TWENTY-FOUR
The Young Shoots and Branches
“As long as I live,” Abigail had vowed, “I shall feel interested in all the interest and concerns of every Branch of my family.” The branches swayed wide now, and though she acknowledged Mrs. Smith’s claim on her “as the first,” distance complicated her concern for John Quincy and his family.1
They had reached St. Petersburg safely on October 23, 1809, after seventy-nine days aboard the Horace, though she did not learn this welcome news until weeks later, and probably first in a newspaper.2
Abigail traced the Horace’s adventurous route past Newfoundland, past Norway, past Denmark, almost as busily as the ship’s Captain Beckford. She followed the party farther, from Kronstadt into St. Petersburg, and had she known about them, she would have kept them company in the “five indifferent chambers” engaged by John Quincy at the Hotel de Londres. The winter’s cold cramped her hands, making it impossible for a time to write, and to keep herself from “quite congealing to a statue,” she kept close to her Quincy fireside, anxiously committing to memory the Travelling Sketches of an Englishman named Robert Ker Porter, who had spent the years 1805 to 1808 in Sweden and Russia.3
It was, of course, Porter’s impressions of Russia, both verbal and visual, that riveted her attention. Already quite a student of Russian history, familiar with the lives of Peter the Great and the Empress Catherine, she found Porter’s impressions, in the harsh February of 1810, with the Boston harbor frozen completely as far as the Lighthouse, painfully relevant. If she thought Boston’s climate almost unendurable, if the “genial influence of the sun” was almost as life-sustaining as her very ability to breathe, she could not help but “shudder” for her children in icy St. Petersburg, where, she learned, birds dropped from the trees, dead and stiff, where water thrown into the air reached the ground frozen, where the sun rose at fifteen minutes after nine in the morning, and set at forty-five minutes after two in the afternoon.4
How Louisa would survive the rigorous Russian winter, and how John Quincy’s eyes would endure the hurtful glare of the snow, posed dreadful problems to Abigail. In her need for solace she sought the companionship of the one person besides John who cared as she did about the Russian “branch” of her family: Louisa’s mother.5
* * *
Catherine Johnson and Abigail had a world in common. As they shared children, grandchildren, and a taste for politics (Mrs. Johnson’s appetite was almost as insatiable as Abigail’s), the two women turned gratefully to one another to exchange family news from loved ones in Russia, as well as information, theories, or merely enticing gossip about the current scene in Washington—Mrs. Johnson’s home—and abroad. The breadth, candor, and commitment of their correspondence are reminiscent of the earlier exchange between Abigail and Mercy Warren. As she had with Mercy, Abigail acknowledged Catherine Johnson as her peer, and was quick to tell her that, “tho retired from the world,” she liked to know what was passing—expecially if she could obtain it “from one who is so capable of describing Life & manners.” She paid Mrs. Johnson a dubious though well-meaning compliment when she spoke “sincerely” of her love for Mrs. Johnson’s daughter Caroline, called Kitty, now in Russia with her sister Louisa. Kitty’s improved mind and sprightly wit, the “easy affability of her manners,” indicated, Abigail told Mrs. Johnson, that “she had stronger marks of her descent from you than any of your other daughters.”6
Though increasing bouts of illness wearied, saddened, and even frightened her, Abigail’s mind remained youthfully vigorous, her opinions as partisan and passionate as ever. Conviction rang through the multitudinous pages of her letters—admittedly her lifeline out of Quincy—leaving not a flicker of doubt about her positions on the President and his Cabinet, on Napoleon, on the press. She was in fighting form, at least intellectually, and the spectrum of her interests was nearly infinite. In Catherine Johnson she found an ideal audience and collaborator.7
At Abigail’s initiation, they discussed the “very unpleasant occurences” at the seat of government, particularly the “disunion” in the Cabinet caused by President Madison’s attempt to appoint Albert Gallatin as Secretary of State. All of Abigail’s chauvinistic leanings surfaced now. The Swiss-born statesman was capable enough, but Abigail thought the public voice (her own included, of course), favored a “Native American” in that role; Gallatin was, therefore, best off in his present office, that of Secretary of the Treasury.8
As always, Napoleon was a subject for prolific speculation. “Pray is the report in the public papers true,” Abigail asked Mrs. Johnson, regarding Napoleon? Had the Emperor adopted the son of Jérôme Bonaparte and made him a prince of the realm? “We all know what a facility he has had of making Kings and Queens spring up like mushrooms,” and as a result, she concluded, “we are very apt to think our American Blood as pure as any that flows in the veins of any of his Dukes & Dutchesses,” some of which may have “creapt through Scandles ever since the flood.” Soon she would despise Napoleon’s “indiscriminate plunder” of American commerce and predict that his action was not “very like” to promote his influence or interest in America, insisting that “power without right will never do.”9
Nor had Abigail made peace with the “venal hirelings” of the press. Russia was at war with Britain and in alliance with France, and Abigail took particular exception to the British newspapers’ description of John Quincy as a meddler, and as the bearer of dispatches to Bonaparte. The American Federalist-sympathizing papers copied the British, clearly intending, in Abigail’s opinion, to pass their allegation “where it will” for the truth, in order to undermine her son and “render the Mission to Russia as unpopular as possible.” Some of the newer writers even exceeded the originals, Cobbett and Callender, for example, in their willingness to “do the dirty work of their employers,” Abigail told Mrs. Johnson. If she had to point to factions dedicated to discrediting John Quincy’s mission, she would immediately name the British partisans in America.10
And once on the subject of the British, her old animosities were revived sometimes in unexpected ways. In the spring of 1810, she went to the trouble of describing her garden in affectionate detail, as she viewed it from her living-room window. She mentioned the full bloom of the trees, the “rich luxurience of the grass plotts,” the early flowering of the cowslips, daffodils, and columbine. One other early flower, however, had not yet found “assylum” in her garden. This was the Crown Imperial, excluded because it bore “too monarchial a title to find admittance in the catalogue of an Humble citizen” such as she. The flowers she chose to plant would “gracefully return the labour and toil bestowed upon their cultivation.” Furthermore, envy would not nip their buds, or calumny destroy their fruits, or ingratitude “tarnish their colors.” “You see,” Abigail had the grace to observe to Mrs. Johnson, concluding this horticultural digression, “I cannot wean myself from the subject of politicks.”11
The correspondence between Abigail and Mrs. Johnson took on a more urgent tone when it included news from Russia. Abigail steeled herself against disappointment—she knew that the River Neva, for instance, was generally frozen over until May and that therefore she could not hope for word from John Quincy or Louisa until springtime. Nevertheless, she found the four- to sixth-month intervals between letters extremely worrying. It was, as it happened, in exchange of their meager information that Abigail learned from Mrs. Johnson of Louisa’s difficulties, of the “perplexity of your situation,” as she wrote to her daughter-in-law on May 15, 1810. Louisa was finding her life “uniformly dull,” and was missing the comforts of home in America. Her impatience with her situation was “excessively difficult to controul, and utterly impossible entirely to command.” It would require, by her own forlorn admission, more philosophy than she “ever shall boast,” to meet with her current challenges. Besides, shocked by the morals and manners of the Russians, and “so conscious” that she could not “in any degree” acclimate herself, Louisa foresaw nothing ahead but “perpetual mortifications.”12
It soon became evident that another factor was most powerful of all in ruining all hopes for even a reasonable adjustment—money. John Quincy wrote about the expense as well as the difficulty of forming a suitable domestic establishment for an American minister. His stress only heightened Louisa’s sensitivity on the subject of finance. Acutely conscious of “having not a sixpense in the world,” Louisa wrote Abigail that every bill she was forced to bring to her husband made ruin “stare him in the face.” John Quincy tolerated this problem very patiently, but Louisa could not. It had “ever” been her maxim, she told Abigail, knowing she had married penniless, “to make my expences as light as possible.” And, she added, she was “under the necessity,” presumably due to straitened finances, of relinquishing society in Russia altogether. Submerged in self-pity, Louisa had gone on to write Mrs. Cranch, with whom her two sons George and John boarded, on the subject of her impoverishment. Never until now, she said, had she “so sensibly” felt the loss of the little property she had once been taught to expect. Otherwise, had her situation been different, she could have offered some trifling gifts of affection to her “darling Boys which though they are in themselves nothing, contribute greatly to endear an absent friend.” Alas, fortune proved unkind, and she had only to depend on Mrs. Cranch’s goodness to let her sons know of their mother’s affection.13
Louisa could not have found a more empathic audience than Abigail. She understood precisely the hurdles her daughter-in-law faced and was achingly, if not angrily, familiar with the deprivations enforced by the meager American ambassadorial salaries—and in fact with government salaries overall. To meet European standards in terms of dress, servants, and liveries (especially the latter) challenged an American’s pocketbook as well as his pride, and she said as much, voluminously.14
Since Abigail had lived abroad in this “connection,” Louisa’s lament over rents, over the entire wretched spectrum of official finance, and, as a specific example, over the fact that a plain leghorn hat with a simple ribbon cost four and a half guineas evoked bitter agreement. In her elder years, Abigail increasingly resented the strict economy enforced on her by the fact that John had “neither riches or affluence to bestow on his posterity.” She wished that her “rich flourishing country,” who owed their fisheries and great landed possessions to her husband’s “exertions and firmness,” would, at the least, “blush at their ingratitude.” She took sly revenge in availing herself of John’s free mailing privileges, the only way, to her mind, that her country did reward its servants. Therefore, she openly and frequently urged her friends to write to her by way of her husband, so that they might avoid payment of postage.15
The outcry of criticism of the “magnificence” of the Madison White House was still another proof of her country’s miserly attitude in the face of European regard for opulent appearances. If it had been her decision to make, she would aim for a presidential salary of $100,000 and, moreover, for a twelve-year term. Her experience abroad had led her to believe that the social standards of monarchical countries had to be met before meaningful diplomacy could be conducted.16
When, however, the moment came for Abigail to discuss personal finances, her general indignation subsided. On January 21, 1811, she wrote to Louisa: “The subject which preys upon your mind, and which you have repeatedly mentioned, is surely no fault of yours. It was well known to Mr. Adams before he was connected with you and can never be a complaint against you.” Nor, Abigail continued, had any of his “connections” reminded her of her financial position, or lack of one. Nor could it “by any means” lessen her influence with him. Further, his honor and his reputation must be as dear to her as though she possessed “ever so large a fortune.” In fact, Abigail said, “I should esteem it a misfortune for you to have carried him a fortune unless he had possest sufficient to have balanced it—believe me my dear,” she had concluded, “altho you might have felt more independent; you would not have been happier.” In light of Louisa’s cruel references to her mother-in-law in future years, Abigail’s sensitive and kindly consolation is poignant in its inability to salvage an overwhelming situation.17
In a further effort to cheer her daughter-in-law, Abigail wrote affectionately and intimately of Louisa’s children, John and George. John looked “daily” more like his mother; George, on the other hand, resembled his father in many respects. He even partook of “a little too much positiveness,” an error that Abigail assured Louisa she had tried to correct in his father in early life. But “the Boy inherits it, by regular descent as his Father did before him,” and in Abigail’s opinion, “Age, a knowledge of the world, and experience will correct it, and molify it into firmness,” she promised. But her best advice to Louisa was to remember that “‘Hope Springs Eternal in the Human Breast’; the hope of returning to your family and friends—Let that cheer your drooping Spirits and invigorate.”18
Convinced that John Quincy’s position in Russia was not “by any means an Eligible one,” Abigail took measure of her private feeling that she and John had just “minutes” to live, and John’s trembling hold on a teacup, or even a knife, warned her of the “final separation.” Abigail’s proposal to Louisa on May 15, 1810, seemed the logical solution to an altogether troubling situation: “You must extricate yourself by a return to America.” What alternative was there, “what shall I say that Country deserves,” she asked, “which will not support its own dignity, a country rich in resources, and increasing wealth? yet it will have no mercy as respects pecuniary affairs.” As a result of her lengthy confrontation with the problem posed, Abigail had reached the conclusion that “to give the same sallery to every foreign minister, is like a Tailors making a coat, and requiring it to fit all sizes.”19
By mid-July, slightly mellowed though no less determined, Abigail spoke of hopes that John Quincy might leave Russia “consistant” with the President’s views and the benefit of his country, or that the entire issue might be resolved by a vote of greater financial compensation from Congress. Two weeks later, persuaded that “when the means are so inadequate to the end, it requires great skill and judgement to shape the course,” Abigail set out to effect her courageous theory. The remarkable content of her letter of August 1, 1810, to President James Madison is best reflected in his answer to Abigail. On August 15, Madison wrote:
I have received your letter of the 1st instant. Altho I have not learned that Mr. Adams has yet signified to the Department of State his wish to return from the Mission to St. Petersburg, it is sufficiently ascertained by your communication, as well as satisfactorily explained by the considerations suggested. I have accordingly desired the Secretary of State to let him understand that as it was not the purpose of the Executive to subject him to the personal sacrifices which he finds unavoidable, he will not, in retiring from them, impair the sentiments which led to his appointment.… Be pleased, Madam, to accept my acknowledgements for the gratifying expressions with which you favour us, and be assured of my high esteem and very respectful consideration.20
In light of her definitive move, Abigail’s subsequent communication with Catherine Johnson is puzzling. She was, she wrote in mid-September, “gratified, at the marked and particular attention” that the Russian imperial family had shown to their children. The Czar had indeed honored Louisa and her sister in the eyes of all his court, and those of the whole diplomatic body, by choosing to dance with them at the opening of a ball. She appraised the Czar’s action as not only conferring personal distinction, but publicly manifesting “his Friendly Disposition” to the United States. “You know Madam,” Abigail continued, “what weight and influence these apparently trifling circumstances (as some consider them) have in the Courts of princes.” As nearly garrulous as Abigail was up to this point, she dissembled when commenting on the most meaningful issue of this letter. “If he has written to be recalled as you have heard,” she told John Quincy’s mother-in-law, “he has not informed me of it,” although, she admitted, she had expected that he would do so “upon account of the expence of liveing, to which his sallery is by no means adequate.” However, judging from some of his letters, she added, “I think it may be in his power, most essentially to serve his Country if he remains another year.” Possibly she was being practical, believing it would take just about that span of time before John Quincy might tactfully extricate himself from his duties in St. Petersburg. But there was no suggestion of political pragmatism when Abigail wrote of her hopes to Mrs. Peabody in late November that the Adamses’ residence in Russia “will not be of long continuence.”21
On October 10, as testament to Abigail’s persuasion and Madison’s consideration, the President wrote to inform His Imperial Majesty that John Quincy, “influenced by private consideration of an urgent value, having desired to return to America, we have yielded to his request.” Five days later, on October 15, 1810, the Secretary of State sent this choicely worded message to John Quincy:
It having been intimated to the President, by a person particularly attentive to your interest that your return from the Mission to St. Petersburg has become necessary to avoid the ruinous experiences to which it subjects you, I am directed to signify to you, that however acceptable your continuance there would be, he cannot under such circumstances refuse his acquiescence in your wish, nor will he allow your return to impair the sentiments which had led to your nomination.…22
The following day, President Madison wrote on his own, affirming his “unabated friendship” for John Quincy while reassuring him, in regard to the letter received from his “highly respectable mother,” that, as it was not the intention of the Executive to expose him to “unreasonable sacrifices,” it could not withhold permission to retire from them. Accordingly, John Quincy would be receiving a letter of leave and a blank commission giving him the care of America’s affairs in Russia until a successor might be appointed. Having completed his official obligations, Madison took on another, far more personal tone, revealing his canny perception of uniquely motherly ways or, perhaps, of Abigail’s persuasive convictions.23
As Madison had received no direct communication from John Quincy, it was his hope, he said frankly, that the “peculiar urgency manifested in the letter of Mrs. Adams, was rather hers, than yours, or that you have found the means of reconciling yourself to a continuance in your Station.” Besides having confidence in the value of John Quincy’s services, “which led to the call upon them,” there were “considerations” bearing against a sudden return from a short mission. Among them, Madison indicated, was the difficulty of suppressing “unfavorable conjectures” in the mind of the Czar as to its cause, as well as the danger of a protracted intermission, if not an entire discontinuance, of United States representation in St. Petersburg. For this reason it was particularly expedient, in case he made immediate use of the official documents sent him, that he spare America pains by guarding against “misconstruction” of his departure, and prepare the Russian government for any delay in filling the vacancy, “which may be unavoidable not withstanding the purpose of preventing it.”24
This last paragraph proved compelling in a way even Abigail could understand, damaging as it was to her private wishes. While Madison would not disguise his wish that John Quincy’s continuation of his valuable services might be found “not inconsistent” with his other undeniable duties, he could not, on the other hand, demand unreasonable sacrifices. Reason was accommodating, however, and the President was “entirely persuaded” that John Quincy’s patriotism “will cheerfully make the sacrifice.”25
* * *
The weight of the snow in the “baldpated” winter of 1811 smashed three chimneys and crushed the new shed Abigail had built for vegetables. It was impossible to move about Quincy, and dangerous in Boston. As much as Abigail dreaded the winter, it was the climate of the times that she found far more “difficult.” President Madison had issued a proclamation the past October 27, announcing the United States’ possession of West Florida from the Mississippi to the Perdido, and authorizing its military occupation as part of the Orleans Territory. On January 15, 1811, Congress assembled in secret session and adopted a resolution authorizing extension of United States rule over East Florida as well, in the event that a foreign power took steps to occupy it.26
Another controversial issue, apart from the question of the Floridas, was the renewal of the Bank Charter, due to expire March 4, and denounced by “Old Republicans” as the last relic of Federalist power. Another “great” subject before Congress was the question of the British impressment of American seamen and the resulting proposal of the Nonintercourse Bill against Great Britain. This was indeed “a difficult time,” and John seemed to elaborate on Abigail’s sighing assessment, predicting changes and revolutions “such as eye hath not seen nor ear heard; changes in forms of government, changes in religion, changes in ecclesiastical establishments, changes in armies and navies, changes in alliances and foreign relations, changes in commerce.” On the whole, Abigail and John agreed that the acquisition of the Floridas was for the best; if not for the purchase of Louisiana, the United States could never have commanded the navigation of the Mississippi, without which the Western regions would surely have revolted against the Union. Not surprisingly, Abigail favored a systematic view of government and its laws, supportive and respectful of “rulers.” If some laws were not “so judicious or well calculated to promote the order of society as they might be,” she was for letting people petition for redress, not for their rising up in rebellion.27
Concentrating now on her “flying reports,” as Abigail called them (“sketch” was another term she used), to Russia, to Washington, to her daughter’s home in the Chenango Valley, to neighboring Boston, she balanced her extensive political analyses with accounts of “trivial circumstances of a domestick kind.” She apologized for her homely gossip about the newly married, born, and ill, explaining that, as she mixed “so little with the gay world,” she had little that was amusing to pass on. She made still other apologies about her decaying health and faculties; the pain of aging riddled her correspondence with sorrowful regret over dimming eyesight, dwindling mobility, and eroding memory, not nearly so “tenacious” as in her youth. Yet, despite the indisputable fact of these ravages, aspects of Abigail’s being remained powerfully whole. Her dedication to particular truths about religion, parental commitment, handwriting, and even punctuation not only remained inviolate but increased in intensity. As though she were confirming her professed interest in all members of her family—“the young shoots and branches” and twigs alike—Abigail shared her judgments with ardent disregard of age or sex.28
It was on Sundays, Abigail wrote Caroline Smith, probably her favorite grandchild, that she was especially in her grandmother’s thoughts. If Caroline could not attend public worship, Abigail suggested that she nevertheless spend her Sabbaths in a useful manner. In Abigail’s opinion, every moment should be devoted to some useful purpose, that the moments might be asked as they passed “what report they bore to Heaven.” The more one cultivated and improved some intellectual powers, “the more capable we should be of enjoyment in a higher and more perfect state of existence; the nearer we should be allied to angels.”29
Abigail’s advice to George, the more “easily managed” of the two brothers—John, she thought, had not yet “Got the Mastery of his fire”—was much along the same lines, and as rigorous. She hoped he would “daily acknowledge” that almighty power to whom he was indebted for every moment of his existence and to whom he was “accountable” for his time and the improvement of his talents. And, echoing the long-ago advice to her cousin Isaac Smith, Jr., Abigail eagerly sought to teach her grandson the value of youth, how it was not to be wasted, that “it is a treasure, you can possess but once.” Now, at her elderly stage, Abigail thought there would be no price “too great to give,” if she could possess the retentive powers of youth. The true value of these, she confided wistfully to George, she had not “rightly estimated, but by their loss.”30
Abigail’s esteem for polished penmanship and for a literate writing style was certainly heightened by her own deprivation; young women of her era had received no such instruction, and she lamented this her entire life. She could not, therefore, stress seriously enough, to each and every one of her grandsons, the importance of developing “an easy correct stile—it is necessary … as a scholar and gentlemen and a professional man.” Abigail pointed out that Addison’s papers in The Spectator were esteemed by the learned as a model of letter-writing, adding that unless one studied one’s own language “correctly,” one could never write it “elegantly.” Furthermore, she cautioned against abbreviation of words, insisting that “twas” would never do for was, or “twould” for would.31
After scrutinizing John’s handwriting, Abigail pronounced it more “legible” than before, assuring him, however, that “there is room enough yet for you to improve.” In fact, she would be “glad” to see her grandson proving “better, and better every day. This is your duty, this is what you live for,” she insisted. As though to conclude her thesis, Abigail reminded John that his father “is at great expence for your Education, and he expects you will not be wanting in diligence and application.”32
Impartial as she was about sharing her thoughts, Abigail moved easily between the generations. It was inevitable that she turn from her grandsons to their father, and the advice she delivered to John Quincy undoubtedly reflected her sense of what her own children had missed during their separation from their father. Both John and George were now boarding with Mrs. Peabody in Atkinson, New Hampshire, and Abigail was determined to remind John Quincy of his unalterable duties to his sons at “this critical period of their lives.” The boys were maturing now, “coming into life,” Abigail wrote, “and it is of great and important concern to them to be trained up under the eye, care and admonition of their father, to imbibe his sentiments, to catch the fire of his patriotism, and to drink from the fountain of knowledge which he has acquired in the various and important occupations in which he has been engaged.” Directly put, John Quincy’s supervision would be “most valuable” to his sons, “as it would give them a taste for and a Love of Literature, which they cannot be expected to attain in so high a degree as they would under your Eye.” Also contained in every letter was the message, implicit or stated openly, that however valuable their son might be to others, to his parents and all his family John Quincy’s presence was invaluable.33
When Abigail learned of the death in Washington of one of Louisa’s sisters, she sought to “lead” her daughter-in-law to the only source of consolation “from whence you can draw comfort to sooth and calm your agitated Bosom.” Abigail was uneasy, considering Louisa’s admitted want of absolute faith. Groping for the answer, Abigail found herself hoping fervently that “some light might spring up” unforeseen, but effective in rescuing Louisa from her “difficulties.”34
The light, when it finally shone “in the midst of surrounding darkness,” was indeed something about which to cheer. Its source was the appointment of John Quincy as associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Abigail was exultant; the words sang on her page. “An appointment so honorably made, so unanimously concurred in, and so universally approved,” she informed Louisa on March 4, 1811, “cannot fail to excite in his Breast the most pleasant sensations.” As though Louisa might need further convincing, Abigail copied an extract of a letter published in the newspaper the Patriot. With exquisite pride she savored the enobling words she might easily have written herself concerning the Honorable John Quincy’s nomination and the newspaper’s conviction that he “will no doubt be approved”:
When the Bench of Justice shall be irradiated by worth, and tallents so transendently great, as those of Mr. Adams, when virtue and patriotism so rare and so distinguished shall become … the administrator of our Laws the Nation will indeed be blessed, if his influence may have the weight which will be due to it, in the supreme court of his Country.35
Abigail wrote with monumental enthusiasm to both John Quincy and Louisa that March 4. His father had already sent word that she was confident would be given “due respect,” and while Abigail promised her son not to impose her judgment “as a Law upon him,” she did bid that he “forsake not the Law of thy Mother.” The general consent both in the Senate and by all political parties “must weigh in your mind powerfully,” she continued. Furthermore, that none of his friends had solicited the appointment, or found it necessary to “encumber” the President with letters of recommendation, was proof of his popularity.36
There was no stemming Abigail’s conviction that her son had at last found his niche. That he had done so she considered a providential “call” as much as a presidential act, one he could not refuse. Again, with the bounding energy of a young Portia, she argued her case as though her beloved son’s survival, as well as his family’s, depended on his acquiescence. In the first place, she held the judgeship in “higher affirmation” than that of the presidency—though both were grounded on the same principles of “immutable justice and integrity”—because the duties were less arduous, the responsibilities of a different kind. Another attraction of the office was its permanence, which would “in great measure” set John Quincy free from divisive party spirit. It seemed also that, with the family united in Washington, John Quincy might better superintend his children’s education. And, of course, in view of his parents’ tenuous health, his presence, Abigail assured him, would “prolong and heighten the few remaining pleasures & comforts which remain to advanced Age.” John was seventy-six, Abigail sixty-seven; firmly, though with “the tenderest Solicitude” for his happiness, Abigail concluded her case: “I will take it for granted that after mature reflection you will resign yourself to the call of your Country, and hold the office of Justice with an honest heart, and a steady hand.”37
She was in high spirits when she informed friends that early March of John Quincy’s appointment “so unsolicited, made so cordially and unanimously confirmed, and so universally approved,” adding, in her letter to Mrs. Johnson, that she would “permit” no doubt as to his return. As the days passed, she grew more eager about the merit of the appointment, and therefore more restive. By the end of the month she was wondering whether there would be any impropriety on Mrs. Johnson’s part in inquiring of either the Secretary of State or of the Navy if any vessel had been ordered to bring Mr. Adams home from St. Petersburg. By the end of April, Abigail wrote John Quincy that she hoped he would be coming to the “paternal mansion” on his return. She “dwelt with Delight” on this prospect, she continued, but her joy was tempered by “knowing how easily and how suddenly all may be blasted.”38
Unfortunately, Abigail’s acknowledgment of fate’s vagaries proved prophetic. John Quincy was “staggered” by his new commission, suffering as he did from a long-standing sense of his own ineptness in judicial tribunals. He was mindful, however, of how his decision would affect his parents. Despite his personal wish for more southern climes and his ardent inclination to be restored to the bosom of his country, his family, and his “darling boys,” the thought of returning home caused him “extreme perplexity of mind, and a conflict of emotions.” Fortunately, in a sense, “the blessing of Providence” resolved his dilemma. His wife was pregnant. On June 11, 1811, he wrote that “a duty of still more commanding nature” required him to decline acceptance. Later, on August 12, he told his mother that the birth of his daughter Louisa ought to convince her that “the climate of St. Petersburg is not too cold to produce an American.” When he had explained his situation “sufficiently” to President Madison and his father, he turned his attention once again to his mother. He now told Abigail that the office represented “everything” that might have made his family comfortable: a settled station, useful and honorable occupation, security to support a family, the happiness of being home with his parents and all of his children. “All this,” he said, “I have irrevocably put away from me.”39
On June 30, John Quincy wrote to Abigail to assure her that he understood her efforts to remove him from St. Petersburg. “I know,” he said, “that your letter to the President was written from the tenderest and most affectionate concern for myself and my family.” He also acknowledged that his and Louisa’s letters to her, on their arrival in Russia, had fully justified her alarm. “Happily,” he now assured her, he had adjusted, and had managed to buckle down his expenses to the “very edges” of his means.40
By the end of July, Abigail knew the finality of John Quincy’s plans. The news, she admitted, cast “a great damp” upon her spirits. In a state of moody resignation she spoke of presuming that it was for the best. Eventually, she was able to concede that “one judge is perhaps as much as falls to the share of one family” She referred to her son Thomas Boylston, newly appointed chief judge of the County of Norfolk, Massachusetts, including the counties, she noted respectfully, of Plymouth, Barnstable, and Bristol.41
Her almost obsessive anxiety on John Quincy’s account was undoubtedly augmented by other family problems. The Cranches lingered in illness, and Colonel Smith’s note of June 29 informed his mother-in-law that John and Caroline were accompanying their mother to Quincy so that she might consult about the unpleasant symptoms of an “approaching cancer.” By November, Abigail’s “Chapter of Melancholys” was filled with “such impressive scenes” that would not “soon or ever,” she was positive, be eradicated from her mind. The very least of the challenges that made the year 1811 “one of the most trying” of her lifetime was having to nurse her husband after he had struck his leg on a sharp stick and cut it, on going outdoors to view a comet.42
Catherine Johnson, Louisa’s mother and Abigail’s “esteemed friend and correspondent,” whose loss would be “long regretted,” died on September 29 of a fever that swept Washington, indiscriminately attacking the young, the middle-aged, and the elderly. With the death of Mary Cranch on October 11, one day after Mr. Cranch’s demise, Abigail wrote to her surviving sister that the “three fold cord is broken.” By November, observing her daughter’s struggle through the horrible aftermath of radical surgery, Abigail felt her mind “wrought up to a pitch beyond what it would bear.” So lacerated by repeated strokes of woe that she could mingle “tear for tear” with all those bereaved, Abigail reviewed in exhaustive detail the ramifications of Mrs. Smith’s disease, as though, by facing its horror, she might challenge its threat.43
Abigail had not seen Mrs. Smith for three and a half years. Despite the hot and dusty six-day journey in an open carriage, her daughter looked well upon arriving in Quincy, although the appearance of the supposed tumor was “allarming.” She sent her daughter to see doctors in Boston on July 10, with prayers that her ailment would not end in “one of the most to be dreaded of all complaints.”44
Initially, the guarded diagnosis rendered by Doctors Holbrook and Welsh was not entirely pessimistic. The lump in her breast was movable and therefore more easily cured. The doctors saw no need for “outward application,” and considered Mrs. Smith’s general state of health “so good as not to threaten any present danger.” On the other hand, they admitted that they could not say her condition would not “terminate” in cancer. Meanwhile, they prescribed hemlock pills.45
Colonel Smith’s reaction to Abigail’s scrupulously phrased report was one of blustery indignation. With unexpected thoroughness, he had explored the disease, the prognosis, and the treatment and dismissed the diagnosis as contradictory and dissembling. He hammered at phrases repeated by Abigail: “present danger” … “may terminate in cancer” … “live many years in present state” … “no applications” … “hemlock pills,” and brashly concluded: “point, no point.” Having vented his fear and frustration, the colonel relented—he would apologize later that he was “ignorant” of the case and agree that it was best to follow the doctors—more kindly concluding his letter with the wish to move the family to Quincy so that his wife might be with her mother. He would find a furnished house or a “Genteel apartment.” He was done with public life, and sought only retirement, which he could find in Quincy as well as on the banks of the Chenango.46
Further consultations took place the end of August. Dr. Tufts recognized Mrs. Smith’s lump as a tumor, advised against hemlock pills, also against anything “to worry or irritate the part.” At the end of September, Mrs. Smith received decisive advice from Dr. Benjamin Rush, to whom she had written about her own case after reading his treatise on the subject. Again, Abigail rushed the news to the colonel. “If the operation is necessary as the Dr. states it to be, and as I fear it is, the sooner it is done the better provided Mrs. Smith can bring her mind, as I hope she will consent to it.” Dr. Warren of Boston, considered the “first surgeon,” would perform the operation and, no doubt, call in skillful assistants. It was her hope, Abigail continued, that Mrs. Smith would “write her mind” to the colonel, and that if she consented, he would be with her through the “painful tryal.”47
Mrs. Smith was conscious during the twenty-five minutes of surgery that took place on October 8, 1811, performed by Dr. Warren and his son, attended by Doctors Welsh and Holbrook. One month later she was still unable to use her hand, to feed or dress herself, though she could totter from one room to the next, and sit up most of the day. The operation proved almost as traumatic for the mother as for the daughter. Abigail’s grief flooded the pages of her letter to John Quincy, to whom she pronounced herself tried in the “furnace of affliction.” Rather than fill her pages with “Dirges,” however, she would “sing of mercies as well as judgment,” and would find consolation “in that religion that teaches us submission and resignation.”48
Despite brave pronouncements and intentions, however, Abigail could find little peace, and seemed stunned by the implications of her daughter’s dangerous operation. She spoke of Mrs. Smith as a “Heroine,” and admitted that her own mind was at times “lost to itself” over the “Amputation” of her daughter’s breast. By the end of December, when Mrs. Smith was able to leave the house for the first time in three months, Abigail was slightly cheered. She thought now that she had better cause to believe in Mrs. Smith’s prospects of “perfect recovery.” Though her daughter’s arm still required the support of a sling, Abigail clung to a positive view of the situation. After all that Mrs. Smith had endured, “what a blessing it was,” she said, “to have extirpated so terrible an enemy.”49
John Adams, who resumed correspondence with Thomas Jefferson on January 1, 1812, after an eleven-year hiatus, was concerned not only for his daughter but for the fate of his son-in-law. In his initial letter of the reconciliation—effected by Dr. Rush’s resolute urging of both men—John noted that his daughter, having “successfully” gone through a “perilous and painful Operation,” was detained in Quincy, kept from her husband and family at Chenango, “where one of the most gallant and skilful Officers of our Revolution is probably destined to spend the rest of his days, not in the Field of Glory, but in the hard Labours of Husbandry.”50
At the start of 1812, Abigail wrote of an inflammation of her eyes and lungs that left her virtually speechless. To someone as self-admittedly “sociable” as herself, this was a “great deprivation.” Still, she could write to John Quincy, and her “sketch” of current affairs, he said, was always of “double and treble interest.” Abigail wrote to St. Petersburg and Gothenburg (John Quincy was shortly called to Ghent, where he helped in negotiations with the British) by way of France, England, and Denmark, always mindful of possible interception, and of the eight-month intervals before letters would reach their destination. In April, ill as she was, dosed with opium and calomel pills and saline mixtures, she alerted John Quincy to congressional plans to commence an embargo of sixty days. The bill had already passed the House, and all was “hurry and dispatch” to get every vessel to sea. They were “fast approaching a crisis,” and what would happen was “only known to that Being who governs the destiny of Nations.” War with England, as much as it was to be “deplored,” now appeared “inevitable” unless that nation desisted from “unjust pretensions and her injurious conduct.” “I think we may say we are more sinned against, than sinning,” she wrote John Quincy, observing that England’s injustice toward America had exhausted all peace measures.51
* * *
The United States declared war against Great Britain on June 19, 1812. Six weeks later Abigail personally plunged into a skirmish of sorts, writing to the Secretary of State on behalf of her son-in-law, Colonel Smith. His recent appearance at Quincy—he had come with two of his sisters, Nancy and Abbe, just two weeks ago to collect his wife—was an obsessive reminder of a disappointed life. John deeply regretted that “such Talents, such Tacticks, such discipline and such experience should perish and be lost” because the colonel was not a “sagacious Politician,” and had been led astray by Burr, Miranda, and many others. While the father-in-law positively declared the colonel “fitter for the command of the North Western Army, and fitter for Secretary of War,” than at least four other current generals, he was resigned to the fact that “his Pride, his Marriage with my Daughter, and the Collissions of Factions have rendered his Appointment impossible.”52
Abigail agreed wholly with John in his opinion of the colonel, both the good and the bad. Yet constitutionally, or so it seemed, she could not abandon all hope for her son-in-law’s future, and that of Mrs. Smith and their children. It was on August 5 that Abigail addressed Secretary of State James Monroe on a subject of “much delicacy,” avoiding any mention of the colonel’s name. She presumed that she need not list the latter’s former services, or the loss of property his family had sustained, or the wounds he had received in the service, or those qualities that “so well” fit him for military command. “It is impossible that all these should not have come into remembrance” when the new army was being organized, she said. Therefore, she wondered, would the “unfortunate affair,” during which the colonel had been “deluded” by Miranda into believing his venture was countenanced by the government, exclude him from further service? These, she admitted, were circumstances “most sincerely regretted” by Mr. Adams and herself at the time, “altho we knew that the motive was a mistaken, and misguided zeal to liberate an oppressed people.” Now, in the same spirit, Abigail assured Monroe, the colonel was “zealous to support the laws and government of his country as in former days he was to maintain its independence.” Furthermore, she added, raising a compelling issue, she had heard from a friend that if the colonel could be “honorably called he should live ten years the longer for it.” And finally, if there were “difficulties” with her application on the colonel’s behalf, “in the mind of the President,” she promised she would “submit in silence.”53
When, on September 6, Abigail had received no response from the President, she consoled the colonel that it was “often observed that the spectator sees more of the game than the others.” The colonel responded by admiring “the style and dignity of her communication to the Secretary of State,” and though he believed it was too late, he appreciated her interest. If his proferred services had been accepted with alacrity, he could have rendered “material” service; now, however, he was having second thoughts about going to “an ill-arranged camp.”54
Vain as these efforts were, Abigail’s affectionate appreciation of her son-in-law would some years later be confirmed and seconded by others in electing him a representative to Congress. On Monday, January 25, 1813, the colonel wrote his mother-in-law that the votes of the people “so flatteringly expressed, brushes off from my shirt the gall of bitterness, which the past administration had very unjustly soiled it with, and has burst asunder the bonds of iniquity, which the present one had shackled me with.” The powers of government had “pointed at, and exerted against” him, and he had “sustained the attack with a becoming fortitude.” The “steady friends of liberty and their country have poured balm into my wounds. They are healed,” he assured Abigail. “I can never forget the insult. I may forgive the injury.”55
* * *
Abigail turned sixty-eight on November 22, 1812. She considered it “one of the marvels of the age” that she had got rid of her “croaking” cough, that John was in sound health, and that both of them, as she reported to Caroline, were “as tranquil as that bald old fellow, called Time, will let us be.” On the average day, Abigail rose at six and, in imitation of His British Majesty, she said, kindled her own fire. She then called from the stairwell to rouse the servants, and returned to her room to dress. If no one stirred, she called again, raising her voice to a slightly higher pitch, testy about the “blockheads” who required a second nudge. By eight o’clock the fires were lighted, the breakfast prepared. For the next hour, deliveries of coal, cheese, turnips, and sundries were made. On one occasion the arrival of a herd of pigs resulted in the purchase of a spotted swine. Due to the constant flow of callers, Abigail had difficulty finishing her breakfast on certain mornings and vowed repeatedly, if unsuccessfully, “never to be incommoded with trifles.”56
Weather permitting (it was pleasant this November), Abigail made calls at noon, returned to dine at three; John sometimes played whist with a friend at five. At nine in the evening, Abigail was often “engaged” in writing her letters, and eleven was her usual bedtime. If mail arrived—especially a packet from Russia—the schedule was promptly abandoned. “Avaunt, all cares,” Abigail would say; to learn that all members of her family were in good health she counted an enormous “blessing.”57
Milestones in her life, especially this birthday, found Abigail appraising “this long period of my sojourn,” recalling what she had done for herself or others that might be remembered with pleasure or approbation. She regretted her “many, very many follies and errors of judgment,” and took comfort in the truth that “vile passions” had never had control over her; she bore no enmity toward any human being. She hoped for God’s forgiveness for her errors; she believed devoutly that “purity, benevolence, obedience, submission and humility” were virtues that, if faithfully practiced, would find their reward. With amiable logic she concluded: “I am one of those who are willing to rejoice always. My disposition and habits are not of the gloomy kind. I believe that to enjoy is to obey.”58
Two months later, Abigail’s conscientious optimism was severely disrupted. John Quincy’s letter of September 21, which reached her only on January 15, 1813, informed his “dearly beloved Mother” that it was now his turn, as it had been hers the past two years, to bear the unwelcome task of communicating tidings of affliction. His infant daughter, one year and one month old, who had looked like Grandmama Adams (“very handsome, with the finest pair of black eyes you ever saw”), had died. He had mourned the loss of his brother’s infant, and now he grieved for his own. He had hoped the baby Louisa would contribute much to the happiness of all their lives, as she had to the “charm” of his.59
Abigail wept, then regained her composure and rode out a few days later in a snowstorm to Atkinson, to comfort George and John. Both boys had spoken often of their sister. Her death was a grim if useful lesson, and Abigail reminded them “that no Age, is exempt from the decree of mortality … that the blooming youth is as liable to be cut off as the full grown Man or Infant Bud.” At this sensitive period, Abigail’s remarkable combination of resignation and resilience was fully in evidence in her letter of condolence to Louisa. In her fervent effort to prove to her daughter-in-law that one might survive such an appalling tragedy—that, in fact, one had an obligation to do no less—Abigail shared her long-sublimated grief over the loss of her own infant, Susanna. She wrote on January 30, 1813:
For ourselves only we can mourn, and how selfish is that served? Early in Life I was called to taste the bitter cup. Forty years has not obliterated from my mind the anguish of my soul upon the occasion. I have since that day sustained more weighty afflictions, but it has pleased Heaven to support me through them and to permit me to live to advanced Age. Let us with gratitude bless our preserver that we have yet so many blessings left us. Such I hope will prove to you, and to their Father [of] your surviving children who most earnestly long for your return to your native country, that they may embrace you and their Brother of whom all the Americans who have seen him speak highly.60
One month later, she urged John Quincy not to let “gloom and melancholy take root in your mind.” While she understood that his “wounded heart must have time to recover from the stroke” he had suffered, she would remind him of the duties that “you are called upon to discharge,” to which he must devote his “mind and attention.” As a diversionary measure, or perhaps as a practical reminder that politics was one of his “duties,” Abigail enclosed a newspaper clipping dated February 11, 1813, noting the election of President James Madison with 128 ballots, and of Vice-President Elbridge Gerry with 131 ballots.61
John Adams expressed his condolences in far more abbreviated terms than Abigail’s, yet his terse note was revealing and compassionate. “The loss of your Child has deeply affected me,” John wrote on March 1. “I sympathize with you and my daughter under this Severe affliction. But you are perfectly acquainted with all the Consolations of Phylosophy and Religion. I feel to this moment a Similar Loss, and another of a deeper die.”62
It was clear, as the months slipped by, that Louisa could not now or ever share the absolute faith of her husband’s parents, especially Abigail’s outright declaration that her “confidence in the supreme maker will remain unshaken.” It was not that Louisa was godless, but rather that her belief was of a more tenuous nature. The “gleam” of comfort that Louisa found in religion and “in God who gives us strength to bear up against the afflictions which assail us in our passage, through this vale of tears” was only just that, haltingly supportive, but hardly all-embracing.63
Seven months after the event, on April 4, 1813, Louisa struggled, as though her baby had died only that morning, “to controul the pangs of my bursting heart,” pleading that she not be “condemned for a grief which is beyond my reason to subdue.” Her heart was “almost broken,” her health “gone,” her peace of mind, she feared, “forever destroy’d.” It was her desperate hope that she might find “Release” from the suffering that made her existence “a calamity to all who surround her.” Louisa’s pervasive sense of loss was compounded by guilt. Her sister-in-law, Mrs. Thomas Boylston Adams, had “at least” the happiness of knowing that accidental circumstances hadn’t caused her child’s death, in contrast to her own plight. Louisa blamed herself, and a fall she had taken while cradling her baby in her arms, rather than a combination of fever, dysentery, and possibly erysipelas, for precipitating what she supposed was a fatal injury.64
Her anxious tale did not end here. Louisa thought Abigail ought to know that John Quincy’s health was a source of “perpetual anxiety” for her, and that she believed it was “absolutely essential” for him to leave for a milder climate. She thought it her “duty” also to tell Abigail not only that was John Quincy’s breast “attacked” (she did not specify how), but that he was in the hands of a “very careless Physician” who, though a man of “great abilities,” paid little attention to patients unless their symptoms were critical. She was “in terrors,” therefore, about what another winter might produce, and was confident that given a few months in less extreme weather, he might be “rapidly restored.” With unabated melancholy, Louisa confessed herself unable to write to her sons in America; she had set her heart on seeing them this coming summer. Should she “never more have this greatest blessing,” she hoped Abigail would assure them of her tender affection and prayers for their “future happiness prosperity and welfare” in whatever station they would fill, as well as her hopes that they might prove “an honour to the name they bear.”65
Almost simultaneously in April, when Louisa had written her agonized letter, and months before its arrival, Abigail had taken a positive step toward remedying this sorrowful situation. Her course was influenced by John Quincy’s recent and numerous references to his desire to return home to see his children and his parents and to the raw fact that he and Louisa were “literally and really sick of the climate” in Russia.66
Abigail’s letter of April 3, 1813, politely but pointedly reprimanded Secretary of State Monroe for not returning or even acknowledging an earlier letter, one of John Quincy’s, that she had forwarded to him in late February. She presumed that “in the multiplicity of Business, it has been forgotten,” but she had not forgotten her original intent—to inform Monroe of John Quincy’s wish to return to America. Pressing her petition now, she said that she was “anxious to learn if there is a probability of Mr. Adams’s return the ensuing season, and whether any method may be devised for him and his Family to get back to America with safety during the War.” Monroe, she wrote further, could not wonder at her solicitude on this subject when he took into consideration her age and that of her husband. Also, he ought to bear in mind the time her son had been absent in the service: “I will not say of an ungrateful Country, because I hold it to be the Duty of every good citizen to serve his Country, not withstanding he may receive from her, ill usage, and contumely.”67
Though Monroe’s separate letters of April 10 to John and Abigail failed to promise John Quincy’s immediate return, they were nevertheless gratefully received. It was “impossible” to say when their son would leave for home because John Quincy was involved in the negotiations between America and Great Britain, to be mediated by the Czar of Russia in St. Petersburg. “His service in that negotiation is consider’d of high importance to his country,” Monroe assured Abigail, “and it is hoped that it will not interfere in any respect with his views, or with those of yourself or his father in regard to him.” Furthermore, Monroe allowed, whenever their son “resolves to return home, every facility which the government can allow, will be extended to him.”68
Monroe had offered even more details to John about his son’s future. After conferring with President Madison, the Secretary of State was authorized to say that in case of peace with Great Britain, the mission to London would be offered to John Quincy. The latter’s conduct had “obtained” the “approbation” of the President to work on both the peace and commercial treaties, and it was of “great importance” that his country have his services.69
The tone of Abigail’s next letter to Monroe was palpably warmer. The Secretary’s intelligence “excites many reflections,” she answered on April 20. As she evaluated John Quincy’s honored future, Abigail’s own past loomed intensely. She knew precisely where her duty lay. She had been “early instructed,” she confided to Monroe, “to relinquish all personal considerations and enjoyments to the calls of my country.” She had learned long ago to be a patriot first, having “submitted” to years of responsibility for a young family, to years of separation from her “protector, the friend of my youth, my companion and the husband of my choice.”70
Separation from John Quincy was not a new or recent phenomenon, either, but toward the close of her life Abigail confessed that she bore his distance with “still greater and increased reluctance.” Now, facing the possibility of an indefinite time before they might meet again, she was both candid and eloquent in her acceptance of her son’s new role in history. Though she had “daily hoped” John Quincy would return as he had wished to do, that he had been useful to his country, that he merited and had received the confidence of the President, she told Monroe, “is no small satisfaction to me.” Therefore, she “fully and willingly” relinquished her son to his country on “an occasion so highly important and so pregnant with consequences to this nation … fervently praying that he may be an instrument in the hand of providence to restore peace upon a just and honorable basis between the contending nations.”71
Abigail’s communication to John Quincy was even more enthusiastic. “It had been my constant and daily petition to heaven for you: that you might be made an instrument in the hand of providence of much good to your native Lands,” she wrote on April 23. “Should my petition be answered by accomplishing an honourable peace for your Country,” she assured her son, “I should say with Simeon mine Eyes have seen thy Salvation.” To God and my Country I resign you—relinquishing all personal considerations.” She did add, even so, that she still hoped for the pleasure of seeing him and his family “the ensuing season.” She suggested that however much attention she gave to his two children in America, she could not—no one could—“supply” their father’s place. “Should you come nearer to us and peace be restored,” she promised, “I should not object to their being sent to you.”72
Abigail had not forgotten Louisa nor her problems, but at this triumphant moment she optimistically sent love to her “dear daughter,” with the hope that more prosperous days were in reserve for her and her children. “I never was of a Desponding nature—what ever may be the allotments of providence for me or mine,” she assured her son. “My confidence in the supreme maker will remain unshaken and my belief that all partial evil will terminate in universal good is firm, altho we cannot perceive how or when. The History of Joseph and his Brethren,” she suggested, “is a lesson full of instruction.”73
* * *
The summer of 1813, though free of contagious disease and promising of a fine harvest, ultimately proved to be a labyrinth of tragedy. On June 1, the Chesapeake was captured by the British frigate Shannon, and Abigail regretted the fate of the “brave but too daring” captain, James Lawrence, and the loss of more than a third of the crew. By July 24, Abigail learned that the enemy had entered the mouth of the Potomac with five ships and one armed brig, that an attack was expected hourly, and that women and children were flying in all directions in great confusion.74
For Abigail, however, the most painful event of the summer was the most private, and not unexpected. Just the past May, Colonel Smith’s sister Nancy had informed Abigail that Mrs. Smith’s purported rheumatic pains were now acknowledged as a cancer that was wasting her entire body. Now, in July, Abigail recognized the fatal truth of the colonel’s guarded message about his wife’s wish to spend her “state of convalescence” rather within “the vortex of your kindness and assiduities than elsewhere.” He added that he would attend the congressional session at Mrs. Smith’s urging, but hasten to Quincy immediately thereafter.75
Mrs. Smith, accompanied by Caroline, John, and her sister-in-law Nancy, arrived by carriage and was carried into her parents’ house on the July 26. Three weeks later her father abruptly concluded a letter he was writing to Thomas Jefferson. He could not proceed with his philosophical ramblings. He wrote instead: “Your Friend, my only Daughter, expired, Yesterday Morning in the Arms of Her Husband her Son, her Daughter, her Father and Mother, her Husbands two Sisters and two of her Nieces, in the 49th. Year of her Age, 46 of which She was the healthiest and firmest of Us all: Since which, She has been a monument to Suffering and to Patience.”76
Abigail, too, wrote Jefferson of her “irreparable” loss. Just one month before Mrs. Smith’s death, and eighteen months and some thirty letters after the gentlemen had renewed their friendship, Abigail added this postscript to one of John’s letters to Jefferson:
I have been looking for some time for a space in my good Husbands Letters to add the regards of an old Friend, which are still cherished and preserved through all the changes and vicissitudes which have taken place since we first became acquainted, and will I trust remain as long as
A Adams.
On August 22, Jefferson’s cordial, nostalgic letter allowed that “a kind note at the foot of Mr. Adams’s letter of July 15th” had reminded him of the “duty of saluting” Abigail “with friendship and respect; a duty long suspended by the unremitting labors of public agreement,” which ought to have been “sooner revived.” Touching on the use and passage of time, depleted health, and the “comfortable cares” of grandchildren, he then inquired after Abigail directly and personally. “I will now take time to ask you how you do, how you have done,” he wrote, “and to express the interest I take in whatever affects your happiness.”77
At the end of September, Abigail requited Jefferson’s interest with tragic dignity. She wrote him of her “great affliction for the loss of my dear and only daughter, Mrs. Smith,” knowing that he too had been “called to separations of a similar kind.” Having unburdened herself of the details of her daughter’s illness and death, Abigail seemed to feel she owed her correspondent an explanation. “You called upon me to talk of myself, and I have obeyed the summons from the assurance you gave me, that you took an interest in what ever affected my happiness.” As though he might visualize her wretched state, she added a fragment of a poem:
Greif has changed me since you saw me last,
And careful hours, with times deformed hand
Hath written strange defections o’er my face.
Her final words left no doubt of lasting friendship: “But altho, time has changed the outward form and political ‘Back wounding calumny’ for a period interrupted the Friendly intercourse and harmony which subsisted, it is again renewed, purified from the dross.”78
Though Jefferson’s correspondence with Adams flourished, there would be only a few more exchanges between him and Abigail. As was his way, he dwelt briefly on the subject of Mrs. Smith’s death, though with obvious feeling. “On the subject of the Postscript of yours of Aug. 16 and of Mrs. Adams’s letter, I am silent,” he wrote to John on October 12–13, 1813. “I know the depth of the affliction it has caused, and can sympathise with it the more sensibly, inasmuch as there is no degree of affliction, produced by the loss of those dear to us, which experience has not taught me to estimate.” In other times of tragedy he had found “time and silence the only medicine, and these but assuage, they never can suppress, the deep-drawn sigh which recollection for ever brings up, until recollection and life are extinguished together.”79
Jefferson’s wisdom was incontestable: time, faith, and silence were indeed universal healers. But there was another powerful element in Abigail’s salvation, according to her nephew William Cranch. Speaking of his aunt’s “wonted elasticity” of mind, he assured her that “great trials are reserved for strong minds.”80