At this time the health of Mrs. Adams, which had never been very firm,
began decidedly to fail. Her residence at Philadelphia had not been
favorable, as it had subjected her to the attack of an intermittent
fever, from the effects of which she was never afterwards perfectly
free. The desire to enjoy the bracing air of her native climate, as well
as to keep together the private property of her husband, upon which she
early foresaw that he would be obliged to rely for their support in
their last years, prompted her to reside, much of the time, at Quincy.
Such was the name now given to that part of the ancient town of
Braintree in which she had always lived. Yet when at the seat of
government, whether in Philadelphia or Washington, the influence of her
kindly feelings and cheerful temper did much to soften the asperities of
the time. Of her early sentiments of Mr. Jefferson she has given many
proofs in her later correspondence; sentiments which she did everything
in her power to maintain up to the last minute of their intercourse, and
which she qualified only for reasons given very frankly to himself at a
later period, when he requested to know them. In the midst of public or
private troubles, the buoyant spirit of Mrs. Adams never forsook her. "I
am a mortal enemy," she writes upon one occasion to her husband, "to
anything but a cheerful countenance and a merry heart, which, Solomon
tells us, does good like a medicine." This spirit contributed greatly to
lift up his heart, when surrounded by difficulties and danger, exposed
to open hostility and secret detraction, and resisting a torrent of
invective such as it may well be doubted whether any other individual in
public station in the United States has ever tried to stem. It was this
spirit which soothed his wounded feelings, when the country which he had
served in the full consciousness of the perfect honesty of his motives
threw him off, and signified its preference for other statesmen. There
often are, even in this life, more compensations for the severest of the
troubles that afflict mankind, than we are apt to think. It may be
questioned whether Mr. Adams's more successful rival, who, in the day of
his power, wielded popular masses with far greater skill and success
than he, ever realized, in the hours of his subsequent retirement, any
consolation for his pecuniary embarrassments like that which Mr. Adams
enjoyed from the faithful devotedness of his wife, and, it may be added,
the successful labors of his son.
There were many persons, in the lifetime of the parties, who ascribed to
Mrs. Adams a degree of influence over the public conduct of her husband,
far greater than there was any foundation for in truth. Perhaps it is
giving more than its due importance to this idea to take any notice at
all of it in this place. But the design of this Memoir is to set forth,
in as clear a light as possible, the character of its subject; and this
cannot well be done without a full explanation of her personal relations
to those about her. That her opinions, even upon public affairs, had at
all times great weight with her husband, is unquestionably true, for he
frequently marked upon her letters his testimony to their solidity; but
there is no evidence that they either originated or materially altered
any part of the course he had laid out for himself. Whenever she
differed in sentiment from him, which was sometimes the case, she
perfectly well understood her own position, and that the best way of
recommending her views was by entire concession. The character of Mr.
Adams is clearly visible in his own papers. Ardent, vehement in support
of what he believed to be right, easily roused to anger by opposition,
but sincere, placable, and generous, when made conscious of having
committed the slightest wrong, there is no individual of his time about
whom there are so few concealments of either faults or virtues. She was
certain that a word said, not at the moment of irritation, but
immediately after it had passed, would receive great consideration from
him. She therefore waited the favorable time, and thus, by the calmness
of her judgment, exercised a species of negative influence, which often
prevented evil consequences from momentary indiscretion. But her power
extended no further, nor did she seek to make it do so, and in this
consisted her principal merit. Perhaps it may be added, that to men of
ardent and excitable temperament no virtue is more necessary in a wife,
and none more essential to the happiness and prosperity of both the
parties, than that which has been now described.
From the year 1801 down to the day of her death, which happened on the
28th of October, 1818, she remained uninterruptedly at home in Quincy.
This period furnishes abundance of familiar letters. Her interest in
public affairs did not cease with the retirement of her husband. She
continued to write to her friends her free opinions, both of men and
measures, perhaps with a more sustained hand on account of the share her
son was then taking in politics. But these letters bring us down to
times so recent that they carry us beyond the limits contemplated in the
present publication. On some accounts, this is perhaps to be regretted.
None of her letters present a more agreeable picture of life, or a more
characteristic idea of their author, than these. The old age of Mrs.
Adams was not one of grief and repining, of clouds and darkness. Her
cheerfulness continued, with the full possession of her faculties, to
the last; and her sunny spirit enlivened the small social circle around
her, brightened the solitary hours of her husband, and spread the
influence of its example over the town where she lived. "Yesterday," she
writes to a granddaughter on the 26th of October, 1814, "yesterday
completes half a century since I entered the married state, then just
your age. I have great cause of thankfulness, that I have lived so long
and enjoyed so large a portion of happiness as has been my lot. The
greatest source of unhappiness I have known in that period has arisen
from the long and cruel separations which I was called, in a time of war
and with a young family around me, to submit to." Yet she had not been
without her domestic afflictions. A daughter lost in infancy; a son,
grown up to manhood, who died in 1800; and, thirteen years afterwards,
the death of her only remaining daughter, the wife of Colonel W. S.
Smith, furnished causes of deep and severe grief, which threw a shadow
of sadness over the evening of her life. But they produced no permanent
gloom, nor did they prevent her from enjoying the consolations to be
found in gratitude to the Divine Being for the blessings that still
remained to her. She was rewarded for the painful separation from her
eldest son, when he went abroad in the public service under
circumstances which threatened a long absence, by surviving the whole
period of eight years that it lasted, and witnessing his return to
receive from the Chief Magistrate elect, Mr. Monroe, the highest
testimony he could give him of his confidence. This was the fulfillment
of the wish nearest to her heart. His nomination as Secretary of State
was the crowning mercy of her life. Had she survived the attack of the
fever which proved fatal, it is true that she might have seen him
exalted still higher, to that station which her husband and his father
had held before him; but it is very doubtful whether her satisfaction
would have been at all enhanced. The commencement of Mr. Monroe's
administration was marked by a unanimity of the popular voice, the more
gratifying to her because it was something so new. Later times have only
carried us back to party divisions, of the bitterness of which she had
during her lifetime tasted too largely to relish even the little of
sweet which they might have to give.
The obsequies of Mrs. Adams were attended by a great concourse of
people, who voluntarily came to pay this last tribute to her memory.
Several brief but beautiful notices of her appeared in the newspapers of
the day, and a sermon was preached by the late Reverend Dr. Kirkland,
then President of Harvard University, which closed with a delicate and
affecting testimony to her worth. "Ye will seek to mourn, bereaved
friends," it says, "as becomes Christians, in a manner worthy of the
person you lament. You do, then, bless the Giver of life, that the
course of your endeared and honored friend was so long and so bright;
that she entered so fully into the spirit of those injunctions which we
have explained, and was a minister of blessings to all within her
influence. You are soothed to reflect that she was sensible of the many
tokens of divine goodness which marked her lot; that she received the
good of her existence with a cheerful and grateful heart; that, when
called to weep, she bore adversity with an equal mind; that she used the
world as not abusing it to excess, improving well her time, talents, and
opportunities, and, though desired longer in this world, was fitted for
a better happiness than this world can give."
It often happens that when the life of a woman is the topic of
discussion, men think it necessary either to fall into a tone of
affected gallantry and unmeaning compliment or to assume the extreme of
unnatural and extravagant eulogy. Yet there seems no reason, in the
nature of things, why the same laws of composition should not be made to
apply to the one sex as to the other. It has been the wish of the Editor
to avoid whatever might be considered as mere empty praise of his
subject, in which, if he has not altogether succeeded, some allowance
may, it is hoped, be made for the natural bias under which he writes. It
has been his purpose to keep far within the line marked out by the great
master of composition, who, in allusion to the first instance in Rome
when a woman, Popilia, was publicly praised by her son Catulus, defines
the topics which may be treated with propriety upon any similar
occasion.[10] He does not claim for the letters now published to the
world that they are models of style, though in behalf of some of them
such a claim might, perhaps, be reasonably urged; nor yet that they
contain much novel or important historical information. What merit they
may have will be found in the pictures of social life which they
present, during a period daily becoming more interesting as it recedes
from us, and in the high moral and religious tone which uniformly
pervades them. They are here given to the public exactly as they were
written, with only those corrections or omissions which were absolutely
necessary either to perfect the sense or to avoid subjects exclusively
personal. It was the habit of the writer to make first a rough draft of
what she intended to say, and from this to form a fair copy for her
correspondent; but in the process she altered so much of the original
that, in every instance where the two have been compared, they are by no
means the same thing. Only in one or two cases, and for particular
reasons, has the loss of the real letter been supplied by the first
draft. The principal difference between them ordinarily is that the
former is much the most full. Frequently, it will be seen that she did
not copy, the task being, as she testifies in the postscript, extremely
irksome to her.
The value attached to her letters by some of her correspondents, even
during her lifetime, was so considerable that it produced from one of
them, the late Judge Vanderkemp, of New York, a request that a
collection should then be made for publication. In allusion to this,
Mrs. Adams writes in a note to a female friend,--
"The President has a letter from Vanderkemp, in which he proposes to
have him send a collection of my letters to publish! A pretty figure I
should make. No. No. I have not any ambition to appear in print.
Heedless and inaccurate as I am, I have too much vanity to risk my
reputation before the public."