Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
I experienced the night before I married.
“Well, marriage turned out all right for you, didn’t it?” John asked, having ambled down the stairs, eyes bloodshot and weary, to find me awake at four in the morning.
“Indeed, it did,” I said, brushing a kiss on his cheek. “So, then, what has bestirred you, at this hour?”
John was quiet. Then all at once, he burst out, “I want to see Nabby! Our innocent baby girl. Knowing what scene is likely
passing between them this very night, I have half a mind to march over there and—”
“Oh, John, that is a scene of love you do not wish to interrupt.”
John pulled at his chin. “What if he hurts her?”
“He’s a gentleman!”
“Still, it could happen; she might feel she must suffer in silence. Does she even know . . .” He waved his hands in frustration.
“Does she know the general idea of the coming together of husband and wife?”
I chuckled, trying to settle his mind. “She knows, John. She’s a girl of more than twenty, having been raised on a farm and having lived two years now in the most sophisticated
courts of Europe.”
He scowled. “We are never going to see her again!”
I laughed and felt badly for it, because he was truly distressed. “Don’t be absurd. They’ve only gone to live at nearby Wimpole
Street. And I’ve made them promise to dine with us every day.”
That eased his mind, which eased mine. Soon enough we were nestled again in bed, and I fell into a deep slumber that lasted
until mid-morning, when I awakened to see my husband coming in with hat and cane.
“Well, I’ve been to see them,” he said.
“What? Could you not wait until our midday meal?”
“No, I could not. I wanted to see Nabby before breakfast.”
I covered my mouth. “Was Colonel Smith as vexed to find you at his door before breakfast as you may have been if my father had done the same?”
“He was relieved, actually.” John’s expression softened. “Our poor girl—happy as she is to be carried away in marital bliss—had
cried to think of us lonely without her.”
I sat up with concern. “She cried?”
“While we were worrying about her, she was worrying for us. So, I met her with such cheerful reassurance as to dispel the
clouds over her head. She’s well. We’re well. All will be well.”
Oh, letting go of children was a trying business. It would be easier, I hoped, with my boys. Their wives would likely feather
our nest, whereas Nabby would be obliged to fly off with her husband.
For now, though, Nabby’s husband and mine both had important diplomatic work here in London. And for that I was grateful.
By summer of the next year, at the age of forty-two, I was made a grandmama for the first time. Nabby gave birth to as fine
a boy as I ever saw, and as we beheld the infant in his cradle, I said, “He has your brow, John.”
“Poor devil,” my husband replied. “The rest of his shape is his father, at least.”
I patted John’s arm. “This will be no bad assemblage when years mature the one and time strengthens the other.”
Our grandson was to be named William, and I sighed, wary of more confusions. “Yet another William Smith in the family? I do
believe, counting my dearly departed father, that makes four.”
“We’ll call him our Willy Magpie,” John declared, for the babe liked to reach for shiny baubles, like his mother’s ear bobs.
Nabby, for her part, had come through the birth with ease, despite all my worries. “You aren’t too sorry for a grandson, are
you, Mama?”
I’d hoped, in vain, for a granddaughter, but now that it was a boy, I convinced myself to be happy about it. “It’s just as
well. For any granddaughter of mine must be an educated and accomplished young lady. And I have ever observed that it’s a
dangerous thing for a female to be distinguished for any qualification beyond the rest of her sex.”
I had been bickering with John about this at breakfast, and I was not finished making my case, even though he pretended not
to hear. “Whatever may be a woman’s deportment, she’s sure to draw upon herself the jealousy of men and the envy of women.
Of course, I do not see any way to remedy this evil but by increasing the number of accomplished women.”
Nabby laughed. “Mama, forget all that for today. I’m so happy. I didn’t know I could ever be so happy.”
My darling girl was radiant. And I rejoiced for her lucky escape from the charming but debased Mr. Tyler—who had, by all reports
now, gone on to commit adultery with his new landlady, leaving a cuckoo for the woman’s husband to raise. More scandalous
still, the landlady was the mother of the young lady he now intended to marry!
His lascivious treachery was worse than Mr. Lovell’s, but similar enough that I wondered at my own judgment for having ever
been taken in by either man.
Then again, it seemed as if bad behavior in young men was a contagion. For news from my sisters at home told me that under
the pressure of financial embarrassments, Mrs. Warren’s sons were becoming rascals. I was sorry for the financial embarrassments,
but I didn’t like that her sons were being foisted as friends upon my own boys, who might well follow their bad example.
It made me nervous, too, to learn that my Charlie Cherub was apparently now so good-looking that the young ladies in town
all gave him tokens or clippings of their hair.
“The Misses all think Charles an Adonis—a perfect beauty,” mused my sister Elizabeth in a letter, explaining that she’d advised
my son not to give in to the temptations that arose from such attention.
I’d always be grateful for my sisters taking on the role of substitute parents for my boys. In my place, Mary had hosted a
gathering of more than three hundred people to celebrate Johnny’s graduation from Harvard—a party at which Phoebe had been
an enormous help, too. I knew the women in my family would extend love and guidance to our sons.
Still, I couldn’t help but fret about them, especially when news reached us from Harvard that our youngest boys stood accused
of having taken part in a Thanksgiving food riot at Harvard in which windows were smashed and furniture overturned.
“The shame of it!” John raged.
To calm him, I said, “We ought to reserve judgment until we’ve heard a defense against these accusations.”
But John set his cup down with altogether too much force. “Charles has been fined as a suspected instigator and may well be expelled.”
At the other end of the table, our son-in-law, Colonel Smith, who usually adopted rectitude as his motto in all things, smirked a little, as if imagining the rough-and-tumble fun of such a rowdy food fight at school.
But Nabby—protective of the little brothers she’d helped me raise—argued, “John Quincy believes Charles to be innocent.”
Whatever the truth, our minds couldn’t be set at ease until we were in America to take a more active part in the upbringing
of our children.
Alas, my husband’s work as ambassador was crucial, for despite our treaty of peace, the British made practice of seizing American
soldiers and pressing them into the British Navy. Whitehall insisted these were mistakes, but we knew it to be a lie, and
as America’s ambassador, John must stand firm.
I was acutely aware that I, too, was representing our nation upon the world’s stage. And it was a role I liked better than
expected. In addition to hosting dinners, I toured the countryside, attended lectures, and otherwise made of myself as public
a figure as possible.
I was as active as Colonel Smith in managing my husband’s correspondence. There was a feminine art, after all, to weaving
a net of important political and social figures in Europe for the benefit of our country.
Here in London as the ambassador’s lady, I had found some part of myself that I had not known existed. A desire, as well as
a true penchant, for public service. And I was not ready to give it up.