Chapter Twenty-Five
AUTEUIL
France
I felt myself a young woman again. It was my joy in my husband, in my children, and in the world itself that made me so. Never
had any family had so agreeable a journey—feasting on picnic lunches, reading aloud to one another, and laughing over jests
until our sides hurt.
John and I were raucous with merriment and our children both teased us for our volubility. In return, we wondered aloud how
two garrulous parents might have produced such constrained progeny. For where his father’s sense of humor was lively and playful,
Johnny’s was quiet and dry as a bone, and his sister always apprehended it first, snickering behind her fan.
As for France, it was a marvel to us. Everywhere we looked, something novel and interesting came into view. But the countryside
was poorer than England’s. The sight of downtrodden peasants working the fields certainly sobered us. And John warned, “You’ll
smell Paris before you see it.”
It was true; Paris was dirtier than London—shockingly so—and from the carriage window, I stared openmouthed at noblewomen
in ridiculously tall wigs walking not far from where notorious whores openly plied their wares.
“It takes getting accustomed to,” John said. “But this is a delicious country. Everything that can soothe, charm, and bewitch
is here.”
“Indeed?” I asked archly, as a scantily clad woman passed while both husband and son pretended not to notice.
At length, under my scrutiny, John laughed. “Fine. I admire the ladies here. Don’t be jealous. They’re handsome and their accomplishments are brilliant. Their knowledge of letters and arts exceeds that of the English ladies, I believe. Then again, I think women better than men in general.”
“Since when?” I snapped my fan. “I think you say it with hopes of earning my pardon.”
John grinned. “Is it having the desired effect? No matter. All will be forgiven when you see the house I secured for you.”
To save on costs, our house would be in Auteuil, four miles outside the city. And as our carriage rolled down the lane, I
stared at the white stone, the carved archways, the tall glass doors. “This cannot be our house.”
Stepping down from the carriage, John offered me his hand. “It is for our time here.”
I remained in shock, for our little saltbox in Braintree was but a hovel by comparison. “But this is much larger than we need.
How many rooms?”
“I’m told forty beds may be made in it,” John said.
“Forty!” I froze. Would I play hostess to so many? And who would keep so many fires lit? “It must be cold in winter.”
John led me inside. Dining room to the right, with faded blue silk draperies. Elegant salon to the left with pools of light
on the floor. Beyond the glass doors: a garden spilling with roses, orange trees, and china vases of flowers. My hands flew
to my mouth at the sight.
“Why, Mrs. Adams,” John teased. “I do believe you’re in raptures.”
I couldn’t even reply, stumbling out into the garden to discover green, gold, and crimson bursts of growing things in geometric
plots. A wall of grapevines. A fountain.
Oh, the hours I could pass in this paradise . . .
While I stooped to smell a fragrant white flower, Nabby called excitedly from the house. “Mother! Did you see these clever
floors?”
John steered me back inside, where my reverie was brought to earth by the state of the place—it was quite dirty.
It would take twenty maids to scour it clean.
Still, beneath sheets we found fine furniture and mirrored rooms, paintings and carved fireplaces, to say nothing of an elegant bathing convenience set in a room of mirrors.
As for the floors that fascinated Nabby, they were made of strips of wood resembling black walnut that were fashioned into
squares.
“It’s a parquet floor,” Johnny explained. “It must be brushed and waxed instead of washed.”
Sighing, I said, “As always, it seems beauty comes with inconvenience.”
Nabby waved her fan. “You insisted we scrub the decks of a ship, Mama. You wouldn’t know what to do with yourself if you weren’t
keeping busy.”
John arched a quizzical brow, and I shrugged. “Those decks were filthy.”
“No doubt,” John said with mirth. “You won’t be doing the brushing and waxing here, my dear. We’ll have servants.”
“Did she really swab the decks of your ship?” Johnny whispered to his sister.
Nabby laughed, murmuring in reply, “More than once.”
With an exaggerated sigh, I feigned a stern look. “Whatever have I done to have such saucy children?”
Johnny kissed my cheek. “We were merely lauding your industriousness.”
“Spoken like a budding diplomat,” I said, grinning as my impertinent offspring made off to explore. In truth, the playfulness
between them absolutely delighted me.
The family apartments upstairs allowed us each our own chambers. Mine connected to my husband’s. Johnny and Nabby would share
a sitting room, where I already knew she’d spend every day writing to Mr. Tyler.
“It’s a wonderful house,” I said, clasping John’s hand. “At least it will be wonderful once I set up housekeeping here.”
I’d need bed linen, table linen, spoons and forks, tea furniture, china for the table, and all this to say nothing of the servants we must procure.
I soon learned France had a policy about servants.
A coachman would do nothing but carriages and horses.
A hairdresser would not sweep the room—that was for the chambermaid.
And no one but the frotteur de parquet would polish the floors and empty the chamber pots—which I was appalled to learn everyone used for dirty business rather than go outside.
Living here would be costly beyond my imagination, but John promised it would be less expensive than setting up a household
in Paris.
Our first guest was Dr. Franklin, who poured himself an overfull glass of wine. And when my husband stared a little too pointedly,
knowing his colleague suffered from gout, Franklin defiantly drank it down in one long gulp. “Mr. Adams,” he said, wiping
his mouth, “don’t you know that wine is constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy?”
I laughed, but John did not.
In the Continental Congress, Franklin had worked harmoniously with my husband. Unfortunately, tensions between them had erupted
in Europe, where my husband had concluded Franklin was a talented patriot but an irredeemable libertine. In turn, Franklin
had written that John “means well for his country, is always an honest man, often a wise one, but sometimes and in some things
absolutely out of his senses.”
Privately, I thought both men to be substantially correct.
Thankfully the responsibility of moderating between them fell to their new colleague on the commission, the dangerously amiable
Mr. Jefferson, who finally arrived in Paris with his daughter Patsy—a lovely young girl of eleven or twelve.
Patsy was all her father with ginger hair and freckled nose, but she’d come in such a state as only a motherless daughter
might, without proper clothes or shoes for a girl her age. I set out at once to help remedy that. Meanwhile, Nabby took the
lonely girl under her wing in friendship despite their age difference.
“Thank you for trying to put Miss Jefferson at ease,” I told Nabby one afternoon, thinking it was good for my daughter to
have someone to think about besides her betrothed.
“She’s a sweet girl and her manners are lovely,” Nabby replied over tea. “I only worry that she can scarcely tear her eyes
away from her father. Mr. Jefferson is her sun and her moon.”
“She’s no doubt frightened to take her eyes off him. She lost her mother and now finds herself here in France, a place with odd customs and a language difficult to master.”
I, too, struggled to speak French, though I could read and write it tolerably well. Thus I counted myself lucky to have a
close circle of English-speaking friends for society, including the delicate and charming Mrs. Angelica Schuyler Church and
her British husband, a dealer in armaments for our side who’d therefore had to go by an alias during the war. In addition
to the venerable old Dr. Franklin, there was his friend Dr. Bancroft, a renowned scientist and secretary to the American diplomatic
mission. Another handsome Virginian, twenty-four-year-old Mr. William Short, served as Thomas Jefferson’s personal secretary.
And, of course, there was Mr. Jefferson himself, who was unfailingly kind to both my children, inviting them to outings in
Paris and making them both feel quite sophisticated.
Mr. Jefferson was gallant with Nabby at musical occasions, and a fine mentor for Johnny, taking him on scientific expeditions.
And my husband—who had a complaint about every man he ever met—simply adored Jefferson. Truly, I’d never seen him take to anyone like that before.
“He’s an excellent hand,” John gushed as he told me of their work negotiating protection for American ships against the Barbary
pirates. “Congress couldn’t have sent better. Since Jefferson’s arrival, our affairs have gone on with the utmost harmony.”
“You sound smitten,” I teased.
John swatted this sauciness away. “He’s an old friend with whom I worked through many knotty problems. Age has only seasoned
his steadiness and abilities. I don’t trust easily, but I trust in Thomas Jefferson.”
Personally, I found the Virginian to be a wonderful conversationalist. Over tea in our window-filled conservatory, I found
that everything interested him, from politics to architecture, and from animal bones to even the plant I brought with me on
the trip, sitting now on a marble-topped console table, gilded with finely carved vine leaves and grapes.
“It vegetates in air?” Jefferson asked, eyes wide with wonder.
“You must wet it once a week,” I explained. “That is all. It requires no soil. You simply set it upon a table near a window and it thrives.”
“Wherever did you come upon such a plant?”
“It was a gift from a friend who visited Connecticut,” I said, warming to the subject. I brought it as an American marvel