Homes of American Statesmen Part 5

"I pa.s.sed the summer of 1764 in attending courts and pursuing my studies, with some amus.e.m.e.nt on my little farm, to which I was frequently making additions, until the fall, when, on the 25th of October, I was married to Miss Smith, second daughter of the Rev.

William Smith, minister of Weymouth, granddaughter of the Hon. John Quincy, of Braintree, a connection which has been the source of all my felicity, although a sense of duty, which forced me away from her and my children for so many years, produced all the griefs of my heart and all that I esteem real afflictions in life."[4]

In 1758, his term of study with Mr. Putnam being expired, John Adams left Worcester, having determined for several reasons not to settle there, but to establish himself, if possible, in Braintree, where his father and mother resided. They had invited him to live with them, and he says that as there had never been a lawyer in any country part of the county of Suffolk, he was determined to try his fortune there. His acquaintances told him that "the town of Boston was full of lawyers, many of them of established characters for long experience, great abilities, and extensive fame, who might be jealous of _such a novelty as a lawyer_ in the country part of their county, and might be induced to obstruct me. I returned, that I was not wholly unknown to some of the most celebrated of those gentlemen; that I believed they had too much candor and generosity to injure a young man; and, at all events, I could try the experiment, and if I should find no hope of success, I should then think of some other place or some other course." The result was that he established himself in Braintree, living at his father's house, and continuing his studies patiently and perseveringly until clients began to appear. He gives an amusing account of his first "_writ_," and chronicles its failure with a nonchalant stoicism which can hardly conceal his vexation at being laughed at by his acquaintances among the young lawyers of the town. His residence in Braintree seems to have been a pleasant one. He had much leisure for study and reading, and made good use of his time. He was acquainted with all the people of consequence in the town, and was, as we have said, fond of visiting, calling in to take a social pipe or gla.s.s, as was the fashion of the day, to chat with the wife or daughter of the house, to discuss with the head of the family the last political bubble of the hour, the prospect of the crops, the expediency of this or that proceeding in the village, or any of the local topics of the day. Sometimes we find him with a knot of young fellows met together of an evening, discussing with one or two some question in morals or rhetoric, or sitting abstracted with a book or his pipe on one side the chimney, the room filled with smoke, the rest of the party engaged in card-playing, backgammon, or other sedative game.

At another time, though somewhat later, he speaks of hearing "the ladies talk about ribbon, catgut, and Paris net, riding-hoods, cloth, silk, and lace;" and again he has a pleasant picture of taking tea at his grandfather Quincy's--"the old gentleman inquisitive about the hearing before the governor and council, about the governor's and secretary's looks and behavior, and about the final determination of the board. The old lady as merry and chatty as ever, _with her stories out of the newspapers_." He had through life a serene equable mind, he took the kindness and unkindness of fortune with even looks, and preserved his relish for a joke undiminished, in all his circ.u.mstances. We have before us two portraits of John Adams painted, the one when about forty years of age, the other when he was ninety. The younger likeness is a face of remarkable beauty, the forehead broad, serene, and intelligent, the eyebrows dark and elegantly arched over a pair of eyes which we make no doubt did fierce execution among the young women of the period who came under their sparkling influence. The lips full, finely curved, and giving an expression of great sweetness to the face, are yet firmly set, and combine with the att.i.tude of the head to convey an impression of haughtiness and dignity. The chin is full, rounded, and inclined to be double; the powdered hair and the stiff coat take away from the youthful appearance of the picture.[5] The other portrait is from an original by Gilbert Stuart, and was painted when John Adams was in his ninetieth year. At this time he was obliged to be fed from a spoon; yet no one, looking at this n.o.ble, vigorous head, with its fine color and magnificent forehead, would suppose his age so great. The beauty of the young man has grown into the fuller n.o.bility of a face in which there appears no trace of any evil pa.s.sion, no mark of any uneasy thought, but an undisturbed serenity that looks back on life and awaits death with the happiest memories and the gladdest antic.i.p.ations.

In 1768, Mr. Adams, by the advice of his friends, who were urgent with him, removed to Boston, and took the house in Brattle Square called the White House. His son, John Quincy Adams, was born the year before--his life commenced with the most stirring period of his country's history, and it was his good fortune to bring down to our times so clear a memory of those events as to make a conversation with him on the subject an era in the life of an American. Shortly after the removal of John Adams to Boston, he was requested to accept an office under government; but although it was offered to him without respect to his opinions, which were well known to be hostile to the British rule in Ma.s.sachusetts, and although the office was very lucrative, yet he insisted on refusing it, because he feared that he should sacrifice his independence in some manner to the influences of the position. He therefore declined any connection with the government, and continued the practice of the law, which had now become the source of a very handsome income, and was leading him by rapid steps into a very wide and honorable repute.

Before leaving Braintree, John Adams had become accustomed to a great deal of exercise, riding horseback to Boston, Germantown, Weymouth, and other adjoining towns; cutting down trees, superintending planting and harvesting, and every way taking a good share of the work on his farm.

Some of the pleasantest portions of the "Diary" are those in which he describes this part of his life. The following extract gives a moral picture of his habits:--

"October, 22. Friday. Spent last Monday in taking pleasure with Mr.

Wibird. * * * * * * * *

Upon this part of the peninsula is a number of trees, which appear very much like the lime tree[6] of Europe, which gentlemen are so fond of planting in their gardens for their beauty. Returned to Mr.

Borland's,[7] dined, and afternoon rode to Germantown, where we spent our evening. Deacon Palmer showed us his lucerne growing in his garden, of which he has cut, as he tells us, four crops this year. The Deacon had his lucerne seeds of Mr. Greenleaf, of Abington, who had his of Judge Oliver. The Deacon watered his but twice this summer, and intends to expose it uncovered to all the weather of the winter for a fair trial, whether it will endure our winters or not. Each of his four crops had attained a good length. It has a rich fragrance for a gra.s.s. He showed us a cut of it in 'Nature Displayed,' and another of St. Foin, and another of trefoil. The cut of the lucerne was exact enough; the pod in which the seeds are is an odd thing, a kind of ram's-horn or straw.

"We had a good deal of conversation upon husbandry. The Deacon has about seventy bushels of potatoes this year on about one quarter of an acre of ground. Trees of several sorts considered. The wild cherry-tree bears a fruit of some value; the wood is very good for the cabinet-maker, and is not bad to burn. It is a tree of much beauty; its leaves and bark are handsome, and its shape. The locust; good timber, fattening to soil by its leaves, blossoms, &c.; good wood, quick growth, &c. The larch-tree; there is but one[8] in the country, that in the lieutenant-governor's yard at Milton; it looks somewhat like an evergreen, but is not; sheds its leaves.

"I read in Thompson's Travels in Turkey in Asia, mention of a turpentine called by the name of turpentine of Venice, which is not the product of Venice, but of Dauphine, and flows from the larch tree. It is thick and balsamic, and used in several arts, particularly that of enamelling.

"24. Sunday. Before sunrise.--My thoughts have taken a sudden turn to husbandry. Have contracted with Jo. Field to clear my swamp, and to build me a long string of stone wall, and with Isaac to build me sixteen rods more, and with Jo. Field to build me six rods more. And my thoughts are running continually from the orchard to the pasture, and from thence to the swamp, and thence to the house and barn, and land adjoining.

Sometimes I am at the orchard ploughing up acre after acre, planting, pruning apple-trees, mending fences, carting dung; sometimes in the pasture, digging stones, clearing bushes, pruning trees, building to redeem posts and rails; and sometimes removing b.u.t.ton-trees down to my house; sometimes I am at the old swamp burning bushes, digging stumps and roots, cutting ditches across the meadows and against my uncle; and am sometimes at the other end of the town buying posts and rails to fence against my uncle, and against the brook; and am sometimes ploughing the upland with six yoke of oxen, and planting corn, potatoes, &c., and digging up the meadows and sowing onions, planting cabbages, &c., &c. Sometimes I am at the homestead, running cross-fences, and planting potatoes by the acre, and corn by the two acres, and running a ditch along the line between me and Field, and a fence along the brook against my brother, and another ditch in the middle from Field's line to the meadows. Sometimes am carting gravel from the neighboring hills, and sometimes dust from the streets upon the fresh meadows, and am sometimes ploughing, sometimes digging those meadows to introduce clover and other English gra.s.ses."[9]

Thus pa.s.sed the days of his early married life in Braintree, between the earnest study of the law, the partic.i.p.ation in social intercourse with friends and neighbors, and occasional Bucolical episodes. In 1768, as we have said, he removed to Boston, and but seldom went into the country.

In 1771, however, we find him writing as follows:

"The complicated cares of my legal and political engagements, the slender diet to which I was obliged to confine myself, the air of the town of Boston, which was not favorable to me, who had been born and pa.s.sed almost all my life in the country, but especially the constant obligation to speak in public, almost every day, for many hours, had exhausted my health, brought on a pain in my breast, and a complaint in my lungs, which seriously threatened my life, and compelled me to throw off a great part of the load of business, both public and private, and return to my farm in the country. Early in the Spring of 1771, I removed my family to Braintree, still holding, however, an office in Boston. The air of my native spot, and the fine breezes from the sea on one side, and the rocky mountains of pine and savin on the other, together with daily rides on horseback and the amus.e.m.e.nts of agriculture, _always delightful to me_, soon restored my health in a considerable degree.

"April 16. Tuesday evening. Last Wednesday, my furniture was all removed to Braintree. Sat.u.r.day I carried up my wife and youngest child, and spent the Sabbath there very agreeably. On the 20th or 25th of April, 1768, I removed into Boston. In the three years I have spent in that town, have received innumerable civilities from many of the inhabitants; many expressions of their good will, both of a public and private nature. Of these I have the most pleasing and grateful remembrance. * * * * *

"Monday morning I returned to town, and was at my office before nine. I find I shall spend more time in my office than ever I did. Now my family is away, I feel no inclination at all, no temptation, to be any where but at my office. I am in it by six in the morning, I am in it at nine at night, and I spend but a small s.p.a.ce of time in running down to my brother's to breakfast, dinner, and tea. Yesterday, I rode to town from Braintree before nine, attended my office till near two, then dined and went over the ferry to Cambridge. Attended the House the whole afternoon, returned and spent the whole evening in my office alone, and I spent the time much more profitably, as well as pleasantly, than I should have done at club. This evening is spending the same way. In the evening, I can be alone at my office, and nowhere else; I never could in my family.

"18. Thursday--Fast day. Tuesday I staid at my office in town; yesterday went up to Cambridge, returned at night to Boston, and to Braintree,--still, calm, happy Braintree,--at nine o'clock at night.

This morning, cast my eyes out to see what my workmen had done in my absence, and rode with my wife over to Weymouth; there we are to hear young Blake--a pretty fellow.

"20. Sat.u.r.day. Friday morning by nine o'clock, arrived at my office in Boston, and this afternoon returned to Braintree; arrived just at tea-time; drank tea with my wife. Since this hour, a week ago, I have led a life active enough; have been to Boston twice, to Cambridge twice, to Weymouth once, and attended my office and the court too.

"But I shall be no more perplexed in this manner. I shall have no journeys to make to Cambridge, no General Court to attend; but shall divide my time between Boston and Braintree, between law and husbandry;--_farewell politics_."[10]

During Mr. Adams's residence in Boston he did not always occupy the same house. In April, 1768, he removed, as we have said, to the White House in Brattle Square. In the spring, 1769, he removed to Cole Lane, to Mr.

Fayerweather's house. In 1770, he removed to another house in Brattle Square.

In 1772 he again removed to Boston with his family, and finding, as he says, that "it was very troublesome to hire houses, and to be often obliged to remove, I determined to purchase a house, and Mr. Hunt offering me one in Queen-street, near the scene of my business, opposite the Court House, I bought it, and inconvenient and contracted as it was, I made it answer, both for a dwelling and an office, till a few weeks before the 19th of April, 1775, when the war commenced."

In 1774 Mr. Adams was appointed delegate to the first American Congress at Philadelphia, and was obliged to leave his family in Braintree, while he himself remained with the Congress. He continued to reside in Philadelphia, visiting his family but seldom, and then in a very hurried manner, till the year 1776, when he was appointed commissioner to France in the place of Silas Deane, who was recalled. The treaty with France having been concluded by Dr. Franklin before Mr. Adams reached Paris, he returned home after an absence of a year and a half.

Hardly had he returned before he was again dispatched as Minister to the Court of St. James. While abroad at this time he made some stay in Paris, was afterwards at Amsterdam for the purpose of negotiating a loan and forming a treaty of amity and commerce with Holland, and still later, in 1785, was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to Great Britain.

During all this time he had been separated from his wife--a s.p.a.ce of nearly six years--but in 1784, finding that there was no prospect of a return, he sent for Mrs. Adams to join him in London. On reaching London, Mrs. Adams found that her husband was in Paris; her son, John Quincy Adams, was sent by his father to escort his mother and sister to France. The letters of Mrs. Adams, describing their mode of life in Paris, or rather at the little town of Auteuil, and also those which give an account of her residence in London, are most charmingly written, and we wish there was room for long extracts from them, but we already trespa.s.s upon the reader's kindness. We have s.p.a.ce for only one pretty domestic picture.

The family are expecting a packet of letters from America, which their friend Mr. Charles Storer has sent from London to Paris. They had some difficulty in procuring them from the post-office.

"About eight in the evening, however, they were brought in and safely delivered, to our great joy. We were all together. Mr. Adams in his easy chair upon one side of the table, reading Plato's Laws; Mrs. A. upon the other, reading Mr. St. John's "Letters;" Abby, sitting upon the left hand, in a low chair, in a pensive posture;--enter J.Q.A. from his own room, with the letters in his hand, tied and sealed up, as if they were never to be read; for Charles had put half a dozen new covers upon them.

Mr. A. must cut and undo them leisurely, each one watching with eagerness. Finally, the originals were discovered; 'Here is one for you, my dear, and here is another; and here, Miss Abby, are four, five, upon my word, six, for you, and more yet for your mamma. Well, I fancy I shall come off but slenderly. Only one for me.' 'Are there none for me, sir?' says Mr. J.Q.A., erecting his head, and walking away a little mortified."

On his return from Europe, Mr. Adams resided--whenever political duties permitted his absence from the seat of government--at the mansion in Quincy, the name by which the more ancient portion of Braintree was called.

The estate was purchased after the revolution. The house had been built long before by one of the Va.s.sall family, a well-known republican name in England in the time of the commonwealth, some members of which had transferred themselves to Jamaica under Cromwell's projects of colonizing that island, and from thence had come to Ma.s.sachusetts. But time had changed them from republicans to royalists, and when the revolution broke out they were on the side of the mother country. In Quincy, however, the race had run into females, and the house belonged to a descendant by the name of Borland, who sold it to the agent of Mr.

Adams. It was then, however, very different from what it is now. Mr.

Adams nearly doubled the size of it, and altered the front. It has since been altered once or twice, and lately by the present occupant, Mr.

Charles Francis Adams, a grandson of the President.

In this house Mr. Adams continued to reside till his death in 1826.

During the time that he was in Philadelphia and Washington as President and Vice-President, Mrs. Adams remained at Quincy, partly on account of her health, partly to take charge of her husband's private property, which had never been large, and which had suffered much diminution from the expenses incident to public life.

Mrs. Adams's account of her residence in Washington--the troubles which she had in procuring almost the necessaries of life in that out of the way settlement--her description of Washington and the White House at that early date, have been printed too often in newspapers all over the country, to need insertion here. Not less interesting than these letters are those which describe her life in Philadelphia; her little sketches of society in that city, then the seat of government, have all the charms which the unaffected letters of an elegant woman cannot fail to display.

The following letter will conclude our article, showing, as it does, the peaceful occupations of this happy aged couple, retired to their beloved home to await the inevitable summons, to which they looked forward with the beautiful resignation of minds in love with virtue, and conscious of no offence against the laws of G.o.d or man.

TO THOMAS B. ADAMS.

QUINCY, _12 July, 1801_.

"MY DEAR SON:

"I am much delighted to learn that you intend making a visit to the old mansion. I wish you could have accomplished it so as to have been here by this time, which would have given you an opportunity of being at Commencement, meeting many of your old acquaintances, and visiting the seat of science, where you received your first rudiments.

"I shall look daily for you. You will find your father in the fields, attending to his haymakers, and your mother busily occupied in the domestic concerns of her family. I regret that a fortnight of sharp drought has shorn many of the beauties we had in rich luxuriance. The verdure of the gra.s.s has become a brown, the flowers hang their heads, droop, and fade, whilst the vegetable world languishes; yet still we have a pure air. The crops of hay have been abundant; upon this spot, where eight years ago we cut scarcely six tons, we now have thirty. 'We are here, among the vast and n.o.ble scenes of nature, where we walk in the light and open ways of the divine bounty, and where our senses are feasted with the clear and genuine taste of their objects.' * * * * *

"I am, my dear Thomas, affectionately, your mother,

"ABIGAIL ADAMS."

Mrs. Adams died at Quincy on the 28th of October, 1818, aged seventy-four years.

John Adams died at the good age of ninety-one years, on the 4th of July, 1826. We thank G.o.d, as he did, that a life spent in the service of his country should close without pain and in perfect tranquillity of soul, on the anniversary of the best day in her history, and a day with which his name is for ever a.s.sociated in our gratefullest memories.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] "Three months after this (during the second quarter), the Selectmen procured lodgings for me at Dr. Nahum Willard's. This physician had a large practice, a good reputation for skill, and a pretty library.

Here were Dr. Cheyne's works, Sydenham, and others, and Van Swieten's Commentaries on Boerhaave. I read a good deal in these books, and entertained many thoughts of becoming a physician and surgeon."--_The Works of JOHN ADAMS, edited by CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS_--Vol. II., p. 7.

[3] The Works of John Adams--Vol. II., page 9.

[4] The Works of John Adams--Vol. II., p. 145.

[5] This picture is engraved in the "The Life and Works," Vol. II., Frontispiece. We are obliged to guess at the age when it was taken, since we find no hint concerning it--indeed no reference to the picture any where in the book.