“Exposed to the Perils of Sentiment”
On April 6, 1789, the Senate elected George Washington as president and John Adams as vice president, 69 unanimous votes for the one, 34 votes for the other. That June, “from a proper modesty,” John Quincy explained to his father, he had allowed several months to elapse before bringing up any insignificant details about himself, hoping, perhaps, “a moment’s relaxation from the affairs of a nation, to attend to those of a private and domestic nature may not be disagreeable.”1
At this stage, rather than the academic, he was concerned about the actual practice of the law, for he believed that the skill to apply general knowledge to particular cases was no less important than the knowledge itself. Furthermore, he was bedeviled by another problem: his state of irresolution and suspense about where and how he was to settle to practice law and to live. The judiciary bill, “An Act to Establish the Judicial Courts of the United States,” had been signed into law the past September 14. He had consulted Parsons, who had hinted that if Parsons were moved up in the judiciary system, either as district judge or attorney general, he would recommend his place to his pupil John Quincy. Then again, John Quincy supposed that those appointments had been made and he would not therefore appear in the humiliating light of a solicitor which he wished to avoid.2
But setting this issue aside for the moment, he asked his father’s permission to pay him a visit in the fall, about the beginning of October. The next week brought him a thoughtful, affectionate response. His father was thankful for the letter. As for his advice, it was “to give yourself very little thought about the place of your future residence . . . a few months will produce changes that will easily settle that question for you.” As for John Quincy’s proposed visit, his father would be very happy to see him whenever the journey might be most convenient to him and to Mr. Parsons, but he wished him to come when the House was sitting, that he might hear the debates and know the members.3
John Quincy arrived in New York the morning of September 16, 1789. He had walked and with some difficulty found Richmond Hill, the tall, tiered, columned house his parents inhabited, with 11-foot ceilings, flower gardens and a majestic view of the Hudson and the farms of New Jersey. His mother was pleased to “live in a most friendly intercourse” with President Washington and his wife, she would later write, adding, “Let not the busy fiend envy propagate reports so basely false as that there is any coldness subsisting between the families.”4
By coincidence, his parents were entertaining the Washingtons the night of his arrival. Weary from a mostly sleepless voyage and feeling unfit for company, he chose to eat alone. But he did stay the month, and was not lacking in opinions or certain political wisdom in response to his visit at the House of Representatives in the old city hall on the corner of Wall and Nassau Streets. Hearing the debates on a judiciary bill—James Madison was one of the voices—he “did not perceive any extraordinary powers of oratory displayed by any of those gentlemen” and thought the “little new eloquences” were actually exhausted old ones “while a spirit of contention still remained.” As for the subject of the salaries of judges, it wasn’t the subject of the debate—an old one—but its resolution, the art of compromise, that interested him. It showed “the difficulty of men living in different climates and used to very different modes of living.”5
Before leaving New York City to head back north in early October, John Quincy had visited “at the president’s” a number of times. At the end of October he had further contact with him during Washington’s stopover in Newburyport. His proud mother’s supposition of his important role in the formalities of Washington’s reception had met with protest and humor in their spirited exchange of letters.
On October 30, Newburyport welcomed George Washington with a parade, fireworks, and John Quincy’s reverential tribute to “the friend, the benefactor, the father of his country,” for which Washington was “much gratified with the attention shown him.” “This I have it from his own mouth,” his mother had reported, hoping also that her son “was one of the choir who so aptly serenaded him with ‘the hero comes.’”6
“Trifling” with his mother, at first John Quincy assured her that he was “not one of the choir who welcomed the president to New England’s shore” upon his arrival. He was, however, one of the procession which was formed to receive him, in humble imitation of the capital. And when he left, “I was one of the respectable citizens (as our newspapers term them) who escorted him on horseback to the lines of New Hampshire.”7
Then in a more accommodating spirit he allowed that
I had the honor of paying my respects to the president, upon his arrival in this town, and he did me the honor to recollect that he had seen me a short time before, at New York. I had the honor of spending part of the evening in his presence . . . I had the honor of breakfasting in the same room with him the next morning . . . I had the honor of writing the billet which the major general of the county sent him to inform him of the military arrangements he had made for his reception. And I had the honor of draughting an address, which with many alterations and additions (commonly called amendments) was presented to him by the town of Newburyport. So you see “I bear my blushing honors thick upon me.”8
Then he turned from trifling to a subject very serious. More than six months had passed and the matter of his future residence was becoming more worrisome. His mother (and his father) well knew the objections he had about Braintree under the present situation: he and his cousin William would have to divide the small pittance which either of them singly might obtain. Nor was Newburyport a more alluring prospect, though he would enjoy the advantage of being more extensively known there than in any other town of the commonwealth. Boston, on the other hand, was strongly recommended to him by several of his friends. But he agreed to postpone full discussion of the subject until Parsons’s fate was known, after which he meant to state his case fully to his father, and reach a decision based on his final opinion.
Obviously, Abigail had shared John Quincy’s letter and concerns with his father who hoped, he wrote in February, that “your anxiety about your prospects of future life will not be indulged too far.” If, after his term with Mr. Parsons expired, the “judgment, inclination and advice of your friends lead you to Boston,” he would have his father’s full consent and approbation. And more, if he could arrange to get a small family into his father’s house, reserving the best room and chamber for his own office and lodging room, John would not be displeased with the arrangement. “An office you must have, enquire into this matter, and let me know upon what terms you can board, and have an office. Upon this plan, you might make an excursion sometimes to Braintree, and pursue your studies there, especially in the heat of summer when the air of Boston is unwholesome.”9
More advice followed on February 19, but first a reading list. There was a set of Scottish writers deserving his attention in a very high degree, “speculations in morals politicks and law that are more luminous than any other” he had read: Lord Kames, Sir James Stewart, and Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. As for his project of going to Boston—John Adams thought of it every day—he might divide his time between Braintree and Boston to great advantage, or reside constantly at Boston if his business should require it. Physical arrangements were the easy part about which the father could offer his support to the best of his financial resources. But he was less assured though tender in his concern for his son’s morale: “You must expect an interval of leisure, and ennui. And whether those who ought to be my friends will be yours or not, I can’t say—Whether they are mine or not is at least problematical in some instances—yet I think you will find friends in Boston.”10
In March John Quincy acknowledged his father’s February letters. He hoped, he wrote on March 19, that he would always feel “suitably grateful for the tender solicitude” his father expressed regarding his future prospects. Reviewing his options, he recognized that he could live less expensively in Braintree, would have a wider circle of friends in Newburyport, but concluded that Boston remained his choice. He had consulted with Dr. Tufts, Judge Dana, and Dr. Thomas Welsh, and all agreed that he could do no better than to fix on Boston. And as his father had approved, he had little doubt in his mind that he would move there.11
He had painstakingly thought out the details regarding his living and working quarters. He hoped to set up his law office in the front room of his father’s house in Boston and to rent a bedroom from Dr. Welsh who, he presumed, would not demand more than three dollars a week. He hoped also, with his father’s permission, to bring his law library to Boston from Braintree. Such a collection of books around him would allow opportunities “which few of the young gentlemen of the profession have possessed.”12
John Quincy’s father was pleased with his son’s prudent deliberation; he found his judicious decision to board with Dr. Welsh very agreeable and that of taking the best room in his house for his office equally so. As for his law library, his son could take it to his new Boston office and keep it there until he called for it. And again, he thought John Quincy might find it agreeable to go to Braintree and spend a week or a month there, presumably as a change of routine, and especially in summer. Further, as soon as John Quincy’s term ended and when he had completed his clerkship, he would ask Dr. Tufts, who frequently handled the family’s finances, to pay Mr. Parsons a fee of 100 pounds.13
In an April letter to his father, John Quincy reported on the early and bitter struggle to govern the nation according to the United States Constitution signed into law on September 1, 1787. He had happened upon a subject, he thought, “that might at least not be unentertaining,” and its vision of a provocative new party system may ring true for fellow citizens far centuries away.14
Somewhat apologetic about his pressing ardor (too much, he admitted) for public events since early youth, he had accidentally witnessed conversations on subjects from which he collected some information he described as “trifling” when he truthfully meant urgent, if not alarming. As it appeared to him, “the hostile character of our general and particular governments each against the other is increasing with accelerated rapidity.” The spirit and premise at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, that of a balanced government, had already almost totally disappeared “and the seeds of two contending factions appear to be plentifully sown.” People were dividing into two parties, the names of Federalist and Anti-Federalist (or self-government) were no longer expressive of the sentiments which they were so lately supposed to contain, and he expected soon to hear a couple of new names.15
In October, with his “spirit of speculation” unabated, he observed to his father, people (himself foremost perhaps) with a fondness for the subject of politics—“the prospect was glorious”—were turning their attention to politics in Europe, to France, which seemed now as much as ever it could be since the storming of the Bastille, “un repaire d’horreurs.” That nation might finally be free but not, he was persuaded, until they had undergone another revolution. A nobility and a clergy, church and state, leveled to the ground in one year’s time, blown to the winds by the single breath of a triumphant democracy were inauspicious for the erection of an equitable government of laws. Moving far too swiftly and violently toward revolution, it seemed to him that “the National Assembly, in tearing the lace from the garb of government, will tear the coat itself into a thousand rags.”16
Independence and self-sufficiency were more meaningful than ever at this particular time. He wished for more financial security. He was in love and considering marriage to Mary Frazier, the 16-year-old daughter of Moses Frazier, and had confided his intentions or at least hinted of his “attachment” on his return to Newburyport to his “unalterable friend,” his cousin William.17
On April 7 in Newburyport, John Quincy sat down to write a letter to his cousin. First he placed a crosshatch at the top of the page and wrote in the margin sideways: “observe that in the future, all my letters marked thus # are either to be burnt or kept in such a manner as will expose them to the sight of no body but yourself.”18
To begin he supposed that he would harp on that inexhaustible subject of all his letters to his cousin: “I mean my single self. . . .” He wished William would imitate his egotism, for the employments, the studies, the adventures, the passions, and even the amusements of a friend were always interesting. Or at least he found this so, and it was in the hope of gratifying a similar taste rather than from an irresistible fondness of talking about himself that he filled so great a proportion of his letters with his own affairs.19
And now he got to the subject nearest his heart. William Cranch, he suspected, in their time together in Boston and Braintree might possibly have been witness to the struggle he had between his sentiments and his opinions. He could not, owing to their friendship, which he trusted would keep forever, attempt to conceal his feelings, which he wished not to be known to the world in general. Those feelings had, since his return, been acquiring additional strength, and he was more than ever convinced of the absolute necessity that he leave town very soon. “Flight, and speedy flight too is the only resource that is now left me.”20
He had attended three assemblies since his return, and they had afforded him as much pleasure as he could have expected. These assemblies were dangerous places, not only dangerous to females but to males as well during those moments, quoting Pope, “when music softens and when dancing fires.”21
Awkward, helpless and frightened, he did not mean to say that “assemblies were immediately dangerous to our honor and reputation, but rather to the mind, possibly fatal to the peace of a person whose welfare consists in preserving a perfect indifference.” His friend Samuel Putnam was in the same boat, only he was struggling with a passion deeply rooted and confirmed by habits of almost three years standing. The two ladies though very intimate friends were widely different in character, and daily increasing in attraction. While the one was acquiring graces and virtues in addition to incomparable beauty (presumably Mary Frazier), the other was increasing her power and influence through her system of coquetry. “Is it not a hardship that the best of the two characters should be by much the most dangerous,” he asked his cousin.22
If he thought Cranch might have guessed at his feelings for Mary Frazier, the depth of his commitment is revealed in his letter of August 25 to James Bridge. Indeed, his Harvard classmate did not believe it possible for him to have formed another so short a sentence, which Bridge quoted back to him on September 28, that could have afforded him a greater surprise as the following: “You may know (though it is known to very few) that all my hopes of future happiness in this life center in the possession of that girl.”23
He might even have thought of it as a joke, Bridge continued, but for the solemnity of John Quincy’s style “which would not admit a suspicion that you were trifling with my curiosity.” Now, he had no alternative but to consider his friend’s fate “as fixed with respect to the important article of matrimony” while, at the same time, he was reminded with some embarrassment of earlier talks, of “having done injustice of your Goddess by supposing her heart to be cold and unfeeling.”24
Acutely aware of the consequences of having expressed such a negative opinion to his close friend, Bridge was eager, he said, to justify himself in his own mind. Reflecting on the course of his acquaintance with Miss F, it had been too general to give him any opportunities of knowing the qualities of her heart “which might have contained the seeds of the most engaging sympathy.”25
But stumbling aside, it was clear that Bridge thought the young and beautiful Miss F spoiled and overly flattered in Newburyport, with guardians who might not have been vigilant enough to counteract its influence. He had seen her twice, he continued, and implied that nothing had happened to change his opinion since John Quincy had become her avowed admirer. He would bargain, therefore: “You may grant that my judgment was agreeable to appearances and I will agree that it was superficial.”26
At his most conciliatory now, with seemingly guarded optimism, Bridge was sure that the above-mentioned seeds of sympathy must shoot forth vigorously, “encouraged by your genial ‘warmth’ if they have a place in the soil of her heart.”27
Besides letters to Cranch and to Bridge, John Quincy must have confided to his sister his attachment to which “reason and prudence would oppose their influence,” judging from her response on April 18. Caught by surprise, her brother must excuse her, she said, “if I do not give any belief to your confession.” She could not advise him to permit himself to become speedily engaged in an attachment which would influence his entire future, his happiness, prosperity and success.28
Instead, if it was not too late, she was in favor of his first settling in business and taking time to form a more extensive acquaintance with the world. She was aware that his knowledge of mankind was more enlarged and extensive than perhaps any young man of his age. Still, he might yet be deficient in practical knowledge, and as one who was much interested in his prosperity and welfare, she would wish to see him “a few years further advanced in life” before he engaged in a connection that, if formed at present, “must impede your progress and advancement.” She hoped he did not think her too explicit, or would not permit her sentiments if they did not accord with his opinions to interfere with the future confidence of his letters.29
His letters to Bridge, Cranch and Nabby vouch for John Quincy’s devotion to Mary Frazier, and yet sometime that spring something had gone critically wrong. Though his diary is silent on the subject, he confided to Nabby on May 1 the challenges to his problematic love affair. His abrupt change in plans reconfirmed her opinion of his “prudence, discretion,—and caution, upon all subjects of importance, when the heart is so deeply interested.”30
She also must have interpreted her brother’s remarks as suggesting that money, or lack of it, and consequently his inability to make an immediate commitment to marry Mary Frazier, was the root of the problem. (This was shortly to be confirmed.) She was sorry indeed, she said, that a first impression of partiality and attachment inspired by so amiable and deserving an object—“there was nothing so like perfection, in human shape since the world began,” according to their brother Charles—“should meet eventually with any effacement from mercenary views.”31
Which would explain why, of the five assemblies he attended the first week of June in Newburyport, John Quincy danced four with a Miss Newhall who helped him to pass his time tolerably. But there was a weight on his spirits that he could not remove. This he revealed to his cousin William when he also quoted a passage from Hamlet: “I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth.”32
Cranch was tender and wise beyond his 21 years in his concern for his cousin. “Whence comes the listlessness—this depression of spirits? What can relax the elasticity of your mind?” He sought to comfort him by example, his own when he found himself in a like situation.33
Cranch felt so yesterday, he wrote on June 10, without being able to trace the least cause. The connection between the soul and body was so inexplicable that he believed it impossible to account for the peculiar temper of mind which a man will frequently find himself in. But whatever may be the cause, he promised he “would not make it a subject of derision,” not from the motive of pure friendship alone but because he thought it “a disorder or disease to which a man may as necessarily be subjected as to the stone or the gout.” As for the best remedy: He believed in “determined opposition” (he had first written then crossed out “resolution”). His own depressions seldom lasted more than a few hours, and he could generally reason them away. But if neither “reason nor opposition will prevail,” he would just “run away from them—convert some passing trivial circumstance into a source of pleasure soon able to dissipate the gloom.” On ending his letter, it was his wish that “cheerfulness & peace be with you.”34
But a month later, a saddened John Quincy was still pondering his fate as he faced a critical period in his life. In a rare omission, he made no mention of his birthday on July 11; his line-a-day diary for this month is blemished with words like “Indifferent,” “Disappointed,” “Not extraordinary.”35
On July 15, 1790, age 23, John Quincy was “Sworn into court. Dined at Robinsons tavern, returned to Newburyport.” With his formal admission to the practice of law in the courts of Essex County—wishing all the while that he had been “bred a farmer, a merchant, or ‘an anything’ by which he could earn his bread”—he had ended his three-year peripatetic clerkship to Theophilus Parsons of Newburyport.36
In Boston on the morning of August 9—having taken possession of his office, the front room in his father’s old house at 23 Court Street, which the tenant had given over to him for an abatement of 15 pounds—John Quincy wanted to devote the first few moments of the day to write to his father. It was an awkward letter expressing gratitude for past and future support. In truth, he felt himself to be in an awkward position. Clearly, at his age, a man ought to rely for his subsistence upon his own exertions, and yet, after all the trouble and all the expense that his father had so liberally bestowed on his education, he remained dependent on him to make every necessary allowance for the peculiar circumstances in his education, which had slowed his advancement, and for the unfavorable situation of the profession which he had embraced.37
The principal message to his mother was the same regarding his gratitude and dependence on further material support, but more bluntly revealed his state of mind. Settled in his office, he told his mother, with little expectations at present from business, he was sometimes tempted to regret that he came to a place where the profession was so crowded and expenses so considerable.38
Both parents rallied. His mother wrote from Richmond Hill with a kind of cheerful urgency: that she was pleased to find him so well accommodated; that he had a good office, a good library, and an agreeable family to reside in; and if he would be patient and persevering, he would get business in time. And “when you feel disposed to find fault with your stars, bethink yourself how preferable your situation to that of many others.” Although a state of dependence must ever be irksome to a generous mind, when that dependence was not due to idleness or dissipation, she wrote, “there is no kind parent but what would freely contribute to the support and assistance of a child in proportion to their ability.”39
His father also clearly meant to be supportive of his troubled son. With the best of intentions, though endearingly academic, it was his “solemn advice” to John Quincy that “you make yourself master of the Roman learning. Begin with Livy—take your book, your dictionary, your grammar, your sheet of paper and pen and ink, begin at the beginning and read the work through—put down in writing every word with its meaning, as you find it in Ainsworth. You will find it the most delightful employment you ever engaged in.” The writings of Cicero were to be added. By all means he was to make himself “master of the Latin tongue.” And Polybius and Plutarch and Sallust as sources of wisdom and Roman history were not to be forgotten. “Read them all in Latin.” Nor would he by any means consent that he forget his Greek; “keep it alive at least, and improve it by degrees.”40
In a more pragmatic gesture, thankfully, John Adams offered a supply of wood that might be collected from his various properties, as well as other articles to be reviewed, and most meaningful of all, whole management of his estate if he would take it—though he would not urge it upon him for fear that it might interrupt his studies too much. “Above all things,” his father wished for him to “keep up your spirits and take care of your health.”41
Abigail encouraged John Quincy again in a September letter. She did not doubt, she assured her son, that “you will do very well—only have patience, and I will prophesy for you, that you will be able by the close of one year to pay your own board, and if you do that tis as much as you ought to expect, and if you not, why don’t worry your face into wrinkles about it. We will help you all we can, and when you are better off than those who assist you, you shall help them again if they want it, so make yourself easy and keep free from entanglements of all kinds.”42
There was another reason for Abigail’s September letter. Thomas had told her that John Quincy was in love, and she now stammered away as tactfully as she could manage to advise her son on this obviously bewildering news. It was agreeable enough “so far as it will serve to make you attentive to your person, for you are a little inclined to be negligent . . . besides, it may keep your head from rambling after other objects, but if it makes you anxious & uneasy, and when you are reading, slides in between your subject and you, then have cause to be alarmed, so take heed—.”43
In contrast to his explicit letters to Bridge, Cranch, and Nabby about his love of Mary Frazier, his line-a-day diary only records his frequent visits to the Frazier household with comments that initially vary from “quite smart” to “somewhat dull” to “Frazier’s very good.” On July 8, 1790, he “saw the ladies in the forenoon; evening at Mr. Frazier’s”; on October 29, “M.F. came to town, some perplexity”; on November 1, “Evening at my office, critical period”; on November 15, underlined somewhat ominously, “Letter from my mother.”44
In Abigail’s letter of November 7, she advised her son with greater conviction, for the news had spread. Her sister Elizabeth Shaw had confirmed in September the unwelcome news that John Quincy had been “vastly attentive to the ladies of late, & that one happy fair was distinguished—aye my sister, what will you say, should your Hercules be conquered?” Abigail had been ill in the fall or she would have chided John Quincy sooner. Elaborating on her earlier objections with more than a little passion, she was sorry such a report should persist because whether there was or was not cause for such a rumor, “the report may do an injury to the future prospects of the lady as your own are not such as could warrant you in entering into any engagements. . . . Believe me, my dear son, a too early marriage will involve you in troubles that may render you & yours unhappy the remainder of your life.”45
Moreover, even if he said that he had no idea of connecting himself at present—and Abigail would believe him—“why gain,” his mother asked, “the affections of a woman, or why give her cause to think you attached to her?” Did he not know that “the most cruel of situations to a young lady is to feel herself attached to a gentleman when he can testify it in no other way than by his actions.”46
Sadly, Abigail was cautioning John Quincy by example: Nabby’s example. That she was very anxious for her daughter and her family was “most certain.” Nabby had had a third son four years earlier, following her marriage to Colonel William Stephens Smith, and “heaven grant that she may add no more to the stock until her prospects brighten.” President Washington, the year before, had appointed Colonel Smith as marshal for the district of New York, a position which poorly fed a family. If only Smith had followed his father-in-law’s advice while in England three years ago, he would have entered himself at the Temple and attended the courts at Westminster, reading law at home. Then, on his return, he would have been sworn into court to practice law in New York State, gone into an office, and had no need to look for government employment.47
Burdened with concern for his sister’s welfare, John Quincy thought he could at least safely assure his mother: “my dear Madam, that I am as resolutely determined never to connect a woman to desperate fortunes, as I am never to be indebted to a woman for wealth” and “you shall never be requested,” he promised, “for your consent to a connection of mine, until I am able to support that connection with honor and independence.”48
He also tried to reassure his sister, in a long-owed letter, of his ardent and sincere brotherly affection, “which no length of time, no absence, no course of circumstances, shall ever impair.” He had not wanted to try her patience with peevish complaints, given his inability to bring her accounts of his own happiness or success. Under these circumstances he hoped she would understand his apparent neglect for so long, And in a subtle way, allowing for their shared disappointments, he offered promise to his “dear Sister, [that] better days will come: we shall all in our time, have comforts and enjoyments to boast of, and as time and chance happen to all men, the time must come when some favorable chances will occur to us.”49
The Court of Common Pleas was sitting in Boston on October 5 and 11 when John Quincy made his first attempt at addressing the jury. Afterward, he wrote his mother that he wished he had acquitted himself to his own satisfaction. He had very little time for preparation and did not know the existence of the cause three hours before he spoke to it. The novelty of the situation added to his diffidence about his talent at “extemporary speechifying.” He gave no further details other than the fact that he had lost the case to Harrison Gray Otis. He was too agitated to be “possessed of proper presence of mind,” and he left it to her to “judge of the figure I made.”50
His mother had obviously shared this letter with his father, a matter of deepest concern to both. One evening a few weeks later, Charles, on his return from the Law Society in New York City, found his father in his room with a letter in his hand from John Quincy to his brother. He asked Charles to see what John Quincy had written concerning his “downfall.” On opening his letter, Charles soon learned what his father alluded to but, to his own and his father’s relief, “could find no marks of any downfall.” Instead, he was gravely solicitous in his response. “That you should have been somewhat confused upon your first exertion,” he kindly reassured his brother, “was by no means a matter of astonishment to any of us. The person who is unintimidated upon such occasions has not the common feelings of human nature. There is a pride, a respect, required by the auditors, which makes a little confusion rather pleasing than disagreeable. I think that an harangue of fifteen minutes is by no means despicable for a first essay.” Also, he could not conclude “without wishing you could persuade yourself to take the world a little more fair and easy” for he was confident “you raise hills in your imagination more difficult to ascend than you will in reality find them. May you have great fortitude and a more peaceful mind is the wish of your brother.”51
But it wasn’t merely his disappointing debut in court that bothered him—Dr. Welsh had remarked on his diffidence and his tremor, his father told him later—and had alarmed his parents. It was his frightening state of despair. He was one letter in debt to his mother but, he had written on October 17, he had no good news to tell about himself, and very little about anyone else. Instead, he had the advantage of being 300 miles distant from every member of the family, alone in the world, without a soul to share his few joys, or to participate in his anxieties and suspense, which were neither few nor small.52
“Time was the answer”—his father’s solution. “The world cannot be forced. Time must be taken to become known in any situation.” As for his sensibility at his first essay at extemporary oratory, “your agitation, your confusion, if they are as lively as you describe them,” were not at all surprising. Had he been calm and cool, unaffected and unmoved, it would have been astonishing.53
At a comparable age, his father also had despaired over his expectations for “Happiness, and a solid undisturbed contentment amidst all the disorders, and the continual rotations of worldly affairs.” The son, heir to the father’s ambitions and frustrations, was full of gratitude for the “innumerable favors” he had received from the “best of parents,” but, by his own bitter admission, gratitude was the only return he could make for all their trouble and expense, their labors and cares on his behalf. And certainly, this gratitude did not qualify him to think of marriage to Mary Frazier, for whom he cared more deeply than perhaps even he realized.54
In late autumn, after learning his mother had been ill, he wrote that he was pleased she was feeling better. He also was apologetic about having upset her on his account. In regard to one of “the other circumstances”—that is, the rumor “common fame” had carried to her ears regarding his attachment to a young lady—he wished to assure her that the “Lady will be henceforth at the distance of 40 miles” from him, and that he would have “no further opportunities to indulge a weakness, which you may perhaps censure, but which if you knew the subject, I am sure you would excuse.”55
But he could talk about this and several other things with more freedom than he could write and, if it met with his parents’ approval, he would be happy to pay them a visit of three or four weeks this winter in Philadelphia, the new federal capital as of that fall. The expense would not be much more than if he stayed in Boston, and the change of air, the exercise, the novelty of the place and the variety of scenes might have a favorable effect on his health and spirits.
He left Boston on January 22 by stagecoach and reached Bush Hill, his parent’s residence, seven days later. While in Philadelphia, apart from an intensely social schedule, he visited Congress in session, celebrated George Washington’s birthday—“Splendid Assembly at Night,” according to his diary. He also indulged in what he called his “poetical effusions” as well as rebuses, acrostics and elegies. But he no longer wished for their publication. He told his brother Thomas, “I must bid a long and lasting farewell to the juvenile muses. It is to the severer toils of the Historic Matron that I must henceforth direct all the attention I can allow to that lovely company,” to justice, to “the eyeless dame who holds the balance and the sword.” He had been motivated for some time now to write in defense of his father against the outrageous accusation of “political heresies” by Thomas Jefferson.56
While in Philadelphia he had taken some pains to make a complete collection of books and papers relative to the national government. But back in Boston in March, on finding some documents were missing, he asked that Thomas, who was heading to Quincy the next month, might find spare room in his trunks to bring him a set of the laws and journals of both houses of the last session: Acts Passed at the Third Session of the Congress of the United States of America, Begun and Held at the city of Philadelphia, December 6, 1790 and the Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States, Philadelphia 1791. Also, he was in need of missing numbers from the first volume—he was caught up on the second volume—of the United States Gazette, which the 40-year-old John Fenno published to defend the new government under the Constitution.57
But even as he spoke of gathering together his research, he was far from certain that he could afford to pursue his “inclination.” Fortunately an April 18 letter from his mother fortified his spirits and his interests considerably. She had spoken to his father on the subject of an annual allowance and had agreed that he could draw on Dr. Tufts for 25 pounds each quarter, his first quarter to begin on the first of July. In June there would come further support: his appointment as an attorney for his father, empowering him “to ask, demand, sue for, and recover and receive” all rents and arrears of rent due now or in the future. With relief and gratitude, he twice memorialized his father’s support. “Power, from my father,” he wrote across the top of the document, and again, in the top corner: “Powers from my father to let his house.”58
While John Quincy vowed to abandon juvenile muses for the embrace of the “Historic Matron,” he never could entirely forsake Mary Frazier. Throughout his lifetime, he thought back on the melancholy story of those “troubles of the heart” that were “deep and distressing.”59
He paid Mary Frazier eloquent tribute when he wrote a friend before leaving for Europe in 1794:
far be it from me however, to intimate anything unfavorable about the lady, who was then the beloved of my heart. . . .
With respect to her, my opinions have never shared in the revolution of my sentiments. Her wrong to me (which indeed never originated with herself) I freely forgave at the moment when I resigned her affections . . . I hear her name mentioned without an emotion; I see her without a throb of the heart; I speak to her without a faltering of the voice . . . but I remember that I have loved her with an affection surpassing that of women.60
Decades later, on a Sunday in the White House on November 18, 1838, John Quincy, then 71, recalled “the most affecting incident of a recent visit to Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Boston,” when he had been moved to tears of tenderness and melancholy by the sight of a gravestone bearing the solitary inscription of Maria Osborne Sargent, born in 1804, deceased at the age of 30 in 1835. This was the daughter of Daniel Sargent and Mary Frazier, “once to me the most beautiful and most beloved of her sex. In the 15th year of her age, she gave me, then 22, the assurance of her affection and the pledge of her faith. A year afterwards she withdrew them, from distrust instilled into her mind by an anxious cousin. Twelve years afterward she married Daniel Sargent, and in 1804, at the age of 30, died of consumption consequent upon the birth of this only child,” who died, too, the same age as her mother.61
At this point, John Quincy imagined what would have been their fate had their union been accomplished. In all probability, he guessed, he should have lost her in the prime of life and lost perhaps a child, cut off like this, in the blossom. “Dearly! how dearly did the sacrifice of her cost me, voluntary as it was, for the separation occasioned by my declining to contract an unqualified engagement forbidden by my father and by the advice of her cousin to insist on a positive engagement or a separation. Four years of exquisite wretchedness followed this separation nor was the wound healed, till the Atlantic ocean flowed between us.”62
There are no likenesses of Mary Frazier, not even a silhouette. We only know, because Charles Adams told his sister Nabby, that “there is nothing so like perfection, in human shape appeared since the world began.” What is certain is that she was the daughter of Moses and Elizabeth Frazier of Newburyport, and that John Quincy was despondent over their parting. That he disposed of relevant correspondence must account for the skimpy, passing reference to his father’s powerful influence. His mother’s antipathy may have been rooted in her feelings, expressed decades later, of having married “much too young for the proper fulfillment of duties which soon devolved upon me.”63
Possibly, his Aunt Elizabeth Shaw alone, in whose home he had sought peace of mind, understood the depth of her nephew’s love and sacrifice, and knew how critically his health suffered. Some years later, on the eve of his eventual departure abroad, Aunt Elizabeth had teased him about his claim that “cold apathy” had taken possession of his breast, and “If real,” she commented dryly, “it must be extremely advantageous to your peace and tranquility.” Not a likely state for a young man of his nature, the one she recalled on his visit to Haverhill, “when I beheld you nobly struggling with those tender passions, which few at your age would have thought of contending with—& seen you sacrificing your own inclinations, to situations, & filial duty.”64
As to his latter day fears that he might not have another love, his aunt would not hear of them. Instead, she chose to reassure her beloved nephew that he would find “all your sacrifices—your anxieties—your daily labors—midnight toil amply rewarded in the love of this happy fair one,” in a “new candidate for the nuptial state.”65