“To Turn Weariness Itself into Pleasure”
Though it grew more moderate after a full month of icy, nine-degrees-below cold weather, things did not improve in the new year 1800. Louisa was bled on January 2, bore the operation well but fainted in the evening and was taken ill the morning of January 8 in the process “of a fourth misfortune like three others” which she had gone through since arriving in Berlin. After a punishing night, John Quincy hoped the worst of her misfortune was over, and he could only pray to God that there might never again be the possibility of another like event.1
February brought no respite from “melancholy tidings.” News of General Washington’s death after a short illness the past December 15 was a “heavy calamity.” Saddened as he was, France’s formal and public tribute that month to America’s first president seemed to ease his spirits. Napoleon, who had seized power as First Consul of France on the past November 9, 1799—the coup of the 18 Brumaire, year VIII, in the French revolutionary calendar—had ordered black crepe added to the flags and colors of the French armies throughout the whole republic for ten days, and delivered a funeral oration at the Hôtel des Invalides.2
John Quincy was also somewhat consoled that France’s minister at Berlin, General Jacques de Bournonville, with his entire legation had paid him a personal visit to express their regret at the death of America’s most illustrious citizen. But John Quincy had interpreted France’s homage to George Washington from an additionally positive perspective. He was also thinking of America’s trio of peace-seekers, when he reported to Secretary of State John Marshall on March 8 that the outcome of their mission “appears to be more flattering from day to day.”3
The trio of American envoys—Oliver Ellsworth, former chief justice of the Supreme Court; William R. Davie, former governor of North Carolina, after a torturous journey by way of Portugal; and William Vans Murray, after pushing his way across Holland’s marshes and wide chilling waters—held their first official meeting with France’s minister of exterior relations on Wednesday, March 3. In general Murray faced the situation with some optimism. If there was to be a time more favorable than another to obtain justice in France, he thought it was the present. As Bonaparte wished from self-interest to establish his credentials among the neutral powers of Europe, Murray knew that America’s affairs would be the touchstone.
Still, it had taken until August 20 before Murray could predict that they might bring things to a speedy conclusion. He also made it very plain to John Quincy that he was acutely aware of the twofold nature of the commission’s challenges. Though settling a peace in Paris would be great in itself, it also would greatly aid John Adams’s reelection. “Do not believe that we sleep over this estimate of the influence of a good end to our labor over the approaching election. We have all felt it and worked to get along.” And though Murray was proud of his own role, he had to say that the great turns were contributed by Ellsworth, whose resources, his “clearness, firmness and wisdom” had staggered him. He profoundly admired the neatness and accuracy of his mind, and if he had l’usage du monde (the French language) and more literature, he would have been a giant among the diplomats of Europe. That man, he had concluded, “has a head of iron—just iron—that works with the precision of a mill, without its quickness and giddy manner.” As for Davie, he found him “a firm, soldierly, and well-informed man.”4
The treaty of amity between France and the United States was signed at Morfontaine on October 3 at the noble chateau of Joseph Bonaparte, president of the French commission. The impromptu fête champetre that followed, honoring the American commissioners, was “highly complimentary in all its features, and splendid and courtly, and friendly,” in striking contrast to the terrible treatment of the last commission.5
Guests included the ministers of state, generals, the entire Bonaparte family and the foreign diplomatic corps, about 150 in all for dinner. The chateau was illuminated, wreathed in foliage and flowers as fireworks burst skyward from the gardens, and songs were sung in honor of reconciliation, of perpetual peace between France and the United States. With glasses held high in honor of Washington’s successor, cannons echoed throughout the night.
The letters of William Vans Murray, John Quincy’s cherished confidant, which were messages of the happiest tidings John Quincy had heard in years, especially the one of September 27 of successful negotiations with France, did not reach him “in due season,” and he apologized. As his post in Berlin was a place of almost total inactivity, he made best use of the summer to travel out of Berlin, ostensibly to acquaint himself with the most important and valuable province of the Prussian dominion, that of Silesia (after 1945, mostly Poland and a corner of Czechoslovakia). Silesia was a very interesting province, little known to foreign travelers, yet rewarding for its beauty and cultural aspects. Also, as the only Prussian region of commercial interest to the United States, he thought it might, for example, supply linen and broadcloths on more advantageous terms than those of England and Ireland.
But perhaps his more urgent motivation, which he did not mention to Murray, stemmed from his hope that this new travel adventure would prove more beneficial to Louisa than the previous summer’s journey. Hinting possibly at her fragile mental as well as physical health, “a state of debility as great as she had been in at any period before,” he had thought, as he wrote in a letter to her father, “to try what would be the effect of a long and fatiguing journey . . . to amuse the mind, to make the time seem short, and to turn weariness itself into pleasure.”6
John Quincy told Murray he thought about writing a series of letters to his brother “without aspiring to the pretensions of a printed type,” that would give his friends in America some knowledge at least of a country which by no means deserved the neglect it had experienced. And his brother Thomas, now returned to America and living in Philadelphia and working in partnership with his Harvard classmate Joseph Dennie in the recently founded periodical Port Folio, might be in a perfect position to publish his “Letters from Silesia.”7
John Quincy had attentively read the prospectus and the first three numbers of Port Folio, which would be regarded in time as “the most influential of early American magazines.” The object was noble: “to take off that foul stain of literary barbarism which had so long exposed their country to the reproach of strangers, and to the derision of her enemies.” Flattered to be part of this lofty endeavor, he cheerfully accepted the editor’s invitation and promised his “cordial cooperation to promote his success according to the measure of my powers, and of the time left me, after attendance to my other duties.”8
The 42 letters, dated from July 21, 1801 to January 3, 1803, included as promised “fragments, written at different times and places; nay, ‘perhaps, in different humors.’” Contributions “of a miscellaneous nature” had touched on a variety of subjects: attempts at making sugar from beets, the system of manufacturing broadcloths at Grunberg and Hirschberg, the great manufacture of porcelain at Meissen, the misery of the peasants, Jewish filthiness, enmity between Catholics and Protestants, a prominent Englishman’s embarrassing marital connection, the highly valued collections of prints to which he wished he might have devoted every morning while in Dresden. They also included translations into English of Juvenal and of Friedrich von Gentz, the admired German author of Origins and Principles of the American Revolution Compared with the French Revolution.9
John Quincy was surprised and not a little embarrassed by the publication of the both promising and pretentious “Letters from Silesia” three years later, in 1804. Mostly, he regretted the allusion to the domestic histories of certain individuals he and Louisa had met in Dresden. Humbled by the experience, he hoped that if ever he qualified as an author, it would be through more elevated materials. Rather wistfully, in middle age, having fallen short of his goal, he consoled himself that “Scarcely any man in this country who has ever figured in public life has ever ventured into the field of general literature—none successfully.”10
John Quincy, Louisa and their servants arrived in Frankfurt an der Oder the evening of July 18, 1800, after an 18-hour journey from Berlin. They traveled on to Crossen, Grünberg, Freystadt, Rottau and Bunzlau, then to Schreiberhau and Warmbrunn. By mid-August they had also visited Schmiedeberg, Landeshut, Grüssau, Glatz and Breslau. Writing from Leipzig on September 24, six weeks before they would return to Berlin, John Quincy found himself in a small, compact town of about 30,000 people, the center at certain seasons of the year of all the commerce of Germany. He had found a very pleasant walk planted with several rows of trees which circled the town. “And this is almost all I know of it as yet,” he reported.11
It was more than he would know of it for some days. He was ill, suffering a cough and chest pains; Louisa had a bad cold and was quite unwell. On September 20, he wrote: Mrs. A “very ill indeed this afternoon,” and added, “We have a dismal month before us.”12
Obviously he knew that Louisa was pregnant, though he never seemed to use that word, referring to her child-bearing state as her “illness.” On September 27 he sent for a Dr. Kapp. He consulted him not only about his own health but Louisa’s; resigned to their dismal fate, he concluded that her case “no physician can remedy.” The next day was rainy and cold and Dr. Kapp returned: “He prescribed for Mrs. A—Tis to no purpose.” John Quincy felt somewhat better the next day, took a walk, called at the circulating library but wrote mournfully, “Mrs. A’s illness rapidly approaching. She is already very unwell and will continue until the severe and inevitable trial has had its usual end.”13
Sad and sadder notations had followed, one day after the other, hidden in the privacy of his diary. Back in Berlin, one day in December he felt compelled to reveal to his father-in-law, Joshua Johnson, the tragic state of Louisa’s health. He had been silent for so long because he was reluctant to become the messenger of ill-tidings, John Quincy wrote on December 10, loath to give pain when the truth would not have proven gratifying to his parental affection. “You have been informed of the afflictions which four times since our residence in this county have befallen us, and the shock to her constitution by such severe and repeated illnesses has occasioned long periods of so much weakness that to have related her situation to you would almost always have been to stress your sensibility.”14
That John Quincy loved Louisa, there was no question. As her father had always found his Louisa a dutiful and affectionate child, it would be almost superfluous to tell him that she had been invariably to him a tender, faithful, inestimable wife. Their domestic happiness would have been perfect but for the sorrow of her sufferings for his own sake, “and how much more so, for hers!” And in his quest, his most anxious and ardent desire to take every possible measure to find relief, he had thought to leave Berlin, which was not healthy for anyone, but peculiarly unsuitable for her, to spend three months of the summer away in the country.15
But far from enjoying herself, apart from ill health, she also suffered for another cause. She was deeply affected by the “unmerited embarrassments . . . her dear and honored father” had suffered from the dishonesty and treachery of his former partners. And on this sore subject, John Quincy begged Johnson to understand that though his silence may have seemed unkind, “nothing could ever be more remote from the feeling of my heart.” He had always shared Louisa’s anxieties and pain on this account. What John Quincy did not share with his father-in-law was the fact that Louisa was once again pregnant, and for the fifth time.16
For months now, John Quincy had discussed his father’s chances for a second term and was far from optimistic about the result. Contrary to his expectations, Murray’s mission, he concluded, had been the origin of that very strange division of the Federalist party, which would probably transfer the office of president at the impending election into the hands of their opponents. Ever since he had learned that Alexander Hamilton was promoting Charles Cotesworth Pinckney for president, he had been fearful of the division and saddened, especially for his father’s sake, to think of the outcome.
Still, John Quincy consoled himself, if the same measure that had given an honorable peace to America should deprive the president of his reelection, “it will but prove the more victoriously that he acted in his station not as the man of a party, but as the man of the whole nation.”17
Hamilton had published The Public Conduct and Character of John Adams Esq., President of the United States in which the contentious secretary of the treasury and inspector-general of the army—from 1798 to 1800, during the unrecognized war with France—acknowledged Adams’s “patriotism, integrity, and, even talents of a certain kind.” But, he continued, he would be deficient in candor if he concealed his conviction that the president did “not possess the talents adapted to the administration of government,” and that there were “great and intrinsic defects in his character, which unfit him for the office of chief magistrate. . . .”18
What Hamilton’s provocation had been, John Quincy did not know for certain. But he thought it stemmed from his pronounced aversion to this last mission to France, and that it was his weight and influence which probably formed the principal nerve of the Federalist party’s dissenters. Further, if a foreign quarrel was necessary as a pretext for keeping the army, then it followed that an army was necessary for keeping Hamilton its commander.
John Quincy also feared the consequences of division from another source, the southern states: the uprisings in South Carolina and Virginia where “the planters have not discovered the inconsistency of holding in one hand the rights of man, and in the other a scourge for the back of slaves.” This was an early and seemingly oblique recognition by John Quincy of the hypocrisy of the nation’s founders who preached freedom but practiced slavery. He was referring to the insurrection led by the enslaved blacksmith known as Gabriel Prosser, named after his master Thomas Prosser, in the summer of 1800. The blacks were said to be 700 strong; then again 6,000; the revolt had not surprised a young man who wondered why the blacks had not risen before.19
But more to John Quincy’s point: Any insurrection against the government, whose unity was always tenuous, was a threat to its survival. He definitely thought that so long as the slaves did not break out in formal rebellion, the Virginians would not feel the need, for the sake of maintaining the union, to impose order. Obviously, as of December 1800, John Quincy had not heard that in the aftermath of the uprising among the southern blacks, a number of them had been killed by hanging.
The winter months would prove more dismal than even John Quincy had anticipated. Ideally, through stormy days and frosty nights, he continued on his round of diplomatic engagements, and Louisa received visits from her faithful friends, foremost among them Dr. Brown’s daughters and Lady Carysfort, the wife of the British foreign minister and, ironically, the granddaughter of George Grenville, perpetrator of the despised Stamp Act of early Revolutionary times.
But more often than not, plans were disrupted. On his return from a ball given by Lord Carysfort, just after nine the night of January 30, 1801, he found Louisa so very ill that he did not leave her bedside the next evening but finished reading Samuel Butler’s Hudibras to her and then some of Thomas Chatterton’s poems. In a sense, their lives were on hold, summarily ordered according to the vagaries of Louisa’s health. As he wrote in his diary at December’s end: “Rise between 8 and 9. Seldom earlier; for which a partial apology arises from the very frequent bad nights my wife’s state of health occasions—Revise my translation of Oberon, about half an hour. Breakfast; dress—Read or write till 2. Walk an hour—Dine—Spend the evening abroad, or reading to Mrs. A—more frequently the latter, until 10. Take a light supper. Bed at 11.”20
Seemingly too disciplined to allow himself the solace of self-pity, John Quincy was, nevertheless, an acutely sensitive man, apt to turn to prayer when deeply moved. So he had done on February 2 when he received so belatedly newspaper clips of December 6, sent by William Vans Murray with the sorrowful announcement of the death of his younger brother, Charles, and wrote: “May the tender mercies of an ever gracious Heaven have attended him in his passage to the world of spirits.” Charles had died the previous November 30, aged 30.21
But Charles’s death could not have come completely as a surprise. His sister Nabby, at the time of Charles’s marriage to Sally Smith, her husband’s sister, had reported to John Quincy: “After all the hair-breadth scrapes and imminent dangers [Charles] has run, he is at last safe landed and I believe is very happy.” Abigail had also mentioned that “people spoke in grief and sorrow of his habits.” Charles had grieved—“my sleep has been disturbed and my waking hours embittered”—over his mismanagement of John Quincy’s funds. The facts were vague but John Quincy’s savings of 4,000 dollars were clearly lost in an ill-conceived effort by Charles to bolster their brother-in-law Colonel Smith’s limp fortune. Charles, in partnership with their trusted family friend and recently bankrupt Dr. Thomas Welsh, had exchanged John Quincy’s mortgage for a note from Justus Bosch Smith, the colonel’s brother, a prosperous landowner. As values had plummeted, there was good reason to believe Justus Smith’s note was worthless, and Abigail was dismayed that John Quincy “should be plundered by every one in whom he has placed confidence.”22
As Abigail’s brother before him, her son Charles had died an alcoholic wreck, of complications of liver and lung disease and dropsy. She took comfort that the once-darling of his father’s heart was “beloved, in spite of his errors,” which John Quincy’s sentiments movingly echoed: He had “cordially and deeply lamented my poor brother,” he told his mother.23
At the same time that news of Charles’s death was confirmed in a letter from his brother Thomas, John Quincy read about the unfortunate election results in both the English and German newspapers: the election of Thomas Jefferson as president of the United States. Also, his father was ill of a fever. He wrote to his mother to assure her: “My mind has deeply shared in all the anxieties, and disappointments, and afflictions, both of a public and private nature which have befallen you, crowded into so short a space of time. The loss of my brother Charles, the illness of my father, and the manner in which his country rewarded a life of labors devoted to their service were all events which, I know, must call forth the fortitude and energy of his soul and of yours.”24
Beyond sympathy, in turn philosophical and pragmatic, bitter and cynical, John Quincy’s intuitive understanding of the complexities of his father’s loss of a second term was implicit in all ensuing discussions of this tender subject involving “lynx-eyed statesmen” and “lion-hearted warriors.”25
He presumed his father cared about the results of the election, but always understood that every man who served in public must look upon the injustice of men in the same light as on the ills of nature—“a fever or a clap of thunder.” Also, he realized his parent had known from the earliest period of his political life that he was destined to receive at some point, sooner or later, such treatment in return for every sacrifice and toil. And, that John Adams would be prepared to bear this event with calmness and composure, if not with indifference, and would not suffer, or allow his health to be affected, or think less of his country than she deserved.26
“Political disappointment is perhaps one of the occasions in human life which requires the greatest portion of philosophy, and although philosophy has very little power to assuage the keenness of their feelings, she had at least the power to silence the voice of complaint,” he wrote his mother. He also reminded his father that in his retirement he would have the genuine pleasure of reflecting that he had left his country in safe and honorable peace.27
But along with concern for his father’s health and spirits, John Quincy worried about his finances and, anticipating this problem, he discussed it with his brother Thomas. Once out of office their father would be out of income as well. Although his father’s principles of economy were as rigorous as he could manage, always free from serious and permanent embarrassment, he had been far from growing rich in the service of the nation, and it was not improbable that he might in his retirement have need for money. In light of John Quincy’s own severe losses, his instructions to Thomas were extraordinarily generous: “I therefore authorize and direct you to consider all and every part of my property in your hands whether of principal or interest, as subject at all times to his disposal for his own use. If you are certain (as you have means of information which I cannot at this distance possess) that he will have no occasion for this, you will not mention to him that I have given you this instruction, for wishes not to make a show of offering.”28
Still looking ahead in mid-March, John Quincy promised “while I remain in Europe” to keep his father informed, to write more often than in the past to compensate for the time his public correspondence no longer crossed his presidential desk. “I say while I remain in Europe” because, he explained to his mother, he was in expectation of his immediate recall after the new president took office. It would not be anything personal—it was just that his mission had been the source of one of the most powerful objections made against what might be called his father’s foreign policy, and he presumed therefore it would be one of the first programs subject to reform.29
In his opinion, the use and advantage of having some public figure in the north of Europe was, indeed, at this moment more immediate than it had been at any time since he had resided there. Russia, Sweden, Denmark and Prussia were all on the brink of war with Great Britain. This left the United States as the only neutral maritime nation, a situation that might in time convince some large-souled politicians that treaties of commerce with Russia would not be a useless waste of public money. As his colleague Joseph Pitcairn wrote on the last of March: The minister of Russia had taken the occasion every time they met to speak of the American trade: “that the Emperor knew we were very commercial, great consumers of his productions, and that the conduct of our seamen and position of our country made ours one of those intercourses which the policy of the court most disposed them to encourage.” But then again, John Quincy realized that those who deemed the mission to Russia inexpedient would probably find motives, if not reasons, equally strong for thinking it still so.30
By mid-April, John Quincy’s mood had eased. He had learned with extreme satisfaction, he wrote his mother, that his father had regained his health and spirits, that he had known all along that in contributing to found a great republic, he was not preparing a school for public gratitude. Now, as his father thought it advisable, he planned to return home immediately. Obviously torn, both felt there was no choice to be made. John Quincy was deeply wounded but resigned. “Justice,” John Adams thought, “would require that [John Quincy] should be sent to France or England,” if he should stay in Europe. But in the end, taking charge and sparing embarrassment, he was convinced that it was his duty to call his son home.31
Three months later, John Quincy offered news that would bring joy as well as relief to his parents, especially to his mother who had feared after the last news of Louisa that the next would bring an account of her death. On April 14, 1801, John Quincy wrote, “The day before yesterday, at half-past three o’clock afternoon, my dear Louisa gave me a son. She has had a very severe time through the winter, and is now so ill that I dare not write to her mother to give her notice of this event. I will humbly hope that in a few days, I may be relieved from my anxiety on her account and enabled to announce to her mother only news of joy. The child is well.”32
John Quincy had every reason to be cautious. It had been a winter of dismal notations in his diary. He had passed the period of transition between the two centuries “with prayer for a mind to bear whatever the future dispensations of his Providence might be,” and he had tried mightily to avoid self-pity. But with Louisa perpetually weak and unwell he schooled himself: “Hope will intrude upon the slightest occasion and catch at every straw. I have every reason for excluding it.”33
Pain had come with such great and daily increasing violence that he thought they could not continue: “My wife’s health,” John Quincy wrote, “is now the object of my greatest concern.” The day after the baby’s birth and for several weeks, Louisa was alternately excessively ill, dangerously ill, dreadfully ill, and, to complicate matters, she had taken such an aversion to Professor Ribke (a local physician), that she would on no account see him again. In such a weakened state, unable to attend the christening on May 4, the ceremony, John Quincy would explain, was as private as possible, limited to the absolutely necessary persons and family. The baptism was performed by Reverend Charles Proby Jr., chaplain to the British Embassy. The godfathers were the Earl of Carysfort, the British Minister at Berlin, and John Quincy Adams himself; the Countess of Carysfort was godmother. Witnesses included Thomas Welsh Jr. and Tilly Whitcomb. The child’s name, John Quincy wrote, was George Washington, and “I implore the favor of almighty God that he may live and never prove unworthy of it.” Afterward, John Quincy had walked with Lord Carysfort under the linden trees until dinner time.34
Judging from Abigail’s remarks to Thomas, his mother was less than pleased that John Quincy had called his son George Washington. His mother had said, “This I think was ill-judged. I feel that it was wrong; children do not know how much their parents are gratified by the continuation of their name in their grandchildren.” But she was sure that John Quincy did not have any intention of wounding his father’s feelings, though he had done so.35
Between four and five the next morning, May 5, John Quincy was on the road to Potsdam where he would deliver his letter of recall to the king, who said he had been pleased with this American minister’s residence in Berlin and was well satisfied with his conduct. His interview with the queen had proven slightly more satisfactory. She repeated nearly what the king had said but with “less appearance of saying mere formalities.” They had talked about Silesia, Switzerland, sea voyages, and in less than half an hour all was over.36
Louisa had remained frail—described as feeble at one point. She walked with help and great difficulty across the room for the first time a month after the baby’s birth. “We are not allowed to hope for a long time at best” for her recovery, John Quincy had written on May 15. Three days later, suffering from rheumatism, he found himself “without an occupation and without the resolution and perseverance to give myself one,” on the verge of a depression. “Mrs. A’s health varying from day to day between bad and worse keeps me in a crucifying state of suspense. My own health suffers from it in proportion.” Desperately seeking relief, the weather very warm, he tried a cold bath in the river “as a species of exercise, and as a tonic.”37
In preparation for their departure, trusted Dr. Brown had inoculated their infant son against smallpox by a new method whose “vaccine matter” troubled John Quincy. Treatment for the scourge, which his father described as “worse than the sword,” had recently and radically changed since his boyhood. At nine, in Boston with family and friends, his mother valiantly leading the way in July 1776, he had braved Dr. Thomas Bulfinch’s application of the Suttonian method, found to be less harsh than prior techniques—smaller punctures, the use of less virulent matter. But 20 years later in 1796, the esteemed British surgeon Dr. Edward Jenner had substituted live cowpox for smallpox and John Quincy was uneasy about the revolutionary content of this recent vaccine matter.38
Generally speaking, “young Mr. Adams,” John Quincy reported to Thomas on May 30, was in good health, and when milk was plenty, in good spirits. But who he resembled definitely was an open question and varied according to his papa’s and mamma’s dearest friends. Thomas would have his turn, John Quincy promised, but meanwhile Louisa was “sorely perplexed to ascertain how he came by his blue eyes.”39
John Quincy with Louisa, their infant George, Epps and Tilly Whitcomb left Berlin for their homebound journey on June 17. They boarded the America on July 8 and would reach the shores of the United States on September 3.
Just three days out, on July 11, 1801, John Quincy had written prayerfully: “I enter upon my thirty-fifth year; with a grateful heart to a kind Providence for its great indulgence through the course of my life and with a supplication for the means of making my future days, days of usefulness.”40
Early on the morning of September 3, they dropped anchor and, with a faint and irregular breeze, proceeded slowly up Delaware Bay. In the afternoon, at Port Penn a customs house officer came on board. Too late in the evening to disembark, they sailed by Newcastle and Wilmington, where the views from the river were most beautiful. They landed in Philadelphia at noon on September 4, 1801. Happily, Thomas was at the wharf to greet them and take them to lodgings he had found for them at Mrs. Roberts’s, at 130 Walnut Street.
Thomas thought his brother unchanged, “though others thought him altered.” He had, however, developed a “sort of fatherly look—no doubt it would grow upon him with increase of years.” With “so much to say to each other,” there was no doubt of Thomas’s appreciation and understanding of the “grasping genius” of his brother. And further, “If he does discuss his opinions openly, he will by the Federalist be called a Jacobin and by the Jacobins a Federalist.”41