Part 13 (1/2)
She begs to be allowed to join him in Europe.
”I have repeatedly expressed my desire to make a part of your family.
But 'Will you come and see me?' cannot be taken in that serious light I should choose to consider an invitation from those I love. I do not doubt but that you would be glad to see me, but I know you are apprehensive of dangers and fatigues. I know your situation may be unsettled, and it may be more permanent than I wish it. Only think how the words, 'three, four, and five years' absence,' sound! They sink into my heart with a weight I cannot express. Do you look like the miniature you sent? I cannot think so. But you have a better likeness, I am told.
Is that designed for me? Gracious Heavens! restore to me the original, and I care not who has the shadow.”
John was fully convinced that Portia would not like Paris, and that it would not agree with her or the children. ”It would be most for the happiness of my family,” he says, ”and most for the honor of our country, that I should come home. I have, therefore, this day written to Congress a resignation of all my employments, and as soon as I shall receive their acceptance of it, I will embark for America, which will be in the spring or beginning of summer. Our son is now on his journey from Petersburg, through Sweden, Denmark, and Germany, and if it please G.o.d he come safe, he shall come with me, and I pray we may all meet once more, you and I never to separate again.”
It was about this time that ”a person” asked Mrs. Adams, ”If you had known that Mr. Adams should have remained so long abroad, would you have consented that he should have gone?”
”I recollected myself a moment,” says Portia, ”and then spoke the real dictates of my heart: 'If I had known, sir, that Mr. Adams could have effected what he has done, I would not only have submitted to the absence I have endured, painful as it has been, but I would not have opposed it, even though three years more should be added to the number (which Heaven avert!). I feel a pleasure in being able to sacrifice my selfish pa.s.sions to the general good, and in imitating the example which has taught me to consider myself and family but as the small dust of the balance, when compared with the great community.”
And now the long separation was to end. In December, 1782, Mr. Adams writes:
”Whether there should be peace or war, I shall come home in the summer.
As soon as I shall receive from Congress their acceptance of the resignation of all my employments, which I have transmitted many ways, I shall embark, and you may depend upon a good domestic husband for the remainder of my life, if it is the will of Heaven that I should once more meet you. My promises are not lightly made with anybody. I have never broken one made to you, and I will not begin at this time of life.
”My children, I hope, will once at length discover that they have a father who is not unmindful of their welfare. They have had too much reason to think themselves forgotten, although I know that an anxiety for their happiness has corroded me every day of my life.
”With a tenderness which words cannot express, I am theirs and yours forever.”
The war was over; the child Independence had grown to full stature, and the Republic took her place among the nations. On the 21st of January, 1783, articles of peace were drawn up between Great Britain, France, and the United States.
CHAPTER X
THE COURT OF ST. JAMES
NOT yet, Abigail! The treaty of peace was signed on the 21st of January, 1783; but Congress refused to John Adams the leisure he had so amply earned, and so ardently desired. A treaty of commerce must be established between Great Britain and the United States, and he, with Benjamin Franklin and John Jay, must make it. The faithful patriot accepted the new charge without hesitation, but this time his body rebelled. He fell dangerously ill of a fever, brought on by anxiety and over-work. For some days his life hung in the balance: but he could not die then. His work was not done. Barely recovered, while still weak and suffering, he hastened to London, to take up the new task. This accomplished, another waited him. Orders came for him to go at once to Holland, to obtain a loan for the new Republic. This, he felt, might well be the last straw for him; yet he did not falter.
”It was winter. My health was very delicate. A journey and voyage to Holland at that season would very probably put an end to my labors. I scarcely saw a possibility of surviving it. Nevertheless, no man knows what he can bear till he tries. A few moment's reflection determined me; for although I had little hope of getting the money, having experienced so many difficulties before, yet making the attempt and doing all in my power would discharge my own conscience, and ought to satisfy my responsibility to the public.”
Here follows a detailed account of the trip, which I exercise much self-control not to quote. He adds:
”I had ridden on horseback often to Congress, over roads and across ferries, of which the present generation have no idea; and once, in 1777, in the dead of winter, from Braintree to Baltimore, five hundred miles, upon a trotting horse, as Dean Swift boasted that he had done or could do. I had been three days in the Gulf Stream, in 1778, in a furious hurricane and a storm of thunder and lightning, which struck down our men upon deck, and cracked our mainmast; when the oldest officers and stoutest seamen stood aghast, at their last prayers, dreading every moment that a b.u.t.t would start, and all perish. I had crossed the Atlantic, in 1779, in a leaky s.h.i.+p, with perhaps four hundred men on board, who were scarcely able, with two large pumps going all the twenty-four hours, to keep water from filling the hold, in hourly danger, for twenty days together, of foundering at sea. I had pa.s.sed the mountains in Spain, in the winter, among ice and snow, partly on mule-back and partly on foot; yet I never suffered so much in any of these situations as in that jaunt from Bath to Amsterdam, in January, 1784. Nor did any of those adventures ever do such lasting injuries to my health. I never got over it till my return home, in 1788.”
Still the tasks multiplied; still the Hills of Difficulty rose before the devoted statesman. Finally, in the summer of 1784, seeing his return home indefinitely postponed, he dismissed his anxieties and summoned his faithful Portia to his side. She sailed on the 20th of June, on the s.h.i.+p _Active_.
It was her first voyage, and she did not enjoy it. There are no more letters to her ”dearest friend”; the faithful pair were not to be separated again for any length of time; but she writes a little every day to her sister, Mrs. Cranch, and does full justice to the discomforts of life in a small sailing vessel.
”Of this I am very sure, that no lady would ever wish a second time to try the sea, were the objects of her pursuit within the reach of a land journey. I have had frequent occasion, since I came on board, to recollect an observation of my best friend's, 'that no being in nature was so disagreeable as a lady at sea,' and this recollection has in a great measure reconciled me to the thought of being at sea without him; for one would not wish, my dear sister, to be thought of in that light by those, to whom we would wish to appear in our best array. The decency and decorum of the most delicate female must in some measure yield to the necessities of nature; and, if you have no female capable of rendering you the least a.s.sistance, you will feel grateful to any one who will feel for you, and relieve or compa.s.sionate your sufferings.”
She was woefully seasick at first, poor lady. After a time she felt better and writes: ”The s.h.i.+p has gradually become less irksome to me. If our cook was but tolerably clean, I could relish my food. But he is a great, dirty, lazy negro, with no more knowledge of cookery than a savage, nor any kind of order in the distribution of his dishes; but on they come, higgledy-piggledy, with a leg of pork all bristly; a quarter of an hour after, a pudding, or perhaps, a pair of roast fowls, first of all, and then will follow one by one a piece of beef, and when dinner is nearly completed, a plate of potatoes. Such a fellow is a real imposition upon the pa.s.sengers. But gentlemen know but little about the matter, and if they can get enough to eat five times a day, all goes well. We ladies have not eaten, upon our whole pa.s.sage, more than just enough to satisfy nature, or to keep body and soul together.”
Her first impression of England was more exciting than agreeable.
Driving to London in a post chaise, ”from Chatham we proceeded on our way as fast as possible, wis.h.i.+ng to pa.s.s Blackheath before dark. Upon this road, a gentleman alone in a chaise pa.s.sed us, and very soon a coach before us stopped, and there was a hue and cry, 'A robbery, a robbery!' The man in the chaise was the person robbed, and this in open day with carriages constantly pa.s.sing. We were not a little alarmed, and everyone was concealing his money. Every place we pa.s.sed and every post chaise we met was crying out, 'A robbery!' Where the thing is so common, I was surprised to see such an alarm. The robber was pursued and taken in about two miles, and we saw the poor wretch, ghastly and horrible, brought along on foot: his horse ridden by a person who took him, who also had his pistol. He looked like a youth of twenty only, attempting to lift his hat, and looked despair. You can form some idea of my feelings when they told him, 'Ay, you have but a short time; the a.s.size sits next month; and then, my lad, you swing.' Though every robber may deserve death, yet to exult over the wretched is what _our_ country is not accustomed to. Long may it be free from such villanies, and long may it preserve a commiseration for the wretched.”
At last she found herself in London, at Osborne's new family hotel, ”Adelphi,” where rooms had been engaged for her. Mr. Adams was at the Hague, detained by public business; Portia must be patient as she might.
”Here we have,” she writes, ”a handsome drawing-room, genteelly furnished, and a large lodging-room. We are furnished with a cook, chambermaid, waiter, etc., for three guineas a week; but in this is not included a mouthful of victuals or drink, all of which is to be paid for separately.”
There was now little leisure for writing, for callers came thick and fast. Mr. This, Mrs. That, Dr. the Other, all thronged to pay their respects. Many of these were former friends and neighbors of the Tory persuasion, living in more or less willing exile. ”I hardly know how to think myself out of my own country, I see so many Americans about me.”
She knows that her sister will desire news of the fas.h.i.+ons.