by Jane Cook
Though Louisa suspected the source of her sickness, she embraced the fresh air as often as she could and spent time socializing with friends she loved and trusted.
The next day Mrs. Krehmer visited her. “In the course of conversation, she told me that the emperor had seen all our letters to our family.”
The news was as shocking as it was disturbing. The emperor had been spying on them. No wonder Romanzoff had offered to send their letters through a special courier, who, after the czar read their letters, carried their correspondence to Paris, where someone in the US legation forwarded them to America from France.
Mrs. Krehmer explained that some of John and Louisa’s correspondence had raised royal eyebrows. Louisa tried to recall what she had written about Emperor Alexander to her family. Had her pen offended His Majesty? Probably not, she concluded. If anything, she was effusive about him—embarrassingly so.
Mrs. Krehmer explained that Martha Godfrey, Louisa’s chambermaid, was the target of imperial ire. Martha’s letters had been “abusive” of the czar. She had written about her fear of being mugged and assaulted by Russia’s lower class. As shocking as the news was, the revelation also explained why the imperial family had invited Charles to the palace months earlier and specifically requested Martha to accompany him instead of Louisa.
“[The emperor] did not think her [Martha] at all handsome.”
Mrs. Krehmer then relieved Louisa’s worry. “[The emperor] was much pleased with the description and remarks which I had written of him to my friends.”
Despite his approval, she felt violated.
“I observed that it was very ungenerous of His Majesty after offering to send our dispatches by a private and especial courier to use the opportunity against us,” she tersely replied, not caring if the fissure between her and Alexander grew worse.
“For it was perfectly natural that with the idea of perfect safety attached to the conveyance of our letters that we should describe our first impressions without disguise to our friends to whom they must certainly be very interesting.”
Though political shrewdness kept her from writing anything compromising, she chided herself. Of course he would have been suspicious of the new US minister and his delegation. With Napoleon as an official friend, whom could Alexander really trust?
Louisa did not hide her displeasure: “I knew that she [Mrs. Krehmer] would repeat this to the emperor.”
Indeed, Alexander learned of Louisa’s fury.
33
New Year’s Bang
NO MATTER HOW ANGRY SHE FELT AT THE EMPEROR, LOUISA KEPT to her routine in December 1810. The possibility of running into His Coldness did not stop her from riding in her sleigh. Only her health or the weather prevented her from enjoying the outdoors. Her next outing led to a royal test. Had the imperial chill set in? Or had it thawed?
“As usual we met the emperor but he turned his head away and did not look at us. I could not help laughing but was sorry when I found that he had taken offence,” she wrote.
She wasn’t as concerned about the emperor’s feelings as much as how his displeasure could affect her husband’s success and standing with his fellow diplomats. “For I knew that Mr. Adams would feel unpleasantly about it: as the subject would become very disagreeable if the court as customary adopted the same tone.”
Physical illness soon superseded Louisa’s insecurity over the emperor’s favor. Her health abruptly ended her outings.
“Taken suddenly and severely ill—and continued so all night,” she wrote of vomiting and fatigue on December 13. Such sickness is difficult no matter the season, but winter’s woes worsened the effect.
Meanwhile John saw the climate as a culprit of their physical ills. He observed that the sun was visible only about once a week in St. Petersburg’s arctic climate. When it did shine, the sun hugged the horizon, hardly hovering over the streets. The Adamses didn’t need scientific advances to tell them about the health benefits of sunshine, vitamin D, or serotonin. Both John and Louisa instinctively knew that they felt better on sunny days. The sun’s presence, no matter how infrequent, made the winter blues better for these red-blooded, homesick Americans.
“[T]he first fine day my sister and I resumed our walks—we met the emperor on the Fontanka,” an improved Louisa recorded on December 16.
One advantage of a St. Petersburg winter is the opportunity to walk on the frozen river itself or other waterways, such as the Fontanka, the widest and most remote of the city’s three canals at the time. The sunny hues of the Summer Palace, Peter the Great’s Dutch-style home facing the Fontanka, may have also lifted her spirits on a cold winter’s day. Unlike the nearby Winter Palace—a grand, green giant with hundreds of windows—the yellow Summer Palace is small for an emperor, only two stories tall holding a mere fourteen rooms. Although she didn’t say so, the Summer Palace’s size and scale—though not its sunny color—may have reminded her of the cool-toned Peacefield, the Adamses’ family home in Massachusetts. Like Peacefield, the Summer Palace was a large box with two neat rows of windows on each side. The structure was so simple, it looked as though it belonged on a Boston farm, not among St. Petersburg’s intricate baroque buildings.
While walking on the Fontanka that day, Louisa suddenly saw him. Alexander was coming toward them. She may have elbowed Kitty with school-girl discreetness at the sight of him or nervously tightened a scarf around her neck. How would His Majesty respond? Would he turn his head away and pretend he didn’t see them again? Or would his sunny side make an appearance on this winter day?
“He immediately stopped us and looked and spoke a little coldly addressing my sister; but at parting [he] turned to me and said that it was essential to my health that I should take such exercise and desired that we should walk every fine day when he should hope to meet us,” Louisa reflected with emphasis.
She couldn’t have been more relieved unless she’d read a letter from President Madison requesting John’s return to the United States. Though a tad reserved, Alexander’s favor had returned. By emphasizing his desire to see both Kitty and the married Louisa, he showed that his intentions were honorable. His comments about Mrs. Adams’s health were highly intimate, however. Did he know of her illness? Did he suspect the reason behind it? Surely not. No matter how many may have worshipped him, Alexander was merely an emperor, not God omniscient.
One observation about the incident lingered, leading Louisa to laugh whenever she thought of it. Months earlier, when the emperor had first begun talking with Kitty and Louisa on their walks, his flirting had unleashed jealousy among William and the delegation’s other aides, Mr. Gray and Mr. Everett. The czar’s sudden lack of attention to Kitty aroused their passions even more. Their jealousy grew with each slight. “The gentlemen had all been as angry at the want of notice as they had been at His Majesty’s attentions. . . . The minister took no notice.”
For all her worry over the emperor’s coldness affecting her husband’s success, Adams appeared quite uninterested in the whole affair.
When she had first learned of her husband's and father-in-law’s decision to send Kitty to Russia with her, Louisa had been upset. No matter the era, such a lack of control often leads to anger. The Adams men didn’t understand the strain of chaperoning a young woman in a foreign land. Now with the greatest threat—flirtatious Alexander—subdued, Louisa relaxed and saw the benefits that Kitty’s presence brought her.
“I thank my stars that my sister is with me as things have turned out,” she concluded. “What should I have done with all these young men? A young lady in the family is quite an acquisition—She is a companion to me and to them, and their squabbles among themselves are quite amusing as I have nothing to do with them—They help to pass the time quite pleasantly.”
Inaction from the Russian government was more absent than the winter sun. Nearly a month had passed since John first asked Romanzoff to admit the cargoes of the sixty-seven American ships confiscated at Russian ports for the winter. Persiste
nce was in order. He took the matter to Baron Campenhausen, who was minister of commerce, a role previously held by Romanzoff.
They met at 11:00 a.m., breakfast time after a 9:00 a.m. winter sunrise. The problem was urgent. John needed to send a report to his government about the problem.
“I was now about to dispatch a courier to Göteborg, to embark there for the United States,” Adams explained. “I was desirous of informing the [US] government what the ultimate decision of these vessels and their cargo would be.”
Campenhausen explained that the emperor ordered his council to conduct a special investigation of the six hundred ships. “They belonged to a convoy, about which a great deal had been said,” the baron said with strong emphasis. Newspapers recently revealed that Napoleon was as hysterical as he was emphatic. He believed that all the convoy ships were English. No matter the evidence, Russia should admit none of them.
“I supposed the only paper required by law, of which these vessels would be destitute,” attorney Adams observed to Campenhausen, “would be certificates of origin from the Russian consuls.”
The bottom line was simple. These US vessels came to Russia because the ports in Denmark and Prussia were suddenly closed to them earlier in the summer, thanks to Napoleon’s underhanded intimidation tactics. When they departed Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, these captains could not have possibly known about the closures or the need to obtain a Russian permission slip from a Russian consul from their ports of origin. John reminded the baron that only two months earlier both he and Romanzoff admitted two American vessels under similar circumstances.
“In those cases the decision was by the special order of the emperor himself,” Campenhausen replied, noting that the season of the year made dozens of exceptions problematic. “It was very hard upon Russia to have such immense mass of foreign merchandise thus thrown upon her.”
Russia’s ports were open when the previous two ships were admitted, a time when merchants could easily sell American colonial cargo. With the ports now closed, St. Petersburg’s merchants could not afford to buy an abundance of raw materials such as cotton and sugar.
The lawyer in John emerged with patriotic strength. He must do something, especially if Caulaincourt was whispering in the emperor’s ear against these latest ships. If Adams could convince the baron that this cargo benefited Russia, even when the ports were closed, then maybe he would admit the ships.
“That of the trade carried on by the Americans here, the balance was in favor of Russia,” John pressed, releasing his most flattering argument.
Campenhausen could not conceive “how the balance should be in favor of Russia when the ships came almost all laden with colonial articles.”
The man’s snobbery against colonial items was as obvious—and unflattering—as the wig on his head. By Campenhausen’s calculation, one cargo of colonial articles from America equaled three cargoes of Russian merchandise in return. The assessment surprised John because he knew Romanzoff used a different standard.
“From the very nature of the trade between the United States and this country, it must be in the interest of the Americans who carried it on to load their vessels with the richest cargoes of Russia’s manufacturers that they could carry,” John praised.
The baron then prodded Adams’s political savvy. Why were the ports in Prussia and Denmark closed to American ships?
“France had undertaken to levy a duty of 50 percent upon most of the articles brought by American vessels,” John explained of the latest oppressive tax.
“Was there not a great abuse,” Campenhausen countered, “of the American flag made by the English? Did they not counterfeit their papers?”
“There were undoubtedly cases of that kind,” Adams replied, noting they were fewer in number this year and more easily detected, especially by him.
In most cases the English forged American licenses and certificates, not the other way around. He reminded the baron that these delays made it harder for the sixty-seven ship captains to sell their cargo.
“They could do nothing while the question about their admission was in suspense,” Adams stated in the most forceful but polite tone he could muster.
After two hours of bantering, the baron finally said that the council should decide the matter by the beginning of the next week. Everything on his part was ready; he was waiting on the emperor’s council, which was debating new measures regarding imports. Once those issues were settled, they would consider the American ships.
“As to the greater part of the cargoes, those would certainly be admitted; and as to the rest, we will try and find some expedient to let them in, too,” the baron promised.
While agreeing to put off his couriered messenger a few days more, John was grateful that Campenhausen politely received him and spent so much time discussing the issue. Nonetheless, as Adams knew full well, politeness in Russia rarely translated to progress. He was still waiting for the US ship captains in Archangel to receive their clearance papers. Each day of delay was more and more disastrous to the pocketbooks of his countrymen. What was Caulaincourt whispering to Campenhausen, the emperor, or his council?
Politics, politeness, and pretension pressured John and Louisa as the year came to a close. Then another worry emerged. While she continued to battle her fatigue and illness, Charles suddenly began wheezing and coughing. “Charles was threatened with the croup and I was in an agony of alarm.”
Drawing the three-year-old close to her, Louisa became his steadfast nurse, scouring their medicine chest for help. “I took him into my own chamber and Mr. Adams was obliged to occupy the study.”
The tonics in her medicine box were not sufficient for relieving Charles’s hoarse, brassy cough. She called for an English-speaking physician. “Dr. Galloway stayed and dined with us. I was quite sick myself.”
Their quarantine worsened into a quandary on December 22, when the palace messenger arrived at their hotel with another invitation. “There came a notification from the master of the ceremonies inviting Mr. Adams, Miss Johnson, and myself to a ball.”
The ball was scheduled for December 24, a mere two days away. Louisa was too sick and too worried about Charles to attend. That left Kitty and John.
“Mr. Adams informed him [the master of ceremonies] that my child and myself were both sick and that Miss Johnson according to etiquette could not go alone,” she noted, worried that the decision would rankle royal sensibilities again.
“[The master of ceremonies] replied that he was ordered by the imperial family to say that Miss Johnson would be [considered] as already presented and be privileged to attend on all occasions when notified.” The palace offered “that if Miss Johnson wished to be presented it would only be necessary for her to call on Countess Litta.”
Such a presentation meant money. Kitty would have to visit a dressmaker along the silver arcade and buy a long train and other expensive accessories. John opted against a formal presentation.
“I have formed my domestic establishment in a very exact proportion to my means,” John had recently ranted in his diary. In November he finally received a check for four thousand dollars, about half his salary, sent to him by the US Treasury back in April. The money had been stalled on a ship stuck between America and Russia. John was determined to live within his means. Kitty would not be presented and would not attend without Louisa.
As she nursed Charles, Louisa worried about her absence from the ball, the same event that she had missed the year before. Back then she had been fatigued from the early stages of pregnancy and had spent a quiet evening with a friend. Would the empress mother threaten to take her name off the list again? Would Alexander feel snubbed once more?
Charles was too sick, and Louisa was not much better. Unwilling to jeopardize their family’s health, they risked royal wrath instead. John would go solus. The morning of the ball, he attended court at the palace.
“The empress mother told Mr. Adams she hoped to see me at the ball in the evening�
�He said he feared that the state of my health must deprive me of the honor—when Her Majesty kindly said she should much regret it,” Louisa recorded with some relief. At least the woman’s response was polite.
The ball was unremarkable in John’s mind. Without his wife and sister-in-law, he felt lonely. “Great part of the time I stood gazing, and doing nothing.” He missed Louisa.
The Adamses could not have ended 1810 more depressed. Once again they were stuck, sick, and saddened by the problems suppressing US trade. “I have pursued no object steadily, and the year has left no advantageous trace of itself in the annals of my life,” John reflectively fretted in his diary.
Such sentiment was a stark contrast to his conclusions in October that his mission was a success. Although he had dispatched a courier telling his government about Campenhausen’s assurances that the ships would be admitted, he felt uneasy because the officials had yet to issue the paperwork. In Russia it was easier to obtain a decision than a signature. Adams’s countrymen were anxious. They could not legally sell their cargoes until they received permission papers.
“We end this year in bad health and in worse spirits than ever—God help us these are honors dearly bought,” Louisa similarly observed in her diary.
Charles recovered, but Louisa’s exhaustion increased. Attending a small dinner party was as fatiguing as a large ball. While avoiding socializing as much as she could, she knew she couldn’t easily miss the upcoming Russian New Year’s ball on January 13.
Though the lights of thousands of candles against the beautiful murals frescoed on the Hermitage’s ceilings were brilliant, the crush of a crowd of thirteen thousand made walking from room to room an ordeal. The aroma of lamb or other decadent meats at the diplomatic dinner might make her nauseous.
While Louisa and John welcomed the first day of 1811 depressed and worried, French soldiers began the New Year with jubilant symbolism. Unknown to Emperor Alexander at the time, French soldiers had raised French flags in the newly annexed Hanseatic cities. For the first time Napoleon’s empire stretched to the Baltic Sea, the czar’s backyard.