Chapter Forty-Five
EAST CHESTER
New York
In the years of my husband’s presidency, we’d established a pattern. Every autumn, John would set out for the capital, and
I’d follow to play my role as first lady when the weather was most auspicious.
I always stopped on the way to visit our children in New York. But this year was different because Sally and Nabby and the
grandchildren traveled with me. And after dropping them at Colonel Smith’s home in East Chester, I’d be traveling south on
unknown roads to our new capital, on the Potomac.
Traveling with children—even beloved grandchildren—was arduous, so upon our arrival at Colonel Smith’s farm, I was so weary
that I went directly upstairs and fell asleep.
At sunrise I was awakened by an ashen-faced Nabby.
Blinking away dreams, I asked, “Has bad news come from France?”
“No,” she said, trying to hurry me out of bed. “We must take the first ferry to see Charles.”
I lifted my hands in a helpless gesture. “What more can I say to that boy? He had only to refrain from drinking for one summer
and he couldn’t even do that.”
“He’s in a wretched state, Mama,” Nabby said. “Desperately sick. Sally has gone to nurse him.”
Charles must be very sick indeed if his estranged wife rushed to his bedside. I paused, wondering if word should be sent to
my husband, but Nabby mistook my hesitation for reluctance. “Mother, whatever Charles has done, mercy is the Lord’s command.”
She was quite right, and we set out for the ferry straightaway. In the city, we found Charles sprawled weak upon a narrow
sickbed at a friend’s cramped and inhospitable town house—for Charles had been evicted from his own lodgings.
My son was bloated and swollen, hacking up phlegm. The doctor took us into the hall. “Mrs. Adams, your son has a distressing
cough, dropsy, and an ailment of the liver brought on by too much drink.”
I shook my head in dismay. “I told him he must stop drinking.”
“He did,” the doctor said. “He cut himself off completely. But as I’ve seen before in cases such as these, there is a point
at which the damage already done is past recovery. The seizures, malnourishment, and insomnia—they leave a patient, especially
one without tender loving care—vulnerable to other ailments, like this cough.”
A breath hissed out of me as I tried to make sense of this. “What can be done for him?”
“Rest, nourishment, and good nursing can make him comfortable and may extend his life.”
I was so distressed that I put my hand on the wall for balance. But Nabby’s spine went so straight it looked apt to snap.
“How far along is my brother’s ailment, Doctor?”
Under my daughter’s scrutiny, the doctor’s confidence seemed to falter. “I cannot say. Medical science is not exact. The cough
may be reversed. The functioning of his liver is apt to be permanently compromised.”
How I wished for my good Uncle Tufts to explain it all!
But this doctor only made ready to take his leave. “Mrs. Adams, please convey my regrets to the president. And please tell
him that I’m voting for him. No matter what General Hamilton says.”
As the doctor went out, I began to pace. Nabby stared off into the mid-distance. And Sally wordlessly returned to my son’s
side to make him comfortable. She brought him a bowl of boiling water so he could inhale the steam. She gave him sips of an
herbal tisane. And she replaced the bandages from his bloodletting until at last Charles wanted no more, and in a lucid moment,
he whispered, “Enough, sweetheart. You’ve done enough for me. How truly I love you. And how sorry I am for all the ways in
which I’ve hurt you.”
His words to her were tender, and I could see he meant them. Yet Sally did not return his words of love. “I’ll come back to tend you in the morning,” she said. “Once I’ve rested.”
Nabby then took over nursing duties. She gave Charles small sips of tea with honey. She adjusted his pillows so he could be
more upright. Then she said, “I’m taking you home with me in the morning, Charlie. You, Sally, and the girls. You’ll be more
comfortable in East Chester, where you’ve rested your head so many times before.”
His eyes lit up and fixed upon his sister, as if she were his guardian angel. “Colonel Smith will have me in his home?”
“Eagerly,” she promised, without even the blush for the lie it must’ve been. “We’re taking you home to heal.”
How eager Colonel Smith could truly be to take in the man who’d saved him from debtor’s prison but dishonored his sister, I couldn’t guess. But given the urgency
with which Nabby left to make the arrangements, I doubted she’d give her husband a say in the matter. Nabby had always been
the mildest of my children, but I’d seen my own iron in her spine before.
And it was evident in her every mannerism now.
When she left me with Charles, he reached for my hand. His hand was clammy and frighteningly swollen. Still, I took it and
kissed it gently.
When he spoke it was only a rasp. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come. I was afraid that like Papa, you’d say I was no son of
yours.”
I had thought it in my angrier moments. As a stern parson’s daughter, I convinced myself that I’d rather my children die than fall into
sin or disgrace. I’d believed it, too, like an utter fool. Now, faced with the real possibility of losing my boy, there was
no hardness in my heart at all. “Charles, you’re always and forever my son, and it pains me to see you suffering this way.”
Another cough wracked his whole body before he made his sad admission. “It’s my own fault. Many people have said so. It seems
there was no hope for me from the moment my lips first touched a bottle in Spain.”
In Spain. Where he’d been left to fend for himself so his father could play the role of diplomat in foreign courts.
Then we left him at Harvard, where more temptations abounded.
The guilt rose up in my throat until I nearly suffocated of it.
I didn’t know what to say, except to press my lips to his hand again and again, professing love.
“I love you, too,” he whispered. “And Nabby and Tommy and John Quincy. I hoped I could tell him in person how much I regret
the money lost. I only ever wanted to serve him. Knowing I disappointed him has poisoned me more surely than any liquor. Nabby
promised to tell him if I do not recover.”
“You’ll tell him yourself,” I said. “You’ll recover and Johnny will come home and you can make your peace.”
But there was no guarantee of that.
“Rest,” I said, softly. “Rest, my dear boy.”
Alas, he was too agitated. Manic even. He began talking of legal cases he needed to attend. He asked for his books. How he
couldn’t realize how truly ill he was, I didn’t know.
A few hours later, he was wracked with pain and said, “I wish to plead my father’s forgiveness. To tell him that I’m a penitent
man. Will he come to me? Would you go to him and convince him to come? After the election, of course. I know he has the election.
But after that.”
I tried to calm him with a cool cloth on his wrists. “I’d rather stay with you and help make you well. But I’ll send word
to him.”
“He ignores letters,” Charles said, a frantic edge to his words. “But he cannot ignore you for long, not when you’re with
him. Once the election is over . . .”
With that, exhaustion overtook him again, and my son drifted off murmuring, “It’s all right. If my earthly father won’t forgive
me, I’ll try to earn forgiveness of my heavenly father.” A smile so beatific passed over his face that I could almost see
the cherub of days long past. “Do not despair of me, Mother.”
The next morning, we had him carried by ferry to East Chester, where the bedroom was made up for him. “Charles needs to be
with family,” Nabby said. “And I mean to see that he wants for nothing until he recovers.”
“That’s a balm to a mother’s heart,” I told her, tears in my eyes as my bags were loaded back onto the carriage. I feared to leave, but I’d promised Charles that I’d go to my husband and convince him to visit.
Nabby took my hands. “Tell Papa that we’re all praying for his re-election.”
But I did not pray for John’s re-election.
Instead, with every turn of the carriage wheels, I used my prayers for my son.