Homes of American Statesmen Part 13

In 1814 he was appointed first commissioner at Ghent to treat with Great Britain for peace.

In 1815, Minister Plenipotentiary to Great Britain.

In 1817, Secretary of State.

In 1825, elected President of the United States.

Mr. Adams, released from the toils of thirty-five years of unintermitted public service, now sought a home which remains to be described.

John Adams, while yet minister in England, purchased a seat in Quincy of Mr. Borland, an old friend and neighbor, descended from the Va.s.sals, a considerable family in the town and province: this was in 1786. On his return from Europe in 1788, the purchaser took possession with his family; and with the exception of two terms as Vice-President, and one as President of the United States, he never left it until his death on the fourth of July, 1826. This estate descended to his son, as did also that at Penn's Hill.

It is situated about half a mile north of Quincy village, on the old Boston road, where ma.s.sive mile-stones, erected before the birth of John Adams, may still be seen. The farm consists of one hundred acres, now productive, though in a rude state when acquired. Mrs. John Adams described her husband in 1801 as "busy among his haymakers, and getting thirty tons on the spot, which eight years before yielded only six."

The house is supposed to be a hundred and fifty years old. It is built of wood, quite unpretending, yet from a.s.sociation or other cause, it has a distinguished and venerable aspect. Approached from the north or city side, it presents a sharp gable in the old English style of architecture. The opposite end is very different, and has a hipped or gambrel gable. The length may be some seventy feet, the height thirty, consisting of two stories, and a suit of attic chambers, with large luthern windows. A piazza runs along the centre of the bas.e.m.e.nt in front. The south or gambrel-roofed section of the edifice, was built by John Adams. The princ.i.p.al entrance is at the junction of this section with the main building. It opens into a s.p.a.cious entry with a staircase on the right, and busts of Washington and John Quincy Adams on the left.

At the foot of the stairs is the door of the princ.i.p.al apartment, called the Long Room. It is plainly finished, and about seven feet in height.

It contains portraits of John Adams and his wife by Stewart, John Quincy Adams and his wife by the same; Thomas Jefferson in French costume, taken in France by Browne. He appears much handsomer than in most of his portraits. Over the fireplace is a very old and curious picture of a child, supposed by John Quincy Adams to be his great-grandfather, John Quincy. There are several other portraits of less note. The chairs are of plain mahogany, with stuffed seats and backs, and hair-cloth coverings. They belonged to Mrs. Adams. Opposite to the door of this room, on the left side of the entry, is the door of the dining-room, called the Middle Room. This is within the original building. It contains a number of portraits; the most conspicuous is that of Washington in his uniform. It was painted by Savage, and was purchased by the elder Adams. It has a more solemn and concentrated look than Stewart's Washington--more expressive, but not so symmetrical. It resembles Peale's Pater Patriae. John Quincy Adams considered it a better likeness than the popular portraits. It is said to have been taken when Washington had lost his teeth, and had not subst.i.tuted artificial ones.

The lips appear much compressed, the visage elongated and thinner than in Stewart's picture. By its side is Mrs. Washington, painted by the same artist. There is a fine engraving of Copley's picture of the Death of Chatham. It is a proof copy, presented by the painter to John Adams.

Pa.s.sing from the Middle Room through another but small front entry, we reach the north bas.e.m.e.nt room, called the Keeping Room. This is finished with considerable luxury for a provincial parlor of its time. It is panelled from floor to ceiling with mahogany. The effect is somewhat heavy, to obviate which the elder Mrs. Adams, a votary of all cheerfulness, had it painted white. It has now been restored, and presents an antique and rich appearance. Nearly all the furniture of this as well as the Middle Room, including the Turkey carpet of the latter, still bright and substantial, was John Adams's. All these apartments are connected by a longitudinal pa.s.sage in the rear, which communicates with the kitchen.

The Library is in the second story over the Long Room. This chamber was constantly occupied by the Elder President, both for a sitting and sleeping room during his latter years. Here the writer saw him at the age of nearly ninety, delighted with hearing Scott's novels, or Dupuis'

Origine de tous les Cultes, or the simplest story-book, which he could get his grandchildren to read to him. He seemed very cheerful, and ready to depart, remarking that "he had eat his cake." When his son came home from Washington, he converted this room into a library. Of course his books are very miscellaneous both as to subjects and languages; but they are not all here. Some are arranged on the sides of pa.s.sage-ways and in other parts. A portion of them compose in part a library at his son's town residence. John Adams in his lifetime gave his library--a very valuable one--to the town of Quincy, together with several tracts of land for the erection of an academy or cla.s.sical school, to which his library is ultimately to attach. The entire library of John Quincy Adams comprises twelve thousand volumes. To this must be added a chest full of ma.n.u.scripts, original and translated, in prose and poetry. They show unbounded industry. From his boyhood to the age of fifty, when he took the Department of State, he was an intense student. In this chest are many of the earlier fruits, such as complete versions of a large number of the cla.s.sics, of German and other foreign works.

The garden lies on the north, contiguous to the house, and connects with a lawn, narrow in front of the house, but widening considerably south of it. The whole is inclosed on the roadside by a solid wall of Quincy granite, some six feet high, except the section immediately before the house, which is a low stone wall, surmounted by a light wooden fence of an obsolete fashion, with two gates in the same style, leading to the two front doors. The whole extent does not much exceed an acre. It embraces an ornamental and kitchen garden, the former occupying the side near the road, and the latter extending by the side and beyond the kitchen and offices to an open meadow and orchard. The princ.i.p.al walk is through the ornamental portion of the garden, parallel with the road, and terminates at a border of thrifty forest trees, disposed, as they should be, without any regard to order. From the walk above-mentioned another strikes out at a right angle, and skirts the border of trees, till it disappears in the expanse of meadow. Most of the trees were raised by John Quincy Adams from the seeds, which he was in the habit of picking up in his wanderings. The most particular interest attaches to a s.h.a.gbark, which he planted more than fifty years ago. It stands near the angle of the two alleys. In this tree he took a particular satisfaction, but he was an enthusiast in regard to all the trees of the forest, differing in this respect from his father, who, as an agriculturist of the Cato stamp, was more inclined to lay the axe to them than to propagate them. From this plantation Charles Francis Adams was supplied with a great number and variety of trees to embellish a residence, which he built in his father's lifetime on the summit of a high hill, west of the old mansion. This is called President's Hill. It affords one of the finest sea landscapes which can be found. John Adams used to say that he had never seen, in any part of the world, so fine a view. It comprises a wide range of bays, islands and channels seaward, with seats and villages on the intervening land. This prospect lies eastward, and includes Mount Wollaston, situated near the seash.o.r.e, and remarkable as the first spot settled in the town and State, and as giving its name for many of the first years to the entire settlement. This belonged to the great-grandfather, John Quincy, and is now a part of the Adams estate.

The meeting-house is half a mile south of the old mansion. The material is granite, a donation of John Adams. It has a handsome portico, supported by beautiful and ma.s.sive Doric pillars, not an unfit emblem of the donor. Beneath the porch, his son constructed, in the most durable manner, a crypt, in which he piously deposited the remains of his parents; and in the body of the church, on the right of the pulpit, he erected to their sacred memories a marble monument surmounted by a bust of John Adams, and inscribed with an affecting and n.o.ble epitaph.

After leading "a wandering life about the world," as he himself calls it--a life of many changes and many labors, John Quincy Adams, at sixty-two, sought the quiet and seclusion of his father's house. He was yet, for his years, a model of physical vigor and activity; for, though by nature convivial as his father was, and capable, on an occasion, of some extra gla.s.ses, he was by habit moderate in meat and drink, never eating more than was first served on his plate, and consequently never mixing a variety of dishes. He used himself to attribute much of the high health he enjoyed to his walks and his baths. Early every morning, when the season admitted, he sought a place where he could take a plunge and swim at large. A creek, with a wharf or pier projecting into it, called Black's Wharf, about a quarter of a mile from his house, served these purposes in Quincy. At Washington he resorted to the broad Potomac. There, leaving his apparel in charge of an attendant, (for it is said that it was once purloined!) he used to buffet the waves before sunrise. He was an easy and expert swimmer, and delighted so much in the element, that he would swim and float from one to two or three hours at a time. An absurd story obtained currency, that he used this exercise in winter, breaking the ice, if necessary, to get the indispensable plunge!

This was fiction. He did not bathe at all in winter, nor at other times from theory, but for pleasure.

He bore abstinence and irregularity in his meals with singular indifference. Whether he breakfasted at seven or ten, whether he dined at two, or not at all, appeared to be questions with which he did not concern himself. It is related that having sat in the House of Representatives from eight o'clock in the morning till after midnight, a friend accosted him, and expressed the hope that he had taken refreshment in all that time; he replied that he had not left his seat, and held up a _bit of hard bread_. His entertainments of his friends were distinguished for abundance, order, elegance, and the utmost perfection in every particular, but not for extravagance and luxury of table furniture. His accomplished lady, of course, had much to do with this. He rose very early, lighting the fire and his lamp in his library, while the surrounding world was yet buried in slumber. This was his time for writing. Washington and Hamilton had the same habit.

He was unostentatious and almost always walked, whether for visiting, business or exercise. At Quincy he used to go up President's Hill to meet the sun from the sea, and sometimes walked to the residence of his son in Boston before breakfast. Regularly, before the hour of the daily sessions of Congress, he was seen wending his quiet way towards the Capitol, seldom or never using, in the worst of weather, a carriage. He stayed one night to a late hour, listening to a debate in the Senate on the expunging resolution. As he was starting for home in the face of a fierce snow-storm, and in snow a foot deep, a gentleman proposed to conduct him to his house. "I thank you, sir, for your kindness," said he, "but I do not need the service of any one. I am somewhat advanced in life, but not yet, by the blessing of G.o.d, infirm, or what Dr. Johnson would call 'superfluous;' and you may recollect what old Adam says in 'As you Like it'--

"'For in my youth I never did apply Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood.'"

While he was President, the writer was once sitting in the drawing-room of a highbred lady in Boston. A hat not very new glanced under the window sill. The owner rung at the door; and not finding the gentleman at home, continued his walk. A servant entered and presented the card of JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. "I do wonder," exclaimed the lady, "that the President of the United States will go about in such a manner!"

His apparel was always plain, scrupulously neat, and reasonably well worn. It was made for the comfort of the wearer, who asked not of the fashions.

When he retired from the Presidency, he resolved to pa.s.s the remainder of his days under the paternal roof and the beloved shades. He antic.i.p.ated and desired nothing but quiet, animated by the excitements of intellectual and rural occupations. He had before him the congenial task, to which he had long aspired, of dispensing the treasures of wisdom contained in the unwritten life and unpublished writings of his father. He was ready to impart of his own inexhaustible wealth of experience, observation and erudition, to any one capable of receiving.

It takes much to reconcile a thoughtful mind to the loss of what would have been gained by the proposed employment of his leisure. And we had much.

Had the record of his public life, ample and honorable as it was, been now closed, those pages on which patriots, philanthropists and poets will for ever dwell with grat.i.tude and delight, would have been wanting.

Hitherto he had done remarkably well what many others, with a knowledge of precedents and of routine and with habits of industry, might have done, if not as well, yet acceptably. He was now called to do what no other man in the Republic had strength and heart to attempt.

He was endowed with a memory uncommonly retentive. He could remember and quote with precision, works which he had not looked at for forty years.

Add to this his untiring diligence and perseverance, and the advantages of his position and employment at various capitals in the old world, and the story of his vast acquisitions is told. His love lay in history, literature, moral philosophy and public law. With the Greek, Latin, French, German, and Italian languages and princ.i.p.al writers he was familiar. His favorite English poet was Shakspeare, whom he commented upon and recited with discrimination and force, surpa.s.sing, it is said, in justness of conception, the great personators of his princ.i.p.al characters. Among the cla.s.sics, he especially loved Ovid, unquestionably the Shakspeare of the Romans. Cicero was greatly beloved, and most diligently studied, translated, and commented upon. For many of his latter years he never read continuously. He would fall asleep over his book. But to elucidate any subject he had in hand, he wielded his library with wakefulness and execution lively enough.

He was fond of art in all its departments, but most in the pictorial. In his "Residence at the Court of London," Mr. Rush has drawn an attractive sketch of him at home.

"His tastes were all refined. Literature and art were familiar and dear to him. At his hospitable board I have listened to disquisitions from his lips, on poetry, especially the dramas of Shakspeare, music, painting and sculpture, of rare excellence and untiring interest. A critical scholar in the dead languages, in French, German and Italian, he could draw at will from the wealth of these tongues to ill.u.s.trate any particular topic. There was no fine painting or statue, of which he did not know the details and the history. There was not even an opera, or a celebrated composer, of which or of whom he could not point out the distinguishing merits and the chief compositions. Yet he was a hard-working and a.s.siduous man of business; and a more regular, punctual, and comprehensive diplomatic correspondence than his, no country can probably boast."

Mr. Adams was generally regarded as cold and austere. The testimony of persons who enjoyed an intimacy with him is the reverse of this. Mr.

Rush says that "under an exterior of at times repulsive coldness, dwelt a heart as warm, sympathies as quick, and affections as overflowing as ever animated any bosom." And Mr. Everett, that "in real kindness and tenderness of feeling, no man surpa.s.sed him." There is an abundance of like evidence on this head.

He was taciturn rather than talkative, preferring to think and to muse.

At times his nature craved converse, and delighted in the play of familiar chat. Occasionally he threw out a lure to debate. If great principles were seriously called in question, he would pour out a rapid and uninterrupted torrent.

The poets had been the delight of his youth. He read them in the intervals of retirement at Quincy with a youthful enthusiasm, and tears and laughter came by turns, as their sad and bright visions pa.s.sed before him. Pope was a favorite, "and the intonations of his voice in repeating the 'Messiah,'" says an inmate of the family, "will never cease to vibrate on the ear of memory." He was a deeply religious man, and though not taking the most unprejudiced views of divinity, what he received as spiritual truths were to him most evident and momentous realities, and he derived from them a purifying and invigorating power.

"The dying Christian's Address to his Soul" was replete with pathos and beauty for him. He is remembered to have repeated it one evening with an intense expression of religious faith and joy; adding the Latin lines of Adrian, which Pope imitated. He was thought by some to have a tendency to Calvinistic theology, and to regard Unitarianism as too abstract and frigid. Thus he used sometimes to talk, but it was supposed to be for the purpose of putting Unitarians upon a defence of their faith, rather than with a serious design to impair it.

On one occasion he conversed on the subject of popular applause and admiration. Its caprice, said he, is equalled only by its worthlessness, and the misery of that being who lives on its breath. There is one stanza of Thomson's Castle of Indolence, that is worth whole volumes of modern poetry; though it is the fashion to speak contemptuously of Thomson. He then repeated with startling force of manner and energy of enunciation, the third stanza, second canto, of that poem.

"I care not, fortune, what you me deny; You cannot rob me of free nature's grace, You cannot shut the windows of the sky, Through which Aurora shows her brightening face; You cannot bar my constant feet to trace The woods and lawns by living streams at eve: Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace, And I their toys to the great children leave; Of Fancy, Reason, Virtue, nought can me bereave."

He did not much admire the poetry of Byron. One objection which he is recollected to have made to the poet was the use of the word "rot."

There is some peculiarity in Byron in this respect; thus in Childe Harold:--

"The Bucentaur lies _rotting_ unrestored, Where meaner relics must not dare to _rot_."

This, if a sound objection, which it is not, was narrow for so great a man. The cause of this distaste lay deeper. Mr. Adams, though a dear lover of Shakspeare, was of the Johnsonian school of writers. His diction is elaborate, stately, and in his earlier writings verbose, but always polished, harmonious, and sustained. He liked unconsciously Latin English better than Anglo-Saxon. Byron, in common with a large and increasing cla.s.s of moderns, loved to borrow the force of familiar and every-day language, and to lend to it the dignity and beauty of deep thought and high poetic fancy. Not improbably, the moral obliquities of the poet had their influence in qualifying the opinion formed of his writings, by a man of such strict rect.i.tude as Mr. Adams.

He was fond of Watts's Psalms and Hymns, and repeated them often, sometimes rising from his seat in the exaltation of his feelings. Among favorite stanzas was this one:

Sweet fields, beyond the swelling flood, Stand dressed in living green; So to the Jews old Canaan stood, While Jordan rolled between.

Until his private letters shall be published, no adequate conception can be formed of the devotion he paid to his mother. This may give an inkling of it. A young friend inquired of him, when he was once at Hingham on their annual fishing party in his honor, in which of his poems a certain line was to be found, viz.--

"Hull--but that name's redeemed upon the wave,"

referring to the surrender of General Hull, so soon followed (only three days after, August 16-19, 1812) by the capture of the Guerriere by Captain Hull. "I do not," he replied, "but I have been often struck by the coincidence. I think, however, the line occurs in a poem _addressed to my mother_."

The best saying of Mr. Adams was in reply to the inquiry, What are the recognized principles of politics?

MR. ADAMS. There are none. There are recognized precepts, but they are bad, and so not PRINCIPLES.

But is not this a sound one, "The greatest good of the greatest number?"

MR. ADAMS. No, that is the worst of all, for it looks specious, while it is ruinous; for what is to become of the minority? This is the only principle--THE GREATEST GOOD OF ALL.

It must be admitted that much tyranny lurks in this favorite democratic tenet, not half as democratic, however, as Mr. Adams's amendment. Wrongs and outrages the most unmerciful, have been committed by majorities. It may even happen where the forms of law are maintained; but what shall be said when the majority resolves itself into a mob? When rivers of innocent blood may (as they have) run from city gates. The tyranny of majorities is irresponsible, without redress, and without punishment, except in the ultimate iron grasp of "the higher law."

Mr. Adams's view, so much larger than the common one, may, with a strong probability, be traced to the mother. In her letters to him, she insists again and again upon the duty of universal kindness and benevolence.

Patriot as she was, she pitied the Refugees. She said to him,

"Man is bound to the performance of certain duties, all which tend to the happiness and welfare of society, and are comprised in one short sentence expressive of universal benevolence: 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.'

"Remember more, the Universal Cause Acts not by partial, but by general laws; And makes what happiness we justly call, Subsist, not in the good of one, but ALL.'"