Chapter Thirty-Eight
brISTOL
Pennsylvania
“Why does the carriage stop?” I called to the driver. “Have we damaged a wheel?”
“No, madam,” the driver shouted back. “The wheel is fine.”
Everything had gone wrong in my efforts to reach my husband in Philadelphia. So I wouldn’t have been surprised if the driver
said the muddy clay road was impassable, or one of the horses was ailing, or perhaps it was a highwayman and I ought to fear
for my life. Any explanation seemed more plausible than the truth. “It’s the presidential coach up ahead.”
The presidential coach? I leaned out the window, craning my neck to catch a glimpse around the bend. There it was—a magnificent vehicle with brass
fittings and a gilded seal—pulled by livery-clad black horses adorned with plumes in red, white, and blue.
I fought back continued disbelief, even as my husband’s stately carriage pulled closer and I heard John’s voice boom over
the clatter of hooves. “You there, do you carry Mrs. Adams?”
“I do, Mr. President, sir,” said the driver with a great sense of decorum.
But I had none. In a fit of exuberance unfitting for my age and station in life, I threw the door open and kicked the step
down. “John!”
Abandoning baggage, I ran to him like a woman half my age, climbing up to take my seat by his side. My husband’s cheeks colored as I threw my arms around his neck and cried, “Oh, John! Or shall I call you Mr. President? Please tell me this is a happy meeting and not a sad one.”
He grinned. “A happy occasion indeed. I simply couldn’t wait one more moment, so I set out to fetch you myself.”
We held each other’s faces, contemplating the changes. We’d only been a few months apart this time, but we were, in some sense,
now obliged to be new people.
My husband as president and me as first lady.
Interrupting our conjugal reverie, one of John’s beautiful horses threw her plumed head back and gave me a welcoming nicker.
“Meet Cleopatra,” John said. “My new favorite mare. I thought you might approve of her if I named her after a female politician
such as yourself, Madame La Presidante.”
He was teasing, and I took his bait. “Well, history does say that the queens who have reigned for any length of time have
been celebrated for excellent governors.”
John smirked. “Is that so?”
“You know it is. But as reigning is so much out of fashion, my ambition is to reign only in the heart of my husband. That
is my throne, and there I aspire to be absolute.”
“So you are, madam. So you are.”
I smiled with satisfaction. “What is the name of the other horse?”
“Caesar, of course. Cleopatra’s consort.”
I laughed, vastly amused. “You play a dangerous game, sir. The risk you run naming your horses after monarchs and tyrants,
adorning them in plumes. I thought you foreswore all signs of extravagance!”
“Can a man not make an exception in retrieving his wife in fine style, plumes and all?”
I wouldn’t complain of it, especially since our reunion was an unexpectedly romantic interlude.
We dined at a little tavern overlooking the Delaware River. And enjoying a generous helping of braised rabbit over early spring
greens, I said, “You must be quite pleased with yourself, Mr. President. To be chosen as the first of men by your countrymen.”
“But only by three votes,” John muttered.
“Oh, you curmudgeon! You won, didn’t you?”
John downed his glass of beer. “No thanks to certain friends and relations. Do you know that my cousin Samuel campaigned for Jefferson?”
I did know it and had hoped John did not. “Sam is a habitual contrarian. Besides, you’d have won by much more were it not
for Hamilton pushing his own candidate. Beware that spare Cassius!”
“Trust that I will keep my distance from Hamilton and any other man who is lean and hungry with ambition.”
“Like your vice president?” I asked, archly.
But John was in a gracious mood toward our old friend. “Oh, Jefferson and I should go on affectionately together and all will
be well.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Before the votes were counted, he said that if there should be a tie, he wanted Congress to throw the presidency to me as
I’d always been senior to him in public life.”
“Did he?” I asked, pleasantly surprised.
“He also let it be known that he wouldn’t serve as vice president under any man but me.”
That warmed my heart. “Well, though he is so mistaken in politics, I don’t think him an insincere or corruptible man. My friendship
for him is unshaken, and I’ll do my best to bring harmony in the capital.”
John’s expression became a little wistful. “It would’ve given me pleasure to have had you present at my inauguration, which
was the most affecting and overpowering scene of my life.”
“I am sorry,” I said, wishing I’d come sooner, despite all that prevented me.
John confessed, “I couldn’t sleep the night before and feared that I might faint in presence of all the world.”
“But you didn’t,” I said, taking his hand in mine. “You gave all the world an example of a worthy leader; I read it in the
papers.”
Once we’d dined and continued to Philadelphia in my husband’s fine coach, our discussion turned to our children.
And John sighed. “Poor Nabby. When I saw her on the way to Philadelphia, she was surviving well enough in a little farmhouse—your lessons in frugal housewifery serve her well. But her husband absented himself. And now he isn’t answering my letters.
Too embarrassed, I take it. So he should be, after squandering such a fortune. ”
“He’s not answering anyone’s letters,” I said softly. “For disappearing into the wilderness helps keep his creditors away.”
John grimaced. “He cannot run from them forever. He has a wife and children to provide for.”
When I was silent, my husband’s head snapped up. “You don’t think he’s abandoned them, do you?”
With my hands tightly clasped in my lap, I admitted, “I don’t know. Nabby is too fiercely loyal to wonder. But Charles believes
we have reason to despair.”
Several emotions crossed my husband’s face as he contemplated his daughter being left by herself to raise three children.
Fury, guilt for having once left me in similar difficulty, then denial. “I was told Colonel Smith was in western New York
trying to sell off his properties there. It’s still the frontier. Perhaps it’s not easy to get letters home.”
“Perhaps.”
John blew out a breath. “Well, you should’ve brought Nabby and the grandchildren to live with us in the president’s house.”
“I tried, but she won’t come. She said she’d be too humiliated to appear in outdated dresses and explain her husband’s financial
ruin. She doesn’t want to be an embarrassment to you in Philadelphia.”
“Fie on that! But if she won’t come to us, she should live with Charles. His townhome is a modest place, and he must feel
burdened with a new baby of his own, but there’s room.”
The truth could be put off no longer. With my thumbs worrying over one another, I broke the bad news. “Charles also lost a
great deal of money in the economic panic, John.”
My husband’s jaw clenched, but he took it in stride. “Well, these are hard times. It’s what I had in mind when I gave each
of the boys two thousand dollars to help them make their way in the world. He’ll have to be frugal, but he can at least draw
on the interest.”
“It’s gone. Lost in his attempts to keep Nabby’s husband out of debtor’s prison.”
John’s hands clenched in surprise and then dismay. “Damn it.”
How quickly I leaped to defend my boy. “Charles was trying to help. Both his sister and his wife were pleading with him on
Colonel Smith’s behalf. And you know what a tender heart he has.”
“He’s a tenderhearted fool!”
My husband was already so angry, I might as well tell him the rest. “John Quincy’s money is at risk, too.”
“Now how the devil did Johnny’s money get caught up in this with him all the way across an ocean?”
“He entrusted his savings to Charles to invest. Now it is likely gone, and Charles is sick about it. Truly, I’ve never seen
our sunny boy in such a state of despondency.”
I didn’t exaggerate. Having passed through New York on the way to Philadelphia, I’d stopped to see Charles and could still
feel the wet tears my son wept on my shoulder. To have failed his wife, his child, his sister, and his brother this way was
a crushing blow to our middle son.
But now John said, “Curse that boy for dragging Johnny down with him.”
“It’s William Stephens Smith who has dragged three of our children down with him.”
My husband showed his teeth, but it wasn’t a smile. “Well, as it happens, I’m the president, so if Smith doesn’t return to
make matters right, I’ll send federal marshals to dispatch him.”
It was a father’s rage speaking. He wouldn’t actually do it—at least I didn’t think he would. I let my husband vent in the
coach, hoping he’d be in better temper by the time we reached the president’s house.
I reminded my husband that we still enjoyed good fortune. None of our children were beheaded, imprisoned, or likely to starve.
Money troubles they had aplenty, but money troubles could be solved in time. And we were able to help them, so we ought to
thank God for our blessings.
We arrived at sunset, whale oil lamps glowing on Market Street, and stepped out before the redbrick home I thought of as belonging
to the Washingtons.
The house was all but vacant, the furniture having been so battered over the past few years it needed to be discarded.
I felt melancholy to know that the Washingtons had long since departed for Virginia and that I might never see either of those
wonderful people again. But I could still smell the scent of Martha’s lilacs and roses in the garden as they wafted to us
on the evening’s breeze—a lingering reminder of that great lady in whose footsteps I’d now have to tread.
That night, in the privacy of the president’s canopied bed, John embraced me, whispering, “While I’ve been here I thought