by Jane Cook
As he stood to leave, Countess Mengs returned. With more urgency than before, she begged Louisa to change her mind and stay.
“All this I declined, I fear, from a proud and foolhardy spirit, and the conviction that, however retarded, the difficulties of my path must be conquered, and it was as well to face them at once,” Louisa recalled.
The countess and the innkeeper probably wondered why Louisa was in such a hurry to get to Paris. The battlefields were finally silent, strewn with skeletons, not the sounds of soldiers. The war was over. Napoleon wasn’t dead, but he was no longer a threat, either. He was locked up, exiled to Elba, an island off the Italian coast of Tuscany.
Although the countess and the hotel manager had lived through unspeakable difficulties on land that became the front lines of the war, they had no idea how depressed Louisa had become and what she had endured in St. Petersburg. Her sorrows were private. They truly didn’t know why she was in such a hurry to leave Russia. They didn’t understand why she refused to socialize with the countess, particularly when she might not have another opportunity to do so. They didn’t realize that as much as she longed to see her husband, it broke her heart to say good-bye to the one who would never leave Russia. They didn’t know that she had been living in exile. St. Petersburg was Louisa’s Elba. Like Napoleon, she realized that reunion was the only remedy for her broken heart.
They really didn’t know Louisa Adams.
3
Lost
THE SECOND OF EIGHT CHILDREN, LOUISA CATHERINE JOHNSON Adams was born on February 12, 1775, in London, England, the same year and country as novelist Jane Austen. Unlike Jane, Louisa was half-American. Her father, Joshua Johnson, was born in Calvert County, Maryland, while her mother, Catherine Nuth Johnson, was born in London. Also unlike Miss Austen, Mrs. Adams found wedded love, until politics came along and broke her heart.
Though she was too young to remember it, Louisa had lived previously in a form of exile. Decades earlier her father had moved to London from the colonies to make a living as a merchant representing an Annapolis shipping company. When the American Revolution broke out, he’d sided with the Patriots and fled with his family to Nantes, France, in 1778. She couldn’t remember the agony her parents felt while being captives in a foreign country during a devastating war, one that might forever separate them from their homeland. Little did she realize that years later she, too, would find herself again living away from home, only to be trapped by the most destructive worldwide war humanity had ever witnessed.
Being exiled to France had one big benefit. She’d spent her earliest school years under the tutelage of French nuns. These women had unknowingly given her the most useful gift for a future envoy’s wife—the ability to speak French, the language of diplomacy. She’d absorbed the language as naturally as a native French child. Not only did Louisa speak French correctly, but she also spoke it without an American or English accent. Some thought she spoke French better than English.
After the Revolutionary War officially ended in 1783, Mr. Johnson and his family returned to London, where he had later served as the American consul. Their home became the nucleus of social life for Americans doing business in England—whether in trade or diplomacy. Her family was so pro-American that she never expected to have anything in common with the dictatorial Napoleon, other than speaking fluent French.
Now here she was alone and on the road. She understood the pains of exile that her parents had felt years earlier. Though she loathed the exiled French emperor as much as her father-in-law, John Adams, had despised Britain’s King George III a generation earlier, she understood the sorrow of separation from a spouse, children, and homeland.
Louisa’s exile became even more agonizing in April 1814, when John Quincy traveled to Belgium, leaving her alone with Charles in St. Petersburg. Ironically, he left at the same time the kings of Europe sent the conquered Napoleon to Elba. Being exiled from America with John Quincy had been unbearable, but living without him in St. Petersburg during the greatest threat to America since the Revolutionary War was worse than she could have ever imagined.
By February 1815 it was impossible to know who wanted reunion more—Louisa to her family or Napoleon to his throne. One thing was certain: both would do anything to go home. Both would make any decision, no matter how impulsive or rash, to be reunited with the passions of their hearts. For Louisa anything now meant traveling with a thief and taking a road marked by murder. While at the inn in Mitau, she thanked the countess for her concern.
“Finding me determined, she took a very kind leave of me, and I got into the carriage and began my ride under the most uneasy impressions.”
Her party departed in late afternoon, when the amber hues of daylight vanished into black, with only torches or lanterns to light the road. Travel was slow. Unless paved by the order of a king or emperor, most roads lacked any foundation other than dirt, dust, or mud. Given the conditions, she expected to reach the next post by ten o’clock in the evening.
The innkeeper’s words may have haunted her as she hugged her carriage’s seat and endured the terrain’s tossing and tussling. A dreadful murder had been committed on the very ground beneath her.
Who was killed? Why? Was it over money? What should she do with her bags of coins? They were already hidden in the best place possible—under her seat. She made certain that no one, not even Charles or Madame Babet, knew of their whereabouts. The innkeeper’s warning now left her as uneasy as a fortune-teller after reading a palm. Had Baptiste discovered her gold? She would have to be as sly as a thief whenever she withdrew coins from her stash.
Perhaps the murder was over something else, maybe ethnicity. Depravity often leads to dastardly deeds. Did a gang of peasants stop a carriage and drag the poor soul into the forest? Suddenly each boulder on the road became a suspicious hiding place; each beggar, a criminal. The farther she traveled from St. Petersburg, the less protection she received from the Russian minister of interior, who gave her introductory papers.
“I was likewise furnished with a letter from the [Russian] government recommending me to the protection of all whom I called on; and, that any complaint should immediately be attended to.”
Louisa displayed these letters in her coach’s window or concealed them on her person. They were her shield, her crest. Just as masked medieval knights relied on coats of arms to identify and protect them from accidental death by a knight from the same family or tribe, so Louisa relied on her papers from the land of the czar. Such letters have one major flaw. Their interpretation depends on the perspective and true loyalties of the viewer.
As she traveled that night, Louisa probably also worried as much—if not more—about Baptiste. She may have hugged Charles closer, placing him in her lap before encouraging him to get some sleep. She had already failed his siblings. She couldn’t fail him now. She may have stroked his hair, pulling it past his oversized ears under the pretense of reassurance, but the gesture was really an attempt to pacify her conscience. Charles was likely oblivious to the murder outside and the danger within. How she wished to relieve Baptiste of his post! But a bond was a bond.
When the time grew closer to ten, Louisa relaxed. They were nearly there. Then she felt the abrupt backward jolting of the carriage. Her pulse quickened.
“After riding about four miles, the postilion suddenly stopped and informed us that he had missed the road; that the man who was accustomed to drive was sick; that he had never been on that road before; and that he could not tell where he was.”
Now her circumstances were worse than before. She was lost in the woods at the hands of a novice driver. What if the rookie was the criminal? The driver took them through rough terrain. Paths jerked the coach at each and every hole and rock, spitting them suddenly forward and sometimes throwing them from their seats. Nature tripped them with the same teasing as a ship caught in a storm’s fury, something she knew all too well. Their problem was made worse by clouds. Absent from the sky were a bright moon
and delicate stars to brighten their path.
“Until eleven o’clock at night we were jolted over hills, through swamps and holes, and into valleys into which no carriage had surely ever passed before; and my whole heart was filled with unspeakable terrors for the safety of my child, for whom I offered the most ardent prayers to the ever protecting father of his creatures.”
Taking charge, Baptiste halted the carriage. Because of the uneven terrain, the vehicle might overturn. Mindful of the innkeeper’s advice to appear to place unlimited confidence in Baptiste, Louisa agreed. If this wasn’t an emergency, what was?
“At twelve o’clock at night, the horses being utterly worn out, and scarce a twinkling star to teach of living light, we determined that Baptiste should ride one of the horses and endeavor to find a road through which we might be extricated from our perilous situation.”
Louisa snugly tucked Charles into his bed. The scene around them was as dark as the fur on a Russian bear. She gathered all their blankets and made sure everyone was as warm as possible. Questions in her mind haunted her as much as the sounds from the swamp surrounding them. Would Baptiste return, or would they freeze to death? Would they die at the hands of a wandering murderer? How her pulse raced!
4
The Crossing
FOOLHARDY! WHY HADN’T SHE STAYED IN MITAU? THE COUNTESS would have kept her company. Perhaps she should have delayed her journey. She could have saved herself heartache and worry over Charles. Now she would have to wait for the sun to rescue her, unless a beast of the forest or the worst of man found her first. Then she heard it— voices and the trampling of a horse at a short distance. Man or monster?
“The palpitation of my heart increased until I thought it would have burst. My child lay sweetly sleeping on his little bed in the front of the carriage, unsusceptible of fear and utterly unconscious of danger.”
Then she heard his familiar voice. She didn’t record whether it was raspy or mellow, high-pitched, or deep toned, but she recognized his unmistakable voice. Even if Baptiste was a thief, his voice gave her instant comfort in that frightful moment, while his perspiration-stained frock shirt suddenly smelled sweet.
“Baptiste rode hastily up to the carriage door and informed me that he had found a house quite near.”
Accompanying Baptiste was a Russian officer, who saw him riding from the house. The man “offered his services to take us into the road, as it required great skill to keep the carriage out of the gullies by which we were surrounded.” Louisa agreed to let the Russian officer escort them to the house. Confirming her fears, he told her that murder had recently taken place on that road. Not to worry. He brought lanterns and fresh torches to light their path to shelter.
“One of my men mounted the officer’s horse and we proceeded at a foot pace.” They arrived at the house at half past one, three hours later than she expected. “He [the officer] accepted a handsome present, made many polite speeches, and took leave, recommending the innkeeper to be attentive, and to see that horses should be ready at any hour I might want them, [and] he departed.”
Though the post driver was at fault for missing the road and accepting a job to ride to a place he had never been before, and at night at that, Baptiste and the other servant performed their duty with honor. She was not mangled or murdered in the forest. Neither was her carriage sunk in a swamp. Though shaken, she was alive. More important, so was her child.
“I therefore expressed my satisfaction to my domestics for the prudence and discretion which they had shown through this singular accident, and bade them be ready at an early hour with the carriage and horses,” she explained, determining to get out of there as soon as possible.
Louisa retired to a small room with Madame Babet and Charles. Before she closed her eyes, she did something the French nuns taught her to do many years ago. Grateful for God’s guardian angels, she prayed.
“After thanking most devoutly the Almighty for His protection through this hour of trial, I sought repose with renewed confidence in the persons attached to my service, and determined not to listen to any more bugbears to alarm my nerves and weaken my understanding.”
While Louisa zigzagged through dark forests, John calmly walked into the ornate Palais-Royal, “[w]here I was presented to the Duke of Orleans [Louis Philippe].”
Though not the king—Adams had already been introduced to Louis XVIII—this man was a French royal nonetheless. And in postrevolutionary France, one never knew when the throne would change again.
“He asked me whether I was the son of Mr. Adams who had been president of the United States when he [the duke] was in America.”
“Oui,” John replied.
“He saw the resemblance between me and my father, but did not recollect having seen me in America.”
Adams had heard the comparison many times. To avoid confusion with his father, he often signed his name JQA.
“I was at that time in Europe,” he explained about why they did not meet during the Frenchman’s introduction to his father. John Quincy was an envoy to Berlin while his father was president.
“He had a very grateful remembrance of the hospitality with which he had been treated in America, and was very happy to make my acquaintance.”
The Duke of Orleans was unique among the Frenchmen Adams had met recently. Louis Philippe based his opinion of the United States on what he had witnessed, not on negative stereotypes.
The greatest struggle America faced in the early 1800s was acceptance as a legitimate sovereign nation. Though the United States had won its independence from Great Britain during the Revolutionary War, most Europeans believed the son never left the father. America and England were still one and the same power in their view. The gravest dangers facing the nation were failing to establish free trade in Europe—the surest sign of actual acceptance of US sovereignty—and risking independence by losing a new war with England. Independence once again depended, in part, on an Adams.
As enjoyable as it was to meet a French royal who favored the United States, pressing most on Adams’s mind was his daily obsession—the post. When would the president’s letter arrive? Would he receive the orders he longed for? Would he finally be free to go home to America? Would he receive an honorable appointment? The position of secretary of state was vacant. Or would he be stuck—eternally in “exile” in Europe? Tremendous strife still existed between the United States and England.
“The British will take care to inflict some signal stroke of vengeance to redeem their reputation,” he predicted to Louisa in a January 1815 letter. “Its darkest shade is that it has settled no one subject of dispute between the two nations.” He still worried that the future would be worse than the past.
“My visit here [in Paris] has not hitherto given me much satisfaction,” he confessed. Something was missing no matter where he lived. That something was his wife. As much as he loved the theater, such excursions felt empty without Louisa sharing them with him.
“But life here is a perpetual tumult, the forms and manner of the society are contrary to all my habits,” he complained, adding, “I find myself as much a stranger as the first day.”
The reason he had stopped writing to her was as simple as it was practical. Adams longed to embrace his wife. More than anything he hoped that she had dared to risk winter to leave St. Petersburg and be reunited with him. Though he offered for her to wait until spring, when travel was safer, he prayed that she had left frosty St. Petersburg and was en route to meet him. Because they were nearly the same height, theirs was a comfortable embrace, no hunching over for him or stretching up on tiptoes for her. At five feet seven inches, he was an inch taller than his wife. He missed her more than he would ever admit to the Marquis de Lafayette, the Frenchman who aided the American Revolution years ago, and others he dined with in Paris.
He sent this letter by post to Königsberg in East Prussia and another copy to Berlin. Maybe she would reach one of those places soon. How he dared to hope!
&nbs
p; Finally, Mrs. Adams and her entourage broke free, riding five hundred miles without incident toward the Vistula River, the Baltic Sea’s main basin and Poland’s largest river, stretching more than six hundred miles.
They likely passed many pleasant sights, such as the area’s fourteenth-century storehouses, which held salt, timber, grain, building stones, and other raw materials. Because the Baltic’s shores boast the largest and richest deposits of amber in the world, they likely saw bits of this fossilized resin sprinkled along the way.
No matter how attractive the antique amber or quaint the ancient granaries, when they arrived at the Vistula’s shores, Louisa made an alarming discovery: the ice was thin. Help from the locals was even thinner. The ice was in such a critical state that she had trouble finding drivers who were willing to risk crossing it.
How solid was the ice? Could the frozen river hold the weight of her carriage? The ice was iffy, she learned. Even iffier was finding an inn nearby. The locals—likely ice fishermen or traders—gave her the bad news. If she didn’t cross, she would have to make a long, winding detour around the river with no guarantee of finding shelter for the evening. The time was four o’clock in the afternoon. Because it was winter, the sun would disappear very soon. Time was the enemy too.
Her choice was clear: cross the iffy ice or risk a night without shelter, a reminder of getting lost in the woods outside Mitau. The men gave her a variable. If she had the courage to cross, they would attach the horses to the far end of long poles and tap the ice ahead of her.
An hour passed. Night was awakening. She made her choice: cross.
They started at five o’clock. The men went forward a few feet, beating their poles to find the firmest path. They tapped, listened, and watched for cracking. The ice was secure enough to start. Then they attached the long poles to the horses pulling the carriage. Inch by inch Louisa and her party slowly slid over the uncertain ice. Just as the coach reached the border—a few feet from land—the ice cracked and gave way.
