Chapter Thirty-Nine
EAST CHESTER
New York
The bankrupted Colonel Smith had been gone a year while my daughter soldiered on alone. To ease her burdens, we had food sent
from Quincy. We’d also taken our grandsons and paid for their schooling in New Hampshire, with my recently widowed and remarried
sister Elizabeth watching over them. But with only two-year-old Caroline for company, Nabby had been too much alone. So we
decided to pay her a brief visit in New York.
She’d come to greet us in her best dress, saying she otherwise had very little occasion to wear it.
“Doesn’t Charles visit?” John asked.
“Oh, yes. Charles, Sally, and their two little girls,” Nabby rushed to say. “Charles is so kind to me, Papa. Always helping
to repair things. The fence. The leak in the roof. A rotted floorboard on the stairs. I don’t know how I’d have survived without
him.”
It had been a hard and lonely year for our daughter. And a difficult one for the country. Fortunately, there was some good
news. First, that propertied freedmen and women in New Jersey would be able to vote. Second, that our youngest son would soon
return from Europe.
Though Tommy had been an excellent secretary for John Quincy, he’d been away for more than three years and without his own profession for longer than that.
I suspected his impending return also might have to do with not wishing to be always in his eldest brother’s shadow, or to play the part of an interloper.
For John Quincy had married his English sweetheart.
And I was happy to deliver this news to Nabby as we walked up the sloping drive and into her modest two-story house with its gabled attic.
“This Louisa Catherine must be a remarkable woman indeed, to have won Johnny’s heart,” Nabby said.
I nodded without reminding her that all her brothers fell in love easily.
“You’ve learned of the release of the Marquis de Lafayette and his family?” John asked, a little prideful, since our American
diplomatic corps had applied pressure to bring it about.
“Praise God,” Nabby said, leading us into her sunny but sparsely furnished parlor.
I could see that our girl had done her best to make the place hospitable. She’d knitted throws to cover threadbare spots on
the chairs. A lace cloth disguised the crate that now served as a table. And everything was freshly scrubbed. Still, Nabby
was apologetic. “I wish it were more fitting to serve as a place for state business while the president is in residence.”
“It’s more than fitting,” John reassured her. “And I’ll get far more done here than in Philadelphia.”
Thereupon he kissed Nabby’s forehead, then her hair, then her forehead again. “You mustn’t worry, my treasure. Come back to
Philadelphia with us. We’ll make sure you see only the people you wish to see, and we’ll take care of you there.”
At that, our daughter finally let us see the crack in her brave facade. Sobbing with relief against her father’s neck, she
confessed how deeply depressed she’d been. “But seeing my parents again has restored me. Your kindness has given me hope.”
“You’ll be restored to even greater happiness in Philadelphia,” I said. “Say that you’ll come. You and Caroline. She can eat
her fill of plum pudding, and your smiling countenance at the breakfast table will give your father a respite from the cares
of the presidency.”
Our daughter worried at her lip. “I never want to be a burden to you, Papa.”
“That you could never be,” he said.
To our great relief, Nabby consented to come with us. And when we finally went up to bed, she had the look of a woman who’d get her first good night’s sleep in a long while.
Of course, I also noticed that John checked the newly repaired stair, and I hissed, “Don’t you dare criticize Charlie’s workmanship
when we see him. He’s a lawyer, not a carpenter.”
“He also drinks too much if the rumors are true.”
I held tight to the banister. “What rumors?”
John refused to say more until he’d nudged me into the small bedroom, closing the door behind us. “I’ve had a report today
of Charles I don’t like. To begin with, he spends time with Hamilton—a man completely disgraced.”
The accusation that Hamilton had misappropriated funds as treasury secretary was an ongoing scandal. Especially since Alexander
Hamilton defended himself by writing a pamphlet exposing his own adulterous affair. Reading it had confirmed every wicked
thing ever suspected about the man—and left me feeling dreadfully sorry for his wife.
Still, I couldn’t blame Charles for offering comfort to an old mentor. “John, we once apprenticed Charles to Hamilton. We
wouldn’t wish him to be cruel to an old master who is now mired in shame and humiliation.”
John scoffed. “Hamilton is incapable of shame. My worry is for Charles. They say he’s gambling to win back the money he’s
lost—and that he’s a drunk.”
I gasped at the latter. “Surely you don’t believe it.”
“I didn’t believe it when I heard he ran naked through Harvard yard, either. But here we are.”
I took my index finger and poked his arm. “That was a childish lark nearly a decade ago!”
“Ouch! Be careful woman . . .”
“Charles is a hardworking family man now. You’ve been so hard on him. Not harder on him than he’s been on himself, but certainly harder on him than the man who caused his financial
trouble to begin with.”
John lowered his voice, presumably so that Nabby wouldn’t overhear. “Well, that man may have my daughter’s hand in marriage but, praise God, does not have my blood flowing through his veins.”
I was sure that John would soften once he saw his son in the flesh. None of us had ever had the heart to resist Charlie’s
dimpled smile. But the next morning the captain of the light horse that was to accompany us to the city broke the bad news.
“I’m sorry, Mr. President. But there is yellow fever in New York.”
We couldn’t visit Charles, nor could he come to us. And as for Philadelphia, we were unable to go there either. “The outbreak
is worse in Philadelphia than in New York. In fact, it might be worse than four years ago.”
That outbreak had killed 10 percent of the city, so we’d have to abandon the capital until the first winter’s frost, which, for
some reason the physicians could not divine, drove the illness away.
Thus, we stayed with Nabby that autumn.
John found it entirely agreeable to conduct the business of the nation from our daughter’s cramped kitchen, with its cookware
hanging from the ceiling, while our nearly three-year-old granddaughter, Caroline, banged upon a jug with a wooden spoon.
Messengers for the president swept in and out with word of France’s march of victories in Europe.
Then a message came for Nabby from her husband.
Gulping air, she sank down in relief. “Colonel Smith says he’ll be home soon. He says he’s written many letters to me that
must’ve gone missing. Here, look, Mama. An address where I can claim some funds.”
This news positively brought her back to life, which is why I studiously avoided my husband’s gaze, because I knew he was
skeptical.
I rode out with Nabby the next day to the address provided. Unfortunately, the man from whom she was to receive this money
was gone—if he’d ever existed.
But Nabby was still brimming with good cheer. “It’s the fate of women in our family to wait on letters and packages and to
be disappointed. But I’ll muster the fortitude of my dear Mama when Papa was away all those years.”
Your father was a different sort of man, I wanted to say. On a very different mission.
But I merely smiled, praying my son-in-law was only a fool with money and not, in fact, another duplicitous scoundrel in our lives. For now, Nabby determined to stay here alone, convinced her husband would return to her at any moment.
Eventually, the frost came, the epidemics abated, and we were obliged to return to Philadelphia without her.
There we found Congress so set against one another that an actual brawl broke out on the floor when Democratic-Republican
Matthew Lyon spit in the face of Federalist Roger Griswold, who responded by beating him with a cane.
Could guillotines be far behind?
Though I’d never confess it, I began to wonder if the enterprise of the so-called United States was doomed. How long would northern and southern states rub along together when oil and water were not more contrary
in their natures? Then again, perhaps we shouldn’t hold together. There were certainly days I wished to be rid of the whole pack of southern slavers.
“But if we divided,” John warned, “we’d be easy prey for other nations. We must make the union hold.”
How much better for us if my husband’s cabinet agreed! Instead, they each found a way to fan the flames of faction. They were
all holdovers from Washington’s administration—Pickering, Wolcott, McHenry.
All Hamilton’s creatures.
They were a hindrance rather than a help to their president, who felt increasingly embattled and isolated, turning more often
to me for advice and support.
Now John was bundled up in blankets by the fire, writing another speech to Congress, while I coaxed him to drink a hot chamomile
tisane with lemon and honey to ease his cold. And though he’d asked to see the newspapers, I kept them from him—for he didn’t
need to be further sickened.
One paper had referred to him as “blind, bald, crippled, toothless Adams.”
Thomas Paine wrote, “Some people talk of impeaching John Adams, but I am for softer measures. I would keep him to make fun
of.”
There were worse things printed, many of which I thought deeply disloyal, given the state of our country.
And the next day, when my husband’s old colleague Dr. Rush stopped by to check on the president’s health and recount their glory days from the revolution, I said, “I think there ought to be a law against printing such things!”
“If Philadelphians are turning against President Adams, it is only because of impatience,” Dr. Rush said, knowing we’d been