Posterity

by Dorie Mccullough Lawson

  that I could scarcely realize it.”

  Abigail Adams was accustomed to making ends meet. With an eye for economy, she churned her own butter, did her own sewing, fed the chickens, skimmed the milk, and wove her own cloth. Raising young children and managing the Adams farm, Stoneyfield, she supported the family during the Revolutionary War and during those years her husband was serving the country in Philadelphia and Europe. She was never afraid of hard work, nor of scrimping and saving. Debt was something she was always determined to avoid.

  By the early 1800s, through years of effort, the Adamses had acquired additional properties to increase their Braintree, Massachusetts, farm to more than six-hundred acres. They had also managed to save a goodly sum of money, some $13,000, which they had put in the London bank, Bird, Savage & Bird. Then in 1803, catastrophic news came that Bird, Savage & Bird had collapsed and their money, nearly all of their savings, was gone. Abigail was fifty-nine years old, John Adams, the former president of the United States, sixty-eight.

  Their eldest son, John Quincy Adams, who had initially suggested the bank in London, was determined to “share in the suffering.” He sold his own home, used his savings and borrowed. Slowly he bought his parents' real estate holdings (they held title for life) and eventually replenished their depleted savings.

  Here Abigail Adams illuminates the family predicament for the youngest son, Thomas, a thirty-one-year-old lawyer in Philadelphia.

  Quincy April 26th 1803

  My dear Son

  A very bad whitloe upon the finger of my right Hand has prevented my holding a pen; or useing my hand for a long time, or I should not have been so long silent. Altho my communications will give you more pain than pleasure, it may relieve your mind respecting the loss your Brother has sustaind; but it will be only shifting the Burden upon older Shoulders. You know your Father had some Money in Holland, which since your Brothers return, he concluded to draw out, and vest in the Farm which belonged to your Great Grandfather Quincy. Mr. Tufts after keeping his part a year, made an offer of it to your Father and he concluded to take it; relying upon the property he had abroad to pay for it. Your Brother undertook the management of the buisness abroad and as the exchange was more in favour of England than Holand, the money was drawn from thence, and placed in the Hands of the House which has lately faild, Bird Savage & Bird. A Catastrophe so unexpected to us, and at a time when we had become responsible for so large a sum, has indeed distrest us. At no other time of our lives could we have been equally affected by it. The cloud is not however so black as it first appeard; the Bill which past through your Hands, and upon which such heavey damages would arise if returned, the House inform your Brother that Mr. King kindly agreed to take up, upon honour; if this should be true as I sincerely hope it may, it will save us from such sacrifice of property as at first appeard necessary to us. Your Brother tho no way to blame in the Buisness, having conducted it with as much circumspection as possible, still insists upon selling some property which he has in Boston; a House which he lately purchased in order to aid in raising the money necessary upon this occasion: we shall endeavour to make him secure so that he shall not finally be a looser any further than in common with the rest of the family. At first my phylosophy was put to a trial, different from any I had ever before experienced. I have in the various stages of Life, been call'd to endure afflictions, and dangers of many kinds, but this was something so new, so unexpected, that I could scarcely realize it. Your Father bears it as well and better than I could have expected, but as yet we hardly know what we may call our own. There is the Farm, that has not vanished, and will fetch as much as we agreed to give for it, but what the damages will finally amount to, upon the Bills we cannot yet determine: let it not depress your Spirits, it is one of the unfortunate incidents in human affairs to which no remedy but patience and Submission applies. It was not dissipation, extravagance or lack of Judgement which on our part produced the event. I hope we may yet be able to obtain some part of the property in time. In the mean time, the sacrifices we must make shall on my part be cheerfully borne. If I cannot keep a carriage, I will ride in a chaise. If we cannot pay our labourers upon our Farms, we will let them to the halves, and live upon a part. To know how to a bond and to suffer want is a new lesson, but I will bring my mind to my circumstances. I do not dread want, but I dread debt, and for that reason I would contract no debt which I do not see a way clear to pay.

  I shall upon the next arrivals from England be able to let you know further respecting the State of this Busness.

  I have not had a letter from you for a long time. Adieu my dear Son. My anxiety is chiefly upon my childrens account. Neither your Father or I can have a much longer lease. We should have been rejoiced to have left our children with better prospects. Your affectionate Mother

  A A

  GEORGE CATLIN TO LOUISE CATLIN

  “My conduct has broken your hearts . . .

  I have done the best I could under

  cruel and painful circumstances.”

  As white settlers moved increasingly westward, artist George Catlin feared that Native Americans and their way of life would be forever destroyed. Concerned for the wildlife and wilderness of the West, he is credited for first envisioning the national park system, and he himself worked from 1829 to 1837 to make a pictorial record of the tribes and their people. Traveling by steamboat, horseback, and canoe, he created some six hundred paintings in all—of chiefs and tribal leaders, men, women, and children in their customary clothing and scenes of village life, spiritual ceremonies, and domestic routines. His depictions of the Native American were neither the idealized “noble savage,” nor the threatening beast. Instead Catlin's was a portrayal of individuals living in vibrant cultures all their own.

  His hope was that the United States government would purchase his complete body of work, the “Indian Gallery” as it was known, as a permanent record for the nation of a vanishing world. He drummed up interest by staging exhibitions in eastern cities, and when Congress refused to buy his paintings, he angrily took the entire collection, in 1839, to Europe. There he exhibited the paintings and then went on to produce an expensive and extravagant “Wild West Show” that was to be the beginning of his personal ruin. First, his wife and young son caught pneumonia and died in France, and then he lost his money and his honor to creditors and wound up in debtors' prison. His surviving family returned to America. The entire “Indian Gallery” was sold in 1852 to Philadelphia businessman Joseph Harrison, who stored the paintings in his factory's boiler room for the next twenty-seven years.

  In 1861, George Catlin was deaf and nearly crippled. It had been nearly a decade since he had seen his three daughters. For the previous nine years he had wandered Europe like a vagrant and then, attempting to recapture his days in the American West, he traveled the world painting native peoples. Here, from his small apartment in Belgium, he writes to twenty-year-old Louise.

  Ostende, Belgium

  April 22nd 1861

  My Dear, Sweet little Louise,

  Your affectionate and beautiful letter came to me yesterday, and I lose no time in answering it, to tell you what pleasure it has brought me: this I shall scarely be able to do for there are many things which language was not made perfect enough to express or explain.

  One of these things is the paternal and filial affections which connects parents and children together—when like cords, they are stretched, but not snapped, by distance and long absence.

  My dear child, I have read your affectionate letter over and over, with tears in my eyes, and I thank you for every line of it. It is so tender—so loving—so devotional. My conduct has broken your hearts, but my lovely children I pray to God that He may help you to forgive me. He is my witness that I have done the best I could under cruel and painful circumstances. You can imagine somewhat of the shame, the pain, the anguish of an affectionate and loving parent so long separated from those that he most loves—that he idolizes, but you can never know the
whole of it. The labours and fatigues I have been through since we parted have been many, as well as my successes and misfortunes. I made a fortune for you since I saw you, but I lost it again. I have seen much and I have done much—I have traveled much, and for the last year and a half I have suffered much—I have stood upon the crater of the two volcanos in the Koriak Mountains of Siberia. I have been to the Aleutian Islands, & Kamchatka, traced the Pacific Coast to the mouth of Columbia—ascended that and crossed the Rocky Mountains to Santa Fe—from that to Matamoras, by the Rio Colorado—from that to Cuba—to the Amazon, (the second time) to Venezuela to Bolivia—to Perou—to Equador—to Central Ama—to Yucatan—Palenque to Uxmal &c &c. The expenses of traveling in foreign lands are enormous, & I have had nothing but my own hands with the talent which the Almighty gave me (perhaps for that purpose) to pay my way. You can imagine, my dear child that I have travelled to a disadvantage—that my life has been a rough one, & that I have had to labour hard and constantly, to go through what I have done. I have had no time for pleasure or enjoyment, save those which my labours and the thoughts of my dear little children have afforded me. If my life had been thrown away in idleness or dissipations during these long years of absence there would be no excuse for me. I would be a monster, and I should have no right to ask forgiveness of my dear little angels, but I have been constantly at work, and still am so, even when lying on my back, or hobbling about on Crutches.

  I know by my recollections of your early taste as well as by the graceful and prettily formed lines in your letter that you have a talent for the Art; and I believe (yes, that you can “help me”) I think I am preparing enough for your delicate little fingers to work on for a long time, if you are disposed to do so, and for the benefit of yourself and your dear sisters, when I shall be dead and gone. These things I intend to bring to you before long, if our Country is not deluged in blood which I am any day afraid to hear of.

  Your sweet and pretty little postcard came safe in your letter, as well as one from Clara, & one from Libby in her letter from Cincinnati. Oh how pretty they look to me—and how they accuse me. Clara told me in her last letter that both you and she had written me before, but I never have recd those letters, nor can I account for them. I have now but two traces from your little fingers on earth—the one is your composition in French, on La Morgue—and the other, the affectionate letter which I recd yesterday. I came to Ostende about 10 days since, having been in London for a few days, hobbling about on one Crutch. I have now no appearance of any further volcanic affairs in my knee, but I am still a cripple. And such I fear I shall be for the remainder of my days. I suffer considerable pain at times, and mostly in the night, when one should suppose I should be most at ease. While I hobble about in the open air, and keep in motion, I get along tolerably well; but after sitting for a while it is hard starting. I am giving myself pain in walking, in order to prevent a crooked leg.

  Libby wrote me that Mr. Dudley Gregory had been very ill—this I am sorry to hear, but I hope he has greatly recovered. I shall always sympathize deeply and tenderly with such any afflictions amongst those who have been so kind to my little daughters. How long I shall be in Ostende I know not—it matters little where I am now, as I require but a small space and am solely occupied in writing. And there is such a splendid promenade here on the parapet between the town and the beach—in the sea air, that I believe it may be the best place I could be in. Letters addressed to me at present, to Porte Restard, Ostende, Belgique will be sure to reach me. Give my love to dear, dear little Clara, and tell her that I will answer her letter in a few days. Remember me affectionately to all those so kind to you and rest assured that I have never for a moment lost that love that I always had for my dear little girls.

  Your affectionate parent

  Geo. Catlin.

  I send a kiss.

  George Catlin was reunited with his daughters in 1870, but he did not live to know that his “Indian Gallery” was, in 1879, donated to the United States government by the family of Joseph Harrison. The collection is now at the Smithsonian Institution.

  WILLIAM JAMES TO MARGARET MARY JAMES

  “The disease makes you think of yourself all the time;

  and the way out of it is to keep as busy as we can

  thinking of things and of other people.”

  Philosopher, writer, scientist, and psychologist, William James was a towering figure in America's intellectual golden age. In 1872, at the age of thirty, he was recruited to teach at Harvard, just as it was being transformed into a vigorous modern university. Through his teaching and writing, he came to be known as the father of modern psychology. A member of the esteemed James family (his brother was the novelist Henry James), William James was brilliant, apprehensive, intellectually irreverent, and often insecure.

  Plagued most of his adult life by various ailments and debilitating depression, he and his wife, Alice, spent 1899 and 1900 traveling about Europe in seach of treatment for his seriously diseased heart. Their thirteen-year-old daughter, Peggy, stayed in England with family friends. Feeling lonely and isolated and fearing for her father's health, Peggy was overwhelmed with anxiety. Here psychologist James, a man who had firsthand experience with emotional breakdown and once described himself as his children's “half-cracked neurotic daddy,” writes to his distressed daughter. The letter was written fifteen years before Sigmund Freud published his first essay on depression.

  Villa Luise, Bad-Nauheim,|May 26, 1900.

  Darling Peg,

  Your letter came last night & explained sufficiently the cause of your long silence. You have evidently been in a bad state of spirits again, and dissatisfied with your environment; and I judge that you have been still more dissatisfied with the inner state of trying to consume your own smoke, and grin and bear it, so as to carry out your mother's behests made after the time when you scared us so by your inexplicable tragic outcries in those earlier letters. Well! I believe you have been trying to do the manly thing under difficult circumstances, but one learns only gradually to do the best thing, and the best thing for you would be to write at least weekly, if only a post-card, and say just how things are going. If you are in bad spirits, there is no harm whatever in communicating that fact, and defining the character of it, or describing it as exactly as you like. The bad thing is to pour out the contents of ones bad spirits on others and leave them with it, as it were, on their hands, as if it was for them to do something about it. That was what you did in your other letter which alarmed us so, for your shrieks of anguish were so excessive and so unexplained by anything you told us in the way of facts, that we didn't know but what you had suddenly gone crazy. That is the worst sort of thing you can do. The middle sort of thing is what you do this time—namely keep silent for more than a fortnight, and when you do write, still write rather mysteriously about your sorrows, not being quite open enough. Now, my dear little girl, you have come to an age when the inward life developes, and when some people (and on the whole those who have most of a destiny) find that all is not a bed of roses. Among other things there will be waves of terrible sadness, which last sometimes for days; and dissatisfaction with one's self, and irritation at others, and anger at circumstances and stony insensibility, etc., etc, which taken together form a melancholy. Now, painful as it is, this is sent to us for an enlightenment. It always passes off, and we learn about life from it, and we ought to learn a great many good things if we react on it rightly.* Many persons take a kind of sickly delight in hugging it; and some sentimental ones may even be proud of it, as showing a fine sorrowful kind of sensibility. Such persons make a regular habit of the luxury of woe. That is the worst possible reaction on it. It is usually a sort of disease, when we get it strong; arising from the organism having generated some poison in the blood; and we mustn't submit to it an hour longer than we can help, but jump at every chance to attend to anything cheerful or comic, or take part in any thing active that will divert us from our mean pining inward state of feeling. When it p
asses off, as I said, we know more than we did before. And we must try to make it last as short a time as possible. The worst of it often is that while we are in it, we don't want to get out of it. We hate it, & yet we prefer staying in it—that is a part of the disease. If we find ourselves like that, we must make ourselves do something different, go with people, speak cheerfully, set ourselves to some hard work, make ourselves sweat, etc.; and that is the good way of reacting that makes of us a valuable character. The disease makes you think of yourself all the time; and the way out of it is to keep as busy as we can thinking of things and of other people—no matter what's the matter with our Self. I have no doubt you are doing as well as you know how, darling little Peg; but we have to learn everything, and I also have no doubt that you'll manage it better and better if you ever have any more of it, and soon it will fade away, simply leaving you with more experience. The great thing for you now, I should suppose, would be to enter as friendlily as possible into the interests of the Clark children. If you like them, or acted as if you liked them, you needn't trouble about the question of whether they like you or not. They probably will, fast enough; and if they don't, it will be their funeral, not yours. But this is a great lecture, so I will stop. The great thing about it is that it is all true.

  The baths are threatening to disagree with me again, so I may stop them soon. Will let you know as quick as anything is decided. Good news from home: the Merrimans have taken the Irving street house for another year, and the Wambaughs (of the Law School) have taken Chocorua, though at a reduced rent. The weather here is almost continuously cold & sunless. Your mother is sleeping, and will doubtless add a word to this when she wakes. Keep a merry heart—“time & the hour run through the roughest day.” And believe me ever your most loving

  W.J.