1 The America floated: “Adventures,” DLCA 1:157–58. In “Record of a Life,” Louisa places the revelation of John Quincy’s love for Mary Frazier earlier. (“Record of a Life,” DLCA 1:61). But the city of Philadelphia: McCullough, John Adams, 75–84; DJQA, September 11, 1801. She was not alone: “Record of a Life,” DLCA 1:158; LCA to JQA, September 16, 1801, AFP. They crossed the limits: AA to JQA, September 13, 1801, AFP. Did Louisa know: Papenfuse, In Pursuit of Profit, 229–30; Catherine Johnson to LCA, April 26, 1798, AFP. When Louisa arrived: “Adventures,” DLCA 1:158. The morning after: “Record of a Life,” DLCA 1:158, LCA to JQA, September 16, 22, October 2, 4, 1801, AFP. He responded to her: JQA to LCA, October 8, 1801, TBA to AA, September 20, 1801, AFP. Louisa was in no: DJQA, October 30, 1801. They had only: DJQA, November 3, 1801; “Adventures,” DLCA 1:176; JQA to AA, November 16, 1801, AFP; “Adventures,” DLCA 1:160; DJQA, November 14, 24, 1801. Before that day: JQA to AA, November 16, 1801, AFP. He thought the group: “Adventures,” DLCA 1:160; DJQA, November 14, 24, 1801. 2 “Quincy! What shall I”: “Adventures,” DLCA 1:162–65. The shock she felt: Caroline Keinath, Adams National Historical Park (Lawrenceburg, IN: The Creative Company, 2008), 10–30; “Adventures,” DLCA 1:164–65; Ellis, Passionate Sage, 22–24. No doubt Abigail: AA to JQA, May 20, 1796, AA to TBA, July 5, December 27, 1801, AFP. But this, as unfair: McCullough, John Adams, 468; JA to AA, October 12, 1799, AA to JQA, January 29, 1801, AFP. So there was a chasm: “Adventures,” DLCA 1:162. Everything seemed to go: Ibid., 165. She heard the way: AA to Elizabeth Smith Shaw Peabody, June 5, 1809, Shaw Family Papens, LC. For the most part: Catherine Johnson to LCA, April 26, 1798, AFP. For the attitudes and expectations of republican women in the late eighteenth century, see Gelles, Portia; Rosemarie Zagarri, “Morals, Manners, and the Republican Mother,” American Quarterly 44 (1992): 192–216; Mary Beth Norton, Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750–1800 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980); Jan Lewis, “Republican Wife: Virtue and Seduction in the Early Republic,” William and Mary Quarterly 44 (1978): 689–721; Linda Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980). For Abigail as an intelligent and canny financial manager as well as a farmeress, see Woody Holton, Abigail Adams (New York: Free Press, 2009). Louisa tried, but: “Adventures,” DLCA 1:167; AA to LCA, March 8, 1802, AFP. The atmosphere around: JQA to TBA, January 9, 1802, AFP; “Adventures,” DLCA 1:174, 187. Despite their sad: “Adventures,” DLCA 1:165, 183; DJQA, January 7, 1803; “Adventures,” DLCA 1:247. As Louisa spent more: DJQA, January 28, 1802; JQA to TBA, January 2, 1803, AFP. “Of course with so much”: “Adventures,” DLCA 1:171; DJQA, November 3, 1803; Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy, 112–14. When Louisa heard: AA to TBA, June 20–26, 1803, AFP; “Adventures,” DLCA 1:188–89. 3 They drove through: “Adventures,” DLCA 1:192–95. Now, because they: Samuel Allyne Otis to JQA, October 20, 1803, AFP; Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy, 119. He planned on keeping: “Adventures,” DLCA 1:196; LCA to CFA, February 10, 1837, AFP. Joshua Johnson had four slaves living in his household in 1800. (1800 U.S. Census, “Joshua Johnson,” Washington Ward 2, District of Columbia, accessed through Ancestry.com.) So life was different: LCA to AA, February 11, 1804, AFP. She went to Congress: “Adventures,” DLCA 1:215, 204–6; Catherine Allgor, A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation (New York: Henry Holt, 2006), 176. She may have felt: “Adventures,” DLCA 1:204–5; Meacham, Thomas Jefferson, 398. This was one more example of the politics being played out through the battles of politesse. Jefferson had a political motivation—forced to accept Britain’s paternalistic treatment and flagrant disrespect of its former colony because the United States could not afford a war, Jefferson was using the Merrys to send a message to Britain in a way that would not provoke a full rupture. He used the social sphere to rattle his baguettes. He had abstract ideas about republican equality and he wanted to try them out. In the name of simplicity, he asserted a “pell-mell” philosophy. There would be no special treatment or deference to rank, no pomp. Louisa was in: Catherine Allgor, Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2000), 115. Allgor’s work is particularly trenchant in her exploration of women’s largely unacknowledged role in Washington’s early political culture. Louisa claimed to: “Adventures,” DLCA 1:185; LCA to JQA, February 15, 1807, JQA to LCA, November 28, 1806, AFP. It was hard: Fredrika J. Teute, “Roman Matron on the Banks of Tiber Creek: Margaret Bayard Smith and the Politicization of Spheres in the Nation’s Capital,” in A Republic for the Ages: The United States Capitol and the Political Culture of the Early Republic, ed. Donald R. Kennon (Charlottesville: Published for the United States Capitol Historical Society by the University Press of Virginia, 1999). Quincy was not: LCA to JQA, April 9, 17, 1804, AFP. “Our separation”: JQA to LCA, April 9, 1804, LCA to JQA, April 17, May 12, 1804, AFP. He was the one: DJQA, August summary 1804, December 4, 1803; JQA to LCA, May 20, 1804, AFP. But her anger: LCA to JQA, May 6, 20, 1804, AFP. Her sisters, her mother: LCA to JQA, May 29, June 6, 1804, AFP. She had her arias: LCA to JQA, May 29, June 6, June 26, May 13, 1804, AFP. He responded caustically: JQA to LCA, May 25, 1804, LCA to JQA, May 13, August 12, 1804, AFP. “It grieves me to see”: LCA to AA, November 27, 1804, AFP. 4 In the summer: “Adventures,” DLCA 1:225–26. It would have been: DJQA, May monthly summary; AA to Eliza Susan Quincy, March 24, 1806, AFP. An offer from Harvard: LCA to JQA, July 20, 1806, AFP. So they tried: AA to LCA, January 19, 1806, LCA to AA, May 18, 1806, AFP; “Adventures,” DLCA 1:232; LCA to AA, May 11, 1806, AFP. The following summer: Ibid., LCA to JQA, May 5, 1806, JQA to LCA, May 18, 1806, LCA to JQA, May 25, 1806, AFP; “Adventures,” DLCA 1:236. The tragedy, for a while: DJQA, June 30, 1806; LCA to JQA, July 6, 1806, AFP. It was never: “Adventures,” DLCA 1:238, 244; DJQA, August monthly summary, 1806. The following winter: AA to JQA, January 16, 1807,: LCA to JQA, November 25, 1806, AFP. “The last paragraph”: JQA to LCA, December 8, 1806, February 6, 1807, LCA to JQA, February 20, 1807, AFP. As it happens: Heffron, Louisa Catherine, 190; LCA to AA, December 6, 1805, AFP; “Adventures,” DLCA 1:187. O’Brien makes the point about Louisa’s view of parental love well in Mrs. Adams in Winter, 230–32. When she reached: “Adventures,” DLCA 1:269; Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy, 140–49. So the embargo: JQA to JA, December 27, 1807, AFP. For JQA’s tendency toward nonconformity, see also Robert R. Thompson, “John Quincy Adams, Apostate: From ‘Outrageous Federalist’ to ‘Republican Exile,’ 1801–1809,” Journal of the Early Republic 11 (Summer 1991): 161–83. His wife was: LCA to AA, January 24, 1808, AFP. When they reached: Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy, 147–49; “Adventures,” DLCA 1:274. Louisa and John Quincy fought: LCA to JQA, January 28, 1809, JQA to LCA, February 8, February 21, 1809, LCA to JQA, February 21, 1809, AFP. On February 26: JQA to LCA, February 26, 1809, AFP; DJQA, March 6, 1809. But the following day: JQA to LCA, March 9, 1809, AFP. But the children: “Adventures,” DLCA 1:283; O’Brien, Mrs. Adams in Winter, 233; AA to Elizabeth Smith Shaw Peabody, July 18, 1809, Shaw Family Papers, LC. Just before they: “Adventures,” DLCA 1:284–85; Oliver, Portraits of John Quincy Adams and His Wife, 49. PART FOUR: THE GILDED DARKNESS
1 The voyage took: O’Brien, Mrs. Adams in Winter, 11; JQA to TBA, August 7, 1809, AFP; DJQA, August 12, 1809; “Adventures,” DLCA 1:285; O’Brien, Mrs. Adams in Winter, 11; “Adventures,” DLCA 1:290. They sailed into: “Adventures,” DLCA 1:291; DJQA, October 23, 1809. The travelers found: “Adventures,” DLCA 1:293; Nagel, John Quincy Adams, 193.
When the cold stone: “Adventures,” DLCA 1:319; O’Brien, Mrs. Adams in Winter, 27–29, 29–30; Heffron, Louisa Catherine, 211. Among American government: O’Brien, Mrs. Adams in Winter, 27; JQA to AA, February 8, 1810, AFP. Louisa and Kitty: “Adventures,” DLCA 1:297, 304–5, 315; LCA to AA, May 13, 1810, AFP. The constant talk: LCA to AA, January 7, July 9, 1810, AFP. On Sunday, November: “Adventures,” DLCA 1:297–98; O’Brien, Mrs. Adams in Winter, 16–17, 20–21, 37–38. 2 The tsar paid: Alfred W. Crosby Jr., America, Russia, Hemp, and Napoleon: American Trade with Russia and the Baltic, 1783–1812 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1965), 14–15, 28, 150–52, 225; Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy, 161, 169; Crosby, American Trade with Russia, 276–79. Most of the daily: David Mayers, The Ambassadors and America’s Soviet Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 17–19; deposition of Christian Rodde, December 4/16, 1814, in Nina Bashinka et al., eds., The United States and Russia: The Beginning of Relations 1765–1815 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1980), 1098. Alexander, after all,: For one evocative exploration of the effects of the godlike status of the tsar by a foreigner, see Astolphe de Custine, Letters from Russia, ed. Anka Muhlstein (New York: NYRB Classics, 2002). The other job: JQA to AA, February 8, 1810, AFP; Bashkina, United States and Russia, 666. An English lord: W. H. Lyttleton to Sir Charles Bagot, January 22, 1827, in Josceline Bagot, ed., George Canning and His Friends (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1909), 2:362. So it helped: Catherine Allgor, “‘A Republican in a Monarchy’: Louisa Catherine Adams in Russia,” Diplomatic History 21 (Winter 1997): 37; DJQA, November 4, 1809. Allgor’s article adroitly assesses Louisa’s role as a partner in John Quincy’s diplomatic work and places her in St. Petersburg’s social and political context. She saw little: “Adventures,” DLCA 1:304, 306–10, 300; Cornelie de Wassenaer, A Visit to St. Petersburg, 1824–1825 (Norwich, UK: Michael Russell Publishing Ltd, 1994), 50; “Adventures,” DLCA 1:336–37. For a vivid description of the waltzing machines, see de Wassenaer, A Visit to St. Petersburg, 1824–1825, 45. Not long afterward: DJQA, November 5, 1811. The tsar wanted: “Adventures,” DLCA 1:316, 318, 326; DJQA, January 9, 1810. The French ambassador: “Adventures,” DLCA 1:302. By May 1811: Ibid.; “Adventures,” DLCA 1:344. There was so much: JQA to AA, October 2, 1811, AFP; James Madison to JQA, October 16, 1810, AA to JQA, March 4, 1811, JA to JQA, March 4, 1811, AFP. But John Quincy declined: DJQA, May 22, 1811; “Adventures,” DLCA 1:348, 351; JQA to AA, September 10, October 24, 1811, AFP. Winter drove the Adamses: DJQA, March 19, 1812; William Steuben Smith to TBA, June 10, 1812, AFP; “Adventures,” DLCA 1:353. At the end of March: JQA to AA, March 30, 1812, AFP. All of this touched: LCA to GWA, June 14, 1812, AFP. Then that child: DJQA, September 7–15, 1812; O’Brien, Mrs. Adams in Winter, 248–52; “Diary,” DLCA 1:358. 3 On September 15: JQA to AA, September 21, 1812, JQA to JA, October 4, 1812, AFP. His grief stayed: JQA to JA, August 10, 1813, JQA to AA, June 30, 1814, AFP. He watched her: DJQA, September 30, 1812; Benjamin Rush, Medical Inquiries and Observations, Upon the Diseases of the Mind (Philadelphia: Kimber and Richardson, 1812); “Diary,” DLCA 1:373, 357. In her diary: “Diary,” DLCA 1:359–60, 367. To an extent: Sarah Nehama, In Death Lamented: The Tradition of Anglo-American Mourning Jewelry (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012); LCA to AA, September 2, 1813, Autograph File, A, Houghton Library, Harvard University. “I am condemned”: “Diary,” DLCA 1:358; JQA to LCA, July 22, 1814, LCA to JQA, November 22, 1814, AFP. There were tensions: DJQA, July 26, 1811, January 15, 1813. The other duties: JQA to AA, December 31, 1812, AFP; “Diary,” DLCA 1:360–61, 366, 369. “We must live almost”: Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy, 186–87; LCA to AA, September 2, 1813, Autograph File, A, Houghton Library, Harvard University; JQA to AA, December 31, 1812, AFP; “Diary,” DLCA 1:370. 4 The British rejected: Bradford Perkins, Castlereagh and Adams: England and the United States, 1812–1813 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964), 65. It seems that he was: JQA to LCA, June 12–19, 1814, LCA to JQA, July 19, September 4, May 20, 1814, AFP. For months she had felt: JQA to LCA, December 29, 1806, AFP. So one of his first: Ibid., LCA to JQA, December 21, 1806, JQA to LCA, May 3, 1814, LCA to JQA, May 19, 1814, AFP. His will was only: JQA to LCA, July 15, 1814, AFP; O’Brien, Mrs. Adams in Winter, 35–37; LCA to JQA, December 15, June 13, 1814, JQA to LCA, December 16, 1814, AFP. For news, see, for instance, JQA to LCA, July 15, 19, September 2, 1814, AFP. Admiring Louisa’s own: LCA to JQA, September 10, August 25, October 23, August 15, 1814, AFP. She liked the independence: LCA to JQA, July 8, August 5, 7, 1814, AFP. Charles began to appear: “Diary,” DLCA 1:303–4. On some days: LCA to JQA, August 7, November 22, 1814, AFP; “Narrative,” DLCA 1:391; LCA to JQA, January 6, 1814, AFP. “Mama is a great amateur of cards”: CFA to JQA, November 18, 1814, AFP. Still, when 1814: JQA to LCA, October 14, 1814, LCA to JQA, October 23, 1814, AFP. “I therefore now”: JQA to LCA, December 27, 1814, AFP. “I am turned”: LCA to JQA, January 31, 1815, AFP; Mariana Starke, Information and Directions for Travellers on the Continent, 5th ed. (Paris: A. and W. Galignani, 1826), 325, quoted in O’Brien, Mrs. Adams in Winter, 56–59. For the preparations for Louisa’s trip, I am indebted to O’Brien’s work. What she didn’t sell: Caroline Keinath, discussion with author, November 27, 2012. No doubt because of: O’Brien, Mrs. Adams in Winter, 3–4; passports, LCA to JQA, February 7, 1, 1815, AFP. Showing political savvy, Louisa would get a second French passport in Berlin from the French ambassador to Prussia, whose name was better known. (O’Brien, Mrs. Adams in Winter, 269. I’m grateful to Beth Luey for calling attention to the significance of the second passport.) Before she left: LCA to JQA, March 5, 1815, AFP; Mme. Bezerra to LCA, July 2, 1816, AFP; Joseph de Maistre, St. Petersburg Dialogues, or, Conversations on the Temporal Governance of Providence, ed. and trans. Richard A. Lebrun (Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993), iv. Most important, there was: “Diary,” DLCA 1:342. She would think: “Narrative,” DLCA 1:387–88. PART FIVE: NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY
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