by Jane Cook
The annexation adversely affected the Duke of Oldenberg, the father-in-law of the Grand Duchess Catherine, Alexander’s sister who had refused to marry Napoleon. The duke was under Alexander’s special protection. Worse, the annexation violated the Treaties of Tilsit, one of the prized agreements that had previously turned France and Russia into allies. Thus the New Year of 1811 began with a bang, a French volley across the Russian bow of the Baltic.
34
Exit Strategy
“I HEAR THAT YOU ARE LEAVING,” EMPEROR ALEXANDER SAID, implying a question as he addressed John during the diplomatic circle the afternoon of January 13, 1811.
As usual the czar began the Russian New Year with a noon liturgy at the Winter Palace and a ball for the masses that night. In between he held a meeting of his diplomatic court. Alexander did not want to wait until evening to find out the truth behind his American friend’s plans. Was John leaving Russia to return to the United States?
“I hope, Sir, that woe will not yet come,” Adams replied with reserve over the weighty question. With Caulaincourt listening, he chose his words carefully.
“I hope that this will not be soon,” the emperor replied.
President Madison’s October 16, 1810, letter arrived January 4, 1811, a surprisingly fast delivery because the Baltic froze in November. Most likely Madison sent the correspondence on a ship to Paris. From there a land courier brought it to Russia. After discovering John’s financial hardships, Madison proposed an exit strategy.
“I received a letter from Mrs. Adams, your highly respectable mother, communicating your anxiety to leave a situation rendered insupportable by the ruinous expenses found to be inseparable from it,” Madison began, noting that if the information was true, then he assumed Adams would have asked the secretary of state for a recall. Writing that it was not “the intention of the executive to expose you to unreasonable sacrifices,” Madison gave him permission to leave.
“As no communication of your wishes, however, has yet been received from yourself, I cannot but hope that the peculiar urgency manifested in the letter of Mrs. Adams was rather hers, than yours; or that you have found the means of reconciling yourself to a continuance in your station.”
The president assured Adams that he appreciated his service abroad. He then shared his fears. If John decided to return home, he must “spare no pains” to make sure that the emperor did not misinterpret his departure as a sign of American discontent toward Russia. Alexander must know that the US government valued their new relationship and wanted it to continue.
Madison also issued a warning. If Adams departed, many months would pass before a replacement could arrive. The gap alone might destroy the fragile friendship and with it, America’s free trade prospects. Madison concluded his letter, “I am entirely persuaded that your patriotism will cheerfully make the sacrifice.”
How embarrassed John felt. While his mother’s motives were well-meaning, she had meddled nonetheless, emasculating him. Fortunately Madison saw it for what it was. However, rather than offer a salary increase, the president gave him permission to resign whenever the time was right without offering him a position back home—hardly the honorable exit Adams wanted.
A sacrifice to stay it would be. Though John was the second highest-paid US government official, only to Madison himself, the cost of living in Russia was so extreme that he was the lowest paid of the other foreign ministers. He would have to rely once again on his lawyerly logic and compliments on the culture, not lavish entertaining, to succeed.
Adams made one other interesting observation at that New Year’s Day diplomatic circle. Absent was Mr. Wiggers, who represented the Hanseatic cities newly annexed by France. He was out, no longer a part of the czar’s court.
Before John and the other diplomats left that afternoon, the chief of protocol distributed tickets to the New Year’s ball. Would the American ladies be attending?
Yes. Louisa and Kitty would attend.
The protocol chief then gave Adams private instructions. The American party should enter the Hermitage from the petite entrance used only by the imperial family.
“This is considered as a very extraordinary distinction,” a pleased Adams observed in his diary.
As she stepped into her ball gown that night, Louisa was just as shocked by the czar’s special instructions. Only a month earlier at the Fontanka, he had turned his head away from her. Not only had the emperor’s favor returned, but he was also treating them better than before, almost like family. She did her best to make her outward appearance as beautiful as possible. However, the true glow on her cheeks came not from entering the Cinderella ball through a secret entrance but from the secret she carried within.
That night they rode through St. Petersburg’s streets, which were packed with more than thirteen thousand partygoers. Though the line of carriages leading to the public entrance looked longer than the land route to Paris, they turned and made their way to the private entrance. In contrast to the imperial family’s golden-wheeled carriages, their coach was plain and simple. The Adamses did not ride in the luxury of a red velvet interior. They had only two footmen and four horses, not six. No matter, they disembarked and walked through the white pillars of the Hermitage’s private entrance.
“We were shown into the receiving room of the emperor. . . . We were informed that this was a most extraordinary distinction ever granted to a foreign minister at that court and that it was the express order of the emperor himself.”
The only other guests were the French and Austrian ambassadors.
As she glanced about the room, perhaps admiring the ornate gilded designs dimpled into the white ceiling, Louisa was not sure what to expect next. Would they be greeted by the emperor or escorted to another location? Before she could admire the Hermitage’s mythological Greek figures, the French ambassador suddenly made a move more fitting for the palace’s theater than an ornate holding room.
“Caulaincourt was seized with a swimming in the head and left the hall immediately,” Louisa observed.
Was he truly ill? Or was the Frenchman aghast at the Americans receiving the same privilege as the French? His antics were amusing because they were pretentious.
“The imperial family soon came in and spoke very kindly to my sister and myself.”
By special order, the Adams party and the others processed behind the emperor to the main hall. The first time Louisa saw the emperor was at her introduction, when Alexander walked through throne room doors accompanied by nobles. Now she and John were part of the delegation following him and passing through golden doors held open by Turkish-turbaned servants. As she crossed the floor, she may have smiled. Alexander had clearly forgiven her snubs. His politeness and grace returned in greater measure than she had ever expected. He was treating Adams as an ambassador, not a mere minister.
The Hall of St. George was the emperor’s throne room, distinguished by a red-and-gold chair elevated on red carpeted steps. The throne room’s long floor enabled hundreds of guests to stand at once. That night, the emperor was far less concerned about his special seat and more focused on his guest’s special needs.
“On entering the hall [of St. George] the emperor called for the grand master of the ceremonies [and] order’d a chair to be set [for me],” Louisa wrote of the unexpected attention.
After giving Louisa a unique seat for the ball, Alexander’s next direction soared louder in her heart than a hundred string quartets could sound in her ears.
“And turning to me; told him that he [a palace escort] was to take me under his protection to sit or walk as most agreeable; and not to suffer the crowd to press on me for turning to me ‘un malheureux coude vous feroit un grand tort’ [needlessly elbow her during the ball] and he was not to quit me during the evening until he had seen me safe into my carriage.”
The imperial attention soon reached a crescendo.
About an hour later “we met the emperor when he again accosted me.” Alexander suggested that
Louisa should go over to “the empress who sat on an elevated seat, attended by her ladies.”
She couldn’t have been more shocked had the centaurs and other fanciful man-beasts painted on the Hermitage’s tile floors suddenly come to life. This was too much for her American sensibilities.
“I thankfully declined the honor—when he insisted and said ‘don’t you know that no one says nay to the emperor’—I laughed and replied but I am a republican—He smiled and went on his way.”
After supper the emperor returned and spoke politely to them. “He came round and spoke to my sister in English—He always spoke to me in French—I scarcely saw Mr. Adams the whole evening or any of our party.”
John, Louisa, and Kitty departed as they came, through the czar’s special entrance. There their carriage awaited them.
The preferential entrance, chair, escort, and offer to sit with the empresses revealed a quality of Emperor Alexander that Louisa had not noticed before. He was a skilled observer.
“My astonishment and embarrassment [were] painful for I had no idea that my delicate situation had been observed by anyone and it put me sadly to the blush.”
Blush Louisa did. Her cheeks matched the throne room’s red carpet. The emperor knew that she was expecting a baby. Yet she was only two months into this pregnancy. Perhaps he noticed that her face was pale as he talked with her along the Fontanka. Maybe after reading her correspondence the previous year, he knew pregnancy had kept her from previous balls. Perhaps Louisa had told Mrs. Krehmer, the court banker’s wife, and she had spread the news. Somehow Alexander knew. The politics behind the politeness was not lost on the savvy Louisa.
“The motive of all this I presume is political and owing to the flattering partiality of the emperor for my husband.”
John and Louisa returned home from the ball to the news that their footman, Paul, was a new father. Earlier in the day his wife had given birth to a daughter. Would they hold a christening service for him as they did their butler in November? Because his child was a daughter, would Louisa and her chambermaid, Martha, stand in as godmothers?
This time a pregnant Louisa did not hide her enthusiasm over hosting a christening service. She embraced the role of godmother with gusto, finding “a piece of showy calico to wrap the babe in.” Unlike the previous service, which followed Lutheran Church practices, this service upheld the Orthodox Church’s traditions.
“A table was set covered with a handsome white damask napkin with candles and a camel’s [hair] pencil,” Louisa described.
The ceremony started with a procession. The head priest—or pope, as Louisa called him—led the godparents, nurse, and babe to the table. The priest consecrated the bathing tub, a small silver-plated bowl filled halfway with cold water. He placed the nurse and godparents in a circle around the tub.
“The child was presented to me to hold quite undressed,” she explained. “The pope took the child from me, made a prayer in a sort of chant and dipped it three times into the tub.”
In between each dip, the priest swiped the camel’s hair brush across the babe’s forehead in a blessing. With a wet sponge, traditionally dipped in oil, he made the sign of the cross on the infant’s breast, shoulders, and feet. The priest gave the babe to Louisa, who held her while Martha dressed the child with the cap, shirt, and calico wrap.
Then they did something Louisa never thought she would do. With their backs toward the tub, they marched three times around the basin. Each time, the priest ordered them to spit “out the devil and all his works.” Louisa never imagined spitting on the floor of her parlor. The tradition fit Orthodox customs but was far from orthodox to her Anglican and Congregational propriety.
The priest ended the service by cutting three locks of the babe’s hair, rolling them into a little ball, and throwing it into the baptismal water. Louisa had reason to hope that soon she could host her own baby’s christening service.
Two days later, her health dove into uncertainty. “I was taken very ill this day and Dr. Galloway was sent for.”
She didn’t say what her symptoms were, perhaps vomiting and dizziness. Worse, she may have felt a lightning-bolt jolt of pain across her back—a sign of miscarriage.
“In fact we all pined for home and I scarcely endured a longer separation from my loved children,” she wrote. “This was burthensome to all, surely a man loses more than he gains by exacting such a sacrifice.”
Just months earlier, Louisa had begged her husband to leave Russia. They had quarreled so much that she wrote Abigail about her sorrow over their continued sojourn. Now Madison’s letter of recall had come, and she was pregnant.
“How could we be happy under such circumstances—To give birth to another child in a strange land after all I had suffered was a cause of incessant fear and anxiety,” she wrote in her diary, adding that staying longer would deprive Kitty of suitable prospects for matrimony.
Would having another child keep Louisa from being reunited with her other sons? The irony hovered darkly over their horizon. Hope suddenly was as infrequent as the sun.
About the same time, John met with Count Romanzoff. A month had passed. The neutral navigation commission had yet to receive orders allowing the sixty-seven stalled American ships to sell their cargo. Because Campenhausen blamed the count for the delay, Adams had no choice but to return to Romanzoff, who promised that “he would see what he could do in the case.” The papers were in front of the emperor and depended upon his “personal pleasure” for signature.
Adams suspected Caulaincourt was behind the delay. France was unhappy with the imperial council’s new trade policy, which restricted imports on wines, silks, velvets, lace, and other similar items. Because these were mostly French products, Caulaincourt and the local French merchants were furious. Delaying the American cargo paperwork was likely a way to appease the French.
Napoleon was not the only ruler whose words did not match his policies. Pretension permeated the Winter Palace too. Alexander’s inaction did not match the attention he had given the American delegation at the New Year’s ball. More than party favors, John wanted action for those sixty-seven American merchant ships. No matter his frustration, he had to live within the pretension. He pushed back with polite persistence.
As usual Romanzoff changed the subject and asked for John’s opinion on world affairs. Then he made an unusual move. He confronted Adams. Was the rumor true?
“I mentioned to the count that the president of the United States, in consideration of circumstances relating to my private affairs, had given me permission to return to the United States.”
Adams did not intend to leave, not yet.
“And he could assure me, when I should go, I should be much regretted here; that he had a very great and sincere esteem for me, and would be happy that my stay should be prolonged,” he recorded of Romanzoff’s reply.
John responded with gratefulness, promising to remain as long as possible.
What he could not tell Romanzoff was how worried he was about Louisa. Could she endure a voyage? Land travel to Paris was the only option this time of year. With all she had suffered, would it be fair to ask her to do so?
“At any rate, I could not take my leave until the approach of summer and perhaps I might stay until the appointment of a successor,” John concluded.
Had his wife not been expecting, would John have resigned? Was financial strain an honorable exit to diplomatic exile? The questions played like a funeral dirge in his mind. Although leaving under such circumstances was not dishonorable, it certainly was not the answer he longed for. Accepting another position was the most respectful way to leave a diplomatic post. Leaving under Madison’s current terms would not merely hint at failure but reinforce John’s fear that he had not accomplished anything worthwhile in his life. The matter was tough for anyone, especially someone named John Adams. Resigning at that moment was not what he wanted, not on those terms. Not yet.
35
French Cooling
> GENERAL HITROFF WAS AN AIDE-DE-CAMP TO ALEXANDER. MORE than once he had pulled silk stockings over his aging Russian feet, tightened his shoe buckles, and stepped into fur-lined outer boots to depart for a formal event. As was the custom, he threw a shoop, a fur outer garment worn only when riding in a carriage, on top of his formal military coat. Like everyone else, when he arrived at the Winter Palace for a ball, he would remove his shoop and outer boots and toss them to his footman.
Caulaincourt entertained in a similar style, providing a Swiss porter dressed in gold lace and embroidery to greet guests after they disembarked from their carriages. The Swiss porter opened the folding doors leading to the stairs, where Hitroff and other guests would pass twenty more footmen, who lined the steps like statues, until reaching the top to enter the upper level for the formal ball. Such was the ritual. Hitroff knew the routine well. After all, he had attended many events at the French ambassador’s mansion. He had become good friends with the French legation—particularly good.
One winter night in 1811, as Hitroff headed to a party, the uniformed Russian police hailed his carriage. Did they know the truth? Yes. And they arrested him for it.
What was his crime? Treason. Hitroff had furnished the French with information about Russia’s military forces. As John understatedly relayed to the US secretary of state in a letter, the material Hitroff had conveyed was too detailed to be considered “consistent with his duty.”
Hitroff was lucky. Alexander was mild compared to the madness of previous czars. He banished the traitor to a Siberian prison, not to a gallows or a firing squad. John observed that the incident excited “an extraordinary degree of attention.” Indeed it did.
Treason was not the only news lingering on whispering lips. In response to France’s New Year’s annexation of the Hanseatic towns, the Russian government moved 120,000 additional troops to the Polish border.
