American Phoenix

by Jane Cook

  After the ball honoring Napoleon’s marriage in May, Adams detected a change in the French legation’s behavior. They suddenly seemed friendlier to him. Though the swinging social season was officially over, summer’s eighteen-hour days of sunlight brought opportunities for more intimate casual gatherings. To John’s surprise, Monsieur de Laval, the French consul, issued him an open invitation. Adams and Louisa were welcome to attend any of the small dinner parties he hosted every Monday evening at his country estate.

  So far Adams had spent most of his summer evenings either attending lectures or pursuing his new hobby—comparing the weights and measurements of the Russian pound to the English pound. “I wrote something this day but still gave an undue proportion of the time to my inquiries concerning weights, measures, and coins. My precise object is to ascertain those of Russia, with their relative proportions to those used in America. But I find it extremely difficult,” he recorded in late June.

  Were Russian weights, particularly minted coins, the same as the published standards? To find out, he bought a set of Russian brass weights and scales and compared them with the medicine chest scales he brought from Boston. “My apothecary’s balance was much more accurate, and much more sensible to small weights,” he noted.

  Adams measured the Russian pound as equal to 6316.596 grains of the English weight. Published trade standards stated the Russian pound was 6292.098, a significant discrepancy. The standards were wrong and disadvantageous to American trade as result. He spent so many of his summer evenings exploring his new hobby until two in the morning that he left his wife lonely.

  “Mr. Adams too often passed it [the evening] alone studying weights and measures practically that he might write a work on them: no article however minute escaped his observation and to this object he devoted all his time.”

  She was right. He once spent an entire day visiting the Russian mint to watch the smelting process for silver.

  With the obligation to attend at least one of Laval’s Monday night dinners weighing on him, he broke away from his measurements obsession one July evening and rode out to Laval’s country home. Louisa stayed home.

  Adams was one of twenty guests dining on French cuisine that night. One Russian woman, however, arrived late. Her face immediately captured Adams’s attention.

  “After dinner came some additional company, among whom [was] Princess Woldemar Galitzin, venerable by the length and thickness of her beard.” For the first time in his life, he saw the phenomenon of a bearded lady with his own eyes. “This is no uncommon thing among the ladies of this Slavonian breed. There is now at the Academy of Sciences the portrait of a woman now dead, but with a beard equal to that of Plato,” he wryly observed.

  “But of all the living subjects, the Princess Woldemar Galitzin, is in this respect, of all the females I have seen, the one who most resembles a Greek philosopher,” he later joked in his diary.

  An avid reader, Adams knew Plato’s work quite well. Plato’s beard does not refer to the Greek philosopher’s literal goatee. Because Plato did not wear a beard, Plato’s beard is the philosophy of understanding something based on what doesn’t exist. The Russian woman’s beard was clearly a novelty. She could be best understood by what doesn’t normally exist—full beards on women.

  Another example of a Plato’s beard from that era was the common newspaper practice of deriding Dolley Madison as the queen of America. Some editors concluded that the president’s wife dressed like a queen and carried too much influence over the ways of Washington City. Their opinion was interpreted as an insult because it was based on something that doesn’t exist—an American queen.

  Though not as obvious as the Russian woman’s beard, John made another new discovery that evening. He shared something in common with Laval. After dinner he toured the gardens with some of the other guests. They stopped at a gazebo, where they relaxed and conversed freely.

  There he learned more about his host. The Laval family property was confiscated during the French Revolution, and they were banned from France. Losing everything, an exiled Laval made his way to Russia, where he later married a Russian princess. His story was also a Plato’s beard. Adams could best understand his situation based on something that did not exist—individual liberty in France.

  As much as he detested the French, suddenly he felt compassion for Laval. St. Petersburg was his exile too. Napoleon had given Laval a chance to redeem his loyalty by naming him the French consul in St. Petersburg. Though their nation’s principles were different, Laval and Adams shared a similar situation, a need to escape their distinct forms of exile and return home to an honorable position.

  Adams also conversed with the Austrian minister, whose attention from the French legation had also increased. Summer—and Napoleon’s marriage to the Austrian princess—loosened Julien’s lips. The Austrian’s degrading chatter about the bearded lady and other women that night was as obvious to Adams as the diplomat’s accent.

  “Licentiousness with regard to women was peculiarly the fashion of high life in that age. Perhaps it is inseparably the vice of high life of all ages,” he concluded.

  Once again John realized that his principles clashed with those around him. He was living in a place that lacked both the moral compass of congregations from Boston’s steeples and the ideals espoused by legislators at Beacon Hill’s State House.

  Had Louisa accompanied her husband to that garden dinner party at the Lavals, she, too, would have been astonished to see the bearded lady.

  “Mrs. Adams did not go with me; being confined to her bed, and this evening very unwell,” John wrote.

  Her condition could best be explained by what didn’t exist, either.

  25

  Moving On

  AS THE SUMMER OF 1810 WORE ON, EVERYONE SEEMED TO BE MOVING on or moving home—everyone, that is, except Mrs. Adams. The freeing of the river had given her hope for three things: letters from home and moving, first to a new hotel and then home to Boston.

  “At last there is a prospect of our getting out of this horrid hotel where I cannot sing at my work or be accompanied on the piano by my sister,” she wrote. Whenever she and Kitty tried to practice their singing, they would hear “loud clapping of hands and bravas from the neighboring apartments.”

  Their hotel walls were so thin that she could also hear their neighbors as they moved about, resulting in too much information about their habits, such as “the directions of a gentleman for the finishing touches of the toilet which always terminates with rouge.”

  Worse than that, she also needed a more secluded suitable space for Kitty: “Russian houses have no bed chambers according to our ideas for lady accommodation.”

  Though Louisa would have preferred to board a boat for Boston, she was in no condition to do so at the time. Neither was her husband in a suitable situation for going home. He had yet to receive his US government salary check, which was needed, among other things, for paying for a return voyage home. Instead John solved their privacy problem by relocating the American legation a few doors down to a corner house partly facing the Moika Canal.

  “We have moved into a very handsome house for which Mr. A pays $1,500 a year. It is the cheapest we could get being partly furnished and we have everything about us that can be desired, but I do not like the place nor the people,” she confessed in a new letter to Abigail.

  Her burden over income had also weighed anchor-like in her heart for years. When John asked for her hand in marriage, she assumed that she would bring a decent-sized dowry to their marriage. When her father fled London for America after her wedding, which left his creditors clamoring at the newlyweds’ threshold, John couldn’t help wondering whether she had deceived him into marriage. She had not and married him for love, but the damage was done. Money conflicts had bred discord between them ever since. Sometimes she felt guilty over the smallest purchases, such as a simple straw leghorn hat, which cost a whopping four and a half guineas in St. Petersburg.

  Jo
hn’s salary—as well as other letters from home—were stuck on a ship somewhere across the Atlantic or Baltic. They were living off their savings until his exchange check arrived. How could they return to Boston now? If they were not in Russia when his paycheck arrived, they would fall into an even deeper financial ditch. They had to wait in St. Petersburg for his salary; otherwise it might take another year of transcontinental crossings to access the funds. Their dilemma became so well-known that one of Adams’s new acquaintances, Mr. Montréal, offered him a loan.

  “Under the circumstances in which I find myself here, it is difficult to resist the opportunities thus presented for anticipating upon my regular income,” John confessed. Never before had he faced such temptations to spend excessively. “I declined with thanks Mr. Montréal’s kind offer, as I had that of Mr. Harris.”

  He was determined to live within his means without dependence on others. They soon discovered that they weren’t the only Americans looking for better circumstances.

  “The emperor wants to have Nelson for his own servant. He has fourteen blacks, who on entering the service take an oath never to leave him—They wait upon the imperial family alone, wear Turkish dresses very rich and expensive, and take their turns of service,” Louisa reported.

  The perks for Nelson were great. He would receive his own handsome carriage with four horses. He could eat the remains of desserts from the imperial table. As a free black, his life was another Plato’s beard. The Adamses had frequently defended his status as a free man. Nelson was also best understood by something he wasn’t—a slave. Now Louisa feared he was committed for life: “But he had tasted of freedom and the golden pill of this new slavery.”

  As Nelson left, she also said good-bye that summer to her female colleague. The de Brays took advantage of the good weather and returned to their homeland. “We are all very sorry to lose them as they are a charming family and I am the only lady left—a sad substitute even if our salary permitted the expense,” Louisa noted with jealousy over the de Brays’ escape from exile. How she longed to do the same.

  More than all this, welling up in Mrs. Adams was homesickness. No housing arrangement would fill the huge hole in her heart.

  “Adieu my dear madam, of my beloved boys I think night and day, and this cruel separation becomes almost too painful. Nothing but the firm [con]viction that they can never be in better hands would [enable?] me to endure it, for this is an exile which I fear will not shortly be terminated,” she mourned in a letter to Abigail. Wax on the paper later obscured some of her words.

  The truth was as clear to her as the newly free-flowing river. By moving to a new residence, they weren’t moving where she most wanted to go: home. They were staying in exile, at least for the summer. Perhaps they could make a late escape in October, especially if John’s salary arrived.

  Louisa had not seen her family in nearly a year. Worse, she hadn’t heard a word from them. Nothing. It was as if they were dead. Had she moved from Massachusetts to Georgia, she could have kept in touch at least every few weeks through correspondence. Had she been in London and left her sons in Boston, she would have heard from them about every six weeks. In 1810, living as an expatriate to St. Petersburg was extreme. She might as well have been living in hell. She didn’t know anything about the health or lives of her children. She had good reason to worry about curiousity getting them into trouble. At age two John nearly drowned once when he fell into a rain barrel at Quincy.

  With the river’s breakup, her balm became the arrival of ships. Maybe, just maybe, one of the American captains would warp his boat into the mole and bring her letters from George and John. The hope kept her heart alive.

  In contrast John doubted that few US merchant ships would survive the Danish straits. “I wish they may all arrive safe at the places of their destination, but they are all exposed to the danger at least of Danish privateers,” he wrote to a friend.

  He had every right to be fearful. Napoleon had recently retaliated against Congress’s Non-Intercourse Act of 1809, which limited the previous embargo and prohibited American trade with only France and England while opening it to other countries. In March 1810 Bonaparte issued the Rambouillet Decree, which ordered authorities at French Empire ports, colonies, or countries occupied by French troops to seize “US ships that entered French ports or ports of cities occupied by the French.” This act also prevented American ships from repairing into any port in France or its territories. This applied to any US ship that had already entered a port after May 1809. Though Denmark was not a French territory or directly under the Rambouillet Decree, the Danish government was being squeezed by Bonaparte nonetheless.

  Each summer day seemed worse than the day before, bringing yet another new report of the Danes sequestering an American merchant ship. The news continually heightened their fears of receiving no correspondence from their families and of the disastrous consequences for US commercial sailors and their cargo. Somewhere between Boston and St. Petersburg was a vessel carrying correspondence addressed to John Quincy and Louisa. Those letters were more valuable to the Adams family than three boatfuls of cotton were to the exchange market.

  Finally one ship slipped past the Kattegat and into St. Petersburg.

  “Thank God we now receive letters from our children and friends in America,” Louisa cried with joy.

  The letters were dated from late December 1809 to mid-January 1810. John immediately wrote his mother that “after several months of expectation [your letters] gave me new reason for rejoicing at the final release of these regions from the chains of winter.”

  The correspondence also gave Louisa the relief she most needed to hear. Her boys were alive and “All well.”

  “Your very kind welcome arrived yesterday and—reanimated my frame, which was almost congealed by the intense cold of these frozen regions,” she replied.

  The letters were “an electric shock” that cheered “our painful exile from almost all we have loved.” Had she not received the letters, “we should have sunk into a state of apathy and have lost even the blessing of hope.”

  The good news continued.

  “Tell John how delighted I was with his affectionate letter and George that I hope to receive one soon from him in his own writing, that I am sure they will take all possible pains to learn what is taught them to show grandpapa and grandmama how much they love them. God bless you my sweet boys.”

  Louisa understandably hoped more letters would arrive soon. That burst of news was followed by weeks of silence. Danish privateers continued to seize American ships.

  “Newspapers from Baltimore and no letters—What severe trials!!” she complained on July 4.

  Then her health took a dive. “Taken very ill and confined to my bed—could not see anyone,” she wrote on July 15 of her frailty.

  “I am just recovering from another severe indiscretion which has deprived me of the pleasure of presenting you with another little relation,” she explained in a letter to Abigail.

  Louisa had miscarried the same day John attended Laval’s dinner party. “It is only four days since and I am so weak I can scarcely guide my pen[;] you will therefore my dear mother excuse the shortness of this letter and present me most affectionately to all the family and to my dear boys.”

  How she longed to kiss her older boys “a hundred times” in the lonely days that followed. She had now suffered two miscarriages since arriving in St. Petersburg.

  Today, modern science publishes statistics for multiple miscarriages. One miscarriage isn’t uncommon. Fifty percent of early miscarriages are the result of chromosomal abnormalities in the pregnancy, something unrelated to the parents. Three or more miscarriages are much rarer. Only 1 to 2 percent of women have three or more miscarriages. Sometimes the woman suffers from a blood clotting disorder. In extreme cases, the mother develops an immune response to the baby, attacking the implantation site as an invader. Another explanation is that the parents’ blood types are incompatible. Although it
is impossible to know what caused her multiple miscarriages, modern medicine suggests that Louisa was in a rare category.

  Within a week she recovered her strength. “Resumed my seat in the drawing room and my usual occupations.”

  Adams most likely cheered his wife by telling her all about the bearded Russian lady at Laval’s party. He also probably told her of St. Julien’s crude chatter about women, warning her to avoid the Austrian. Louisa, too, was worried about the looser lifestyles of those around her. Despite their opposite personalities, opposing viewpoints on finances, and the angst between them over leaving John and George, their mutual morals and shared losses drew them closer together.

  “The licentious manners of this place; and the familiar habits of my countrymen are not easily controlled,” Louisa observed, worried about her sister’s flirtatious ways, particularly with her husband’s nephew, William. In their new lodgings, Kitty had her own room. “God help me,” Louisa wrote in her diary of the arrangement.

  Pressing on her mind, too, was her husband’s reputation. “All eyes are on a foreign minister[,] more especially on one such as my husband.”

  People were taking notice, which was why she had been concerned about Kitty’s behavior with Alexander at the ball honoring Napoleon’s marriage earlier in the summer.

  “[John was] a marked man everywhere for great ability and statesmanship and already so distinguished by the emperor and his [foreign] minister.”

  Louisa also detected more friendliness from the French. As much as she longed to go home, she knew her husband was gaining respect, something he didn’t have in Boston.

  The delay of mail had one advantage. Considering it her duty to inform her son of the latest opinions of his political enemies back home, Abigail wrote John and quoted critiques from English newspapers.

  “‘The American minister is the meddling advocate for the exclusion of American vessels from the Russian ports, under pretence of preventing the frauds practiced under the American flag; but in reality in prosecution of the Jeffersonian anti-commercial system,’” Abigail irately copied of the falsehood in a letter dated in late May 1810 and addressed to John Quincy. “And this sensible paragraph is copied into the federal papers, without any comment and to pass where it will for truth. The British party wish to render the mission to Russia as unpopular as possible.”