Chapter Thirty
LONDON
England
Our third London season was upon us, a vibrant whirl of balls, court presentations, and rides through Hyde Park. Everything
seemed to be blossoming, from the colorful blooms I cultivated in my small urban garden to my Willy Magpie, who was now less
a baby and more an adventurous and cheerful little boy.
By contrast, his grandfather was increasingly sour as spoiled milk. “Prime Minister Pitt is not the friend to America we’d
hoped he’d be.”
Knowing how difficult it was for John to sway the British leader to pay attention to any of our concerns, I tried to encourage
him. “I daresay he has been consumed with domestic affairs; we must commend him for ordering an investigation into the slave
trade with an eye towards abolishing it.”
“Yes, but that is all I’ll say for him.”
My husband was frustrated. He wanted to go home. And so did I.
Indeed, we had been so long abroad that in our absence an entirely new Constitution had been drafted, debated, and was soon
to be ratified in the United States. And I’d finally had my fill of the foggy weather, the pretensions, and the ridiculous
customs of court. Not to mention the London newsmen who continued to mock my husband for want of better sport.
When we first arrived, they’d condemned John as a colonial bumpkin. By the end of our term, John was accused of being too
much a genius in having displayed an unseemly knowledge in the book he published entitled A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America.
In three volumes my husband had spelled out all the reasons why a mixed government with different branches best protected
liberty and prosperity. Now we gladdened at the prospect of returning to partake of both at home.
Eventually, John would be replaced as minister by the distinguished South Carolinian war veteran Thomas Pinckney. But we could
not wait for that to come to pass. So we set sail, leaving the post as empty as the British deserved it to be.
“You won’t miss Europe?” John asked in the privacy of our berth aboard ship. “All the finery and entertainments?”
“Oh, I’ve seen enough of the world,” I declared. “Henceforth, I shall be content to learn from the pages of history. And you?”
“For a man who has been thirty years rolling like a stone,” he said, “I welcome going home.”
The only pangs I felt were in parting with Nabby, who was pregnant with her second child. She would be settling with her husband’s
family in New York. But in making our farewells, she’d reassured me that we’d see one another again soon. “Everyone is saying
that Papa will be elected vice president in the new government.”
“Heaven forbid,” I had replied, because our private affairs desperately needed our attention. Besides, I doubted that, after so long away,
our countrymen would even remember us.
But those doubts were put to rest by the hero’s welcome that awaited us in Boston Harbor. Well-wishers mobbed the docks and
cannons roared in salute to welcome my husband home with a thousand people who greeted us with shouts of “Huzzah! Huzzah!
Huzzah!”
At the rail, I turned to John to exchange a private smile, and I do believe I glimpsed his lower lip actually wobble. Tears
misted his eyes before he managed to compose himself, standing ramrod straight, shoulders squared manfully with pride.
Meanwhile, I gave what I hoped was a dignified wave, overwhelmed with emotions of my own that made me bubble with sudden happy
laughter.
Boston, oh Boston, always in cacophony!
As we were ushered from the barge to the carriage, hands reached for us from every direction. They all wanted a better look
at Minister Adams and his lady. Even our old friend Henry Knox—now round as a barrel—pushed forward to shake our hands and
deliver letters reassuring us of Nabby’s safe arrival. Francis Dana—Johnny’s old mentor in Russia—had come, too. An aging
Sam Adams and a humbled James Lovell congratulated us. Meanwhile, church bells tolled all over the city—one of the most joyous
sounds I ever heard in my life.
I knew all this pomp and circumstance might fan my husband’s vanity and make him insufferable, but in that moment, I simply
couldn’t find it within myself to mind if it did.
After being whisked to a gracious reception at the residence of the governor, from whom we received the most pointed civility
and attention, we declined an escort to Braintree in his coach and four.
Not wishing to cause more of a stir, we quit Boston quietly to stay with the Cranches, where we met with delightful reunion
upon reunion.
Oh, the gladness to be once again folded against the bosom of my older sister, Mary! And there was her daughter Betsy, a woman
now, preparing the feast. Friends, neighbors, and relations arrived from everywhere. Phoebe and her husband came with cider
from our orchard. Uncle Tufts, now a distinguished elder, welcomed us with good news about our private affairs. My younger
sister, Elizabeth, came by carriage from Haverhill. And our sons rode out to us on horseback.
In my mind’s eye, I could only imagine my boys as they were when we left them. But as they dismounted and approached us with
affectionate but reserved regard, I could see they were both Harvard men now.
Eighteen-year-old Charlie presented me with a dimpled smile and a bouquet, and I almost gasped at his appearance. He cut quite the figure in tight buff breeches and matching embroidered waistcoat atop a high-collared white shirt over which his still-flaxen
hair curled. Then, after kissing my cheek, Charlie clasped his father’s hand, giving it a firm shake. “Welcome home, Father.”
“Charles,” my husband said, one hand on his son’s shoulder as he scrutinized the boy he hadn’t seen in seven years. “By God, you’re
so fair I’d wonder if you were a foundling did your mother not swear you were mine.”
“John,” I said, scandalized, giving his arm a swat.
John only grinned. “Then again, you don’t take your looks from your mother’s dark-haired tribe either!”
Next came fifteen-year-old Tommy, dressed in his Sunday best—with John’s stocky build and my dark hair upon his head. A foundling,
he was surely not.
“Mother,” Tommy said, kissing both my cheeks.
I returned those kisses and drank him in. He flushed at the attention, as if time and distance had put a polite stiffness
between us all, despite the love shining in our eyes. Then, at last, John Quincy arrived, pleading our forgiveness. “I couldn’t
get a horse!”
My husband’s closer relationship with our eldest son was evident by the way he grabbed John Quincy round the neck and loudly
professed his love. “Johnny, my boy, my boy . . .”
“Don’t blame my brothers if they are shy,” Johnny whispered when we embraced. “They’re in awe of Papa. And fearful you’ll
scold them for what they’ve been up to at Harvard.”
At that moment, I didn’t give a fig for what either of them had got up to there. Let them instigate all the food fights they
liked! “There’s nothing sweeter than to be with our children again,” I promised my sons. “Today it’s the only thing that matters
in the world. I’m only sorry your sister isn’t here with us.”
Of course, there were others missing from this reunion.
Strangely, Mrs. Warren and her husband hadn’t come to greet us. And I asked my sister Mary, “Are they terribly ill or have
we offended them in some way? Mercy’s pen went dry when I was in Europe.”
“Mrs. Warren has been unwell for a long time,” Mary said over cider. “But she’s also embarrassed because she owes you money.
And jealous because she believes she was better destined than you to become a prominent lady of the republic.”
I thought my sister was being uncharitable.
Mercy could be prickly, but I didn’t think her petty.
And I hoped we might yet be reunited in friendly company.
So, I saved my griefs for those with whom I would never again be reunited but in heaven.
Colonel Quincy had passed. My Aunt Tufts was gone.
My Aunt Smith, too. Perhaps most painful of all was the loss of my unhappy connection to my brother, who had died penniless, drunk, jaundiced, and alone, far from the children he’d abandoned.
I felt ashamed and angry by all the pain Bill had caused his family and himself. I’d spent countless hours thinking about
how we’d been raised together but turned out so differently. Yet, mingled with that shame and anger was genuine grief for
the brother I’d known in childhood, who’d taught me to play cards. And for the heroic soldier he’d been in our revolution.
Now I hoped his wandering soul was, at last, at peace. Just as I felt mine to finally be.
Home, we were home.
But we wouldn’t return to the saltbox in which I’d raised our children in Braintree. Phoebe and her husband were eager to
show me how well they’d kept the old place in our absence, but we were to have a new home upon eighty-three acres of the finest
land in the area.
“Now you’ve got the best mansion in Braintree, Honey.” Phoebe grinned widely, wearing her Sunday best, and the little tokens
I’d sent her from France.
“Indeed, I do,” I told her.
I took special pleasure in the purchase of a new house not only because it was the finest mansion in Braintree, but also because
I got it for a steal—all owing to a most unlikely benefactor.
Royall Tyler.
In the wake of his romantic scandals, Nabby’s former paramour had simply abandoned the place and his creditors like a no-account
scoundrel. The jilted owner was so desperate to sell that he accepted two hundred pounds less than his set price. Thus, Tyler’s
villainy delivered into our hands the most wonderfully situated domicile, with fields to plow and fruit trees to pluck and
a picturesque view of the bay besides.
Now Uncle Tufts, stately and seemingly in his prime at the age of fifty-four, was pleased to present John with the keys. “I pounced on it the moment you sent your approval, and now it’s yours, sir.”
“The idea to buy it was Abigail’s,” John said graciously. “She has a keen eye for a bargain.”
“It is that,” Tufts said. “But needs improvement. As you’ll soon see for yourself.”
I looked forward to hanging wallpaper in the parlor, painting my chambers French Gray, and furnishing each of the seven bedrooms
to my liking.
Perhaps it was because I had spent so many hours making such plans that I was so disappointed with the place when I saw it
again. The truth was that I’d been spoiled by the grand homes of London and Paris. So much so that this home, with its low
ceilings, now seemed as cramped as a wren’s house. I’d hoped for a home to give formal entertainments but now teased that
a lady guest dared not wear a feathered headdress nor a gentleman heels if he wished to walk upright under our new roof!
Then there was the shocking state of disrepair in which Mr. Tyler had left the place—almost as if he’d somehow known we’d purchase it. Perhaps he did possess that warlock power, for it seemed only witchcraft could explain the damage. Every
manner of tradesman from carpenter to mason must be hired for the inside.
Tyler had also let the garden run to complete wilderness. Which I supposed was just as well, since it was the only place in
which we could put the cows until a new dairy could be built to replace the old one.
“Ah, well,” John said, surveying the pile of rotted timbers. “Are not these the rural domestic cares to which we so desperately
wished to retire?”
He said he wanted to retire, but I knew his mind. The new federal Constitution had been ratified by nine states just days after our
return, which made it official. By the end of July, both New York and Virginia had ratified it, too, which meant the new government
had a chance to survive. And we’d been informed that John had been elected in absentia to the first Congress.
But John Adams had no wish to be a congressman.
“It’ll be the vice presidency,” he said. “Or nothing.”
Many of my friends, family, and countrymen had grave reservations about this new government.
Our son John Quincy feared it wasn’t democratic enough.
I was told Mrs. Warren opposed it because it lacked a bill of rights.
And we already knew of Mr. Jefferson’s reservations.
Some advised my husband to steer clear of it entirely. So, I should have discouraged John.
Instead, I said, “Any lesser position would surely be beneath your dignity.”