SEVEN

A Call So Honorable

“I asked not my Heart what it could, but what it ought to do,” was the way Abigail explained her consent to John’s first call to France. Still, for all her noble theories, her studied resignation to a “negative kind of happiness,” she was desolate. Her “Most Forlorn and Dismal of all states” she considered “widowhood”; she waited four months and was on the verge of panic before receiving John’s first two letters. Reports of the assassination of Dr. Benjamin Franklin in his bed, and the description of his lingering death from stab wounds in his ribs, though discredited after a month, prepared her, if anything could, for the even more threatening news that followed shortly. Rumors that the Boston had been captured meant only one thing—imprisonment of a husband and son.1

During the next twenty-one months of spartan communication, Abigail would weep with relief when John’s first letter assured her of his safety, scold at another’s brevity, and eventually conclude bitterly that writing was not “A La mode de Paris.” She began to wonder if John had changed hearts with some frozen Laplander, and threatened, even though she knew she was being unfair, to adopt his “concise” method. Relenting in almost the same breath, she explained that her “Friend” had left a “Craveing void,” that she missed him for reasons ranging from the mighty to the mundane, including her need for advice about paying taxes (supporting an army was costly), as well as the “important weight” of educating their children.2

Charles was her main concern at this time. A puzzling, thoughtful child, given to meditating on “some deep thing or other,” Charles eluded definition and categorization. It was one thing for his parents to think about his future and another to settle him for the present. It was Abigail’s lonely decision, to make up her mind—as no instruction was available in Braintree—whether to board Charles with her sister Betsy, now married to the Reverend John Shaw, in Haverhill, where he might attend a “very good School.”3

Inflation was another gnawing worry. It seemed to her that people were more “extravagant, selfish, oppressive” than ever, and a year’s budget was easily exhausted in a month. The challenge for her of “studying frugality and economy” meant renting out half of the farm to tenants, and importing goods (with John’s cooperation) that her cousin William Smith, partner in the Boston mercantile firm of Codman & Smith, might help her turn at profit. It also meant abandoning thoughts of buying a new carriage—three hundred pounds for this “light commodity” was beyond reason—when she was already committed to spending $150 for a fence, and sixty dollars more for a pair of cartwheels. To add to her problems, the scorching months of July and August 1778 ruined the corn and potatoes and smothered Abigail’s hope of turning out even a single barrel of cider. In a fatalistic mood, she consoled herself that at least she was not alone. Everyone was embarked, she said, on the same voyage; if the country sank, “we must sink with it.”4

*   *   *

Fortunately, Abigail was not only burdened by care during this period of her life, but also swayed by curiosity. She craved to know a “thousand circumstances” about her family’s life abroad and was able, in the course of nine months, three letters, and two teatime guests, to patch together a reasonably accurate account of her family. The reports of two visitors from France, Sir James Jay and Mr. George Diggs, both “very social and communicative,” dispelled her fears as to their safety and even amused her, initially.5

On the whole, Abigail could assume that her husband and son had survived their arduous journey with “utmost firmness.” At times, however, John, she would later learn, was horrified by the filth of the ship and the cursing seamen, annoyed by the cook for not having his meals ready punctually, distressed by the amputation of a limb, and the subsequent death, of a fellow passenger. Thunderous gales, waves, winds, and the stench of putrid water and smoking coal provoked intermittent seasickness. Lightning struck one seaman and split the mainmast; as they were chased by enemy ships and gave chase, it was not at all clear in the father’s mind that it was his duty—as he had been led to believe—to expose his child to all that had to be endured.6

It was six weeks between the time they boarded the Boston, on Friday, February 13, and the time they sighted—at the end of March—many windmills and sandhills and the village of St. Denis d’Oléron, and knew, heading toward the port of Bordeaux, that the “troublesome” voyage was over at last. Crowds, cannonfire, and torchlit gardens celebrated the Americans’ arrival. Still another thirteen-cannon salute signaled their departure the next morning, and after a five-hundred-mile trek through Poitier, Tours, and Amboise, along the River Loire, admiring the fields of grain, flocks of sheep, churches, convents, vineyards, and castles (and despairing of the beggars in certain towns), the party arrived in Paris at nine o’clock Wednesday night, April 8. Early on Thursday, riding out amid the din of the street cries, bells, and clattering carriages, father and son, accompanied in their coach by their fellow passenger, Dr. Nicholas Noël, joined Benjamin Franklin at the Hôtel de Valentinois, in the suburb of Passy, in what John described as a “fine, airy, salubrious situation.”7

*   *   *

Listening to the stories told by her teatime companions, Diggs and Jay, Abigail was impressed with their understanding of her husband’s “rather reluctantly” adapting to French customs. From the start, the farmer, patriot, lawyer, and bibliophile, was torn about life in France. With almost grudging delight, John conceded that France was “one great garden,” and admitted that if human nature could be made happy by anything that pleased the eye, taste, or any other sense or passion or fancy, France would be “the region for happiness.” He could not help admiring Franklin’s splendid establishment, with its view of the Seine and the city beyond, framed with forest greens of the Bois de Bologne. The grandeur of the houses, gardens, libraries, furniture, dress, and entertainment enchanted his eye, but embarrassed his puritan soul. The New Englander was confused.8

The habits of homespun and cider, of riding circuit courts and clearing farmland, of ardent prayer in barren pews, were too ingrained in the patriot to license him to enjoy life in and around Paris. In fact, it made him crotchety to think about French mores, especially as they were so conveniently embraced by his colleague, Benjamin Franklin, with whom he supped on cheese and beer. Franklin’s pace was unlike anything known to John. The New Englander, who spoke of sacrificing himself and his family to his country’s cause, who pruned his life of all excess, who talked about needing the wisdom of Solomon, the weakness of Moses, the patience of Job, all in one, to cope with his work, was plainly appalled by the pleasure-prone elder statesman.9

Unquestionably, John admired Franklin’s fine reputation and “great genius” in engineering matters, and thought his discoveries in electricity “very grand.” But just as he would not deny him great merit for his role in American affairs, he could never conceal his impatience with those who thought he had foreordained America’s fate by the wave of his electric wand. The clamorous display of public reverence for Franklin as an equal of Voltaire, by an evening’s audience at the French Academy of Sciences, actually offended him. And if Franklin’s relationships with women were too numerous and distracting, the conduct of his household and social life “slack,” the management (or lack of management) of his business was unnerving. Before long, John would conclude that Franklin’s age and true character made it impossible for him to “search every Thing to the Bottom,” that his love of ease and dissipation would “prevent any thorough Reformation of any Thing—and his (Cunning and) Silence and Reserve, render it very difficult to do any Thing with him.”10

The more John was exposed to Franklin, the more frustrated he grew. John preferred to review letters and papers the first thing in the morning; Franklin breakfasted late, and when he finished he met with crowds of visitors—philosophers, academicians, economists, and literary folk, including those who worked on translations of his writings. By the time the visitors left, it was the hour for Franklin to dress for dinner; he dined out every night other than the ones on which he received company, and came home “at all hours,” anywhere from nine to midnight. Franklin kept a hornbook in his pocket in which he noted invitations; his associate Arthur Lee said they were the only things about which he was punctual.11

At first, John teased Abigail about how he envied Franklin’s affectionate relationships with women of all ages who seemed quite ready to “eat him up.” Abigail, amused by John’s account, wrote back that the recital of Franklin’s adventures consoled her in his absence. Pondering the phenomenon of Franklin’s amazing appeal, she speculated that his “Mentor like appearance, age and philosophy must certainly lead the polite scientifick Ladies of France to suppose they are embracing the God of Wisdom, in a Humane Form.” Abigail also owned that while she never wished the man she loved to be an Angle,” she would be as content if those “divine” honors accorded Franklin were omitted from John’s life. She had no cause for worry; John was restless about his work. Soon after his arrival in France, the “grave American republican” was once again tormenting himself.12

In his diary, on April 21, 1778, just thirteen days after his arrival in Paris, John wrote of encountering a “rope of sand.” Almost instantly he was alert to the disputes between the Americans, of the “bitter Animosities between Dr. Deane and Mr. Lee; between Dr. Franklin and Mr. Lee; between Dr. Franklin and Mr. Izzard; between Dr. Bancroft and Mr. Lee and Mr. Izzard; and between Mr. Charmichael and all of them.” Shortly, he would not only complain of Franklin’s inefficiency—days passed before the statesman signed the documents prepared for him—but of the arbitrary manner in which he had hired his own grandson, William Temple, as his private secretary, without consulting a single soul.13

It was one thing, in John’s opinion, for all of Europe to regard Franklin as “the most important character in American Affairs”; it was another for John to recognize that the man termed a “magician” was, in fact, a poor executive, party to extravagance and waste. Even Franklin’s French was found wanting; he was “wholly inattentive” to grammar and, worse, had an accent that was “very far from exact,” in John’s opinion.14

On May 21, John took steps bluntly—myopically, in hindsight—that would account for the “Revolution” in his life, the new twist to his future. He wrote from Passy to Samuel Adams on a subject that lay “heavily” on his mind, and that he proceeded to detail with total lack of restraint. The expense of the commissioners was vast, in his opinion. Three could not manage at less than three to four thousand pounds sterling a year, and one of them spent from five to six thousand. The system was all wrong, he said. Instead of three, one public minister, at a single expenditure, would be quite sufficient for all the business.15

Obviously, John did not have his own expenses in mind. He did not keep a carriage, instead using Dr. Franklin’s when it was free. He did not pay a separate house rent and boasted that “few Men in this World are capable of living at a less Expence” than he was. Others, such as Deane, seemed to maintain several establishments, both in Passy and in Paris, and two sets of carriages, horses, and servants.16

The “Revolution” took effect—as far as John was concerned, “toll” was the word—the following September 14; Franklin was elected the sole minister to France. New instructions, drawn up on October 26, dissolving the Franklin-Lee-Adams commission, would be delivered by the Marquis de Lafayette, who sailed for France in mid-February. That John was already aware of the impending change was apparent from a letter he wrote to Abigail on November 27; he mentioned “Hints” received regarding some new congressional regulations, and the possibility of his being sent to the Viennese court.17

John was obviously dismayed at the choice. To be kept abroad, to be idle, or even to travel to countries where he would not be formally received, was the most painful situation he could imagine. He was at a loss as to whether he ought to head for home immediately, or stay and write to Congress for permission to leave. He assured Abigail that he would not take any step that would offend Congress or the people. On the other hand, he could not eat “pensions and sinecures,” he said: “they would stick in my Throat.”18

Unfortunately, since Abigail had last heard from John the past August, she was unaware of his predicament, however self-engineered. For the first time in their fourteen years of marriage, her confidence in their relationship sagged, deeper with each passing day devoid of the letters that were, she said, “my food by day and my rest by night.” If her letters were of so little importance and not worth noticing with his own hand, she suggested to John that he might be so kind as to direct them to his secretary. Yet her heart denied the justice of her accusation, at the same time that her soul, she admitted, was wounded at the separation, and her fortitude dissolved in “Frailty and weakness.” In searing loneliness she sought her husband’s understanding:

all all conspire to cast a Gloom over my solitary hours, and bereave me of all domestick felicity. In vain do I strive to [throw off] in the company of my Friends some of the anxiety of my Heart, it increases in proportion to my endeavours to conceal it; the only alleiviation I know of would be a frequent intercourse by Letters unrestrained by the apprehension of their becomeing food for our Enemies. The affection I feel for my Friend is of the tenderest kind, matured by years,… by choise and approved by Heaven. Angels can witness to its purity, what care I then for the Ridicule of Britains should this testimony of it fall into their Hands, nor can I endure that so much caution and circumspection on your part should deprive me of the only consolor of your absence—a consolation that our Enemies enjoy in a much higher degree than I do, Many of them having received 3 or 4 Letters from their Friend[s] in England to one that I have received from France.19

On December 2, a moody John wrote a fairly soothing answer to Abigail, considering others to come. He was “astonished” she had not heard from him more often, claiming to have written fifty letters to her. But he also said that it was impossible for him to write as much as he had in America. “What could one write?” It wasn’t safe, he insisted, to put down on paper anything that one was not willing to see in the newspapers of the world. He also didn’t know which vessels were trustworthy, and pointed out that he was five hundred miles from Bordeaux, and not much less distant from Nantes. He also made it thoroughly clear that

The Joy which the Receipt of these Packets afforded me, was damped, by the disagreable Articles of Intelligence, but still more so by the Symptoms of Grief and Complaint, which appeared in the Letters. For Heavens Sake, my dear dont indulge a Thought that it is possible for me to neglect, or forget all that is dear to me in this World.20

The next day, December 3, with the arrival of Abigail’s letters of September 29 and October 10, his tone was far less conciliatory. Her letters, in fact, gave him more concern than he could express: “I will not say a Fit of the Spleen,” but something close to it. He had so much ceremony to submit to, so much company to see, so many visits to make and receive, it was impossible for him to write as often as he was inclined to. Besides, he was tortured by still another rumor that “a certain fine gentleman will join another fine Gentleman, and these some other fine gentlemen, to obtain some Arrangement that shall dishonnor me.”21

Had it been another time, almost any other in his life, John could not have failed to be seduced by Abigail’s candor and tenderness. She tried to explain that for fourteen years past, though they had been separated, she had never spent an entire winter alone; some part of the dismal season had been mitigated and “softened by the Social converse and participation of the Friend of my youth.” Now she admitted that things large and small, even a Scottish song, moved her to tears and set her wondering:

And shall I see his face again?

And shall I hear him speak?

The paragraph had ended in a prayer: “Gracious Heaven hear and answer my daily petition, by banishing all my Grief.”22

But John was unable to rally. He was openly embarrassed, impatient, and even angered. In a “State of total Suspence and Uncertainty,” awaiting word of his fate, he did not know whether to acknowledge Abigail’s letter with pain or pleasure. As he wrote on December 18:

this is the third letter I have recd. in this complaining style. the former two I have not answer’d.—I had Endeavour’d to answer them.—I have wrote several answers, but upon a review, they appear’d to be such I could not send. One was angry, another was full of Greif, and the third with Melancholy, so that I burnt them all.—if you write me in this style I shall leave of writing intirely, it kills me. Can Professions of Esteem be Wanting from me to you? Can Protestation of affection be necessary? can tokens of Remembrance be desir’d? The very idea of this sickens me. Am I not wretched Enough, in this Banishment, without this. What Course shall I take to convince you that my Heart is warm?23

On Sunday, two days after Christmas, Abigail was alone with Charles and Tommy, surrounded by mountains of snow that made her think she was in Greenland. Twenty hours of howling winds only accentuated her despair:

How lonely are my days? How solitary are my Nights?… How insupportable the Idea that 3,000 leigues, and the vast ocean now devide us—but devide only our persons for the Heart of my Friend is in the Bosom of his partner. More than half a score years has so rivetted it there, that the Fabrick which contains it must crumble into Dust, e’er the particles can be seperated.24

Within a week, her sentiment turned to sarcasm.

Surely I have been the most unfortunate person in the world, to loose, every Letter you have wrote me since your absence, and to receive only a few lines at various times wrote in the greatest haste, containing only the state of your Health, perhaps making mention of your Son and Servant and then concluding abruptly yours.

Furthermore, he would see that she intended to repay him in kind:

I determine very soon to coppy and adopt the very concise method of my Friend—and as I wish to do every thing agreable to him, send him Billits containing not more than a dozen lines at the utmost Especially as paper has grown so dear.…25

The angry tone of Abigail’s letter must have provoked her alarmed husband to share his tribulations with their son. Johnny now entered the fray, quite fearlessly for an eleven-year-old. He wrote on February 20, 1779:

I last night had the honour of reading a letter from you to my Pappa dated Jany. 4th. in which you complain much of my Pappa’s not writing. He cannot write but very little because he has so many other things to think of, but he can not let slip one opportunity without writing a few lines and when you receive them you complain as bad or worse than if he had not wrote at all and it really hurts him to receive such letters.26

The son was pitifully protective of the father, who considered himself treated roughly by the world, and especially by the person he counted on most, Abigail. There was not time for descriptions of churches, plays, parties; it was more useful to conjugate two or three French verbs in all their moods and tenses. “Let me alone, and have my own Way,” John begged. “For mercy Sake dont exact of me that I should be a Boy, till I am Seventy Years of Age.” The kind of correspondence Abigail sought would do for gentlemen and ladies under twenty, and might possibly be pardonable till twenty-five, provided all was peace and prosperity. But old men, he said, borne down with years and cares, could no more amuse themselves with such things than with “Toys, Marbles and Whirligigs.” If he had ever had wit, it was all “evaporated”; if he ever had any imagination, it was all “quenched.”27

John was horrified at the thought that Abigail’s effusive letters would be intercepted. He worried about what security he had against their appearance in newspapers, and reminded her that while some of her letters would do honor to the most virtuous and accomplished Roman matron, others would make them both “very ridiculous”: “Pray consider your Age, and the Gravity of your Character, the Mother of Six Children—one of them grown up, who ought never to be out of your sight, nor ever to have an Example of Indiscretion set before her.” Admitting that he had grown more “austere, rigid, and miserable than ever before,” he thought he had seen more occasion, perhaps, for doing so. In any case, he pleaded, “For Gods sake never reproach me again with not writing or with Writing Scrips. Your Wounds are too deep.”28

*   *   *

The sum of their winter correspondence convinced John that either some “infernal” had whispered insinuations in Abigail’s ear, or that she had forgotten the “unalterable” tenderness of his heart. In any case, her sorrowful and sentimental excursions concluded abruptly with news that darkened melancholy into apprehension. On January 4, 1779, Abigail turned to her friend James Lovell for help.29

Abigail had just learned, by “some late intelligence,” of the “New arrangement” of the commissioners. Begging Lovell’s pardon for distracting him from the weighty concerns of state, her query was this: “Where is my Friend to be placed?” She hoped not at a great distance. In their eleven-month separation she had received five letters only, the last dated August, she informed Lovell. Furthermore, she was aware of the roles each was called to play: John was meant to serve wherever he was needed; she, as with all members of her sex, was to submit with patience. Yet she would remind Lovell that this was a lesson she had mastered completely, having been “so often call’d to the Exercise of it.”30

Lovell’s reply was typical: flirtatious, outrageous, and consoling. He did not hesitate, in any of his correspondence with the “lovely” Portia, to amuse himself by hinting at his own attachments to her, to exploit her privacy (including the possibility of her being pregnant) through the most convoluted innuendo:

You say ’tis near 11 months since he left Braintree. I find myself relieved by that period from a certain anxiety, which was founded on my tenderness towards your dear Sex that Mr. A’s rigid patriotism had overcome. He used, in that Spirit, to contemplate with pleasure, a circumstance in you, the like of which in Mrs. Lovell aggravated my absence from home, exceedingly. In spight therefore of his past reproofs to me, I will take pleasure in your Escape.31

Lovell eventually did get down to the business of tempering Abigail’s doubts about John—admitting, however, that there was a “strange Delay and something of Mystery in the Propositions that have been lately made here respecting our foreign Affairs.” Though he was not entitled to write as confidentially to her about the “mighty Congress as Mr. A. used to,” he added that he had not yet perceived anything that would “affect Mr. A. in a disagreeable Manner.”32

*   *   *

To understand just what agonies John endured abroad, his crisis of self-confidence and even of purpose, Lovell and Abigail would have had to be with him in the latter days of February 1779. The finality of Congress’s choice of Franklin left him in deep depression. He felt ignored, unappreciated. He, John Adams, was simply a man that nobody had ever heard of before, and therefore a man of no consequence. He was inclined to think that all parties—in France and England, both Whigs and Tories, friends of Franklin, Deane, and Lee—differing in many other things, agreed on one: he was not “the famous Adams.” Both French and English newspapers hardly fortified his confidence. It was Samuel Adams they touted as “le fameux Adams” in contrast to himself, dismissed as a “perfect Cypher, a Man who did not understand a Word of French—awkward in his Figure—awkward in his Dress—No Abilities—a perfect Bigot—and fanatic.”33

On February 28, John wrote of his fate as a sullen youth. He had quite forgotten, or so it seemed, that he had been responsible for turning the key and opening the door of the political abyss into which he had now plunged.

The Scaffold is cutt away, and I am left kicking and sprawling in the Mire, I think. It is hardly a state of Disgrace that I am in but rather of total Neglect and Contempt. The humane People about me, feel for my situation they say: But I feel for my Countrys situation. If I had deserved such Treatment, I should have deserved to be told so at least, and then I should have known my Duty.34

John had written Congress, he told Abigail, of his intention to return home; unless he received orders that he could execute with honor and some advantage to the public, she might expect to see him in June or July. She might also prepare herself to move to Boston, into the old house, where he would draw writs and deeds, harangue juries, and be happy. On March 3, John took leave of the French ministry at Versailles; on March 8, he and Johnny left Passy for Nantes; not until June 17 were they to embark for America.35

John’s main regret at leaving France, he said, was that he had finally “happily succeeded, tres heureusement reussi in learning French”; he could speak it fluently, understand it perfectly. His son Johnny suffered no misgivings whatsoever. A conscientious youth who had boarded at school in Passy at Le Coeur, he considered the “Charming prospect” of returning home to his Grandpappa, Grandmamma, and uncles a “feast” to his mind. The joy of being reunited with his mother, sister, and brothers, he said, would be greater than all the pain he had suffered when he had left them. He consoled himself that the pleasure of telling the tale of his travels would somehow compensate for the “toils and dangers” he had endured.36

*   *   *

As of June 8, Abigail had still not received a “syllable” from either husband or son for the past six months; justifiably, she complained that she was at the mercy of every hint and rumor. She was “not in a very good humor,” she explained to Lovell; she was struggling to suppress all disagreeable thoughts about public slight and indignity until she could talk to Sam Adams and know the truth. Later in the month she learned of the possibility of John’s return, with or without leave from Congress, news that was contradicted shortly. Mercy Warren wrote to tell Abigail (according to her husband’s information) that there was “No Expectation” in Congress of John’s return, that a large majority of Congress “highly Esteem him,” and wished him to continue in Europe. Further, if Congress should be in a position to do so, he was the man best qualified to negotiate peace, and he would be “in Employ” at some European court in a short time. All in all, Mercy predicted “some New appointment will be Necessary before Long.”37

On July 30, a bewildered Abigail wrote directly to Samuel Adams to learn precisely what Congress proposed to do with her “absent Friend.” The fact that Lee had been appointed to Spain, while John was left in limbo, as far as she knew, gave her some “disagreeable sensations.” Abigail added almost gratuitously that her husband had found nothing “to disgust, disturb or any ways discontent” him with the French nation, but that all the evils he experienced were caused by the Americans. Sam Adams’s reply the following day presented “most friendly Regards” and shared word he had received that John had intended to embark for America the past March 6, and should be arriving shortly to tell her about “the States of our Affairs here.” By dramatic coincidence, John’s boat lay, at this moment, one hundred miles east of Cape Cod.38

The Sensible, carrying father and son, as well as the artful new French minister to the United States, the Chevalier Anne César de La Luzerne, sailed into Boston Harbor on August 3. Soon Abigail was to learn that the “call so honorable” had taught her husband many lessons about the subtleties of the “scenes” he had passed through. Yet John was realistic: “I am more and more convinced every day of the Innocence, the Virtue and absolute Necessity of Art and Design.—I have arrived almost at 44 without any.” The urgency with which the undiplomatic diplomat would be called to put into practice the lessons he had theoretically mastered would come as a breathtaking surprise, more swiftly than either John or Abigail could have imagined in either the best or worst of their dreams about their future.39