Chapter Thirty-Eight #2
of you, dreamed of you, and longed to be with you again. I hate speeches, messages, proclamations, levees, and drawing rooms.
I hate to speak to a thousand people to whom I have actually nothing to say.”
“Yet all this you can do, if you put your mind to it.”
“All this I can do, if my Abigail is at my side.”
“I’ll be at your side,” I vowed. “But I fear I have not the patience, prudence, and discretion sufficient to fill Martha’s
place. I’m used to a freedom of sentiment. I know not how to look at every word before I utter it, and impose a silence upon
myself when I long to talk.”
“A woman can be silent, when she will,” John teased. “But in truth, I can do nothing without you, and I’ve never wanted your advice more
in my life. Assist me with your counsel and console me with your conversation. Do not leave me alone so long again.”
It hadn’t been so very long this time, but I gloried at the feel of his fingers twined with mine. “I suppose that no man,
even if he is sixty years of age, ought to live more than three months away from his family.”
John pulled back to feign a glare. “Madam, how dare you hint or lisp a word about sixty years of age? I will soon convince
you that I am not above forty!”
I was too mature now to blush at such a remark. Instead, I said quite shamelessly, “You’ve always been a very good lawyer,
John. So by whatever proofs you deem necessary, I’m ready and willing to be convinced.”
My first order of business as Lady Washington’s successor was to establish orderly levees or I should be overrun entirely. For on my very first entertainment I received thirty-two ladies, and nearly as many gentlemen, in an under-furnished house, without enough chairs for a drawing room!
To get anything done between visits, I’d have to rise at five in the morning, breakfast at eight, tend to family affairs until
eleven, then dress to receive company the rest of the day.
In trying to know how to conduct myself, I remembered the Court of St. James. Dear God. I, too, was going to have to ask vapid questions such as Did you take a walk today, madam? and How do you like your house?
It was said in society that my husband and I did not have the innate aristocratic dignity of the Washingtons. That was meant
for a compliment. As it happened, my preference to mingle with the ladies was taken for good conduct in the first lady of a republic.
And because, in his portly old age, my husband wanted nothing more than to slump into a comfortable chair, smoke his cigars,
and sip his brandy with the guests by a fire—he was said to be convivial.
An unexpected triumph for both of us.
This did not forestall all criticism, of course. I’d expected to be vilified with my whole family when I came into this situation.
And I might have borne it with better grace were it not for the godless French faction amongst us, led in Congress by the
little Virginian James Madison.
We had it on the authority of our son, the foreign minister, that the French government intended to go to war with the United
States for our alleged fecklessness in paying our debts and failing to support their revolution. Their great expectation was
founded upon the hope of our internal disunion—a hope encouraged by Americans who associated with the ruling men in France.
And amongst them, we must now count Thomas Jefferson.
We knew this because a letter he wrote to a neighbor had been indiscreetly shared and then published in a French newspaper.
Our once bosom friend denounced us as aristocrats, accusing my husband and the Federalist party of being “timid men who prefer
the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty.”
While Jefferson plainly regretted the exposure, he didn’t deny having written it. And this time, it was an undeniable insult.
That boisterous sea of liberty he praised in France had not been kind to the men who actually fought for freedom. Admiral d’Estaing beheaded. Rochambeau
arrested. Lafayette still rotting in prison—his wife and daughters having narrowly escaped the guillotine only through American
influence.
How could Jefferson possibly countenance it?
“Does he even write an apology?” I asked John.
My husband’s mouth flattened to a grim line and I decided not to press the matter. After all, the job of the president was
arduous, perplexing, and hazardous. It was little wonder Washington retired from it.
John was sweating over a speech to Congress, and I gave my help eagerly. “You must emphasize that while both the British and the French now seize and harass American ships, only the French are refusing to receive a new ambassador from us.”
John scribbled, contemplatively. “At this point, I am unsure who else to send.”
“Send John Quincy,” I said, though I shivered to contemplate sending my son to a place where the guillotine reigned. “They
cannot refuse him. You need an ambassador in France, and there’s none better than your son.”
My husband slumped with a sigh. “But what does that look like for a ruler of a country to send his own son to negotiate? It
looks like nepotism at best and monarchy at worse.”
I didn’t want to admit that he was right.
War with France might come anyway, which is why he intended to tell Congress, “Without some means of protection against a
foreign enemy, national dishonor is unavoidable.”
We needed a navy.
We needed an army, too, for as the French marched out to conquer Europe, the saber they rattled was very frightening indeed.
“Will the vice president support you?” I asked.
John snorted. “Jefferson will say that his role is merely to preside over the Senate, not to guide it. And for this I am grateful.
For if he spoke his true feelings, he might still favor the French.”
I couldn’t understand Thomas Jefferson. However high-minded the French Revolution was when it started, it had devolved into a cycle of beatings, beheadings, and reigns of terror that begot new reigns of terror.
France had become a dangerous Leviathan.
But somehow our old friend couldn’t see it, even now that the Leviathan was bent on devouring us, too.
It fell to me to plan the forthcoming Independence Day celebration. And in that I was likely to come up short. I’d have to
entertain not only all of Congress but also the city gentlemen, governor, officers, and companies. The house couldn’t hold
everyone, so some would have to be placed at long tables in the yard to be served cake, punch, and wine.
It would cost at least five hundred dollars, and it was an expense we couldn’t avoid, for the Washingtons always made a splendid
celebration of it. But of course, Washington was a very wealthy man.
I reminded myself that we were wealthy in other ways when a portrait arrived from overseas. It was painted by Mr. Copley in
London, and the nameplate read minister john quincy adams. When the servants unwrapped it, I gasped to see our eldest rendered so beautifully.
“Oh, how distinguished he looks!”
It’d been years since we’d seen John Quincy as he traversed Europe with his little brother in tow. He wrote that he now intended
to take a wife—an Englishwoman named Louisa Catherine. Though he wanted no delay, we still hoped he’d reconsider.
John said, “It pains me to think we’ll miss the wedding.”
We hung the portrait of John Quincy above the mantel to inspirit us, though we feared our guests would accuse us of grooming
him as a princeling.
As the summer heat rose, so, too, did tensions with France, now ruled by a directoire of five in which Napoleon Bonaparte was the dominant leader. Every day we anticipated that a vessel might arrive with a formal
declaration of war. And our people wondered if President John Adams was capable of leading through such dark days.
Naturally, we both fretted about the forthcoming holiday—wondering how our more frugal version would be received. It’d be the country’s twenty-first Independence Day, and with a wary eye over the sea, many worried it’d be our last.
On the day in question, Philadelphia was a bake oven. I stood on the dais in pearls and a pale gown underneath the chandelier
where Mrs. Washington once stood, sweating so much I feared I’d melt into a puddle. Then I could stand the empty formality
of it no longer, and plunged into the crowd.
Our country, which was now comprised of sixteen states, needed to unite under threats of war. And the holiday ought to have
pulled us together. But I noticed Federalist ladies shunning Democratic-Republican ladies. And though I wished to do the same,
I set a good example, pulling Mrs. Gallatin into the court circle, paying her much attention.
It galled me, because her husband had become our avowed foe in Congress. But the gossip at the party—from what snippets I
overheard—was far less about my husband’s failings and more about the notorious scandal involving Alexander Hamilton.
“Do you believe the accusations?” Mrs. Gallatin asked. “That Mr. Hamilton embezzled money from the treasury?”
“Certainly not,” I said.
Hamilton was too vain and prideful about his financial system to steal from it.
But there was another accusation, less sinister but more sordid—that Hamilton had betrayed his wife with a base harlot and
made himself vulnerable to blackmail. And according to my children in New York, Hamilton’s infidelities were amongst the worst-kept
secrets in that city. Why Nabby said he even panted after his own sister-in-law!
Oh, my heart bled for Eliza Hamilton, remembering the way she had always gazed so adoringly at her husband. I couldn’t possibly
add to her humiliation by crediting the words of Mr. Callender—the shady immigrant muckraker—who brought the scandal into
public light.
Besides, as Hamilton was part of our Federalist faction, it felt disloyal for me to say anything against him to Mrs. Gallatin,
the wife of a man who bore us no goodwill.
So instead, I ushered Mrs. Gallatin back to her husband, who was then conferring with Senator Burr. Gallatin was still complaining about the Jay Treaty while Burr, in silver-buckled shoes and every inch the rake, drank punch.
I mistrusted both men—suspecting at least Burr of being on the French payroll.
But before I could say anything to either, a certain social buzz vibrated around the room, and I turned to see it was the
hum of adoration that now seemed to accompany Vice President Jefferson wherever he went.
Jefferson made his way to me amidst admiring toasts and hands that reached to greet him, his popularity undiminished by our
troubles with France.
When finally he reached me, I gave a wave of acknowledgment with my feathered fan. “Vice President Jefferson.”
“Mrs. Adams,” he said, and like the diplomat he once was, he swept a bow so low that the hat in his hand nearly touched the
crimson carpet. “I must congratulate you. What a lovely affair you’ve put together.”
“How kind of you to say!”
I had learned to be diplomatic, too.
With the old familiar smile, Jefferson confided, “I think it does you much credit as the new first lady in our republic that
you converse liberally with guests rather than presiding over the crowd from a dais with royal detachment.”
Remembering that he had called us aristocrats, I quite nearly said, “How relieved I am to have your approbation!”
Instead, I said, “I feel too silly standing upon a dais by myself without a second lady to attend to me.”
At this, the vice president winced. And not having intended to raise the subject of his widowhood as if his wife’s death was
an inconvenience to me, I quickly added, “I would so welcome your daughters at my side during such gatherings. You know how
fond I am of Patsy and Polly.”
I was able to say this much with honesty.
And I believe Jefferson spoke honestly when he said, “As they are both fond of you. Polly is soon to be wed and I hope she
will join us next year.”
“I shall rejoice on that happy occasion.”
I was polite. Jefferson was polite.
We were all so very polite on the occasion of our nation’s birth.
But inside, I seethed.
For Jefferson would not stand beside my husband against France. And now I didn’t even want him to. We’d been loath to give
Jefferson up as a friend, but no matter how wise and scientific as he was a philosopher and as a politician, I now believed
him to be a vain child easily flattered and duped by the faction of zealots who fawned over him.
And this was never more evident than when Jefferson—and not the man who had actually been elected to the presidency—was toasted as the Man of the People.
Party factions were tearing our young nation apart and it fell to my husband to hold this union together, alone if must be.
Well, I resolved he wouldn’t be alone. He’d have me. I didn’t know how much I could help by charming ladies in the parlor
or smiling at hypocrites like Jefferson. But for John and for the country, I was willing to do this and much more.