Louisa (6 page)

And he seemed
willing to risk it. Joshua wrote home about his bachelorhood with bravado. In March 1773, nine months before Catherine gave birth to Nancy, Joshua wrote to Maryland to snuff out rumors that he was going to get married. “It is the least of my thoughts,” he wrote to a friend, “and if I continue in the same mind I believe I never shall.” Then, in November 1773, just before the birth of his first daughter, Joshua wrote to another friend: “You say that you have heard I was to be married. I pawn my honor to you that there is nothing in it.” He did “not even dare to form any acquaintance,” he added. He admitted to one friend that he “worshipped at the Temple of Venus” but regretted too much carousing. In the fall of 1773, with Catherine about to give birth, he wrote to a friend that “a man must possess true courage indeed to engage the matrimonial way in these hard times.” True courage, apparently, that Joshua lacked.

It would have been
natural for Catherine to wonder who might find out. After all, even if she had been legally married, her position was already precarious. Joshua openly participated in pro-American activities when it was dangerous to do so in a hostile country. The British government was reading his letters, and spies kept him under watch. The rift between him, if not also her, and her parents would have affected her. And she was as sensitive as she was sharp. When Joshua's female acquaintances were cold or distant to her, she reacted badly. There was gossip of “a terrible row” between Catherine and the wife of one of Joshua's friends. Another wrote that Catherine's manner was “very flighting disrespectful.” Later in her life, she would often
feel a sting where none was intended. And marriage meant something important to her, clearly—because eventually, they did marry.

Joshua Johnson and Catherine Newth
were wed on August 22, 1785. By that time, they had had six children (five still living). The event took place at St. Anne Soho, in Westminster. Secretive arrangements were made. The parish register described Catherine Newth (not Nuth) and Joshua Johnson as living in the parish of St. Anne Soho, even though they did not. It said they were married by banns (an announcement read out on three Sundays at the church, to allow for objections), even though they do not appear in the banns book. One of the witnesses was a man named Joseph Palmer. To judge from the number of times his signature appears as a witness in the register, he was not an acquaintance but somebody regularly on hand at the church. Perhaps he played the organ or swept the floor. The other witness was Catherine's friend Elizabeth Hewlett, the one Louisa described as “a very eccentric woman of strong mind and still stronger passions.”

Catherine had her own
strong independent streak. Some found her dazzling, and some found her difficult to describe. She enlivened teatime; she made a simple dinner of roasted oysters and cider an occasion worth commenting on. Women gossiped about what she wore. When people tried to capture something of Catherine's character, they tended toward contradictions. “So much spirit and so much gentleness are rarely united,” wrote one who knew her. Another described her as “lively, sedate.” She was applauded for her mildness and discretion and yet criticized for having too biting a wit. She was “free and chatty.” The woman who summoned John Quincy to explain himself was not a woman to be trifled with.

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H
OW
M
UCH
of her parents' history did Louisa know? There's no way to say for sure. It's doubtful that she was told of their wedding in August 1785, when she was ten years old. She may not have been in
London when it happened; she and her siblings were at Ramsgate, a popular seaside resort in east Kent, for at least part of that month. But there are some signs that, as she grew older, she at least sensed something out of the ordinary. Among the many romantic stories she told about her parents, for instance, there was no account of how they met and married—a curious omission for one who liked to tell wedding stories throughout her life.

Most tellingly, she was hazy and misleading about her mother's origins—so much so that Catherine Johnson's identity was a mystery. For more than a hundred and fifty years—in fact, until now—the Adams family and historians alike thoroughly misinterpreted her background. Even her maiden name was invented: she was called Catherine Nuth, instead of the name she was born with, Catherine Newth.

“
All families are not
as indifferent to their maternal connections as ours are,” Louisa later wrote self-pityingly to her son Charles, but she was the one largely to blame. About her maternal grandfather, she was vague. The story she told was strange and full of holes. Her grandfather's “name was Nuth . . . I do not even recollect his Christian name and am not sure that I ever heard.” He “had a place like that of Charles Lamb mentioned in his memoirs of a writer I think it is termed in the India House.” He married a woman named Mary Young, with whom he had “twenty two living children born but only reared two.” Her grandfather, she added, “died at the age of 96—I think when I was about 12 or 13 years old—He lived in Camberwell and left at his death the sum of 500 sterling to my Mother which my Father permitted her to use as her own.” The only other information she offered about her mother was an age. Catherine was, Louisa wrote, “not one and twenty” when the family moved to Nantes in 1778—which would have made her fifteen when Nancy was born.

Louisa's descendants in fact
were quite interested in her maternal connections—but when they tried to reconstruct the story she had given them, they were left with more questions than answers. The
great nineteenth-century historian Henry Adams, Louisa's grandson, was among those who tried to track down Catherine's origins and failed. He joked that his great-great-grandmother's existence was “one of the deepest mysteries of metaphysical theology.” He hired a genealogist in London to comb through parish registers, looking for her; for two years he searched “everywhere he could think, but not a trace has he ever found of Nuth or Young or Johnson, in marriage or out.” Later, historians who normally knew enough to squint hard at Louisa's careless use of numbers and dates found a scandalous version of Catherine's past, without contrary evidence, irresistible. In the story they told, Catherine's parents were unmarried and her grandmother was possibly a prostitute who left a steady stream of children at the foundling hospital. In this version, Catherine was hardly more than a child when she met Joshua, and possibly a disreputable one. In one historian's telling, “it was a cold fact” that Catherine “had been the fondling sort.”

But Catherine Newth's
parish birth record does exist, and it is now possible to create a map of Catherine's family background. No one can say for certain what Catherine did in bed, but the real story of her birth is more quotidian than the one that has been told until now, and it changes our understanding of Louisa's background. Her grandfather, Martin Newth, was married to a woman named Mary (née Young). There may have been many Newth children—there are several extant baptismal records of children born to Martin and Mary (if not twenty-two), but the burial records suggest that the children were not abandoned; they died. Catherine was not “not one and twenty” when she moved to Nantes; she was not one and
thirty
—she was born in 1749.

Many of Louisa's facts were confusing, misunderstood, or wrong. Most of her errors are probably innocent. The biggest, of course, is her mother's maiden surname. “Nuth” sounds like “Newth.” Louisa may not have ever seen the name in writing, and she had a habit of using phonetic spellings in any case. Because of the breach between Joshua
and Catherine's father, she spent very little time with her grandparents, and it's unlikely she heard much about them. As for Catherine's age, Louisa may have made a meaningless mistake when she wrote that Catherine was twenty instead of thirty, or it may have been a telling slip: Louisa herself was twenty-two when she moved from England to continental Europe. Describing the fear her mother must have felt moving to an unknown city in a strange culture, she may have put herself in her mother's place. Or she may have wanted to put the emphasis on her father's ancestry, since she was proud that Joshua Johnson descended from aristocratic stock. Martin Newth's humble profession of a shoemaker may have been something to hide.

But whether she knew of her illegitimacy and how it influenced her are open questions. In the United States, rumors of impropriety in Catherine and Joshua's union circulated first in Maryland and then more widely—indeed, they would become widespread. There is a good chance that, at least by the time Louisa wrote her second memoir sketch, “The Adventures of a Nobody,” those rumors reached her. Again and again, she dwells on her insecurity and her sense of illegitimacy in the Adams family—her sense of not belonging. It's tempting to wonder whether she had some sense that she had been an illegitimate child.

Whatever Louisa discovered
about her parents, this much is certainly true: a sensitive child intuits more than she knows, and Louisa was a sensitive child. From the earliest age, Louisa had learned to read those around her. “My disposition inclined me to read the countenances of all who approached me with extreme care,” she later wrote, “and my judgment of character was almost immediately stamped upon this investigation.” She grew up in a household where there were secrets.

Catherine's meeting with John Quincy to learn of his intentions toward Louisa was one more thing that happened without her knowledge. But the meeting did not remain a secret for long.

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I
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HIS
DIARY
, John Quincy wrote that Catherine “declared herself satisfied.” (Presumably, he told her he planned to marry.) But Louisa was not—perhaps not with the meeting at all. Her mother had intervened in an unusual way, she was still fighting with Nancy, and John Quincy's hesitation no doubt hurt her in the first place. “Something uncommonly out of course,” John Quincy wrote in his diary two days after his conversation with Catherine. The next day: “Required an explanation of last evening's singularities, from Louisa.” He got it, or gave it, two days after that. “Conversation with Louisa. Was explicit with her, and obtained her acquiescence. The same with him”—presumably, consent from her father.

She admitted to him
that she felt uncertain. She wasn't sure of his affection and his desire to marry her (an admission she would later regret). Her humiliation was probably worse because she knew there were reasons John Quincy might be wary, and they may have talked about them. There were problems. John Quincy could easily guess that his parents would disapprove of his choice. He almost disapproved himself. She had been naturalized by Maryland, but she was still half British by birth and British—even French—by her upbringing. She could not possibly declare her American patriotism in a way that would erase his impression of her un-American life. Money was another issue. John Quincy was still not in a good position to support a wife, and a quick glance around the nice house on Cooper's Row gave him some indication of what kind of style Louisa would expect to maintain. At Harvard, John Quincy had once given a speech about marriage. Beauty fades, passion fades, people fall out of love, he declared, and so a sound republican marriage (a citizen's duty, he liked to say) was based on procreation, companionship, and economic security. Presumably, Louisa would bring some money to the marriage, but
he had some intimations that Joshua's finances were not nearly as good as the graceful mansion and presence of servants suggested. When he and Louisa spoke, it seems they talked about money; she let on that her father was facing difficulties that would soon force him to return to America. But the promise was made.

Faced with an engagement
or losing Louisa, John Quincy chose the engagement. But the problems did not disappear—least of all the tension over money. A marriage was an agreement, a contract. Along with his permission, Joshua promised a dowry: £5,000 sterling. There was only one point of lingering contention: John Quincy insisted that he would return to The Hague unmarried, and they would not marry until he was in a position to resume his law practice and support her. He would serve out the remainder of his diplomatic posting alone. He could not say how long it would take. She would have to wait.

Louisa was devastated
. Their bond already felt strange and fragile, and she worried that time and distance would weaken it. She worried, too, about the effects it would have on her reputation—not unreasonably. Women in limbo—betrothed but unmarried—easily became jokes, exposed to humiliating “banter and jests.” Long engagements were considered unnatural, uncertain. She begged him to let them be married before he left London, she later wrote, so that she might at least take his name. In fact, that might have been ideal: she could become a bride, the great goal of the young Johnson girls' lives, and at the same time, nothing would change. She could remain with her parents and sisters. She could become a wife and remain a child. But John Quincy was inflexible. With no other choice but to accept his conditions or to call off the engagement, Louisa gave in.

Orders arrived for John Quincy to return to Holland in May, and they faced the prospect of a separation. She was uneasy. He had committed to marrying her, and yet he insisted on delay. She was not sure whether she had fallen in love or had been convinced. She was not
entirely sure what he felt at all. She saw signs that he loved her, and signs that he did not. The burden was on her to mold herself to his wishes, while she could not expect the same of him.

She did try, once
, to change his behavior. It was a springtime evening, warm and suggestive, and they planned to walk the next day in the fashionable pleasure gardens of Ranelagh. Teasing him, she told him that he must dress very handsomely for their excursion, “as dashy as possible.” His clothing was a sensitive subject—the one subject (besides his engagement, that is) that he fought with his mother about—and he stiffened. He distrusted fine things and disdained the conventions of lovers. But he did not like to be made fun of, and he wanted to please her. So he showed up the next day wearing a new Napoleon hat, “very handsomely dressed in blue,” looking as wonderful as she had hoped he would. She was delighted and charmed. They entered the Rotunda, broke away from the others, and took each other's arm. Lovers were blooming like flowers. She complimented his excellent appearance—but instead of accepting her praise, he turned on her. He “assured me that
his
wife must never take the liberty of interfering in those particulars, and assumed a tone so high and lofty and made so serious a grievance of the affair, that I felt offended and told him that I resigned all pretensions to his hand, and left him as free as air to choose a Lady who would be more discreet.” She pulled away from his arm and went to join her mother and sisters. She had heard the lesson behind his words—he would try to change her, but she was never to try to change him—and she was stung. That night they made up, but the wound was fresh, and it refused to fully heal. It seemed to her to portend something terrible. Later, she wrote that she felt within her “a secret and unknown dread of something hidden beneath the rosy wreath of love.”