Chapter Fifty-One
BOSTON
Massachusetts
Time marched on for our family.
John and I suffered the slow torments of age—new aches and pains, senses dimming, and memory fading. But our love for our
children sustained us.
Tommy took over much of the management of our farms. Nabby sent letters from the western New York frontier, where she and
Colonel Smith were building a life in the wilderness with fellow settlers and the remaining members of the Oneida Nation still
residing there. Meanwhile, having lost his Senate seat over his support for Jefferson’s embargo, John Quincy was now making
his living in Boston as a gentleman lawyer and Harvard’s Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory.
We visited him as often as our good health would allow. On this particular visit, as our chaise rolled through the still-slushy
streets, my husband was filled with nostalgia. “Do you remember when the children were little, toddling about in our our Boston
town house?”
“I remember.” If I closed my eyes, I could see Nabby in braids, fighting off sleep whilst insisting she was too old for naps.
Johnny stacking blocks. Little Suky clutching her silver rattle. Charlie with his little fists curled under his chin, sleeping
like an angel. Tommy still a gleam in his father’s eye . . .
Tasting the familiar brine on the air, I said, “The ocean remains the same, but much else has changed in the forty years since
we first lived here.”
Gone were the days when redcoats drilled in the streets.
The king’s emblems had been stripped away.
The damage from the war repaired. New homes now rose up next to the old, made of brick instead of wood to prevent fires.
The Green Dragon Tavern was still open, but these days people met at the new and elegant Exchange Coffee House.
Fashion had certainly changed. Gentlemen strolled in black top hats instead of tricorns. Ladies wore wide-brimmed bonnets
instead of mobcaps. We heard more variety of voices in passing, too. From the street corners, lady shopkeepers openly hawked
warm bread and hot toddies. On the widened cobblestone streets, Irish dockworkers rolled casks of rum and barrels of fish.
Haitian washerwomen in colorful head cloths rushed past carrying sacks of laundry.
Time had marched on not only for us, and for Boston, but for the country, too.
Following Washington’s example, Jefferson had resigned after two terms, leaving a terrible mess for his successor, James Madison.
The British were still preying upon us. And our new president—like the three who had come before him—was trying to exhaust
every option for peace.
“Boston Gazette!” cried a newsboy splashing through puddles alongside us, trying to sell his paper. “Federalists say Madison is too weak for war!”
“Poor devil,” John grumbled. “Now it’s Madison’s turn upon the rack.”
I thought he was remarkably sympathetic to Madison, considering that the small-statured Virginian had once been a formidable
foe. But perhaps there would always be an unspoken kinship among those who held our highest office.
Those few who understood the weight of it.
John Quincy was waiting for us at his law office, where several clerks did brisk business. Our oldest son could be well-satisfied
with the life he led now, taking on clients, lecturing at the university, teaching his little boys, and making of himself
a dutiful son on the Sabbath at our supper table.
And I could be well satisfied for him—for though it was natural for me to have ambitions for my sons, it was also natural to want him close.
But he was restless. Like me and his father both, John Quincy missed the fray of public life. We all said that family could be enough, but none of us could quit the newspapers. And all of us were grateful that John Quincy still
made trips to Washington City to argue before the Supreme Court, because he always returned with intelligence that made us
feel as if we were still a part of the political world.
“I have much news to impart,” John Quincy said. “Important news, though it can wait till tomorrow after we settle you into
the guest room.”
“A hint at least, Johnny,” my husband said.
And his son obeyed. “I was there to see the electors cast their votes for the new president.”
“I was surprised it was Madison,” I replied. “I expected George Clinton or James Monroe, both of whom I’m told are more dynamic.”
My son smiled. “Oh, Madison is a wilier politician than most suspect.”
I remembered at the start of our government, when every idea Madison proposed seemed to me a bad one. But he had founded the Democratic-Republican party, which was still ascendant, while Federalists foundered in disarray.
“Madison is a deep thinker,” said John Quincy. “A coalition builder. Besides, he was secretary of state, which positioned
him as the heir apparent.”
My husband waggled his brows. “I heard some wanted to put you forward for the vice presidency, my boy.”
To that, our son only said, “Let my feelings not be sported with by those electioneering intrigues. What the country needs right now is smooth sailing into a new administration.”
We dined that night at John Quincy’s house, and our little grandsons crowded around the table shouting, “Grandmama! Grandpapa!”
We made gifts to the little ones of molasses candies. I also presented a basket of seed cakes and apple butter to John Quincy’s English wife, Louisa Catherine—a woman to whom I had tried to warm without ever quite achieving it.
It wasn’t entirely her fault. With the pallor of a corpse, and a whisper of a voice, Louisa simply tended to fade into the
wallpaper during garrulous Adams family gatherings. And I thought her delicacy and somewhat romantic notions made for an ill
match with my austere and practical son. Still, she was the mother of my grandchildren, and for that alone I could hold her
in high esteem.
I was also grateful that my English daughter-in-law was always sweet to Charlie’s fatherless daughters.
We’d sent twelve-year-old Susanna and ten-year-old Abbe to Boston for dancing lessons, and now the girls demonstrated how
properly their aunt Louisa had taught them to curtsey.
Charlie’s girls were fair-haired, dimpled, and blessed with his good looks. That should secure them ample choice for husbands
when the time came. Provided, of course, that they had good heads, as well.
But I wasn’t encouraged on that score when, over supper, our conversation turned to the latest headlines and my granddaughter
Susanna asked, “Must we always talk about the newspapers?”
“Susanna,” I scolded. Unlike most families, we didn’t have a rule that children mustn’t speak until spoken to. But we did have a rule
that we wouldn’t countenance blockheads. “It won’t hurt you to pay attention to the newspapers, my dear girl.”
My granddaughter made a pained face. “But I hate politics.”
My husband chuckled, hand over his heart, as if mortally wounded. “Hate politics, child? How can you bear the name Adams and
say so?”
“It’s so very dull,” Susanna whined.
At hearing that, I nearly dropped my spoon onto my daughter-in-law’s altogether too fussy china plates. “Dull? When your native country is so continuously threatened by foreign powers, and disagreements about slavery, you cannot be a
descendant from the spirit of ’76 and be indifferent to what is passing.”
“I would only be frustrated if I took an interest,” Susanna said. “Because what could I do about any of it as a girl?”
I wished to say that as a citizen of this republic she had a duty and responsibility to give her attention to its cares.
But despite my entreaties all those years ago to remember the ladies, we’d been forgotten.
Worse than forgotten, in truth. For those few women who had been allowed to vote in our country had just been stripped of that right two years ago.
Knowing this ought to have given me pause in hectoring my granddaughters about
patriotism.
Then again, to love one’s country when that country did not love you in return might as well have been our family motto.
Later, when I tucked my granddaughter into bed, she asked, “Am I likely to find a husband who would look to me to read newspapers
and advise him the way Grandpapa looks to you?”
I took her question seriously, thinking about all the men I knew. Some did value and recognize the intelligence of their wives. But not even my own sons gave their wives all the consideration they
were due. So it was with a deep sigh of disappointment that I admitted, “No, child, you’re not likely to find a husband like
your grandfather. But you must look for one anyway.”
The next morning, before the children were awake, John Quincy delivered the important news he’d been waiting to share.
And in shock, I cried, “No, no! You mustn’t go.”
My son pulled his chair closer, intent that I should look into his eyes. “Mother, this is what I was made for. These past years since losing my seat in the Senate, I’ve severely felt my own defects, and the want of experience in
business. It’s diplomacy that I know well. And it is what I am wanted for.”
It turned out that his trip to Washington City hadn’t merely been to argue a case before the Supreme Court or to watch electors
cast their votes. He’d gone on to enjoy a private meeting with the new president, who intended to appoint my son as minister
to the Court of Tsar Alexander.
“It is a great political reward,” John Quincy said. “And it may one day lead to higher office.”
“How wrong you are, my boy. You are a political rival and he is sending you into exile. Russia, again! He might as well banish
you to the moon. You need not accept this appointment. Nay, you must not accept it.”
I expected John to agree.
Rarely had we been so happy and content as these past three years with Johnny nearby to enliven our society and keep our minds agile. I couldn’t bear the thought of parting with my son yet again.
But my husband said, “Johnny, I cannot think of a man more qualified for the post.”