by Jane Cook
Breeches, or pants ending at the knees, were in vogue. Collars were turned up, not down. Because John was not a dandy, he would have passed on buying something exotic, such as pink-and-brown-striped silk breeches with a matching coat. Solid blue, brown, and black were safer colors for a man of Adams’s taste, not to mention his republican principles. For his vest or waistcoat, he needed tasteful and elegant fabric, such as white silk edged with embroidery. Likewise bands of embroidery were stitched on the stockings—and in Russia, stockings were often lined with fur. A plain John Adams became a gentleman of finery.
“And the minister was dressed from top to toe much to his discomfiture in a superb style wig and all to be presented to the chancellor of the empire when he should be ready to receive him,” Louisa observed.
With Adams transformed, Harris sent a note to Romanzoff, who immediately invited them to call the next evening, October 25.
“Mr. Harris dined with us [and] gave Mr. Adams much instruction as to how many bows he must make—almost what to say; and told him to be careful not to dwell upon business but to be careful to introduce something light and pleasant into the conversation as the Russians must be amused.”
By this time in his life, John Quincy was nearly bald. Although a wig was useful—not to mention warm—he preferred to go wigless. In Europe wigs were a fashion necessity regardless of how much hair grew from one’s scalp. The sight of her husband with an abundance of hair—something she hadn’t seen in a while—amused Louisa.
“At seven o clock [sic] in the evening they departed—Mr. Adams looking very handsome,” Louisa remarked, an outward sign that their strained relationship had healed somewhat.
While his threads flattered him, one feature detracted from his physique, in his wife’s opinion: [A]ll but the wig. O horrid! which entirely disfigured his countenance and not to his advantage.”
While it warped his appearance, the wig worked. Pleased to see the finely dressed gentlemen standing before him, Romanzoff asked for Adams’s commission. John handed him his papers along with a French translation that he had prepared.
“The count received us with courtly state and politeness,” Adams reported of the brief but successful meeting.
The most important question, however, remained unresolved. What of the emperor? When would Adams meet him? Wait, the count replied. Emperor Alexander was indisposed with inflammation in his legs. He would be up and about soon.
“He [the count] assured me that the information of my appointment had been very agreeable to him [the emperor].”
Was Romanzoff telling the truth? Or was he beginning a series of put-offs? The new American minister could not know for sure. He had seen the Russian penchant for delay before—years earlier.
Harris spent the rest of the evening with the Adamses at their hotel. With each after-dinner drink, he dished more advice to his pupil-boss. Harris insisted that Adams purchase a carriage and travel to the other diplomats’ homes, where he was expected to leave customary cards of introduction. On top of that he must make the rounds wearing his “full court dress.” The diplomats, however, were not obligated to receive him and rarely did. Failing to perform the seemingly pointless tradition was not merely rude; it could jeopardize his credibility among his new colleagues. John hated this initiation ritual—especially while wearing silk threads—but agreed.
The next day brought a welcome sight: a bag from the boat.
“Mr. Smith arrived with only a small part of the baggage,” Louisa noted.
No sooner had he delivered the goods than he carried them away to the customhouse, as the imperial government required.
Word of their arrival continued to spread. Hearing of Louisa’s fig-leaf plight, Mrs. Annette Krehmer, the court banker’s wife, called on her.
“She entered fully into our situation and appeared to take great interest in the child who was sitting on my knee when she came in.” An hour after her departure, Annette sent Louisa and Charles several garments and encouraged her to use them as long as convenient. “[The] whole business was so elegantly performed that I felt very grateful and readily used the favor for the child.”
Within a couple of days, Adams and his Eve had another reason to feel ashamed. “We this day received our clothes and baggage from the custom house, every article plumbed.”
Plumbed meant “searched.” Custom officials examined their belongings much more thoroughly than she would have preferred. Even her most intimate delicate slips and gowns were scrutinized by faceless Russian men working at the customhouse. What could she do? Nothing. At least she had her belongings, including her much-needed medicine chest.
“I was quite ill[.] The water was dreadful in its effects and both the child and myself suffered everything,” she wrote of her ill health, which drove her to reach for whatever tonic she could find in her medicine chest to relieve her hemorrhaging bowels. They were all suffering from dysentery, common for newcomers adjusting to the water.
Their lodging was also contributing to their ills. “The chamber I lodged in was a stone hole entered by stone passages.”
Such stone quays were foundational to the city. After capturing this flat delta from Sweden, Peter the Great founded St. Petersburg in 1703. Determined to turn the swamp into a capital city rivaling Venice, he used more than forty thousand Swedish prisoners to fill in the bog with imported rock and turn streams into canals. Because so many died in the process, the city was built on bones. Lining these waterways were barriers. These stone quays not only siphoned off water, but they also bred pests.
The passageway at Louisa’s hotel was “so full of rats that they would drag the braid from the table by my bedside, which I kept for the child, and fight all night long.” The braid was a toy she had given Charles. “My nerves became perfectly shattered with the constant fright least they should attack the child—we were all more or less sick.”
Realizing his hotel was far from a garden of Eden and wanting to satisfy his Eve’s need for peace, Adams scoured the city of his Russian banishment for new housing.
Then it happened. A uniformed messenger arrived at their rat-infested hotel. The sight of gold fringe dangling from the coachman’s shoulders could mean only one thing. He hailed from the palace. Could it be? Had the emperor agreed to accept his credentials?
Alas, no. The paper was an invitation from Romanzoff for dinner at his house the evening of October 28. John would go with Mr. Harris. Uninvited, Louisa would stay behind, fighting nausea and driving rats from her chamber while longing to be reunited with her sons.
Time for the dinner came. With his wig firmly in place and his silk stockings tied tightly under his knees, Adams set out. As soon as he stepped his polished buckled shoes into the large hall of Romanzoff’s Russian mansion, John experienced true-blue déjà vu. He had been there before.
13
Déjà Vu
“I HAD IN THE YEAR 1781 DINED AT THE SAME HOUSE, MUCH IN THE same style, with . . . then the French minister at this court.”
Decades earlier a teenage Johnny had briefly journeyed to St. Petersburg. Thirty-eight-year-old Francis Dana had served so ably as secretary to Adams’s father in France that the Continental Congress commissioned Dana to secure Russia’s official recognition of the United States. Young Johnny’s ability to speak French impressed Dana so much that he asked for his help. Just days before his fourteenth birthday, Johnny left his father to accompany Dana as his secretary and interpreter. They traveled by land to St. Petersburg.
While his father negotiated peace to end the American Revolution, Johnny watched a different diplomatic drama unfold. The president of the Continental Congress wrote Dana that “the great object of your negotiation is to engage Her Imperial Majesty to favor and support the sovereignty and independence of these United States.”
Russia’s leader at the time was Catherine the Great. Of German descent, Catherine came to power after the murder of her husband, Peter III, in 1762. She brought many cultural changes to Russia and
acquired much land, including annexing Courland and parts of Poland. She also issued the Great Instruction or the Bolshoi Nakaz, which among many others decrees declared in 1767 that Russia was a European power. Because she projected an image of Russia as an enlightened and progressive place, her favor and acceptance were valuable. If Catherine recognized America as an independent nation, then the rest of Europe would surely follow.
Adams watched hope fade from Dana’s eyes as each day passed without receiving an invitation to meet Russia’s empress. On one of those days in waiting, they dined with the French minister to Russia. He lived in the house now occupied by Romanzoff.
When Catherine refused to accept Dana’s credentials—and thus officially ignored the sovereignty of the United States—Johnny left, traveling without Dana by land in a postal coach across Europe to join his father in the Netherlands. Years later he thought so highly of his patron Francis Dana that he gave Charles the middle name of Francis.
Now he was experiencing déjà vu. Not only had he sat previously for dinner in the highly ornate house, but the grandeur of the scene was also identical to his memory. “This was a diplomatic dinner, in the style of the highest splendor; about forty-five persons at table.” The guests included diplomats of various ranks from France, Sweden, Bavaria, Holland, and Portugal, among others. Absent was an English envoy. Though once an ally, Great Britain and Russia were at odds because of their opposite relationships with France. Just as he had experienced years before, John did not know a foreign soul in the room. If Emperor Alexander accepted his credentials, then—unlike Dana—he would soon be an equal among the men at the table—so he hoped.
Something new, however, caught his attention.
“The rest of the company were strangers to me. But they were all covered in stars and ribbons—beyond anything that I had ever seen.” Some of these were eight-pointed embroidered silver stars, the Order of Saint Andrew, which resembled diamonds superimposed on squares. Others were medals and bold ribbons signifying victorious battles from the native nations of these diplomats. Right then and there John made a decision. He would not be wearing stars or ribbons. A wig and a little waistcoat embroidery were all the fuss he could fashion. After all, they represented royalties; Adams represented a republic.
Romanzoff took an interest in his newest guest. He showed off his collections, including superb Parisian porcelain vases. One of his favorites was a splendid bound edition of French poems. John wasn’t sure which meant more to Romanzoff, the book or the fact that Napoleon, the French emperor, gave it to him.
John Quincy’s father had experienced diplomatic déjà vu too. When John Adams left Philadelphia at the end of the first Continental Congress in 1774, he didn’t expect to return and wrote: “Took our departure, in a very great rain, from the happy, the peaceful, the elegant, the hospitable, and polite city of Philadelphia. It is not very likely that I shall ever see this part of the world again, but I shall ever retain a most grateful, pleasing sense of the many civilities I have received in it.” Not only did his father return to Philadelphia, but he also lived there—in an exile of sorts from Boston—to build a nation.
Now John was experiencing the same phenomenon but halfway around the world. He certainly never dreamed he would return to St. Petersburg to face the same challenge that Dana faced—acceptance of American independence by the Russian government. As Adams studied the splendor surrounding him at Romanzoff’s dinner, the lonely reality of his circumstances sank in as well.
“The house—the company—the exhibitions . . . led my mind so forcibly to the mutability of human fortunes, that it shared but little in the gorgeous scene around me.”
Unlike prison, at least this was an honorable exile, as his friend Ezekiel Bacon had put it. But where would his mission lead? How could politely praising gifts of Napoleon in a baroque Russian mansion help solve America’s problems? How could any American rise to prominence in the United States by way of Europe, especially in remote Russia? His mission felt like an exile, no matter how honorable.
An important piece of political news soon distracted him from his worries. “We heard this day that the peace between Austria and France was concluded.” Romanzoff announced the accord, a boon to Russia, at the diplomatic dinner.
The problems began years earlier when French general Napoleon Bonaparte took power in a coup and became the first consul of France in 1799. Renewing the French war against England in 1803, he made himself France’s emperor a year later. In response Great Britain, Russia, Prussia, and Austria formed a coalition against him in 1806. Napoleon’s army, however, defeated the Prussians in a significant battle at Jena, Prussia, in October 1806, which allowed him to march 135 miles more and occupy Berlin.
In a dramatic turn, Napoleon sought to isolate British trade throughout Europe by issuing his infamous Berlin Decree in 1806. Because he could not defeat the English militarily, he sought to destroy them economically. He forbade France, countries under his conquering military influence, and his allies from trading with British ships, whether they embarked from British ports or British colonial ports, such as those in the Bahamas southeast of Florida. This exclusion included so-called British products carried by neutral ships, such as American trade vessels. Thus, Napoleon’s Continental System began in earnest.
In 1807 Russia and Prussia, without Austria, came to terms with France through the Treaties of Tilsit. Napoleon took control of Prussian Poland. Alexander reluctantly agreed to join Napoleon’s Continental System, which forced him to let go of long-standing trade ties with England. In return Napoleon agreed to underwrite Alexander’s quest to capture Finland away from the Swedes.
Now Austria was finally at peace with both France and Russia. Under the clinking of glasses, Romanzoff toasted the new accord as beneficial to his country and the stability of Europe.
With the weight of Austria’s alliance lifted from his mind, now maybe Emperor Alexander was ready to receive his newest diplomat. So John hoped. Before the evening ended, the chancellor pulled Adams aside. His demeanor was direct.
Ah, hope vanished from John’s heart as soon as Romanzoff began speaking French. The message was clear. The emperor was still confined. He would not be able to receive Adams’s credentials for several more days at least. “But he [Count Romanzoff] repeated that the mission was agreeable to him.”
With his introduction to the czar postponed, John spent the next day leaving cards of introductions at diplomatic mansions. “The formalities of these court presentations are so trifling and insignificant in themselves, and so important in the eyes of princes and courtiers, that they are much more embarrassing to an American than business of real importance,” John reflected on the ruffling of his republican principles.
Precisely following Harris’s directions, he performed the door-to-door ritual, which was as monotonous as a Baltic sailing wind: “It is not safe or prudent to despise them [the customs], nor practical for a person of rational understanding to value them.”
At the same time, John tried to rescue his wife from the rats.
“The style of expense is so terrible here it seems as if it would be impossible for us to stay here—we are in pursuit of lodgings but can procure none,” Louisa moaned. Within a few days, another palace messenger boasting gold fringe on his shoulders arrived at their hotel.
“The emperor signified . . . that he would receive Mr. Adams,” Louisa wrote in relief.
The wait was over. As John put his arm through his silk waistcoat and buttoned his jacket to prepare for the meeting, he may have wondered about the mysterious Emperor Alexander. Was the grandson of Catherine the Great wise and benevolent or prickly and petty? Did he have character, or was he a caricature of royalty? Who were his allies? His friends? Did he keep his friends close and his enemies closer?
John did not know the answers to these questions as he rolled his silk stockings to his knees and buckled his shoes, but he knew one thing for sure. Twelve years after the deed, one question lingered under
the cigar smoke of taverns throughout Russia. Was Alexander involved in the mad murder of his foolish father, Paul? Because so many Russian nobles—as many as eighty—were aware of the conspiracy at the time, it was impossible to believe that the prince was completely ignorant of the plot. However, Alexander was so likable—and powerful—that no one wanted to believe he was involved, either.
Soon the moment arrived. A carriage whisked John away from the hotel and took him to the Winter Palace, a mint-green giant towering above the Neva River. Greeting him was a medieval-looking man dressed in a dark velvet robe with a wide white collar and feather in his black velvet cap. The master of ceremonies resembled a cross between an American pilgrim and a monk. He escorted John along the palace’s checkerboard parquet floors and white marble columns to the emperor’s cabinet room.
John stood stock-still as the ceremonial monk announced “the minister plenipotentiary from the United States of America to His Imperial Majesty the emperor of all Russia.”
Standing before him was thirty-two-year-old Emperor Alexander, a tall, blondish red-headed man with cheery apple cheeks dotting his long oval face. The emperor stepped forward to greet him.
“Sir, I am happy to see you here,” Alexander said in French.
Adams bowed according to his instructions and presented his credential letters.
“The president of the United States hopes His Imperial Majesty would consider the mission as a proof of the president’s respect for His Majesty’s person and character, and of his desire to multiply and to strengthen the relations of friendship and commerce between His Majesty’s provinces and the United States,” Adams said, delivering his most important and rehearsed lines.
The emperor dished out compliments, noting, “The system of the United States was wise and just.”
