by James Traub
Adams was operating in a remarkable number of languages, though he scarcely considered it remarkable himself. He and Baron de Bielefeld were learning Italian together, reading Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme Deliverato. He was teaching himself Dutch, which he found “very similar to English,” though “the differences are wholly to its disadvantage.” He was studying and translating the Latin historians. And he was reading Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, which he found fascinating and deeply persuasive, as well as French literature and history. He was, all in all, modestly pleased with himself.
Adams had written his first letter to Louisa almost the moment he reached land in Holland, telling her how he gazed longingly at the miniature of her she had given him and describing for her the image in his mind’s eye to which he continually recurred: “I see you sitting on the Sopha with the table before you, working at a Vandyke, and Caroline at the other end with her silken net-work pinn’d before her, while Nancy calls the very soul of harmony from the forte-piano.” Apparently he missed not only Louisa herself but the delight of being ensconced in a room full of women all of whom treated him as a young prince. This and the many letters Adams would write Louisa over the next year contain only the most restrained hints of physical passion. Adams was obviously no stranger to desire, but his profound distrust of passion, his commitment to reason and to principle, leached out the strongest emotions before he gave them expression—perhaps before he even consciously experienced them. His father’s letters to Abigail when the two were engaged, by contrast, were headlong and ardent and fairly blazing with desire. The life force that burned in John Adams had been banked in his son.
Louisa finally wrote back almost a month later. She was plainly intimidated by her supremely articulate swain and only wrote because he had implored her to do so. And she lacked his self-control. “Oh Philosophy,” she cried out, “where art thou now without thy aid my present sensations will carry me beyond myself and far exceed the limits of my Paper.” She ended the letter after only a paragraph.
By this time Portugal’s ambassador in Philadelphia, no doubt privy to the diplomatic gossip in London and the Hague, had told the Adamses that their son had formed an attachment, though they seem not yet to have identified the object of his affections. John Adams wrote to say that while he wished the event had occurred at home, “you are now of an Age to judge for yourself.” Abigail, on the other hand, passed up the opportunity to demonstrate unconditional acceptance, writing, “I would hope for the Love I bear My Country, that the Syren, is at least half Blood.” She even had the temerity to ask of “Maria,” the name she used for Mary Frazier, “has she no claims?” Her son wrote back to say curtly, “She has none, but to my fervent and cordial good wishes for her welfare.”
Adams was hoping to end his time in Holland as soon as possible, return to his law practice in Boston, and marry Louisa. Or maybe he would buy some property and settle in the South, a prospect he broached with his brothers. But he never followed up his plantation fantasy, and he appears to have done nothing to prepare to return to his law practice, probably because he dreaded the prospect of doing so. Then, in early August 1796, he learned that President Washington had appointed him minister to Portugal. The message from the secretary of state instructed him to remain in his post for several months longer. That forced a question: Would he come to London, marry Louisa, and bring her with him to Portugal? Or would he continue to insist that she wait until they could both return to America, he knew not when?
Adams did not trust Louisa to master the etiquette of a diplomatic wife, which worried him a great deal; worse still, he appeared to have no sense of how she would feel to learn how little he trusted her. “For your own happiness,” he wrote her, “endeavour to acquire the faculty not merely of acquiescence, in unavoidable inconveniences, but even of a cheerful conformity to things which must be endured, and above all establish as an invariable rule for your conversation, to express no general or national reflections.” In other words, no opinions. And, he added, she would have to “suppress some of the little attachments to splendor that lurk at your breast.” That drew a riposte: Louisa said that she had no idea why he “erroneously supposed me dazzled with what you stile rank.” Adams asked for a truce on explanations between them. His parents had never needed such a truce, for they had been raised in the same world and understood one another intuitively.
The truce, in any case, lasted only until November, when Adams wrote to say that he would probably have to go directly to Lisbon. The consolation, he helpfully observed, was that “it will not expose us to form habits of attachment to the empty baubles of a life connected with Courts.” He was still convinced that Louisa pined for empty baubles, perhaps because she had always had them. The following week he added, “You are still at a period of life when reflection is not a welcome guest . . . and Pleasure announces herself as the principal or sole object of pursuit.” Adams had surely been abetted by a letter from his father, who cautioned that “a young lady of fine Parts and Accomplishments, educated to drawing dance and Music . . . will be in danger of involving you in Expences far beyond your Appointments.”
Louisa must have wondered what, exactly, her fiancé saw in her. She wrote back to say that she was devastated to learn that they would remain apart for an indefinite period. She admitted that she was a stranger to suffering and disappointment, and begged his indulgence for her weakness. Louisa understood that a display of stoicism—Philosophy, as Adams called it—would raise her in his esteem far more than weepy complaint, and so she wrote back to implore him not to consider resigning his new post on her account. Then she added “a feeble ray of Hope”: since her father would soon be sending a ship to Holland, she and her father could pay a visit.
Adams immediately concluded that Louisa had concocted a ruse in order to marry him in Holland. He wrote to Joshua Johnson saying that a marriage at this point in his life would be “an act of folly.” And he then wrote a strikingly cold letter to Louisa, pointing out that “you will be sensible what an appearance in the eyes of the world, your coming here would have; an appearance consistent neither with your dignity, nor my delicacy.” This very nearly provoked a rupture between the two. Louisa wrote back to say that his letter “astonished and mortified me so much, that I can scarcely believe you recollected to whom you were writing.” She had, she said, proposed the expedient of visiting Holland only because the “cruel disappointment” of learning that he would not marry her in London had made her ill, and she thought that “if I could but see you for a few days, I should acquire fortitude and resignation to ensure our lengthened separation.” She was, she added tartly, “much surprized at the frequent repetition of the words suspicion and distrust in your last and several of your former letters.”
John Quincy Adams comes out of this exchange very badly, and especially to the modern ear. He seems to be hurling missiles at his defenseless fiancé from the massive fortifications of his principles. He is intent not only on asserting his perfect rectitude but on securing his dominion over his wife-to-be. Louisa puts up a brave defense but is overwhelmed, for Adams’ willingness to jeopardize their relationship in the name of propriety gives him the upper hand. The situation was, however, slightly more complex. First of all, Adams was right about Louisa’s intentions, her angry protestations notwithstanding. Many years later she admitted in her journal that her suffering had become so terrible that her father had invented the pretext of the trip to Holland in order to corner Adams into a marriage. And Adams was probably also right that such a connivance would have provoked the kind of malicious gossip that, at that time, could have dogged the couple in future years and offered to the Adamses’ many political opponents a cudgel with which to belabor them. Nevertheless, Louisa was deeply afflicted by what felt to her like abandonment, and her pain would color their marriage in its own way. Another man might have felt compelled to find a way to alleviate his beloved’s suffering; Adams counseled Philosophy.
The letters betwee
n the two continued in this vein until the middle of 1797. At times Adams writes to Louisa from dizzying heights of condescension: “You imagine that I receive with anger the information that you pay little attention to the Harp, and cannot yet play a single song—By no means—I hear it with great indifference: it is indeed as you say a charming, but it is also a trivial accomplishment.” At other moments his hard heart melts, and he writes as a swain, admitting that when he doesn’t receive a letter from Louisa, he walks the three miles to the seashore and gazes out over the horizon to where the coast of England lies. Louisa, for her part, bows before Adams’ masterly reserve: “I shall soon, by my unremitting attention, and solicitude, for your welfare, convince you that your Louisa’s heart is entirely devoted to you.” But she was not altogether daunted and sometimes held up a mirror to his foibles, whether his excessive concern for dignity or his withdrawal into solitude and books or his penchant for dwelling on “the dark side of things.” Self-critical as he was, Adams could not accept even this loving, rallying form of advice and replied that such displays of “spirit” forced him to choose between an equally spirited rejoinder and “acquiescence and obsequiousness, painful to him who makes and unworthy of her who receives the sacrifice.” In short, he could criticize her, but she could not criticize him.
In February, John Adams had narrowly squeaked past his great rival, Thomas Jefferson, to become the second president of the United States. He appointed William Vans Murray, a Federalist and staunch loyalist, to succeed his son as minister to Holland. While John Quincy Adams waited for his replacement to arrive, and thus for permission to depart, he went back and forth on the question of whether he would come to London to marry Louisa and bring her to Lisbon. In the meanwhile, Joshua Johnson solved the problem of transportation by arranging to have one of his schooners carry the couple from London to Lisbon. Whether Adams felt that this removed a practical obstacle or rather that such an extravagant courtesy left him no other option, he now wrote to Louisa to say that he would come to London. On June 29, he and Tom went to the port of Maasluis, next to Rotterdam, to await a boat.
And then Murray, who had already arrived, sent Adams a note with shocking news. President Adams had changed his son’s assignment: he would be going not to Lisbon as he had imagined, but to Berlin as American minister to Prussia. Only a few weeks before, Adams had written to his mother to say that he would accept the ministry in Lisbon because it had been decided by President Washington, but “you may rest assured that I never shall hold a public office under the nomination of my father.” Adams objected to nepotism as a violation of republican principles, but at a much more visceral level he could not bear the idea that others would think he had gained a position through his father’s influence rather than his own merit. This amounted almost to a mania with him, and he had written Abigail about it a number of times. President Adams had showed one of the letters to Washington, who had responded just as Adams probably imagined he would: “The sentiments do honor to the head and the heart of the writer, and if my wishes should be of any avail, they should go to you in a strong hope that you would not withhold merited promotion from Mr. Jn. Adams because he is your son.” That, of course, was good enough for the father.
The son, however, was flummoxed. He had finally accepted the idea that he would begin his new life as a family man in Lisbon. He had secured lodging there; boxed up and sent his beloved collection of books; spent $2,500 on furnishings, which he was unlikely ever to recover; and agreed to Joshua Johnson’s offer of free passage. And now, instead, he was to go to distant Berlin, where he knew no one—and at his father’s behest. He had arrived in London July 12, and there received his official commission from the president as well as instructions from the secretary of state. He wrote to his father to say that the appointment was “totally contrary to every expectation and every wish I had formed.” Nevertheless, he had agreed to accept the post for two reasons: because his father had asked him to, and because “the new destination will be so much more inconvenient and troublesome to myself, than that to which I had already been appointed.” No one, that is, could accuse his father of giving him a plum.
Once in London, Adams had what one can only hope and imagine was a joyous reunion with Louisa, who had been in agonies as he wavered about their fate. Her trousseau had been laid out for months. Now he informed her that they would not, in fact, be going to Lisbon but to Berlin, though to her the one was no less strange than the other. Louisa wanted to get married right away, as did her father. The previous September, Joshua had written to Adams with what the latter must have found very alarming news: he had to leave for the United States no later than the following spring if he was to rescue his fortune. He offered no details, but one of the reasons he had been eager for Adams to make up his mind was so that he and Catherine could leave for America, with or without Louisa. But now Adams had new preparations to make, and he began to fret over how he could afford to stay in London longer than he had planned. Joshua gallantly, if perhaps a bit desperately, offered to let Adams move from Osborne’s Hotel to the family home once he had married.
John Quincy Adams and Louisa Catherine Johnson were married, at long last, on July 26 at the Johnson church, known as All Hallows Barking. According to the marriage certificate, the witnesses consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, Tom, and two of Adams’ friends, Joseph Hall and James Brooks. In his journal, Adams drily notes these bare facts, adding, “We were married before 11. in the morning: and immediately after, went out to see Tilney House; one of the splendid Country seats for which this Country is distinguished.” Adams was no longer in the habit of confiding unbridled feelings to his journal. But with his good friend William Vans Murray he was less restrained. “You see I have really joined the honorable fraternity, into which I was when I left you, a candidate for admission,” he wrote a week after the wedding. “I am just now too happy to be good for anything as a correspondent, and hope my friends will excuse the shortness of my letters.”
THE NEW MINISTER TO PRUSSIA COULD NOT LEAVE UNTIL HE received instructions from the State Department, so John Quincy and Louisa spent the ten weeks after their wedding in London. Adams had taken up Joshua’s offer to move into the family home on Coopers Row. He and Louisa had scarcely ever been alone with one another before, much less shared a bedroom. Adams, as was his wont, drew a veil across whatever delight he experienced, though he did note in his diary one morning that he had arisen late from “an inevitable cause.” Adams passed his days reading Milton; browsing the booksellers’; meeting with Rufus King, the American minister in London; and writing to the secretary of state, his father, and his friends. He spent the evenings at a dizzying succession of postwedding fetes with the Johnsons. On September 8, he and Louisa had a farewell dinner with the Johnsons, which concluded with a “distressing scene.” Joshua Johnson was being hounded by creditors and could stay in England no longer. He insisted that all would be well so long as he could return home, for he had property in Georgia that would redeem his fortune. It is unlikely that Adams believed him. At four thirty the next morning the Johnsons slipped out of London for Margate and a waiting ship. Louisa, who had never been without her parents, was devastated. Her parents’ departure was, she later wrote, “the most wretched moment of my life.”
And then things got worse. On October 7, Adams received a letter from a Frederick Delius, postmarked Bremen. Joshua Johnson, said Delius, “went off largely indebted to me” after having “promised me most faithfully to come to a settlement before he leaves the Country.” Delius said that Johnson had duped others as well and that his credit was “worse then notting.” Delius asked Adams to pay off Johnson’s debt to him, which amounted to 500 pounds, and added a threat to expose his father-in-law’s peculations. In his journal, Adams wrote, “Find the affairs of Mr. J. more and more adverse. This trial is a strong one. More so indeed than I expected. And I expected it would be strong.” Adams wrote back to Delius saying that even if his claims were true, “I am not the pe
rson to judge between you,” and then added sternly, “But when you threaten me with a publication against him you cannot expect that I should receive the threat other than with defiance.”
Adams was the son of the man whose greatest boast was that for 160 years no one bearing his name had committed the smallest infraction against public morality. He conducted himself so as never to give his enemies, or his father’s, even the tiniest opportunity of just reproach. And now he was the son-in-law of a bankrupt who had fled his creditors. For Adams, this was immeasurably worse than the loss of a future legacy. He wrote to Joshua Johnson to say that the allegations had called into question “something more than merely your credit” and urged him to settle his debts immediately. For Louisa, though, the pain was yet deeper. Her father, whom she worshiped, now stood accused—in her husband’s mind as well as the world’s—as a scoundrel. She trembled with every knock on the door, lest a new creditor appear and add terror to shame. Worse still, she had urged Adams to marry quickly, and now it looked as if she wanted to hurry him to the altar before he learned the awful truth. Adams may never have said as much, but he probably did a poor job of hiding his shock and humiliation. “It was strict and rigid justice and I had nothing to complain of,” Louisa wrote in her journal.
Louisa did not commit her memories to paper until many years after this terrible incident, when she decided to record the story of her life for her grandchildren. Her chief motivation was not to clear her own name but her father’s, and in this late-life memoir she writes again and again of his guilelessness and generosity. But the journal is laced with a bitter self-abasement; one installment is titled “The Adventures of a Nobody.” She writes that from the moment of the Delius letter, “all confidence was destroyed for ever in me and mine,” and describes her father’s downfall as “a phantom that has unceasingly followed me through every stage of life.”
