ONE

In Youth the Mind Is Like a Tender Twig

In 1744, the year Abigail Adams was born Abigail Smith on November 11, a comet kindled the New England sky on a number of evenings. It was slow-moving and in part of hazy color, the Boston Weekly News reported, with a nucleus “like a dim star of the first Magnitude.” A telescope clarified details: the comet was “small at the Beginning; and from thence stretches Several Degrees and spreads regularly wider.” Like the comet, Abigail reached ever widening horizons, only faintly imagined in the sky-bound seaport town of Weymouth, Massachusetts.1

Under the spartan roof of her family’s immaculate cupboard of a house, life in Weymouth meant upright thoughts and chairs; pristine church at the crest of the winding road; sister Mary, born in 1741; brother William, born in 1746; sister Elizabeth, born in 1750; father, the Reverend William Smith; mother, Elizabeth Quincy Smith; and a “steady adherence to the Path of Duty, however rigorous.”2

Summer at home was a celebration of bright skies, singing birds, white sails billowing in a blue bay, and sheep grazing over verdant fields that rolled skyward into the hilly distance. Inevitably, these sun-dappled days peaked to a florid brilliance, then muddied and froze into ominous, vindictive winter grays, and then, just as predictably, revived to a joyous green, gaudy with golden daffodils. All in all, it was a challenging atmosphere in terms of weather and family, which seemed to inspire young Abigail with a sense of passing time and a nervous need to acquire valuable knowledge before it eluded her reverent grasp.3

One month before her seventeenth birthday, Abigail, tallish, slender, her grave beauty fired with “keen, penetrating” black eyes, wrote wistfully of her aspirations and frustrations. She hoped she wouldn’t be thought a stupid girl, apologized for being a “very incorrect writer” (Pope was a better “moddle” by far), and affirmed that the reason she entered into correspondence with friends was not merely for entertainment but for “instruction and edification.”4

Abigail speculated at length about disappointments, accepted dutifully the responsibility for somehow having created her own failures, for believing that much unhappiness arose from forming false notions of things and persons. “We strangely impose upon ourselves; we create a fairyland of happiness,” she wrote her friend Hannah Lincoln on October 5, 1761:

Fancy is fruitful and promises fair, but, like the dog in the fable, we catch at a shadow, and when we find the disappointment, we are vexed, not with ourselves, who are really the imposters, but with the poor, innocent thing or person of whom we have formed such strange ideas.

Clearly, Abigail knew disappointments, took their measure with a wounded hand, but also faced their inevitability with common sense. That person who could not bear disappointments must not live in a world as changeable as hers; disappointments being a person’s lot, they must be accepted with patience. “Daily experience” had taught her these truths.5

*   *   *

On the record, there are few explanations for Abigail’s bitter wisdom. One, perhaps, was her ambition for an education and her crushing disappointment at its unavailability—according to her rigorous standards. A perfectionist, instilled with formidable goals, Abigail yearned to study with the “greatest Masters” who taught the male members of her family. Convinced that women played no less a role than men in the “Great Theater” of life, being responsible for the care and early instruction of their children, she mourned their lack of training for this “Trust.”6

Instead, Abigail’s quest for more challenging instruction, beyond the usual arithmetic, reading, music and dancing, Irish and ten-stitch embroidery, was richly, if extemporaneously fulfilled by a subtle osmotic process. A “kind hand” here and there introduced her to the poetry of Milton, Pope, and Thomson, to Shakespeare and to the novels of Samuel Richardson. One person mentioned on several occasions in connection with her education is Richard Cranch, who married her sister, Mary, in 1762. He was an émigré from Devon, England, a graduate of Harvard, a sometime glass manufacturer, watch repairer, farmer, and judge to whom she was thankful for teaching her to cultivate habits that afforded her “rational pleasure and satisfaction.” Somehow Abigail acquired “some small acquaintance” with the French language and the sensitivity to know that it was impossible for her to translate works in French—though she tried—without a deep familiarity with that tongue. Undoubtedly, her knowledge of history and government broadened during discussions with educated, courageous, and visionary family members. Her attendance at these privileged seminars was her inheritance.7

*   *   *

In Abigail’s girlhood, on her maternal side, the Quincys were already rooted in American soil five generations deep, four claiming diplomas from Harvard. The first émigré from Northamptonshire, England, in 1633, the prosperous Edmund Quincy, with six servants, had married Joanna Hoar, a widow with five children from Gloucester. Edmund was elected a representative of the town of Boston in the first General Court ever held in Massachusetts. Edmund’s grandson, Abigail’s grandfather, John, was a colonel in the militia, Speaker of the House of Representatives, negotiator of Indian treaties.8

John Quincy and his wife, Elizabeth Norton, a minister’s daughter, lived in Braintree in a spacious house crowning Mount Wollaston. A brief four-mile carriage ride transported Abigail into her grandparents’ rarefied world, where literate country gentry tended their broad acres as well as their hilly politics, mindful of the “Oath of Free Man,” so gratefully pledged by members who had preceded them to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.9

Abigail, who claimed her share of “early, wild and giddy days,” paid lengthy visits to the Quincys, and was on especially affectionate terms with her “merry and chatty” grandmother, who knew how to discipline with justice and dignity. Her grandfather’s sense of public service and of active concern for the commonwealth helped to crystallize Abigail’s fundamental values and ideas. Melded with her commitment, undoubtedly due to her preacher father’s teachings that “nothing bound the human mind but religion,” and her mother’s model of strenuous goodness and tireless devotion to God and family, Abigail’s credo would govern her future family until her last breath, and even theirs. Her principles, first codified for her younger cousin Isaac Smith’s benefit, when she hoped he might “daily grow in virtue and useful Learning, and be a bright Orniment in Church or State,” resound in her voluminous correspondence with her children and her grandchildren.10

Fortunately, Abigail was not the only young person in her circle who hungrily sought intellectual fulfillment. Invitations to correspond on literary and political as well as social matters were customary; they were formally requested and respectfully acknowledged. It was, however, rare that a male relative or friend initiated such an exchange, as did the exceedingly precocious thirteen-year-old Isaac Smith. Abigail’s solemn acceptance was gracious:

As to your request of entering into a correspondence with me, I freely consent to it,—there was no need of my cousin of a complement to intice me into what I was before so well inclin’d to.…

Riddled with the sense of lost opportunity and in consideration of Isaac’s “growing genious,” she lovingly but firmly advised:

Youth is the best season wherein to acquire knowledge, tis a season when we are freest from care, the mind is then unincumbered & more capable of receiving impressions than in an advanced age—in youth the mind is like a tender twig, which you may bend as you please, but in age like a sturdy oak and hard to move.

In her early wisdom and, perhaps, disillusionment, she concluded that without a “good foundation” intellectually and, undoubtedly, morally, no “permanent satisfaction” was to be expected.11

Another reason for Abigail’s lengthy discourse on the subject of disappointment might be her conviction that her lack of wealth accounted for her lack of a “spark.”* Friends, such as Mrs. Lincoln, might suppose that young men were “as plenty as herrings,” but alas! there was as great a scarcity of them as there was of justice, honesty, prudence, and many other virtues, in Abigail’s opinion.12

Concerning this very subject, on the verge of the new year of 1762, Abigail’s life took a momentous turn. She could claim a “spark” of her own. Her sister Mary’s fiancé, Richard Cranch, must somehow have been responsible for her reintroduction to John Adams, a twenty-seven-year-old lawyer and graduate of Harvard College. The couple’s earlier meeting, when Abigail was fifteen, had gone disastrously, judging from John’s comments. At that time John, in love with a riper young woman, Hannah Quincy, had been uncomfortable with Abigail’s father, thinking him a “crafty, designing Man.” John had even suspected that Parson Smith, who could afford a Negro servant named Tom, a chaise, and a fine personal library, concealed his wealth from his parishioners that they might send him presents.13

As for Abigail and her sisters, John conceded that they were “Wits,” but wondered about their other attributes. He spelled out his doubts in his diary: “Are S girls either frank or fond or even candid?” He abruptly concluded the negative. The “S girls” did not measure up: “Not fond, not frank, not candid.” His superficial judgment would probably not have surprised the sisters. Certainly the youngest, Elizabeth, was aware of their shortcomings. Years of discipline had inhibited any genuine display of emotion. Wistfully she recognized that they were beings who felt vastly more than they could express, “whether it be Joy or Grief, Love, or any other Passion.”14

*   *   *

Two years later, John’s opinion of Abigail had altered almost miraculously. On December 30, 1761, John wrote to Mary, asking her to deliver a prophetic though cryptic message to Abigail, referred to therein as Mrs. Nabby. “My—I don’t know what to Mrs. Nabby. Tell her I hear she’s about commencing a most loyal subject to young George—and altho my Allegiance has been hitherto inviolate I shall endeavour, all in my Power to foment Rebellion.”15

John’s teasing about Abigail’s loyalty to the Crown belied the gravity of John’s sentiments. Only superficially did he conceal his disenchantment with young George III, King of England since the previous October, or a deepening relationship with Abigail. John’s commitments, as definitive as they were life-lasting, had been resolved upon by emotional and intellectual contortions of extraordinary intensity. A profound understanding of their meaning would be fundamental to any projection of the future of the young woman he was courting.

In appearance, Abigail’s spark was not by any imaginative process a romantic figure. Pigeon-breasted, a lumpy bundle of a man, with protruding eyes and sensuous lips, he claimed, somewhat whimsically, to be five feet seven or nine inches tall, “I really don’t know which.” Not even his most youthful portrait would intimate his allure for Abigail, who soon proclaimed openly and with tender sincerity the investment of her whole heart, her hopes and wishes in the bosom of this “dearest friend” and “beloved partner.” Nine years apart in age, with strikingly different educational backgrounds—his as rigorous as hers was a matter of bits and pieces—theirs, they recognized, was an explicit, passionate love. John, signing himself “Lysander” very often, dreamed of “Miss Adorable, of Dr. Miss Jemina,” of his Aurora and Diana (she was Portia only after marriage), dreamed of her morning presence, of her kisses. Abigail, in turn, was devoted, proud, and shy.16

At his father’s death, the previous spring, John had inherited his parents’ house and barn, ten acres of adjoining land, and thirty acres of neighboring orchard, pasture, and woodland. Also there was the understanding that his father wished that he would “never forget this nation, but … stand by the Law, the Constitution, and the real Welfare and Freedom of this Nation vs. all Temptations.”17

Though Abigail insisted that she and John were both cast in the same mold, it was John who was emphatic about the differences in their heritage. If the Quincys were gentry, the Adamses were aspiring yeoman, English émigrés to Massachusetts Bay in 1639, humbly ascending from constable to field driver to fence viewer to surveyor to tithingman to selectman. John’s grandmother, Hannah Bass, however, was descended from the Honorable John Alden, who sailed to Plymouth on the Mayflower in 1620. John’s mother, Susanna Boylston Adams, was a niece of Zabdiel Boylston, who introduced the practice of inoculation for smallpox to the British Empire. His father, John Adams, a cordwainer, was, in family tradition, a constable, tithingman, ensign in the militia, selectman, and church deacon. His younger brothers were Peter Boylston, whom John spoke of as neighbor and friend, and Elihu, a captain in a company of militia stationed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who would die of dysentery the summer of 1775. John was the family’s first graduate of Harvard, the only one of three brothers.18

John had grown up in a frequently troubled household, often governed by “Passion, Accident, Freak Humour.” At times when his mother fretted and scolded, when her “rages, raves” with his father over money made it seem as though “all was breaking into flame,” John would run from the room, fright knotted deep inside him, to try to read in hope of composing himself.19

While he pitied his mother, was even angered by her, he also credited her with teaching him to read and with supervising his education. As an athletic child, he had loved to ice skate, wrestle, and swim, to sail boats and fly kites, and had wanted to be a farmer. Instead, he was tutored for Harvard. Once admitted, his incessant self-search for his place in the “starry worlds” outside, for a “new, grand, wild yet regular thought” that might make him famous, intimated all that he was to be as a husband, father, statesman. A man of passion, intellect, and vanity, he had unlimited need for approval and recognition.20

John taught for a year in Worcester, Massachusetts, after graduation from Harvard in July 1755. Then he contracted to stay on to study law and was not completely surprised, with the entire town immersed in the subjects of government and war, that he had “turned politician.” In the next years and after he had returned to Braintree, his birthplace (later called Quincy), in 1760, aware of the acute issues and looming choices he faced as an American, he was inspired by James Otis, Jr., an impassioned thirty-six-year-old student of constitutional rights, a Harvard graduate and lawyer. Thick set, with narrow, brooding eyes and an irascible spirit, Otis termed Britain’s newly imposed writs of assistance nothing more than disguised search warrants, authorizing royal customs collectors to break open ships, shops, cellars, and houses to search for goods on which taxes had not been paid, especially those made of prized molasses.21

John’s destiny as a patriot would be influenced just as surely by his second cousin, Samuel Adams, the class of 1740 at Harvard, whose masterful conception of the so-called Committees of Correspondence was responsible for publicizing the cause of the colonies from town to town. When John looked back on the series of events leading to the revolution, he would find himself telling Abigail that Britain had been “filled with Folly, and America with Wisdom.”22

The incipient politician, zealous student of the Scriptures, of English and Latin authors, had, however, to face up to what he considered a personal weakness—his enjoyment of the society of females “engaged” him too much. So much so that on several occasions he recorded in his diary what amounts to an exhaustive primer on his ideal female. His description of her role in society is prescient. To one day produce “an Hero or a Legislator, a great Statesman or Divine or some other great Character that may do Honour to the World”—this, in John’s opinion, was “the Highest Pinacle of Glory to which a Woman can in Modesty aspire.”23

Despite his first impressions, John had found a remarkable semblance to this ideal woman in young Abigail Smith. Her appearance and temperament possibly even exceeded his most stringent standards. Plans for their marriage were cruelly interrupted by a terrifying epidemic of smallpox so rampant that on March 3, 1764, Boston voted to allow the extreme measure of private arrangements for inoculation. John arranged to board at the home of his uncle, James Cunningham, on Washington Street in the South End of Boston, with Dr. Nathaniel Perkins scheduled to perform the inoculation. On Saturday, April 7 he left behind an anxious Abigail, whose brother, William, would endure the same ordeal at this same period.24

As John was required to spend the next three or four weeks “in an absolute Vacation of Business and Study,” he was readily able to attend to a request from Abigail. As a critic, Abigail said she feared John more than any other person on earth, and she wished for his truthful estimation of her thoughts and deeds. John’s response provides an unexpectedly delightful portrait of Abigail during their courtship. It animates another, painted two years later by Benjamin Blyth, in which Abigail appears thoughtful, composed, pristinely groomed. Her dress is classic—pearls, an embroidered white lace collar, her hair drawn immaculately into a tidy bow.25

Answering Abigail, John noted that her habit of reading, writing, and thinking made her head hang like a bulrush. She did not play cards or sing or dance. She walked as though she were parrot-toed, and crossed her legs to the ruination of her posture. But she blushed and smiled easily, her eyes sparkled, and all the rest, he assured her, appeared to be “bright and luminous.”26

Abigail read John’s description of her faults as cheerfully as another person would read of her perfections. Obviously not too damaged by his sketch, which included examination and review of “all the Spotts,” she admitted to her neglect of singing, explaining that she had a voice “harsh as the screech of a peacock.”27

When both mothers had been won over to the couple’s intentions—to their immense relief—a wedding was plotted in detail and scheduled for Thursday, October 25, 1764. A “neat and clever girl” named Rachel Marsh was hired for £1 6s. 8p. “lawful money” for a quarter’s wages, and a man named Brackett was to help Abigail pack her belongings. John left for Plymouth with a foul stomach, a distaste for his impertinent and stingy clients, and an anxious heart. Old doubts about his life’s work and success surfaced. By September 30, John admitted that a month or more separated from Abigail would make him the most insufferable cynic in the world.28

Before their marriage, however, John, with “Prophetick Imagination,” discerned the pivotal role Abigail would fill with supreme tenderness in his long and accomplished life. On September 30, 1764, he wrote:

you have always softened and warmed my Heart, shall restore my Benevolence as well as my Health and Tranquility of mind. You shall polish and refine my sentiments of Life and Manners, banish all the unsocial and ill natured Particles in my Composition, and form me to that happy temper, that can reconcile a quick Discernment with a perfect Candour.29

Years before meeting Abigail, John had understood his problem, which his marriage would solve to a dramatic degree: “Ballast is what I want. I totter, with every Breeze. My motions are unsteady.” Abigail would be that “ballast” he sought on his long and difficult journey.30