American Phoenix

by Jane Cook

  Silver service, however, would not do for a king. “That of the emperor ornamented and served on solid gold.” Outnumbering the guests, more than three hundred servants waited on them. More than half wore magnificent liveries according to rank. Gold-braided appliqués covered their rich velvet coats.

  In less than a week John witnessed two contrasts. At the palace chapel he heard quiet monotone chanting and a cappella music, as blended and smooth as if one person were singing. Now he was attending an event on the same block with some of the same people but in a completely different atmosphere. While the liturgy silently whispered solemnity, the ball screamed splendor. Russia reveled in its extreme contrasts.

  By the end of dinner, Louisa was introduced to the entire diplomatic corps. Though far from content, the Adamses were less lonely than when they arrived. They soon discovered, however, that splendor led the last dance, holding these liberty lovers captive. No matter how strong the need for fresh air or a warm bed, nothing changed one fact: protocol dictated departure. Guests could not come and go as they pleased.

  “No one was allowed to depart before the emperor,” Louisa wrote, noting with relief that the party broke up at 1:00 a.m. “I was glad to get home—all this was too much like a fairy tale.”

  “I was seized with violent illness and a Dr. Galloway was sent for—who ordered that I should be confined to my bed until he came again,” Louisa wrote two days later after struggling to recover from fatigue after the dance.

  Her medicine chest tonics were not enough. She needed a supportive doctor, who gave her the painkiller laudanum. “[The] voyage: the excitement and the uneasiness of Mr. Adams at the expense entailed upon us bore me down,” she wrote of her anxiety and homesickness.

  Worried about his wife’s condition, John checked the thermometer outside. From their front windows at the Hôtel de la Ville de Bordeaux they could see the Moika Canal, the closest one to the Neva River. With the Moika nearly frozen, the Neva was not far behind.

  Although they had no intention of returning to America immediately, as long as the water was passable, a voyage was possible. If the czar had denied John’s credentials, they could have caught a boat and headed home. The falling temperature indicated the onset of long-term confinement. Once the Neva froze, no ships carrying mail or passengers would reach or leave St. Petersburg until the thaw. Land travel was the only option.

  As the temperature dipped, so did Louisa’s loneliness. Soon her separation would be sealed by thick ice for six to eight months. Within hours she reached a depth of depression that no ball—no matter how fairy tale–like—could cure.

  “And again I sadly regretted that I had not stayed at home,” she wrote in her diary of her longing for George and John. Nothing could replace what she was sacrificing for her country.

  Weighing on them, too, was the new reality. Social life in the emperor’s court was far more extravagant than they'd experienced in Berlin. How could they possibly survive the lavish social pressure? They certainly could not compete on an American diplomat’s salary.

  Social life in America was radically different. A mere nine months earlier, John had attended the president’s inaugural ball at a Capitol Hill hotel on March 4, 1809. Splendor was as absent from America’s first inaugural ball as the British flag. Discarding diamonds, Dolley Madison, the president’s wife, opted for pearls to accent her buff-colored velvet dress, a much heavier and more modest fabric than silk or satin. Absent, too, were ribbons and stars from President Madison’s coat.

  “The crowd [of four hundred] there was excessive; the rooms suffocating and the entertainment bad,” John explained to Louisa in a letter. “Your sister [Nancy] Hellen literally took me with her, for I should not have gone but at [a] special invitation that I would attend her. The President and his family were also there, and also Mr. Jefferson.”

  Adams’s conversations focused on small talk, not politics. When the outgoing president saw him, the courteous Jefferson reflected on their shared time in Paris—not the embargo. “He [Jefferson] asked me whether I continued as fond of poetry as I was in my youth. I told him, yes. . . . He said he was still fond of reading Homer, but did not take much delight in Virgil.”

  Adams knew that Jefferson abhorred the European royal practice of having nearly as many servants as guests. The reason? The presence of too many servants created too great an opportunity for eavesdropping. Jefferson preferred the silent waiter, dumbwaiters, or cabinets prepacked with food and utensils.

  The sharpest difference, however, between an American president and the emperor of Russia or the king of France was rank. Jefferson hated rank, insisting that all guests at the president’s table were equals. Torn up were seating charts. No matter the expectations of European diplomats assigned to Washington City, Jefferson thought rank reeked of royalty.

  “When brought together in society all are perfectly equal, whether foreign or domestic, title or untitled, in or out of office,” Jefferson wrote.

  John knew the America he represented in Europe. He understood the principles behind Jefferson’s and now Madison’s protocol. With the presentation to the emperor and the first ball behind him, his practical side emerged. He had to get to work. No more small talk. He must make progress, no matter how incremental, on his mission: firmly establishing trade with Russia—and thus thwarting England’s madness against US independence.

  “I was much better,” Louisa wrote by week’s end.

  While his wife was up and about, a relieved John noticed a significant change.

  “The River Neva has been these two or three days freezing, and is this day passable on foot upon the ice,” he wrote. With the river inaccessible by boat, the people of St. Petersburg skated over it as easily as crossing the street. Thus, Adams’s “honorable exile,” as Congressman Bacon called it, was sealed until spring.

  16

  When in Rome . . .

  FRUSTRATED BY THE EXPECTATIONS OF SPENDING NIGHT AFTER night socializing, John set an appointment with the count to discuss business between America and Russia.

  Though not old enough to be a father figure, Romanzoff was fourteen years older than Adams. What very possibly stood out about the count at their meeting was his broad, white collar on his monklike chancellor’s robe. It was so large that it fanned across his chest and halfway down his sleeve. On the left side of his robe was the eight-pointed leaf-shaped star of St. Alexander Nevsky, the city’s patron saint.

  While both men wore wigs, Romanzoff’s receding hairline was not nearly as severe as Adams’s. Where John’s nose was triangular, the chancellor’s was long and slender. Both had unusually arched eyebrows. Romanzoff’s were even more distinctly arched than Adams’s, giving the count an austere appearance.

  With remarkable detail, Adams recorded this conversation with the chancellor and many others soon after they took place. Though much of his diary writings were personal, he copied official business entries into reports to the US secretary of state and other government officials. Hence, his pen and daily recordings were among his best tools for conducting diplomacy.

  At this meeting, Adams wanted to talk trade. Romanzoff immediately made his position clear. England’s foolish commerce practices were usurping other nations. Britain’s obstinate maritime policies, namely Parliament’s orders to blockade all Western Europe, were leading all countries to ruin. Such unchecked power needed a rival. Who should fill that role? Why, America, of course. A man of reserve, Adams concealed his pleasure at Romanzoff’s suggestion.

  “That some great commercial state should be supported as their rival, that the United States of America were such a state, and the highest interest of Russia was to support and favor them,” John recorded.

  Nonetheless, the chancellor’s proposal was an idea, not official Russian imperial policy. The reason? Emperor Alexander had yet to reach the same conclusion, as Romanzoff explained.

  Yes, the czar wanted to trade with America. But how far was he willing to give the United States the ne
cessary preferential treatment to make free and fair trade happen? The count did not know.

  John kept his poker face. He could hide his disappointment better than the best cigar-smoking gambler in St. Petersburg taverns.

  What about France? Romanzoff believed the quick-thinking French emperor’s military judgment was sound. However, Napoleon’s trade policies were as confusing as trying to dance triple time while the string quartet played a double rhythm.

  Ah. Adams relaxed a little. The chancellor was not as friendly to France as he seemed the night he boasted about Napoleon’s gifts at the déjà vu diplomatic dinner.

  Next came a change of subject: Did Adams have the power to negotiate treaties? John evaded. Instead he effusively affirmed US government policy. America “favored a course equally independent of both [France and England].”

  Keeping the captive Americans in Denmark in mind, John made it very clear. Commercial trade meant free trade, not just trade.

  America wanted “freedom to their commerce, freedom of admission and departure for ships, freedom of purchase and sale for goods, the more completely they could obtain this, the better.”

  Adams continued, saying that both France’s and England’s trade practices were “unjust and impolitic.” He then complimented his host: “The more liberal system established under the auspices by Russia was not only of great advantage to both countries, but would very much increase the commerce already existing between them [America and Russia].”

  Smiling at the accolade, a less austere Romanzoff changed the subject. Though barely acquainted, the pair found themselves easily chitchatting about politics in Sweden and other places.

  Then John left. Free trade with Russia seemed closer to reality than it had before. In contrast as he stepped into the below-freezing temperatures to return to his hotel, he also knew that winter had a say in America’s success. US ships would have to wait until spring to reach Russia’s ports. Much could happen between now and then. Too much.

  While professing friendliness with the United States, Alexander needed more convincing to become a true-blue ally. As a blacksmith strikes an anvil, over the next few months, Adams would have to hammer his free trade message to any diplomat who would listen—but especially to the emperor. John’s mettle—his conscience—was heating up too. He had yet to confront the problem with the Americans detained by the Danes. Doing so would risk his tender relationship with Romanzoff.

  John continued to meet the other diplomats. One in particular stood out, the Baron de Bussche Hunnefeldt of Westphalia. When he stopped by John’s hotel to pay a customary visit, he made a startling proclamation.

  “’Tis universal,” the baron said. “There is the emperor and Romanzoff on one side, and the whole people on the other.” The baron believed that everyone else in Russia, except Alexander and Romanzoff, hated the French. Pretension was absent from his opinion—something Adams admired. Bussche was partially correct. Many of the more conservative Russian nobles opposed their country’s recent war with Sweden and acquisition of Finland. They feared their czar was a puppet for Napoleon, an unpleasing outcome of the 1807 Treaties of Tilsit.

  The baron had good reason to detest Napoleon, who had conquered his beloved northwestern German province and renamed it Westphalia. King Jerome, Napoleon’s brother, gave Bussche two choices: go to Russia as Westphalia’s minister, or watch his house burn. The baron chose a Russian exile.

  King Jerome’s situation was not great, either. He had fled to the United States, where he married a prominent woman from Baltimore. The woman’s father smartly insisted that Jerome marry his daughter in the Catholic Church under an American archbishop’s authority. When the couple tried to return to France, Napoleon had Jerome arrested and refused his pregnant wife’s entry into any French-controlled port in Europe. Ordering Jerome to rule over Westphalia, Napoleon forced him into marriage with a German princess. The Catholic Church refused to grant Jerome a divorce. Napoleon paid the American woman, who gave birth to her child after the English let her into a British port, a severance for the rest of her life.

  The baron’s anti-French views were understandable. How many other diplomats shared the same sentiments? Did others merely pretend to admire Napoleon, or was worship of Emperor Bonaparte sincere? Adams might soon find out. The French ambassador had just invited all the diplomats to a party at his house.

  By December John and Louisa were finding their footing among the Russian revelers. In a week’s time they dined twice at the de Brays, attended a children’s ball, and visited the theater, where they sat in the Italian minister’s box. Sharing these events together brought them closer together as a couple.

  To Louisa’s relief the invitations to the de Brays came sans cérémonie, or without ceremonial trappings, which meant she didn’t have to worry about what she wore. The balls and theater outings were another matter.

  “My sister was quite enchanted with all these parties, but the want of variety of toilets [attire] was a dreadful drawback—what would have dressed one modestly was by no means competent for two, more especially for a younger lady.”

  She knew St. Petersburg would be expensive. The past week’s social outings proved it.

  “We had much to endure from the rigid parsimony of the salary, our expenses were very heavy and our difficulties increased every hour at a court so showy and every way extravagant.”

  Fashion-savvy Harris came to their rescue. He gave Louisa and Kitty elegant Turkish shawls.

  “Mr. Harris had suffered agonies at the idea that American ladies should appear without such indispensables.”

  While a thrilled Mrs. Adams draped the exotic fashionable wrap around her shoulders, John was indignant. He could not accept such an expensive gift, particularly from a subordinate. He made it clear to Harris that Louisa received it, not him.

  “Mr. Adams allowed me to accept it.”

  Adams wanted no hint at bribery, but even the most innocent events challenged his principles against accepting gifts. One particular occasion was the children’s ball.

  “We took Charles, who I had dressed as an Indian chief to gratify the taste for savages, and there was a general burst of applause when he marched in,” Louisa said, noting that her two-year-old boy was “much surprised” at the attention.

  Ranging from ages two to twelve, forty children wore costumes, danced, and dined. Children also did as the adult Russians did. There were “oceans of champagne for the little people.” The extravagance did not end there. No matter the era, children’s balls were not complete without a parting party favor.

  “When supper was finished there was a lottery of choice and expensive toys—but Mr. Adams hurried us away when the child left the table and would not permit him to take a chance.”

  He couldn’t let the Russians spoil the one Boston birch in his immediate charge. More than that, Adams could not allow anyone to take an axe to his deeply rooted principle against accepting gifts. Bribery, indeed.

  Louisa needed her Turkish shawl for the many invitations issued by the French ambassador too. No sooner had they stepped inside his residence for one party than they realized that Baron de Bussche was not bluffing about French extravagance. “We were struck with the splendor of the ambassadorial residence, which is quite regal,” she observed.

  The French minister lived at an imperial palace, a mansion owned by Alexander. The two nations had struck a diplomatic exchange. The Russian minister to France lived in an elegant estate owned by the French government and vice versa. Housing a theater and chapel, Caulaincourt’s imperial residence easily hosted forty guests.

  This particular party lacked palace formality. Conversations were as free-flowing as the wine. Louisa and John Quincy could easily see that Bussche was wrong on one point. The Russian elite may have despised the French, but the diplomats seemed more relaxed at the French ambassador’s than at the czar’s palace. They appeared to love everything French—the food, the wine, and especially the theatrical entertainment. />
  Lips were looser too. Louisa learned more from the ladies at the party about Caulaincourt than she wanted to know. Her stomach’s sudden queasiness had nothing to do with the water and everything to do with the French ambassador’s stallion reputation.

  Soon Caulaincourt cornered her in conversation, confirming the catty chitchat. His thick, wavy hair and upturned metallic gold collar made him every bit as handsome as a fairy-tale prince. He was a cad clad with the authority of Napoleon.

  “The ambassador told me I was too serious for a pretty woman; and that when ‘we were at Rome, we must do as Rome.’”

  “If I should go to Rome perhaps I might,” Louisa said, politely but playfully pushing back.

  She would not be conquered: “The party was small divested of all ceremony—but I was not fitted for the sphere and ‘could not do as Rome does.’ The liaison of the ambassador was notorious.”

  Thus Louisa left the party unscathed but wiser than she wanted to be.

  A special occasion is special when it’s unique, not routine. For the Adamses, attending lavish events became as commonplace as hearing a rooster crow on a Boston farm. Parties seldom broke up before 4:00 a.m. As a result, John rarely awoke before nine in the morning. This social routine offended his sense of responsibility as a US government official.

  Adams read Scripture for an hour, took breakfast at ten, and began work around eleven or noon. Then he received guests, wrote in his journal, and conducted business until three in the afternoon. The late-afternoon hours provided time for exercise. He walked for an hour or two, occasionally passing Emperor Alexander as he strolled. If a late-night party was on the docket, he ate dinner at 4:00 p.m. Devoting only a few hours each day to business and spending too many evenings socializing frustrated his industrious Boston work ethic and republican principles.