THIRTEEN
In Public Character
The eggshell delicacy of their mission in London did not escape Abigail: “Whilst the Coals are cover’d the blaize will not burst,” she wrote to Thomas Jefferson. Ominously, she added, “but the first wind which blows them into action will I expect envelop all in flames.” She paused, for it was difficult to concentrate with all the clattering noises of Piccadilly echoing in her suite at the Bath Hotel. Moments later she pointedly observed, “If the actors pass the ordeal without being burnt they may be considered in future of the Asbestos kind.”1
From May 26, 1785, the Thursday of her arrival in London, until June 6, the date of her letter to Jefferson, Abigail detected hardly a spark—if she discounted a “beginning squib” or two—in the precariously dense atmosphere. Until this time, she and John had absorbed themselves in fulfilling the public duties and private needs of a diplomat’s family, critically aware of their vulnerable position and of the awkward sentiments their presence aroused. For the Americans to seek understanding and accommodation, if not precisely friendship, from the British, was to be compared to children expecting a parent’s indulgence after a shattering breach of conduct. The parent was formidable in this instance; George III was in his prime.2
Throughout the past Saturday, June 4, the citizens of Great Britain had commemorated the King’s forty-eighth birthday with poems and hymns, bells and cannons, bonfires and fireworks—the latter tossed into the heavens so that parks, rivers, and towers, from London to Dublin, burst into light. Nor was that the whole celebration. Noblemen and state ministers and their feathered, flowered, and jeweled wives, who had jammed the city’s hotels for the past ten days (and increased the price of lodgings “near double,” Abigail complained), drove off at dusk, in the splendid gray carriages crowding beneath Abigail’s window, to greet the King in his palace. His Majesty, said to be in “charming spirits,” was dressed in shades of pale chocolate, his Queen and children in deep-piled blue and lilac velvets, fretted with silvery lace. Considering that Abigail admitted to an appetite to see Europe “in all its forms,” once she quieted her fears of facing the world beyond Braintree, she had reason to be pleased. It was plain that she could not have made a more successful start at fulfilling her wish than those first spectacular days when all of London seemed dedicated to honoring the King.3
* * *
London, in the summer of 1785, saw the ascent of Britain’s first female aerial traveler: one Mrs. Sage soared skyward in Mr. Vincenzo Lunardi’s balloon, washing down ham and chicken eaten aloft with glasses of Florence wine. Fascinated as she was by these proceedings, with which she had already familiarized herself in Paris, Abigail’s attention was mostly earthbound in her attempt to understand a country for which she harbored such a peculiar assortment of sentiments. Hearing six hundred voices glorifying every hallowed corner of Westminster Abbey with Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” was an exhilarating and frustrating experience. She struggled to find the words to describe the impact; the best she could say was that she found herself “one continued shudder from beginning to end.”4
Handel was one matter, the ballet was another: she had no trouble expressing herself specifically on the “gymnastics” at Sadler’s Wells. Though she consoled herself that the petticoatless performers, both male and female, were well clad underneath with “draws,” she regretted the loss of “delicacy, modesty and diffidence” involved in the entire presentation.5
On the one hand, Abigail found herself admiring the English gardens, so ordered and fragrant, proof of what might be “affected by culture.” On the other, committed to an unbiased view, or perhaps fearful of misplaced loyalty, she dwelt at length on the spectacles of misery which the old countries, “crowded with inhabitants” and “loaded with taxes,” exhibited. She wrote home about the “variety of wretchedness,” of disease and starvation, of gallows deaths, of hundreds of starving, homeless children who begged by day and slept nightly in Hyde Park. There must be some essential defect in the government and morals of a people, she concluded, “when punishments lose their efficacy and crimes abound.” And piously she recommended that her niece Betsy Cranch make herself “perfect mistress” of the history of her own country; no one, she thought, could be sufficiently thankful for the blessings they enjoyed, unless they knew the value of them. But overall, gardens and orphans in balance, Abigail’s major preoccupation was with the politics of the day. Studiously, though somewhat nervously, she reported that shopkeepers, reflecting their opinion of the British statesman, draped black cloth all over their premises, and nailed up signs reading “No Pitt,” “No Shop Tax,” “Damn Pitt,” and were threatening to attack the House of Commons.6
* * *
If London, in all its shades and depths, was a curiosity to Abigail and her family, the same was true in reverse. The observers were being observed; official notice of the movements of the Adams family appeared in the London Chronicle on Thursday, June 2, and Abigail did not miss a word:
On Wednesday last arrived from the United States of America, Col. Smith (late Aid de Camp to General Washington during the American war), as Secretary to an Ambassador from that country; and on the day following his Excellency John Adams (with his Lady and daughter) as Plenipotentiary from the United States of America to the Court of Great Britain and we hear he had delivered his credentials to the Marquis of Carmarthen. Yesterday his Excellency John Adams was introduced to his Majesty, and most graciously received.7
John had announced his arrival to Francis Godolphin Osborne, the Marquis of Carmarthen, His Majesty’s principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, his first evening in London. Seven days later, on June first, Carmarthen guided John to the King’s Closet, where he was instructed to offer three “profound” bows, one at the door, one halfway in, and the third directly before the stout, pear-shaped George III. John wished he might have had more time to study the King, with his dimpled chin and fleshy lips, his passion for Handel, for clocks, for books (he had bought £120,000 worth for his library at Buckingham Palace), for Canaletto’s drawings of the Grand Canal, for gloriously carved furniture and the most delicate porcelains. Whether George had lost America because he was uninformed, misinformed, or merely insensitive, and whether his eventual madness was correctly diagnosed, would be questions to tantalize John in his old age. But now John had to get on with his long-awaited task.8
After a surprisingly gracious bow for a bulky man, John, appearing to stand a little taller before the King, managed to deliver the speech with infinite care, eloquence, and clarity. He had hopes, he told the King, of restoring esteem, confidence, and affection, of reviving “the old good nature and the old Good Humour, between People who tho’ separated by the ocean and under different governments have the same language, a similar religion and kindred Blood.” George’s response to “this audience so extraordinary” was all that John could have wished: “Sir, your words have been so proper, upon this occasion, that I cannot but say I am gratified that you are the man chosen to be the Minister.”9
Though John was satisfied with his meeting with the King, there were others who felt differently. The Public Advertiser on June 6, deemed the idea of an ambassador from America “humiliating.”
Good heavens what a sound! The Gazette surely never announced any thing so extraordinary before.… This will be such a phenomenon in the Corps Diplomatique that tis hard to say which can excite indignation most, the insolence of those who appoint the Character, or the meanness of those who receive it.…
Insults were dramatically compounded by the same paper that Friday, June 10:
His Excellency Mr. Adams was, it seems, originally a lawyer, in New England, who, starving there on a meagre practice, took the pious resolution to destroy the law itself, in which he had not found a fortune equal to his merit. Liberty then, or rather the name of Liberty, afforded him the old battered mask for cutting her throat, and exterminating the laws of his country, which, in times of yore, had ever been sacredly held her most faithful guardians.
The “blaize” so shrewdly anticipated by Abigail was stoked by still another voice, this one in the London Chronicle, that same weekend:
It is said that Mr. Adams, the American Ambassador, was so embarrassed at his first audience, as not to pronounce the compliment prescribed by etiquette. The great person before whom he stood, very good-naturedly passed by the omission, and told him that though it could not be a pleasing circumstance to receive an embassy from those who were once his subjects, yet as the right was insured to them by treaty, he, Mr. Adams, might depend upon being treated with every mark of regard and protection.”10
From the beginning, Thomas Jefferson confessed to Abigail that he did not envy Mr. Adams’s assignment to Great Britain, that it would have “illy” suited Jefferson himself, as he did not love difficulties. He found the London papers teeming not only with news of assassinations, suicides, and thefts, but, what was worse, the blackest slanders. “Indeed, the man must be of rock who can stand all this; to Mr. Adams it will be but one victory the more,” he wrote. An introspective Jefferson told Abigail that he was fond of quiet, and willing to do his duty, but that slander made him irritable and could possibly force him to abandon his post. These were weaknesses for which there was some remedy, however. Abigail’s counseling might help “preserve” Mr. Adams, Jefferson suggested.11
In his own way, with wisdom and charm, Jefferson consoled Abigail. He did not advise any attempt to answer or refute the newspaper allegations, and he joked about their origin. He would not be the last to suggest where the blame lay: it was the quantity of animal food eaten by the English that possibly rendered their character “insusceptible of civilisation.” He suspected that it was in their kitchens, and not in their churches, that reformation must be wrought, that missionaries ought to train them not on precepts of religion or philosophy, but cuisine. Having diverted Abigail for a few moments, Jefferson was solemn once again as he alluded to the behavior of an irresponsible press. “But what do the foolish printers of America mean by retailing all this stuff in our papers?” he asked; wasn’t it enough “to be slandered by one’s enemies without circulating the slanders among his friends also?”12
Jefferson’s perception of the damaging consequences at home of the newspaper jeers was acute. Friends, relatives, and government officials who read the British newspapers, or reprints of the controversial columns in their own journals, assumed the worst. Abigail, trying to smooth away misunderstandings, assured relatives that the news sharks were uninformed, that the Tory venom was due to envious intolerance of an American minister being treated as envoys of other powers were—with attention, politeness, and civility. But Abigail’s bravado was tenuous at best. Intellectually, she understood Jefferson’s advice and respected it, in addition to her sister Elizabeth’s recommendations that she rise above the newspaper squibs, conscious of her own integrity, and aware of others’ malice, pride, and envy. Exalted stations were a mark for the public eye to shoot at, Elizabeth instructed her, reminding her that according to Joseph Addison, the poet and statesman, “Censure is a tax a man pays the public for being eminent.”13
All very well, what Jefferson and Elizabeth and Addison said. But Abigail could not be cerebral about a gaping wound. She was furious, and she could not pretend otherwise. “False as hell” was what the press was. She thought again, and corrected herself: “No I mean false as the English.” She only wished she could have shouted her pronouncements to the world, but she knew she could really confide to only a trusted few that the “newsliars” knew nothing of the matter between John and the King. Or, for that matter, between John and Queen Charlotte, to whom he had also been presented. He had spoken then “of a rising Empire and an infant Virgin World,” of another Europe rising in America. He supposed a philosophical mind like Her Majesty’s “could not be more pleased to contemplate this prospect of doubling the human species and augmenting at the same time their prosperity and happiness.” The Queen had told him she was glad he was in England, and even asked whether he had found a house.14
Abigail was on guard now, hurt, and beginning to talk about people who would “catch at everything,” who were given to “misrepresentation.” She seemed deliberately to school herself against any deep involvement, and insisted now that there was no fear of her being in love with European manners, or becoming truly attached to England. “The people must love my country and its inhabitants better first,” she said; “must discover a more amiable temper towards us.” But, for all her reservations, Abigail was committed to some extent. She was, she said, interested in anything that concerned those she loved. She was also a proud woman, almost belligerently protective of her husband, ambitious that he perform well; in all, she was his driven helpmate. Scheduled to be presented, with John and Nabby, at the Queen’s circle on Thursday, June 25, Abigail was quite willing to play her role. Very well, then, her hoops and Nabby’s would be as wide as any, her feathers as commanding, her ribbons as frivolous. But she would not compromise her own taste. Above all, she vowed to be discreet and neat; in other words, Abigail meant to cope with royal exigencies on her own terms.15
* * *
“There is no presentation in Europe, in which I should feel so much as in this,” Abigail wrote Mary, while waiting for Nabby to finish dressing for the afternoon’s “indispensable” ceremony. With her New England frugality, burnished with patriot’s pride, Abigail had issued meticulous instructions to the dressmaker about her court dress. She was to be as plain as she could be, while being as elegant as she could be; she would tolerate no foil or tinsel about her. Court dress, after all, could be worn nowhere else, not even to the Queen’s weekly receptions, she reasoned, so decency without extravagance would be her aim.16
At one o’clock Thursday afternoon, an hour before she was due at court, Abigail was quite content with herself, in her “rigging” of white lutestring; the lustrous silk, overlaid with white crepe, was festooned with lilac-colored ribbons and imitation point lace. Three ruffles (customarily worn by married ladies) ringed the wrists of her sleeves, and her vast hoopskirt, not quite as wide as her three-yard train, was caught up in a ribbon at her left side, out of her way, since, unlike the Queen, she had no one to bear it for her. She thought her jewelry was as discreet as her dress; pearls were visible at her ears and neck, but those tucked in her hair were hidden with a “very dress” lace cap decorated with two white feathers. Brushing away a nonexistent wrinkle in her skirt, Abigail pronounced herself “very tasty.” Maternally, she reserved “beautiful” for Nabby, whose white crepe dress was embellished with ribbons and blossoms, her cap not only feathered but flowery as well. Still, reassured as she was by her own appearance and Nabby’s, Abigail suffered stage fright. Just before she stepped into her carriage to ride to court—John was to follow with his new aide, the appealing young Colonel William Stephens Smith—she thought how “gladly” she would have welcomed an excuse from ceremony. There being no choice, and the moment of panic having passed, Abigail, once she arrived at the palace, was absorbed absolutely by the proceedings.17
Certainly, Abigail missed none of the grandeur, solemnity, or theatrics of the pageant. She was pleased (or was it relieved?) that the Swedish and Polish ministers, as well as the Marquis of Carmarthen and Sir Clement Cotterel Dormer, greeted her cordially. She and Nabby, with the three daughters of the Marquis of Lothian and two brides, were, in a sense, the “soloists” among an audience of two hundred, waiting gravely for the performance to begin. For all her anticipation she was a bit startled when a heavy door opened abruptly and the royal family entered, the King walking to the right, the Queen and the Princesses bearing down on the group gathered at their left. Abigail’s instant reaction to the King was to find him “personable,” though she did not quite know what to make of his flushed red face with its stark white eyebrows. But whispered greetings began almost immediately, and there was no more time to concentrate on any aspect of the ceremony except to ready herself for the King. The wry humor of her meeting with His Majesty was not lost on Abigail, according to her report:
Lord Onslow said, “Mrs. Adams”; upon which I drew off my right-hand glove, and his Majesty saluted my left cheek; then asked me if I had taken a walk today. I could have told his Majesty that I had been all the morning preparing to wait upon him; but replied, “No, Sire.” “Why, don’t you love walking?” says he. I answered, that I was rather indolent in that respect. He then bowed, and passed on.18
Abigail’s presentation to the Queen was even less satisfactory than her husband’s; both of them, she sensed, suffered “disagreeable feelings.” The German-born Queen, whose florid complexion was only accentuated by her purple and silver robes, was neither well-shaped nor handsome, in Abigail’s opinion. The Princess Royal, Charlotte, and Princess Augusta, dressed in black and silver, garlanded with diamonds, fared better. Grudgingly, Abigail allowed that they were pretty, though hardly beautiful, that they were well shaped, and that their fair complexions betrayed only a “tincture” of the King’s countenance. In spite of her reservations, she did admit to thinking the Queen and her daughters held forth with “much affability, and the ease and freedom of old acquaintance.”19
For the Queen’s court, Abigail found few kind words. Their rank and title might compensate for their lack of personal charm, but in general she pronounced them “very plain, ill-shaped, and ugly; but don’t you tell anybody I say so,” she wrote to Mary. Fine feathers did not necessarily make fine women, and on the whole, Abigail was the smug chauvinist. Many of the English wore vastly richer clothes, but none were neater or more elegant than the Americans—thanks to the taste of her dressmaker, Mrs. John Temple, whose company she valued personally, regretting only that Mr. Temple was so deaf she could not hold much conversation with him. Thinking about her afternoon’s venture at court some hours later, Abigail was more piqued than pleased. As an American, she was not one to “tremble” at the name or sight of majesty; nor did she consider the King’s bothering to “salute” her as a “dignified honor.” In conclusion, she really felt that never in her life was she to find herself in a more “contemptible” situation than when she stood, that afternoon, for four hours, waiting for a gracious smile from His Majesty—hardly a “mighty boon,” in her opinion.20
* * *
The Queen’s question about the state of the Adamses’ new dwelling in London touched on a project that had engrossed Abigail almost from the hour she set foot in the bustling city. She had taken on the search for housing alone, not wishing to bother John, who was so preoccupied from morning to night with petitions, applications, and letters from Americans in need of help of one sort or another, that Abigail thought a galley slave would have an easier task than her husband did. Her primary search was for something “airy” rather than grand, but she succeeded in achieving both with a house in the northeast corner of Grosvenor Square, in the parish of St. George, Hanover Square.21
The gracious, gray stone house on the corner of Duke and Brook Street, which Nabby would describe to her brother Johnny as a “decent” house—a little out of repair but still not one to make him blush with embarrassment—afforded the family a sense of tidy space and privacy. Sixteen could be seated in the dining room with no trouble, but a smaller and cozier room was available for family meals. Upstairs, one could entertain in the drawing room and retire to the smaller parlor, while John had available to him both a room for an office and another for a library. Perhaps John’s favorite “room” was the square itself, an elegant green copse with gravel walks, presided over by an equestrian statue of George II, bathed at night in a permanent moonlight of sixty glowing lamps, by Abigail’s actual count. For someone who thought a man his age ought to walk at least four or five miles a day, John felt in luck living on the square, especially when he hadn’t time to exercise in nearby Hyde Park, or St. James, or Kensington Gardens.22
One other remarkable aspect of the house on the northeast corner of Grosvenor Square was its prestigious neighbors or so the upholsterer who was also the undertaker said. But the houses of the Duchess of Bedford, Lord Thurlow, the Marquis of Carmarthen, and Lord North, which framed the square, though duly noted by Abigail, did not especially impress her, or so she insisted. She was too much a republican to be charmed with titles alone—or too much an American, she might have added. “I have not taken a side with Lord North,” she assured her family, “but are still opposite to him.” She could compliment herself on her “good genius” about her house on Grosvenor Square, not because of its illustrious neighbors, but because of its brilliant location; the air was pure, even though the square was in the great city. Its private park reminded her of the Boston Common, and the bargain rental of £160 a year included the repainting of two rooms at no further cost.23
Another reason Abigail seemed to be so pleased with her English residence was—perhaps with Auteuil as precedent—that she was now accustomed to the complexities of a large household. Her New England Esther was designated ladies’ maid, her duties including dressing Abigail’s and Nabby’s hair (a business she was now most proficient at, her mistress said) and caring for linen and sewing. The housemaid was to do beds and clean stairs; two footmen were to ride the back of the carriage and tend the table and the door; maintenance of the carriages and horses was the province of a special coachman. The butler, the indispensable Mr. Spiller—“a very spruce body” as well as a civil, well-bred man—was to keep the weekly accounts and act as a kind of overseer of the wine, table, and sideboard, and the lesser servants. It was all highly departmentalized, and privately Abigail really did not think she was exaggerating when she said that her Mrs. Newcomb had “done” more for the family in Braintree than the whole lot accomplished together in Grosvenor Square.24
On the surface, and certainly personally, all went better for the family than it had in years. The house on Grosvenor Square, as Nabby accurately described it, was nothing to be ashamed of—a pleasant place, indeed, to entertain old friends and acquaintances. Yet Abigail persisted in maintaining an arm’s-length position; she could not allow herself to grow too attached to her life in England, as friends had promised she would, for reasons almost as involuntary as breathing.25
Basically, the English irritated her; they were too full of “narrow” prejudices, too rigid to respond to her dream of a friendly and liberal exchange between the old and the new England. And why, she asked herself over and again, did the British choose to examine every action America took through a magnifying glass, to view every tiny commotion as high-handed, as signs of lack of authority or government? Of course, she knew the answers, but there was little chance for her to relay them to others. In company, when she heard the English criticize her country and make false assumptions about her fellow Americans, Abigail forced herself to remain tightlipped, only because of her razor-sharp sense of protocol. Their slights and their haughty pride tested all her discipline; if remarks were not addressed to her, she explained to a friend, she did not think herself authorized to enter into a political dispute. But as carefully as she might censor her behavior, she could not deny her sentiments. She recognized in herself a deeply ingrained sense of closeness, even fondness, for this maddening England that insistently challenged her family’s presence on its territory, and the very existence of her own country across the sea. Abigail understood something else, being a fair woman. She understood the basis for some ill will and harsh words, especially among British merchants who had extended credit to Americans unable to meet their payments. The situation was fragile at best. She thought Britain depended on its friendly union with America; she spoke of the countries not being able to “quit” one another. Abigail was uncomfortable with the unpredictable. She was puzzled, worried, intent on trying to judge just how the pulse of the ministry was beating. She was certain, however, that if the two countries did not have peace between them, the horrible alternative was war.26
* * *
By June, there were intimations; and by July, sharp clues to British intentions were in the open. On Friday, July 1, the London Chronicle removed all doubt about the British position regarding America:
His Excellency John Adams has pressed the Marquis of Carmarthen to open negotiation for the payment of the Negroes that were taken from the subjects of the American States during the war. The Marquis has refused, declaring that the American States have in no one instance complied with the Definitive Treaty of Peace, and until that shall have been fulfilled, he must decline entering into that or any other negotiations. Mr. Adams has pledged himself to the New England provinces that when he shall have completed the above business he shall obtain the so much coveted intercourse with the British West India islands.27
Immediately, Abigail understood the difference between manner and method. The “Civil and polite” reception of the American minister and his family by George III and his ministry, as respectful as any accorded ministers from other powers, in no way insured justice to America in other respects, she wrote Johnny, with justified apprehension. Personally, the family had been shown all the courtesy they had any right to expect; admittedly, Abigail expected quite a bit, as she was proud of her country and in no way ashamed of its “great actions,” which had theoretically “dismembered” it from the British Empire. Politically, things were amazingly different. John shared his wife’s reservations and wished, almost wistfully, that British conduct toward his country was “of a piece” with that shown to its representative.28
Unfortunately, July’s unpromising appraisal remained in effect that autumn and winter. If John thought the Marquis of Carmarthen and Mr. Pitt were the most liberal of all the British ministry, he was still unable to say that either gentleman had helped in solving the differences between the countries. The “bones of contention” remained achingly numerous; while the British conceded that the Americans ought to be repaid for their captured slaves, their attitude toward complying with the seventh article of their Definitive Treaty was something else. Withdrawal from certain posts of defense such as Oswego, Niagara and Detroit depended on “certain other matters,” a position it only took moments to evaluate. The British meant to occupy American territories as a security for the payment of debts owed them, a supposition entirely substantiated months later when Lord Carmarthen reminded John of the fourth article of the treaty concerning violations by American debtors.29
However chastened he may have been by the many problems, John was optimistic about the outcome. Though he frowned on the “immense debt” American merchants owed British manufacturers (one that certainly “sours this people beyond measure”), John thought the British shortsighted, and was astonished at the way they deluded themselves with the “bubble” that Americans were weary of their independence. It was too late for punishment, for imposing heavy duties and clumsy prohibitory acts; to forbid, for example, the export of tools to America could, at most, be regarded as a petty reprimand. Those who foresaw the consequences—and John thought himself an able visionary—recognized British restraint as a spur to Americans, whose chemistry reacted most creatively in adversity. England “will never leave us until they drive us into power and greatness that will finally shake this kingdom,” he predicted shrewdly.30
John was equally astute in his evaluation of the King who ruled his kingdom so tenuously. There were some who called the King a great “dissembler”—a glib description when contrasted with John’s thoughtful perception of George’s elusive personality. Strangely, though John was frustrated by negotiations with the British, aware of their limited acceptance of his country, he was still able to muster some fragmentary sympathy for the royal family. By December, when he had had time to study the considerable responsibilities of George and Charlotte, he was able to admire their ability to cope with duties he thought appalling. To say that John was forthright was to be charitable; friends as well as enemies were more likely to characterize his stark honesty and direct manner as blunt and awkward. Minor frivolities were an enigma and a trial for him, and he could only think it “paying very dear” to be a king or a queen, or anyone obligated to spend even one day a year chatting with thousands, let alone hundreds, of people. The idea of finding small talk suitable for each individual both intimidated and alarmed him—it was a task, he said, out of proportion “to all his own forces of Mind or Body.”31
Perhaps because of their contrasting personalities, and possibly because of the King’s fateful influence on his country’s destiny, John was fascinated by George, and scrupulous in his observation. No detail was too homely to incorporate in the masterfully idiosyncratic portrait he drew of the ruler in a letter to John Jay. The King, John reported, was a man who favored order and regularity, who was methodical about his personal habits, who was not a bit lazy, who even made his own fire at the palace. John had also learned that the King shaved himself, sometimes wore a scratch wig to the levees, and appeared doomed to oversee the fragmentation of his empire. On December 3, 1785, John wrote:
The King, I really think is the most accomplished courtier in the Dominions. With all the affability of Charles the Second he has all the Domestic virtues and regularity of conduct of Charles the 1st. He is the greatest talker in the world and has a tenacious memory stored with reserves of small talk concerning all the little things of life, which are inexhaustible—But so much of his time is and has been consumed in this that he is in all the great affairs of society and government as weak as far as I can judge, as we ever understood him to be in America. He is also as obstinate—The unbounded popularity acquired by his appearance of graciousness added to the splendor of his dignity, give him such a continual feast of flattery that he thinks all he does is right and pursues his “own ideas” with a firmness which would become the best system [of] action. He has a pleasure in his own will and way without which he would be miserable which seems to be the true principle upon which he has always chosen and rejected ministers. He has an habitual contempt of patriotism.32
If John, despite grievous frustrations, seemed wise and even tolerant about the British monarch, Abigail was unyielding, if unconsciously entertaining. She wished no favors, but she did expect the courtesy and recognition she believed was due her country; she thought herself “complimenting” the power before which she appeared, as much as she was complimented by its notice of her. On further exposure, she recognized that she would never be a court favorite, and as early as September 1785, she decided never to set foot in court except when etiquette required her to submit to the penalty, in her role as a public character. Just to think about the royal family was disturbing; actually to see its collected members was worse. She truly did not think them attractive, and could find no common ground with a Queen “stiff with diamonds.” She relented only slightly to allow that the King was a “stout, wellmade man” who would look better if he had not sacrificed so much to Bacchus. She thought his daughter Elizabeth a short, clumsy miss who would not be considered a bit handsome if she was not a princess. On the whole, when pressed to think of something polite to say about the family, she tended to concentrate on their complexions.33
Whatever her reservations, London held an obvious advantage for Abigail. She was, at last, plunged into the heart of life, no longer merely a mail-pouch participant. She had always assured John that she was interested in every transaction concerning those she loved. In this allegation Abigail tended to underestimate herself.
More accurately, Abigail took an interest in every transaction in which all humanity was involved; she feasted on the profundities and trivia concerning not only family and country, but coachman and King. Abigail’s private conversations as well as her correspondence, during this time, brimmed with opinions on everything and everybody. She pronounced Parisian rouge, even enhanced with a royal blaze of diamonds, no match for the blooming health, sparkling eyes, and modest deportment of the dear girls of her native land. She fretted, as well, that she might be called snobbish by the American refugees, the Tory sympathizers, whom she could not entertain in her official capacity. She thought Sarah Siddons the most glorious actress alive, but was disgusted, even horrified (allowing for an “early predjuce”) that her gentle Desdemona should be touched by a sooty Moor, a man of African color. Abigail’s further reservations about Shakespeare concerned his language, which was unequaled, in her opinion, for its beauty, but unfortunately also for its harsh, uncouth expressions. She supposed that with some alterations the playwright’s work might be made more agreeable for the stage. Apparently, while professing a desire to see “this European world in all its forms,” Abigail had in no way abdicated her right to her emphatically defined beliefs.34
* * *
Of the trio in London, however, Nabby was the surprise. For the first time in letters to Johnny, written in the summer of 1785, she made herself known, disclosing opinions, appetites, and insights that erase the wooden figure glimpsed in previous self-portraits, and through her mother’s eyes. Instead, a sensitive, shy, lonely young woman emerges, with unsurpassed family loyalties and unsuspected vision. Her bountiful acceptance of the father she barely knew, the void she felt herself in after Johnny’s departure, indicate her deprivation and need in the years of growing up apart from both. Nabby’s appreciation of John was singular. She managed to catch him at his best angle; what others viewed as awkward or blunt behavior, she termed candor, openness, integrity—all the cherished qualities she would wish to inherit from her father. It was a case of loyal and mutual admiration. Nabby bloomed in her tentative way; she teasingly referred to herself as “my Ladyship,” as the “Honourable Miss Adams you know,” while a proud, affectionate father talked about her blend of “drollery and modesty” when others saw acquiescence and even sadness.35
Nabby’s relationship with Johnny was of another order. He was not only her brother, but her companion and friend. The finality of their separation almost devastated her. Now the arrival of his letters at Grosvenor Square were apt to be the main event of any of her days—tea or chocolate grew cold, bread-and-butter squares turned soggy, as the seemingly diffident sister was magnetized by every word he wrote.36
In return, in her room over the breakfast quarters, she pulled up the green velvet–cushioned chair to her desk, rolled back its louvered dome, glanced fleetingly over the rooftops out her window (she counted more than one hundred chimneys one day) and absorbed herself in the writing of one of the dozens of encyclopedic letters to her “dearest of brothers.” She wrote with mournful tenderness, without restraint, as she might have to a lover. “Every day, hour, and minute, mon chere frere, pains me more and more,” she confided:
I would walk, my Brother is gone—I would ride, my Brother is gone. I would retire to my chamber alas I meet him there. I would meet him in his apartment, but where is JQA? I would go to my work and he would read to me, but alas, this is passed, and I am to draw the comparison between Auteuil and Grosvenor Square and sigh and—and wish to recall the former.37
Methodically, Nabby went about scheduling her life in her brother’s absence. It would obviously have been different had he been with her, or if she had been “blessed” with a sister who might have shared the amusements offered, made the invitations to assemblies and balls more welcome. Since this was not the case, she was convinced that happiness lay in performing secretarial duties for her father and Thomas Jefferson, which included deciphering their special code, and tending to her private correspondence. Johnny’s letters, in this period particularly, were especially meaningful to Nabby; they were nearly tangible links meant to reinforce a relationship of fleeting duration and stunted promise.38
Nabby wished to make a pact with her brother to ease their separation. She wrote pitiably that they had once been strangers and now were nearly strangers again, with a difference—by “constant and unreserved” communications they would not lose knowledge of each other’s sentiments and dispositions. “Tell me all that I am entitled to know of what passes within your own mind and from what sources your derive pleasure and from what you receive pain,” she begged Johnny. She seemed to be telling him that having found roots, she could hardly bear to crush them, and that she needed his love and his help, and revered his opinions:
Tell me also all that you wish to, respecting myself or others. Remind me of all my errors, mistakes, and foibles, and convince my judgment. Guide my opinions and may you also approve of all past present and future decisions.… If I ever take any important step contrary to your judgment it will be because you aren’t present to judge it.39
The beauty of their correspondence was that Johnny fulfilled his role with affectionate generosity. Erudite and compassionate, he allowed that it would be a “mortification” to him to hear from Nabby less frequently than she had promised. In return, he vowed to set apart half an hour weekly to write to her. In the brief intimacy of their exchange, the summer and winter of 1785 and 1786, the two roamed through an amazingly broad field of subjects, including talk about flirtations and aspirations, about courts and customs, about women’s education and about romance. As might be expected, the letters were as revealing of the brother as the sister.40
Johnny’s interests, contrary to his mother’s opinion, were not confined to Roman and Greek literature. Wonderfully normal for his age, he confessed to finding one young woman, who was staying with Aunt and Uncle Shaw, “uncommonly interesting,” elaborating that she was “exceedingly well proportioned, had a fine shape, very fair complexion.” In further chitchat, Johnny referred to another subject he thought of interest to Nabby, the education of the young ladies of Boston, but here his enthusiasm waned drastically.41
Americans had no theaters and no masquerades, but they did have assemblies and balls, a surfeit of them in Johnny’s judgment, and the most “ridiculous” way of spending time that was ever invented. American women went into company too young, and talked nonsense too fluently, while European women seemed to receive an excellent education before they were introduced into the world. In particular, the young ladies of Boston offended him because they seemed to find it beneath their dignity to know anything but how to dance and talk scandal—and “for this last particular,” he insisted, “they have attained great perfection.” In all these sentiments, Johnny assured his sister, he spoke “not the truth only, but all the Truth,” and nothing, he warned, was meant for repetition.42
Undoubtedly, John Quincy set the tone of their correspondence; certainly, Nabby sustained it. Loving, assertive, even mischievous, she wrote now of American visitors and drunken coachmen, of breakfast at 4:00 P.M. and dinner at 11:00 P.M. (“ridiculous beings these are”), and refused to permit the glorification of European women. Englishwomen were too masculine in their dress, in her opinion, and as far as their talents for conversation were concerned, they seemed to reach the height of sociability when they managed to say “yes” and “no.” Nabby, in droll spirits, did not hesitate to tease Johnny about an old flirtation. Careful to avoid names, she merely asked in sisterly fashion: “Does not your heart go pit a pit, now bounce, as if it would break your rib?”43
When Nabby was serious, which was most of the time, she wrote as intelligent but largely unschooled young women had written to their formally educated brothers for generations. She was candid about encouraging Johnny’s criticism, about needing his approval; she wished to know whether her letters were “too particular,” whether her brother found himself “informed” by her scribbling, and was pleased by it. The unique aspect of the correspondence was its complete contradiction of the uninspiring impression Nabby made on others, as well as herself, convinced as she was that she lacked willpower and tended to be dutiful and joyless. For the most ephemeral of moments, the girl who claimed she was not fond of “very laughing characters,” who denied any pretense to soaring imagination, revealed aspirations and curiosity that would be tragically aborted. “Above all things,” she confided to her brother, she aspired to join a party of travelers in a trip around the world.
I cant see why People who have the inclination and ability, which to be sure is the most essential of the two, should not gratify themselves by indulging it and seeing as many and various parts of the world as it should lead them to if they are possessed of proper principles. To explore would not injure them but make them wiser and better and happier.44
Though she had appeared to frown rather than laugh, to reject rather than accept, Nabby was fully aware of the opportunity her new life abroad had afforded her. “Pray dont you feel a great deal wiser than if you had never been outside the limits of the State of Massachusetts Bay?” she asked her brother.45
Something else charmed her about her travels. She understood and rather enjoyed her elevated prestige, and relished the news that her friends at home were impressed with her visits to the Tower of London, to St. Paul’s Cathedral, to George III’s court. Their country had a “wonderful likeing,” she told her brother, for those who could say they had been “here and there.” As Nabby seemed to enjoy sharing her adventures “here and there,” she recorded her days on an almost hourly basis, from breakfast to teatime, from theater to ballroom, from millinery to mantua-maker. A spontaneous reporter, she described the Prince of Wales as very fat and supposed his careless, lounging air was what was generally referred to as ease and politeness; the Princess Royal, though the handsomest member of the family, shared with the rest an expression of “great vacancy.” The Queen, she went on, was a “haughty Proud imperious dame” whose countenance was “hard and unfeeling as if carved out of an oak knoll.” And “Thank Heaven” she did not feel dependent on the Queen’s frowns and smiles.46
No doubt, Nabby was in high gear now, every syllable her mother’s daughter. Her pen flourished with confidence, bristled with opinion. She exercised restraint on only one subject and one person: her references to her father’s secretary were so circumspect that initially it was impossible for her brother to surmise Colonel William Stephens Smith’s precise relationship with his sister. But if Johnny was oblivious of this newcomer’s role, his mother was not. Her awareness of his possible position in her family was mounting. So was her appreciation of the change he had wrought in their lives, and in Nabby’s particularly. Abigail’s mood these days depended, more than she admitted, on Nabby’s, and there seemed to be no question that Nabby was happy for the first time in more months than her mother cared to count. Here it was September—they had known the colonel since June—and their lives were brighter for his presence, a fact that Nabby acknowledged most directly.
Shyly, Nabby told John Quincy of her father’s delight in Colonel Smith, of his pleasure with his “Principles and Sentiments as they respect his appointment with him.” Next she related an outrageously flattering incident that could not help but endear the colonel to her. One afternoon he had switched carriages, jumping from his into hers, waving instructions to his companion of seconds ago to proceed on his own to call on Mr. Adams. “Perhaps you will say the Colonel sacrificed politeness to gallantry,” a radiant Nabby suggested to her brother, obviously forgoing such a reservation. More definitively, she wrote: “Mamma I suppose will tell you in what relation this Gentleman is Considered in this family—and you my Brother know that your approbation is dear to me.”47
Approbation was the key word now. If approval was important to Nabby, it was even more so to Abigail. If there was one potential flaw in the romance between the colonel and her daughter, it was the possibility that those who were aware of Nabby’s commitment to Royall Tyler would consider her hasty, careless, or frivolous—or all three—in her new bond with William Smith. But these would be people, Abigail reasoned, who did not know that Nabby had ended her relationship with Tyler months earlier, to the relief of her parents, whose doubts Mary Cranch cultivated relentlessly. Though Cotton Tufts’s reports were more objective, they too did nothing to dispel accumulating evidence against Tyler. Between both aunts, Uncle Tufts, various cousins on one side of the ocean, and Nabby and Abigail on the other, a dozen quills were at work scratching out messages across two continents that doomed one romance as it prepared for another. In retrospect, the turn of Nabby’s affairs was hardly surprising. Rather, it seemed predestined, the way having been studiously prepared before she had even sailed out of Boston Harbor little more than a year before.48