetts Historical Society
BM The B ritis h Museum
LC The Library of Congress
MHR Maryland Hall of Records
MHS Massachusetts Historical Society
NYPL New York Public Library
X
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. A NOTE ON PAGINATION
Louisa Adams's two autobiographical works, "Record of a Life or
My Story" and "The Adventures of a Nobody," are s till in manuscript
form but published on the Adams Papers Microfilm. Louisa's page
numbering of these two works is very ir r e g u la r : some pages are
unnumbered, some are misnumbered, and some other pages are missing. To
guide the reader to the original source, I have numbered each page of
"Record of a Life or My Story" consecutively; and the page numbers
given in the footnotes refer to my consecutive numbers. The reader
should note, therefore, that page numbers in the footnotes will not
always agree with the numbers Louisa wrote on her pages. I have
assigned consecutive numbers to all the pages of "The Adventures of a
Nobody" through page 126. My footnotes refer to these numbers. After
page 126, Louisa dated her entries beginning with 8 July 1801, and I
have used Louisa's dates to guide the reader to the proper place in the
manuscript. Her dates are sometimes confused; yet after my
consecutively numbered page 126 and starting with her entry of 8 July
1801, I have employed her dates at all times.
XI
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. INTRODUCTION
Four generations of the Adams family have played crucial roles
in the political and intellectual life of the United States. No other
American family has demonstrated such significant talents generation
after generation, and it is this staying power that has made the Adamses
so endlessly fascinating. Books and articles, both scholarly and
popular, abound and yet some important members of this much studied
family remain neglected. Aware only of the lives of the most "public"
members of the family, scholars fail to explain which elements gave the
family its strength and its extraordinary vitality. No family's history
can be considered encompassed or comprehended as long as even one of
its major figures remains unstudied.
This dissertation is an effort to rescue one of the least-known
members of the Adams family, Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams (1775-1852),
whose husband was John Quincy Adams, from more than a century of
obscurity and neglect.
Historians have written little about Louisa Adams; the slight
seems puzzling. John Adams considered his son's marriage to Louisa
Johnson "the most fortunate event in his life." Lyman H. Butterfield,
the first editor of the Adams Papers, has stated, "In the entire span of
the Adams dynasty, no figure is more central" than Louisa. Yet he
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. provided only "notes" to aid a future biographer. Although Samuel F.
Bemis introduced Louisa into his two-volume work on John Quincy, she
appears only as an appendage to her husband. Overshadowed by other
members of the Adams family in most of the literature, here, Louisa is
the central figure.
If Louisa Adams is little known, the fault is surely not hers.
Three long memoirs, running to well over five hundred typescript pages,
letters, diaries, poems, and plays, all by Louisa, have remained unused;
all of this material has been available since 1956, in the microfilm
edition of the Adams Papers. Although these memoirs are often inac
curate, and require careful use, her writings are a rich untapped
resource of Adams material which illuminate not only Louisa's own life
but also those of other family members. A study of Louisa is important
not only for herself, but is also crucial in helping to fill out the
record of a most remarkable American family.
The neglect of Louisa Adams is difficult to understand since both
historians and literary scholars have extensively studied her husband
John Quincy, her son Charles Francis, and her two grandsons Henry and
Brooks. A bibliography citing even major works and articles concerning
these men would be of staggering length.
Historians have not failed all Adams women. Abigail Adams has
surely received her due from the scholarly community. Following the lead
of her grandson, Charles Francis, who published her letters in 1840, a
full century before the advent of women's studies, historians have cast
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Abigail in the role of a "founding Mother." Her forceful, significant
and often pithy letters have been published time and time again, and her
role in John Adams' life is well documented. Historians have awarded
Abigail a subordinate but important part in John Adams' public life and
a full partnership in the establishment of the Adams dynasty. But those
who are not specialists in Adams history would be challenged to recognize
the names of Louisa Johnson, Abigail Brooks, or Marian Hooper.
The forced anonymity of Louisa Johnson and Abigail Brooks is all
the more mysterious since, for many decades, the mother's role in the
making of an adult personality has been considered crucial. Nature, not
nurture, has predominated in writings about the Adamses. Thus (always
excepting Abigail) the nurturing influence of Louisa and her daughter-in-
law Abigail Brooks Adams has not even been credited and the Adams men
of the third and fourth generation have been described as if their entire
training had been by fathers alone.
In many works on the Adams family, Louisa appears only in
conjunction with her grandson, Henry Adams. He remembered her as exotic,
decorative and charming, very different from the stern, cold New
Englanders whom he met on his journeys between Boston and Quincy. Henry
wondered if his own doubts, hesitancies, and rebellions might have come
from the Maryland blood which entered the family through Louisa.
Although Henry's perceptions of Louisa have been widely quoted, no one
seems to have asked whether his description portrayed Louisa correctly.
Until now, the question not having been asked has, of course, not been
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. considered.
This dissertation deals with Louisa Adams' life from her birth
in 1775, until 1817, when she returned from Europe for the last time to
take up permanent residence in the United States. During these years
Louisa grew up in England, married John Quincy Adams and joined her
ambition to that of her husband. Until 1817, the outcome of her
struggle for John Quincy to attain his goal of serving his country as a
preeminent statesman lay still very much in doubt. In 1817, appointed
Secretary of State by James Monroe, John Quincy finally reached the
great objective. It seemed as though the Presidency lay securely ahead,
and that Louisa's aspirations were to be fulfilled at last.
Focusing on the earlier period of Louisa's life allows for a
detailed investigation of Louisa's psychological development, as she
experienced a most unusual childhood and then entered upon a troubled
adult life. The serious difficulties she encountered during her
engagement and marriage to John Quincy can be fully understood only in
relation to the strange configurations of her family's situation in
London. Louisa's struggle for maturity, impeded both by her husband's
obsession to control and her own lim itations, shapes a large part of
this narrative. Although she was adult in many ways, psychological
maturity always eluded her while she lived with John Quincy. Yet by
1817, Louisa's wide European experiences had made her perhaps the most
sophisticated and travelled woman in America, and the end of all her
striving seemed in sight. Her later years from 1817 to 1852, during
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. which her hopes were dashed in tragedy, are outside the scope of this
work.
Within the limits of these early years, I have tried to pose
some pertinent questions about Louisa. Who was she? In what kind of a
family did she grow up? What kind of education did she receive? What
were her goals in life? How did she meet and why did she marry John
Quincy? What did she learn from her experiences? How did she view her
husband, children, her own life? What gave her pleasure; what caused
h e r pain?
Louisa's life encompassed some very disparate elements: an
English mother, an American father, and a London residence. Louisa's
was an Anglo-American family struggling to hold on to their American
roots in a slightly alien country. The highly social, overly sensitive,
unrealistic and romantic Louisa became engaged to the intellectual,
controlled and very uncommunicative John Quincy. John Quincy perceived
Louisa's outlook in political terms, as a consequence of European living,
and he feared these traits would unsuit her for life in an American
republic. Yet they married in spite of an engagement filled with
quarrels, misunderstandings, and hurtful, wounding letters. John
Quincy's fears of Louisa's European background had a history reaching
far back into his own extraordinary childhood, which is here given the
close attention it deserves.
More questions are raised by Louisa's removal from the expected
roles in which nineteenth-century women found their meaning: managing
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the household, raising the children and being the moral center of the
family. Her very controlling husband kept these roles for himself and
Louisa acquiesced in the arrangement. Deprived of the usual outlets for
women of the time, where did she turn, where did she find meaning for
h e r li f e ?
Louisa's relations to the Adams family form another theme of
this dissertation. Did the family see her, as did John Quincy, as
possessed of dangerously unrepublican tendencies? Did she consider
herself an Adams ? In a larger sense, which women are considered part of
a family which remains prominent through several generations, and which
are outsiders? Is only the founder's wife and mother of the second
generation truly "of the family" and are all others fed into an ongoing
stream, never to be truly considered one of its members? Louisa's
position in the Adams family may help us to know more about the Adams
family structure, especially if in some later work her position is
compared to that of Abigail Brooks, a thorough New Englander and in no
way as "different" from the Adamses as was Louisa.
Although Louisa stands firmly in the center of this study, her
own family plays a vital part: her many sisters, her father Joshua
Johnson, United States Consul in London, and the remarkable English
woman, Catherine Johnson, Louisa's mother. Beginning life as an
illegitim ate London girl, pregnant at fifteen, perhaps not even married
to the father of her baby, Catherine managed to arrange good marriages
for six of her seven daughters. In eighteenth-century terms, she was a
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. resounding success. Admired by Abigail and John Adams, welcomed at
White House dinners by Thomas Jefferson, making friends wherever she
went, her ability to create and maintain a family in the face of serious
difficulties was impressive.
Not only the Johnsons but many of the Adamses enter this narra
tive, especially Louisa's very engrossing husband, John Quincy. If
complaints that men's biographies have in the past been written without
sufficient consideration of their wives are valid, then biographers of
women must not compound the error by artificially removing the husbands
from their works. Louisa's career was her husband's. To understand
Louisa's life, John Quincy's must also be attended to, so he appears here
as a secondary but major figure. Louisa may be the main focus of the
picture, but just behind her, and most recognizable, is her husband
John Quincy Adams.
The diplomatic corps, in which Loir - spent so many years,
blurred the usual sharp dichotomy between the spheres of husbands and
wives. Louisa lived in three European posts: Prussia, Russia, and
Great Britain. Few American women of her time were so prepared for
diplomatic life as was Louisa when she married. Accustomed to enter
taining and accomplished—as the eighteenth century understood the
term—she had lived in a quasi-diplomatic household, and spoke fluent
French. In Prussia and Russia she was singled out by royalty for
special attention and easily made friends within the diplomatic corps.
In spite of John Quincy's expressed fears, Louisa remained uncorrupted
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by the luxuries and displays of European Courts. The niggardly salaries
paid to United States Ministers forced Louisa to sacrifice comfort and
even necessities, while living in wildly extravagant Courts. Yet she
was at all times a faithful representative of the republican country, in
which she had not been reared. The lives of women who have followed
their husbands to remote diplomatic posts have not been studied, but
these unknown, unrecognized women, many of whose letters may s till be
extant, should claim our attention. Louisa Adams’ experiences in Europe
would seem an interesting beginning for such a study.
Much has been written about Abigail Adams' undoubted patriotism ;
Louisa's services to her country have passed virtually unnoticed. Both
women crossed the Atlantic on wretched sailing ships to reach their
husbands' diplomatic posts. Louisa lived abroad on the same inadequate
salary as did her mother-in-law. Each woman suffered the same agonizing
separations from children and husband for the sake of her husband's
public career. Abigail coped alone on a New England farm during the
Revolutionary War while John was away on diplomatic missions. Louisa
remained by herself in St. Petersburg for ten months while John Quincy
negotiated the Treaty of Ghent. Louisa endured serious illnesses
abroad and even buried a beloved infant daughter in Russia, She accepted
all these privations for the sake of her husband and his career in the
service of the United States—a country she did not even see until she
was twenty-six and whose strident republicanism she learned about only
when she became engaged. No less than Abigail's, Louisa's life was
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. determined by the requirements of the United States, and she rendered
services to her country, both abroad and at home, which deserve public
recognition.
Both Louisa and Abigail made sacrifices for reasons of patriotism
and ambition, yet the balance between the two emotions was different for
each woman. Two very equal sentiments motivated Abigail's sacrifices:
her deeply felt commitment to and identification with her country, and
her ambition for her husband to succeed as a great statesman. She lived
through the struggle for Independence as the wife of a prominent
participant, and thus identified with the United States with an intensity
Louisa could not match. Not only had Louisa taken no part in her
country's founding but she had been raised entirely in Europe. Yet the
same difficult life was demanded of Louisa as it had been of Abigail.
Louisa's sacrifices, in some ways even greater than her mother-in-law's,
sprang from a much weaker patriotism, though allied with an ambition for
her husband's career that certainly equalled Abigail's.
Louisa's story is that of a woman whose life was ruled by
ambition: first, her wish to marry well, and second, her husband's
ambition which she accepted as her own. Neither her husband's nor
h e r own a s p ira tio n s could be p u b lic ly acknowledged. Women's one
allowable ambition was a good marriage, but they must, the culture
prescribed, cover over their pursuit of a husband with a denying
passivity. His parents raised John Quincy to be a great statesman which,
after 1789, meant that his goal was to be President of the United States,
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but according to Adams’ thinking, high office must never be sought. It
must come unbidden as a reward for services rendered to the Republic,
Women must wait patiently for marriage; Adamses must wait patiently for
political office. For both Louisa and John Quincy, life was lived with
high aspirations and much self-delusion, and enormous tensions and
frustrations were the result. Louisa early attained her goal to marry
well; once married to John Quincy, she adopted his ambitions. Suppres
sion of overt expression of her hopes for her husband was easy. What
she sorely lacked was the ability to bear with equanimity the exactions
of a long-term goal.
Louisa’s psychological training within her family was in no way
equal to her vigorous ambition. Her childhood was "fraught,” she wrote,
"with bliss." It would be more accurate to say it was fraught with
anxiety. Her father’s constant financial distresses, her mother’s social
strivings, and her father’s chronic fears of ill health (for himself and
his children) kept the family under almost constant stress. Throughout
this time, Louisa was "petted" and spoiled. The culture demanded that
young women appear docile, of uncertain health, timid, and in need of
constant emotional support. These "feminine" traits were of no use to
Louisa in equipping her to accept with poise and grace the demands of
John Quincy’s career. She needed courage, physical and mental endurance,
self-confidence and emotional fortitude. As a young girl, Louisa knew
nothing of these sterner virtues.
Louisa could not own her ambition but she did admit she was
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excessively proud; both qualities rested on a very shaky foundation.
Louisa always lacked self-confidence. At seven years of age, she
already felt out of place with Americans in Paris. In England, she felt
even more out of place in her school and in the Anglican Church. Anxious
to shine at school and in the marriage race with her sisters, she
developed an outward compliance, which suppressed the symptoms of
eagerness, but could not control the anger and tensions caused by such
restraints. Since girls were forbidden to display or even to feel anger
in any form, her often-expressed anger further sapped her self-confidence.
During her childhood, ill-health rather than achievement brought her the
attention she craved. Her family even thought one of her sisters, not
she, should have been John Quincy's choice. What little self-confidence
Louisa possessed was nearly completely destroyed by her father’s
financial failure a few weeks after she married. She was never able to
shake off the feeling that John Quincy regretted having married into a
ruined family, and she carried this guilt for the rest of her life.
Further, possessing no dowry, she thought she had no rights and no
standing in her marriage.
Her ambivalence intensified Louisa’s emotional problems. She
admired strong, intellectual women, yet thought them unfeminine, and
therefore unacceptable as role models. She complained that woman had
been "cowed by her Master man," yet she continually deferred to men,
looking to them for protection and for her own self-esteem. Unsure
about herself as a woman and unable to take a clear stand, she constantly
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shifted from assertions of competence to disclaimers and excuses. The
great affection and gratitude she felt because her husband had married
her, and her appreciation of his great probity and high-mindedness,
constantly warred with the tremendous anger he roused in her by his
remote and distant personality. Feeling inferior and therefore grateful
that he had married her, she nevertheless complained because no need
of hers, no matter how great or how stridently expressed, could deflect
him from his goal.
Once married, Louisa faced one crisis after another that her
husband's career provoked. His service in Washington as Senator forced
the family into a series of unhappy choices. Since Jefferson, all
Presidents had served first as Secretary of State. Louisa and John
Quincy both knew that service abroad, crisis-laden and difficult as it
was in the early nineteenth century, might bring him the Secretaryship,
which in turn might lead to the Presidency.
Further, John Quincy's political ambitions deprived Louisa of
the satisfaction of filling the twin roles of wife and mother.
Although usually thought of as a modern plight, political wives struggled
with this problem even during the early days of the Republic. While
John Quincy was Senator from Massachusetts (1803-1808), the family was
almost never together, forcing Louisa to choose between her husband and
her children. During the six years Louisa was in Russia, she was
separated from her two oldest boys. No matter which role she chose,
mother or wife, she felt guilty and angry about the difficulty of the
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c h o ic e .
In view of the many crises brought on by John Quincy's career,
Louisa needed emotional support. Yet her husband's personality and
manners were a major problem for her. She sought from John Quincy
emotional warmth, easy and long periods of socializing, and continual
companionship. But he was cool, distant, self-absorbed and only fit
fully companionable. Even his parents, who thought him the possessor of
almost every virtue, had to reprove him for his coldness, amounting to
rudeness, when entering a room. Louisa needed constant emotional
support, and what she termed "gentle correction," not John Quincy's
criticism which she considered harsh and preemptory.
If Louisa's was a story of a woman made unhappy and limited by
the structures of the culture and a husband who could not meet her
emotional needs, it would be merely a melancholy tale. Louisa was,
however, n o t only a woman acted on and moved by th e c u ltu re . She becomes
a tragic figure in that she herself was a protagonist in the drama.
She carried within her the seeds of her own unhappiness. If the culture
disapproved of aggressive, ambitious, active women, Louisa concurred
with the strictures. She was in full agreement that she should be what
she was not. Louisa could not like herself and at the same time admire
the model the culture held up to her. In any age it would have been
hard for Louisa, who was difficult, sharp, and ambitious, to come to
terms with her culture's ideal for woman. In the late eighteenth century
women lived under particularly strong constraints. Even before she
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married, she perceived herself as different from the model, and certainly
the enormous strains and stresses of John Quincy's career only
exacerbated her own inner tensions.
Further, Louisa could not find in herself the strength to pay,
with grace, the price needed to achieve the goal she had taken on as her
own when she married. Her passions led her to want both present
satisfactions and benefits of future goals. She could not enjoy both
simultaneously. The-necessary day-by-day self-abnegation and intense
self-discipline she needed for calm acceptance of a difficult and
strenuous life quite simply exceeded Louisa's strength, despite her
identification with the objective.
Louisa could neither live with ambition nor stifle its imperious
demands. After years of separations Louisa, John Quincy and their three
sons finally found domestic peace while living in Ealing on the outskirts
of London from 1815 to 1817. The family happiness she had sought since
her marriage was hers at last. Yet she could not rest. She went in
search of a house in London itself, where John Quincy's career might be
furthered by greater contact with Americans.
Louisa did have some strengths to call upon, but it is easier
to understand her weaknesses than her powers. Her overriding ambitions
for her husband, and for herself, may have given her life a thrust and
direction which ultimately helped her to accept the distresses she was
forced to endure. Perhaps because, in spite of the culture, she did
lash out at John Quincy, refusing to accept him as the paragon his
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parents thought him; perhaps because her mother managed her own long
term goal of raising socially successful children under difficult
circumstances ; perhaps because she herself was a success in the
diplomatic world; Louisa bore with the constant crises which beset her
life. Even being an outsider may have helped. Her distance may have
allowed her to draw strength from watching, appreciating, considering
the human comedy which passed before her in so many d if f e r e n t p a rts of
the world. One sees more if one is slightly on the outside looking in.
Forced by circumstances in 1814-1815 to be responsible for herself and
others, she discovered a competence she did not know she possessed,
abilities she generously thought other women too might possess were
they faced with the same responsibilities.
This dissertation is but one step in understanding Louisa's
complex personality. The definitive version of her early life will
emerge only after many scholars have analyzed and described the
configurations of other aspects of her character. Her importance is
confirmed by her centrality to Adams family history, her varied
American and European experiences , and her insistance—in spite of
being a woman—that her story be heard. The rewarding task of fully
understanding Louisa still lies ahead.
The enormous imbalance between Louisa's sacrifices and the
rewards she received for her husband's realized ambition constituted
the heart of her final dilemma. John Quincy's Presidency proved to be
a four-year affliction, and Louisa sank into the semi-invalidism so
prevalent among upper-class women in the nineteenth century. Amid the
tragedies of her later life. Louisa's sacrifices seemed less and less
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worthy of the goal. Having totally identified with his ambition, the
b i t t e r h arv est was as much hers as h i s .
Louisa's memoirs were written to save something of herself from
the OTeckage of ambition and a distressingly subordinate role in her
husband's life. Although wanting him to be President, she felt she had
been crowded out by the great design of John Quincy's calling. In her
w ritings, she argued unendingly with the world, which thought she had
no v a lu e , y et a t the same time she agreed w ith i t s assessm ent. She
wrote to assert her identity by offering her version of events, yet the
truth of Louisa's memoirs is more often to be found in the emotions
they express than in the details of the narrative. Most poignantly,
she w rote to l e t the world know she e x is te d . In 1836 Louisa wrote the
account of her journey across Europe to proclaim to the world that she
was a woman "who was." This dissertation is an attempt to recover from
the shadows of Adams family history Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams, a
woman "who was."
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER I
A TANGLED SKEIN
The Johnson family, into which Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams
(1775-1852) was born, was a most unusual one. Her mother, Catherine
Young Johnson (1757-1811) was illegitim ate and her parents' own
marriage was performed, if at all, under questionable circumstances.
Yet the Johnsons lived outwardly like a legally married, socially
acceptable couple. Despite the fact that they frequently teetered on
the brink of financial disaster, they lived opulently and tastefully.
The Johnson ties with social England were almost non-existent in spite
of Louisa's English mother and the family's London residence: both the
politics and their social life were American. Louisa's American
father, Joshua Johnson (1742-1802) was a vocal and committed American
patriot, yet he stayed in London until 1778, three years after their
start of the Revolution. Louisa wrote about her ambiguous and
complicated background as if nothing were amiss. Her life had been
complicated for her before her birth; she never straightened out its
tangled skeins.
17
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"My Father was the descendant of an English Gentleman," Louisa
wrote when she came, in middle age, to write her memoirs.1 On 29 May
1771, in a reversal of the usual pattern, which saw Britishers emigrate
to the colonies, the twenty-nine-year-old Johnson, born and raised in
Maryland, stepped off a boat in Bristol, England, and headed for
London. There, as the partner of a new American firm, Wallace,
Davidson and Johnson, he hoped to succeed in the mercantile world of
Anglo-American trade.2
Joshua Johnson's ancestors originated in Yarmouth, England.
During the English revolution (1640-1649), Thomas Johnson, an early and
prominent member of the Puritan "Eastern Counties Association," turned
royalist and for this change of allegiance received a coat of arms from
llCA, "Record of a Life or My Story," p. 3, APM, reel 265.
2Jacob M. Price, ed., Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1771-1774; Letters from a Merchant in London to His Partners in Maryland (London: London Record Society, 1979), p. vii; Edward C. Papenfuse, In Pursuit of Profit: The Annapolis Merchants in the Era of the American Revolution, 1763-1805 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), p. 53. See Jacob M. Price, "Joshua Johnson in London, 1771- 1775: Credit and Commercial Organization in the British Chesapeake Trade," in A. Whiteman et al., eds.. Statesmen, Scholars and Merchants: Essays in Eighteenth-Century History Presented to Dame Lucy Sutherland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 153-80. LCA. "Record," p. 3, APM, reel 265. Two other firms sent Americans to London at the same time as Wallace, Davidson and Johnson. One was a smaller firm; the second could not raise sufficient capital to survive the credit crisis in 1772-1773. Papenfuse, Pursuit, p. 67, n. 98. Charles Albro Barker, The Background of the Revolution in Maryland (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940), p. 344.
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3 the Heralds’ College. Here, family tradition diverges into two
slightly different versions.
One version, recorded by a cousin of Louisa, James Johnson, and
attributed by him to Louisa, herself, is as follows: Thomas Johnson's
son, a young barrister, eloped with one Mary Baker, a ward in chancery.
Wards in chancery were forbidden by law to marry without the Chancellor's
permission, which the young couple did not obtain. However, Mary
Baker's father, a ship's captain, arranged for their escape to Calvert
County, Maryland, where they arrived about 1690, Several years later,
because his brother was in favor at the Court of Queen Anne, Thomas
decided to return to England, leaving for the time being his wife and a
young son, born in 1702, in Maryland. After incredible adventures, he
reappeared in Maryland, only to find that his wife allegedly had died
from worry and anguish.^ In another version, recorded by Louisa's
co u sin , C harles Johnson, Thomas came to America because of p o l i t i c a l
troubles. He opened a store and was captured returning to England for
3 Edward S. Delaplaine. The Life of Thomas Johnson (New York; F. H. Hitchcock, 1927), p. 8.
^This version of the Johnson family history is taken from "A Letter of Information from James Johnson, nephew of Governor Johnson (son of James and Margaret Skinner Johnson) to his children. September, 1842." Johnson file. Filing cabinet A, Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, Maryland. Referring to the details apparently given by Louisa Adams, James Johnson questioned the accuracy of Louisa's account. See also Adele Moody to Charles Stein, 8 May 1963, Johnson File, Filing cabinet A, Maryland Historical Society. Delaplaine. Life, p. 8.
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merchandise.^
A few years later, Thomas Johnson, too, died, leaving his young
son in the care of friends, who took not only physical care of the boy
but also saw to it that he received a good education. In 1725, this
Thomas Johnson married Dorcas Sedgwick, whose Puritan ancestors, forced
to leave Virginia, had settled in Calvert County, Maryland. Johnson
rose in Maryland to elective office, being sent to the Lower House of
the Maryland Assembly as Delegate from Cecil County. Joshua Johnson, 6 Louisa s father, was the eighth of the eleven Johnson children.
The plan of the firm in sending Johnson abroad represented a
break with the old ways of merchandising and ushered in a new era in
Anglo-American trade, in that the firm was capitalized from America, not
England.^ The concern hoped to gain for themselves the substantial
amounts that the British middlemen in London took as commissions for
selecting and shipping merchandise to Maryland. Since many London
merchants ordered goods for Maryland sight unseen, quality control was
impossible; Johnson's job was to choose the goods personally and oversee
g their shipment to the store in Annapolis.
^LCA to CFA, 5 July 1828, APM, reel 486. The letter from Charles Johnson is dated 30 June 1828, and is copied into LCA to CFA, 5 July 1828, APM, reel 486.
^Delaplaine. Life, pp. 9-10.
^Edward Papenfuse believes the success of Johnson's firm con tributed to tensions between Great Britain and America, Papenfuse, Pursuit, p. 34. O JJ to Charles Wallace, 22 November 1773, Price, ed., Letterbook,
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Young, exuberant, and single, Joshua Johnson reached London
four days after disembarking in Bristol. Like most Americans, he found
England and London overwhelming. In letters home he described the route
between Bristol and London as a "continual garden" and noticed
"Noblemans Seats every here & there.London was the entrepot of the
Atlantic world and its docks were piled high with manufactured export
goods beyond Joshua Johnson's wildest expectations.^^ Hoping to look
more like a Londoner, he ordered new suits immediately.^^
Johnson considered London a city of danger as well as oppor
tunity. He needed two sets of eyes, he reported home, one in front and
12 one behind, and found little integrity in London business practices.
He found temptations so rampant that he despaired of taking proper care
of Charles Calvert, a young Marylander. Totally lost if more than "a
p. 106. For the mark-up on goods Johnson imported, see John Thomas Scharf, History of Maryland (Hatboro, Penn.: Tradition Press, 1967; facsimile reprint of 1879 edition), p. 68.
^JJ to Jarrand Hopkins, 20 July 1771, Joshua Johnson's Letter book, 1771-1774, Maryland Hall of Records (hereafter cited as Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1771-1774, MHR).
^^JJ to the firm, 7 August 1771, Price, ed., Letterbook, p. 11. "Every visitor to eighteenth-century London was impressed by the noise and the throng of people." Roger Hart, English Life in the Eighteenth Century (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, Inc., 1970), p. 13.
^^JJ to John Davidson, 4 June 1771, Price, ed., Letterbook, p. 1.
^^JJ to John Davidson, 22 July 1771, Price, ed., Letterbook, p. 3; JJ to the firm, 29 October 1771, Price, ed., Letterbook, p. 13. 1 ^ JJ to John Davidson, 30 October 1772, Price, ed., Letterbook, p. 51.
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mile from home," he gradually found his bearings, and six months later
he boasted to the firm they could send his mail to "simply . . .
JJ Mercht. London as I am become of that consequence that they w ill
readily come to hand."^^
Johnson's courage, however boldly advanced, never lasted. All
too often his self-doubts proved sturdier than his bravado. When first
in London he worried what people were saying about him in Maryland, and
thought himself ill-educated.^^ His self-image required constant
bolstering, and he insisted to the firm that he wished to be supported
in the character of a gentleman. Johnson's emotional volatility
continued throughout his career: he was either elated with success or
cowering before adversity. His character provided little room for steady,
orderly progress, or for serenity and calm. Certainly, the very nature
of the mercantile business created some of this instability, but
Johnson seemed particularly susceptible to the vagaries and trials of
this world. Just below his heightened rhetoric and boasting was an
unsure, homesick young American. Even before leaving Annapolis, Johnson
distrusted his ability to carry on his end of the business and he
continued to defer to his partners in all major decisions, such as
whether to continue or quit the business. He covered his feelings of
inferiority with banter, accusing an acquaintance of thinking him dead.
^^JJ to the firm, 4 December 1771, Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1771-1774, MHR.
^^JJ to the firm, 18 August 1771, Price, ed., Letterbook, p. 12.
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and, therefore, "goodbye to you old acquaintance."^^ Considering himself
in exile, he thought (hoped really) his stay in London would be limited
to four or five years. However long he lived in London, he never
became Anglicized and regarded America a more moral country.
Johnson’s very first letters to Maryland, announcing his arrival
in London, had, as a subsidiary theme, a subject that was to become all
too familiar in his future letters: his health. He reported home a bad 18 leg, a cough, fevers, inflammation of the lungs, and a hernia. His
illnesses could be brought on by business worries. Hearing in October
1772 that a ship he had loaded with goods might arrive in Annapolis
during a siege of smallpox, Johnson became ill for a week. 19 He assumed
his American friends worried about him and he concealed from them the
news that he had a bad cold. In 1773, he recovered from a "long 20 complaint," but did not specify its nature. Johnson's greatest problem
during his first year in England was his health, but it would pale in
comparison to the financial problems of 1772.
^^JJ to Samuel Harrison, 15 September 1771, Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1771-1774, MHR.
JJ to James Gibbs, 13 November 1771, Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1771-1774, MHR; JJ to Lloyd Tilghman, 5 February 1773, Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1771-1774, MHR.
^^JJ to John Davisson, 22 July 1771, JJ to Denton Jacques, 20 July 1771, JJ to the firm, 20 December 1771, Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1771-1774, MHR.
^^JJ to the firm, 7 October 1772, Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1771-1774, MHR. 20 JJ to Matthew Ridley, 15 February 1773, Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1771-1774, MHR.
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In 1772, exactly one year after Johnson arrived in England, a
widespread panic shook the London financial market. The cause of the
crisis lay in the vast amount of credit offered by the London merchants
during the great financial boom which lasted from 1765 to 1771. Great
commercial expansion occurred both in England and in the colonies, and
credit also increased. Land, slaves, goods had all been pledged, but
many large loans were never paid back. Some debts were even passed down
from father to son. Planters in the West Indies and in America felt no
compunction at encumbering their estates with debts, some to the tune of
ten times the value of the collateral. London firms assumed property
overseas as safe as that in England, and offered huge amounts of credit.
Excessive consumption and luxurious living became a way of life for
American planters after 1763, but they based this lifestyle largely on
the continued extension of credit rather than on cash. The precipitating
factor in the volatile mix was the failure of the Fordyce Bank in London;
other banks soon closed their doors. The boom years of the late sixties
and early seventies had created an enormous demand for exports to meet
the growing wants of the planters, and when the crash came, Johnson was 21 in London.
In the midst of the panic, many firms suffered severely, some
Richard B. Sheridan, "The British Credit Crisis of 1772 and the American Colonies," The Journal of Economic History 20 (June 1960); 161-88. Katherine A. Kellock, "London Merchants and the pre-1776 American Debts," Guildhall Studies in London History 1 (October 1974); 109-49.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 25
went out of business altogether, and immediately Johnson, who had been
doing well his first year, began to receive a high proportion of
protested bills. At this juncture, he lost a nerve (at best never very
strong) and wrote his partners with something akin to panic. "Fearful,"
he "hoped in God" they would take care of him; his situation was
dreadful and he thought he would end as an inmate of King's Bench
22 prison. Johnson was very vulnerable in London: as a provincial he
operated out of his depth in the city's financial circles, and he alone
represented the firm. His partners censored him for his lack of nerve, 23 without the slightest appreciation of Johnson's risky position.
Possibly the American view of London as a luxury-loving city fueled the
Annapolis partners' further complaints that Johnson lived above his
means. In turn, Johnson taxed his partners for their failure to keep
him fully informed and thought they took too much upon themselves,
failing to follow his instructions, which he based on firsthand
knowledge of business conditions in London.Johnson's p a rtn e rs
thought he manipulated his figures and kept a larger percentage of the
commissions than warranted. Although he denied the charge, his own
figures cast some doubt on the integrity with which he dealt with the
22 JJ to John Davidson, 5 February 1773, Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1771-1774, MHR.
^^The firm to JJ, 3 November 1773, Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1771-1774, MHR.
^^JJ to the firm, 6 February 1773, Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1771-1774, MHR.
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planter's tobacco. He reported one sale price home, while entering
another on the books of the firm.25 Even during good times tension
existed between Johnson and his partners, but during bad times
arguments always intensified.
Johnson had some very modern business attitudes. He had, from
his earliest days in London, the idea that time was money.26 He also
wrote in the fullest detail concerning the trade, teaching his partners
what he thought they needed to know, because he considered information
important. Johnson pushed the firm to seek business aggressively, and
when the Chesapeake was blockaded in 1781, he asked his partners, "Why
not go to Philadelphia?"27 in all his years in business he never found
25price, "Joshua Johnson in London," p. 177, and Papenfuse, Pursuit, p. 55, n. 55, and see p. 75, n. 114. "Even Benjamin Franklin . . . felt compelled to confess that 'Commerce . . . is generally Cheating' and that farming is, after all, 'the only honest Way for a people to acquire wealth.'" William D. Liddle, "'Virtue and Liberty': An Inquiry into the Role of the Agrarian Myth in the Rhetoric of the American Revolutionary Era," The South Atlantic Quarterly 77 (Winter 1978):34. See also J . G. A. Pocock, "C ivic Humanism and I t s Role in Anglo-American Thought," in Politics, Language and Time; Essays on Political Thought and History (New York: Atheneum, 1971), p. 92. John Trumbull's "criticism of his brother's commercial interests reflects the circular argument that dominated much of American thought for many decades a f te r the R evolution: commerce co n trib u ted to the public good by providing ease and comfort to the people; furthermore, trade brought friendly relations among nations. But prosperity stirred greed, which satisfied itself with constantly greater accumulation; wealth led to extravagance and luxurious living and eventually, inevitably, to corruption and decay." Irma B. Jaffe, John Trumbull: Patriot-A rtist of the American Revolution (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1975), p. 66. See also Drew R. McCoy, "Benjamin Franklin's Vision of a Republican P o litic a l Economy fo r America," The W illiam and Mary Quarterly 35 (October 1978):605-28.
26price, ed., Letterbook, p. xxiv.
27papenfuse, Pursuit, p. 110.
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partners that could match his sense of urgency and drive. They thought
they were restraining his impetuosity; he thought his public image could
create business. His partners in America imagined he was simply living
too high; he believed he was inspiring confidence in his ability. In a
pattern that was to be repeated over and over again, Johnson's initiative,
although strong enough when he proposed his schemes, collapsed in the
face of difficulties. His courage in facing day-to-day hardships never
equalled his high ambitions.
Having survived the credit crisis, Johnson could write in
November 1773 to the firm, "I have a pleasure of informing you that we
are in Top Credit. . . . I am much elated at our present flattering 28 Prospect in good Health Good Spirits." He did not tell the firm, or
anyone else (friend or business acquaintance) in any extant letter in
1773, that he was about to become a father, that the baby would be born
in December 1773, and that the mother of the child was a sixteen-year-old
London g i r l named C atherine Young, th e daughter of one Mary Young and, 29 Louisa later wrote, a Mr. "Nuth."
The background of Louisa's mother is puzzling. After she was
married, Louisa wrote a genealogical memorandum which has been preserved
among the Adams Papers. Louisa wrote:
JJ to the firm, 29 November 1773, Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1771-1774, MHR. It is important to note that the firm was saved with American, not British capital. Papenfuse, Pursuit, p. 67, n. 99.
^^Baptismal Record Book, St. Botolph without Aldgate, The Guildhall Library, London, England.
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His [her mother's father's] name was Nuth and as I have always heard from my Mother he had a Place like that of Charles Lamb mentioned in his Memoirs of Writer I think it is termed in the India House I do not even recollect his Christian Name and am not sure that I ever heard
My Grand Mothers name was Mary Young. She was the daughter of a Brewer a Partner in the House of Sir Felix Calvert and was engaged to marry his Son but owing to some misunderstanding rejected him and married Mr. Nuth. They had twenty two living Children born but only reared two My Mother Catherine Nuth and A Son who at fourteen years of Age was sent out by the East Indian Company as a Cadet and was always supposed to have perished in one of the expeditions sent up into the back Country. I remember my Grandfather who died at the Age of ninety six—I think when I was about 12 or 13 years old—He lived at Camberwell and left at his death the sum of 500 sterling to my Mother which my Father permitted her to use as her own.50
Louisa also wrote elsewhere that her maternal grandfather had a "very
indifferent" character and that he and Joshua Johnson had quarreled.51
If we accept Louisa's account, a genealogical chart of her mother's
family would look like this:
50undated genealogical note on the Johnson family in LCA's handwriting, APM, reel 603. Henry Adams, LCA's grandson, was perplexed by LCA's maternal genealogy. In 1893 he wrote to his cousin, "My own chief curiosity is to know something about my great grandmother Catherine Nuth, wife of Joshua Johnson and mother of Mrs. J. Q. Adams. If any of your Maryland genealogists will solve me that difficulty, I can quite fill out my family tree." Henry Adams to Maria Louisa Crane, 27 May 1893, Fourth Generation, Adams Papers, MHS. Seven years later, Henry wrote his mother, "You ask me a question which is one of the deepest mysteries of metaphysical theology. What was [sic] Catherine Nuth Johnson? Her daughter, Louisa Catherine Johnson, our grandmother ought to have known who she was. If any historical reasoning is sound, that appears so—to me." Henry Adams to Charles Francis Adams, Jr., 12 July 1900, Fourth Generation, Adams Papers, MHS. In 1895 Henry went to London and hired a genealogist to search the records for a Young/Nuth/Johnson connection; none could be found. Henry planned a biography of LCA. He stopped, however, after collecting material from LCA's letters and diaries, filling but one notebook. The notebook is now in the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Henry never recorded why he dropped the proj ect.
51lCA, "Record," pp. 3-4, APM, reel 265.
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0) 'Xi 00 •S 00M
<
> i /-—. vo M 00 M Cd cd O o N 0) S r—i 130 M cd 1—1 . O QJ 1 W >-j Q C 0 ro 0) w .=r O 0 t— (U o iH a W P> w '—y •rH CD «d- M cu CO 0 cd Ü - 0) cd u U X! •H a rH 0 > •H o P P cd H T l m Cd cd p -p td C C u a IH XI o o H X s o X-P t-3 p tH u .H W m C30 0 rH Cd Cd •H r^- w 0 H ;d P rH P k x : cd rsfO I—! g Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 30 Louisa's statements concerning her mother's father "Mr. Nuth" cannot be verified. First, the records at India House do not indicate that the company employed anyone by the name of Nuth between 1750 and 1775, the years in which Louisa's grandfather Nuth might have worked there. Further, no cadet named Nuth appears in the company records nor was he a member of any expedition. Unfortunately, Louisa did not recall ever hearing the Christian name of her grandfather Nuth; the records 32 of India House w ill not supply this lack. Her great-grandfather, named Young, Louisa wrote, was a partner in the Calvert brewery. Although in no way conclusive, the 1745 records of a lease for a warehouse by the Calvert firm indicate that Felix Calvert's partners at that time were Samuel Smith and Sir William 33 Calvert, Knight; no record of a partner named Young exists. Yet another problem exists concerning Louisa's grandmother, Mary Young, the daughter of the London brewer. Louisa referred to her grandmother not as "Mrs. Nuth," but as Miss Young,or Mary OO Records searched by the author at the India House Library, London. Record L/AG/9/4/13-20. The librarian at India House searched in vain for a cadet named Nuth. Letter to Joan R. Challinor from Miss M. Meaden, India Office Records, 30 January 1980. O O Letter from C. R. H. Cooper, Keeper of Manuscripts, the Guildhall Library to Joan R. Challinor, 2 November 1979. A search for a w ill of a "Mr. Young" of Camberwell was made for me by Marie McMahon of The American University. None could be located in Camberwell, or any other part of London. Records searched are in the Public Record Office, and the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. ^^"My Grandmother was a Miss Young." LCA, "Record," p. 4, APM, r e e l 265. " I know l i t t l e more than th a t my Grandmother’s name was Young." LCA to ABA, 3 January 1844, APM, reel 528. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 31 35 Young, once even as Miss Mary Young. Why, if she was married to Mr. Nuth, did Louisa call her "Miss Mary Young" rather than Mary Nuth or Mrs. Nuth? From legal records preserved at Nantes, France, where the Johnsons lived for seven years, it appears that Mary Young's daughter, Catherine (Louisa's mother), also used the name of Young, when, if Louisa's account is accurate, she should have been called Catherine N uth.37 Not only is there a problem with Catherine Johnson's maiden name and with the identity of her father and grandfather, but also with her own marriage to Joshua Johnson. A genealogist hired by Henry Adams, Louisa's grandson, in the 1890s was unable to find the marriage record of Catherine Young (Nuth) Johnson and Joshua Johnson, Louisa's mother and father. The genealogist's investigations, Henry wrote, "continued for two years through all the Parish records, and the India Office, and every where he could think; but not a trace has he ever found of Nuth or Young 38 or Johnson, in marriage or out." My own researches through some of the 35"My grandmother's name was Mary Young." Undated genealogical note on the Johnson family in LCA's handwriting, APM, reel 603. 3^"Your Grandmother was a Miss Mary Young," LCA to CFA, 5 July 1828, APM, reel 486. In a chart of her family's genealogy, LCA wrote Joshua Johnson married "Miss Nuth," APM, reel 603. 37"Dame C atherine young, nee à L ondre." B aptism al c e r t i f i c a t e for Harriet Johnson, 3 January 1782, Archives Municipal de Nantes, France; "Dame Catherine Young (je dis jong) de Johnson." Baptismal certificate for Bethia Williams, 7 August 1782, Archives Municipal de Nantes, France. The second certificate was found for the author by Mary E. Challinor. O Q HA to CFA2 , 12 Ju ly 1900, Box marked "M iscellaneous. A ll Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 32 records of London parishes have also failed to find this important document. 39 No marriage between a Joshua Johnson and Catherine Young or Catherine Nuth is recorded at the church of St. Botolph without Aldgate, within which parish Joshua Johnson was living and where, normally, he would have been married. Catherine Young probably lived in London when she met Johnson. According to the French baptismal certificate, she was bom in London. Although Joshua Johnson concealed his fatherhood, he had, while in England, informed his Maryland friends about his dealings with women. He found that London women, whom he called "Quantum" (probably to indicate they were one-fourth ladies), were "exceedingly pretty and genteel," and he used them with impunity.He was pleased by the London ladies and he paid "tribute at the Temple of Venus," but s till he Generations," Adams Papers, Massachusetts H istorical Society, Boston, Massachusetts. 39 Matthew Ridley, living with Johnson, was married on 16 April 1776, at St. Botolph without Aldgate, the church where the first four Johnson children were baptized and where one might have expected Johnson's marriage to have taken place. Register of Marriages, 1767-79, Ms. 9230/4, St. Botolph without Aldgate, Guildhall Library, London. Catherine young, nee à Londre," baptismal certificate of Harriett Johnson, 3 January 1782, Archives Municipal de Nantes, France. Catherine's age at the birth of her first child is computed from two so u rces: John Quincy Adams's D iary fo r 25 May 1796, APM, r e e l 27, and LCA, Journal Fragment meant for ABA, 2 March 1834, APM, reel 499. ^^JJ to Denton Jacques, 20 July 1771, Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1771-1774, MHR. "Quantum" seems to have been Johnson's way of spelling "Quartem." A "Quartem" was a gill or the fourth part of a pint. Samuel Johnson, Dictionary of the English Language, 2d ed. (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1827). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 33 yearned for a soberer way of life.^^ Marriage, however, for a struggling young merchant, with very shaky prospects, was out of the question. In January 1773, Johnson, warned by a friend about women, declared he did not "even dare wish to form any acquaintance. February 1773, a letter to his brother said nothing about a marriage and a month later, Johnson assured his old friend, Denton Jacques, that although it was rumored in Maryland that "I shall get Married this I assure you . . . it is the least of my Thoughts & if I continue in the same mind I believe I never shall." A letter from a woman friend of Johnson's to her fiance, assuring him that Johnson was no rival of his, gives substance to Johnson's claim that in March 1773 he was indeed not married.The following month (April 1773), Johnson informed his partners that he needed a proper house and, indeed, he did find larger quarters. In September 1773, he inquired of John Davidson about his (Johnson's) "private matters , . . that I might regulate myself respecting other Matters," but he did not elucidate the "other M a t t e r s . He informed ‘^^JJ to Lloyd Tilghman, 3 September 1772, Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1771-1774, MHR, ^3johnson told Matthew Ridley he could not "form an acquaintance" because "Mrs. B has grown an armful." Who "Mrs. B " was, and what Johnson meant by "an armful" is obscure. JJ to Matthew Ridley, 6 January 1773, Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1771-1774, MHR. ^^JJ to Denton Jacques, 18 March 1773, Joshua Johnson's Letter book, 1771-1774, MHR. Anne Richardson to Matthew Ridley, 5 March 1773, Ridley Papers, Box # 1, MHS. ^^JJ to John Davidson, 4 September 1773, Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1771-1774, MHR. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 34 John Davidson (Catherine Young was within three months of giving birth) that "some of my good friends have been busy with me and the Crehold Ladies. A Man must possess true Courage indeed to ingage the Matrimonial way in these hard times. Even in November, when Catherine was seven months pregnant, Johnson again denied that he was married. "You say that you have heard I was to be married, I pawn my Honor to you there is nothing in it," he 47 wrote home. In the very same month, Johnson advised the firm that he was renting a "house of my own," not because he would have a wife and child, but so that he could entertain visiting Americans in London. He also began to separate his living expenses from his "House Rent, Taxes, Clerks wages and charges of Merchandize."^^ Then, on 22 December 1773, after denying in March, September, and November that he was even contemplating marriage, Joshua Johnson became the father of a g irl. This daughter, Nancy Johnson, was duly baptized at the church of St. Botolph without Aldgate and her parents were recorded as Catherine and Joshua Johnson. Although no marriage record for Catherine Young and Joshua 49 Johnson has ever been found, the child was registered as legitimate. 4Glbid. ^^JJ to Matthew Ridley, 3 November 1773, Joshua Johnson’s Letterbook, 1771-1774, MHR. to the firm, 20 November 1773, Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1771-1774, MHR. 49 Nancy Johnson was baptized twice according to the record book: once on 2 January 1774, and again two weeks later in the same church on 16 January 1774. Baptismal Record, St. Botolph without Aldgate. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 35 Louisa stated later that her mother was "not yet twenty one" when she went to Nantes in 1778.^^ If correct, and there is no reason to doubt the truth of her statement, then Catherine Young would have been fifteen years old when she conceived her first child and sixteen when she bore the child. Johnson, born in 1742, would have been thirty at Nancy's conception and thirty-one at the birth of the child. Men often married in their early thirties, but fifteen would have been a very early age for Catherine Young either to conceive a child or to marry. The average age at which women married in the eighteenth century, below the gentry class, was twenty-three to twenty-six. Moreover, childbirth was believed, at that time, to be excessively dangerous for very young girls, and Catherine Young should have been protected against sexual adventures which might lead to pregnancy. A mother with any pretentions of social standing would have guarded her fifteen-year-old daughter from the sexual advances of a thirty-year-old man.^^ In February 1774, when their first child was two months old, an associate of Johnson's wrote to a mutual friend in Baltimore (who could 52 be counted on to keep the secret if necessary) about "J's . . . Wife." LCA wrote, "He [Joshua Johnson] . . . removed . . . to Nantz in France with his Wife then not one and twenty and four Children." Since this removal was in April 1778, if Louisa's information is correct, then Catherine Young was born in 1757. LCA's Journal Fragment meant for ABA, 2 March 1834, APM, reel 499. ^^Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500- 1800 (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1977), p. 46. CO "A most divil of a dust in J-'s family between himself, his wife and P-y. . . ." Daniel Bowly to Matthew Ridley, 20 February 1774, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 36 The writer of the letter knew Johnson well and the "J" in the letter may have been Johnson and "J's . . . Wife" Catherine. Whatever the Johnsons' marital status, their children, including the first, were baptized at the local church and registered as legitimate. The legal penalties for presiding ministers who registered as legitimate illegitim ate children were severe. Therefore Nancy Johnson's baptismal record is a good indication that the Johnsons were married sometime, in 53 as yet an undiscovered place, before her birth. A slight possibility exists that Joshua and Catherine Johnson were not in fact married, although the community recognized them as man and wife. Common-law marriages were becoming rarer in the late eighteenth century, but they certainly existed. Alternatively, Catherine and Joshua Johnson may have married later, perhaps after the first child was born. Great care must be taken in even considering the possibility of a common-law marriage for the Johnsons. A missing record does not mean that none 54 exists or never existed. Binder #5, Ridley Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. There is, however, no certainty that Joshua Johnson was the "J" mentioned in the l e t t e r . ^^Derek Jarrett, England in the Age of Hogarth (New York: Viking Press, 1974), p. 132. ^^Lawrence Stone finds a startling rise in illegitim ate births in the eighteenth century. Stone, The Family, pp. 609-10. Stone deals also with Lord Hardwick's Marriage Act (1753) and its results on eighteenth-century demography, see Stone, The Family, pp. 35-37. For another view of the Hardwick Act, see Belinda Meteyard, "Illegitimacy and Marriage in Eighteenth-Century England," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 10 (Winter 1980):479-89. See also M. Dorothy George, London Life in the Eighteenth Century (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1965), p. 305. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 37 The first reference to Catherine Johnson in Johnson's letterbook, which contains both his public and private letters, seems to be in 1776 when she was eighteen, the mother of two children, and six months pregnant with a third. Johnson, at the time, asked a ship's captain, who had probably met Catherine, to bring "Mrs. Johnson" some linen from R ussia.• 55 Questions about Johnson's marriage abound. Was there any known impediment to the marriage? If she was only fifteen when she conceived Nancy Johnson, the oldest Johnson child, it seems out of the question that Catherine Johnson had been married previously. If Johnson knew of an impediment to a marriage, there was certainly none to living with her and fathering nine children. The question, then, is were Catherine and Joshua Johnson married somewhere else than in their geographic parish? The Johnsons could have gone to the country somewhere and been married, although they should have stayed long enough to have the banns published. Yet Catherine Young was born in London, and Johnson presumably met her there. The banns of marriage, prescribed by the Hardwick Marriage Act (1753), should have been proclaimed in her home parish, wherever that was.^^ In eighteenth-century London, there were ways of being married that would leave no trace. Quick marriages in unlicensed churches, or in ^^JJ to George Buchanan, 19 July 1776, Joshua Johnson's Letter- book, 1774-1777, MHR. ^^Stone, The Family, p. 35; George, London, p. 305. The banns were not proclaimed at Joshua Johnson's parish church, St. Botolph without A ldgate. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 38 the vicinity of the Fleet by unscrupulous clergymen were common.57 i f Johnson's relationship to Catherine could be kept from Marylanders, it certainly could not have been kept from his London friends. The letters of Matthew Ridley, a fellow merchant and good friend of Johnson's, show that he accepted them as husband and wife, and since he was closely connected to them in London, he surely knew the situation. After 1778 Johnson wrote often of "my wife" and his will refers to C atherine as such. The answer l i e s perhaps in some p a ris h record book not yet searched. It may be they were married late—perhaps before they went to France to g e th er in 1778. U n til some record comes to li g h t we must admit that where, when or if Joshua Johnson and Catherine Young were married is unknown. On 12 February 1775, Catherine Johnson gave birth to a second child, named Louisa-Catherine. Catherine was, of course, her mother's name. On 9 March 1775, Louisa, like her sister before, was taken to St. Botolph's Church and baptized as a legitimate child.58 %n 1779 Johnson's good friend, Matthew Ridley, referred to the fact that Catherine and Joshua finally had the boy they had always wanted, so perhaps this second daughter disappointed the young couple. Catherine Johnson and the children may not have been living in London at this time. Matthew Ridley urged his wife in 1777 to visit Catherine, "Mrs. J.," in Hackney (then on the outskirts of London) adding, "you will 57Stone, The Fam ily, p. 33. 58Louisa-Catherine Johnson, 9 March 1775, Baptismal Record Book, St. Botolph without Aldgate, The Guildhall Library, London. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 39 hardly meet with her in T o w n ."59 At any rate, Louisa joined a family visibly and stridently pro-American, living in a country moving towards open conflict with its colonies. Johnson supported the American cause even before hostilities broke out. He wanted, he told his partners, to return home. Having shared the favors of his countrymen, he now offered to "share the dangers in Protecting their liberties." The same message went out to other correspondents: Joshua Johnson was thinking of coming home. In not one letter did he mention he would be coming to America with a pregnant wife and two small daughters, although having had the children baptized at church with himself clearly as the father, it is difficult to believe he would have left the mother and children in England. In March 1775, Johnson reported only a few American merchants remained in London; and, although he could not leave for America at once, he hoped to be on his way by Christmas 1775.^® He now became aware that the British government read his letters and kept a close check on his a c t i v i t i e s . The B ritis h S ecret S ervice was run by an am bitious Undersecretary, William Eden (later. Lord Auckland), and his paid informers kept Americans in London under close surveillance. Eden's main theatre of operation was Paris, where Franklin and other 59"As she [Catherine Johnson] had called & you have seen her I would have you one day take a Coach & go to Hackney—you w ill hardly meet with her in Town." "Oliphant," Matthew Ridley, to "Amelia," Anne Ridley, 22 September 1777, Box #5, Ridley Papers, MHS. 50JJ to James Gibbs, 22 March 1775, Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1774-1777, MHR. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 40 Americans, more important than Johnson, could be spied upon, but British agents were not above watching American merchants in London and inter cepting their mail. Johnson used several pseudonyms to protect his correspondence, which seemed to confuse Eden's spies, but their surveillance made him nervous. Few of the merchants in London supported the American cause. William Lee, a merchant from a prominent Virginia family, exhorted the colonies to tie the American merchants to their cause. Lee knew of only three merchants in London besides himself who were active in the American cause, and one of these was Johnson. When Louisa was a year old, Johnson began to cast about for a place of refuge from the difficult position of a pro-American in Britain. He finally settled on France, and considered moving to either Bordeaux, Nantes, or Dunkirk.Perhaps France, instead of America, was chosen in part because Catherine Johnson was again pregnant in February 1776, when Louisa was only one year old. This third child, named ^^For Johnson's intercepted letters, see The Auckland Papers, Additional Manuscripts, #34,414, B ritish Museum, London, England, and Benjamin Franklin Stevens, ed., Facsimiles of Manuscripts in European Archives Relating to America; 1773-1783, 28 vols. (Holbom: Malby & Sons, 1892). ^^Worthington C. Ford, ed., Letters of William Lee: 1776-1783, 3 vols. (New York: Burt Franklin, 1968), 1:29. On the British Secret Service, see Samuel Flagg Bemis, "British Secret Service and the French- American Alliance," American H istorical Review 29 (April 1924):474-92. ^^Matthew Ridley to Anne Ridley, 10 September 1777, Ridley P apers, Box #1, MHS. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 41 Carolina Virginia Marylanda in a burst of patriotism, was bom in October 1776.54 An ocean voyage to America would have been extremely risky for both mother and child, but Johnson's letters to the firm in Annapolis mention neither wife nor children. In September of 1775, he had explained that the King's proclamation forbidding commercial intercourse between the two countries would prevent his coming home.55 Catherine Johnson was, in 1776, still only nineteen years old, and she may have been frightened of leaving Europe for America, a country which was in a state of actual war. Johnson may have planned to go first to Nantes and from there to America. Whether the choice of France was dictated by Johnson's fears of exposing his family to Annapolis, or by Catherine's own condition and fears, or by Johnson's hopes for business, the family did, in fact, move to Nantes in March of 1778. The English watched Johnson's movements closely. In September 1777, he had gone to France with Matthew Ridley to reconnoiter the situation^ one of the English spies informed Eden of their trip.55 When the Johnson family left London for Nantes, Joshua had come a long way from the inexperienced youth who had stepped off the boat in 54carolina Virginia Marylanda Johnson, 5 October 1776, Baptismal Record, St. Botolph without Aldgate. 55jj to Lux & Bowly, 5 September 1775, Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1774-1777, MHR. 55George Supton to William Eden, 23 September 1777, The Auckland P ap ers, BM. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 42 1771. In six years he had prospered financially, had become a proficient merchant, and an American patriot well known enough to be watched by the British Secret Service. He had survived a severe credit crisis, had pushed the firm into two new fields of endeavor (shipbuilding and tobacco factoring), and was the father of four small girls, the last, Mary Ann, having been born in December 1777.57 As far the the volatile, insecure, eighteenth-century mercantile world allowed, he was the momentary master of his fate. Nantes, one of the great commercial cities of eighteenth- century France and second only to Bordeaux in colonial trade, was situated on the Loire River, from where its commerce of sugar and cloth could be floated to the center of the country. Three contemporary accounts of Nantes give some idea of its size and importance. John Adams wrote in his diary of the "Islands in the River [Loire] . . . they have built Bridges from one to the other, and Houses upon the Islands. There are fine Meadows on each Side, and the mixed Appearance of Houses, Meadows, Water and Bridges is very uncommon and amuzing."58 He thought the houses on the L’Isle Feydeau very fine, commenting on the fact they were all made of stone. Arthur Young, the famous 57Mary Ann Johnson, 25 December 1776, Baptismal Record, St. Botolph without Aldgate. 58l . H. Butterfield ed.. Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, 4 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1961), 2:357-59. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 43 English agricultural writer and traveller, styled Nantes a "great commercial town," with a "society both intelligent and agreeable."59 Matthew Ridley described Nantes to his wife, then in London. The Town is much larger than I expected to find it and the continual increase of people so great that lodgings are not to be procured in a hurry .... The Merchants many of them very rich & live well . . . .70 The American merchants who came to Nantes found a city already firmly set in its mercantile ways, and they directed to it the commerce they had formerly conducted in London, It was at Nantes, according to Louisa, that her mother first conceived ambitions for herself and her family above the station in life appropriate to a commission merchant. Louisa, writing years later, blamed the house in which the family rented an apartment. It was this house, called "Le Temple du Gout," that had, she insisted, ”turn[ed] the head of a beautiful and much admired young W oman, "71 Memories of childhood are notoriously inaccurate, and what seems grand to a child is often seen later as quite insignificant, but in this case 59Arthur Young, Travels During the Years 1787, 1788, & 1789, 2 vols. (London: W. Richardson, 1794), 1:103-5. See also L. Rouseau, "Aperçus sur le role de Nantes dans la guerre d'Independence d'Amérique: 1775-1783," Annales de Bretagne 74 (June 1967):217-78, and Jean Meyer, "Les D ifficultés du commerce franco-américain vues de Nantes (1776-1790)," French H istorical Studies 11 (Fall 1979): 159-83. 75>Matthew Ridley to Anne Ridley, 17 October 1778, Ridley Papers, Folder #1, MHS. 71lCA Journal Fragment meant for ABA, 2 March 1834, APM, reel 499. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 44 Louisa remembered the house with great accuracy. Situated on L'Isle Feydeau in the middle of the River Loire, the house overlooked the docks, which lined the island, and the boats were able to come almost up to the street. The house, designed a quarter-century before the Johnsons arrived in Nantes for a successful and wealthy merchant, Guillaume Grou, had three rows of balconies guarded by filigreed ironwork, a spacious courtyard, and large generous rooms.72 Living in such a house could have turned the head of a twenty-one-year-old Londoner whose experience was limited and who had probably never previously been abroad. The Johnson family—mother, father, and four very young children—settled in and immediately participated in the vigorous mercantile world of Nantes. In fall 1778 Johnson began to write home to Maryland about his family. He may have written before about his wife and children, but if so the l e t t e r s seem not to be e x ta n t. In November 1778 Joshua Johnson wrote a letter to the firm in which he claimed "my children will be beggars whilst yours will be rich and happy."73 He also spoke of the "very heavy Expense that had attended the removal of my Family from England," to Nantes, He hopes in a few years to "take [his] Family on 72"Le Temple du Gout" is s till standing in Nantes and has been declared a "bâtiment classe." 73JJ to the firm, 30 March 1778, Chancery Papers #2893, Exhibit A, #3, #4, MHR. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 45 the heaving Pond" and spend the rest of his life in Maryland.74 The question naturally arises, why should it have been safe to inform the firm of his family in 1778, but seemingly not in 1777, when his 1774-1777 letterbook ends? The letterbook gives no clue; but from this time on, Joshua Johnson's letters to the firm often end with a report on his wife's or children's health. Clearly, the existence of Catherine Johnson and her children was known to the Annapolis community after 1778. Louisa and her sister Nancy did not live continually at home in Nantes. They were placed in a boarding school situated two stories above the Johnson apartments where, taught by nuns, the Anglican Johnson children first became acquainted with the Roman Catholic Church, and with what would become their second language, French. The two children were very young to be living apart from their mother: Louisa had just turned three and Nancy was only five. In later life, Louisa identified strongly with her father, not her mother, a result perhaps of being separated from her when she was l i t t l e more than a toddler. Further, Louisa suffered from extreme anxiety when separated from her family, even as an adult, a measure perhaps of how she felt when living away from her family as a young child. Louisa remembered years later that she had great difficulty in learning English again when she was eight years old; what she did not recall were the possible 74 Ib id . Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 46 strains of living suddenly at age three with strangers dressed in odd habits, who spoke a strange language.75 Female education in France at that time was inadequate, both intellectually and socially, but Louisa was too young to be affected by i t s defects.76 ghe loved the ritual of the Catholic religion and im mersed herself in it. Louisa's memories of Nantes were mere snatches, the marriage of her father's coachman, nuns who were kind, and a flood which enchanted the children, but understandably not the adults. Dur ing the first sunmer in Nantes, Mary Ann Johnson, then only seven months old, died. I^ouisa wrote in her memoirs that her sister died of the fatigue her mother underwent from the voyage from London.77 This in te r p r e ta tio n was probably a c h ild 's memory p lay in g her f a ls e , as Mary Ann lived for four months after the family arrived in Nantes, and John son reported to London, in April, that the family was well.78 Louisa herself suffered many miscarriages, and her children were often ill during and after journeys. In Louisa's life, journeys, pregnancies, and young children were Incompatible, and she may have decided her 75lCA, "Record," p. 4, APM, reel 265; LCA Journal Fragment meant for ABA, 2 March 1834, APM, reel 499. 76concerning convents and their educational standards, see Edmond Louis de Concourt and Jules de Concourt, The Woman of the Eighteenth Century; Her Life from Birth to Death, Her Love and Her Philosophy in the Worlds of Salon, Shop and Street (New York: Minton Balch & Co., 1927), p. 8. 77i)eath certificate for Mary Ann Johnson, 5 August 1778, Archives Municipal de Nantes, France, 78jj to Matthew Ridley, 29 April 1778, Ridley Papers, Folder #6, MHS. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 47 mother had suffered from the same difficulties. It was in Nantes that Louisa learned the French that would be so valuable to her in her later diplomatic life. A three-year-old when she arrived in Nantes, she must have spoken some English and to this was now added French, which she learned at her boarding school, Louisa's fluent and colloquial French was to cause her much trouble later at an English school, where she spoke better French than did her te a c h e rs . It seems plausible that beside the house, the social world in which she moved in Nantes may have engendered Catherine's new social pretentions. The Johnson's moved in the highest circles of mercantile Nantes. Because of the American Revolution and Nantes' position as an entrepot for American goods, the mercantile community was particularly open to foreigners and to newcomers, a situation very different from the London community they had le ft. Among Johnson's friends were members of the Protestant mercantile elite and the American merchants, who were 79 often also officials of the American government. Furthermore, at Nantes, Johnson lived in the thick of revolutionary events. John Adams, with John Quincy in tow, went quite naturally to his house for meals, and listened to and recorded in his Diary Johnson's opinions on the mercan tile situation between France and America. Had Louisa been home from school, it would have been the first meeting between her and John Quincy, ^^"Schweighauser was a very solid merchant and highly esteemed by everybody and highly approved by the Court." Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, 4:52. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 48 yet neither of them remembered the occasion. At any rate Johnson quite soon became one of the leading American merchants in France.80 Not only was Joshua Johnson trading while in Nantes, but so, in a small way, was his wife, Catherine. During this period at Nantes, there seem to have been unusual opportunities for women to handle not only their own money, but also to deal directly with merchandise. The records of W allace, Davidson and Muir show th a t by 1782 C atherine Johnson was speculating in goods on her own account.81 Louisa recorded that her mother had received a legacy from her father, so we may perhaps assume that Catherine was using the money from this legacy. It may have been her ability to handle her own money as well as the house in which she lived, which gave her new confidence. Mariamne Williams, the English wife of Jonathan Williams, Franklin's grandnephew and an American commercial agent at Nantes, also managed her own money,82 Ridley's will refers to debts owed to him, among which were "money for small adventures consigned Mr. Davidson on account of Mrs. Johnson and 80JA thought the future marriage between JOA and LCA "grew out of Spark that was kindled at Nantes." But LCA, then four, may have been at school. Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, 2:358 and 359, n . 3. 81JJ to John M uir, 30 J u ly 1781 and 15 May 1782; JJ to the firm, 3 July 1782, Wallace, Johnson & Muir Letterbook, 1781-1783 (hereafter cited as WJM), Manuscript Division, New York Public Library, New York City. 82The information on Mariamne Williams's account was given me by Claude-Anne Lopez, Assistant Editor of The Franklin Papers, Sterling Library, Yale University. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 49 83 Mrs. R id ley ," so Anne R idley must a lso have c o n tro lle d some money. Wartime conditions may have allowed women to dabble in merchandising with their own accounts, or it may have been a way of sequestering some money from the husband's creditors in case of financial disaster. Not only did Catherine Johnson use her own money for buying merchandise to be sold in the United States, but she did so with confidence and even aggression. She threatened not to send the firm in Annapolis any more goods unless the Maryland partners traded more "actively. Catherine was piqued not to have received news of the arrival of a shipment or her accounts. When she heard others had received their accounts, she punished John Muir for his unpunctu.aLity by withholding further trade. Both Catherine Johnson and Mariamne Williams complained that freight charges on one shipment were "very shabby" and not only did they refuse to pay these charges but they "attacked" the Captain who delivered the bills. Shrewdly judging the political situation in 1782 as unstable, they halted their business until the question of peace or war was settled "one way or another. ^^Matthew Ridley's last Will and Testament, 28 April 1786, Ridley Papers, MHS. ^^Letter to John Muir, 30 August 1781, WJM Letterbook, 1781- 1783, NYPL. OC Letter to John Muir, 20 September 1781, WJM Letterbook, 1781- 1783, NYPL. Letter to John Muir, 28 February 1782, WJM Letterbook, 1781-1783, miPL. ^^Letter to John Muir, 20 December 1782, WMJ Letterbook, 1781- 1783, NYPL. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 50 In spite of his patriotic sentiments, Johnson refused to make financial sacrifices for his country. Johnson was at one time or other agent for the state of Maryland in France, consul for Congress and investigator of the accounts of Silas Deane and other American commissioners. He complained, however, that public service cost him money, and when private business picked up he resigned all his p o s t s . 8 7 He was horrified when he found that in dealing with the Deane affair, he was expected to live at his own expense in Paris! He opportuned Franklin to obtain a rebate for him of the entire French tax due on the furniture he imported to France from England, and Franklin complied. Johnson also complained to Franklin that the government had quartered French soldiers in his house and threatened to quit France, which on second thought he did not do. Other Americans were making many more sacrifices than Johnson; his complaints seem unreasonable.88 87Johnson complained to the firm of "heavy expenses" in removing to Nantes. JJ to the firm, 18 November 1778; JJ to the firm, 23 January 1778, Chancery Records, #2893, MHR. For Johnson's career in public service, see Kathryn Sullivan, Maryland and France: 1774-1789 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1936), p. 52. For Johnson's job as Maryland Agent, see Thomas Johnson to Benjamin Franklin, 3 April 1778, #17477, The Franklin Papers, Sterling Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn. Johnson also looked into the accounts of Jonathan Williams, Benjamin Franklin to Joshua Johnson, 17 March 1779, Benjamin Franklin Letterbook, 1779, p. 253, Records of the U.S. Legation in Paris, The Benjamin Franklin Papers, Manuscript Division, LC. On Johnson's refusal to serve, see JJ to the Continental Congress, 20 July 1780, Papers of the Continental Congress, M, no. 147, Roll 97, p. 146, National Archives, Washington, D.C. Concerning Johnson's resignations see Papenfuse, Pursuit, p. 108. 88"I did not understand from the Resolution of Congress or your Letter that it was requested I should leave my Family and Business to do that of the Public without so much as my Expenses being born." JJ to Benjamin Franklin, 1 July 1780, #4679, Benjamin Franklin Papers. "I am Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 51 Besides balking at financial sacrifices for his country, Johnson's sharp business practices seem to have continued in Nantes. With a growing family, Johnson was quite naturally eager for money. Johnson's relations with his friend and business associate Matthew Ridley deteriorated but were patched up again when Johnson admitted his fault. Ridley later learned to his sorrow that Johnson was simply incapable of long-term loyalty. In 1777, the partnership with John Davidson had been d isso lv e d and a new firm e s ta b lis h e d in 1781 w ith a new partner, John Muir. Relations, however, between the new partners ran no smoother than they had with the earlier.89 His accusations against Ridley were entirely untrue.90 The Johnson family continued to increase in Nantes. Two children were born to the Johnsons abroad: Thomas, the boy the Johnsons sorry however that you find these taxes so Inconvenient as to induce you to quit the Kingdom," Benjamin Franklin to Joshua Johnson, 17 March 1779, Benjamin Franklin Letterbook, 1779, p. 253, Records of the U.S. Legation in Paris, The Benjamin Franklin Papers, LC. AA paid duty on her furniture. AA to Elizabeth Shaw, 8 May 1785, The Shaw Family Papers, Microfilm Reel 1, Manuscript Division, LC. 89papenfuse, Pursuit, pp. 93, 108-9. Matthew Ridley to J J , 6 March 1783, Matthew Ridley's Letterbook, MHS. 90Matthew Ridley to JJ, 2 October 1779, Matthew Ridley's Letterbook, MHS. Herbert E. Klinglehofer, "Life and Letters of Matthew Ridley, Maryland Merchant," p. 239. I should like to thank Dr. Klinglehofer for making his unpublished manuscript available to me. Matthew Ridley to JJ, 14 December 1782; Jonathan Williams to Matthew Ridley, 9 January 1783, Ridley Papers, MHS; on his part, Ridley could not have been a better friend. Matthew Ridley to Philip R. Fendale, 24 January 1780, Matthew Ridley to Philip R. Fendale, 24 January 1780, Matthew Ridley's Letterbook, MHS. Matthew Ridley to Samuel Purviance , 22 March 1783, Matthew Ridley's Letterbook, MHS. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 52 had always wanted, in 1779, and Harriet in 1781. Harriet was baptized in the Nantois Protestant Church.91 Matthew Ridley, living closely with the Johnsons, wrote a friend before Thomas was bom, "A boy this time: or I do not know what will become of us," and informed another correspondent of the birth: "[a] fine Son—As you know their anxieties on this head I leave you to guess their joy."92 No baptismal record for Thomas has been found in Nantes, but he may have been baptized when the fam ily was in the country. The fam ily now co n siste d of fiv e children and Joshua and Catherine Johnson. Although the family was rising socially, the children were losing their Englishness; Louisa and her sister Nancy seem to have spent a great deal of time away at school, becoming more French than English. Louisa recorded later (without an explanation) that she was, when seven years old, more at home than she had ever been before, although her vacations had always been spent with the family. She may have been ill.93 9lBaptismal Record of Harriet Johnson, 13 January 1782, Archives Municipal de Nantes, France. Harriet Johnson was born on 18 June 1781, JJ to John Ross, 21 June 1781, WJM Letterbook, 1781-1783, NYPL. 92Matthew Ridley to Anne Ridley, 21 January 1779, Ridley Papers, Folder #2, MHS; Matthew Ridley to Philip R. Fendale, 24 January 1780, Matthew Ridley's Letterbook, MHS. 93lCA, "Record," p. 6, APM, reel 265. LCA told ABA that she and her sisters forgot all their English but "yes! and no!," LCA Journal Fragment meant for ABA, 2 March 1837, APM, reel 499. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 53 During these years in Nantes, Joshua Johnson began to refer in his letters to the depressions from which Catherine Johnson was to suffer during her life. Her physical health was also precarious. She and the children went to the country during summer 1781, returning to Nantes when f a l l brought the cold weather.94 The follow ing year she was again ill. Johnson, typically fearful, often spoke of the health of the family being only "pretty well." When ill, Catherine complained; when pregnant, she seems to have felt nauseated, unwieldy, and depressed.95 Seemingly, neither Louisa's mother nor father was capable of reserve or stoicism in the face of illness, a trait they were to pass on to their daughter Louisa.96 As the Revolution ended, a new problem pressed on Johnson. Where should the fam ily go when the war was over? S t. E u s ta tiu s , Baltimore, and Annapolis were mentioned as possibilities. Finally, with peace declared in 1783, Johnson decided for business reasons, he 94Matthew Ridley to JJ, 22 February 1780, Matthew Ridley's Letterbook, MHS. JJ to James Sterrett, Junior, 20 September 1781, WJM Letterbook 1781-1783, Manuscript Division, NYPL; JJ to Matthew Ridley, 4 October 1786, Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1785-1788, Peter Force Collection, Manuscript Division, LC. 95JJ To Captain John McKerdy, 15 May 1782, WJM Letterbook, 1781-1783, NYPL. Matthew Ridley to Anne Ridley, 21 January 1779, Ridley Papers, Folder #2, MHS. The depressions do not seem to have lifted after the children's births. 96when the children had the measles, Johnson wrote a business acquaintance; "I cannot tell whether You will be able to read what I have wrote it is confused owing to the Illness of my Little ones." Letter from JJ intercepted by Eden, 8 November 1777, Auckland Papers, Correspondence, Vol. 3, June-December 1771, Additional Manuscripts #34,414, BM. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 54 said, to return to London with Catherine and the five children. Johnson thought that existing trade between France and America would "steal" back to Britain; the trade did not "steal," it fled. Not only did the French lose much of the business they had so fortuitously gained during the war, but by October 1783 there was scarcely an American merchant left in France. Johnson thought the "genius" of the French not calculated to "Incourage commerce with America & that British manufactories are much cheaper and more fitter for the American consumption." Moreover, the French, unlike the English, had no conception of the entrepreneurial value of long-term credit. By May 1783 the Johnson family was moving all their belongings to England, and Johnson was s o lic itin g London business from h is Maryland correspondents.97 On the way to London the Johnsons stoped in Paris where the children were taken to visit John Jay's children. According to Louisa's memoirs, the Jay children were dressed in the English fashion, plain white dresses with pink sashes, which seemed to the Johnson children prettier than their own, more ornate, French clothes. L o u isa 's memory is fa u lty h ere. The Jays had a t th a t time only one child, a daughter, one year old and still in baby clothes. In a later letter to her daughter-in-law, Louisa identified the two children only as being with Mrs. Jay, not as her daughters. Louisa may have noticed 97JJ continued, while in Nantes, to plan to go to America but in the end went back to London. Matthew Ridley to JJ, 2 October 1779, 9 June 1780, Matthew Ridley Letterbook MHS; JJ to John Cownan, 30 March 1783, JJ to Charles Wells, 30 April 1783, WJM Letterbook, 1781-1783, NYPL. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 55 that not only she and her sister were overdressed but that so was her mother.98 Catherine Johnson was known to dress very flamboyantly, so much so that when she arrived back in England, her acquaintances corresponded with each other about her clothing. The episode is important because here, perhaps for the first time, Louisa felt herself odd, different, and more importantly, inferior. Thus, these "Frenchified,” Anglo-American children returned to London with strange clothing, a new language, and a mother with new and heightened social am b itio n s. Arriving in London with five children in May 1783, the Johnsons moved into a large house on Tower Hill in the East End of London. Feeling American, and worried because he had been away from America for thirteen years, during which the colonies had become independent, Johnson requested and obtained from the State of Maryland a naturalization bill for himself, his wife, and his bom and unborn children. This move seems consistent with Johnson's pro-American stance and with prudence. He may have worried that because his children had an English mother, the British government might consider them B ritish.99 98lcA, "Record," p. 7, APM, reel 265; LCA Journal Fragment meant for ABA, 2 March 1834, APM, reel 499; Sarah Beddow to Matthew Ridley, 20 June 1783, Ridley Papers, Box #2, MHS. Sarah Beddow commented on the great difference in style of dress between the French and E nglish c h ild re n . Sarah Beddow to Anne R id ley , 26 September 1783, Ridley Papers, Box #2, MHS. 99au Act to declare Joshua Johnson Merchant and his Wife and Children Citizens of this State, Passed by the Maryland House of Delegates, 15 January 1785 and by the Maryland Senate, 20 January 1785, original in Maryland Hall of Records, Annapolis, Maryland. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 56 A full description of the Johnson's London house is strangely absent from Louisa's memoirs. She recorded only that eleven servants ministered to the family there. Whether the house was comfortable or not is never stated. Its size, its facade, public rooms, bedrooms, hallways are not described. The relentless noise of her brother and many s i s t e r s romping and q u a rre llin g seems to have made no la s tin g impression. All these aspects of a house, inextricably entwined with family life, are left out of Louisa's reminiscences. Three more children, all girls, were bom to the Johnsons in London, making a very feminine family of one boy and seven g irls.100 Her mother took great pride, Louisa wrote later, in dressing the girls alike and parading them to church on Sunday for the edification of the onlookers. To support their growing familiy and new social hopes, Johnson's business should have been prospering, but financial problems appeared almost as soon as the family returned to London. However changed the Johnsons w ere, London commerce was much as it was before the war. As soon as peace was declared, Americans bought lOOfhree more girls were born to the Johnsons in London: Catherine Maria Frances Johnson, 27 August 1784; Eliza Janet Dorcas Johnson, II October 1786; Adelaide Johnson, 8 April 1788; all in Baptismal Record Book, All Hallows', Barking, London, Guildhall L ib ra ry . Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 57 heavily on credit, with the usual results when payment was demanded. Johnson's inept business practices caused some of the trouble; but the Anglo-American trade balance was seriously askew, and America suffered from a shortage, of specie. He again became absolutely panic-stricken; and although Louisa pictured her home life as serene and happy, it is hard to believe her father's fears were not conveyed to the children, especially since the three oldest girls were removed from school later because of Johnson's precarious financial situation, and Johnson himself thought his children's health suffered from his financial concerns.101 Louisa was raised in a household in which unhappy events, depressions, and illnesses were linked, at least in her father's mind.102 In England, Louisa and her two sisters, Nancy and Caroline, attended boarding school, where they received a conventional education typical of eighteenth-century female institutions. Although Louisa asserted that the school was excellent, the studies she mentions do not seem different from what most upper-class girls were receiving at the time. The curriculum included dancing, music, ballet, performing plays, public speaking, reading, and French. Louisa's later difficulty in corresponding w ith John Quincy when she was engaged leads to the lOlLCA, "R ecord," p. 24, APM, re e l 265. 102"Several of my Family is unwell, nor can they be better until I am relieved from the pain I Labour under." JJ to Matthew Ridley, 11 February 1787, Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1785-1788, Peter Force Collection, LC. "I really am not [well] but when I can get clear of all the debts I owe then I believe I shall be both well & happy." JJ to Mr. Helie, 16 September [1785], Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1785-1788, Peter Force Collection, LC. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 58 suspicion that writing was not stressed, but she recorded she was very fond of reading. Rising literacy among women was responsible for the enormous amount of novel-reading which became such a feature of female life, but it also brought the intellectual attainments of husband and wife into closer relationship and helped produce what one historian has called "companionate marriages." However much this education may have been an improvement over that of the earlier eighteenth century, it was, as one English woman w riter pointed out, inexorably oriented towards preparing girls, not for broader horizons, but for the same end as the earlier and inferior lessons: matrimony. Louisa's brother, Thomas, educated quite differently from his sisters, travelled to America in 1794 for, Louisa wrote, a republican education, but such opportunities 104 were not available to the girls. Louisa reported later that speaking only French and wearing strange clothes, the Johnson girls became an object of ridicule to the school. The French teacher spoke (according to Louisa) an "execeable [sic] jargon." She condemned Louisa's excellent French, afraid that, by suffering in comparison with Louisa, she might lose her position at the 10"^ Stone, The Family, pp. 283, 353-55, 420. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar quote from Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, "A woman, especially if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can," and, "imbecility in females is a great enhance ment of their personal charms." Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the A ttic; The Woman W riter and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), p. 134. ^^^LCA, "R ecord," p . 49, APM, r e e l 265. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 59 school. For the first, but not the last time, one of Louisa's attain ments causes her difficulty, not satisfaction. Louisa attributed her nickname, "Miss Proud," to the mocking of the girls and withdrew into herself in reaction. It is difficult to think that Louisa's English was as rudimentary as she pictured, but the distance between herself and her schoolmates seems never to have been bridged. Her only friend, she stated, was a young East Indian girl, with foreign looks, uncommon talents and as different from her schoolmates as Louisa felt herself to be.l05 It is obvious from Louisa's memoirs that as soon as she left Nantes, she was at odds with the world. She reported in her memoirs that, forced to attend the Anglican Church, she fainted away. Apparently Louisa had been taught by the nuns to think of the Anglicans as heretics, yet it seems unusual that a child of eight would feel so strongly about the change from one ritual to another, especially since both churches were given over to beautiful liturgy. She felt herself different from her schoolmates, and mocked by her sisters. Gullible to an extreme, her sisters were even able (according to her memoirs) to have her hair cut short by a hairdresser and fixed in an unbecoming style, while Louisa sat unaware that she was the butt of a joke.^^^ Although seemingly meandering recollections, Louisa's memories of h e r childhood do co n tain some re c u rre n t themes. Dramatic il ln e s s ^^^LCA, "R ecord," pp. 9, 20 and 17, APM, r e e l 265. ^^^LCA, "Record," pp. 9 and 61-62, APM, reel 265. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 60 and disabling emotional sequences were two memorable features of her early years. As Louisa described it, illness brought her the attention she craved and behavior usually forbidden was indulged when she was sick. Surprisingly, men were often her saviors. Her father seems to have tried to protect her from unpleasant emotions, insisting, for instance, that she be excused from the Anglican liturgy until her "fears wore off." Acquaintances of her father, she wrote, vied with each other to indulge her: the family doctor took a "great fancy" to her, and made a pen and ink drawing of a pigeon for her. In a scene redolent with high drama, the family's minister, John Hewlett, not her mother, removed a blister from the almost fatally ill l.ouisa. Her mother, overcome with emotion upon seeing that the blister had been efficacious, fainted away. The minister treated Louisa with great kindness and while visiting the Hewletts for two months she came to regard the minister as another father. Unwittingly exposing her childish egotism, Louisa described how her mother, caring for her when ill, seemed to dress her doll, all 107 the while anxiously watching every change in the infirm Louisa. In many of Louisa's stories, a male was the saving person, and Louisa the victim saved. There is here a suggestion of covert sexuality very reminiscent of the novels she read as a young girl. Louisa's illnesses are the reasons that men are so involved with her. Throughout her childhood men are drawn to her, taking care of her, soothing her. Ambitious and striving, she also enjoyed the dependency lO^LCA, "R ecord," pp. 9, 12-13, ARM, r e e l 265. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 61 of being ill. Louisa's reported illnesses were not minor and they were certainly dramatic. Many of her ailments, she wrote, brought her close to death and were surely figments of Louisa's overwrought imagination. One of these seems ridiculously slight—she recorded that she twisted her neck while playing battledore with her cousin Walter Hellen and hovered near death. Out driving one day, Louisa was thrown from a carriage, but unhurt. The young man who was driving, Louisa recorded with a dramatic flair, despaired of Louisa's life, fell into a "d eclin e" and "the shock . . . hastened h is death."108 Louisa's stories of her childhood raise the suspicion that she suffered from hysteria. In later life, her husband's Diary records that Louisa did have "hysterics" from time to time, and the doctors resorted to laudanum to soothe her nerves. Louisa presented other symptoms in adult life which might suggest hysteria, among which were chronic fatigue, an inability to do work, an inability to receive bad news without an immediate debilitating illness, depressions, and fits, which she characterized as similar to convulsions. All these symptoms were considered in the nineteenth century to be indicative of hysteria.109 Louisa did not develop these symptoms after she married. IOS lcA, "Record," pp. 43-44, ARM, reel 265. 109it is difficult to diagnose mental illness for a person no longer living. LCA's symptoms, however, were so marked and so chronic that I suggest she may have suffered from a "hysterical personality (histronic personality disorder)" as described in Diagnostic and S tatistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: The American Psychiatric Association, 1968), p. 43; or a "somatization disorder” as described in the 3rd edition of the same manual, pp. 241-52. LCA's symptoms were: a history of physical disturbances beginning in childhood, the belief that she had been sickly for a good Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 62 Her description of her childhood contains enough indications that the "sensitiveness," the dramatic illnesses, and the faintings, for which Louisa was distinguished in her family, did not begin at twenty-two, but may have had their origins in the early days of her life , as far back as her first recorded fainting episode which occurred when she was forced to attend a strange and uncongenial Anglican service. Hysteria was a strange and, to the physicians, incomprehensible disease. Considered a specifically female disease, symptoms appeared, disappeared, reappeared, took on new and various guises, and worst of all seemed impervious to medical treatment. Sympathy seemed as efficacious as actual drugs or restoratives. One historian has seen hysteria as the result of an attempt by naturally aggressive and forceful women to conform to the culturally determined role model of passivity and dependency.110 The fragile, dependent, and submissive female so admired by the eighteenth century was truly appropriate only part of her life, faintings, paralysis, seizures, severe and persistent difficulties while pregnant, and various and continual illnesses throughout her life. See Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 3rd ed. (Washington, D.C.: The American Psychiatric Association, 1980), pp. 241-52. On the subject of neurasthenia and its treatment in nineteenth-century America, see Jean Strouse, Alice James : A Biography (New York: Houghton M ifflin & Co., 1980), pp. 100-116. See also James R. Morrison, "Review of Alice James: A Biography," American Journal of Psychiatry 138 (August 1981):1133. hysteria, in the nineteenth century, see Carroll Smith- Rosenberg, "The Hysterical Woman: Sex Roles and Role conflict in 19th- Century America," Social Research 39 (Winter 1972):652-78. Ilza Veith, Hysteria: The History of a Disease (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 63 for those girls who by nature were dependent and docile. For those who, like Louisa, were assertive, ambitious, and emotionally volatile, a great deal of repression was necessary to dampen their natural inclinations. Dependent to an unusual degree, yet aggressive at the same time, Louisa was seemingly a very conflicted adolescent. So intense were her conflicts and so great her need for repression that the combination may have produced a behavior pattern very like that of a hysteric. It is difficult to see from where Louisa would have learned emotional control. Her father wrote letters often verging on panic. His physical state was clearly, in his own mind, connected with outward events. Her mother seems to have been equally unable to surmount illness without complaint. Louisa may have inherited a double portion of uncurbed emotionalism. Like many young women without adequate mental or physical exercise, Louisa's emotions seem to have gained the upper hand in her life. The most difficult part of dealing with Louisa's memoirs is th a t they were w ritte n in 1825 when she was f i f t y and in 1840 when she was sixty-five years old. It is, therefore, impossible at this remove to know whether the emotional themes which appear in her writings are later feelings which she put onto her childhood or whether she reported contemporaneous childhood emotions accurately. What we do know is that Louisa displayed some symptoms of hysteria as an adult and that her memoirs indicate a tendency in the same direction during her childhood. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 64 Louisa seems to have been different from her sisters, at odds with the world as they were not. There is nothing to suggest that either Nancy or Caroline Johnson suffered from the same stresses as did Louisa. Nor does it seem as if they were removed from school in Nantes as was Louisa and kept at home. They seem to have surmounted the emotional problems attendant on the move from France to England. Louisa's description of her relations with her peers, sisters, and teachers indicates a great deal of tension. Louisa's later expressed passion for her father ("almost to madness") was the most salient emotional bond during her childhood. When she was ill, the "acquaintances of my Father" were kind to her. According to her memoirs, her father's behavior toward her mother was exemplary in all respects, and he loved Louisa best of all his daughters. He was the "handsomest man I ever beheld. His eye or the power of his eye was indescribable." It must have taken an extraordinary amount of repression to keep such an overwhelming affection under control. There is a quality to Louisa's memoirs very like the novels she admitted reading during her adolescence. She tried to emulate "characters of lofty elegance," but "lofty elegance" requires not only pride but confidence—a quality Louisa sorely lacked. Louisa embellished, heightened, and dramatized past incidents in the romantic tradition of eighteenth-century novels, and the truth of her memoirs is more often to be found in the emotions they express rather than in the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 65 111 exact details she gave. In 1788, when Louisa Catherine was fourteen, Joshua Johnson's financial affairs became so strained that the girls returned home from school. A governess now taught the three older girls and also took care of the younger children. Louisa wrote later that she and her sisters took turns weekly in keeping the household (probably while her mother was ill) and she learned about the "labours and troubles of family 112 economy." This training might have stood her in good stead had she been permitted to run her household later. It was, however, an English, not an American household, she managed: a house with well-trained servants, their roles carefully designated in a strict hierarchical order. The role of the mother was to keep the house running smoothly, not to teach servants their jobs, nor to work herself in any way. Neither school nor her household training gave Louisa self- confidence. Louisa continually pictured herself as inferior to her two sisters, yet she also claimed that her father trusted her more than the others, and he treated Louisa as the eldest, thus "exciting much 111 LCA, "Record," p. 10, ARM, reel 265. For effects of novel reading in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see Gilbert and Gubar, Madwoman, pp. 107 ff; Patricia M. Spack, Imagining a Self : Autobiography and Novel in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976). For an analysis of novels and their effect on American women, see Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chap el H ill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), pp. 233-64. ^^^JJ to Matthew Ridley, 7 February 1787, WJM Letterbook, 1787- 1788, NYPL; LCA, "Record," p. 24, APM, reel 265; LCA, "Adventures," 26 June 1802, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 66 justifiable jealousy." To be the best put Louisa in a quandary. As the object of her sisters' envy, she was again different from them, and yet insecure in her separateness. Louisa's memoirs contain much contradictory information about herself and her sisters. She found learning music difficult because her facility was so great, her voice too flexible. Although insisting that hers was a republican family, she felt polluted by the idea that she would be held by servants while her teeth were extracted, and playing "duchess" was a favorite pastime. Shy to a fault, Louisa was, in her own words, like a bird "who spreads in wanton sport his plumage to the garish Sun."^^^ A close reading of "Record of A Life or My Story" reveals an underlying rivalry with the oft-repeated "beloved sister," Nancy. Contradictions abound in episodes dealing with this sister. It is Nancy who gets Louisa into trouble at school, but the trouble teaches Louisa humility. It is Nancy, at the piano, who angers Louisa just as she is about to sing, with the result that she (Louisa) sings ab her s i s t e r , causing "th e h a p p ie st r e s u l t ." Nancy, a t th e moment of g re a t success as a dancer, becomes fat to the point of dropsy. Nancy "almost always obscured" the performances of Caroline and Louisa. Nancy's husband-to-be, Walter Hellen, Louisa characterizes as "sickly . . . possessing no shining qualities and very indolent," although Nancy, with many beaux, is a classical beauty. Louisa's feelings of competition ll^LCA, "Record," pp. 16-18, 31, 36, APM, reel 265. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 67 with Nancy may have, in part, been responsible for her insistence on marriage with John Quincy when prudence might have counselled breaking the engagement. Louisa's suppressed but spirited ambitions emerge from her memoirs. She was clearly in competition with Nancy for her father's attentions, musical prowess, and of course in the race for a husband. Since the three girls seem to have been put on exhibition together before young men after dinner, it is not surprising that Louisa felt competitive. However much Louisa longed to win the race, she also loved her sisters deeply and was perhaps disconcerted by the extremes of her feelings. These remembrances of love and competition appear, in her memoirs, as tremendous emotional extremes, between which Louisa endlessly swung like a pendulum never at rest. Not only was Louisa ambitious for herself, but she was particularly conscious of her mother's ambitions, and guilty about those too. Louisa never attributed them to Catherine's own strivings. They were always deflected on to outside forces : the house in Nantes, or the social milieu of an American consul. Louisa knew that her mother's social drive was expensive beyond what Joshua Johnson could afford, and although she never said so outright, perhaps her mother's social ambitions may have been responsible for her father's debts. Whether her sisters were equally affected by Catherine Johnson's ambitions as was Louisa, we do not know. Perhaps they were naturally less ambitious ll^LCA, "Record," pp. 16, 19, 29, APM, reel 265. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 68 than Louisa and therefore less aware than was Louisa, of their mother's aspirations. Unlike Louisa, her sisters did not write their memoirs. Louisa's guilt about her own ambitions is not hard to understand. Eighteenth-century culture made no allowances for the expression of strong female ambition, at the same time that it put sisters into an aggressive marital race. Perhaps Louisa, being more striving than her sisters, felt more at odds with the ideal woman the culture prescribed, and therefore more guilty even as a young girl about drives in herself she could neither suppress nor accept. She agreed, as an adult, with the culture that she should have been the kind of woman she was not, nor ever could have been—a cruel psychological dilemma. Louisa's guilt seems also to have included feelings that the Johnsons were not as republican as they might have been. Some later traces of Adams family influences are discernible in Louisa's account of her adolescence. When given a guinea by her father, she records she bought M ilton's Paradise Lost and Regained and Mason's Self Knowledge. Nothing in her education or her admitted reading would lead one to believe that these are the books Louisa would have chosen to buy with her guinea; her statement comes as a complete surprise. Had John Quincy Adams been given a guinea when he was young, these are precisely the books he might have bought. George Washington, she records, was a paragon for the Johnson family (as he was for the Adamses), and Franklin, Laurens, Trumbull, Jay, John Paul Jones were conversational topics in her household. This seems more like an Adams than a Johnson list. The Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 6 9 Johnson children were far more likely to hear about Matthew Ridley, Jonathan Williams, their Uncle Thomas Johnson, and the various business associates of their father. The more august and famous republican characters of the American Revolution almost never appear in Johnson’s letters, but they appear with great regularity in the Adams' 115 correspondence. From the time she left school at fourteen, Louisa's life was spent, like other girls of her class and time, at the all-important task of finding a husband. The Johnson house on Tower H ill was large, the dinner table continually and generously open to acquaintances from America, and not only Louisa but her two sisters, the older Nancy, and the younger Caroline, were "accomplished" and ready for marriage. In the late eighteenth century, marriage was the only possible permissible future for any upper-middle-class or upper-class girl and the singleness of purpose this prescription produced is difficult for the modern mind to grasp. All female attainments were designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to allure young men. The lives of these girls were planned only to the point of marriage; after marriage, it was thought life would take care of itself. In order to be as attractive as possible to marriageable young men, certain skills were more useful than others, and like the caring mother she was, Catherine Johnson made sure her ^^^LCA, "R ecord," p . 35, APM, r e e l 265. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 70 daughters were proficient in all of them. Although embroidery (not practical), sewing, and speaking French and Italian were considered important accomplishments, by far the most valuable was the ability to perform music. Learning music filled up empty time, and performing it gave them a chance to display themselves under socially sanctioned conditions. Not all instruments were equally favored. The harp gave girls a chance to show off their arms to great advantage, but playing on the pianoforte was considered the ultimate accomplishment. One social historian has even claimed that "the history of the pianoforte and the . . . social status of women can be interpreted in terms of one another."117 Louisa sewed, spoke French, sang, and played the harp and pianoforte. She was ll^W. A. Craik, Jane Austen and Her Time (London; Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1969), pp. 48-50; Keith Thomas, "The Double Standard," The Journal of the History of Ideas 20 (April 1959), pp. 195-216. Stone, The Family, p. 347. A didactic English writer of the eighteenth century, John Gregory, recommended sewing "but was careful to remove all connotations of productive labor." Mary P. Ryan, Womanhood in America : From Colonial Times to the Present (New York: New Viewpoints, 1975), p. 99. ll^Arthur Loesser, Men, Women and Pianos: A Social History (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954), pp. 267 ff. Thackery accurately described the use of the harp in Vanity Fair: "To play the harp if they have handsome arms and neat elbows . . . that they may bring down some 'desirable' young man with those killing bows and arrows of theirs," quoted in Loesser, Pianos, p. 276. "For no other sense [sic] is so innocent or so constant or elevated in its impressions on the mind as that of which music is the object." William Vans Murray to Henry Murray, 6 August 1785, William Vans Murray Papers, Box I, 1784-1797, Manuscript Division, LG. So central were the harp and pianoforte to the accomplished woman's life that a contemporary picture entitled "An Accomplished wife and the bored husband, 1789" shows the lady playing the harp while the pianoforte stands in the background. Stone, Family, p la te 20. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 71 indeed "accomplished." With a large staff in the house, there was little for the Johnson daughters to do. Since idleness was condemned, they were to busy themselves without actually doing anything. Being busy while idle naturally led to lives replete with trivia, while simultaneously the game of marriage was played with the utmost seriousness. In a family of seven girls, the bustle of trivialities could have been overwhelming at the same time that it both obscured and heightened the suppressed emotions attendant on attracting young men. For the purpose of doing something while doing nothing, needlework was ideal. It could be performed while talking (not true of novel reading) and could take several forms: crewelwork, fine art sewing, wool working, and decorative stitchery, anything but necessary sewing. Poetry-writing was much in vogue; verses, many of them banal, were handed round and treasured. Living in an overcharged emotional atmosphere, yet with almost nothing to do, upper-class girls became overly emotional, and because romance was their whole life they overvalued love. While Joshua Johnson was fully occupied with his consulate and commercial affairs, the women in the family organized their day around their business: social life. Social life, of course was an idle life: it produced nothing* The women's idleness and conspicuous consumption ll^G ilbert and Gubar, Madwoman, pp. 117-18. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 72 was a vicarious way for men to show their wealth; the more idle the 119 women, the richer the family might seem. Breakfast, held about ten o'clock, was the only meal at which the family was sure to be alone. Afterwards, Catherine and her girls made morning "visits" by carriage 120 until dinner, which was served around five. Dinner time was a prime opportunity for socializing, and the Johnson table was available to American men of a ll ages, who were in London on business. Many Marylanders carried letters of introduction to Joshua Johnson, as word of his generous hospitality spread. One visitor, William Vans Murray, wrote later: Mrs. Johnson was always a very great favorite of mine. I have often had occasion to admire her wit, and always humility enough to bow to its justice. I should lament if she had forgotten. I never shall forget her polite hospitalities to a raw American.^^1 Johnson was even, in some cases, acting as a banker of last resort for 122 young Americans. Johnson's generosity was touching. Perhaps remembering his own loneliness when he arrived in London, he wished to ^^^Loesser, Pianos, p. 267. ^^^For social life in eighteenth-century England, see Craik, A usten, pp. 11-42. ^^% illiam Vans Murray to JQA, 30 July 1797, Worthington C. Ford, ed., "Letters of William Vans Murray to John Quincy Adams, 1797-1803," in The Annual Report of the American H istorical Association for the Year 1912 (Washington, D.C.: n.p., 1914), p. 358. ^^^Johnson was acting as banker for a young medical student, William Quynn. See Samuel Chase to William Quynn, 22 April 1784, Dorothy Mackay Quynn and William Rogers Quynn, "Letters of a Maryland Medical Student in Philadelphia and Edinburgh," Maryland Historical Magazine 31 (September 1936):190. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 73 save others from the same experience. Not everyone who visited the Johnson house was socially acceptable. Louisa told her son Charles Francis that the scurrilous "Peter Pindar," the newspaperman well-known in late eighteenth- century London, dined at the house when she was young, "but his conversation was so coarse and improper that my Father never suffered my sisters and myself to appear after dinner when the doctor was a guest." Louisa and her sisters, however, were at least old enough to be presented after dinner.123 Entertaining grandly at home may have been costly for the Johnsons. London prices, which Louisa's father characterized as "expense almost double of What it would have been before the War," were enormously inflated.124 Later, Abigail Adams would refer to Catherine Johnson as conspicuously elegant; and Catherine dressed very smartly, so perhaps Catherine's social ambitions were responsible for the Johnson's fiancial difficulties.125 if Louisa's count was correct, eleven servants—a very costly item—ran the household. Life in London was indeed expensive, but as the 1780s wore on, Joshua Johnson's business position deLeriorated. Johnson's financial problems came to a head in the mid-1780s. 123lCA to CFA, 17 February 1836, APM, reel 499. 12^The firm to Stephen Wirt, 11 February 1785, WJM Letterbook, 1784-1785, MHR. 125aa to JQA, 20 May 1796, APM, r e e l 381. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 74 So pressing did Johnson's debts become that in 1787 he was forced to call together his creditors, and control of the London business passed into their h a n d s . 126 Financial troubles continued to plague the firm; quite naturally, Johnson lived on the thin edge of worry. Relations between Johnson and the American partners became so strained that in 1790 the partnership of Wallace, Johnson and Muir ended, with a subsequent legal settlement which began in 1798 and proceeded through the Maryland courts for more than a decade.127 The n e u tra l a r b itr a to r s later sided with the Annapolis partners in some (but not all) aspects of the case. Too much b u sin e ss, too l i t t l e o rg a n iz a tio n was p a rt of their evaluation. The course of the firm had never been smooth; n e ith e r was i t s ending. In 1790, just as Johnson was being cut loose from his ties to the firm, a surprising appointment was tendered by the newly formed United States National Government. Johnson was offered the position as 126papenfuse, Pursuit, pp. 204-5. Gouverneur Morris in London in 1790 found Johnson "in the leading strings of his creditors." Beatrix Cary Davenport, ed.. Diary of the French Revolution by Gouverneur Morris, 1752-1816, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton, Miffin & Co., 1939), 2:500. JJ was not the only person to suffer such a fate; see JJ to Col. Richard Lloyd, 5 February 1775, Price, ed., Letterbook, Appendix A, p. 157. Some of JJ's troubles were caused by the Robert Morris collapse. "I wish to God we had nothing to do with him [Robert Morris] his credit is gone, his name stinks in the nostrils of everyone who hears it." JJ to Francis Charlton, 4 March 1788, Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1787-1788, NYPL. 127^11 arbitrated settlement in 1798 gave roughly £5,000 more to JJ than to Wallace and Muir, and a second legal case dragged on until 1823 without resolution. Chancery Papers, #2893, MHR; Papenfuse, Pursuit, pp. 191, 228-29. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 75 United States Consul in L o n d o n128 . yg accepted the post immediately and brought his family back to London from the country where they had been staying. Thomas Jefferson, the Secretary of State, stressed there was little money in the job, so Johnson continued his consignment trade. Wallace and Muir, meaniAile, worked to reduce the London debt and satisfy the London creditors. Johnson's consulate accounts, according to one historian, were in the same disarray as his business affairs;129 but Jefferson relied on Johnson primarily for intelligence about the British, which he seemed to have supplied to Jefferson's satisfaction. As he had in France, Johnson complained about his "out of pocket expenses" while on government business and even threatened to resign if he were not repaid for his service, a threat he did not carry out.130 Despite those continuing problems, Johnson managed to hold his head above water and to keep a large, expensive household afloat. Although we do not know how he managed, to judge from the number 1 2 8 ju lian P. Boyd, e d .. The Papers of Thomas J e f f e r s o n , 21 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), 16:521-28, 17:249, 18:96, 322. 129pr. Rhoda Dorsey made an unpublished study of the United States Consuls in Europe during the late eighteenth century and concluded that JJ's records as Consul were inaccurate and in arrears, in contrast to the records of other Consuls. Conversation between Dr. Rhoda Dorsey and Joan R. Challinor, March 1979. 130jj to James Maury, 25 May 1791, Dispatches from U.S. Consuls in London, 1790-1906, T-168, No. 1, National Archives, Washington, D.C.; see also JJ to James Maury, 7 February 1791, ibid. Who, he asked Jefferson, should compensate him for all his duties? JJ to Thomas Jefferson, 26 February 1791, Dispatches from U.S. Consuls in London, 1790-1906, T-168, No. 1, National Archives. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 76 of creditors who tried to collect debts when Johnson's business failed, we may assume he had been living on credit for quite some time. Louisa records that although the Johnson family lived "in the midst of the city of London we were kept almost entirely out of English society and visited only one family in the street in which we lived." A letter from her uncle in Maryland, Governor Thomas Johnson, was, Louisa recorded, the reason for this "singularity." The Governor told Johnson his daughters should "form connections with none but men of note and distinction in his own Country." Since Louisa herself termed this letter "silly," it is unlikely the letter could have actually determined the Johnson social circle. 131 Besides, the letter mentioned only the connections of the girls, not the friends of the parents. There is, however, an alternate possibility. Since Catherine Johnson was illegitim ate, she may not have been acceptable to London society, and Johnson, knowing this, kept her from embarrassment. Louisa may not have recorded any details of the house on Tower H ill, but she certainly remembered the young men who came to dinner, and for whom the older Johnson girls played and sang. In the eighteenth- century fashion, love was omnipresent at the Johnson's. Louisa explained that "a man old or young who visits frequently in a family of young Ladies must be supposed to be in love." Some loves of the three girls remained unrequited, some were unsuspected until revealed years later, one forbidden by the young man's previous engagement in America, and one ^^^LCA, "Record," pp. 34, 41, APM, reel 265. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 77 offer for Caroline refused by Joshua Johnson. A mutual attraction between Caroline and a young Englishman, Lord Andover, was broken off, Louisa recorded, by the Johnsons. Louisa admitted to an affection for a Marylander, Benjamin Ogle, and insisted that had John Trumbull, the American painter, been younger he would have asked for her hand. Later, a young southerner, Lawson Alexander, seems to have caught Louisa's fancy. Several times Louisa insisted in her memoirs that she had been thoroughly protected, that she had never been left alone with a man and that the only man "to take a liberty" with her was John Quincy, and he only after they were engaged. Although constantly exposed to men, Louisa told her children "no woman I can assure you ever had fewer 132 lovers than your Mother." During the 1780s the Johnsons had continued their friendship with the Adamses which had begun in Nantes. Young Abigail Adams and her husband, William Smith, were intimate friends, and one summer, Louisa wrote, the Smiths and Johnsons took a house together at 133 Brighton. Abigail and John Adams dined with the Johnsons when he was the United States Minister. There is a clear republican patina to Louisa's description of the Johnson's London life. It is understandable that Louisa, in 1825 when "Record of A Life or My Story" was written, would try to present the ^82lcA, "Record," pp. 42, 45, 54, 55, 59, APM, reel 265. 3-33lcA, "Record," p. 49, APM, reel 265. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 78 Johnson family living in London in as republican a light as possible. John Quincy had been under attack for his supposed "unrepublican" tendencies during his campaign for the Presidency; and Louisa, too, had been maligned as "English." Her brother, she recorded, had sailed to America in 1794 for his education to "fit him to live among republicans.” She described how her father put the pen Benedict Arnold used into the fire with tongs, so disgusted was he that a traitor should have called at and been physically present in his o f f i c e . 134 The Johnsons' social ambitions were, according to Louisa, raised again by Johnson's new job. As Consul, Johnson quite naturally came into contact with Thomas Pinckney, United States Minister to Britain, and saw much of his family. Louisa recorded in her memoirs that she was a friend of Elizabeth Motte Pinckney, the M inister's w i f e . 135 Louisa thought later that close relationships with the Pinckneys and the elegant John Barker Church had raised the Johnsons' social sights. They now associated with the pinnacle of Anglo-American society. There was seemingly nothing republican about the very elegant and attractive Angelica Schuyler Church or her daughter Kitty, with whom the Johnson girls attended balls and parties, and who, Louisa 13^LCA, "Record," pp. 48, 57-58, APM, reel 265. 135lcA, "Record," p. 47, APM, reel 265. Correspondence between JJ and Thomas Pinckney can be found in Dispatches from U.S. Consuls in London, 1790-1906, Miscellaneous Letters to Joshua Johnson, T-168, No. 1, N ational A rchives. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 79 wrote, was "a sweet girl entirely engrossed with pleasure."136 Perhaps their new social status, or perhaps Catherine Johnson's pride in her children, was responsible for a series of family portraits painted in the early 1790s. Louisa was about seventeen years old when the entire family, except for the boy Thomas, was painted by an unknown miniature portrait painter in London. Louisa's portrait shows a pert young lady with an upturned nose, large brown eyes, and, in the very latest style, a tall feathered bonnet perched on her head. Her sisters Nancy and Caroline (if the likenesses are accurate) looked remarkably like her: the portrait of Nancy is almost a twin of that of Louisa. Not only are Nancy and Louisa wearing the same dress and similar hats, but even the feathers on the two girls' hats are alike. Caroline's dark hair and bonnetless head set her apart from the others. Catherine Johnson wears an enormous hat, and her limpid look and stylish clothes make for an attractive picture. Although the portraits are small, they are well painted, and Joshua Johnson's has depth and character. In spite of continuing financial troubles, Johnson must have found the money to pay fo r th ese nine p o r t r a i t s , re v e a lin g the s o c ia l s ta tu s to which the Johnson family either aspired or thought they had achieved.137 136lcA, "Record," p. 51, APM, reel 265. "I saw frequently Mrs. Church and Mrs. Bingham—The pleasures or rather say the Follies of this Country seem to me greatly to have weakened their attachments to America," Matthew Ridley to Catherine Livingston, 5 September 1785, Ridley Papers, Boc #5, MHS. 137Andrew Oliver, Portraits of John Quincy Adams and His Wife (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1970), pp. 22-27. "About this time fashion required ladies to wear an Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 80 This small picture of Louisa is not the only image we have of Louisa before she was married. A portrait of Louisa, probably painted by Edward Savage, in 1792 or 1793, indicates what a lovely and feminine young lady she was. This portrait is incomparably lovelier and more sophisticated than the earlier miniature. A white gauzy dress fluffed out above the waist to make a fuller bosom line, a wreath of roses in her hands, a black ribbon around her w rist, and a tightly bound waist, all show off her youthful good looks. She certainly seems a well-bred young lady from an affluent family. It is not, however, the mere physical features of the sitter that makes this such an arresting portrait, but rather the steady and intelligent expression in Louisa's eyes. Beneath the facade of a fashionable young lady, the artist has captured an interesting and intelligent girl, who is watching the world with acuity and attention. The ambivalence, so obvious in Louisa's writings, is not discernible in this picture. Louisa may or may not have been the least attractive of the sisters, but in this portrait she is a most charming, intelligent, and engaging young lady.^^^ Although the family's life-style included portraits, the finances enormous pyramid of feathers on their heads," G. E, Mitton, Jane Austen and Her Times (London: Methuen & Co., 1905; reprint ed.. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennicot Press, 1970), p. 125. portrait is attributed by Oliver to Edward Savage and dated ca. 1801. Oliver, Portraits,pp. 45-48. I suggest, after discussing the matter with Celeste Walker, Assistant Editor of the Adams Papers, that this portrait was painted when Louisa was seventeen or eighteen years old by Savage before he left London in 1793. The portrait seems to have been brought to America in 1797, See Mary Cranch to AA, 28 May 1798, APM, r e e l 388. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 81 of the Johnsons, we know from historical evidence, were disordered, in a large measure because of Joshua’s inept and unsystematic business methods. These difficulties are pictured by Louisa, quite naturally, in a very different light. In her memoirs her father was the innocent victim of an unscrupulous partner, a Mr. Maitland, and surprisingly, of young Walter Hellen, his nephew and one-time trainee, and when Louisa wrote in 1824, the dead husband of her sister, Nancy, then also deceased. Perhaps Walter Hellen, being dead, was a convenient scapegoat; perhaps Louisa was genuinely unaware of her father's incompetence, or, more likely, chose not to record it. Parenthetically, her mother was identified as one of the culprits in the business collapse, since she refused to stay in England with the children, hostage to the trustees, while her husband went to Maryland to straighten out his affairs. But Louisa immediately excused her mother, because she could not be expected to keep such a large family alone in England. Even though her father suffered financial reverses in the 1780s and 1790s, Louisa claimed that he stood ready to give each girl £5,000 as a dowry, a large sum under any circumstances, but enormous (and perhaps spurious) where seven girls were involved, and the father's business affairs were in confusion. This unbestowed dowry promised, she recorded, but never 139 delivered was to haunt Louisa throughout her life. What emerges, then, from Louisa's memoirs is the picture of a ^^^LCA, "Record," pp. 55, 59, APM, reel 265. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 82 large family of girls, the oldest three already experienced, even if passively, with young men’s ardors and flirtations, and thoroughly marriageable. Love, marriage, romance, balls, parties, visiting made up their daily life giving the family an aura of fashionable and expensive sociability although they moved only in American, not English, society. The fact of Catherine Johnson's illegitimacy had been firmly covered over, and to visitors, the Johnson family seemed gay, lively, and comfortable. The household was quite obviously a mecca for young American men in London, so it is not surprising that on the evening of H November 1795, Colonel John Trumbull, an American painter living in London, and a constant visitor at the Johnsons, brought a young American diplomat, John Quincy Adams, to the Johnson house for dinner and introduced him to the twenty-year-old Louisa Catherine Johnson. 140 JQA, D iary, 11 November 1795, r e e l 27. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER II DEVOTED TO THE PUBLIC If the Johnsons were an unusual family, the young man who walked into their house in November 1795 was also unique: both his outward circumstances and his inner formation had been exceptional from early youth. Raised by his parents to be a great statesman, John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) served with distinction as a Minister abroad and as an illustrious Secretary of State (1817-1824), survived a difficult presidency (1825-1829), and became, finally, an eminent member of the House of Representatives (1830-1848). Although John Quincy's public life has been closely studied, his private life has not been given the a tte n tio n i t d eserv es. Nor is th is s u rp ris in g . The private life of public figures has been considered, at best, tangential to their public doings. Although John Quincy has fared rather better than many other historical figures, the special stresses under which he lived from earliest childhood must be understood if the many difficulties he encountered in his married life with Louisa are to be comprehended with compassion .1 iThe early works on the Adams family neglect the personal lives of the Adams men in favor of their public careers. A prime example is James Truslow Adams, The Adams Family (New York: The Literary Guild, 1930). Robert A. East provides many insights into the personal life of JQA during the formative years he spent in America from age seventeen to twenty-seven. Robert A. East, John Quincy Adams, the Critical Years: 1785-1794 (New York: Bookman Associates, 1962). Samuel F. Bemis includes much of JQA's personal life in his two definitive biographies. 83 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 84 John Quincy's ancestors had been established in Braintree (later Quincy), Massachusetts, since 1638. Among the first arrivals in Puritan Massachusetts, they were part of the first great migration that came in the 1630s. The Adams men worked th e ir farms and also participated in town government as selectmen, highway surveyors, and constables. In 1734 Deacon John Adams, great-grandson of the original colonist, a shoemaker, farmer, and town officer, married Susanna Boylston, whose family counted among its members several distinguished Boston physicians. Deacon John was the father of another more famous John (1735-1826), that sometimes school teacher, circuit-riding lawyer, patriot leader, future president and husband of a most remarkable woman, Abigail Smith Adams (1744-1818). Abigail's mother was a Quincy, which meant that Abigail came from a family that enjoyed greater social standing than did her husband. Living in the Quincy "mansion," devoting themselves to public service, and elected time and time again to the town's highest offices, the Quincys were as close to being John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956) and John Quincy Adams and the Union (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956). Bemis's version has, however, been assessed as "a thorough, readable and comprehensible study of Adams's private and public life" by Patrick J. Qwens in his dissertation, "John Quincy Adams and American Utilitarianism " (Ph.D. dissertation, Notre Dame University, 1976), p. 8. Qwens discusses JQA's ideas on the female sex which appear in John Quincy Adams, "Society and Civilization," The American Review 2 (July 1845):80-89. Qwens does not deal in any way with JQA's life with LCA, as his dissertation is concerned with JQA's intellectual formation. Dorothy Bobbe's account of JQA's and LCA's life is readable yet lacks interpretation. Dorothy Bobbe, Mr. and Mrs. John Quincy Adams : An Adventure in Patriotism (New York: Minton, Balch & Co., 1930). Marie B. Hecht includes much material on LCA in her biography of JQA, but again, interpretation is missing. Marie B. Hecht, John Quincy Adams: A Personal History of an Independent Man (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1972). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 85 "gentry" as this rough colonial world allowed. They valued strength and intelligence in Quincy women, a legacy inherited by all three Smith daughters; Mary, Abigail, and Elizabeth. Their father, William Smith, minister of Weymouth parish, also farmed his acres and, most importantly, owned a sizeable library which Abigail used to improve her mind beyond the attainment of most colonial w o m e n . 2 Both John and Abigail parents were unusually intelligent and active people. Each alone might have lived full and satisfactory lives within their spheres. Both rose far above their families: John Adams above his brother, Peter, and Abigail, because of John's position, above her two sisters. Jointly they created a family that for four generations played crucial roles in the political and intellectual history of the United States. The first step in the creation of this e x tra o rd in a ry fam ily was the form ation of John Quincy Adams. Bom in a five-room farmhouse in Braintree in 1767, John Quincy was the second of four children, the eldest son and unquestionably the most important child in the family. His sister, Nabby, born two years before him, was disqualified by her sex from playing a role in the larger world. The burden, therefore, of his parents' expectations fell 2por the background of AA and JA, see Adams, Adams Family, pp. 3-8; Page Smith John Adams 2 vols. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1962), 1:3; Gilbert Chinard, Honest John Adams (Boston: L ittle, Brown & Co., 1933), pp. 5-12; Edith Belle Celles, "Abigail Adams : Domesticity and the American Revolution" (Ph.D. dissertation. University of California, Irvine, 1978), pp. 29-45; Rosemary Skinner Keller, "Abigail Adams and the American Revolution: A Personal History" (Ph.D. dissertation. University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, 1977), pp. 4-35; Francis Russell, Adams: An American Dynasty (New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., 1976), pp. 13-16. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 86 squarely upon the shoulders of John Quincy, His two younger brothers, Charles and Thomas, seem never to have awakened such high hopes from their parents as did John Quincy. Abigail encouraged the twelve-year- old John Quincy to succeed. "Great necessities call out great virtues," she told him, and qualities which might otherwise lie "dorm ant, wake in to L ife , and form the C haracter of the Hero and the Statesman."3 Most importantly, John Quincy accepted his parents' goals for him. Concerning her eldest son, Abigail later asserted, "at a very early period of Life I devoted him to the publick," and she further reported that he had never disappointed her.4 Abigail meant what she wrote: she devoted him. He did not choose his life's course; she chose it for him. Abigail and John together mapped out John Quincy's career. His parents believed they had the right to choose his life for him, even before they knew what kind of person John Quincy was: what were his inclinations, likes, dislikes, temperament, strengths, weaknesses, or even talents. Quite literally, John Quincy was a tabula rasa on which his parents inscribed their ambitions, their longings, and their 3a A to JQA, 19 January 1780 in L. H. Butterfield, ed., Adams Family Correspondence, 4 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1963-1973), 3:268. ^Charles W. Akers, Abigail Adams: An American Woman (Boston: L ittle, Brown & Co., 1980), p. 133. JQA ”Accept[ed] almost without question the political postulates of his father . . . ." Adrienne Koch and William Peden, eds.. The Selected Writings of John and John Quincy Adams (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946), p. xviii. In 1788 JQA decided against the Federal Constitution, but upon hearing that his father favored ratification, he changed his mind and strongly supported the Constitution. David F. Musto, "The Youth of John Quincy Adams," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 113 (August 1969):274. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 87 view of the world. His was always to be a career for the "publick," not for John Quincy himself. John Quincy responded actively to his parents' promptings and achieved the goals they set for him. He adj usted to their demands by striving more vigorously; he, not his parents , made the necessary accommodations. His parents almost never lowered their expectations or mitigated the intensity with which they presented their demands. In fact, the greater their expectations, the harder he tried to fulfill their wishes. His father seems to have apprehended John Quincy first and foremost as a "mind." He did not mention the birth of the boy in his Diary; John Quincy appears there first in his father's account of their t r i p to France to g eth er when the boy was te n . The problems of John Quincy's education, however, concerned his father, almost from his birth. "Johnny must go to colledge," John wrote to his brother-in-law, Richard Cranch, when the proposed scholar was two months old.5 It is the father's first reference to the boy and it was merely a foretaste of what was to come. He described h is s ta te of mind to A b ig a il, when John Quincy was six: he was "very thoughtfull and anxious about our Johnny. What School to send him to—what Measures to take with him. He must go on learning his Latin, to his Grandfather or to you, or somewhere. And he must w rite."& The same year John expressed satisfaction that John Quincy was reading with his mother and asked 3j A to Richard Cranch, 23 September 1767, Adams Family Correspondence, 1:63. 6j A to AA, 30 June 1774, Adams Family Correspondence, 1:117. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 88 that he receive a good account of the boy's progress in Latin.7 The following year John urged Abigail to teach all the children "Geometry, Geography, and the art of drawings" and considered Abigail "well qualified for a school mistress," an important talent since John was absent much of the tim e rid in g on the c i r c u i t .8 Already before the Revolution, Abigail spent much of her time alone, but "the Education of our Children," John wrote to her, "is never out of my Mind."9 His overriding concern was not so much the education of Charles, Thomas, or Nabby; it was the education of John Quincy. John and Abigail both hoped through education to mold John Quincy into a "Hero and Statesman." Later, as a teenager in France and Russia, his father's letters reveal a veritable obsession with the boy's educational progress. Perhaps his precocious intelligence, or his positive response, or his position as eldest son spurred his parents on. Regardless of the reason, John Quincy became the prime object of his parents' extravagant hopes. Because she was a woman, A b ig a il's in te n se and w ide-ranging ambitions could find expression only vicariously through her husband and son. She could only help her husband with her often perspicacious advice, but John Quincy she could actually form. John Quincy's receptiveness and intelligence provided her with an ideal subject. Abigail had been much impressed with a book published in England in 7ja to AA, 28 August 1774, Adams Family Correspondence, 1:145. 8 ja to AA, 26 September 1775, Adams Family Correspondence, 1:285. 9jA to AA, 28 August 1774, Adams Family Correspondence, 1:145. Bemis, Foundations, p. 5. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 89 1754 and reprinted in America: Juliana Seymour's On the Management and Care of Children.10 The mother's role in this book seems unreasonably elevated in the light of present-day psychological theories. The mother could, Seymour wrote, by judicious management, form her eldest son, chosen because of his rank (this was an English book), into the "figure in the higher world." Abigail herself craved an active role in the world, but her sex disqualified her. Women supposedly concerned themselves with their domestic world. The role Seymour advocated for mothers as molders of virtuous, civic-minded citizens gave women vicarious power through the male members of the family. "God," Seymour wrote, "has given them Genius; but you, my Dear, have the Cultivation of that G ift."11 His parents never doubted John Quincy's genius; that Abigail was competent to nurture and bring his genius to fruition, they seem not to have questioned. Seymour believed, further, that not only ♦ could the mother inculcate virtue in the child, but she could also extinguish every evil trait. The power given to the mother seemed total; in Abigail's hands, abetted by John's instructions it was certainly awesome. Total control over the child, as proposed by Seymour, became therefore a religious duty. Religion and patriotism l^Keller, "Abigail Adams and the American Revolution," pp. 220-21. "I am obliged to you for the ingenious Mrs. Seymours treatise on Education." Mercy Qtis Warren to AA, 25 July 1773, Adams Family Correspondence, 1:86. Juliana Seymour was not a woman but a man (Dr. John Hill) who, fearing his advice would be refused as an outsider, wrote under the pseudonymous name Juliana Seymour. Celles, "Abigail Adams : Domesticity and the American Revolution," p. 105, n. 5. Quoted in Keller, "Abigail Adams and the American Revolution," p. 221. "John has Genius and so has Charles," JA to AA, 15 April 1776, Adams Family Correspondence, 1:384. It was, however, JQA's genius, not CA's, which was nurtured by his family. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 90 combined to countenance parental control over the child, and the end, thus sanctified, justified the means. Abigail and John absorbed these ideas and their subject was John Quincy. John and Abigail agreed wholeheartedly in their planning for John Quincy—so much so that it gave him a very circumscribed childhood. Instead of receiving two slightly different views on life, he received only one. Very importantly for his future outlike on life, his parents tried to keep him from other influences, fearing the contamination of the world. John suggested, when John Quincy was seven, that he should "keep himself out of the Company of rude C h i l d r e n . "12 John Quincy did not attend a school newly started in Braintree because Abigail thought children should not be accustomed "to such examples as would tend to corrupt the purity of their words and actions."13 He continued learning with his father's law clerk as a tutor, away from other children.14 His parents' fears for John Quincy were no inheritance from the Puritans. Indeed, the Puritan view of childhood tended to the exact opposite. In the Puritan view, children partook from their birth of the depravity visited on mankind by the sin of Adam. Far from being 12ja to AA, 28 August 1774, Adams Family Correspondence, 1:145. 13a A to JA, 16 September 1774, Adams Family Correspondence, 1: 153. "Who," AA wrote to a young man on his way to Europe in 1780, "can touch pitch and not be defiled?" AA to Winslow Warren, 19 May 1780, Adams Family Correspondence, 3:353. Later AA suggested that children of good republican households be kept from contact with servants whose standards of virtue were low. Akers, Abigail Adams, p. 117. 14JQA's tutor was John Thaxter, cousin of AA. He was also JA's law clerk, tutor to the Adams boys and private secretary to JA in Europe. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 91 kept pure, children's wills had to be broken, their sinful inheritance rooted out. But John Quincy, apprehended by his parents to be pure, needed no evil exorcised out of him. Perhaps their reading of John Locke's Some Thoughts on Education had convinced them of children's essential goodness and of the errors of the Puritan view. Of the evil of the world, however, Abigail was quite sure; she had not abandoned all her Puritan theology. Her special child must be guarded from worldly wickedness. This view of John Quincy as susceptible to contamination would be sharpened by political rhetoric during the Revolution, but it is important to mark that it existed already in his parents' mind before political events and attitudes gave it new and heightened m e a n i n g15 . xt is difficult to know why Abigail protected John Quincy so closely when the other Adams children seem to have lived a normal life, in contact with their peers. Perhaps his parents' hopes were so extreme that any fall from grace might mar the entire picture. John Quincy, it seems, was raised to be perfect. 15"In contrast to both the Calvinist and Enlightenment writers, the Romantics insisted that original child nature was neither depraved (or prone to depravity as some Calvinist revisionists had it) nor neutral, but was good, perhaps even holy." Peter G. Slater, "Views of Children and of Child Rearing During the Early National Period: A Study in the New England Intellect" (Ph.D. dissertation. University of California at Berkeley, 1970), p. 3. See also Philip J. Greven, Jr., Child-Rearing Concepts, 1628-1861 (Itasca, 111.: F. E. Peacock Publishers, 1973); Anne L. Kuhn, Tlie Mother's Role in Childhood Education: New England Concepts, 1830-1860 (New Haven: Yale University P r s s , 1947); Bernard W. Wishy, The Child and th e R epublic : The Dawn of Modern American Child Nurture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968). AA's view of mankind was negative: "I am more and more convinced that Man is a dangerous creature, and that power whether vested in many or a few is ever grasping." AA to JA, 27 November 1775, Adams Family Correspondence, 1:329. Concerning John Locke's influence on AA, see Keller, "Abigail Adams and the American Revolution," p. 216. On the change in adults' perception of children, see Carl N. Degler, At Odds : Women and the Family in American from the Revolution to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 66-82. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 92 Although John Adams seemed to be a full partner in raising the children and although he and Abigail seem to have agreed in every detail of the purpose of training their children, Abigail implemented their ideas. In their first fourteen years of marriage, John was home only half that time. John Adams, lawyer, rode the circuit, then became a representative in the Massachusetts legislature; later he emerged as a prominent patriot leader in Boston; and finally, in 1774, he travelled to Philadelphia as Massachusetts delegate to the Continental Congress. John's many absences from home were a cause of conflict for him between his concept of duty to his family and obligation to his country, but country always won out. However much Abigail suffered, however much she missed John when he was a b se n t, she agreed a t a l l times that he must go. The tensions between her ambitions for him and her need to have him at home tormented her, but she was capable of bearing the stress. Although her letters detail her loneliness without John, it is possible that the effort to run a home singlehandedly gave her both the power and control she seems to have craved and a part in the sacrifices which her country so desperately needed. If John could serve his country one way, Abigail could serve in another way.l^ The strain of raising the children alone was great for Abigail, but John Quincy proved a most rewarding pupil. No child ever signed his letters more truthfully than he, with the familiar subscription. l^This view of AA's problems in coping with the Revolutionary War and JA's role in it is based on David F. Musto, "The Youth of John Quincy Adams," pp. 269-82. "Sunday seems a more lonesome Day to me than any other when you are absent." AA to JA, 14 [i.e., 13] September 1767, Adams Family Correspondence, 1:62. AA to JA, 7 May 1776, Adams Family Correspondence, 1:401. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 93 "your dutiful Son.''^^ Although there was no way John Quincy could reach his parents' standards, he gave himself over to trying. The burden imposed on John Quincy can be felt in his first extant letter, w ritte n to h is cousin when he was s ix years o ld . i thank you for your last letter i have had it in my mind to write to you this long time but afairs of much leess importance has prevented me i have made Sut veray little proviciancy in reading . . . to [o] much of my time in play [th]ere is a great Deal of room for me to grow better.18 The letter illustrates his concerns. Had he discharged his duty? Had he let trifles wean him away from chores? Is he reading well enough? Is he playing too much? The cares he expressed are not those of a s ix - year-old child, but the cares of a child upon whom the adult world is already pressing. The letter reveals the demands of duty, concentration, self-restraint, and, above all, effort. Following the path laid out for him by his parents at six years old, he was already grappling with adult worries. Unwittingly on their part, his parents' demands had robbed him of his childhood and propelled him at once into the cold, cheerless world of adult strivings. Saddest of all, they had awakened in him an adult sense of failure. The sense that he continually failed to meet his parents' standards produced in John Quincy a remarkable sense of shame. At nine l^For example: JQA to JA, 13 May 1781, Adams Family Correspondence, 4:113. AA's patriotism was exemplary. When told that JA would accept a seat in the House of Representatives, an unremunerative post, AA replied, "Well I am willing in this Cause to run all risques with you and to be ruined with you if you are ruined." JA to Benjamin Rush, 12 April 1809, Old Family Letters Copied from the Originals for Alexander Biddle (Philadelphia: J B. Lippincott Co., 1892), p. 229. 18JQA to Elizabeth Cranch, 1773?, Adams Family Correspondence, 1:91. The editors of the Adams Papers have provisionally dated this letter, using the handwriting as evidence. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 94 he told his father he was ashamed that he had read too little of Smollett's A Complete History of Europe.19 His mother, he explained had a difficult time keeping him "steady" at his writing because his mind was always running after "birds eggs play and trifles." He ended with the determination to do better and asked his father to help him apportion his time. In his request may be felt the effort needed for John Quincy to meet the high standards of an absent father. Six days later he could report he had progressed halfway through the third volume of Smollett, applying himself even while his tutor was away.20 The desire to please his parents is palpable in every letter, and by eleven he had already internalized their wishes. He found he was "more Satisfied" with himself when he applied part of his time "to some u se fu l employment," than when he "Idled i t away about T r i f l e s . "21 Not only did his parents insist that he succeed, but they told him that if he failed, the fault would be his. "Nothing," Abigail counselled him, "is wanting with you, but attention, dilligence and steady application. Nature has not been deficient."22 Heading off any criticism from her, he justified a shortened correspondence from France, "si vous consideree le peu de tems que j ai ete ici vous ne blâmerez pas moi pour ne pas avoir apprit plus de françois."23 Even 19jQA to JA, 2 June 1777, Adams Family Correspondence, 2:254. 20jAQ to JA, 8 June 1777, Adams Family Correspondence, 2:261. 21Ib id . 22aa to JQA, 12 January 1780, Adams Family Correspondence, 3:268; AA wrote to JQA of "advantages you will be \ke to have if you do but properly attend to them." AA to JQA [10?] june 1778, Adams Family Correspondence, 3:37. 23JQA to AA, 25 May 177[8], Adams Family Correspondence, 3:29. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 95 his sister delivered the lesson, "It is your own fault," she told him, "if you neglect to make a right improvement of the talents that are put in to your h ands."24 John Adams left home for Philadelphia and the First Continental Congress in 1774, and John Quincy experienced the early years of the Revolution with his mother. With her he watched the Battle of Bunker Hill from Penns Hill near the Adams farmhouse. The event was seared into his mind by the death of Dr. Joseph Warren, a close family friend. He was present while Abigail coped with commodity shortages, rampant inflation, disease, and the death of his grandmother and a servant girl, while the Revolution swirled about Braintree. British troops became a common sight, and his patriotism was enhanced by his mother's exhortations and his father's letters from Philadelphia. A child far less sensitive and malleable would have been affected by the momentous events of the times. John Quincy absorbed them into his very being.25 For both John and Abigail, devotion and duty to the emerging republic was the very stuff of their lives, their very existence. No matter how many sacrifices they were asked to make, John and Abigail made them w illin g ly because country came before a l l e ls e , and they saw the Revolution as one of the great events in the history of mankind. John Adams saw himself as Thucydides and also detected a "striking Resemblance, in several Particulars, between the Peloponnesian and the American W a r."26 High purpose supplied the motivating force for 24a A2 to JQA, 3 May 1782, Adams Family Correspondence, 4:320. 25JQA's early revolutionary experiences are well described in Bemis, Foundations, p. 6. 26 JA to AA, 20 August 1777, Adams Family Correspondence, 2:320. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 96 Abigail and John, but John lived in the midst of events while Abigail was left with the burden or raising a family day by day, hour by hour, under painful and trying wartime conditions. The way she coped with the challenges had a direct impact on John Quincy's life . Left alone with her four children under conditions of extreme danger and loneliness throughout much of the Revolutionary and post- Revolutionary period, she could bear her difficulties only if she elevated her sacrifice to the very highest patriotic plane. Incapable of admitting the truth that John Adams was satisfying his ambitions at the same time he served his country, she continually justified her sacrifice by claiming for him, and obliquely for herself, a pure and unsullied patriotism. In most families, close personal contact reveals the parents' faults to the child, but John Adams' long absences from his home made this difficult for the four children in Braintree. Abigail seems to have elevated John Adams' role as an American leader to such an extent that a political career, achieved through moral and educational superiority, became for John Quincy (and for future generations of Adamses) the only possible role in life.27 Abigail stated it well when she wrote John, "tho I have been calld to sacrifice to my Country, I can glory in my Sacrifice, and derive pleasure from my intimate connextion with one who is esteemed worthy of the important trust devolved upon him."28 Although Abigail willingly sacrificed for her country, she continually voiced her anguish and counted the price paid for her patriotism. In letter after letter she 27Musto, "The Youth of John Quincy Adams," p. 271. 28AA to JA, 18 May 1778, Adams Family Correspondence, 3:23. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 97 described the pain of her loneliness, the difficulty of running the farm, and her anxiety for her husband and son on the high seas during the war: "My habitation, how disconsolate it looks! My table I set down to it but cannot swallow my food. 0 Why was I born with so much Sensibility and why possessing it have I so often been call'd to struggle with it?"29 if she received no letters from John she complained to him directly and described her feelings of desolation in em otional rhetoric.30 Abigail's ability to maintain her equilibrium under the most trying circumstances may have been closely tied to her capacity to express her sufferings. Patriotism may have demanded self-abnegation, but it did not demand that she suffer in silence. John Quincy, ten years old, was being prepared by the letters of his father and the exhortations of his mother for a career like that of his father as a patriot statesman when, in December 1777, John Adams was ordered by the Continental Congress to Paris as a diplomatic Commissioner. There was never any question in either John’s or Abigal's mind that he (John) would accept.31 Devotion to country 29a A to John T h ax ter, 14 November 1779, Adams Family Correspondence, 3:233; see also AA to John Thaxter, 9 April 1778, Adams Family Correspondence, 3:5; AA to JA, 10 June 1778, Adams Family Correspondence, 3:36; AA to JA, 18 May 1778, Adams Family Correspondence, 3:22. 30concerning AA's complaints about letters, see JQA to AA, 26 December 1778, Adams Family Correspondence, 3:139. 31"But self-sacrifice amounted to a definition of his [JA'sl idea of public service." Peter Shaw, The Character of John Adams (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Va., by The University of North Carolina Press, 1976), p. 107. A letter from Mercy Otis Warren stiffened AA's resolve to let JA go to Europe. Warren's arguments were based on the same combination of patriotism and self-interest shown by AA. Mercy Otis Warren to AA, 2 January 1778, Adams Family Correspondence, 2:376. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 98 should and would supersede all other considerations. More difficult to decide was whether Abigail should accompany him or if any of the children should go. John Adams' Diary records the final determination: "... after Dinner I sent my Baggage, and walked myself with Captain Tucker, Mr. G riffin a Midshipman, and my eldest Son, John Quincy Adams, between 10 and 11. Years of Age, down to the Moon Head, where lay the Bostons Barge."32 John Quincy, who had begged to go, bore up well under the tension of leaving his family and a difficult voyage. Although his mother, his brothers, and his sister all wept at his leaving, John Quincy preserved a rather unnatural "manly firmness." John Adams's diary records that he and John Quincy shared a bunk, a physical closeness that may have been of some comfort to the boy, whose fears of capture could not have been lessened by his father receiving a pistol before they left. John Quincy was not the only child on the voyage: John Adams also cared for Jessie Deane, son of one of the American diplomats in Paris. Far from finding the children a burden, John Adams recorded that "This benevolent office is peculiarly agreeable to my Temper." Chased by British ships, enduring seasickness and a hurricane, cursed with a less than sound ship and the death of a sailor, throughout everything, John Quincy bore up with a calm and fortitude that gratified his father "beyond expression." Keeping with his settled habit of educating himself, John Quincy began to learn the sails and compass of the ship.33 32piary and Autobiography of John Adams, 2:269. 33por JA's pleasure at JQA's manly behavior, see Diary and Autobiography of John Adams . 2:276; and JA to AA, 13 February 1778, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 99 It must have been an extraordinary ten year old who maintained, under such circumstances, his inner calm and turned his mind to the outside world. His father's pleasure at having him along must have been conveyed to the boy and may have given him strength to bear the voyage. John Quincy did not hide from himself or minimize the "distresses & dangers" he had gone through on the voyage, and he reached across the ocean in his letters with great affection to his family and to John Thaxter, his tutor.34 But he carried with him to Europe the fear that he would fall short of his parents' standards. He wrote diffidently to his mother that he hoped she would forgive him for not writing very often, told her he was "no great hand at letter writing," and assured her that he was trying hard to keep a diary and a copy book of his letters, even though, reading through them later, he would be ashamed of their childishness. With both self-effacement and self-justification, he wrote, "a journal Book & a letter Book of a Lad of Eleven years old. Cannot be expected to Contain much of Science, Littérature, arts, wisdom or wit."35 His sense of unworthiness would be mitigated with time. More lasting and important in his life, however, would be his perception that Europe, to which he was travelling, was a morally dangerous place. Adams Family Correspondence, 2:388. JQA mentioned the "distresses & dangers I have gone through" in writing to his brother when he arrived in Paris. JQA to CA, 6 June 1778. Adams Family Correspondence, 3:33. 34JQA also mentioned the dangers of the voyage to his mother. JQA to AA, 12 April 1778, Adams Family Correspondence, 3:11. 35JQA to AA, 27 September 1778, Adams Family Correspondence, 3:92. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 100 John Quincy received two almost contradictory messages about Europe : firs t, that living in Europe was so valuable an experience , that he should endure separation from his family and a very hazardous wartime ocean voyage. John Adams described his feelings when he first saw the coast of France: "Europe thou great Theatre of Arts, Sciences, Commerce, War, am I at last permitted to visit thy Territories ."36 Yet, simultaneously, both Abigail and John believed that Europe was a place of great danger and that European monarchies were repositories of moral corruption. Europe was, therefore, both remarkably enticing in what it had to offer, yet morally corrupt. His parents delivered both views with great intensity. How John Quincy organized this very complicated set of theories about Europe into a coherent whole is hard to grasp. Yet he managed it at the age of ten. Europe as morally corrupt was a common idea among educated Americans both before and during the Revolution. The focus of corruption, the Americans thought, lay in monarchical government, a form of polity at that time prevalent in Europe. Because of political confrontation with England, the Americans considered England to be the central focus of the corruption, but the dangers of a monarchical system of government extended to other European countries as w ell.37 36JA quoted in Peter Shaw, John Adams, p. 108. So moved was JA when he saw Europe that he suffered from vertigo. Peter Shaw, John Adams, p. 108, n. 6. 37h . Trevor Colbourn, ed., "A Pennsylvania Farmer at the court of King George: John Dickinson’s London Letters, 1754-1756," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 86 (July 1962):268. Richard Bushman, "Corruption and Power in Provincial America" in The Development of a Revolutionary Mentality (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1972), pp. 63-91; Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967), especially chapter 3. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 101 The colonists feared the inherent power of the monarch to create an aristocracy of influence and connections and thereby undermine and subvert that most revered institution, the British Constitution. Balanced through the monarchy in England was by a once-free aristocracy and the people in Parliament, they feared that not even the world's best Constitution could save them from monarchy's corrupting influence. Their ideas grew from their concept of morality and the relationship between liberty and virtue. Proud of their inherited English liberties, many colonists during the imperial crisis believed they were the victims of a settled plan to subvert their liberties—a plan consciously plotted by the English administration and their bought lackeys in Parliament. The means of subversion would be to draw Americans away from their simple and frugal habits, insinuating in them love of luxury and high living which could then be fed by a venal English colonial administration. England, the colonists believed, had already gone far down this road. John Dickinson, viewing a British election in 1754, drew the parallel between Rome and England that was perceived by other Americans educated in the classics: "I think," he wrote, "the character of Rome will equally suit this nation: 'Easy to be bought, i f th e re was but a purchaser.'"38 private luxury and public corruption had destroyed the liberties of the people in the Roman republic; Americans' own liberties were similarly at risk. Against the corruption they feared would enslave America, the colonists thought they had but one weapon—the virtue residing in the American people. 38cordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969), pp. 35-36. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 102 When Americans spoke of "virtue" and "luxury," the colonists meant something far more comprehensive than what is meant by those words today. By "virtue" they meant love of country, willingness to sacrifice one's own interests for that of the republic, and renunciation of ease. By "luxury" they meant not only wealth but the enervating life of ease which they thought would sap a man's fibre. Self-indulgence, prodigality, idleness, all these traits could so soften a country within that attack from without was merely the final act. Republics they believed had been subverted not from enemy countries but by the enemy within to which they gave the name of luxury. Further, luxury also confused the ordained hierarchical order, allowing the poorer classes to emulate their richer neighbors.39 Montesquieu, whose writings were widely read and admired in the colonies, encompassed even more when he warned against luxury. To 39The French political philosopher Condorcet warned against using the historical analogues of which the colonists were so fond and denied the validity of the classical analogies. Edward Handler, America and Europe in the Political Thought of John Adams (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), p. 61. The perception of classical events as contemporary was widespread among Americans in the late eighteenth century. Henry Steele Commager, The Empire of Reason: How Europe Imagined and America Realized the Enlightenment (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press-Doubleday, 1978), pp. 140-42. On the subject of the classics and eighteenth-century America, see Richard M. Gummere, The American Colonial Mind and the Classical Tradition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963); H. Trevor Colbourn, The Lamp of Experience : Whig History and the Intellectual Origins of the American Revolution (Chapel H ill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963); J. W. Eadie, ed.. Classical Traditions in Early America (Ann Arbor: U n iv e rsity of M ichigan, 1976); Gordon S. Wood, The C reation of the American Republic, pp. 478-79; Liddle, "'Virtue and Liberty,''* pp. 15-38. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 103 riches and conspicuous consumption as signs of luxury, he added sexual self-indulgence.40 A perceptive historian has pointed out that "luxury" was often joined with "effeminacy and corruption" as faults to be avoided by good republicans. "Effeminacy" was also joined with "ignorance . . . and vice," dangers to be shunned if the Republic was to survive.41 What is most important was that unmanly weakness was a threat to the Republic and that this feebleness could come in the guise of femininty. To sum up the situation: "If Americans lived in a world of the political imagination in which virtue was ever threatened by corruption, it must be added that the overtones of virtue were male, and those of corruption, f e m a l e . "42 These ideas, which identified Great Britain as a fountain-head of corruption, provided the ideology of rebellion. After 1776, ever so s lig h tly a lte r e d , these same ideas provided some of the ideology th a t informed the political discussion in the United States until well into the nineteenth century. It was a political discussion nourished by fear. Other republics had proven to be fragile and short-lived. The 40uinda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic, Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel H ill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Va., by the University of North Carolina Press, 1980), p. 19, n. 10 and 11. 41 Ibid., p. 31. AA wrote that "Luxery that bainfull poison has unstrung and enfeabled her sons." AA to JA, 13 February 1779, Adams Family Correspondence, 3:168. 42Rerber, Women of the Republic, p. 31. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 104 United States, now connected, in the minds of the Americans, with all republics of history, partook of the risk; the responsibility was awesome, but so was the s ig n ific a n c e .43 Not all Americans, no matter how much they gave lip service to these ideas, acted on them. The history of bad attendance and sloppy management at the Continental Congress and an Army consistently undermanned, underarmed, and underclothed testified that, to some, rhetoric did not translate itself into either concern or action. But for other Americans, the ideas and the rhetoric did penetrate their lives and inform their actions—perhaps none more so than John and A bigail Adams, A lready in 1765 John Adams was re fe rrin g to the " s e rv ile dependencies" of the European social o r d e r . 44 Abigail, although like all of her sex in America without a classical education, asserted American heroes might die with the "Speech of Cato in their Mouths, 'What a pitty it is, that we can dye but once to save our C o u n t r y . '"45 She feared Americans' love of ease might lead them 43During the Revolution, AA began to lose confidence in America's virtue. AA to JA, 13 February 1779, Adams Family Correspondence, 3:168. On Benjamin Rush's attitudes towards Europe and the American republican experiment, very like that of the Adamses, see Lester H. Cohen, "Explaining the Revolution: Ideology and Ethics in Mercy Otis Warren's Historical Theory," The William and Mary Quarterly 37 (April 1980):200-218. 44nandler, America and Europe, p. 83. 45aa to Mercy Warren, 5 December 1773, Adams Family Correspondence, 1:88. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 105 astray. John Adams, only a month before the First Continental Congress, worried lest corruption infect America and identified the source; "Debauchery, Dissipation, Luxury, Effeminacy and Gaming which the late m inisterial Measures are introducing."46 The Americans, John Adams, insisted, were not immune to the blandishments of corruption. Ten years of British politics, he insisted, had brought "Profaneness, Leudness, Intemperance" to "Ambitious and Avaricous" Americans.47 Naturally, Americans who associated with the English were considered dangerous, especially Tories. "These Tories," John Adams asserted, "act the Part of the Devil—they tempt Men and Women into s i n . "48 prom Philadelphia where he had gone for the First Continental Congress, he wrote Abigail that he worried lest the country might not have enough virtue for the task that lay before it, but he placed his trust in "Frugality,(Economy, Parcimony," hoping women, and men, too, would relinquish their " o r n a m e n t s."49 Virtuous citizens, defined as those willing to subordinate their personal interest to the good of the entire society, were thought to be an absolute requisite for a republic. History had proved again and again that republics could be lost if their citizens were turned away from the path of patriotic virtue into that of selfish self- interest. Lacking the trappings and coercive power of a monarchy, republics depended entirely upon the virtue of their subjects. Thus, 46JA to AA, 5 July 1774, Adams Family Correspondence, 1:125. 47 Ib id . 48 Ib id , 49JA to AA, 20 September 1774, Adams Family Correspondence, 1:161. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 106 the moral health of the American people became of great significance to both America and to the Adamses. "The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue," John wrote one correspondent and thought "public Virtue is the only Foundation of R e p u b l i c s . "50 Abigail located virtue in the countryside, not in the city, and she hoped Americans would return to a "primitive Simplicity of Manners and not sink into inglorious ease." Fearing Britain would go the way of Rome, she thought that Lord North was practicing "Neroism."51 Although corruption was seen to be particularly rife in England, all of Europe, because of its monarchies, courts, and aristocracies, was also thought by the Adamses to partake of im m orality. No one was sure th a t Americans had enough virtue to support the republic; but though the Adamses w orried about the m orals of America, a much more p a r tic u la r worry for both of his parents was the moral state of John Quincy age ten, now at the mercy of the dangerous European scene. 50wood, The Creation of the American Republic, pp. 65-70; JA quoted in John R. Howe, Jr., The Changing Political Thought of John Adams (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), p. 88. 51a A to Mercy Otis Warren, 3? February 1775, Adams Family Correspondence, 1:183; AA to JA, 16 October 1774, Adams Family Correspondence, 1:173. Not all America felt forever negatively towards monarchies, with their courts and aristocracies. In the 1790s, Gouverneur Morris wrote the Countess of Sutherland about Vienna, "Well, here I am, in a country full of 'state and ancientry'—how congenial to my task and feelings you well know." Anne Carey Morris, ed.. The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, 2 vols. (New York: Da Capo Press, 1970). Nor did Gouverneur Morris think Americans more virtuous than other people. Max M. Mintz, Gouverneur Morris and the American Revolution (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970), p. v ii. The Adams's "prejudice against Britain was to be transmitted in full virulence through Charles Francis to his children." Arthur F. Beringause, Brooks Adams : A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955), p. 10. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 107 Abigail admitted to John Thaxter that she felt a "thousand Fears and anxieties" upon John Quincy's leaving. She worried about the "snares and temptations," the possibility of a "stain on his morals." She concluded, however, "To exclude him from temptation would be to exclude him from the World in which he is to live, and the only method which can be persued with advantage is to fix the padlock upon the m ind."52 It is hard to understand just what vice Abigail thought John Quincy would absorb at his early age, unless it was a taste for luxurious and idle living. By writing letters to John Quincy representing the dangers of Europe in the blackest of terms, by emphasizing the fact that John Quincy was alone in a foreign land (where, incidentally, he was particularly susceptible to her admonitions), she hoped to protect him against European immorality at the same time he was gaining all the benefits from a European experience. Abigail managed to protect her son from European vices, but there was a cost, and the cost was paid by John Quincy. John Quincy had to learn to live life at a distance, safe only with his books and in the company of Americans. The boy fully realized his danger, writing to his brother that although missing European advantages, he 52a A to John Thaxter, 15 February 1778, Adams Family Correspondence, 2:390. Five years later AA wrote in almost the same words of "temptations and snares of vice." AA to JQA, 20 November 1783, Charles Francis Adams, ed.. The Letters of Mrs. Adams (Boston: Charles C. L ittle & James Brown, 1840), p. 189. Rosemary Skinner Keller has based a chapter of her dissertation on the phrase, "the padlock upon the mind" and analyzes accurately what Abigail intended to do. Keller, "Abigail Adams and the American Revolution," pp. 214-46. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 108 advantages, he (Charles) was "less exposed to vice & folly."53 He was, for the seven formative years he lived abroad, in enemy territory, always on guard, never fully relaxed. The padlock on his mind kept out much, but it was not total; it was a selective lock. Already highly intellectualized before he went to Europe, books and reading, always "safe" learning, became a passion he was never to lose. But other parts of his nature, many of them necessary for a balanced, happy life would be neglected. Flexibility, suppleness, spontaneity, easy relationships with his peers, and much creativity was stifled. He became impervious to outside influences, locked into himself, seemingly cold and austere. In his most formative years he had consciously to defend himself from the environment in which he lived, and this produced a personal distance, often apprehended as coldness. He was certainly not cold. On the contrary, his was a passionate nature. It was, however, a banked fire, perhaps held in check by a padlock Abigail thought necessary to put on h is mind when he was b u t ten years o ld . Seemingly John Quincy did not rebel. Perhaps he was too alone to do so; or perhaps he loved his mother too much to risk hurting her; or perhaps his nature was in tune with her strictures. Conceivably, his rebellion came at a later time, when he married a woman brought up in Europe, whose family lived in an opulent and luxurious style. Certainly he acquiesced when young. John Quincy complied with his parents wishes, but neither the world nor John Quincy himself could ever know what his own proclivities and tendencies really were, where the "birds eggs and trifles" would 53jqa to CA, 6 June 1778, Adams Family Correspondence, 3:34. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 109 have led him. By his own wish to please his parents, to gain the prize they insisted he pursue, John Quincy followed their instructions. He could not do otherwise. He was too young, too pliant, too overwhelmed by his parents' constant reiteration that his own welfare was their only motive for their warnings. Understandably, at ten years old, he accepted their depiction of "his welfare." His inability to follow his own instincts and inclinations—even to test other opinions, other modes of life—meant he could not break out into open ground and be h im se lf. The limitations on John Quincy's mind were fixed by the letters and precepts of his parents. No other influence could possibly meet the heightened rhetoric and vigor of his parents' teaching. His mother's first letter to him abroad is an example of the force with which the lessons were d e l i v e r e d .54 Although Abigail told a friend when John Quincy sailed for Europe that she felt as if "a Limb had been lopt off," it was almost four months before she wrote to John Quincy. She did not explain her silence to her son, but assured him he had been "upon my Heart and mind." The letter she then wrote John Quincy is a most important letter because it illustrates how she intended to control him, her heightened concern for him, and how great were the sacrifices she had been called upon to make for her country. It seems today a terrible letter and in every way an inappropriate communication to a ten-year-old boy, no matter how intellectually precocious. The 54aa to JQA, 10? June 1778, Adams Family Correspondence, 3:37-38. The editors of the Adams Papers characterize this as "the first extant letter from a famous mother to a famous son," Adams Family Correspondence, 3:39, n. 1. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 110 only compassionate explanation of this letter is that in those four long, anxious months, Abigail had lost contact with the real John Quincy and related instead to an unreal person who had become, probably unconsciously, the repository of all her oblique strivings and am b itio n s. Obviously, this letter was written under great strain. Father and son had left in February 1777 for France. In March, a false rumor reported an assassination attempt on Benjamin Franklin; in April, another report had their boat captured and taken as a British prize into Plymouth. Whether husband and son were now captives in London, Abigail did not know. At the beginning of June, she described her anxieties to James Warren, "My Imagination wanders like the Son of Ulyssus from Sea to Sea and from Shoar to Shoar." She worried what Congress would do had John Adams fallen into the hands of the English and pleaded with Warren that "A reply to this Question may perhaps alieviate the anxious mind” and calm her "fears. In this mood of fear and apprehension, she sat down to write to John Quincy. On one level her letter is threatening; on another it is an expression of panic. She told him he was in great danger, safe only because he was with his father. Qld enough to derive advantages from the trip, he should properly attend to them. Not only was he answerable for his talents, but he must "double [his] numbers" of talents and account also for his words and actions. His conduct should 5^AA to James Warren, 15 February 1778, Adams Family Correspondence, 3:34. Concerning the rumored capture of the boat, see James Lovell to AA, 1 April 1778, 3:1, and John Thaxter to AA, 10 June 1778, Adams Family Correspondence, 3:39. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. I l l make him an "ornament to society, an Honour to your Country, and a Blessing to your parents." She counseled him that if he ever should possess "Great Learning and superior abilities," they would be "of little value and small Estimation, unless Virtue, Honour, Truth and integrety are added to them.Should he fall victim to the "inadvertency and Heedlessness of youth," she would rather have him in his "Grave in the ocean you have crossed, or any untimely death crop you in your Infant years, rather than see you an immoral profligate or a Graceless c h i l d . "57 The threats continued. Reminding him that his reading of history had familiarized him with crime and vice, she admonished her son to disdain the "monster" of vice. She paraded Nero, Caligula, and Cesare Borgia before the ten-year-old boy as examples to be avoided. In closing, she asked him to describe his voyage, his situation, and "every thing entertaining" to h e r . 58 This letter seems intimidating and hostile. It may indicate some of Abigail's anxiety as well as her search for tangible rewards for her efforts and sacrifices. John Quincy must not be allowed to fail; even his death was preferable. No matter what the cost, he must justify her dedication and devotion to the cause. This letter demonstrated most poignantly a woman's striving to achieve through the male members of her family. Abigail's frantic threats to 56aa to JQA, 10? June 1778, Adams Family Correspondence, 3:37-38. 57It is important when assessing AA's reference to "an immoral profligate," to realize that AA's brother, William Smith (known as B illy), was indeed an irresponsible adult whose family had to be supported by his sisters. Akers, Abigail Adams, p. 8. 58a A to JQA, 10? June 1778, Adams Family Correspondence, 3:37-38. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 112 John Quincy indicate a measure of her frustration. Blocked in her own self-expression and achievement by her culture from achieving for herself by a male-dominated society, almost undone with fears for her husband and son, tormented by the sacrifices she had made, her ambition may have been deflected onto her ten-year-old son in France. What can have been the effect of such a letter on John Quincy? It was hardly possible for him to understand the underlying reasons for it; equally impossible for him to mitigate the importance of the letter and shrug it off.59 if he had been afraid of failure before, what greater fear of failure must this letter have engendered? John Adams reported to Abigail that she made John Ouincy very happy with this letter; from John Quincy we have no direct c o m m e n t .&0 His letters from France did not at first change; they display his usual self-censure and diffidence. In a letter to his mother, however, several months after receiving hers, he took her sharply to task for complaining that his father did not write often enough. Seeming to identify with his father, he told her "it really hurts him [John Adams] to receive such letters." He also told his mother, but inked it out on second thought, "if all your letters are like this my Pappa will cease writing at 59JQA was not even living with his father when he received this letter! He was in a French boarding school nearby in Passy. Charles Francis Adams, ed.. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, 12 vols. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1874), 1:8; hereafter cited as JQA, Memoirs. ^®"You have made your Son very happy by your L e tte r to him ," JA wrote. JA to AA, 26 July 1778, Adams Family Correspondence, 3:66. AA's rhetoric when writing to her adult correspondents was also inflated and full of references to the horrors of past times. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 113 a ll."61 Inked out or not, the emotion behind it had been felt, and John Quincy attributed to his father what he himself would later often do when faced with personal problems—withdraw. John Quincy's defense of his father shows both sensitivity and courage—sensitivity to his father's feelings, courage to criticize his mother. Having been held to such high standards himself, he now held her to the same. John Quincy's identification with his father is clear. What is important for his future relationships with women is the pattern of sharply and critically holding his mother to the same high standards she insisted upon for him. Only a short time later his sister Nabby refused to write to him in Europe for fear of his critical comments. John Quincy attended a boarding school in Passy, where he learned to speak and write fluent French, studied Latin, dancing, drawing, and music.83 His father hoped he would "not be the Worse for coming to Europe. Yet I will not trust him here long. The Manners of Europe are enough to debauch Angells."84 John Quincy's "dangerous" time in Europe was to be shortened by the fact that the Congress 81"My Pappa has rec'd several [letters] from you in which you complain'd a great deal of my Pappa's not writing to you." JQA to AA, 26 December 1778, Adams Family Correspondence, 3:139. A pessimistic strain enters JQA's letters at this time. JQA to AA, 20 February 1779, Adams Family Correspondence, 3:176. In 1783, AA wrote to JQA in Europe, " I f you liv e to re tu rn [to A m erica]," AA to JQA, 20 November 1783, Adams, ed.. Letters of Mrs. Adams, p. 189. 82AA to JQA and CA, 26 February 1780, Adams Family Correspondence, 3:283. 83"johnny is well— reads and chatters french like a french Boy." JA to AA, 9 September 1778, Adams Family Correspondence, 3:88. 84jA to Cotton Tufts, 3 December 1778, Adams Family Correspondence, 3:131. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 114 appointed Franklin as Sole Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of France, and John Adams, with John Quincy, returned home in April 1779, passing through Nantes to board their ship for America. Here, father and son dined with the Johnsons, and John Quincy and Louisa may have met for the first time. Louisa may well have been away at boarding school, although John Adams later referred to his stay in Nantes as if John Quincy had met L o u i s a . 85 Considering John Quincy's precociousness, it is unlikely he took much notice of a four-year-old c h ild . Arriving home in June 1779, John Quincy had but four months to enjoy the farm, the hills of Braintree, and his family before he was propelled back to Europe, again with his father, now appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to negotiate a peace with Great Britain. This time, going to Europe was against John Quincy's wishes. Much better, he thought, to stay in Massachusetts and prepare for Harvard. But Abigail prevailed, persuading him by exhortations of patriotic fervor, pride in his father, and his duty to his own future, which she thought would benefit greatly from another European v isit. Duty to country would probably have been enough to make John Quincy go, since it was, above all other considerations, the primary and most intense feeling within the family; it was the reason that John was away so much. It would have taken a boy even stronger than John Quincy to withstand Abigail's pressure. After his departure, she advised him that having followed 85JA to TBA, 25 October 1797, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, 2:359, n. 3. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 115 her counsel, he must now prove himself worthy of the journey which he had not wished to take. Again, he had to succeed; he had been given much, much would be expected. Great minds were formed by "contending with difficulties." Cicero "shone" because he was "roused" by "the Tyranny of Catiline, Millo, Verres, and Mark Anthony." He must emulate his father's efforts and his father's devotion to duty. In closing, she advised him to curb "that impetuosity of temper" she had noticed in him because if he indulged any "vice in youth," even a "foible," it would conquer him in later years. Her final exhortation was to "do Honour to your Country, and render your parents supremely h a p p y ."86 Like the letter she wrote him in 1778, this letter contained warnings, exhortations, and criticisms. Abigail's letter to Charles, who this time accompanied John Adams and his older brother, although also didactic, was milder, softer, and far less demanding.87 John Ouincy, not Charles, received the full weight of the family's expectations which by now had been raised to the stage where even "foibles" were dangerous. The second ocean voyage was, if anything, even worse than the first. The passengers were in constant danger due to a "crazy and leaky" ship, which was forced to put in at Feroll, Spain. After a distressingly difficult journey overland to Paris, the two Adams boys were placed in a French boarding s c h o o l88 . when John Adams was 88aa to JQA, 19 January 1780, Adams Family Correspondence, 3:268. 87AA to CA, 19 January 1780. Adams Family Correspondence, 3:269. 88John Thaxter to AA, 16 February 1780, Adams Family Correspondence, 3:276; JOA to AA, 17 February 1780, Adams Family Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 116 appointed Minister to the Netherlands, the boys were transferred to a school in Amsterdam. There, upon being set down into the lower forms because he knew so little Dutch, John Quincy had one of his rare outbursts of temper ("La Désobéissance et L'impertinence" was how the rector put it). His father supported his son. John Adams removed John Quincy from the school and John Thaxter, now also in Holland, tutored the boy, who added Dutch to his store of languages.89 In December of 1780, Congress appointed Francis Dana M inister to Russia in the hopes that Catherine the Great would recognize the United States. Since Francis Dana spoke no French, with John Adams's approbation, Dana took the fourteen-year-old John Quincy to Russia with him as interpreter.70 This was surely the most unusual event in an extraordinary childhood. John Quincy stayed for fourteen months in St. Petersburg.71 His letters from his father contained, as usual, a bombardment of educational advice, including, in one letter, a list of things John Quincy had not informed him about: Russian houses, public Correspondence, 3:279. For a description of the trip through Spain and Johonnot's subsequent career, see Claude-Anne Lopez, "A Story of Grandfathers, Fathers, and Sons," The Yale University Library Gazette 53 (April 1979):177-95. 89Rector Verheyk to JA, 10 November 1780. Adams Family Correspondence, 4:11, and JA to Rector Verheyk, 10 November 1780, Adams Family Correspondence, 4:12. 70concerning the Dana Mission to Russia, see Adams Family Correspondence, 4:171, n. 3; and David M. G riffiths, "American Commercial Diplomacy in Russia, 1780 to 1783," William and Mary Quarterly 27 (July 1970):379-410. 71JQA to John Thaxter, 8/19 September 1781, Adams Family Correspondence, 4:214. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 117 buildings, churches, palaces, statuary, paintings, m u s i c . 72 H alf schoolboy, half diplomatic aide, John Quincy now began to study German and continued reading in history by himself. John Adams encouraged his solitary educational efforts, provided that he maintain his "Innocence, and a pure Conscience, a sacred Regard to your own Honour and Reputation" and remembered that, "Your morals are of more importance, both to yourself and the World than all Languages and all Sciences."73 Then expressing the view that a small failure would destroy the entire picture, he wrote his son that "The least Stain upon your Character will do more harm to your Happiness than all Accomplishments w ill do it good." The perfectionist strivings of John Quincy's adult years can be traced to this kind of extreme advice from his father. Not surprisingly, John Quincy became homesick and worried about the lack of educational opportunities in St. Petersburg. His father, having at first advised him to go to Russia, now told him, "You should be at Leyden or at Cambridge." "It is a long time," John Adams wrote across Europe from Paris, "since you have written to me. You should think of your Father's Anxiety, for the Success and Progress of your S t u d i e s . "74 John Quincy returned alone to Holland by way of Scandinavia. In the Hague, he became his father's secretary, a role he fulfilled later in Paris. 72ja to JQA, 15 December 1781, Adams Family Correspondence, 4:264. 73JA to JQA, 13 May 1782, Adams Family Correspondence, 4:317. 74jA to JQA, 18 August 1782, Adams Family Correspondence, 4:366. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 118 Concerning this second trip to Europe, John Quincy wrote years later to his mother; "if you or my father had known the moral dangers through which I passed, and from which by the mercy of Providence I escaped, I think neither of you would have had the courage to expose me to them."75 ^e never explained what the dangers were. John Quincy spent much of his adolescence removed from his peers. In Holland, he had only his brother, Charles, with him; in Russia and Scandinavia, he had no contact with young people at all. Returning to Paris, his brother Charles, unable to conquer his homesickness, was sent back to the United States. John Quincy associated with Franklin, Jefferson, and Jay, obviously, not as an equal, but as a youth interesting in his own right. John Quincy's relationship with Jefferson was especially close: John Adams remembered later that John Quincy at this time seemed as much Jefferson's son as his own, and that "La Fayette harrangued you [Thomas Jefferson] and me, and John Quincy Adams, through a whole evening in your Hotel in the Cul de Sac, at Paris."76 One result of his years in Europe was that John Quincy found it difficult to form strong emotional attachments to persons of his own age. Abstract concepts were, from his earliest years, represented to him as more im portant than people. In 1778 and 1780, the message was the same: his training for statesmanship was more important than being with his family. This was not a surprising attitude for his mother. 75jqa to AA, 1 Qctober 1815, APM, reel 427. 76Bemis, F oundations, p. 14; JA to Thomas J e ffe rs o n , 13 Ju ly 1803, The Thomas Je ffe rs o n P apers, R eel 46, LC. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 119 who referred to her country as "the first and greatest parent" and "a Secondary G o d ."77 1778, he went to Europe with her approbation; in 1779, in order to please her, he had to leave her. Such separation anxieties as he suffered, he had to deal with alone. Any intimacy with his father in Europe was usually conducted over books and learning. Quite naturally, therefore, at seventeen John Quincy suggested to his friend and one-time fellow traveller, Samuel Cooper Johonnot, that they establish a litterary correspondence." This letter is uncharacteristi cally signed "Jack, Jacky, JQA alias Jack." Such playful moods were rare and reaching for intimacy with others even r a r e r . 78 Deprived by circumstances of companions of his own age, John Quincy read voraciously under the tutelage of his father. His addiction to books grew and centered on readings in political science and history. He was merely following a pattern already set. His first book had been The Renowned H isto ry of G iles G ingerbread: A L i ttl e Boy Who Lived upon Learning, in which G iles's father baked lessons on gingerbread and after learning them the boy ate his lessons .79 in 1776 when the Adams children were asked what present their father should bring them, they requested a book. "It was natural," Abigail wrote. 77a A quoted in Joseph E. Illick, "John Quincy Adams; The Maternal Influence," The Journal of Psychology 4 (Fall 1976):188. 7®JQA to Samuel Cooper Johonnot, 31 August 1783, Beinicke Library, Yale University. JQA was to find just such a correspondent years later in William Vans Murray. 79 AA to Mary Cranch, 31 October 1799, Stewart Mitchell, ed.. New Letters of Abigail Adams : 1788-1801 (Boston: Houghton M ifflin Co., 1947), p. 211, n. 2. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 120 "for them to think of a Book as that is the only present Pappa has been used to make them."®0 John Quincy's letters from his father would have read the same if John had been schoolmaster to the boy; his father's first concern was always about his education. John Quincy's passion for books began early and it never slackened; if anything, it grew as he matured. John Quincy's European years produced in him another passion— the theatre. It was at the theatre that John Quincy fell in love for the first time. He was then fourteen and the object of his desires, a child actress about the same age, who belonged to an acting company performing at the Bois de Boulogne. Poignantly, he wrote forty years later to his wife, Louisa, "of all the ungratified longing that I ever suffered, that of being acquainted with her [the actress] , merely to tell her how much I adored her, was the most intense." For two years, he was "tortured with . . . desire" and dreamed of her for at least seven years after.®! John Quincy's passions ran deep and this glimpse into his teenage life gives a good indication of how much control he needed to dampen desires of the most intense kind. If his young cousin, Elizabeth Cranch, referred mockingly in her Diary to his stiffness and formality when he returned to the United States, she ®®AA to JA, 14 May 1776, Adams Family Correspondence, 1:408. ®ljQA to LCA, 28 August 1822, Koch and Peden, e d s .. W ritings of John and John Ouincy Adams, p. 340. JA had been advised by Benjamin Franklin to learn French by taking a mistress or by going to the theatre—he chose the theatre. Walter Francis Brown, "John Adams and the American Press, 1797-1801: The First Full Scale Confrontation Between the Executive and the Media" (Ph.D. dissertation. University of Notre Dame, 1974), p. 3. The theatre "never fails giving me a severe headache." AA to Mary Cranch, 9 December 1784, Adams, ed.. Letters of Mrs. Adams, p. 255. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 121 could not know of the passionate nature for which this reserve was but a guard and control.®2 Finally, in 1785, Abigail and Nabby joined John and John Ouincy who had then been abroad for six years. Charles and Thomas, now thirteen and eleven, were left with Abigail's sister and her husband. Abigail was delighted with her son who had the "appearance of a man," his learning, and his manners, even though he carried himself with an air of superiority. Abigail was relieved to find that John Quincy had survived the moral dangers of Europe , and she now referred to him as her "young Hercules," delighted that her son had chosen the path of virtue over sloth and ease.®® His wish to return to matriculate at Harvard was seconded by his parents, who, as usual, were worried about the effect of a European education on his morals.®4 in 1783 John Adams wrote Mercy Warren about her son, James, "My Advice to him and every ®2concerning Elizabeth Cranch's reference to John Quincy as J. Q. A. or Mr. J. Q. A., see Musto, "John Quincy Adams," p. 272. ®3jA had proposed the picture of Hercules as the Great Seal of the United States, and he described Hercules as choosing between virtue and vice. JA to AA, 14 August 1776, Lyman H. Butterfield et al., eds.. The Book of Abigail and John (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975), p. 156. Benjamin Rush hoped the American republic would free America not only from the spiritual ills of Europe but also from the physical ills he thought so rampant in the Old World. Jacqueline R. Reinier, "Attitudes Toward and Practices of Childrearing: Philadelphia 1780-1830" (Ph.D. dissertation. University of California at Berkeley, 1977), p. 93. ®^AA to Mary Cranch, 30 July 1784, Butterfield, ed.. The Book of Abigail and John, p. 395. Robert A. East, John Quincy Adams, pp. 16-17; Akers, Abigail Adams, p. 89. The Adamses were appalled by two examples of what could happen to Americans abroad: Benjamin Franklin's grandson, who was a dandy; and Mrs. Anne Willing Bingham, about whom AA wrote Mary Cranch, "Dissipation and frivolity of amusement, which have weaned her from her native country, and given her a passion and thirst after all the luxuries of Europe." AA to Mary Cranch, 30 September 1785, Adams, ed.. Letters of Mrs. Adams, p. 316. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 122 young American is and uniformly w ill be, to stay in Europe but a little while."®® John Quincy had then been abroad for six years, longer than prudence might have dictated. His parents' ambitions may have outrun their fears of, alternatively, they may have thought, correctly, that he would survive the temptations of Europe. Leaving his parents and his sister he sailed home from L'Orient in June 1785 and fifty-six days later, for the first time in six years, set foot on American soil.®® Though he had read extensively, John Quincy was not fully prepared for advance standing at Harvard, so he went to live with his Aunt and Uncle Shaw in Haverhill to study and repair his inadequacies. Here at the Shaw boarding school he was, for the first time in six years, in daily communication with young people of his own age. Argumentative, opinionated, discontented, and occasionally depressed, he tried simultaneously to work ten hours a day and to handle his first close encounter with the opposite sex. His aunt worried because he held his opinions so positively. He developed eye strain, a difficulty that would reappear later in his life under conditions of extreme emotional strain. Examined perfunctorily by Harvard in 1786, John Quincy passed into the junior class. His college years were happy ones, benefiting ®5j A to Mercy Otis Warren, 29 January 1783, Adams Family Correspondence, 3:60, n. 2. In 1823 William Thornton assessed JQA as "free from those Taints that are sometimes consequent to a life spent in Corrupt Courts." William Thornton to Isaiah Cooper, 17 September 1823, Papers of William Thornton, Microfilm reel #3, LC. ®®It is interesting that in spite of his parents' fears, JQA stayed so long in Europe. Worthington Chauncey Ford, ed.. Writings of John Quincy Adams, 7 vols. (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), 1:33, n. 3; hereafter cited as JQA, Writings. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 123 hlm both intellectually and socially. Again and again in future years, John Quincy would demonstrate his gratitude to Harvard with donations of books and scientific instruments. He had good, although remote, relations with his classmates. Yet his overly critical attitude towards his tutors worried his parents. On the whole, the effect of Harvard was to give him a more realistic view of himself vis-a-vis his future prospects, which had been, quite naturally, overinflated by his success in benefiting from his European e x p e r i e n c e.®7 While at college, John Quincy turned his attention to domestic politics. Shays’s Rebellion erupted in western Massachusetts in September 1786, and in November John Quincy argued before a debating club that the cause of the present danger was the appearance of luxury and dissipation in America and a lack of public virtue. John and Abigail's teaching had taken hold. Decayed morality in America was both an Adams and New England theme. Like the Puritans who went before them, whose Jeremiads had bemoaned the progressive loss of pristine virtue from their founding fathers, so the Adamses worried lest America should now be found wanting in virtue—the sine qua non of republicanism. John Quincy's graduation address dealt with the same topic, "Upon the importance and necessity of Public Faith, to the well-being of a community."®® Although well received by his relatives ®7For JQA's criticisms of his tutors, see Smith, John Adams, 2:667. East, John Quincy Adams, p. 51. JQA's manner was so distant that some of his classmates were surprised to find out later how much he liked them. Musto, "John Quincy Adams," p. 273. ®®East, John Quincy Adams, p. 62; Bemis, Foundations, pp. 21-22. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 124 and friends, the press thought otherwise.®9 The local newspapers claimed that in choosing John Quincy as one of the orators. Harvard had been influenced by his family connections, criticized his European education, and awarded the "other orator” all the declamatory prizes. This was merely a foretaste of the hostility and rancor toward John Quincy to come from the press in later years.90 Having graduated from college, John Quincy began his training for the law with Theophilus Parsons in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Here he met young women of his own age and, as in Haverhill, he found them attractive. He criticized them for the shortcomings he discovered in their manners and education, and for their assertiveness, and their vanity. John Quincy wrote his cousin that his feelings of "sentiment" were becoming so strong in Newburyport that he was convinced of the "absolute necessity for me to leave this town very soon." "Flight and speedy flight" was the only resource left to him. Towards the end of his training, however, he met a girl absolutely outstanding in both character and appearance and fell deeply and passionately in love. The young woman was Maria F ra z ie r of Newburyport, a young g i r l of sixteen, and daughter of Moses Frazier, a well-known patriot .91 The B^East, John Quincy Adams, pp. 85-86; JQA’s oration was published by Jeremy Belknap, "An Oration Delivered at the Public Commencement in the University at Cambridge, in New England, July 18, 1787. By Mr. John Quincy Adams, Son of His E xcellency John Adams, LL.D., the American Minister at the Court of London," Columbia Magazine or Monthly Miscellany, September 1787. 90a review of the talk is in The Massachusetts Centinel, 21 July 1787; East, John Quincy Adams, pp. 76-78, 85-86. 91por JQA's contemporary and cryptic accoung of this episode, see Charles Francis Adams, ed.. Life in a New England Town : 1787-1788 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 125 relationship was ultimately broken off by John Quincy when Maria, spirited and somewhat aggressive, moved to Medford for a winter's visit with a relative not far from where John Quincy was practicing law in Boston. How far the couple had gone in considering themselves engaged is not clear, but certainly no public pronouncement had been made. After he decided to break off the relationship, Abigail reminded John Quincy of the necessity of being financially independent before he could support a wife. Abigail's concerns were not unnatural: John Quincy was receiving a quarterly stipend from his parents, and his sister's husband had proved himself financially irresponsible.92 John Quincy longed for "independence." Convinced that America needed independent men, he read law, although all his inclinations were towards literature and science, which he convinced himself were "secondary objects."93 The two factors, Maria's aggressiveness and his inability to maintain a family may have weighed equally with John Quincy when he decided to end the re a ltio n s h ip . He trie d to calm h is mother's fears that he would marry before he could support a wife, and Diary of John Quincy Adams While a Student in the Qffice of Theophilus Parsons at Newburyport (Boston: L ittle, Brown, 1903). East reports that Maria Frazier is said to have had "only one rival for beauty in all New England. She was to be remembered for both beauty and charm" East, John Quincy Adams, p. 123. Bemis, Foundations, p. 24; JOA to William Cranch, 7 April 1790, Cranch Papers, LC. All the Adamses called this girl "Maria" Frazier. I have chosen to follow their lead in spite of the fact that both East and Musto call her "Mary" Frazier. 92Musto, "John Quincy Adams," p. 272. 93since AA2 's husband William Smith was, at this moment, in deep financial trouble, AA's fears were probably increased. It was David Musto who, by a close reading of JQA's Almanac, ascertained that the affair had already been broken off by JQA before he received his mother's letter. AA to JQA, 7 November 1790, APM, reel 374, and Musto, "John Quincy Adams," p. 272. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 126 he assured her that "The Lady will henceforth be at the distance of 40 miles from me and I shall have no further opportunities to indulge a w e a k n e s s . "94 physical distance seemed important to him. If Maria's move toward him was determined John Quincy to end the relationship, it would be understandable. His years in Europe had been spent trying to hold himself aloof from the dangers outlined by his father and mother. Bereft of companions his own age, he had been forced to withdraw into himself, and what relationships he had were with adults and usually at a distance. John Quincy had once before seemingly reacted to the nearness of a contemporary. Two years before he met Maria, John Ouincy, while studying law, had suffered from an emotional upset, unable to study or to sleep and needing an opiate to calm his nerves. At that very time, a friend, James Bridge, had moved to Newburyport, and the two young men had begun rooming together. One historian suggested that John Quincy's anxiety may have been caused by a breach in his detachment, a detachment which, seemingly necessary for psychic survival in Europe, was inappropriate and limiting at home. Personal distance may have been of overriding importance to him at this time— distance from Maria Frazier and distance from James Bridge. This is not to say that he could not make friends, but John Quincy seems to have been wary of 94JA to William Cranch, 7 April 1790, Cranch Papers, LC. See also Musto, "John Quincy Adams," pp. 275-77. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 127 aggressive moves towards him or of too close contact, even with a very good friend.95 John Ouincy described later, how, with "an effort never known but to myself" and with "voluntary violence," he decided he could not marry Maria Frazier. Just what happened is not clear, but the amorphous nature of the breakup allows John Quincy to make out of the situation what he wanted.96 He himself would later insist his heart had been broken, yet at one time he admitted he himself had done the breaking. It is possible that upon discovering in himself a passion he could not control, he was so frightened that he decided to end the relationship and regain the composure and distance that had served him so well in the past. If, as he claimed, finances and prudence were the cause of the rupture, he could certainly have married Maria later. Both he and Maria remained unattached until John Quincy went to Holland in 1794, and during this time he became financially independent. There was, as historian Robert East points out, a "strange finality" to the episode.97 Later, John Quincy told his mother that his "sensations" were "blunted," and stated the "irrevocable separation" had been 95Musto, "John Quincy Adams," pp. 275-77. 9®This whole episode (JQA's involvement with Maria Frazier) passed into family myth as "the time when John Quincy followed the path of duty" instead of his heart. Even his aunt referred to it when JQA was appointed Minister to Holland in 1794. JQA himself wrote William Vans Murray, "I was once disappointed in love . . . disappointed in a cru el & d is tr e s s in g manner—From th a t wound I was never e n tir e ly healed, but by the balsam of a second & more auspicious attachment, after an interval of five years. The sear would go with me to the grave, though I should live like an antideluvian." JQA to William Vans Murray, 28 February 1801, APM, reel 134. See also Brooks Adams to Henry Adams, 8 May 1904, quoted in Beringause, Brooks Adams, p. 262. 97R ast, John Quincy Adams, p. 127. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 128 pronounced by "mutual consent," contradicting his earlier statement that he had broken off the engagement.9® The episode may have been useful, unconsciously, to John Quincy in bolstering a wish to remain detached. Perhaps he even convinced imself that events had been otherwise and that a man whose heart had been broken could not be expected to commit h im self f u lly to any woman. Whatever the re a l reason, John Quincy insisted that prudence had determined his course and that he had been left with a "widowed heart."99 Not only were personal relationships a problem for John Quincy at this point in his life, but so was open, healthy, and admitted ambition. As a young child, his parents' ambition for him had been met with diffidence; his work was not good; he was too young to write an interesting journal; he had trouble keeping steady. The more his parents demanded, the more he met their demands with self-effacement. At the moment of entering manhood, John Quincy seemingly found it impossible to come to terms with his ambitions. He represented himself in the hands of events, a strangely passive and submissive stance for such an ambitious youth. Of course, recognizing his ambitions also meant recognizing the possibility that he might fail. The slightest deviation from the highest achievement would be counted as failure by himself and by his parents. Further, part of the myth which Abigail had imparted to the children was that John Adams had been utterly without ambition in his career; his high posts had come unbidden as the 9®JQA to AA, 7 November 1795, APM, r e e l 380. 99 Ib id . Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 129 rewards of service to the n a t i o n .100 Like his father, John Quincy suffered from a disabling inability to recognize his ambition.101 in neither father nor son could an acknowledged ambition propel them forw ard. However much John Quincy t r i e d , he was unable to p ra c tic e the law with anything approaching personal satisfaction. This was not surprising. Patriotic duty, not his own inclinations, determined a le g a l c a re e r. The law was a way to make a liv in g , do h is p a tr io tic duty, and please his father all at the same time. Earning his own living was, however, a difficult matter. From 1790 to 1793 John Quincy required a stipend from his father, which John Adams willingly gave, not only to John Ouincy but to C harles and Thomas as w e l l . 102 John Adams, no m atter how many o th e r v o cations he considered fo r h is th re e sons, ultimately always suggested the law, even to his errant son-in- law, William Smith. Thomas Adams once referred to "Father's partiality to the idea of having only Lawyers among his Sons." Abigail thought no man without a legal education was "fit for a Legislator or a Statesman."103 John Quincy had even been astonished when he found that lOOxhere is a strangely early-eighteenth-century cast to AA's view of ambition, almost as if she was trying to bring back the political deference which had been enjoyed by her Quincy forebears. lOlpeter Shaw, The Character of John Adams, pp. 19-23, 274-75, 291-93, 309-10. 102"I only ask of you to recollect that my Circumstances are not affluent: that you have Brothers and a Sister who are equally instituted to assistance from me: and that therefore as Strict an Oeonomy as is consistent with your Comfort and with decency is necessary." JA to JQA, n.d. September 1790, APM, reel 374. 1^®TBA to JQA, 23 April 1796, APM, reel 381; AA to Mary Cranch, 20 February 1790, Mitchell, ed.. New Letters, p. 39. See also Gerald Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 130 he was not bored by the dry legal texts. His adolescence had been spent at the pinnacle of diplomatic activity, so it is not surprising that provincial law in Boston should seem unremunerative and unworthy of his talents. The truth was that John Quincy was working against his own predilections, but he applied himself with dogged determination. I f John Quincy was unhappy in h is p ro fe s s io n , h is fa th e r was no happier in his. Installed in 1789 as Vice-President, John Adams began a campaign that would scar his reputation among the more democratic elements in politics for years to come. John Adams's exaggerated notion of the importance of titles and etiquette led him to be ridiculed by his contemporaries; one senator thought Adams suffered from "nobilimania." Having served abroad, Adams was well aware in what little respect the United States was held in Europe and in what awe Europeans held title s. He hoped to strengthen the national government both at home and abroad by adding dignity to new offices, but this rationale was totally misunderstood by his contemporaries. Desperately afraid of anything that remotely resembled aristocracy and trying frantically to launch an untried and shaky republic, Adams's colleagues thought he was deserting the republican ship before it was fairly launched. In truth, Adams believed that the United States might eventually move towards a hereditary president and senate, but hoped it would not be necessary. Adams, by his public advocacy of title s, made himself not only absurd (he was called "his Rotundity"), but left W. Gawalt, The Promise of Power; The Emergence of the Legal Profession in Massachusetts, 1769-1840 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979); and Maxwell Bloomfield, American Lawyers in a Changing Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 131 himself forever open to the accusation of having monarchistic and aristocratic leanings; John Quincy would later share in the opprobrium.104 Meanwhile, political events roiled the United States and the Adamses. The French Revolution advanced into terror and anarchy, dividing America into two highly volatile factions split over foreign policy questions. From the world's newest republic, the French minister to the United States, Charles Genet, managed to polarize his host country even further. The venomous assaults carried out by each party upon the other worried and angered the Adamses, and it was unlikely that John Ouincy, possessed of an itching pen, could keep out of the controversy. Writing in the press, always under a pseudonym, he inveighed against privateering, supported Washington's demand for the recall of Citizen Genet, and strongly backed Washington's developing neutrality stance.10® John Quincy showed a maturity few other Americans managed, siding with neither England nor France and warning against "the insidious wiles of foreign intrigue."10® In April 1794, John Adams, g r a tif ie d th a t h is son was beginning a p o ltic a l c a re e r, confided to Abigail, "All my hopes are in him: both for my Family and 104jA to William Tudor, 3 May 1789, Tudor Papers, MHS. Linda Dudik G u errero 's "John Adams' V ice-P residency, 1789-1797: The Neglected Man in the Forgotten Office" (Ph.D. dissertation. University of California at Santa Barbara, 1978). See also James H. Hutson, "John Adams' Title Campaign," New England Quarterly 61 (March 1968):30-39. lOSxhe pseudonyms JQA used were M arcellu s, Columbus, and Barneveldt. lO^Bemis, Foundations, pp. 35-37. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 132 Country."107 His newspaper activity brought John Quincy notoriety as a strong supporter of the administration, and in May 1794 Washington nominated John Quincy as United States Minister to The Netherlands.108 The appointment could not possibly have come at a better time, although in true Adams fashion he had to satisfy himself that his father had in no way solicited the post for him, and he wrote diffidently in his journal, "I rather wish it had not been made at a ll."109 The post was an honor for one so young, an opportunity to use those skills he had learned by so many years residence in Europe, and a chance to discharge what was always uppermost in his mind politically: duty to country. He had been bred to the diplomatic life; he was about to reenter it. John Quincy's struggles with his profession had been finally remunerative, although still intellectually unsatisfying. Without committing himself fully, he decided to give diplomacy a three-year try .110 Reading Dutch and speaking and reading French fluently, he was an ideal candidate for the post, although neither Washington nor John Adams could yet know just how good he would prove to be. 107JA to AA, 5 April 1794, APM, reel 377. Peter Shaw asserts that in four generations, JQA "seems to have been alone in never finding himself at odds with the family tradition." Peter Shaw, "The American Adams" (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1965), p . 107. lOSjQA, Memoirs, 1:32. AA acknowledged "the honor done him [JQA] by the unsolicited appointment." AA quoted in Akers, Abigail Adams, p. 133. 109jQA, Memoirs, 1 :32. llOjQA no longer received a stipend from his father. His new salary was to be a very low $4,500, but in an ecstasy of pride his father made him a gift of 5,000 Dutch guilders. East, John Quincy Adams, p. 242, n. 83. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 133 In September 1794 John Quincy and his youngest brother, Thomas, serving as his secretary, sailed for London. Two Boston friends saw him o f f , and when he and Thomas were alone on the ship he f e l t so keenly "the pain of separation" from America that "it was like the severing of the last string from the heart." He admitted that he could have "turned my eye and wept."HI It was an admission of strong emotions uncharacteristic of John Quincy, but gives early warning that his brother's companionship would not suffice and that he would suffer loneliness while abroad. Although he thought the countryside enchanting, England, on the whole, did not suit John Quincy. On hearing cheers for the King at the theatre, he "could not help disdaining the baseness of their [the peoples'] servility."112 ^e conducted business with Joshua Johnson in his office, but did not meet the family. In his Diary, John Ouincy noted his susceptibility to girls while in England, and felt flight was his only option. "There is something so fascinating in the women I meet with in this country, that it is well for me I am obliged immediately to leave it," he wrote about an American girl living in London. When John Quincy arrived in Holland the last day of October in 1794, that country was in the final stages of a take-over by French 111JQA, Memoirs, 1:39. 112JQA, Diary, 20 October 1794, APM, reel 24. 11®JQA, Memoirs, 1:55. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 134 t r o o p sH . 4 A few pockets of resistance (supported by English detachments) still existed, but soon after he arrived, the United Provinces became the new Batavian Republic, a mere cover for the virtual conquest of Holland by France. In spite of the change in government, John Quincy continued as under his original assignment to the old government, enabling him to continue servicing the Dutch loan that had so greatly aided the Americans during the Revolution.il® John Quincy's value to his country, however, lay not so much in his contacts with Dutch and French diplomats, or in servicing the Dutch loans, but in the reports he sent home. The new republic was in great danger of being drawn into the expanding European conflict, either on the side of France or on the side of England. John Quincy's lucid, forceful, and accurate assessments of the situation were of inestimable help to the government because they were untinged by either Federalist or Republican prejudices. John Adams passed on his son's letters to George Washington, whose expressed admiration for John Quincy was relayed back to The Hague by his proud mother and father.H6 114Bemis, F oundations, p. 52. ll®The American newspaper Independent Chronicle printed falsely that JQA went to England with the fleeing Dutch Stadtholder and that, on the other hand, he had stayed at The Hague under the protection of the French General Pichigru. JQA, Writings, 1:381. ll^Bemis claims some sim ilarities between JQA's ideas and Washington's Farewell Address. Bemis, Foundations, p. 63. For Washington's high opinion of JQA's work in Holland see William Thornton statem en t on John Quincy Adams, 13 August 1823, Papers of W illiam Thornton, Microfilm reel #3, Manuscript Division, LC. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 135 The young Minister Resident struggled not only with a disintegrating political situation in Holland, but also with himself. He was dissatisfied with the scope of his duties, complained of "receiving the pay of a nation for the purpose of penetrating the contents of a newspaper," and told his father "an American Minister at The Hague is one of the most useless beings in creation."11? As m inister, John Quincy was obliged to attend diplomatic dinners. These, John Quincy found tedious and the best of them "tolerable." At one such dinner he entered a spirited discussion on the subject of music, which he said was not a talent given to Americans ; no national anthem had been produced during the entire Revolution; and, as an example, he himself had not been able to learn an instrument.118 At another supper, the "conversation became romantic and mystical, owing principally to the presence of the ladies .... It ended in a discussion upon the commonplace of Love."119 He found playing prawns (a game much favored a t th a t tim e) to be " p u e rile , in s ip id and cheerless."120 Paying visits, a necessity for the diplomatic corps, he described to his brother as "idle, unmeaning and intolerably servile."121 Nothing could disguise the fact that he was bored, restless, and again, not working to his full capacity. 1 1 7 jQ A , W ritin g s, 1:354. llB jQ A , Memoirs, 2:98-99. 119JQA, Diary, 16 April 1795, APM, reel 27. 1 2 0 j q a , Memoirs, 1:113. 121tbA, Miscellany, 1 January 1795, APM, reel 282. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 136 Dissatisfied with his professional life, John Quincy was also gripped by a personal malaise. Thomas, intellectually less endowed than John Quincy, seems to have been unable to provide the companionship which his brother so badly needed. Five years younger than John Quincy, he made his own friends at The Hague. Taking sufficient exercise was a problem for both men, and their Diaries complain of the sedentary diplomatic life , which compelled them to read and write too much.122 goth took long walks, but not together. On a great number of days John Quincy took solitary walks, which he characterized as "one of the miseries to which I have always condescended, and is the most cruel penance to which Nature has doomed me."123 gg worried about his health, about "dullness, doubly dull," and about time which "flies and yet is very h e a v y"124 . He turned as usual to the theatre "from excess of ennui" and because "time must be passed, and it is impossible to read and write f o r e v e r"125 . % took lessons on the flute, despite his lack of talent, simply to pass the tim e .126 John Ouincy met some young ladies and one pleased him because she had "beaucoup d'esprit."127 Yet by September 1795 he was 122JQA, Diary, 22 April 1795, APM, reel 27; TEA, Diary, 9 January 1795, APM, reel 282. 123jQA, Diary, 13 April 1795, APM, reel 27. 12^JQA, D iary, 14 May, 21 May 1795, APM, re e l 27. 125JQA, D iary, 16 May, 10 August 1795, APM, re e l 27. 126jq a , Diary, 21 August 1795, APM, reel 27. 127JQA, Diary, 4 May 1795, APM, reel 27. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 137 "reflecting on the self-propagating power of idleness" and losing time in h is indolence.128 Then on 14 October 1795 he received from the State Department instructions which would give him a respite from his restless, dull, lonely life in The Hague. In the absence of Thomas Pinckney, Minister to Great Britain, John Quincy was ordered to London to exchange ratifications of Jay's Treaty with the British g o v e r n m e n t .129 John Ouincy was to go to London only if he could get there by 10 October 1795. Should he not be in London by th a t day, W illiam A llen D eas, s e c re ta ry to Thomas Pinckney, was to execute the ratifications. As Samuel Bemis, John Quincy's biographer, so perceptively points out, as an accredited minister to a country with which Britain was at war, John Quincy was an odd choice fo r the job.130 John Quincy received these instructions on 14 October 1795. He did not begin his trip until October 19th, as he had to prepare himself and introduce his brother Thomas as Charge d'Affaires to the President of the States General. There was no chance of his arriving in England by October 20th. Prevaricating about his mission in his Diary, he wrote that he was ordered to London, where he would find "directions and documents for my government," adding, "This business is unpleasant and unpromising, but I have no election."131 The business may have been unpleasant, but more disagreeable s till was 128jq a , Diary, 18 September 1795, APM, reel 27. 129jo a , W ritin g s, 1:397. 180gemis, F oundations, p. 68. 131jQA, Memoirs, 1:123. JA thought JQA would not go to London because the dispatches did not arrive in Holland on time. JQ to AA£, 1 January 1796, Caroline de Windt, ed.. Correspondence of Miss Adams: Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 138 the alternative of remaining at The Hague and coping with his loneliness. He certainly had the choice to go or not. He wrote his father that the task had nothing to recommend it; success was little better than failure; the business allowed him no latitude in judgment.132 Typically, he was convincing himself that only his duty, not his wishes, drove him to London. How much John Quincy really wanted the appointment can be gauged by the heightened rhetoric he used in describing the post to his father as of no importance, yet "involving the most important interests and the welfare of my Country," and stressing "the magnitude of the trust" placed in him. Having described a very small task in these extreme terms, his next statement concerned his "incompetency," his usual attitude when faced with a task for which he had real relish. Denying any ambition, he stated that insignificant a station as it was. The Hague, at least, gave him time for his studies. 133 Before he left Holland for England, John Quincy received a letter from his father suggesting he return home and, like his brother Charles, lately engaged, "look you up a wife," adding "Charles in this respect had got a head of you."134 Although th e req u est came from h is Daughter of John Adams President of the United States, 2 vols. (New York: Wiley & Putnam, 1842). 132JQA to JA, 31 October 1795, APM, reel 380. 133ibid. John Jay had left London for the United States. Thomas Pinckney, United States Minister to London was in Spain on other negotiations. 134JA wrote, "I hope they will let you come home in two or three years to look you up a Wife." JA to JQA, 19 September 1795, APM, reel 380. JA wrote further, with his usual bluntness, "I wish you to come home and be married after two years." JA to JQA, 25 August 1795, APM, reel 380. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 139 father, John Quincy answered his father through his mother, because marital affairs should be discussed "only with the Ladies." This was not such an odd notion: John Quincy asserted in a long sociological work in 1822 that women's main contribution to society was emotional.135 perhaps the letter to his mother indicates that he had held this view of women for many years. Quoting LaRochefoucauld that man may pass from love to ambition, but never return from ambition to love, John Quincy declared that he had passed not from love to ambition (no Adams could admit that), but from love to the "concerns" of ambition (a fine point indeed). Could, John Quincy asked his mother, "a widowed heart," separated once from all its "hopes and . . . wishes" because of "worldly prudence," submit to the "controul of other bonds?"136 He spoke of "blunted sensations," living without pleasure, but at least possessed of "peace and tranquility." He stated unequivocally that he could not seek another woman purposefully; his heart must find its own course without directions from him. He would be passive; if his passions were stirred from the outside, well and good, but he would not try. Until the age of forty-five, a marriage of convenience was not possible; he would choose a marriage in which the passions were engaged. Then, having explained his position with great 135In 1822 JQA gave a le c tu re on "S ociety and C iv iliz a tio n " (not published until 1845), in which he made the point that women's primary role in society concerned the emotions. John Quincy Adams, "Society and Civilzation," The American Review 2 (July 1845):80-89. 136jqa to AA, 7 November 1795, APM, re e l 380. " I d o n 't b e lie v e all the Points of Rochefoucauld's Thoughts. Ambition and Love live together very well. A man may be mad with both at once. Witness Caesar & Anthony with Cleopatra & many others." JA to AA, 9 March 1796, APM, reel 381. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 140 great circumlocution and leaving much unstated, he told his mother, "You now have the clear exposition of my sentiments and principals" and towards the end of the letter made the poignant observation that "the knight has lost his Dulcinea."137 John Quincy's letter was a long and detailed answer to a casual suggestion by his father. Perhaps John Quincy himself had been thinking of marriage in his long walks alone. His father's casual phrase about Charles having won the race to marriage may have piqued John Quincy's competitive instincts. He later wrote Thomas, "Ay! Charles had got the start of me, to be s u r e ."138 He may have sensed a directive in his father's letter and wanted first to set his own terms for marriage, then having done so felt better about the whole question. He seems not to have felt comfortable discussing the subject of marriage with his father. Perhaps he felt his mother would understand his complicated feelings better than his father, and unable to say this directly, took refuge in the common male sanctuary of the eighteenth century—the cliche that women interested themselves in affairs of the heart, while men dealt with more practical matters. Unable to leav e Holland between 26 October and 10 November because of contrary winds, John Quincy fretted away the time on the Dutch coast, arriving finally in London on 11 November 1795, by which 137ibid. AA seems to have been encouraging TEA to interest himself in girls. See TEA to AA, 12 July 1795, APM, reel 380. 138jQA to TEA, 2 November 1795, John Adams P ap ers, N. Y. Historical Society. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 141 time Deas had, of course, exchanged the ratifications. 139 the day of his arrival, John Quincy delivered letters to Joshua Johnson and found the American painter John Trumbull with him. Later that afternoon, he "Dined with Mr. Trumbull at Johnson's . . . after Dinner, Mr. Johnson's daughters entertained us with good m u s i c . "140 Among those undifferentiated "daughters" was the twenty-year-old Louisa. Again, and at a more appropriate age to notice each other, Louisa and John Quincy were brought together in a country in which women were so fascinating to John Quincy that he had once been obliged to leave it. This time he stayed. 139while waiting anxiously for the winds to change, JQA wrote, "There are no books that can engage my attention and abridge the length of time on such occasions except well-written novels.” The only other time he recorded reading novels was in 1787, when he sat up all night to "watch" with Francis Dana who was ill. In view of women's proclivity to almost compulsive novel reading in the nineteenth century, perhaps they, like JQA, were the victims of nervous boredom. JQA, Diary, 26 October 1795, APM, reel 27; and East, John Quincy Adams, p . 69. 140JQA, D iary, 11 November 1795, APM, re e l 27. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER I I I AN UNCOMMON ENGAGEMENT Louisa recorded years later that John Quincy was in "high spirits" the first evening he dined at the Johnsons—a remarkable feat, if true, as he had spent the two previous nights without sleep, so difficult was the trip to London.1 Colonel Trumbull, Louisa wrote, informed the susceptible Johnson girls that John Quincy would make a good husband. His clothes, however, being more Dutch than English, the Johnsons thought him not up to the standards of sartorial splendor set by his brother-in-law. Colonel Smith.2 in any case, John Quincy seems not to have been overly impressed with the Johnson girls because he did not even try to return for fourteen days. He found, as was likely, that Deas had carried out the ratifications, which left him with little work to do until new instructions arrived. Characteristically, he kept busy going to the theatre and seeing friends in London. IjQA, Diary, 10 November 1795, APM, reel 27; LCA, "Record," p. 60, APM, reel 265. Bemis, Foundations, p. 70, n. 9. Jack L. Cross, London Mission; The First C ritical Years (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1968), pp. 110, 117, 123. There is an interesting parallel between JQA's experience in 1795 and JA's experience in 1777, when immediately after JA arrived in France he learned that the French had already approved the treaty he had come to negotiate. Shaw, John Adams, p. 108. 2lcA, "Record," pp. 59-60, APM, reel 265. 142 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 143 Two weeks after his arrival, John Quincy hunted for, but failed to find, the Johnson's house.3 His inability to find the Johnson's was matched by his ineptness in society. The self-castigation, so characteristic of him in Holland, continued in London. The more conscious he was of his faults, the more likely he was to repeat them.4 "Oh stupid Vanity! When wilt thou leam to be silent," he wrote in his Diary one day, and the next, "the monition of yesterday doubly deserved today .... Totally disatisfied with myself."3 Although unable to carry out the business he was in London to do, John Quincy held talks with two British officials on other matters which Deas had been unable to settle, and in this diplomatic exercise he was thoroughly bested by the British who were vastly more experienced and skilled in the negotiating arts than was the twenty- seven-year-old John Quincy, for all his diplomatic background and training. George Hammond, Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs, suggested during their meetings that he should succeed Thomas Pinckney as the American M inister. This raised John Quincy's suspicions that the British for their own reasons were trying to make him the Minister. More difficult than Hammond was Lord Grenville, the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Hammond's superior both in the foreign office and in diplomatic ability. Grenville easily parried John Quincy's attempts to secure further concessions from the British. 3jq a , D iary, 25 November 1795, APM, r e e l 27. 4jq A, D iary, 23 November 1795, APM, r e e l 27. 3jq A, D iary, 22 November 1795, APM, r e e l 27; JQA, D iary, 23 November 1795, APM, r e e l 27. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 144 Since John Quincy was representing a nation that had yet to prove its stability, appeared to be weak, and was in truth torn by opposing political factions, it was not surprising that Grenville, representing one of the two great powers of the European world,6 was unimpressed with his demands. Inexperienced and suspicious, John Quincy relied excessively upon protocol. His official appointment in Holland was as Minister Resident of the United States of America at The Hague. Grenville presented John Quincy to the king and sent him an invitation omitting the words "at The Hague." One invitation, to the king's levee, actually read "Minister Plenipotentiary," a higher grade than Adams deserved, about which John Quincy wrote an entirely unnecessary letter. He insisted he be presented to the king according to his precise title, including "at The Hague." John Quincy's time-consuming persistence in small details diminished his ability to deal with the British government. Busy men could not cope with the fantasies of half-grown diplomats. Finally, in exasperation, the king refused to speak to John Quincy at a reception, and Grenville inserted a notice in the official court gazette that John Quincy had left for The Hague. The entire episode showed how inexperienced John Quincy w as, how o v erly s e n s itiv e ^The British naturally distrusted the United States because it was a republic. Jack L. Cross, "Thomas Pinckney's London Mission" (Ph.D. dissertation. University of Chicago, 1957), p. 41. The description of JQA's diplomatic behavior in London is based on Bemis, Foundations, pp. 69-79. "You have long known, that a real republican, will never be a favorite at a Court," JQA to JA, 7 January 1796, APM, r e e l 381. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 145 he was to protocol, and how accurately Gouverneur Morris assessed him as biased by suspicion of designs against h i m . 7 However much the British government wished it, John Quincy was not on his way to The Hague. Although he continually wrote home that he was waiting for new orders, he was in fact also waiting for money to be sent from the State Department to London to cover the expenses of his trip. The money, from a series of mischances, was slow in coming, and he lived on his own resources.& He, therefore, had to do what he did so infelicitously: wait, with no employment. The next five months were to be without professional occupation, but they were certainly not empty; they were quite filled up with his courtship of, and engagement to, Louisa Johnosn. John Quincy encountered the Johnson girls and their music simultaneously. The three older girls, Nancy, Louisa, and Caroline, played and sang after the first dinner. Not only was music a showcase for young marriageable women, but it functioned also as home entertainment. Not every evening could be spent at the theatre or at a concert, and music could divert both company and the family after dinner. The three young musicians performed on the harp, pianoforte, and sang for company in the evening, with what effect can be gauged by John Quincy's interest in their music and the fact that he recorded it 7jq A to TBA, 26 December 1795, APM, re e l 131. JOA, D iary, 14 January 1796, APM, reel 27. JQA was also suspicious of John Trumbull and Samuel Bayard (both in London at the time). JQA to LCJ, 5 December 1796, APM, reel 382; and JQA, Diary, 2 December 1795, APM, reel 27. For Gouverneur Morris's opinion of JQA, see Bemis, Foundations, p. 78. ^Timothy Pickering to JA, 5 September 1796, APM, reel 382; JQA to Timothy Pickering, 22 June 1796, APM, reel 129. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 146 in h is Diary when they refused to p la y , or when they played h is " fa v o rite s o n g . "9 Cards or conversation also took place after dinner, until supper, for which some of those visitors at dinner might remain, as John Quincy so often stayed until the early hours of morning. As Louisa related in her memoirs, these visitors were always male and always American. The Johnson stricture against socializing with Englishmen had two important results. Each young American male visitor became a potential husband, while at the same time, because they were Anglo- Americans abroad, the Johnson girls may have been less marriageable. Since American men in London visited the city either on business or making a grand tour, they were continually sojourners, but never at home. They were, therefore, less likely to think about marriage or to make long-range plans. Further, the Johnson girls, for all their parents' efforts, may have seemed not quite American to these visitors, Catherine Johnson was wholly British, and neither she nor her seven daughters had ever seen America. Indeed, the climate of the household must have been British with English furniture, servants, clothing, and food. John Quincy wrote his mother later that "prudence" cautioned him against Louisa's English background and "the habits of life necessarily formed by it," so he may have felt the pervading British atmosphere of the household.10 Their way of life then may have made 9jq A, Diary, 16 December 1795, APM, reel 27; JQA, Diary, 8, 10 February 1796, APM, reel 27. 10JQA to AA, 16 August 1796, APM, reel 382. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 147 the Johnson girls neither wholly American nor wholly English, no less alluring, but perhaps slightly less marriageable. Yet to John Quincy, who was thinking seriously of marriage, the combination of British and American backgrounds in a woman may have been remarkably enticing. Louisa's reminiscences show that marriage was also on the minds of the Johnson women. In spite of her insistence that almost every young man had fallen in love with one or another of the Johnson girls, the eldest, Nancy, was at twenty-one unmarried. She was not yet a cause for parental concern, but it seems unlikely that Catherine and Joshua would have refused their assent to any reasonable offer. Indeed, their behavior concerning the proposed marriage of Louisa and John Quincy indicates that they would have welcomed a proposal. Except for the English aristocracy, the day of arranged marriages was over, and any young man would have to come to an agreement with the daughter first and then with her parents. Usually, but not always, the eldest girl married first, and Louisa's very conflicting feelings about her eldest sister, Nancy, may reflect not only the usual sibling rivalry, but perhaps guilt about having married out of turn. Faced, however, with the prospect of finding husbands for seven girls, the order in which the girls married may have been of secondary importance to Catherine and Joshua Johnson. However much the culture mandated that marriages were to happen without any apparent effort on the part of the girl or her family, social life in the Johnson house was a serious business which, in part, revolved around putting eligible young men and eligible young Johnson women in a setting which might, it was hoped, put marriage into the Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 148 minds of the men. Marriage did not have to be suggested to the women: the idea was already continually and almost obsessively present. Louisa's claim that she never tried to lure John Quincy into marriage denied what was natural and ordinary in her upbringing; the finding and attraction of a husband. Young women being courted, however, should display no urgency. The culture dictated that they should be sought out by men; thus a seemingly calm, but actually tension-filled p a s s iv ity was imposed upon young women.H Nothing in the ambience of the Johnson household indicated to John Quincy that this was a family living beyond their means, although living beyond one's means was not uncommon in the very erratic world of the late eighteenth century. Jonathan Williams, who had worked alongside Joshua Johnson in Nantes, failed to pay his debts in spring 1783; Daniel Parker, a tobacco merchant in Paris, found himself in serious financial difficulties in the 1790s; Matthew Ridley struggled constantly to pay his creditors; a distant relative of the Adamses, Thomas Boylston of London, lost a fortune because of the failure of the mercantile firm in which he was a partner. Even so committed a republican as John Trumbull lived consistently beyond his income because he thought he should live as a gentleman whether he could afford it or not.12 llReith Thomas, "The Double Standard," The Journal of the History of Ideas 20 (April 1959):214. 12concerning Daniel Parker and John Trumbull, see Irma S. Jaffe, John Trumbull: Patriot-A rtist of the American Revolution (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1975), pp. 59 and 172. Concerning Thomas Boylston Adams, see TBA, D iary, 25 October 1794, APM, re e l 282. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 149 The Johnson life style included miniatures and portraits of the family. Among several miniatures of Joshua Johnson was one commissioned in the 1790s from Thomas H. Hull. It is in every way a fine portrait. Johnson's eyes, which so captivated Louisa are here penetrating indeed. The full ruffle on his shirt and the high collar indicate a substantial p r e s e n c e . 13 The edge of the oval frame is ringed with pearls adding an air of opulence to the small picture. Two portraits of Catherine and Joshua Johnson by an unknown artist, probably painted in the mid-1790s, attest their rise in the social scale. Unlike the smaller portraits made three or four years before, these were full-size portraits. The Johnsons appear affluent and socially aware, not opulent according to English standards, but certainly prosperous and comfortable. This is not a couple still struggling to succeed; they have arrived. Beside Joshua Johnson an ink stand and some l e t t e r s , one of them opened and read , show th a t he is a man of affairs. The Greek column and the drapery drawn back revealing a bucolic landscape give a sightly classical air to his portrait. C a th e rin e 's p o r t r a i t , painted by the same a r t i s t , e x h ib its the same confidence, her head leaning to one side with an almost quizzical look on her face. The high, obtrusive hat, so prominent in the earlier and very much smaller portrait, is now gone, and although still dressed in the height of fashion, with a rising waistline and ribbon-bound hair, there is now an air of much quieter affluence, quite different from the earlier painting. A book rests on the table by her left elbow, typical 13oiiver, Portraits, p. 22. Brooks Adams owned still other miniatures of Joshua Johnson, his great-grandfather. Arthur F. Beringause, Brooks Adams : A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955), p. 306. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 150 of portraits done in the 1790s, even if the sitter was a lady whose daily use of books probably included only novels or manuals of child- raising. The Johnsons in these portraits could be any mercantile couple whose years of struggle and uncertainty were behind them and, however precarious was their perch in reality, within these frames they seem secure. The Adamses were not the only fam ily in the g rip of am bition; the Johnsons were eq u ally s tr iv in g . The Adamses were am bitious politically; the Johnsons were ambitious for social position. Even seeing only Americans, the family moved in a far wealthier circle than the strictly mercantile world to which they had been accustomed before Johnson was made Consul. 13 Having started married life as an illegitim ate girl, pregnant at fifteen (perhaps with out being married), Catherine had come a long way. But along with a large house, eleven servants, infirm health, periodic depressions, and a volatile l^There are two versions of these portraits; one set is in the National Collection of Fine Arts, the other at the Massachusetts Historical Society. A history—of questionable accuracy—of the pair at the Smithsonian can be found in The Opening of the Adams-Clement Collection (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, National Collection of Fine Arts, Publication 4055, 1951), p. 12. The portraits at the Smithsonian may be copies of the pair in the Massachusetts Historical Society. Robin Bolton-Smith, Assistant Curator at the National Museums of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, made the tentative dating of the pictures, which at one time were thought to have been painted by John Trum bull. In 1903 C harles F ran cis Adams, Jr., ascribed them to an unknown London artist, suggesting that they were painted in 1796. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., 1903, Adams Papers, "All Generations, MHS. 13por JQA's opinion of John Barker Church, see JQA, Diary, 22 October 1794, APM, reel 24. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 151 and Insecure husband, she was faced increasingly in the 1790s with another problem: a bevy of girls for whom husbands must be found. The Johnsons, however pressed to marry off their daughters, held strictly to eighteenth century dictates. Although women could encourage or ward off suitors, they could not initiate a courtship.16 No invitations to the Johnson house followed John Quincy's original in tro d u c tio n , and l a t e r in l i f e Louisa would make much of th is to show he had willingly sought out the Johnsons. "Mr. Adams," she insisted, "was in England a long time without even an invitation from them, my parents. It was therefore his own choice which led him to seek us."17 Her point was well taken. John Quincy returned again on 16 December, indicating a continuing, but perhaps not overwhelming, interest in the family. Six days later John Quincy attended a ball given for Nancy Johnsons' birthday, and he danced until three in the morning. The next week he thought all the daughters "pretty and agreeable," recording in his Diary, "The eldest performs remarkably well on the piano forte. The second L o u isa, sin g s. The th ird plays on the Harp."I® L o u isa 's was the only name John Quicy recorded. Louisa always claimed that her family thought John Quincy was interested in Nancy, not in her, and she wrote of her surprise when he finally showed his preference for her. But Louisa's is the only name which appears in his Diary in the early days of the relationship. 16stone. The Family, p. 398. In the eighteenth century, girls were supposed to pretend no interest in love or marriage. Gilbert and Gubar, Madwoman, p. 118. 17lcA, "Adventures," p. 39, APM, reel 269. 18JQA, Diary, 16, 22, 26 December 1795, APM, reel 27. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 152 except when the ball is identified as being in honor of Nancy's birthday. Separated while still engaged in 1796, Louisa wrote John Quincy that a visitor mistook Nancy for John Quincy's "best friend," so there must have been a basis for her insistence later that her father, mother, all her friends, and even she herself thought John Quincy interested in Nancy. 19 If his Diary is to be believed, however, his interest always centered on Louisa. At any rate, John Quincy began to return regularly to the Johnsons' in the evening and met them at other houses such as the Churches' on Twelfth Night and the Pinckneys' in F e b r u a r y .20 g ymid-January he noticed that he was spending much of his time at the Johnsons'.21 Evening followed evening; cards were played, instruments strummed, songs sung, more and more "at the Johnsons." If the Johnsons did not move in English society, neither did John Quincy. John Quincy thought that the ill breeding of the Americans whom he met in London was exceeded only by that of the few English he saw, although he admitted after a few months in London that he found companies entirely English very tolerable. Half-English, half-American groups, he thought, could not find a common meeting g r o u n d22 . At this very time he was becoming emotionally involved with 19"Mr. C. Calhoun on his arrival paid us a v isit, he turned to Nancy and told her, he had now seen her best friend, left him in very good health and supposed she had given up all idea of going to America, I could not help smiling at the mistake." LCJ to JQA, 30 December 1796, APM, reel 382. LCA, "Record," pp. 60-61, APM, reel 265. 20JQA, D iary, 6 January 1796, APM, r e e l 27; JQA, D iary, 2 February 1796, APM, reel 27. 21JQA, Diary, 17 January 1796, APM, reel 27. 22JQA, Diary, 16 February 1796, APM, reel 27. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 153 a half-English, half-American girl in London, a city which he detested, London partook of all those aspects of Europe most disliked by the Adamses and John Ouincy: opulence, courts, aristocracy, and, most importantly, seductions. John Q uincy's opinion o f London was d e v a sta tin g . In 1804 he described a friend's danger while living in London in the 1780s. [He] was exposed to the seductions of dissipations, and lived in the midst of a luxurious and splendid metropolis, where all the energies and powers of man are combined to vary the scenes of delight, and multiplying enjoyments, where sloth allures to beds of down, and pleasure beckons with swimming eye, and enchanting s m ile s .23 This is a strange description of a city in which at least some of the enchanting smiles must have come from the young and lovely girl who was his wife when he drew the picture. Louisa's memoirs do not reveal if the Johnsons knew of John Quincy's negative feelings about London and mixed company. Although Louisa recorded that he was a great favorite of her mother's, Joshua Johnson told his daughter that "Yankees . . . never made good husbands."24 According to her memoirs, Louisa's governess, not she, was responsible for the engagement. Louisa stated that the governess actually "coaxed" her affection for John Quincy into flame by making 23JQA, "Tribute to William Vans Murray," The Portfolio, 7 January 1803, p. 5. "This city is become as vile and debauched as the City of London." AA to Mary Cranch, 24 May 1797, M itchell, ed.. New Letters, p. 91. See also Arthur J. Weitzman, "Eighteenth-Century London: Urban Paradise or Fallen City," Journal of the History of Ideas 36 (July-September 1975):469-80. See David Kunzle, "William Hogarth: The Ravaged Child in the Corrupt City," in Changing Images of the Family, ed. Virginia Tufts and Barbara Meyerhoff (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), pp. 99-140. 24lcA, "Record," p. 60, APM, reel 265. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 154 much of a poem John Quincy wrote to her (Louisa) and arguing that John Quincy had been in love all winter and that the affair would end in marriage. In a typically passive pose, Louisa "suffered" herself to be persuaded into a passion, which she insisted later, was long lasting because it grew slowly. Had her love blazed up suddenly, it might have quickly died a w a y .23 Day followed day, and the Johnsons saw more and more of John Quincy, who recorded in his Diary what happened to Louisa. Louisa was ill; Louisa was recovering; he was dancing with L o u i s a .26 Nancy and Caroline were almost never m e n t i o n e d .27 Interest in Louisa brought no surcease from his nervous irritability. Even at the Johnsons', he could "only learn how much wiser" he would have been to stay at home. During January he was at the Johnson house more and more, and finally on 2 March he wrote cryptically, "Ring from Louisa's finger. . . . Placed in a very difficult dilemma. Know not how I shall escape from it,” without indicating whether he asked for the ring or if Louisa offered it.28 No word is recorded in his Diary how his feelings were piqued, engaged, and finally acted upon, and how by April, the Johnsons' home was "more my home I th in k , than my own l o d g i n g s"29 . 23ibid. Louisa may have gotten the idea that sudden passions are short from her reading of Shakespeare's Richard II. "Small show'rs last long but sudden storms are short." Richard II, 2. 1. 35-36. 26JQA, Diary, 27 January, 14 and 15 February 1796 APM, reel 27. 27JQA, D iary, 21 February 1796, APM, re e l 27. Once JQA recorded "Caroline very pretty " and that Nancy was "affected." JQA, Diary, 10, 21 February 1796, APM, reel 27. 28JQA, D iary, 2 March 1796, APM, re e l 27. 29JQA, Diary, 22 April 1796, APM, reel 27. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 155 In both Louisa's description of this winter and in John Quincy's Diary there is a noticeable passivity. In both accounts the main actors of the drama seem to be elsewhere detained. The ring springs unaided from Louisa's finger; the governess is responsible for their falling in love. Passivity concerning his career was a long- settled stance of John Quincy's. He had, just before leaving for London, explained to his mother how his heart too would remain apathetic. Louisa's passivity had just as long a history; indeed, it belonged to a woman of her time and place. A young woman was to be docile at the same time as she, and her parents, made every effort to present herself to appropriate males in as attractive a manner as possible. Even the accomplishments which were designed to catch husbands should never be blatantly displayed, but left to be discovered by men. The one and only future of the Johnson girls lay in marriage.30 In England, educated single women's only profession was as a governess; or they could live with their married sisters—a dismal life at best. The profession of governess hardly existed in America, and there were very few women school teachers. Abigail Adams had been equally ambitious for her daughter Nabby as was Catherine Johnson for her girls; each mother would have thought it a failure on her part not to have found a "good match" for her daughters. 30Stone, The Family, pp. 317, 398. "Economically and socially, marriage at this period was almost forced upon women. If they failed to marry they remained dependents in the homes of relatives and were persons of little importance to society." This passage refers to women in England. Mary Sumner Benson, Women in Eighteenth-Century America; A Study of Opinion and Social Usage (New York: Columbia University Press, 1935), p. 76. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 156 L o u isa 's d o c ility was m erely a facade. Her memoirs show clearly that marriage was on the minds of the Johnson girls, on the mind of Colonel Trumbull when he suggested to the sisters that John Quincy would make a good husband, and by inference on the mind of Louisa when she s ta te d again and again in so many d if f e r e n t ways th a t no such idea ever entered her mind.31 For what other reason than preparation for marriage would Thomas Pinckney suggest to Joshua Johnson that the girls learn Italian and Spanish except to add to their "accomplishments?"32 These extra accomplishments might have been useful in replacing small or nonexistent dowries, although Louisa insisted her father had planned to give each girl five thousand pounds. Dowries of this size would have required a fortune of thirty-five thousand for all seven g irls.33 Even having to be paid singly and even given excellent business prospects, which for Joshua Johnson is allowing a great deal, thirty-five thousand pounds would seem an enormous sum. I f Johnson knew th ere was no money fo r dow ries fo r the g irls, Catherine Johnson's problem of finding husbands was doubly difficult. John Quincy wrote his mother later that he had not inquired about Louisa's "fortune."34 The Johnsons' habit of opening their house 31lcA, "Record," pp. 61-63, APM, reel 265. 32Thomas Pinckney to J J , 7 March 1795, M iscellaneous l e t t e r s to Joshua Johnson, Dispatches from U.S. Consuls in London, 1790-1906, National Archives. Education could be used as an alternative to m arriag e. Ann D. Gordon, "The Young Ladies Academy of P h ila d e lp h ia ," in Women of America: A History, ed. Carol R. Berkin and Mary Beth Norton (Boston: Houghton M ifflin Co., 1979), p. 85. 33lcA, "Record," p. 70, APM, reel 265. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 157 to young Americans was certainly a strategy, conscious or not, for introducing eligible males to their girls. Louisa wrote in her memoirs that in late January, at a second Johnson ball, John Quincy first made public his preference for her, which brought only opprobrium on her head from her two rivals, Kitty Church and her sister Nancy. "Shunned" by her sisters, she lost all sense of humor and knew something, but not what, was wrong. Louisa should have known the vanquished do not love the v i c t o r . 35 Thus, according to her memoirs, love came to Louisa in an atmosphere of difficulty and stress. An evening's outing in the spring provided her first taste of John Quincy's sensitivity to criticism . Having been told that Louisa laughed a t him, he b rid le d when she commented on h is handsome appearance and became angry, telling her that "his wife might never take the liberty of interfering in those particulars, and assumed a tone so high and lofty" that Louisa "resign'd all pretentions to his hand, and left him as free as air to choose a Lady who would be more d i s c r e e t . "36 Louisa reported the event as if i t were a single critical episode, but John Quincy's Diary stated "more lessons of dress," so perhaps the Johnsons had been trying to change his mode of a ttire , 34"[Prudence] muttered some question about the fortune, which I told her I was unable to answer and would not take the trouble to enquire." JQA to AA, 16 August 1796, APM, reel 382. 35lcA, "Record," p. 63, APM, reel 265. JQA recorded no public declaration. JQA, Diary, 27 January 1796, APM, reel 27. 36LCA, "Record," p. 64, APM, reel 265. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 158 which they had found so unfashionable,37 The sp at was made up, but Louisa stated the memory of it stayed with her to be recalled later at other occasions. Nor did L o u isa 's d is tr e s s end when the f i r s t q u arrel was made up. A mind in love, she wrote, struggles through the "obscurity," and reason penetrates only like sunbeams through a "dense fog [that] . . . make[s] the darkness . . . still more impenetrable." "Obscurity," "fear of some unknown," only "momentary flashes of reason," these are the words used by Louisa to describe her state of mind in the early days of her engagem ent.38 To e ig h te e n th -c e n tu ry women, m arriage was the great leap into the unknown, and perhaps Louisa feared the future with John Quincy that she was now facing even though her parents had moved in a quasi-diplomatic world and she had been as prepared as any girl of her time for marriage. Perhaps she feared his realistic, critical attitude, or a situation in which men were clearly in control. Certainly, Louisa's experience of living with men was small; one boy among seven girls speaks for itself. Louisa's description of her father as perfect in every way concealed a truer picture of Joshua Johnson as a very unstable and unsure man, whose fears were constantly breaking through his control and who lived, from time to time, in a state bordering on, if not actually in, panic. Whether she concealed his weaknesses on purpose or did not see them is hard to determine. The strength of the family seemed to reside in Catherine Johnson. She 37JQA, Diary, 11 May 1796, APM, reel 27. 38 lcA, "Record," pp. 64, 65, APM, reel 265. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 159 seems, with her trenchant wit and sharp tongue, to have been the moving force of the Johnson family. The picture of the courtship months which emerges from John Quincy's Diary is also one of frustration and agitation. In London, with no employment, John Quincy was in the grip of a nervous depression. In February, he recorded "customary day, dull and dissipated .... Dine out almost every day, and pass the Evening at Mr. Johnson's—Health low. Spirits lower still This must be reformed almost entirely."39 The nearer he came to Louisa, the more dissatisfied, the more indolent, and the more exasperated he became.40 Small incidents irritated him; and angry at his fractiousness, he was "Astonished almost as much as mortified at my own im becility."41 Solitude, he recorded, was the only enjoyment. Unsure of his own motivations, he put the worse construction on those of others. Louisa, he decided, "pretended a headache for the privilege of being cross."42 By the end of February he had resolved to end "the present state of things."43 John Quincy did indeed change the situation; he accepted Louisa's ring.44 39JQA, Diary, 1 February 1796, APM, reel 27. 40Ib id . 41JQA, Diary, 18 February 1796, APM, reel 27. 42jqa , Diary, 21 February 1796, APM, reel 27. 43JQA, Diary, 25 February 1796, APM, reel 27. 44JQA, Diary, 2 March 1796, APM, reel 27. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 160 Taking the ring seems to have changed nothing. John Quincy was convinced he was needed a t The Hague. Thomas had been i l l and lo n e ly , "pernicious passions" were closing in on him, and he felt as "idle as a Prince" in London.45 Reading and writing were impossible; his time was spent "dressing and then dressing again" for making and receiving visits;46 music at the Johnsons', to his annoyance, soothed him;47 winning at cards he considered "ill luck."48 a few days' trip to Cambridge with two friends helped both his health and spirits, and although he resolved to take more excursions he did not do so.49 He recorded in his Diary that the situation at the Johnsons' was "embarrassing" and Catherine Johnson was "grave," but did not explain further.50 Unable to understand his real feelings, he twisted and turned until all feelings were reported obliquely, wrongly skewed. Exhausted from doing nothing, he had no energy left over for work of any kind. The indolence he so vainly fought against lay not, as he thought, in London, but inside himself. The portrait of John Quincy done at this time by John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) shows none of the turmoil reflected in his Diary. 45jqa , Diary, 1 March APM, reel 27. JQA to TEA, 24 March 1796, APM, reel 131. 46 Ib id . 47JQA, Diary, 19 March 1796, APM, reel 27. 48JQA, D iary, 20 February 1796, APM, re e l 27. 49JQA, Diary, 5 February 1796, APM, reel 27. 50JQA, Diary, 11 and 15 March 1796, APM, reel 27. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 161 The portrait, painted at the instigation of Mrs. Copley in admiration of Abigail Adams, is one of the very finest of all the Adamses portraits. It shows John Quincy calm yet alert, his features handsome and composed.51 He was in truth neither calm nor composed. Even the theatre failed him; it was, he told his mother, "mere parade and show," with no real "passions, sentiments or manners." Compared to his own conflicts, it is not surprising John Quincy found those on the stage in s ip id . Moreover, John Quincy was unable to state clearly to his family in America that he was seeing Louisa. Telling his mother he could hardly find a quarter of an hour to write to her, he suggested that she might guess the reason.52 He asked Louisa to choose cloaks for Louisa Adams (John Quincy's cousin) in Massachusetts and then informed his mother who had chosen the cloaks, but nothing more, while at the same time leaving the impression that there was more to te ll.53 Abigail Adams had by this time received his moving letter from Holland, in which he described his view of love. Her answer to John Quincy's plaint was sent off in mid-February. She tried to support his decision made in 1790 to remain unm arried and held out the hope th a t Maria Frazier would never marry while he was s till single. She admitted that he might not find the same physical attractions in Maria that he had discovered six years before but suggested that "mental attractions" might yield a more "permanent and solid satisfaction." Trying to soothe John Quincy's sorrows at having a "widowed heart," she suggested 51oiiver, Portraits, pp. 37-41. 52JQA to AA, 20 February 1796, APM, reel 381. 53JQA to AA, 28 February 1796, APM, reel 381. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 162 all the benefits of reason over p a s s i o n ,54 gad she read her son's Diary, she might have questioned with how much reason he was approaching Louisa Johnson and might have guessed that her attempt to redirect her son's affections back to Maria Frazier had come too late. Had John Quincy been able to apply reason to his relationship to Louisa, he might have noticed that Louisa's health was, for a young girl, very unsettled. Twice Louisa was very ill, only to be recovered the very next day. Her health was to be the most acute and recurrent problem of her married life , and this pattern of extreme illness followed by a quick recovery would be repeated over and over again. Since John Quincy recorded no details of Louisa's illnesses it is impossible to decide whether these illnesses were of psychosomatic or physical origin (or b o t h ) .55 John Quincy might also have noticed that the closer he came to Louisa the more he wished for solitude. Although the sisters competed, Louisa had been steeped in the companionship of a very feminine family. She married John Quincy, from all later descriptions the least companionable of men; and certainly his love of solitude, so evident in London, was an intrinsic part of his life. The amount of anger Louisa and John Quincy aroused in each other during courtship was indeed surprising. Single misunderstandings occurred. More ominously, he recorded in May, "the usual asperities 54aa to JQA, 29 February 1796, APM, reel 381. John Quincy received this letter in London on 26 April 1796. 55john Quincy seems not to have made the connection between women's ill health and women's questionable moral state which many people made in the nineteenth century. Richard W. Wertz and Dorothy C. Wertz, Lying-In; A History of Childbirth in America (New York: The Free Press, 1977), p. 91. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 163 arose this Evening.— I must g et a w a y . "56 Their engagement survived the first argument, but Louisa and John Quincy passed on to other hostilities by letter and to still others in their life together. Illness, emotional distance, and antagonisms were not the only problems which first appeared in London. During the winter of 1796 various members of the Johnson family became noticeably and incomprehensibly depressed while only partial explanations were given, finally causing John Quincy in May to write in exasperation about the Johnsons, "'Cans't thou not minister to a mind diseased.'"57 Louisa's periodic depressions in later life, some very severe and persistent, caused her agonies of suffering. Finally, there were the conflicts brought on by Louisa's emotional needs—needs which John Quincy was ill-equipped to satisfy. Feeling inferior to her sisters, Nancy and Caroline, Louisa needed support, not criticism. On his side, John Quincy was so sensitive to censure of any kind that he even "heard" criticism where none was intended. Upon learning that his cousin was now a father, John Quincy commented, "I cannot help considering it as a sort of reflection upon me; for a good example always contains a censure upon a bad practice."58 Louisa's conflicts concerning her behavior and attractiveness were so deep that she, too, could bear almost no correction. John Quincy could not control a long standing proclivity to criticize, nor could Louisa lose her 56JQA, Diary, 10 May 1796, APM, reel 27. 57JQA, Diary, 1 May 1796, APM, reel 27. 58JQA to AA, 30 March 1796, APM, reel 381. Arthur Eeringause described the Adams's "extreme sensitivity to adverse criticism ." Eeringause, Brooks Adams, p. 10. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 164 predilection to retort. To be married to John Quincy she should have been perfect, but of course she was not, but rather in desperate need of comfort for her imperfections—comfort which he could not give. Although numerous problems were unresolved, it seems as though the Johnsons were pushing John Quincy not only to declare his intentions towards Louisa, but also to marry her before he returned to Holland. By the middle of April, Catherine Johnson obviously demanded of this strange young man what his intentions were, and John Quincy wrote in his Diary that the "came to a full explanation of my views and intentions with Madam, upon the subject which was interesting to her."59 Were his intentions not interesting to him? Not only could he not inform his parents specifically and accurately that he was engaged to a young lady named Louisa Johnson, he could not even tell himself in his Diary the same precise information. A few days later, Louisa and her father received an explanation of his intentions and they acquiesced except for one point, unidentified in the Diary, upon which John Quincy seems to have been adamant.60 From other evidence, the probable sticking point was his refusal to marry Louisa before he returned to Holland. Neither Louisa nor her father was satisfied with the arrangement. Louisa wrote in her autobiography that she wanted only John Quincy's name and to escape, through marriage, from the vulgar jo k es made to engaged women. This attem pt by the Johnsons to have Louisa married before he went to Holland raised in John Quincy's mind 59jq a , Diary, 13 April 1796, APM, reel 27. 60JQA, Diary, 18 April 1796, APM, reel 27. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 165 the suspicion that they did not trust him to marry her at all if he returned to the Continent unmarried. Yet Louisa had custom on her side: long engagements were at the time the exception rather than the rule.61 Louisa insisted in her memoirs that she wanted to be married and yet stay in her father's home—an odd statement, since at twenty-one there seemed little reason for her not to live with her husband,62 % be married and still at home would seem to need an explanation, to have gone abroad needed none. Louisa came to the conclusion that is was the unsettled political state of Holland which prevented John Quincy from taking her there, an explanation which implied a loving carefulness of her person on his part. On his side, John Quincy felt he could not support a family on a Resident M inister's salary of forty-five hundred dollars a year and was unwilling to let his expenses exceed his income. His very realistic worry was that under a new administration in America he might even lose his position in Holland. He told his mother that Louisa "acquiesced in these sentiments," although he might have added, "unwillingly."63 In May John Quincy informed his brother that he had received o rd e rs to re tu rn to The Hague and was more than ever im p atien t to leave.64 John Quincy finally tired of waiting for the money and had made arrangements in Holland, through Thomas, to borrow on his own 6lEast, John Quincy Adams, p. 124. 62lcA, "Record," p. 65, APM, reel 265. 63JQA to AA, 30 June 1796, APM, reel 381. 64JQA to TEA, 15 May 1796, APM, re e l 131. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 166 credit the sum he needed to pay for the trip.65 Almost simultaneously the money arrived from America, so he was not obliged to use the loan. When Louisa said goodbye to John Quincy, no date had been set for the marriage. Complicating the situation were the long-standing but vague plans of Joshua Johnson to return to America and to take care of business in Maryland, already too long unattended. That Louisa should remain alone and unmarried in Europe was out of the question, so she faced the spectre of John Quincy in Holland and she three thousand miles distant in America. Independent, yet engaged at the same time, John Quincy left on 27 May 1796 w ith "se n sa tio n s u n u su ally painful."66 This is the closest he ever came to admitting in his Diary that his feelings, not only his person, were engaged. For Louisa, it must have been a difficult parting, Having watched John Quincy's swings between attraction and irritation and having lived through an arduous engagement period, she was being left in England with not even a probable date for the wedding. It was limbo which few women could have borne with equanimity; Louisa was not among them. Before they parted, Louisa and John Quincy each had a miniature painted of themselves for the other one. Louisa's was done by an artist identified only as Mr. Birch; John Quincy's by Thomas H. Hull, who had already painted the fine miniature of Joshua Johnson.67 Each hoped these miniatures would bridge the distance between them. Louisa, 65tbA to JQA, 23 April 1796, APM, reel 381. 66JQA, Diary, 27 May 1796, APM, reel 27. 67Oliver, Portraits, pp. 34-36. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 167 meanwhile, settled down reluctantly in London for an indeterminate wait for a meeting with, and a marriage to, John Quincy, which, she wrote years later, "might be in one year or in seven."68 Not the miniatures, but letters bridged the gap between London and The Hague.69 Louisa candidly told John Quincy in an early letter that she had an "aversion" to writing and wrote only because it would pain him i f she did not; she could not know then how much pain th e ir correspondence would bring to both of them.70 Loving, yet at the same time quarrelsome and hurtful, these still-unpublished letters are most unusual engagement communications. Quite simply, Louisa could not change and become what John Quincy wanted, a republican wife with thoroughly American values. Later she was to explain that, "Educated in England I had already discovered that our views of things were totally different in many essential points."71 For all her American contacts, Louisa had an English mother, French schooling with Roman Catholic nuns, long years in an English boarding school, and a home in a large European city. From such a background, i t was im possible to fash io n a thoroughly American rep u b lican woman. John Quincy could only alter the outward expression of her views and create the impression that, although he had become engaged to her as she was, as his wife she would have to learn a new life style at long 68LCA, "Record," p. 65, APM, reel 265. 69JQA, Diary, 29 May 1796, APM, reel 27; JQA to LCJ, 17 June 1796, APM, reel 381. 70lcJ to JQA, 4 July 1796, APM, reel 382. 71lcA, "Adventures," p. 37, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 168 distance. Not only was Louisa to change, but she slowly became aware that he had, almost Janus-like, already changed. His time in London had been for John Quincy a time "out of time." His behavior had distressed and disgusted him. Arriving back at The Hague in June 1796, he told his father that he had been "released from a situation, equally remote from all public utility and all personal satisfaction."72 Thus did he describe the time in which he courted and became engaged to Louisa. It was not until quite late in their correspondence that he stated to Louisa clearly and openly th a t he was "the Man I was when you f i r s t knew me," and th a t he was now far more "estimable" and "respectable" than the person she had known for the two or three months before he left London.73 The problem, of course, was that the man who had been attracted to Louisa and who stayed at her house after dinner was the man whom he now wished to put aside. This "indolent . . . irresolute . . . abandoned" man was now to be replaced by a man she hardly knew and certainly could not relate to at long range by letter. Just as she was not in The Hague to plead her c a se , so he was not in London to ex p lain h is new p e rs o n a lity . On a conscious level, at least, he was able to keep this hatred of himself in London and his love for her clearly separated, but it is important to ask if the man she "first knew" could possibly have engaged himself to the same woman as the indolent man in London? No series of letters could have accomplished John Quincy's purposes—to teach Louisa 72JQA to JA, 6 June 1796, APM, reel 381. 73JQA to LCJ, 20 February 1797, APM, reel 383. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 169 a new outlook on life and to convey himself to her as a new person whom she must now learn to know. Louisa worried about her letters, frightened that they would reveal her "folly and insignificance." She reported that her officious governess corrected her early letters, giving them what Louisa thought was a more eleg an t p a t i n a . 74 go strongly did she express her aversion to writing letters that John Quincy wrote to her less than he would have liked because he was aware of the pain answering him would cause her. In doing so, he added, with evident self-satisfaction, that he was consulting her pleasure even while he sacrificed his o w n . ^5 Louisa would soon leam that he often advanced his motives as selfless. Louisa may have had great difficulty in waiting for John Quincy to decide when to marry her, but certainly his first letters to her were such as any engaged woman might long to receive. He may have had difficulty in expressing his feelings in his Diary and in telling his mother that he was engaged, but his first letters from Holland declare his love in language so open, tender, affectionate, and caring that it is clear Louisa had touched his deepest emotions. He conveyed not only his love for her, but a compassionate regard for her feelings and a patient acceptance of her aversion to letter writing, which he certainly had been unable to find in London for either his own or for her faults. Louisa's letters, compared to John Quincy's, were short and somewhat uncommunicative. Yet she told him how much she missed him. 74lca , "Record," p. 66, APM, reel 265. 75jqa to LCJ, 13 August 1796, APM, reel 382. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 170 that she hoped for his happiness, "and judging from myself am vain enough to believe it cannot be complete whilst separated from me.”76 Louisa also insisted that if he could not marry her she preferred he not visit London on his way to Lisbon, since she could not bear a second parting. The first letter Louisa received from John Quincy, a few days after he sailed for Holland, was one of the most loving he ever wrote. He described his last hours in London, in which he visited Thomas Hull, the portrait painter, for the last time, and declared himself satisfied with the likeness Hull had produced, even though it was less flattering than the large picture done by Copley. In a beautifully phrased passage he offered the miniature to Louisa as a "token of an affection which will cease only with the last pulse of the heart of him whose image i t is."77 John Quincy wrote that the miniature was to be delivered to Joshua Johnson, "who will doubtless know that it is destined for you." Nowhere in the letter does John Quincy actually give the picture to Louisa. The portrait, by a circuitous route, finds its way into Louisa's possession. The episode is reminiscent of Louisa's ring which, in a similar manner, found its way into John Quincy's possession. In a rom antic mood, John Quincy conjured up in h is memory a picture of the Johnson girls in the house on Tower Hill that is utterly naive and charming and his enjoyment of their female company palpable. The Johnsons had evoked in John Quincy a softer, more feminine, more 76 lcJ to JQA, 19 August 1796, APM, r e e l 382. 77jqa to LCJ, 2 June 1796, APM, reel 381. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 171 languid side than he usually allowed himself to experience. I see you sitting on the Sopha with the table before you, working at a Vandyke, and Caroline at the other end with her silken net-work pinn’d before her, while Nancy calls the very soul of harmony from the forte piano. I place myself between you, I run a file of spangles upon a needle; I urge you, though without success to produce the long-expected Harp, or to give the graces of your voice to the Shepherds charming "pipe upon the mountain." From thence we pass to the opposite room, where the humorous additions to the Dictionary from one Sister, and the unfill'd outlines of imprecation from another, delight and charm though they cannot inspire the inflexible dulness of gravity at your Mamma’s left hand; and at length when the hour of midnight sounded from the unrelenting monitor of the moments past, in spite of reluctance commands my d e p a rtu re , then is the moment fo r the illu s io n to vanish, and leave me to that solitude which the pencil of Fancy herself can no longer colour.78 He also offered, if he could find employment in America, to "cheerfully resign a career of public life" and claim "private happiness." This letter is at sharp variance with John Quincy's diary entries in London. It is clear that he could, at a distance, revel in his feelings, yet at the Johnson's he had enjoyed his innocent and normal pleasures very little . Perhaps in London he feared precipitate actions or Louisa's parents who demanded to know his intentions. Whatever the reasons for his new expressive mood, John Quincy began what he thought would be a romantic and intimate correspondence, in which his feelings could expand at a distance, without even an approximate date for his wedding. That the situation was not as acceptable to Louisa as to himself he fully understood, but he was completely in control of events, and underlying the warm and loving memories was a resolve more powerful and inflexible than any with which 78Ib id . Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 172 Louisa had probably ever dealt. In summer 1796, as the correspondence began, he was in a loving, kind, and tender mood. At first, Louisa accepted her loneliness. She told John Quincy that contrary to popular theory, absence "strengthens rather than weakens real affection," but that she experienced an "aching void" which only a letter from him could fill. She was, in her own way, reaching out to him and repeatedly told him how much she wanted to marry him, an event she characterized as "my futile favorite hope."79 Although John Quincy expressed concern at being separated from Louisa, he wrote quite coolly that the "tediousness of absence . . . will sometimes be irksome, but independent of that sensation, there is something pleasing and grateful in the remembrance of a distant friend".80 Nothing in Louisa's life had prepared her to love at a distance. Quite the opposite, her mother had refused to let Joshua Johnson go to America while she stayed in London with the family. John Quincy's ability to accept physical separation from those he loved, probably forged in his youth while far distant from America, was, he was to leam, at sharp variance with Louisa's ability to bear a long separation. On her side, Louisa expressed her displeasure. She told John Quincy "the unpleasantness" of his situation gave her satisfaction .81 79lcJ to JQA, 24 Ju ly 1796 and 19 August 1796, APM, re e l 382. 80JQA to LCJ, 2 June 1796, APM, reel 381. 81 The letter in which Louisa stated she was satisfied at the "unpleasantness" of John Quincy's situation is no longer extant, but see JQA to LCJ, 9 July 1796, APM, reel 382. LCJ to JQA, 19 August 1796, APM, re e l 382; LCJ to JQA, 24 Ju ly 1796, APM, re e l 382. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 173 Not many eighteenth-century girls allowed themselves to express such feelings, but there was one aspect of Louisa’s upbringing on which she and John Quincy could always agree: she had been spoiled. She accepted his assessment and admitted later that her infancy and youth were "fraught with bliss . . . too much beloved by my family for my good."82 On his side, John Quincy pictured her living in a family where her every wish had been instantly granted and in which a good deal of money had accustomed her to "every indulgence."83 Neither Louisa nor John Quincy could know that the Johnson's proclivity to indulge their children was part of the culture in late eighteenth-century England. Child-rearing habits were changing and among the first families to be affected by the reversal of stric t, rather distant child-parent relations were upwardly mobile, wealthy merchants and their child-centered wives.84 John Quincy implied that 82lcA, "Adventures," p. 3, APM, reel 269. 83JQA to LCJ, 20 December 1796, APM, reel 382. 84as well as representing herself as a "paragon," Louisa also wrote of herself as "the faultless monster that the world ne'er saw." She took the phrase from an eig h te e n th -c e n tu ry poem: Reject that vulgar Error (which appears So fair) of making perfect Characters; There's no such thing in Nature, and you'll draw A faultless Monster, which the World ne'er saw. John S h e ffie ld , E arl M ulgrave, "Essay on P o etry ," The Works of John S h e ffie ld , E arl M ulgrave, Marquis of Normanby and Duke of Buckingham (London: John Barker, 1723), pp. 129-47; LCA, “Adventures," p. 30, APM, reel 269; JQA to LCJ, 21 November, 20 December 1796, APM, reel 382; Stone, The Family, pp. 437, 449, 458. "In the time of Jane's [Austen] childhood [1775-1800], the old days of rigid severity towards children were past . . . a period of undue indulgence had set in as a reaction." G. E. Mitton, Jane Austen and Her Times (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1905), p. 22. In Jane Austen's Price and Prejudice, Darcy confesses, "I was spoilt by my parents who . . . allowed, encouraged, almost taught me to be selfish, and over-bearing, to care for none beyond my own family circle." Quoted in Marilyn Butler, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 206. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 174 among other things which she would have to unlearn in America was this background of indulgence. Since he described Caroline as using questionable language, Louisa seems not to have been the only spoiled child in the family. Louisa admitted later that her mother, too, had been greatly indulged. It is clear from her later writings that Louisa considered herself raised in an atmosphere of permissiveness that made her life difficult. Louisa received no pleasure from her side of the correspondence. Her letters were in no way as loving as those of John Quincy. There were no languid memories, no recollections of happy time with him in London. Louisa may have hurt him deeply by her matter- of-factness in the face of his romantic reveries. If so, he did not complain. The only news she gave in her first extant letter was that she did not like the miniature he gave her, and the very short letter ended with the intelligence (the current in London) that John Adams would probably become President of the United States .85 In September 1796, when Louisa and John Quincy had been parted only a few months, Washington published his famous farewell address to the nation, and the first political scramble for high office was on. In eighteenth-century fashion, John Adams waited out the election on his farm, like an American Cincinnatus waiting to be called from the plow, while others, having made the leap into partisan politics, behaved quite differently. John Adams and Thomas Pinckney were the Federalist choice for president and vice-president. Thomas Jefferson was the obvious choice of the Republicans, his running mate being Aaron 85lcJ to JQA, 4 July 1796, APM, reel 382. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 175 Burr. Part of the attack on John Adams had centered on his supposed aristocratic ideas and his attempts to introduce titles to America .86 Although Hamilton's machinations against Adams were unsuccessful, he managed to lose the vice-presidency for Pinckney and throw it to Jefferson so that at a most critical time in foreign affairs, the nation had a president and vice-president from opposing parties, many of whose basic differences were rooted in foreign policy. For John Quincy in Holland, the months of waiting between Washington's announcement th a t he would r e t i r e in summer 1796 and the news th a t John Adams was elected were months of trying and failing to cope with his ambition for his father. Both his mother and father also struggled with their feelings, as usual in agreement, that for John Adams the nation's highest office would be a just reward for his undoubted services to his country. Elections in the United States took months to complete; and this meant that ambitions, both Johnson's and Adams's, were allowed room for growth, but on John Quincy's part, none for expression. According to the Adams code, ambition should play no part in public life; high office should come only as an unsought reward for services rendered. Louisa offered John Quincy her congratulations, if his father won the presidency, but instantly disowned all ambition.87 Her disclaimer was ridiculous. Neither Louisa nor her mother nor her 86por John Adams's behavior and thoughts during summer 1796, see Peter Shaw, John Adams, pp. 230, 244-46. On the subject of the 1796 election and attacks on John Adams, see Smith, John Adams, pp. 894-913. See also Brown, "John Adams and the American Press, 1797-1801." 87LCJ to JQA, 4 July 1796, APM, reel 382. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 176 father could possibly remain untouched by the news that she was now engaged to the son of the probable president of the United States. However, in true Adams fashion, John Quincy expected her to see his father's Presidency in all its negative aspects. "Dangers," "burdens," "the honour of the place is a mere bauble . . . the Station . . . exposed," in these terms did he describe an event that was probably, for the Johnsons, beyond their wildest hopes and dreams as a connection for their daughter.88 They had known the Adams family since their days in Nantes and the mid-1780s when John Adams was United States M inister and Joshua Johnson an American merchant. It was absurd to pretend that their feelings were wholly negative. Further, the Johnsons had not lived in America and had not experienced party politics and the burdens of high office at first-hand, as had the Adamses. John Quincy encountered such difficulty in dealing with his father's Presidency that in January 1797 he told Joshua Johnson that the election for the House of Representatives was of greater importance than that of the Presidency or Vice-Presidency.89 Re was unable to face ambition openly and honestly, he conducted Louisa's political tutelage through a screen of unacknowledged, but nonetheless passionate ambition, which only rarely broke through. In spring, he admitted that his position in Europe was a poor place "out of sight and out of hearing of his Countrymen [for] . . . an ambitious American . . . to 88jqa to LCJ, 31 January, 31 March 1797, APM, reel 383. 89JQA to Joshua Johnson, 9 January 1797, APM, reel 383. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 177 rise."90 still later he urged her to interest herself in American public affairs because "I too Louisa, am much of a politician," and predicted that politics would influence both his and her life.91 It is hard to see just how she could have fulfilled his injunctions except by taking a keen, yet distant, interest in the subject and at the same time by suppressing all feelings of ambition. Inexorably entwined with the whole question of Louisa's ambitions for John Adams was her supposed love of rank and splendor, which in its turn kindled John Quincey's fears that she would be unable to live in a republic. The occasion for the original dispute was that John Ouincy was ordered on 30 May 1796 to the Court of Lisbon where he would be Minister Plenipotentiary at twice the salary which he received in The Hague, thereby ostensibly removing one impediment to his marriage. In happy anticipation of coming to London on his way to Lisbon, he advised Louisa that she should expect his arrival and be ready to leave at a moment's notice; news which she welcomed by preparing a trousseau which had to be put away as the expected arrival of John Quincy failed to materialize.92 she wrote in her memoirs she stored the trousseau with a sense of guilt, which is hard to understand. Collecting a trousseau was a normal and pleasurable 90JQA to LCJ, 7 February 1797, APM, reel 383. 91JQA to LCJ, 20 February 1797, APM, reel 383. 92Thomas Pinckney suggested to JA th a t TEA might be considered as JQA's replacement in The Hague. Wisely, the suggestion was not follow ed. Thomas Pinckney to JA, 5 September 1796, APM, re e l 382. LCJ told JQA she had made preparations for her marriage "to the most minute a r t i c l e ." LCJ to JQA, 25 November 1796, APM, re e l 382. The fin e ry was put away and "the preparations concealed with as much care as if I had committed some crime," LCA, "Record," p. 70, APM, reel 265. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 178 activity before women married. John Quincy's orders, however, directed him to wait in The Hague for further instructions. Already upset at having been left in London, Louisa could not with equanimity face the lengthening separation. Although John Quincy expressed anxiety to go to London, he managed, nevertheless, to settle down in The Hague with a philosophical calm, reporting to Louisa his speculations on longer and longer waiting periods: first winter, then spring, then summer, and finally fall of 1797. Louisa finally realized that he actually welcomed the frustrations as an exercise in self- control. Nothing in her life had prepared her for his self-denying "philosophy" which she branded a "dreadful thing."93 Re considered that heroism (appropriate for both sexes) consisted in "combat[ing] our own failings and subdu[ing] our own propensities," a task Louisa found beyond her.94 Although rejoicing in his new post, he warned her that even on a doubled salary she might "find it necessary to supress some of the little attachments to splendor that lurk at your heart, perhaps imperceptively to yourself."95 a few weeks later he stated that he possessed no respect for "the parade of dignity annexed to rank."96 They began an eighteenth-century minuet in which each would declare that though the other thought he and she loved rank and splendor, they knew themselves to be free from all such pretensions. Louisa stated in 93lcJ to JQA, 31 January 1797, APM, reel 383. 94JQA to LCJ, 20 March 1797, APM, reel 383. 95JQA to LCJ, 13 August 1796, APM, reel 382. 96JQA to LCJ, 12 September 1796, APM, reel 382. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 179 various forms that she welcomed a return to a humble station in America so that she could show him how little she cared for his position, but his doubts remained. Louisa's most casual remark could arouse John Quincy's fears. She hoped her awkwardness in the diplomatic world would not distress him—surely a self-effacing and quite loving statement. But John Quincy heard it as a suggestion that he would care about her performance in the diplomatic world and, therefore, obliquely, that he cared about status.97 Louisa answered with asperity that domestic happiness alone was enduring and, sarcastically, that perhaps it was for the best that she not go to Lisbon, as she could not have fully appreciated "the honor acquired."98 Louisa knew not why he had "erroneously supposed me dazzled with what you stile rank" and assured him she was "a stra n g e r to pomp."99 in spite of her avowals, however, John Quincy told her that she should forget the "idle unsubstantial pagentry of Europe," and sacrifice "every pretence to Splendor, and perhaps of many things which you consider as conveniences of c o u r s e ."100 in John Quincy's eyes, Louisa, raised in England, could not be counted on to possess from birth those virtues thought to be 97JQA to LCJ, 12 September 1796, APM, reel 382. 98lcJ to JQA, 30 December 1796, APM, reel 382. 99lcJ to JQA, 30 September 1796, APM, reel 382. 100JQA to LCJ, 12 November 1796, APM, r e e l 382; JQA to LCJ, 21 November 1796, APM, re e l 382. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 180 typically republican; frugality, temperance, moderation, and endurance.101 In a very important and subtle sense, neither Louisa herself nor John Quincy considered her fully American. The United States, he w ro te , would become "dearer to me than e v e r, when i t s h a ll become your's by residence in it," and later, in her memoirs, she wrote about England as "my Country," perhaps making a slip, but a revealing one nevertheless.102 %n London, Louisa's English background seemed unimportant while he listened to her music in the Tower Hill house or sat on the sofa; now, back in The Hague, in the "cold light of day," it seemed to matter terribly, so much so that every hint, every nuance of aristocratic leanings was seized upon by John Quincy as evidence of difficulties to come. The tr u th was th a t Louisa came from a fam ily th a t was s o c ia lly ambitious and to whom rank and splendor meant a great deal. The Adamses, too, were from time to time susceptible to the attractions of rank. Had Louisa, after she was married, painted the Johnson coat of arms on her coach as Abigail had done with the Ouincy arms, John Quincy might have been horrified and taken it as a sign of involvement with 101John Quincy was not the only Adams who judged the republicanism of others with great confidence. TEA wrote to his mother, "I have always been & always shall be of the opinion, that the John Adams's were the only people in their right minds from the beginning, and were more instrumental in bringing the senses of Americans back to the standard whence they had deviated, then all the rest of the world put together." TEA to AA, 21 July 1799, APM, reel 395. 102JQA to LCJ, 13 December 1796, APM, reel 382; LCA, "Adventures," p. 37, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 181 European decadence and aristocratic tendencies .103 Rad Louisa hired someone, as John Adams did, to search the Herald's office in London for a titled ancestor, John Quincy might have bridled at this, too.104 Louisa, like most young women of her background, loved balls, pretty clothes, and the excitement of social life: it was the only life she knew. Until she became engaged and John Quincy returned to Holland to pick up his former life, these attitudes had not been considered wrong. But they were wrong now. The slightest hint of interest in the figure she would cut in diplomatic life (even for his sake) or in John Adams's Presidency was taken as a sign of inordinate ambition which she should firmly put aside. Louisa was not the only person to write to John Quincy about the possible Presidency of his father, but she was the only one whose interest evoked such a negative response. His cousin, William Cranch, and Joshua Johnson both wrote him about it without arousing an adverse reaction, and Louisa reported to him that his friend Hall had great hopes for his f a t h e r . 185 Louisa's remarks on John Adams's future were received more sensitively than were those of others. John Quincy seemed to fear her presumed ambitions more than those of others, lO^Russell, Adams, pp. 99 and 125. Louisa claimed Johnson arms were on the family carriage in London and on the carriage they brought to America with them. LCA to JQA, 24 November 1841, APM, reel 591. 184Russell, Adams, p. 99. Even America could be touched by aristocracy: "Has the President (JA) ever told you that he has received an address from a volunteer light infantry company, of Hampshire county Massachusetts praying to be organized by the name of Lady Adams rangers?" William Shaw to AA, 16 December 1798, APM, reel 392. 105William Cranch to JQA, 16 September 1796, APM, reel 382; JJ to JQA, 5 July 1796, APM, reel 382. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 182 perhaps because she was a woman and, as she herself admitted, women were supposed to be more prone to status seeking of all kinds than were men. Or perhaps, because unlike Cranch and Johnson, Louisa was only partly American and, accordingly, her proclivities were more to be feared. Even more likely, her intended close association with him necessitated her being, like Caesar's wife, wholly above suspicion. Louisa could not know how much John Quincy struggled against ambition. John Quincy's assessment of his own strivings, delivered to his mother was, "No—I have as little ambition of family as of person," and later to Louisa, "You think me ambitious . . . I never had a wish to be placed so high in the world at so early [a] period of my life," yet his life was motivated by an ambition which had been chosen for him almost from birth and with which he was fully in accord.186 The first summer of their engagement, Louisa moved with her younger sisters to Clapham Common, a country village within a few miles of London. Louisa later wrote that her father had taken this house especially for her so that she could study and thereby lesser the intellectual distance between herself and John Ouincy. Another purpose, she surmised, was to learn housekeeping. She herself, in her memoirs, never mentioned the presence of her younger sisters; indeed, she gave the impression in her memoirs that she was in Clapham alone. 187 it is possible that the London household containing Nancy, 186jqa to AA, 25 July 1796, APM, reel 382; JQA to LCJ, 12 September 1796, APM, reel 382. 187lcA, "Record," p. 68, APM, re e l 265. Clapham Common was a "wild and marshy tr a c t. . . . The Clapham area had become c iv iliz e d , there was no longer danger from highwaymen, the merchants and politicians were were beginning to settle there could leave families in Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 183 envious of her engaged sister, and the sharp-tongued Caroline, was simply too much for the Johnson parents and they, understandably, decided to separate the three sisters. Whatever the real reason, Louisa spent a quiet and retired summer. When fall came, she returned to London. Meanwhile, the long-standing Johnson plan to quit Europe for America was still in abeyance, often discussed in their correspondence, but never quite carried out. John Quincy was kept informed of their on-again, off-again plans. In September Joshua Johnson told John Quincy that he was planning to go in March or early April and that he hoped John Quincy would tell him whether Louisa was to go or n o t . 188 Since John Quincy’s own plans were unsettled, the doubt remained. Johnson informed his future son-in-law that unless he sailed, he might lose his property and leave his family penniless. On 1 November Johnson informed John Quincy that he was at last preparing to go to America, but later that month (using an odd phrase) Johnson told John Quincy that he would communicate his plans to him "without guile or reserve."189 John Quincy reported to his sister that the Johnsons had planned for two or three years to go to America and that they expected safety when they drove the four or five miles up to Westminster or to the City." E. M. Forster, Marianne Thornton; A Domestic Biography, 1797-1887 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, 1956), p. 4. Joseph Hall to JQA, 24 July 1796, APM, reel 382. 188JJ to JQA, 30 September 1796, APM, reel 382. 189xhe letter from JJ to JQA is no longer extant, but JQA wrote to JJ, "I have received your favour of the 1®*^ inst: in which you mention that you are preparing for your departure on your return to America." JQA to J J , 19 November 1796, APM, re e l 382. JJ to JQA, 29 November 1796, APM, r e e l 382. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 184 to go that summer (1796) or the following one, but with great prescience, he thought they would wait another year. commented that "the ladies," presumably the Johnson women, were not as good sailors as was his mother. How he reached that conclusion is hard to understand since Abigail had been dreadfully ill on her way to France in 1784, agreeing with her husband that the ocean was no place for women.Ill The Johnson family, as John Quincy knew, had travelled only between France and England by sea. As the months of 1796 went by, the Johnsons stayed in London. Louisa was not the only one living in a kind of limbo ; John Quincy was waiting to take up his duties in Lisbon and to hear about his father's election. To his Diary he confided an anxiety about the "two objects the nearest to my Heart, my Country and my Father [which] press continually upon my reflections."11% This was an odd entry for an engaged man. Abigail hastened to assure John Quincy that his appointment to Libson had been made by George Washington not by John Adams.113 John Quincy's long-standing prejudice against accepting governmental appointments from his father made explanations necessary.H4 Louisa 118JQA to AA 2 , 31 July 1796, APM, reel 128. 11lit is hard to see how John Quincy could think his mother a good sailor since her letters record her terrible experiences on the ocean. Akers, Abigail Adams, p. 80. 112 jqa , Diary, Day January 1797, APM, reel 27. 113a A to JQA, 10 August 1796, APM, reel 382. 114 ja 's instructions to JQA are in JA to JQA, 31 March 1797, APM, reel 383. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 185 would have been happy if he had gone to Lisbon at once and she with him, but his orders were for him to remain in Holland until further instructions arrived. His inability to move at once to Lisbon prolonged their separation and their correspondence. It also provided an opportunity for disputes to arise, grow, and remain unresolved. So the correspondence went forward as John Quincy tried to teach Louisa a new way of life, republican virtues, and, above all, endurance. John Quincy's letters urged Louisa to change herself; his fears outran his satisfactions. He never mentioned her many assets: her fluent French, her youthful good looks, her intelligence, her social graces, her experience in a household already involved in diplomatic life , her quite normal pleasure at social occasions. All these resources seemed to count for nothing, and she was judged as though she was to live immediately in America under the most strenuous republican conditions. Louisa was not the pliant pupil John Quincy expected; her attitude in London should have warned him, but it did not. He had begun his lessons at Tower Hill and he called himself "Mr. Quiz," but his real effort to teach her began after he returned to Holland. He defended himself even before she complained and insisted he was not her "mentor." In her turn she was sure he would "correct her errors" and that he would show her how to avoid future lapses. Two months after they parted, Louisa wrote him: "You have frequently endeavored to teach me fortitude. I knew not then how much I should need it and find though I listened to the Teacher I lost the l e s s o n s . "115 115lcJ to JQA, 24 July 1796, APM, reel 382; JQA to LCJ, 13 August 1796, APM, reel 382. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 186 "Listening to the teacher" sometimes angered her and she charged him with a "commanding" and "authoritative" style and a "preemptory tone," while he defended himself, explaining he meant only to "speak decisively." The pity was that the lessons were given without reference to the character or aptitude of the pupil. Nothing, no experience in her life, had prepared her for his kind of thinking or living. She had been prepared for marriage and the kind of very active social life John Quincy despised. There were,from John Quincy's point of view, compelling reasons why Louisa must change and learn new rules for her future married state. He was entirely absorbed in becoming what his parents had so e a rly demanded of him: a g reat statesm an. I t made no d iffe re n c e th a t he had internalized these goals as his own. The stricture his family placed on his ambition was a stern taskmaster. To succeed while seeming not to try, to care passionately while seeming not to care, to move sinless and pure in a sinful, degenerate world took a great deal of doing. And certainly it would need the cooperation of his wife—a wife who was not Abigail Adams—brought up in a family in which self- discipline, frugality, endurance, and renunciation of present pleasure fo r fu tu re go als were unknown v ir tu r e s . Louisa was unacquainted w ith the kind of moral fiber John Quincy demanded, but he never stopped trying, during their engagement, to change her. Certainly from his earliest days, John Quincy's parents had related to him as teachers, and just as surely Louisa's training had been along very different lines. In November, six months after he returned to Holland, John Quincy's fears for Louisa were heightened by the arrival of letters from his parents. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 187 Not Louisa herself, but her English background was at issue in the letters that crossed the Atlantic between John Quincy and his parents. John Adams raised the question. Learning of John Quincy's interest in Louisa by reading his letters to Abigail, John Adams wrote his son that "some family or other afforded the means of making your visits in London tolerable at least" and added that although he had been warned by the wife of the Portuguese Ambassador that John Quincy would form an attachment in Europe, he had hoped it could have been in America. But loyally he gave John Quincy the support that "your deliberate choice shall be m i n e . "1^5 Abigail was, as usual, more forceful. "I will speak out if you will not," she wrote. "It is one of the Miss Johnstones [sic] who had become your Flame . . . you have years sufficient to judge for yourself, and whom you call yours shall be mine also, only weigh well consider maturely of the most important action of your l i f e . "117 ghe wrote to Thomas after learning about John Quincy's engagement, "I hope . . . you will be proof against his [Cupid's] shafts untill you return to your native Land and then chuse a wife whose habits tastes sentiments are calculated for the meridian of your own Country," and in another letter urged her youngest son to hold himself "free for an American wife."118 Abigail's feelings about Louisa were understandably confused. Having been told but not told, hinted to, and left in suspense, she was 116JA to JQA, 19 May 1796, APM, re e l 381. 117a A to JQA, 25 May 1796, APM, re e l 381. 118a A to TEA, 10 June 1796, APM, reel 381; AA to TEA, 16 August 1796, APM, reel 382. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 188 thoroughly exasperated and wrote to John Quincy "some fair one . . . has taught you to admire ! Youth and Beauty have penetrated through your fancied apathy." She presumed John Quincy's enthusiasms had taken second place to reason and judgment, and then, having in her own mind removed Louisa from the realm of John Quincy's passions, she commented "I would hope for the love I bear my Country, that the Syren is at least half B l o o d . "119 Later she was to worry that she had spoken too harshly of Louisa and hurt her son's feelings. 120 Having se v e ra l years before encouraged John Quincy to renounce Maria in favor of his career, A b ig ail now, when he was engaged to L o u isa, asked (s tra n g e ly ungrammatically), "is Maria? has she no claims?"121 John Quincy answered with great explicitness, "the attractive principle itself was destroyed . . . the flame was extinguished with cold water." He then told his mother he had satisfied the only claim Maria still retained, a promise that he would never marry a woman who would be unworthy of the place Maria once held in his affections. He was satisfied he had done his part and hoped Maria would do hers.122 Thus did he once and for all bury his affection for Maria and turn positively to Louisa, free from entangling reminiscences. The Johnsons were w ell known to the e ld e r Adamses. A bigail Adams remembered Louisa as having "classical Lockes as V irgill 11^AA to JQA, 20 May 1796, APM, r e e l 381. 120a A to TBA, 25 September 1796, APM, reel 382. 121aa to JQA, 20 May 1796, APM, re e l 381. 122JQA to AA, 25 July 1796, APM, reel 382. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 189 stiles them, Heavenly blue-Eyes and plays Musick delightfully."123 These were, of course, Abigail's recollections of Louisa as a young girl of eleven or twelve years old, when John Adams had been Minister to G reat B r ita in . Whether John Quincy was stung by A b ig a il's comment on Louisa as a "half Blood" we do not know; he certainly never censured his mother in any extant letter. Abigail would have been less than human had her reaction to John Quincy's engagement been free from all animosity, considering how she was informed, or rather heard, of her son's engagement. The rest of the family fared no better; no detail of his bride-to-be crossed the ocean. Even Thomas, waiting in Holland for John Quincy's return, had to ask which of the Johnson daughters had interested his brother.124 Nabby was offended that John Quincy did not inform her he was engaged.125 since he could not even record the event openly and with ease in his o\m private Diary, it is not surprising th a t he was unable to rev ea l i t to o th e r s . Qnce fully sensible that John Quincy was engaged to Louisa, both John and Abigail worried about the effect European diplomatic life would have on their future daughter-in-law. They communicated these concerns by letter to John Quincy. As they long ago worried about John Quincy in Europe, so they were now anxious about Louisa in a diplomatic setting. Abigail Adams expressed her doubts first. Might not Louisa, through life in foreign courts, be placed in an "elevated station" with "examples before her eyes of a stile of living altogether incompatible 123aa to JQA, 20 May 1796, APM, re e l 382. 124tbA to JQA, 17 April 1796, APM, reel 381. 125aa 2 to JQA, 4 November 1797, APM, reel 386. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 190 with her future views and prospects in America?" Even though she was sure Louisa loved domestic life , Abigail worried that she might pick up habits dangerous to her "youth and inexperience” and place in jeopardy those housewifely duties so necessary to a happy m a r r i a g e . 126 Although Louisa had learned American manners, customs, and habits in her father's house, Abigail feared exposing her to diplomatic life. Abigail's attitude was summed up by the question, "Who can answer for her after having been introduced to the dissipations of a foreign C o u r t ? "127 The thrust of the letter was clear—John Quincy should marry Louisa in America. John Quincy was strongly influenced by his mother's letter, which he received on 9 November. Three days later he informed Louisa that he had almost lost hope that they could meet and marry in Europe. Distressing as this outcome was, he comforted himself with the thought of an early return to America, where they could live humbly and contentedly. Starting married life in America would prevent their becoming attached to the "empty baubles" of life in European Courts, and once acquainted with life in America, Louisa would not regret the "idle unsubstantial pagentry of Europe."128 Nine days later he advised Louisa that he had abandoned all hope of meeting in Europe and again emphasized the advantages of beginning life in America at the bottom of the ladder, well away from the trappings of a public post. At her age, he stressed, reflection was onerous, and single-minded pursuit of 126aa to JQA, 10 August 1 7 9 6 , APM, re e l 3 8 2 . 127ibid. 1 2 8 j q a to LCJ, 12 November 1 7 9 6 , APM, re e l 3 8 2 . Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 191 pleasure quite normal, yet he nudged her gently to consider the "concerns of life" and suggested control, deliberation, and w o r k . 129 Fearing that she had spoken too strongly, Abigail later assured her son it was merely the possibility tbat Louisa should acquire "tastes and sentiments altogether Anti-American" that had concerned her, lest she be unable to adjust to "the Republican manners of an American." Abigail put her hopes in John Quincy's experience to guard him against the evils of court life and to make Louisa fully aware of the dangers she would meet. She now advised John Quincy to marry Louisa before he went to Portugal and ended her conciliation attempt with the lovely phrase, "as she made England delightful to you, I hope she w ill, every other Country."130 John Adams continued the republican warnings, emphasizing women's alleged tendencies to extravagance as the source of risk. He exhorted h is son to s t r i c t economy and summed up h is fe a rs about Louisa: A young Lady of fine Parts and Accomplishments, educated to drawing dancing and Music, however domestic and retired from the World she may have been in her F athers House , when she comes to shine in a Court among the Families of Ambassadors and Ministers of State, if she had not more Discretion, Prudence and Philosophy than uncommonly belong to her Sex, w ill be in danger of involving you in Expenses far beyond your appointment.131 129jqa to LCJ, 21 November 1796, APM, re e l 382. 120a A to JQA, 11 November 1796, APM, r e e l 382. 121In the same letter, John Adams warned John Quincy of the expenses of a family at a diplomatic post. JA to JQA, 7 August 1796, APM, reel 382. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 192 Would John Adams have had such doubts about a New England woman? Perhaps. What is important is that once again, warnings about marriage and money were being pushed on John Quincy as they had been during the Maria Frazier affair. Louisa's later shame that she brought no dowry could not have been based on Adams's expectations. Clearly, John Adams thought that his son would continue to live only on his salary after his marriage, and he never even considered the possibility of a dowry for Louisa. John Quincy's replies to his parents show how much he agreed with them about the dangers to Louisa of a diplomatic post—dangers he seems not to have considered before he received his mother's letters. He did not share his father's and mother's certainty that her upbringing had been so thoroughly republican. He answered his father's warnings, as usual through a letter to his mother and told her he, like his father, wished he could have become engaged to an American and that the same considerations as theirs encouraged him to choose a person "wholly American" in descent, family, birth, and education. But having weighed all factors (and here he removed himself from the choice), "the destiny which is said to preside over these things did not suffer them to prevail," and he could only hope that there would be no invincible a r g u m e n t . 132 To his mother he admitted her opinion was "judicious" and asserted that if he had done wrong, he would be the "principal sufferer." In this assessment he erred, since Louisa would partake of much suffering with him, but John Quincy clearly considered himself the "principal sufferer" in an unhappy marriage. He told his mother. 132JQA to AA, 25 July 1796, APM, reel 382. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 193 however, that if he had waited until all his prerequisites had been f u l f i l l e d , he would have been "doomed to p erp etu al c e l i b a c y . "133 In February 1797 John Quincy agreed with his mother that Louisa might indeed imbibe "Anti-American" habits and be led astray by the "tinsels of courts." She was, he wrote, neither "Superior to such attractions" nor did she disdain splendor. John Quincy, however, rested his case again on her "goodness of heart" and "gentleness of disposition," both of which might rescue her from the snares of European c o u r t s . 134 The tone of the l e t t e r s Louisa was sending to The Hague make i t d i f f i c u l t to understand how he could s t i l l th in k of her as having a gentle disposition, yet on this slender reed he rested his hopes. Thus did John Quincy handle his parents' fears about the Englishness of Louisa. As soon as John Quincy knew that his mother feared for Louisa in European Courts, he explained to her how he had become engaged to Louisa. "Prudence," he told his mother, had no objection to Louisa's person, manners, mind, and heart. "Prudence," then inquired about her fortune, but John Quincy did not know and would not ask. "Prudence," did object to England and "the habits of life necessarily formed by it," and he admitted that the country where Louisa lived was "irremediable," but he also thought her "habits of life" could be modified. It was prudence who prescribed an open-ended 123JQA to AA, 16 August 1796, APM, reel 382. JQA often compared celibacy and marriage. JQA to AA, 18 January 1797, APM, reel 383. JQA, Diary, 26 July 1811, APM, reel 31. 124JQA to AA, 8 February 1797, APM, reel 383. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 194 relationship. 125 John Quincy explained he used the poetical and allegorical "prudence" as a device to elevate this discussion of economics and love into something better than "mere meanness." Yet, the effect of the letter was to remove him from an active part in the a f f a i r . John Quincy had somehow overlooked the dangers of Louisa's background while he was in London. But the admonitions from America persisted and brought with them the possibility of criticism . John Quincy was already over-sensitive to censure, finding it in letters from home even where none was ever in ten d ed . How much more might he have feared expressed concerns about the woman to whom he was engaged? No wonder that he took refuge behind "destiny" and "prudence" and was unable to declare openly that this was the woman he had chosen. The altercations and disagreements between John Quincy and Louisa must be understood in the light of these family letters to John Quincy, which gave voice to republican worries about Louisa's European experiences and inflamed fears which had been quiescent in London. Further, Louisa was not in The Hague to speak for herself. Her charms needed her physical presence to appeal. As the memory of her songs, her voice, her looks, her body grew dimmer, as they must have, other considerations took their place. Her letters, which she hated to w rite, were poor reminders of what had allured John Quincy in London, and there was, in Holland, no advocate for her. Her background loomed larger in his mind as his time in London was recollected at a farther and farther distance and as he considered his parents' warnings. 125JQA to AA, 16 August 1796, APM, reel 382. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 195 However much Abigail and John worried about Louisa's susceptibility to court life, once convinced that John Quincy would, in spite of their caveats, marry her, they both behaved, for the rest of their lives, with the greatest kindness and compassion towards the entire Johnson family. Abigail considered Louisa as her child once she had married John Quincy and wrote to Catherine Johnson about "our children." It was to their credit that they were able to lay aside whatever feelings they may still have harbored and to act positively. Already in summer 1796, young Thomas Johnson, in America, visited the Adamses in Quincy, and he was welcomed with perfect hospitality as a soon-to-be relative.126 Louisa dealt with John Quincy at a great disadvantage, as he seemingly could not control his own destiny. "Duty" came before all else. His length of stay in Europe was determined by the possibility that professional obligations would keep him at his post. Meanwhile, she might sail with her family for America. The call of duty for him, and now for her, was more imperious than that of his or her domestic happiness. However difficult Louisa found this attitude, it all came quite naturally to John Quincy. He had been reared in just such an atmosphere. John Adams had been told when sent to France in 1777, 126(,qj to JQA, 20 January 1797 , APM, re e l 383; JQA to LCJ, 7 February 1797 APM reel 383; JQA to AA, 8 February 1797, APM, reel 383. The Johnsons extended the same kindnesses to Thomas Adams when he visited Washington. TBA to William S. Shaw, 21 May 1799, "Letters of Thomas Boylston Adams to W illiam Smith Shaw, 1799-1823," Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, New Series 27 (April 1917):87. When a Boylston-Beale wedding was in the offing, AA wrote to her sister of the intellectual and social gap between the families and asked, "how was it possible for him to respect [his father-in-law] or treat him, as a son ought to treat a father?" AA to Mary Cranch, 18 March 1800, Mitchell, ed.. New Letters, p. 239. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 196 "Your domestic view of happiness was not consulted on this occasion," and he had "resolved to devote my family and my Life to the Cause."127 Further, Abigail, in a typical burst of patriotism once asserted, "I feel a pleasure in being able to sacrifice my selfish passions to the general good" and considered herself and her family "as the small dust of the balance when compaired with the great comm unity."128 John Quincy's sense of duty unbalanced his relationship with Louisa. He would be her whole life; in his life, she would come after duty. Since duty constrained his life, he could take a passive stance towards his future and, of course, towards hers. His was not the decision when to go to London; others would decree when he would go, and he was at the same time preserved from criticism. If duty, not his own w ishes, determ ined h is re sid e n c e , he could demand th a t she reconcile herself to their separation in a way he never could have done had the decision been his alone. 129 He clearly stated he could not shorten this engagement because he was powerless to order his life. Qnly once in late December did John Quincy almost, but not quite, join bis duty and Louisa assuring her he would return home "whenever my duty to the public and your interest will permit it." Louisa suggested that although adherence to duty was a virtue, even virtue could be carried too f a r . 140 John Quincy could not change. Louisa should submit not 127Adams Family Correspondence, 2:373, n. 1; Autobiography and Diary of John Adams, 4:4-5; AA to James Lovell ca. 15 December 1777, Adams Family Correspondence, 2:370-71. 128aa quoted in Akers, Abigail Adams, p. 73. 129jqa to LCJ, 31 January 1797, APM, reel 383. 140jqa to LCJ, 31 December 1796, APM, reel 382; LCJ to JQA, 28 February 1797, APM, reel 383. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 197 only to a timetable wholly out of line with her wishes, but she should yield to restrictions and decisions determined by a very abstract concept; obligation to one's country. Abstractions had played very little part in her life, but from now on John Quincy's duty would be her constant companion. As usual, John Quincy explained how unremunerative and onerous were its demands and he stated clearly, "I may therefore own to you that my duty to my Country is in my mind the first and most imperious of all obligations; . . . every interest and every feeling inconsistent with it must forever d i s a p p e a r . "141 Louisa could not misunderstand her place in his life; she could never say he had not told her. That her negative feelings toward his duty could not "disappear" seems not to have occurred to him. Yet John Quincy was far from settled in his career. His position in Lisbon might well prove to be short-lived if John Adams were not re-elected President. The law was still an unpleasant alternative for him, and at one point he even suggested to his parents that he might move to a southern state to practice law. 142 However, the new appointment to Lisbon and the raise in salary put the necessity of returning to the drudgery of the law into the future. Just as it was difficult for Louisa to understand John Quincy's "philosophy," John Quincy found it hard to grasp Louisa's romantic 141JQA to LCJ, 7 February 1797, APM, reel 383. 142JQA to AA, 30 June 1796, APM, reel, 381. JQA to Thomas Crafts, 17 May 1797, APM, reel, 130. The letter of Thomas Crafts to JQA, 14 May 1797, seems no longer to be extant. John Adams wrote, "I do not approve of your Project of quitting the Diplomatic Career at present; much less of your Thoughts of Settling in the Southern States." JA to JQA, 28 Qctober 1796, APM, reel 382. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 198 sensibility. Louisa's mind had received a romantic and sentimental cast, quite usual for young women in the late eighteenth century. Nourished on novels, the most escapist of all literature, denied meaningful work, young women lived in a vacuity filled with sentimental emotions and became literally "addicts of feeling."143 Louisa's sense of timelessness—expressed as "time flew on unheeded . . . [as] I had no data to make a strong impression on my mind"144— ig quite typical of this kind of romantic attitude. Impressions were made by emotions, not by outward events; feelings tended to be fleeting and insubstantial. Ruled by her emotions, Louisa found endurance difficult; it was this attitude that John Quincy tried to combat. His insistence upon financial considerations, his dogged refusal to look on the bright side of things, his persistence in refusing to enter upon a marriage until every negative possibility had been considered might have, with a woman other than Louisa, been enough of an example to drag her out of romantic musings into real life. John Quincy suggested that she read a book by Madame de Staël, in which the author asserted unhappiness was the end of all human passions, although he hoped Louisa might remain "susceptible of one passion at least”—presumably love.145 perhaps the lesson was given too suddenly by a John Quincy Louisa had scarcely l43Gilbert and Gubar coined the phrase "Addicts of feeling." Novelistic cliches are itemized by Gilbert and Gubar: "Love at first sight, the primacy of passion over all other emotions and/or duties, the chivalric exploits of the hero, the vulnerable sensitivity of the heroine, the lovers' proclaimed indifference to financial considerations. . . ." Gilbert and Gubar, Madwoman, pp. 115 and 117. 144lcA, "Record," p. 52, APM, reel, 265. 145JQA to LCJ, 7 January 1797, APM, reel, 383. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 199 known in London; perhaps her romanticism was too much a part of her character to be uprooted so suddenly; perhaps letters were not the best way to teach. For whatever reason, the lessons were only half-learned, while Louisa, instead of learning the strictures of duty and practicing endurance, overtly tried to end the separation. In December 1796, seven months after John Quincy left London, first Louisa, then her father, made a suggestion: the Johnsons, planning to return to America, should go by way of Holland so that Louisa could see John Quincy once more before the Atlantic Ocean was set between t h e m . 146 To this, John Quincy reacted with something akin to panic, reminiscent of his behavior when Maria Frazier had moved close to him in Boston. His letters became full of angry phrases and accusations. He pointed out to Louisa that she had once told him that she could not bear another separation and yet she was suggesting a second parting. He believed that Louisa and her father had in mind, not a visit to Holland, but a marriage in Holland: a marriage as much out of the question in The Hague as it had been in London and for exactly the same reasons. His "prospects" were not changed. His new salary had not begun. He might be dismissed from the diplomatic service were the Republicans to win the election. He argued that it would be cruel for him to take her away from a family which indulged her every whim.147 146lcJ to JQA, 29 November 1796, APM, re e l 382; J J to JQA, 29 November and 16 December 1796, APM, r e e l 382. 147JQA to LCJ, 20 December 1796, APM, reel 382. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 200 His argument is indeed difficult to follow. He was planning to marry L ouisa. She would not be le s s indulged in a few months, when he intended to go to Lisbon. Louisa would be leaving her family sooner or l a t e r . He was not taking her away from her fam ily; she was begging to go. He was saying no to marriage, but saying it in an oblique way. He categorized her plan as an "unbecoming remed[y]." John Quincy explained to Joshua Johnson, as he had to Louisa, that his professional situation was unsettled, that he simply could not support a wife as the situation stood, and repeated that even his position in Lisbon might be taken from him if the election went against the Federalists. He wrote Johnson on 9 January 1797: "If the object for which you propose to undertake this Journey is to provide an opportunity to terminate my matrimonial union, I regret sincerely the impossibility which will prevent me from concurring in a measure so conformable to my w is h e s ."148 is im possible to know i f John Quincy made a s lip when he wrote "term in ate" or i f he was using the word in the sense in which it was very rarely used in the nineteenth century, meaning to finish or complete.149 He never used "terminate" in other letters at this time in the sense of finishing. Possibly, therefore, he made a slip, revealing more about his intentions than he purposed. However, given his extreme caution and exactitude of language, one hesitates to come to any hard or fast conclusion. Writing to Louisa in December, he had used the phrase "completion of our Union."150 148JQA to JJ, 9 January 1797, APM, reel 383. 149oxford E nglish D ic tio n a ry . 150JQA to LCJ, 20 December 1790, APM, reel 382. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 201 How to explain John Quincy's negative letter to the Johnsons? There was his parents' worry about Louisa's republicanism; John Quincy's own concerns about her European background, lack of stamina, and resolution; his vulnerability to criticism, and her proclivity to criticize; her view of life that was so different from his; the disdain, guilt, and disgust in which he regarded the time in London during which he had become engaged; the different kind of life he was now living—a life of almost frantic application and study; his fears of her controlling the situation, and his fear of any overt move towards him made by a woman. He had drawn away from M aria F ra z ie r when she moved near him. He was now seem ingly doing the same thing when Louisa attempted to come to Holland. John Quincy may have decided that the best plan was to marry Louisa in America where she was safe from the corrupting influences of European Courts. Qn the other hand, he may have been so alarmed by Louisa's assertiveness that he did not wish to marry her at all. If the Johnsons noticed that his ardor seemed to have cooled, they certainly did not discuss it in their letters. They could not fail, however, to notice that in the very next letter he wrote to Joshua Johnson, on 27 January 1797, John Quincy explained something he had not mentioned before: even were he free to return home to America, he still could not marry Louisa as he would be forced to start over in the legal profession, an unremunerative process which would not allow him fam ily r e s p o n s ib ilitie s . Did he seek to dash the Johnsons' hopes that he would ever marry Louisa? The record is silent on that point. But Louisa made her reaction to his rejection of her idea to come to Holland very clear. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 202 Louisa, stung by the suspicion and distrust in his letters, fought back. She told John Quincy that "his fears had magnified" her wishes. She suggested that he might have softened his rejection by giving a date to which she might look forward, at which their separation might end. She had never doubted his affection and constancy, why should he question hers? But she acquiesced, "the die however is cast, I go to America, you to your e m b a s s y ."151 Her pride stung, she would prove that she too was incapable of slighting her duty; and then, in a flash of insight which she would have done well to ponder more deeply, she asked him if such a letter as she had received was the result of having expressed her affection and love "too warmly" and "too candidly." Unusually sensitive, she surmised that her active moving towards him might have caused his anger, and while her anger was hot, she ably defended herself, speaking out with "utmost candor." She f u ll y re a liz e d how much she would wound him. "Happy would i t have been for Mr. Adams if he had broken his engagement, and not harrassed himself with a wife altogether so unsuited to his peculiar character," she wrote years l a t e r . 152 gut he did not break the engagement and neither did she. They pushed doggedly on, quarrels punctuating their constant reiteration of love and affection. Louisa defended herself against an unstated accusation that she had tried, by suggesting the trip to Holland, to force herself upon 151l CJ to JQA, 17 January 1797, APM, reel 383. 152Louisa later wrote the engagement had been nearly broken off but that she had proved her "affections were not to be sacrificed to my pride, or to any desire of ambitious exaltation," LCA, "Adventures," p. 37, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 203 John Quincy and his family. Louisa was to suffer for the rest of her life from overwhelming guilt because she thought the world could not help but conclude that she had aggressively lured John Quincy into marriage. The worry that she would be seen in this light did not begin with the marriage, but with the proposed journey to Holland, and perhaps even when she guiltily set aside her trousseau—a tangible sign of her hopes. Were John Quincy's fears justified? Did Louisa, her father, and, by inference, her mother hope that in Holland she might get married? In her memoirs, she admitted this was the case.153 Taking Louisa to Holland to sail to America from there, just so Louisa and John Quincy could meet, but not marry, does seem to have been senseless. In America, in any case, the Johnsons already knew that their life style would be much reduced, and perhaps they feared that a simpler life style would cause the relationship to end. Qr perhaps they simply considered three years too long for any engagement. Perhaps they were puzzled by a young man who could, with equanimity, prescribe such a future for himself and Louisa. The opportunity to have one daughter settled—and settled with the son of the President of the United States—may have caused their ambitions to outrun their judgment. Whatever the reasons, his extreme negative reaction to the plan and the deviousness he assigned to their motives should have warned Louisa of difficulties to come in the marriage; but they did n o t. Both Louisa and John Quincy apologized to each other for the quarrel. Louisa admitted an "involuntary error," and he apologized for 153lcA, "Record," p. 66, APM, reel 265. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 204 even "one particle of superfluous asperity." Louisa did, however, later describe her behavior as "weak and ridiculous" and her letters as "folly."154 Neither had admitted real mistakes, but at least the partial concessions cleared the air enough to allow once more for love to be expressed. The sarcastic anger, however, in their subsequent letters increased. The quarrel had brought to the surface personal disagreements more serious even than those they had discovered in London. Just as John Quincy, while in London, had learned much about the Johnsons, so by the time the furor over her proposed trip to Holland subsided, Louisa had discovered that her fiance thought her spoiled and tainted with European attitudes. She found that he welcomed misfortune as an opportunity to practice fortitude and endurance. She should also have known that only one will would control the marriage—his. She should, above all, have understood that she would not be allowed to reach out to him, that she would threaten his defenses i f her love was "too can d id ly a v erred ." She had, she wrote later, loved her father "almost to madness”; but, quite naturally, because he was her father, she had loved him at a certain distance. She was about to marry a man whose greatest need was emotional distance. Given her insecure yet passionate nature, the situation could lead only to unhappiness. Yet the engagement went forward. Too many pressures led both Louisa and John Quincy to repair the damage: her affection for him, her 154lcj to JQA, 17 February 1797, APM, reel 383; JQA to LCJ, 12 February 1797, APM, reel 383; LCJ to JQA, 14 March 1797, APM, reel 383. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 205 ambition, her wish to be married, his tenderness for her, his sense of duty, his wish to escape from celibacy. Although there would be other quarrels, none would be as serious as this one; the worst had been surmounted. But the altercation had important results. Louisa now knew that if she wished to marry John Quincy she would have to seem submissive if only outwardly. Inwardly she could not change. All she could do was to mitigate the expression of her aggressions. Louisa could not change her assertive and combative nature and become the quiescent, self-effacing wife so favored by the eighteenth-century culture. The unhappiness which she had experienced as a child would continue in her marriage. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER IV MARRIAGE AND AFTERWARDS The great crisis of Louisa’s engagement, John Quincy's alarmed reaction to her proposed trip to Holland, was over. Perhaps, as her memoirs later judged, the clash should have ended the engagement and the relationship then and there. Instead, as Louisa's letters at the time suggest, she adopted a conciliatory stance and expressed an "Adams view" of affairs. Yet her gestures of appeasement did not end their troubles; other disputes arose. Louisa's letters after her proposed visit to Holland may have shown a new willingness to please, but stung by John Quincy's accusations she had answered his anger with spirited and resolute letters. She had also answered back in London. Sometime in her youth she had learned to stand up for herself, to give as good as she got. Possibly this spirit came from her mother, who for all her depressions and ill health possessed a very sharp wit and probably dominated the family. It is possible that the sibling squabbles, typical of any large family, had taught Louisa to hold her own in any quarrel. She may have alternated between aggression and timidity like her father; and, again like him, outside circumstances may have determined her reaction. Qf course, in a family of eight women and two men, the father, uncertain and harried by financial worries, the female influence within 206 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 207 the family may have been enormously strengthened.! Louisa's letter in reply to John Quincy's to allow her to come to Holland might indeed have ended the engagement and marriage, so she must be given a great deal of credit for sending it. So strained was their relationship that in February Louisa told John Quincy, "I had rather be obliged to correspond with any body than you."2 Much of the anger in the letters took the form of sarcasm. Louisa c e r ta in ly began i t , and by November John Quincy accused her of "temper." She characterized his gloomy forecast as "pleasing admonition";3 he alluded to her irony as "convenient covering for satirical w it."4 More was to come. She should not, she told him, have "been sufficiently convinced of the honor acquired" had they married before John Quincy went to Portugal and referred to his graceless aspersions on her constancy as "very kind and tender."5 she told him that Colonel Trumbull was a "great man therefore do not see him often." At this, John Quincy bridled, as Trumbull was a good friend of his, and he rightly read her phrase as criticism of Trumbull.6 lAnne Ridley, who knew the Johnsons well in the 1780s, asked once if Joshua Johnson was "still as much under [his wife's] government as formerly." Anne Ridley to Matthew Ridley, 14 February 1783, Ridley Papers, Box #2, MHS. "Women rule here [England] perhaps more than anywhere else"; J. W. Von Archenholtz quoted in Stone, The Family, p . 329. 2lcJ to JQA, 7 February 1797, APM, reel 383. 2lCJ to JQA, 30 September 1796, APM, reel 382. 4jqa to LCJ, 12 October 1796, APM, reel 382. 5lcJ to JQA, 30 December 1796, APM, re e l 382; LCJ to JQA, 17 January 1797, APM, reel 383. 6lcJ to JQA, 30 December 1796, APM, reel 382; JQA to LCJ, 27 February 1797, APM, reel 383. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 208 As the correspondence progressed and tempers rose, John Quincy also turned to sarcasm to express his anger. Thinking Louisa had implied he suffered from pride of family, he asked her if she was trying to wound him by imputing to him motives he despised.7 in February he hoped that public events in America might not be "remote even from your attention."8 He encouraged her to use her time well by telling her that thoughts of him and full employment of her time were "not impracticable."9 Sarcasm seemed to break through even when it seemed most under control. Assuring her that her writing style was now excellent, he suggested she read published letters , a task worthy of her time, "if you can obtain a respite for it from your thoughts of me."!0 Commenting on Chesterfield's letters, which advised exactly the courtly behavior John Quincy hated, he wrote that pleasing as a way to rise in the world was not valid "even in England."11 Other, more tender, feelings mingled with the anger and the sarcasm. In March John Quincy described to Louisa how he went to the beach near The Hague and peered toward the English coast. In loving words he told her that his imagination carried him from Holland to London and her. But then, the affectionate moment over, he admonished himself to "return to my solitude and my books."12 When he 7JQA to LCJ, 12 February 1797, APM, reel 383. 8JQA to LCJ, 20 February 1797, APM, reel 383. 9JQA to LCJ, 6 March 1797, APM, reel 383. lO lb id . 11JQA to LCJ, 7 April 1797, APM, reel 384. 12JQA to LCJ, 14 March 1797, APM, reel 383. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 209 wrote her In January, "I do most heartily and sincerely love you and believe that ray affection is as freely returned," he expressed genuine emotions. 13 % reiterated his love again and again throughout their correspondence, and clearly his affections had been thoroughly engaged. All his emotions were engaged—both the loving and the hostile. Although in one sense he was pulling her down from unrealistic heights of romantic daydreams, she managed likewise to pull him down from his unrealistic emotional expectations where anger, even if felt, could be forever controlled. He had thought "nothing sarcastic, nothing bitter, nothing invidious would ever pass between us."14 At one point, he admitted he had not always expected things would go smoothly, and he generously apologized for his temper. He told her, however, that he was in no way prepared fo r her in te n s e , wounding, venomous a n g e r.15 L o u isa 's l e t t e r s and memoirs show th a t fo r her th is was a dreadfully trying time. John Quincy's spirits had lifted once he returned to Holland. He habitually summed up in his Diary, on the New Year, the debits and accomplishments of the past year. Qn 1 January 1797 he summed up h is time in London as f il le d w ith "the indulgency of indolence," which he had repaired by work habits in The Hague. Since his return to Holland, he was most content and had "nothing essential to regret,” although he did mark some "errors" and "follies." He continued : 12JQA to LCJ, 31 January 1797, APM, reel 383. 14JQA to LCJ, 12 February 1797, APM, reel 383. JQA wrote Louisa of "uninterrupted future harmony between us." JQA to LCJ, 20 March 1797, APM, reel 383. 15jqa to LCJ, 12 February 1797, APM, reel 383. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 210 At least I have not knowingly injured any human being and I can form no more fervent prayer to Heaven than that at the termination of every succeeding year which may be granted me, and at the end of life my own heart may yield roe a testimony as pure and as favourable as it does at this moment. Thus did he view himself as he recollected the important year j ust passed. Perhaps Louisa's attacks on him, to which he was so unused, produced his defensive self-satisfied assessment. Certainly he had never been exposed to such direct sarcastic criticism before; and perhaps to be sure that he did not merit even the smallest part of it, he had to see himself perfect. Louisa's anger was so baldly expressed, with such drive and directness, that John Quincy felt it necessary to tell her that her "Spirit" was a "repellent quality" and that she was not to try his temper by a "formal and professed assertion of your Spirit."17 ge admitted, in a lighter mood, that he was unaware she was such a "spirited Lady," but he knew it now. 1^ She had brought to the surface what had before been strictly controlled; his own answering anger. Later in their married life , he would not answer back, but simply retire into himself.19 She wrote in her memoirs that she had discovered in London, that he had an intolerance for weakness and a "severity bordering on injustice" towards someone educated in England, e s p e c ia lly a woman. IGjQA, D iary, 1 January 1797, APM, re e l 27. 17 jq A to LCJ, 12 February 1797, APM, reel 383. IBjQA to LCJ, 27 February 1797, APM, reel 383. 19lcA, "Adventures," p. 37, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 211 Louisa and John Quincy fought yet another battle over her harp and his books simultaneously. Perceptively she realized from his letters that he was spending all his leisure time in reading, a threat to the companionship she hoped to find in their marriage. She asked him for the sake of her happiness and his health that he relinquish the habit .20 Later, in a fit of pique, she told him that she was not "yet able to play one song" on her harp, and although she realized this news would make him angry, she observed sharply that her harp had not "usurped the primary place in my heart" as had his books.21 His reaction to her news was exactly what she expected but he could not express it openly. He was, he wrote, not angry at all, merely indifferent, as playing the harp was "a trivial accomplishment," providing neither intelligence nor virtue. Music could give little "domestic happiness" and he would willingly give up any pleasure of music if she would improve h e r s e l f . 22 These are not the words of an indifferent man, but of a very angry man indeed. John Quincy encouraged Louisa to use her time productively and told her he was improving himself in order to be a better lover and husband. Far better he told her to possess another accomplishment than to say, "'I have wasted my time in thinking of you.'"23 His anger had now come to such a pass that he was, like her, conscious of the hurt he 20lcJ to JQA, 27 March 1797, APM, reel 383. 21lcJ to JQA, 20 January 1797, APM, reel 383. 22j q a to LCJ, 7 February 1797, APM, reel 383. 23JA to LCJ, March 1797, APM, reel 383. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 212 was inflicting; and for the second time he implied that it was wrong of her to think about him. Although Louisa was to give up her music to improve herself, John Quincy would not give up his books. He continually referred to books and solitude, as if they were one and the same exercise. He explained exactly how books charmed him. They left "no languor, no satiety, no listlessness of indolence upon the m i n d . "24 Although he did not state it clearly, all those feelings (so rampant in London) were to be quashed. Louisa thought solitude and books were inappropriate for a man of his young age, hurtful to his health and temper, and she was afraid that his love of books would make her company "irksome" to him. He answered in great heat that neither his health nor his temper was at risk and that, as she had observed in England, he would not brook any attempt to change him. She might have to change her entire way of thinking and her life style; he would not change in any way. He was "incorrigible," and the opinions of his friends, even were their judgment superior to his, would have no effect —a strange stance for a man planning to be a politician, a profession in which accommodation was a necessary skill. Arguments, he told her, which had as their purpose to persuade him to relinquish his personal time and "give it to the world" (or as she saw it, to give it to her) would be "little better than frivolous." His books and solitude were an integral part of his character and were f i x e d .25 in response to his 24JQA to LCJ, 14 March 1797, APM, reel 383. 25JQA to LCJ, 13 April 1797, APM, reel 384. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 213 tenacity, Louisa apologized saying she had thought only of his health. John Ouincy took this opportunity to explain his view of their marriage. He envisioned it as "a mutual exhortation and encouragement of each other to every honorable pursuit" and he had thought, by repetition, that this view of marriage might in time become hers. In this hope he was wrong. Louisa clung to the idea that he could learn to moderate his love of reading and solitude and leam to enjoy social life. John Quincy envisioned mutuality of adjustment to each other, but at the same time he was unwilling to change. The boy who had to keep himself aloof from the dangers of Europe can be discerned in John Quincy, the man. A personality so defended and closed to outside influences was unlikely to find relationships with people either easy or rewarding; nor was he likely to provide the sociability which Louisa craved. As he controlled the date of their marriage, so he, not she, would control the lim its of mutual accommodation. The difficulties between Louisa and John Quincy were not even yet finished. In February 1797 she began to call him "my Adams" and did so repeatedly in the letters that f o l l o w e d26 . He thought it sounded "too much like that of novels" and did not sound or look well on a man in "real life." In view of the amount of novel reading women in England were doing at that time, he may well have guessed the source. In his attempt to pull her out of a romantic frame of mind, he was inexorable. John Quincy told her that he had tried to accustom himself to the name since she seemed to like using i t , but considered 26lcJ to JQA, 24 February 1797, APM, re e l 383. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 214 it "more and more uncouth and awkward," and declared baldly, "I do not like it."27 it is hard to understand just what riled him; her expressed possession of him by the use of "my," or her use of his surname, or, as he claimed, the echo of romantic fiction. It was perhaps a small irritation compared to the serious aggravations they had struggled with before, but it does show how easily he could be exasperated. The attempt, however, to accustom himself to the name on her account, after all they had been through, does show an admirable willingness to try and adapt. John Quincy's continual insistence that his income was insufficient to support a family inevitably raises the question of whether he was hoping Joshua Johnson would offer a dowry for Louisa. Louisa's dowry, or rather lack thereof, was an enormous problem for her in later life , but her financial problems began even during her engagement. Five thousand pounds was the amount Louisa later claimed her father contemplated giving her. Joshua Johnson did tell John Quincy just before the marriage that he would give Louisa a dowry, although j u s t how much money was promised is u n c le a r. John Quincy specifically told his mother in August that he had not inquired about Louisa's fortune. Nonetheless, both John and Abigail had been preoccupied in their letters to John Quincy in both the early 1790s and in 1796 with his need to have sufficient income for marriage. Warnings 27JQA to LCJ, 31 May 1797, APM, reel 384. "Attacks on fiction, it is clear, were in large part attacks on emotion, on passion, and on sexuality. . . . Novels seemed to offer approbation for precisely the sort of behavior that political and didactic literature had labeled a danger to the Republic." Kerber, Women of the Republic, pp. 241 and 245. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 215 abound in their correspondence, probably based on their unhappy experiences with irresponsible family members such as Abigail's brother, Billy Smith, Charles Adams, and William Smith (Nabby's husband). Further, the Adamses knew first-hand the expenses of a diplomatic post in a European Court. The suspicion remains, unresolved by the present evidence, that John Quincy's refusal to marry on forty- five hundred dollars a year and his vacillation after his income was doubled might have been mitigated had Louisa been promised a dowry earlier in the engagement. For the rest of her life, especially while in diplomatic posts overseas, Louisa felt guilty because she had no dowry. Louisa tried very hard to learn, outwardly at least, the view of life John Quincy was attempting to teach her through his letters. Taken as a w hole, they show th a t her w ritte n s ta te m e n ts , a t l e a s t , conform in some measure to what he had tried to teach her: his way of thinking, his outlook, the Adams and republican configuration of ideas and ideals. She may have been angry, as her letters show; she may have been ill from worry, as she claimed; she may have been, in turn, hurt, mollified, wounded in her pride, pacified, lonely, despairing, but her phrases sounded more and more like his. In her letters she accepted those things which he told her she must endure and dismissed what he considered trivial. She even told him, "I shall I trust prove that I have not neglected your repeated lessons and be still more worthy of your yet much valued affection."28 in December she wrote that 28lcJ to JQA, 19 November 1796, APM, re e l 382. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 216 everything, even the winds, conspired "to teach me patience" and asked him to "teach my rebellious heart gently to acquiesce without murmuring."29 At first, with "sincere pleasure" she offered John Quincy her congratulations should his father become President; later, she had learned what she was to say and said it—that the Presidency was "dearly purchased at the present crisis of affairs."30 jn a relapse, during February, she was once more hoping John Adams's situation would be less difficult and more pleasing than they thought. Early in the correspondence, separation had seemed to her almost unbearable, but in January after the quarrel over the proposed trip she wrote, "Our doom it appears is fixed—Let us not then repine, but rather by strengthening our minds, be prepared to meet whatever fickle fortune may throw in our way."31 She no longer encouraged "delusive ideas" and was try in g to forge th a t f o r titu d e he so much admired and which she now found necessary. She was reading the books he recommended with attention and tried to inform herself so she might become "a fit companion for my beloved friend." She admitted in late spring that she would be consulting only her own happiness were she to go with him to Lisbon at his inconvenience. This was a far cry from the self-centered hopes in her first letters. She may have suffered, she told him, but she had overcome her feelings and would hear of his departure for Lisbon "without much 29lcJ to JQA, 6 December 1796, APM, reel 382. 30lcJ to JQA, 4 Ju ly 1796, APM, re e l 382; LCJ to JQA, 17 January 1797, APM, reel 383. 31LCJ to JQA,10 January 1797, APM, reel 383. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 217 regret."32 There are, In these last letters, written in the spring of 1797, a sense of appeasement, of real effort of the w ill, of conciliation, which had appeared only sporadically before. Whether she really gave up hope of marrying in Europe is not clear.33 Conciliatory as her mood may have been, she tried once more in mid-May to mitigate John Quincy's dark and pessimistic outlook. She claimed that his mood "embitter[ed] the few moments of happiness within our reach" and with great good sense she wrote: "Life is short, and admits not of much real felicity, therefore we ought not to reject the good that offers by watching for evil, but thankfully accept it, with gratitude to the giver of all good."34 These are not the sentiments of a sp o ile d c h ild , or of a com plaining woman, b u t of a woman who could argue reasonably and persuasively on a subject which interested her. John Quincy's negative outlook is hard to understand since his life had been, although not always smooth, certainly not fraught with disasters. The Atlantic Ocean had been crossed and recrossed by every member of h is fam ily w ithout calam ity . A ll h is immediate fam ily was still alive. His parents had been reasonably healthy. His career was on the rise; and although there were parts of the diplomatic life which he did not relish, it was certainly better than the law, which he actively disliked. Why then did he consider the future in such a 32lcJ to JQA, 19 May 1797, APM, re e l 384. 33por exam ple, see LCJ to JQA, 21, 24 A p ril and 3 May 1797, APM, reel 384. 34lcJ to JQA, 19 May 1797, APM, re e l 384. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 218 negative light? He told Louisa only that his attitude reduced disappointment.35 jn another sense, not only the disappointment but also the sense of loss of control could be lessened by looking on the gloomy side. Surprise brings with it a loss of control more keenly felt if the surprise is an unhappy one. John Quincy also hoped with unfavorable prognostications to bring some reality to Louisa's highly romantic and fanciful view of life. The novels she was reading presented life as a series of crises which were resolved by love to everyone's satisfaction. Love, not hard work, nor realistic appraisals of problems, nor the application of intelligence, but love conquered all. Louisa expressed this very dangerous sentim ent when she wrote th a t no m atter how many d if f i c u lti e s they encountered, with him "at the head" all would be smooth once more. Her attitude may have expressed confidence in him, but it did not flatter him. On the contrary, it worried him, because he feared she would blame him later, if difficulties ensued. John Quincy's fixed habit of announcing things only when no scintilla of doubt remained was never more evident than in the last weeks before he went to London to marry Louisa and take her to his next diplomatic post, which he thought would be Lisbon. He had faced their separation with far more equanimity than she. He had planned, if possible, to take her with him to Portugal. In April he finally received orders from the United States to go to Libson. His letters to 35jqa to LCJ, 12 September 1796, APM, reel 382. AA commented later on the good fortune of the family in crossing the ocean. AA to JQA, 20 January 1811, APM, reel 411. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 219 her now advanced two reasons why she could not accompany him on the Danish ship he hoped to take. First, Portugal seemed likely to be invaded by the French since the two countries were at war. Second, on the voyage to Lisbon, even a neutral vessel would be in danger of capture by French privateers if it touched an English port.36 Their only hope, he wrote, was to persuade an American ship leaving Holland for Portugal to touch for a few days in England, where Louisa and he could marry and then re-embark for Lisbon; but he added that he had not found such a ship, and they must reconcile themselves to meeting in America. The news was the same th ree weeks l a t e r . Meanwhile, he was writing to David Humphreys, then American Minister in Lisbon, that he would come to Portugal as a bachelor, then as a married man, then again as a bachelor.37 He then told Louisa that he would take a Danish vessel from Amsterdam to Lisbon, without mentioning any stop in England. A month later Louisa informed John Quincy that her father now also feared the French privateers and had written for French passports, so that if the family was apprehended on a foreign ship, they would be allowed to continue the voyage. If these passports were not forthcoming, the Johnsons planned to embark for America from France, from where they could take a French ship.38 Perhaps the Johnsons were truly planning to go to France because of the French privateers, but Louisa's letter raises the suspicion that this new plan might have been 36JQA to LCJ, 13 April 1797, APM, reel 384. 37JQA to David Humphreys, 10 April 1797, APM, reel 130. 38 lcJ to JQA, 16 May 1797, APM, re e l 384. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 220 one more attempt to put Louisa in a place which might make it easy for John Quincy to marry her. Meanwhile, Joshua Johnson had made a proposal which ended all discussion of France. Johnson suggested that he send a small schooner, the Mary, from London to Lisbon, outfitting her for passengers.39 when he first heard the proposition, John Quincy wrote Joshua Johnson that the ship would be too small and unpleasant for a lady who had never been to sea. Suddenly, in mid-paragraph, he suggested that if Joshua Johnson and Louisa would agree to the trip, then he would come to London on his way to Lisbon.40 in his Diary for the day he wrote to Johnson (12 May 1797), he recorded, "Determined upon a point very important to myself. Heaven grant it be for the best."41 it seems possible that his determination was made between the first and second paragraphs of this letter. On the same day he wrote to Joshua Johnson, he told Louisa they might yet be married in Europe, although he feared this chance might be lost like all the others. At this juncture, in a very direct and fair way, John Quincy gave Louisa a chance to change her mind. He told her that she knew him better now because of their separation which had proved his affection and trie d h is tem per. She knew h is fe e lin g s and h is w eaknesses. She knew the "hardship inconvenience and danger” which she might have to sh are w ith him. She knew how attach ed he was to America and h is plan to re tu rn , and she knew th a t when he r e tir e d from diplomacy she would 39jj to JOA, 25 April 1797, APM, reel 384. 40jqa to JJ, 12 May 1797, APM, reel 384. 41JQA, Diary, 12 May 1797, APM, reel 27. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 221 face "privations.” Then in a burst of emotion, he wrote: "Choose, Louisa, choose for yourself and be assured that his Heart will ratify your c h o ic e .”42 John Quincy had once before, in February, hinted to Louisa that she reconsider her marital plans. Told by her about some proposed marriages in Boston, he wrote that he wished both of the couples well and that before "the irrevocable conclusion,” he hoped the lady would "ascertain to her own satisfaction that she really has an attachment for the Gentleman.”43 He then admitted that there was no reason to doubt the lady's affection, so the question arises, why did he mention i t ? Perhaps to b rin g Louisa up s h o rt, to make her th in k . From her answering letter we do not know if she took the hint to think more deeply about her coming marriage. Louisa's response to a straightforward choice concerning her marriage was clear and direct. She would not hesitate.44 she had always wanted to go with him to Lisbon, and she anticipated his return to London (and their marriage) with the utmost pleasure. Louisa's answering letter was short and superficial, quite different from his letter to her, so penetratingly frank about himself. It is hard to suppose that she would have refused to marry at this point. Eighteenth-century women rarely drew back from proposed marriages. Her last letters had been conciliatory. She may not have believed he would marry her at all, if they were separated for a longer time. Only a 42JQA to LCJ, 12 May 1797, APM, reel 384. 43JQA to LCJ, 27 February 1797, APM, reel 383. 44lcJ to JQA, 26 May 1797, APM, re e l 384. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 222 a month before, Joshua Johnson had tied John Quincy even more firmly to the family by requesting that he become executor for Johnson's w ill. In answer to her affirmative response, John Quincy told her that she expected too much from her marriage and that he already regretted her disappointment. He had always meant to leave her to her choice until the last minute; but since she had chosen, he hoped that she would have no r e g r e ts . The same day he was w ritin g to her fa th e r of h is annoynace th a t the Mary was being kept s o le ly to take him and Louisa to Lisbon and, cryptically, referred to some "uncertainties" concerning liis arrival in E n g l a n d45 . It is, of course, natural to ask why Louisa and John Quincy m arried when, by spring 1797, they must have known how many d iffe re n c e s lay between them. On Louisa's side, it may have been first a question of genuine emotional involvement with the highly marriageable, attractive, affectionate, young man so evident in his first engagement letter to her. She recorded in her memoirs that John Quincy was "universally liked" in Europe, so it is not surprising that she, too, felt warmly towards him. Certainly, she was, with all the force of which the culture and her parents were capable, being pushed into marriage with John Quincy. There was, quite simply, no other future life available to her. To break an engagement with the son of the President of the United States was probably, for the ambitious daughter of such ambitious parents, utterly beyond her strength, even had she been of a mind to do it. Lastly, the picture of herself given in her 45JQA to LCJ, 6 June 1797, APM, reel 384; JOA to JJ, 6 June 1797, APM, reel 384. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 223 writings was that of a very difficult personality, at odds with her sisters and teachers, loved only by her parents, especially her father. The conflicts between John Quincy and Louisa, so apparent in the letters, may have actually hidden a personal attraction between two people both of whom found personal relationships difficult. Louisa made her choice. She would marry John Quincy at once, anywhere, anytime. Her eagerness was such that she could not imagine why he had asked her to choose, told him she anticipated his return with the "utmost pleasure," and prophetically warned him he might find her "a troublesome c o m p a n i o n"46 . probably with some trepidation that his plans might again be upset, and with a superfluity of feeling and a paucity of deep thought, Louisa waited impatiently for John Ouincy to return to London. On his side, John Quincy's sometimes tender and loving letters show that he could be warm and affectionate, and certainly it was Louisa who had called up these feelings. He had freely chosen Louisa over her two sisters, apparently more attractive and personable, and he had chosen her at once. He, too, was being pushed toward marriage by his parents and by his own loneliness and celibacy. In February he had written his mother: "To live much longer in Europe, without a family, and especially if without my brother too, is what I cannot possibly think of—My life is destined to be spent at home .... But p erp etu al 46l CJ to JQA, 26 May 1797, APM, reel 384. Eliza Southgate gave it as her opinion that "not one woman in a hundred marries for love. She insisted that women were merely grateful for having been preferred above all others." James, "Changing Ideas about Women in the United States," p. 140. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 224 solitude at home, is almost as bad as imprisonment."47 ge was even more s o lita r y in A p ril and May when Thomas l e f t fo r an extended tr i p to Paris. Although she was clear that she positively wished to marry him, John Quincy had vacillated and prevaricated, leaned towards her and away from her. But he had become engaged to Louisa and, as he had told her, he was not a man to slight engagements positively taken. Duty was pushing him towards her: a call John Quincy was unable to silence. It is difficult to see how he could have, with honor, refused to marry her, unless he refused to come to London and let her sail for America. This he did not do. He gave her the chance to change her mind. He could not, or would not be the one to break the engagement. Hers was the final choice. When she decided, he began to make plans to leave Holland for England. John Quincy left from Rotterdam for England by boat with his brother. They sailed only as far as Maasluys, where he had waited so long in 1795. He was to wait again, for nine days. While there, he wrote a letter to his mother concerning newspapers and mail from home, the political situation, and, at the very end of the letter, characteristically oblique, he warned that he would not be a good correspondent while in London. Not once did he tell her outright that he was going to London to marry L o u i s a .48 while at Maasluys, he was informed by letter that his appointment to Portugal had been superseded by later orders, this time at the instigation of his father, instructing him to proceed to Prussia. On 9 July 1797 he left 47JQA to AA, 8 February 1797, APM, reel 383. 48JQA to AA, 6 July 1797, APM, reel 385. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 225 Holland, in a Dutch boat, sailing under Prussian colors, finally and irrevocably on his way to marry an Anglo-American woman whose life had been wholly passed in Europe. Although the Adamses held strong negative views of Europe, the scion of the family had immersed himself deeply in its world. In England, Louisa unpacked her trousseau laid away for almost a year. The marriage to which she had looked forward for a year, she hoped, but understandably could not be sure, was about to take place. She assumed that her father's ship, the Mary, already fitted out, would carry herself; her new husband; his brother; her maid, Epps; and the Adams's servant, Whitcomb, to Lisbon. She wrote John Quincy that she "admired, esteemed and loved [him]" and that her "inclination, [was] to do everything in my power to promote your happiness and welfare."49 this romantic and happy mood she awaited the change of wind which would bring John Quincy to London. The event of her life, toward which all efforts, both hers and her family's, had been bent for years, was about to take place. If Louisa expected to meet a happy bridgroom she was wrong. On his side of the channel, John Quincy had lived through a difficult time. The last two months had been a time of great tension for him and, while Thomas had visited Paris, he had been deprived of even the consolation of his brother's company. Time, as usual, had simultaneously dragged and flown. He had been racked by doubts about his intended marriage, had finally decided, had been confounded by a change of destination (from Lisbon to Berlin), and had been through 49lcJ to JOA, 26 May 1797, APM, reel 384. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 226 another enforced wait at Maasluys. He was returning to a city he hated to marry a woman whose romantic and unrealistic view of life he had only partly succeeded in mitigating and with whom serious quarrels and misunderstandings quite possibly had undermined his desire to marry. John Quincy's behavior when he arrived in London was in keeping with his ambivalent feelings toward Louisa. Arriving at Osborne's Hotel at five o'clock on the afternoon of 12 July 1797, he remained there with his brother until the next morning, when, after visiting with two friends, he finally went to see Louisa.50 Louisa later attributed his reluctance to visit the Johnsons to "a trifling accident on his route," but nonetheless described feelings of "mortified affection more bitter" than she could express.51 John Quincy's Diary records no accident and gives the impression that he chose not to go to the Johnsons' . Possibly this was his last statement of independence from Louisa and the constraints of married life. At Tower H ill, John Quincy found his "friends there and particularly my best friend." This is the only mention of Louisa in his Diary (and then not even by name) until thirteen days later when he wrote that they were married.52 Louisa's presence at the Johnson dinner table, where John Quincy went every evening, is not recorded. Neither was her presence or absence noted in the Diary when John Quincy 50jq a , Diary, 12, 13 July 1797, APM, reel 27. 51lCA, "Record," p. 70, APM, reel 269. 52JQA, Diary, 13, 26 July 1797, APM, reel 27. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 227 and a family party went on board the Mary, nor her reaction to the news th a t her d e s tin a tio n w ith him was to be P r u s s i a . 53 The Johnsons now proposed that Louisa marry and return to their house with John Quincy. Apparently, he refused to live in the Johnson house; a letter from Johnson to John Quincy refers to the marriage as being "retarded" by John Quincy's sense of "delicacy." Joshua Johnson again offered him the house, suggesting that if John Quincy had business to do, he could spend his mornings at his hotel.54 John Quincy seems to have accepted this offer, and on the twentieth Louisa was asked to set a date for the marriage. Louisa could not have remained unmoved by John Quincy's reluctance to act the part of an eager bridegroom, so it is not surprising that in choosing a date for the wedding she suggested July twenty-sixth, a particularly early date, which, she wrote in her memoirs, astonished both her mother and John Quincy. She explained that she assumed John Quincy was as anxious as she to be married and that she hoped by an early marriage to spend a few weeks after the wedding with her mother and her family from whom she had never been separated: a very natural wish for an upperclass girl raised in the eighteenth century.55 Although thoroughly prepared, women feared marriage because it was a leap into the unknown. Abigail's sister, Elizabeth Shaw, admitted to her niece that "time can never efface" what apprehensions for the future she suffered when she married. To give up 53jq a , Diary, 17, 18 July 1797, APM, reel 27 54JJ to JQA, 19 July 1797, APM, reel 385. 55lcA, "Record," p. 70, APM, reel 265. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 228 one's childhood home, companions, parents, she wrote, "cannot but strike a reflecting Mind with awe, & the more fearful Apprehensions—as it is the important Crisis, upon which our Fate depends."56 L o u isa 's memoirs reveal clearly that she feared the break with her childhood, more sharp in her case than in others. But even among those women who stayed physically close to their parents and childhood homes, the fear of marriage and of having perhaps made a wrong choice was consciously p re s e n t. John Quincy was also trying to hold on to his family, exhorting his brother to remain with him as company. Once in Prussia, he thought that he would hardly see an American from one year to another.57 just as women looked to women for companionship, so men formed close friendships with other men. Perhaps because of his solitude in Europe as a boy, John Quincy did not want to be completely separated from his family at this juncture in his life. For all his insistence on 56Quoted in Mary Beth Norton, Liberty's Daughters : The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800 (Boston; L ittle, Brown & C o., 1980), p. 42. R eferring to the m arriage of AA 2 's daughter Caroline, AA wrote, "And now I consider the die, as cast and she must say with St, Paul, Behold I go bound to not knowing the things that may befall her." AA to Harriet Welsh, 18 March 1814, APM, reel, 417. Louisa was in no way as r e a l i s t i c about her m arriage as was C atherine Livingston before she married Matthew Ridley. "I think I shall experience as much happiness as is reasonable to expect in a world where so frequent disappointment smiles at hopes career." Catherine Livingston to William Livingston, 14 November 1786, Ridley Papers, MHS. Men's fears about marriage also need to be explored. William Cranch wrote that his wife and he "have not once had the least difference of sentiment, and neither satiety nor disgust have follow'd from 18 months [of marriage]." William Cranch to JQA, 16 September 1796, APM, reel 382. 57tbA wrote his father that his staying with JQA "has been rather a sacrifice to the earnest wishes of my brother, than to a conviction of its ultimate benefit to myself." TBA to JA, 3 October 1797, APM, reel 386. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 229 solitude, he wanted a solitude within a family setting. Louisa was to learn that this seeming contradiction was not impossible. Although the actions taken by Louisa in setting an early date for the wedding, as well as Joshua Johnson's in exhorting John Quincy to stay in his house, seem in keeping with a family who wished to see their daughter married before they left for America, another explanation subsequently suggested itself. On 9 September 1797, little more than a month after the wedding, Joshua Johnson left London and took ship with his family for America—a virtual bankrupt, his European creditors unpaid and some of his property sequestered by the British government. Against this drama of flight and insolvency, the possibility of the Johnsons having deliberately maneuvered to trap John Quincy into marriage before their fortunes shattered suddenly became plausible, Louisa herself agreed that it seemed as if she and her family had lured John Quincy into marriage just before her father's bankruptcy became known. Viewed from this perspective, the attempt to have Louisa married in Holland, the continual postponement of the Johnsons' sailing for America, Johnson's letter urging John Quincy to marry and live with them, and the early date Louisa set for the wedding would seem to be efforts to hurry him to the altar. Louisa felt accused of being privy to her father's business difficulties and having a part in the alleged marriage schema. Her brother Thomas apparently accused Louisa of actually causing her father's financial difficulties by keeping the family in Europe while they waited for John Quincy to marry her.58 it was an unfair accusation since even if Louisa agreed 58lcA, "Adventures," April 1805, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 230 to and welcomed their staying, it is hard to imagine that hers was the final decision. John Quincy seems to have had little idea of Johnson’s real financial condition. Indeed, he had written Louisa about her "fortune,"—as egregious a misconception as he ever harbored. Although acquainted with Thomas Boylston's bankruptcy and prison term John Quincy seems to have been unaware that his future father-in-law was about to run out on his creditors.59 Johnson's w ill, for which John Quincy was now executor, seemingly had revealed nothing. We do not know what Johnson told John Quincy about his partners when they discussed finances three days before the wedding, but he must have hidden much about his personal business. Thomas Adams wrote home that he felt "proud of an alliance with such worthy people."60 John Quincy could have—probably should have—made inquiries about his in-laws (he admitted later that he had noticed their distress) but did not, thinking it not his business. Although Louisa later claimed that John Quincy had been warned about the Johnsons by a friend, she did not specify of what he had been warned or by whom.81 The Johnsons' menage displayed signs of affluence, even opulence. Johnson's generosity in sending the Mary to Lisbon especially for the newly married couple, a 59Robert Morris also became a bankrupt after his daughter Hetty married James Marshall, brother of John Marshall. Howard Swiggert, M orris's biographer, wrote about Marshall, "One must wonder whether he had thought he was marrying a great Heiress or knew how close her f a t h e r 's ru in w as." Howard S w iggert, The E x trao rd in ary Mr. M orris (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1952), p. 304. 80TBA to AA, 17 August 1797, APM, reel 385. 81lcA, "Adventures," p. 40, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 231 son supported in America, the family portraits, large parties, carriages for visiting and riding in the park, excursions, theatres, a house in the country rented solely for Louisa and her younger sisters all indicated the "fortune" John Quincy wrote about. If John Quincy could be "lured" into marriage, it indicates an extraordinary naivete on his part and lack of judgment about personal relationships. However acutely he could penetrate the European political situation, he was unable to assess correctly Joshua Johnson's misleading air of a fflu e n c e . In spite of the worries attendant upon removing to the United States and difficulties about money, Louisa wrote in 1825 that the wedding took place under the happiest of auspices.82 On the morning of 24 July 1797, John Quincy accompanied by Joshua Johnson obtained a special marriage license, as there was not time for the banns to be proclaimed.83 The next day was spent preparing fo r the wedding. At eleven o'clock on the morning of 26 July Louisa Catherine Johnson and John Quincy Adams were married at All Hallows, Barking, the Johnsons' p a ris h church.84 The Johnson fam ily, Thomas Adams, and two frie n d s of John Quincy's, Joseph Hall and James Brooks, were present. John 82lcA, "Record," p. 71, APM, reel 265. LCA recorded that Nancy refused "in the smallest degree [to] assist my toilette" on LCA's wedding day. Ibid., p. 62, APM, reel 265. 83paculty Office, Calendar of Marriage Allegations, August 1787-December 1800, Lambeth Palace Library, London. 8426 July 1797, Marriage Register, Church of All Hallows, B ark in g , London. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 232 Quincy, as was often the case in the eighteenth century, recorded no more than the facts of the wedding in his Diary.85 Although honeymoons, as a period of sexual and personal privacy, were becoming more common in the eighteenth century, Louisa and John Quincy did not go away after the wedding. The entire party visited a country house during the day, returning to London at four o'clock. After dining at the Johnsons', John Quincy recorded in his Diary, "the day was a very long one and closed at about 11 ."86 The next weeks were spent by Louisa and John Quincy at the Johnsons', as had been planned. Each morning, John Quincy went to Osborne's Hotel to conduct business and to meet with his friends. In a charming le tte r, he presented Louisa as a daughter to Abigail Adams, characterizing the Johnsons as an "amiable and respectable family," to which Louisa added her greeting, promising to perform her duties as w ife and daughter.67 Further, Louisa told Abigail she would follow the "path of rectitude" and never "sully" the title to which she now had the right, that of Abigail's "dutiful Daughter." She added that her greatest wish was to merit the approval of John Ouincy and his family. R evealing how much he had been influenced by h is b ro th e r's m arriag e. 65jq a , Diary, 26 July 1797, APM, reel 27. Some modern writers have taken JQA to task for the "dispassionate" account of his marriage. See Otto Frederich in Clover (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), p. 99. JQA's record of his marriage, however, is in keeping with the habit of eighteenth-century men to record only the facts of the marriage. See William Plumer's account of hJs marriage in William Plumer, "Autobiography," William Plumer Papers, Manuscript Division, LC. 86S tone, The Fam ily, p. 334. 87JQA to AA & JA, 28 July 1797, APM, reel 385. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 233 John Quincy wrote Charles that he had "at length followed the example which I should regularly have given to you and was married."88 As was usual, parties were given for the newly married couple. This social round probably gave Louisa a great deal of support during a psychologically stressful time. Not only was she trying to adjust to being a married woman, but her family was about to leave for a land three thousand miles away, which she had never seen, while she herself was faced with a journey in the opposite direction in company with two men, one of whose severity she already had reason to fear. John Ouincy d escribed the p a rtie s as "among the appendages to the ceremony from which I should have been willingly relieved." However much John Quincy may have hated the social round attendant upon weddings, he recommended marriage to two friends, describing it in the most glowing terms.89 Louisa had every reason to fear her future in Prussia. The idea that a person could depend for his or her emotional support upon one member of the opposite sex is a concept which arose in the twentieth not in the eighteenth century. Historians and sociologists have regretted the loss of a female support system, testifying to its great psychic value to women and stressing the loss when, in the twentieth century, it disappeared. Women spent much of their time with women and were often far closer to their female friends than to their husbands. Women gave each other great support and were distressed when they were, for one reason or another, deprived of each other’s 88JQA to CA, 1 August 1797, APM, reel 130. 89jq a , Diary, 29 July 1797, APM, reel 27; JQA to Daniel Sargent, Jr., 7 August 1797, APM, reel 130; JQA to Joseph Pitcairn, 14 August 1797, APM, reel 130. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 234 c o m p a n y70 . Sisters were especially close, and it seems as if Louisa had never been separated from Nancy and Caroline except for the few months she had lived in Clapham Common, and even there she had found a female friend with whom she dined. Louisa may have found life with her sisters difficult, but the prospect of an unknown life as a married woman was daunting. Women's early life did not have to be smooth for them to be anxious about marriage. Louisa's wish to stay in her own home with her mother until the last moment and her fears of setting off fo r P ru ssia w ith her maid Epps , the only o th e r female member of the group, should be understood in the light of women's emotional ties to o th er women. Since John Quincy's behavior in London before the marriage had been unsettling to Louisa, she may have become more fearful than ever of impending loneliness. Looking back at this time later, however, she described it as a happy period, so perhaps John Quincy confined his pique only to his D i a r y . 71 He characterized the wedding entertainments 70women's letters of the late eighteenth century are filled with expressions of their desire for close female relationships. AA to Elizabeth Shaw, 15 August 1785, The Papers of the Shaw Family, LC. "But it is to my little circle of long-esteemed & chosen friends, that I am indebted for that peculiar happiness which flows from the union of heart & mind." Margaret Smith to Mary Ann Smith, 20 June 1803, Margaret Bayard Smith Papers, Manuscript Division, LC. "Many of your sex allow its [love] subsisting between the different sexs [sic] but laugh at the idea of women professing it for each other - Experience has [ta]ught me the absurdity of their hypothesis." Catherine Livingston to Matthew Ridley, n.d., Ridley Papers, Box #2, MHS. When her mother became mentally ill, Eunice Callender wrote, "My friends were round me all all exceeding kind." Eunice Callender Diaries 1808-1824, 6 January 1822, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Mass. 71LCA, "Record," p. 71, APM, reel 265. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 235 as being given for Louisa, not for them both, and could not even enjoy the theatre.72 John Quincy's Diary records that as the time drew near for the Johnsons' departure, the family became unwell and because of th e impending jo u rn ey , on 2 September the Adamses moved to O sborne's Hotel, where they were joined two days later by the Johnsons .73 Several days after the fleeting reunion, the Adamses moved again, this time to a rented house. Although John Quincy recorded in his Diary a touching farewell scene, Louisa wrote later that her mother did not know the evening before on which day the Johnsons would leave London for America. Louisa tried perhaps in this way to sustain her assertion that she herself did not know of the impending financial disaster.74 On the morning of 9 September, the Johnsons left London a week earlier than they had intended.75 it was then that the blow which, according to Louisa, blighted her life forever fell upon the Johnson family. It is impossible at this remove to reconstruct Joshua Johnson's financial collapse, which became evident a few days after he left London with large unpaid debts .76 By 1796, with money borrowed from 72”Evening went to a ball given by Mr. Murdoch: on the occasion of Mrs. Adams's marriage." JQA, Diary, 22 August 1797, APM, reel 27; "Mrs. Pinckney . . . means to go three times a week to the Play, next Winter - Poor thing!" JQA, Diary, 13 August 1797, APM, reel 27. 73 j q a , Diary, 29, 30 August, 2 September 1797, APM, reel 27. 74lcA, "Record," p. 72, APM, reel 265; JQA, Diary, 8 September 1797, APM, reel 27. 75jq a , Diary, 9 September 1797, APM, reel 27. TEA wrote his mother that the Johnsons left a week earlier than they had intended. TEA to AA, 10 September 1797, APM, reel 385. 76ihe record books for this period of Johnson's business career are no longer extant, and Papenfuse w rites, "How Johnson got into such straightened circumstances is not clear, although Dr. Rhoda Dorsey, who Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 236 h is hankers, he had bought up the amounts s t i l l owed in London on the old debt. In August 1797 he pledged securities for other debts and then sailed to Annapolis to "claim his profits" on the old firm of Wallace, Johnson and Muir. Louisa remembered later that the debts were not all paid, and to the psychic trauma of parting from her family was added the shame of learning that her father had left unpaid bills in London. She never revealed in her memoirs that the British government had appropriated some of Johnson's property. Ambiguously, Louisa described herself as the "most forlorn miserable wretch that the sun ever smiled upon."77 Her father's creditors, unable to find him, came to the Adams's door to demand payment, which John Quincy refused. Exactly a month after Johnson le ft, John Quincy confided to his Diary that the "trial" was stronger than he expected.78 jt is clear that Johnson had represented himself as solvent when he spoke of his affairs to his future son-in-law; and, more importantly for understanding Louisa's future obsession that she had no dowry, Johnson also told John Quincy that Louisa would have her own money. "I shall not be short in value to what I have told you there will be for my Children," he wrote is familiar with Johnson through his correspondence as consul in London in the 1790s, feels it was probably owing to his obtuseness when it came to speculating in matters of trade. Johnson managed to marry off his daughter Louisa Catherine to John Quincy Adams just before disaster struck." Papenfuse, Pursuit, p. 228, n. 11. "I hope to have my Property delivered up into my own hands & should the British Government restore me that which they have so cruelly detained from me . . . ." JJ to JQA, 1 December 1798, APM, r e e l 392. 77lCA, "Record," p. 72, APM, reel 265. 78JQA, Diary, 9 October 1797, APM, reel 27. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 237 John Quincy in 1798.79 perhaps the "value" was the £5,000 Louisa later claimed her father promised all his daughters. John Quincy was satisfied he had done his duty in this crisis ("rigorous, inflexible duty"). According to Louisa, he paid "not a shilling" on her father's d e b ts . Louisa's account of her father's financial crisis, given again and again, is understandably colored by her effort to make her father seem faultless. She wrote that her father was forced to stop payment for £500 because a ship from the West Indies failed to arrive. The ship, she insisted, had arrived two days after her father left London; and one of Johnson's associates bribed the firm's bookkeeper to give him (not Johnson) the money from the cargo (£500), which would have covered all her father's debts. Struggling to undo what could not be undone, she even suggested in her memoirs that had Rufus King, United States Minister to Britain, been in London instead of on vacation in Wales, his goodness and kindness might have spared the family their " r u in ."80 However much Louisa tried to exonerate her father, a letter from Frederick Delius, United States Consul and merchant in Bremen, to John Quincy puts Johnson's affairs in quite another light.81 79jq a , D iary, 21 J u ly 1797, APM, re e l 27; JJ to JQA, 1 December 1798, APM, reel 392. 80lCA, "Record," p. 72, APM, reel 265; LCA, "Adventures," November 1803, APM, re e l 269. Blprederick Delius to JQA, 29 September 1797, APM, reel 385. Ironically, Joshua Johnson had suggested Frederick Delius as United States Consul in Bremen. JJ to W. Jackson, 22 February 1796, The George Washington Papers, Series 7, vol. 8, p. 71, Manuscript Division, LC. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 238 Apparently, Johnson owed not only Delius, but several other commercial houses in Bremen large sums of money, which they could not now collect, despite Delius's claim that Johnson had promised payment. One firm in Bremen believed th a t he had "escaped to F rance." D e liu s 's d ra fts on Johnson were, of course, protested; and Delius, a friend of Johnson's, felt upset, angry, and betrayed, and he questioned Johnson's integrity. Delius asked that Johnson's friends (and by implication, John Quincy) publish the state of Johnson's finances. He asked John Quincy to send by return mail his opinion of Johnson's affairs, assuming that since John Quincy was so "nearly related" to Johnson, he would naturally be acquainted with his father-in-law's financial dealings. John Quincy forwarded the letter to Joshua Johnson. It is almost impossible to imagine with what intensity her father's failure burned itself into Louisa's consciousness. Since Johnson had told John Quincy that Louisa was to have her own money (a dowry he could not now deliver), Louisa felt she had married under false pretences. She could find no distance from the event: her father's financial failure was her personal failure. His financial collapse in her eyes injured her standing in her marriage. Even had she felt partially responsible, her sense of guilt seems extreme. It hung like an "incubus" upon her spirit, and forty-three years later the "sore was not healed." Louisa's feelings, which she characterized as "the iron mask" of guilt, kept the episode fresh in her mind. She felt herself accused of knowing beforehand of her father's precarious financial state and having purposely set an early wedding date knowing that the crash was coming. Only once did she find a silver lining. In Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 239 1835 in an excess of self-deprecation she thanked God for the misfortunes of her family as they "crushed the formidable growth of stubborn pride, which must have led to ruin."82 Since John Quincy would pay none of Johnson's debts, she later wrote, she had at least not involved herself in further guilt by having contracted yet another d e b t.83 Although Louisa claimed innocence of all involvement in her father's bankruptcy, she obsessively insisted that John Quincy must have seen it otherwise, that it was impossible for him to find her blameless. She imagined that he must think that for the sake of marriage, she had thrown over "honour, truth, and happiness." She believed that however much John Quincy tried to conceal his feelings, her standing in his eyes had been irretrievably lost. She agreed in 1825 that his attitude "was strict and rigid justice and I had nothing to complain of," yet in 1840 when she wrote her "Adventures of a Nobody," she found John Quincy wanting in compassion for her father.84 Even had Louisa not known of the impending crash, she may have felt the truth of her brother's accusation that waiting for her wedding had prevented Johnson from going to America a year before he did so. She adm itted in 1840 th a t her fa th e r "waited fo r my m arriage alone to enable him to depart."85 In that case, she became an accomplice to the 82lcA, Miscellany, 26 October 1835, APM, reel 271. 83lcA, "Record," p. 74, APM, reel 265; LCA, "Adventures," p . 23, and November 1803, APM, r e e l 269. 84LCA, "Record," p. 73, APM, reel 265; LCA, "Adventures," p. 39, APM, reel 269. 85lcA, "A dventures," November 1803, APM, re e l 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 240 family's disaster, which may account for her guilt, otherwise so hard to understand. She, too, thought her obsession strange and wrote the loss of her dowry, of which she rightly insisted both she and John Quincy had been assured, could not have caused such bitterness, nor could the protested bills account for her sense of guilt since they were part of the risk which méchants took.86 she finally settled on the "period of life" being at fault and insisted that the misfortune "overtook me at the zenith of my happiness."87 Louisa's sense of worthlessness may have been heightened by her father's financial debacle, but they were certainly present before. She had always thought herself the least attractive of the sisters. Having little confidence in herself before she was married, she had none with which to meet the shame of her father's failure. Having deeply loved her father and having clearly associated herself with him, she was now in her own mind irrevocably involved in his problems. Louisa admitted again and again that appearances were against her, and she assumed that she knew what John Quincy and the world thought. A few months before they were married, John Quincy had written Louisa that in case of adversity, the only consolation would be if the misfortune was not their fault and if it did not come as a 86lCA, "A dventures," November 1803, APM, re e l 269; LCA, "Adventures," April 1805, APM, reel 265. "The loss of Fortune so small as the best to which all knew I could have pretended to was scarcely a consideration." LCA, "Adventures," 1 January 1802, APM, reel 269. 87LCA, "Adventures," 1 January 1802, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 241 surprise.88 Johnson's financial problems partook of both these strictures: it came as a surprise and as a result of Johnson's ineptitude. It would have been almost impossible for a man of John Quincy's probity and meticulous bookkeeping habits to believe that Johnson did not know the disordered state of his finances or that he could not have reduced his style of living in order to make his income and expenses more nearly equal. Further, John Quincy's repeated refusal to set a date for the marriage had been based on fiscal responsibility. Not only did Louisa feel guilty about having seemingly drawn John Quincy into her family under questionable circumstances, but she also felt like an unwelcome intruder in the Adams family. She had once assured John Quincy in her engagement letters that she did not want to give him the right to say that she had forced herself on his fa m ily .89 What John Quincy thought of the whole affair is clear in a letter to his father-in-law a few weeks after Johnson had left London and for which, after a sharp rebuke from Catherine Johnson, he apologized.90 He told Johnson "appearances and allegations" questioned more than his mere credit and that Johnson should as speedily as possible pay off his creditors. Johnson informed John Quincy before he left London that he would recoup enough in America to pay his European 88JQA to LCJ, 7 February 1797, APM, reel 383. 89lcJ to JQA, 31 January 1797, APM, reel 383. 90jQA to JJ, 11 October 1797, APM, reel 386; "My letter of 11 October was offensive and painful." JQA to JJ, 28 June 1798, APM, reel 27; JQA to CJ, 28 May 1799, APM, reel 131. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 242 claimants and s till have a "decent property"; John Quincy now urged him to do exactly this. Louisa wrote in her memoirs that when John Quincy came to study her father's affairs years later, he thought Johnson blameless, although at the time of the failure John Quincy seemingly never spoke of the matter to Louisa. His attitude may have given her fears room to grow uncorrected. She might have coped better with expressed censure than with John Quincy's apparently distant and unexpressed d isappointm ent.91 Louisa seems to have felt more at ease with her brother-in-law than with her new husband. Thomas Adams was "kind and affectionate" to her, and in asserting her innocence in her father's failure she seems to have confidently discussed matters with him.92 Perhaps John Quincy's inability to make allowances for others less gifted than himself kept her from reaching out to him as she reached out to Thomas. Although we do not know whether John Quincy did indeed feel th a t he had been lured in to m arriage w ith L o u isa, we do know th a t shortly after the Johnsons left, the affairs of the household, which were almost universally the province of women at that time, were, according to Louisa, "put into the hands of Whitcomb," John Quincy's man-servant. She did not specify who had ordered this, but she implied that it was John Quincy. She was found, she wrote, "to be incompetent to the management of the family concerns," and in her mind it seems as if her father's financial difficulties and her incompetency were 91Lyman H. Butterfield, "Tending a Dragon-Killer: Notes for the Biographer of Mrs. John Quincy Adams," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 118 (April 1974) :167. 92lcA, "Record," p. 73. APM, reel 265. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 243 closely related. It seems from her description that even before she had a chance to manage her own household, her functions had been given to a servant.93 There is , of course, the possibility that Louisa was inept at running the household following the emotional strain of her father's departure and bankruptcy and that John Quincy, the most meticulous and exact of men, could not wat^h her learning and making mistakes. No matter what Louisa thought was the cause of being removed from the management of the household, it might have been hard for the incredibly painstaking and controlling John Quincy to have allowed Louisa to direct the household. Probably no woman could have met his standards. Could he have allowed control of anything to pass to another? John Quincy was not in the habit of allowing others to take control. In Holland, he apparently carried out all the commissions his mother asked Thomas to do, and Thomas complained that John Quincy then thought himself deserving of all the credit.94 shortly after she married, Louisa chose a ring as a gift for her new mother-in-law, but John Quincy would not let Louisa send i t , fearing his mother would think it too gaudy.95 93 Ib id . 94TEA to AA, 17 August 1797, APM, reel 385. 95jo A to AA, 19 January 1798, APM, reel 130. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 244 Besides constricting Louisa's functions in a way totally at variance with late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century family custom, her ineffectual role in the household deprived her of an arena fo r achievement.96 if anything might have restored Louisa's sense of worth after her family's disgrace, it might have been the experience of successfully running her own household. Further, Louisa wrote in her memoirs, she had been fully prepared to run a household by taking turns with her sisters in organizing the large Johnson house in Tower Hill and in taking cooking lessons.97 The removal of Louisa from the management of her home had serious and long-range consequences. Women's days were filled with work of the household, but Louisa now had no work to do. Her illness in Prussia precluded her taking over the superintendence of the household, but later in America, her lack of control and purpose would set her apart from other women. A large part of what was o rd in a rily women's sphere was lo s t to Louisa when s h o rtly after their marriage, Whitcomb, not she, ran the household. The timing of this episode is important. From her autobiographical works, it is clear that Louisa's emotional state after her family's departure was extremely precarious. The question quite naturally arises, did Louisa break down completely at learning the news of her father's bankruptcy, and did John Quincy, through Whitcomb, take 96"The husband was repeatedly urged to take his wife into his confidence on money matters, informing her of his income and expenses and assisting her to manage economically . . . doling out money for household expenses [was condemned]." Janet James, "Changing Ideas," p. 145. 97"My father insisted upon our taking turns each alternate week, in the superintendency of the House keeping." LCA, "Record," p. 25, APM, reel 265. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 245 control of the household because she was too upset to work? If she did have a breakdown, John Quincy's Diary does not record it. The evening her parents left London, 9 September, four guests spent part of the evening ifith Louisa and John Quincy.98 The next morning the young couple were at church together, walking in Hyde Park after dinner with the m inister.99 On 14 September five people came to visit for the afternoon, and Louisa and John Quincy went out for dinner.100 Two days later, they again dined out.101 Although they did not live a gay life in London after the Johnsons' departure, there is enough socializing recorded in John Quincy's Diary to preclude the hypothesis that Louisa was so undone by events that a breakdown ensued. Without the management of the household to occupy her, Louisa was left with almost nothing to do. In the home, women could rule, be active, useful, and find meaning for their lives. To train the servants and organize the daily life of the household was not just the main occupation of women, it was the only one women were allowed.102 98JQA, Diary, 9 September 1797, APM, reel 27. 99JQA, Diary, 10 September 1797, APM, reel 27. 100JQA, Diary, 14 September 1797, APM, reel 27. 101JQA, Diary, 16 September 1797, APM, reel 27. 102The American c u ltu re had a c le a r idea of how women in LCA's position were to behave. The merchant's daughter, faced with her father's ruin, was supposed to show courage, fortitude, and great resolve. Rather than fear financial disaster, she was to see it as an opportunity to strengthen her character (and that of her parents). Women should make the best out of everything, even economic calamity. Certainly they were not supposed to fall ill from worry as did Louisa. Barbara Welter, Dimity Convictions; The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1976), p. 42. The combination of depression and ill health was not unusual. "Miss Wilson is in ill Health and much dejected with the embarrassments of her Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 246 When Catherine Johnson became too ill to manage the household, not Joshua Johnson, but the other female members of the family took over. When Louisa could not manage the household, she lost her work, her sphere, her raison d'etre. Instead of a balanced marriage,in which husband and wife cooperated and shared, he in charge of the public domain, she in charge of their domestic life, Louisa's was now a marriage totally under the control of John Quincy. Her future overvaluation of her biological motherhood may have had its roots in the denial of a meaningful role in her own household. Not only was the role John Quincy seemingly determined for Louisa at variance with the usual role of women in America, but it was in no way part of the Adams's experience. Abigail had insisted that the two separate roles assigned by the culture to men and women were reciprocal and that neither took precedence over the other. "If man is Lord, women is Lordess," Abigail wrote with her usual forcefulness .1^3 Abigail's highly competent management of the farm in Quincy and her business acumen in tra d in g m erchandise during the war was w ell known in Fathers affairs which wholly prevent him from residing here." AA to TBA, 4 April 1798, APM, reel 388. "While Plumer mounted the ladder of political fame, she [Sally Plumer] stayed home quietly managing her household." Lynn W. Turner, William Plumer of New Hampshire 1759-1850 (Chapel Hill; University of North Carolina Press, 1962), p. 56. "The role of the mistress of the household . . . [was] a core of private domestic duties." Mary P. Ryan, Womanhood in America: From Colonial Times to the Present (New York: New Viewpoints, 1975), p. 106. In Godey's Lady's Book, a young husband admonished his wife to care for her "department" as he cared for his business. Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood : "Women's Sphere" in New England 1780-1835 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), p. 73 and pp. 63-100. 103Akers, Abigail Adams, p 143. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 247 the family.1^4 John Quincy discussed his finances with her when he was abroad; and when Dr. Welch in v ested John Q uincy's money unw isely, i t was Abigail who chose Dr. Tufts as his new financial manager.105 Certainly John Quincy's sister Nabby ran her household, as did Abigail's two sisters. The family arrangement devised in London for Louisa was n e ith e r Adams, nor American, nor even E n g lish . I t reflected, as portrayed by Louisa, her husband's lack of confidence in her ability to fulfill woman's normal role. In her misery at her father's disgrace, Louisa turned (as was natural) to a woman friend of the family. A Mrs. Court, a neighbor, was her companion, although Louisa reported in her memoirs that Mrs. Court had always preferred Nancy to herself.106 Her new brother-in-law seems also to have given her the support she craved. Qn his side, Thomas voiced his affection by telling his mother in a charming letter that he had an "amiable and accomplished Sister" with a "softness of temper and seems to love as she ought."107 A bigail thought " th is is a g reat d eal fo r Thomas to say."108 He further wrote with compassionate understanding that Louisa had renounced "kindred and Country." Thomas, like John Quincy, thought of Louisa as English. How 104Edith Belle Celles, "Abigail Adams: Domesticity and the American Revolution," The New England Quarterly 52 (December 1979): 451-67. 105AA to JA, 1 February 1799, APM, reel 393; AA to JA, 14 February 1799, APM, reel 393. 106lcA, "Record," p. 55, APM, reel 165. 107tbA to AA, 17 August 1797, 385. 108aa to Mary Cranch, 12 December 1797, M itchell, ed.. New Letters, p. 116. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 248 John Quincy tried to cope with Louisa's distress is nowhere recorded, certainly not in his Diary. Not only was he during this time dealing with his father-in-law's creditors at the door, he was also having problems with his own father. John Quincy was adjusting to the idea that his father had determined his new post should be Prussia, not Lisbon. Like Louisa's response to her father's bankruptcy, John Quincy's anger and upset would seem to be out of all proportion to the event. Since his parents had chosen his career and his profession for him, his father's further interference may have been the last straw; but there is also another explanation. John Quincy once heard that a son of a French minister had been given a job fo r which he was unqualified. 109 Nepotism seemed to John Quincy a European vice. Yet what his father was doing might be construed by the world as the same kind of act. He decided to accept only because of "parental authority." Enlarging on his feelings to his mother, he suggested that his father must have considered that the new inconveniences, endured without extra pay, would allow him to prove his devotion to his country—a convoluted way of handling his father's quite innocent change of destination.HO John Adams made light of his son's complaints, telling him he was being over scrupulous, the rebuke being delivered in the down-to-earth, common-sense style so typical of John Adams.Ill Had John Quincy known the real, as contrasted with the imaginary, inconveniences to which he would be subject in Prussia, he 109JQA to AA, 16 August 1796, APM, reel 382. 110Ib id . l l l j A to JQA, 3 November 1797, APM, r e e l 386. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 249 might not have sought sacrifices to justify his acceptance. However justified he felt, seven months later he was still writing to his parents of his reservations about the appointment. John Quincy's fears that Adams behavior would be scrutinized by the world was justified. Louisa and John Quincy's marriage was instantly the subject of editorials and counter-editorials in the United States press. Trying to tie the Adamses to the very aristocratic Great B ritain, the Republican Independent Chronicle represented Louisa as E n g l i s h ; H2 the pro-Federalist Columbia corrected the error to protect the Adams's republican and democratic reputation.113 It was Louisa's first experience with American politics, but it was not to be her last. Louisa's health in London was not good. Almost immediately after the marriage she became pregnant and, like her mother before her, became i l l , probably from nausea connected with the pregnancy. John Quincy wrote he spent one entire day at her bedside, but he needed to look after his own affairs. This was just the very first episode in what was to become a pattern in their married life. Qn several days Louisa was unable to go out, but interspersed with these bouts were walks and drives and dinners with women friends and with the Rufus Kings who had returned from their trip .114 The Adamses stayed in London for slightly more than one month after the Johnsons left for America. At home in a rented house, they ll^Bemis, Foundations, p. 81. H^Ibid. 114jq a , Diary, 2, 14 October 1797, APM, reel 27. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 250 visited and received old friends. Soon they began to receive letters from the Johnsons now in the Orkney Isles where inclement weather had forced their boat to seek shelter. Joshua Johnson admitted to John Quincy he expected censure for the manner in which he left London but thought that his conduct would later be understood.C atherine Johnson wrote to John Quincy that no event in her life had ever given her as much satisfaction as the right to call him her son. Behind this statement can be felt the pressure that must have been brought to bear on Louisa to marry John Quincy and perhaps gives some substance to Thomas Johnson's accusation that the family had stayed in London until Louisa was m a r r i e d . H8 Not knowing when orders to remove to Prussia would arrive, Louisa and John Quincy settled down to as regular a life as was possible. At this time John Quincy began to read to Louisa in the evening, a habit which lasted until the press of business overtook him in later life. John Quincy's mood of nervous irritability disappeared, and he was able to both read and write, and made numerous visits to b o o k s e lle rs . S u rp ris in g ly , he w rote in summing up the month of September, "This life, if I were to stay here might be improved to something u s e f u l . "117 perhaps the Johnsons had depressed his spirits, and w ith them on th e ir way to America he re la x e d . More lik e ly , h is llSjJ to JQA, 12 September 1797, APM, reel 385. llGcj to JQA, 18 September 1797, APM, reel 385. For an example of how an American girl could be pushed into marriage by her parents, see Ethel Armes, éd., Nancy Shippen; Her Journal Book (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1935). LCA, however, seems to have been fully in accord with her parents' wishes. 117JQA, Diary, Day September 1797, APM, reel 27. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 251 happiness a t being m arried changed h is mood. Louisa was extremely anxious about her trip to Prussia. John Quincy knew the difficult travelling conditions Louisa would face crossing the North Sea. Like Louisa, he feared she might lose the baby. Louisa's confidence, never very strong, had been further damaged by the manner in which her family had left London. Not only was she anxious about being without close female companions, but she was afraid of the very judgmental John Quincy. She was pregnant, ill, alone and afraid. So it was with great trepidation that Louisa faced the trip to Prussia and her first post abroad in the diplomatic corps of the United States of America, a country she had never seen and whose republicanism had been represented to her in the most rigorous terms. It must have taken all the courage Louisa possessed to leave London on 18 October and travel to Gravesend, from where the following day she sailed for Germany. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER V REPUBLICAN LIFE AT THE COURT OF KINGS By the time she married John Quincy, Louisa had been fully instructed in those republican virtues which she would need as the wife of a Minister of the United States. What John Quincy had not mentioned in his letters were those talents she already possessed, which fitted her so remarkably to be the wife of an American diplomat in Europe: her acquaintance with European manners and customs, her fam iliarity with diplomatic life, experience in gracious entertaining, fluent French, good looks, and attractive demeanor. All these endowments were now to be put at the service of the United States in a European country where the new nation was well known as the world's latest experiment in republicanism and where, for that very reason, the young Minister and his wife would be considered with more than usual interest.1 lln 1784 a le c tu re was d eliv ered a t the B erlin Academy of Sciences in honor of the King's birthday. The subject was "Qn Forms of Government and Which Is the Best?" American republicanism was discussed, and the pessimistic speaker suggested waiting fifty years to see whether the United States could make republicanism work. Willi Paul Adams, The First American Constitutions: Republican Ideology and the Making of the State Constitutions in the Revolutionary Era (Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 1980), p. 3. See also Gerald John Ghelfi, "European Opinions of American Republicanism during the 'C ritical Period,' 1781-1789" (Ph.D. dissertation, Claremont Graduate School and University Center, 1968); and Horst Dipple , Germany and the American Revolution, 1770-1800: A Sociohistorical Investigation of Late Eighteenth-Century Political Thinking (Chapel H ill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977). Although Prussia's interest in the United States was great, the United 252 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 253 As the wife of John Quincy, Minister from the republican United States, Louisa faced an almost insuperable task in her relations with the Prussian Court. She must succeed at being attractive and making friends at the same time that she must not, under any circumstances, be drawn into the "dissipations" of Court life. She should charm representatives from monarchies, and at the same time keep herself aloof from those allegedly frivolous indulgences of Court life that John Quincy and many Americans thought undermined a people's moral character. She must attend balls, dinners, receptions, be gracious, friendly, warm, amicable, but be always aware that the social events of the Court were shallow and perilous, and must not under any circumstances be too much enjoyed. It was an almost impossible assignment, but Louisa managed it. Without ever compromising her republicanism, she conducted herself in a way which charmed the Prussian Court.2 The t r i p from London to Hamburg was worse than L ouisa and John Quincy had feared. Sailing into the stormy North Sea, Louisa bore up States was quite disinterested in Prussia, "she not being a maritime power, not as yet connected with us by commerce." Timothy Pickering to JQA, 7 January 1800, APM, reel 133. 2"[LCA] has formed some agreeable and valuable acquaintances here and wherever she has been seen she has been invariably loved & admired." JQA to CJ, 13 July 1798, APM, reel 133. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 254 remarkably well in spite of being both seasick and pregnant.8 Eight days after leaving England, Louisa, John Quincy, and Thomas arrived at Hamburg. Louisa, now recovered, found Hamburg an uncongenial city, the houses and canals dirty and gloomy, the smell of the peat fires nauseating, and the unique system of downspouts noisy, as the water splashed into the streets. Yet she admitted in her memoirs that the time passed agreeably enough, and the party continued on to B e r l i n . 4 According to her later writings, Louisa's lessons in republicanism had not yet taken hold. Asked to share her carriage with a footman, she felt affronted; and even more interestingly, she thought she was being insulted because of her family's financial humiliation. If her account is correct, she was already, shortly after her marriage, linking an event, quite unrelated, to the financial failure of her father.5 More likely, it was an association of ideas which derived from her later life, not from her Berlin years. Louisa bore the trip well, although travelling for pregnant women was risky. In spite of almost impassible sandy roads and 3jQA, Diary, 22 Qctober 1797, APM, reel 27. 4lCA, "Record," pp. 75-76, APM, reel 265; LCA, "Adventures," pp. 4-5, APM, reel 265. LCA's account of her arrival in Prussia was f a r more negative in her 1840s memoirs than in her 1825 reminiscences, ^LCA, "Record," p. 76, APM, reel 265. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 255 uncom fortable German beds w ith fe a th e r co m forters, the Adamses arriv e d in B erlin on 9 November w ith Louisa s t i l l in good h e a lth .6 The city of Berlin, to which John Quincy was ordered in 1797, was essentially the creation of both Frederick I and Frederick the Great. Royal palaces, comfortable townhouses, an imposing central square, a magnificent park, and the justly famous avenue "Unter den Linden," gave Berlin the ambiance of a sophisticated capital. The city functioned as the urban center for North and East Germany. Decisively beaten by Napoleon in 1795, Prussia retired into a determined neutrality which, although removing her from the heated political theatre of Europe, allowed for a flowering of intellectual life that was w ell known even in A m e r ic a .7 John Adams told John Quincy that Germany was "sa id to be the seat of Science and L e tte rs a t p re s e n t." Even before he arrived in Berlin, John Quincy was impressed with the educational level of the ordinary country people.& The state of the country was tranquil at home and abroad, even though the basis of all Prussian power lay in the army. After three months' residence, John Quincy still considered Berlin a "newly discovered Coast."9 John Quincy's was the first offical United States mission to Prussia, although he had been preceded by a trade mission in 1777 and unofficially by his brother-in-law, William Smith, in 1780, who 8l CA, "Adventures," p. 5, APM, reel 269. 7Gerhard Masur, Imperial Berlin (New York: Basic Books, 1970), pp. 17-28. 8j A to JQA, 1 March 1798, APM, reel 387. "We saw at the Post house a small library, a forte-piano and music." JQA, Diary, 5 November 1797, APM, reel 27. "Music and reading; we find marks of them in almost every house." JQA, Diary, 3 November 1797, APM, reel 27. 9jqa to JA, 3 January 1798, APM, reel 387. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 256 interested himself in the military aspects of Prussia. John Quincy's in s tru c tio n s were to make a new tr e a ty of commerce and amity w ith Prussia and Sweden, replacing those which had expired. John Adams asked his son to send home intelligence, as he had done in Holland, but this time, "freely to me, and cautiously to the Secretary of State,"10 whose views on foreign policy differed in many respects from those of John Adams. Although John Quincy's was the first official diplomatic contact with Prussia, he was known to some of the diplomats. The French Minister had met him as a boy when, as interpreter for Francis Dana, he had lived in St. Petersburg, and two of the diplomats had been in Holland while John Adams was United States Minister there. The French Minister Gaillard was so friendly that John Quincy wrote his father he believed Gaillard wished the two countries, now on the brink of an undeclared war, to be reconciled.H In 1797 the Court of Frederick William II, as befitted a great state, was urbane, sophisticated, and protocol-ridden. The courtiers, aristocrats all, were removed from the intellectual ferment then occurring within Prussia. With the bureaucratic longevity typical of aristocracies, one of the Ministers of State, Gount Finkelstein, had lOsemis, Foundations, p. 91; JA relied upon JQA for European information, relegating Timothy Pickering to second place, as Pickering was a "provincial, barely acquainted with European politics." Gerard H. C larfield, Timothy Pickering and American Diplomacy: 1795-1800 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1969), p. 94. Qn early contact between the United States and Prussia, see Walter Holzinger, "Stephen Sayre and Frederick the Great: A Proposal for a Prussian P ro te c to ra te fo r Dominica (1777)," The W illiam and Mary Q u arterly 37 (April 1980):302-ll; Akers, Abigail Adams, pp. 102-3. H jqa to JA, 31 January 1798, APM, reel 387. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 257 held his post for nearly fifty years. Madame de Staël, with her customary perspicacity, summed up the situation: "The thinkers are soaring in the empyrean, and on earth you encounter only grenadiers." H Louisa, settling in at a fashionable hotel, the Soleil d'Or (also called the Hotel de Russie), was concerned with neither thinkers nor grenadiers. As she had feared, she missed her sisters and mother dreadfully. Pregnant, afraid, in a foreign country whose language and customs were unfamiliar, she craved the female companionship of the women in her family. She later wrote that the two men, John Quincy and Thomas, could in no way provide her with either the close emotional bonds she had enjoyed before her marriage or the assistance she needed during her pregnancy. Not only did women of this time require female companionship, but when pregnant and in childbirth, female members of the family banded together to sustain each other. Women facing childbirth in a very real sense faced not only excruciating pain, but death; and in their fear and terror they looked to female relatives, not to men, to provide the support they so badly needed. Childbirth was a crucial event in the life cycle, and it was ritualized by the presence of women relatives, many of whom had experienced the event themselves. Although midwives knew a good deal, there was little besides laudanum which could be given for the agonizing pain associated with the actual delivery. Louisa was alone as she had never been alone before, in a condition which called for exactly what she did not have 1^M asur, B e rlin , p .28. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 258 —strong, intensive help from close female relatives—her mother and h er s i s t e r s . 13 John Quincy was busy w ith work and books, and Thomas was engaged in sightseeing. John Quincy sympathized with Louisa's loneliness, writing Catherine Johnson later that when she became ill, he suffered from "deep distress of my own feelings in considering that she was remote from her beloved mother and sisters . . . without the benefit of a single female, who could give her assistance or relief."14 Abigail Adams also understood Louisa's plight, writing of her tender l^Although inaccurate in some details, Carol Smith-Rosenberg's is still a seminal article on women's psychological need for other women. Carol Sm ith-R osenberg, "The Female World of Love and R itu a l: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America," Signs 1 (Autumn 1975): 1-29. See a lso Nancy F. C o tt, Bonds of Womanhood, pp. 160-96; and Mary Beth Norton, Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800 (Boston, L ittle, Brown & Co., 1980), pp. 77 and 82. Women feared both pain and death during birth, and the birth of a child "continued to be a fundamental occasion for the expression of care and love among women." Richard W. and Dorothy C. Wertz, Lying-In: A History of Childbirth in America (New York: The Free Press, 1977), pp. 6, 17, 18, 109. "I am sure you wanted for nothing that an affectionate Husband could do but a female friend at those times is a great comfort especially one we love." Sarah Beddow to Anne R idley, 22 Ju ly 1783, R idley P ap ers, Box //2, MHS. "As I was coming down stairs, [I] was seized with symptoms not alarming to my self, but highly so, to those dear tender hopes which I have for some months indulged. My kind, excellent sister Sally, was called, who instantly undressed and put me to bed, sent for Dr. Westar & Aunt Hodge. The great attention of these friends together with my own prudent command of ray feelings has I hope averted this misfortune." Margaret Smith to Samuel H. Smith, 9 March 1803, Margaret Bayard Smith Papers, LC. See also M argaret Smith to Mary Ann Sm ith, 20 June 1803, and M argaret Smith to Mrs. Kirkpatrick, 15 November 1801, and Margaret Bayard to Samuel H. Smith, 14 March 1797, and Margaret Smith to Mrs. Kirkpatrick, 14 February 1802, Margaret Bayard Smith Papers, LC. "The loss of the supportive female world of the nineteenth century as described by the women historians, a world in which men entered as "aliens" was, I believe, a serious blow to women." Jessie Bernard, "Considering 'A B io so cial P ersp ectiv e on P a r e n tin g ,'" Signs 4 (Summer 1979):697-98. Nancy Schrom Dye, "History of Childbirth in America," Signs 6 (Autumn 1980):99; and Catherine M. Scholten, "'On the Importance of the Qbstetrick A rt': Changing Customs of Childbirth in America, 1760 to 1825," The William and Mary Quarterly 34 (July 1977):429. 14JQA to CJ, 7 February 1798, APM, reel 27. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 259 sympathy "for Louisa separated from her family, in an unknown country." In true republican fashion, Abigail relied on Louisa's love of domestic life and her "mental accomplishments" to obviate the need for entertainment outside the home.15 Louisa's health, not her domestic duties, made entertainment impossible. Three days after settling into the hotel, Louisa became dreadfully ill, eventually miscarrying for the first, but not the last, time in Berlin.16 This first miscarriage was especially distressing because having borne the trip so well, Louisa and John Quincy both thought she might carry the baby to full term. An acquaintance (John Quincy had hardly had time to make friends) recommended Dr. Charles Brown, the English physician of the Queen. After all the unfortunate and upsetting events Louisa had experienced, the arrival of the English-speaking Dr. Brown, and later of his family, was a most providential occurrence. Louisa thought he had saved her life, and John Quincy considered Dr. Brown's "kindness and interest . . . more efficacious in sickness than medicine."17 The physician found Louisa's condition so serious that he sent at once for a Prussian professor who, of course, spoke no English at all. Louisa was in excruciating pain, and as the miscarriage progressed, John Quincy and Epps, Louisa's young 15AA to LCA, 24 November 1797, APM, r e e l 386; AA to JQA, 21 April 1798, APM, reel 388. AA herself wanted American friends when she was in London. AA to Elizabeth Shaw, 15 August 1785, The Papers of the Shaw Family, Reel 1, Manuscript Division, LC. See also AA to Mary Cranch, 20 March 1792, Mitchell, ed.. New Letters, p. 78. IGjQA, D iary, 10, 11, 12 November 1797, APM, r e e l 27. 17lcA, "Record," p. 77, APM, reel 265; JQA to CJ, 7 February 1798, APM, reel 27. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 260 maid whom she had brought from London, were up with her all night, night after night. John Quincy was so continually with her that for five days he could do no work at all except to squeeze in a few receptions and walks. Louisa understood how difficult her miscarriage was for John Quincy. The problem, judging from John Quincy's Diary, which as usual is reticent on personal matters, was that although Louisa was very ill, she did not expel the fetus until nine days after her illness began. Quite naturally, the prolonged suspense was one of the very worst features of the illness; John Quincy wrote of the "torture of disappointment prolonged."18 go ill was Louisa that at one point, according to h e r, Thomas Adams, upon en terin g her room, asked i f she were dead. Except fo r Dr. Brown she was " d is g u s t[e d ]” and "shocked" by the indecent manner of the people who cared for her.19 Perhaps the German d o cto rs did not take the same care fo r L o u isa 's modesty as did Dr. Brown. It is true that obstetrical examinations can cause a sense of loss of privacy and of bodily invasion, even under the best of circumstances, and Louisa's sensitivities were probably heightened by 18jq a , D iary, 17 November 1797, APM, re e l 27. M argaret Bayard Smith described her state of mind when miscarrying. "Every pain but accelerated my misfortune; I had no fortitude to suffer, my spirits were sunk . . . I was only preserved from fainting by the restoratives which my dear sister applied." Margaret Bayard Smith, Diary, [n.d.] September 1805, Margaret Bayard Smith Papers, LC. 19lCA, "Record," pp. 77-78, APM, reel 265. LCA's shyness before three male doctors was not unusual. Male midwives devised methods to preserve women's modesty. One famous English male midwife, William Smellie actually dressed as a woman when he delivered babies. The physician in gynecological situations was to be a comforter and to preserve the patient's modesty. Wertz and Wertz, Lying-In, pp. 41, 73, 77-108. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 261 being alone in a foreign country, Louisa did not know the cause of the miscarriage, which may have further depressed her.20 she may easily have felt that she had failed in the most fundamental female function— that of motherhood. Anxiety, depression, sadness and even guilt may have been the result of Louisa's first miscarriage. In the e ig h teen th century l i t t l e was known about the m edical problems of women who suffered from spontaneous abortions. Why some women carried babies to term and others had interrupted pregnancies was as much a mystery to the medical profession as it was to the women themselves. Little could be done to ease the pain of the delivery of the fetus and still less to reduce the very real chance of infection. Since Louisa survived this first and four subsequent miscarriages in Berlin, her constitution must have been stronger than her many illnesses suggest. The cause of her miscarriages, however, may have lain not so much in Louisa's body as in her mind. 20lcA may have been suffering during her pregnancy with a threatened abortion; a condition defined by a "bleeding of intrauterine origin with or without contractions." An "inevitable abortion" is diagnosed when "continuous and progressive dilation of the cervix is noted. Bleeding and uterine contractions are invariably present and the membranes may have ruptured. . . . Habitual abortion is defined as a condition in which a woman has had three or more spontaneous and consecutive abortions." Threatened abortions are treated today by absolute rest in bed and the administration of mild sedatives. Clifford B. Lull and Robert A. Kimbrough, Synopsis of Obstetrics (St. Louis: C. V. Mosby Co., 1974), pp. 225-29, 257. For LCA's extreme suffering during the miscarriages, see JQA, Diary, 14-20 July 1798, APM, reel 27. By winter 1800, two years after she had arrived in Berlin, LCA had experienced four miscarriages. JOA, Diary, 8 January 1800, APM, reel 27. During one threatened miscarriage (which actually occurred almost two weeks later), LCA suffered from "fainting fits and cramps almost amounting to convulsions." JQA, Diary, 4 December 1799, APM, reel 27. "Mrs. Adams was seized this afternoon about an hour a f te r dinner more suddenly than I have ever known her b e fo re ." JOA, Diary, 16 December 1799, APM, reel 27. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 262 Several recent psychological studies have discovered a cluster of emotional factors which often appear in women who habitually abort.21 Among these traits are poor control over their unusually unstable emotions and a tendency to act out conflicts, emotional immaturity, unusual dependency upon others, and difficulty in planning or anticipating events. The amount of hostility experienced by these women was not greater than other women, but they found it difficult to express their angry emotions directly and openly. Surprisingly, in view of their hostility, the women studied were also excessively conforming, producing, as one clinician described it, a "self compromising compliance." So great was the tension produced by their suppressed feelings that they could not deal directly with their problems, but instead fragmented their energies unproductively. Uncontrolled and unfocused, their emotions often broke out in explosions of anger or in episodes of weeping. A disturbed relationship with their mothers and a very strong identification with th e ir fa th e rs was o ften uncovered in these women, an id e n tif ic a tio n produced, perhaps, by an unwillingness (often unconscious) to accept the culturally prescribed feminine role.22 Unusually prone to guilt 2lElaine R. Grimm, "Psychological Investigation of Habitual Abortion," Psychosomatic Medicine 24 (July-August 1962) :369-78. 22concerning the close attachment of women who spontaneously abort to their fathers, see L. Kaij et al., "Psychiatric Aspects of Spontaneous Abortion - II. The Importance of Bereavement, Attachment and Neurosis in Early Life," Journal of Psychosomatic Research 13 (1969), pp. 53-59. The view that a woman who aborts habitually may be suffering from unconscious psychological conflicts is expressed in Nathan M. Simon et a l., "Psychological Factors Related to Spontaneous and Therapeutic Abortion," American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 104 (May-August 1969) :799-808. LCA may not have been always happy to be pregnant. In 1806 she was trying (unsuccessfully) to hide Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 263 feelings, a quarter of these women felt personally responsible for the miscarriage.23 Louisa suffered from so many of these emotional traits that her first and subsequent miscarriages should come as no surprise. They came, of course, to John Quincy and Louisa not only as a surprise but with deep feelings of depression, loss, and grief. Both Louisa and John Quincy were able to express their grief at the loss of the unborn child, yet in the face of a mysterious bodily function which had obviously gone awry, Louisa was left with little but hope. Just as Louisa began to recover, Thomas became severely ill, and John Quincy wrote in his Diary that three-quarters of his time was taken up by attendance at two sick beds.24 in order to reduce expenses, he found new apartments over the guard house at the Brandenburg Gate.25 The new lodgings were, however, noisy for the still-ill Louisa; the drums rolled, the soldiers presented arms for any and all members of the royal family, and the soldiers were often disciplined right below the Adams's apartment. John Quincy, under the the fact that she was seven months' pregnant. JQA to LCA, 22 June 1806, APM, reel 404. Her letters before this birth often mention her condition and its uncomfortableness but never the baby. See LCA's letters from April-June 1806, APM, reel 404. 23Twenty-five percent of the women seen in one study felt they were personally responsible for the miscarriage. Machelle Seibel and William L Graves, "The Psychological Implications of Spontaneous Abortions," The Journal of Reproductive Medicine 25 (October 1980): 161-65. 24tbA' s illness was an "inflamatory sore throat accompanied by a high fever." JQA to JA, 16 December 1797, APM, reel 386. 25jq a , Diary, 29 November 1797, APM, reel 27. Lord Carysfort, the British Ambassador, had exactly the same housing problem in Berlin as did JQA. Lord Carysfort to [?], 25 August 1800, Grenville Papers, Additional Manuscripts #41,856, Manuscript Division, British Museum. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 264 pressure of Louisa's and Thomas's illnesses, wished for a friend to consult and felt keenly the strangeness of the country and its language. Summing up the month of November, he ”mark[ed] this month as one of the most unfortunate that have occurred to me in the course of my life ."26 It was impossible, because of the cost, to stay long at the apartments at the Brandenburg Gate; so the family moved yet again to "handsome apartments in the Bearen Strasse" but were so constrained by finances that they could furnish only two rooms properly. The new apartments were within a few doors of the Browns, and this probably mitigated the lack of furniture and the fact that the carriage the Adamses now bought was second hand. By December, Louisa recovered enough to go out in the carriage. John Quincy, pushed to his capacity by his duties in a new Court, too few servants , no household conveniences, cheating tradesmen, worried about the two seriously ill patients and experienced a "swimming in the head." It is surprising that this was the only physical symptom from which he suffered. Louisa's recovery, although now certain, was so slow that she could not take part in the ceremonies attendant upon the death of King Frederick William II nor the coronation of King Frederick William III and the lovely Queen Louise. Nor was she well enough to join John Quincy and Thomas when they were presented a t C o u rt. In mid-January, Louisa, fully recuperated, was presented at Court. Laconically, John Quincy recorded the event in his Diary. He 26JQA, D iary, Day November 1797, APM, re e l 27. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 265 did not record the information given by Louisa in her memoirs that, quite fortuitously, she discovered she had been closed out of society because she had not been formally presented at Court. Further, she learned the Queen had said, unless Louisa was presented soon, the only conclusion to be drawn was that she was not married to John Quincy. Since John Quincy had never mentioned such protocol, Louisa surmised erroneously that he had not arranged to take her into society because of his "mortification” at their marriage. In reporting her presentation to her mother by letter, Louisa mentioned only that John Quincy had told her at the last moment that she was to be presented and that her upset had been occasioned by the shortness of the notice. She did not mention the problems surrounding her marriage. In her memoirs she seemed to attribute events quite unrelated to her supposedly scarred m a rriag e.27 Actually, Louisa's presentation at Court went rather well. A trembling and frightened Louisa, wearing a satin robe, dressed hair, and ostrich feathers, was presented by Madame Parella from Sardinia, who smoothed over Louisa's nervousness both at the ceremony and at the later dinner. Louisa would have liked to wear an "ornament," but such ostentation would have been "injudicious" for the republican wife of John Quincy. The Queen, informed of Louisa's illness by Dr. Brown, was kind and u nderstanding. Louisa thought the Queen liv e d up to her 27For AA's quotation from LCA's letter about the presentation, see AA to Mary Cranch, 13 June 1798, Mitchell, ed.. New Letters, p. 190. See also JQA, Diary, 21 January 1798, APM, reel 27. JQA explained to his mother that "my wife owing to her state of health has not been into company at all." JQA to AA, 3 January 1798, APM, reel 387. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 266 reputation as one of the loveliest and most appealing Queens in Europe (Goethe, well acquainted with royalty, considered her and her sister u tt e r ly beguiling),28 Other presentations to members of the royal family followed, repairing whatever damage may have been done to Louisa's reputation. Launched officially, she was now ready to take her place in the social life of the diplomatic corps of Berlin. Her knowledge of French, the international language of the Court, must have been of great help to her.29 After being presented to the King and Queen, Louisa was presented to the dowager Queen, then in mourning, for which Louisa improvised a dress "basted" together by a friend, Pauline Neale, and her own maid Epps. The old lady, bizarrely coifed and dressed, seemed so ridicuous to Louisa that she could hardly keep a straight face.30 Taking part from that time on in the world of the diplomatic corps, Louisa was often overcome at other ludicrous spectacles of the Prussian Court. As a child, Louisa had often played "duchess," so she 28Qoethe wrote, "The effect they [the two princesses] produced on me was such, that I could only compare them to two celestial beings, whose impression on my mind could never be effaced." Quoted in Constance Richardson, Memoirs of the Private Life and Qpinions of Louise, Queen of Prussia (London; Richard Bently, 1847), p. 13. 29por a description of her presentation, see LCA, "Record," pp. 79-82, APM, reel 265. Wives of American diplomats who did not speak French were socially constrained. "Mr. Eustis has a good house at the Hague, but Mrs. Eustis complains much of the want of Society. Neither of them speaks French." JQA, Diary, 30 December 1815, APM, reel 32. JQA wrote of the "universal practice of all the french in all the companies with which we associate." JQA to AA, 11 June 1798, APM, re e l 389. 80LCA, "Adventures," p. 20, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 267 could not help but be Impressed with titles, yet her memoirs also indicate that she was amused by some ridiculous scenes. Louisa formed friendships by sharing her amusing insights not only with Thomas Adams, but with others, as well. At a formal dinner, she and a young Lord from England counted the number of dishes they were offered—nineteen was the final count—each remembering the tally of the other while they in turn conversed nonsensically with their dinner partners. Had the hostess not been nearly blind, Louisa wrote, she might have noticed the two young people at her table making sport of her dinner party.31 It was this sense of fun that is marked in Louisa's memoirs. She described the "playful simplicity" of the Browns, the ludicrous scenes of the formal Court, the overladen tables groaning with food, the pomposity and meaningless protocol of the Court. John Quincy was an object of respect and admiration to all who knew him, but his sense of mischief and lighthearted pleasure had long ago been subordinated to other, more weighty, concerns. A boy of six who cannot play with "birds eggs and trifles" is not likely to grow into a man of playful moods or see, as Louisa did, the absurd pretenses of the Court as amusing. John Quincy saw them as dangerous aristocratic tendencies to be avoided at all costs. Once and only once did Louisa record that John Quincy enjoyed one of her stories: Baron Krudner suggested to Louisa that she breakfast with him tête à tête in a pavilion in his garden; and when she told John Quincy of the offer, he "roared with laughter." Louisa was drawn to the large balls because of the dancing. iLCA told this story twice with slightly different details. LCA, "Record," p. 83, APM, reel 265; and LCA, "Adventures," pp. 26-27, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 268 the ambiance, and most of all because of the people—the "human comedy" to which she was exposed. She loved also the affectionate home of Dr. Brown and the intimate small dinners which allowed for easy conversation and companionship she missed in her husband.32 Louisa, now recovered, entered this new and remarkable world. After the court presentation, invitations came so thick and fast that, in order to spend an evening at home, Louisa feigned illness. Court parties took place twice a week, one was a dance, the other a card party. Louisa seems to have been extremely popular with the Prussian Royal Family. Yet, her memoirs and her letters show her recurrent ambivalence: in the same letter she reminded her mother of her "Partiality for Great Companies" and yet could write that educated for "domestic society," she found the constant round of "dissipation" not to her liking. It is true that she was not fond of the endless boring dinners, but she loved the dancing and dazzling display of clothes and the splendid ballrooms, which were so much a part of the great Court parties. She basked in the affection and attention she received from the Court, especially from Princess Ferdinand, who, taking a keen 32LCA, "Adventures," p. 32, APM, reel 269. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., characterized his father and grandfather as "They were in a word, by inheritance ingrained Puritans , and no Puritan by nature probably ever was really companionable." Quoted in Daniel B. Boylan, "Towards a Definition of the Adams Tradition" (Ph.D. dissertation. University of Hawaii, 1974), p. 13. JA's view of Courts was the same as JQA’s, and he asserted he was "never fond" of "Parade, Ceremony, Pomposity and Finery . . . I always dispised and detested them. The Stations I have held demanded them. The World demanded them of me, but I always loathed them." JA to TEA, 28 January 1803, APM, reel 402. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 269 interest in Louisa's health, garnered the medical details from Thomas Adams at Court functions.33 Much of Louisa's memoirs concern these glittering parties, hut what particularly interested Louisa was the characters of the various Ministers and their wives. Louisa was fascinated by the complex characters of some of these diplomats, and neither they nor their wives escaped her very penetrating observations. Louisa could make the fine distinction between evil and idiosyncratic character traits. Count Haupwitz, whom Louisa described as in "apparent" control of the Prussian Foreign Department, was a deceitful man, believing that "truth is not needful when falsehood will suffice"; his superior. Count Finckenstein, had pecularities of character which were "tedious" but in no way " v i c i o u s ."34 Subtle nuances, gradations, and finely tuned appraisals of the Court and diplomatic personnel are the very stuff of Louisa's writings; for her, black and white were usually mixed into shades of gray. Far from a neutral observer, Louisa made sharp judgments about the people she knew, appraisals which were sometimes h arsh , sometimes lo v in g , but meted out f a ir l y between men and women. Although she felt herself and other women under the control of men, her realization that men ruled and women acquiesced did not blind her to the fact that women and men shared equally in failings of character and 33lCA described the assembled guests as an "Elegant Mob." LCA quoted in AA to Mary Cranch, 13 June 1798, Mitchell, ed.. New L etters, p. 190. AA still worried that Courts might spoil LCA for life in the United States. AA to CJ, 9 June 1798, APM, reel 389. Concerning Princess Ferdinand, see TEA to JQA, 28 January 1799, APM, reel 393. This princess was a cousin of Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia. 34lcA, "Adventures," p, 43, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 270 weaknesses. Prince Hadzfeldt was a "cold, supercilious, haughty, flashy personage"; the Landgravine of Hesse-Cassel had "German" manners which were sometimes so coarse and indelicate that Louisa blushed for her.35 The world Louisa depicted in her memoirs teems with men and women who are real just because Louisa could portray them in all their complications. Louisa was in no way attracted by false sophistication. Miss Bishoffswerder, a lady of the Court, contrived her gothic tales, while Mrs. Brown's were artless and therefore, Louisa thought, far more affecting.36 Louisa also realized that prejudice arose from narrowness of experience and that toleration proceeded from appreciating that good and evil were universally mixed.37 L o u isa 's was a su b tle and discerning mind. Nowhere was Louisa's republican training more evident than in her writings about parties and balls. Sometimes she wrote she hated parties, but then described them with relish and in the greatest d e t a i l . She had w ritte n in the same am bivalent v ein about her l i f e in London: she was "allowed" to give a ball, but was too shy to join in the fun. In Berlin, her shyness vanished. Clearly, she loved the great balls, at which there might be three or four hundred people, because of the dancing. She was, according to John Quincy's Diary, 35lcA, "Adventures," p. 93, APM, reel 269; LCA, "Record," p. 85, APM, reel 265. LCA thought her portrayals of the persons at the Court of Berlin lacked the "satiric keenness" of Mirabeau's famous memoirs, but she also thought they were more "just in the likeness." LCA, "Adventures," p. 76. APM, reel 269. 36LCA, "Adventures," pp. 73-74, APM, reel 269. 37lcA, "Adventures," p. 65, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 271 among the "first out" to dance at balls, and even she admitted, at one point, that she was "extravagantly fond" of dancing.38 she certainly hated the ubiquitous card games, as she could ill afford to lose money, and eventually she stopped playing. Her memoirs record that she had to refuse a part in a quadrille not only because of the expense involved but because of the dangers of association with the "gay persons of the Court."39 She greatly enjoyed the smaller parties, where there was a great deal of conversation and sociability. Perhaps Louisa thought one could be republican and at the same time enjoy dancing; certainly Thomas Adams seems to have managed this combination. Louisa seems to have been, perhaps by her father, indoctrinated into a less extreme version of republicanism. But John Quincy's muscular republicanism taught that aristocratic social life (especially balls) was the entering wedge of dissipation. John Quincy found all parties tedious and thought they had an air of stiff formality which prohibited friendly intercourse. Interestingly, these very complaints were later often made about John Quincy himself. Yet he himself sometimes enjoyed balls, and his Diary records that sometimes he danced until early in the morning. Thomas Adams seems to have had the same sense of humor as Louisa, and she could regale him with her comic tales, sure that he would laugh heartily at her recitation. In contrast to his brother. 38LCA, "Adventures," p. 26, APM, reel 269. JQA, however, wrote TBA that LCA's taste for "assemblies for the purpose of dancing and card playing" had not increased since TBA had left Berlin. JQA to TBA, 10 January 1801, APM, reel 134. 39lcA, "Adventures," pp. 25 and 66, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 272 John Quincy worried Louisa might make some gaffe. Louisa perceptively and fairly realized it was Thomas's disinterest in her performance which allowed him the emotional distance to share her m irth.40 Louisa's affection for Thomas Adams ran deep. Forty years later she wrote that he "proved a solace in my moments of mental anguish, and had uniformly contributed to my comfort, and my pleasure, both in sickness and in health - He soothed me in my afflictions - corrected gently my utter want of self-confidence."^1 When Thomas left for America in 1798, Louisa missed him terribly. Upon receiving a letter from him she was overjoyed: You cannot conceive Mr. Adams's disappointment on opening your letter and finding it directed to me ^ was so agreeably surprized that I absolutely kissed it. would to heaven we could have you back again I did not think I should have felt the loss of your society so much but we r e a l ly are not lik e the same family.42 Louisa found it impossible to adjust to Thomas's replacement, young Thomas Welsh from Boston, whom Louisa described as "Stout, athletic, short necked, coarse complexioned, raw - his manners abrupt ; his conversation brusque . . . though very good tempered . . . An 40lcA, "Adventures," pp. 19 and 49, APM, reel 269. 41lcA, "Adventures," p. 44, APM, reel 269. It was AA who chose Thomas Welsh to go to Berlin. JQA had suggested Francis Dana's son, as TBA's replacement, but AA overruled him. JQA to AA, 29 July 1797, APM, reel 385. See also AA to Mary Cranch, 4 June 1798, M itchell, ed.. New Letters, p. 185. William Vans Murray also appreciated TBA. See William Vans Murray to JQA, 5 October 1798, W. C. Ford, ed., "Letters of William Vans Murray to John Quincy Adams, 1797-1803," Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1912 (Washington, B.C.: n.p., 1914), p. 480. The correspondence between William Vans Murray and JQA was continually read by the British Decyphering Branch. David Kahn, The Code B reakers (New York: Macmillan P u b lish in g C o., 1967), p. 187. 42lcA to TBA, 6 October 1798, APM, reel 391. JQA missed TBA as much as d id LCA. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 273 inveterate Yankee." His was not the world of Thomas Adams, and he made friends first with Whitcomb, the Adams's servant, and then, after learning French in record time, with people Louisa described as "out of our l i n e . "43 It is clear from her own writings that she was, as she put it, a "belle"; and yet she always claimed any mark of distinction given her was solely due to the esteem in which John Quincy was held.44 This attitude is very reminiscent of her claim that she was the least attractive of the three Johnson sisters. Yet she could not always keep up her guard. She wrote about the English in Berlin, "at home the english sought me, abroad they flattered me; and I naturally felt much pleased with their acquaintance."45 upon the birth of her child, the King had her street closed off so no carriage would disturb her; this she attributed as a compliment to America.46 what is obvious from her memoirs is that Louisa must have been a captivating and lovely young woman, attractive to both women and men. Yet she often belittled h e r s e lf . Fortunately for Louisa, she found in Berlin a surrogate family. Dr. Brown, who had given such "fatherly care" to Louisa, introduced her to his own family, consisting of three daughters (two of them about the 43lcA, "Adventures," p. 50, APM, reel 269. 44LCA, "Adventures,” pp. 17 and 28, APM, reel 269. 45lcA, "Adventures," p. 40, APM, reel 269. 46lcA, "Adventures," p. 124, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 274 same age as L o u isa), one son, and h is warm, a ffe c tio n a te w ife. The Adams's new apartments (after a second move) were only a few doors from the Browns' house, and Louisa spent many of her afternoons and evenings there. Not yet knowing if the Johnsons had arrived safely in America even months after they left and still hating to write, she needed a family close to her. The Brown menage was a gathering place for the English-speaking circle in Berlin during the winter and at Charlottenburg (a few miles away) during the summer. Dr. Brown, physician for the Oueen and for the "Nobility and the Gentry," was, according to Louisa, aristocratic and courtly. Louisa's portrait of him in her memoirs vividly recalls th a t o f Joshua Johnson. She w rote he was "Showy in h is manners, proud of his daughters, and fond of his distinction." His daughter Margaret, the same age as L ouisa, was her f a th e r 's " sp e c ia l frie n d and counsellor." Mrs. Brown, Louisa described as domestic and busy, superintending the house and "anxious to hear news of her daughters." She thought her daughters "paragons." A comic difficulty with the German language fu rth e r u nited Mrs. Brown and Louisa; Mrs. Brown's humor in the face of a language she simply could not learn captivated Louisa, who herself in other situations could only pretend to understand German. It was the "playfulness" of the Browns which attracted her, a commodity probably in short supply in her own house. Laughter, camaraderie, and a family atmosphere were what appealed to Louisa, and a sense of timelessness took hold of her while in conversation at the Browns' as it had at her own home in London. "Mrs. A. at the Browns'" appears again and again in John Quincy's Diary, and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 275 ju s t as o ften Mrs. Brown and her daughter v is ite d L ouisa. Soon th e re was a regular group of women who met either at the Browns' or at the Adams's. There was scarcely an evening when John Quincy went to a Court function that Louisa was not at the Browns' or was visited by one or more ladies. The importance of this family to Louisa during her difficult stay in Berlin would be hard to overestimate. Louisa wrote later she was aware her sense of affection and gratitude to the Browns was heightened by her depression caused by the Johnsons' d i f f i c u l t i e s .47 Louisa was not the only Adams to feel at home at the Browns'. Thomas Adams became a frequent visitor at the doctor's house and seems to have been genuinely attached to one of the sisters, Isabella. The situation was very reminiscent of the Johnson house. Louisa feared Thomas's affection was returned; two "English" daughters-in-law might have been a g re a t deal fo r the Adamses to face w ith eq u an im ity .48 Dr. Brown introduced Louisa not only to his own family but to Countess Pauline Neale as well. The Countess was an Englishwoman and a Maid of Honor a t the Court of P rin cess L ouise, She was, Louisa recorded, intelligent, well-educated, well-read, a willing instructor in ways of the Court, and the mentor Louisa needed. It was she who explained to Louisa how Court life worked and shared her many insights into the characters of the Court with a young woman of limited experience. Extremely congenial, the Countess and Louisa spent much 47lcA, "Adventures," pp. 11-15, APM, reel 269. 48TBA to LCA, 17 August 1798, APM, reel 390. For TBA's admission that he was attracted to Isabelle Brown, see TBA to JQA, 8 June 1801, APM, reel 401. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 276 time together; Louisa wrote that they "lived in perfect harmony." John Quincy's Diary records how much they were together. Mademoiselle Neale was at the house, riding with, having tea with Louisa, or going with her to Charlottenburg to the Browns. Both women had a sense of fun and the ludicrousness of the stiff, formal social life of the Court. It is obvious that Louisa had a talent for friendship and the ability to attract women of taste and experience.49 In the fall of 1800, upon returning from a trip, Louisa met the wife of the new British Minister, John Joshua Proby, Lord Carysfort, Lady Elizabeth Carysfort. Older than Pauline Neale, Lady Carysfort arrived in Berlin near the end of Louisa's stay, but she was a good friend. The sister of Lord Grenville, who had bested John Quincy in London, Lady Carysfort was, according to Louisa, highly educated, somewhat formidable, and took a great fancy to the young Louisa. The Carysforts immediately became a part of the coterie of English people who met at the Browns'. This group included a Countess Bruhl and her two daughters, in whom Louisa found "steady friends." In spite of the bad feelings between Britain and the United States at the turn of the century, Louisa and John Quincy seemed to have moved almost exclusively in an English atmosphere in Berlin when they were not at Court. John Quincy seems for a time to have put away his feelings about monarchies and to have lived easily with the Carysforts and Benjamin Garlick, the Secretary of the British Embassy. Indeed, the Carysforts were god-parents for Louisa's son, George Washington Adams, bom in Berlin 49lcA, "Adventures," pp. 15-16, APM, reel 269; JQA, Diary, 4, 18 A p ril, and 8 November 1798, APM, r e e l 27. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 277 in 1801. Here in a foreign land, England's monarchy and its aristocracy came to count for less, and John Quincy seems to have enjoyed the English group as much as Louisa, who even sponsored some E n glish women a t the Court when th e re was no E nglish M in is te r's w ife .50 It is somewhat surprising that Louisa harbored for forty years so much anger at John Quincy for his behavior in Berlin. It is impossible to know if this anger was a later accretion caused by the blame Louisa put onto John Quincy for subsequent family tragedies, or if it really began with his conduct towards her in Berlin. At any rate, she complained in her memoirs that his library was furnished with a carpet, bookshelves, and a writing desk, while her bedroom had "no Carpet" and a bedstead with coarse curtains made by herself, a "common pine wood Toilet Table," and no fire in the winter.51 she also recalled that German lessons, appropriate for John Quincy, were too expensive for her.52 Louisa's most serious complaint was that her husband was emotionally remote. Since she was well supplied with friends, she did not need to look solely to John Quincy for companionship, but she missed a warmth from him she thought she deserved. Louisa might have been even more upset had she read a letter from John Quincy to his mother in December 1797, shortly after her 50lcA, "Adventures," p. 124, APM, reel 269. Lord Carysfort, appointed B ritish Ambassador on 24 May 1800, was unimpressed with JQA. "As to the other members of the Corps, there is not one to brag of." Lord Carysfort to ?, 25 August 1800, Grenville Papers, BM. 51lcA, "Adventures," p. 31, APM, reel 269. "In point of lodgings we are miserably provided." TBA quoted by AA in AA to Mary Cranch, 21 April 1798, Mitchell, ed.. New Letters, p. 158. 52lcA, "Adventures," p. 34, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 278 first miscarriage, in which he bemoaned the loss of his library, which had been sent to Lisbon. He wrote that without books he felt as had Dr. Clarke on being separated from his wife, as if "his soul had parted from him." However bereft John Quincy felt without his library, he certainly spent time with Louisa.53 After signing the treaty with Prussia in 1799, John Quincy was as unencumbered with work as he would ever be again in his whole life; and later in America, Louisa wrote with fairness towards her husband that she could not expect the same attention she had received in Germany. Much as she complained in her memoirs of her treatment in Germany, Louisa had a firm grasp on John Quincy's admirable qualities. She recorded that the King's kindness to her was influenced by his feelings for John Quincy, who was "universally liked." She also described her love and respect for her husband, her unbounded admiration for his rock-like integrity and "purity of motives," and the admiration and respect he called forth in every country where he served. She could even write that she understood his proclivity to judge people harshly. She placed the blame on John Quincy's greatness, which prevented him from experiencing suffering and thereby extending some measure of compassion to others less fortunate than himself.54 She noted his superior talents and "aimiable character" and realized only too well that by her illnesses and by her lack of a dowry she had become a burden to him. What she could not solve was her adm iration 53jqa to AA, 28 December 1797, APM, reel 386. By October 1799, JQA had purchased so many books that it was difficult for him to keep his library in order. JQA, Diary, 21 October 1799, APM, reel 27. 54lcA, "Adventures," pp. 30 and 38, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 279 for her husband as a public figure, his attentiveness to her when she was ill, and the emotional distance she felt he put between himself and his immediate family. Louisa was not the only person to have difficulty in relating to John Quincy. He was perceived as a great public servant, of surpassing probity, application, and brilliance, yet personally cold and distant, sometimes inhuman and unforgiving. Qn his side, after the first difficult time in Germany, John Quincy told his mother that he was as "happy as a virtuous, modest, discrete and amiable woman" could make him. After seven months he found their "mutual affection increasing" and described marriage to his friend Gardner as "the state of the greatest happiness that this world can bestow."55 Louisa's memoirs, however, show that, along with affectionate feelings, she must have harbored a great deal of resentment. She stored up these antagonisms only to summon them again years later in her autobiographies. John Quincy could, at times, be responsive to Louisa's sensibilities. Qbjecting to Abigail Adams calling her "Mrs. Adams" in a letter, Louisa asked, and John Quincy complied, in suggesting to Abigail that she henceforth call her "Louisa," or "My daughter," or "your wife." John Quincy gently rebuked his mother, reminding her that she had once asked Thomas and himself to call her "Dear Mother" instead of "Dear Madam." He then admitted such sensitivities belong to women, not to men, and admitted he might have seen "Mrs. Adams" twenty times in letters without thinking it might upset L o u i s a .56 But no m atter how 55JQA to AA, 5 February 1798, APM, reel 387; JQA to J. Gardiner, 10 October 1798, APM, reel 133. 56JQA to AA, 16 March 1799, APM, reel 133. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 280 kind and understanding he could be, it is obvious that John Quincy could not help Louisa with her ongoing problems with her father's financial difficulty, her constant ill health, her unmet emotional needs, and her lack of self-confidence. Along with physical and emotional problems, financial stringency was another of Louisa's trials. In Berlin, Louisa first realized how helpful a dowry would have been to John Quincy in his diplomatic career. The real problem lay not in the lack of a dowry, but in the inadequate salaries paid to American representatives abroad. The Congress, in an excess of republican frugality, allowed its Ministers salaries in no way commensurate with the life style in which they were expected to live. Nine thousand dollars a year was a ludicrously low salary.57 John and Abigail Adams had themselves experienced straitened finances both in France and England in the 57"There is a parsimony, which many in office call Republicanism, that casts an ill feature upon all public doings. This mistaken sentiment of political economy checks all government grants to the servants of government." Rufus King to Daniel Kilham, 18 February 1784, Robert Ernst, Rufus King; American Federalist (Chapel H ill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), p. 37. "Neither the Adams nor the Jefferson families could afford to follow the court to V ersaille." Fawn M. Brodie, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1974), p. 188. The Jay family had the same problem of following the Spanish Court on a salary which would scarcely have "enabled [him] to maintain a family in one place." Sarah Jay to Mrs. Susannah Livingston, 13 May 1780, Richard B. Morris, ed., John Jay: The Making of a Revolutionary (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), p. 694. "Mr. [John] Jay went home because he could not support his family here [Europe] with the whole salary." AA to Mary Cranch, 5 September 1784, Charles Francis Adams, ed.. Letters of Mrs. Adams, the Wife of John Adams (Boston: Charles C. L ittle & James Brown, 1840), p. 247. James A. Bayard thought the salary of a United States Minister adequate if the Minister had no family. It was, however, "extremely inadequate to the support of a Minister who has a regular establishment with a family." James A. Bayard, Diary, 3 August 1813, Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1913, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: [n.d.], 1915), 2:427. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 281 1780s. James Monroe, Minister to France in Jefferson's administration, incurred debts so large that he was unable to extricate himself for the rest of his life .58 John Quincy's salary in Holland may have been sufficient for himself as a bachelor, but Holland had no great Court and expenses there were far less than in Berlin. Rufus King, United States Minister in London, used his personal fortune to enhance his salary, maintain his household, and perform official functions.59 Louisa felt bitterly the constraints imposed by their lack of money. She wrote later of the "cruel and stinging mortification of National pauperism, which most of the Foreign Missions present at the Courts" in Europe. Louisa thought the ill effects of the underpayment f e l l most h e a v ily on the women, sin ce what l i t t l e money th e re was was used for business and to allow the Minister to appear well, leaving the wives to live in cheerless, comfortless houses. Quite ordinary pleasures such as "ornaments" and attractive dresses were beyond their straitened circumstances.60 No matter how John Quincy struggled, he could not solve the problem of expensive Courts and his insufficient salary. He had very little personal wealth. His extra funds were in America, safe, he thought, in the hands of his brother Charles. The salary he was living on in Berlin was, in truth, too little for a man with a family. A dowry from Louisa, no matter how small, would have helped. Although 58sidney H. Aronson, Status and Kinship in the Higher Civil Service (Cambridge, Mass.; Harvard University Press, 1964), p. 167. 59Ernst, Rufus King, p. 220. 60LCA, "Adventures," p. 2., APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 282 the young Adamses attended the "magnificent parties" given by the other Ministers, they could not possibly return these invitations in comparable style. The Adams's dinners were small and intimate, with a borrowed cook. Their regular household staff consisted of Epps, Whitcomb, a footman, housemaid, and a woman cook, unreliable at best and obviously not capable of preparing a formal dinner. Although John Quincy would not spend capital for his own and Louisa's comfort, he was willing to share his savings with his parents. When, in 1800, John Adams lost the Presidency to Jefferson and feared he might face financial difficulty, John Quincy offered to put his entire fortune at the disposal of his father.61 if Louisa knew of this offer, she chose not to comment on i t in her memoirs. The Adamses could never have hoped to match the magnificence of the life style of the diplomats from the great powers, but that was not their goal. Certainly, John Quincy's wants were in no way extravagant; but the constraints under which they lived, bordering on penury, may even have been hurtful to the United States's image abroad. According to Louisa, Dr. Brown thought the Adams's style of living mean and without ceremony.62 John Quincy's financial worries were well grounded. He had just lost twenty-five hundred dollars in the change of his post from Lisbon to Berlin. His baggage had been sent to Lisbon, and he had taken a house there before coming to Berlin. Whether he would ever see this money again, he did not know. His post in Germany, he thought. 61JQA to TBA, 27 December 180, APM, reel 134. 62lcA, "Adventures," p. 29, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 283 would last only eighteen months, after which he would return to the United States to begin a law practice, a shaky prospect at best. Further, John Quincy learned in 1799 that his brother Charles had badly mismanaged the money entrusted to him. He then appointed Thomas, who was now living in Philadelphia, as his financial agent. Looking after his future finances, John Quincy asked the family friend. Dr. Welsh, to buy a house for him in Boston which he could rent while abroad and live in later. Clearly, it would have been unwise in the extreme for John Quincy to spend all his capital in a vain attempt to match the life style of the European diplomats, although he might have allowed some mitigation of the rule that he and Louisa would have to live within his inadequate salary. Louisa craved a more comfortable style of living, not great luxury and extravagance; further, she was dependent on John Quincy for every penny.63 For all John Adams's warnings about extravagant women, Louisa did not involve her husband in expenses beyond his means. On the contrary, she seems to have been well aware of the problem; and, unlike Monroe, John Quincy remained solvent, if not wealthy, for his entire life. Curiously, given his lack of fortune, John Quincy decided again and again to accept posts in the diplomatic service. He knew his 63"To Mrs. Adams. 57 D rs. 8 G ro ss., 10 January 1798; to Mrs. Adams on account 50 Drs., 11 January 1798; to Mrs. Adams on account 50 Drs., 24 January 1798," JQA, Daily Expenses, Miscellaneous, APM, reel 207. LCA's position in the Adams household was in sharp contrast to that of AA in her household in London in 1784. "I have become steward and book-keeper, determined to know with accuracy what our expenses are, and to prevail with Mr. Adams to return to America if he finds himself straightend." AA to Mary Cranch, 5 September 1784, Adams, ed., Letters of Mrs. Adams, p. 247. William Plumer's wife "managed his household." Turner, William Plumer, p. 28. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 284 resources would be insufficient, that his wife would be constrained in her dress and entertainment, and that the psychic strain for both would be great. But it is also true that financial sacrifice for country was a strong Adams argument for self-justification. Without financial sacrifice, John Quincy's service in Europe might seem like an ordinary diplomatic post, not a patriotic duty performed at great personal cost. If he struggled and won against great odds, his self-esteem would be dignified and elevated by his personal sacrifice. There was also an element of republican exhibitionism in his behavior, which he may have found satisfying.64 John Quincy seems to have been somewhat ambivalent. On the one hand he despised all conspicuous wealth; on the other hand he realized he should receive a better salary. Certainly he did not d e s ire a la v is h or lux u rio u s way of l i f e . What he wanted was enough money to house his family in comfort, an almost impossible task on h is s a la ry . His l i f e s ty le allowed him to show how rep u b lican s should liv e ; on the o th er hand, he thought he was underpaid. The re a l problem was that he and his parents refused to admit that, even in a republic, the diplomatic service was for men who could afford it. The Adamses insisted that what ought to be, was, in spite of evidence to the contrary. John Quincy had been trained as a diplomat, yet his fortune was inadequate to the demands of the diplomatic life. He lived according to his salary, always at great cost to himself and to his family. Abigail Adams even thought men should serve thier "country for 64"i shall not forget the precept of my father, which indeed altogether suits my own inclination, to live more retired than any other of the foreign Ministers." JQA to AA, 8 October 1798, APM, reel 391. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 285 n o u g h t"65 . Underpayment for the diplomatic corps was a problem John Quincy was never to solve, and it blighted Louisa's happiness, causing her much because she thought she should have provided a large dowry and instead brought no income at all. When he had been in Germany for only one year, John Quincy wrote a letter home, asking to be recalled; whether because of Louisa's health or because of the financial difficulty of the life is not clear. Louisa wrote Thomas Adams that she made him bum the letter, so perhaps it was on account of her health. Or perhaps Louisa's ambition, already joined to John Quincy's, overrode the exactions of life in the United States diplomatic service.66 xf so, this is the first sign that Louisa may have been even more eager for John Quincy to succeed than he was for himself. But life was difficult for both of them, and certainly expenses were a problem. If Louisa could not bring John Quincy a dowry, and if she was removed from the running of the house, she was left with only the biological function of bearing children. But this was proving a hard task. Louisa's repeated miscarriages were, for her, the most difficult part of her Berlin years. After her miscarriage in November, she apparently became pregnant again almost immediately. In February 1798 Louisa was i l l again fo r se v e ra l days, and John Q uincy's Diary records his frame of mind: "Latter part of it (the day) at home, alone 65AA to C. Cabot, 17 June 1798, APM, reel 389. JQA held to "a most punctilious and minute rigour of Oeconomy." JQA to AA, 5 February 1798, APM, reel 387. 66lcA to TBA, 6 October 1798, APM, reel 391. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 286 and unhappy."67 The sense of suspended hopes that accompanied every episode wracked both of them. After the illness passed without an actual miscarriage, he wrote, "Mrs. A. better to flatter us again, and make the cu rse more bitter."68 Days took on a grayness fo r him, devoid of differences. Hope continued, but so did the fears. There seemed to be crisis after crisis. In mid-March, during the next episode, John Quincy wrote, "My prophetic heart! I have no doubt of the cause - The cup of bitterness must be filled to the brim and drank to the dregs."69 April brought more illness; and in June, Louisa seems to have had another incident. In July, another illness seems to have been the actual miscarriage. Louisa remembered years later John Quincy's kind and unremitting attendance on her when she was ill. His nervous anxiety, however, which he could not hide from her, in turn made her extremely agitated, and so he produced the very condition he tried to m itigate.70 It is difficult, without Louisa's medical history, to know what caused 67JQA, Diary, 21 February 1798, APM, reel 27. 68jq a , Diary, 22 February 1798, APM, reel 27. JQA's Diary does not describe LCA's specific symptons. Besides a threatened abortion, LCA may also have been suffering from nausea and vomiting during pregnancy, a condition known as hyperemesis gravidarum. In extreme cases this illness can lead to death, as it seems to have in the case of Charlotte Bronte. See Philip Rhodes, "A Medical Appraisal of the Brontes," Bronte Society Transactions 16 (1972): 107. 69JQA, Diary, 21 March 1798, APM, reel 27. 70l CA, "Adventures," p. 35, APM, reel 269. For an overview of women's illnesses, see Lorna Duffin, "The Conspicuous Consumptive: Woman as an Invalid," in The Nineteenth Century Woman : Her Cultural and Physical World, ed. Sarah Delamont and Lorna Duffin (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1978), pp. 26-56. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 287 her "illnesses" and miscarriages.71 When pregnant, she was apparently in monthly danger of losing the child she was carrying, and any excessive mental agitation could bring on a miscarriage. She recorded she lost one child because she watched a child run over by a wagon, another from the stress of helping a woman at a ball who had broken her leg.72 Sometimes Louisa "read" a miscarriage back into an upsetting episode, even when the two events were weeks apart. Since so little was medically known about conception, pregnancy, and miscarriages, almost any explanation could be given credence by women of the time. John Quincy could not keep from Louisa his pain at each loss, nor the strength of his wish to have a child. Thomas Adams was also affected. Upon hearing that Louisa would miscarry in July 1798, he wrote in his Diary, "poor little woman; how she suffers! Matrimony these are thy fruits ! Bitter Bitter."73 John Quincy loyally wrote his mother that their troubles had strengthened, rather than weakened, their devotion. 7lLouisa's psychological state at this time may have been very shaky. Women who experience a spontaneous abortion sometimes show nervous symptoms due to psychological distress, especially if they are unable to express their grief. Robert T. Corney and Frederick T. Horton, Jr., "Pathological Grief Following Spontaneous Abortion," The American Journal of Psychiatry 131 (July 1974) :825-27. "Delayed unresolved and pathological grief reactions are common and often unrecognized occurrences following spontaneous abortion." J. M. Stack, "Spontaneous Abortion and Grieving," American Family Physician 21 (May 1980):99-102. 72lcA, "Adventures," pp. 71 and 93, APM, reel 269; JQA to AA, 18 February 1800, APM, reel 397; JQA to William Vans Murray, 6 December 1799, APM, reel 134. Margaret Bayard Smith recorded that she lost a child from unexpectedly hearing the firing of a gun. Margaret Bayard Smith, Diary, [n.d.], 1805, Margaret Bayard Smith Papers, LG. 73tbA, Journal, 17 July 1798, Victor Hugo P altsits, ed., "Berlin and the Prussian Court in 1798," Bulletin of the New York Public Library 19 (November 1915) :821. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 288 Louisa's miscarriages and gynecological difficulties were not the only form of illness that she suffered while in Germany. There were headaches, colds, coughs, and other unspecified sicknesses. John Quincy reported these to his great friend William Vans Murray, now serving as Minister to The Hague; and Murray wrote back a penetrating view of Louisa's illnesses: The delicate women are always in more apparent & generally in less real danger than the robust & herculean when ill - I dare say that Mrs. A. is of the same class in which my wife is - infirm often - but Elastic - a day ill & the next well - such women never die - they have a sort of coquetry of health that by eternally exciting our fear makes us more tender husbands and makes us more innocent - "blameless" because we are always at their side - She is too young to be in real danger if well nursed from a first child - and after this will grow stouter than e v e r .74 "A day ill & the next well," would indeed describe many of Louisa'a illnesses, but there were also other illnesses which lasted day after day, such as a bad case of influenza in spring 1800.75 Whether John Quincy felt "more innocent" or "'blameless'" because he spent so much 74william Vans Murray to JQA, 16 May 1801, APM, reel 400. "The susceptibility of nerves that was the cause of her [LCA's] illness is at once the charm of the sex and the source of a thousand pains - yet on the whole it is best they should have it - by nursing them we only love them the more." William Vans Murray to JQA, 3 January 1800. APM, reel 397. If some men found illness charming and if "nursing" their wives increased their love, it is no wonder that some wives were delicate and often ill, as was Murray's wife. 75JQA, Diary, 18, 19 May 1800, APM, reel 27. Although it was fashionable in the eighteenth century for women to be frail, a didactic writer in England noted, "Delicate health in a female might be appealing, but it was hardly desirable for a life long connection since, as any close observer of society would note, occasions of alarm, suffering and disgust come much more frequently in the way of women than of men." John Aiken, Letters from a Father to His Son, quoted in Janet James, "Changing Ideas about Women in the United States, 1776-1825" (Ph.D. dissertation, Radcliffe College, 1954), p. 143. So ill was LCA in summer 1799 that AA expected "the next [post] w ill bring us an account of the death of his [JQA's] wife." AA to Mary Cranch, 31 Qctober 1799, Mitchell, ed.. New Letters, p. 212. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 289 time at Ixjuisa's bedside is impossible to know. He recorded it in his Diary when attention to Louisa drastically reduced his ability to work. The first anniversary of their marriage passed, and lovingly John Quincy recorded that although "external circumstances" had been unpropitious, the "loveliness of temper and excellence of character" of Louisa made it "the happiest day of my life." To his mother he wrote, Louisa's "lovely disposition and affectionate heart afford me constant consolation."76 Although his Diary indicates he was harried and upset, no word of censure of Louisa was ever set down. But Louisa remembered the unfavorable details, his furniture, his German lessons, his abandonment of her a t p a rtie s when she very much needed h is presence for moral support. Though she wrote she could, when young, stay angry only ten minutes at a time, she must have held these insensitivities against him.77 perhaps Louisa felt what John Quincy unwittingly revealed when he wrote to his brother Thomas, after Thomas returned to America: "Mrs. Adams sends her love to you, as she always does when I write, though I often forget to tell you."78 uer feelings about Thomas, very strong and very loving, were not always important enough for her husband to remember. For one who almost never forgot anything, his oversight seems odd. Louisa's emotional demands, when she was ill, on John Quincy may have been excessive. They may have been similar to the demands 76JQA, Diary, 26 July 1798, APM, reel 27; JQA to AA, 14 September 1798, APM, reel 391. 77lcA, "Adventures," p. 52, APM, reel 269. 78JQA to TBA, 5 November 1798, APM, re e l 133. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 290 she pictured her mother making on her father, needs to which John Quincy was utterly incapable of responding.79 Had he been less emotionally distant and she less needy, the criticisms of John Quincy's attitude towards her, which Louisa recorded, might have been mitigated. Yet, no matter how much he cared for her, her husband's anxious presence by her bedside was not perceived by Louisa as emotional support, although to us, reading his Diary, it seems as though he was a source of comfort and relief,80 Louisa's father had been constantly on edge about his children's health. Louisa needed a husband who could face her illnesses with equanimity, not one whose fears were close to the surface. Louisa's illnesses did not prevent her from taking part in Court life. Women's role in the diplomatic world varied widely. It could run the gamut from the role of the wife of the Italian Minister who "knew well how to play a political game," to Lady Carysfort, who "did most of the diplomacy,"81 to Louisa, who . . . knew so little concerning politics, I seldom heard, and never enquired what was going on - I only knew that it was a period of great events, which I did not understand; and in which I individually took no interest - Mr. Adams had always accustomed me to believe, that Women had nothing to do with politics, and as he was the glass from which my opinions were reflected, I was convinced of its truth, and sought no farther.82 79lcA, "Record," p. 31, APM, reel 265. ^®LCA, "Adventures," p. 35, APM, reel 269. 81lCA, "Adventures," pp. 92 and 107, APM, reel 269. 8^LCA, "Adventures," p. 69, APM, reel 269. "If Mr A - instead of keeping me back when I was a young woman had urged me forward in the world I should have better understood the maneuvering part of my situation." LCA, Diary, 12 December 1822, APM, reel 265. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 291 In view of Louisa's trenchant and penetrating comments on politics later in her life, it is too bad that she accepted John Quincy's strictures—prohibitions in keeping with his view that women should take charge of the emotional sphere of life while men grappled with the active side.83 Although John Quincy thought women should have no part in politics, he wrote in great detail to his mother about the political scene in Europe year after year. He certainly did not do so because he thought John Adams was busy as President: he was at the same time sending home long evaluations of the European scene to him. Probably he conveyed political information because he thought his mother would be interested. In some way she was different, so different that she did not partake of the usual female disabilites in politics or in John Quincy's stricture that women should concern themselves only with the emotions. John Quincy may possibly have felt that his mother's role in choosing and guiding his career and her wide diplomatic experience gave her access to the political world in a way he would not allow in other women. For whatever reason, John Quincy held one view of his mother's political capacity and another view for other women, including his w ife . 83For LCA's comments on politics in Washington from 1819 to 1824, see LCA, Diary, APM, reel 265. LCA was not the only wife who was removed from politics, William Plumer's wife "certainly shared little , if at all, in his manifold public interests." Turner, William Plumer, p. 28. Mary King, "For thirty-three years [was] the loyal companion of one whose interest in public life she could not share and for whom she had sacrificed her own preferences." Ernst, Rufus King, p. 361. "The letters of the President's wife [Dolley Madison], with the exception of expressions of uneasiness at the prospect of war, are confined to social and family matters." Anne Hollingworth Wharton, Social Life in the Early Republic (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1902), pp. 153-54. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 292 Louisa may have known l i t t l e of p o li tic s , but th is does not mean th a t she had no e ff e c t on John Q uincy's m ission. The diplom atic service was a sphere in which women could and did play a meaningful role. A wife like Louisa, who could captivate the Royal Family and receive public recognition by being singled out at receptions or dinners for conversation or dances, could be a help to her husband. The Ministers of State were deeply engaged in the social life of the Court, and those who dealt with the foreign Ministers could not but notice who was, and was not, a favorite of the King and Queen. In the late eighteenth century, favor at Court was an invaluable asset for any Minister; and if his wife was, in her own right, a favorite of the Royal Family, advantages of an ephemeral nature could accrue.84 S ocial life and the diplomatic life were, at this time, not always distinct; but following her habit of denigrating any success on her part, Louisa claimed nothing for herself. Louisa was removed not only from politics but from the intellectual life in which her husband was so engrossed. Her memoirs mention none of the books John Quincy read to her nor even the theatres they attended when Louisa's health allowed it. For John Quincy, the theatre was one of the great joys of his life. Perhaps the elegance and interest of the characters of the Court were overwhelming or 84For the importance of a wife to a diplomatic husband, see Count Mirabeau, Memoirs of the Court of Berlin 2 vols. (Boston, L. C. Page & Co., 1900), 2:190-91. See also CFA's flattering assessment of his mother's role as a diplomatic wife in two biographical fragments which CFA wrote. [Charles Francis Adams], "Louisa Catherine Adams," in National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans: With Biographical Sketches by Celebrated Authors, ed. James B. Longacre and James Herring (Philadelphia: Rice, Rutter & Co., 1865), 4:1-9. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 293 perhaps Louisa’s health was so infirm that the theatre meant very little to her except as a way to occupy a few hours. A common attitude towards intellectual women in the la te ■ eig h te e n th century was th a t they were m asculine, Louisa was in complete agreement with this view. Dr. Brown's eldest daughter Margaret, Louisa wrote, had "an expression too intellectual for feminine beauty," and was deficient in "softness but not coarse."85 Her sister Isabella was "less intellectual" and therefore "much more pleasing."86 Lady Carysfort, "somewhat masculine," Louisa wrote, was extraordinarily intellectual, prepared her sons for college, and appeared stern to many of the Court.87 Yet Louisa overcame her aversion to intellectual women and admired Lady Carysfort. If intellectuality meant the loss of femininity, which in its turn described all that was most desirable in women, it is no wonder that women were content not to know of politics and to fill their empty days with gossip. When John Quincy was unemployed, he studied German, translating Weber's Oberon and reading other German works. When Louisa was unemployed (which was all the time), she visited friends and talked and talked. 85lcA, "Adventures," p. 13, APM, reel 269. On the subject of women and anti-intellectualism , see Barbara Welter, Dimity Convictions, pp. 71-82; and Susan P. Conrad, Perish the Thought ; Intellectual Women in Romantic America 1830-1860 (New York; Oxford University Press, 1976). AA's Quincy aunts seem to have been the exception to the rule that women should know little of intellectual life. They "were expected to think and converse on public issues and to be as deeply committed to religious and civic concerns" as were their husbands and fathers. Keller, "Abigail Adams," p. 29. 86lcA, "Adventures," p. 14, APM, reel 269. 87lcA, "Adventures," pp. 101 and 103, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 294 Romances, marriages, and irregular liaisons were the subjects most discussed by Louisa, the adult versions of the romantic stories she read while she was growing up. In later life she remembered in special detail the gothic horror tales which were exchanged and recorded her surprise that otherwise well-educated women, such as Pauline Neale and Lady Carysfort, would believe such stories or be in the grip of superstition.88 Even William Vans Murray passed on to Louisa a story of corpses and horror in the Swedish Royal family in thanks for the new "taste and tenderness" she had brought to her husband, so evident to Murray in John Quincy's letters.89 The great formal balls of the Court appealed to Louisa's senses, as they were meant to do, but it is clear also that in this respect she felt inferior to the other women in the diplomatic corps. Her dress, she wrote, was usually simpler than others or inadequate in some way: borrowed or basted or without ornaments. Further, John Quincy would not allow her to wear rouge, in spite of the fact she was almost continually ill and probably as pale as she claimed in her memoirs.90 indeed, the Queen h e r s e lf , according to L o u isa, f i r s t suggested Louisa wear rouge; and upon being told that John Quincy had forbidden it, smiled at Louisa's simplicity and remarked that if "she [th e Queen] presen ted . . . the box he must not refu se i t . "91 The 88lcA, "Adventures," pp. 74 and 120, APM, reel 269. 89william Vans Murray to JQA, 1 Qctober 1799, APM, reel 396. 90"i who was remarkably pale, of course look a fright in the midst of the Splendor." LCA, "Adventures," p. 64, APM, reel 269. 91lcA, "Adventures," p. 61, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 295 Queen had not yet met a republican of John Quincy's stripe, and he did indeed forbid Louisa to wear the rouge. Several months later the Queen told Louisa again she should wear rouge and "threatened" to give her a box. One evening a year later, thinking herself more pale than usual, Louisa applied some rouge to her cheeks and found that she looked quite beautiful. Hoping to escape notice, she hurried through her living room, telling John Quincy to put out the light and follow her downstairs. Alas, republicanism is ever vigilant! His curiosity piqued, he saw the rouge and refused to accompany her to the ball. Taking her on his knee, as he might a child, he washed her face, removing all the beauty she had put there.92 a k is s , she w ro te, "made the peace." Yet from the amount of repressed anger evident in her memoirs, one wonders if the peace was not somewhat superficial. Later, going to another party, she applied the rouge and "walked boldly forward to meet Mr. Adams." Again he asked her to remove the offending paint. With some temper, she refused; and he left her, jumped into their carriage and drove off, leaving Louisa "plante là!" Louisa, feeling like a "fool" and crying with frustration, "cooly" took off her Court dress, redressed, and went to the Browns for the evening, where John Quincy met her later. They returned home "as good friends as ever," and though the quarrel seems to have been made up, the episode must have reached Murray's ears in The Hague, because he wrote John Quincy "I hear Mrs. Adams does not use paint!"93 and it left a residue 92lcA, "Adventures," p. 95, APM, reel 269. 93William Vans Murray to JQA, 21 October 1799, Ford, ed., "Letters of William Vans Murray to John Quincy Adams," p. 609. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 296 of hot anger which cropped up in other places. In any case, after this episode Louisa recorded that she never attended another Court function again, probably an exaggeration. It must, however, have saddened Louisa to appear pale and wan in a Court where physical beauty counted for so much and where a Princess had remarked about Louisa, "comme elle est jolie."94 The Adamses enjoyed several respites from the Berlin regime. Since the city was reputedly unhealthy in the hot weather, Louisa and John Quincy took three summer trips in hopes that her health would improve. The first and shortest was taken in summer 1798 to Potsdam. There, in th a t German r e s o r t, Thomas Adams, th re e E nglish gentlem en, an American visitor, Isabelle Brown, and her brother William Brown, accompanied the Adamses. In Potsdam, John Quincy and L o u isa, when her health would permit, began the sightseeing and gallery visiting which were so much a p art of h is German y e a rs . The p a rty retu rn ed to B e rlin , but L o u isa 's h e a lth was not improved.95 In the summer of 1799 the Adamses went to Dresden and from thence to Toplitz. Louisa was so ill that she had to be lifted into the carriage when they left Berlin, and they travelled in short stages, but she stood the trip well, surprising John Quincy. Like so many others, this illness was never specifically described. John Quincy, always an alert tourist, noticed the sandy soil becoming richer and more cultivated the nearer they got to Saxony. The inns on the way 94lcA, "Adventures," p. 20, APM, reel 269. 95lcA, "Adventures," p. 42, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 297 were inadequate, so travellers usually made the trip in one leap, journeying day and night—a method not practical for the delicate L ouisa. The Adamses reached Dresden in th ree days, and Louisa had recovered so far that she was able to walk about the town. Louisa and John Quincy went to the gallery, which Louisa enjoyed "to adoration." The art galleries, together with the theatres, which she often attended in Berlin, and the books John Quincy was reading to her were providing Louisa with a very broadened education. In February 1799 John Quincy began "a plan for reading to Mrs. A the whole collection of British poets." Louisa listened first to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.96 To get to Toplitz, a steep mountain had to be traversed. The men walked, but Louisa was carried in a sedan chair over the incline. The Adamses s e ttle d in to an apartm ent. An in tro d u c tio n to a German P rince from a frie n d in B erlin meant the Adamses were a t once included in the social events given by the local aristocrats in the great hall of the Prince's house. Such were the benefits of diplomatic life in a foreign country. To belong to the diplomatic corps (no matter how republican one was) gave one entré to aristocratic circles. The Adamses were always part of this group, never really outsiders; and there were always friends with whom to socialize.97 The purpose of Louisa's visit was for the well-known baths. These she took in her apartment in water brought from the stream; her doctor considered bathing at the public facilities too tiring for her. The routine of the spa fell lightly on both Louisa and John Quincy, 96jq a , Diary, 18 February 1799, APM, reel 27. 97LCA, "Adventures," p. 78, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 298 with its theatres, daytime social events, and walks. By ten o'clock they retired, in sharp contrast to the late parties at Berlin. In Toplitz, Louisa at once found an English friend with whom to exchange v isits. Louisa found this friend had undergone the same rough treatment in childbirth as she had in her miscarriages. At least, she wrote, this woman had a child, while she was left comfortless. The psychological strains of miscarriages on Louisa must have been s e v e re .98 Louisa recovered her health during the trip, but John Quincy became ill. Some of his irritation at being ill spilled over into his Diary. Exchanging beds with Louisa one night, he wrote in his Diary that he passed the night "in" her bed, while she "got what rest she could upon mine."99 John Quincy described in detail to his mother Louisa's tender and affectionate care for him. She probably got a good deal of pleasure in devoting herself to him as he had done for her.1^0 Although really ill, John Quincy, against doctor's orders, got out of bed in order to meet with colleagues, a measure of the pleasure he derived from devotion to his work. 98LCA, "Adventures," pp. 76-77, APM, reel 269; JQA, Diary, 21 July 1799, APM, reel 27. 99JQA, Diary, 3 August 1799, APM, reel 27. For LCA's memories of JQA's illness, see LCA, "Adventures," pp. 80-81, APM, reel 269. 100"During my own illness, she nursed me, with all the tenderness and affection, which women only can display and which she possesses in a degree so eminent even among her own sex; her attention was as indefatigable, as if she herself had been in perfect health, and would have added, if it had been possible to the ties of affection by which I was bound to her." JQA to AA, 21 September 1799, APM, reel 396. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 299 Hoping to improve her health even further, Louisa began to drink the waters, although John Quincy was gloomy about the efficacy of either the baths or the waters, an attitude Louisa resented. Louisa thought his negativism no help to her; given the psychic strains under which she lived, she was probably correct.101 A kind friend from Berlin, Count Bruhl, arranged for the Adamses to travel back to Dresden from Toplitz by boat on the Elbe. The journey out had been made by carriage, and the Count wished to alter their return route.102 Life as a Minister, spoiled by the kindnesses of European aristocrats, could be extremely pleasant and easy. Abigail's worry about exposing Louisa to diplomatic life in Europe was a prudent warning. Certainly America could not provide friends who could produce barges with three rowers simply to vary the scenery on a trip. At Dresden the Catholic church provided the Adamses with lovely music, and Louisa felt all the attraction for that Church's ritual and sensual beauty she had experienced as a child. The "grandeur and awful sublimity" of the churches, the art, music, decorated altars, vestments of the priests, and the incense, all combined to touch the senses and "steal insensibly upon the heart with rapt enthusiasm." If, Louisa asked, the works of man could be so magnificent, how much more wonderful must be the God who contains all that "we behold of the great Waters of the deep, and the lustrous magnificence of the Celestial ^^^LCA, "Adventures," p. 80, APM, reel 269. lOZjQA, Diary, 9 September 1799, APM, reel 27; LCA, ’Adventures," p. 84, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 300 Heavens . . . the same forever; yet forever n e w ! ! ! "103 Tales of the local castles provided Louisa with the gothic stories she loved, and the current scandals of the Court were tea-time conversation. Instead of the state occasions they attended in Berlin, the Adamses now had time for what Louisa loved best—socializing. She found a good friend in Dresden, an Englishwoman, Mrs. Erring ton; and she happily spent her days with her and the rest of the English circle in that beautiful c i t y . 104 By September, Louisa was walking with John Quincy almost every day, going farther and farther distances; and even John Quincy, understandably unwilling to raise his hopes, admitted her health was much im proved. By O ctober, "th e season" was o v er, and the Adamses began their preparations to return to Berlin. The Adamses took th e ir th ird tr i p in summer 1800 to S ile s ia , again, primarily for Louisa's health. But there was also a political purpose to the trip.105 John Quincy hoped to investigate the manufactures of Silesia, such as linen, broadcloth, and glass, and the possibilities of initiating commerce with the United States. The Adamses gave themselves over to being tourists, seeing castles and natural wonders. Always sensitive to marks of European despotism, John Quincy recorded how peasants were not obliged to quarter soldiers, 103lcA, "Adventures," p. 86, APM, reel 269. 104LCA, "Adventures," p. 87, APM, reel 269. 105concerning the dual purpose of the trip, see JQA to JJ, 10 December 1800, APM, reel 399. On this trip LCA kept a journal, seemingly no longer extant. LCA to JJ, 5 September 1800. APM, reel 398. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 301 which gave the citizens a republican nature, unusual in a monarchy. Louisa recorded nothing of the trip in her memoirs. She thought John Quincy's letters, published by Thomas in The Portfolio (a Philadelphia journal for which Thomas was part-time editor) were more interesting that any she could write.106 At the time, she wrote a long letter to her father describing the very mountainous and beautiful countryside. She emphasized the affection with which she was received by a governor's wife, yet insisted her motive for recounting her reception was not mere vanity.107 Again, the t r i p was made smooth by John Quincy's position; they dined with important local officials, who then announced their arrival to the next town, where more preparations would be waiting for them. Socializing was the order of the day, and Louisa reveled in the life. It was a very pleasant way to travel. At the end of October, after three months away from Berlin, the Adamses returned, with Louisa pregnant and in better health. By this time, John Quincy had despaired of her ever carrying a child. In Silesia, he had consulted a doctor about her condition but was sure "her case no physician can r e m e d y ."108 Her illness, he thought, would "continue . . . until the severe and inevitable trial has its usual end," and sadly, "Mrs. A's illness delays but to distress the more."109 And again in utter resignation, "Mrs. A - is never well lO^After being printed in The Portfolio, these letters were published in England. John Quincy Adams, Letters from Silesia (London: J. Budd, at the Crown & Mitre, 1804. See also Linda K. Kerber and Walter John Morris, Politics and Literature: The Adams Family and the Port Folio," The William and Mary Quarterly 23 (July 1966):457-76. 107Ibid.; LCA, "Adventures," p. 103, APM, reel 269. 108JQA, Diary, 27 September 1800. APM, reel 27. 109JQA, Diary, 29 September, 1 October 1800, APM, reel 27. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 302 a whole day through."!10 Surprisingly, this time Louisa did recover. On 30 December 1800 Louisa, now six months pregnant with the baby she would eventually carry to full term, made one of the most fortunate decisions of her young life. She chose at the last minute not go to to a ball at which a young officer, after leading a dance, f e l l dead. The c o n stern a tio n and g rie f of the o th er g u e s ts , when they finally realized he had not merely fainted away, was overwhelming. John Quincy immediately went to the Browns, even before he heard the final outcome, to break the news himself to Louisa, lest the shock of hearing it too suddenly from someone else bring on illness and perhaps even a miscarriage. John Quincy reported the episode in his Diary and (with great wit at the expense of the women present) to his brother Thomas : Wild delerium, convulsions & hysterical fitts, faintings, & all varieties of sudden illness were experienced, or pretended by different individuals of the fair company. . . . It is yet a subject of controversy, whether the number of those, who fainted away from weakness, or those who committed a similar act from decorum, was the greatest - One lady, upon her husband proposing to go home, requested him to wait for her while she fainted. Another while in the State of insensibility was principally solicitous that her hair should not be discomposed. . . . I forbear. The occasion is as improper for indulging sarcasm, as for the hypocracy of sentiment. I saw nothing of this myself, & only repeat a part, a very small part of what I heard. HI Louisa's short essay on the sad event, written we do not know when, was couched in far different terms than John Quincy's llOjQA, Diary, 9 October 1800, APM, reel 27; JQA to JJ, 10 December 1800, APM, reel 399. l l l j Q A to TBA, 10 January 1801, APM, reel 134. So struck was JQA with the young man's death that he reported it to Benjamin Rush in 1801 when he and Louisa returned to the United States. George W. Corner, ed.. The Autobiography of Benjamin Rush (Princeton; Princeton University Press, 1948), p. 225. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 303 description. In a florid, ornate, almost baroque style, Louisa recounted the preparations for the dance, describing the ball as both a family and diplomatic New Year's gathering. Louisa's description of the candlelit house, footmen, illuminated facade, the jewels and dress of the Ambassador and his wife, leaves no doubt but that the sensuous side of diplomatic life appealed to her enormously. Her description of the young officer sounds very much like the romantic accounts of beautiful young men in the novels Louisa had read as an adolescent. In full health, handsome, accomplished, beloved and admired, two and twenty years of age, while dancing to his fair partner was observed by her to reel, and ere he fell to the ground his manly and beautiful form had stiffened in the icy chill of the dark ty ra n t d e a t h .H 2 Louisa drew a religious lesson from the event, commenting: "But alas! who can tell what an hour may bring forth; or how soon ' the house of feasting may be turned into the house of mourning' and the mansion of p le asu re become the abode of d e a t h ."H3 Cushioned from the shock of the event by John Quincy's quick-wittedness, and perhaps (if her undated essay is contemporaneous with the event) because she wrote about it, Louisa's health survived the shock, and her pregnancy went forw ard. In w inter 1801 ju s t before Louisa gave b ir t h , the Adamses heard of one death in America and another at Berlin. First, John Quincy's brother Charles died of an illness related to his habitual and excessive drinking. Charles had for years disappointed his parents; and Thomas, who broke the news to John Quincy, summed up his own ll^LCA, "Death in the Dance," post 30 December 1800, APM, reel 399. 113lbid. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 304 feelings: "We have long been looking for the catastrophe, which it was not in humans power to avert. Let silence reign forever over his to m b ."114 In B e rlin , Is a b e lla Brown, of whom Thomas Adams was so fond, died of what seems to have been a devastatingly quick illness.H 5 Although Louisa had miscarried several times before from shocks, she managed to stay well in spite of the two tragedies. Bouyed by several devoted friends in Berlin, she kept the child that she was carrying at this time. It was during this pregnancy that she met Lady Carysfort, and Louisa's recollection that Lady Carysfort took the place of her mother implies that possibly it was her support which helped Louisa through the pregnancy. That Louisa could so immediately accept her in a mother's role may indicate how much Louisa needed her mother. The Englishwoman treated Louisa with firmness and kindness—exactly the treatment which women with repeated miscarriages need most.116 Lady Carysfort, Louisa wrote, told her to come to her for motherly advice and promised that when the baby was bom she would be in attendance. Her presence, for psychological help at the birth, would have been of the utmost importance to Louisa. It must have been a great help that Lady Carysfort (probably spurred on by Dr. Brown) 114Thomas concluded a three-page letter with the news of Charles's death. TBA to JQA, 6 December 1800, APM, reel 399. ll^TBA to JQA, 8 June 1801, APM, reel 401; and LCA, "Adventures," p. 123, APM, reel 269. 116"Lady Carysfort who has been to her as a mother." JOA to TBA, 28 March 1801, APM, reel 134. Exercise was thought to be good for pregnant women. Margaret B. Smith, Diary, [n.d.] 1804-1807, Margaret Bayard Smith Papers, LC. "In cases of continual miscarriages or extreme nausea, kind but firm treatment seems most efficacious, either by relatives or a therapist." Rhodes, "A Medical Appraisal of the Brontes," p. 107. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 305 forced Louisa to go out for exercise and diversion. Even when ill, Louisa dined a t the C a ry s fo rts ', when she would not go elsew here. Dr. Brown thought Louisa should be kept amused, as her mind was "too anxious for the body." Her former obstetrical experiences make Louisa's fears for her body fully understandable. On 12 April 1801 Louisa gave birth to a healthy boy. She had finally ended the constant disappointment for herself and John Quincy and had given him a child. Louisa's joy in having produced a child must be understood against the background of her repeated miscarriages, John Quincy's wish to be a father, and the mores of the eighteenth century. However strongly the culture pushed women into marriage, the wedding was also a preparation for women's ultimate vocation: childbearing.H 7 Only women could bear children. So central was this process to women's lives that some medical authorities in the nineteenth century thought woman's central organ was her uterus. Louisa was not immune to these influences, and she knew when she gave birth that she had fulfilled her function. She was fully conscious of her feelings and wrote again and again that she was a Mother, with a sense of wonder and euphoria. Other considerations besides the culture may have influenced Louisa. Her mother had given birth to nine children, brought up eight. 117The literature on the importance of motherhood to women of the nineteenth century is wide; see Norton, Liberty's Daughters, passim; Carl Degler, At Odds (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 55-57; Cott, Bonds of Womanhood, pp. 47-57, 84-85. In gratitude for "the sublime lesson that the best pleasures of a woman's life are found in the faithful discharge of her maternal duties," Mary Tyler dedicated her book The Maternal Physician to her mother. Mary Tyler, The Maternal Physician (New York: Isaac Riley, 1811). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 306 and may have been a strong role model. John Quincy had been strongly parented and was more than ready to be a father-educator. With all these pressures bearing on her, her joy can be imagined, even in the midst of bad obstetrics, that she had given birth to a healthy child. The birth of her son was as difficult as her previous miscarriages. A drunken midwife handled her so roughly that she almost died and for a long time lost the use of her left leg. Shortly after giving birth, Louisa thought she would die, and she "gave the child to Lady Carysfort" to care for until John Quincy should take the baby home to America. Modern studies show that women who have had several miscarriages often have difficulties, both mental and physical, after a full-term birth, so Louisa's long convalescence after George's birth is not surprising. 118 Louisa could not attend the christening at which Lord and Lady Carysfort were god-parents for the child, who was, with some trepidation on the part of his father, called George Washington Adams.119 The Carysforts, of the highest British aristocracy, seem an odd choice for such a republican baby; but the Adams's close ll^Kaij et al., "Psychiatric Aspects of Spontaneous Abortions," p. 45. LCA, "Adventures," p. 123, APM, reel 269. Childbirth was not only l i f e th re a te n in g , but could s e rio u s ly in ju re women. E lizab eth Drinker and her youngest daughter, Molly, were both injured in childbirth. Rainier, "Attitudes toward and Practices of Childrearing," p . 47. Women's p a rtic ip a tio n a t c h ild -b irth "Provided a r it u a l feminine participation in this significant event." Ibid., p. 48. Sarah Jay thought her slow recovery from childbirth in 1783 due to the fact that she was abroad and did not have her "dr mamma or sisters" with her. Sarah Jay to Susannah Livingston, 12 September 1783, Jay Papers, Columbia University, New York. Female psychological support for the laboring woman was stressed in childbirth manuals. Wertz and Wertz, Lying-In, p. 17. H ^ lcA, "Adventures," pp. 124 and 125, APM, reel 269; George Washington Adams, being bom in the U.S. M inister's house was a citizen Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 307 association with, and deep affection for, the Carysforts probably overcame a ll p o litic a l scru p les. Both Louisa and John Quincy seemed perfectly comfortable with their son's god-parents. In 1800 Thomas J e ffe rs o n defeated John Adams fo r the Presidency; and rather than have Jefferson recall his son, John Adams decided to do it himself. On 4 May 1801 John Quincy received his official recall and began making preparations to leave B e r l i n . 120 was only on 11 May that Louisa could, for the first time and with great difficulty, walk across the room; and two days la t e r she was w ell enough to go out for the first time. So ill was Louisa that John Quincy wrote her health varied "from day to day from between bad and worse.121 His own health was beginning to suffer from the suspense and an x iety . Louisa's illness clung to her, but the baby thrived. Although only one month old, George Adams was innoculated against small pox by Dr. Brown. In spite of her illness, Louisa wrote that she had enough milk to nurse two babies, a regime prescribed by the doctor. 122 Proudly, Louisa wrote, the second baby would not nurse off anyone else when she left. These details were probably added later, as John of the United States from birth. GWA, Autobiographical Essay, 1825, APM, reel 287. AA thought the baby should have been named after one of its grandfathers. She reported that JA's feelings had been hurt. AA to TBA, 12 July 1801, APM, reel 401. For JQA's fears for LCA's health after the birth of the baby, see JQA to CJ, 18 April 1801, APM, reel 134. 120jQA, D iary, 4 May 1801, APM, re e l 27. 121JQA, Diary, 18 May 1801, APM, reel 27. 122lcA, "Adventures," p. 124, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 308 Quincy's Diary does not record the second child. As always, Louisa's close friends visited her almost every day: Mrs. Brown, Lady Carysfort, and the Brown d au g h ters. Like Ills father before him, the education of his boy was to be of great interest to John Quincy. He now began to read with great avidity the sermons of Tillotson on the education of children.123 John Quincy made all the preparations for leaving Berlin. Even had Louisa wanted to and been allowed to, she was far too ill to do more than look forward with eager anticipation to seeing her father, mother, and sisters again. On 15 June 1801 Louisa took an emotional leave from her Berlin friends and dined for the last time with Lady Carysfort and the Browns, whom she never expected to see again. Lifted up into the carriage, Louisa's health began to improve as the distance lessened between her and her family, now in America. By the time she reached Hamburg, she was able once more to walk, although she needed to be supported by her husband.124 The almost four years in Prussia had been in one sense a desperate time. She had suffered at least four miscarriages, excruciating pain and mortification and had several headaches severe enough to be recorded in John Quincy's Diary. Worst of all, she realized her illnesses would be a problem not only for her, but for her husband as well. Neither could help the other, although each was in 123jqa , Diary, 3 May 1801, APM, reel 27. 124lcA, "Adventures," p. 126, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 309 desperate need of comfort. Louisa would never receive from her husband the emotional companionship she so badly wanted. If she could not find it elsewhere, she would have to do without: John Quincy simply could not provide it. She also knew that she would face the world without artifice. Neither rouge nor any other paint would be allowed to cover the bare, irrefutable truth she thought the world could read on her f a c e . 1 2 5 In another sense, this time had been for Louisa one of personal success. These had been years of deep and fulfilling friendships. Louisa had shown she could act her part as wife of a republican Minister in a European Court, and that far from committing the indiscretions that John Quincy feared, she had been a success and liked by the Royal Family. She had presented women to the Court, in her turn, as she had once herself been presented. Most deeply satisfying of all, she had successfully given birth to a child; and although her guilt hung heavy on her, she could feel that at least she had given John Quincy what he wanted most and what would give her life its ultimate meaning—a child. After a few days in Hamburg, the Adamses sailed for the United States on 8 July 1801. Louisa faced the trip with very mixed feelings. On one hand, she wanted to see her family; on the other hand, not only the Johnsons but the Adamses lived in America. Whatever strength she got from her motherhood, she would have need of it all : she was about 125"I have looked so ill and ugly ever since I have been married that I have avoided sending [a picture]. LCA to Nancy Hellen, 27 September 1798, APM, reel 391. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 310 to live in a republican country which she had never seen but which had been represented to her as a place in which she might find adjustment difficult. Bolstered by the presence of George, now only three months o ld , yet s t i l l a f r a id , unsure of h e r s e lf , she sa ile d from Hamburg consumed with desire to get to America. Louisa's European years were, for the moment, finished. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER VI "NOAH'S ARK" The prospect of seeing her family again, Louisa later recalled, made her eager to reach the United States.1 Louisa knew she would find her family, not in Annapolis from where Joshua Johnson had sailed in 1771, but in Washington, the yet-to-be built Federal City and capital of the United States of America. Washington was a far cry from busy, teeming London. It was still, in 1797, a rural plot of undeveloped land. Begun in optimism and hope, all the great plans for the capital of the republic had almost immediately gone awry. Not only were the public buildings uncompleted, but the ambitious scheme for raising building funds had stalled.2 Neither the three Commissioners appointed to oversee construction nor the syndicate which hoped to raise much-needed revenue by selling off land had been successful. Indeed, the syndicate members were at this time deeply involved in bankruptcy proceedings. Joshua Johnson, always on the lookout for commercial opportunities, expected to find them in Georgetown. While Washington itself was merely fields, Georgetown was at least recognizable as a ^LCA, "Adventures," 17 June 1801, APM, reel 269. ^Linda Marion Arnold, "Congressional Government of the D istrict of Columbia, 1800-1846" (Ph.D. dissertation, Georgetown University, 1974), p . V . 311 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 312 settled town. Now annexed to the Federal City, it was, however, in a commercial decline. Baltimore, with its fine harbor and aggressive merchants, was rapidly outdistancing other commercial ports on the Chesapeake.3 Arriving in Washington, Johnson was distressed to find how little "Enterprise and Spirit" there was.4 Land speculation in the Federal City had absorbed all ready cash, and the fear of approaching war with France had dampened mercantile enthusiasm. A French wit remarked that "Washington was a city without houses and Georgetown a city without streets."5 When Abigail Adams came to visit Georgetown in 1800, she thought it "the very dirtyest Hole I ever saw for a place of any trade, or respectability of inhabitants . . . a quagmire after every rain."^ Georgetown may have been physically unprepossessing and its commerce sluggish, but its social life was extremely active. Only four years later it was, according to an English diplomat, a "marriage market" despite, what he considered, "an excess of small talk," and the "small amount of literature and improving conversation." In spite of these drawbacks, much of Washington's social life took place in Georgetown.7 3lbid., p. 7; James Sterling Young, The Washington Community; 1800-1828 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966), p. 22. 4CJ to LCA, 26 April 1798, APM, reel 388. ^Wharton, Social Life, p. 73. ^AA to Mary Cranch, 21 November 1800, M itc h e ll, e d .. New Letters, pp. 257-58. ^Wharton, Social Life, p. 86. "... the extreme sociability which reigns in the manners of all our society [Washington and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 313 Washington as a wasteland became proverbial among the foreign diplomats "condemned to reside in such a city." The British Minister, Anthony Merry, exclaimed, "The Capital—good heavens what profanation!! Here is a creek too—a dirty arm of the river—which they have dignified by calling it the Tiber."8 in 1796 W ashington contained only one hundred brick houses, many of these unfinished and uninhabited, and about one hundred decent wooden houses. By 1800 Thomas Adams thought the city improved, and he reported to John Quincy that Washington "begins to assume somewhat the appearance of an inhabited region; much wood, stubble and stumps however still standing." Identifying a problem which would plague the members of the Congress for years to come, Thomas warned that "good accommodations are scarce."9 The Johnsons' arrival in America was smoothed by the welcoming hand of Abigail Adams. The Adamses considered their in-laws as part of the family. Sharing Louisa and John Quincy with the Johnsons, Abigail referred to them as "our Children."10 From the time Louisa and John Quincy became engaged, the Adamses had kept in touch with Thomas Johnson at Harvard. Even before the Johnsons' arrival, Abigail encouraged her nephew's wife, Nancy Greenleaf Cranch (sister of Georgetown]." Margaret Bayard Smith to Mrs. Kirkpatrick, 2Q June 1801, Margaret Bayard Smith Papers, LC. 8Allen Clark, Life and Letters of Dolley Madison (Washington, D.C.: Press of W. F. Roberts Co., 1914), p. 58. OtbA to JQA, 6 December 1800, APM, re e l 399. IO a A to Mary Cranch, 13 June 1798, Mitchell ed.. New Letters, p. 190. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 314 a member of the bankrupt Washington syndicate) living in Georgetown, to introduce herself to the Johnson family.H Sixty days after they left London, the Johnsons arrived in Washington where a house had been rented for them. Within a few more days, Catherine Johnson received a letter from Abigail congratulating her on her arrival.12 Thomas Johnson, on h is way to see h is p aren ts in Washington, stopped, quite naturally, at the Adamses. Abigail then began an almost weekly correspondence with Catherine Johnson, keeping her informed about their children in Berlin, because Louisa, still averse to writing, corresponded only sporadically with her parents and sisters. Abigail invited the Johnsons to come north to New England, hoping to return some portion of the "Kindness and Hospitality" which she and John Adams had received from the Johnsons when John had been Minister in London.13 It was difficult for the Johnsons to settle down in America, although they immediately moved in rather exalted company. Ex-President Washington called on them, inviting Catherine Johnson and llwilliam Cranch went to Washington in 1795 to represent the interests of the North American Land Co., whose owners were James Greenleaf, John Nicholson, and Robert Morris. The son of Abigail's sister Mary Cranch, he had married Nancy Greenleaf, sister of James Greenleaf. The syndicate could not pay their debts. Unlike Joshua Johnson, Greenleaf went to ja il for his business failure. Like LCA, Nancy Greenleaf Cranch, depressed by being in a strange place without friends and worried by her brother's business failure, became ill. AA to CJ, 8 , 14 Ju ly 1798, APM, re e l 390; Mary Cranch to AA, 19 November 1797, APM, reel 386; William Cranch to AA, 21 November 1797, APM, reel 386. 12a A to JQA, 2 December 1797, APM, reel 386. 13aa to CJ, 4 May 1798, APM, reel 388; AA always gave the latest news from Berlin to the Johnsons. AA to JQA, 4 April 1798, APM, re e l 388. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 315 her children to visit Mount Vernon, an invitation seconded by Washington's step-daughter, Nelly Custis. The architect of the new capitol, William Thornton, and his wife called on them and became friends. Prominent women living in the Federal City or in Georgetown (some sent by Abigail) came to visit and were impressed by Catherine Johnson. In spite of this welcome, the very English Catherine Johnson was depressed, homesick, and ill. She explained to Louisa that "visiting only is the order of the day" and she "knew not how to a c t ."1^ There was one th e a tr e , no parks to d riv e in , no c o n c e rts. Because of poor roads and trackless fields, even visiting was sometimes d i f f i c u l t . Catherine realized that the vast differences between English and American housekeeping practices were at the heart of her predicament. Well-trained servants could be hired in England, but not in America. Servants, even when they could be found, were completely uninstructed; and in New England, girls of ten or eleven years old were trained by those they were supposed to serve. Abigail understood Catherine's u p s e t . 15 Her own struggles with servants when she returned from England in 1788 had been severe. "The help I find here is so very indifferent to what I had in England," Abigail lamented when she lived l^CJ to LCA, 26 April 1798, APM, reel 388; 21 February, 14 May, 18, 19 October 1798, Diaries of Anna Maria Thornton, Reel #1, Manuscript Division, LC. In 1819, LCA recorded she paid 25 visits in one morning. LCA, Diary, 19 February 1819, APM, reel 264. 15a A to TEA, 1 May 1798, APM, reel 388. AA to CJ, 4 May 1798, APM, reel 388. AA wrote to CJ, "I hope Mr. Johnson and you will receive a fresh supply of Spirits and Health. I sensibly feel that the Health of the Body depends very much upon the tranquility of the mind." AA to CJ, 19 January 1800, APM, reel 397. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 316 in Philadelphia in 1789. "I Cannot find a cook in the whole city but what will get drunk."16 The eleven well-schooled servants in the Johnson's Tower Hill house were now a thing of the past. Even Abigail’s nephew William Cranch perceptively realized that different and inferior domestic arrangements distressed Catherine Johnson.17 Shortly after the Johnsons arrived, Louisa's older sister became engaged to her cousin, Walter Hellen, who had apprenticed in Johnson's business in London. Catherine did not wholly approve of the match. She thought Nancy and Walter's dispositions too dissim ilar. However, in true eighteenth-century style, Catherine expected Nancy to adapt herself to her husband after the marriage. "Accommodation," Catherine asserted to her intractable daughter in Berlin, was "the only Basis on which we women ought to B u ild ." By November 1798 Nancy and Walter were married.18 Two years later, the Hellens' first baby was born, perhaps giving rise to some jealousy on Louisa's part, since she was at this time miscarrying one baby after another. Like his mother, Thomas Johnson, Louisa's brother, found it hard to adjust to the new environment. Young William Shaw wrote his 16aa to Mary Cranch, 9 August 1789, M itchell, ed.. New Letters, p. 20, Margaret Bayard Smith, who arrived in Washington in 1800, found the same trouble with servants as did Catherine Johnson. Margaret Bayard Smith, The First Forty Years of Washington Society, ed. Gaillard Hunt (New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1906), pp. 32 and 44. 17william Cranch to AA, 16 January 1799, APM, reel 393. 18cJ to LCA, 26 April 1798, APM, reel 388. CJ's attitude was not unusual. Mary Beth Norton writes of Elizabeth Foote's marriage, "Lund Washington's satisfaction with the marriage was what mattered, not her own." Norton, Liberty's Daughters, p. 63. Like LCA, Nancy Hellen was very ill after the baby was born; 21 February 1800, Diaries of Mrs. William Thornton, Reel #1, LC. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 317 Aunt Abigail that Thomas fit poorly into America, his ideas being "too aristocratical."19 Thomas abruptly withdrew from Harvard, thereby horrifying the Adamses, who thought a Harvard education a very valuable preparation for life. William Cranch explained to his Aunt Abigail that if Thomas hoped to practice law in the South, Thomas needed an apprenticeship with an Annapolis lawyer more than a Harvard degree.20 While in Annapolis, Thomas Johnson became critically ill with a "spitting of blood" and made a rather surprising but not complete recovery. For the rest of his life, his health, like his sister Louisa’s, was fragile. He eventually became a rather apathetic, hypochrondriacal person, never quite able to grasp hold of life .21 Despite the depressions and ill health of various family members, Johnson turned his attention to his most pressing concern—his personal finances. Upon his arrival, Joshua Johnson put his business affairs in the hands of his nephew, James Cook, a young but successful lawyer in Georgetown. Cook's sudden death ended the association; and, according to Catherine Johnson, Joshua Johnson was instrumental in persuading William Cranch to take over Cook's practice. The impression seems to have been created that Johnson was doing William Cranch a favor by encouraging Cranch to assume Cook's law practice. Johnson llwilliam Shaw to AA, 2 April 1798, APM, reel 388. 20william Cranch to AA, 4 June 1798, APM, reel 389. Thomas Johnson, LCA's uncle and Governor of Maryland, unlike most Maryland lawyers was wholly educated in Maryland. Kathryn Sullivan, Maryland and France: 1774-1789 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1936) p. 16. See also AA to Mary Cranch, 8 June 1798, M itchell, ed.. New Letters, pp. 188-90. 21Thomas B. Johnson, D iary, APM, re e ls 332-39. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 318 seems to have managed to create an ambiance of influence and affluence w herever he went no m atter how impecunious he was h im se lf. Johnson was still in financial straits and about to sue his partners for money he was not at all sure that he would get, yet Mary Cranch, Abigail's sister, thought Johnson responsible for her son's good fortune.22 The relationship between John Quincy and his in-laws was not as smooth as that between William Cranch and the Johnsons. The Johnsons took strong exception to the letter John Quincy had written to Joshua Johnson at the time he forwarded to America Fredrick Delius's complaints about Johnson's financial dealings. Her mother wrote in great heat to Louisa that John Quincy had branded his father-in-law a "V illain,” and Catherine finished her paragraph with a flourish: "was Mr. A here he would be taught to know, that neither Exalted Worth or Exalted Station, are Sufficient to protect any man from Slander & Calumnations."23 in two carefully worded, apologetic letters to the Johnsons, John Quincy smoothed over the ruffled feelings he had p r o v o k e d . 24 The contretemps between the Johnsons and John Quincy caused Louisa much anguish. She admitted to Nancy, now living in Baltimore, that John Quincy's manner of writing (which she had every reason to know) could at times be blunt and gave pain where none 22william Cranch to AA, 8 May 1798, APM, reel 388; "Mr. Johnson seems cool, collected and decided." Ibid. See also Mary Cranch to AA, 18 May, 1 June 1798, APM, reel 388. AA approved of the Johnson-Cranch business connection. AA to CJ, 4 May 1798, APM, reel 388; and AA to JQA, 2 December 1798, APM, reel 392. 23qj to LCA, 26 April 1798, APM, reel 388. 24JQA to JJ, 27 May 1799, APM, reel 131; JQA to CJ, 28 May 1799, APM, reel 131. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 319 was intended.25 John Quincy's frankness, even with his closest relatives, could be devastating. He told Thomas once, "You will never think yourself entitled to betray my confidence, because I am your brother, or to ruin me, because I cannot take the law of you."26 Thomas understood his brother's way of expressing himself, but until Louisa and her family accustomed themselves to i t , they found John Quincy's brusqueness upsetting. In 1799, Johnson, with William Cranch as his attorney, began a court case against his partners that was to continue in one form or another until Charles Wallace's death in 1812. Johnson claimed that his living expenses in London during the life of the Wallace, Davidson and Muir partnership should have been deducted from the firm 's accounts—interest free. In 1798 three arbitrators appointed by the court agreed. The court case dragged on. Even though Judge Samuel Chase decided in Johnson's favor, the Chancellor of Maryland reversed the award. Johnson never collected the sum he thought that he deserved and made several more appeals.27 Thinking that the division of money between the partners was grossly unfair to him, he so disparaged his ex-partners in public that, in 1801, Wallace and Muir published a handbill showing how much Johnson had drawn from the firm in London and claimed that Johnson, by his aspersions, had maligned their credit and 25lcA to Nancy Hellen, 11 September 1798, APM, reel 391. 26tbA to AA, 26 August 1799, APM, reel 396. 27jj's letterbooks, from which we know so much about his early business dealings, were preserved because of this lawsuit. All documents relative to the case can be found in Chancery Papers #2893, MHR. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 320 r e p u ta tio n .28 The case was s t i l l pending when Joshua Johnson died in 1802, but according to his will he expected to have enough capital to instruct his executors to pay his wife £800 a year.29 Catherine Johnson, in fact, was left impecunious and was forced to move in with the Hellens, where she stayed for the rest of her life. John Quincy tried in 1804 to untangle Johnson's books. The more he investigated, the less he could follow Johnson's complicated transactions.30 The family tried suing Johnson's associate in London's Chancery Court in 1806, but nothing was ever collected.31 Not only did the Johnsons receive friendship and loyalty from the Adamses, they also received desperately needed economic assistance. In 1800 the Johnsons' financial situation was precarious, and Catherine Johnson wrote Abigail requesting a federal job for Joshua Johnson. Abigail, always wary of charges of nepotism, suggested Johnson make application through the proper secretaries so that the request could come to John Adams through the proper channels.32 P resid en t Adams 28Handbill signed by Wallace and Muir, 12 June 1801, #792047, MHR. 29Joshua Johnson's W ill, 12 December 1801, APM, reel 603. 30"I was again engaged the whole evening, in examining Mr. Johnson's books and papers; which relate to transactions so extensive and complicated that the more I advance the more the difficulties increase." JQA, Diary, 13 December 1804, APM, reel 30. 31LCA to JQA, 5 May 1806, APM, re e l 404. 32AA to CJ, 19 January 1800, APM, reel 397. JJ was not the only Adams relative to receive a job from President John Adams ; there were several others: William S. Smith, William S. Shaw, Thomas Johnson, W illiam Cranch, John Quincy Adams, Thomas B. Adams, T u rre ll T u fts, and Joseph Cranch. See AA to Mary Cranch, 21 A pril 1790 and 7 January 1800, Mitchell, ed.. New Letters, pp. 45 and 227. For a description of Johnson's job see TEA to JQA, 11 May 1800, APM, reel 397. "In spite of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 321 forthwith nominated Johnson to be Superintendent of Stamps at a salary of $2,000 a year. There was much opposition to Johnson's appointment in the Senate, and a tie-breaking vote in Johnson's favor was cast by Thomas Jefferson. William Smith reported to his cousin, young Abigail Adams, th a t Je ffe rs o n s ta te d Adams's recommendation was s u f f ic ie n t fo r his vote but an added inducement was Jefferson's personal acquaintance with Johnson and his respect for Johnson's abilities.33 Louisa claimed, forty years later, that the post was offered Johnson (who accepted with alacrity) against the judgment of Thomas and Abigail Adams. She ap p reciated the g e n e ro sity of the a c t, y et thought John Adams had been "imprudent" in appointing her father.34 In May 1800 Catherine Johnson visited Abigail in Philadelphia. Abigail told John Quincy that she found Catherine "sensible, discreet prudent, lively, sedate, judicious impressive elegant. All that constitutes a fine woman, and I feel my Heart drawn with stronger ties towards my Daughter ever since I became familiar with her Mother."35 Considering Abigail's high standards for women, this was praise indeed. The friendship thus formed continued until the day of Catherine the declaration of John Adams to the contrary . . . no one can accuse him of not having done his utmost to further the interests of his children and his relatives." Mitchell, ed,, New Letters, p. 228, n. 5. "JA and AA saw no harm in appointing qualified relatives to federal offices: their country owed them a debt for past services." Akers, Abigail Adams, p. 156. 33william S. Smith to AA 2 , 11 May 1800, DeWindt, ed.. Correspondence of Miss Adams. 34lcA, "Adventures," October 1802, APM, reel 269; for Johnson's expressed gratitude, see JJ to JA, 12 May 1800, APM, reel 397. 35aa to JQA, 15 May 1800, APM, re e l 397; AA to JQA 27 A pril 1800, APM, reel 397. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 322 Johnson's death, giving rise to an ongoing correspondence between the two women much valued by A b i g a i l .36 Abigail was not the only one captivated by Catherine. William Cranch thought "so much spirit and so much gentleness are rarely united"; and Mrs. Ruth Dalton, wife of the Senator from Massachusetts and long-time friend of A bigail's, admired C atherine g r e a t l y37 . In fall 1801 when Louisa arrived in the United States from Germany, Catherine's spirits were improving. Her husband had a small but steady income, and Nancy was well married with a child. The Johnson family had settled in Washington, a city with an active social life and where, in time, a foreign diplomatic corps would arrive, adding a European flavor to the social scene. For the moment, in a great measure because they had the extreme good fortune of being connected to the Adamses, the Johnsons had landed on their feet in America. Knowing very little of her family's fortunes in America, Louisa set out from Berlin on 17 June 1801, still recovering from George's birth. Her health rapidly improved, and in Hamburg she was even able to attend a French p la y .38 xhe voyage from Hamburg to 36Abigail generously suggested CJ consider "this House as your Home." AA to CJ, 13 March 1800, APM, reel 397. Abigail reported to her sister Mary Cranch that she had considered CJ in England "an acquaintance without any particular interest more than an agreeable person [with] pleasing manners," but that she now considered her "a sensible well bred but discreet woman, with polite and affable manners." AA to Mary Cranch, 16 April 1800, APM, reel 397. 37william Cranch to AA, 8 May 1798, APM, reel 388; Ruth Dalton to AA, 20 March 1798, APM, reel 387. 38JQA, Diary, 25 June 1801, APM, reel 27. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 323 Philadelphia during the summer was difficult for Louisa, who was very susceptible to seasickness. Louisa recorded in her memoirs that both she and George were ill but the infant made a complete recovery and even became a great favorite of the sailors. Louisa's emotional condition, however, must have been highly unstable: two incidents, a near grounding on the English coast and a bad, but distant, thunderstorm, caused her days of illness—illnesses recorded but not described in John Quincy's D iary.39 It was on this voyage, Louisa wrote in 1840, that she first heard, undoubtedly from John Quincy, about Maria Frazier. Louisa vividly recalled being told about Maria's beauty and her "great attainments and eloquent letters." Comparing herself unflatteringly with Maria, Louisa described herself in her memoirs as "a poor broken consumptive creature" but found some consolation, at least, in the fact that she "had a Son."40 Louisa's high valuation of her biological motherhood was not unusual for a woman of her time. Even had she managed her own household in London and Prussia, her main function would still have been to bear children. Quite simply, eighteenth-century women were valued and defined as childbearers. Louisa's triumphant feelings in having at long last produced a child were probably heightened by her repeated miscarriages and her never-expressed, but quite realistic, fears that she would be childless. Caring so much that she brought no 39JQA to Joseph Pitcairn, 14 October 1801, APM, reel 135. JQA, Diary, 17 July , 19 August 1801, APM, reel 27. 40lCA, "Record," p. 85, APM, reel 265; LCA, "Adventures," 8 July 1801, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 324 dowry to John Quincy, Louisa delighted all the more perhaps that she could give him a child. The culture and her yearnings joined to give her motherhood added meaning. When Louisa wrote in her memoirs that she had longed for her "blessed home," she meant her family. A rented house in Washington could not compete with the house in Tower H ill, nor was Georgetown, London. But where her parents and sisters lived—there was home. C e rta in ly no place in Germany had f e l t lik e home: not the H otel de Russie, nor the apartment near the Brandenburg Gate, nor even their apartment near the Browns. Louisa's sense of loss at leaving her family after she married can be, in part, gauged by her anxiety to get "home" to W ashington. Louisa and John Quincy landed in Philadelphia on 4 September 1801, where they were greeted by Thomas Adams.41 Thomas was at that moment engaged in an unsuccessful law practice and an equally unremunerative association with The Portfolio, he greeted his brother and the sister-in-law he loved with warmth and enthusiasm. No sooner were they s e ttle d in lodgings than th e Adamses began v is it in g . John Quincy found that peace and prosperity had altered America for the b e tte r and was im pressed w ith the new b u i l d i n g s .42 Unused to the American climate, he thought the September heat excessive, but it was not until it became suddenly colder that Louisa became ill. She refused, however, to stay in bed at their lodgings; 41JQA, Diary, 4 September 1801, APM, reel 27. 42JQA to Rufus King, 13 October 1801, JQA, Writings, III, 1-2. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 325 and after eight days of constant visiting, Louisa and John Quincy parted, each to their own family. Just as Louisa wished to see her parents, so John Quincy wanted to see his. John Adams considered his son's haste to get home to Quincy odd. Assuming John Quincy would accompany Louisa to Washington, John Adams had explained to Thomas Adams, "It is right they should go there [Washington] first" as it was so n e a r . 43 gut John Quincy decided to let Louisa go to Washington with George, her maid Epps, and Whitcomb, while he himself, with "pain," went to Quincy. The wish to see his parents overrode even his fears about Louisa travelling alone to Washington. John Quincy's decision to go to Quincy instead of Washington, was only the first of many episodes which question his ability to cut loose emotionally from his parents. So strong were his feelings of filial gratitude, affection, and reverence that he seemed unable to commit himself fully to his marriage. He consistently held his obligation to his parents as sacred as those to his wife; and his a ttitu d e on t h i s , as in so many o th e r th in g s in h is l i f e , was fix ed and rigid. The first outward sign of John Quincy's divided loyalty appeared as soon as he landed in America. 43JA to TEA, 9 September 1801, APM, reel 401. As usual, JOA's Diary records only that he went to Quincy while Louisa went to Washington, not the reasons for the decision. JQA, Diary, 12 September 1801, APM, reel 27. In 1818 JQA wrote, "If there is one cord of human affection mingled with gratitude, stronger than all the others it is that between the Mother and her child." JQA to William Thornton, 23 November 1818, Papers of William Thornton, Reel #3, Manuscript Division, LC. "I assure you that in the whole course of my life, I scarcely ever did a responsible act of which I was proud or ashamed, without feeling my soul soothed or galled with the reflection how it would affect the sensibility of my Parents." JQA to JA, 7 June 1811, APM, reel 411. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 326 Both Louisa and her father, when they met, were shocked by each other's appearance. Louisa wrote in her memoirs that she was so altered by her illnesses in Germany that her father did not know her. Joshua Johnson, too, had changed: his health was broken and his spirits were low, but he was enchanted with G e o r g e44 . Louisa's health did not improve in America. The day after she arrived, Louisa awoke in a high fever. A doctor who was called in insisted she wean George in a month, a process which caused her both physical and psychic stress. George was only six months old, an age thought to be far too young for weaning, one year being the normal a g e .45 Yet the child stood weaning well. The loving care and surfeit of attention Louisa received from her sisters and her mother, she remembered years later, restored her to health; and feeling better than she had for a long time, the "little months" passed rapidly. Yet she informed John Quincy at the time that she was "much as usual sometimes well and sometimes very il l ."46 Surrounded by her father, mother, and sisters, Louisa's spirits rose. Unlike most visitors, Louisa was delighted with Washington, admired the 44lcA to JQA, 4 Qctober 1801, APM, reel 401. LCA recorded that Thomas Adams was "shocked and d is tre s s e d " when he saw h e r. LCA, "Adventures," July 1801, APM, reel 269. 45In 1800 six months was considered too young to wean a child and eighteen months too old. Norton, Liberty's Daughters, p. 91. 46lca to JQA, 2 Qctober 1801, APM, reel 401. By mid-nineteenth century, Catherine Beecher came to the conclusion that an inordinate number of women were ill. She warned in Physiology and Calesthenics that "there is a delicacy of constitution and an increase of disease, both among mature women and young g irls, that is most alarming, and such as was never known in any former p e rio d ." Quoted in Ann Douglas Wood, "'The Fashionable D is e a s e s ': Women's Complaints and T heir Treatment in Nineteenth-Century America," Journal of Interdisciplinary H isto ry 4 (Summer 1973) :26. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 327 half-finished public buildings and thought, should the city be finished, it would be "one of the most beautiful spots in the w o r l d ."47 Just as John Quincy could not break loose, so Louisa, too, faltered in the face of adult challenges. She explained to John Quincy that she felt incapable of caring for George alone on the trip to Massachusetts and encouraged him to come and fetch her, admitting in a letter to Abigail that she was a " c o w a r d ."48 Yet it could not have been the physical care of George that Louisa feared, as the nurse Epps and Louisa's sister Caroline would be along on the trip. It was the responsibility which concerned her. Given, however, the strain of travel in the early nineteenth century, Louisa's ignorance of America, her chronic fears of being alone, and her total lack of responsibility in Prussia, Louisa's plea to John Quincy is understandable. If Louisa was to take charge, a long trip in a strange country seems hardly the place for her to have begun. Probably because of Louisa's request, John Quincy felt "compelled" to go to Washington to fetch her. Arriving at the Johnsons' in Washington, John Quincy thought Louisa looked better than she had for several y e a r s . 4 9 John Quincy then began the usual round of formal visits. Qn the first morning that 47LCA to JQA, 16 September 1801, APM, reel 401. 48LCA to JQA, 16 September 1801, APM, reel 401. LCA to AA, 2 Qctober 18Q1, APM, reel 401. Travelling in 1800 was difficult for women. "Our rid e from P h ila . to L ancaster was h o rrib ly fa tig u in g , I never experienced anything like it, and if crying could have done any good, I should have followed Julia's example and cried all the way." Smith, Forty Years, p. 42. 49JQA to TEA, 24 Qctober 1801, APM, reel 401. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 328 he was in the capital, John Quincy and Joshua Johnson visited the President, the Secretaries of State, Navy, War, the Daltons, Cranches, and Hellens. Only President Jefferson and Secretary Gallatin were at home; but Dolley Madison, Ruth Dalton, and Nancy Hellen were gathered up and taken to the Johnsons' fo r d in n e r.50 The Adamses v is ite d Mount Vernon with Louisa's mother, her sister .Catherine, the baby George and, of course, Epps.51 J u s t as the Adamses were about to leave fo r B oston, Louisa became ill yet again, and the trip had to be postponed for four days until she was able to travel. The Johnsons, who were to accompany the Adamses as far as Frederick, Maryland, where they would be visiting Johnson relatives, also had to postpone their trip. Caroline Johnson, now twenty-five, was, at John Quincy's suggestion, planning to come to Boston with Louisa.52 This was quite a normal arrangement, since unmarried girls often lived with their married sisters.53 Both parties benefited—Louisa because she had female company and help with the children, and Caroline because she was exposed to a new social milieu. Caroline's outlook was thus broadened, 50JQA, D iary, 22 October 1801, APM, r e e l 401. 51JQA, Diary, 27, 28 Qctober 1801, APM, reel 401. 52"! will candidly own to you that it would [be] a terrible disappointment to me not to have one of them [her sisters] with me the next winter." LCA to JQA, 2 Qctober 1801, APM, reel 401. 53Lyman H. Butterfield wrote that LCA's sisters were "useful as nursemaids." He wrote, however, before the advent of women's studies and was unaware that unmarried women often lived with married sisters and that both sides benefited from the arrangement. Butterfield, "Tending a Dragon-Killer," p. 169. The William James family were fortunate in having an aunt, Catherine Walsh, Mary James's younger sister live with them. Strouse, Alice James, pp. 31-35. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 329 and in a new city she probably hoped to find a husband, When the postponed trip finally got under way, an entire stage had to be h ire d fo r the Adamses and Johnsons. No sooner were they on the road, however, than Joshua Johnson became desperately ill with pain so severe that when they reached Frederick, the whole party, including the Adamses halted. John Quincy sat up with his father-in-law for two n i g h t s .54 Louisa recorded in her memoirs that she and John Quincy were very h o sp ita b ly tre a te d by Jo sh u a 's b ro th e r Thomas ( "p etted " was the word she u se d ), who liv e d in F red eric k and who took the Adamses in to h is h o u s e.55 Although Johnson improved only sightly, John Quincy was determined to travel on, but without Caroline, who stayed with her ill father, much to Louisa's disappointment. Unmarried women remained where the need was greatest. George now became very ill with what was known as "summer com plaint." The Adamses, n o n e th e le ss, l e f t F rederick and journeyed northward after two weeks, leaving Joshua ill. The d o c to r who was summoned fo r George in P h ila d e lp h ia attributed the child's illness to teething; but since children teethed almost continually from age six months to two years, any childhood illness could, and often was, ascribed to this cause. In Philadelphia, Louisa's health was so bad that Dr. Benjamin Rush was sent for, but i t was clear to him as it was to her that her spirits, not her body, were to blame.56 54JQA, D iary, 5, 8 November 1801, APM, re e l 27. 55lcA, "A dventures," 3 November 1801, APM, r e e l 269. 56lcA, "A dventures," 8 November 1801, APM, re e l 269; JQA, D iary, 14 November 1801, APM, re e l 27. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 330 John Quincy's flexibility in the face of the family's health problems was remarkable. He had been delayed in Washington by Louisa's illness, then for two weeks more in Maryland by Joshua Johnson, and now Louisa and the child were ill in Philadelphia. John Quincy wrote his mother without complaint that Louisa's health did not allow them to travel very far in any one day and that he could scarcely hope some other misfortune would not further delay their arrival in Q u i n c y . 57 Still ailing, and inappropriately dressed for the stormy weather they encountered, Louisa arrived half-drenched at her sister-in-law 's house in New York. Abigail Smith put Louisa to bed and gave her the loving, caring, motherly attention she craved. No one could do this better than Abigail Smith. Having put up with an errant, erratic, profligate husband with equanimity and grace, Abigail was one of the mainstays of the Adams family. As so often happened, and especially since she was so well cared for by Abigail, Louisa recovered quickly and seems to have attended a New York theatre with John Q uincy.58 When Louisa recalled this time in her memoirs, she characterized herself as tom by "suffering and sorrow, sickness and exhaustion, with anguish of mind." Forgetting that she had started her American experiences in Georgetown, Washington, and Philadelphia, she wrote as if New England had provided her first impressions of the United States. Trying to account for her feelings, she speculated that 57JQA to AA, 16 November 1801, APM, re e l 401. 58lcA, "A dventures," 18 November 1801, APM, re e l 269; JQA, D iary, 18 November 1801, APM, r e e l 27. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 331 the differences between her indulged childhood and the stern realities of New England were too great for her to bridge. How much she feared going to Quincy can be gauged by her statement that "fortunately" the family was prevented from going all the way from Providence to Quincy in one day and had to spend one more night in Boston.59 Out of spirits and depressed, Louisa faced with trepidation the welcome at "Peacefield," the Adams house in Quincy. She reported in her memoirs she had been "hurried on from the South" for the sake of John Quincy's parents, but inserted at a later time between the lines, "and the necessity of Mr. A's entering business"—a far more realistic assessment of the cause for the journey.60 "Hurried" seems better to describe her feelings of anxiety than the trip itself. The only slower pace would have been not to arrive at a ll. Louisa's memories of her arrival in Quincy were almost wholly negative. "Had I stepped into Noah's Ark I do not think I could have been more utterly astonished," she wrote forty years later. She was amazed at the Adams's relations and the other New Englanders who came to see her. The following day was Thanksgiving, and Louisa attended the Congregational Church for the first time. She found the new ritual as unsettling as she had found her husband's relatives. Abigail's niece, who lived with the Adamses, burst into jealous floods of tears because Louisa Adams was the center of attention, left the dinner table, and could not be persuaded to return. Even the beautiful weather failed to lift Louisa's spirits. She wrote that fortunately. 59l CA, "A dventures," 23 November 1801, APM, re e l 269. 6 0 ib id . Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 332 being depressed and ill, she could stay silent, since by talking she might have given mortal offense. In the event, she may have given more offense by not talking. Accounting for her seeming coldness and reserve, she explained that she felt inadequate. Her chill and distance were deemed by others, who could not distinguish between modesty and pride, to be a sign that she was proud. Dubbed "Miss Proud" at school, she apparently thought she had earned the same reputation in Quincy. In her memoirs she admitted more than once that she was indeed proud. Summing up her arrival, she wrote, "I could not su it."61 The only positive note of the entire visit was that John Adams took a liking to Louisa, and a deep affection grew between the two which lasted until John Adams's death. Since she had loved her own father so deeply, it is not surprising she was able to respond positively to John Adams's fatherly affection.62 To the preferred warmth of others, Louisa admitted she was not so accepting. She wrote later that Abigail arranged for her to have a dish of special food, which made her feel even more different than before; and refusing to eat it, she hurt Abigail's feelings. The kindness of the act made little impression on Louisa. She knew only 61LCA, "Adventures," 26 November 1801, APM, reel 269; LCA, "Adventures," 1 January 1802, APM, reel 269. LCA was not the only woman who could not adjust to a new environment. Mary King, wife of Rufus King, was unhappy in Philadelphia, where she was without friends and her elderly father. She was also depressed in Washington. Ernst, Rufus King, p. 106, n. 55, and p. 110. 62"The old gentleman took a fancy to me, and he was the only one." LCA, "Adventures," 1 January 1802, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 333 that the special treatment exaggerated her feelings of being out of p la c e .63 Louisa assumed that John Quincy's relatives considered her not up to the mark. Trying to understand her awkwardness, she suggested later that she now, as she had not before, felt the burden of having married a foreigner. She was different; she was ill; she was foreign. She had been "different" as a child in her own home and would be permanently different in her adopted c o u n t r y . 64 A lready a ilin g upon arrival, she was not helped by the onset of an early New England winter. Describing Louisa in a letter as so delicate that she might not live long, Abigail was saddened to see how anxiety for Louisa's health had added years to John Quincy's looks.65 Louisa's cough was so bad she was thought to have consumption, and the doctor doubted she would live even a month. But Louisa did recover, to find herself, she wrote later, a "fine Lady" in a part of America where to be a "fine Lady" was useless.66 xhe New England culture demanded that women work. 63Ibid. 64 Ibid. 65aa to TBA, 27 December 1801, APM, reel 401. AA, like JQA, did not draw the parallel between a woman's ill health and her moral condition. Wood, "'The Fashionable Diseases,'" p. 34. The psychosom atic o rig in of some illn e s s e s was known in the n in e te e n th century. "For more than a year disease had been preying on my mind and spirits & indeed on my body too—for so close is the connection that they cannot suffer separately." Margaret B. Smith to Mrs. Kirkpatrick, 10, 11 June 1820, vol. 10, Margaret Bayard Smith Papers, LC. "My health suffers from a dejection of spirits which I cannot overcome." AA quoted in Keller, "Abigail Adams and the American Revolution," p. 296. 66lcA, "Adventures," 1 January 1802, APM, reel 269. John Aiken, a didactic writer published in Philadelphia in 1793, emphasized that women should keep house and manage it with "order and economy." Husbands were encouraged to take their wives into their confidence about family finances and to help the wife to manage. James, "Changing Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 334 If Louisa was ever to work, she should have begun when she had a house of her own. Louisa, John Quincy, George, Epps, and Whitcomb now moved into a house on Hanover Street in Boston, where Louisa would be expected to take charge. Although she did not state so directly in her memoirs, it seems as though Louisa tried her hand at managing the household and that her mistakes and blunders made her husband so nervous that he took over once again. Louisa explained in her memoirs that John Quincy could not "hear . . . eternally" of her inadequacies "without seeing my faults; and questions of expenditure and mismanagement highly merited on my part; caused perpetual uneasiness of a character painful to both, yet impossible to a v o i d"67 . F u rth e r, possessing no money of her own, Louisa thought she had "no responsibility." Finding that she could not run a house, or "work as they call it" in Quincy, she began to feel incompetent and useless. In England Louisa had "been found incompetent to the cares of the household," and here in Boston she found herself incapable. Louisa asserted that her training for the management of an English household with a large staff of servants was of little use to her in America, where well-trained servants were not to be had. Abigail, appreciative of Catherine Johnson's servant problem, was also sympathetic to Louisa's. Abigail told Louisa there was not the least chance of finding a cook in Boston, as "we have not any such persons," Ideas about Women in the United States," p. 145. JQA, Diary, Day 1801, APM, reel 27, records that he did the marketing for the family. 67lcA, "Adventures," 1 January 1802, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 335 and she could not find one for herself. To care for George, a remarkably active child, Abigail suggested a young girl of ten or eleven years old.68 Louisa interviewed twenty young women as a nurse for her child, none of whom were suitable because "misfortune," not inclination, had forced them into service. Finally settling on one, Louisa discovered the woman had had a baby by a black man, and she dismissed her before she had served a single day. The young girl Louisa actually engaged spent much of her time "in hysterics because she could not see her SweetheartThe unschooled domestics of New England must have seemed more trouble than they were worth after the well-run Johnson household in London. When Louisa wrote in her memoirs that her mother actually had to "cook," she described a totally new and unfamiliar role.70 No one with the slightest pretensions to status in London would have cooked her own meals, and it was even unusual for Louisa to be taken into the kitchen by the Johnson's cook. When Louisa and her sisters learned housekeeping, they learned to supervise a large staff, not to do the work themselves. It was exactly the physical exertion of household work which Louisa now found beyond her strength. It would be difficult to overestimate the importance for an early nineteenth-century woman in New England to run her own home and 68aa to LCA, 8 March 1801, APM, reel 401. 69lcA, "Adventures," 4 December 1802, APM, reel 269. 70lcA, "Adventures," November 1802, APM, reel 269. Elizabeth Peabody, AA's sister, drew the distinction between girls helping in th e ir p a re n ts' homes when they were "novices" and running th e ir own homes. Elizabeth Peabody to AA, 13 June 1809, APM, reel 407. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 336 how useless Louisa must have felt. Home was women's "sphere.” There she, not her husband ruled. The rhythms of the household provided the measure of women's d a y s.71 Domestic work was women's " b u sin e s s ." On both sides of the Atlantic women were supposed to do the shopping, pay the bills, hire and train the servants, and keep the accounts. Time not spent on household management and actual work was deemed to be frivolous. Abigail Adams summed up the American viewpoint: I consider it as an indispensible requisite, that every American wife, should herself know, how to order, and regulate her family, how to Govern her Domesticks, and train up her Children, for this purpose, the all wise creator made woman an help meet for Man and she who fails in these duties: does not answer the end of her creation.72 A woman with little or nothing to do soon became trivialized. All this Louisa must have felt when she wrote that she "could not be useful," yet she could not bring herself to work hard. The Adamses, like so many other American families, were devoted to the idea that people should be useful—useful to their relatives and to their country. The Adams correspondence is filled with exhortations 71 On the subject of women's domesticity, see Norton, Liberty's Daughters, pp. 3-39; "the primary role of the wife was the care of children and the maintenance of the home." Degler, At Odds, pp. 8 and 26-50. "The duties of my station in life do not afford occupation for my mind—At the time which is left me from the interruptions of society its wholly occupied with my needle, household concerns & attention to the children." Margaret B. Smith to Mrs. Kirkpatrick, 21 February 1807, vol. X, Margaret Bayard Smith Papers, LC. "I give out everything, I spend some part of every day in the kitchen. Since I have kept house I have cooked at least have [half] the victuals which have been used." Margaret B. Smith to Mrs. Kirkpatrick, 8 September 1801, vol. X, Margaret Bayard Smith Papers, LC. Praising Mrs. Webster, Abigail Adams's sister wrote that she studied "'household good—which is the female's dignity & praise.'" Elizabeth Peabody to William Shaw, 20 March 1799, Reel //I, The Papers of the Shaw Fam ily, LC. 72aa to Elizabeth Peabody, 5 June 1809, Reel #1, The Papers of the Shaw Family, LC. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 337 to each other to be " u s e f u l . "73 Usefulness was an aspect of a man's or woman's life which stood high in their hierarchy of values. By her physical and emotional inability to perform domestic work, Louisa was set apart again. Later, when one of her sisters lived with her, she would perform some household chores, but never to the extent of most New England women. For whatever reason, or combination of reasons, John Quincy, as he had in London and Berlin, took on the duties of the h o u se h o ld . Odd as it was that Louisa did not run the household in Germany, it was odder still that she did not do so in Boston. New England was the land of competent women, and for a husband to be doing the marketing, hiring the servants, supervising the household, and parceling out even the smallest amounts of money to his wife was singular. It seems clear from later comments made by Louisa that there was constant disagreement between her and John Quincy about her capacity to manage the household. At first glance these disagreements seem to be the reason why he and not she ran the household. She could not keep accounts with the same exact minuteness and perfection 73"The training of them [George and John] to virtue, and usefullness, is very near my Heart." AA to JQA, 1 April 1815, APM, reel 423. "If it be thy will, let me be useful upon Earth!" JQA, Diary, 1 January 1814, APM, reel 32. "May your eminently useful life . . . be preserved for many years." R. G. Norton to JA, 5 March 1812, APM, reel 413. "Your father is well as continues his useful labours." AA to JQA, 30 September 1809, APM, reel 408. "Finally, let the uniform principle of your life, the 'frontlet between your eyes' be how to make your talents and your knowledge most beneficial to your country and most useful to mankind." JQA to his sons, George and John, JQA, Memoirs, 2:17. "I perfectly agree with you, that the habit of constant occupation is the surest basis of happiness." Mary Helen Middleton to Margaret Bayard Smith, [n.d.] December 1823, Margaret Bayard Smith Papers, LC. See also Patrick J. Owens, "John Quincy Adams and American Utilitarianism" (Ph.D. dissertation. University of Notre Dame, 1976). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 338 that John Quincy required—probably no one, woman or man, could have done so. When Louisa failed, he quite simply took over so that it would be done absolutely correctly. Every single solitary penny was accounted for and written down in John Quincy’s account books. Every article which passed through the house, no matter how small, was itemized: bread, 34 cents; eggs, 17 cents; clothesline, 28 cents; parsley, 7 cents.74 In 1802 when John Quincy took over the account keeping from his steward Whitcomb, who had performed the task in Germany, he also began to keep track of every penny spent by Louisa. On 1 February 1801 Louisa had $11.75; on 2 February, $8.75.5; on 3 February, $7.15. When he gave her $10, he recorded that she returned $4.38 and had, therefore, $5.62 left in her possession. After eight months, he quit this practice but continued recording the amounts he gave her. If Louisa wished to buy linen, the money she received was carefully tallied, "Mrs. Adams to purchase linen & . . . $5." He also habitually itemized even the very smallest sums he doled out to her: the 50 cents he gave her on 4 October 1805 and the $2 on 23 October 1807.75 when Louisa complained later that she had no money and therefore could give her children no presents, her feelings may have derived in a great 74JQA, Household account book, 7 May 1805, 2 June 1802, 30 March 1807, 13 November 1802, APM, reel 208. "Employed almost the whole morning in domestic affairs, and did not get to my office until past 11." JQA, Diary, 4 February 1802, APM, reel 27. See also JQA, Diary, 23 April and Day December 1802, APM, reel 27. 75JQA, Pocket memorandum and account book, 14 January, 1, 2, and 3 February 1802, APM, reel 200. JQA, Household account book, 23, 26 October 1807, 4 October 1805, APM, reel 208. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 339 measure from the way in which John Quincy doled out and recorded every penny. On 23 March 1815, the day Louisa arrived in Paris—after a horrendous trip alone across Europe, John Quincy wrote in his financial record book, "Received from my wife on her arrival in Paris, $96. 09."76 His account books were ruled not only for dollars and cents but also for m ills. His exhaustive itemization certainly seems compulsive. As time went on, John Quincy found his household duties more and more onerous, yet he could not let go. Indeed, John Quincy's perfectionist standards of management may have so intimidated Louisa that she felt too fearful even to try and meet them. Failure at even small tasks seems to have crushed her fragile endurance and nerve. Later letters show how afraid she was of John Quincy's standards and especially of "cold looks." What she craved was "gentle correction." Again and again in her memoirs and in her letters, Louisa claimed that John Quincy lacked compassion for women, as well as for all those who could not do what he, with his incredible talents, could do so well. Without the psychic strength to face continual failure, Louisa preferred, perhaps understandably, to retire without trying. Louisa's "removal" from the household in London and her incapacity in Boston had an important political dimension. The history of republics taught Americans that they were the most tender, the most sensitive, and the most easily corrupted form of government. 76JQA, Personal Financial Record 1802-1822, 23 March 1815, p. 135, APM, reel 209. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 340 Therefore, the United States, the last best hope of republicanism, needed virtuous and highly moral citizens. To this purpose the women of America, working quietly out of sight but ever vigilantly in their own homes, were expected to guard the national morals. The role of American women was seen to be crucial, since the republican form of government was thought to be in great danger, although in retrospect, the danger seems more potential than real. The danger, according to the general assumption, came from the heartless, competitive, selfish business world in which men spent their days. Corrupted by the market place, these men were seen as morally weak, in need of moral discipline by their wives, in whose hands were the ethics of the Republic. At the end of the day, men retu rn ed to homes which the c u ltu re id e a liz e d as an oasis of peace, tranquility and calm, and moral virtue. Refreshed by their loving wives and peaceful homes, men could once again return to the debasing world of affairs. Meanwhile, the women, untarnished by the business world, would keep the moral purity of the home and raise the children in an atmosphere of uprightness which would fit them for their future role in a republic.77 Inexorably entwined with the theory of the woman's place in the home was the idea of women's purity. Because women were thought to be morally superior to men (not being debased by the business world), the morals and education of the young children were placed in the hands of 77Kerber, Women of the Republic, pp. 11, 200, 229, 235; Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood, pp. 64-66. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 341 the mother, not the f a t h e r . 78 E xpressions o f th is c e n tr a l, commanding role in the household abound in the literature of the time. In the nineteenth-century home, the woman was the primary mover and the husband a secondary figure. So important was training the children for the Republic that one historian has w ritten, "Motherhood was discussed almost as if it were a fourth branch of government."79 Republican Motherhood gave women an unprecedented political role in America. Denied the vote, removed from political life, American women, as "Republican Mothers," could now help to build and maintain the new Republic. Because she neither ran the household, nor educated the children, Louisa's life lacked this political dimension. Hers was not to be a role of raising the children to be good republicans, nor renewing her husband physically or morally. Uncorruptible and morally pure, John Quincy needed no wife to strengthen his moral fiber. Louisa, removed and incapable of running her own household and overseeing the education of her children, was unable to fulfill the moral role of American women which the times demanded. It was not entirely John Quincy's fault. True, his standards were unreachable. True, the arguments which seem to have arisen must have been difficult and exhausting to endure. But there is in Louisa's writing, a sense of acquiescence, an agreement on her part that she should not have to 7 8 c o tt, The Bonds of Womanhood, pp. 67-68, 69, n . 10; Barbara W e lte r, "The C ult of True Womanhood," in D im ity C o n v ictio n s, pp. 21-41, 79Rerber, Women of the Republic, p. 200. At the turn of the century, the mother's role to provide training for republican citizenship was glorified and sanctified. Reinier, "Attitudes toward and Practices of Childrearing," pp. 133, 259, 263. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 342 work—that "fine" ladies did not w o r k . 80 ghe h e r s e lf was an accom plice in the fact. By proving herself incapable of managing the household, perhaps she hoped to escape the concomitant stresses and strains and find the peace and quiet she considered so necessary for her health.31 Whether Louisa realized that her life lacked this important dimension we do not know. She never specifically wrote, either in her letters or in her memoirs, that she had no active part in the Republic. It is difficult to know whether John Quincy took over the education of the children because he thought Louisa incompetent or because he felt a compulsion to do everything. He did enjoy teaching his children; and yet he started working with them, especially Charles, at an age when it would have been far more appropriate for their mother to be teaching them. Having been reared in England, Louisa may not have been able to feel the republican drive, which fueled women's desires to control their households in the service of the American republic. Louisa had not lived through the Revolution, nor seen the birth of the republic. 80l CA, "Adventures," 1 January 1802, APM, reel 269. 31l CA' s sister took over the housekeeping after JJ's death. "The nature of the illness . . . required repose." LCA, "Adventures," 26 July 1802, APM, reel 269. "As usual very ill after so much exertion." LCA, "Adventures," 30 July 1807, APM, reel 269. LCA was not the only woman to seek peace and quiet when ill. "Like Alice and c o u n tless o th er n in e te e n th -c e n tu ry women, K itty spent much of her time seeking to avoid excitement of any kind, and trying endless remedies that involved rest, quiet and patience .... Nervous women who took to their beds with fainting spells instead of doing the housework and bearing children were opting out of the roles society had prescribed for them." Strouse, Alice James, pp. 69 and 105. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 343 nor experienced the growth of the idea that women should undergird this newest of republics, John Quincy's engagement letters in 1796 show clearly that he thought Louisa harbored unrepublican tendencies, and her own writings show her to have been stamped with European ideas of station. Her brother's behavior had been labeled as "aristocratical." Her mother was English and, although partially cut off from English society, could hardly establish a fully republican family in London with a husband who had left America four years before the revolution began. No matter how patriotic Joshua Johnson was, he had been continuously abroad from 1771 to 1797. In short, Louisa had not been raised in a republican atmosphere. A further aspect of Louisa's incapacity to work was her feeling that she was a "fine Lady." Perhaps she felt "work," as the New Englanders meant i t , would d eclass h e r. Hands made fo r play in g music on the harp and the piano could hardly be expected to do the rough work of housekeeping. John Ogden, an American, complained in 1793 that women were discovering "it is not genteel to work," an attitude which would gain momentum in the middle nineteenth century. But in 1800 New England women were expected to run houses. Louisa may have agreed with those who believed that the more frail and ill, the more upperclass and interesting a woman was. Robust health and physical capability seemed to some to be signs of inelegance and crudeness. Always proud, Louisa was unlikely to perform work which might call into question a fragile Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 344 gentility. Perhaps for this reason she shied away from the New England concept of housekeeping.82 Louisa's lack of a dowry may also explain her inability to work. "I had no private expenses, because I had no means, therefore I had no responsibility!"83 she wrote later in discussing household work. In her mind, responsibility and financial contribution were strongly linked. The long arm of Catherine Johnson's ability to manage her own money may be here a t work. The fa c t of her m o th er's fin a n c ia l contribution to the Johnson household may have transformed itself somewhere in Louisa's mind into the idea that without a like contribution she could have no responsibility. Without a dowry, she may have felt like a second-rate citizen within the family and, thinking herself inferior, been unable to make a full contribution to the family's welfare. If Louisa felt incapable of running a household, how then could her sisters have worked so well? In the first place, Nancy married her cousin Walter Hellen, who was wealthy in his own right and did not need a wife's dowry. Louisa's health seems to have been far worse that her s i s t e r s '. The o th er Johnson g i r l s m arried much la t e r than Louisa and Nancy, when several years in Washington and Boston had taught them how respectable work was in the United States. Louisa had been the only girl to marry out of the Tower Hill home and into an affluent London 82wertz and Wertz, Lying-In, p. 111. For the opposite view, held by some, that women needed healthy bodies and healthy minds to bear and raise children, see Barbara Welter, Dimity Convictions, pp. 207 and 208, n . 65. 33lcA, "Adventures," 1 January 1802, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 345 life. Further, she had been instantly propelled into the diplomatic life in Berlin, where she was not expected to keep house in the same sense as New England meant it. Last, but not least, only Louisa had a husband like John Quincy. It is possible that John Quincy's expressed feelings that Louisa was le s s then fu lly rep u b lican may have in a su b tle way encouraged him to take over the household. He may have felt, obscurely and never quite consciously, that Louisa was not morally fit to run a republican household nor to educate republican sons. John Quincy had been to Tower H ill. His parents worried in 1796 that Louisa might be corrupted by Court influences—John Quincy's letters show he thought she had already imbibed European ideas. Joshua Johnson had promised John Quincy th a t Louisa would have money and had fa ile d to make good on his offer. Certainly, Louisa's move towards John Quincy in Holland had aroused his suspicions that she was less than truthful. John Quincy may have felt, very obscurely, that the Johnsons were devious and that (as she feared) he thought she and her parents had lured him into marriage. In short, John Quincy may have distrusted Louisa, and her removal from the household and her very short financial leash may have been a measure of this distrust. He certainly questioned her capacity to live in a republican country when they returned from his post overseas. The American culture conceived of motherhood as a republican act. If John Quincy mistrusted her republican feelings in Europe, he may also have questioned them in America and questioned them enough to have felt compelled to be both mother and father, leaving to Louisa only the biological side of motherhood. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 346 In 1811 John Quincy summed up L o u isa 's ro le in the m arriage; "She has always been a faithful and affectionate wife, and a careful, tender, indulgent, and watchful mother to our children, all of whom she nursed h e r s e l f . "84 He then admitted that there were "differences . . . in opinions in regard to domestic economy, and to the education of children, between us." Yet he determined the domestic economy; he controlled the education of the children. In her husband's view, Louisa's contribution to their marriage was emotional, yet essentially passive. John Quincy had definite convictions about women's role in life. He assigned to women two active functions within the family: to direct men's feelings toward their children and maintain the focus of family life. Yet his description of Louisa's role implies neither of these sentient activities. Even in the emotional sphere—so much a woman's dominion— Louisa's role was circumscribed and diminished, at variance with her husband's expectations for all women and in every way different from the very central role carried out by her mother-in-law. Abigail was the center of a very extended family, and she kept a large household functioning smoothly. It was to her that family members looked for comfort and support in time of troubles. Louisa described her mother-in-law as "Full of energy, bouyant and 34JQA, Memoirs, 2:283. Qn JQA's ideas on woman's role in society, see John Quincy Adams, "Society and Civilization," The American Review 2 (July 1845):80. Didactic books "reinforced women's orientation toward interpersonal goals in the emotional realm rather than s e l f - r e l i a n t accom plishm ents." C o tt, The Bonds of Womanhood, p . 71. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 347 elastic . . . the guiding Planet around which all revolved, performing their separate duties only by the impulse of her magnetic power." Yet Louisa wrote these encomiums thirty years after she first arrived in Quincy. In 1802 Louisa and Abigail did not understand one another, and Louisa often misconstrued acts which Abigail meant to be kindnesses. "Paltry rival jealousies of those, vrtiose interests it was to deceive her [Abigail]" got in the w a y .35 Later Louisa would so admire Abigail's letters that she thought they should be published to give women confidence, but when she was first in Quincy, Louisa knew her own letters (and her own abilities to manage her small household) were inadequate and suffered in comparison. John Quincy had feared Louisa's background in 1796. Now he worried that Louisa would talk about her European experiences. She explained in her memoirs that she promised John Quincy she would not discuss her Berlin life in Boston. Probably, although she did not state it , John Quincy feared that a half-English wife discussing life in a monarchy could damage his republican reputation and hurt a 35lcA' s change of heart about AA is recorded in LCA, Miscellany, 1 September 1836, APM, reel 268. AA's sister told her son William Shaw, "Go to her [AA] for Instruction—receive it as from the Delphian Qracle." Elizabeth Peabody to William Shaw, 20 November 1799, Reel #1, The Papers of the Shaw Family, LC. For praise of AA's letter writing, see Clark, Life and Letters of Dolley Madison, p. 7. Not only did LCA feel inferior to AA in the housewifely arts, but she thought tea ' s wife, Ann Harrod, "Versed in all the duties of a bon menage . . . a most striking contrast to poor me; who know but little of it—And it was certainly not in London or at the Court of Prussia that I could leam the management of a Quincy establishment." LCA, "Adventures," 16 July 1807, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 348 possible political career. He insisted from the time he came to America that political parties made it impossible for him to be a politician, yet he feared his wife's experiences in a c o u r t .36 His concern may indicate that his aversion to politics was, in these early days, more rhetorical than real. Epps, of course, Louisa explained, could not be silenced and made ridiculous statements, which then re fle c te d ad versely on L o u i s a . 37 Even more difficult, after some months the Adams's finances made it necessary to dismiss Epps, the maid who had been with the Johnsons in London and with Louisa in Berlin. Epps, Louisa admitted later, took better care of George than she did. Now Louisa was really alone; her last tie with London gone, George entirely in her care, and her family in Washington.38 Not only did Louisa feel inferior to Abigail, but everyone talked to her, she related, about Maria Frazier "as if they were afraid that I did not know the tale." When she met Maria, Louisa found her all that had been described to her. By 1840, when she wrote her memoirs, she had decided that John Quincy wished to return to his first love and that she—poor sickly Louisa—stood in the w a y . 3 9 There seems to have been little in Boston, except John Adams's affection, to bolster her self-confidence. Her husband had once loved someone who, in Louisa's 36JQA to TBA, 27 September 1801, APM, reel 401. 37lcA, "Adventures," 1 January 1802, APM, reel 269. 33Ibid. Epps later married Whitcomb, JQA's steward. LCA, ’Adventures," March 1802, APM, reel 269. 39LCA, "Adventures," 1 January 1802, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 349 eyes, was better than she in every way; her mother-in-law was a paragon; she was unable to run the house in such a manner as to please her husband. Unsure of herself before she married, the experience of New England undermined her confidence further. In A p ril 1802 Joshua Johnson d ie d . Louisa received the news from John Quincy, who tried to soften the shock. Upon hearing of her father's death, Louisa was thrown into such "agitation" that she was ill for days. Even the simultaneous news that her sister Nancy had, a week before, been safely delivered of a baby gave her only "as much joy as she was . . . susceptible of receiving."90 Louisa had now lost the father she had loved "almost to madness," the parent she had tried to emulate, on whose every word she had hung. While in Washington, John Quincy had looked over Johnson's books and thought he had been "considered a prey by every man with whom he had dealt."91 Louisa portrayed her father in her memoirs as blameless in life; his death occurred before he could be vindicated. Although his will provided for h is w ife, th e re was no money w ith which to pay her the y e a rly stip en d the will specified.92 And certainly there would now be no money for Louisa, as Johnson had intended. Catherine Johnson, with a number of small children, had no funds and no man to look after business matters. The life of any widow was difficult; for Catherine Johnson, a 90JQA to Walter Hellen, 28 April 1802, APM, reel 135. In her memoirs, LCA blamed her father's death on his removal from his position of Superintendent of Stamps by Thomas Jefferson. LCA, "Adventures," January 1802, APM, reel 269. 91JQA, Diary, 26 October 1801, APM, reel 27. 92joshua Johnson's Will, APM, reel 603. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 350 foreigner, the blow was especially hard. Abigail wrote Catherine a supportive and moving letter, attributing Johnson's death to the "injustice of man inflicted upon him and his Family.”93 A b ig a il's support for the Johnsons was sturdy and long lasting. In no way do Abigail's letters show that she deserved Louisa's later accusation that she had never liked Catherine Johnson. Boston social life helped Louisa recover from her grief. Visits by highly placed Bostonians and invitations to their parties pleased and flattered her. Comparing the 1840s with the early 1800s, Louisa found the earlier time more congenial. Wealth, she remembered, was the support of a "handsome," but not extravagant, social life not merely a "gew-gaw display of meritricious show." At the earlier time, she wrote later, fortunes were still small and wealth was not necessary to enjoy a wide acquaintanceship.94 Louisa attributed their popularity to friendship for her husband, but it is clear Boston appreciated her, too. John Quincy's reduced income, as a struggling lawyer, had no bearing on the kind of social life they lived. They entertained as best they could and were included, until John Quincy's political apostacy in 1807, in Federalist society. Louisa wrote that she was delighted with the suppers, the "music, dancing and song," to which she responded in Boston as she had in London and Berlin. So happy was Louisa in Boston that she described her years there (independent of 93AA to CJ, 20 May 1802, APM, re e l 401; AA to TBA, 23 May 1802, APM, reel 401. 94LCA, "Adventures," 4 July 1803, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 351 politics, which she hated) as the happiest period of her life in America. Indeed, Louisa shone as a Boston hostess. Her ability to make guests feel at ease, brightened and relaxed an atmosphere that cauld be formal and stiff. Inviting over forty guests to a dance at her small house, she opened all the rooms, upstairs and downstairs, placing refreshments on "prettily ornamented small tables in every direction." She thought the dance had pleased the guests, and the success of the party is recorded in John Quincy's comment, "I danced myself the whole evening."95 No matter how settled in Massachusetts John Quincy seemed, he was toying with plans to move to the New York frontier. So serious was he about th is move th a t he w rote h is b ro th e r Thomas th a t he would establish only a "temporary" residence in Boston.96 The basis for the plan was the debt his brother-in-law. Colonel William S. Smith, owed to John Quincy—a debt the Colonel, typically, could not discharge.97 John Quincy thought to take land the Colonel owned in New York for the debt and invited his brother Thomas to settle there with him. Qne wonders if John Quincy had truly considered Louisa, her love of gay, urban s o c ia l l i f e , and her f r a i l h e a lth when he made the su g g estio n . Abigail, hearing of the plan, thought Thomas might be "discontented and unhappy."98 How much more likely that Louisa would have been 95JQA, Diary, 7 January 1803, APM, reel 30. 96joa to TBA, 28 November 1801, APM, reel 401; TBA to JQA, 7 December 1801, APM, reel 401. 97JQA to William S. Smith, 20 November 1801, APM, reel 135. 98aa to TBA, 7 February 1802, APM, reel 401. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 352 miserable? If Louisa found New England life difficult, and if her health was infirm in Boston, how long would it have held out in rural New York? So odd was the suggestion that they live on the frontier, that much credence must be given to Louisa's complaints that John Quincy lived in a world of his own, hardly noticing those about him. Louisa's health was a serious and recurrent problem in Boston. As in Berlin, Louisa was constantly threatened with miscarriages when pregnant with the three children born in the United States. The medical profession was of no more assistance to her in Boston than in B e r l i n .99 she was at this time suffering from time to time with hysterics, with violent cramps, fainting spells, headaches, and also with crippling pain in her hands. The pains in her hands, which she had also experienced while in Washington, may indicate that Louisa suffered from Reynaud's syndrome. Reynaud's syndrome, which can be triggered by emotional stress, is a sympathetic reaction of the nervous system which constricts the blood vessels of the hands, causing severe pain.100 por relief, laudanum poultices were applied to her aching hands. Louisa also took laudanum internally to quiet her nerves. 99lcA thought the damp climate caused her illnesses. LCA to AA, ante 8 March 1802, APM, reel 401. By the time LCA had been in Quincy for a year, AA despaired her health would ever improve. AA to TBA, 7 November 1802, APM, reel 401. lOO^ary D. Restifo, M.D., suggested to me that LCA might have been suffering from Reynaud's syndrome. For a description of Reynaud's syndrome, see Paul B. Beeson, Walsh McDermott, James B. Wyngarden, eds.. Textbook of Medicine (Philadelphia; W. B. Saunders Co., 1979), p. 1305. For LCA's other episodes, see LCA to JQA, 2 October 1801, APM, re e l 401; and JQA, D iary, 29 A pril 1803, APM, re e l 30. Laudanum was a hydroalcoholic solution containing 10 percent opium (1 percent of morphine). Alfred G. Gilman and Louis S. Goodman, The Pharmacological Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 353 Although often ill, Louisa did attend parties in the way William Vans Murray had predicted to John Quincy. She learned to live with her illnesses and, in spite of them, went out often. Her way of handling illness was not unusual. Margaret B. Smith, her contemporary in Washington, described how she kept active despite illness. I have often gone out with the ague, sometimes with fever on me, so much has habit done in reconciling me to this enemy. I know that nothing will keep off the fit, and may as well have it in one place as another. I very seldom now go to bed, but sit up or lie down on the sopha, have a bowl of tea, and a basin by me and then give no further trouble, but take my fit with the greatest sang froid.101 This is surely an account of life lived courageously in the face of continued i l l h e a lth and g re a t p ain . Women's re a c tio n to th e ir sufferings ranged widely, from total invalidism to active, useful lives in spite of illness. Louisa's ill health was an ongoing and serious problem for her and her family. At the same time, she did, at least until family tragedies overtook her in later years, maintain an active social life. Louisa's later comments about Boston men and women are pithy, colorful, direct, and penetrating. Louisa's ability to appreciate and describe people whose characters contained aspects almost diametrically opposed to each other is remarkable. Just as stiking was Louisa's ability to catch nuance in character. Two men, superficially with the same characteristics she described differently. Colonel William Smith she described as a "gay deluded boy," charming and the plague of doting Basis of Therapeutics (New York; Macmillan Publishing Co., 1980), p . 509. 101 Smith, Forty Years, p. 33. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 354 w om en.102 George Blake, another lady's man, she took more seriously. He had "somthing in the tone of his conversation that like the noted rattle of the snake, gave warning of danger."103 Louisa's perception was keen, and a person's morals counted with her as much as physical beauty or charm. Louisa particularly admired Colonel Smith's long- suffering, but uncomplaining wife Abigail, especially the strength which equipped her sister-in-law to bear a most difficult life calmly.104 Louisa had a sense of humor and a sense of the ridiculous which was sharpened, probably, by being always an outsider to the scenes which she observed. Before long, the arrival of various Johnson sisters in the Adams household would give Louisa someone to regale with the anecdotes she carried home from the parties, a role which Thomas Adams had filled in Berlin. As in Berlin, where she gravitated to the English group, so now in Boston, Louisa was particular friends with a Mrs. Gardiner Green, with whom she felt a particular sympathy since, like Louisa, she had been educated in England. Further, Mrs. Green took Louisa to the Episcopal Trinity Church, whose rituals were far more congenial to Louisa than the cold fare of the New England Congregationalist C hurch.105 Like Abigail Adams before her, Louisa found it difficult to accustom herself to another church with its different ritual. Abigail had yearned for the plain New England forms when she lived in 102lcA, "Adventures," 4 July 1803, APM, reel 269. 103 Ib id . 104 Ib id . 105lcA, "Adventures," March 1802, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 355 Philadelphia; 106 Louisa now wished for the more ornate Episcopalian rite. Although she had been weaned away from the Catholic religion as a child, Louisa's appreciation of the beauty of ritual remained unimpaired, and her longing had been satisfied by the Episcopal church, to which John Quincy accompanied her while in England. George Adams had been christened in an Episcopal church by the Chaplain to the English foreign ministry; but in Boston, John Quincy's religion took him to the Congregational Church. Religion and childbearing were closely connected in Louisa's mind. Her yearning for a child, she thought ”a sanctified hope," and part of her happiness in being a mother may have stemmed from her conviction that, for her, motherhood was a holy act.107 Louisa wrote in her memoirs that because of the children and out of loyalty to John Quincy, she attended the Congregational Church, although she found the noise of the congregation (snuffling through their noses) and the singers and the time of the service, at half-past four in the afternoon, strange. Christmas Day, always a holy day before, was not one now. She believed the form of religion ultimately did not matter, if one's heart "be true." What she felt strongly was that her opinions were at variance with those of John Quincy's friends, forming another point of difference between her and New England people. 106pQr LCA's view of the Congregational Church, see LCA, Miscellany, 15 August 1832, APM, reel 271. "There is something more cheerful and comfortable in an Episcopalian than in a Presbyterian Church." JA to AA, 27 October 1799, APM, reel 396. ^^7LCA wrote, "until I became a Mother; [I had] perhaps not properly weighed and considered [religion]. LCA, "Adventures," 3 February 1803, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 356 The one point of difference between New Englanders and herself that Louisa did not fix upon was her speech. It may be that the difference between New England and English speech in the early nineteenth century was less than now. It may be that the formalities of life were so strange that nuances in speech seemed hardly worth mentioning. Possibly Louisa was less attuned to different accents. For whatever reason, among the long list of New England dissonances, the speech of the people was not one of them. It is clear from her memoirs that Louisa was seldom without female companionship. Louisa Smith, who had been so jealous when she first met Louisa, paid the young Adamses a long visit during the winter of J.8U2, and the follow ing summer C atherine Johnson and C aroline came to stay for an extended visit. Catherine Johnson seems to have made friends among the women of Boston as easily as she had in Washington. When her mother left, Louisa wrote later, the trial was "very, very severe."103 Caroline, too, made friends quickly, being particularly drawn to the daughter of Louisa's great friend Mrs. Katherine Dexter. Caroline flung herself into social life in Boston attending one ball after another, sometimes with John Quincy when Louisa was too ill to go. According to Louisa, young William Shaw, John Quincy's law apprentice who lived with the Adamses, fell in love with Caroline, as did another young Bostonian, Charles Bradbury. Neither of these encounters led to m a r r i a g e . 109 IOS lcA, "Adventures," 26 June, October 1802, APM, reel 269. 109lcA, "Adventures," 30 December 1802, 13 January 1803, APM, r e e l 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 357 The family's life now took on a regular routine. John Quincy spent his weeks in Boston, working at his law practice and at his job as one of the Commissioners of Bankruptcies. On weekends he went out to Quincy, most often alone. He told Thomas his weekly visits to Quincy, which he described as "Arcadia," had become almost a "necessary of life." In Quincy, he wrote, he could find tranquility, rest, relaxation, swimming, and leisure time to read in the library, all things closed to him in the "perpetual agitation . . . of the week."110 If the agitation of the week included an often ill wife and a very active child, he did not say. Louisa wrote in her reminiscences that she could not expect the same attention from John Quincy now that he was in business as she had enjoyed in Berlin and candidly admitted that "like a petted child I pined at what ought to have gratified me."HI As much as she understood the reasons for his business, she still complained. In 1802 she stated that George's birthday passed almost without notice.112 Just as she had been in Berlin, Louisa was ambivalent about in te lle c tu a l women. She found Hannah Adams, the Boston au th o r, "one of the most rem arkable Women of the age—The World was to her a vacuum —She breathed in it and had her being—But Books were the only thing she appeared to delight in." Louisa described how, stimulated by a discussion of Rousseau, Hannah "burst forth . . . in a Strain of poetic fervor almost startling to an imagination warm even as mine." Louisa llOjQA to TBA, 25 July 1802, APM, reel 401. HI lcA, "Adventures," March 1803, APM, reel 269. 112lCA, "Adventures," 12 April 1802, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 358 marked the contrast between Hannah Adams's "peculiar" appearance and the "beauty" of her speech. She felt overwhelmed by Hannah's knowledge more fitted, she thought, for John Adams's erudition than her own. But having admitted her own intellectual incompetence, she declared that she had felt proud to be the one to "draw out a mind of such strength and purity."113 t o be a catalyst was allowable; to be intellectual was not. She both admired and feared strong-minded New England women, even writing that John Quincy should have had "a Wife with a soaring mind."114 Madame de Genlis, an eighteenth-century female w riter, appears in Louisa's memoirs in both a negative and positive light.H 5 "Beauty, elegance, and propriety" were not necessarily the province of intellectual women, yet Louisa felt "showy, strong minded Women . . . to be what God intended woman to b e , before she was cowed by her M aster man. "116 Louisa's view, that strong women were more womanly than the frivolous and dependent females who were more typically admired, is unusually modern and may have been the result of sixty-five years' experience when she wrote her memoirs. She may have had this insight only fitfully when young and, if so, certainly did not dare to follow its implications. Perhaps, for all her anger toward John Quincy's 113lCA, "Adventures," 19 November 1806, APM, reel 269. 114lcA, "Adventures," 4 July 1803, APM, reel 269. 115"She [Mrs. Sullivan] was altogether an extraordinary Woman of masculine mind, and fine person, very much like Madame de Genlis . . . . Mrs. Winthrop with beauty, grace, elegance and propriety; formed a striking contrast to Madame de Genlis, and all her tribe." LCA, "Adventures," August 1802, APM, reel 269. 116lbid. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 359 Incessant intellectual work, she may have been drawn to just that side of him. And having been drawn to his work, and being shut out, she was perhaps jealous of what she wanted and could not have. In fact, Louisa herself now was experiencing a certain intellectual broadening in Boston—John Quincy was reading to her aloud. "In the fervour of a lately acquired Parental duty" he read to Louisa books on children's education—Plutarch, Locke and Maria E d g ew o rth117 . jje also read her L ocke's essay "On the Human Understanding" and Locke's essay on identity and diversity—all rather difficult reading for a woman whose tastes had run to novels.H3 However ill-educated, she had discernment and taste. Congreves' Morning Bride, she considered insipid compared to Shakespeare and insisted upon returning to the stronger fare. John Quincy then worked h is way through many Shakespeare p la y s , and in one week in October 1802 read Louisa nine books of Paradise Lost.119 in true nineteenth-century style, Louisa passively absorbed strong intellectual fare from the active male; but she was not untouched. In spite of her claim that she had not greatly benefited from the books, her letters from this time onward display a maturity which may, in some part, reflect the literature to which she was exposed. 117Ibid. JOA wrote upon reading Montaigne's essays, "that upon the Education of children seizes my attention more forcibly, than any of its predecessors." JQA, Diary, 22 April 1803, APM, reel 30. llBjQA, Diary, 23 February, 29 March 1802, APM, reel 27. 119jq a , Diary, 11 August 1802, 15, 22, 28 March 1803, APM, reels 27 and 30. JQA, Diary, 14-22 October, APM, reel 27. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 360 Louisa's outlook, broadened perhaps by her readings, was to be expanded further by her husband's political career. Despite John Quincy's insistent assertion that he would not enter politics, he had been back from Prussia only seven months when, in April 1802, he was elected to the Massachusetts State Senate. In November of the same year, he ran and lost the election for the Federal House of Representatives from the Boston D istrict. The loss, he wrote in his Diary ”reliev[ed] me from a heavy burden, and a thankless task."120 But in February 1803 he was willing once again to shoulder the "heavy burden" of national office and was elected Senator from Massachusetts by the State House of Representatives.121 xhe plans to move to western New York were quickly abandoned. John Quincy was now a committed politician on the national level and Louisa a political wife. To be a Senator's wife in the early nineteenth century meant to be constantly faced with choices, few of which were pleasant. Congress sat between November and March, most of the work not even starting until after the Christmas and New Year holidays. Year after year, the inevitable question had to be faced. Who should make the arduous trip to Washington; who should stay home? After only fourteen months in her own home, Louisa was faced with a yearly removal to Washington or a yearly separation from John Quincy. Complicating the decision was the fact that Louisa's sister Nancy Hellen now lived in Washington, and therefore Louisa was as drawn to going to Washington as she was to staying home. Most Congressmen, having no residence in Washington, 120 jq A, D iary, 3 November 1802, APM, re e l 27. 121 jqa , Diary, 3 February 1803, APM, reel 30. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 361 left their wives at home and lived, during the sessions, in boarding houses which sprang up around the Capitol. No sooner was the election of John Quincy to the Senate decided, with its unsettling implications for Louisa's residence and peace of mind, than a further blow fell. With his father's approval, John Quincy had selected the London house of Bird, Savage and Bird as his European bankers, and both John Quincy and his father had drawn bills on the House. When Bird, Savage and Bird failed, the bills drawn by the Adamses were protested. John Quincy had purchased his house and outfitted his office with these bills; they were now r e t u r n e d . 122 Cash to pay his own creditors was John Quincy's first and most pressing need. The Quincy lands which John Adams had purchased were not easily marketed. John Quincy tried to sell his house back to the original owner, who refused, but he sold the house to another buyer. The Adamses were, however, not without friends. In London, Rufus King, and others stepped forward and covered the b ills.123 A friend in America also came to the aid of the family. Bird, Savage and Bird did finally pay its debts to the Adamses, the last payment being made twenty-three years later. Although in no way responsible for the crisis, John Quincy felt keenly he must help in discharging the bills. He had been entrusted with choosing a banking house in Europe, and he would "not refuse to share in the s u f f e r i n g ."124 without drawing the 122Bemis, Foundations, p. 114. 123 Ib id . 124jQA, Diary, 1, 2 April 1803, APM, reel 30. For the history of these funds, which go back to John Adams's stay in Holland during the Revolutionary War, see JQA, Memoirs, 1:263, n. 1. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 362 contrast to Louisa, whose nerves were always racked by bad news, John Quincy wrote that his parents "bore [the news] with proper firmness and composure."125 Louisa did not bear up as well as her in-laws. She admitted in her memoirs that she showed her grief too strongly when she signed the deed for the sale of the Boston house. In the face of necessity, she gave her emotions no validity. She thought that if she understood the reason for the sale, rationality should change her feelings. That she could feel badly and at the same time agree with the necessity to sell the house did not occur to her. She explained that her lack of a dowry gave her no right to feel sad, as her family's penuriousness gave her no claim, even to her house. This ongoing feeling that her family's finances affected her position in her married life was a serious block to any satisfaction in her marriage. Louisa wrote that a woman's home was "a blessing under every circumstance" and that there "her happiness should be f i x e d . "126 Although she could not know it then, she would not have a permanent home of her own for many years. At the beginning of September 1803 the house was sold and the fu rn itu re tran sp o rte d to 125"She [AA] had known sorrow, but her sorrow was silent." JQA quoted in Mabel B a r tle tt and Sophie B aker, M others, Makers of Men, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Exposition Press, 1952), p. 21. LCA's behavior under s tre s s was q u ite lik e th a t of some o th er women. "Last n ig h t after watching anxiously for Mr. Smith, until after the hour when I expected him, I felt so entirely dejected that I gave way to my tears & was weeping . . . ." Margaret Bayard Smith, Diary, [n.d.j, Margaret Bayard Smith Papers, LC. 126lca , "Adventures," October 1803, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 363 Quincy. Louisa, who thought her health depended on quiet and rest now began a life of incessant change and travelling. During the upheavals of John Quincy's election to the Senate, the Adams's financial crisis and the proposed sale of the house, Louisa was in the throes of another pregnancy. The baby was due in June or early July, and Louisa reported in her memoirs that the original plan was for her, Caroline, and George to go to Washington in the spring and board with the Hellens.127 Her mother, now living at the Hellene's, could then have been with her at the birth of the child, a most desirable comfort to Louisa, even though Caroline was with her in Boston. John Quincy could have joined her in Washington in the fall. At the last moment, plans were changed; and to Louisa's disappointment, she stayed in Quincy. It is, of course, doubtful that Louisa could have sustained the trip without losing the baby. Louisa's disappointment indicates the strength of her wish to be surrounded by her sisters and mother when she gave birth, even at the cost of leaving John Quincy for seven months. As the baby's birth approached, John Quincy's anxiety increased. Abigail thought her son looked "as tho he had the trouble himself to pass through."^28 gbe thought Louisa "feeble" and warned Thomas Adams that in choosing a wife, "a healthy & good constitution is an object with those who consider m a t u r e l y . "^29 go worried was John 127lca , "Adventures," May 1803, APM, reel 269, 128 aa to TEA, 20 June 1803, APM, reel 402. 129ibid. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 364 Quincy that in early June he did not go out to Quincy for several weekends. But over J u ly 4 th (in 1803 on a Monday) he went to h is parents alone. Louisa stayed in Boston, explaining to Abigail that the expense of a carriage would be double because of the holiday. On the morning of July 4th, "as the first guns fired" for the celebration of Independence, Louisa was delivered of another boy, this time named John Adams. John Quincy, returning home in the morning, was informed he had a second son. In telling Catherine Johnson, John Quincy honestly stated, "I was myself out at Quincy spending Sunday."130 Louisa gave much c re d it to C aroline fo r keeping the baby a liv e when i t was bom by caring for it when others in attendance were negligent. Upon hearing the news, Catherine Johnson, wrote first of the "pleasing intellegence of the safety" of Louisa and only secondly about the child, thus revealing women’s realistic fears of the dangers of c h i l d b i r t h .131 Louisa recovered slowly from the birth of John, and it was the very end of September before she could go out. Although no discussion of the decision appears in John Quincy's Diary, Louisa and the children were to accompany John Quincy to Washington and board with Nancy and Walter Hellen. Before they could leave, the Boston house had to be vacated and the furniture moved to Quincy. Because of Louisa's ill health, John Quincy oversaw most of the move. On 1 October 1803, when John was th ree months o ld , L o u isa, John Quincy , the two children, Caroline, and the maid Patty began the first 130JQA to CJ, 4 July 1803, APM, reel 402. 131cj to JQA, n.d. but after 4 July 1803, APM, reel 402. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 365 of the almost yearly trips to and from Washington. Although Louisa knew the trip would be difficult, she also knew that at the end, she would be with her family. The ties that bound Louisa to Boston were e a s ily broken. She had enjoyed some of Boston l i f e , e s p e c ia lly the social activities, but the only "home" she would now have was one of the small farmhouses on the original Adams farm (Penn's H ill) which John Quincy had purchased from his father. Upon leaving for Washington, John Quincy wrote in his Diary, "I have now closed my residence in Boston, probably for several years—Perhaps f o r e v e r ."132 132JQA, Diary, Day September 1803, APM, reel 30. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER VII A SENATOR'S WIFE While the wife of a United States Senator, Louisa found her family's life fragmented and unsettled. Few professions impinge so strongly on family life as that of a politician; and Louisa, like other political wives, was unable to solve the dilemma of difficult family choices. John Quincy had warned her in his engagement letters that "I too Louisa, am much of a politician."! She was now to find out what, he meant. Always anxious about separations, Louisa needed the fortitude and strength she did not possess to endure with equanimity the dislocations that were the price politicians' families paid for the men's careers. Louisa was, however, in full accord with the aim of her husband's career—the Presidency.2 Even before she had to face the emotional pain of family separation, Louisa had to sustain the physical struggles of travelling. Travelling in the early nineteenth century was strenuous, and the journey between Boston and Washington p a r tic u la r ly s o .3 The Adamses and Caroline Johnson left on 1 October 1803, going to Providence by IjQA to LCJ, 20 February 1797, APM, reel 383. 2lcA to JQA, 20 J u ly , 12 August 1804, APM, re e l 403. 3por JQA's factual account of the trip, see JQA, Diary, 1-20 October 1803, APM, reel 30. For LCA's more emotional account, see LCA, "Adventures," 1-12 October 1803, APM, reel 269. 366 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 367 stagecoach. Yellow fever in New York City prohibited all intercourse with that city, so a boat had to be found in Providence to take the p arty to Powles Hook (sometimes c a lle d Paules Hook, now Jersey C ity ). Contrary winds prevented their sailing the next day. Then, after they finally left for New Jersey, storms and heavy seas forced the boat to put in at Newport, but not before the two-year-old George had managed to throw his shoes and the keys to the trunks overboard. At Newport the party lodged at a boarding house, whose landlady Louisa remembered almost forty years later "with pleasure." There they waited. John Quincy summed up the situation, "We could not proceed yesterday though with a perfectly fair wind, because we had foul weather; and this day we cannot sail though with fair weather, because we have foul wind."4 Finally sailing on 7 October the family divided up the cabins, "elegantly termed State Rooms." Louisa and the two children took one cabin, Caroline and the maid slept in another. All were dreadfully seasick. Louisa, sickest of all, lay in a small berth, with George ill on one side of her and John on the other. The cabin boy, whose job it was to help the passengers, spent his time top-side. Louisa was frightened by overhearing a sailor say the "Rigging was so rotten, it would not bear them to the Sails.The next day John Quincy persuaded the captain to make for New London, where they again took rooms and reboarded the vessel at eleven o'clock in the evening, finally getting to Powles Hook the next day. Transfaring to a tavern in Newark which was crowded with refugees from the yellow fever raging in New York, the 4jq a , Diary, 5 October 1803, APM, reel 30. 5lcA, "Adventures," 9 October 1803. APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 368 whole Adams party was put into one room, where Louisa was extremely ill with a "violent fever," Quite naturally, the innkeeper and others thought Louisa had contracted yellow fever, so she was treated as a p a ria h . Louisa's illness forced the family to remain in Newark for three days. A local doctor, who was himself afraid of contracting the disease, prescribed a powerful opiate, and Louisa, her fever subsiding, began to recover.6 Three days later, although Louisa was still very weak, the Adamses travelled by stage to Elizabethtown, where once again bad weather delayed them. Another stage brought the party to Princeton, where Louisa was forced to rest in bed, while the rest of the family was again strictly segregated in case Louisa had caught yellow fever. Three more stages, from Princeton to Trenton, to B ristol, and to Frankford brought them into contact with another set of refugees from yellow fever—this time from Philadelphia. Cared for by John Quincy and Caroline, Louisa recovered, and the next day, the seventeenth since they had left Boston, they travelled through Chester, Pennsylvania, to Wilmington, Delaware, and the next day to Havre de Grace, Maryland. Poor accommodations and nearly impassible roads inconvenienced them further. On the twentieth day after they left Boston, the Adamses reached the Hellen's house in Washington, where they had arranged to board until Congress rose in the spring. Louisa was not the only woman to find travelling difficult. In 1789 A bigail had journeyed from P rovidence, Rhode Isla n d to New York 5lcA, "Adventures," 10 October 1803, APM, reel 269; JQA, Diary, 9 October 1803, APM, reel 30. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 369 City by boat. "We were," she wrote her sister, "five days upon the water. Heat, want of rest, sea sickness and terror, for I had my share of that, all contributed to fatigue me . . . Louisa [Smith] was very sick . . . Polly was half dead all the passage." She resolved "upon what I have frequently before, that I would never again embark upon the water."7 Abigail found travelling by road almost as strenuous; and after a trip over the New Jersey roads in 1797, which she found "very dangerous," spent two days in bed, which she reported was not enough to alleviate all her sufferings.& Louisa thought Congress should not begrudge the mileage they paid to their members, since they and their families travelled at "their peril of life and comfort to get to their p o s ts ."9 The Hellen's house in Washington, where Louisa, John Quincy, the two boys, and a nurse settled in, was as much the center of an extended familiy as was "Peacefield" in Quincy. Nancy, her husband, their two children, the Adamses, Caroline and Catherine, and Louisa's four other sisters all lived in the one house. Louisa's sisters, now grown into young women were ready to enter society, but Louisa wrote that Catherine's impecuniousness made this impossible. Louisa summed up her mother's position when she wrote Washington "seemed" to be her mother's home. Left widowed and without financial support, Catherine Johnson depended entirely on her nephew 7aa to Mary Cranch, 28 June 1789, Mitchell, ed.. New Letters, p . 12. 3a A to Mary Cranch, 16 May 1797, M itchell, ed.. New Letters, p. 90. 9lcA, "Adventures," 24 October 1808, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 370 Walter Hellen for a home. Louisa wrote in her memoirs that there were many " re p u ta b le " ways in which women m ight support them selves, especially if they had capital or could borrow some, but she excused her mother from work in much the same way she excused h e r s e lf . A ll avenues of work were closed to Catherine Johnson, Louisa wrote, because of her foreign birth and many children. Further, Louisa explained her mother had been accustomed to great luxury for almost forty years and was in delicate health. Louisa and John Quincy, themselves financially straitened, helped out by supporting whichever of Louisa's sisters was currently living with them. But the real burden of assisting Catherine and her five unmarried daughters fell on Walter Hellen, who, with exceptional generosity, supported his aunt and his young c o u s i n s .10 In Louisa's description of the Hellen's house can be heard the echoes of the Johnson's house on Tower H ill: Talent, Wit, good humour, and an easy and general desire to please promoted freedom, without the fam iliarity of rudeness; and the young and the old, were received with equal respect and pleasure, with the security of the surest welcome—Music, dancing. Cards, or more frequently social and brilliant conversation,varied the Scene. H Good music was a prominent part of entertainment at the Hellene's. The French aide-de-camp, Louisa wrote, was an excellent 1®LCA, "Adventures," 12 October 1803, APM, reel 269. LCA referred to her mother's "painful state of dependence" and the "heavy burthen which he [Walter Hellen] has supported with unexampled kindness." LCA to JQA, 6 June 1804, APM, reel 403. JQA wrote of Waiter Hellen's "invariable kindness and attention both from him and Mrs. Hellen, to you and to me." JQA to LCA, 10 May 1806, APM, reel 404. JQA's Household Expense Book, 1799-1802, Family Expenses, 5 December 1804, APM, reel 208. JQA seems to have loaned CJ money in October 1802. JQA, Miscellany, Personal Financial Record 1802-1822, 15 September 1803, APM, reel 209. U lcA, "A dventures," November 1803, APM, r e e l 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 371 singer, composer, and performer and became an intimate in "all the musical families and of course in ours."12 The following year, John Quincy translated some French songs for Louisa to sing. Mrs. Anthony Merry, the wife of the British Minister brought Thomas More, the composer, to visit the Hellens. Louisa wrote later that after singing with her (Louisa), he told her she had no soul. Louisa, defending herself, wrote that he himself was so emotional that he failed to recognize her "delicacy and restraint."13 Looking back forty years later, Louisa described Washington: "The City not being laid out; the streets not graduated; the bridges consisting of mere lose planks; and hugh stumps of Trees recently cut down intercepting every path."14 The Hellens and Catherine Johnson partook of what social scene there was in Washington. Often the entire family went together to parties: the Hellens, the Adamses, Catherine Johnson, and the unmarried Johnson girls. Louisa wrote in her memoirs that "Mr. Adams [was] being much courted" and that her mother, sisters, and Walter Hellen made the house in Washington delightful to political leaders and foreigners alike.13 she did not mention herself. Sometimes, when the Adamses dined at the White House, Catherine Johnson and her daughters were there. Apparently, Jefferson's kindness to 12JQA to JA, 24 December 1804, APM, reel 403; LCA, "Adventures," January 1805, APM, reel 269. 13LCA to JQA, 10 June 1804, APM, reel 403; LCA, "Adventures," 26 July 1806, APM, reel 269. JQA translated French songs. JQA, Diary, 28, 30 November 1804, APM, re e l 30. 14lcA, "A dventures," November 1803, APM, re e l 269. 13lcA, "Adventures," 8 January 1804, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 372 Joshua Johnson was now extended to his widow, who seemed free of the animus Louisa later showed Jefferson. Constant visiting was very much a part of the Washington scene. Louisa felt keenly the lack of a carriage, since it meant she could not go out at will to make calls. The non-existent carriage became, from this time on, an oft-repeated complaint in her letters and in her memoirs. John Quincy refused Louisa's request for a carriage, insisting that the family could not afford to buy one. He justified the economy by telling Louisa that should they overspend, she and the children would be the "sufferers by it."15 q>he Hellens's house was at some distance from other houses, which made Louisa, who hated being alone, feel isolated. John Quincy walked daily to and from the Capitol, a distance of five miles, in good weather and in bad. In her memoirs, Louisa blamed republicanism for the fact that she, as the wife of a "Senator," was treated as more important than her sisters.17 in Europe, she wrote, all the family would have been on the same plane or "station" because of their birth, but in America, to be the wife of an important official could raise one above one's own family. She insisted in her autobiography that her heightened status made her feel awkward, but her letters show that she was happy at the H e lle n e 's . l^Concerning the expense of the carriage see JQA to LCA, 12 August 1804, APM, reel 403. 17lcA, "A dventures," November 1803, APM, re e l 269. For JA 's view of etiquette, see JA to JQA, 25 February 1804, APM, reel 403. For AA's view of the Merry crisis see AA to JQA, 23 January 1804, APM, reel 403. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 373 It is obvious from Louisa's reminiscences and from John Quincy's Diary and letters home that, for the Adamses as for others, the diplomatic corps added much to life in the new capital. Foreigners provided the social panache so sorely missing from a city of bachelor legislators and widely scattered houses.18 Mrs. Merry kept tongues wagging over her crise d'ettiquette with Mr. Jefferson. Although she seems to have been a frequent visitor at the Hellene's, Louisa scorned her as vulgar, coarse, and low class. According to Louisa's memoirs, Mrs. Merry had inherited money from a first marriage and married Merry —"a regular John Bull"—for status. Yet Louisa admitted the story was scandal and perhaps not true= At Mrs. Merry's dinners, the spectacle of American Senators and Congressmen bringing their hostess food on a plate, while she royally received their favors, angererd Louisa. She reported Mrs. Merry singled her out because (thinking to flatter Louisa) she said Louisa had known Courts in Europe. Louisa was not the least flattered. She despised Mrs. Merry for the rudeness of her remark, as it reflected unfavorably on other American women.19 By 1840 Louisa's identification with American women was complete. Much French was spoken at the Hellens's house. The very exotic Tunisian Ambassador Sadi Suliman Mala Manni, visited the Hellens's, smoked a pipe (perhaps a water pipe), and invited women "without IBjQA's cousin Josiah Quincy, a member of the House of Representatives, found companionship not with other Americans but with the British envoys. Robert A. McCaughey, Josiah Quincy 1772-1864; The Last Federalist (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), p. 47. LCA, "Adventures," February and March 1805, APM, reel 269. 19lcA, "Adventures," November 1803, APM, reel 269; No author, "Jefferson to William Short on Mr. and Mrs. Merry," The American Historical Revue 33 (July 1928), pp. 832-35. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 374 familles" to come under his cloak which he said had "many virtues,"20 Since Louisa had known another Tunisian diplomat in Berlin, she was not surprised at his strange ways, but most of Washington was fascinated. The Secretaries of the French legation visited often at the Hellene's where they could find conversation in their own language. The French General Turreau brought his violin, and Nancy accompanied him on the pianoforte. The wife of the French Consul General entertained by singing French ballads.21 The diplomatic corps was not the only group for whom Nancy play ed . Louisa remembered years l a t e r th a t on C hristm as Day 1805 a tribe of Cherokee Indians (probably in Washington for the customary open house at the White House) came to the Hellene's house. Afraid because there was no man in the house (John Quincy was perhaps at church), Nancy Hellen agreed to play the piano at their insistence. Louisa was obliged to give them "beads and ribbons and feathers" before the Indians were willing to leave. The women's fears, Louisa explained, were heightened by the isolation of the h o u s e .22 Manners, wit, easy conversation,musical evenings were what Louisa liked best in social intercourse. But there was little enough 20lCA, "Adventures," 9 December 1805, January 1806, APM, reel 269. 21lCA, "Adventures," 13 March 1806, 25 December 1803, APM, reel 269. 22lcA, "Adventures," 25 December 1806, APM, reel 269. A few Indians visited the Hellens's house one day in July 1804. LCA to JQA, 20 July 1804, APM, reel 403. For the visit of the Cherokees to the White House, see Augustus John Foster, Jeffersonian America (San Marino, Calif.: The Huntington Library, 1954) p. 22. LCA characterized Foster as "A wild untameable young Irishman full of intelligence." LCA, "Adventures," 5 March 1805, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 375 of these amenities in Washington. There were, however, certain acquaintances who were so much themselves that Louisa loved them. General and Dorcas Dearborn (he was the Secretary of War) from Maine, were just such a couple. Dorcas Dearborn fussed because she had no cows and chickens to tend, no cheese to make in Washington. Her husband spelled "Congress" with a "K," Louisa recounted, but was a kind, family man, slightly "puffed up by the Station into which he had popped." He informed Louisa that captured by Indians, he had inside of two weeks lost whatever refinement he had possessed. With gentle humor, Louisa thought to herself, "in regard to polish there was not much to l o s e ."23 General Dearborn may have had no polish, but others in Washington did. Even such a dangerous man as Aaron Burr could be the possessor of what Louisa termed "manners." She admired Burr's way of controlling the women who sat in the Senate galleries with the "little hammer in h is g ra c e fu l l i t t l e hand." Upon meeting Burr tra v e llin g from Washington to Boston, Louisa, as well as John Quincy, was impressed by his friendliness and lack of pretension. Louisa, forgetting her strict republican training, wrote that Burr's manner would "ever white wash many Sins which morality must c o n d e m n ."24 Louisa's description of Jefferson in her memoirs must be read with the knowledge that she felt Jefferson had removed both her father and her husband from their posts. Years later, Abigail Adams 23lcA, "A dventures," November 1803, APM, r e e l 269; LCA, "Adventures," January and February 1805, APM, reel 269. 24lcA, "A dventures," November 1803, APM, r e e l 269; LCA, "Adventures," March and April 1805, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 376 understood that he had dismissed John Quincy from his position as Commissioner of Bankruptcies unwittingly and forgave him, but Louisa could not do this. In her memoirs, she characterized Jefferson as "the ru lin g Demagogue of the hour," " tric k y ," and "cunning." She described him as awkward and inelegant and summed him up as "the lago of the political world." When he conversed, she wrote, he managed simultaneously to draw others out while drawing attention to himself. A "sneaking greatness," she wrote, had come to him in a "lucky hour."25 She described his dinners as elegant, almost European, but so mean and stingy was he with the fire after dinner that one wag said he could amuse himself by "spitting out the fire." The President, Louisa wrote, seemed unaware that his guests were suffering from the cold. A bachelor, Jefferson kept the downstairs of the White House elegantly; but the upstairs, Louisa thought, lacked a woman's care.26 Jefferson's daughter gave birth to a baby in the White House, and the nurse told Louisa there was no food to be found for the mother. Louisa could, in later life, see little difference between the "vulgar aristocracy of the German c o u rtie rs " she had known and "the borrowed lu x u rie s " and "stately assumption of the Parvenue triumph of a political h y p o c rite ."27 25lcA, "A dventures," November 1803, March 1804, APM, re e l 269. For a positive view of Jefferson by Margaret Bayard Smith, a contemporary of LCA and wife of the publisher of The National Intelligencer (the first national newspaper), see Smith, Forty Years, pp. 6 -7 . 26LCA, "Adventures," January 1805, APM, reel 269. 27lcA, "A dventures," 26 January 1806, November 1803, APM, re e l 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 377 However happy Louisa may have been at her sister's, the decision to live with the Hellens while in Washington may have been detrimental politically for John Quincy. The vast majority of Congressmen and Senators lived not with their wives and families in private houses, but in groups in the numerous boarding houses which clustered about the Capitol. Choosing their messmates by regions, these legislators ate at the same mess tables, mixed with each other informally, and, according to one historian, often voted according to pacts laid down at the dinner table. Life in these boarding houses combined some of the qualities of the "fraternity house [and] the political club." To have joined such a group from New England might have forced John Quincy to unbend and meet his fellow legislators in inform al discourse.28 Having missed an easy social relationship with his peers during adolescence, he might, while living with other Congressmen, have learned the art of compromise. Not for one session of the five he attended did John Quincy join a boarding house. After the day's work ended, if there was no social engagement, he was in his study at the Hellene's—alone, writing, always solitary. Louisa complained often in her memoirs that she had little conversation with him and that he buried himself in his work. Thomas Adams urged his brother to take his political life more in stride, pointing out that he took the public cause too much to heart—advice that went unheeded.29 28por a description of these boarding houses and how they produced political friendships and alliances, see James Sterling Young, The Washington Community, pp. 98-199. Young reports 97 percent of Congressmen and Senators lived in boarding houses. 29tbA to JQA, 23 December 1803, APM, reel 402. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 378 If Louisa could not participate in his work, she could at least sit in the Senate and House galleries to hear the debates, as did so many o th e r W ashington women. Not only was the work of Congress conducted in the Capitol, but on Sundays religious ceremonies were held there. Louisa did not approve of religion and politics being held in the same building. John Quincy often attended worship in the Capitol, but Louisa thought the Capitol was itself "unsuitable to all religious feeling or solemnity or propriety," not only because of the "intriguing and wrangling" that went on, but because of the "corruption [which] faces you in every corner."30 since she had no carriage, Louisa could only occasionally attend the more congenial Episcopalian services at St. John's Church in Georgetown. After the Congressional session of 1803-1804 ended, John Quincy determined to return to Quincy for the summer. Louisa stayed in Washington. The separation caused an immediate clash. Louisa must have written John Quincy a letter (not now extant) accusing him of coldness and unkindness at leaving her.31 He replied coolly and with careful logic that he would always let her choose where to live, that she had chosen Washington because her family was there and that just because he loved his family he understood her attachment to hers. Then ignoring the Biblical injunction to leave mother and father and cleave only to one's spouse, John Quincy wrote that "the duties of filial. 30lcA, "Adventures," May 1804, APM, reel 269. 31 Perhaps this was one of the letters destroyed by CFA. In a later letter, LCA referred to the fact that her friend in Boston, Katherine Dexter, "blamed" JQA for having left LCA in Washington. LCA to JQA, 31 July 1804, APM, reel 403. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 379 . . . conjugal and of paternal tenderness are equally sacred and I wish to discharge them all with equal f i d e l i t y . "32 Neither this answer nor John Quincy's offer to let her live where she chose impressed Louisa. She replied that he had told her repeatedly that only during the first winter in Washington could he bring her with him and that her real choice lay between summers in Washington with her family or "dreary" winters alone in Quincy. She had chosen Washington. Louisa recognized instantly that John Quincy's logic was based on a faulty premise. She was able to state what had truly passed between them and use this reality to sustain her argument. Louisa could be aggressive, but aggression brought with it fears of being unloving and unfeminine, which had quickly to be quieted. She offered, therefore, as proof of her affection, to leave Washington and come to Quincy. John Quincy suggested that she had been unable to "reconcile" herself to Quincy or to "so humble a residence" as the farmhouse where he had been born (lately purchased from his father), and he also informed her that it was expensive to keep her and the boys in Washington.33 Louisa understood any discussion of expenses as a reference to the fact she had no dowry and always became angry. She could not understand his anxieties about the children's finances. She pointed out they had only boys, who could make their way in the world 32jqa to LCA, 9 April 1804, APM, reel 403. 33lcA to JQA, 17 A p ril 1804, APM, r e e l 403; JQA to LCA, 24 April 1804, APM, reel 303. Margaret Bayard Smith echoed the same sentiments as LCA about living in the country and described her happiness on learning that she was to spend winter in Washington, where "we shall have something to think of and feel for besides ourselves." Smith, Forty Years, p. 92. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 380 as John Quincy and his father had done. Although Louisa did not mention a dowry, she told John Quincy that if they had a daughter, she could better understand his husbanding their resources.34 she admitted she was totally dependent on him and expressed surprise that her staying in Washington was an added expense.35 John Quincy suggested she return to Quincy after the next session of Congress in spring 1805 and then return to Washington with him in the fa ll, thus reversing his former stance that she could accompany him only during the first session in 1803-1804.36 she in her turn again offered to come to Quincy and live in the small farmhouse at Penns Hill and ended with a flourish—if "Mrs. Adams could reside there with four Children, I can certainly live there with two."37 Having told Louisa that keeping her in Washington was expensive, John Quincy now added in answer to her offer to return to Quincy that he could not afford the expense of two journeys within six months.38 John Quincy's message was the same whether she stayed in Washington or came to him: she was an expense. Louisa was not alone in Washington, but she missed John Quincy and told him so: "the loss of your society . . . must ever inflict a pain which I never shall acquire a sufficient degree of philosophy to 3 4 l c A to JQA, 25 August 1804, APM, r e e l 403. 3 5 l c A to JQA, 12 May 1804, APM, r e e l 403. 36 JQA to LCA, 9 May 1804, APM, reel 403. 3 7 l c A to JQA, 12 May 1804, APM, re e l 403. 38 JQA to LCA, 20 May 1804, APM, r e e l 403. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 381 overcome."39 John Quincy, in his turn, as a peace offering, sent her a copy of John Donne's poem to his wife, written when the poet was forced to leave her in England while he journeyed to France.40 in August, hearing he had been ill, she expressed her feelings in a burst of em otion. Qh God of Heaven forbid I cannot support the idea of your being sick and I so far from you the thought is torture and I shall know no peace untill I hear Oh this separation life is not worth having on such terms rather than continue this distressing way of passing our lives I would cheerfully relinquish it. Form'd for domestic life my whole soul devoted to you and my children yet ambitious to excess my heart and head are constantly at war my affection is the most pow erful and a t th is moment when every fe a r is rouzed I would willingly give up every future hope of your attaining the highest honors your Country admits to be assured we never shoul'd part [no]more.41 Louisa was never to state the central dilemma of her early years with greater clarity. Bearing the responsibility of the children and angry at being left alone, Louisa wrote sarcastically to John Quincy that she could not "flatter" herself that he could "devote more than one half hour in a week" to her.42 Nevertheless, she hoped for more letters. At one 39lcA to JQA, 31 July 1804, APM, reel 403. Neither LCA nor JQA was able to bear the separation with equanimity. Each worried constantly about the health of the other. LCA to JQA, 25 August 1804, APM, reel 403; JQA to LCA, 12, 19, 26 August 1804, APM, reel 403. Some letters took three weeks to travel between Quincy and Washington. See JQA to LCA, 2 September 1804, APM, reel 403. 40I t is hard to know i f JQA was se rio u s when he c r itic iz e d Donne for his "versification." JQA to LCA, 17 June 1804, APM, reel 403. 41LCA to JQA, 12 August 1804, APM, reel 403. This is not the only letter in which LCA admitted her ambition. "The times are such I tremble to look forward and though you know my ambition I almost wish you were comfortably settled in your old profession free at least from the cares of Public life." LCA to JQA, 20 June 1804, APM, reel 403. 42lcA to JQA, 29 April 1804, APM, reel 403. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 382 point, she became so angry that she signed a letter "Adieu once more believe in spite of everything you can say to mortify me your sincere affectionate L C Adams,"43 Hardly had John Quincy left Washington than she asked him to return to her and the children a few weeks early, before "Congress takes you from me."44 Her request was not unreasonable. When he returned six months later, he devoted only one whole day to his family, took a ride with Louisa, and then plunged into w ork.45 Caring for the children by herself drained Louisa. John was constantly sick during the summer, and at the end of the hot weather Louisa thanked God he was still alive. John's illnesses were so severe that John Quincy thought it best to remind her of her duty towards herself and their friends to moderate the expression of her feelings and to prepare herself with resignation for whatever might occur. He warned Louisa that parents rarely escaped the loss of at least some of their children and tried to strengthen her nerve.46 At three years old, George was difficult to handle. Louisa thought he was "extremely wild" and seemed to have no judgment about his limits in his world. He actually destroyed Nancy Hellen's chickens, drove "the ducks to death," and one person had to be assigned 43lcA to JQA, 25 August 1804, APM, re e l 403. 44lcA to JQA, 20 May 1804, APM, re e l 403. ^3JQA, Diary, 29, 30 October 1804, APM, reel 30. 46LCA to JQA, 23 September 1804, APM, re e l 403; JQA to LCA, 30 September 1804, APM, reel 403. Late eighteenty-century families often lost some children: Elizabeth Drinker lost four of nine, and Julia Stockton Rush, four of thirteen. Reinier, "Attitudes toward and Practice of Childrearing," p. 49. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 383 solely to watch him. He had to be stopped from going into the Potomac "to see how deep it was he said," and descended from the third floor to the first, not by the stairs, but out the window. To help settle him down, George was sent to school at three and a half. John Ouincy was puzzled by his son's poor judgment, which did not improve as he grew o ld e r .47 In spite of her own good health, Louisa visited her Aunt Cook in Bladensburg, Maryland, from time to time to escape the unhealthy air of Washington. The undrained swamps encouraged insect-borne diseases, and Louisa was wise to go to higher ground. Although John Quincy would not buy a carriage, he encouraged Louisa to hire one for the summer. At the end of the summer, Louisa purchased (without his permission) a small riding pony. It was an excellent idea—Louisa needed exercise and fresh air.48 John Quincy, alone fo r the summer of 1804 in M assachusetts, lost himself in study.49 He passed much time with his parents; but even with them relaxation was difficult, and after returning to Washington he apologized to his father for "a stiffness of temper" which kept him from expressing his affection for them.30 John Adams 47lcA to JQA, 24 A p ril, 29 May 1804, APM, re e l 403; see a lso JQA, Diary, 1 August 1807, APM, reel 30. LCA told JQA that GWA had cried because he saw a man on the street he took for his father and that GwA was angry with his father for "desert[ing]" him. LCA to JQA, 20 May, 1 October 1804, APM, reel 403. 48LCA to JQA, 31 J u ly 1804, APM, r e e l 403; JQA to LCA, 12 August 1804, APM, reel 403; LCA to JQA, 7 October 1804, APM, reel 403. 49por an example of JQA's work habits, see JQA, Compilation of U.S. Treaties and U.S. Laws, 30 April 1804, et seq., APM, reel 403. 30JQA to JA, 19 November 1804, APM, re e l 403. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 384 waved away John Quincy's apology.31 But Abigail, perceptive as always, attributed her son's "reserve and coldness of address upon entering company," first to his long stay in Europe during adolescence during which he was forced to maintain a diplomatic reticence, secondly to the anxiety his family caused him, and lastly to excessive study. She then asked reasonably, "could not the student be left in the study?"32 John Quincy himself realized study was an escape. "I endeavour," he had written in his Diary the previous summer, "to employ as much of my time as possible in study, to escape from Reflections and prospects under which I cannot choose but feel impatient and worse."33 His habit of retreating into study to gain control over his anxieties was a major difficulty in his marriage. Louisa needed more, not less, a tte n tio n when problems a ro se, b u t when she asked fo r em otional support, John Quincy became less, not more, available. Louisa, during her engagement had foreseen this might happen. When she was anxious, she had no defense against overwhelming feelings except perhaps by retreating into illness. It was a vicious circle which she and he were never to break. L o u isa 's p h y sical h e a lth was rem arkably good in summer 1804 when she lived apart from her husband, but she suffered from 31JA responded that he had not noticed this "stiffness of tem per." JA to JQA, 30 November 1804, APM, re e l 403. 32AA to JOA, 18 December 1804, APM, reel 403. JQA himself had worried that he would become too studious in Ouincy. JQA, Diary, 8 June 1804, APM, reel 30. 33JQA, Diary, 22 July 1803, APM, reel 30. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 385 depressions. She described her state as a "torpid Listless state of languorand with an insight rare for women in the nineteenth century, told John Quincy that the exertions she made to keep him from being anxious would help to pull her out of the depressions. Louisa realized full well how dangerously self-centered she could become in periods of depression, yet the insight did not help her—the depressions continued.54 she also began reading books on children's education, although she seems to have imagined herself educating only daughters.55 Her attitude was at variance with many women's practice of teaching their small children, both girls and boys, their early lessons in reading and writing.56 John Quincy, not Louisa, taught the boys the French they learned at home. By October, Louisa was anxiously awaiting John Quincy's return. She warned him in one of her last letters to Quincy that her looks had altered for the worse and added, somewhat hostilely that she hoped his affections were as constant as hers.57 Always positive about the city, Louisa predicted that John Quincy would be surprised at the changes he would find. The new 54lcA to JQA, 16 September, 1 October 1804, APM, reel 403. 55lcA to JQA, 6 June 1804, APM, reel 403. 56Mrs. Margaret Bayard Smith recorded that she spent the mornings in family affairs and school. After 10 o'clock she "dress[ed, seat[ed] myself in ray corner on the settee and [gave] my little ones their lesson." Smith, Forty Years, p. 132. Mary Wollstonecraft suggested women should be more learned so that they could be better tutors to their children. R. M. Janes, "On the Reception of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women," The Journal of the History of Ideas 39 (April-June 1978), p. 294. "I know you are contented and happy in , , . educating your children." Mrs. Middleton to Margaret B. Smith, Margaret Bayard Smith Papers, LC. 57lcA to JOA, 1 October 1804, APM, reel 403. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 386 theatre was almost finished, two hotels were being built, the work on the Capitol considerably advanced, and the President's house improved and the grounds drained.58 John Quincy arrived in Washington on 29 October 1804 and took up once more his Senatorial duties. He spent most evenings in his study, allowing one evening a week for joining the Hellens and their guests in the drawing room.59 His Diary records, "The habit [of study] has so long been fixed in me as to have become a passion and when once severed from ray books, I find little or nothing in life to fill the vacancy of time."GO Beginning in 1804 John Quincy had a more legitimate cause to stu d y . He was named the f i r s t Boylston P ro fesso r of R hetoric and Oratory at H a r v a r d . G1 He was unsure about accepting this position. He would not resign his Senate seat in order to teach at Harvard, which meant he would have to be in Washington from November to April until 1808, when his Senatorial term expired. He therefore requested that he 58lcA to JQA, 18 October 1804, APM, reel 403. 59JQA, D iary, Day November 1804, APM, re e l 30. GOJQA, Diary, Day December 1804, APM, reel 30. "Study became an obsession" of JQA's; Daniel B. Boylan, "Towards a Definition of the Adams Tradition" (Ph.D. dissertation. University of Hawaii, 1974), p . 35. G1Donald M. Goodfellow, "The First Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory," The New England Ouarterly 19 (September 1946), pp. 372-89. JA was worried the professorship might injure JQA's health. JA to Benjamin Rush, 23 July 1806, John A. Schurtz and Douglass Adair, eds.. The Spur of Fame; Dialogues of John Adams and Benjamin Rush, 1805-1813 (San Marino, Calif.: The Huntington Library, 1966), p. 59. "The professorship . . . I firmly believe has been the cause of almost all his [JQA's] trouble since his political career." LCA to AA, 23 October 1810, APM, reel 410. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 387 be allowed two consecutive summers to complete the course, refused on principle to take the oath of religious test usually given by Harvard, and declined the offer of an assistant. John Quincy was already known as an independent and uncompromising politician ("unmanageable" was how his colleagues put it) . Harvard may not have done John Quincy a favor by agreeing to his every demand, since what he really needed was practice in the art of compromise. The lectureship seems to have accomplished two things. First, it gave purpose and thrust to John Quincy's heretofore aimless studies; and second, it absorbed all his free time. Louisa had felt alone before. She would now discover what it was to live with a man who would never have enough time to accomplish what he wanted. Even more seriously, it gave John Quincy a further reason to be alone, never to "leave the student in the study." Most important of all, it made the quite natural interruptions and annoyances of family life even more irritating to an easily exasperated John Quincy and added further strain to an already tense marriage. Louisa did not think he should accept the professorship. John Quincy retu rn ed in f a l l 1804 to the H e lle n s 's , and the second winter in Washington was passed much like the first with musical evenings, parties, and visiting as usual. John Quincy overworked and was ill. There was one less Johnson girl at the Hellene's. In March 1804, Harriet had married a Washingtonian, George Boyd, and moved but a s h o rt way from the H ellens.G 2 G2lcA, "Adventures," 5 March 1804, APM, reel 269. LCA reported in her memoirs that George Boyd "was descended from the House of Killmarnock in Scotland and the next Heir," but wrote in the margin "omit." LCA, "Adventures," 5 March 1805, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 388 In A p ril 1805 the Adamses l e f t Washington fo r Quincy w ith both boys "ill and troublesome." This time the seventeen-year-old Eliza Johnson accompanied the Adamses to Massachusetts. Arriving in Philadelphia, John Quincy's patience wore thin, and he decided the children should not accompany them to Washington again.G3 Traveling with small children in the nineteenth century was extremely vexing, even hazardous, and George and John were never taken to Washington a g ain . From then on they stayed in New England no m a tte r where th e ir parents were. Arriving in Quincy, the Adamses stayed but a short time in the large house. Louisa, John Quincy, the two boys, and Eliza Johnson moved into the farmhouse to which John Quincy always referred as "our house." It was indeed a small house. The ground floor consisted of two rooms and a large kitchen with a fieldstone fireplace and a ceiling which sloped almost to the ground. Two more rooms on the second floor were undoubtedly used as bedrooms. John Quincy's plan was to live th e re d u ring the summer w hile s t i l l a Senator and when h is term expired to move to Boston. At the farmhouse, Louisa, despite her aversion, began to do housekeeping. She reported in her memoirs that her cooking was faulty and milking the cow impossible, but nonetheless she gave this unaccustomed role a try. John Quincy seems to have accepted her halting efforts with equanimity. Louisa complained later that she was often alone: John Quincy in Boston and Eliza, as popular as her sister Caroline, often at parties in town. G3lcA to AA, 11 May 1806, APM, re e l 404. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 389 Even with Louisa, Eliza, and the boys in the small farmhouse, John Quincy tried to study. Not only did he begin work on his Boylston lectures, but he also discovered botany that summer. As usual with his s tu d ie s , he found th a t the more he knew, the more th e re was to know. He tried without success to interest Louisa in wild flowers. In the evenings he often read to Louisa, and her literary taste was being further sharpened. In October, Louisa thought two "Popular Tales" too similar—so she and Eliza listened to Ovid's Metamorphoses, which they found tiring, an assessment with which John Quincy agreed.G4 When John Quincy "swore" in Philadelphia that the boys, George and John, would not accompany him to Washington again, he meant it. In November 1805, according to Louisa, John Quincy decided to leave the children in Quincy without consulting her. Louisa now faced the choice she had dreaded: leaving her children or living in Quincy without her husband.G5 xwo months later she wrote to Abigail from Washington that she had been "compelled" to leave her children in Quincy.G6 Not only were the children to be left in Boston, but they were to be separated: George was placed with Abigail's sister Mary Cranch, and John stayed with Abigail. John was almost two and a half, and George was four and a half. This was the first instance of what was to become a re g u la r p ra c tic e — the fam ily s c a tte re d and the two c h ild re n separated from each other. G4jq a , Diary, 3 October 1805, APM, reel 30. G5lcA, "Adventures," October-November 1805, APM, reel 269. JQA, Diary, 8 November 1805, APM, reel 30. GGLCA to AA, 6 January 1806, APM, reel 404. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 390 The Adamses were not the only fam ily who boarded out th e ir children with the Crunches while they went to Washington. Josiah Quincy, Congressman from Massachusetts and cousin of John Quincy, and his wife also went to Washington, taking one child with them and leaving the others with the Crunches. Eliza Quincy, living with the William Crunches in Georgetown, complained that she and her husband looked forward to the end of their "banishment" and the painful separation from their children.67 Mary Cranch was considered a thoroughly reliable person to care for children, and Abigail stressed to Louisa that George was well cared for. That Abigail was competent to care fo r John was evident to a l l . As the distance between Quincy and the Adamses increased, so did their anxiety for their children's health. Abigail tried to reassure them: [John] asked once for his mother, when she would come from Boston? and the day you went away, when he went down to sea, he looked round, and seemed disappointed said he thought his pappa was there. Since then he has been told that his pappa and mamma were gone to Washington and he is quite content.68 Abigail never failed to send news of the children to their absent parents, and her extraordinary felicity in writing was never more evident. "I told him [John] I was writing to you and asked him what I should say-shall I say John is good. No shall I say John is Naughty. 67gophia Quincy, the young daughter of Josiah Quincy, was left in Quincy with Mary Cranch. See Eliza Quincy to AA, 6 April 1806, APM, reel 404. See Robert A. McCaughey, Josiah Quincy, p. 37. G8aa to JQA, 21 November 1805, APM, re e l 404. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 391 No, he stood a moment and his little Eyes glistned—say John has got a Beauty new Hat,"G9 Abigail's willingness to take her grandchildren to live with her and her obvious relish in doing so may have reflected her deep and positive feelings about her own grandparents. When Louisa and the boys had stayed in Washington in 1804, Abigail was disappointed not to see her grandsons and had written to Louisa, I have a great opinion of childrens being early attached to their grandparents. perhaps it may arise from the Bias I formed for mine, and the respect and veneration instilled into my infant mind towards them; so that more of their precepts and maxims remain with me, to this hour, than those of my excellent parents, who were not however deficient in theirs but the supérieur weight of years, added to the best examples imprest them more powerfully at the early period when I resided with t h e m . 70 Without her children, Louisa was unhappy and depressed. Both her "spirits and her health" were "indifferent" and she "hourly" missed the children more.71 John Quincy was so anxious about the boys that he asked his brother and mother to write a day apart so that he and Louisa would always have the very latest news.72 Every effort was made by Abigail to calm the anxious parents with very little effect. Abigail agreed with her son that the children should have been left in Quincy. She reminded Louisa that nothing could be "more disagreeable than transporting young children twice a year; either by water, or in crowded stages." Abigail supposed that "your own judgment 69aa to JQA and LCA, 29 November 1805, APM, re e l 404. 70a A to LCA, 21 May 1804, APM, reel 403. See also AA to JA, 25 October 1775, Adams Family Correspondence, 1:313. 71LCA to AA, 6 December 1805, APM, reel 404. 72JQA to AA, 30 December 1805, APM, reel 404. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 392 experience and good sense would have convinced you of the propriety of the measure without compulsion." She told Louisa that she, Abigail, knew how painful was the separation, but she "consider[ed] it the duty of a parent to consult the interest and benefit of their children."73 It was, perhaps, Abigail's great confidence in herself and her sister Mary Cranch to care for children which blinded her to Louisa's feelings. Perhaps the boys would have been better off with their parents, even if Louisa was not as experienced and expert a caretaker as either Abigail or Mary Cranch. Louisa's confidence, never very sure, may have been further weakened by Abigail's expressed certainty that the boys were better off somewhere else than with her, although the reason given for the boys living in Quincy was the arduous trip, not Louisa's incompetence. Separated as the family was, misunderstandings were inevitable. Thinking to reconcile Louisa to the absence of the children, Abigail wrote that John and George were "much better off than they could have been at any boarding House in Washington.where they must have been confined . . . or mixed with improper persons."74 Louisa was deeply hurt at what she took to be Abigail's slur on the Hellens, who had extended every courtesy and hospitality to the Adamses and their children. In her turn, Louisa hurt Mary Cranch's feelings by not writing to her at all while she cared for George. Louisa excused herself by saying she had worried that a letter to Mary Cranch might be interpreted as a reflection on her care of George, a rather weak 73aa to LCA, 19 January 1806, APM, reel 404. 74 Ib id . Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 393 excuse, since Louisa wrote Abigail regularly while she cared for John .75 During the third winter in Washington, Louisa, once again pregnant, stayed at the Hellene's when John Quincy went home to Quincy for the summer to teach at Harvard. He quit Washington in April 1806, two months before Louisa was due to deliver the baby. John Quincy had not been w ith her when John was born, he was in Quincy. He would not be w ith her when th is baby was born; he would, a g a in , be in Quincy. But for once she would be with her mother and her sisters, who knew from experience the trauma and pain of child-bearing. Louisa, waiting in Washington for the child to be born, was disappointed when John Quincy told her so little about the children in his first letter from Massachusetts. She expected he would have written "fully as to their growth and every alteration which had taken place since his departure."76 John did not know his father at all, but George recognized him at once. Louisa admitted it was unreasonable to expect a child not yet three to remember someone who had been away for six months.77 Louisa feared that away from her, John Ouincy would overwork. Her fears were fully justified. Over her protestations, he left the children in Quincy and moved in with an old Cambridge friend. 75lcA to Mary Cranch, 18 May 1806, APM, r e e l 404. 76JQA "found both our children at my father's - Both in fine health, and considerably grown - John whom I saw first did not know me, but George recognized me immediately." JQA to LCA, 4 May 1806, APM, re e l 404. 77l CA to JQA, 11 May 1806, APM, re e l 404. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 394 Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse. Perhaps just because he had been without the children all winter, he found it hard to accept the difficulties of living with small children again.78 As Louisa had foreseen, John Quincy's work began to take precedence over everything else. Having been extremely regular in visiting Quincy every weekend when Louisa and the children were in Boston, he now put study ahead of these visits. Abigail informed Louisa that he missed several weekends with the children in Quincy, and Louisa urged him to share himself with his family. Your Mother writes that you apply so closely to this permit me to say strange occupation of yours that she is fearful you will materially injure your health Mon Amie I grant as you have undertaken the business that it is necessary to attend to it but your family have some call on you as well as the public and the place you fill will become more odious to me than ever if it is to occasion you to neglect your children and deprive you of seeing them at least once in eight days untill ray return[.] from the stile of your last letter I fear that even my society will prove unwelcome and you meant it as a warning for me—not to claim any part of your time but having relinquished almost all claim to it in the winter for some time I am the less willing to give it up in the Summer and the separation I have endured makes my claim the stronger.79 In Louisa's plea can be heard echoes of her entreaty before they were married to mitigate his reading habit. She had pleaded for his time th e n , and she was pleading fo r i t now. Her req u est was couched in reasonable and mature terms. John Quincy's preoccupation with his own work grew. In July, he was too busy even to write Louisa his usual Sunday letter. He admitted that she had every right to know what had absorbed the "time 78xhe relationship between fathers and sons in the nineteenth century is as yet little studied. JQA's attitude may not be as unique as it seems at first glance. 79lcA to JQA, 20 Ju ly 1806, APM, re e l 404. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 395 appropriated to you." It was the composition of an oration for his nephew John Smith. That the oration might be less well written, and some time still saved for Louisa's letter, seems not to have occurred to John Quincy. Clearly, in his mind, no other day was suitable for letter-w riting, as he "had no other day which I could borrow for I am oppress'd with the composition of Lectures which I am to deliver one a week, and each of which it takes me a week of very close asiduity to compose."80 Seemingly, neither Louisa nor the children would be allowed to break into this extreme intellectual concentration. John Quincy did find time, however, to add to the family real estate holdings in Boston by purchasing two houses. Unlike most nineteenth century men, John Quincy kept Louisa fully apprised of his real estate transactions because, he informed her, she would have "dower rights" in the property. Therefore, after selling the Hanover Street house, he decided to reinvest the money that he had not used to help his parents in real estate, thus protecting her part of the investments.81 He also pointed out that one of the houses could be used as their home, when she came to Boston. Although John Quincy seemed wholly committed to his public career, an exchange of letters with Louisa in early June raises some questions. Two of the most eminent Bostonian lawyers quit their practice. John Quincy wrote Louisa that he was strongly tempted to resign his Senatorial seat and seize this auspicious moment to return 80JOA to LCA, 9 July 1806, APM, reel 404. 81JQA to LCA, 24 May 1806, APM, r e e l 404. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 396 to the bar. Louisa, although depicting herself as unqualified to advise John Quincy, nevertheless made the case for his remaining in public service. She appealed to his sense of duty and reminded him that Ms mind was "form'd . . . for a more brilliant sphere" than that of the law. Men of talents, she asserted, were needed in the government; and although she lived an "unsettled and divided life," interest in private affairs over those of the country could never produce great men, now so scarce, yet so badly needed. She clearly stated her willingness to support the life she was forced to live for him to hold public office. In Berlin, Louisa had persuaded John Quincy to bum his letter of resignation. Now, in 1806, she was advising Mm not to flag in Ms pursuit of greatness in government service. Louisa, no less than Abigail, was ambitious for John Quincy; and although she continually complained of the serious inconveniences from which she suffered, her ambition was strong and steady.82 As the time of her delivery grew closer, Louisa grew more unwieldy; her legs were so swollen that she could not wear stockings nor walk for exercise. She wrote John Quincy that she had been told by "the wise ones" that she would suffer from lack of exercise, perhaps an oblique reference to her lack of a carriage. When she wrote Mary Cranch in mid-May, she regretted she could not visit with William and Nancy Cranch, since without a carriage she could not travel the five miles between houses. At this very time, John Quincy was exchanging one house for two in Boston, so perhaps it was difficult for Louisa to 82jqa to LCA, 8 June 1806, APM, reel 404; LCA to JOA, 15 June 1806 APM, re e l 404. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 397 understand why, when she wanted one so much she could not have a c a r r ia g e . Before the birth of the baby, Louisa developed abscesses on the back of her throat, ears, and her thumbs, but felt better just before the baby was born. She asked John Quincy to send her fifty dollars to pay the nurse and "sage femme" fee, which, by common usage, was paid when they arrived to deliver the baby.83 Hearing that Louisa felt better, John Quincy wrote that the most critical time had passed and she had "only the usual case of confinement to meet."84 This casual- sounding phrase was probably meant to reassure her. A very optimistic statement for John Quincy to make, it unfortunately proved in error. The baby, a third boy, was born dead after a difficult labor of twenty hours. The doctor told Louisa that had the child lived, he would have had convulsions all his life, so his death was easier for Louisa to a c c e p t.85 John Quincy received the news of the birth and death of the baby while engaged in his law business. He went immediately to his own 83LCA to JQA, 9 June 1806, LCA to JQA, 404. 84JQA to LCA, 10 June 1806, APM, reel 404. 85lcA to JQA, 29 June 1806, APM, reel 404. LCA reported in her memoirs that her sister Harriet Boyd had sent word her child was dying. "Having no carriage," Louisa walked to and from her sister's house. The next day she gave birth to the dead child. Yet LCA's letter of 2 June 1806 mentions that she had been ill from walking "a very small distance." LCA to JQA, 2 June 1806, APM, reel 404. The child was born on 22 June 1806. Perhaps LCA compressed the two incidents into one, obliquely raising the suspicion that had she been allowed to own a carriage, the birth might have been different. LCA, "Adventures," 29 June 1806, APM, reel 269. So difficult was the birth that LCA feared had it lasted twelve hours more, she might have died. LCA to JOA, 24 June 1806, APM, reel 404. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 398 room and wept. This time his Diary records not only the events of the day but his overwhelming emotion.86 % wept not only for the loss of the baby, but also for the relief of knowing that Louisa was still alive. No matter how hard he tried to reassure her and himself, she, lik e a l l women, had been in danger when d e liv e rin g a c h ild . In a letter of extraordinary tenderness , John Quincy conveyed to Louisa his concern for her and his gratitude that her life had been spared. He offered to come to New York after Commencement and accompany her to Boston. It was a letter of consolation, support, and affection.87 Perhaps because her mother and sisters had been at her bedside before and after the birth, Louisa made a far better recovery than she had after the other two children. Soon she returned to the farmhouse in Quincy. She made the trip with her sister Caroline, meeting John Quincy in Boston, not in New York. Louisa complained later about their life at the farmhouse. John Quincy was continually pressed for time trying to instruct George, write lectures, learn Greek, and graft buds and trim his fruit trees. "Wasting time" now appeared in his Diary, and he realized that "this is no longer the studious life of the two former months." He bemoaned the "petty avocations" among which he numbered gardening.88 He also referred to Louisa's vegetable gardening as an "amusement," so he seems 86JQA, Diary, 30 June 1806, APM, reel 30. 87JQA to LCA, 30 June 1806, APM, reel 404. JQA to JA, 4 July 1806, APM, reel 404. 88JQA, Diary, 30, Day August 1806, APM, reel 30. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 399 never to have taken her gardening seriously.89 Besides the "petty avocations," there was also Louisa, her sister Caroline, and two growing boys. It must indeed have been difficult to maintain the detached monastic life of the scholar in the Quincy farmhouse. He spent an hour with his father every evening, giving rise to Louisa's complaint in her memoirs that he "spent most of his Evenings at his Father's," yet his Diary shows he often returned home after an hour and "read to the ladies."90 In the fall of 1806, with John Quincy's impending departure for Washington, the usual decisions had to be made. Who would go where and with whom for the winter? This time it seems that Louisa decided that she would board in Boston while John Quincy went alone to Washington.91 But there was a residue of resentment that John Ouincy enjoyed his freedom. On learning he had lost a travelling companion on his way to Washington, Louisa sarcastically remarked "but being free and unshackled as you now are, must certainly add considerably to your enjoyment."92 Louisa, angry to be alone, informed John Quincy, now at the Hellene's that "I can neither live with or without you," an extraordinary insight and an even more frank admission.93 John Quincy 89JQA to LCA, 1 June 1806, APM, reel 404. 90lCA, "Adventures," 30 September 1806, APM, reel 269. JQA, Diary, Day September 1806, APM, reel 30. 91JQA, Diary, 24 October 1806, APM, reel 30. 92lcA to JQA, 7 December 1806, APM, reel 404. 93lcA to JQA, 25 November 1806, APM, re e l 404. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 400 turned her complaint aside, remarking humorously that he could not say the same but, in view of the cold weather, he would be very glad to live with her. Not often did he use humor to parry her criticism .94 He might have done well to ponder Louisa's statement more deeply and to enter into a discussion as frank on his side as on hers concerning their strained marriage. Before she received his letter, she, in turn, told him that she thought she would never live "without [my] bed fellow again in the Winter."95 The comfort and warmth she received from him in bed may have gone a long way to mitigate the anger he often provoked in h e r. Louisa expressed her anger obliquely as well as directly. Nancy Hellen had lost a child and Louisa, distressed for her sister, informed John Quincy that Nancy felt overlooked by him because she lacked intellect. She suggested that even "trifling" attentions would help her through this difficult time. Louisa may have spoken specifically about Nancy, but she herself was in the background. Louisa then passed from Nancy to an identification with all women and asserted that females could "be objects of very little importance to a mind like yours." She reminded him God had ordained that men "even of the greatest abilities" should live the greatest portion of their lives with women, so men ought to offer women "those little civilities, which by raising us in our own esteem, inspires us with gratitude." These civilities in turn encourage women to shows those attentions "which 94JQA to LCA, 8 December 1806, APM, reel 404. 95lcA to JOA, 14 December 1806, APM, reel 404. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 401 form the basis of mans happiness."96 Thus did Louisa outline her view of the proper mutual give and take in a nineteenth-century marriage. The problem was that Louisa's self-esteem came from her husband, not from herself. When the attentions she thought she deserved were not forthcoming, she was angry. John Quincy scrutinized Louisa's criticism with logic. He listed those things which were true: his heart had bled for Nancy; he would have done anything to have averted the tragedy or alleviated her sufferings; he did not know what were the "trifling attentions" which would comfort Nancy, who had just lost a child; and "from this ignorance" he had failed to offer her solicitude. He then admitted he was deficient in "Chesterfieldian" graces and dealt with those instead of what Louisa had actually suggested—a tender, overt caring for Nancy.97 Thus did John Quincy handle criticism —by elevating the desired behavior beyond all reason and then admitting he lacked those extreme virtues, which Louisa had never suggested in the first place. If others, he wrote, imputed his behavior to a want of caring, it was not his fault. There, for the moment, he rested his case. Upon receiving John Quincy's letter, Louisa called him "my testy friend" and was horrified that he had elevated her "little attentions" into "Chesterfieldian graces." She explained that she had merely suggested Nancy would feel flattered if included in the conversation. "Be good humored my friend," she begged, not realizing 96lcA to JQA, 28 December 1806, LCA to JQA, 404. 97JQA to LCA, 6 January 1807, APM, reel 405. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 402 that he could not possibly be cheerful about criticism . Then she reminded him that he had taken her for better or worse and "if you have so much the worst of the bargain I am sorry for it I have vainly wished to render you happy."98 Louisa's anger was never very far from the surface, and she could be quite outspoken. John Quincy, in his turn, made no comment on th is l a t e s t s a lly . Whatever distance John Quincy was compelled to put between himself and criticism , he did write a poem to Nancv Hellen and in a later letter to Louisa, he admited "in the observations . . . [there was] much of Justice." He sent Louisa a copy of the verses he had written, asserting that it was an attention "in my own way."99 He hoped it would give Louisa the satisfaction it had given Nancy Hellen. Louisa was delighted with the poem. She told John Quincy it had "answered my every wish." So moved was she that she was sure his heart would "understand what I cannot describe."100 Having begun writing verses, John Quincy added another set of a very different kind. He wrote a poem and sent it to Louisa. It concerned the undress of a certain young Washington lady named Sally. It was witty, slightly risque, and done with a light hand. John Quincy seldom allowed this side of him to surface, but the poem shows how much Louisa lost when he buried himself in his work.101 98lcA to JQA, 16 January 1807, APM, reel 405. 99JQA sent a copy of the poem to Nancy Hellen to Louisa on 10 January 1807, APM, reel 405; JQA to LCA, 14 January 1807, APM, reel 405. IOO lcA to JQA, 21 January 1807, APM, reel 405. 101JQA to LCA, 6 February 1807, APM, reel 405. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 403 Having seen with what pleasure Nancy Hellen received his verses, John Quincy now wrote yet another poem for Louisa on her birthday, explaining how he spent his days in Washington. The verses (fourteen in all) are utterly charming and describe both the domestic scene at the Hellen's and his loneliness for Louisa and the boys. To Louisa F riend of my bosom! w o u ld s't thou know How far from thee, the days I spend, And how the passing moments flow. To this short, simple tale attend. Thus in succession pass my days, While time with flaggin pinion flies. And s till the promised hours delay When thou shalt once more charm my eyes. Louisa! Thus remote from thee S till something to each joy is wanting. While thy affection can to me Make the most dreary scene enchanting.102 Louisa was greatly touched by this poem and demurred in being able to answer in like manner, as "alas the muses never smiled on me." She would instead rely on her bad prose to "express my gratitude and affection" for his effort. Louisa wished to have his verses published in an anthology. She told him "you have but to exert the talents you so eminently possess to shine almost u n r i v a l e d ."103 Ambition for John Quincy was never very fa r from L o u isa's th o u g h ts. What she did not realize was that as her ambition pushed him higher in her estimation, it also, in her mind, created a greater gap between them, a gap which 102JQA to LCA, 12 February 1807, quoted in Dorothy Bobbe, Mr. and Mrs. John Quincy Adams, p. 123. 103lcA to JQA, 17 February 1807, APM, reel 405. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 404 may have caused her much anxiety and which, given his cool and distant demeanor, could not be bridged. However lonely Louisa was in Boston, she could s till, as she had in Berlin, count on Thomas Adams for the kind of entertainment she so enjoyed. An Assembly ball, frowned on by Mary Cranch and the Ouincy ministers but applauded by Louisa, was organized in Quincy under the aeg is of T h o m a s . 104 Louisa and Thomas to g eth er danced the f i r s t dance—different guests, and a different ballroom from the one in Berlin, but the same two dancers. Louisa returned home after midnight. Thomas’s fondness for his sister-in-law , along with her love for John Adams and his for her, must have made the cold New England winter a little less dreary for the solitary Louisa. The boys were not always with Louisa during the winter of 1807-1808. One child at a time visited Abigail in Quincy and often stayed for weeks. Abigail seems to have wanted the children, especially John. Louisa told John Quincy it was possible John would pass the greater part of the winter with his grandmother, as Abigail could not do without him.105 Except for reporting to John Quincy that her health was indifferent and that she had a sore throat, Louisa's letters during the winter of 1806-1807 are particularly free of any complaints of illness. The weather was extremely cold and the children were both ill from time to time, but she seems to have been remarkably well. Louisa's health 104LCA to JQA, 21 January, 1 February 1807, APM, reel 405. 105lcA to JQA, 1 January 1807, APM, reel 405. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 405 is puzzling as she was, during this time, again expecting a child. The alarms and violent illnesses, if she had them, do not appear in her letters nor in those of Abigail or Thomas. Indeed, Louisa's letters at this time are particularly long and fu ll, and yet they do not mention a pregnancy nor fainting spells. Except for one sick headache, Louisa's letters are those of a mature woman coping tolerably with difficult children and a less-than-satisfactory living style. In no extant l e t t e r did she t e l l John Quincy she was pregnant, but sin ce some letters are missing from this winter's correspondence she may have told him the news in some letter subsequently destroyed or lost. How much Louisa yearned for her husband can be measured by her l a s t l e t t e r to him in the w inter of 1807 , sen t to New York. My impatience to see you is becoming so great, minutes seem hours, and days years. Though I endeavor to laugh at my folly, but even my dreams partake of this folly, and after passing the night in idea with you I wake mortified and depressed at finding it nothing but an i l l u s i o n .lOG John Quincy returned in April to find Louisa already installed in their new house. The next weeks were hard on John Quincy. He had been a lonely scholar the summer before. His family had been with him but a short time before he went off to Washington where he could study and use his hours as he wished. Life with a pregnant wife and two children was not so serene, and his Diary records his inability to find time in which to work. It also records that nine days after he returned home he was lecturing at Harvard and that "just after going to bed was roused by the illness of Mrs. Adams who had a fainting f it."107 IOGlcA to JOA, 6 March 1807, APM, reel 405. 107JQA, Diary, 27 March 1807, APM, reel 30. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 406 Two days later she had another fainting fit and immediately thereafter became very ill with a cough. At this juncture, John Ouincy found that during a heavy rain and wind, the new house leaked and the smoke from the fires blew into some of the rooms, which may account for Louisa's respiratory disorders. John Quincy summed up the situation accurately, "I doubt indeed whether I shall be able at all to study here as I have done both at Washington, and at Cam bridge."108 Louisa's health, which seems to have been very good all winter, now worsened. Her cough continued unabated, and John Quincy took over the household. How he felt can be gauged by his Diary entry for 21 April 1807 : "I was abroad all this morning upon domestic concerns which seemed to be indispensible. . . . This day was, of course, lost to m^ occupations."109 When he was not taking care of the household, he was taking care of Louisa, who beside her cough now suffered from headaches. John Quincy's Diary recorded "the cares of a family multiplied in the minutest and most miserable details of drudgery scarcely leave me the due command of my patience or of my temper."HO May passed with John Quincy in constant attendance upon sick beds and the household affairs, and added to all this June began with the loss of their servants. At two o'clock in the morning of 18 August, Louisa began labor, and by nine o'clock she was in hard labor. Soon, Louisa gave birth to yet another son. This child, John Ouincy observed, was as large as the 108JQA, Diary, 14 April 1807, APM, reel 30. 109JQA, Diary, 6 May 1807, APM, reel 30. 110JQA, Diary, 19 May 1807, APM, reel 30. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 407 other two boys together. At first the child appeared to have been injured at birth. He did not breathe for the first five minutes and, Louisa recorded later, did not open his eyes for half an hour. John Quincy's sister Abigail stopped by the house soon after the baby was born and immediately decided to stay.H I These are but the facts of the birth. When she came to write about it years later, what was important to Louisa was that John Ouincy was fully and undeniably present and that he had seen her give birth to an apparently dead child and that he had witnessed her sufferings in the process of giving birth—"sufferings that he had no idea of."112 Louisa's wish that her husband witness the agony of childbirth may simply indicate a personal hostility towards John Quincy. But it might also be an expression of what many women felt at the time: that men had little appreciation of the burden that childbirth imposed upon them and that their sufferings were neither sufficiently apprehended nor, of course, sufficiently appreciated. John Quincy, in his turn, wrote the day after the birth, "the occurrences in my family have in a great measure disqualified me for present Study—I have not enough of the Stoic in my Soul."113 Had Abigail Smith not fortuitously stopped at the Adams house, Louisa would have been without any female relatives, as she had been when George was born. Louisa, fully aware of her need, wrote that "Mrs. Smith kindly supplied the place of my sister." The 111JQA, D iary, 18 August 1807, APM, r e e l 30. CFA was born apparently dead: "for a long half hour little hope was entertained of his opening his eyes." LCA, Miscellany, 18 August 1839, APM, reel 268. 112lcA, "Adventures," 18 August 1807, APM, reel 269. 113jq a , Diary, 19 August 1807, APM, reel 30. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 408 in fa n t, baptized on 12 September 1807, was named C harles F ra n c is: Charles after John Quincy's dead brother and Francis after Francis Dana, who had taken John Quincy to Russia in 1781. So difficult was George at age six that Abigail Smith, Louisa wrote, helped not with the newborn baby but with the cares of George ! The boy continued to be a worry in Boston as he had been in Washington. He was extremely accident prone, and each mishap alarmed Louisa. After being punished by his father for what Louisa considered a harmless prank, George did not return from school, giving rise to more f e a r s . H4 In an already tension-filled household, George was one more constant anxiety. John, brought in from Quincy by his grandmother to see Charles, thought the baby a "usurper," and refused even to look at it. He had to be taken back to the country. J u s t two months a f te r C harles was bom , Louisa was once more forced to choose between Quincy and Washington and between her two oldest children and her husband. In fall 1807, relations between the United States and the two European belligerents, France and England, worsened. Congress was called into session six weeks early. This time Louisa, the baby Charles, and John Quincy went to Washington. George went to his great aunt Elizabeth Peabody in Haverhill, Massachusetts, where John Quincy had studied after his return from Europe in 1785. John was to live with his grandparents at Quincy. Louisa wrote later that John Quincy made the arrangements to "board out my two children in different places and thus again was the family 114jQA analyzed GWA's behavior in depth and considered GWA's ideas often "eccentric" and "absurd." JQA, Diary, 20 September 1807. APM, re e l 30. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 409 scattered to the winds,"H 5 xhe two boys had been separated the year before, one at the Cranch's and one at the Adams's, but at least they had been both in the same locale and could v isit. This time they were truly apart. After yet another dreadful trip , during which Charles had convulsions and Louisa became utterly worn out, the Adamses arrived in Washington. They settled down at the Hellene's again. Almost immediately Louisa began the usual round of v isits, although somewhat constrained by her nursing baby. Recalling the winter of 1807-1808, Louisa seems to have been quite oblivious to the serious political situation; yet at the time, she wrote Mrs. Cranch "we hear of nothing but War."116 she remembered that a new and more congenial British M inister, David Erskine, had arrived with his American w ife.11? Dolley Madison was as "popular as ever," people went to the horse races, the Hellene's house was gay and convivial, and "Loo parties became quite fashionable. "H8 Mrs. Gabriel Duvall, wife of the Comptroller of the United States Currency, was, Louisa wrote, a wonderful housekeeper. She kept open house and taught Maryland cooking to all who would listen. A list of the skills that women could learn from Mrs. Duvall indicates just what housekeepers of the time were expected to know: 135lcA, "Adventures," 15 September 1807, APM, reel 269. HG lq A to Mary Cranch, 13 December 1807, APM, reel 405. "A dventures," 13 November 1807 , APM, r e e l 269. H^LCA, "Adventures," 26 October 1807, APM, reel 269.. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 410 "curing Bacon, making soap, pickles. Preserves, Pies, Puddings. . . . She armed with Floating Islands, Whips and Syllabubs, [and] Cakes."119 However domestic Louisa's memoirs, the country was passing through a deep crisis. "The really important period of my life began with the British attack upon our Chesapeake frigate, in the summer of ISO?," John Quincy wrote thirteen years later.1^0 The Chesapeake affair began when an American ship was ordered by a British warship to hand over alleged deserters. Unprepared for battle, the Chesapeake struck her colors after she had been fired upon, and the British impressed four seamen, only one of whom was a bona fide deserter.121 John Quincy , still in Boston, was outraged and suggested the Federalists hold a mass protest meeting to rally public opinion; but the Republicans held theirs first, and John Quincy Adams, Federalist, party attended. Not only did he attend, but he served on a committee which drew up resolutions of protest. John Quincy's departure from the Federalist party dates from his presence at this Republican mass meeting.122 In December, with the United States under pressure by both Britain and France, John Quincy voted for the embargo bill, a measure Jefferson anticipated would prevent a shooting war through peaceful coercion. Hope ran high that it would stop impressment by both France and England and the ominous English and French blockade of American 119lbid. 120j q a , Memoirs, 5:136. 121 On the Chesapeake affair, see Bemis, Foundations, pp. 139-55. 122ibid., p. 142. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 411 ships. New England, being the center of shipping in the United States, felt the embargo most severely, and John Quincy, as Senator from Massachusetts, fully understood the implications of his vote. His was a reluctant vote: better an embargo than a war for which American was unprepared.123 And, as if the vote for the embargo was not enough to separate him from the Federalists, John Quincy, by attending a Republican Congressional caucus to decide candidates for Vice President and President in the 1808 election, made it clear that he had changed parties. He voted first for Goerge Clinton merely because he was the least obnoxious to the Federalists. Then, when it became obvious that Madison would be the candidate, he voted for Clinton as Vice- President.124 One person voted for John Quincy as Vice-President. 125 A furious Abigal Adams refused to believe her son had attended a Republican caucus, but John Adams supported John Quincy.126 To both parents, it was clear that John Quincy's days as a Federalist Senator from Massachusetts were numbered. Louisa's letters home at the time, touch on the emergency. In a letter to her mother-in-law in late January, Louisa reported the political news and told Abigail that things were in such confusion that 123ibid., p. 143. 124ibid., pp. 144-45. 125ibid., p. 144. It was rumored the ballot for Vice-President was in JQA's own hand. TEA joked, "I did not believe you thought so meanly of y o u rs e lf as to put in for V ice-P resid e n t when th e re was a poll open at the same place for President." TEA to JQA, 19 February 1808, APM, reel 405. 126aa to JQA, 15 February 1808, APM, r e e l 405; JA to JQA, 8 January 1808, APM, reel 405. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 412 i t was im possible to say e x a c tly when Congress would end i t s s e s s i o n . 127 generally agreed, she wrote, that war with either France or England was inevitable, but (she wrongly reported) the Republicans' loyalty towards France made England the more likely candidate. Evening parties, were becoming fractious with talk of the coming elections, and the battle between Clinton and Madison had spilled over into social life. Louisa came to agree with John Quincy that office-holding would "not prove an enviable station as the path is so thickly strew'd with thorns that the few flowers with which it is decorated only serve to conceal the poison by which it is surrounded." John Quincy's apostacy from the Federalists was causing private criticism and in spite of being at her sister's, Louisa looked forward to her "release" from Washington. Abigail, sending Louisa the news of her boys was also gloomy. "We are all in pretty good Health," she wrote, "I cannot add spirits. The aspect of public affairs throughs [sic] a gloom over the approaching spring. The Husbandman can neither till or sow with a prospect of gain; as his handmaid commerce has both her hands loped of[f] and her feet tied."128 Although the dread of war lay heavy on Washington, it certainly did not curtail the number of parties. The Adamses were out a great deal, and the usual inter-family visiting continued with H arriet's family, the Boyds. Balls were also given, and musicals continued. Even when Louisa could not attend, John Quincy went alone, an unusual behavior for one who so often gave the impression that parties were a 127lcA to AA, 24 January 1808, APM, reel 405. 128 aa to LCA, 4 April 1808, APM, reel 406. Reproduced with permission ot the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 413 waste of time. This winter he began to have serious trouble with his eyes, an affliction that would recur in the future when he was upset.129 Louisa's health was still an ongoing problem, although Charles flourished. For once, she had a child that seemed positively robust. After the worrisome time they bed had with the other two children (especially John), John Quincy considered himself "bless'd in the birth of a third son, who has hitherto had health beyond the common portion of an infant. My other children though of more slender Constitution, have also been p r e s e r v e d ."130 At this time Louisa's sister's husband, George Boyd, requested from John Quincy a recommendation to President Madison as a messenger to bear dispatches to France. Having carefully kept himself free from all job-seeking, of which he was viciously accused by the Federalists, John Quincy how explained to Boyd that he would not in any way solicit a position for anyone. Should the slightest part of the Federalist charge be true, John Quincy answered Boyd, "I should have in my own bosom a chastiser more severe and more implacable than the most inveterate of ray E n e m i e s . " 131 Louisa herself wrote to Jefferson requesting a job for her brother Thomas. Jefferson put her off telling 129JQA, Diary, 4 April 1808, APM, reel 30. 1^*1 JQA, Diacy, Day 1807, APM, re e l 30. 131JQA to George Boyd, 14 May 1808, Archives Division, State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 414 her brother to apply to the proper secretaries, but later Madison gave him a job in New Orleans where he served as postmaster for several y e a r s . 132 the n in e teen th cen tu ry , th e re was much job seeking; Abigail had requested jobs for several of her relatives. It was, therefore, not unusual that Louisa made the request for her brother or that George Boyd asked John Quincy to help him. At the end of April, Congress finally ended its long session, and the Adamses began to make arrangements to go home to Quincy. In May, six months before it was necessary or customary, the Massachusetts Legislature dumped John Quincy as Senator by electing a new man to fill his place. In answer, on 8 June 1808, John Quincy resigned his seat in the Senate. He now returned to the law practice for which he had so little liking and the Boylston Professorship which he had in the past enjoyed so much. Years later, when she came to write her memoirs, Louisa recorded her pleasure that John Quincy's resignation had ended her travel. Since the peregrinations between Quincy and Washington had always been so trying, her view was fully understandable. She had spent much time away from John and George and, during the Congressional sessions, to be with her children meant to be alone in Boston. Like other political families, no happy solution had ever been found to the Adams's family problems brought on by national political service. 132Thomas B. Johnson to LCA, 8 August 1807, Papers of Thomas Jefferson, reel 38, LC. It seems that Dolley Madison was responsible for getting Thomas Johnson the position. See LCA to Dolley Madison, folder 1811-1815, Box 1794-1842, Dolley Payne Madison Collection, Manuscript Division, LC. For a description of the job, see AA to LCA, 12 January 1810, APM, reel 409. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 415 John Quincy arrived in Boston to find that many Boston Federalists considered him a pariah. Some people, however, were still willing to associate with the Adamses, and a large party they gave in June was attended by fo rty g u e s t s . 133 There were not to be many such evenings either that summer or the next winter. In November, Louisa and John Quincy gave a ball.134 The house next door, empty at this time and a lso owned by the Adamses, was used fo r the s ix ty g u ests who attended the party. Louisa described how she decorated the house "prettily" and gave a "handsome supper." The Federalist politicians she recorded did not attend, although "old friends and connections of the family" and "a few young men" were able to overcome their political prejudices. Fall 1808 was a difficult time for the family: all were ill, and George was a behavior problem. Louisa blamed the amount of study to which George was subject for his chronic cough, and indeed John Quincy's Diary shows that he spent hours almost every day teaching his son. Perhaps in revolt against his father's extraordinary interest in his schooling, George played truant from time to time. Louisa wrote years later that "George was kept too close a student—his brain overcharged with all sorts of things and his imagination kindled into a F l a m e . "135 John, who had spent little of his five years with his parents, passed the greater part of the summer with his grandmother in 133lcA, "Adventures," 25 July 1808, APM, reel 269. 134lcA, "Adventures," 19 November 1808, APM, reel 269. 135lcA, "Adventures," December 1808, APM, reel 269. Concerning GWA's truancy, see LCA to JA2 , 12 October 1810, APM, reel 410. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 416 Quincy. Louisa recorded in her memoirs that George was "always in trouble and in punishment." She tried to mitigate what she felt was the harshness of George's upbringing and sent him to dancing school, apparently against his father's wishes. Louisa, in her reminiscences, wrote quite reasonably, "Why should not a man move well? Is it p re fe ra b le to be lik e a Clown? S urely not when we have the means of improvement . . . we cannot dance alone: it has the effect of subduing rude egotism ."136 In late fall 1808, Louisa and the children stayed in Boston while John Quincy went to Washington to argue a case before the Supreme Court. Louisa accused John Quincy of leaving her "cavalierly" and with "apparent" coldness. All separations were difficult for Louisa, and as usual her heightened emotional needs went u n m e t . 137 Louisa in Boston suffered another miscarriage. No matter how many children Louisa had, John Quincy heard of each miscarriage with genuine sadness. Uncharacteristically looking on the bright side of things, he advised Louisa to realize from how much pain and suffering the miscarriage had re lie v e d h e r . 1 3 8 The e n tire tim e John Quincy was in W ashington, Boston buzzed with rumors of his appointment to various offices. Secretary of State 136LCA, "Adventures," 22 April 1809, APM, reel 269. 137lcA to JOA, 28 January 1809, APM, reel 407; JOA ended his letter, "Farewell my dearest child," so perhaps she was less than adult about his leaving. JQA to LCA, 29 January 1809, APM, reel 407. 138lcA, "Adventures," 15 February 1809, APM, reel 269; JOA to LCA, 21 February 1809, APM, reel 407. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 417 was mentioned, as were various posts in Europe but not specifically the one which on March 6th he was offered by President Madison—Minister Plenipotentiary to R u s s i a . 139 John Quincy inquired as to the length of the appointment and was told, "It depends upon events. Perhaps three or four years." John Quincy told the President he could see no objection to accepting the mission. Madison told John Quincy that he would be expected to go as soon as convenient and with the understanding that he could refuse if there was any objection. John Quincy replied that he would allow his name to be put forward, but the Senate rejected the nomination.140 The objection of the Senate was not to the man, but to the post, it being deemed "inexpedient" (too expensive and unnecessary) to send a Minister to Russia at this tim e .141 John Quincy reported the nomination to Louisa. In a masterpiece of understatement he assured her that "In respect to ourselves and to our Children it would have been attended with more troubles than advantage," and described himself as "better pleased to 139"xhe Town is full of your appointment as Secretary of War and your father and Brother ask'd me if I thought your [sic] would accept it." LCA to JQA, 16 February I808[9], APM, reel 407. So seriously was the rumor taken that the young men studying law with JOA looked for another mentor. LCA to JQA, 1 March 1808[9], APM, reel 405. JQA Memoirs, 1:545. Bemis writes that JQA "accepted on the spot." Bemis, Foundations, p. 151. 140william Short's nomination to the same post had been rejected the year before. Bemis, Foundations, p. 159. 141lbid., p. 151. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 418 sta y a t home" than go to R u s s i a . 142 John Quincy was correct in his surmise. Had the appointment been confirmed, the family certainly would have faced serious disruption. Whether he himself wanted the post and was, as usual denying it, is harder to judge. He was bored with the law, driven by the cares of his family, and according to his Diary felt fragmented in his avocations. He may have wished to return to diplomacy for which his talents were far more appropriate than for the law, yet, for the moment, the Senate's rejection kept John Quincy in Boston. On 3 July, while perusing a Washington newspaper, John Quincy learned that the Senate had reversed itself and that he had been confirmed as Minister to Russia. No comment follows in his Diary, simply that he passed the newspaper on and that he "knew not who the boys were that brought it to me."143 On 4 July, John Quincy received several letters, one of which was a Commission appointing him "Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States at the Court of His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias." He accepted the appointment. At the same time he received a letter from his nephew William S. Smith requesting that he be allowed to serve John Quincy as Secretary in the Russian post.144 John Quincy seems to have decided to accept Smith as Secretary merely because Smith applied first. Two other young men, including John Quincy's favorite law student, Alexander H. Everett, also applied for the job. John Quincy wrote in his Diary that they had applied too 142joa to LCA, 9 March 1809, APM, ree l 407. 143jqa, Diary, 3 July 18Q9, APM, re e l 30. 144JQA, Diary, 4 Ju ly 1809, APM, re e l 30. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 41 9 late. It seems not to have occurred to him that he could consider all the applicants and decide which he would choose. Time of application, not John Quincy would make the decision, as once prudence, not he, had determined when he would marry. In the end, Alexander H. Everett, and another young man, Francis Gray, went along at their own expense. John Quincy's Diary and a letter were full of reasons why the acceptance of the post was unfortunate. He had thought that he could serve Mr. Madison better as a private citizen.145 The appointment would unsettle his family. His parents were entering old age; his children were yet young. He enjoyed his work at Harvard. The post suited neither his "own inclination nor my own private judgment," but he "deem[ed] it a duty to sacrifice them both to the public sense expressed in Constitutional authority."146 gut nowhere in his Diary is there a clue how the decision was arrived at, that Louisa, Charles, and Catherine Johnson, Louisa's sister, should go to Russia, and that George and John should go to live at the Cranches'. Louisa wrote in her memoirs that she and her mother fought against Catherine's going to R ussia on the grounds th a t she had no money to d ress p ro p e rly , but the opinions of both women were overruled.147 1^3JQA to William Eustis, 16 July 1809, APM, reel 135. 146JQA, Diary, 5 July 1809, APM, reel 30; JOA, Diary, 6 August 1809, APM, reel 31. See also JQA, Diary, 11 July 1809, APM, reel 30. JA understood JQA's mission perfectly. "If we do not acquire more knowledge than we have of the present and probable future state of Europe, we shall be hoodwinked and bubbled by the French and English." JA to Benjamin Rush, 21 January 1810, Schulz and Adair, eds. The Spur of Fame, p. 159. 1^7lca , "Adventures," 4 July 1809, APM, reel 269. JOA wrote that he asked TBA to accompany Catherine Johnson to Washington if she could not go to Russia. JQA, Diary, 9 July 1809, APM, reel 30. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 420 From John Quincy's Diary it seems as if the most pressing problem for him in leaving the United States was the disposition of his books, not his family's well being. His emotions may have been in such a turmoil that to deal with inanimate objects like books calmed him. It seemed unlikely he would ever see his parents again. He was leaving his two boys, his farm, and his brother. "The separation from my family and friends," he wrote, "has always been painful; but never to the degree which I feel it now." But the old sense of duty in serving his country drove him to go. Madison had entrusted the mission to him, and he would not betray this trust. He laid his motives, as far as he recognized them, bare on the page and asked God's blessing on his country, on the "Purity" of his motives, and the "approbation of my Countrymen ."148 There were, however, some positive forces driving John Quincy towards Russia. He was fully aware of the political importance of the mission, "perhaps the most important of any that I have ever in the course of my life been engaged in ."149 John Quincy's instructions were to create good will; look after the interests of the United States, "secure favorable treatment for American commerce," which meant expediting American shipping, now sorely constrained by Napoleon's blockade. He was also to send home political information.150 As an ex-Federalist, his career in government seemed over, but a post abroad 148JQA, Diary, 6 August 1809, APM, reel 31. JOA came to realize his behavior when moving was odd. JQA, Diary, 19 April 1814, APM, re e l 32. 149JQA, Diary, 5 August 1809, APM, reel 31. 150gemis, Foundations, p. 160. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 421 would, while not keeping him in the limelight, at least keep him in politics. He had been bred to the diplomatic service and was returning to a sphere in which he had done well before. Taken in its entirety it was a congenial appointment. There is no record of how Louisa felt at this time, but she was very clear how she felt about the trip when she came to write her memoirs in 1840. She had thought the m atter s e ttle d in March and could not say who was more stunned, John Adams or herself. The shock, she w rote, was t e r r i b l e . 0 it was too hard! not a soul entered into my feelings and all laughed to scorn my suffering at crying out that it was a f f e c ta tio n —Every p re p a ra tio n was madewithout the s lig h te s t consultation with me and even the disposal of my Children and my Sister was fixed without my knowledge until it was too late to Change. Judge Adams [Thomas] was commissioned to inform me of all this as it admitted of no change and on the 4 of August we sailed . . . I having been taken to Quincy to see my two boys and not being permitted to speak with the old gentleman [John Adams] alone least 1 should excite his pity and he allow me to take my boys with me.— Oh this agony of agonies! can ambition repay such sacrifices? never!! 151 I t is hard to know how much tru th th e re was in L o u isa 's assertion that she was practically carried off to Russia. A year after she arrived there she told Abigail Adams that she went abroad because of the "cruel anxiety and uneasiness in which Mr. Adams passed his life in A m e r i c a . "152 This does not sound like someone who was made to leave against her will. It is difficult to imagine her living in Boston for 131lCA, "Adventures," 4 July 1809, APM, reel 269. 152lcA to AA. 13 October 1810, APM, reel 410. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 422 three or four years without John Quincy. She had missed her husband dreadfully when he went alone to Washington; how bereft would she have felt with him in Russia, she in Boston? All the assets (except youth) which had made her a success in Berlin were still hers. She had written once to John Quincy that she could live neither with him nor w ithout him, and she was probably faced w ith the same dilemma now. Abigail told her sister in Haverhill that John Quincy had made the determination that George and John would be left with her in A m e r i c a . 153 Louisa knew that the two children would be well cared for by Mary Cranch. John and George had been put out to board before and had spent a great deal of time away from their parents. Neither John Quincy nor Louisa could know that it would be six, not three or four, years before they once again saw their sons. The Cranches, although getting on in years, were fully capable of caring for the boys, and Abigail lived nearby. Both George and John's questionable health would have made it positively dangerous for them to live in the Russian c lim a te . I t was c le a r , Louisa decided years l a t e r , th a t she had made a mistake, that she should have stayed home. Certainly a prayer she wrote on George's birthday in 1847, suffused with guilt, gives more than a hint that she herself wanted to go to Russia. Pardon! pardon! the Sin of thy Servant for deserting the Children of my tenderest love, thy gifts, for mere worldly purposes; at that tender age when they most required a Mothers watchful cares .... It was thy Will to take both my Cherished Sons from one who . . . 153aa to Elizabeth Peabody, 18 July 1809, The Papers of the Shaw Family, Reel 1, LC. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 423 left to others to perform these lovely duties, which thy goodness had called me to f u l f i l . ^^4 Louisa wrote in her memoirs that "nothing on earth could induce" her again to make such a sacrifice. If separation was unavoidable a mother should "cling" to her children. "A man can take care of himself—And if he abandons one part of his family he soon learns that he might as well leave them all," she wrote with the benefit of hindsight. She wrote that "wiser heads" than hers had p re v a ile d , and she blamed no one.155 Louisa wrote that her wish to stay home was interpreted by others as affectation. Those who scoffed at her feelings had never lived abroad, probably had never taken a long ocean voyage, and had no idea what it was to live on an American salary abroad. Russia was not England, not even Prussia. At a greater distance, its climate would be difficult for the strongest constitution, certainly not part of the equipment Louisa brought to her new station. To go to Russia was hard, but probably to stay would have been harder s till. So, perhaps ambivalent, Louisa, her sister Catherine, the almost two-year-old 134lcA, "The Birthday of My First Born Son, George Washington Adams," 12 April 1847, APM, reel 270. 155lcA, "Adventures," 5 August 1809, APM, reel 269. In 1834 LCA w rote JQA, "In no way as you know have I ever been consulted or have I even participated in the settlement of my Children." LCA to JQA, 16 July 1834, APM, reel 500. CFA wrote later that his mother had "decided upon going with him [JOA] even at the cost of leaving with their grandparents two of her children to pursue their education at home." Perhaps JQA's own experience of wanting to stay home in 1788 to prepare for Harvard influenced him to leave George and John. CFA, Biographical Fragment, APM, reel 269. Mary King, wife of Rufus King, very reluctantly left her two youngest boys with Mrs. Gore in London while she travelled on the continent. Ernst, Rufus King, pp. 231 and n . 38. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 424 Charles, John Quincy, the three young men, and two servants sailed on 5 August on the ship Horace, bound for St. Petersburg.156 The Louisa who left for St. Petersburg was far more adult than the immature woman who had arrived eight years before looking for her "home." There was now no "home" except where she re s id e d , and she would be expected to maintain a family wherever her husband's duty led him. She would need all the maturity she had gained and more in Russia. She could not, however, know this in August 1809, as with only one of her three children beside her, she began yet another journey—this time to the very periphery of European civilization. 15bThe two servants were Martha Godfrey, LCA's maid, and Nelson, John Quincy's black man-servant. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER V III "WHEN AT ROME’ Sea voyages had always been difficult for Louisa, and the one in summer 1809 from Boston to St. Petersburg was no exception. On the ship Horace, the Adams party, seven in all, shared a cabin twenty feet square which also served as a dining room.l The Adams's black servant. Nelson, and the white maid, Martha Godfrey, slept elsewhere. All the women as well as Charles and Alexander Everett were seasick. John Quincy slept very little , becoming fractious, but reminded himself that others had nerves that were even "naturally more irritable" than his.2 Louisa remembered years later not the seasickness but the squabbles and jealousies on board the ship engendered by the presence of one unmarried woman and several unmarried men.3 The voyage to St. Petersburg was strenuous, punctuated by hostile warships and layovers in Scandinavia. The ship went north between the Shetland and Orkney Islands to avoid seizure by British warships operating in the Channel. The British stopped the vessel three times, but each time allowed it to continue.4 Because of the IjQA, Diary, 12 August 1809, APM, re e l 31. 2jq A, Diary, 11 August 1809, APM, reel 31. 3lcA, "Adventures," 5 August 1809, APM, reel 269. 4jq A, Diary, 17, 19 September 1809, APM, reel 31. 425 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 426 threat of a storm, the ship put into Fleckeroe, Norway, where they found the captains of nearly thirty American ships held as prizes by the rapacious Danish and Norwegian privateers on the grounds that the boats were English.5 The American counter-claims (that the boats were American) were winding their slow way through the courts. Louisa, John Quincy, Catherine, and the young men went onshore to dine with an American official. Louisa described it as a "charming dinner in this little nook of Norway"; because the storm prevented their return, she remained overnight.& They sailed for Denmark in a high rolling sea, and Louisa and Charles were once more seasick. An English vessel stopped the Horace but allowed it to pass because John Quincy was an accredited Minister to a foreign government. Near the port of Elsinore, Denmark, a gale forced the ship to put out an anchor, but it did not hold. The bowsprit of another vessel almost came through the porthole , and the Horace began to drift onto the rocks. Louisa admitted in her memoirs that even at a distance of thirty years, "To go through the horrors of this most terrible and tedious voyage is beyond my strength."7 Uncomfortable accommodations and bad w eather made Denmark memorable. At Elsinore, Louisa visited Hamlet's garden, which she 5JQA, D iary, 19 September 1809, APM, re e l 31. For an a n a ly sis of U.S.-Danish relations, see Alfred W. Crosby, Jr., American, Russia, Hemp and Napoleon: American Trade with Russia and the B altic, 1783-1812 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1965), pp. 125-49. ^Much of LCA's account of this trip seems to have been copied from JQA's Diary. Compare LCA, "Adventures," 19 September 1809, APM, reel 269, with JQA, Diary, 19 September 1809, APM, reel 31. 7lCA, "Adventures," 25 September 1809, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 427 found heavily ornamented. Their own lodgings were dilapidated. John Quincy described them as almost in "ruins."® Bad weather kept Louisa on shore while her husband left for Copenhagen to negotiate the release of the American ships. After four days in the "ruins," all returned to the ship and more foul weather. Years later when she wrote about the experience, Louisa's sense of the ridiculous asserted itself. In the midst of sickness distress of mind, weariness of body constant alarms not daring to put our last anchor for fear we should lose it was received an invitation to a Ball at the Governors on the Island of "Burnt Hollum" . . . while the Vessel was rocking r o llin g and p itch in g as i f she would go to p ie c e s—We were obliged to decline the honor.9 At last the Horace reached Kronstadt, the port which served St. Petersburg. Going ashore, Louisa and Catherine wore the large beaver hats that Louisa wrote had been "chosen" for them at Copenhagen. Thus accoutred[,] fancy us[,] immediately from the Ship ushurd into an immense Salon a t the Admirals House f u l l of e le g a n tly dressed Ladies and Gentlemen[,] staring aghast at the figures just introduced .... Maid and Child and a l l taking th e ir place in the Farce and our Black Servant following—It was exquisite beyond all description.10 While on shore, another mishap occurred. The Horace, with all th e ir c lo th in g , lo s t i t s mooring and was blown downstream. The Adamses arrived in St. Petersburg, Louisa and her sister in cambric, the baby in his only suit, and "the Minister with the Shirt he had on: solus!!"11 The United States Consul, Levett Harris, provided extra ®LCA, "Adventures," 28 September 1809, APM, reel 269. JOA, Diary, 29 September 1809, APM, reel 31. 9lcA, "Adventures," 14 October 1809, APM, reel 269. IO lcA, "Adventures," 22 October 1809, APM, reel 269. U lCA, "Adventures," 23 October 1809, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 428 clothing until theirs could be retrieved. A small boat took them the last twenty miles to St. Petersburg on the Neva River, thus completing a seventy-five-day voyage from America.12 St. Petersburg, where the Adamses arrived on 23 October 1809, was a majestic city and the capital of Imperial Russia. Situated almost on the Gulf of Finland, it had been a marshy swamp when Peter the Great decided to move the seat of government from Moscow in 1703. Drawing the nobility after him, Peter's drive and authority created a city which, in time, became as beautiful as any in Europe. The Neva R iver, which made a g re a t bend a t S t. P ete rsb u rg , divided the city. Broad and deep, its banks were lined with wharfs and handsome buildings that had been built at enormous expense and effort on the marshy ground. Frozen in winter, the river became a street which united the parts of the city. In the summer it divided the city, but could be easily crossed by boats for hire. The three- mile quay which ran alongside of the Neva was built from granite, as were the two major canals which, along with several minor ones, drained the swampy g ro u n d .1® The streets of St. Petersburg were wide and, in 1809, unpaved. In winter the packed snow and ice formed a perfect surface for sleighs and sledges, but in summer the dust and discomfort were severe. 14 12lhe Adamses accomplished the last part of the journey by shallow-draft boat. Crosby, America, Russia, p. 29. 13Por an early description of St. Petersburg, see William Coxe, Travels in Poland, Russia, Sweden and Denmark, 3 vols. (Dublin; S. Price, 1784), pp. 47-133. 14Johann Georg Kohl, Russia (London: Chapman & H all, 1844), p. 11. A full description of St. Petersburg can be found in ibid., pp. 1-211. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 429 The Royal Palace dominated the city, and it was clear that this was an imperial capital. The life of the court was all-important. What happened to Russia happened to the Emperor and, in turn, to St. Petersburg. One could no more escape from the presence of royalty and aristocracy than from the sight of their magnificent palaces. M ilitary uniforms were everywhere.13 John Quincy reported home that the court was "addicted to official parade beyond any other in Europe." Senator James A. Bayard considered St. Petersburg in 1813 "one of the most splendid cities in Europe" not rivaled by any but Berlin.1® Although the city was the capital of Russia, the aristocracy looked towards western Europe and especially France for their culture. French, not Russian, was spoken by the upper classes; and their chefs, libraries, and household decorative arts came from Paris. The diplomatic corps lived magnificently and expensively, spoke French, and gave and attended official functions as opulent as any in Europe. Louisa and John Quincy came into this new world with previous diplomatic experience. Louisa was not the immature bride she had been in 1797 when she f i r s t saw B e rlin . She alread y knew th a t the l i f e of an American Minister abroad entailed financial sacrifice. It seems symbolic that the Adamses arrived with only one suit of clothes. The St. Petersburg climate was worse than Louisa had imagined. Desperately cold in winter, it regulated every aspect of life between October and April. The cold determined the wearing of thick furs in ISlbid., p. 28. IGjQA to Robert Smith, 3 January 1810, APM, reel 409; James A. Bayard to Andrew Bayard, 27 August 1813, The Bayard Papers, Manuscript Division, LC. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 430 the winter, and constant precautions had to be taken that loiterers did not freeze to death on the streets. Carriage drivers, kept waiting hour after hour without compunction by their pleasure-loving masters, were sometimes found frozen to death. Huge bonfires of whole trees were lit on the streets to keep the coachmen w a r m .17 One circumstance that made life bearable in a cold which froze quicksilver was that at the lower temperatures the "sky . . . [was] invariably clear and the air a perfect calm."l® The houses, designed for the cold, had massive walls, double windows, and wood stoves that furnished heat at least six months of the y e a r .19 Fires kept the rooms at a livable temperature, and life went on indoors. Ice-hills on the Neva gave some exercise to children, but the danger of frostbite was c o n sta n t. Not only the cold, but the length of the day was a factor in St. Petersburg. Endless daylight in the summer and darkness in the winter were psychologically wearing. As the autumn began evenings lengthened until, by December afternoons and evenings were indistinguishable. In the summer, with practically no dark hours, sleep in g was d i f f i c u l t . The Neva was used by the city's inhabitants for transportation in winter as well as summer, and the date of the breaking up of the ice 17K ohl, R u ssia , pp. 42-44. 1®JQA to AA, 1 February 1814, APM, reel 417. 19Kohl, Russia, p. 45. Mary Helen Middleton, wife of the United States Minister to Russia from 1821 to 1830, found that in St. Petersburg, "The houses are so well warmed that we never suffer from cold within doors." Mary Helen Middleton to Margaret B. Smith, 7 and 8 February 1822, vol. 10, Margaret Bayard Smith Papers, LC. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 431 in the spring was of the utmost importance. For several days, the huge blocks of ice pouring out of Lake Ladoga tore away the winter's bridges and halted all intercourse between the various parts of the city. When the bridges had been swept away, the boats could once more transport passengers from one part of the city to the other. Summer's heat could be as oppressive as winter's cold. It was, in every way, a land of extrem es. Finances, not the cold, first challenged the Adamses. In her earliest letter home, Louisa reported that they were "plunged into the midst of difficulties and expences from which nothing . . . could extricate us unless the American government w ill double the present appointment."20 They were, she explained, "miserably lodged." The Adamses needed clothes and furniture first. Fortunately, a Mrs. Krehmer, wife of the Czar's banker, provided some clothing for the family and then took Louisa shopping for the household necessities. Mrs. Krehmer became a firm and lasting friend.21 Instant help from a woman who knew St. Petersburg well was invaluable to Louisa; she had not been so lucky in Berlin. Levett Harris also helped the family to settle in.22 20lcA to AA, 28 October 1809, APM, reel 408. 21lcA, "Adventures," 26 October 1809, APM, reel 269. Mrs. Krehmer, a Russian woman, was noted for her hospitality to English and Americans in St. Petersburg. The language of Mrs. Krehmer's house was English, and the whole household spoke Russian and German. Diary of James A. Bayard, 8 September 1813, Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1913, 2:451. 22por H arris's background, see Crosby, America, Russia, pp. 94-96. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 432 Finding an affordable house was the next order of business for the Adamses. Unsuccessful, they moved, a month after they arrived, from one hotel to another. Louisa complained to Abigail Adams that the "disagreeableness of a Russian Hotel . . . [is] indescribable you can form no idea of the Morals the manners and the people of this C o u n t r y"23 . she described in her memoirs th a t her room was a "stone hole entered by stone passages" and rooms so full of rats that she feared they would attack C h a r l e s . 24 she admitted in a letter that they had brought this evil on themselves, thus implying that she had voluntarily come to Russia. No one could or should be expected, she asserted, to possess enough "Philosophy [to] support [such discomfort] any length of t i m e . "25 she fell sick two weeks after she arrived, but recovered quickly.2® Louisa began at once to take part in the social round, which was more active and incomparably more magnificent in Russia than at the Court of Berlin and for which John Quincy's $9,000 salary was pitifully small. Even the extra $9,000, which Congress had allowed to set up his 23lcA to AA, 7 January 1810, APM, reel 409. Lord Carysfort, sent from Berlin to St. Petersburg in 1802, had exactly the same problems as the Adamses to find a house. Benjamin Garlick to George Grenville, 28 March 1802, Grenville Papers, Additional Manuscripts #41,856, BM. 24LCA, "Adventures," 27 October 1809, APM, reel 269. 25LCA to AA, 7 January 1810, APM, reel 409. An English diplomat wrote about St. Petersburg thirty years before the Adamses arrived; "Our society is uniformly dull, our climate uniformly cold, our provisions uniformly bad, & every article of Life both of luxury and of necessity uniformly dear." William Harris to William Eden, 3 June 1779, Auckland Papers, #34,416, BM. 26lcA, "Adventures," 27 October 1809, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 433 residence, fell short of the family's needs. The French Ambassador spent $350,000 (one million rubles) a year and lived in a residence Louisa considered "regal." The Swedish Minister had a salary of $30,000 per a n n u m .27 Houses, food, servants, horses, clothing, entertainment required expenditure beyond the Adams's experiences. Compared to St. Petersburg, Berlin could be considered republican in its relative simplicity. Not only the required outlay, but the Court life itself d iffe re d from what the Adamses had been used to . The hours kept by the Diplomatic Corps and the Court made work difficult. Louisa explained to those in Quincy that the diplomats rose at eleven, dined at five, took tea at ten, supped at one, and returned to bed at four A.M. Visiting, as it had been in Washington, was endless; and parties were held every night. The Russian nobility kept open house, held card p a r ti e s , and engaged in "gaming of every kind to an immence [s i c ] amount[ ,] which is in fact term'd the only genteel and interesting amusement the Secretaries of the foreign Ministers who have nothing else to do pass their whole lives in this amiable occupation."2® Very soon after his arrival, John Quincy, instructed in the intricacies of a Court known fo r i t s c o m p le x itie s, was presented to the Emperor Alexander I and his Empress, Elizabeth. 27Bemis, F oundations, p. 164. LCA, "A dventures," 20 November 1809, APM, reel 269. 2®LCA to AA, 7 January 1810, APM, reel 409. James A. Bayard recorded that "The evenings [of cards] end at about 3 o'clock and the next day commences a t 2." D iary of James A. Bayard, 13 September 1813, Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1913, 2:457. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 434 Since protocol was naturally of the utmost importance, Louisa, too, received special instructions for her official presentation from her sponsor, the first "dame d 'honneur," a Countess Catherine Litta. As in most European courts, the daily schedule was at the whim of royalty; and Louisa's ceremony was put forward, then back, and finally foward again. What was important to Louisa, thirty years later, was that because of the changed hour she was "left alone to go through all the fears and frights of the Presentation perfectly alone at the most magnificent Court in Europe."29 Louisa recalled the strain of the presentation. Her heart had raced and she reported she had a "fluttered Pulse." Instead of the basted-together dress she had worn in Prussia, she wore "a Hoop with a Silver tissue skirt with a train a heavy crimson Velvet Robe with a very long train lined with White body." Her hair was "simply arranged and ornamented with a small diamond arrow—White Satin Shoes gloves Fan . . . and over all this luggage my Fur Cloak."30 John Quincy's account book shows that he paid a jeweler's bill for October 1809, which was higher than his month's rent, so perhaps the diamond brooch was not so small after a ll.31 The men in the house, Everett, Smith, and Gray, she recalled, laughed at her appearance as she left attended by two 29lcA, "A dventures," 12 November 1809, APM, re e l 269. 30Ib id . 3iHemilian-Jeweller's B ill, 18 November 1809, 1,235 rubles. Bill for lodging one month 1,027.25 rubles. JQA, Household Account Book 1799-1822, APM, r e e l 208. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 435 footmen, although she did not explain what about her costume was so am using.32 Meeting her sponsor, Countess Litta ("superbly dressed and covered with diamonds"), Louisa stood in the center of a hall and was told she "must stand unmoved until her Imperial Majesty walked up to me," at which point Louisa should undertake to kiss her hand, which the Empress would, however, not permit. Louisa described her presentation in d e ta il; Two Negroes dressed in a la Turque with Splendid uniforms were stationed at the doors with drawn Sabres with gold handles—At the opening of the doors I saw a suite of long rooms at each door of which stood two Negroes in the same style and the Grand Marshall in a splendid Costume proceeded the Emperor and Empress who came up together with a long train of Ladies and Gentlemen following and as their imperial Majesties passed the door the Grand Marshall fell back and the door[s] were nearly closed and they approached me—The Emperor was in Uniform and the Empress like myself in a rich court dress. I went through the forms which the Empress made easy by her extreme affability and the Emperor assumed the conversation the Empress only joining with a word or two—I think the audience was of about fifteen minutes ending with some complementary words and they withdrew as they came and I remained in the same position until the doors were reclosed—And thus ended act the first—33 Congratulated because she had performed so well, Louisa was now led to the Empress Mother before whom a lesser ceremony was held. The Empress Mother, according to Louisa's memoirs, thought Louisa an untravelled woman, and asked her many questions about the "wonders that struck my eyes everywhere in St. Petersburg." Louisa, experienced as a diplomat's wife, expressed her admiration of the Russian city, but mentioned having seen "London Paris Berlin and Dresden." "'A mon dieu 32lcA, "Adventures," 12 November 1809, APM, reel 269. 33ibid. For Harriet Stoddert Cambell's (wife of the U.S. Minister from 1818 to 1820) presentation to the Empress, see Wharton, Social Life in the Early Republic, pp. 193-94. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 436 vous avez tout vue!!' and she [the Empress Mother] appeared to regret i t very much—The Savage had been e x p e c t e d!!"34 since the Countess Litta was of too exalted a rank to present Louisa to the Grand Duchess Ann, the fourteen-year-old sister of the Emperor, a lesser courtier performed this honor. The parties given by the Russian diplomatic corps were sumptuous and lavish. Two days after her presentation, Louisa and John Quincy attended a splendid ball at Count Romanoff's, and this time even the Americans approved of her dress. Louisa danced well; and although she feared she would "blunder," she managed not to "mortify my fastidious partner," Levett Harris. The Emperor was served supper on solid gold plates, the Diplomatic Corps on silver, and the party ended at seven o'clock in the morning. Louisa commented later that she was glad to get home: " a ll th is was too much lik e a f a ir y t a l e . "35 Levett Harris, a constant visitor at the Adams's, took upon himself the diplomatic, instruction of the new Minister and his wife. Harris, appointed Consul by Jefferson in 1803, had worked to improve Russian-American relations. Treated like a Minister, Harris also felt he had to liv e lik e one and u n su ccessfu lly requested more money from the government .36 Louisa thought Harris an officious man whose efforts to help the very experienced Adamses amused, rather than instructed. 3^LCA, "A dventures," 12 November 1809, APM, re e l 269. When he had been at The Hague in the 1780s, JA had thought the Empress Dowager "W ealth, D ignity and Beauty p e rs o n ifie d ." JA to JQA, 15 January 1811, APM, reel 411. 35lcA, "A dventures," 14 November 1809, APM, re e l 269. 36on H arris's career, see Crosby, America, Russia, pp. 276-79. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 437 her. On one occasion he even hinted that should Louisa and he be seen too much together, people would suppose an improper liaison. For such an inanity, Louisa laughed in his face. Harris was, she wrote, "a petit Maitre, with Quaker habits of exceeding neatness and in his household, his furniture, his Equipage and [in] his person there was a refined elegance amounting to effeminancy in the best possible ta s t e ."37 One American with whom the Adamses became particularly close was Miers Fisher, Jr., son of a Quaker merchant from Philadelphia. Fisher had gone to St. Petersburg in 1809 as the representative of his f a th e r 's m e rc an tile house. The Adamses met him f i r s t in Norway and then again in St. Petersburg. Again and again the entry appears in John Quincy's Diary, "Mr. Fisher here for dinner," for supper, for the evening. Fisher's business prospered, and he reported to his father in Philadelphia that he was very close to the Adamses, closer than any other American. He realized that association with the American Minister raised him in the estimation of his countrymen. Fisher thought John Quincy eminently qualified to be President and Louisa equally qualified to be the wife of the President.38 Even in a 3 7 lc A , "Adventures," 8 February 1810, APM, reel 269. James A. Bayard described Harris's apartment as elegant, tastefully and richly furnished. "The establishment is considered even in St. P. as a very neat and pretty one." Diary of James A. Bayard, 23 July 1813, Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1913, 2:416. 38Miers Fisher, Jr., to Miers Fisher, 28 June/10 July, 7/19 August, 7 September 1811. Fisher wrote that under any circumstances he would support JQA for President. Miers Fisher, Jr., to Miers Fisher, 7 September 1811, Xerox copy of selected Miers Fisher, Jr., letters in possession of the author. "Mr. Fisher is a constant visitor." LCA, "Adventures," 30 July 1810, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 438 European outpost, the promise of the Presidency clung to John Quincy. Louisa made friends with several women in St. Petersburg but not with those in the Russian Court or with other Russian women, about whom she formed very decided opinions. She found them handsome when young but thought they "fade remarkably early, . . . are cold and haughtily repulsive in their manners with tendencies to languor and susceptibiity."39 But the diplomatic corps provided few women who were not Russian. Unlike Berlin, few diplomats in St. Petersburg brought their wives, probably because of the expense and the climate.40 Madame de Bray, the young and pretty wife of the Minister from Bavaria, was, in 1809, the only other diplomatic wife besides Louisa. Charles often visited the Krehmer and de Bray children, while Louisa visited with their mothers. Later, Louisa found Mrs. de Bezarra, wife of the Minister from Portugal, very sympathetic, "a remarkably sensible woman: full of that worldly knowledge which adapts a Lady for a political Station—Shrewd observant and practiced without any excess of sensitive delicacy."41 if Louisa drew the inference that her own worldly knowledge fitted her for a political station, we do not know, but she recognized it in others. She further recognized that wives of 39lcA to AA, 7 January 1810, APM, reel 409. 40"At present there is a great scarcity of diplomatic ladies at St. Petersburg." JQA to AA, 18 May 1811, APM, reel 411. Mary Helen Middleton found "some individuals whom I converse with distinguished for good sense instruction and originality of thought, among the Russians & in the Corps - but the generality cannot boast of such rare qualities and the balls remind me of puppet shows." Mary Helen Middleton to Margaret B. Smith, 7 and 8 February 1822, vol. 10, Margaret Bayard Smith Papers, LC. 41l CA, "Adventures," 20 June 1811, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 439 diplomats held a truly political status, whether acknowledged by the home government or n o t. Although Louisa, now thirty-four, no longer needed mothering from women such as Mrs. Brown or Lady Carysfort, she continued to be drawn to English women. Louisa found the British Mrs. Bettancourt, whose husband served as Chief of the Polytechnic School, "uneducated and illiterate but kind hearted [and] warm". She wrote later that she always felt at home in the Bettancourt house. On the other hand, the "well educated" Countess Colombi, the twenty-four-year-old Russian wife of the Spanish Consul, was mild and gentle and "so gay; so sensible;and so attractive it is impossible to know her without loving h e r . "42 Her sister Clementine de Bode, more serious than the Countess, was also a great friend of Louisa's. There were few intellectual women in Louisa's circle; but Louisa had a firm grasp, when she wrote her memoirs, that sensible women, though not always the most "agreeable, [were] the most v a lu a b le ." She commented, however, th a t "th e maxim of Men that pretty is better than good is almost universally adopted by them where money does not bias the t a s t e . "43 This was a double a tta c k on men; first, for their overvaluation of female beauty and, second, for their mercenary instincts. The lavish parties to which John Quincy went night after night sometimes with, sometimes without, Louisa, were beyond their imaginings. Thirty years later, Louisa recalled a ball at the H erm itage, 42lcA, "Adventures," 24 June 1810, 29 March 1811, APM, reel 269. 43lcA, "Adventures," 11 February 1811, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 440 The nobility all appear in full Court dress The Gentlemen wearing black Venetian hats with large Plumes of Feathers and Cloaks and the Ladies rich dresses of the most splendid style—The illuminations exceed all description and the Pictures vases and rich ornaments of every description produce an effect perfectly dazzling to the eyes and the imagination.44 Not only were the normal expenses of diplomatic living in St. Petersburg enhanced by such opulent and competitive displays, but just keeping house was unexpectedly expensive. So disheartened was Louisa by St. Petersburg society that she foresaw only "mortifications of every kind" and requested John Quincy to allow her to go home as soon as the ice broke up in spring 1810. To save money, she proposed to live quietly at Quincy and see only her nearest relatives, but John Quincy refused. He could not, he said, support her and the children in Quincy while he stayed in Russia. John Quincy's response surprised Louisa, an indication perhaps that finances had not been discussed as a reason for taking Louisa to Russia.45 Even the children were not immune from the social round. Evening parties were regularly given for the children. At a children's costume ball, Charles, only two and a half, went outfitted as an Indian chief, as Louisa explained "to gratify the taste for savages." There were lottery tickets for prizes, but John Quincy would not let Charles stay for the final drawing. To another party, Charles went dressed as Bacchus, the god of wine and debauchery, and supped with the other children at eleven o'clock. His costume brought sharp questions from the family in Quincy. Whatever Charles's costume, the 44lcA, "Adventures," 13 January 1810, APM, reel 269. 45lcA to AA, 7 January 1810, APM, reel 409. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 441 parties were lavish and during one evening there were "oceans of champagne for the little p e o p l e ."46 Louisa and John Quincy attended the theatre as often as possible. Their attendance was made easier by the invitation of the Duke de Mondragoni to use his box whenever they wished. Both German and French plays were given. Unlike John Quincy, Louisa understood no German; she found the former "stupid" and thought the actors' voices strident.47 She felt quite differently about the French plays and reveled in them. Louisa decided domestic tragedy was more affecting than high tragedy because it more nearly touched everyday life and therefore the experience of the audience. A barrier of unfamiliarity prevented the same audience reaction to tragedy dealing with matters of state, and she found historical characters "stiff and stately or cold."48 Yet her memoirs of Russia most often recall only the bare fact that she attended the theatre. Perhaps she felt that John Quincy was more competent to judge the dramas they saw, an assessment she might have reached by reading his Diary where he recorded in great detail his moral and intellectual reactions. Possibly the figures of the haut-monde were so real to Louisa and so dramatic in their own right even thirty years later that they crowded out the lesser lights on the stage. 46JQA, Diary, 14 December 1809, APM, reel 31. LCA, "Adventures," 14 December 1809, APM, reel 269. See AA to JOA, 11 July 1810, APM, reel 410. 47lcA, "Adventures," 8 October 1810, APM, reel 269. 48LCA, "A dventures," 19 November 1811, APM, re e l 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 442 Louisa remembered that she made a very favorable impression on the Czar and his family. This was not necessarily an advantage, because economy sometimes forced her to stay home when she should have been at court functions. Louisa's absence was noticed, and the Empress Mother warned her that if she played truant again she should be "om ited" on fu tu re o c c a sio n s.49 This could be serio u s fo r the Adamses because, as Louisa wrote, the Emperor's behavior was the "key to the conduct of everybody at Court."50 The same situation had obtained at Berlin; those whom the Emperor chose to favor were treated well by everyone else at Court. Chastised, Louisa went to parties, but with trepidation. She overheard the Empress Mother telling a lady, seen several times in the same gown, that she wished her to wear another as she was tired of "seeing the same color so often."51 John Quincy may have been unusually sensitive to Louisa's plight, because he allowed Louisa and Catherine to accept expensive Turkish shawls from H arris.52 The problem was not only expensive clothing but that both Louisa and Catherine had to dress on a budget already strained to provide clothing for Louisa alone. She tried even the extreme of dressing in mourning, but others in the diplomatic corps suspected the subterfuge. The situation was hard for Louisa, and John Adams wrote his son that Louisa felt the financial constraints more than he and thought "Your 49LCA, "Adventures," 1 January 1810, APM, reel 269. 58 lCA, "Adventures," 16 December 1809, APM, reel 269. 51lcA, "Adventures," 1 January 1810, APM, reel 269. 52lcA, "A dventures," 27 November 1809, APM, re e l 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 443 lady is very good."53 Such an acknowledgement of Louisa's acceptance of the difficulties of the diplomatic life was rare. She stated in her autobiography that the rigor of life in the United States diplomatic corps fell most heavily on women, because what little money the families were allowed was lavished on the more prominent Ministers. Both Louisa and John Quincy received attention and favors from members of the royal family. Louisa recorded that at a ball given by Count Romanoff, the Adamses were "received . . . with distinction."54 Perhaps Louisa's social eminence mitigated some of the difficulties of life in St. Petersburg and helped her to settle down. She had more honored than her family in Washington, elevated by her husband's position in Berlin, and now once again she entered a world in which social prestige arrived with diplomatic post. In spite of her complaints about their lack of money, Louisa received social prominence. Despite her disclaimers, Louisa was socially ambitious. In the diplomatic corps at European courts, social prestige was palpable and may have been very satisfying to Louisa. She often recorded she was forced into a life of dissipation, a disclaimer belied by her admiring descriptions of elegant parties. The Adamses were also flattered by informal contacts with the Czar. The Emperor often stopped on the Nevsky perspective (the largest quay of the city) and chatted informally with the Adamses. Without equerries or guards, Alexander, friendly yet dignified at the same 53lca , "Adventures," 27 November 1809, 14 April 1810, APM, reel 269. JA to JQA, 22 February 1811, APM, r e e l 411. 54lca , "A dventures," 14 November 1809, APM, r e e l 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 444 time, stepped out of the stiff protocol to the admiration of John Quincy and L o u i s a . 55 At a ball in May 1810 the Emperor danced a polonaise with Louisa. In an account reminiscent of the novels to which she had been so addicted as an adolescent, Louisa wrote in her memoirs that the Czar's wish to dance with her was but an excuse for him to be introduced to her sister. Louisa attributed an invitation for her and Catherine to attend a theatre at the Hermitage as arising from a dance the Czar had with Catherine and "the great partiality of the Emperor for my husband." Catherine was also allowed to consider herself as "presented," although she had not been so. Since there is no corroborating support for the Czar's suggested partiality for Catherine and much evidence of Alexander's respect for John Quincy, the l a t t e r reason was probably the r e a l o n e . 56 Louisa, however, insisted that her sister had captivated the Czar. The Emperor, she wrote, tried to catch Louisa and Catherine to speak to them after another dance; but Louisa, in the role of "duena," 55nary Helen Middleton was just as admiring of the Emperor's ability to cast off formality. Mary Helen Middleton to Margaret B. Smith, 7 and 8 February 1822, vol. 10, Margaret Bayard Smith Papers, LC. 56lcA, "Adventures," 23 May 1810, APM, reel 269. There is absolutely no corroborating evidence that the Czar was interested in Catherine Johnson in any way except as Louisa's sister. LCA, "Adventures," 14 October, 29 November 1810, 13 January 1811, APM, reel 269. JQA's Diary records that Catherine was admitted to the Hermitage because LCA was the only wife in the Diplomatic Corps. JQA, Diary, 24 October 1810, APM, reel 31. Mainwaring reports that the Emperor had a mild flirtation with Catherine and opened a ball by dancing with her. Marion Mainwaring, John Quincy Adams and Russia; A Sketch of Early Russian-American Relations as Recorded in the Papers of the Adams Family and Some of Their Contemporaries (Quincy, Mass.; Published for the Adams Papers by the Patriot Ledger, 1965), p. 30. Mainwaring's assessment of LCA was that she was a "sickly and unenterprising woman." Ibid., p. 20. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 445 thinking things had gone far enough, drove off with Catherine in the carriage. Meeting the Czar later while out for exercise, Louisa thought he was particularly cool to Catherine and wrote that she was sorry for John Quincy's sake, but amused nevertheless—a rather dangerous "amusement" if the Court, following the Czar's lead, became cool towards the Adamses.57 Probably with greater truth, Louisa reported that Catherine attracted the young American men. Gray, Everett, and William Smith, who liv e d a t f i r s t w ith the Adamses and la t e r in an apartm ent of th e ir own. Louisa insisted these young men were jealous of the Emperor's a tte n tio n s to C ath erin e. The Adamses had been in S t. P etersburg only four months when John Quincy's Diary records enigmatically, "Catherine this day gave me information with respect to herself and Mr. Gray, which places me in a situation of some delicacy," but the resolution of the situation is not r e c o r d e d .58 From Louisa's account, it seems as though both Louisa and Catherine took pleasure in teasing the young men about the Emperor's attentions to Catherine, and the resultant squabbles "help to pass the time quite pleasantly." This seems like a somewhat cruel pastime since Catherine was the only unmarried American woman in St. Petersburg. Louisa seems to have exchanged poetry with Alexander Everett, and perhaps the entire scene reminded her of her years at Tower H i l l . 59 57lcA, "A dventures," 29 November 1818, APM, r e e l 269. 58JOA, Diary, 12 February 1810, APM, reel 31. Word reached Boston that Catherine and Francis Gray were engaged, but AA wisely refused to believe it. AA to CJ, 29 December 1810, APM, reel 410. 59lcA, "Adventures," 1 January 1811, JQA, Diary, APM, reel 269. Alexander H. Everett to LCA, 1809-1810?, APM, reel 408. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 446 Whether Louisa did or did not fend off the Czar's attention to Catherine, Louisa did not, in her memoirs anyway, hesitate to break through protocol. She recorded some very sharp answers she made to those in the Court—including the Czar. Told by Mrs. Krehmer that Czar Alexander had taken offense at some criticism s Louisa's maid had w ritten home, Louisa answered (knowing that Mrs. Krehmer would convey her words to the Emperor) that it was "very ungenerous of his Maj esty after offering to send our dispatches by a Private and especial Courier to use the opportunity against us."60 The French Ambassador, Louisa recalled in her memoirs, told her that she was too serious for a pretty woman and th a t when "we were a t Rome we must do as Rome." Louisa retorted, "if I should to to Rome perhaps I might."61 Louisa also recorded that in refusing a special court seat near the Czar, her informant told her that "no one says nay to the Emperor—I laughed and replied but I am a republican—He smiled and went on his way."82 Even more than Louisa, John Quincy was self-conscious about being a republican. On Twelfth Night, a cake was baked with a bean in it and, according to custom, the man who found the bean in his slice would be honorary king for a year and give a party for all present in return. John Quincy tactfully refused the bean in his slice of cake saying "that being a Republican it was not suitable for me to be made king,"63 One day walking along the quay with the Czar, he admitted to 60LCA, "Adventures," 3 January 1811, APM, reel 269. 81lcA, "A dventures," 20 November 1809, APM, r e e l 269. 62lcA, "Adventures," 13 January 1811, APM, reel 269. 63jQA, Diary, 18 January 1810, APM, reel 31; LCA, "Adventures," 18 January 1810, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 447 this European emperor that his official budget was too small, a confidence probably made easier by John Quincy's pride in his republican heritage. As time went on, the Adamses learned to live within their small budget. Nevertheless, both Louisa and John Quincy, in letter after letter, complained about their circumstances. They were pressed by the expenses of their house, clothing, food, household help. Servants were the greatest expense. John Quincy, in charge of the household, wrote; Since we entered this house, my monthly expense books amount to double what they were the first month. We have a maitre-d'hotel, or steward; a cook, who has under him two scullions—mujiks; a Swiss, or porter; two footmen, a mujik to make the fires; a coachman and postilion; and Thomas, the black man, to be my valet-de-chambre; Martha Godfrey, the maid . . . a ferame-de-chambre of Mrs. Adams, . . . a house-mald and a laundry-maid.84 Not only did the families of the married servants live with the Adamses, but John Quincy reported in his Diary that the cook and the steward took a cut of all purchases and the steward raided the wine c e l l a r . 65 to hold down costs and prevent stealing, the Adamses fired the cook and had the meals catered. John Quincy's household account book, which he kept in Russia, shows the same rigorous bookkeeping practices which he had practised in America. 64JQA, Memoirs, 2;193. 65up to twenty people lived in the servants' quarters of the Adams menage. Mainwaring, John Quincy Adams and Russia, p. 34. An added expense fo r the Adamses was the custom of New Years and E aster fees and gifts of money for Court servants who arrived at the Adams's door on New Years morning to collect the money. JQA, Diary, 13 January 1813, APM, reel 30. JQA, Miscellany, Account book 1809-1829, 13 January 1813, APM, reel 210. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 448 The expenses of life in Russia should not have surprised the Adamses. Abigail informed Louisa that "I have always understood that a mission to Russia was one of the most expensive embassys—but our wise L e g is la to rs make no d iffe re n c e w hether l i t t l e or much is required."66 Since the Adamses had at least fifteen servants in 1812, expenses mounted. The Bavarian Minister and his wife hoped, if he could obtain permission, to travel during the following winter. Although he gave many reasons for the journey, John Quincy thought the real reason was to escape the expense of living in St. Petersburg.67 Once again Louisa interpreted financial stringency in light of her lack of a dowry. To Abigail she explained how she saw her situation vis-a-vis John Quincy: "Every bill that I am forced to bring in (having not a sixpence in the world) makes ruin stare him in the f a c e . "68 Louisa felt her money might have been of assistance. She had no dowry, therefore she thought that she had no rights and could not object to anything that John Quincy thought would "promote his ambition his fame or his e a s e . "69 Somehow, in Louisa's mind the possession of money gave her opinions and fe e lin g s stan d in g ; the lack of money rendered her opinions quite without value. Without an income or capital of her own, Louisa felt as insignificant in Russia as she had in America. 66aa to LCA, 6 March 1810, APM, reel 409. 87JQA, Diary, 28 May 1810, APM, reel 31. See also JQA to JA, 2 September 1810, APM, reel 410. 88lcA to AA, 13 May 1810, APM, re e l 409. LCA to AA, 23 October 1810, APM, reel 410. See also LCA to Mary Cranch, 5 June 1810, APM, r e e l 409. 69lcA to AA, 23 October 1810, APM, reel 410. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 449 Abigail, to whom Louisa lamented her lack of a dowry, answered loyally that the fault was not Louisa's. Abigail assured her daughter- in -law th a t John Quincy had known when he m arried her th a t she had no money (an in te r p r e ta tio n open to q u e stio n ), th a t none of the Adamses had ever mentioned the lack of a dowry, and that her influence was not le s s over John Quincy because she owned no fo rtu n e . Warming to her theme, Abigail asserted that it would have been unfortunate had Louisa possessed more financial means than John Quincy, ending with the assertion, "believe me my dear altho you might have felt more independent, you would not have been h a p p i e r . "70 Louisa's health, never very good in any climate, was affected by the Russian winter, and the rest of the family suffered equally. In February 1810, she apparently suffered another miscarriage, and in April she became ill with erysipelas, a streptococcus infection. In Louisa's case, the infection settled into her ear and caused temporary deafness. This deafness, she recorded later, embarrassed her when she conversed with royalty, who expected alert attention from their dinner and dancing partners; and Louisa, often not able to hear, felt stupid. Besides her deafness, Louisa suffered from fever, lassitude, and headaches. She was plagued with erysipelas every winter she spent in Russia.71 For a wife in the diplomatic corps, any outward 70aa to LCA, 21 January 1811, APM, reel 411. 71Concerning the miscarriage, see LCA, "Adventures," 3 February 1810, APM, reel 269. Concerning erysipelas, see LCA to AA, 13 June 1812, APM, reel 413; and LCA, "Adventures," 1 April 1810, APM, reel 169. For what was known about erysipelas in the nineteenth century, see "Dissertation on Erysipelas," submitted to the Faculty of Medicine of the Washington University of Baltimore for the Degree of Doctor of Medicine, 1841-1842, The Papers of Joseph M. Toner, Manuscript Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 450 manifestation of illness could be embarrassing. Blisters were applied to her head, and at one point she had to attend a party with the blisters still fresh behind her e a r s . 72 Others in the family became ill, too. During Louisa's illness, John Quincy's leg and eyes had become inflamed. His eyes healed, but the leg remained sore for weeks. In Russia, due perhaps to the climate or to unsanitary conditions (or to both), all illnesses seemed to linger. In the summer of 1810, Louisa had yet another miscarriage, but she seemed to recover more quickly than formerly.73 The next w in te r, Catherine, too, suffered from erysipelas. Besides Louisa's health, the scarcity of mail during the winter added to the Adams's worries. Communication between St. Petersburg and the outside world was frequently interrupted by both man and weather. Because the Danes seized all the ships they could during the summer months when the Baltic was open, much American mail never got through. Ships leaving Kronstadt for America sailed early in the autumn to be sure of clearing the Baltic before winter so that no mail came or went between fall and spring. Every year in October, the Adamses knew they would not hear regularly from home for six or seven months. In winter when the Baltic froze hard, letters would be sent via Paris and then Division, LC. For the modern view of erysipelas as a beta-hemolytic streptococcal infection of the subcutaneous tissue, see Gordon C. Sauer, Manual of Skin Diseases (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1980), p. 138. LCA's headaches, one of the effects of erysipelas, became more frequent at this time. See also JQA to AA, 6 June 1810, APM, reel 409. Louisa suffered from bouts of erysipelas for the rest of her life. 72lcA, "Adventures," 7 February 1810, APM, reel 269. 73lcA to AA, 19 July 1810, APM, reel 410. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 451 brought to St. Petersburg by Russian courier; but these letters were read first in Paris and later in St. Petersburg, which retarded their delivery. John Quincy wrote to his mother that the "greediness of appetite which we have for letters from America, makes them always highly acceptable, however remote their dates."74 Any letters told Louisa only how things had been four or five months previously. Thus her fears were allayed only about time long past. The present had to wait for future mail. News of the Adamses in St. Petersburg passed between Catherine Johnson in Washington and Abigail Adams in Quincy. Two remarkable women began a correspondence which was a continuing pleasure to both. Abigail wrote to Catherine: "Your Letters my dear Madam are allways entertaining and interesting to me. and as we have a common bond of union, by which our hearts are drawn to a Foreign Country, we mutually share in all the concerns of our dear absent C h i l d r e n . "75 go hig h ly did Abigail value her correspondence with Catherine that she wrote even when handicapped by an eye inflammation, which "renders it improper for me to write at all but I could not deny myself the pleasure of writeing to you, altho at some r i s k . "76 A b ig ail put the news th a t Louisa and Catherine had been particularly favored by the Emperor (he had opened a ball by dancing with them) into a diplomatic perspective and explained 74JQA to AA, 2/14 October 1810, APM, reel 410; "The Danes capture everything." AA to CJ, 19 September 1810, APM, reel 410. "I have written during the winter by way of France, and England, as well as to Denmark and Sweden." AA to JQA 17 February 1812, APM, reel 413. 75aa to CJ, 13 September 1810, APM, reel 410. 76aa to CJ, 29 December 1810, APM, reel 410. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 452 that these "apparently trifling circumstances" carried great political meaning in the "Courts of Princes."77 Abigail explained that diplomatic salaries were insufficient for a Minister to maintain a family and asserted "I do not see anyway for Mr. Adams to save himself and his family from total ruin; but by requesting a speedy recall." Abigail then advised Louisa directly: "You must extricate yourself by a return to America."78 Afraid her son would return home a pauper, Abigail took matters into her own hands in summer 1810. She wrote to President James Madison, requesting him to recall John Quincy because of the ruinous expense of the post.79 In his reply to Abigail, Madison wrote that "it was not the purpose of the Executive to subject him to the personal sacrifices which he finds unavoidable" and assured Abigail that should John Quincy agree to return, he would not "impair the sentiments which led to his appointment."80 Yet Madison, in another letter, this one to Russia, sent John Quincy a notice of recall to use if he wished but at the same time urged him to stay at his post.81 Not only did John Quincy remain in Russia, but he offered to stay for a year as a private citizen, as his own expense, without the 77aa to CJ, 13 September 1810, APM, reel 410. 78aa to CJ, 4 May 1810, APM, re e l 409; AA to LCA, 15 May 1810, APM, reel 409. AA thought JQA should not have gone abroad. AA to CJ, 13 September 1810, APM, reel 410. 79aa to James Madison, 1 August 1810, copied 22 February 1811, APM, reel 411. BOjames Madison to AA, 15 August 1810, APM, re e l 410. 81James Madison to JQA, 16 October 1810, APM, reel 410. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 453 salary he so badly needed.8% If Louisa learned of this offer, she did not comment about i t in her l e t t e r s or memoirs. Had she known, she might have expressed some feelings about John Quincy's willingness to use his capital for an entire year in Russia to help the government when he was so unwilling to provide her with some comforts she craved, such as a more comfortable house and enough clothing so that she did not have to feign mourning. The news th a t f il te r e d through the blockade was both good and bad. Eliza Johnson, the sixth of the seven Johnson children, had married John Pope, Senator from Kentucky, with President Madison in attendance .83 in January of 1811 Louisa's sister Nancy Hellen had died in childbirth. Abigail poured out what affectionate consolation she could in a letter to Catherine Johnson. The circumstances attendant upon a childbed death: have ever appeared to me one of the most awful dispensations of providence. . . . Religion my Friend, does not forbid us to weep, and to mourn for our Departed Friends, but it teaches us to cast our sorrows upon that Being in whose hands, and at whose disposal we are and who can heal the wounded Bosom, and bind up the broken h e a rt .84 I t was May before the news of Nancy H e lle n 's death reached St. Petersburg. Upon hearing the news, Louisa became alarmingly ill. Since she was again pregnant, she was, for some time, in danger of delivering prematurely. Louisa improved and eventually recovered. 82jqa to James Madison, 7 February 1810, The Adams Papers, MHS. "I then informed the President that under these circumstances, if my mission here should be terminated, I should remain here as a private individual until the next summer." JQA to JA, 7 June 1811, JQA, W ritin g s, 4:100. 83AA to LCA, 6 March 1810, APM, reel 409. 84AA to CJ, 19 January 1811, APM, reel 411. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 454 but not before leeches were used to bleed her and laudanum was prescribed to compose her n e r v e s .85 Both sisters had loved Nancy Hellen, and Catherine, too, was griefstricken. Abigail, as compassionate and loving towards Louisa as towards her mother, again suggested submission to the will of G o d .86 The following year, Walter Hellen, now a widower, married Louisa's youngest sister, Adelaide. Nancy Hellen's was not the only death in America reported to Louisa during 1811. In November, Elizabeth Norton, Mary Cranch's daughter died, with the result that her three children were added to Mrs. Cranch's care. Abigail's view that the boys were in the best possible hands continued unabated despite the number of children in the Cranch h o u s e h o l d87 . Perhaps she was c o rre c t; George and John were indeed in remarkably good health. Thomas Adams had made plans in 1810 to have the boys live with him, but these plans were never carried out. Abigail feared that Thomas and his wife Ann would spoil the boys, and she thought that Thomas was so often away that the burden of the boys' -care would fall on Ann. It was clear that Abigail wanted the boys with her sister and that there they would r e m a i n . 88 The overriding concern 85JQA, D iary, 23, 25 May 1811, APM, re e l 31; LCA to AA, 10 June 1811, APM, reel 411. LCA described her feelings while awakening from a laudanum-induced sleep: "It is at such moments that the heart is filled with fullness of joy for in these moments the affections expand and all the best sympathies which lie dormant in the every day events of rush forth uncontrould and give assurance of their reality." LCA, "Adventures," 25 May 1811, APM, reel 269. 86AA to LCA, 18 February 1811, APM, reel 411. 87a A to LCA, 28 April 1811, APM, reel 411. 8 8 j q a to TEA, 29 March 1811, APM, reel 411; AA to JQA, 8 April 1811, APM, reel 411. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 455 of the Adams family was for John Quincy's career; the boys, like Louisa, would simply have to adapt themselves to this priority. Within this framework, however, John Quincy's concern for the emotional w ell-b ein g of the two c h ild re n was marked. He assured h is mother th a t he felt secure in trusting the boys "to those who next to ourselves will feel the deepest and tenderest interest in their w e l f a r e . "89 Louisa, too, was consoled by what she knew was the expert care of Mrs. Cranch. The boys' unusual good health was reported to her in Russia by Abigail. Louisa missed the children terribly, and her yearning for them was not lessened even as she adjusted to life in St. Petersburg. She wrote Mary Cranch that she wished to buy the boys a token of her affection but felt constrained because she had brought no dowry.99 Possibly, because she had to ask John Quincy for the money, she felt that the presents would not truly be from her. The distance between Russia and American made emotional contact between the boys and their parents difficult, but John Quincy tried to bridge the gap by correspondence. Accepting the difficulties, he tenderly wrote to George: We are, my dear Child, indeed very far distant from each other; but we love you and your brother John as much as we could if we were all together—We hope that your brother Charles and you will still grow up together enough to love one another with the tenderest brotherly affection.91 He also encouraged them in their studies and began a long series of letters to George on the subject of Bible reading. John Quincy had, in 89JQA to AA, 5/17 September 1810, APM, reel 410. 90lcA to Mary Cranch, 5 June 1810, APM, reel 409. 91JQA to GWA, 3 September 1810, APM, reel 410. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 45 6 America, always measured the boys' height on each one of their birthdays. In Russia, he measured Charles on his own and on George and John's birthdays also, just as if the two older boys were present. He was, perhaps, unable to give up a habit once formed, or he may have wished to perform rites which, symbolically at least, kept the family to g e th e r .92 Louisa herself was ambitious for the boys. She pushed George to "emulate the talents, and merits, of your father and Grandfather." Possibly as an added incentive to the two boys in America, she reported the progress Charles, not yet five, was making in his studies in Russia. After describing Charles's prowess in arithmetic, Louisa admonished George, "I hope you pay due attention to this branch of your education."93 she did not mention her own part in driving George in his studies when she criticized her husband in later years for having "overcharged" his brain. In October 1811 death struck closer to the Adamses. Within one day of each other, Richard and Mary Cranch died. Mary Cranch's illness had been of several weeks' duration, and she finally succumbed on 17 October. Richard Cranch had died suddenly the day before. Fortunately George and John were not actually living with the Cranches when the two deaths occurred; fo r se v e ra l weeks they had moved from one 92"charles 2 F 10 inches." JOA, Diary, 12 April 1810, APM, reel 31; "John 7 years old—Charles 2 F 11 i . ," JOA, Diary, 4 July 1810, APM, re e l 31. 93LCA to GWA, 14 June 1812, APM, reel 413. JOA informed JA 2 that "the more and better you learn the more your Parents and friends will love you." JQA to JA%, 15 June 1811, APM, reel 411. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 457 place to another. How George and John bore up under the simultaneous deaths of both their foster parents is difficult to imagine. The perigrinations of George and John now started in earnest. New plans were made, and the boys were sent to their Aunt and Uncle Peabody in Atkinson, New Hampshire. Almost fifteen years later, George described in a reminiscence his happy wanderings through the fields and woods of New H a m p s h i r e . 94 Louisa would have been happy to know of George's pleasure during this time. From her letters and autobiography, it seems she knew nothing of the boys but had a vague sense that they were safely under Abigail's direction. In 1813 the boys were removed from Atkinson, for a reason which George wrote later he did not understand, and were sent to Hingham, Massachusetts, where they attended an academy. From the same letter which brought the news of the two Cranch's deaths, the Adamses learned that Louisa's mother, Catherine Johnson, had died. A "malignant fever" had swept through Washington in early autumn and not only Catherine Johnson, but Andrew Buchanan, Caroline's husband, had died. Harriet Boyd and Eliza Pope were also dangerously ill with the same fever, but both recovered. In a masterpiece of thoughtfulness in a time of great sorrow, Abigail conveyed to Louisa her strong, yet controlled, grief, which she hoped would find its ultimate consolation in the goodness and justice of God. Like so many 94GWA, Miscellany, Autogiobraphical Essay, p. 9, APM, reel 287. George and John had been "some times in one place & sometimes in another" during the summer. AA to Elizabeth Peabody, 1 [?] November 1812, The Papers of the Shaw Family, Reel #1, LC. Elizabeth Peabody w orried about George and describ ed h is " sin g u la r H a b its, & awkward ways." Elizabeth Peabody to JQA, 26 February 1812, APM, reel 413. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 45 8 other eighteenth-century women, Abigail considered death a release. The essence of the letter was in the ending, "I am your afflicted & sympathizing Mother."95 John Adams paid tribute to Catherine Johnson : "She was a Woman of fine Understanding and held an ingenious Pen. A constant Correspondent with your Mother [she] was a high Entertainment to Us, full of useful Information."96 Her loss, he wrote, almost equaled that of Mrs. Cranch. Catherine Johnson had brought up a family of daughters and married them to a number of distinguished men. It was in part family cohesion which had helped the Johnsons, as well as Catherine's charm, wit, and force of character. The Hellens had taken her and her unmarried daughters into their family. Louisa and John Quincy had taken one sister after another into their house and opened up for these fatherless girls a new and wider world. What Catherine had learned about entertaining as a Consul's wife in London, she passed on to her daughters—Nancy Hellen in Washington and Louisa in various posts around the world. She also passed on her wit. Abigail once wrote to Louisa that "the brilliancy of your Mother's wit, stings whilst it s p a r k l e s . "97 Louisa had inherited both the wit and the sting. 95a A to LCA, 26 November 1811, APM, re e l 412. I t is d i f f i c u l t to discover the exact nature of the fever. See T. H. Wright, "On the malignant fever of Elkridge Landing and its vicinity 1811," Baltimore M edical and P h ilo so p h ic a l Lyceum (1811) 1:26-42; and T. H. W right, A Historical and Physical Sketch of a Malignant Epidemick, Prevalent in Maryland: And some other states within the last few years (Baltimore: R. W. Pomeroy & Co., 1815), pp. 13, 22, 25-27. 96JA to JQA, 10 December 1811, APM, reel 412. 97AA to LCA, 24 February 1812, APM, reel 413. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 459 Louisa, bereft of a mother and sister, living more than three thousand miles away, looked to Abigail for advice about the future of her other sisters. She admitted "you have bestowed sufficient care and pains, on my unfortunate family to secure you from further trouble."98 It is odd that Louisa always considered her family as unfortunate when it seems that in the circumstances, they did very well. It may be that Louisa's basis for comparison was always Tower Hill and the opulent life they lived there before extravagant hopes were dashed. By January of 1811 the Adamses seemed well accustomed to their life in St. Petersburg. They were comfortably, if not luxuriously, situated in a house the living room of which was large enough to hold a p ian o , on which Louisa and C atherine played and sang to g e th e r.99 Most Americans who came to St. Petersburg ended up at the Adams's, where they were entertained for dinner. When not at a Court function or a party, John Quincy read to Louisa, sometimes in English, sometimes in French. Catherine often dined out on her own. The young gentlemen attached to the legation were no longer living with the Adamses, but they came for dinner almost every evening and often brought other Americans with them. Francis Dana, Jr., the son of the diplomat with whom John Quincy had gone to Russia in 1783, was at this time a successful merchant in Archangel and visited the Adamses every winter. Louisa remembered later that "time passed very pleasantly." She always 98lCA to AA, 13 June 1812, APM, reel 413. 99mus 1c was a great diversion for Americans in St. Petersburg. Ten years later, Mary Helen Middleton described "young men in town . . . [who] are m usical which is a resource to us who are so fond of singing." Mary Helen Middleton to Margaret B. Smith, 23 May 1824, vol. 11, Margaret Bayard Smith Papers, LC. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 460 felt at ease in any situation which harked back to her childhood in London, when the Tower H ill house had been filled with young men from A m erica. In March 1811 John Quincy learned he had been nominated and confirmed unanimously by the Senate as Associate Justice of the Supreme C ourt. The Adamses in America w ere, of course , d e lig h te d w ith the news. John Adams, while admitting his son disliked the law, listed the benefits of the appointment for John Quincy himself, Louisa, and the children. He ended his letter by pronouncing it a "providential Dispensation for your good, for my good and for the preservation of your Family from Ruin." Using hyperbole, John Adams told his son that if he refused the post, it would create "a National Disgust and Resentment. It will be imputed to Pride, Oddity, Fastidiosity and an unbridled unbounded Ambition."100 Abigail, too, encouraged her son to accept the position. A judgeship on the Supreme Court would free him from partisan politics, give him a secure income, elevate him above envy, and, lastly, please his parents. On the very same day, writing to Louisa, Abigail reviewed all the reasons why the appointment should be accepted, but suggested with extraordinary perspicacity that Louisa might again be pregnant and, if so, she realized the dangers of the ocean voyage would preclude their coming home.1^1 IOO tba sen t JQA the news of h is appointm ent. TEA to JQA, 3 March 1811, APM, reel 411; JA to JQA, 4 March 1811, APM, reel 411. lOl^A to JQA, 4 March 1811, APM, reel 411. AA to Catherine Johnson, 30 March 1811, APM, reel 411. On her pregnancy, see LCA to AA, 10 June 1811, APM, reel 411. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 461 Louisa was indeed expecting a child in August and could not s a i l to the U nited S ta te s during the sunnner of 1811 e ith e r before or after the birth of the baby. Leaving from Kronstadt would expose her to the perils of the Baltic Sea; an overland journey to a safer port posed different but equal hazards. Louisa's pregnancy, John Quincy informed his father, relieved him from having to make a decision whether to accept or refuse on the merits of the case; quoting Shakespeare, he termed her pregnancy "the pleasing punishment women bear."102 It was not hard for John Quincy to refuse the judgeship. He had never liked the law, and the position would remove him from the mainstream of political life—the probable reason so many Federalist Senators voted for him. His staying in Russia because of his wife's pregnancy v^ould be instantly understood by everyone and could not expose him to criticism. He could, perhaps, feel that the decision had been made for him. In the grip of events (always a congenial stance for him), he could accept the honor paid him by the offer and, at the same tim e, w ith honor re fu s e . Within the tiny American community at St. Petersburg, rumors flew: John Quincy was about to be recalled, Robert Smith was on his way to Russia by frigate, John Quincy would be appointed to France (an old rumor dating from February). Louisa positively refused to believe this last rumor, as Paris was supposed to be even more expensive than 102jQA to JA, 30 May 1811, APM, re e l 411. Whoever made a copy of this letter (which follows the original on the microfilm) omitted the quotation from Shakespeare. Having seen LCA deliver CFA, a very large baby, it is difficult to understand how JQA could still think or write of childbirth as "the pleasing punishment women bear." Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 462 R u s s i a , 103 B esides, by 1811 a more com fortable house and warm relations with the members of the Czar's family had reconciled Louisa to life in St. Petersburg. In Ju ly of 1811 th e Adamses learned th a t th e ir permanent house had been s o ld . They moved to a summer house w ith in a few days. John Quincy's well-meant ministrations only partially helped the eight- months-pregnant Louisa. Thirty years later Louisa was to remember that it was slow going as John Quincy read "a page of every book that passes through his h a n d s . "104 Louisa was exhausted by the move in s p ite of having done little of the actual work. The new house was w ith in the bounds of S t. P e te rsb u rg , upon Apothecaries Island, formed by two arms of the Neva River and a small stream, the Karpoffka. John Quincy found this semi-rural residence "as pleasant a place of abode that ever fell to my lot." A dock led to the r iv e r . There was a fla g s t a f f on which, when the Adamses had g u e s ts , they flew an American flag brought out from Kronstadt by Miers Fisher. Nearby a large public garden with a variety of plants was available for w alking. Near the house was the summer residence of the Emperor. From two royal yachts moored in the river, bands gave two concerts daily—at dinner time and again at nine o'clock. So close were the Adamses to the yachts that "with the open doors and windows of warm weather we heard it [the music] as if it had been before our own door." lO^LCA to AA, 4 February, 10 June 1811, APM, reel 411. 104lcA, "Adventures," 10 July 1811, APM, reel 411; JQA, Diary, 1 July 1811, APM, reel 31. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 463 The view from their living-room windows was spectacular. They could look out across the Kamenoi Ostrof (Story Island), the country seat of Count Stroganoff, a collector and connoisseur of art whose grounds contained a large and very beautiful English Garden. Their nearest neighbors were the French Ambassador and the Danish Minister and others of the diplomatic corps, with whom they visited. Miers Fisher dined with them constantly, and the house was readily accessible to the city so that Louisa could receive and pay visits. John Ouincy called the house "my Russian Arcadia," and here in this lovely setting Louisa waited for her baby to be b o r n .105 Although now eight months' pregnant, Louisa went to Court to introduce Mrs. de Bezarra, wife of the Minister from Portugal, to the Empress. The Adamses had, at this time, an excellent French chef and entertained a good deal. By the end of July, Louisa wrote later, she was more quiet. She fished with Charles from the end of the dock, although what they caught was in e d ib le . She " trem ble[d]" when she considered what she had to go through. As in Berlin, she needed something to take her mind off the coming birth, and while she fished, she recorded, " I do not th in k ." Like so many o th er women, she turned to religion and "bow[ed] down with trust in him who has mercifully saved me through a life of trouble and granted to me so many blessings."lOG lOSjQA to AA, 2 October 1811, APM, reel 412. lO^LCA, "Adventures," 25, 29 July 1811, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 464 On 12 August 1811, after twelve hours of labor, Louisa delivered a healthy daughter. Although the delivery went quite well, L o u isa 's recovery was slow.It was 28 September before she could once more go out; by then the Czar had publicly inquired after her confinement and its outcome. In her memoirs, Louisa im plicitly criticized the Czar for hypocrisy (as did John Quincy in his Diary), because she thought his police must have already told him the news; but the Czar was m erely making sm all t a l k . 108 John Quincy wished to call the child Louisa Catherine, and la ter, in her memoirs, Louisa insisted that the name was chosen against her w ishes. The new baby was bap tised on 9 September 1811 a t the Anglican Church. That day the American flag flew from the end of the pier. Fearing what America might think, Louisa and John Quincy did not dare ask the Czar to be the baby's s p o n s o r .109 The godparents were of various religions: Madame de Bezzara was a Roman Catholic, Mrs. Krehmer an Anglican, and Levett Harris a Quaker. In the fall, because the house was unsuitable for the winter, the family moved back to the mainland. "I shall regret it [the house], the whole Winter," John Quincy wrote sadly. HO Although John Ouincy recorded in his Diary that Louisa was very pleased with the new house that he had found in Officers Street, she complained about it in her 107JQA, Diary, 12 August 1812, APM, reel 31. IOS lcA, "Adventures," 16 October 1811, APM, reel 269. JOA, Diary, 17 October 1811, APM, reel 31. 109JQA to AA, 10 September 1811, APM, reel 412; LCA, "Adventures," 9 September 1811, APM, reel 269. 110JQA, Diary, 3 October 1811, APM, reel 31. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 465 memoirs. "Debt or meaness is the penalty imposed by the salary of an American Minister," she recalled and, she might have added, a Minister who had married a woman without a dowry. HI John Quincy described the winter of 1811-1812 as one of "sickness and afflictions." Both he and Louisa were almost constantly ill. He fell into a "nervous agitation" which he could not c o n t r o l . H2 Louisa pleaded ill health as an excuse for her very infrequent letters to America, but Abigail responded, "My love to my daughter—her right hand hath forgotten to w r i t e . " ! 1 3 So frail was Louisa at this time that at the beginning of 1811, when writing a prayer in his Diary, John Quincy added to the description of Louisa as the "companion of my life," a question m a r k . 114 perhaps he thought she would not survive another winter in St. Petersburg. How much John Quincy suffered from the vicissitudes of his family can be gauged by the entry in his Diary upon hearing of the possible suicide of the Dutch Minister: "being a bachelor, [he] had no family to bear as a burden upon his estate or his sp irits."115 HI lcA, "Adventures," 10 October 1811, APM, reel 269. H 2 jqa to Alexander H. Everett, 10 April 1812, Adams Family Collection, Box #1, Manuscript Division, LC. JA could have been no help to JQA, telling him the country was forgetting him and bemoaning the fact that he was not even "acquiring an Independence." AA told him his boys and his country needed him at home. JA to JQA, 7 April 1812, APM, r e e l 413; AA to JQA, 10 May 1812, APM, r e e l 413. 113ibid. 114JQA, Diary, 1 January 1811, APM, reel 31. The prayer is on a separate piece of paper and tipped into the Diary. 115jQA, D iary, 21 August 1811, APM, re e l 31. JQA's comment was made only nine days after LCA was safely delivered of a child. Perhaps JQA was depressed by her illness after the birth of the baby. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 466 Among the burdens John Quincy struggled with was, of course, the management of the household. The household economy, however, was responsible for one of the great works of John Quincy's life. On 15 February 1812, he discovered that some coffee he had bought had been short-weighted "about one pound to forty." Wanting to examine the system of weights and measures in Russia, he found he could purchase neither an English nor a French measure. His interest became an avocation and his avocation almost an obsession, absorbing more and more of his time.H^ More arduous diplomatic responsibilities forced him, in 1814, to quit this work. He never really forgot the issue. In 1821, taking up where he had left off in Russia, John Quincy produced one of the great scientific papers of the nineteenth century, his Report of the Secretary of State upon Weights and M e a s u r e s . H7 By March 1812 Louisa was so homesick for the boys in America that John Quincy decided to send for them even though he himself was unsure of the wisdom of the plan. The possibility of their learning French and German and of seeing a wider world persuaded him, and he felt that their mother's wishes should have the greatest weight when llGjQA, Diary, 15 February 1812, APM, reel 31. Marion Mainwaring wrote without further comment, "Adams, not his wife, was housekeeper, superintending servants and supplies." Mainwaring, John Quincy Adams, p . 30. LCA rep o rte d in 1813 to AA th a t JQA was "even more buried in study than when he left America." LCA to AA, 2 September 1813, Houghton Library, Harvard University. l-^See Bemis, Foundations, pp. 258-59. See also Nathan Reingold, "The Scientific Mixed with the Political: John Quincy, Brooks and Henry Adams" (Ph.D. dissertation. University of Pennsylvania, 1951); Donald M. Goodfellow, "Neglected American Classic," Carnegie Technical 9 (April 1945):18-31. See also H. G. Good, "To the Future Biographers of John Quincy Adams," The Scientific Monthly 39 (September 1934):247-51. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 467 the welfare of the children were concerned—even when he was ambivalent.118 In June, Louisa defended herself against Abigail's accusation of having deserted her boys—a charge which, she told Abigail, had "cut me to the heartShe reiterated that she had wanted to send for them earlier, but left unsaid that for financial reasons John Quincy had refused.H9 Before the boys could even begin their trip to Russia, war intervened. In June 1812 it must have seemed as if the whole world was at war. France, already England's adversary, now declared war against Russia. The United States government, driven to the point of impasse by British Orders in Council and continual impressment of United States seamen and seeking to defend the republic against humilitation, declared war against Great B ritain.120 Napoleon began the famous campaign into Russia which would end in his fearful retreat from Moscow. The French in c u rsio n in to R u ssia, however, was not uppermost in Louisa's mind. Communications through war-torn territories and llBjQA to AA, 30 March 1812, APM, reel 413; JQA to AA, 30 April 1812, APM, reel 413. Mary Helen Middleton felt exactly as did LCA. "My fixed resolve is that when I have once again the happiness of meeting them [her children] nothing but Death shall separate us. When I left T was led to believe our absence would be only for 18 months & here we have been 4 years! how much longer to remain God only knows." "Nothing here can offer any compensation for such a privation." Mary Helen Middleton to Margaret B. Smith, 14 October 1822, vol. 10, 9 October 1824, vol. 11, Margaret Bayard Smith Papers, L.C. H 9 lcA to AA, 13 June 1812, APM, r e e l 415; AA to LCA, 24 February 1812, APM, reel 413. Yet LCA herself referred to "my two deserted Boys." LCA to AA, 2 June 1810, APM, reel 409. 120]^oger H. Brown, The Republic in P eril; 1812 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964). Bradford Perkins, Prologue to War: England and the United States, 1805-1812 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 468 across oceans patrolled by hostile navies became more fitful than ever, so i t was not u n ti l 1813 th a t the Adamses in M assachusetts learned th a t the long list of deaths in the Adams and Johnson families in America had been lengthened by yet another death—this one in Russia. Louisa C atherine had been u n til summer 1812 an ex ce p tio n a lly healthy, alert, and beguiling baby. In July she was extremely ill with dysentery. On 15 August, Louisa weaned the child. On 20 August, Louisa Catherine had another attack of dysentery, this time with a very high fe v e r. The do cto r suggested the baby be put back on the b re a st again, but her symptoms were ominous. Both parents were up with the baby at night, and John Quincy was unable to concentrate. Since the child was experiencing more frequent attacks, the doctor now suggested a change of air. Mrs. Krehmer found Louisa, the infant, and Catherine a lodge at her country place a t O chta, which the Adamses rented fo r a month. There Louisa brought some furniture, a maid, two men servants, and the ill child. But the infant continued sickly, and the sad procession made i t s way back in to the c ity on 9 September. The child's physicians (two were in attendance) were convinced,121 John Quincy wrote in his Diary, that her teeth were the cause of illness.122 xhe baby suffered and grew weaker. By 121JQA, Diary, 13-18 July, 20 August 1812, APM, reel 31. Parents panicked easily when children were ill because of the very real danger that the child might die. See Ethel Armes, éd., Nancy Shippen, pp. 150-51. JQA, Diary, 26 August 1812, APM, reel 31. 122JQA, Diary, 29 August 1812, APM, reel 31. Dr. Buchan, a nineteenth-century physician, estimated that l/lO of all children died during teething. Digestive problems after weaning were particularly common. Reinier suggests these problems, thought to be caused by teething, were actually caused by contaminated milk, water, or food. Thus, perhaps LCA was correct in attributing her baby's death to her Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 469 4 September, John Quincy was prepared for the worst. Watching the child's distress, he wrote, was agonizing. No teeth broke through Louisa Catherine's gums, and her alarming symptoms continued. On 7 September and again on 9 September, the baby had severe convulsions and she became more and more exhausted. Hours of respite were followed by relapses. These intervals, her father wrote, only "excite hopes in all their ardour and eagerness, and terminate in the bitterest anguish and disappointment."123 Both p aren ts were d is tra u g h t; l i f e came to a h a l t . Toward the end, the child's gums were lanced, although the operation was completely useless. "Renewed blisters, warm baths, injections of laudanum and Digitalis" were tried. Finally her hair was cut, her head blistered, and still the child grew worse. John Quincy's Diary is eloquent in its grief : Language cannot express the feelings of a Parent, beholding the long continued agonies of a lovely infant, and finding every expedient attempted to administer relief, utterly unavailing. It appeared scarcely possible that our Child should survive the tortures which she endured throughout this day—Her mother, fond, and affectionate by Nature, and attached to this child in particular as to an only daughter . . . was this afternoon forced to quit the side of the Cradle which for three days and nights before she had scarcely left a minute, and remove to another chamber, to be spared witnessing the last struggles of her expiring l i f e . 124 weaning, but the lateness of the weaning could not have been responsible. Reinier, "Attitudes toward and Practices of C h ild re a rin g ," pp. 62 and 70. For what was known about te e th in g in 1812 see J. Hurlock, A practical treatise upon dentition: or the breeding of teeth in children (London: 1742). 123JQA, D iary, 9 September 1812, APM, re e l 31. 124JQA, Diary, 12-13 September 1812, APM, reel 31. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 470 The child lived on another day and night. John Quincy alternated between the child and Louisa, who, returning to the child's bedside, "suffered hardly less than the child." On the 15th of September, as Catherine Johnson fainted, recovered, and resumed her place beside the cradle that she had not left for two days, the child finally and mercifully died. Louisa was not present; it was John Ouincy who informed her that their child was d e a d .125 Immediately after the death, both Louisa and Catherine became ill. Mrs. Krehmer came to give Louisa what comfort she could. Miers Fisher and another American watched duri:.g the night. The child was buried, with the whole family and their closest friends in attendance, in the churchyard of the British mercantile house,126 To his mother, John Quincy described his and Louisa's thwarted hopes, searing pain, and unendurable grief. Attributing the cause of the child's death to teething, he compressed into a few lines what it had taken the parents weeks to live through. Perhaps, he suggested, the death of their child was punishment for "transgressions of [her] parents." Nothing, he declared, could "alleviate or soothe, but thoughts of religion and hopes of another world . . . if her long and 125jq a , Diary, 14 September 1812, APM, reel 31. Like LCA, Mary Helen Middleton also lost a child in St. Petersburg. Harriet Campbell lost three of her four children from typhus; and she herself and her remaining child became ill after the death of the other children. Wharton, Social Life in the Early Republic, p. 193. 126jQA, D iary, 17 September 1812, APM, re e l 31. The Adamses regularly attended this church. LCA, "Adventures," 25 June 1810, APM, reel 269. Watching with bereaved parents was a common practice at this time. Margaret B. Smith passed four days and nights with Lucretia Clay, wife of Henry Clay, who lost a child of three months. Smith, Forty Years, p. 130. Miers Fisher himself died in 1813, two days after his marriage to a Russian princess, Helen Gregoroffsky. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 471 racking agonies here, were an atonement for my Offenses (for her own they could not be) I may be permitted to hope that her happiness in immortality will be proportioned to the rigour of her destiny upon Earth." He signed his letter "your afflicted s o n ."127 The event burned itself into Louisa's heart. The rest of her life she felt particularly close to any woman who had lost a child. To express her sympathy, she often wrote poems to comfort bereaved mothers. When Louisa came in 1840 to write her memoirs, she could go no further than the death of her baby. She had ended the first of her autobiographical writings, "Record of a Life or My Story," with the sadness of learning about Maria Frazier; she ended her memoirs, "The Adventures of a Nobody," with the death of Louisa Catherine.128 Although she did not record her feelings until several months la te r, Louisa told Abigail her grief was "beyond my reason to subdue . . . my heart is almost broken my health is gone and my peace of mind is I fear forever destroy'd." She then told her mother-in-law that she had fallen with the baby in her arms and that in this way she had caused her child's death.129 she seemed not to know that the child's 127JQA to AA, 21 September 1812, APM, reel 414. 128por an unknown reason, LCA dated her baby's death, in her memoirs, as 12 March 1812. LCA, "Adventures," 12 March 1812 (second part), APM, reel 269. AA described LCA as "full of sweet charming sensibilities towards her children." AA to AA 2 , 29 March 1812, De Windt, ed.. Correspondence of Miss Adams, p. 212. 129lcA to AA, 4 April 1813, APM, reel 421. Since women in the nineteenth century were defined by their childrearing function, when a child died, "it was an affirmation of personal guilt and possible sin. The pages of women's diaries are filled with personal recriminations. For months she flagellated herself with the remedies she might have used, the errors of judgement she could have avoided and the ways in which she might have offended a jealous God." Barbara Welter, "The Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 472 symptoms were unrelated to a fall. John Quincy wrote that Louisa felt more keenly than he the "privation and the vacuity" stemming from the loss. "The maternal cares," he explained, "were the business as well as the enjoyment of life," and he thought Louisa might have suffered an "irremediable wound." Yet after almost two years, he still could not pass a child of the same age on the street without a sharp pang of g r i e f . 130 Louisa thought herself, even after six months, "a calamity" to all around her. It seems as though Louisa was unable to shake off the melancholy which gripped her after the baby died. Without anything to occupy her time, her mind dwelt obsessively on the child's death. She tried going out even when she wanted to stay home, but upon returning to the house she was inevitably confronted by the empty room in which her child had suffered her last agonies. To occupy her mind and to mitigate her depression, Louisa began to keep a Diary. Perhaps seeing how John Quincy gained some measure of control over his life by journalizing, she hoped for the same therapeutic effect for herself.131 Feminization of American Religion: 1800-1860," in Dimity Convictions, pp. 83-103. 130JQA, Diary, Day September 1812, APM, reel 31; JQA to AA, 30 June 1814, APM, reel 418. 131lCA, Diary, 22 October 1812, 15 February 1814, APM, reel 264; LCA, Diary, 22, 24 October 1812, APM, reel 264. Mary Helen Middleton recorded her feelings when she lost a baby in Russia. "Everything around me recalls her most painfully to my recollection - She is never absent from my thoughts her idea mingles with every place & object, & I feel that her loss must sadden the remainder of my days. . . . For the last two months I have been forced to exert myself, I am constantly occupied in one way or other with my two little girls" (Mary Helen Middleton to Margaret B. Smith, 8 October 1827, vol. 10, Margaret Bayard Smith Papers, LC). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 473 Louisa's Diary records her state of mind. She realized that inactivity made her depressions worse. She thought her spirits might lift if she could return to America, where she had been more active. Not only were George and John there, but she hoped Abigail, who had herself lost a daughter in infancy, might comfort her. To go home was not all that Louisa wanted. At times she wished obsessively and overwhelmingly to die and be buried next to her child. She had been breast-feeding the baby when she died, so the maternal bond must have been particularly close. When an American died in St. Petersburg, Louisa was anxious lest he be placed in the grave beside her own dead child—a spot Louisa imagined reserved for herself. In the form of a w ill, she asked to "lay with my Infant—and to let no one follow me to my grave." Pathetically, she considered her body the "only thing in the world over which I may pretend to have a right and that only conditionally," referring even in her grief to the unbestowed doOTy.132 In ordinary times, Louisa admitted she would have been ashamed to admit her wish to be buried with her baby, but she did so freely now because she thought grief had affected her mind. John Quincy suggested she read Benjamin Rush's Diseases of the Mind. The book affected her powerfully, but produced more pain than therapy because, sensitive to 132lcA, D iary, 6 November 1812, APM, re e l 264; LCA, D iary, 5 December 1812, APM, reel 264. Richard H. Shyrock assesses Benjamin Rush's Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind as "showing some a p p rec iatio n of what would today be known as m ental healing and even of psychoanalysis." Richard H. Shyrock, "Benjamin Rush," Dictionary of American Biography, 20 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929-1937), 16:230. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 474 her own emotional instability, she imagined herself the victim of every symptom described in the book.133 Louisa's overwrought state of mind spilled over into her dreams. Two months after the child's death, she recorded a dream: Methought I was at the house in which I lived at Octa I was playing w ith my babe who ap p ear'd in pale h e a lth when I was suddenly c a lle d by my father who was sitting in the next room with a party of Gentlemen to beg that I would go down into the Cellar to fetch him some wine feeling afraid to go alone I requested by Sister Hellen to accompany me she immediately complied we descended a flight of steps which appeared to lead to a deep Vault and at the bottom of the stairs I stumbled and fell over a body newly murder'd from which the blood still appear'd to stream I arose with difficulty and looked for my Sister who seem'd to stand as if immovable and as if just risen from the grave notwithstanding my terror methought I got three bottles and carried them to my father who upon examining them told me that they were bottles of Porter which was entirely spoilt with the usual inconsistency of dreams I got over all these painful impressions and was as at first playing with my Child who was all life and annimation when the most tremendous storm of Thunder accompanied by most vivid flashes of Lightening suddenly arose the Sky was entirely obscured and I was left alone in the undescribable terror I fell upon [my] knees and implored the mercy of Heaven when suddenly the Thunder ceased and I raised my eyes and beheld as it were a stream of Fire which extended completely across the Heavens in which was d is ti n c tl y w ritte n "Be of good cheer thy p e titio n is g ran ted — I f e l l f l a t upon my face in a swoon and a w o k e . 1 3 4 Like so many n in e te e n th -c e n tu ry women, Louisa turned to religion for comfort. Like John Quincy, Louisa apprehended the death of the baby as God's punishment for her pride. Louisa was never quite sure of the cause of the baby's death, but she always blamed herself. In November, she thought it was her late weaning which brought on the fatal illness. Her Diary records her feelings about having weaned Louisa Catherine: "Oh God thou didst know the agonies I felt ere I 133lca , Diary, 5 December 1812 and 7 February 1814, APM, reel 264. 134lcA, Diary, 11 November 1812, APM, reel 264. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 475 could bring myself to do it Thou didst think . . . fit to take her from me Oh Lord and I humbly bow myself in submission to thy w ill."135 Louisa recorded depressed, self-accusatory, suicidal thoughts. Her self-control, never very good, grew even more erratic. She tried reading a prayer to Charles; but when John Quincy told her that she read badly, she lost her temper and left the reading to her husband. Thinking herself unfortunate in every undertaking, Louisa saw herself as harried and useless. Her heart was, she wrote, "almost broken." In the first pages of the Diary the modifier "almost" is the only hopeful sign .136 Besides her grief, Louisa's Diary records her hostility against John Quincy. "He" (John Quincy) complained that she had become suspicious and jealous. Yet she claimed that his "coldness and restraint" had adversely affected her "affectionate disposition." She offered no excuses and acknowledged many of her faults. She conceded that her requests (not identified in the Diary) were sometimes unreasonable. But she thought her husband's refusals might have been tempered by indulgence, affection, and gentleness. Louisa laid bare her feelings with great perception. She wrote that John Quincy's power to refuse her requests, combined with his contempt and harshness, overwhelmed h er.137 135lcA, Diary, 6 November 1812, APM, reel 264. 136lcA, Diary, 25 October 1812, APM, reel 264. 137 Ib id . Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 476 Louisa's Diary recorded that she read a book about Louis XVI. Her observations on the king seem to come perilously close to her feelings about John Quincy. She pleaded with her children to realize how easy it is for persons of "superior talents" to overestimate themselves without recognizing that excellence existed in many different forms. Men easily accepted "vanity of mind" and then "nursed by the adulation of the world," lived only within themselves, no longer capable of intercourse with others. They became incapable of appreciating the "common occurrences and sociabilities of life." Gifted men, she asserted, were difficult to reach emotionally. No sacrifice on the part of their families could break through their self absorption. Instead of retiring into themselves, they should support those less gifted. These same protests against the sacrifices she had been called upon to make for John Quincy's career and against the small emotional returns she received appear again in her writings twenty-five years later .138 A modern study of grief has isolated five characteristics in the behavior pattern of those recently bereaved and suffering from intense grief; a tendency towards bodily distress, a focus on the deceased so intense that the person may think himself insane, a preoccupation with feelings of guilt, irritability and heightened hostile reactions towards others, and a disturbance of normal life patterns. Louisa suffered from every one of these grief symptoms, and 138lcA, Diary, 23 December 1812, APM, reel 264. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 477 her Diary must be read with the knowledge that she was going through normal, although extreme, reactions to overwhelming g r i e f . 139 Louisa's ire at John Quincy preceded and outlasted her baby's death. It is often difficult to understand Louisa's anger at John Quincy. His Diary seems to indicate a caring man devoted to his family. Yet Louisa's later autobiographical works merely continue to express hostility she had felt for years. Now and again, however, some writing of John Quincy's indicates how self-centered he really was and how utterly tangential were women in his scheme of things. While on the ship going to Russia, John Quincy wrote a long letter to his two sons in America advising them on the choice of a career. The first obligation for men, he stated, was to earn a living, based on the Biblical injunction that man must live by the sweat of his brow. The second o b lig a tio n was to pass on to a new g en eratio n the blessings of existence, which he himself had received. Then, since the "society of the sexes" was so pleasant, man had an obligation to share one's "pleasures with a partner," but this duty and that of having children could only be undertaken out of a "superfluity" of means. This extraordinary and carefully worked out scheme of life is so male-centered, and the relationship between men and women so firmly based on the possession of money, that Louisa's anger at being left out of her husband's life and her continuing shame that she brought no dowry becomes easier to understand. The female of the species appears 139Armand M. N ich o li, J r . , e d .. The Harvard Guide to Modern Psychiatry (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 596. "I often involuntarily question myself as to the perfect sanity of ray mind." LCA, Diary, 7 February 1814, APM, reel 264. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 478 only as a "wife,” a "partner for life," as an unseen person to provide the "society of the sexes," not even identified by the appellation "woman." In this letter, women are hardly even tangential. If Louisa complained that John Quincy had lost touch with those he considered less able intellectually than himself, she may have known how little she j as a woman, counted in his life' s view.140 Further, Louisa's distress may have been occasioned by John Quincy's manner, which of course is not manifest in his letters. His mother had reproved him for his unsociability in summer 1804. James Bayard, who served with Albert Gallatin as United States Peace Commissioners in Russia (1813-1814) knew the Adamses w ell. He found John Quincy "singularly cold and repulsive," with "harsh manners." Bayard noticed that he never seemed to make "the least effort to please anyone." Yet Bayard admitted that the Adamses were very hospitable— "as far as hospitality consists in giving dinners."141 The dinners, served in the Russian style, were vehicles to bring together Gallatin, Bayard, and the American community in St. Petersburg.142 They were probably organized by Louisa and provided her with company who tried to be pleasing and whose manners were gay and charming. John Quincy's 140JQA, "Letter to My Children," quoted in Adams, ed.. Memoirs, 2:8-17. 141 Diary of James A. Bayard, 3 August 1813, Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1913, 2:427. Although in no way as reliable a description of JQA as was Bayard's, that of W. H. Lyttleton was even more damaging. Lyttleton, an Englishman, disliked JQA and wrote that "[Adams] was . . . dogged and systematically repulsive." Quoted in Crosby, America and Russia, p . 151. 142james A. Bayard, Diary, 22 July 1813, Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1913, 2:416. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 479 Quincy's letters do not indicate his removed and distant manner; indeed, they often seem warm and loving. Yet, when Louisa admitted she feared John Quincy's "cold looks," she may have been describing a facet of her husband's character which was apparent to those who knew him. Louisa did not w rite in her D iary between November 1812 and March 1813. When she resumed her journal, she thanked God for "the restoration of my health and a new sense of the blessings which are still within my power." This was a dramatic change, although it was still not complete. Writing about the loss of the baby to her mother- in-law "rent my heart afresh." In April 1813 she prepared herself for remaining in Russia another year. Her wish to be buried in Russia was once again balanced by a hope to see her older boys and, surprisingly, a desire to quit the climate where John Quincy's health, not just her own, was precarious at best. Louisa's interests were beginning to turn outward again, and her anger against John Quincy seems to have abated. Eleven months after the baby's death she hardly recognized herself as the same person who had been gripped by g r i e f . 143 Upon hearing of the death of the baby, Abigail sent Louisa a supportive and compassionate le tte r, all the stronger perhaps because Abigail herself had once lost a child. "Forty years has not obliterated from my mind the anguish of my soul upon the occasion," she informed her daughter-in-law, "most tenderly and affectionately do I feel the sorrows of the parents."144 in consoling John Quincy, she 143lcA, Diary, 27 March, 14 August 1813, APM, reel 264. 144aa to LCA, 30 January 1813, APM, reel 415; AA to JOA, 25 January 1813, APM, reel 415. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 480 suggested that perhaps he and Louisa had loved the child too much and had not sufficiently considered that she was a "Borrowd favor, to be returned." Had she known of Louisa's guilt, she might have withheld any comment which could have connected the death of Louisa C atherine to the parents' a t t i t u d e . 145 Angers and griefs were not the only aspects of Louisa's life reflected in her Diary. Perhaps in imitation of John Quincy, Louisa began to record her reading. Many of the books she wrote about were memoirs and accounts of mistresses of the French kings. Louisa drew various moral lessons from her reading, as did her husband from his. She noted the instability of life and how little control man has over his own actions. Many of the characters she discussed came to grief not because they actively pursued evil, but because they were in the grip of forces beyond their control. Compared to the elevated and magnified struggles of these women, Louisa found her trials small and her complaints excessive; but she may have found a parallel, only fitfully realized, in that she, too, was buffeted by outside f o r c e s . 146 Louisa's reading ran to courts, kings, and poets. She read with a critical sense. She compared the poetry she read with that of other writers making a hierarchy of poets, at the pinnacle of which was Sir Walter Scott. Byron, she thought, "possess[ed] ideas too vast for expression," although she found much beauty in his works. The Life of the Queen of Navarre she considered so overly romantic that an evaluation of the Queen's character was impossible. The succession of 145aa to JQA, 25 January 1813, APM, r e e l 415. 146lcA, D iary, 27, 28 November 1812, APM, re e l 264. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 481 anecdotes of the court of Louis XVI came so rapidly and were of such "trifling" importance that again she could form no worthwhile opinion of the book. She insisted that her reading was desultory and what she studied most diligently she forgot the q u i c k e s t . 147 In the winter of 1813 both Louisa and John Quincy again were ill. Napoleon was in retreat from Moscow and the season in S t. P etersb u rg was very gay, b u t n e ith e r of the Adamses was w ell enough to enjoy the festivities. Under tension, John Quincy turned to the Bible for support. Having lost one child, Louisa was concerned about Charles's health. The weather did not cooperate; it was the most rigorous winter the Adamses had yet experienced, and the temperature sank to twenty degrees below zero. In spite of the baby's death and the attendant grief, life went on a t the Adamses. A new bond between the Johnsons and the Adamses was being forged. In a postscript to a letter written in late January 1813, John Quincy informed his mother that William Smith, his nephew and secretary, and Catherine Johnson would be married in the next few weeks. Perhaps the brief mention of the news indicates that John Quincy did not approve.148 An unusually cryptic Diary entry in mid-January, "I had a long and very serious conversation with Mr. Smith, who finally avowed a disposition to do right," suggests that some s o rt of p ressu re had been brought to bear. 149 John Quincy made the proposal to Catherine for William Smith which she accepted. Yet 147LCA, Diary, 23, 27 December 1812, APM, reel 264. 148JQA to AA, 30 January 1813, APM, reel 415. 149jq a , Diary, 18 January 1813, APM, reel 31. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 482 four days later, John Quincy had to talk again to the young man, who again "professed a sincere and earnest wish to do what is right and j u s t . "150 On the evening of 17 February, yet another Johnson girl was married, this time at the English Church at St. Petersburg. In another postscript to a letter home, John Quincy wrote, "William E. Smith and Catherine Johnson were married last Evening. I shall write or speak to you of this hereafter."151 Abigail considered the marriage a rash step because William Smith had no money and no settled job. William was so happy in h is m arriage th a t he to ld h is b ro th er in May, "When I come to America you will see me in a new Character of which please to inform my F ather and M other." I t was very rem iniscent of h is f a th e r 's superficiality and egotism that this young man thought new characters could be put on like new coats and that his parents should be apprised of this very important fact before he arrived home. It seems as though marriage was more to his liking than he had anticipated. A year later, in March of 1814, Louisa, as her sisters had done for her, assisted at the birth of a girl—the second American baby born in Russia during the Adams tenure. The child was christened with Louisa and John Quincy as sponsors.152 150jqa , Diary, 19, 20, 23 January 1813, APM, reel 31. 151JQA to AA, 18 February 1813, APM, reel 415; JQA, Diary, 17 February 1813, APM, reel 31. 152william S. Smith quoted in AA to Thomas B. Johnson, 3 October 1813, APM, reel 416; JQA,Diary, 19 March 1814, APM, reel 32. Unbelievably, it seems that AA 2 , W illiam 's m other, was not to ld of the marriage before she died. AA to Thomas B. Johnson, 3 October 1813, APM, re e l 416. The c h ild , born on 19 March 1814 to the Smiths was named C aroline Amelia. W illiam S. Smith, D iary, 19 March and 14 A p ril 1814, APM, reel 329. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 483 In mid-January 1813 Louisa, again pregnant, again miscarried. She was ill on and off the whole month of January and John Quincy so constantly at her bedside that he hoped it "would not be charged to idleness." Not only was Louisa ill, but Catherine, too, spent most of her time in bed. John Quincy wrote of "sicknesses and sorrows not without cause," among which were death, illness, virtual exile, absent children and an apparently unwilling bridegroom.153 Louisa's recurrent ill health was noticed at Court, and John Quincy was questioned about i t . Louisa stayed in bed day after day or arose only for a few hours. She did attend the wedding of her sister, but went back to bed only a few days later. She spend almost the whole month of March either in her room or in bed. As for John Quincy, he himself suffered from insomnia and the concomitant inability to stay awake during the day. He admitted to his mother that they had made no friends whom they would be sorry to leave when they returned to America, yet Louisa's friends seem to have been of comfort to her. In May, Catherine contracted scarlet fever. To his mother, John Quincy wrote about his family, "They never I fear will be well during the Winter in this climate."154 By spring, Louisa was anxious about John Quincy's health, which was now chronically bad. She reported he had a very bad cough. She had no confidence in the doctor, who, she thought, took interest only 153jq a , Diary, 16, Day January 1813, APM, reel 31. 154JQA to AA, 25 March 1813, JOA, W ritings, 4:459. Northern Europe was known to be unhealthy. "In leaving the North of Europe I hoped to have also left at least some share of . . . Rheumatic affections." HE to Lord Auckland, 8 January 1793, Auckland Papers, BM. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 484 In serious cases, and she was terrified of facing another winter in St. Petersburg. Further, he was more and more engrossed in study. In September 1813, when the Smiths made plans (never carried out) to return home, Louisa wanted to go with her sister, but John Quincy would not allow it. Abigail, realizing how depressed Louisa was, sought to firm her resolve by Biblical appeals. She pointed out how trials on this earth were "parts of the great plan," mere preparation for the next world. She encouraged Louisa: "Despond not my Dear Daughter, be cheerful, submissive and resigned." Louisa could not manage even one of these injunctions.155 John Quincy had not been idle on the diplomatic front even during the time of domestic tragedy and turmoil. In June 1812, when Congress declared war on Great B ritain, the French troops were massing on the Russian border. Because war with France was in the offing, the Czar did not look kindly on the United States now at war with Russia's newest ally, England. But he offered to mediate in the war between England and the United States, a mediation which John Quincy cautiously encouraged without a definite commitment. The Czar's offer was relayed to President Madison, and without even waiting for the British to reply, the United States accepted the Czar's offer. 156 Meanwhile, on 25 June 1812, Napoleon had ordered his experienced and well-trained army into Russia. Fortunately for the Adamses, Moscow, not St. Petersburg, was the French target. After a 155lcA to [Mrs. A.] Adams, 12 September 1813, Houghton Library, Harvard University; AA to LCA, 24 July 1813, APM, reel 416. 156gemis,Foundations, pp. 185-88. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 485 summer of m ilitary successes, on 15 September (the very day little Louisa Catherine died), the French took Moscow. Following a short stay in the city, Napoleon began his long withdrawal over a hostile country in the dreadful cold of a Russian winter. Harrassed by the stubborn, disaffected populace, over whose land he had swept as a conqueror, Napoleon recrossed the Nieman River on the Russian frontier with only 30,000 of the 600,000 men he had launched into Russia six months b e fo re . The American President Madison, meanwhile, appointed Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, and James A. Bayard, Senator from Delaware, as special envoys to the American Peace Commission. Gallatin and Bayard joined John Quincy in St. Petersburg to undertake negotiations through the Russian mediators. Abigail, hearing that her son had also been appointed to the Peace Commission, resigned herself to his protracted European stay. In a letter to James Monroe, she reviewed those sacrifices she had made for her country in accepting the absence of both husband and son on patriotic missions. To John Quincy she wrote, "To God and my Country I resign you—relinquishing all personal considerations , with the anticipated pleasure of seeing you and your Family the ensuing s e a s o n . "157 Gallatin and Bayard arrived in St. Petersburg in June 1813. Abigail regretted she was unable to send George to Russia with them, but did not explain why he did not go. She might have added, as did her sister, Elizabeth Peabody, in another letter, that George was 157aa to James Monroe, 20 April 1813, APM, reel 415; AA to JQA, 23 April 1813, APM, reel 415. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 486 disappointed. 158 The envoys waited week after week for the negotiations to begin, but heard nothing from the English. Gallatin and Bayard naturally gravitated to the Adamses, whose house they often visited, sometimes until after midnight. So settled did the Adamses feel in St. Petersburg that they took their house for another year. Because the chance had been missed to send the boys to Europe before war broke out with England, Louisa would be deprived of a completed family for at least that long. In October 1813 another tragedy struck the Adamses, this time in America. Almost a year before, Abigail Smith, John Quincy's sister, had undergone a mastectomy for a breast tumor. She returned to her home in western New York, and by the following winter it was clear to her (although not to her mother) that the malignancy had spread to other parts of her body. By July 1813 Abigail Smith could neither walk nor write, but she faced her sufferings with the same patient resignation with which she had faced other sorrows in her life. She adamantly wished to die at her parents' house, so her two children, Caroline and John (eighteen and twenty-one) brought her by carriage from western New York to Quincy. Waiting for her arrival, Abigail now apprised of her daughter's fatal illness, looked to religion for c o m f o r t . 159 Abigail Smith died quietly in her parents' home that summer. News of her death reached Louisa in Russia. The expressions of grief and consolation which passed between Louisa and her 158AA to JQA, 14 June 1813, APM, reel 415; Elizabeth Peabody to AA, n.d. June 1813, APM, reel 415. 159aa to JQA, 14 July 1813, APM, reel 416; AA to Mrs. Julia S. Rush, ca. July 1813, APM, reel 416. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 487 mother-in-law, each one recently bereft of a daughter, may have in some slight way mitigated their sufferings. Louisa drew the parallel explicitly in a letter to Abigail: Too recently have I suffer'd the same dreadful stroke not to feel how every fibre of your heart must have been rent by this great great affliction if the tenderest sympathy could in the smallest degree assuage the anguish of maternal grief if the assurance of the profoundest respect and affection could alleviate one pang with what delight would I contribute by every attention in my power to ameliorate the pain which I am sensible cannot be entirely removed[.] In the winter of 1814, John Quincy's health was worse than ever. Louisa again became her husband's amenuensis, as his eyes were badly inflamed, and "for her amusement and much to my assistance" she began to copy his correspondence and Diary. John Quincy also suffered from jaundice but managed to stay out of bed and at work. John Quincy's ill health did not retard the work of the Commission because there was little work to do. The Emperor had long known that England had refused his mediation offer, but neglected to send word to the Chancellor at St. Petersburg. Affairs were therefore at a standstill with the Americans completely in the dark. In January, Gallatin and Bayard left St. Petersburg for England, hoping to prod the British into negotiation. Louisa "unaccountably" missed Gallatin and Bayard. They had, she wrote in her Russian Diary, not liked "the Climate, the manners and habits" of the Russiansj and, in turn, their style of living had antagonized the resident Americans. She then reflected on the role of public citizens abroad, an appraisal she was well qualified to make. 160lcA to AA, 6 [?] 1814, APM, re e l 421. AA to LCA, 30 September 1815, APM, reel 426. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 488 Louisa thought men in public positions were unaware how closely they were scrutinized by their countrymen, who, having little else to do, magnified each foible into a major failing. Men sent on public business, she thought, should be especially careful to conform to rules of etiquette and of politeness, as slight omissions on their part became serious offenses. Men too inflexible to adapt to new situations should not be sent abroad. Only a small amount of the M inisters' effort was actually spent on public business; and for the rest of the time, not his intellect, but his "manners and deportment were all important."161 These were the observations of a woman raised in a diplomatic atmosphere with nine years' experience in foreign posts. Her suggestions resulted from mature deliberation on a subject little known and less understood in America. On 1 April 1814 John Quincy received new instructions from Secretary of State Monroe. He was to proceed to Gothenburg, Sweden, where negotiations with Great Britain were scheduled to begin at last. This time he left his family behind and went on the mission alone. Although Louisa always hated staying behind, John Quincy told his mother that he left the family because he would save time—he could travel faster by himself. He expected the negotiations to be short, although the rumor was abroad that the British would not negotiate at Gothenburg. Crossing the Gulf of Bothnia by ship might be difficult, possibly even dangerous; perhaps the hazards of the trip persuaded Louisa to wait in Russia. Then, too, the family was comfortably 161lCA, Diary, 14 August 1813, APM, reel 264; LCA to [Mrs. A.] Adams, 12 September 1813, Houghton Library, Harvard University. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 489 settled in St. Petersburg. For whatever the reason, Louisa and Charles remained in St. Petersburg, and John Quincy proceeded to Sweden. Louisa and Charles rode out with John Quincy as far as the first stage coach station at Strelna, where they dined together at the post house opposite the Grand Duke Constantine's Summer Palace. Charles wept, first from anger, then from sadness, as his father's carriage pulled away; then he and his mother returned to their house in th e c i t y . Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER IX ALONE IN RUSSIA Louisa knew why John Quincy had to go to Gothenburg, Sweden, on 18 April 1814. She fully realized, as did he, that the most obvious stepping-stone to the Presidency in the early nineteenth century was the position of Secretary of State. John Quincy's best chance to gain this higher office was by conspicuous and successful service as a diplomat abroad. His grandson, Henry Adams, thought that John Quincy had risked his future by taking on a sensitive assignment and forever ruin his political career. But this idea was absent from the letters that Louisa and John Quincy wrote each other at the time. Qn the contrary, he hinted how much the new assignment seemed to promise advancement. In an early letter to Louisa from Reval, on the shores of the Baltic, where he was waiting to go to Gothenburg, he declared significantly: "As the song says, 'that the fruit must be gathered from the tree - Adieu.'"1 At the start of their separation, which she thought would be short, Louisa showed little acute anxiety at being left in St. Petersburg.2 Her sister's company may have made a difference, or possibly the bustle of the diplomatic world had proved sustaining. In IjQA to LCA, 3 May 1814, APM, reel 418. 2lCA to JQA, 11 May 1814, APM, re e l 418. 490 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 491 St. Petersburg she felt, perhaps, that she could "suit" very well. Further, she had not been faced with continual partings as she had been in America. Moreover, instead of being left with two very young children, she had only the very grown-up, seven-year-old Charles to care for. For whatever reason, Louisa's early letters do not complain of being abandoned. In fact, Louisa's letters during the early period show an unaccustomed spirit. True, she missed her husband. An encrease of distance will not I hope prolong your absence much beyond the period you mention[.] should it do so I will at least endeavour to be resigned to the necessity and wait patiently the happy moment which will bring you back to your family and home which must remain cheerless untill your return.3 But she could, with equanimity, contemplate another winter in St. Petersburg. And she kept her sense of humor. One week after John Quincy's departure, Louisa lightly rebuked him: "We all unite in affectionate wishes for your welfare and success on which you are almost too well assured hangs the soul of your affectionate wife."4 Louisa even chided her husband's lack of tolerance for Charles' anger at his departure. When John Quincy wrote that Charles had no right to be indignant at his father's leaving, Louisa replied with spirit: We cannot expect that [a] Child of his age should be capable of reasoning profoundly upon the nature of his feelings. . . . Nature will prevail [in] spite of us, mon Ami, and it is only time and experience that can teach him to judge the motives which lead our a c tio n s .5 3lCA to JQA, 10 June 1814, APM, reel 418. ^LCA to JQA, 8 May 1814, APM, re e l 418. 5jqa to LCA, 13 May 1814, APM, re e l 418; LCA to JQA, 20 May 1814, APM, reel 418. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4 9 2 Louisa's letters to John Quincy were long, detailed, and sent off almost always twice weekly. Most of what she wrote was either domestic news or court gossip, but she also reported on politics. Some of these reports were untrue or out of date when they reached John Quincy, but Louisa recounted them with a mature reserve neither elated nor depressed. Louisa was angry that the Russian police opened their letters, yet she wrote freely. She rightly thought a man's letters to his wife should be spared this indignity.6 John Quincy's letters to Louisa were, as usual, extremely lengthy and, like hers, sent twice each week. Although alone in St. Petersburg, she was well informed about his life. Meanwhile, the Allied Coalition against Napoleon was gathering to settle the future political face of Europe. Czar Alexander was thought to be, John Quincy reported, the "darling of the human race"; and having been "the most wantonly and cruelly outraged" of the allies, he was now the most magnanimous. 7 He alone, John Quincy thought, had prevented Paris from plunder. Louisa thought the Czar combined the "good and great He shines so far superior to all his A llies, that they must feel humbled to the dust by the comparison."® Quite naturally, St. Petersburg praised and celebrated the Czar, and Louisa sent news of the many fê te s to John Quincy. 6lCA to JQA, 27 May 1814, APM, re e l 418; JQA to LCA, 11 May [added on to 9 May] 1814, APM, reel 418. 7jq A to LCA, 2 July 1814, APM, reel 418. ®LCA to JQA, 28 July 1814, APM, reel 418. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4 9 3 John Quincy himself was in an unusual mood. Almost playfully at times, he sent news of his own travels. He had purchased, from the Countess Colombi, a sleeping carriage (dormeuse) for his journey to Gothenburg. He easily and jokingly told Louisa that fantasies kept him awake for two nights. Sending a message to the Countess ("perhaps," he wrote, "un peu gaillard") that he could not sleep, he assured Louisa that his gallantries to other women were "mere manuscript and ^ la distance."9 Louisa, light-hearted in her turn, asked him what lady he was seeing, since it was essential to a diplomat's reputation that he form some "intrigue"; and she encouraged him not to lose so fine an opportunity. At her age, she added, jealousy was no longer permissible.10 These exchanges indicate that whatever difficulties Louisa and John Quincy may have had in living together, monogamy was assumed in their marriage; and adultery was so far from a possibility that they could, with ease, joke about liaisons. Louisa's early mood soon changed. Before long, angry sarcasm was once again asserting itself. About a month after his departure, she was hoping the journey might improve his health, an outcome that "however painfully acquired by your family must prove the greatest blessing and the one for which they must ardently pray."11 She herself had become ill, suffered from fainting spells and "my old complaint."12 Perhaps, she suggested, her letters were boring 9JQA to LCA, 3 May 1814, APM, re e l 418. l^LCA to JQA, 30 December 1814, APM, reel 421. U l CA to JQA, 15 May 1814, APM, re e l 418. 12lcA to JQA, 8 May 1814, APM, re e l 418. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 494 —all the more chance for John Quincy to practice fortitude and earn more reputation. but when a man [h]as taken a woman for better for worse he must make up his mind to bear a great deal, the more fortitude he displays, the greater is his merit. Socrates would never have acquired such a reputation as he gained if he had not had Xantippe for a Wife.1® Significantly, in this letter of 1814, Louisa likened herself to Xantippe, a well-known termangant in fifth-century Athens, whom Socrates had the misfortune to marry. This self-accusatory identification disappeared later in her life, but not her characterization of John Quincy as Socrates. What is most striking in her statement is that Socrates' reputation for goodness is in direct relationship to his wife's ill humor. With John Quincy away, all mail, both official and private, was delivered to Louisa. John Quincy had left directions about public correspondence but not about his private letters. Louisa told him, "I have never in my life broken a Seal without your permission, I have thought it most prudent to ask for your instructions."14 it is not clear why Louisa was so deferential, but a week later, she wrote anx io u sly : I took the liberty of opening the outside [of the packages of mail] imagining they might contain letters for me but was entirely disappointed[.] I immediately put them into the hands of Mr. Smith and can assure you that I did not [read] one word of the letters which were enclosed unsealed—you will I am sure pardon the liberty, and make allowance for my great anxiety to hear from my family and Children.15 13lCA to JQA, 15 May 1814, APM, re e l 418. 14lcA to JQA, 29 A pril 1814, APM, re e l 417. 15lcA to JQA, 8 May 1814, APM, reel 418. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4 9 5 John Ouincy gave Louisa detailed instructions not only about opening the mail, but also about the rent, furniture, and unpaid bills. He asked Louisa to number her letters so that he would know if some had gone astray; but unused to such efficiency, Louisa soon forgot. Eight months later, in January of 1815, she began to number them again, starting with number 1. From John Quincy's second letter to Louisa, written when he had been gone only five days, Louisa learned that he was sending her a document he had intended leaving with her—his w ill.1® To her great surprise, Louisa discovered she had been appointed sole executrix for all of John Quincy's European business. At first, out of tune with the seriousness with which he took all his financial affairs, Louisa told him it was unnecessary to send her his w ill, because their separation would be short.17 Louisa told John Quincy she had labored for many years under a "false impression," although she never explained just what the impression was. Her "extreme affection for them [her children] rendered me very unjust," she told him. Then, with insight, she explained that she had been so unconscious of this perception that she was, perhaps, unaware "how much it influenced my conduct." She apologized to him "sincere[ly] and from the heart."!® John Quincy himself did not understand to what "erroneous impression" she referred. IGjQA to LCA, 3 May 1814, APM, re e l 418. 17lcA to JQA, 11 May 1814, APM, reel 418. 1®LCA to JQA, 19 May 1814, APM, re e l 418. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 496 but assured her tenderly of his perfect confidence in her affection for him as well as for the c h i l d r e n . 19 In her new role as head of the household, Louisa had to face many new domestic challenges. The servants' monthly accounts, she complained to her husband, were full of "tricking." One servant she dismissed immediately and a month later had to discharge his replacement. Louisa blamed the habits of the entire Russian servant class for her troubles. Finances beset her as never before. She dealt with tradesmen who presented bills; receipts mentioned by John Ouincy which she could not find; receipts already discharged but presented a second time; servants who needed to be paid; and, not least, her own proclivity to live well. Further, inflation gripped St. Petersburg. The cost of food and everything else doubled, adding expenses that Louisa worried John Quincy would not understand.20 go fearful was she of making an error in her calculations that she asked a male friend to help h er. John Quincy expected a good deal from a woman who had never managed money before. She was, he instructed her, to pay interest on their yearly obligations and report to him how and when she paid it; to abstract and send him the exchange rates in London, Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Paris; and to report the worth of silver in rubles and the value of ducats. All this, he told her, she would find published in The 19jqa to LCA, 14 June [added on to 12 June] 1814, APM, reel 418. 20lcA to JQA, 15, 19, 20 May 1814, APM, reel 418; LCA to JQA, 28 July 1814, APM, reel 418. See also JQA to LCA, 22 July 1814, APM, reel 418. JQA, Miscellany Personal financial record, 1802-1822, APM, re e l 209. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 497 St. Petersburg Gazette.21 Her accounts were not in disarray, nor even greatly overdrawn; on the contrary, they indicated an ability to manage a household under inflationary conditions in a foreign country. Although Louisa was doing well managing the household, John Quincy did ask several pointed questions. Louisa had written that she had moved to the country for the sake of Charles' health. How could Charles benefit from the country if he was at the same time at school in St. Petersburg? What was the added expense of the country house? Where was it (Louisa had neglected to mention this detail)? It was in Qchta, where she had lived the summer their child had been so ill. Extravangance , he reminded her once again, would be paid for by "your Children" in reduced "subsistence and e d u c a t i o n ."22 He then told her that instead of allowing him a full outfit for his peacemaking mission. Congress had allowed only half, probably because he was already in Europe, and, unbelievably, would alow him "nothing" for his time in G hent, to which Flemish c ity the n e g o tia tio n s moved in summer 1814.23 John Quincy, upset by Louisa's struggles with the household and her statement that he would be angry at "many things," begged her to be more specific about her expenses. When she detailed her outlays, the items were not trivial: a summer house, a new carriage (the old one had broken down), and Martha Godfrey's passage home to America with the 21JQA to LCA, 15 Ju ly 1814, APM, r e e l 418; LCA to JQA, 15 May 1814, APM, reel 418; LCA to JQA, 5 August 1814, APM, reel 419. See a lso JQA's Memorandum, 7 May 1814, APM, re e l 418, and LCA to JQA, 7 August 1814, APM, reel 419. 22JQA to LCA, 8 July 1814, APM, reel 418. 23James Monroe to JQA, 23 June 1814, APM, re e l 418; JQA to LCA, 8 July 1814, APM, reel 418. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 498 Smiths. Louisa's pleasure at the new carriage can well be imagined. John Quincy urged her to take smaller apartments for the winter, by the month perhaps, as the Smiths would be leaving and his income would be consumed by their two separate households. He told her how frugally he and his American colleagues were living and added, "none of us had thought it necessary to keep a c a r r i a g e ."24 In spite of her straitened circumstances, Louisa enjoyed the country house she took in summer 1814. From this new house, Charles returned to school, despite the doctor's warning that he should not cross and recross the Neva. Louisa's disregard of the doctor's instructions indicates a reliance on her own judgment derived perhaps from her new experience of making all the decisions. Much to her delight, Charles benefited greatly from fresh air and exercise. Charles' letters (unlike those of George and John) have been preserved; and they show clearly that in Charles, John Quincy finally had a son whose drive for perfection was as great as his own. The youngster's handwriting was a model of neatness, in contrast to George, who did not even try to write well. Charles apologized for a blot, and Louisa told his absent father that Charles was mortified that he was unable to produce a perfect l e t t e r . 25 of a l l the c h ild re n , C harles was most like his father and the most responsive to his teaching. It was difficult for Louisa to keep Charles at his studies , especially when he began to show " the same contempt fo r the a b i l i t i e s o f [my] Sex as 24JQA to LCA, 22 July 1814, APM, reel 418; LCA to JQA, 2 and 25 August 1814, APM, reel 419; JQA to LCA, 30 August 1814, APM, reel 419. 25CFA to JQA, 11 June 1814, APM, reel 418; LCA to JQA, 13 June 1814, APM, reel 418. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 499 George had at his a g e ."26 Louisa, heretofore indulgent of Charles, now became much stricter. Charles thought his mother more severe than his father and told her he loved his father best. John Quincy saw through Charles' attempts to play his parents off one against the other and advised Louisa to be more e x a c t i n g27 . Louisa, expecting that the Peace Conference at Gothenburg would soon be o v er, addressed her l e t t e r s th e re . But in summer 1814 the Anglo-American peace conference was moved from Gothenburg to Ghent. Although the English naturally preferred London, the Americans had objected. The two governments finally settled on the Flemish site. John Quincy thought Ghent a better place than London, but considered Gothenburg preferable as the negotiations would, he thought, have been finished more q u i c k l y .28 Nevertheless, he had quickly made the move from Sweden to Ghent. But now, with the prospect of a longer separation, Louisa began writing to Abigail of the "cruel separations" she was obliged to endure and of the isolation she felt in St. Petersburg. As she had done often in the past, she reviewed once again the impossibility of living in the style expected of them on the salary that they received. She complained again of the harsh climate, which had so affected John Quincy that his friends had thought another winter in St. Petersburg dangerous for him. A self-pitying tone crept into her letters. Her 26lcA to JQA, 3 and 7 June 1814, APM, reel 418. 27JQA to LCA, 12 July 1814, APM, reel 418. 28Ib id . Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 500 hair was graying, she told her mother-in-law, she missed her sons terribly, and sorrow had made her look years o l d e r .29 Indeed, Louisa lived in a veritable limbo. Her husband did not know how long he would be at Ghent, and Louisa asked him not to send news of h is re tu rn u n ti l i t was " p o s itiv e ly fix e d ." U n til m id -Ju ly , several weeks after he had arrived there, she did not even realize he was in F lan d e rs. She did not know i f the n e g o tia tio n s ended, whether John Quincy would come to St. Petersburg or she to him in Ghent, Paris, or London. She had no idea when or where she would see her two sons living in America. Meanwhile, diplomacy dragged on. Louisa knew that London had been mentioned as John Quincy's next post; but like everything else, this, too, was uncertain. With this new turn of events, Louisa sank into gloom and depression. Word in St. Petersburg was that the negotiations were hopelessly deadlocked. Memories of her child's death haunted her, and she feared that she might succumb "even to madness."30 Louisa reminded her husband that she was weaker than he. Had she his strength of mind, she would be "the paragon of my Sex to which alas! I have neither claim nor pretention." As a woman without a husband, in a foreign country whose language she could not understand, she thought herself "wretched."31 Her moods shifted rapidly. She could still jest. Reconciled at one point to being alone, she jokingly told John Quincy, 29lcA to AA, 10 July 1814, APM, reel 418. 30lg A to JQA, 15 July 1814, APM, reel 418. 31lCA to JQA, 19 July 1814, APM, reel 418. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 501 "perhaps in time I shall like i t ."32 But John Quincy did not take her words in the spirit intended. With their physical separation growing longer, misunderstandings between them quite naturally occurred. John Quincy told her he wished her to "enjoy life, in cheerfulness and comfort," but that he should "deeply lament" it, should she actually like living without him. He assured her that he would not wish to live apart from her. As if she had undermined his confidence, he added that although he realized his letters were long, they were tokens of his affections.33 In August Louisa began to consider travelling to meet John Quincy in Ghent. But since the distance between St. Petersburg and Ghent was fifteen hundred miles and since crossing the Baltic after September could be dangerous, she flinched at the idea. Although Louisa hated to be alone and complained repeatedly, she did, from time to time, ally herself with the ultimate aim of John Quincy's absence— peace between the United States and England. S till, her mood vacillated, never steady. She could be angry at being left one day and then happy at a party or with friends the next. Her emotions were no more to be counted on than her physical health. In a good humor, she wrote him that if a peace should be concluded, she would happily stay alone another whole winter.34 32lcA to JQA, 19 J u ly 1814, APM, re e l 418; JQA to LCA, 12 August 1814, APM, reel 419; LCA to JQA, 4 September 1814, APM, reel 419. 33JQA to LCA, 12 August 1814, APM, reel 419. For Louisa's answer, see LCA to JQA, 4 September 1814, APM, reel 419. 34lcA to JQA, 13 August 1814, APM, reel 419; LCA to JQA, 15 August 1814, APM, reel 419. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 502 During John Quincy's absence, Louisa was left to cope with the irresponsible William Smith. He borrowed money for gambling debts, which he could not repay, and was reluctant to return to America with his wife and child. In the end Louisa even had to pay for Martha Godfrey's (now nurse for the Smith baby) passage home.35 in spite of her emotional need for sisterly support and companionship, Louisa urged the Smiths to leave Russia. The Smiths had other troubles later for which, at first, Louisa blamed herself; but then showing a new maturity, Louisa decided she had no other choice and put her guilt a s id e .36 The day the Smiths f in a lly l e f t S t. P ete rsb u rg , Louisa was badly depressed. She roamed about the house accepting what loving comfort Charles could give. She considered looking for a young girl to stay with her, asserting that her single status was "singular" and "sufficient to excite curiosity."37 Rut her depression did not last. Going out and mixing with people was the best medicine. Although living alone in St. Petersburg, she continued going to elegant parties; without John Quincy she may have allowed herself to enjoy parties as she could, not while his republican warnings rang in her ears. The very special attention she received from the royal family bolstered a self-image never very strong. Qnce more Louisa was dancing at balls, staying up until six o'clock in the morning, noticed by the Grand 35lcA to JQA, 2 August 1814, APM, reel 419; LCA to JQA, 15 November 1814, APM, re e l 420. 36LCA to JQA, 30 September 1814, APM, reel 419. 37LCA to JQA, 28 July 1814, APM, reel 418. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 503 Maître, and spoken to by the Emperor.3® In August she attended a ball without her husband against Harris's advice. Since Harris did not appear at this ball, Louisa was the sole representative of her country. "Not so bad either,” she asserted, "considering how we go on in Canada, an Old Woman or a Child would answer the p u r p o s e ."39 It is not surprising that Louisa felt herself capable of making her own social decisions. She did not respect Harris and she was certainly more experienced in court life than he. Her self-confidence was growing in spite of periodic depressions. Louisa's letters to John Quincy reported life in St. Petersburg. The French theatre closed because the French actors left St. Petersburg—a real loss to Louisa. She described the parties she attended in detail; marriages, engagements, and broken liaisons filled out her letters. Yet her reading took a serious turn. She read Cicero (John Quincy was not to laugh) on the defense of republics and Byron's The Corsair, in which she thought the poet had finally curbed a wild imagination. John Quincy did not laugh; he encouraged her.40 Louisa continued to give dinners to which she invited Americans and her friends in the diplomatic corps.41 Entertaining well was hard. She struggled unsuccessfully with her servants, who were sometimes 3®LCA to JQA, 6 July 1814, APM, reel 418; and 7 August 1814, APM, reel 419. 39lcA to JQA, 7 August 1814, APM, reel 419. 40lcA to JQA, 25 August 1814, APM, reel 419; LCA to JQA, 10 December 1814, APM, reel 421; JQA to LCA, 20 September 1814, APM, reel 419; JQA to LCA, 23 September 1814, APM, reel 419. 41 CFA to JQA, 15 August 1814, APM, reel 419. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 504 drunk, often ill, and almost always dishonest. Mrs. Krehmer continued to be a great friend and support, and Harris often visited Louisa. His purpose, Louisa surmised, was to discover whether John Quincy would be relieved of his position in Russia and posted to London, which would leave him (Harris) the sole United States representative in Russia. Louisa, who had never liked Harris, toyed with him, telling him one day she would leave Russia and then the next that she would s t a y .42 Louisa's confidence rose in spite of depressions, yet she continued to deprecate her a b i l i t i e s . She had no one to advise h e r, she complained to John Quincy, and doubted her own judgment, and incompetency. Then she quickly added that in "matters of expence [sic] and management, their are few people in the World so exigeant as yourself."43 Active as her social life was, sarcastic, self-derogatory remarks appear in her letters during the fall. Her compliments to him, she wrote, had no value and could do nothing for a husband whose "excellence . . . is already above p r a i s e . "44 As she handled the finances, Louisa began to feel that the money was more n e a rly h e r s . Having w ritte n to Mrs. Cranch in 1809 th a t she could not give her boys even a small gift, she now bought and sent 42lcA to JQA, 19 August 1814, APM, reel 419. JQA had requested his recall for spring 1815. JQA to LCA, 20 August 1814, APM, reel 419. 43lcA to JQA, 30 August 1814, APM, reel 419; JQA to LCA, 2 September 1814, APM, reel 419. 44lCA to JQA, 15 August 1814, APM, re e l 419. In 1806, when LCA had stayed in Washington while JQA went to Boston, JQA bought a book and a toy for George and John and gave them to the boys "from their Mama," so perhaps LCA had some right to feel that she had not been able to give the boys something she had chosen. JQA to LCA, 1 June 1806, APM, reel 404. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 505 watches to both George and John. Fearing her husband would be angry, she reduced the watches in a letter to him to "a trifling souvenir." Since Charles had been left a watch by Jean Pierre Quizard, the Adamses's French chef, Louisa may have thought the older boys deserved something.45 Louisa heard from John Quincy and others, too, that his health and his spirits were much improved from what they had been in Russia. His mood was certainly gay. In late September the American negotiators gave a ball, described by John Quincy as "très animé." Gallatin and Adams organized the party, according to one American there, and John Quincy likened it to one of Louisa's Boston Balls.46 Louisa was am bivalent about the news of John Q uincy's good spirits. Qn the one hand, she was glad that he was healthier physically and mentally. Qn the other hand, she blamed herself for the ill health and depression he had suffered in Russia. Already afraid that he would be better off away from her, she told him with some asperity that upon his return to Russia she hoped he would not revert to the "gloom from which you seem now to be happily relieved."47 But i t was she who was depressed in September when the ra in s came and she faced the evenings alone. Louisa, now well versed in the tedious ways of diplomacy, rightly concluded that the Ghent negotiations would drag on and th a t she would spend many evenings alone; but her husband was more o p tim is tic . 45lcA to JQA, 15August 1814, APM, reel 419. 46JQA to LCA, 30 September 1814, APM, reel 419. 47 lcA to JQA, 22 August 1814, APM, re e l 419. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 506 Since the British commissioners arrived in Ghent on 6 September 1814, John Quincy had every right to assume that he could return to St. Petersburg by October. This would allow him to take the Baltic route just before the winter closed in or the overland route if that proved necessary. John Quincy told Louisa that Paris was only thirty- six hours away from Ghent, yet he would resist the temptation to go there, as it would lengthen his journey to St. Petersburg by three days. Louisa generously encouraged him to visit Paris.4® Nevertheless, the negotiations at Ghent continued. The British commissioners were not empowered to treat directly with the Americans, and they referred each question back to England for Lord Castlereagh's determination. Since the main theatre of diplomacy employing the British attention was Vienna, not Ghent, the Americans had to wait. Had the war been going well for the Americans , a peace treaty with Britain, triumphant in Europe, would have been difficult enough. But the war was not going well. In 1814, an army composed of Wellington's veterans landed on the east coast and burned the Capitol, part of the White House, and other buildings in Washington. Baltimore, the next target, almost suffered the same fate. Most of the tiny U nited S ta te s Navy was b o ttle d up in port or n e u tra liz e d by su p erio r British seapower. The British blockade was complete against American shipping. Only Macdonough's victory on Lake Champlain saved the Northeast from a British i n v a s i o n49 . 48JQA to LCA, 30 August 1814, APM, reel 419; LCA to JQA, 12 November 1814, APM, r e e l 420. 49Allan Lloyd, The Scorching of Washington (Newton Abbott, England: David & Charles, 1974). Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 507 In October, sick with influenza, cross, unsure of her future, Louisa expressed directly and openly her anger at years of financial constraints. She notified her husband that she had rented a small house. Although she hoped he would be pleased, she admitted she had been heretofore unsuccessful at pleasing him. Had she reduced her children's property from lack of judgment or bad management, then she would have to bear "their reproaches as I have for many years submitted to yours." She was sure she had never deliberately injured her children or her husband. On the contrary, she had always sacrificed "every pleasure often of comfort" for their sakes. Perhaps, she wrote, having for once the means she had gratified herself "too liberally," but it had been done. It should, she added, be a lesson to him not to leave her with a "large establishment in a foreign Country another time as you know th a t when I am w ith you th is g r a ti f ic a tio n is im possible."50 it is clear she felt financially restrained when with John Quincy, yet her expenditures in Russia when she was alone do not seem o verly e x tra v a g a n t. She did not buy a new w ardrobe, nor give expensive parties herself, nor hire extra servants. She did, however, take a summer house and buy a new c a rria g e . It is not hard to understand why Louisa was so angry and lashed out at John Quincy. She was ill and, although four female friends were in attendance and although she realized she should be happy, she missed her husband. He used, when she was ill, to come to her bedside. 50lcA to JQA, 16 Qctober 1814, APM, reel 420. LCA described the letter as "tinctured" by her ill health—a very mild description of what she had written. LCA to JQA, 18 Qctober 1814, APM, reel 420. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 508 comfort her, and kiss her hand.51 Louisa's needs when she was ill seem to have been very great, and perhaps she needed her husband or a sister in the house. John Quincy's gallant and surprisingly frank answer to her request for a kiss on the hand was to request that upon his return she give him "a kind reception, warm quarters and a more cordial kiss than of the hand." She replied, in turn, that, as concerned his kiss, "unless times are much changed the one I mentioned would be sufficient to content you." She then wrote that she had long since ceased "to flatter myself and the manner of our last separation brought conviction."52 while still in St. Petersburg, John Quincy had written in his Diary that he failed to understand how an older man could still be responding to love poetry and added "I grow cold as I grow older." Louisa herself had written in her Russian diary: "I have passed the enthusiastic age."53 perhaps for both John Quincy and Louisa the physical side of marriage had become less important. In f a l l 1814 more war news f i l t e r e d in to S t. P e te rsb u rg . Upon hearing of the United States' success at the battle of Niagara, Louisa wrote that she could sense, for once that the United States was capable of victory. Yet she realized only misfortune could unite the divided nation behind one unified cause. Party division and Federalist opposition crippled the government's efficiency. Louisa, probably 51lCA to JQA, 18 Qctober 1814, APM, reel 420. 52jqa to LCA, 11 November 1814, APM, re e l 420; LCA to JQA, 6 December 1814, APM, reel 421. 53JQA, Diary, 16 May 1813, APM, reel 31. LCA, Diary, 4 February 1813, APM, reel 264. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 0 9 under the tutelage of John Ouincy, ascribed the inefficiency of the government to the rival parties and asserted that America needed the "united abilities of all parties."54 Then, having written what was a reasonable analysis of the political situation, Louisa proceeded to disparage what she had just written. John Quincy would smile at her opinions; she had written too quickly, quite unconscious of where her thoughts were leading her. Declaring that "at any rate my sentiments are harmless," she suggested that she did not really understand the needs of her country and ended with the meek assertion that her convictions, although uninformed, were "at least well-wished."55 As the war dragged on, Louisa's letters contained more and more of her thoughts on the political world. At one time she may have considered herself English, but she now totally identified herself with America—its fortunes, its strengths, and its weaknesses. She blamed the flaws in the Constitution, party conflict, and the growth of treason in New England for the success of the British Army. At one point she suggested there might be less disgrace in acknowledging that America was a conquered nation than to bear continual m ilitary ignominy. She was deeply ashamed th a t George and John were being brought up in a part of the country that was a "hot Bed of Treason and C o w a r d i c e."56 Louisa insisted that if the Americans did not desert 54LCA to JQA, 23 October 1814, APM, re e l 420. 55 Ib id . 56lcA to JQA, 8 November 1814, APM, re e l 420. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 51 0 themselves, they could make England recognize them as the great nation they were.57 In October, St. Petersburg heard of the destruction of the public buildings in Washington, an event which, Louisa wrote, convinced everyone that all America had been devastated. Louisa became an object of pity and hated to go out. The Russians, having suffered somewhat the same fate at the hands of the French, were, in general, "disgusted with this act." The American colony, far from home in Russia, wavered between excessive hope and equally excessive despair. False rumors abounded. The Irish in Baltimore, it was said, had declared themselves English, but the more skeptical refused to believe it. Louisa gave little credence to the rumors and did not, as other did, lose heart.58 Louisa's health was not good during the winter she was alone. She had a "slow intermitting fever," but her letters show she still liked taking part in the life of the diplomatic corps. In December she arranged to have herself invited to a dinner given by a princess, particularly pro-American, and saw her presence at the princess' table as promoting the interests of the United States. She attended court functions and, upon several jokes being made comparing diplomats and crayfish at the court dinner, Louisa opined that diplomats "professed at least the advantage of creeping backward and forwards at p le asu re ."59 57lCA to JQA, 15 November 1814, APM, re e l 420. 5*^LCA to JOA, 15 December 1814, APM, re e l 421. 59lcA to JQA, 30 December 1814, APM, reel 421. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 511 To keep busy, Louisa took drawing and music lessons. She considered both these endeavors "follies"—mere "amusements," as her husband would say. No matter how angry she became at her secondary role in the family, she was always in complete agreement that her work was worthless.GO Louisa may have denigrated her music and drawing lessons , yet she was proud of her ability to delineate character and did so repeatedly in her letters. Perhaps she could allow herself this talent because John Quincy had long encouraged her in this direction. Intellectual ideas were dangerous; analysis of real people, countenanced by her husband, was allowed. Ideas belonged to men; people to women. Her "fort,” she wrote, lay in "discernment" of character. The long descriptions of people, which she inserted in her Diary entries to form her memoirs, may have found their beginnings in John Quincy's admiration for her ability to understand people and their ch aracters.Jo h n Quincy could not know with what discernment she would, years later, describe him as "a Socrates who glides smoothly on the course which he had laid out for himself," while "enjoying" the turmoil of his family life, a turmoil she found "insupportable."^2 In November w ith the fu tu re s t i l l very much in doubt, Louisa sent again to her husband an angry, sarcastic letter. She was jealous that he was enjoying himself at Ghent; she was pained at the idea that he would return to the Russian climate where "innanity" had heretofore 60lCA to JQA, 6 January 1815, APM, reel 422. 61lCA to JQA, 23 Qctober 1814, APM, reel 420. G^LCA, "Adventures," p. 1, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 1 2 gripped him; she saw herself and John Quincy endlessly together in the evening, one person sleeping, the other "sinking into absolute silence"; she thought that happiness was having her family about her; society should be frequented to make homelife bearable ; she saw herself as "tagging after" her husband ; she had very few requisites to make an agreeable companion and had been made to feel her "incapacity" keenly. She realized, she told her husband, what a "melancholy disposition" she had and, worse, that it affected not only herself but those "allied" to her. Qnly when removed from her could her family find "any real enjoyment."63 Later in the winter, she sounded the same theme again. "Even with all the means in my power [I] am not fitted to be or make o th e rs h a p p y ."64 This very same attitude, that she spoiled everyone's pleasure with her presence, appears prominently in her memoirs in 1840; but it began during her stay in Russia. Rightly or wrongly, Louisa was deeply hurt that John Quincy was better off away from her than with her. Louisa realized that her complaints would be attributed to "ill temper" but wrote that she was used to this explanation and would "indulge myself by writing f r e e l y ."65 What she needed was unremitting, oft-expressed, emotional support, not a husband whose career was his obsession and whose work often took him away from her. She required a husband who continually encouraged her, not one who obliquely, but continually, suggested she was spending too much money. Loneliness and the news that John Quincy 63lcA to JOA, 22 November 1814, APM, re e l 420. 6^LCA to JQA, 6 January 1815, APM, reel 422. 65lcA to JQA, 22 November 1814, APM, re e l 42Q. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 513 was well and happy without her combined to produce an eruption of anger. John Quincy was communicating in his own way from Ghent by writing long and very detailed letters concerning the peace process. Few, if any, nineteenth-century wives were taken so fully into their husbands' confidence or received such detailed accounts of their husbands' w o r k .66 Yet sharing his work by letter did not sustain Louisa. However much she expressed her gratitude for his constant correspondence, she needed, or thought she needed, his presence. That the St. Petersburg climate may have caused his ill health seems not to have occurred to her. As usual, she attributed unhappiness in others to herself. John Quincy did not rise to her anger. Instead he gently pushed it aside as a thorn amid roses in which "the sweetness of the flower will make me forget the sharpness of its companion [the th o r n ] ."67 The flow er to which he re fe rre d was a drawing of a ro s e , done by Charles, but placed by mistake in a letter to John Quincy from Louisa. He had naturally thought it came from her and had written kindly and lovingly to her about it but was later given the correct explanation. John Quincy may have thought that she had grounds for her anger, or been no longer touched by her complaints, or thought the loss of her child in Russia had permanently affected her mind. For whatever reason, he told her she should feel free to express her anger to him. 66por example, see JQA to LCA, 6 and 23 September 1814, APM r e e l 419. 67JQA to LCA, 23 December 1814, APM reel 421. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 514 Perhaps in passing over her anger, he indicated to her that he had retired further than ever into his own life, leaving her to make out emotionally as best she could. She might have been more satisfied with a sharp rebuke. The impact of his letters is impossible to measure, but they do indicate a man who is sharing his profession with his wife. It is true, of course, that he was writing of his concerns; but if she could have felt fully part of his career, she might have derived much support from h is confidences. For some reaso n , although she was in tune with the ultimate goal and although her ambitions had been fully bound to his, she was unable to participate with him in the day-by-day work towards that goal. Perhaps the discomforts were too great. Or more likely, his firmly held idea that women were to deal only with the emotional side of life closed her out. No matter how bitter and angry, Louisa worked to advance her husband's career. She gave dinners for the Americans at St. Petersburg, she told her husband, "by way of keeping you in their minds"—a technique which she may have learned from her mother in L o n d o n68 . Louisa's ambitions for her husband's career could not be dampened even by solitary living and depressions. Harris, now Charge d'Affaires, did nothing for the Americans; and Louisa took upon herself this very important part of diplomatic life. Without pay, without official standing, Louisa felt herself responsible for keeping in touch with Americans at her husband's post. She was certainly competent to carry out the social end of her husband's position. Louisa felt more 6®LCA to JQA, 15 December 1814, APM reel 421. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 515 for the Americans than did her government for her; but since the Congress paid its Ministers so little, it is not surprising that the wives were overlooked. So many different rumors reached St. Petersburg about John Quincy that Louisa discounted most of them. In December word came via Harris, who was still interested in seeing John Quincy elsewhere than in St. Petersburg, that John Quincy had been appointed Secretary of State. Another report had John Quincy returning to St. Petersburg; both rumors proved to be incorrect. Writing at the beginning of December, John Quincy mentioned for the first time the possibility that Louisa might join him in Paris, where he would go if the negotiations were successful. Intending to ask for his recall from Russia, he still expected to go to England; but if the President had "other views," he would, he wrote, return to the United States. Should the worst happen, and the negotiations break doim, then naturally no Ministry to England would be possible, and he would return to R u s s i a . 69 On Christm as Eve 1814 the Ghent tr e a ty n e g o tia tio n s were finally ended. The American negotiators, no matter how able, could not possibly have accomplished by themselves what the uncertain European situation achieved for them. Wellington argued that to defeat the United States would require huge outlays of men and armaments. The peace conference at Vienna, the unsettled state of France, and W ellin g to n 's assessm ent encouraged B rita in to make peace on a s ta tu s 69JQA to LCA, 9 December 1814, APM reel 421. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 516 quo, ante-bellum basis. The Americans were glad to do so, and the tr e a ty was s i g n e d .70 The English newspapers containing the peace terms reached St. Petersburg by 20 January. Louisa thought New England would have "some ground for discontent" and reported she heard nothing but regret at the Peace, because it was not to America's "interest to have accepted any terms at the present moment." Presumably the terms of the treaty reflected the stalemate in the military situation. She thought that since the European countries had been so helpful to the United States, they had every right to criticize the treaty. Suspecting that their next post would be England, Louisa worried that wartime animosities would make living in London difficult.71 Even before John Quincy had official orders to proceed to London, he directed Louisa to join him in Paris, where he went from Ghent. He "invited" her to break up the house in St. Petersburg, sell the furniture they would not need, pack up the rest so it could be sent on later to Boston or London, and join him in Paris. All this he calculated would be done by mid-February; but if the weather was too cold for her to travel, she should wait until later in the spring. From the experience of Gallatin and Bayard, he recommended she travel in a kibitka, a heavy Russian carriage, which she could have fixed up for her convenience. If possible she should take a travelling companion, and he proposed she take both a man and a woman servant with 70Bemis, Foundations, pp. 196-220; Bradford Perkins, Castlereagh and Adams; England and the United States, 1812-1823 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964). 71lCA to JQA, 20 January and 7 February 1815, APM, reel 422, Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 517 her. Then followed explicit directions as to the disposition of papers, boxes, bills, furniture. Louisa was to list all books and furniture whether sent to England or to America. Then after having given orders for the arrangement of all possessions, came the news most welcome to Louisa that he had sent for George and John to come to E ngland.72 As he had in America, John Quincy left Louisa to choose her own time for the journey. The coolness with which he contemplated a further separation (until April) was no different from his ability to remain separated for a whole year in 1797 or during the summer of 1805. John Quincy stayed at Ghent after the other negotiators left. With him were Catherine and William Smith (only part of the way to America), with whom he passed part of every day. Louisa was upset at the turmoil of leaving St. Petersburg: she thought herself incapable of dealing with the finances of leaving. John Quincy w rote H arris to give Louisa as much money as she needed and told Louisa to keep account of all monies received and expended. She anticipated that it would cost as much to send things to America as to buy new furniture, so she decided to sell everything she could. She was very unsure of her business acumen, and she defended herself ahead of time by writing that if she did wrong it was unintentional. She was, she wrote, "afraid of cold looks." Louisa's financial anxiety increased as her time for leaving drew near, until she felt it was 72JQA to LCA, 27 December 1814, APM r e e l 421. JOA to LCA, 30 December 1814, APM reel 421. Levstt Harris hoped Louisa would travel with a companion. Levett Harris to JQA, 19 January 1815, APM, reel 422. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 518 "unspeakable." She worried about procuring cash. Few people in St. Petersburg had any specie, and barter took its place. While trying to sell her carriage, she was offered pearls or diamonds in exchange, but refused. Later she decided she had been mistaken. So burdensome were the preparations for departure that she almost wished peace had not been made.73 L o u isa 's fe a rs were r e a l i s t i c . She was about to tra v e l more than sixteen hundred miles across a continent over which contending armies had recently fought. Much of her route lay through very primitive rural country. Roads, even in summer, were rutted and muddy. But i t was not summer; i t was w in te r. High snows o fte n blocked a l l roads, and blizzards could catch the unwary traveller. In violent snowstorms travellers could lose the road and perish before they could find shelter.74 Carriages did break down, overturn, and stick hard on roads which melting snows had turned into quagmires. Travellers often lost their way and, if lost or if a carriage broke down, they had to look to a rustic populace for help. Local dialects prohibited friendly intercourse, and Louisa spoke no Russian and very imperfect German. Travellers were at the mercy of their servants and innkeepers; women most often travelled in the company of one or more male friends. All of this Louisa realized. She also knew that she would be travelling alone in a month that would produce both snows and floods, making the 73lcA to JQA, 1, 7 February 1815, APM, reel 422. James Bayard reported such occurrences and described the same journey as LCA was about to take as "a terrific one." Diary of James A. Bayard, 12 November 1813 and 25 January-5 March 1814, Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1913, 2:483-84 and 497-502. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 519 journey doubly hazardous. She knew several large rivers lay between her and Paris and that she could not count on solid ice to help her carriage cross. Yet Louisa faced the daunting prospect of the trip with a singlemindedness and mature ability to plan ahead which she had not shown b e fo re. By February 1815 Louisa was ready to leave St. Petersburg for Paris. In 1836 Louisa recorded her memories of this trip.75 she regretted she had not kept a journal at the time and thought she would write for amusement, to fill up empty hours, and, in a more serious v e in , to " re c a ll the memory of one, who was." She a lso wanted to show that "undertakings," seemingly "difficult and arduous" to women, were never as trying in reality as in imagination. Further, she asserted that "energy and discretion, follow the necessity of their exertion, to protect the fancied weakness of feminine imbecility."76 it is difficult to know if her reference to "feminine imbecility" was to balance the assertiveness of owning her own "energy and discretion," or if Louisa mean it sarcastically. Simple amusement, self-definition. 75ihere are three versions of LCA's account of her trip, "Narrative of a Journey from Russia to France, 1815." The first, entirely in her hand, is on reel 268 of the Adams Papers. The second, partly in LCA's hand and partly in another hand, and marked "[Another Copy]," is also on reel 268 of the Adams Papers. These two versions differ only in some very minor details. A third version was published by Brooks Mams, LCA's grandson, entitled "Mrs. John Quincy Adams's Narrative of a Journey from St. Petersburg to Paris in February 1815" in Scribner's Magazine 34 (July-December 1903):450-63. This version is identical with the second version ([Another Copy]), except that Brooks Adams omitted the first part of the last paragraph. See also Beringause, Brooks Adams, p. 260. 76lcA, "Narrative," APM, reel 268. LCA underlined "was" twice in the version marked "[Another Copy]." Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 2 0 self-assertion were Louisa's reasons for writing her narrative but were followed by a self-deprecatory identification. The balance of disparagement and assertiveness is striking. Since Louisa recorded this trip twenty years after the fact, it is necessary to question the veracity of her account. Internal evidence must provide the answer; no definitive confirmation is possible. Only Charles and three servants accompanied her, and while travelling she wrote few letters. Except for one lapse she remembered her route well. She reported that she did not visit Leipzig, yet John Quincy's account book shows that she drew money there. Most of the details of the trip accord well with the rest of her life: she acknowledged her fears; described her happiness on meeting her Berlin friends, who seemed like "sisters" to her ; admitted her faults; took great pleasure in being treated as an important person; and handled her European servants with skill. She conceded that not everything went well. She was, at one point, careless with money; her decision to cross a thawing river almost brought the party to grief; her men servants, through no fault of her own, deserted her in Frankfurt. This story is in one important sense different from her other memoirs. It is direct in a way her other memoirs are not. Nowhere does she review her father's financial debacle or her lack of a dowry, nor does she recount her many angers at John Quincy. Her mind, for once, seems to be concentrated on a single subject. Yet Louisa was, like all authors, building an image. The image projected by her narrative is that of an important person, travelling Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 521 in a carriage, on an errand of great danger, to rejoin her beloved husband and sons. There is an echo here of the romantic novels she had read in her youth. One of the recurrent themes of these novels is that of a heroine (often a prominent woman), travelling in a closed carriage, overcoming many dangers, on an errand of love. For Louisa, who had for so long wanted, and been so often denied, a carriage, the heavy Russian conveyance may have had symbolic meaning. Here, at last, in the small world of an enclosed space, Louisa physically spanned a continent, fully active, undeniably in charge, and unquestionably the most important person. Arriving in Berlin, Louisa described the carriage as her "own" carriage. Other novelistic elements appear in her tale. One servant is depicted to her as a "desperate villain"; everywhere she goes she is pressed to stay with local officials; Louisa uses Charles' m ilitary cap and sword (which happen to be in the carriage) to disguise the nature of those inside the carriage. Louisa's story is tinged by romantic details which are impossible to corroborate, but these details do not affect the basic truth of her t a l e . Another purpose of Louisa's narrative was to relive the emotional warmth she got from being a very important person. She recounted how city officials wanted her to stay with them; emphasized the powerful letters of introduction she received (tangible signs of the esteem in which she was held); and was gratified to find that fifteen years had not diminished the affection that her Berlin friends felt for her. Perhaps she forgot she had visited Leipzig because she Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 2 2 knew nobody in the city, was invited nowhere, and was, in short, an ordinary traveller. Even allowing for Louisa's purposes in writing her narrative and for some questionable, perhaps novelistic, details, Louisa's tale is written with a balance and directness which inspires confidence that her story is substantially true. She was a woman alone, badly frightened yet competent for the task, who completed an arduous journey in mid-winter across the continent of Europe—in, as she described it, her "own" carriage. Louisa recorded in her narrative that the night before she left St. Petersburg, she went to Countess Colombi's for a farewell tea. An uninvited Russian lady insisted on telling Louisa's fortune by reading cards. She said Louisa was delighted to leave St. Petersburg and that Louisa would once more meet those from whom she "had long separated e t c . , e tc ." She fo re to ld th a t when Louisa had made h a lf her jo u rn ey , she "should be much alarmed by a great change in the political world, in consequence of a gret man which would produce utter consternation and set all Europe into fresh commotion." She added that Louisa would hear of this on the road, change her plans, meet with difficulty, but that in the end she would find her "husband well, and that we should have a joyous meeting." Since the story was written down years later, and since Louisa loved Gothic tales, this vignette may have been added for effect. If not, the Russian woman was prescient indeed.77 There were several reasons why Louisa was able to plan maturely for the journey. Her health, although not strong, was better than it 77lcA, "Narrative," Scribner's, p. 455. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 2 3 had been during other winters in St. Petersburg. From three trips made while in Berlin, she was acquainted with conditions of European travel. She was not pregnant and was tra v e llin g w ith only one c h ild . She knew that as part of the diplomatic corps her trips would be made easier, that she would be welcomed and accommodated, and how much power letters of recommendation from autocratic governments could generate. A Russian acquaintance had written all the postmasters to watch for Louisa's arrival, expedite her journey with good horses, adding a special circular letter to the letter of introduction.78 ghe realized how many of the diplom ats along the way she would alread y know. She had been running a house in St. Petersburg, making decisions about Charles' school, and had gathered, in some measure, the American community around her. She had felt her power in dealing with Levett Harris. Invited to court functions while alone, she had been singled out by royalty. John Quincy was not there to be anxious and compulsively busy with the cares of the moving. Most of all, Louisa wanted to make the trip for her own reasons. She had chosen the time herself and was leaving a place where she was not happy without her husband. Although in full control, Louisa was in one sense not alone. Charles was with her; and so clearly did she consider this a trip for two that she ended her last letter from St. Petersburg with the statement: "be prepared to expect your most affectionate Wife and Child LC & C Adams."79 78Louisa called the letter ordering the horses a "podorojna.' A modern transliteration of the word would be "podorozhania." 79LCA to JQA, 12 February 1815, APM, reel 422. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 524 Louisa planned the trip well. Her very heavy Russian carriage was p u lle d , when she was in France, by s ix h o rses. The snow was s t i l l packed hard in northern Europe in February, so the carriage had runners which she exchanged at Riga for wheels. Louisa ordered a bed built for Charles inside the carriage so that he could sleep during the nighttime—one could not always count on travelling by daylight. The s e le c tio n of a heavy c a rria g e was probably p ru d en t, as Louisa was not once overset on the trip—other travellers were not so fortunate. Her servants travelled in a kibitka, a much rougher and less comfortable carriage, behind her. She carried at all times provisions in the carriage so that she would be independent from the inns, which were often rude way-stations. Louisa had enough gold and silver for her expenses on the journey, which she hid against theft by her servants; and she shrewdly used her letter of credit to give the impression that she was o b taining ju s t enough money to go from one c ity to a n o th e r.80 Naturally Louisa needed servants for the journey. She took three with her: two male servants—one of whom had served with the Smiths and one a prisoner from Napoleon's army, recently released, named Baptiste—and a French nurse, Madame Babet, who had worked for Madame Colombi for thirty years. Louisa engaged the nurse a few days before she left St. Petersburg.81 it was a rather ill-assorted group to be travelling across the continent of Europe together, but Louisa had much experience in dealing with European servants. Her last act in 80lcA, "Narrative," Scribner's, pp. 452, 454. 81 lcA to JQA, 31 January 1815, APM, reel 422. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 2 5 St. Petersburg was to send John Quincy a short letter expressing all her anticipation and the affection she felt for him at that moment, after which she took "the first step towards that meeting for which my soul pants." She left the letter to be sent after her; and with the seven-year-old Charles beside her in one carriage and the nurse and two men servants in another carriage behind, Louisa Adams began her trip across Europe on her fortieth birthday, 12 February 1815.82 Louisa told John Quincy a few days before she set out that, surprisingly, she left Russia with regret.83 To spare herself the pain of parting from her friends in St. Petersburg, where she had lived for more than five years, Louisa slipped out of the city during the dinner hour, apparently making no formal farewells. Louisa's account of her journey emphasized her feelings of haste. The party travelled both day and night until they reached Narva, on the Baltic, where they stopped at the "best Inn." Declining apartments prepared for her at the Governor's house, she nevertheless had visits from the Governor and Count de Bray, the Bavarian Minister to the court of the Czar, who with his wife was visiting his father-in- law living nearby. Conscious that she was travelling without John Quincy and wanting to get on with the journey, she refused the Count's offer to stay with them for a few days.84 An accident to the carriage forced Louisa to stay for four or five days in Riga until it could be repaired and the kibitka sold. 82lcA to JQA, 12 February 1815, APM, reel 422.e 83 lcA to JQA, 4 February 1815, APM, reel 422. 84LCA, "Narrative," Scribner's, p. 450. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 526 Louisa Adams’s Account of her Journey from St. Petersburg to Paris V P tttf tb u r a f # M itau K#ntg*b#fg -VÜ' . -r.; K üttrm F rankfurt S traaboufQ Th^rry Eparnay Clay# C h ito n s X PARIS Souilly J llo n s Mtaux la Farl#- SarrabourQ Phalsbourg G au ch ar Nancy V ltry- la-Francois •n-uarroit Samt*Diii#r STRASBOURG Map 1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 527 What she did for a new carriage for the servants is not recorded in her memoirs; perhaps the servants rode on or in hers. From Riga and later from Memel, she wrote to John Quincy. She described the pleasure of the trip and how much she liked the Governor and his wife, whom she found unaffected and without ostentation. The weather had been so cold that all the food Louisa kept in the carriage, including the Madeira wine, was frozen. Charles was not as pleased with the trip as was his mother. Louisa understood his fears, yet she wrote that he was a "coward," and how, on arriving at the sea, he blanched, thinking they were about to go into "that great water."85 In Riga a silver cup belonging to Charles disappeared. Louisa suspected one of her men servants but could not prove his guilt. She spent several days in this northern city, turning down the Governor's invitation to stay at his house, preferring to lodge at an inn. Yet she visited the Governor daily, met "all the most distinguished persons" in town, and was "forced to c a ll up a l l th e German . . . I could muster" to converse.86 Louisa described to John Quincy that the snows in Courland were deep but the ground not frozen, so that travel became more difficult. The rivers, no longer covered with ice, had to be forded "at the risk of our lives."87 When the carriage stuck, the postilion rang a bell, which was answered by the inhabitants who dug out the carriage with pickaxes and shovels. Arriving in Mitau, the capital of Courland, 85%bid.; LCA to JQA, 17 February 1815, APM, reel 422. 86lc A, "Narrative," Scribner's, p. 450. 87lc A to JQA, 20 February 1815, APM, reel 422. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 2 8 Louisa was met by a Countess Mengs, a slight acquaintance from St. Petersburg, but because of her hurry declined an invitation to stay at the Countess' house. The owner of the inn in Mitau, where she stayed next, took Louisa aside, she recorded years later, and after preparations enough to announce the direst news, told her that a man had been murdered on the road she was about to take. Further he revealed that her servant from the French army, well known to all in Mitau, was a "desperate villain." The innkeeper was panicked Chat the servant, were he to hear that Louisa had been informed of his background, might bum the inn down. Louisa answered forthrightly that the man had at all times behaved well, that she had given her word to take him to France, and refused to dismiss him. She did, however, believe enough of the innkeeper's information to be wary of the servant.88 Louisa's haste to get on with the trip was prudent, although in her narrative she wrote that her hurry was "proud and foolhardy," a typical under-evaluation of her own good judgment. Her very affectionate letter to John Quincy from Memel shows that her haste was fueled by her desire to be with him. She felt the trip was difficult, as indeed it was, and that the hardships should be ”face[d] at once."89 Such a trip as Louisa had undertaken required concentration of mind and effort, and endless stops for socializing might well have robbed Louisa of the singlemindedness she sorely needed before the trip was over. 88lcA, "Narrative," Scribner's, p. 451. .89LCA to JQA, 5 March 1815, APM, reel 422. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 52 9 No sooner had Louisa left Mitau than the postilion (probably picked up a t the la s t post house), new on the road, lo s t h is way. Jolting over "swamps and holes, and into valleys, into which no Carriage had surely ever passed before," Louisa was terrified. Finally at midnight, the horses being exhausted, Louisa sent Baptiste, her French man-servant, on horseback to find a road. The sound of horses’ hooves and men's voices on the road while they were waiting for Baptiste to return raised Louisa's fears even further, but Baptiste had found a Russian officer in a house nearby and was bringing help. At half-past one they found an inn and stayed overnight, and Louisa's confidence in her servants rose. In spite of the warnings she had received, they had behaved with great courage during the very trying h o u rs.90 Starting early the next morning, Louisa and her party came to the Vistula, where, the ice being thin, they had difficulty finding men willing to take them across. She refused to take a long and tedious detour and made the courageous decision to try and cross the river in a manner suggested by some local men. The men took long poles with hooks on them to te s t the ic e and moved the horses to the extreme end o f the shafts so their weight would be as far separated from that of the carriage as possible. Although the ice broke at the edge of the river just as they finished crossing, the carriage lurched up the bank and they were safe.91 90LCA, "Narrative," Scribner's, p. 452. 91lbid., p. 453. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 3 0 Louisa was but a short time in Poland, and the only village that she saw she described as a "most filthy and beggarly village."92 Arriving in Prussia and being kept waiting three hours for horses, Louisa produced her letter which instructed her to report any obstructions to the Ministry of the Interior in St. Petersburg. The letter effected not only apologies but the horses she had waited for, plus two extra to pull the heavy carriage. (The two extra probably meant she now had six.) Louisa's letters gave her an official status, which at times gave her access to power not available to the ordinary t r a v e l l e r . Travelling east of Prussia, Louisa was again warned against taking a road at night. Again, she decided to press on but admitted she was la t e r so rry when sh e, to o , was seized w ith extrem e a n x ie ty . The darkness and the strangeness of the road gave her imagination full rein, and her fears seemed to clothe themselves in reality. In the account of her trip she described this unfocused anxiety as "something beyond the ken of man" and, not recognizing it as based on fantasies, thought it close to superstition.93 Louisa realized she was travelling over the route Napoleon's army had passed on i t s r e tr e a t from Moscow. "Houses h a lf b u rn t, a very thin population, women unprotected, and that dreary look of forlorn desertion" were everywhere.94 92Ib id . 93lcA, "Narrative," APM, reel 268. 94LCA, "Narrative," Scribner's, p. 453. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 531 Trouble began for Louisa at Konigsberg in eastern Prussia, where Louisa's French servant Baptiste began to assume a rude tone to her. Wisely Louisa gave him the freedom to go or stay. Louisa may not have been expert in keeping household accounts or in dealing with untrained New England girls, but she knew exactly how to get the very best out of European servants. Further, she knew, on this trip anyway, how to make the best of a bad situation. Baptiste decided to stay with the party, but from this point on Louisa had one more anxiety with which to cope. Outside of Konigsberg the carriage broke down, and Louisa and Charles, unable to walk on the road which was a quagmire, rode in a cart to a roadside hovel. The inhabitants of the cottage, rude and surly, refused to take the party back to Konigsberg, so Louisa sat up all night while Charles slept in his bed, brought in from the carriage, while one servant stood guard at the door with his gun. The carriage was fixed with a makeshift wheel, and the trip progressed. The roads now became nearly impassable, and a traveller going the other way towards St. Petersburg informed Louisa his carriage had been upset seven times. She "could not help laughing at his doleful account" and told him she had not yet had the pleasure of being upset herself. Since being upset was a very serious accident, Louisa may have exaggerated her sang-froid when she wrote her account.95 Disgusted by the signs of war, fortresses "et cetera that military skill achieves to give dignity to crimes," Louisa was "utterly astonish!ed]" to hear Napoleon and his officers praised at the inn where they stayed. The Allied armies were seldom acclaimed, yet 95lcA, "Narrative," Scribner's, pp. 453-54. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 532 Napoleon's exploits were "greatly admired" because, Louisa explained, the "renowned cruelties, and barbarities, of the Cossacks seemed to have white washed all other crimes from their minds." The women especially were terrified of the Cossacks. Louisa, sensitive and intelligent, realized "the guarded tone of the conversation, the suppressed sighs, the significant shrug" of the populace were the result of war and its suppression of personal liberties .96 Near Berlin, Louisa passed a small house where, in retreat from Napoleon, Queen Louisa of Prussia had stayed with her sick baby. With great empathy, Louisa wept at the suffering of "one whom I had so dearly loved."97 Finally Louisa reached Berlin, driving directly to the Hotel de Russie, where she planned to stay for a week. Typically, when she wrote about her trip later, she felt obliged to explain that the carriage needed repairs, the wheel had to be painted, and, last of all "B erlin was a ttr a c tiv e to me." B erlin was not only a t tr a c t iv e , i t was enchanting! All the unhappy occurrences between 1801 and 1815 were swept away, and Louisa entered Berlin "with the pleasant recollection!s] of the past" crowding in on her. She sent a note to Countess Pauline de Neale, who arrived the next day—s till the good friend Louisa had known fourteen years before. She and Louisa together planned the v i s i t s they would make to those women whom Louisa had known when she was a hesitant, unsure, yet fun-loving, young girl. Louisa, probably with the greatest pleasure, gave orders that her "own" 96lcA, "Narrative," APM, reel 268. 97LCA, "Narrative," Scribner's, p. 454. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 3 3 carriage should be repaired and ordered another for the projected Berlin v isits.98 Outwardly the city of Berlin had changed little , but the people had changed. The national costume was gone, "French was almost universally spoken," and there was, Louisa recorded, a "cold . . . flat . . . foreign air" about the city that "dampened the pleasure she expected." The Princesses Ferdinand and Louisa Radzwill received Louisa with the same kindness as before, but Princess Louisa said that "two dishes for my supper, and a hearty welcome" were all she could manage. Louisa thought Princess Ferdinand was changed only in that her face had softened. The King and the Prince were at Vienna, busy with diplomacy and peace-making.99 Here again, Louisa wrote to John Ouincy. She told him that the Empress, who had not seen Louisa since 1801, thought "she had never seen a Woman so alter'd in her life for the better," which gives some idea how really ill Louisa must have been when she left Berlin, or perhaps how Louisa was thriving on the journey across Europe. The Empress suggested that if John Quincy had sent for Louisa from such a great distance, he could not expect to return to Russia. Seeing Louisa's eyes sparkle at the thought of not having to return to St. Petersburg, the Empress chided her for being a bad diplomat.180 Greeting others she had known in Berlin, Louisa described how she and her friends met like "long separated and beloved Sisters." Her time was spent in visits, and she imagined herself young again. Louisa 98ibid., p. 455. 99ibid., pp. 455-56. IOO lCA to JQA, 5 March 1815, APM, reel 422. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 534 heard stories of distress during the war and of magnanimity in peace. Life for women had not changed in one respect. Louisa wrote that "[we] sat round a table with our work chatting," and felt, as she had fourteen years before, "at home,"181 Louisa found Captain Norman, an American, "dying of a fever in the upper story of the Hotel for want of care and attention." Feeling herself responsible for Americans, Louisa visited the man every day, asking the Neales to care for him when she left Berlin. She reported to John Ouincy that the man had "excellent physicians but no friends." Louisa had no confidence in the efficacy of medicine alone, unaided by social contacts, and perhaps she was right.182 On 10 March 1815 Louisa, Charles, and her three servants left Berlin with "feelings both of gratitude and regret" and with a new passport. Her friends, Louisa wrote later, warned her not to visit Leipzig because she would have to cross a battlefield. Yet John Q uincy's account book shows she drew some money th e r e .183 Since s tra g g le rs from the army were s t i l l on the road, when tra v e llin g a t night Louisa wore Charles' military cap with its tall feather and put his sword across a window to give the impression that a m ilitary man was in the carriage, hoping in this way not to be molested.184 181lCA, "Narrative," APM, reel 268. The Browns seem not to have been in Berlin at this time. 182lcA to JQA, 5 March 1815, APM, reel 422. 103"My wife drew a Bill at Leipzig in favour of Frege and Co. on F. E. Montreal for 100 Ducats." JQA, Miscellany, Personal Financial Record, 1802-1822, APM, reel 209. 184lcA, "Narrative," Scribner's, p. 457. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 535 After leaving Berlin, more difficulties arose. Louisa was amazed to hear the rumor that Napoleon had returned to France. She went to bed in a country inn unusually tired and carelessly left her purse with some gold on the table. The next morning the lamp which had been on the table and the gold (but not the purse) were gone. Although she never quite stated it outright, Louisa suspected the nurse, even thought she had served Madame Colombi for thirty y e a r s . 1^3 Louisa heard an extraordinary amount of news while on the road. In Berlin she learned that Harris had been appointed Minister in St. Petersburg, which was incorrect; and a man Louisa met on the road informed her that Catherine and William Smith had left Ghent and gone to Paris, which was true. She heard everywhere the news of Napoleon's return. The closer she got to Paris, the more substance did the rumor seem to g a i n106 . At Hanan near Frankfurt am Main, Louisa heard that plans were underway to call back the disbanded soldiers to fight Napoleon. Near the town, Louisa crossed a plain covered with "remnants of Clothes; old Boots in pieces; and an immense quantity of bones." Her postilion showed Louisa a board which stated that on this battlefield the remnant of Napoleon's army had been intercepted by the Bavarians and ten thousand men had been slaughtered. Louisa wrote she could hardly keep from fainting at the thought of the "butchery . . . torture, suffering and anguish" which must have taken place on that spot. Louisa's lOSibid. lO^LCA to JOA, 5 March 1815, APM, re e l 422. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 536 servants began to grow uneasy and to discuss another conscription and the possibility of the war's r e n e w a l . 107 Louisa, rightly alarmed by the news, hoped to have accurate information from John Quincy (now in Paris); but no letters were waiting for her in Frankfort, where she arrived in mid-March.10® John Quincy was also troubled. He learned that both the foreigners and the many French who were fleeing Napoleon had taken all the post-horses. He worried that Louisa might lack horses or be detained at the frontier.109 while in Frankfort, Louisa was warned to change her proposed route and go by way of Strasbourg. Although this change made her route longer and caused extra expense, both of which she feared, she took the advice.HO She had not taken the detour at Vistula and was right. She decided this time to take local advice and was again correct. Her flexibility in assessing or rejecting counsel must have come from her knowledge of Europe and an intuition in which, at least on this trip, she had confidence. No sooner had Louisa reached Frankfort than her two male servants declared the circumstances of the employment had changed, and they were no longer willing to return to France. Both men were in a state of panic, and nothing could persuade them to go farther. Louisa, 107%,cA, "Narrative," Scribner's, pp. 457-58; LCA, "Narrative," APM, reel 268. 10®LCA to JQA, 17 March 1815, APM, re e l 422. 109jQA to JA, 21 March 1815, APM, reel 422. llOpor the cost of LCA's trip, see JQA, Miscellany, Account Book 1809-1829, APM, reel 210. JQA later charged this sum to his acount at the Treasury, but it was disallowed. JQA Miscellany, Accounts with U.S., 1794-1801, 1809-1822, 26 October 1819, APM, reel 206. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 537 turning to a Frankfort banker for help, was informed that the situation was even worse than she had thought. Louisa was determined to press on. She thought the general consternation might work in her behalf, as in such disorder no troops could be called up immediately. At four o'clock in the afternoon, the banker, having arranged for her funds and having found a fourteen-year-old boy willing to go on to France, put Louisa, Charles, the nurse, and the boy in the carriage (now supplied with new horses) and sent them off to Carlsruhe. The boy had been in the Russian campaign and was emotionally caught between "admiration and detestation" for Napoleon.HI At Carlsruhe, Louisa wrote that she had hoped to visit the Princess Amalia of Baden and a friend Louisa had known in St. Petersburg but on arrival discovered that both had left. Louisa was disappointed. She also tried to obtain some knowledge about the conditions of the road. Louisa was told Napoleon had been taken, tried, and shot. The news was reported as absolutely reliable, as it had come from the Palace. So precarious were the times that Louisa was glad a cry of sorrow, which escaped the boy upon hearing the news, had not been heard, or she might have been suspected of harboring a Bonapartist .H2 Louisa passed through Baden without incident, but wagonloads of soldiers rolled to the frontiers singing patriotic songs and looking llllCA, "Narrative," Scribner's , p. 459. H2xbid., p. 459. In the first account of her trip, LCA wrote that she had hoped to see the Empress of Prussia and her sister, who had left the day before. In this published version she heard that the Empress of Prussia and her sister had left. LCA, "Narrative," APM, re e l 268. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 538 forward to "renewal of hostilities." She thought normal men had turned into animals.H3 Louisa was stopped trying to cross the Rhine and allowed to proceed to Strasbourg only after questioning. Again her "Passports [were] demanded, baggage taken off &." Strasbourg, unlike the cities she had left, was quiet; but the news of Napoleon's return was here confirmed. Louisa once more tried to procure a man servant, and it was the hotelkeeper who found Louisa "a most respectable looking man." This man, named Dupin, turned out to be a d is c r e e t, h e lp fu l, and tactful person, who considerably smoothed the rest of the voyage. Louisa was so anxious to get to Paris and end the exhausting journey that she was ill for the very first time, but she found enough strength to go on. Uppermost in her mind, she w rote, was the memory of the husband from whom she had been separated for nearly a year and the two sons she had not seen in five-and-a-half y e a r s . H4 Again Louisa had to stay at a hovel overnight, sitting up as she had done before; this time the men in the next room held threatening conversations "boasting of what Napoleon was to do now that he had arrived, to drive out Louis dixhuit and his beggarly crew." They railed against the Allies and, of course against the C o s s a c k s . H5 H 3 lcA, "Narrative," Scribner's, p. 459. H^LCA, "Narrative," APM, reel 268. Louisa thought the town of Strasbourg reminded her of Worcester, Massachusetts. HS lcA, "Narrative," APM, reel 268. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 539 At Nancy, the town square was alre ad y f i l l e d w ith troops awaiting with delight the return of the Emperor, Dupin now told Louisa if they made good time, they should keep in advance of the troops who were planning to march on to Paris. Again Louisa followed advice. This time it was good for only one day. After stopping at Chateau- Thierry, where they were well housed, they pushed on towards Paris. A hurried dinner was got at Epernay with a bottle of local champagne which Louisa thought was the best she had ever tasted "before or since." The troops were not expected in town until the next day.11® Unaware of imminent danger, Louisa left Epernay. Only a mile and a half out of town, however, she found herself "in the midst of the V Imperial Guards who were on their way to meet the Emperor." Forgetting that she was travelling in a Russian carriage, Louisa was surprised to hear the women camp followers swear at her. Suddenly she realized they were crying "'tear them out of the Carriage; they are Russians take them out kill them.'" The soldiers seized the horses and turned their guns on the driver. A general examined Louisa's passport and called out to the men that this was an American lady travelling to Paris to meet her husband. In answer the soldiers shouted "vive Les Américains" and Louisa was required to answer "vive Napoleon"! Now pacified, the soldiers marched before the carriage and, Louisa wrote, had the horses done more than walk, the soldiers would have fired. In such a parade did Louisa make her way towards P a r i s . H7 llGlbid. H 7 lca , "Narrative," APM, reel 268. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 540 The general who had inspected Louisa's passports told Louisa that her position was "precarious . . . the Army totally undisciplined" and that her best protection was to seem unconcerned and answer the soldiers' "Viva's." He arranged for Louisa to spend the night at the post house and advised her to go around Paris, thus missing the Army waiting to greet Napoleon. Her perfect French, he told Louisa, would convince people she was French.11® Throughout this experience, Louisa, unlike her companions, kept her composure. Terrified by the troops, Mme Babet broke down completely, wept continually; and Charles "absolutely petrified . . . sat by my side like a marble statue." Constantly threatened by the soldiers, harangued by drunken men on the side of the road, the party travelled on. The men shouted "A has Louis Dix huit! Vive Napoleon! till the whole welkin rang with the screech, worse than the midnight Owls' most dire alarms to the startled ear."119 Louisa stopped at a post house near Paris where the party and the carriage were hidden overnight. Here she was unable to sleep and suffered "faintings, headaches and sickness," not surprisingly, considering her tension and terror. The ubiquitous soldiers caroused all night. Kindly treated by the innkeeper and his wife, the party left at nine o'clock in the morning, passing through Chatillon, where Louisa was informed that forty thousand men had massed before the gates of P a ris and th a t b a ttle was im m inent.HO ll®Ibid. 119lbid. HOibid. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 541 On "cool reflection" Louisa decided to press on, as the expenses of the trip were great, and she was sure, if danger were present, John Quincy would have found some way to let her know. To go on was also the advice of the servant Dupin, so she decided to go as far towards Paris as possible. She reasoned that closer to Paris, were she stopped, she could at least make contact with John Quincy. Dupin told her that because she was the only person travelling towards Paris (in a carriage with six horses), a rumor had sprung up that she was one of Napoleon's sisters going to meet the Emperor—a rumor which Dupin did nothing to dispel. Passing through Meaux, Louisa and her companions heard yet more horror stories of the Cossacks, causing her to ruminate on the "fiend like passions of men." In the reputedly dangerous Forest of Boudy, Louisa feared that a pursuing horseman was a bandit. Instead, he very kindly informed her that her carriage was about to lose a wheel and turn over. Returning to the last post house, the wheel was repaired, and in spite of the late hour, they started off once again. At eleven o'clock they reached the gates of Paris and rode without trouble to the Hotel du Nord, where they found John Quincy had gone out to the theatre. Louisa's memory was faulty; John Quincy recorded in his Diary that he returned before Louisa arrived, that he greeted his wife and son, who were both well, and that he was delighted to meet them again after eleven months. He also recorded that they had been forty days on the road. Here the Diary entry ends.HI Louisa, at the end of her memoir, reflected on how she, an unprotected woman, could have accomplished such a trip. Fortunately, HI Ib id .; JOA, D iary, 23 March 1815, APM, re e l 32. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 542 she wrote, she was neither young nor beautiful. If, Louisa thought, women would travel with persevering discretion, their "very weakness" would find them "friends and protectors" and keep them safe; but this was her usual disclaimer, following an awareness of her competence. At no time had weakness helped her. Leaving weakness aside, where it belonged, she then delved deeper into the matter. She had been responsible for others; therefore, fortitude had been absolutely necessary. Her ultimate motivation, she thought, was to be once more reunited with her husband and her two boys, George and John, whom she knew had been sent for from America. To Louisa's list a few more explanations of her successful trip may be added. First, she was fully in charge. John Quincy was not there either to point out mistakes or to take over should things go awry, or to be nervous that she would be ill. She had been making decisions for herself for almost a year. Her ability to speak French was absolutely crucial in the final stage of the trip, and she could at least make herself understood in German. Charles' health stood up for the entire trip. She valued herself during this time, not just as a mother, but as a person whose behavior could support others. Her reasons for wanting to make the trip to reunite her family were her own: for once a trip served her own immediate purposes rather than John Quincy's long-range career. The trip had a beginning and an end— unlike ambition, which was without a time frame. She was doing something, namely travelling, at which she was thoroughly experienced. And last, she was leaving a place, St. Petersburg, where she had not been happy without her family and where she had been forced to stay a lo n e . Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 543 For all these reasons, Louisa showed for once of what she was capable and how much strength of both body and mind she could summon. On her own, motivated, responsible for the safety of others, she mustered fortitude, endurance, and confidence. Yet with her husband, these qualities were beyond her reach. During that spring of 1815 Louisa was at her best. It was a fitting end to her very difficult Russian years. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER X AN ENGLISH IDYLL Louisa could hardly have known in March 1815 that an unaccustomed period of personal and domestic well being was about to begin. In June the entire Adams family was reunited in London when John Quincy took up his new appointment as United States Minister to the Court of St. James. During this London interval, Louisa's anger towards her husband cooled and her great admiration and her love for him asserted themselves. Protected from too close contact with the social life of a great court by a country residence, John Quincy also took a calmer and more reasonable attitude towards life. It was to be an English idyll. Louisa had last been in Paris in 1783, when she and her family had travelled from Nantes to London. In the spring of 1815 the city was in the turmoil of Napoleon's return from Elba. Three days before Louisa arrived in Paris, Napoleon had entered the city and taken possession of it; the welcome had been tumultuous. Simultaneously, Louis XVIII, with many Royalist supporters, fled the city, while the European powers, still talking peace at the Congress of Vienna, began preparations for a new invasion of France.1 A mighty allied army under IjQA to JA, 21 March 1815, APM, reel 422. 544 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 545 the leadership of the Duke of Wellington faced Napoleon's forces in June 1815 and defeated them a t W aterloo, During the winter, while waiting for Louisa, John Quincy had been happy in Paris. Looking back after a year, he wrote that his time in Paris was "in many respects the most agreeable interlude of my life." He had seen the "gloomy Court of Louis 18," the circle of the Duke of Orleans, the art museums, the "National Institute, the Courts of Law—the Theatres," and he had visited and dined with Madame de Stael. These pleasant activities, however, ended upon Napoleon's temporary return from exile. John Quincy wrote that he had been "indemnified for the loss" of his pleasant life by the arrival of "my wife and Charles; safe from the long and not unperilous winter journey from Russia." This happy news he passed on to his parents a month after Louisa arrived in Paris.% Although the Paris in which Louisa found herself that March 1815 was frau g h t w ith p o l i t i c a l upheaval, she found much to enjoy. The theatre and the opera were both functioning, and almost every evening the Adamses went to one or the other. They went so often that at the end of April John Quincy recorded that they were going "only" two or three times a week. The first three days in Paris Louisa managed to go to two operas and one play. Sometimes the very precocious seven-year-old Charles accompanied them. One night the Emperor himself attended the theatre much to the delight of the audience, which could hardly leave off cheering him. Louisa, Charles, and John Quincy spent 2jq A to AA, 22 April 1815, reel. 423. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 546 two pleasant days renewing an old acquaintanceship with Lafayette at La Grange, his country estate.® Louisa's health, which had held up during the trip from St. Petersburg, continued to be good. This time she did not need several days' rest after an exhausting journey, and the usual "Mrs. Adams ill" does not appear in John Quincy's Diary. Mme Babet, however, developed a brain fever immediately upon her arrival in Paris, from which she had still not recovered two months later.4 Louisa went visiting, was called on, and did much sightseeing. She spent two hours in the Jardin des Plants, saw the mastadon bones presented by Thomas Jefferson, rode about the city, and shopped. She went to the Napoleon Museum, lately reopened, and admired the triumphal Battle of Marengo.® On 5 April 1815 news arrived that brought this very pleasant life to an abrupt end. John Quincy was to be the new American Minister to the Court of St. James. His colleagues, Gallatin and Bayard, also received new assignments. Gallatin was to stay in Paris as Minister to France, while Bayard was ordered to St. Petersburg.® Indeed, Louisa's two months in Paris had been quite delightful. She wrote Abigail that she left Paris "with the utmost regret." Although she knew John Quincy had sent for George and John, she had no idea when or where the boys would arrive in England.7 ®JQA, Diary, 24, 25, 26, 31 March, 1 May 1815, APM, reel 32. 4jq a , Diary, 28 March 1815, APM, reel 32. 5jQA, Diary, 26 March 1815, APM, reel 32. ®JQA, Diary, 5 April 1815, APM, reel 32. 7lcA to AA, 12 June 1815, APM, r e e l 424; AA to JQA, 8 March 1815, APM, reel 422. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 547 In mid-May Louisa and John Quincy left Paris for London. The very first full day's journey produced in John Quincy's Diary the terse re p o rt: "Mrs. Adams was much overcome w ith fa tig u e ." From Le Havre the trip across the Channel was cold and rough. Even John Quincy was almost sick, and he spent the night on the floor lying on a mattress, "with an old Great Coat and the vessel's flag for a covering." At Dover, despite regulations, Louisa flatly refused to go to the customs house but went immediately to a hotel. Louisa was now an experienced tr a v e lle r and knew what she would and would not do and how fa r she could circumvent official rules. Twice this day John Quincy recorded that Louisa was tired, although she felt well enough to walk around the town with him in the evening.® Remembering that Louisa had been born and brought up in England, Abigail hoped that she would be "invigorated by the Air of your Native soil."9 But Louisa herself was not looking forward to living in England. She anticipated a "very disagreeable residence." England had been at war with America for two-and-a-half years, and Louisa feared England's new "moderation and friendship" was merely a superficial cover for continuing enmity. The living expenses in England she expected to be "insupportable," while she considered the people themselves overburdened with taxation.10 Despite her earlier experiences of English life when she lived in London, she did not now feel as if she were coming home. "Home" was where her family was, not ®JOA, Diary, 17, 23, 24 May 1815, APM, reel 32. 9a A to LCA, 14 April 1815, APM, reel 423. IO lCA to AA, 12 June 1815, APM, reel 424. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 548 the country in which she had been brought up. Abigail explained the Johnson's situation in England to a friend: the Johnsons had entertained mostly Americans, because Joshua Johnson was himself, of course, American—not British.H Louisa found but few of her old friends in England, and these had greatly changed. Six m iles out of London the Adamses were given a l e t t e r which told them what lodgings had been taken for them. More importantly, they learned that their two older sons , George and John, whom they had not seen for almost six years, would be waiting for them there. In fact, George and John had left America in April in the care of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Perkins, who promised to deliver them to their parents. Abigail bravely likened the boys to "Telemacus . . . setting out in search of their father."H Having cared for them for six years, she felt bereft when she sent them off. On the day they left, Abigail's sister, Elizabeth Peabody, died unexpectedly. For Abigail the loss had been thus compounded. Louisa's reunion with her sons was understandably emotional. Forewarned as she was, Louisa was nearly overcome, had to "retire,” and even "fainted twice." John Quincy tersely explained her collapse as owing to the "fatigue of the Journey, following so immediately upon the Sea-sickness of the Voyage," and her meeting with her sons.l® H a A to Harriet Welch, 5 September 1815, reel 426. H aa to Harriet Welch, 16 April 1815, reel 423. H jq a , Diary, 25 May 1815, APM, reel 32. There is a strange insistence on JQA's part that LCA was fatigued. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 549 Trying to get settled in London was a "hurly burly of confusion." Again John Quincy (whose diplomatic responsibilities had begun) made the domestic arrangements. He searched for a house, kept all accounts, got a carriage and horses, and arranged for the baggage. It was as if Louisa had never lived alone in St. Petersburg. Louisa had from May of 1814 to February of 1815 run a household by herself, but now in London John Ouincy took over the account books and made most of the decisions. Louisa did, however, hire the servants, a responsibility she does not seem to have exercised before.14 At once the Adamses were caught up in a round of v isits. One visitor was Temple Franklin, the aging grandson of Benjamin Franklin and a former Loyalist. Another was Lord Carysfort, now so old John Quincy hardly knew him. The Countess Levin, wife of the Ambassador from Russia, also left a card. Of course, all these visits had to be returned. Theatre-going also took up a great deal of time. At dinners, according to British custom, Louisa and the other ladies left the table after the meal; the men remained about a half-hour longer. Louisa also rode in the Adamses' carriage in various parks, perhaps remembering her childhood and the Johnson's almost daily rides in these same parks.1® Even before finding a house, John Quincy arranged for the boys’ education. Tutors were hired (it was the summer vacation) for writing, arithmetic, fencing, and, perhaps at Louisa's insistance, dancing. 14JQA,Diary, 25 May 1815, APM, reel 32. The Adamses lived, from 22 May to 5 August 1815, at 67 Harley Street, Cavendish Square. Bemis, Foundations, p. 238. 1®JQA,Diary, 4, 5, 7, 10 June 1815, APM, reel 32. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 550 Abigail constantly exhorted the boys to write letters; hers show clearly how much she missed them. To their father she wrote (as if John Quincy needed reminding) that morals were the foundation of character. "In raising the moral edifice," she wrote, "we must sink deep in proportion as we build high."l® While house-hunting and arranging for the boys' lessons, John Quincy carried on his diplomatic business. The parallels between John Adams, first Minister to Great Britain after signing a peace treaty with that nation, and his son John Quincy, now Minister to Great Britain after signing yet another peace treaty, were obvious.H Never stated directly, yet almost palpable, was the thought that John Quincy would follow his father's example and achieve the Presidency. On his birthday John Quincy summed up in his Diary the year just past. His public affairs had made it "the most important year of my Life, and in my private and domestic relations one of the most happy years."!® In view of the fact that he had been separated from his entire family for eight of the twelve months, this was a somewhat surprising assessment of his "private and domestic" life. It gives, perhaps, some substance to Louisa's chagrin at the news that his 1®AA to JA 2 , 10 May 1815, APM, re e l 423. AA to JQA, 20 May 1815, APM, reel 423. Rufus King, while Minister to Great Britain, had his boys tutored during vacations. Ernst, Rufus King, p. 229. 17AA to JQA, 10 March 1815, APM, reel 422. JA feared JQA might, while Minister to Great Britain, lose the popularity he had gained in America by his service in St. Petersburg. JA to JOA, 18, 24 March 1815, APM, reel 422. 1®JQA Diary, 11 July 1815, APM, reel 32. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 551 spirits were so much better in Ghent than they were in St. Petersburg and her worries that he was happier when away from her than with her. Not only was Louisa's family united for the first time in six years, but the distance between the London family and those in Quincy had been almost halved. Now letters could be expected to arrive in a few weeks' time and to arrive unopened and unread. Abigail rejoiced, although she realized that she might die before she saw her son and his family again. She could now at least carry on frequent correspondence,19 Abigail also asked Louisa to send her "a narrative of your Journey from St. Petersburg to Paris." Louisa modestly recounted her experiences. "My Journey from St. Petersburg was performed with as little uneasiness and as few misfortunes as could possibly have been anticipated and I have really acquired the reputation of a heroine at a very cheap rate."20 She then wrote she experienced trouble only between Strasbourg and Pairis because of Napoleon's return and the patriotic fervor accompanying i t . The panic- stricken warnings of the fleeing royalists had intensified her fears, but her American passport protected her everywhere. Abigail may have received few details about Louisa's epic trip, but a new note of respect appeared in her letters to her daughter-in-law. It was not until 1836 that Louisa wrote a narrative of this trip and then not for her mother-in-law, but for herself to assert her existence and to show what women could, under the press of necessity, accomplish. 19a A to LCA, ante 20' May 1815, APM, r e e l 423. 20LCA to AA, 12 June 1815, APM, reel 424. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 552 On 15 July 1815, John Quincy engaged a house called L ittle Boston House at Ealing, seven miles from London.21 Here the family was to settle while he himself conducted diplomatic business from an office in town. The next day Louisa went to visit the house "again," so she must have seen it before and may have helped in choosing it. John Quincy referred to it as "our Country Residence." It may have reminded him of their Russian "Arcadia" on Apothecaries Island where they had spent the summer of 1811 or of the Adamses' country home in Quincy. Louisa loved Little Boston House; she thought the situation "beatiful, the House comfortable."22 London could be easily reached by carriage but far enough away so that Louisa was not deeply involved in the diplom atic round. The d ista n ce between th e ir house and Hyde Park Corner was e x a c tly the same as from the Adamses' in Quincy to th e ir former house on Nassau Street in Boston. Louisa was within "an hour's ride of Kew, Richmond, Twickenham, Harrow and other beautiful places"; what was more, she had a carriage to visit all of these lovely spots. The boys, unhappy in London, were equally delighted with their new house. The house itself was not large, but it had a coach-house and stable, a dairy, and vegetable and fruit gardens. A pew in the local Anglican church went with the house. The possibilities of walks from Little Boston House were endless. Syon House Park, the seat of 21JQA,Diary, 28, 29 July 1815, APM, reel 32; Bemis, Foundations, pp. 239-40; concerning the name of the house, see AA to Thomas B. Johnson, 9 November 1815, APM, r e e l 427. 22lcA to AA, 6 August 1815, APM, reel 426. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 553 the Earl of Northumberland was only a short distance away. Everything about L ittle Boston House seemed to turn out well.23 Piling their belongings ("baggage, furniture and wines") on carts and wagons, the family moved to Ealing on 1 August. By midnight they were unpacked and in residence. John Quincy took the house for five months only, explaining to Alexander Everett, now Secretary of the Legation in Holland; My own residence here w ill very probably be short—Every American who has resided so long as five or six years in Europe, ought to go home to be new-tempered—I recommend this to your future practice, as during my whole life, I have found the benefit, and necessity of i t fo r my own.24 Then, showing that John Quincy had not changed his view of Europe and its dangers since he wrote to Louisa in 1796, he told Everett: "The fascinations of Europe, to Americans . . . present themselves in various and most dissim ilar forms—Sensuality-Dissipation-Indolence- Pride- and last, and most despicable, but not least— Avarice."25 He then explained to Everett that if he went home it would be because he could not afford to stay long in Britain. He must, he wrote, care for his personal concerns, see his aged parents, and educate his sons. 23j q a , Diary, 6 August 1815, 2 January 1817, APM, reel 32 and 33. James Smithson, illegitim ate son of the first Earl of Northumberland, was, in 1829, to leave 109,000 gold sovereigns to the United States for an institution to bear his name for "the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." JQA was the author of the 1846 Act which created the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. 24JQA to Alexander H. Everett, 27 July 1815, Adams Family Collection, Box #1, Manuscript Division, LC. 25 Ib id . Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 554 Noticeably absent was any hint of the fact that by returning to the United States he could position himself for an appointment to be Secretary of State. Louisa quickly made herself at home in L ittle Boston House. Her letters to Abigail, now detailed and lengthy, contained a great deal more political information than ever before. As usual she deprecated her efforts by referring to them as nonsense, but their length shows how completely she had overcome her dislike of writing, and they were not uninteresting. Abigail thought Louisa a very good correspondent and wrote that she could not allow Louisa to "deprecate your own letters. Your stile is much more correct and elegant than mine, and your letters are much approved and admired."26 her turn Louisa appreciated Abigail's gifts as a correspondent. It has often been to me a source of wonder how you can write to so many in one family, and yet never appear at a loss for subjects; but you possess the talent of giving interest even to trifles and the easy course of your thoughts, seems to flow upon the paper like an unruffled stream, clear, and smooth; whereas I can never mould my thoughts to my will and my style is always loose unconnected and irregular and I frequently find it impossible to express a single id e a .27 John Hewlett, the former friend and minister of the Johnsons, advised the Adamses to send the boys to a boarding school only a mile 26lcA to AA, 8 July 1815, 27 March 1816, APM, reel 425 and 430. Besides praising LCA's letters, AA summed up her educational shortcomings: "In the days of my youth. Female Education was very little attended to in this Country beyond reading, and writing, and Arithmetic . . . neither Grammar, orthography, or our Native Language, was considered a part of Female Education, and I have through Life lamented the deficiency in this respect." AA to LCA, 27 March 1816, APM, reel 430. 27lcA to AA, 21 January 1816, APM, reel 429. AA passed on Johnson news to LCA, e.g ., see AA to LCA, 30 September 1815, APM, reel 426. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 555 from Little Boston House. This school was close enough to the house so that the boys, walking with their class, could stop in at home on their free time. Two hundred and fifty boys made up the student body. The Adamses were delighted with the school and immediately placed the two younger boys there. George studied at home with his father, who woke him a t s ix every morning fo r le s s o n s . The Headmaster of the school was a Dr. George Nicholas of Wadham College, Oxford; the satisfaction of the very particular Adamses suggests that Dr. Nicholas ran a very good s c h o o l.28 John adjusted well to the school, but Louisa reported that Charles, having previously led such a solitary life, was finding it hard to live and study with other boys. Abigail had not pressed George's studies, as he was growing so rapidly, and in America he had developed very bad headaches. George had wanted to enter Harvard, but Abigail had feared he was too young and unformed to resist the temptation she saw at college. In September George was so stimulated by a school exhibition that he requested he be allowed to go as a day student. John Quincy allowed this but could not give up being a schoolmaster. George now rose at half-past five to study with his father before he went to school.29 Louisa believed, not without reason, that her husband vras pushing George too hard in h is s tu d ie s . She was e s p e c ia lly concerned 28JQA, Diary, 2, 10 August 1815, 8 September 1815, APM, reel 32 and 33. 29lcA to AA, 2 October 1815, APM, reel 427; AA to LCA, 20 October 1815, APM, reel 427; JQA,Diary, 5, 10 October 1815, APM, reel 32. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 556 because she thought John Ouincy made no allow ance fo r d if f e r in g abilities at various times of life. There were, Louisa thought, "periods of life and ocassions" when it was better to err on the side of permissiveness, but this kind of flexibility was beyond John Quincy. Abigail agreed with Louisa that George was being pushed too hard by his father; and even his grandfather, John Adams, candidly admitted to the boy, "I fear that too many of my hopes are built upon you."30 In the relaxed atmosphere of Ealing, with his sons at a school he respected, John Quincy began to mellow about the boys' education. Unbelievably, in April 1816 the boys, with John Quincy's connivance, played truant from school in order to go to London to visit the captain of the boat that had brought George and John to England and to take in the London sights. Indeed, John Quincy seems finally to have given up personally trying to make scholars of all the boys, admitting that he had too little time to work with them. Accepting their lim itations, he w ro te, I am well aware that no labour will ever turn a pebble into a diamond. If the pursuit of knowledge at or very soon after George's age is not a Passion, which will seek its own gratification, I know how useless it is to impose it upon youth as a ta sk . He even came to the conclusion that his sons were "like other children." In December of 1815 he let the boys come home from school a week early for their vacation on the grounds that little work was 30lCA to AA, 21 January 1816, APM, reel 429; AA to LCA, 24 April 1816, APM, reel 430; JA to GWA, 27 May 1816, APM, reel 431. LCA was puzzled by JA^'s superior ability in mathematics. Both LCA and JQA thought only the humanities were intellectual work. JQA had not yet produced his great scientific work. Report on Weights and Measures. LCA to AA, 21 January 1816, APM, reel 429. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 557 done in the last week before v a c a t i o n . 31 This was an entirely new John Quincy, and the reason may perhaps be found in the happy atmosphere of the Adams household and their fulfilling social life. No sooner were the Adamses set at their Ealing house and the boys at school than another long correspondence between the family in England and the family in Quincy began about the lack of proper financing for United States Ministers. The miserliness of the United States government, Louisa thought, was harmful to the American image abroad, engendering only contempt from the Europeans "who have generosity enough to prize great talents." America's reputation, she insisted, although better since the ending of the war, would never rest on a solid basis until the country was willing to reward its representatives with a decent standard of l i v i n g32 . While Louisa was in England, Johnson news was funnelled through A b ig a il. Thomas was s t i l l in New Q rleans and, in a b ro th e rly way, helping Caroline and others of his family, acts of which Abigail approved. Louisa worried about her brother's health in New Qrleans, yet advised him to stay there because he was earning a good salary. Of all the Johnsons he seems to have been the weakest. Louisa tried, as a protective older sister, to encourage him, perhaps realizing his fragility. Like Louisa, away from his family, he felt like a 31JQA,Diary, 18 April 1816, APM, reel 32; JQA's acceptance of his son's academic limitations is expressed in a remarkable paragraph in JQA to AA, 6 June 1816, APM, reel 432; JQA to CFA and JA 2 , 16 December 1815, APM, reel 428. 32LCA to AA, 8 July 1815, APM, reel 425. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 5 8 a "banished man" and longed for his relatives, but his position (and income) was in New Orleans.33 Even some bad news did not destroy Louisa's new-found well-being. In October 1815 Walter Hellen died. Further, Catherine Smith, Abigail reported, was recovering from the loss of her daughter. The child had been born in the Adams's house in St. Petersburg; the death now reminded Louisa of her own loss. John Quincy wrote home, "Their loss however may be in some sort repaired - Ours is only to be endured with resignation." His statement is puzzling. Did he mean that the Adamses would have no more children? Louisa, in reply, wrote of the "painful recollection" and the "fortitude" necessary for her to "calm the vain and ungrateful regrets" from which she still suffered.34 Although Louisa still occasionally mourned the death of Louisa Catherine, she was unexpectedly happy in England. The family now had not one carriage, but two: a curricle and a landau. Qne carriage took John Quincy in and out of town for his errands and visits; the other was used in Ealing. Louisa went into London either alone or with John Quincy. Louisa loved visiting and being visited; but her husband still considered visitors a trouble as it took him away from work, which to him meant writing. He could never feel that seeing people, even Americans, was part of his work. Louisa's first party in August was admittedly a disappointment, as some of those who had accepted did not come at the last moment and others sent their regrets. Other parties 33aa to LCA, 2 September 1815, APM, reel 426; AA to Thomas B. Johnson, 9 November 1815, APM, re e l 427. 34aa to LCA, 20 October 1815, APM, reel 427; JOA to AA, 1 October 1815, APM, reel 427; LCA to AA, 2 October 1815, APM, reel 427. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 559 were held more successfully. Dinners and evening parties implied music, and in October Louisa received a piano from John Ouincy. Since playing was one of her greatest pleasures, this expenditure, along with the carriages, shows generosity on his part.35 The household did not always run smoothly. The staff—butler, personal maid, housemaid, laundry maid—did not always work in harmony, and in late November Louisa dismissed three of the servants on what John Quincy considered "well founded complaints." Since the Adamses were living in England, not New England, they were able to find new servants at once. Louisa herself went to London to do the h i r i n g .36 Life at the Ealing house began to take on a happy quality very different from their previous residences in New England or in Russia. The Adamses were content and so were the boys. They invited their friends home from school. Historians have emphasized the quip John made when asked at school if he had been "in Washington." He answered, "No . . . but I have been in New Orleans." Yet on the whole, relations between the Adams boys and their English friends seem to have been particularly close. In December the Captain of the School dined with them, and by the next summer George and John were exchanging long visits with their classmates.37 35JQA, D iary, 13, 19 August 1815, APM, re e l 32. The piano was "purchased for my wife." JQA Diary, 16 October 1815, APM, reel 32. 36JQA,Diary, 23 November 1815, APM, r e e l 32. 37JQA to AA, 25 March 1816, APM, reel 430. Adams, Adams Family, p. 164; JQA,Diary, 10 July, 17 December 1815, APM, reel 32 and 33. Rufus King had sent his boys to Harrow at ages 10 and 11. Ernst, Rufus King, pp. 228-29. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 560 Louisa and John Quincy visited the boys' school often, and the school became a cultural center for the Adamses. Even a performance of sleight-of-hand by one of the masters was worth an evening. A performance of Terence's Andria, in which George played the part of Crito, was attended not once, but three times on successive e v e n i n g s38 . Louisa's health the first winter in England was uncertain. She had once more an attack of erysipelas in her ears and head and stayed at home for five weeks. George had a rheumatic fever, and John Quincy was never entirely well. But compared to Russia, both Louisa's and John Quincy's health was greatly i m p r o v e d39 . In Qctober 1816 Louisa for the second time in her life became her husband's amanuensis. In firing a target pistol, John Quincy injured his right hand. Then his eyes became inflamed and an abscess developed under one eyelid. Louisa kept up both his correspondence and notes for his Diary, which he later copied in the Diary itself. Writing for John Quincy had an effect on both her handwriting and the content of her letters. Her handwriting when writing for him was smaller and neater, probably because she made a fair copy. In her own letters the omission of words strongly suggests she did not even read them over, but after helping her husband fewer words are missing from her letters. Further, Louisa's letters became more structured and less hasty while she was acting as John Quincy's secretary. Thoughts are worked out, not just touched upon and dropped with a second idea 3 8 j q a , Diary, 11 December 1815, 12, 13, 14 June 1816, ARM, reel 32 and 33. 39lcA to AA, 21 January 1816, APM, reel 429. JOA to AA, 25 March 1816, APM, reel 430. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 561 crowding out the first prohibiting any logical development.40 Louisa realized full well the unconnectedness of her thoughts, blaming it on the inferior education women received.41 Significantly, it was during this time that John Quincy often referred to Louisa in his Diary as "my wife," not as the usual "Mrs. Adams” or "Mrs. A." Working as John Quincy's secretary, Louisa drew closer to her husband. She also read aloud to her husband. It was November before John Quincy could walk out ag ain ; some of th is time Louisa was also i l l , but when she was w ell she read in the evening. Walter Scott's novels became favorites. Louisa read aloud the romances of Guy Mannering and Waverly. Maria Edgeworth's Tales of a Fashionable Life (as could have been predicted) John Quincy did not like; other books of Edgeworth's, which Louis read aloud, were better received. John Quincy referred to these books as "books of amusement." Much of what Louisa did, not only the books she read but her gardening as well, seems to have been considered by her husband as "amusement."42 40JQA, Diary, 13 October 1815, APM, reel 32. LCA to AA, 23 December 1815, APM, reel 428. In 1832 LCA wrote, "Accustomed from the age of 22 to copy the writings of a man of such vast and comprehensive requirements as my husband, even the mind of woman, flighty, and imaginative as she may be, must acquire a tendency to reflections of a calm and serio u s c h a ra c te r." LCA, Commonplace Book, 25 August 1832, APM, reel 271. 41"That want of methodical arrangement that regularity of connected thought which men obtain by the system of education which they receive their deductions are correct while those of females are often erroneous and unsatisfactory." LCA, Miscellany, 25 August 1832, APM, reel 271. 42por example, see JQA,Diary, 27 Qctober, 3, 16, 19, 26 November 1815, APM, r e e l 32.; JQA,Diary, Day December 1815, APM, re e l 32. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 562 In September the Adamses went for dinner at the Nicholases and were charmed by the dinner, which John Quincy characterized as "elegant and sumptuous" beyond anything they had experienced in England. Two la d ie s e n te rta in e d on the harp and p ian o . In December, when John Quincy's eyes were better, Louisa paid a visit to the Nicholas's daughters, who almost immediately returned the. call. A few days later the four Nicholas daughters came to spend the evening, and by January they were constant visitors. Louisa had been brought up in England, and John Quincy had always been drawn to English women. The friendship which grew between the two families was one of the pleasantest episodes in a very happy interlude.43 Although they lived in Ealing away from the Court and its intense social activities, the Adamses were very much a part of the diplomatic corps. In March 1816 Louisa was finally presented to Queen Charlotte. She dressed at the house of Gracie King, whose husband Charles was the son of the previous Minister to Great B ritain, Rufus King. After three good friends of Louisa's watched her dress, Louisa and John Quincy went together to Buckingham House. Lady Castlereagh was to have presented Louisa but arrived late, so Lady Bathurst did the honors. John Quincy wrote in his Diary "Lady Castlereagh . . . [is] noted for always coming too late, perhaps to minimize the slight to the United States and to L o u i s a.44 important or not, Louisa's presentation went w e ll. 43JQA,Diary, 1 September, 3, 8, 9, 15, 19 December, 1815; 1 January 1816, APM, reel 32. 44JQA, Memoirs, 3:316-17. AA wrote that the American newspapers reported LCA's presentation and mentioned "the distinguished elegance and taste" of her dress. AA to JCA, 28 June 1816, APM, reel 432. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 56 3 Louisa wrote Abigail (both women now had been presented at Great Britain's Court) that the Queen had grown fat and stood for the presentation. In Abigail's time she had gone around the circle. Louisa reported she had been graciously received and was at Court not more than o n e -h a lf h o u r.45 A week later Louisa went again to Court hoping to see the Princess Charlotte and Leopold, Prince of Saxe-Coburg; but they were not there. Louisa had heard the Queen was particularly cold to American ladies, so she took special notice of how she was received and reported the Queen was gracious to her. At this time in her life, it seems as though Louisa thought of herself as fully A m e r i c a n . 46 Now that they had been presented at Court, Louisa and John Quincy began to attend Court functions four or five times a week. It was difficult to live so far from London. "Yet it was spring and the summer months were the most pleasant in the country," John Quincy wrote, so they stayed in Ealing. They often came home by early morning l i g h t . 47 On the second of May, Louisa attended the royal wedding of Princess Charlotte (daughter of the Prince Regent) to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. The "great officers of the Crown and Ladies, the Queen's Household Princess and the Foreign Ambassadors and Ladies" were there, she wrote home. The next royal drawing room was the most "crowded and splendid ever seen in this Country." Everyone stood for four hours and 45lCA to AA, 8 April 1816, APM, reel 430. 46 Ib id . 47JOA to AA, 13 May 1816, APM, re e l 431. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 6 4 was exhausted by the end. Louisa described her dresses and John Q uincy's o u tf i t in g re a t d e t a il. She wore a t the drawing room a "white net petticoat embroidered in Silver with draperies of spotted silver net looped with Silver lapels, the train rose colour trinmed with silver to correspond." Louisa added (in a seeming contradiction) that the dress was "generally admired for its richness and simplicity." Then, perhaps with some guilt, she wrote that she had given so detailed a description because she knew it would please A b i g a i l .48 she need not have explained. Abigail was interested to leam whether hoops were still worn and what kind of hats were fashionable.49 fjo m atter how old (Abigail was now seventy-one), she was still curious about everything that touched the lives of her family. Her vitality and emotional involvement with other people in her old age was truly remarkable. Louisa and John Quincy spent much time in London at the theatre and visiting. Louisa wrote Abigail that they kept away from the gay pleasures of London, as they could ill afford them and their residence in the country allowed them to avoid many parties without seeming rude. Yet a later letter describes the many diplomatic functions they attended.50 Ealing, it seems, gave them the excuse to choose just which functions they would and would not attend. 48lcA to AA, 17 May 1816, APM, r e e l 431. 49AA to LCA, 28 May 1816, APM, r e e l 431. 50lCA to AA, 2 Qctober 1815, APM, reel 427; LCA to AA, 4 July 1816, APM, reel 432. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 565 Fashionable parties began at eleven or twelve at night and lasted until three or four in the morning. In a most revealing passage, Louisa wrote about her husband and their life together; "I cannot conceive how it happens but this mode of life seems to agree perfectly well with me; for I never enjoyed such health, particularly since my marriage, and I am only afraid of growing too fat."51 Louisa, closer to her husband than ever before and thoroughly enjoying their social life, was as happy as she had ever been. She might have added that she had not since her marriage, lived in England. Even her letters convey a new-found pleasure in life. Louisa was impressed with the great beauty of English women but felt the taste of English fetes could not live up to those she had witnessed in Russia. A new dance, "vaulting," was introduced, and at one party a v erb al play on the name of the Duke of W ellington amused Louisa—he was called by a French lady "Vilain Tom." At another party, at the Duchess of Cumberland's, two members of the Royal Family were present, and Louisa recorded a concert and some good singing. The ladies, Louisa wrote, "were superbly dressed in the height of French fashion." Because hoops were, by the latest fashion decree, omitted, Louisa now needed new dresses, an expense not even contemplated by the A d a m s e s . 52 With the boys happy at school and Louisa deriving great satisfaction from an active social life balanced by a quiet residence in the country, her letters became even more lengthly and thoughtful. Although later asserting a woman's right to be herself, Louisa was at 51Ib id . 52LCA to AA, 4 July 1816, APM, reel 432. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 566 this time fully in tune with the culture's depiction of women. Princess Mary seemed to her the ultimate in modesty and delicacy; but the bold and forward style of another princess, Louisa wrote, caused men to assume cold and insolent manners to keep these untoward females at a proper distance.53 Louisa agreed with those who were repelled by assertive females. A contretemps arose in the British newspapers concerning the legal position of Napoleon after Waterloo. A woman, Mary Ann Bulmer, wrote forcefully to the Morning Chronicle on the subj ect, quoting Epictetus and Grotius and taking the position that Napoleon, as a bona fide prisoner of war, had no right to sue for habeus corpus. Furthermore, she referred to the Emperor as an "assasin" and an "apostate from his God." Louisa realized that Mary Bulmer was unusually erudite, agreed with her claim that Napoleon was a prisoner of war, but criticized her lack of com passion.54 In 1840 Louisa wrote that women were bold and intellectual before "they were cowed by her M aster m a n . "55 Yet during th is tim e in England, Louisa still identified with men's aversion to forward women and took as her model the submissive, delicate women the culture rewarded. Thus did women cooperate in the mores of the culture and 53lcA to AA, 4 July 1816, APM, reel 432. 54j^ary Ann Bulmer's letter was in reply to an earlier letter to the Morning C hronicle of 1 August 1815 by Capel L o ft. L e tte r of Mary Ann Bulmer to the Morning Chronicle, 3 August 1815, The Collingdale Newspaper Library, a division of the Guildhall Library, London, England. AA read Capel Loft's argument in an American newspaper. AA to LCA, 20 October 1815, APM, reel 427. 55lcA, "Adventures," August 1802, APM, reel 269. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 567 take on opinions contrary to their own best interests. Louisa herself worried that her aggressive emotional demands on John Quincy caused him to liv e more h ap p ily when away from h e r. Yet when she saw p o s itiv e , confident women she was repelled; and in adopting the dictates of the c u ltu re , she was doomed to d is lik in g h e r s e lf . Louisa's self-confidence could not have been bolstered by John Quincy's opinion of her diplomatic position. Referring to a party at Buckingham House, John Quincy wrote to his mother with gentle sarcasm: "I hope you will have an account of it from your usual Chronicler, to whom all the Reports upon the National Affairs of this importance are given in c h a r g e"56 . Yet Abigail wrote to Louisa that royal marriages had important consequences for Great Britain and that her attendance at these celebrations "in your diplomatic Character . . . will make an Epocha in the History of our Family, if i t should ever be w r i t t e n . "57 Abigail, unlike her unperceptive son, realized the diplomatic uses to which these marriages were being put; further, Abigail appreciated that Louisa, woman though she was, had "a diplomatic Character." Abigail did not consider women's work "amusements" nor the wife of an American Minister wholly tangential to diplomatic life. Although most diplomatic friendships ended once the Minister moved to a different post, quite unexpectedly Louisa received a long letter from her friend in St, Petersburg, Madame Bezerra, whose husband was now stationed in Rio de Janeiro. She had heard that Louisa was 56j q a to AA, 12 August 1816, APM, reel 433. 57aA to LCA, 30 September 1816, APM, reel 434. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 568 much liked in England and observed that in England, they knew well how to appreciate Louisa’s "merits."58 Louisa and her husband also revived an old friendship with John Singleton Copley, the painter. Sadly, a few months after they arrived, he died. In January 1816 th e Adamses paid a v i s i t to Mrs. Copley and her daughter, still unmarried after all these years. Mrs. Copley had in her possession a portrait of John Quincy's sister, which Copley had painted for his wife. The picture was still unfinished after almost thirty years. Abigail asked that the partially painted background now be completed. "I should prefer an American [painter]," she wrote, "and Mrs. Adams's direction, I have great confidence in her taste."59 Abigail admired not only Louisa's taste but also the letter which accompanied the boys' watches that Louisa had purchased in St. Petersburg and sent to Quincy. The gifts arrived after George and John had sailed for England. Abigail kept not only the watches but the letter from Louisa "too excellent, to be seperated from them, and I hope they will esteem it, of more intrinsic value than the watches." Louisa might not have agreed with her mother-in-law's assessment of the small worth of the watches, since they represented to Louisa tangible proofs of her affection which she did not ordinarily feel able to give her c h ild re n .80 58Madame B. B ezerra to LCA, 2 Ju ly 1816, APM, r e e l 432. 59JQA, Diary, 31 January 1816, APM, reel 32; AA to JQA, 2 May 1816, APM, reel 431. 80aa to LCA, 2 May 1816, APM, reel 431. LCA's letter urged John to curb the "natural warmth of your disposition." LCA to JA 2 , 14 July 1814, APM, reel 418. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 569 The summer of 1816 was in both Europe and America cold and rainy. New England experienced frost in every month, and the rain in England was unceasing. None of the Adamses, either in Europe or America, could know that they were experiencing a worldwide disorder, perhaps caused by the explosion of a volcano in the far-off Pacific. Ashes may have blocked the rays of the sun causing the summer frosts in New England and the incessant rainfall and cold weather in England. By August England was so cold that Louisa could neither open the windows during the day nor sleep without two blankets at night.81 No matter how well settled the family was in England, John and Abigail continued to exhort John Quincy to return home. Their advancing age and the need to educate American boys in America were the reasons given. John urged that the boys come home. It must have been extremely upsetting to John and Abigail to learn from Louisa that Vienna was being suggested as a new post fo r John Quincy and th a t Louisa had been told before she left Russia that the Czar would be glad if John Quincy would return and make a new treaty.82 Most of the parties the Adamses attended in London were diplomatic in character, but some were purely social. Louisa sent home to Quincy a long description of a party given by Mr. Sanders, the black school teacher who had come to England with the Adams boys. The guest list included the Countess of Cork, who had "taken up" Mr. Sanders, and 81a A to JQA, 18 July 1816, APM, reel 432; JQA to AA, 23 July, 12 August 1816, APM, reel 432. Henry Stommel and Elizabeth Stomnel, "The Year Without a Summer," Scientific American 240 (June 1979): 176-85. 82JA to JQA, 18, 26 July 1816, APM, reel 432; LCA to AA, 4 July 1816, APM, reel 432. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 57 0 the Countess of Mexborough. Louisa found the presence of the black man at a formal party attended by distinguished guests of high rank close to ludicrous. Sanders had become an object of "fashionable curiosity"; and his portrait, in which he was dressed in "Spanish dress with a scarlet Cloak with a point lace ruff," hung in his drawing room. Louisa's surprise, amusement, and discomfort at this dinner was in keeping with the attitude about blacks in America, especially for one who had lived several winters in Washington, a Southern city with a considerable slave population. Louisa thought of blacks as servants, not as hosts, at a fashionable d i n n e r .83 Life in Ealing seems to have been almost completely free of the tensions Louisa had suffered from elsewhere. As she once had in St. Petersburg with Charles, Louisa now began to go fishing with the three boys. In Russia she had done it for the sake of her nerves, so that she did not have to "think." Here in Ealing she did it for pleasure. She fished often. John Quincy, too, as he had in St. Petersburg, found country living delightful. With the fruit trees, herbs, vegetables, and flowers all in bloom in spite of the unending r a in , the house fo r him was a " l i t t l e P a r a d i s e . "84 Life at the Adams's house now began to resemble that of the Johnsons at Tower H ill. As the friendship between Louisa and Ellen Nicholas progressed, Louisa was almost never alone either in Ealing or London. Musical evenings became a common occurrence either at the 83lcA to Ann Harrod, 31 July 1816, APM, reel 432. 84JQA, Diary, Day June 3, 6, 16, 19 August, 11 September 1816, APM, r e e l 33. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 571 Nicholases or at the Adamses. Ellen joined Louisa on fishing expeditions. Soon Ellen began staying overnight. In September 1816 E llen made a long v i s i t of th ree months to the Adamses.85 The I ta l ia n singing m aster from the school came to the Adamses to g iv e E llen her singing lessons. One evening both women put on an entire program of music by Handel, and John Quincy was full of admiration. Louisa sang while Ellen played the piano. He was charmed and delighted by the women's music, as he had been so long ago at Tower H ill. Ellen's affection for Louisa was deep. Upon seeing Louisa faint one night, Ellen was distressed until "relieved by a shower of tears,"88 John Quincy wrote. Early in September Louisa and her husband had their portraits p a in te d . We are both at this time setting for our pictures, (half lengths) for my brother Thomas[.] the Painter is a young American by the Name of Leslie who bids fair to become a very great A rtist and whom Mr. West is very proud of[.] Mr. A. tells me his picture is likely to prove an excellent likeness at which I am much delighted as I think he never looked so well or so handsome as he does n o w .87 The "fashionable season" over, Louisa had time to sit for her portrait, and she was usually accompanied to London by Ellen Nicholas. John Quincy did not think Louisa's portrait as good a likeness as his own, but Louisa considered hers a striking resemblance. Louisa and her husband sat fourteen times for the two portraits; and when they were 85jqa , Diary, 16, 18, 20, 29 August 1816, APM, reel 33. JQA Diary, 1 September-2December 1816, APM, reel 33. 88JQA, Diary, 14 October 1816, APM, reel 33. 87lcA to AA, 11 September 1816, APM, reel 434. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 7 2 finished, Robert Leslie asked permission, which they readily gave, to exhibit them in Philadelphia before they were sent to New O r l e a n s . 88 The portrait shows Louisa in a velvet dress, her eyes turned upwards. One hand is encased in a glove; the other holds its mate. The high-waisted dress is scalloped along the edge. A net cloak is throvm over one shoulder, and the other end covers the chair on which Louisa sits. Louisa's hair is short and curled; a velvet tiara with a pointed crown on top sits on her head. In this handsome likeness, Louisa looks secure, mature, and composed. She had put on weight, but she looks younger than her forty-one years. Her upturned nose, bowed mouth, and eyes looking upwards draw the viewer to Louisa's face. The trials of her life may have been many, but they do not show in this portrait. She might have been a woman who had been much at home, cared for her children, and enjoyed herself at parties. The depth of Louisa's experience is not apparent, but her new maturity and confidence show c l e a r l y .89 As Louisa sat for her portrait, Ellen Nicholas composed a poem to her o ld e r frie n d . The poem has much charm and c le a rly shows the author's great affection for Louisa. Impressions, time w ill melt away. And fond affections must decay; Oh! let the painter then combine 88JQA's opinion of LCA's portrait is recorded in LCA to AA, 11 November 1816, APM, reel 434, and JQA Diary, 14 September 1816, APM, reel 33. See also Oliver, Portraits, pp. 57-64. 89A copy of this portrait by Gregory Stapko, painted in 1962, hangs in the John Quincy Adams State Drawing Room in the State Department Building, Washington, D.C. Oliver, Portraits, p. 64. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 573 His magic sk ill, his art devine To paint each virtue on thy face Now beaming with celestial grace Which gives such lustre to thine eye As smiles the sun this summer's sky; Nor shall the clouds of age destroy That Heav'nly smile suffusing joy. For virtue holds dominion there And strives to banish ev'ry care — Oh! may thy Children make thee blest! And grief be sunk in endless-rest.70 Louisa also wrote some verses to Ellen Nicholas. Not since the years in Berlin, when she had lived closely with the Browns, had Louisa enjoyed such a close and fulfilling relationship with a woman. It was a moment to be cherished, and it was recorded in Louisa's verses to her friend. In a lighthearted way Louisa suggested that so lovely was the young Ellen that Cupid himself was smitten and the arrow meant for her returned to his own breast. To Miss Ellen Nicholas Cupid a dart had just prepar'd To aim at Ellen's rest. The d a rt r e c o il'd and cupid s e a r 'd . Received it in his breast. Amaz'd the angry urchin frown'd. Nor cou'd conceive the reason. Why his own arrow thus shou'd wound. Against himself rank treason. His heart with heaving sighs opprest, Around he roll'd his eyes; The bea[u]teous Ellen stood confest And smil'd at his surprize. 70Ellen Nicholas, "Lines Addressed to Mrs. Adams while sitting for her Portrait," p. 2, APM, reel 271. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 574 4 Tis true the little Urchin cries, My shaft sped not in vain; Even a God for such a prize. May find delight in pain.71 Learning that Ellen Nicholas had written a poem for Louisa while she was sitting, John Quincy immediately began a poem for Ellen N ich o las. The mood of these stanzas took on a l i f e of th e ir own, and several turned out to have a "serious and even solemn" tone, "as if from a youthful and ardent lover, and expressing sentiments which I neither do nor ought to feel for her." He scruppled to show the lines as they "are now w r i t t e n . "72 During these tedious sittings for Leslie, John Quincy composed an ode which he t i t l e d "To F o rtitu d e ." The ode became longer and more unwieldly every day. In the end he thought it worthwhile only for its energy.73 Inspired by John Quincy's effort, Louisa in her turn produced quite another kind of poem: her "first attempt," as she wrote A b ig a il. Qn the Portrait of My Husband The Painter's art would vainly seize That harmony of nature. Where Sense and sw eetness joined w ith ease Shine forth in ev'ry feature. That open front where wisdom sits That Eye which speaks the soul That brow which study gently knits That soft attemper'd whole — That v ast v a rie ty of Mind 71l CA, "T o Miss Ellen Nicholas," p. 1, 14 October 1816, APM, r e e l 271. 72JQA,Diary, 12 October 1816, APM, reel 33. 73oiiver, Portraits, p. 59, n. 7. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 575 Capacious, clear, and strong Where b r illia n c y of w it r e f in 'd Enchants the list'ning throng That sense of right by God impres't That virtuous holy love Of excellence whats'ere is best Imparted from above These Painter if thou canst impart Shall fame immortal raise And e'en the greatest in thy Art Shall carol forth thy p r a i s e , 74 This poem is a tribute not only to John Quincy, but to Louisa for her appreciation of what was best in her husband. No matter that his qualities were of an abstract kind, unavailable to his family for their daily lives; no matter that he found it difficult to relate to those whose talents were less than his; no matter even that he seemed happier and healthier when alone than with his family. This poem shows how deeply Louisa valued John Quincy's best qualities and how sad, at times, she must have been at their inability to live harmoniously together. John Quincy wrote in his Diary that Louisa had written stanzas "to the Painter about my Portrait" completely missing the point of the poem and deflecting the admiration she expressed from himself to L e s l i e . 75 Hopefully he did not express this thought to Louisa, who had poured out her love and affection to her husband, not to the painter. Giving her due credit for the poem's high literary quality, John Quincy thought that with a little practice she would write beautiful verses. Louisa sent both sets of verses to Abigail (hers and John Quincy's) 74LCA to AA, 11 November 1816, APM, re e l 434. 75JQA, Diary, 19 October 1816, APM, reel 33. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 576 denigrating hers and claiming merit only because her love and admiration of her husband's good qualities called them forth.76 In reply to her poem, Louisa received one from John Quincy. Warm, lo v in g , in tim a te , and generous, in th is poem he was f u lly aware that he, not "the Painter," was the subject of the poem. F riend of my bosom! d e a re st Wife ! With rapture I receive thy lays. From thee, best solace of my life How charming is the voice of praise! What tho' the Conscience in my breast Thy bright but partial tints disclaim. I t knows thy Bosom was the te s t Whence i t s too v iv id co lo rs come. Eight more verses complete the poem and all are in the same vein. In the most tender quatrain, he wrote, Louisa ! could a Mortal hand, Break for a moment. Hymen's chain Before the altar, I wou'd stand And thou shoulds't be my Bride a g a i n .77 For some reason John Quincy could express in writing what he seems to have been too austere and distant to express in everyday life. Perhaps the formality and discipline of the poetic form may have been helpful to him. For whatever reason, his poem is a lovely tribute to Louisa. It is not difficult to know what produced the burst of appreciation of John Ouincy in Louisa. She had found a measure of confidence from having managed alone in St. Petersburg and having made the trip to Paris successfully. The peace of the house in Ealing and John Quincy's generosity in buying her a piano and allowing her a 76lcA to AA, 11 November 1816, APM, re e l 434. 77JQA, "To My Wife," pp. 8-12, APM, reel 271. Ellen Nicholas wrote s till another poem to LCA entitled "To L. C. Adams," p. 3, APM, re e l 271. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 7 7 carriage may have helped. Ellen Nicholas, and in a lesser degree her two sisters, may have been supplying the emotional warmth which John Quincy could not give; therefore, with those needs fulfilled by others, Louisa could appreciate those other qualities which John Quincy did p o sse ss. Poetry was not the only bond between Ellen and the Adamses; she also star-gazed with John Quincy. After the Adamses sailed to America in 1817, Ellen wrote a most affectionate letter to John Quincy reminding him of the "delight" she had derived from his lessons in astronomy.78 jn the evenings there was almost always music provided by Louisa and Ellen. It seems that the attraction John Quincy felt for English women had never subsided. So relaxed was John Quincy that he even wrote a poem to mark an occasion when Louisa and Ellen could not restrain their laughter at Sunday church service. Qne evening he recorded that he "Spent the Evening at sport with the children."79 Poetry continued to engage the Adamses and Ellen Nicholas. Hearing of the ode John Quincy was writing, Louisa and Ellen urged him to write something they could set to music, but the muse deserted him. Later he wrote a moving poem in honor of Ellen's birthday and a set of stanzas in thanks to Charlotte Nicholas for a present she gave him. The next evening, while Louisa and Ellen played and sang Handel and Italian music, John Quincy again wrote poetry. Several days later he 78JOA, Diary, 17, 20, 22 September 1816, APM, reel 33; Ellen Nicholas to JQA, 4 August 1817, APM, reel 438. 79j q a , "A Sunday Hymn Addressed to L.C.A. and EFN. on their laughing during Divine Service," pp. 4-5, APM, reel 271. Ellen N icholas answered h is poem w ith one of her own. E llen N ich o las, "To J. Q. Adams," p. 6, APM, reel 271. JQA, Diary, 3 Qctober 1816, APM, r e e l 33. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 578 wrote more verses to Louisa and began an epistle destined for his m other.80 Ellen and Louisa may have tapped, in the same way as had the Johnson women in Tower H ill, a side of John Quincy that was usually crowded out by work: a softer, more feminine side, usually hidden under the scholar or the diplomat. When Ellen returned home after three months, John Quincy wrote, "Since Ellen Nicholas left us, there has been no Evening M usic."81 In spite of the very happy time in Ealing, Louisa decided to move back into London for the winter. Diplomatic parties ended early in the morning, and Louisa explained to Abigail "The Americans find it troublesome and expensive to come so far to see us. . . . I have thought it would be both prudent and advantageous to Mr. Adams to move into London he laughs at me and says I do not understand his interest." Actually, he, not she, may have been correct in a personal sense; but she may have been hurt at the way in which he deflected her concern for his diplomatic career, and she may have been more right politically. Perhaps her experiences had taught her that a career in the ascendancy must keep in dost touch with its constituency. At this point John Quincy seems to have been willing to wait, but Louisa's wish to move to 80JQA, "To Miss Ellen Nicholas in Her Birth-Day 14 Dec^r 1816,' pp. 72-75, APM, r e e l 271. JQA, D iary, 30 Q ctober, 13, 14 November 1816, APM, reel 33. 81 JQA, Diary, Day December 1816, APM, reel 33. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 579 London may have been a way of acting on the ambition she felt for him .82 In spite of all of Louisa's later disclaimers, even her serene family life could not quiet her ambition for John Quincy. In order to forward his career, she now wanted to leave the house in Ealing, move away from the Nicholases, and face a more harried life in London. She had thrived on the combination of country living and diplomatic functions in London, yet her ambition seemingly drove her on and would not let her rest. Louisa was, in fall 1816, in the grip of an ambition which overrode all other considerations. Now it was Louisa who went house-hunting. Just before John Quincy signed the lease for a house in Portman Square, it turned out to be already rented. John Quincy despaired of finding a house in London at the same price or as convenient and comfortable as Little Boston House. In January another house was found, but John Ouincy (not Louisa) decided not to take it and the family stayed in E a l i n g .83 In November 1816 George Boyd, L o u isa's b ro th e r-in -la w , arriv e d in England on h is way to F rance. John Quincy heard from Boyd fo r the first time a rumor abroad in Washington that would bring the English idyll to an end: he was to be appointed Secretary of State under James Monroe, who (since he was running unopposed), it was assumed, would be e le c te d in 1816, when Madison would have served two t e r m s . 84 xwo weeks 82lcA to AA, 11 November 1816, APM, re e l 434. 83JQA, Diary, 12, 16 November, 21 January 1817, APM, reel 33. 84JQA, D iary, 16 November 1816, APM, re e l 33. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 580 later he heard the rumor again but described it in his Diary as "mere gossiping, speculative distribution of public offices, which is always going on in the United S t a t e s ,"85 More rumors reached England through American newspapers. The usual disclaimers appear in John Quincy's Diary; his feelings of incompetency ought perhaps to be "decisive." Of one thing he was sure: he would not raise a finger to secure the post. He would w ait fo r Monroe to make the o f f e r . By January 1817, by which time Monroe had been elected, John Ouincy began receiving letters of congratulation from America on his supposed appointment, and he must have begun to take the rumors more s e r i o u s l y86 . How Louisa felt is nowhere recorded, but in view of her efforts to live in London, she must have been delighted. John Adams had also heard of the rumored appointment from the newspapers. He was, of course, extremely happy at the prospect but hoped his son would come home even if the new post did not m aterialize. Better, he thought, for John Quincy to "Lay your Bones here with your Ancestors, than remain where you are, annihilating yourself and ruining your C h i l d r e n . "87 This from a father who had in every possible way prepared John Quincy for the diplomatic life! Although John Quincy had 85JQA, Diary, 5 December 1816, APM, reel 33. 86JQA, Diary, 24 December 1816, 9 January 1817, APM, reel 33. Bemis writes two other men were considered for the post of Secretary of State: "Gallatin . . . undoubtedly the ablest," and Henry Clay with the "greatest natural talents of the trio." Bemis, Foundations, pp. 244-45. JQA proved to be, by general agreement, a great Secretary of S ta te . 87JA to JQA, 26 November 1816, APM, re e l 434. AA a lso heard the news. AA to JQA, 26 November 1816, APM, r e e l 434. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 581 formerly set spring 1817 as the date by which he and the family would leave England, he now, because three years was a reasonable time in a diplomatic post, suggested the spring of 1818 as the new date by which he would r e t u r n . 88 This new date would tell the world (and possibly himself) that he did not seek the not-yet-offered post. On 16 April 1817 John Quincy received a letter from President Monroe informing him that the Senate had confirmed his appointment as Secretary of State. Monroe suggested he return home immediately, a summons which, John Quincy recorded, placed him under a "pressure of business." He did not mention another matter connected with his return to America—Louisa's pregnancy. During winter 1817 Louisa's health had not been good. In January she had suffered a fainting spell. At the end of the month she was bled. From a Diary entry on 5 February, in which John Quincy recorded, "The crisis of her complaints lingers," Louisa's ill health was almost surely another pregnancy.89 The next day she was in such pain that leeches were applied to her side. Yet she did not miscarry. The pregnancy progressed, and the family made plans to return to America. In 1810 John Quincy had refused the post of Supreme Court Justice because Louisa had been pregnant. Now he was faced with the same dilemma. This time he decided to accept the post of Secretary of State and travel to America. His letters to Monroe and the Department of State show no hesitation. He assured the Department he would sail 88JQA to AA, 28 December 1816, APM, reel 435. 89JQA, Diary, 23 December 1816, 5 February 1817, APM, reel 33. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 8 2 as soon as possible, but could not expect to reach America before early August. In no extant letter did John Quincy mention Louisa's pregnancy, not even when he w rote Thomas in Ju n e , when Louisa was seven months pregnant. Nor was Louisa specific about her condition when she wrote Abigail in May that her health was very bad.90 Louisa recorded later that she was told by her doctor that she would die if she went on the ocean voyage.91 Louisa seems to have written to her sister Caroline in the spring that neither she nor John Quincy would come home until after the birth of the baby she was carrying, which would probably have been in September.92 jf this was true, no hint of John Quincy's arrival in autumn 1817 ever appeared in his letters to his family or to the State Department. He always wrote he would be home in mid-summer. Between the time Louisa wrote her letter and June, the decision for them all to go to America was made. By John Quincy? By Louisa? We simply do not know. Abigail joined John in exhorting John Ouincy to come home. Even before he received official notification, Abigail, hearing of the appointment, had written in her usual high-toned language: "The voice of the Nation calls you home. The government calls you home—and your 90JQA to TBA, 23 May 1817, APM, re e l 143; LCA to AA, 18 May 1817, APM, reel 437. 91"Mrs. J. Q. Adams," in The Saturday Evening Post, 24 February 1827, p. 1. 92"You w ill see by C a ro lin e 's [ l e t t e r ] th a t Mr. Adams may not be able to come home so soon as he would wish to, I never had an intimation that such a manufacture had taken place—I hope it will be of the feminine gender." AA to Harriet Welch, 20 May 1817, APM, reel 437; JQA to AA, 16 May 1817, APM, re e l 143. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 8 3 parents unite in the general call to this summons, you must not, you cannot refuse your assent."93 Stil living at L ittle Boston House, Louisa knew that she was experiencing the end of her stay in Europe. She attended a concert, ball, and supper at the Nicholases, went to the theatre in London, and stayed at the rooms in the city which had been taken for the remaining time in England. She went looking for fine English furniture to take home to Quincy and, of course, went visiting. Although her husband worried about the expense of buying English furniture, Louisa thought the prices low and that the savings of putting it on "public ship" would make the transaction worthwhile. John Quincy acquiesced. 94 Shortly before their departure for America, the Adamses moved to London to make final preparations for their return to America. When the Adamses left Ealing at the end of April, John Quincy had taken two last walks—one around the Ealing Green and one around their own garden. Summing up his feelings he wrote, "I have seldom perhaps never in the course of my life resided more comfortably than at the house which we now quit, and which I shall probably never see again."95 jn every way the Adams's stay at Little Boston House had been a success. As usual when leaving somewhere, he was occupied with his books. Benjamin West, the American painter living in England, visited the Adamses and gave them medals. In May Louisa was ill again, but 93aa to JQA, 12 March 1817, APM, reel 436. 94JQA, Diary, 19, 21, 29 April 1817, APM, reel 33; LCA to AA, 18 May 1817, APM, re e l 437. 95JQA, Diary, 28 April 1817, APM, reel 33. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 584 recovered. For reasons of haste, Louisa copied out State Papers, as did John and C harles (George was tra v e llin g in F r a n c e ) . 96 Louisa went on 10 May 1817 to look over the accommodation on the boat on which they had booked passage for a June sailing—the W ashington. She understood the Adamses were to have the e n tire after-cabin to themselves, probably because of fears about her health; but at the last moment this arrangement was changed. She also took a drive in Hyde Park and returned once more to the boys' school where the Adamses were invited to dine ten days later. But ten days later Louisa was again ill, too ill to dine for the last time with the Nicholases. John Quincy wrote an acquaintance that she was so ill she probably could not accompany the family to America.97 Yet Louisa sailed in June for America with her two sons and John Quincy. It is almost impossible to think that John Quincy forced her to go. Perhaps Louisa refused to stay in England and have the baby while John Quincy went home. Her mother had refused to stay in England alone while Joshua Johnson went to America. No sister was with Louisa in England, as Catherine had been with her in Russia. John Quincy's letter indicates that he would have taken the boys with him to America. Possibly Louisa feared dying in childbirth as much as dying while miscarrying and at least wanted to be with John Quincy. She had certainly lived with him in greater harmony in England than in either America or Russia; and her love for him, being more acutely felt, may 96JQA, Diary, 1, 4, 28 May 1817, APM, reel 33. 97JQA, Diary, 10 May 1817, APM, reel 33; "The state of Mrs. Adams's health will probably not admit of her going with us." JQA to William Rae Wilson, 29 May 1817, APM, reel 143. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 8 5 have made her unwilling to stay behind. At this point In her life perhaps she felt stronger about being a wife than a mother.98 John Quincy seems to have refused to wait for the birth. Perhaps In her mood of growing ambition, she wanted to participate fully In the fruits of all her sacrifices: John Quincy's position as Secretary of State—the natural stepping-stone to the Presidency. In the past Louisa had loved being a mother. Her last beloved baby had died, and one might suppose she would have welcomed another child. But suppositions are not always correct. Louisa's grief over the death of Louisa Catherine may have made her less willing to Invest herself emotionally In another child. For whatever reason or reasons, Louisa decided to make the trip. Both Louisa and John Quincy may have hoped for the best If she went, although past experience might have led them to expect the worst. The Adamses tra v e lle d from London to Southampton by stage and by packet to Cowes In order to join the ship, which had sailed without passengers from London on 5 June. They stayed at a hotel In Cowes until 15 June, when all the passengers went on hoard ship.99 Louisa was very 111 on the ship. Fortunately, Dr. Tlllary, an eminent doctor from New York, was a fellow passenger and for Louisa's distress he prescribed laudanum. Her "Illness" continued and she was bled. It Is not clear from John Quincy's account of her Illness In his 98in mid-May LCA wrote to AA In the same letter, "we are all well" and "My health Is very bad and I expect to suffer much on the voyage as I can by no means bear fatigue as I used to." LCA to AA, 18 May 1817, APM, reel 437. 9 9 j q a , Diary, 15 June 1817, APM, reel 33. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 586 Diary, but Louisa was in the midst of the prophesied miscarriage. She described it later to her mother-in-law as a "bad miscarriage," Thirteen days at sea she lost the baby.100 During her illness John Ouincy was even more attentive than u s u a l. A c h a ir , which was a lso a bed, was made up fo r him and placed beside Louisa's bunk in their cabin. He slept in this chair, perhaps holding her hand as he had done in Russia, while she suffered through the miscarriage.101 The worst part of this episode must have been both Louisa's and her husband's fear that she would die during the miscarriage. She was always seasick, and no pregnancy could survive the constant contractions of nausea and vomiting. The pain of the miscarriage, the lack of privacy and of cleanliness on hoard must have been extremely distressing for Louisa. John Quincy's Diary records that In the midst of the unspesclfled Illness, she thought she was dying; the Diary does not say that she had been told by the doctor that she might not survive. Almost unbelievably, she recovered quickly and four days later even tried to go on deck.l®^ It seems appropriate that Louisa should have ended her married European years as they began with yet one more sacrifice and that it should have been on a ship on the high seas. A perceptive historian lO^Dr. Tlllary, a Scotchman, had emigrated to New York. JQA, Diary, 16, 25, 28 June 1817, APM, reel 33; LCA to AA, 14 August 1817, APM, reel 438. Two authors, James Truslow Adams and Samuel F. Bemls, report (using the same phrase) that the trip was "uneventful." Adams, The Adams Family, p. 165; and Bemls, Foundations, p. 247. 101JQA, Diary, 27 June 1817, APM, reel 33. 102JQA, D iary, 28 June 1817, APM, re e l 33. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 8 7 has pointed out that John Quincy's career was very like a ship, which sailed on, while his family, like passengers, clung on to the gunwales. In no way would John Quincy have stopped the boat for the sake of the struggling family. Ironically, the course of the ship had not even been determined by John Quincy: his parents had decided for him. Years earlier his mother had "devoted him to the publlck." But John Quincy had made his wishes hers. Louisa's problems, needs, desires, comforts had been very little considered.103 Louisa's comfort and emotional needs had been sacrificed again and again to John Quincy's career: while waiting In London to be married, when tom between children and husband In America, when John Quincy forced her to stay with him In Russia, when she was left alone In St. Petersburg. But these sacrifices had been Imposed on her. In 1817 Louisa seems to have been willing to risk even her life to be with her husband and to participate In the rewards of their ambition. One wonders If she realized that she herself—her very life—might have been the price of ambition and that she had been willing to pay it. From smaller exactions of comfort, unmet needs, and wrenching separations she had passed to life Itself. In later years she would insist the sacrifices had not been worth it, but that was hindsight. At this time the goal was still before them, and Louisa as well as John Quincy took the risk. It seems particularly fitting that the boat on which the Adamses sailed should have been called the Washington. George F. M usto, "Adams Fam ily," Proceedings of The Massachusetts Historical Society 93 (1981), in press. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 588 Washington had been the embodiment of patriotic service to his country; the city of Washington was the location of the Presidency. Louisa's life was bounded by both: John Quincy's great sense of duty and his search for the Presidency. There was to be no surcease in the future. Driven by a sense of duty Louisa could never understand and by an ambition she understood only too well, her husband would not slacken his pace. This last sacrifice to his career, whether she went willingly or not, was the greatest of all. Louisa risked her life and gave up the baby she had been carrying perhaps for as long as seven months. The child, of course, died—another sacrifice to its father's career. It must have been with a great sense of relief that Louisa disembarked from the boat in New York City on 4 August 1817. She reported to Abigail ten days later that she had suffered a "bad miscarriage" on the voyage, that she had, in six years, lost her good looks, but added optimistically she hoped to "be quite well when I meet you." Then, as she had done so often before, she travelled from New York to Quincy and returned to her husband's home and her husband's f a m ily .104 Conclusion Louisa's European years were now over. She was an experienced, tr a v e lle d , know ledgeable, c u ltiv a te d , and s o p h is tic a te d woman. Raised in a diplomatic setting, she had helped her husband represent the republican United States successfully in three European Courts. In the diplomatic world she was secure, and she looked forward to her position IO^LCA to AA, 14 August 1817, APM, re e l 438. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 589 in Washington as the wife of the Secretary of State with a confidence she could not muster in other aspects of her life. John Quincy's position and her own had been purchased at great cost to her bodily health and peace of mind; yet at those times when John Quincy's motivation had failed, she had kept him on course. She had lived through many c r is e s , made many m istak es, was s t i l l unsure of h e rs e lf in many respects. Yet she had every right to expect that with the Presidency so close, she could look forward to years of family life in a settled home, comparable to what she had experienced in England. Louisa's life had been bounded by ambition, guilt, and denial. She recorded her early strivings in her memoirs: her desire to surpass her sisters at school, to be her father's favorite daughter, to attract a husband, and to marry well; yet she denied any ambition. Even her socially ambitious marriage was fraught with vicissitudes and guilts. In her memoirs, she denied again and again any complicity in luring John Quincy in to m arriage w ith an im poverished woman. A fter m arriage, Louisa had to disown her delight in social occasions in favor of a severe republicanism which held that they were the entering wedge of dissipation. Her own ambitions, now deflected onto her husband's political career, could be disclosed in private letters but not p u b lic ly . As an am bitious woman, born when am bition was p ro h ib ite d fo r women, she could never fully admit to, or act on, her own feelings. Caught in a web spun by the culture and her husband's extreme republicanism, Louisa suffered from ambivalences and a paralyzing guilt. At no time was she able to face herself and her desires squarely and honestly. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 590 In autumn 1817 Louisa could not know th a t fu rth e r t r i a l s and unhappinesses lay ahead: lives would be ruined and one actually lost. From this knowledge, she was, in August 1817, mercifully spared. Angered by the eventual collapse of her hopes for happiness, she turned her rage on her husband in particular and men in general. All this is plain in her autobiography, "The Adventures of a Nobody," which she began in 1840. In 1817 Louisa was still "somebody." Her psychological frailties were substantial, and for her mental poise, life with her husband would have to be very smooth and undisturbed. Yet Louisa's ambition, allied to that of her husband, had gained for both positions in which their life together could be neither tranquil nor easy. Her aspirations had made the choice for her. For the rest of her life, Louisa would pay the price of ambition. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE SOURCES Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams wrote three long autobiographical works: "Record of a Life or My Story," "The Adventures of a Nobody," and "Narrative of a Journey from Russia to France, 1815." Because in three works she described long periods of her early life, any biography of Louisa must take them into account. It is crucial to determine both the conscious and unconscious purposes for which they were written and to assess critically their veracity and usefulness as historical documents. Further, because she appears so often in her husband's Diary, this famous work must also be scrutinized and its reliability evaluated. Louisa wrote "Record of a Life or My Story" in 1825 for both her own satisfaction and for her children's amusement. She had called it "Memories of Your Mother," but inked this title out and substituted the longer and more public title it now bears. Louisa was fifty years old in 1825, but in this work she covered only the first twenty-six years of her life from 1775 to 1801. She recorded her memories of childhood, adolescence, engagement, marriage, and her life with John Ouincy in Berlin—their first post abroad. Louisa wrote her second work, "Narrative of a Journey from Russia to France, 1815," in 1836, twenty-one years after the event.1 lln 1903 when Brooks Adams, Louisa's grandson, published "Mrs. John Quincy Adams's Narrative of a Journey from St. Petersburg to Paris in February 1815," he chose to publish only her account of the actual 591 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 59 2 So important was the trip to Louisa that she saw it as proving to the world that she was a woman "who w a s She hoped it would provide an example of what all women could accomplish were they given the chance. Her only published work, it too must be analyzed to assess its value in understanding Louisa. Her third autobiographical work, "The Adventures of a Nobody," Louisa wrote in 1840. She described mainly the first fifteen years after she was married. Yet she often returned in this narrative to what she pictured as the happier days of her youth. Louisa recounted her experiences in Prussia, her life in Boston and Washington during the years John Quincy was both a Senator and a Harvard professor, and her first three years in St. Petersburg. A darker and more angry record than her first memoir, it reflects the tragedies of her later life: the death of her two sons, a tension-filled Presidency, and John Quincy's decision to return once more to the political life that Louisa h ated . E x actly how Louisa co n stru cted th is work is u n c le a r. Long prose reminiscences, probably written in 1840, are interspersed with what are obviously earlier diary entries. Some of these entries seem to be taken from her own journal (no longer extant) and others from her husband's Diary. Both "Record of a Life or My Story" and "The Adventures of a Nobody" end on an unhappy note. "Record of a Life" ends with Louisa learning of John Quincy's earlier and more passionate love for an trip, without comment of any kind; omitted were those paragraphs in which Louisa gave her reasons for writing the work. Lyman H. Butterfield, in an article summarizing Louisa's life, touched only briefly on her European journey and asserted that "her recollected account of this forty-day ordeal spares the reader no harrowing detail." Butterfield did not record the enormous value she placed on her successful endeavor. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 593 American g irl, Maria Frazier; "The Adventures of a Nobody" ends with the tragic death, in 1812, of Louisa's only daughter, as an infant, in St. Petersburg. In each case, recording these affecting episodes seems to have prevented her from writing further. Since none of Louisa's three works was written contemporane ously with the events they relate, they must be treated very differently from her diary fragments and letters which were, of course, written as events occurred. Her three autobiographies depict Louisa's early life as she remembered it. Because so many intervening events and later emotions warp the narrative, they obviously must be used with great care. Certainly these works afford useful insight into Louisa's feelings at the time she wrote them. Yet Louisa's works also deal in the greatest detail with her early years. No matter how much they filter or distort the original reality, they do reveal, even if obliquely, Louisa's character and life. Scholars have not assessed the accuracy of these three memoirs. Lyman H. Butterfield, in an article on Louisa, quoted from her autobiographies but did not deal with their reliability. Samuel F. Bemis, biographer of John Quincy Adams, considered "Record of a Life," a "morbid document," written during a "critical period of her life from forty-nine to fifty-four years of age," and suggested that Louisa, in a wave of "melancholy and self-pity," reverted to memories of the happier days of her childhood. Since "The Adventures of a Nobody," written in 1840, is darker, more angry, and more strident that "Record of a Life," we must assume, following Bemis, that her mood of "melancholy and self- pity" lasted longer than her fifty-fourth year. Louisa's writings are Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 594 too deeply felt and too detailed to be so summarily dismissed. "The Adventures of a Nobody," Bemis discussed but briefly, quoting Louisa's opinion that John Quincy was a man of "Fine qualities, easy temper, quiet home habits and indefatigable power of application." This quotation is somewhat misleading: Louisa's portrait of her husband in her second work is, on balance, more negative than positive. It is certainly true that in her "Record of a Life," Louisa cast a roseate glow on her childhood in London and Nantes. Most people tend to remember the happier moments of childhood, forgetting what was sad or difficult, and Louisa was no exception. Her father appears as handsome, good, trusting, and, incidentally, Louisa is his favorite child. Her mother (whose background Louisa admits she did not know) is universally admired, lively witty, and proud of her eight attractive children. The love between her parents is in every way exemplary. Other themes emerge from Louisa's first memoir. The Johnson family is described, although living in monarchical England, as having been deeply committed to the republican way of life and the American cause. Since much had been written in the press about Louisa and her "English antecendents" (most of it false) during the 1824 Presidential campaign, we can understand th is attem pt in summer 1825 to republicanize her family. Not only was Louisa defending a supposedly republican background, she was also upholding her father's honor. In no way, according to Louisa, could Joshua Johnson have been at fault when, in 1797, his business failed and he quit England for America, leaving unpaid creditors behind. To undo the bankruptcy and to exonerate her father became nearly an obsession with Louisa in her Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 9 5 memoirs. Protecting her parents and herself from her own accusation, she claimed again and again that John Quincy had not been lured into marriage with the daughter of a family on the verge of ruin. The very rhetoric Louisa used to describe her adolescence mitigated against cool, rational accuracy. There is an unrestrained emotionalism in her writings very reminiscent of eighteenth-century novels to which, Louisa admitted, she had been addicted as an adolescent. She insisted that she never succumbed to the "lovesick sensibility of puling girls," but rather that she aspired to emulate "characters of lofty elegance." Louisa's account of relations between the Johnson g i r l s and the young American men who v is ite d the London house is highly novelistic. Male visitors inevitably fall in love with one or another of the Johnson s is te r s , and the g ir ls move from one romance to another. The twin subjects of love and marriage form the background of Louisa's adolescence; yet just as the culture prescribed, she denied having any interest in these subjects. The memoir also describes her early relationship with John Quincy as filled with misunderstandings, dark forebodings, and an almost-broken engagement. Through a screen of guilt for her father's bankruptcy, Louisa describes her wedding and her early days as the wife of a republican Minister at the very aristocratic court in Berlin. Louisa's second memoir is far less freighted with emotional messages. It details her forty days on European roads in winter 1815, while travelling alone from St. Petersburg to Paris accompanied by her seven-year-old son and two servants. Conditions on the road were so Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 5 9 6 difficult that an American male traveller termed the same journey as "terrific." Some novelistic cliches appear in this story, and although she probably exaggerated her diplomatic importance while travelling, her narrative rings true. Her guilt over her marriage and her father's bankruptcy does not contort her story. John Ouincy is entirely absent from the narrative except that reuniting with him after ten month's absence was one of the motives that propelled her onwards when her courage might have failed. The trip itself bears out her thesis that were women only given the chance, they could successfully complete a difficult task. Though never directly stated, her pride in this achievement emerges in every line.2 Louisa's third work, "The Adventures of a Nobody," repeats many of the themes in the first. Again, Louisa compares her sad, difficult, and painful life as John Quincy's wife with a carefree, entirely happy childhood where love, not stem duty, reigns. She often reviews her father's bankruptcy and always declares her father innocent of wrong doing. Again, she exonerates herself and her family of having lured John Ouincy into marriage. The title of this work introduces a new theme. Here Louisa sees herself as a "nohody," but the "somebody" in the family was John Quincy—indeed, he was everything. Set against John Quincy's all-important and well-known career, her life becomes a failure in all respects: her marriage, her motherhood, and her social relations. Several times Louisa asserts that she and John Quincy 2yet even while writing to bolster women's confidence and assert her own worth and existence, Louisa excused her boldness and success by adding yet a third reason for recording the trip—to fill up empty hours. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 597 should never have married; their cultural differences were too great to be bridged. Louisa, for all her family's financial difficulties during her childhood, was a "fine Lady" reared and educated in a European monarchy, playing "Duchess" as a child, and seeking forgetfulness in sociability. John Quincy, frugal, moderate in everything but patriotism, displaying great endurance and courage in the face of privations, was the very embodiment of American republican virtues. Louisa recognized she could not "suit" in New England. Yet even as she admits to deficiencies in her character, she is voicing her despair in never having been accorded the rights of a useful, worthwhile, deserving woman. John Quincy, not she, controlled the children, their education, and the household. Although she appreciated and detailed John Quincy's admirable qualities, she was, nevertheless, engulfed by her anger at his remoteness, and at his inability to give her the emotional support she craved. Louisa's portrait of John Ouincy is a powerful indictment: "[a] Socrates [who] glides smoothly on in the course which he has laid out for himself, enjoying the turmoil, the very reflection of which is to me perfectly insupportable." Louisa described, in this long, discursive, memoir, her life in Berlin, Washington, New England, and at the court of the Czar. In each setting she describes herself as inadequate to the task of mother and w ife. Only on the diplom atic stage did she feel competent. Even these capabilities she covered over by claiming that any distinctions she received were due not to her own popularity, but to respect for her husband. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 598 Besides the various motives which may have twisted Louisa's narratives, internal discrepancies and inconsistencies in her writing also require care in the use of her three memoirs as historical evidence. For example, Louisa reports that she was present at Mrs. Thomas Pinckney's final illness and death; but in the very next sentence, Louisa hears of the death. Louisa attributes her own haughty and proud demeanor to the fact that she spoke only French at the English school when she returned from France at eight years old. Yet she lived in an English-speaking household, and it is hard to imagine her mother and father speaking only French to the children. Further, Louisa's sisters, who had also lived in France, seem not to have suffered from the same social penalties at school as did Louisa. According to Louisa, her governess guided John Quincy's affections to her; yet John Quincy's Diary, contemporaneous with events, shows that Louisa was the first sister noticed by name and the one in whom he always seemed interested. Although Louisa represents her childhood as "fraught with bliss," there are strong signs of jealousy underlying her stories about her eldest sister, Nancy. Her father's financial difficulties, moreover, spill over into his family's life as the three oldest girls are removed from school. There are significant discrepancies between Louisa's memoirs and other sources. Louisa states John Quincy's salary was cut in half when, in 1797, he was ordered to Prussia instead of Portugal. In either place, his salary would have been nine thousand dollars a year. Louisa also records that when she was ill in Berlin, John Quincy was "entirely occupied by his public avocations." John Quincy's Diary Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 59 9 shows him constantly at her bedside day after day. Unless John Ouincy falsified his Diary over a long period of time, Louisa's account derives more from her emotions when she wrote than from what actually happened in the first years of their marriage. Louisa stated she had been "hurried" from Washington to Quincy in 1801, yet John Quincy's Diary shows the entire journey was taken in very slow stages out of consideration for Louisa and the baby, George. Louisa claimed to have read in John Quincy's Diary allusions to her father's financial collapse "altogether injurious to him." Yet a modern reading of the Diary shows an exemplary reticence about Johnson's failure and not one obviously negative reference. These are but a few of the problems Louisa's memoirs pose for the historian. All these discrepancies make it difficult to know how heavily Louisa's autobiographies can be relied on by the biographer. Yet her writings contain much that is true. The problem is to winnow out that which is true from that which is distorted. Where other sources exist, there is, of course, the possibility of comparison, although Charles F rancis Adams, L o u isa 's son, adm itted th a t he destroyed many of Louisa's letters. Where her memoirs and other sources agree, we can stand on rather firm ground. Where other and more neutral sources are a t v arian ce w ith her w ritin g s , we can conclude th a t her memory f a ile d her or that her own emotions shaped her narrative. Great care must be taken to record what actually happened and what she recorded so that the reader knows which version is which. Louisa herself worried about her works. The mere act of writing itself, she wrote, was "certainly harmless! but to a woman of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 60 0 a reflective turn is it not a prolific source of erroneous opinions? of propagating inconsistencies?" Further, she perceived that "the sophistry of selfishness" casts its "glowing colouring over the truth . . . concealing by its delicate brilliancy, the thorn that lies buried under its gay and vivid colours.” She was certainly correct concerning "erroneous opinions and inconsistencies"—they abound. She was also correct about the "glowing colour over the truth" and "the thorn that lies buried." Yet, in accusing herself of the "sophistry of selfishness," she may have been less than fair to herself. Perhaps not selfishness so much as her own emotional self-absorption and anguish led her to be less than completely- truthful about her early life. For instance, her obsessive love for her father could be better justified if he was perfect in every way. She may have tried to convey her fe e lin g s of lo s s when sep arated from her fam ily in 1797 by p ic tu rin g a delightful childhood home. Alternatively, she may have been trying to conceal a childhood which had actually been filled with tensions and anxieties. Or, again, her later life was so tragic, so filled with unhappiness that, in retrospect, her childhood, however strained, may indeed have seemed "fraught with bliss." For whatever reason, Louisa either did not consciously know, or chose not to record, the ordinary strains and discomforts of childhood or the special tensions of the Johnson household. Equally important, Louisa's attitude towards herself as a woman colored her writings about her early life. She believed that "weakness and unsteadiness of mind" were a "component part of her Sex," and that women were inherently frail and inconsistent. With such a self-image. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 601 the truth may not have seemed of utmost importance to her. One of the first requirements for accuracy would seem to be a self-respect which Louisa could not muster. She contrasted her own "perpetual stream of crude thought" with "minds of a high cast," with whom she associated. Feelings of intellectual inferiority at times overwhelmed her. She wrote that her appetite for "scribbling grows on what it feeds" and that "even garbage may become grateful to a craving stomach." If she considered her writings to he "garbage," it seems unlikely that veracity and precision would have been uppermost in her mind when she set down her memoirs. To "define anything substantially; excepting the mere mechanical works of men's hands" appeared to her impossible. No one achieves that which they deem impossible. Yet Louisa's reminiscences do have intrinsic value for the historian. She was not always trying to exculpate herself and her father, or angry at John Quincy, or blaming men for their uncaring attitudes towards women. Louisa also described in great detail her experiences at European courts and the Washington scene as she knew it. Louisa's memoirs are a greatly underused scource for women's history and for understanding the Adams family's dynamics at every level. Historians know almost nothing of women's experiences in America's early diplomatic service. Louisa's oft-expressed distress should sensitize historians to women's predicament as wives of politicians at the national level. The difficulty of the yearly choice between husband and children is portrayed by Louisa with exceptional poignancy. Above all, Louisa's memoirs depict in terrible detail the plight of an ambitious girl and woman in an age in which overt ambition was reserved Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 6 0 2 for men. As an ambitious woman, as a diplomatic wife, as a politician's wife, as an Adams wife and mother, Louisa has a gripping story to tell. Historians should take the trouble to sift the chaff from the wheat; their efforts will be well repaid. Fortunately, Louisa's autobiographies are not the only extant documents from her early life. An enormous number of her father's letters have been preserved (quite fortuitously), and these detail the life of a London merchant and provide glimpses of the Johnson family. Most of Louisa's own correspondence with John Quincy and other Adamses has been preserved by the Adamses. This is immensely valuable as a contemporary record. There is yet another record of the utmost importance in understanding Louisa Adams—the justly famous and enormously detailed Diary of John Quincy Adams. Diaries as a literary genre are as yet insufficiently studied for the historian to make easy generalizations about the motives that make any one diarist keep a journal.3 Undoubtedly, John Ouincy worked in the tradition of Puritan diarists, which began in the sixteenth century and which took hold in American so il. The most famous of the Puritan diaries were written for spiritual account-keeping, but John Quincy's Diary was not merely a Godly "reckoning book." He considered it a "Timepiece of Life," and "a preservative of Morals," because he thought that the recording of his daily life forces a writer to mount a "personal guard over himself." In short, he told his son that his Diary was, for him, "a second Conscience." 3E arl N. H erb ert, "John Quincy Adams and His D iary ," Tulane Studies in English 18 (1970):81-94. For a fine study of the diary of an English public servant, see Martin Stein, "A Psychoanalytical View of Mental Health: Samuel Pepys and His Diary," The Psychoanalytical Quarterly 116 (January 1977):82-115. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 603 In contrast to Louisa's recollections, John Quincy's Diary seems to be painstakingly correct. Details which can be verified by the historical record or with family letters do accord well, yet the Diary is not totally accurate. There are some misstatements of facts, a normal part of any diary, and some prevarications. John Quincy's inability to admit his trip to England in 1795 was mostly useless because the work in London had already been done by another diplomat is one of these less-than-honest moments. The Diary does not record that one reason he waited in London was for the State Department to reimburse him for his trip. It is also impossible to tell from his Diary whether he accepted governmental posts because he was ambitious or because he felt duty required it of him. John Quincy could be honest about many things, but he could not openly admit ambition. Misstatements and prevarications are few, however, far fewer it would seem than in many d ia r ie s . W ithin the lim its of human f r a i l t y , John Quincy's Diary is an extraordinary document of a great statesman at work, regular as the daily spin of the earth, in season and out of season. But John Quincy was not always a public figure. He was also a priv ate man, and on th is subject the Diary is d escrip tiv e but not analytical. We know in the greatest detail what he and his family did, but not why decisions were made. Trips were taken, cities visited, theatres and concerts attended, illness, births, deaths—all were described. There is, however, a curious lack of reasons given, a noticeable absence of described motivation, a dearth not of emotion—for feeling does occasionally break through—but of accounting Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 604 for private decisions taken. Even his personal emotions about Louisa during the sojourn in London when he became engaged to her are not recorded, but must be read between the lines. The Diary shows an unwillingness or inability to reveal the whys and wherefores of his p riv a te l i f e . For example, in 1804 Louisa and the two sm all boys, George and John, spent the summer in Washington w hile he went home to Quincy. John Quincy reports this fact but not the discussion; neither the weighing of pros and cons nor even the thinking that ultimately prevailed appear. He merely recorded that he "took leave of my two sons George and John." Again, in 1809, the two older boys stayed in America, while their parents and younger brother went to Russia. John Quincy's Diary never tells us why, what was to be gained by the boys remaining in America, or even how he felt about being separated from his two sons. In 1817 John Quincy and the pregnant Louisa left England for America. Both knew that she could lose her life in a miscarriage, and both knew that she was likely to miscarry on an ocean voyage. John Quincy did not reveal the reason for the decision for them both to go while Louisa was still carrying the bahy. The fact of Louisa's almost inevitable miscarriage is not even mentioned, although John Quincy recorded she suffered an "illness" on the voyage home. What is missing then from the diary are his own motivations in personal matters; but his omissions, much as we wish they did not exist, should in no way deter us from using the Diary to understand Louisa. The reticence of John Quincy's Diary should not be surprising. Perhaps he was too greatly conflicted about his emotions to express them openly, or perhaps he had a wider readership than his fam ily in Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 605 mind fo r the d iary and thought public display of such personal family decisions would be inappropriate. His early training certainly mitigated against expression of personal emotions or thoughts. At age fourteen he was already a diplomat, expected to guard against disclosing his thoughts too freely. The restraint and emotional distance, about which Louisa so often complained, he carried over into every aspect of his life, including his Diary. The reasons for the major decisions of his and Louisa's and his son's lives must be looked for elsewhere; the historian will not find them in his Diary. John Quincy's Diary, used in conjunction with Louisa's writings, helps to verify what she wrote and enables the biographer to determine when her own account was written for her own personal purposes. Louisa may have been correct in many of her statements, but the historian would like, in view of Louisa's proclivity to dramatize, some corroborating evidence, without which some of Louisa's accounts must remain open to question. Admittedly, Louisa's writings must be used with great care. Yet they constitute a most valuable source for the study of a widely experienced nineteenth-century woman. Louisa wrote her works in an era when few women found any outlet for genuine personal aspirations in a male-dominated and male-controlled world which took little heed of women's needs, desires, or ambitions. Louisa's works stand almost alone in mid-nineteenth century literature for their emotional nakedness and intensity. Yet her frankness may have been purchased at the cost of accuracy. Thinking so little of herself, she may have felt that only stridently expressed anger would gain attention; or having Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 6 0 6 lived for so long with her rage (which met no answering reaction from John Quincy), the intensity mirrored exactly how she felt. Her inflamed emotions then spilled over into her narrative, affecting the factual—but not the emotional—truth of what she wrote. Because the balance of fact and emotion is sometimes askew in Louisa's memoirs, these autobiographies must be used with constant awareness that her writings teem with purposes that were not contemporaneous with the recorded events and which sometimes twisted the accuracy of the narrative. Yet Louisa has left her biographers a legacy to be used with restraint—a restraint she could not find for herself when she wrote about her life. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary M aterials Published Adams, Charles Francis, ed. Letters of Mrs. Adams, the Wife of John Adams. Boston: Charles C. L ittle and James Brown, 1840. ______, ed. Memoirs of John Ouincy Adams. 12 vols. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1874-77. ______, ed. The Works of John Adams. Boston: L i t t l e , Brown & C o., 1850-56. ______, ed. "Diary of John Quincy Adams." Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings XVI (1902):295-464. Adams, Charles Francis, Jr., ed. Life in a New England Town: 1787, 1788. Diary of John Quincy Adams l^ile a Student in the Office of Theophilus Parsons at Newburyport. Boston: L ittle, Brown & Co., 1903. Adams, John Quincy. Letters from Silesia. London: J. Budd, at the Crown and M itre , 1804. ______. "An Oration Delivered at the Public Commencement in the University at Cambridge, in New England, July 18, 1797, by Mr. John Quincy Adams, Son of His E xcellency John Adams, the Minister at the Court of London." Columbia Magazine or Monthly Miscellany (September 1787). "Society and Civilization." The American Review 2 (July 1845): 80-89. . "Tribute to William Vans Murray." The Portfolio 7 (January 1804)5-6. Adams, Louisa Catherine. "Mrs. John Quincy Adams's Narrative of a Journey from St. Petersburg to Paris in February, 1815." Introduction by Brooks Adams. Scribner's Magazine 34 (July- December 1903): 449-63. Butterfield, Lyman H.; Garrett, Wendell D.; and Sprague, Marjorie E., eds. Adams Family Correspondence. 4 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1963. 607 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 60 8 Butterfield, Lyman H.; Friedlander, Marc; and Kline, Mary-Jo, eds. The Book of Abigail and John; Selected Letters of the Adams Family, 1762-1784. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975. Butterfield, Lyman H.; Faber, Leonard C.; and Garrett, Wendell D., eds. Diary and Autobiography of John Adams. 4 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1961. Corner, George W., ed. The Autobiography of Benjamin Rush. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1948. DeWindt, Caroline Smith, ed. The Journal and Correspondence of Miss Adams, Daughter of John Adams, President of the United States. 2 vols. New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1841. Donald, Aida DiPace, and Donald, David, eds. Diary of Charles Francis Adams. 6 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1964-74. Donnon, Elizabeth, ed. "Diary," by James A. Bayard. Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1913. 2 vols. Washington, D.C.: n.p., 1915. Ford, Worthington Chauncey, ed. Writings of John Quincy Adams. 7 vols. New York: Greenwood Press, Publishers, 1968. ______, ed. Letters of William Lee: 1776-1783. 3 vols. New York: Burt Franklin, 1968. ______, ed. "Letters of William Vans Murray to John Ouincy Adams, 1797-1803." Annual Report of the American H istorical Associa tion for the Year 1912. Washington, D.C.: n.p., 1914:341-708. "Jefferson to William Short on Mr. and Mrs. Merry." The American H istorical Review 33 (July 1928):832-35. Koch, Adrienne, and Peden, William, eds. The Selected Writings of John Adams and John Quincy Adams. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946. Memoirs and Letters of Dolley Madison. Edited by her grandniece. Boston: Houghton M ifflin & Co., 1888. M itchell, Stewart, ed. New Letters of Abigail Adams 1788-1801. Boston: Houghton M ifflin Co., 1947. "Mrs. John Quincy Adams," Saturday Evening Post, 24 February 1827, pp. 1-2. Morris, Anne Cary, ed. The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris. 2 vols. New York: Da Capo Press, 1888; reprint ed.. New York: Da Capo P re s s, 1970. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 6 0 9 Morris, Richard B., ed. John Jay: The Making of a Revolutionary. New York: Harper & Row, 1975. Old Family Letters Copied from the Originals for Alexander Biddle. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1892. Paltsits, Victor Hugo, ed, "Berlin and the Prussian Court in 1798: Jo u rn al of Thomas Boylston Adams." B u lle tin of th e New York Public Library 19 (November 1915):803-43. Price, Jacob M., ed. Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1771-1774: Letters from a Merchant in London to his Partners in Maryland. London : London Record Society, 1979. Stevens, Benjamin Franklin, ed. Facsimiles of Manuscripts in European Archives Relating to America: 1773-1783. 28 vols. Holborn, England: Malby & Sons, 1892. Unpublished Hall of Records, Annapolis, Md. Chancery Papers for Joshua Johnson, #2893 Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1771-1774 Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1774-1777 Maryland H istorical Society, Baltimore, Md. Buchanan Papers Johnson File Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Mass. Adams Papers Matthew Ridley Papers The Tudor Papers The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Manuscript Collection The Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Mass. Eunice Callender Diaries, 1808-1824 The L ib ra ry , The U n iv e rsity of Wyoming, Laram ie, Wyo. The Cranch Papers The B ritis h Museum, London, England The Auckland Papers The G ren v ille Papers Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 610 The Sterling Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn. The Benjamin Franklin Papers The Butler Library, Columbia University, New York, N.Y. The John Jay Papers The Morgan L ibrary, New York, N.Y. The W illiam Vans Murray Papers The New York Historical Society, New York, N.Y. The John Adams Papers The Rufus King Papers The New York Public Library, New York, N.Y. Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1781-1783 Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1787-1788 The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. The Bayard Family Papers The Cranch Family Papers The Benjamin Franklin Papers Joshua Johnson's Letterbook, 1785-1788 The Papers of Thomas Jefferson The Dolley Payne Madison Collection The William Vans Murray Papers The William Plumer Papers The Papers of Joseph Toner The Papers of the Shaw Family The Margaret Bayard Smith Papers The Papers of William Thornton The Anna Maria Thornton Papers The George Washington Papers The National Archives, Washington, D.C. Dispatches from U.S. Consuls in London, 1790-1906 Papers of the Continental Congress M icrofilm Microfilm of the Adams Papers Owned by the Adams Manuscript Trust and Deposited in the Massachusetts Historical Society. 608 reels. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1954-59. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 611 Secondary Materials Books Adams, James Truslow. The Adams Family. New York: The Literary Guild, 1930. Adams, Willi Paul. The First American Constitutions: Republican Ideology and the Making of the State Constitutions in the Revolutionary Era. Chapel H ill, N.C.: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 1980. Akers, Charles W. Abigail Adams: An American Woman. Boston: L ittle, Brown & Co., 1980. Armes, E th e l, ed. Nancy Shippen: Her Journal Book. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1935. Aronson, Sidney H. Status and Kinship in the Higher Civil Service. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964. Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967. Barker, Charles Albro. The Background of the Revolution in Maryland. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1940. Bartlett Mabel, and Baker, Sophie. Mothers, Makers of Men. 2nd rev. ed. New York: Exposition Press, 1952. Bashkina, Nina N., et al., eds. The United States and Russia: The Beginning of Relations, 1765-1815. Washington, P.C,: Govern ment Printing Office, 1980. Beeson, Paul B.; McDermott, Walsh; and Wyngarden, James B., eds. Textbook of Medicine. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders Co., 1979. Bemis, Samuel Flagg. John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949. . John Quincy Adams and the Union. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956. Benson, Mary Sumner. Women in Eighteenth-Century America: A Study of Opinion and Social Usage. New York: Columbia University Press, 1935. B eringause, A rthur F. Brooks Adams: A B iography. New York: A lfred A. Knopf, 1955. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 6 1 2 Berkin, Carol Ruth, and Norton, Mary Beth. Women of America; A History. Boston; Houghton Mifflin Co., 1979. Bloomfield, Maxwell. American Lawyers in a Changing Society. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976. Bobbe, Dorothy. Mr. and Mrs. John Quincy Adams: An Adventure in Patriotism . New York: Minton, Balch & Co., 1930. Bolkhovitinov, Nicolai N. The Beginnings of Russian-American Relations, 1775-1815. Translated by Elena Levin. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975. Brodie, Fawn M. Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1974. Brooks, Gertrude Zeith. First Ladies of the White House. Edited by Jan Pitts. Chicago: Charles Hallberg & Co., 1969. Bro\m, Roger H. The Republic in Peril: 1812. New York: Columbia University Press, 1964. Butler, Marilyn. Jane Austen and the War of Ideas. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. Butterfield, Lyman H. Butterfield in Holland: A Record of L. H. Butterfield's Pursuit of the Adamses Abroad in 1959. Cambridge, Mass.: By the author, 1961. Calhoun, Arthur W. A Social History of the American Family from Colonial Times to the Present. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1945. Chinard, Gilbert. Honest John Adams. Boston: L ittle, Brown & Co., 1933. Clarfield, Gerard H. Timothy Pickering and American Diplomacy 1795- 1800. Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 1969. Clark, Allen. Life and Letters of Dolley Madison. Washington, D.C.: Press of W. F. Roberts Co., 1914. Colbourn, H. Trevor. The Lamp of Experience: Whig History and the Intellectual Origins of the American Revolution. Chapel H ill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1963. Coramager, Henry Steele. The Empire of Reason: How Europe Imagined and America Realized the Enlightenment. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press-Doubleday, 1978. Conrad, Susan P. Perish the Thought : Intellectual Women in Romantic America 1830-1860. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 613 C ote, Nancy F. The Bonds of Womanhood; "Women's Sphere" in New England 1780-1835. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977. Coxe, William. Travels in Poland, Russia, Sweden and Denmark. 3 vols. Dublin: S. Price, 1784. Craik, W. A. Jane Austen in Her Time. London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1969. Crosby, Alfred W., Jr. America, Russia, Hemp and Napoleon: American Trade with Russia and the Baltic, 1783-1812. Columbus, Ohio : Ohio State University Press, 1965. Cross, Jack L. London Mission: The First Critical Years. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1968. Davenport, Beatrix Cary, ed. A Diary of the French Revolution by Gouverneur Morris, 1752-1816. 2 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1939. Degler, Carl N. At Odds : Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. Delapla in e , Edward S, The L ife of Thomas Johnson. New York: F. H. Hitchcock, 1927.♦ Deutsch, Helene. The Psychology of Women. 2 vols. New York: Grune & Stratton^.' 1945. De Pauw, Linda Grant. Founding Mothers: Women of America in the Revolutionary Era. Boston: Houghton M ifflin Co., 1975. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 3rd ed. Washington, D.C.: The American Psychiatric Association, 1980. Dipple, Horst. Germany and the American Revolution, 1770-1800: A Sociohistorical Investigation of Late Eighteenth-Century Political Thinking. Translated by Bernhard A. Uhlendorf. Chapel H ill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977. Douglas, Ann. The Feminization of American Culture. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977. Eadie, J. W., ed. Classical Traditions in Early America. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1976. East, Robert A. John Quincy Adams, The Critical Years: 1784-1794. New York: Bookman Associates, 1962. Ernst, Robert. Rufus King: American Federalist. Chapel H ill: Univer sity of North Carolina Press, 1968. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 614 Farmer, Lydia Hoyt, ed. What America Owes to Women; The Nation Exposi tion Souvenir. Buffalo; C. W. Moulton, 1893. Ferguson, E. James, and Catanzariti, John, eds. The Papers of Robert Morris 1781-1784. Vol. I & II. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973, 1975. Forster, E. M. Marianne Thornton: A Domestic Biography, 1797-1887. New York: Harcourt Brace Javanovitch, 1956. Foster, Augustus John. Jeffersonian America. San Marino, Calif.: The Huntington Library, 1954. Fothergill, R. A. Private Chronicles: A Study of English Diaries. London: Oxford University Press, 1974. F re d e ric h , O tto . C lo v er. New York: Simon & S c h u ste r, 1979. Gawalt, Gerald W. The Promise of Power: The Emergence of the Legal Profession in Massachusetts, 1760-1840. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979. George, Dorothy M. London Life in the Eighteenth Century. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1965. Gerlinger, Irene Hazard. Mistress of the White House: Narrators Tale of a Pageant of First Ladies. New York: Samuel French, 1948. Gilbert, Sandra M., and Gubar, Susan. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. Gilm an, A lfred G ., and Goodman, Louis S. The Pharm acological B asis of Therapeutics. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1980. Concourt, Edmond Louis Antoine Huot de, and Concourt, Jules Alfred Huot de. The Woman of the Eighteenth-Century: Her Life, from Birth to Death, Her Love and Her Philosophy in the Worlds of Salon, Shop and Street. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1972. Gordon, Lydia L. From Lady Washington to Mrs. Cleveland. New York: C. T. D illingham , 1889. Green, Constance McLaughlin. Washington: Village and Capital. 1800- 1878. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962. Graven, Philip J., Jr. Child-Rearing Concepts, 1628-1861. Itasca, 111.: P. E. Peacock Publishers, 1973. Griswold, Rufus Wilmot. The Republican Court: Or, American Society in the Days of Washington. New York: D. Appleton, 1855. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 6 1 5 Gummere, Richard M. The American C olonial Mind and th e C la ss ic a l Tradition. Cambridge, Mass.; Harvard University Press, 1963. Handler, Edward. America and Europe in the Political Thought of John Adams. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964. Herbert, Earl N. The Force So Much Closer Home : Henry Adams and the Adams Family. New York: New York University Press, 1977. Hecht, Marie B. John Quincy Adams: A Personal History of an Independent Man. New York: Macmillan Co., 1972. H ill, Peter P. William Vans Murray, Federalist Diplomat: The Shaping of Peace with France, 1797-1801. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1971. Horsman, Reginald. The Causes of the War of 1812. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1962. Howe, John R ., J r . The Changing P o litic a l Thought of John Adams. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966. Hurlock, J. A Practical Treatise upon Dentition: Or the Breeding of Teeth in C hildren. London: 1742. Jaffe, Irma B. John Trumbull: Patrlot-A rtist of the American Revolution. Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1975. James, Janet. Changing Ideas about Women in the United States: 1776- 1825. New York: Garland Publishing, 1981. Jarrett, Derek. England in the Age of Hogarth. New York: Viking P ress, 1974. Jensen, Amy LaFollette. The White House and Its Thirty-two Families. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962. Jones, Kenneth V., ed. John Quincy Adams 1767-1848. Chronology, Documents, Bibliographic Aids. Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Oceana Publications, 1970. Kahn, David. The Code Breakers. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1967. Kerber, Linda K. Women of the Republic, Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America. Chapel H ill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980. Kerr, Laura. Louisa: The Life of Mrs. John Quincy Adams. New York : Funk & Wagnalls Co., 1964. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 616 Kohl, Johann Georg. R u ssia. London: Chapman & H a ll, 1844. Kuhn, Anne L. The Mother's Role in Childhood Education: New England Concepts 1830-1860. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1947. Lipsky, George A. John Quincy Adams: His Theory and Ideas. New York: Thomas Y. C row ell, 1950. Lloyd, A lla n . The Scorching of W ashington: The War of 1812. Newton Abbott, England; David & Charles, 1974. Loesser, Arthur. Men, Women and Pianos: A Social History. 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Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 62 1 Duffin, Lorna. "The Conspicuous Consumptive: Woman as an Invalid." In The Nineteenth-Century Woman : Her Cultural and Physical World, pp. 26^56. By Sarah Delamont and Lorna Duffin. New York; Barnes & Noble Books, 1978. Dye, Nancy Schrom. "History of Childbirth in America." Signs 6 (Autumn 1980): 97-108. Celles, Edith Belle. "Abigail Adams; Domesticity and the American Revolution." The New England Quarterly 52 (December 1979): 500-521. Gerstenberger, Donna, and Allen, Carolyn. "Women Studies/American S tudies, 1970-1975." American Quarterly 29 (1977):263-79. C lick, Wendell. "The Best Possible World of John Quincy Adams." The New England Quarterly 37 (March 1964):3-17. Good, H. G. "To the Future Biographers of John Quincy Adams." The Scientific Monthly 39 (September 1934):247-51. Goodfellow, Donald M. "Neglected American Classic." Carnegie Technical 9 (April 1945):18-31. "'Your Qld Friend, J. Q. Adams.'" 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Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 625 Smith-Rosenberg, Caroll, and Rosenberg, Charles. "The Female Animal: Medical and Biological Views of Woman and Her Role in Nineteenth-Century America." The Journal of American History 60 (September 1973):332-56. Stack, J. M. "Spontaneous Abortion and Grieving." American Family Physician 21 (May 1980):99-102. Stein, Martin. "A Psychoanalytical View of Mental Health: Samuel Pepys and His Diary." The Psychoanalytical Quarterly 46 (January 1977):82-115. Stirk, S. D. "John Quincy Adams's Letters on Silesia." The New England Quarterly 9 (September 1936):485-99. Storamel, Henry, and Stommel, Elizabeth. "The Year Without a Summer." Scientific American 240 (June 1979):176-85. Taylor, William R., and Lasch, Christopher. "Two 'Kindred Spirits': Sorority and Family in New England, 1839-1846." The New England Quarterly 36 (March 1963):23-41. Thomas, Keith. "The Double Standard." The Journal of the History of Ideas 20 (A pril 1959):195-216. 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