Eagle's Cry

by David Nevin

  “Poor Mrs. Adams,” Danny said, “says there is scarcely any furniture, the bell pulls haven’t gone in, only a room or two has been plastered, the big ceremonial East Room has hardly been touched—she hangs the family wash there.”

  Dolley didn’t answer but she thought such talk unnecessary. Mrs. Adams had only been here since November and was said to be even more bitter than her husband over the election. This was a great national house, and it deserved loving attention. Moving beyond the first impact, she saw it did have a faintly shabby air that she was immediately determined to correct. She would see to everything: decoration, colors, finishing, furniture, all the things that shape a shell into a national home. And someday, though she kept the thought to herself, she too might live here, with plantings everywhere and trees growing sturdy, a formal garden in that square across Pennsylvania Avenue that now was a cornfield … .

  “Let’s stop and walk a bit,” she said on impulse. “Get a better look.” In truth, she wanted to savor the place. She was thinking of Colonel Madison’s prediction for his oldest son. Tom wouldn’t be here forever … .

  6

  WASHINGTON, JANUARY 1801

  He boarded the stage at Annapolis and found one other passenger, a heavy man with gray whiskers to his jaw line, his bulbous nose mottled with broken blood veins.

  “Well, young feller,” this worthy boomed as the vehicle lunged off, “looks like we got the Washington stage all to ourselves. My name’s Thomson Tolliver.”

  “John Adams.”

  “John Adams! But you ain’t the president, I reckon.” An explosive laugh. “Not that he’ll be president much longer. Poor John, I really admired him. Fine, honest man. Loved the British a little too much, but what the hell. I seen him once, you know, passing by in a stage, and I saluted him. And by God, he saluted me back! I always remembered that.”

  Mr. Tolliver settled back with a contented sigh. “This election, you know, it wasn’t just an election. No, sir! It was an earthquake like they have across the water, buried Sodom and Gomorrah or whatever that town was. We was bound down the wrong road going hell for leather and the people put up their hand and said, Whoa! We ain’t going that path no more! You know how you drop an egg in the frying pan and the yellow’s looking up at you, and then you flip it over and it looks all different? Same egg, see, same country, but all different. But it’s too bad Mr. Adams had to pay the price, for he’s a damned fine man.”

  With which he folded his arms, wedged himself in a corner of the lurching stage, and went immediately to sleep.

  John Quincy Adams, son of the president, diplomat returning from six years abroad, equally concerned for his father and for his own rapidly dwindling future, rather dreading the bitter anger he was sure his mother would be focusing on their old but no longer admired friend, Mr. Jefferson, opened his traveling copy of Thucydides. But the Peloponnesian Wars failed to grip him, and with his finger holding his page he rode along gazing out on a dense forest of hardwoods broken here and there by a farmhouse behind a rough rail fence, hogs rooting in bare yards, dogs barking at the stage.

  He’d been at his post in Berlin when dispatches gave him the stunning election news. It was shattering in a peculiar way; he’d always seen his father, great patriot and ranking intellectual, as invincible. That he would be cast aside amid electoral detritus was always possible, of course, but John Quincy had never imagined such a thing. A flashing image of how his father would be feeling had struck him, eyes moist, mouth twisted at this new evidence of failed appreciation for a lifetime of public service. The dear old man! They were profoundly close. Over the years their conversations had stretched toward dawn, with the older never condescending to the younger, and much of what the son was today had grown from that intellectual nurturing. And from his powerful mother too, with her incessant demands for excellence.

  But it had been six years since he’d been home … . Nabby, more boon companion of his youth than sister, had married and his brothers had gone their ways, and my goodness, he himself had changed quite radically. Married to Louisa three years—he’d resisted, but what joy the wedded state had proved to be. He was deeply in love with her. That Louisa was American, daughter of the U.S. consul in London, had relieved the Adams, but tensions still swirled around his temerity in choosing without family—meaning maternal—guidance. His lips tightened at the thought. He was thirty-three, for goodness sake, if he’d awaited Mama’s total approval, he’d still be celibate at ninety!

  Louisa would come later, in more leisurely comfort; John Quincy had set out at once, by stage and horseback and small boat and a brig that seemed ready to disintegrate in heavy seas, and finally the long run up the Chesapeake, and now this stage creeping along a road more notable for its holes than for its surface. He was nearly there and should be concentrating on the agony of rejection he knew his father was feeling, but Mr. Tolliver slept on and Adams’s mind circled back to the contemplation of his own dismal future.

  The law … back to Boston, back to a hated practice, rooting among assizes and assigns in search of a meager living, far cry from the promise of his golden youth. He remembered boyhood days in Paris and later in London and, indeed, across Europe when he’d accompanied his father’s diplomatic travels. He’d been warm friends with Mr. Jefferson in the palmy days before that gentleman betrayed his old friends with weird ideas, he’d associated with international statesmen, his French had been better than his English, he’d tutored important men in both languages, and he had forged for himself a lifetime career as student of classics and languages. Quite enough to turn a young lad’s head, though the hammering admonitions his mother sent in every post from Braintree had saved him from that failing, so he felt. He’d entered the magnificent University of Leyden for profound studies, then enrolled in Harvard when his parents insisted he have American training. Harvard was rude and raw, but he’d managed to dig out a few nuggets. Finally—one did, after all, have to earn a living—the dismal law, three years of reading in a good firm and then to Boston, scratching in the courthouse for a miserable living like the guinea fowl in yonder yards. And he’d been single then!

  Rescue from this limbo had come when General Washington named him envoy to The Hague. The general had assured him that his own analytical writing, not his father’s vice presidency, had earned him the post, and off he’d gone to Holland with a light heart. From The Hague and then from Berlin he’d soon been monitoring all of Europe from a ringside seat as the French Revolution changed the very nature of the continent. Ah, those were the days, ample time for obsessive study, frequent travel to Paris and London, a salary on which he could marry and still manage to save, nightly forays to the theater that he savored above all the arts—and now this! Boston and hustling for clients, lurking in courtrooms hoping something would come his way!

  The ride ended at Stelle’s Hotel in the shadow of the massive Capitol. Adams reclaimed his old leather satchel from the boot and paused to examine the building. Far from finished, its muddy grounds still littered with building materials, it nevertheless was impressive, though that was a relative term for a man who’d seen Versailles. He set out along the gravel walk beside Pennsylvania Avenue, dodging the mud splashed from passing carriages, sighing when the gravel walk ran out after a block or two and left him stepping around mud holes. From the jungle to his left he saw ducks scattering, wings glinting, and heard a distant shotgun. A passerby told him that was where L’Enfant envisioned a great mall that would stretch to the Potomac. You had to admire—and perhaps question the sanity—of a man who could dream so magnificently from so pedestrian a start, for there was nothing at all magnificent about the new little town’s physical setting. A misty sun glowed in haze and the air felt damp and warm. Soon he was perspiring and his mood was not high when a voice cried his name.

  “You there! Haw! Rushed home to commiserate with the old man, eh?”

  Timothy Pickering came bearing down on him, eyes alight with malice. The tall, skinny Bostonian,
sour as a quince, had been secretary of state and, hence, John Quincy’s nominal superior until the president had cashiered him. Cashiered the whole cabinet in one ferocious sweep—oh, that had set tongues to wagging! But in doing so the president had saved the nation from war with France. Indeed, John Quincy felt it was not self-aggrandizing to take quiet satisfaction in the fact that he himself had had a signal hand in easing that war danger. His actions had not endeared him to the secretary of state, but there was little love lost between them in any event.

  Now Pickering hurried toward him, stumbled, stepped into a deep puddle and jumped sideways, cursing and shaking a foot. With a tortured smile he said, “Well, a son should commiserate, I suppose, but your father’s a foolish man. He threw everything away when he sucked up to France. Proved to be a mere Gallic tool like that dandified oaf Jefferson, who’s naught but a lickspittle to the Frogs. Mark my words, the French’ll be our destruction, we give ’em a chance!”

  John Quincy bowed. “Mr. Pickering, one can count on you to run true to form.”

  “Certainly, sir.” The older man stopped, peering suspiciously. Had he been insulted? “Well,” he said, “consistency is a virtue and so is speaking against John Adams, you like it or not. But we ain’t lost yet. Colonel Burr will turn things our way.”

  “Colonel Burr?”

  “You ain’t heard about the tie?”

  Adams’s mouth fell open as the older man sketched the situation. “But Burr will withdraw, won’t he?”

  “Hell, no, that’s the point. He’s contesting! Puts it all back in our hands; we still have the House, you know.”

  “You’ll give it to Burr, you mean? That’s—”

  “Keep it to ourselves. Appoint a caretaker for now, then a new election, bring the people back to their senses.”

  “My God, sir!” The words were torn from Adams. “You’ll shatter the Constitution.”

  “Shatter, my foot! We’re saving it. How long do you think it’ll last under Jefferson? He’ll sell us out to the Frenchies the moment he gets in office. Been his plan all along. You squint your eyes and what do you see—Robespierre!”

  Jefferson as Robespierre … ridiculous! He remembered Mr. Tom taking him in hand as a raw boy, polishing his language, leading him on long walking tours of Paris and London, making him understand painting and sculpture and the soaring cathedrals that were both art and worship. Weird and dangerous ideas seemed to have overtaken him, but he still was not to be traduced.

  “Mr. Pickering,” he said, “I’ve known Mr. Jefferson all my life. He’s no Robespierre.”

  “So you say. But you’re not much ’count. Don’t think I’ve forgotten it was you who overturned what the country needed so desperately, to settle things with France. Don’t think anyone will ever forget!”

  Adams smiled. “That I helped avert war? I take that as an accolade.”

  “God! You and your father are fools alike!”

  Still smiling, Adams said, “Now, sir, you criticize my father, and in one respect I do too. He should have cashiered you years ago.” He bowed. “Good day, sir.”

  The thing that really struck him was the pain in his father’s eyes and that drove all thoughts of Mr. Pickering and Colonel Burr from his mind. Of course, first there were rapturous greetings: “Oh, Johnny,” his mother crying, “you’re all grown up!” and then treating him as a child, fussing over his failure to write more often, dubious about his marriage. He assured her she would love his beautiful young wife as he privately measured wife against mother and decided Louisa would have no trouble holding her own. There was the quick tour of the sadly unfinished mansion, its interior streaked and scarred—apparently the roof leaked even though it was new.

  But it was that look in his father’s eyes … his face had taken on a wizened quality that John Quincy had never seen before. Of course, he was older, sixty-five now, but it wasn’t that. During dinner, the sun slowly settling as they lingered at table, purple dusk stealing across the field below, herdsmen rounding up the goats who grazed there, the reality of his father’s manner dawned on him. He’d seen kings deposed in the wild turmoil of Europe today and they had looked … diminished. So did his father. His mother launched a furious tirade against Jefferson, whom she seemed to see entirely in terms of betrayal of their long friendship—“He turned on us, Johnny, he was the asp in the bosom; he’ll carry that to the end of his days!”—while his father said little, that look of pain deepening in his eyes.

  At last his father said that he and Johnny would go off to his study to chat a bit, and she smiled and put her hand on his with such a look of devotion that the son felt sudden moisture in his eyes. He knew that her rage against Thomas Jefferson was simply that he had caused John Adams pain; in defense of her husband she was a warrior.

  Parsimonious to the core, his father lighted a single candle and set it on the desk between them. Clouds had comes abruptly with the night and thunder burst outside. A flash followed and then a quiet but steady rain began to fall, ticking softly against window glass that threw the candle’s flicker back into the room. John Quincy felt the little room reflected his father’s modesty; he might dream of titles for his country, but he was himself an unpretentious man. The wainscoted walls were bare of pictures, and he supposed now none would be hung. The candlelight glinted redly on the Madeira, flashing now and again on cut-glass facets as they drank the wine.

  “Probably I was never right for the presidency,” his father said. “Too fussy, too particular, too concerned about details. Talking truth instead of politics.”

  “No!” John Quincy banged a fist on the desk. “Remember, you succeeded a man who had assumed near-deity status. All the criticism they hesitated to put on him they heaped on you. I’d say you managed it brilliantly.”

  His father smiled, liking what he was hearing but too wise to accept it. “That’s why they rewarded me with a thrashing.”

  John Quincy refilled their glasses and settled back in the chair. Now he saw that, indeed, a single painting had been hung behind the desk, showing the farmhouse at Braintree to which the Adams would be returning and which he knew a part of his father’s heart had never left. He smiled. “You tell me why they so rewarded you. After all, you saved them from a disastrous war. Did they hold that against you?”

  “No, that was popular. But you know my mistake? I should have started afresh with my own cabinet—men loyal to me. But I—oh, I don’t know—I guess I hadn’t realized how party had come to dominate. I was a vice president moving up to president—it seemed an extension rather than a new administration—seemed logical to keep the same cabinet members in place …

  He talked a good while in this vein, somewhat obsessively, the son thought, but the gist was the unexpected strength of party division. Hamilton had been out of the government by then, practicing law in New York, and what the president understood only too late was the cabinet’s fealty to Hamilton and Hamilton’s blind determination to control from afar.

  The president—he was still the president, though from his manner his son could hardly be sure—seized a coal from the fire, lighted his clay pipe, and passed the tongs.

  “So my government was answering primarily to Alex, and Alex wanted war. Madly fearful of the French, sentimental to a fault about the British even after the Revolution. Maybe growing up on a British sugar island inculcates that. Of course, this revolution in Paris scared a lot of people. Scared me too.”

  “Scared everyone,” John Quincy said. “It was violent, dangerous, murderous at times, far beyond rational control for a while. Personification of good gone wrong.”

  “Maybe that kind of violence is inherent in democracy after all,” his father said in a small voice.

  “Oh, Pappa! I just don’t think so. I’ve seen it up close; it doesn’t translate to America.”

  “Really? That’s encouraging. Jefferson as Robespierre is an article of faith with a lot of people.”

  With, for example, Mr. Pickering. He had told his
father of the encounter. Now he said, “Oh, Mr. Jefferson is not—”

  “Yes, yes, I agree. But remember, Robespierre was the end, not the start. Good men were full of hopes and dreams at the start, and then they were swept away and things got worse and worse. Executed the king and then started killing the nobility, and then the men who’d started it were insufficiently radical and Robespierre came up like a shark after chum and gave the world the Terror. And then military dictatorship and Napoleon—if it came here, Jefferson would be just the start; he’d soon be swept away and the evil men would rise … .”

  John Quincy dug the dottle from his pipe and refilled it. He was very content, sitting here with his father. “You’ll see,” he said. “We’re growing from such a different seedbed here from what I see in Europe. Mr. Jefferson won’t be able to ruin us.”

  “Well,” his father said slowly, “we won’t ruin easily. But Jefferson’s ideas are so bizarre it will put us to sore test.” He sighed. “To think we were once the closest of friends.”

  “Do you feel he stole it?” John Quincy asked softly.

  “Yes.” He stopped. “I wouldn’t admit this to anyone, not even your mother, but in my heart of hearts, I see him creeping up under cover of friendship and—” He stopped, his mouth working, then shook his head and said in a whisper, “No, I don’t like thinking such things; it’s not good for me … .”

  There was a long silence and then he said, “Well, it’s not just me personally. Tom will put the whole country under attack. His ideas are strange, something has happened to him, he’s dangerous—he’ll tear things apart. He’ll throw away the national bank and it’s obvious we need it, he’ll reduce privilege and make enemies of men of power without whom the government can’t really work, he’ll kill the navy and shrink the army to a border constabulary—Oh, Johnny, I fear he’ll be wild!”