The depiction works well for Adams's image in that it firmly establishes him as having all the appropriate desires of a young man. It depicts him in a way that is accessible to readers and sympathetic in his heartbreak but above moral reproach in the clear absence of any innuendo that the relationship was ever consummated. Adams remained for Ferling, as he had for many other chroniclers, a chaste man. Ferling even points out that although Adams might well have had plenty of opportunity for sexual dalliances with available women while in Europe, he remained faithful to Abigail. This behavior came naturally for him, although such "month after month of living alone would have tested the mettle of even the most disciplined man."39
As noted at the start of this chapter, in 2001, McCullough published his blockbuster Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, which went on to be developed into an HBO miniseries that won Emmys and numerous other accolades. McCullough, like so many before him, relies on Adams's declaration of being "amorous" and states about him that "the appeal of young women was exceedingly strong," that he was naturally "lively" and "amiable," and that he enjoyed "flirting" with girls. As for the connection to Quincy, McCullough describes it as fully engaging and claims that Adams was "devoting every possible hour to her" before the relationship abruptly fizzled after they were interrupted when he was about to "propose" to her.4o
As biographers have long enjoyed pointing out, Paris provided Adams with much to shake his head over. Indeed, one biographer, borrowing from Warren's own observation, explains that Adams was an ineffective European diplomat because he wouldn't "flirt with the ladies."41 In one letter to Abigail, he assesses European morals in his typical fashion: "Luxury, dissipation, and Effeminacy, are pretty nearly at the same degree of Excess here, and in every other Part of Europe."42 Even after nearly ten years in Europe, he would comment in his diary while he was in London, "The Temples to Bacchus and Venus, are quite unnecessary as Mankind have no need of artificial Incitements, to such Amuzements."43 Typical of most biographers, his self-fashioning has been taken at face value. Popular writer Judith St. George, for example, explains, "John especially objected to Franklin's constant partying, his open flirtations with women."44
Charles Tansill in the 1960s does not include a chapter on Adams in his work about the Founding Fathers, presumably finding him too lacking for Tansill's method of focusing on sexuality to "humanize" his subjects. But in the new millennium, Adams's image was too starched and Puritanical for many modern audiences. Adams's early romance with Quincy was highlighted and framed as evidence of his capacity to love and of his view that such desires were in conflict with his drive and determination in political and legal affairs. In the new millennium, several authors would attempt to make more of Adams's romantic life than before, hoping to fan the embers of any stories they could pinpoint.
Historian John Patrick Diggins's 2003 biography, published as part of the American Presidents series edited by Arthur M.Schlesinger, Jr., portrays Adams as raging with heteronormative desires. Describing the "Wild and Giddy Days" of his youth, Diggins takes pains to wrench Adams from his Puritanical portrayals and highlight his "wit and charm" that he used with the "belles." Setting up a juxtaposition of public and private male selves, Diggins writes, "Long before he was a practicing attorney, Adams felt himself drawn to the female sex." Adams was "warned" of the dangers of premarital sex by his friends, but "even so, Adams spent hours `gallanting the girls."' Quincy, in this version of his youth, becomes but one of many unnamed loves he may have had. She "captivated" him as she did many young men (who, we are told, could not help "swarming around her like moths to a flame"). And she is not described as a massive failed relationship on his part but as someone who left him "lovesick." Although years passed before he would marry Abigail, the quick succession of the telling here makes it seem only a short while before he would do So.45 Diggins reasserts the contrast between the youthful heteronormative and appealing Adams and his stuffy, offensively prudish Puritanical reputation to set the scene for Adams in Paris. As this chapter demonstrates, calling him the "Puritan Diplomat in Paris" shows how Adams's moral compass and above-reproach conduct set him apart from those colleagues of his who had love and romance on their minds while in Paris: Morris, Jefferson, and Franklin 46
In 2005, John Grant, like so many writers before him, lets Adams's passage about his youthful interest in sex and self-restraint stand for itself with no commentary afterward and only this setup: Calling the autobiography a "truth-telling" account, he observes that there is an "extraordinary passage in the early pages about sex." He also argues that Quincy "may have been" an early "distraction" for him but firmly establishes that Adams liked women and they liked him, even if he was a "hard and unsentimental judge of the opposite sex." Grant notes that Adams may actually have been tempted by sex in Paris rather than repulsed by it. He claims that "we have it on his own authority that John Adams was a hot-blooded youth, and his amorous fires were only partially banked in middle age, or so Abigail's letters suggest."47
In 2009, Fleming attempts to create love interests for Adams in the manner of the other great Founders. Calling him "an amorous Puritan," Fleming emphasizes Adams's personal writings in which he self-consciously chastises himself for having a wandering eye and wandering thoughts of amusements, including socializing with girls. While Adams's focus is on showing that he has mastered his carnal self, Fleming uses the passages to highlight that Adams did, indeed, have a carnal self, a side of Adams perhaps lost for many who celebrate him as without "blemish." For Fleming, the youthful Adams was, indeed, inherently sexual: "Growing up on a farm, he had no need for sex education." And Fleming observes that Adams had many "`favorites' throughout his Harvard years." Fleming links him specifically to Quincy, whom he describes as a "beautiful" young woman with whom Adams "found it extremely difficult to discuss love and marriage" (her favorite topics, according to Fleming) "without asking her to be his wife." Fleming asks Americans to imagine Adams and Quincy "almost certainly" "strolling" in "a lover's lane not far from her house. "48
If we compare two moments from Adams's diary with Fleming's interpretations, we can begin to see how the relationship with Quincy developed from something left out of many earlier accounts to a love and loss of high order. Fleming describes a scene where Adams and Quincy were alone: "John leaned toward Hannah, breathing her delicate perfume, lost in the liquid depths of her tantalizing eyes. The words of love and commitment were on his lips," but they were interrupted by Hannah's cousin and her fiance. And the relationship sputtered and died, with Hannah becoming engaged to another young suitor the following month. The actual diary passage is much less romantic, including no references to perfume or "liquid depths." It reads:
Accidents, as we call them, govern a great Part of the World, especially Marriages. Sewal and Esther broke in upon H. and me and interrupted a Conversation that would have terminated in a Courtship, which would in spight of the Dr. have terminated in a Marriage, which Marriage might have depressed me to absolute Poverty and obscurity, to the End of my Life. But the Accident seperated us, and gave room for Lincolns addresses, which have delivered me from very dangerous shackles, and left me at Liberty, if I will but mind my studies, of making a Character and a fortune.49
According to Fleming, the experience was "heartbreak" for Adams, and it pushed him to focus more intently on building his law practice.5o Again, this interpretation is one that favors the heart and tends to make Adams more accessible to modern readers. The original passage on which Fleming bases his interpretation is one that describes a man whom many today would find more difficult to understand. It reads:
Now let me collect my Thoughts, which have been long scattered, among Girls, father, Mother, Grandmother, Brothers, Matrimony, Husling, Chart, Provisions, Cloathing, fewel, servants for a family, and apply them, with steady Resolution and an aspiring Spirit, to the Prosecution of my studies. Now Let me form the great Habits [illegible] of Thinking, Writing, Speaking. Let my whole Courtship be applyed to win
the Applause and Admiration of Gridley, Prat, Otis, Thatcher &c. Let [illegible] Love and Vanity [illegible] be extinguished and the great [illegible] Passions of Ambition, love Patriotism, [illegible] break out and burn. Let little objects be neglected and forgot, and great ones engross, arouse and exalt my soul.51
The eighteenth-century man, complete with his considerations of marriage and career as distinct from love and romance, is one perhaps too alien for contemporary readers to embrace. Fleming, like many biographers before him, looks to sex and romance to give his readers an avenue to Adams that is familiar and also appealing.
Romeo for Juliet
Although biographers have long pointed to the bond of husband and wife, only with the advent of early women's history did the Adamses rise to the ranks of the couple of the Revolution." It was not until the bicentennial that popular audiences had some access to the letters of a personal nature that John and Abigail exchanged. Their courtship letters are, indeed, quite playful, as we might expect given eighteenth-century conventions, and many of his letters contain expressions of romantic desire. "The Conclusion of your Letter makes my Heart throb, more than a Cannonade would," declares one.53 Like most of the Founders, Adams maintains a certain romantic touch in his letters throughout their marriage.
The depiction of the couple as unusually matched, of course, presents an overly simplistic view of the "happy couple," one that is seized on by popular mythmakers who seek to portray the Founders in a positive light and as exceptional individuals both publicly and privately. His self-consciously fashioned identity as a morally upright sexual man ensures the assumption of monogamy during his long absence; the estrangement of husband and wife then becomes one of romantic longing rather than questionable pairing or an absence of love and desire. In an early-twentieth-century account, his courtship is romantic, described in an innocent way as "making love."54 Despite the fact that Minnegerode's 1926 account is a mini-biography of Abigail herself, their marriage is described as being marked by long separations and Abigail's lively correspondence with others is obscured, making her seem wholly dependent on John. In her letters, she is said to have "poured out her heart to him" and to have told him "many tender, foolish things.1"55
The romantic gauze that later-twentieth-century writers wrap around John and Abigail is largely woven from the threads of what to biographers appears to be Abigail's endless pining. Her letters are often expressive, romantic, and loving.56 In 1777, signing one such letter to John, she writes, "Good Night Friend of my Heart, companion of my youth-Husband and Lover-Angles watch thy Repose."57 But he was throughout their marriage, as Abigail writes, her "long absent Husband."58
Abigail was sending sad, lonely letters to John as early as 1767. As time went on, letters came less and less frequently from John. "Dearest Friend," begins one letter from Abigail, "Five Weeks have past and not one line have I received."59 We do know that as time went by, she became frustrated by and resigned to her separation from John. In some letters, she seems to be coaxing and cajoling him to behave better toward her. To this type of expression, he nearly always responds with a combination of reassurance and defensive ness: "In one or two of your Letters you remind me to think of you as I ought. Be assured there is not an Hour in the Day, in which I do not think of you as I ought, that is with every Sentiment of Tenderness, Esteem, and Admiration."G0
Adams's absences at times seemed unwarranted. While the Second Continental Congress was in recess during August 1775, Adams headed to Massachusetts, but instead of going home he went straight to Watertown for the sessions of the General Court. During this period, John and Abigail visited on weekends-an eighteenth-century commuter couple. And after returning to Philadelphia, John did not write home for three weeks. During that time, Abigail's mother, John's brother, and his son all took ill. In John's response to the news from Abigail that her mother has died, he expresses heartfelt sympathy, a somewhat defensive explanation for not being there for her, and uncertainty about what to do-to stay or to return to his family: "You may easily conceive the State of Mind, in which I am at present.-Uncertain and apprehensive, at first I suddenly thought of setting off, immediately, for Braintree, and I have not yet determined otherwise. Yet the State of public Affairs is so critical, that I am half afraid to leave my Station, Altho my Presence here is of no great Consequence."" We can only wonder whether such words were comforting or distressing to Abigail. Her letters are full of references to events and moments that John has missed and should have been present for; perhaps her letters intend to tug on his heartstrings at the same time that they confirms her faith in him as the "tenderest of Husbands."62 This was a marriage of almost constant separation-by John's decision.
John and Abigail's extended time apart generated a body of letters replete with both complaints and expressions of love. Their separations resulted in a marriage experienced largely in letters-a written record that has enabled generations of Americans to ponder their marriage and their private lives apart from each other. In 1779, John again engages Abigail's complaint: "You complain that I dont write often enough, and that when I do, my Letters are too short. If I were to tell you all the Tenderness of my Heart, I should do nothing but write to you. I beg of you not to be uneasy. I write you as often and as much as I ought. If I had an Heart at Ease and Leisure enough, I could write you, several sheets a day, of the Curiosities of this Country. But it is as much impossible for me to think of such subjects as to work Miracles."63
By the last third of the twentieth century, the image of Adams's intimate world would begin to truly come alive. As historian Edith B.Gelles points out, Abigail had a full life in John's absence, with intense emotional bonds with her children and sister.64 And she carried on lively correspondence with many others. Gelles sketches out the changing portrayals of Abigail. In the nineteenth century, she was the idealized woman; in the twentieth century, she was a "romantic silhouette of a woman consecrated in dutiful service to her great husband," and she became a feminist figure in the later twentieth century; "Political Abigail" also came about at this time, which merged the protomodern feminist with the dutiful wife. "The Adams marriage has become legendary in American history," she writes. "Just the mention of 'Abigail and John' calls forth an image of an ideal marriage, one founded upon love, loyalty, friendship, and courage." They had an "ideal correspondence if not an ideal marriage." Given her "visibility," their marriage has come to represent "companionate marriage." As Gelles's work allows us to see, what is often overlooked in the depiction of Abigail as living a life of "constant loneliness" and pining is the very full life that she led in her own right-during his absences. She was not only running the family household, managing the finances, and raising the children but also corresponding with many other individuals, including Warren and one James Lovell. In a romantic, flirtatious manner, Lovell calls her "Lovely Portia." For Gelles, Lovell was an "emotional affair" and a "virtuous affair." Abigail relied chiefly on her sisters for emotional support and described her daughter as her "closest companion."65
In the last third of the twentieth century, popular memory of the American Revolution cast John and Abigail as not only the first "power couple" of the United States but also a romantic pairing of the highest order. Fulfilling the American dream of happy family and romantic pairing, in such tellings John is more than a patriot and Founding Father-he is the founder of the husband ideal. "John Adams was in love," according to one biographer. The author notes that "he had been in love before" and that "he was of so amorous a bent" that he would write in his autobiography that no one needed to worry that he had sired another family. But the marriage is a remarkable one, according to this author, in part because Abigail was "delightfully feminine, [John] robustly masculine."66 Their "love did not wither during these absences but progressed to new heights," with each "continually declar[ing] unabated love between the partners, despite all hardship and separation.""
In 1979, Robert A.East describes theirs as "surely one of the most glorious marria
ges ever made." Calling them "ideally suited" and their union "a real love affair," this biographer notes that some have even claimed that "his marriage saved his sanity because he had been exhibiting paranoid (i.e., suspicious) behavior; but whether that was sexual in origin is anybody's guess." Their marriage, and Abigail's position in it, is readily romanticized in simple terms, downplaying the complexities of distance and time apart, of other significant bonds developed, of feelings of betrayal, and of opportunities for nonmonogamous expression that might have gone unrecorded. Portraying her as his perfect "helpmeet," East describes them both in remarkably easy terms-he "a farmer" and she a "dairymaid"-and notes that he "thought of himself primarily as a farmer, and of Abigail as a farmer's wife." 68
The depiction of a chaste, moral man with no skeletons in his closet could serve as a healthy counterbalance to the sordid tales of Jefferson and others. But it could also veer too far off course, making Adams inaccessible to modern readers, save one detail: his supposedly well-documented marriage. By the 1990s, accounts begin to present two versions of the marriage. In 1992, for popular biographer Ferling, the match was, indeed, one of extraordinary love, as has been depicted in previous decades. Their happiness as newlyweds is warmly described, their letters are mined for expressions of deep sentiment, and their reunions after long absences are portrayed as electric. But Ferling is also quick to emphasize that Abigail's longings were not simply romantic and touching but also sources of deep dissatisfaction in the relationship. Indeed, in Ferling's account, Adams eventually becomes truly comfortable with "full intimacy" with his wife too late in the relationship, as Abigail has already "changed" from the years apart. This failing, Ferling points out, was part of a "transformation that is not uncommon among men in their later adult years," an explanatory phrase that would have connected Adams to readers in that very demographic.69
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