Louisa (51 page)

“I am turned”
:
LCA to JQA, January 31, 1815, AFP; Mariana Starke,
Information and Directions for Travellers on the Continent,
5th ed. (Paris: A. and W. Galignani, 1826), 325, quoted in O'Brien,
Mrs. Adams in Winter,
56–59. For the preparations for Louisa's trip, I am indebted to O'Brien's work.

What she didn't sell
:
Caroline Keinath, discussion with author, November 27, 2012.

No doubt because of
:
O'Brien,
Mrs. Adams in Winter,
3–4; passports, LCA to JQA, February 7, 1, 1815, AFP. Showing political savvy, Louisa would get a second French passport in Berlin from the French ambassador to Prussia, whose name was better known. (O'Brien,
Mrs.
Adams in Winter,
269. I'm grateful to Beth Luey for calling attention to the significance of the second passport.)

Before she left
:
LCA to JQA, March 5, 1815, AFP; Mme. Bezerra to LCA, July 2, 1816, AFP; Joseph de Maistre,
St. Petersburg Dialogues, or, Conversations on the Temporal Governance of Providence,
ed. and trans. Richard A. Lebrun (Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1993), iv.

Most important, there was
:
“Diary,” DLCA 1:342.

She would think
:
“Narrative,” DLCA 1:387–88.

PART
FIVE
:
NARRATIVE
OF
A
JOURN
EY

1

Through the carriage's windows
:
“Narrative,” DLCA 1:376–77, 391–92; LCA to JQA, February 12, 1815, AFP. For this account of Louisa's journey, I rely heavily on the extensive and deep research of Michael O'Brien, who impressively reconstructed Louisa's trip from St. Petersburg to Paris in
Mrs. Adams in Winter.

She traveled through
:
“Narrative,” DLCA 1:378, 397. For a rich account of another journey through the Russian winter, see Custine,
Letters from Russia.

When she reached
:
“Narrative,” DLCA 1:379–82; O'Brien,
Mrs. Adams in Winter,
99–100, 104–7.

As she turned
:
“Narrative,” DLCA 1:384, 386–87, 391.

2

She went straight
:
“Narrative,” DLCA 1:388–90.

But little else
:
Ibid.; Radziwill,
Forty-five Years of My Life
, 231–376, 254–56; O'Brien,
Mrs. Adams in Winter,
159–63; Clark,
Iron Kingdom,
357–59.

She had hoped
:
“Narrative,” DLCA 1:392; O'Brien,
Mrs. Adams in Winter,
186, 184; Clark,
Iron Kingdom,
373–74.

She passed quickly
:
Alan Schom,
One Hundred Days: Napoleon's Road to Waterloo
(New York: Atheneum, 1992), 27–29; “Narrative,” DLCA 1:394.

As Louisa advanced
:
“Narrative,” DLCA 1:396.

As she moved through
:
Ibid., 398–402; O'Brien,
Mrs. Adams in Winter,
281–82.

At the post house
:
“Narrative,” DLCA 1:402–5.

That evening, John Quincy
:
Ibid.; DJQA, March 20, 23, 1815.

PART
SIX
:
A
L
ITTLE
PARADISE

1

Springtime in Paris
:
Alistair Horne,
The Age of Napoleon
(New York: Random House, 2006), 178; DJQA, April 21, 23, 1815; Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne,
Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte
(New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 1889), 4:152.

Their time in Paris
:
JQA to AA, March 4, 1816, LCA to AA, June 12, July 8, 1815, AFP.

She was not looking forward
:
LCA to AA, June 12, 1815, AFP; DJQA, May 16, 17, 25, 1815.

A surprise in London
:
LCA to AA, June 12, 1815, AA to JQA, March 8, 1815, JA to JQA, March 4, 1811, AFP.

The younger boy
:
JQA to AA, March 25, 1816, Diary of George Washington Adams (hereafter DGWA), December 31, 1825, AFP; DJQA, June monthly summary, 1815.

While John Quincy
:
DJQA, July 21, 28, 29, May monthly summary, 1815.

Louisa may have
:
LCA to AA, July 8, December 23, 1815, AFP. For Ealing, see
An American President in Ealing: The John Quincy Adams Diaries, 1815–1817
(Ealing, UK: Little Ealing History Group, 2014); Jonathan Oates, “A Tale of Two Ealings,” Ealing Local History Centre, unpublished paper provided to author.

Perhaps it was easier
:
LCA to AA, April 8, 1816, July 8, 1815, AFP.

Ealing, then, was an oasis
:
DJQA, June monthly summary, 1816; LCA to AA, August 6, 1815, AFP.

Rev. John Hewlett recommended
:
DJQA, August 5, October 4, 1815. For the Great Ealing School, Jonathan Oates, “The Great Ealing School: Myth and Reality,” Ealing Local History Centre, unpublished paper provided to author.

At the end of October
:
DJQA, October 13–14, 23, 25–29, November 14, 23, 1815.

She was tireless
:
LCA to AA, November 27, December 23, 1815, AFP.

She was only
:
LCA to AA, December 23, 1815, AA to LCA, August 8, 1815, AFP.

Much of his time
:
JQA to AA, March 25, 1816, AFP.

Their oldest son
:
DGWA, December 31, 1825; “Obituary—Clergy deceased,”
The Gentleman's Magazine Historical Chronicle
100 (January to June 1830): 186; DJQA, August 10, 1815;
Letters and Correspondence of John Henry Newman During His Life in the English Church
(London: Longmans, Green & Co, 1891), 19–20; JA to John Adams II (hereafter JA2), July 31, 1816, JQA to AA, March 25, 1816, AFP.

Louisa watched her sons
:
LCA to AA, January 25, 1816, JQA to AA, June 6, 1816, LCA to AA, September 11, 1816, AFP.

“
And what are to”
:
JQA, poem, 1816; LCA, “On the Portrait of My Husband,” 1816, AFP.

2

London had a
:
LCA to AA, June 7, July 4, 1816, AFP.

Once she was
:
LCA to AA [n.d.], April 8, July 4, 1816, AFP; Heffron,
Louisa Catherine,
286.

It probably did not
:
For the Caton sisters, see Jehanne Wake,
Sisters of Fortune: America's Caton Sisters Home and Abroad
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012). DJQA, August 8, 1816; LCA to AA, November 11, 1816, AFP.

By October 1816
:
LCA to AA, July 4, 1816, AFP.

More than the inconvenient
:
DJQA, November 8, 1816; LCA to AA, June 12, 1815, AFP.

There may have been
:
DJQA, October 12, 1816.

Some open flirtation
:
“Gallant” was a noun, adjective, and verb. “I offered my arm and services to our friend Mrs. Storrs,” an American member of the House could write to his wife, “and became her particular Gallant for the evening, attending her wherever she inclined to go, and in thus coursing round the room I had a more intimate serving of the many beauties which adorned each respected group.” (Thomas H. Hubbard to Phebe Guernsey Hubbard, January 7, 1819, Thomas H. Hubbard Papers, LC.)

There is no reason
:
Ellen Nicholas to JQA, August 4, 1817, LCA to JA, December 25, 1818, AFP.

Whether or not Louisa
:
“Diary,” DLCA 2:731.

That November, 1816
:
DJQA, December 24, 1816, February 4, 7, 21, April 7, 14, 28, 1817; LCA to AA, November 11, 1816, AFP.

John Quincy stayed
:
JQA to TBA, February 28, 1817, LCA to AA, August 14, 1817, AFP; Heffron,
Louisa Catherine,
295.

PART
SEVEN
:
MY
CAMPAIGNE

1

The typical mix
:
Harrison Gray Otis to Sally Foster Otis, February 19, 1819, Harrison Gray Otis Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society; Allgor,
Parlor Politics,
110. For an incisive analysis of the so-called etiquette war, see Allgor,
Parlor Politics
, 149–83. For Washington society in general, see Constance McLaughlin Green,
Washington: Village and Capital, 1800–1878
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962), 81–82; James Sterling Young,
The Washington Community 1800–1828
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1966), 214–18, 223–28.

In the Adamses' parlor
:
Wake,
Sisters of Fortune,
87.

Louisa and John Quincy
:
“Adventures,” DLCA 1:315.

So they ignored
:
LCA to AA, January 23, 1818, LCA to JA, December 10, 1818, AFP; Allgor,
Parlor Politics
, 165.

That chilly night
:
Harrison Gray Otis to Sally Foster Otis, February 7, 1819, Harrison Gray Otis Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

For all her insistence
:
Heffron,
Louisa Catherine,
299; “Diary,” DLCA 2:543–45, 549; DJQA, January 13–15, 24, 1821.

With reliable suddenness
:
LCA to GWA, April 29, 1821, AFP. For the growing importance of charity work among elite women in the era, see Lori D. Ginzberg,
Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-Century United States
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990). JA to LCA, May 25, 1819, AFP.

The servants who helped
:
DJQA, November 28, May 3, and January 10, 1818; LCA to AA, January 1, 1818, AFP. For trouble with servants, see, for instance, JQA to LCA, July 24, 1827, AFP; LCA to AA, January 1, 1818, AFP; DJQA, February 2, 1818. In her attitude toward servants, she was not alone. “It appears that Mr. Adams has some affection for this old servant,” wrote one European visitor who watched John Quincy and Antoine Giusta together and spoke to the valet, “but he is said never to confide in, and to be without exception and according to American custom stern and cold to his servants.” Christian F. Feest, “Lukas Vischer in Washington: A Swiss View of the District of Columbia in 1825,”
Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C.,
49 (1973/1974): 105.

So there was a hectic
:
LCA to AA, January 23, 1818, AFP; DJQA, December 23, 27, 1819; JQA to Daniel D. Tompkins, December 29, 1819, AFP; Green,
Washington
, 81; Allgor,
Parlor Politics
, 120–23;
The Papers of Henry Clay: Presidential Candidate, 1821–1824
, ed. James F. Hopkins and Mary W. M. Hargreaves (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1961), 3:200.

“The ettiquette question”
:
“Diary,” DLCA 2:447; JA to LCA, January 13, 1820, AFP;
Boston Courier,
January 6, 1825, quoted in
Connecticut Herald,
January 18, 1825; LCA to AA, January 27, 1818, AFP.

Her commitment to
:
Margaret Hall,
The Aristocratic Journey,
ed. Una Pope-Hennessy (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1931), 168.

Her critics saw
:
Ibid.; Feest, “Lukas Vischer in Washington,” 105; LCA to AA, February 16, 1818, AA to LCA, January 3, 1818, AFP.

Her relationship with Abigail
:
“Diary,” DLCA 2:713; AA to LCA, January 3, 1818, AFP.

Abigail died of typhoid
:
“Diary,” DLCA 2:713, 669.

John Quincy's work
:
Kaplan,
John Quincy Adams
, 330–38; Bemis,
John Quincy Adams and the Union,
108; “Diary,” DLCA 2:540.

Louisa complained about
:
“Diary,” DLCA 2:459; LCA to JA2, July 5, 1821, AFP.

She knew there was
:
LCA to JA, January 7, 1819, AFP.

During her second year
:
For dinner parties, see, for instance, “Diary,” DLCA 2:430.

That obfuscation that
:
Daniel Walker Howe,
What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 206–8; DJQA, March 18, 1818; Lynn Hudson Parsons,
John Quincy Adams
(Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), 166.