In 1784 John Adams would advise his son that “there is no accomplishment more useful or reputable, or which conduces more to the happiness of life to a man of business or of leisure, than the art of writing letters. . . . The habit you now form will go with you through life. Spare no pains then to begin well. Never write in haste. Suffer no careless scroll ever to go out of your hand. Take time to think, even upon the most trifling card.”1
Certainly by 1779, John Quincy had already received the message that the effort of writing and writing well was important, and so he began his early journal with this title page inscription:
A
Journal By Me
JQA
Vol:
1st.
But the title page was revised, the contents made more specific on the inside cover:
A Journal by J Q A
to
begun Friday
12th of November
1779.
That day on one of 11 sheets of paper he had ruled and bound into a booklet, 7 x 43⁄4 inches, John Quincy, age 12, wrote: “This morning at about 11 o’clock I took leave of my Mamma, my sister, and brother Tommy and went to Boston with Mr. Thaxter, in order to go on board the frigate the Sensible of 28 twelve pounders.” He would see his mother and sister again five years later on July 30, 1784, and his brother on his return to America one year after that.2
This was the beginning of John Quincy’s earnest attempt to honor his father’s wishes. But easy as this practice of journaling appeared to be, he wrote later, it required one quality “not very common among men, and yet scarcer among boys—perseverance. I had it not.” His journal soon became “irksome.” He ceased writing a journal and would do so several times before resuming it faithfully in 1795 for the rest of his life.3
Still, despite his protestation, he at once proved himself to have the ear and eye of an instinctive diarist and a born historian, his thriving curiosity leavened by a skeptic’s humor (perhaps unintentional at times) and a keen and honest pen that sharpened with maturity. Intrigued by details, he was enthralled by numbers, nurturing an affinity for lists and charts with compelling patience. On board the Sensible, he decided to list the names of the officers and principal passengers in categories. He placed American gentlemen in a separate category; another, boys, included himself and his new friend Samuel Cooper Johonnot. In retrospect, it seems unsurprising that as an adult he would initiate a unified system for the United States in his milestone Report on Weights and Measures that was to be regarded as “a classic in the historiograph of modern science.”4
On Saturday, November 13, he was joined by his Papa and his brother Charles. Together they boarded the ship at about four that afternoon and took their lodgings, Charles to room with Papa and John Quincy with Thaxter. The ship filled up over the next two days, about 350 passengers in all. Francis Dana, who was accompanying John Adams as his mission secretary and chargé d’affaires, came aboard, followed by Captain Tucker, with whom they had made their first voyage on the Boston. Tucker warned about the presence of two British ships and a brig off Cape Ann. “We were very glad he told us of it,” John Quincy wrote, “so that now we can take proper measure for shunning them.”5
They set sail on Monday, November 15, accompanied by the chasse marée, the brig Courier de L’Europe, returning to Europe. No question but that John Quincy anticipated the hazards implicit in this ocean voyage. Just 200 leagues out, on November 20, he addressed a letter: “Mrs. John Adams Braintree near Boston, To Be Sunk in Case of Danger.” Then, as though to reassure his mother in case she imagined the worst, he spoke of his new young friend Sammy Cooper, “a very agreeable young gentleman who makes me more happy on the voyage than I should have been without him; as to his language I have not heard him say any thing amiss till now.”6
Sounding very much like the seasoned traveler, he bravely and repeatedly attempted to dismiss the vagaries of the wind that gave way to a continued gale and the subsequent quiet as “nothing remarkable.” “Sailors,” he noted, “say that when there is a bad wind drink a bowl of punch upon the capstan and the wind will come right. Mr. Dana, Mr. Allen (a Boston merchant) and Mr. Thaxter try’d the experiment and the wind changed and came fair; there’s superstition for you,” he concluded.7
The weather grew rougher and on Thursday, November 25, John Quincy had the first sign that the Courier was in trouble. She lost her foremast, the Sensible lay by; hours later she recovered it and they set sail again. The next day, early on, “every face [was] fill’d with contentment,” but only for a short while. In raging wind and sea the Courier lost her foremast for a second time “and we were obliged to leave her.” John Quincy had recounted the tragedy with reticence, but still—“O! I had like to have forgot that . . . night.” Francis Dana’s journal elaborated somewhat: the tempest carried their own ship at such a speed, at a turbulent 76 leagues, that they could be of no help and sadly, “There were about thirty souls on board . . . one a woman. Heaven protect them from further harm.”8
“The ship is very leaky,” John Quincy noted on Monday. As the ship rolled back and forth, amid continued squalls, thunder and lightning, passengers were called to the pump four times a day, at 8 a.m., 12 noon, and 4 and 8 p.m. At noon the next day working the pump, the beam struck his head and hurt him. On Friday, the captain announced his decision to head for Spain to search the ship to see if he could find the source of the leak—they were 180 leagues from Cape Finisterre.9
By Sunday, December 5, hoping to see land, John Quincy and Charles took turns at their father’s porthole. At night John Quincy was not sure if he saw dolphins or porpoises; it was too dark to make the distinction. He could only write in his journal during the day because the captain forbade light at night for fear of British frigates. When the next night some sailors cried “land, land,” the fog was deep, and it was only early the next morning that they could see plainly and clearly that they had arrived at the coast of Spain at Ferrol.10
John Quincy only hinted at the bleakness, never mind the danger of these last weeks: “One thing which is remarkable is that all our voyage,” he wrote “we have not had once the sun set clear.”11
The port entrance to the city of Ferrol was narrow, only a mile wide; the city was small but the houses seemed to be well built; the large building in the middle appeared to be a monastery. With at least this first effort behind him, the diarist was relieved to claim “Thus have I given a small description of this place.” His father, however, allowed himself not a moment’s respite. He needed to focus on getting to their intended destination: Paris.12
All of this uncertainty, especially when his family was involved, was an “embarrassment” to John Adams. He worried about whether to travel to Paris by land with the dangers of crossing the Pyrenees or to wait for the frigate, a two-month prospect. There was also the question of suitable accommodations and, as always, expenses, and he was all too aware that the entire party faced a “very difficult” time. At least he could comfort himself on how much greater his problem would have been if the rest of his family had been traveling with him.13
Yet he remained true to form. On this “unexpected journey,” he was honestly concerned about his children’s welfare, but he could never, under any circumstances, allow physical hardship to excuse or interfere with their intellectual growth. As he and the children had to be in Spain for some weeks, he was determined to acquire the language of the country “as fast as possible.” Almost immediately he headed for a bookseller, and soon the children as well as the rest of the group were studying the language. He had flattered himself, he later admitted, that in a month he should be able to read, make himself understood, as well as understand the Spanish, but found instead that a language was very difficult to acquire “especially by persons in middle life.”14
John Quincy began his second set of notes on the tenth and meant to keep them throughout December. He was 12 years, 5 months old, at his most earnest, capable beyond his years of perceptive anecdote and subtle portraiture. The young French consul, for instance, who came to help them in La Coruña was, according to John Quincy, “about 35 years of age. He is pitted with the smallpox without which he would be handsome. He is a little tall but not overgrown. He is very sociable and very polite.”15
But clearly John Quincy would never be content in the role of mere observer or reporter. In the privacy of his diary, his unique and premature brand of intellectual skepticism fostered irreverent musing on a spectrum of subjects, including patriotism, religion and Christmas observance.
On Tuesday, December 14, the muleteers came and carried the travelers’ things down to a boat, in preparation for their departure the next morning to cross the bay to La Coruña, five leagues away and 30 miles north of the religious shrine of Santiago de Compostela, the first leg of their overland journey to Paris. The officers of the ship were French and Spanish, and wore cockades of red and white honoring the alliance between France and Spain. But Captain Chavagnes wished all his officers to add black to the color scheme; as France was now allied to the 13 United States of America, “it was only what was due for the politeness that he had been used with in Boston. There’s an example of French compliments,” John Quincy commented with wry humor in the privacy of his diary.16
On Wednesday, December 15, at 5 a.m., the party of 13 dressed and, warmed with cups of Spanish chocolate, set out “like so many Don Quixote’s and Sancho Panza’s or Hudibras’s and Ralpho’s” for La Coruña. John Quincy relished the imagery: Samuel Butler’s farce come to life, their three mule-drawn carriages trundling through corn and turnip fields, in the month of December verdant and plentiful as though it were May.17
From his room in the tavern at La Coruña, he had a view of rocks and mountains, sea and town; the breaking waves were as beautiful a sight as he had ever seen in his life. But he was curious about the three monasteries and two convents. Disappointed that he did not witness a nun take her orders, he was puzzled by the young women who would choose to be “shut up in convents and never see any men except the friars.” As to their reasons for embracing such a restrictive life, he concluded, “Sometimes the thing is this. In these European countries a girl must marry the person that her parents . . . choose for her. If they are ever so obstinate as to absolutely refuse to marry a person. . . .”18
“This is a great day with the Roman Catholics,” he wrote on Saturday, “Fête de Nousailles,” Christmas. “However I find they don’t mind it much. They dress up and go to mass but after that’s over, all is . . . But stop. I must not say any thing against their religion while I am in their country.”19
On Sunday John Quincy began his third journal. By now he was growing impatient. “One look at the chaises and any body would think that they were as old as Noah’s ark made in the year one.” Their itinerary was arduous: John Quincy wrote of bad and muddy roads, of “prodigious mountains” that caused the axle of one of their carriages to break, and of a “miserable cottage” where they stayed in a room filled with straw, grain, chests, barrels and chestnuts—but for once not among the mules, although he believed “we sha’nt have that to boast of long.”20
By January 3, when they had at last reached Astorga, he could say they had not once had to lodge with the mules “but not much better.” They had been shown chambers in which “any body would think a half a dozen hogs had lived for six months.” But as angered as John Quincy was by their living conditions, he was not without sympathy for the inhabitants. “I do not wonder at it. Poor creatures, they are eat up by their priests. Near three quarters of what they earn goes to the priests and with the other quarter they must live as they can. Thus is the whole of this kingdom deceived and deluded by their religion. I thank Almighty God that I was born in a country where any body may get a good living if they please.”21
Through the journey he noted the convents and monasteries, places of worship, a cathedral in Astorga that was said to be very magnificent and elegant, and he indeed found it “so exceeding rich and magnificent that it is beyond the reach of my pen to describe it.” Nurtured in the simplicity of the family church in Braintree, he was uncomfortable and even suspicious of the grandeur of the ancient churches of Spain. “All this show cannot come from the heart but is all out side appearance.” Of his morning’s visit with his father to the cathedral in Leon, he wrote of seeing the procession. “The bishop passed. Our guide told us to kneel. I did. He gave me his benediction but I did not feel the better for it.”22
When they reached Bayonne on January 23, John Adams paid the Spanish guide and bought and rented several port chaises for travel over frozen roads to reach Bordeaux. From there, it was familiar territory, a repeat of their earlier journey. They arrived in Paris late in the afternoon of February 9.
A letter from Abigail was waiting for John Adams. It gave him, he wrote back, “more pain than I can express to see your anxiety, but I hope your fears will be happily disappointed.” In earlier letters dated January 16, John had sought to reassure her that “those at home are best off,” while John Quincy had written from Bilbao that they had arrived safely for “one more storm would very probably carried us to the bottom of the sea.”23
So she was undoubtedly reassured to hear from him a month later, that after a terrible journey of about 1,000 miles from Ferrol they had at last reached Paris, and that the day after their arrival: “Papa put me to one of the pensions where I was before, and I am very content with my situation.” Brother Charles, he added “begins to make himself understood in French and being as he is he will learn that language very soon.”24
John Quincy was very content in Passy, returning to the school, sometimes known as the Ecole de Mathematiques, run by M. Pechigny and his wife. “My Work For a day,” was the title of John Quincy’s letter to his father on March 16, 1780.
Make Latin
Explain Cicero, Erasmus
Pierce Phaedrus
Learn Greek racines, Greek grammar
Geography
Geometry
Fractions
Writing
Drawing
“As a young boy can not apply himself to all those things and keep a remembrance of them all I should desire that you would let me know what of those I must begin upon at first.”25
His father responded the next day and left no doubt about his preferred curriculum. “Making Latin, construing Cicero, Erasmus, the Appendix de iis et Heroibus ethnicis, and Phaedrus, are all exercises proper for the acquisition of the Latin tongue.” He would not have his son omit, on any consideration, the Greek grammar and racines (roots) because the most perfect models of fine writing in history, oratory and poetry are to be found in that language. “Writing and Drawing,” he continued, “are but amusements and may serve as relaxations from your studies. . . .” Finally, he hoped to hear “that you are in Virgil and Tully’s orations, or Ovid or Horace or all of them.” And, in a postscript: “The next time you write to me, I hope you will take more care to write well. Can’t you keep a steadier hand?”26
The cost of his children’s education, 1,200 livres a year, was of critical concern to John Adams. The bills added up, seemed very high to him, especially regarding clothing. Perhaps the outlay for equipment or clothing influenced his request to Pechigny that the children no longer spend time on fencing or dancing.
Increasingly, every facet of John’s work appeared to be a paradox, and America’s complicated relationship with France especially upsetting. In December 1775 the French had informally assured America of its backing, that it would welcome American ships, and seemed already to be thinking in terms of financial aid. Bonded by the threat of their mutual foe, Great Britain, and with Spain’s consent, Louis XVI had, by orders signed on May 2, 1776, decisively come to America’s help. By stealth and intrigue the supply of one million livres worth of munitions administered by the French secret agent Beaumarchais through a fictitious company, Roderigue Hortalez et Cie, and a like amount from Spain’s Charles III would account for 80 percent of America’s gunpowder in 1776 and the following year.27
The Franco-American alliance of February 6, 1778 had affirmed the countries’ ties—with the Treaty of Amity and Commerce, the countries granted one another most favored nation status; the Treaty of Alliance stipulated America would aid France if war broke out between France and Great Britain, and that neither country would conclude peace with England without assurance of the independence of the United States. Furthermore, the two nations had combined forces in July 1778 to attack the British on American shores.
John’s doubts about the sincerity of the French had only surfaced when he had come to Paris to negotiate the peace treaty with Great Britain when military and political conditions were ripe for talks. It was then that he had begun to question not only the honesty, integrity, and efficiency of the Americans’ representatives, but also the loyalty and intent of the French. One could be grateful to the French for their financial aid but quite accurately perceive, as John did, that the foreign minister, Count Charles Gravier de Vergennes, meant “to keep his hand under our chin to prevent us from drowning, but not to lift our heads out of the water.”28
Uneasy with the intricacies of the situation in Paris, John was hardly at his best: To be patient, to be “so idle and inactive” did not suit his temperament. He therefore decided to visit Brussels, The Hague, and Amsterdam to serve his country “by transcribing intelligence and in every other way.” He left Paris on July 27, 1780, with John Quincy and Charles. The brief trip turned into a year’s stay, the start of what was, perhaps, the most unhappy period of his life personally and the proudest diplomatically.29
By September, before their mother had even learned of their whereabouts, Johnny and Charles were enrolled in the Latin school on the Singel canal in Amsterdam, across from the Bloemenmarkt, the flower market. But for the first time John Quincy was unequal to his work. Because of his deficiency in Dutch, the school authorities had held him back. John was of the opinion that John Quincy, 13 years of age, would be discouraged if kept in the lower forms. The letter of November 10 from the rector and preceptor of the Latin school, H. Verheyk, indicated no such confidence. The schoolmaster found John Quincy far from advanced or in any way praiseworthy: “The disobedience and impertinence of your older son, who does his best to corrupt his well-behaved brother . . . can no longer be tolerated, as he endeavors by his bad behavior to bring upon himself the punishment he deserves, in the hope of leaving school, as a result.”30
John Adams’s cherished Johnny had been, in fact, expelled. On the back of H. Verheyk’s note, that same day, John wrote: “I have this moment received, with surprise and grief, your billet. I pray you, Sir, to send my children to me this evening and your account, together with their chests and effects tomorrow. I have the honor to be, with great respect, Sir, your humble servant.”31
As John Quincy’s diary shut down from September 30 until the following June, his reaction to this difficult moment was not recorded but for one bleak passage. On September 6, John Quincy noted: “Brother Charles and myself study in a little chamber apart because we don’t understand the Dutch.”32
On December 18 John Thaxter moved John Quincy and Charles to Leyden, to pursue Latin and Greek and attend lectures with the celebrated professors of Leyden University. It was cheaper there, the air infinitely purer, and the company and conversation better, John Adams informed Abigail. Without directly commenting on the humiliating experience with the Latin School in Amsterdam, John wrote he did not wish to have his children educated in the common schools of the Dutch “where a littleness of soul is notorious, where masters are mean spirited witches, pinching, kicking, and boxing the children upon every turn. There is besides a general littleness arising from the incessant contemplation of stivers and doits, which pervades the whole people. Frugality and industry are virtues every where, but avarice, and stingyness are not frugality.”33
Five months later, in mid-July 1781, the children’s lives changed again, as their father resigned himself to parting with both sons. As John informed Abigail—on John Quincy’s fourteenth birthday—Charles, who was, as always, the amiable child who won the hearts of everybody, especially the ladies, had suffered a fever and was unwell. He had his heart set on going home. “Put him to school,” he advised Abigail, “and keep him steady—He is a delightful child, but has too exquisite sensibility for Europe.”34
John Quincy was to accompany Francis Dana, the Boston lawyer who had been serving John Adams as secretary to the peace commission, on his new post in Russia. Congress appointed Francis Dana the first American minister to Russia on December 19, 1780, and ordered him to go to St. Petersburg with instructions to conclude a treaty of friendship and commerce with the empress. John Quincy was to serve as his interpreter and secretary. “He will be satiated with travel in his childhood,” his father predicted, “and care nothing about it, I hope in his riper years.”35