American Phoenix

by Jane Cook

  “I entertain some very heretical opinions upon the merits of that common law, so idolized by all the English common lawyers and by all the parrots who repeat their words in America.” His doubts about common law were so strong that he knew he could not possibly serve on the US Supreme Court without ruffling the robes of judges up and down the thirteen original colonies and beyond.

  Though John didn’t think it was dishonorable to pursue public office, he believed that he should wait until called by the voice of his country. With war on the horizon and his wife about to go through the agony and danger of childbirth, he had no idea what his next calling would be. If his country did call again, he assured his father that he would “repair without hesitation to the post assigned me.”

  He had one consolation in his need for quick resolution with his father. As many as two hundred US ships had arrived in Russia that summer. One from Delaware came in fewer than forty days, a record time.

  “For seven months of the year my great embarrassment was to devise means of sending my letters for America to places from which they could be dispatched, but now the opportunities of the direct conveyance are so numerous, that it is impossible to write by them all,” Adams explained of the effects of Russia’s more open trade policy toward American ships. Gone were the restrictions of previous seasons. Not only that, but Danish privateers no longer menaced US ships passing through the straits.

  His father just might receive this letter in six weeks—not six months—such was the definition of instant gratification in 1811.

  After the Peterhof party, John waited for the workers to lower the bridge. He waited so long his eyes seemed glued to his pocket watch. Near a quarter to five in the morning, the laborers lowered the bridge. Adams sprinted home, where he found Louisa as he had left her: pregnant and not in labor, not yet.

  42

  Christening Reprise

  LOUISA ALSO COULD HAVE USED A NONEXISTENT TELEPHONE, ESPECIALLY on August 11, when the tightening of her womb began in earnest. The time arrived. Because they were living in the country, the distance from town delayed the arrival of help. In an era when messengers on horseback carried urgent news, Louisa had to wait before hearing the soothing tones from the voices of an experienced midwife and nurse.

  “We were obliged to send to town for my requisite help. Mrs. Heinche came out and remained through the day—Mrs. Buitzpon here.”

  Though she probably thought otherwise, she likely had access to better midwife care than her sister Nancy had received in the nation’s capital. In America—especially in the remote town of Washington City—midwives were sometimes the closest woman available to help. In contrast most European midwives were licensed by church, local, or provincial governments after they received some training. At a minimum midwives were part of a guild. Midwifery in Europe was a respected trade.

  Every woman is different, but the first stage of labor is usually the longest. Mild contractions begin to squeeze the womb while the cervix dilates. Sometimes the contractions come every fifteen to twenty minutes, and for some, they quickly become much closer and more intense. Louisa’s contractions were slow to mature.

  “Continued quite ill,” she wrote about the next day, August 12.

  Women who have previously given birth often have a shorter labor, but Louisa’s lasted more than twenty-four hours. Her emotions became more intense as she dealt with contraction pain. Then her mood shifted into outright anger. Sometimes gearing up with hostility or getting mad can help a woman push through the pain. The nurse may have suggested that Louisa walk around or squat or remain still and focus her energy on the work of labor. Perhaps the ladylike Louisa failed to scream as loudly as the average Russian woman, or maybe the midwife decided that because Mrs. Adams was not quite ready, she had time to visit another woman in labor.

  “Mrs. Heinche left me to go and see a lady in the city, taking my carriage horses and servants and did not return until six o’clock in the evening.”

  The anxiety of losing her midwife in midstream sent Louisa into a panic. Because Mrs. Heinche had taken their carriage, John had no easy means for calling Dr. Galloway for additional help. No sooner had the woman left than Louisa’s contractions grew more intense, her back pain piercing with lightning-bolt fierceness.

  “This indiscretion nearly cost my life,” Louisa wrote of the midwife’s abandonment. Perhaps, too, she couldn’t shake the knowledge that her sister had died in childbirth.

  Louisa could not have imagined having a telephone any more than she could have conceived wearing a beltlike contraption to measure her contractions or watching the baby’s heart beat on a digital screen. Hearing the beeps and seeing the screen’s magic numbers would have given her the comfort that she most needed in those moments—her baby was alive.

  By the time Mrs. Heinche returned, Louisa’s delirium had reached a peak. She was not the only one who was worried. “This was a day of great suffering and dreadful anxiety to my dear husband,” she wrote.

  Louisa entered into the final work of labor. The midwife may have encouraged her to change her position and take deep breaths after each contraction. Ever since Eve, women have been giving birth. Without the aid of drugs, however, Louisa endured intense, indescribable pain. The fear of death was as real to her as the contractions.

  “God was very merciful to me for I had been in great danger ever since morning.”

  Within an hour and a half after Mrs. Heinche’s return, Louisa felt the burning ring of fire that comes with the crowning of the head.

  “My child, a daughter the first that I was ever blessed with, was born at half past seven o-clock.”

  A rush of relief came after the last push.

  “My sister went and announced her birth to her father, and he soon came into bless and kiss his babe.”

  Joy. Bliss—all something to write home about.

  Nine months after hosting their butler’s baby’s christening in their home, John and Louisa felt the joy of beholding their daughter’s dark eyes among the beauty of white satin calico or a similar fabric. They held the ceremony in their country house.

  “This day my lovely little babe was christened,” Louisa wrote on September 9. Reverend Loudon King Pitt, chaplain of the English Factory Chapel in St. Petersburg, performed the service according to the Church of England’s traditions.

  How they missed Quincy, Massachusetts, in that moment! John and Charles had been baptized in Boston by a family friend in the Congregational tradition. John preferred public baptism rather than a home christening: “Because it is done in church, a place devoted to divine worship, and in the presence of the congregation. It is therefore more solemn and more public than private baptism can be.”

  He also appreciated the practices of Boston churches for another reason: no godparents: “Because the father of the child is the only sponsor, and solemnly undertakes what it is his duty to perform—that is, to educate the child to virtuous and Christian principles; while the sponsors of an English christening are often strangers, who are never likely to have any control over the child, and therefore rashly enter into solemn engagements, the performance of which will never depend upon themselves.”

  Louisa noted with some irony the religious differences of the godparents: “The sponsors were strangely selected: Madame de Bezzara, Roman Catholic, Mrs. Krehmer, Episcopalian, and Mr. Harris, Quaker.”

  They had faced the same dilemma in Berlin when George was born. Though lacking access to their preferred church, christening was so integral to their faith that they dare not postpone it merely to avoid another church’s traditions, which was why John insisted on his daughter’s baptism without delay. “But the rite itself, the solemn dedication of the child to God, I prize so highly, that I think it ought never to be deferred beyond a time of urgent necessity.”

  One person who meant a great deal to them was absent from the ceremony. Public politics permeated this private affair. “We dared not ask the emperor to stand as sponsor, least it should
not please in America,” Louisa explained.

  As much as they longed for their own traditions and their neighbor the emperor to serve as a figurehead godfather, they also mourned over George’s and John’s absence from this happy family celebration.

  About a dozen guests attended. The Adams in John emerged. Nothing would move him on one crucial decision. “The child was baptized by the name of Louisa Catherine, being that of her mother,” he wrote.

  “She was named after me by her father’s special desire contrary to my wish,” Louisa described of the awkwardness.

  Self-conscious or not to his wife, naming a female after her mother was familiar to John. His sister Nabby was named for their mother, Abigail. John’s younger sister, Susanna, who died at thirteen months of age, was named after his father’s mother, Susanna Boylston Adams. Louisa’s middle name and her sister’s formal name, Catherine, came from their mother, Catherine Johnson.

  Although the ceremony was a brief fifteen minutes, the celebration lasted several hours. They entertained by playing cards and serving food.

  “The company dined with us and I got through the fatigue pretty well,” Louisa recorded.

  About this time John wrote letters to their sons back home. Earlier in the summer, after declining the Supreme Court, he had told John and George that he and Louisa would not be able to return home until the next year. Had he a telephone, he could have broken the news in real time and answered their anguished questions. Of course, had he a telephone, he would have also had access to a train to expedite a land journey to Paris and then a boat ride home. Within days after his daughter’s birth, Adams wrote to his sons about their sister’s arrival and that Charles talked about them often. Their mother was doing as well as expected.

  What John didn’t know as he signed that letter was the significance of the signs in the sky. With them would come the woes of the world.

  43

  Comets

  COMETS HAVE A BAD REPUTATION. THEY ARE KNOWN FOR LETTING their hair down and growing a brilliant train as they head for earth. Over the years humans have had trouble making heads or tails of these celestial lights. Some welcome these eccentric stars as signs of hope. To the masses, however, these masses of gas and dust are omens of impending disaster. Many would prefer that a comet keep its distance and stay as close to the sun as possible. The reason? Excessive tragedy seems to follow in the wake of these long-haired stars.

  With so much woe over one comet, what would happen if two comets suddenly appeared in the sky? That was the question on Alexander’s mind as he took a walk on December 9, 1811. When he saw his American friend, he knew he would receive a thoughtful reply.

  “Monsieur Adams,” the emperor called enthusiastically in a good-humored tone. “I have the honor to pay my respect.”

  John responded cordially. As usual the pair discussed the weather, which could not help leading to a conversation about the mysterious lights in the sky.

  “We have two comets at once,” Alexander observed of the twin prediction.

  Adams instantly knew what he meant. The comet of 1811 was becoming more and more unmistakable and brilliant. With its tail “warming them” for some months, the latest reports predicted that two comets, not merely one, would streak past St. Petersburg before the year’s end. John doubted the newspaper’s prediction of double trouble.

  “Oh, that is certain,” Alexander said playfully.

  He offered another cosmic puzzle for Adams to solve. “But, furthermore, I hear that one of the fixed stars—namely, Sirius—has sunk one degree in the firmament,” Alexander continued wryly.

  Unlike his American friend, the emperor’s information came not from a newspaper but a person. In a sarcastic tone, he revealed his source: “But for this I will give you my authority, ‘says the ambassador from France.’”

  “This was extraordinary news indeed,” John responded with equal sarcasm over Count Lauriston’s planetary predictions.

  “C’est un bouleversement général du ciel,” Alexander replied in French of the “general upheaval of the sky.”

  “But as it is generally understood that one comet portends great disasters,” John observed, “it is to be hoped that two must signify some great happiness to the world.”

  “Or at least that their mischief will operate mutually against each other and by reciprocal counteraction destroy the evil efficacy of both,” Alexander suggested.

  “I congratulate His Majesty of his happy solution of the portentous knot.”

  “Il y a moyen d’expliquer toutes ces choses là,” he said with a laugh; that is, there are ways to explain all these things. The czar added that the best way to respond to cosmic harbingers of calamity was to let the heavens take their own course without meddling in their management.

  Indeed. The czar may have recently brought the Turkish Empire to a truce, freeing thousands of Russian soldiers to fight France if need be, but even with all his power, he could not control a comet.

  A Frenchman first discovered the Great Comet in March 1811, when Honoré Flaugergues’s telescope detected a very faint light in the evening twilight. A month later another French astronomer tracked its movements. That same night, a German astronomer recorded a streak of light.

  The nighttime sky of 1811 was very different from that of the modern world. Today, the naked eye easily sees the blinking lights of satellites and aircrafts. Humans are used to watching jets streak across the nighttime sky. Not so back then. All the lights in the sky above Alexander, Adams, and the astronomers were made by the hand of God. None came from the hammers of man. Because their skies were filled only with stars, a brilliant, blazing comet stood out even more as a result. Astronomers predicted the comet would move northeast across Europe and become extremely bright by year’s end. They were right. This brilliance was why newspapers erroneously predicted two comets, not one.

  By December 1811 the comet’s tail was twenty-five degrees long. What no one could predict was just how big and bright this comet would become the following year. In 1812 its coma would grow, spanning more than a million miles across and becoming 50 percent larger than the sun. What no one could also forecast was the name history would give to this widespread wonder. The comet of 1811 is known as Napoleon’s comet.

  Indeed Bonaparte’s destruction across Europe would soon seem as daunting as the comet hovering above.

  “I have got into such a regular and quiet course of life, and have now so little troublesome public business to do, that my time passes smoothly away,” Adams confessed in a letter to his father that autumn.

  Freezing early, the Neva River was passable on foot by October 31. No boats would be able to dock. If the newspaper reports were accurate, John had great reason to rejoice. Finally he received the confirmation he needed.

  Anticipating that Adams would accept the Supreme Court nomination and wanting to rid himself of the troublesome, inept Robert Smith from his cabinet, President Madison offered Smith the St. Petersburg mission. Though at first accepting and telling the newspapers he would go, Smith changed his mind and turned down “the Siberian exile.” Instead he turned his attention to spitefully writing a pamphlet to tear down Madison’s administration.

  “For my own part, I am not displeased that he chose to stay home,” John wrote his father. Had Smith arrived at the Russian post, Adams would have found himself in the unenviable position of spending the winter as a private gentleman without income in St. Petersburg. In his letter to his father, John confided that he hoped to see him within the year. His destination still depended, however, on the president’s pleasure.

  “As respects myself, the interest of my family, and the service of my country, I know not which would be more desirable, for me to remain here or to return home; but the sense of duty prescribing my return is so strong that I still feel myself uneasy until I comply with its commands.”

  John made an important decision. If Madison did not recall him or give him explicit instructions to leave before summer,
John would ask the president for a recall. He was ready to return home and resume the “superintendence” of the education of his older boys. Tutoring four-year-old Charles was one of his favorite activities. The Supreme Court appointment vindicated John’s integrity with his political enemies. He could now return home with dignity. That is, if war didn’t prevent him from leaving when the Neva River broke in the spring. Though he longed to talk politics with his father, he dared not take the risk: “The political state of affairs on the European continent is equivocal and threatening. But on this head, I can say little.”

  From Americans in Paris, John had recently learned that the French police were intercepting his letters from any Russian courier they could catch. He could write sensitive passages in cipher or the latest secret code to US government officials, but not to his brother or parents. For now he must give up writing freely about the state of European affairs to his family.

  At least he no longer needed to advocate to the Russian government on behalf of American commerce. France was clearly now a foe to Alexander, and US trade flowed much more freely into St. Petersburg ports—as did, unofficially, British ships.

  Overall the autumn of 1811 had been rather quiet for the Adams family. They said good-bye to Mr. Gray, who departed for London not long after baby Louisa’s christening. As planned, they also moved again because their country house was not suitable for winter. Although she chose the summer house, Louisa’s need to nurse her infant prevented her from house hunting.

  “[We] moved into a house in the city selected by Mr. Adams, a miserable place but the only one that would suit our finances. The accommodations were altogether unfit for a family,” she wrote in her journal about their new home. “Debt or meanness is the penalty imposed by the salary of an American minister.”

  Not long after returning to the city in October, John met Alexander during a walk along the quay. After discussing the weather, the czar was full of questions. Among them, where was their new home located?