First Family (35 page)

This is not to mention the inevitable vicissitudes of aging, which had rendered him hairless and almost toothless—his speech had grown increasingly slurred—and the shaking of his palsied hands, which he referred to as “quiverations,” a word he claimed to have “borrowed from an Irish boy [and] an improvement of our language worthy of a place in Webster’s dictionary.” These “quiverations” sometimes required him to grip his pen with both hands while writing letters. And his poor eyesight—he somewhat melodramatically claimed that he had been going blind for almost twenty years—meant that Abigail often read out loud to him at night. These physical ravages of time imposed the kind of daily burdens that Cicero’s idealistic account of elderly bliss had somehow neglected to mention.
⁹

Although nine years younger than John, Abigail was actually in worse physical shape. Her congenital rheumatism and associated rheumatic fevers flared up more frequently. And when they did she was often confined to her bed for weeks at a time, which required the household staff to gather in her bedroom each morning to receive her instructions for the day. Even when the rheumatism was in remission, she seldom left the house and could only accompany John on his daily ride around the farms in a cushioned carriage. Her hair had turned completely white and, in conjunction with her deepening wrinkles, led her to observe that the woman depicted in Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of 1800 was no longer recognizable a few years later.
¹⁰

She was also, albeit in a different way than John, emotionally invested in the Adams legacy. For John, the concern about his place in the history books was painfully personal. For Abigail, on the other hand, the focus was on the family, her role as the matriarch who helped lay the foundation on which succeeding generations of Adams descendants could make future contributions to the unfolding American story.

Quite obviously, John was still her highest domestic priority. In retirement, that meant helping him to navigate past the sharp edges of his vanities and remaining calm when he was in mid-eruption, listening patiently to his passionate denunciations of partisan politics, Jefferson’s misguided foreign policy, or the suicidal tendencies of the New England Federalists. She had been performing this essential task
for their entire life together, and it was even more essential that she continue to perform it now, since once John was removed from the public arena his ambitious energies had no outlet and simmered away inside him with greater ferocity.

The heir apparent, just as obviously, was John Quincy, who had been groomed for greatness almost from the moment he exited Abigail’s womb. All prospects for an Adams dynasty now rested wholly on the eldest son, since Charles had already carried their hopes to a besotted early death, and Thomas had established a pattern of inexplicable ineptitude sufficiently severe that he was forced to move back to Quincy under the eye and within the orbit of his parents.

John Quincy’s return from Berlin in 1801, most especially his return to Quincy in December, was a landmark event. For then Abigail met her “new daughter” for the first time. Louisa Catherine was an elegantly statuesque, delicately boned young woman who spoke with a slight British accent. Very much at home in the European salon set—she had been the sensation of the Berlin court—Louisa Catherine was up for inspection, since Abigail regarded her as the crucial partner that John Quincy would need by his side in the long march toward public triumph. She was also the biological fountainhead for the third generation of Adams descendants, heir apparent to Abigail’s role as matriarch.

First impressions on both sides were not encouraging. Abigail was alarmed at her sickly condition, “which confined her almost the whole time she was here.” More basically, Louisa Catherine struck her as precariously refined: “Her frame is so slender and her constitution so delicate that I have many fears that she will be of short duration.”
¹¹

For her part, Louisa Catherine remembered the Quincy introduction as an unmitigated catastrophe: “Had I stepped onto Noah’s Ark I do not think I could have been more utterly astonished.” She also sensed Abigail’s disapproval, not that any wife of John Quincy would have passed muster in Abigail’s eyes. “Do what I would,” Louisa Catherine recalled, “there was a conviction on the part of others that I could not suit, however well inclined.”
¹²

Abigail saw it differently. From that day until her final illness, she resolved to make Louisa Catherine her special project. She was not
the woman Abigail would have chosen for John Quincy, but she was the woman he had chosen for himself, and therefore the essential link with future generations of Adams progeny who must be cultivated, encouraged, folded into the dynastic network.

Finally, it merits attention that the extended Adams family over which Abigail was supposed to exercise her legendary prowess bore no relationship at all to the idyllic domestic world described in the Latin classics. Abigail was attempting to manage what, by any measure, qualified as a dysfunctional family: Nabby and her little brood were living on the edge of poverty in a marriage sustained only by her unconditional loyalty; Sally Adams, widow of Charles, had become a permanent casualty of life, frequently breaking down in tears for no apparent reason; Thomas, upon his return to Quincy, retreated into self-doubt, chronic dissipation, and eventually a losing battle with alcoholism. Although the magic between Abigail and John remained intact, they were in fact surrounded by the kind of human debris subsequently depicted in the plays of Eugene O’Neill.

Though the Old House was Abigail’s designated domain, she did her best to create a secluded space for John, where he could do his daily reading and writing with a minimum of interruption. Given the sheer size of the resident population, and the fact that so many of them were infants and young children often running from room to room, this was not an easy task. It was rendered even more difficult by John’s habit of plopping himself down at the parlor table after dinner, which was usually served between three and four o’clock, and commencing his work in what was, in effect, the center of the wind tunnel. John had developed impressive powers of concentration over the years, and Abigail made a point of reminding the grandchildren that the patriarch, often referred to as “the president,” was not to be disturbed. But interruptions were inevitable, whether it was young George climbing onto his lap, or Susanna, the somewhat precocious daughter of Charles, asking him to read her a book.

John apparently welcomed the periodic interruptions as a relief
from the burdensome thoughts about his problematic place in the history books that had become his all-consuming obsession. “How is it that I, poor, ignorant I, must stand before Posterity as differing from all the other great Men of the Age?” he asked. And why was it that even when his name was admitted onto the list with those of Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, it was always accompanied by an asterisk describing him as “the most vain, conceited, imprudent, and arrogant Creature in the World?”
¹³

He had begun his career as a young lawyer aiming for fame more than fortune. And then history had presented him with the chance to play a major role in leading a revolution and establishing a new nation, a truly remarkable opportunity that came around only once every few centuries. But now, with his work done, his achievement was being airbrushed out of the story, and others were being accorded prominent places in the American pantheon while he was required to languish in obscurity, or worse, being described as an erratic, slightly deranged curmudgeon who did not fit comfortably into the proper heroic mold.

For the first twelve years of his retirement John spent a portion of most days seated at the parlor table amid the buzz of grandchildren, and most nights by the fire alongside Abigail, who was often reading a book while he did battle with his emotions. First in his somewhat pathetic attempt at an autobiography, then in a caustic exchange with Mercy Otis Warren, then in a nearly interminable series of weekly essays for the
Boston Patriot
, and throughout in an extraordinary correspondence with Benjamin Rush—easily the most candid and colorful letters he ever wrote—John released the pent-up energies of his tortured soul. These separate venues were really parts of a single project, namely, to claim his proper place in American history, or, if that proved problematic, to smash all the other statues currently being enshrined in the American pantheon. He was, to put it charitably, slightly out of control.

In November 1804 John Quincy, by then serving as the senator from Massachusetts, encouraged his father to write his memoirs: “I have heretofore requested you, if you find it consistent with your leisure, to commit to writing an account of the principle incidents of
your own life … It would afford a lasting and cordial gratification to your children, and I have no doubt, be ultimately a benefit to your Country. It might also amuse many hours which otherwise may pass heavily.” John effectively threw up his hands at the suggestion: “You have recommended to me a Work, which … would engage my feelings and enflame my Passions. In many Passages it would set me on fire and I should have occasion for a Bucket of Water constantly by my side to put it out.”
¹⁴

He spoke from experience, since, unbeknownst to John Quincy, he had been working on his memoirs in fits and starts for more than two years. His self-defeating message was announced at the start: “As the lives of Philosophers, Statesmen or Historians written by themselves have generally been suspected of vanity, and therefore few People have been able to read them without disgust; there is no reason to expect that any sketches I may leave of my own Time would be received by the Public with any favour, or read by individuals with much interest.”
¹⁵

As the editors of the modern edition of the
Adams Papers
acknowledge, to call John’s autobiography chaotic would be generous. Its disorderly and often incoherent shape was in part a function of the fitful, stop-and-start manner of its composition. Initially he worked solely from memory; then it occurred to him to consult his own diaries and letter books, then volumes he had in his library on sessions of the Continental Congress, which he began to quote verbatim for long stretches without commentary, thereby losing any semblance of narrative control.
¹⁶

But another source of incoherence was the periodic explosions that went off throughout the text when John encountered a character who conjured up painful memories. Predictably, Hamilton produced a major detonation, even though he had recently died in a duel with Aaron Burr: “Nor am I obliged by any Principles of Morality or Religion to suffer my character to lie under infamous Calumnies,” John argued, “because the Author of them, with a Pistol Bullet through his Spinal Marrow, died a Penitent.” The venom poured out: “Born on a Speck more obscure than Corsica … with infinitely less courage and Capacity than Bonaparte, he would in my Opinion, if I had not controlled
the fury of his Vanity … involved us in all the Bloodshed and distractions of foreign and Civil War at once.” There was score-settling with Franklin, Paine, and Jefferson as well, all of whom ended up with Hamilton in the Adams rogues’ gallery. One can almost see him hunched over the table, scribbling away despite his palsied hand, gleefully eviscerating his enemies into the night.
¹⁷

In 1807 he shifted his guns to Mercy Otis Warren, who had recently published a three-volume
History of the American Revolution
(1805) in which, as John saw it, his own role in making independence happen was not sufficiently appreciated. Actually, Abigail had fired the first shot two years before Warren’s
History
was published, declaring to her old friend that “the sacred deposit of private confidence has been betrayed, and the bonds of Friendly intercourse swept asunder, to serve the most malicious purposes … I have been ready to exclaim with the poet [Shakespeare] ‘What sin unknown dipt you in Ink.’ ” Abigail was apparently referring to critical remarks that Warren had made about John because he had refused to give her son a job in his administration.
¹⁸

The appearance of Warren’s
History
clinched the breakdown of communication between the families. The most offensive passage echoed the charges of the Republican press that John was a closet monarchist, that during his eight-year tour of duty in Europe, “living long near the splendor of courts and courtiers” had caused him to become “beclouded by a partiality for monarchy [and] a lapse from his former republican principles.” This was a long-standing accusation, not really true, but now enshrined in one of the first serious histories of the American Revolution by none other than a lifelong friend of the Adams family. Worse yet, it was sure to influence all subsequent histories, because it came at the start and because Warren herself possessed impeccable revolutionary credentials.
¹⁹

The initial salvo from Abigail, which effectively announced that her friendship with Warren was seriously compromised, was followed by ten letters from John that verged on hysteria. No one in the revolutionary generation, he claimed, had “done more labor, run through more and greater dangers, and made greater sacrifices.” He had done more than “any man among my contemporaries living or dead, in the
service of my country.” In the Continental Congress he had been the singular voice insisting on American independence. In the peace negotiations in Paris he alone had insisted on a separate treaty with England despite instructions to the contrary. These were, in truth, plausible claims, but he was the last person to make them on his own behalf without sounding like an arrogant fool, which is pretty much what Warren called him: “What is Mrs. Warren to think of your comments?” she asked rhetorically. “I readily tell you she thinks them the most captious, malignant, irrelevant compositions that have ever been seen.” All communication between the two families then ceased for several years.
²⁰