“A Student in the Office of Theophilus Parsons”
Interest in John Quincy’s days as a law student skipped a generation. To his son Charles Francis, they merited only a single paragraph. For though they gave “a curious and not unattractive picture of the social relations prevailing in a small New England town at that period,” they did not “seem to retain interest enough to warrant the occupation of space” in the 12-volume, painstakingly abridged version of the diary Charles Francis called Memoirs. By contrast, to John Quincy’s grandson, the second Charles Francis, they were worthy of a volume of their own. Attempting to rationalize his father’s omission, perhaps, the grandson supposed he had overlooked them because they contained “little of, so-called, historical value.”1
More likely, Charles Francis senior feared their disclosure might blur the heroic image he meant to foster in his father’s name. For, in fact, they were disturbing, intensely revealing of the struggles of a shatteringly vulnerable young man during one of the most emotionally charged periods of his entire life.
With the passage of 30 or so years, the younger Charles Francis viewed the diary from a far different perspective. Asked to speak at the 175th anniversary of the First Congregational Church of Newburyport in October 1901, in commemoration of his grandfather’s student years in the seaport town, he had gathered some extracts from his grandfather’s two small octavo volumes, bound in calf, bought in Paris and entitled “Ephemeris,” which he would publish under the title Life in a New England Town, 1787, 1788.
Unlike his father, he had been “greatly interested” in his grandfather’s record of his time as “a [law] student in the office of Theophilus Parsons.” John Quincy’s diary gave “a curious and graphic picture of social, everyday existence in a small Massachusetts seaport during the closing years of the eighteenth century. Its maturity of tone is perhaps its most noticeable feature.” Possibly, it was the heartbreaking candor of John Quincy’s revelations regarding his depressed mental state that moved the protective grandson to solicit sympathy for his esteemed grandfather’s plight by way of exploring his unusual background. “It is well to bear constantly in mind,” he advised, “that not only was the writer an exceptional character, but his experience had been so very unusual as to be . . . almost, if indeed not altogether, unique.” He had passed the period between 11 and 18 in a “curiously diversified and roving life in the Europe of Louis XVI, Catherine II, and George III”—separated from family, associated with men of distinction much older than himself such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson—“and then suddenly transferred at his own volition to America.”2
In addition, to highlight the breathtaking physical and implicitly cultural differences involved in John Quincy’s transition from the great cities of Europe to the towns of America’s northeast, the younger Charles Francis noted that in the time covered by the diary, “Boston, not yet a city, numbered some eighteen thousand inhabitants, and Cambridge a little over two thousand. The town of Quincy had not yet been incorporated, but was still the North Precinct of Braintree, its population a little short of three thousand.” As for Newburyport, between 1787 and 1790, it was a community of some 5,000 “of the old New England type,” and “while distinctly provincial . . . it had an individuality.”3
But also, Charles Francis continued, “The period was critical.” The country had emerged from the revolutionary troubles only a few years before and was still in the formative stage. The land was poor, and the taxes burdensome. “Hence the spirit of unrest was great; crude theories of money, government, and the rights of man were in the air, and it yet remained to be seen whether the people of Anglo-Saxon descent in America would prove equal to the occasion and develop into a nationality, or whether, victims of a morbid jealousy of all centralized authority, they were to sink into a state of chronic anarchy.”4
John Quincy found the first few days in Newburyport long and tedious and had in fact gone to bed early that Sunday “merely from ennui.” The weather did not help. Alternately very warm and very cold, these New England transitions were almost intolerable to foreigners, as he wittingly included himself. He had begun his studies in Theophilus Parsons’s office with the first volume of Robertson’s History of Charles the V, an account, Parsons recommended, of the feudal institutions that influenced current laws of contemporary Europe. In the next days he read for the second time the Reverend Hugh Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, took up Emmerich de Vattel’s Law of Nature and of Nations, and pronounced Rousseau’s Confessions “the most extraordinary book I ever read in my life.” His fingers grew so sore from copying extracts from Blackstone’s that he thought he might throw out his pen.5
With his fellow students, Horatio Townsend and Thomas Thomson—only three students were permitted in an office simultaneously—he attended the Court of Common Pleas, where he heard cases about stolen sheep; about real estate (valid vs. invalid deeds) and a mason’s suit for payment for building and plastering a brick house; and about four men arraigned for different thefts, all of whom pleaded guilty and were sentenced to whipping and hard labor.
Evenings he walked and dined with friends, and one night toward the end of September, a group of them got to singing after supper, “and the bottle went around with an unusual rapidity, until a round dozen had disappeared.” Deciding it was time to leave, he slipped away, and took a walk with Townsend, arriving at his lodgings about 1 a.m., where the two friends sat for an hour and smoked a pipe or two together.6
The next morning, though he thought he had not been intoxicated, he was dismayed to find himself suffering from a severe headache. He could neither attend meetings, nor read, nor write. He “pass’d the day with much tediousness” as he did the following two days, the consequences of his Saturday evening “frolick.” Given his tragic family history of alcoholism—his mother’s brother William Smith was already ravaged with the disease—he knew that “inseparably in all cases of intemperance is the punishment allied to the fault!”7
With relief, days later, he had recovered his “usual tone,” able to attend to the very uninspiring task of copying declaration forms, admittedly an unrewarding piece of drudgery that was, he consoled himself, a necessary piece of work the sooner finished, the better. He resented it nevertheless. He had hoped before he came to study with Parsons that he would have time to read for entertainment but, after passing eight hours a day in the office and four more in writing minutes and forms at home, he had energy for only the most menial tasks. And indeed, if for three years he continued to work at this rate, as he had since the day he had entered this office, “the de—l [devil?] will be to pay,” he wrote in his diary, “if I have not some stock of law. Health is all I shall ask.”8
But very far from the entertainment he sought, Parsons’s recommendations included Coke’s The First Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England, Or, A Commentary upon Littleton, the standard elementary treatise for law students since 1628, superseded only by the more (comparatively) modern Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, published between 1765 and 1769. The contrast between Coke and Blackstone was “like descending from a rugged, dangerous and almost inaccessible mountain, into a beautiful plain, where the unbounded prospect on every side presents the appearance of fertility.”9
In ensuing days, he complained of being distracted, of the year fading away, of proceeding rapidly on a decline. By October 20 he had left Newburyport, heading for Boston with stops in Haverhill and Hingham. Not the way to acquire the science of the law, he admitted, but he excused himself on grounds that “dissipation is so fashionable here that it is necessary to enter into it a little in order not to appear too singular.” Also, as Mr. Parsons would probably be away for the next three weeks, he did not know a more “eligible” time for a vacation.10
During the next ten or so days of his self-appointed holiday, he dined and chatted with friends and relatives, sang, smoked, played cards, passed an enjoyable afternoon in his father’s library reading some of his journals from 1769 to 1776. At one party he felt lucky to draw a Miss Smith of Sandwich for a partner and dance with her for most of the evening. At another party, in honor of his beloved cousin and former tutor John Thaxter’s forthcoming marriage, he drank from “big bellied bottles,” and though very moderately, he felt it necessary to walk at length with his good friend Leonard White.11
Once back in Newburyport, his thoughts were searching, sad, and deeply pessimistic. One night in late fall he was in such a poisonous mood that his demons—whether real or imagined, political or social, is unclear—propelled him to the doorstep of his neighbor and friend Dr. John Barnard Swett. While he had described the events of the previous day as “quite uninteresting,” they must have been quite alarming, triggering “an opportunity to observe the effects of the Passions. How despotically they rule! how they bend, and master, the greatest and the wisest geniuses! ’Tis a pity! ’tis great pity! that prudence should desert people when they have the most need of it. Tis pity, that such a mean, little, dirty passion as envy, should be the vice of the most capacious souls.”12
Whether he was scolding himself or a colleague, or bemoaning a disturbing incident is not known. But clearly miserable, he pondered “Human Nature”: “how inexplicable art thou! Oh, may I learn before I advance upon the political stage, (if I ever do) not to put my trust in thee!” Addressing himself—or perhaps an unwelcome reader of his diary—he continued: “the lines that precede . . . may be mysterious to you sir, but if so, remember that it is none of your business. And so I wish you good night.”13
John Quincy trusted Dr. Swett, with whom his Harvard classmate and future surgeon Moses Little lived and studied. Swett, a 36-year-old graduate of Harvard who had trained at the University of Glasgow with the distinguished Scottish physician and professor William Cullen, was in John Quincy’s estimation “a man of learning, and ingenuity.” He had traveled in different parts of Europe, and had “a mean idea of human nature,” by which he meant that Swett was keenly conversant with the physical defects and infirmities of mankind, viewing humanity, as all doctors did, “in a state of humiliation.” But Swett told him that his complaints “were not worth speaking of,” and John Quincy left, having no choice he thought but to “let them take their chance.” Not for long, as it turned out.14
By December 6 he faced a new and more frightening challenge. He was seriously depressed in a way unknown to him ever before. The evening had started off cheerfully, spent with Harvard classmates Thompson, Little and Putnam at the latter’s lodgings. They had talked on diverse subjects in a gathering, which like many “renew the recollection of those happy scenes, which we have all gone through in college; and in this manner, I now pass some of my most agreeable hours.”15
But back at his own lodgings at Mrs. Leather’s, and after reading an hour or two, he felt “a depression of spirits to which I have hitherto been entirely a stranger.” He had frequently felt dull, low spirited, in a manner out of tune; “but the feelings which I now experienced were different from what I ever knew before, and such as I hope I shall never again experience.” They kept him awake a great part of the night, and when he finally fell asleep, they disturbed his rest “by the most extravagant dreams.”16
Another week passed and his anguish deepened. “The question,” he wrote on December 18, “what am I to do in this world recurs to me very frequently; and never without causing great anxiety and a depression of spirits: my prospects appear darker to me, every day, and I am obliged sometimes to drive the subject from my mind, and to assume some more agreeable train of thoughts.” He did not covet fortune, and honors, he began to think, were not worth seeking. And at Christmas, almost a non sequitur, he wrote, “I suspect I shall soon drop this journal.”17
It was undoubtedly his mother to whom he best described the challenges that so bedeviled him these days. First the good news, as he always tried to temper his concerns when writing to either of his parents. Reviewing the past months, he explained, he could not possibly have an instructor more agreeable than Mr. Parsons. His chief excellency was that no student could like asking questions more than he liked answering them. He was never at a loss, and always gave a full and ample account of the proposed subject as well as all related matters.
As for the study of law itself, it was more interesting than he had been led to expect. He had read three or four authors with pleasure as well as improvement, and the imaginary terrors of tediousness and disgust had disappeared. But in their stead, other fears had arisen that created greater anxiety in his mind, which was only increasing.
There were two problems, as he saw it, of enormous weight. One was the degree to which lawyers, no matter how innocent and upstanding, evoked the hatred of their fellow citizens. The very despicable writings of Benjamin Austin Jr., who (under the pen name Honestus) had published Observations on the Pernicious Practice of the Law a year ago, were calculated to spread “a thousand lies, in addition to those published in the papers all over the country, to prejudice the people against the order.”18
The other reason for his great ambivalence about his legal studies was the ogre of competition. The number of lawyers was growing, but with little business to be divided among them, he thought they were in danger of starving one another. When he considered these particular disadvantages, as well as the time-honored need for great skill, enormous effort and good luck to achieve sufficient professional standing to earn a living, he confessed he was sometimes discouraged and wishing he had chosen a different occupation.
He started the New Year, Tuesday, January 1, 1788, at his office, and read until one in the morning. He was troubled about his daily obligation to his diary. It was especially difficult to keep up with it in the winter—hands stiff with cold made it so hard for him to write. And yet the diary gave him satisfaction. When he looked back on the volumes, he was at least able to say “that day I did something.”19
The diary, Samuel Flagg Bemis has suggested, was “a secret tuning-fork for his pent-up emotions.” Certainly to some extent, as John Quincy was without a close confidant at that time. More urgently, his diary was the work of an obsessive writer and self-critic—regrettably, to his mind, not skilled at invention and at a loss at this time for a suitable narrative to understand his current situation.20
Oddly, though, he made few if any references to his exotic past; it must have seemed another lifetime when he thought of his dinners with Franklin, Jefferson, Lafayette and the grandees of the diplomatic world, of the great theatre, opera, treasured art and palaces of Europe, of fraught adventures on high seas and in foreign lands. And now, as though abandoned in this tiny seaport town of Newburyport, he felt himself staring at an opaque wall, with little promise of transparency or future light.
He grew inconsolable in the passing days. “Nothing,” he wrote. “It would be a fine theme to expatiate upon.” The ruminations that follow are bleak: “In the moral world, what is honor, what is honest, what is religion?—nothing. In the political world, what is liberty, what is patriotism, what is power and grandeur?—nothing. The universe is an atom, and its creator is all in all. Of him, except that he exists, we know nothing, and consequently our knowledge is nothing.” And then, most cruelly, he added, “Perhaps the greatest truth of all is, that for this half hour, I have been doing nothing.”21
In an effort to combat his frightening hollowness, he accepted a friend’s invitation to a party of gentlemen and ladies, although he loathed the singing in these mixed companies, the “few very insipid songs, sung in a very insipid manner.” A “stupid” game of pawns had followed, in which kissing was the only condition for redeeming pledges, which he found deeply disappointing. As he complained at a later date: “The art of making love muffled up in furs, in the open air, with the thermometer at Zero, is a Yankee invention, which requires a Yankee poet to describe.”22
His overall opinion of the young ladies of Boston and Newburyport was not flattering. Though vastly appreciative of their appearance, his assessment of their conversation and personalities was often disparaging, especially when compared to the young women he had encountered abroad.
Fundamentally, he found little pleasure in partying and even less in his daily life. On January 12, with Mr. Parsons gone to Boston, he reached an alarming state of depression. “I hope to god,” he prayed, that he would not go on in this way, “squandering week after week, till at the end of three years I would go out of the office, as ignorant as I entered it.”23
He would arrive at his office at nine each morning, perhaps chat with fellow law clerks, and then take up his Lord Coke and “blunder along a few pages with him. At two I return to dinner. At three again attend at the office, where I remain till dark.” The routine changed when Mr. Parsons did not permit a lighted fireplace in his absence. In these instances, as soon as daylight began to fail, he and his fellow law clerks put up their books and spent the rest of the day “as best suits our convenience and the feelings of the moment.”24
He had begun to seriously doubt the quality of his intelligence, and worried that as he aged, the dullness of his mind would likewise increase. To add to his general frustration, he had failed yet again “to ascend Parnassus” by writing creditable poetry. Some years before, he had confided to his mother that he was “addicted to the rage of rhyming.” While ambitious, his efforts could be puzzling. In response to the copy he sent to Nabby, “An Epistle to Delia,” his sister had wondered “is Delia a real or feigned character.” Fifty-two lines long, marking the end of his frustrating attraction to Nancy Hazen, his poem declared “Let poets boast in smooth and labor’d strains / of unfelt passions and pretended pains / To my rude numbers, Delia now attend, / Nor view me, as a lover, but a friend.”25
He had begun “A Vision,” a composite, satirical sketch based on nine young women of Newburyport, cloaked in fanciful names, in January 1787 and would finish it in June 1790. Among the characters, there was a disdainful Narcissa, a chatty Vanessa, a Lucinda, whose “form my fond attention caught . . . who wanted nothing but a feeling heart.” There was also “Belinda’s voice like grating hinges groans, / And in harsh thunder roars a lover’s moans. . . .”26
Fifty years later, by then the master of self-deprecation, on rereading a copy of “The Vision,” he thought that he had never since written anything equal to it—and that his apogee as statesman, orator, philosopher and proser was of the same quality: He had left nothing to live after him “but aims beyond my means, and principles too pure for the age in which I have lived.”27
In this “dull and low spirited” state, there were inklings of respite and broader concerns. The newspapers were full of the public discussion of the new continental form of government, the Constitution. Fifty-five delegates had met the previous June 21, at the State House in Philadelphia, the precise site 11 years earlier of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. John Quincy feared it would be adopted. In discussion with Mr. Parsons, he noted that his mentor “favors very much the federal constitution lately proposed by the Convention of the States,” which was hardly surprising, as it was calculated, in John Quincy’s opinion, “to increase the influence, power and wealth of those who have any already.”28
Coming to terms with the Constitution was a problem for John Quincy. As he saw it, its adoption would be a grand point gained in favor of the aristocratic party: Though there would be no titles of nobility, great distinctions would be made and soon become hereditary. For his own part, he was willing to take his chance under any government, “but it was hard to give up a system which I have always been taught to cherish, and to confess that a free government is inconsistent with human nature.”29
Parsons left for Boston on January 10 for the purpose of assenting to and ratifying the federal Constitution. About 300 attended the convention; it was adopted and ratified by a majority of 19 members on February 6. When church bells rang and the mob cheered so insistently, John Quincy seemed surprised by the volume of enthusiasm. It was as though “with the adoption of the Constitution everyman had acquired a sure expectancy of an independent fortune.”30
He acknowledged himself “converted though not convinced,” and was surprised to learn in early March that his father had written strongly and at length in favor of the Constitution. The son’s response was respectful: “I did not expect it, and am glad to find I was mistaken, since it appears probably the plan will be adopted.”31
From a 40-year perspective, on rereading those early letters, he thought their best use was to teach him a lesson of humility and forbearance. “I was so sincere, so earnest, so vehement in my opinions, and time has so crumbled them to dust that I can now see them only as monumental errors. Yet the spirit was such as even now I have no reason to disclaim—a spirit of patriotism, of order, and of benevolence.”32
His legal studies remained pure drudgery. With depleted energy, willpower, and ambition, he felt his friends far surpassed him. James Putnam, for example, read law faster and would make greater improvements in his three years. In his imagination, John Quincy had written volumes and read books without number. In reality, he had written scarcely anything aside from his diary. Though he had begun Gibbon months ago, he was not halfway through the second volume. In Lord Coke’s Laws of England, he trudged along at the rate of about 80 pages a week and did not understand a quarter of it.33
One night in May, walking with his friend Benjamin Pickman up to Sawyer’s Tavern, their “future prospects in life were the subject of our conversation.” Though Pickman’s father’s large fortune was bound to be divided among his several children, there was a sum enough for starting forward. Besides, he was courting a young lady of sufficient fortune that the two might marry before long.34
The fact that even Pickman was anxious about his future welfare gave John Quincy much greater reason to look to his own future “with terror.” He had two long years of study ahead in order to qualify him for anything. He had no fortune to expect. His father had made this absolutely clear, warning his son: “You must prepare yourself to get your bread,” and that “I think it very probably that in a very little time, I shall find it very difficult to provide for myself.”35
The subject of family fortunes was a longstanding preoccupation. The way fortunes changed was similar to revolutions within empires. It often seemed as if fortune was resolved to put the republican system into practice in Boston. The wealthiest and most politically important citizens could not “trace a genteel ancestry or even such as lived comfortably and creditably for three generations.” By contrast, it was common to see descendants from honorable and opulent families now in the greatest obscurity and poverty. And there was a great chance, “that I myself shall at some future period service as an additional example of this truth.”36
But for all his despair, he was keenly looking forward to his parents’ return to their home in Braintree. According to his family friend, the historian Mercy Warren, John Adams would be “employing the short respite from the field of politics & intrigues of statesmen: to the momentary delights of rural peace and the cultivation of his own grounds.”37
John Adams’s resignation as minister plenipotentiary to Britain had been accepted on October 5, 1787, and he had embarked with Abigail at Weymouth, England, on April 27 on John Callahan’s Lucretia. John Quincy, faithfully monitoring their voyage, left his office just before two on the afternoon of June 18 and went “with trembling hope” to the post office. He was soon made happy by a letter from his brother Tom, which confirmed their arrival on the previous day.38
He set out on horseback early the next morning and arrived in Boston at 10 a.m. He found his mother at the governor’s house; his father had already gone to Braintree, and enjoyed, as he had anticipated, “all the satisfaction that can arise from the meeting so near and dear a friend after a long absence.”39
John Quincy would spend the next week unpacking “to make a home of the house” which his family had bought while overseas. In between chores—unpacking furniture and books, some moist and somewhat moldy—he and his brother Charles spent the warm summer days shooting birds, reading (very little and of a light kind), playing their flutes, bathing in the creek. The cherry trees were full and so inviting to the birds that there was very good sport with little trouble. In Cambridge for his brother Tom’s graduation from Harvard, John Quincy’s pleasure was such, his “spirits so much exalted,” he slept very little that night. By mid-July, he prepared to return to Newburyport with regret.40
Writing on his birthday, July 11, he had seemed sadly resigned to his problems. As he wrote in his diary,
This day completes my twenty first year. It emancipates me from the yoke of paternal authority which I never felt, and places me upon my own feet, which have not strength enough to support me. I continue therefore still in a state of dependence. One third of the period of my professional studies has also now elapsed; and two years more will settle me, should life and health continue, in a situation where all my expectations are to center. I feel sometimes a strong desire to know what my circumstances will be in seven years from this: but I must acknowledge, I believe my happiness would rather be injured than improved by the information.41
Surprisingly, in the midst of his ongoing surges of depression, John Quincy made a meaningful admission of his interest in a young woman named Mary Frazier. On the evening of May 16, he had met his friend Putnam walking with “the young girls,” two daughters of Moses Frazier, and joined them to pass the rest of the evening, as he had many times before, at their home. He had mentioned the Misses Frazier most casually four months earlier without a hint of their first names, Elizabeth and Mary.42
Now he wrestled with his ambivalence: “These young misses have assumed an importance rather above their years. I receive not much satisfaction in their company, and as they are handsome, I had rather look at them for five minutes than be with them five hours.” With more than a tinge of envy, he wrote that “Putnam is not too difficult to please. He can conform to their manners, and enter into all their debates: he is consequently a favorite.” Soon it would be apparent that Mary’s preference, if she ever favored Putnam, had changed and John Quincy would be writing in the coming months of their serious commitment to one another.43
On Wednesday, September 3, he informed Mrs. Leather of his intention to temporarily move back to Cambridge—his friend James Bridge would join him—where he was to deliver “An Oration, Spoken, at the request of the Phi Beta Kappa Society” that Friday, September 5, 1788. He was pleased by the size of his audience: about 40, including Governor Hancock, two men from Dartmouth College, officers of the French squadron now in Boston harbor and the French consul de L’etombe who, afterward, offered his special compliments.
A week later he returned to Newburyport and “did not sleep a wink” that next Sunday night, his nerves “in a very disagreeable state of irritation.” After lying around for three hours he got up and went over to Dr. Swett to request an opiate—possibly derived from the bark of a magnolia or white willow tree commonly used to treat depression—that gradually helped him compose his nerves and gave him a few hours of sleep. The following nights were no better; his diary is a dirge of desperation: “Sleepless. Could do no business / Strolling about all day. Idle / Can neither read or write . . . Unwell out of spirits.” By Saturday, weary and “indebted to soporific draughts” for the little rest he enjoyed, he mounted his horse and headed out to Haverhill—Braintree was a far greater distance—where he was determined to spend a few days with the Shaws to see if he could revive his health, and “to experience,” as his Aunt Elizabeth explained to his mother, “a little of my maternal care.”44
Lest her sister should hear of it from someone else, and be too anxious, Elizabeth wrote the next day to tell Abigail that her son “had not been well since he left Braintree.” But for all the severity of her nephew’s condition, she was cheered that her patient was “the best man to take his medicine that she ever saw—He hardly makes a wry mouth. . . .” As his reward and to amuse his mind, she sent him riding and visiting family. She was afraid he had studied too hard, for “He is so avaricious in coveting the best gifts that I fear such intense application will injure his health, more than he is aware of.”45
There was a follow-up letter. If she had not felt too great a tenderness for the parent, Elizabeth Shaw would have told her sister that her son on his recent visit was very sick but she did not want Abigail to “travel the road with an aching heart.” John Quincy had left for Newburyport contrary to her advice, and she had been very uneasy about him ever since. She thought it was highly necessary for him to be exceeding careful as to “diet, exercise,” and as to study, “that most certainly must be laid aside at present.”46
John Quincy had come to the same conclusion. On one sleepless night, Shakespeare’s Henry IV “obtruded” on his mind: “Oh gentle sleep / Nature’s soft Nurse, how have I frighted thee / That thou no more wilt weigh mine eyelids down / And steep my senses in forgetfulness.” He left on the stagecoach on Thursday, October 2, reached Boston that evening and was indeed home in Braintree the next day.47
While in Braintree he rode, tramped fields and marshes, continued to read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Justinian’s Institutes, and Cicero’s Cato Major de Senectute (A Treatise on Old Age). On October 14 he wrote that his “occupations have been very regular, and similar for a week past,” and with the help of medicine and constant exercise he thought he was on the way to recovery. But he was too hopeful. His next sentence trails off. “This evening, my . . .” is the three-word fragment that concludes his diary. The next page is blank.48
From here on, he kept to the premise of his “line-a-day” notebook with staccato postings: “Madam and Tom went to Boston. Violent Thunder,” or “Mr. A. went to Boston. Charles to Cambridge,” or “Rode my horse” or “Rode as usual” or “Variable weather. Gibbon’s history.” Or he named guests or Sunday’s preachers. He stayed on in Braintree until December 8, and on the tenth: “Got to Newbury-Port. Ordination [of his friend John Andrews]. Dancing.” This burst of activity quickly faded. On the eleventh, obviously still troubled, he sought help: “Dined with Mr. Tufts. Not very bright. Dr. Swett’s.”49