stripped of every member.”
But the hand of the pestilence was stayed, and her country again engrosses her thoughts. She very early declares herself for independence, and wonders how any honest heart can hesitate at adopting the same sentiment. An attempt to drive the enemy from Boston is meditated, and she tells us that she has been kept in a state of anxiety and expectation. “It has been said ‘to-morrow’ and ‘to-morrow’ for this month; but when this dreadful to-morrow will be, I know not. But hark! The house this instant shakes with the roar of cannon. I have been to the door, and find it a cannonade from our army.” The militia are all ordered to repair to the lines. The result was thus related: “I have just returned from Penn’s Hill, where I have been sitting to hear the amazing roar of cannon, and from whence I could see every shell which was thrown. The sound, I think, is one of the grandest in nature, and is of the true species of the sublime. * * * I could no more sleep than if I had been in the engagement: the rattling of the windows, the jar of the house, the continual roar of twenty-four pounders, and the bursting of shells, give us such ideas, and realize a scene to us of which we could form scarcely any conception. * * * All my distress and anxiety is at present at an end. I feel disappointed. This day our militia are all returning without effecting any thing more than taking possession of Dorchester Hill. I hope it is wise and just, but, from all the muster and stir, I hoped and expected more important and decisive scenes. I would not have suffered all I have for two such hills.” The British soon afterwards evacuated Boston, and Massachusetts never again became the theatre of war.
In 1778, the fortitude of Mrs. Adams received a new trial. Her husband was appointed one of the commissioners at the court of France. The sea was covered with the enemy’s ships; and, should he escape these and all the natural dangers of the seas, and arrive at the place of his destination in safety, rumor said that he would there be exposed to one of a more terrific character, “to the dark assassin, to the secret murderer, and the bloody emissary of as cruel a tyrant as God, in his righteous judgments, ever suffered to disgrace the throne of Britain. I have,” continues Mrs. Adams, writing soon after her husband’s departure, “travelled with you across the Atlantic, and could have landed you safe, with humble confidence, at your desired haven, and then have set myself down to enjoy a negative kind of happiness, in the painful part which it has pleased Heaven to allot me; but the intelligence with regard to that great philosopher, able statesman, and unshaken friend of his country,” – alluding to a report of Dr. Franklin’s assassination in Paris, – “has planted a dagger in my breast, and I feel with a double edge the weapon that pierced his bosom. * * * To my dear son remember me in the most affectionate terms. Enjoin it upon him never to disgrace his mother, and to behave worthily of his father. I console myself with the hopes of his reaping advantages under the careful eye of a tender parent, which it was not in my power to bestow.” Mr. Adams was accompanied by his eldest son, John Quincy Adams, and, after incurring various hazards from lightning, storm, and the enemy, arrived in France. The maternal solicitude of Mrs. Adams relieved itself in part by writing letters to her son filled with the warmest affection and the most wise counsel. She urges it upon him “to adhere to those religious sentiments and principles which were early instilled into your mind, and remember that you are accountable to your Maker for all your words and actions. Great learning and superior abilities, should you ever possess them, will be of little value and small estimation, unless virtue, honor, truth, and integrity, are added to them. Dear as you are to me, I would much rather you should have found a grave in the ocean you have crossed, than see you an immoral, profligate, or graceless child.”
As has already been said, Mrs. Adams managed her husband’s money affairs at home. A short extract from one of her business letters to him may be interesting, and will show how a matter always troublesome was in such times doubly so: “The safest way, you tell me, of supplying my wants, is by drafts; but I cannot get hard money for bills. You had as good tell me to procure diamonds for them; and when bills will fetch but five for one, hard money will exchange ten, which I think is very provoking; and I must give at the rate of ten, and sometimes twenty, for one, for every article I purchase. I blush whilst I give you a price current; all meat from a dollar to eight shillings a pound; corn twenty-five dollars, rye thirty, per bushel; flour two hundred dollars per hundred pounds; potatoes ten dollars per bushel, &c. I have studied, and do study, every method of economy; otherwise a mint of money would not support a family. I could not board our sons under forty dollars a week at school. * * * We have been greatly distressed for grain. I scarcely know the looks or taste of biscuit or flour for this four months; yet thousands have been much worse off, having no grain of any sort.” Nor were things then at the worst; for in October, 1780, we find “meat eight dollars, and butter twelve, per pound; corn one hundred and twenty dollars, and rye one hundred and eight, per bushel; tea ninety dollars, and cotton wool thirty, per pound.” But our readers must not suppose that this was entirely owing to a scarcity of products; these prices are in “continental money,” seventy dollars of which would hardly command one of “hard money.”
Hitherto Mr. Adams’s residence had seemed too unsettled to render it worth while for his wife to undertake a long and dangerous voyage to meet him. But after the acknowledgment of our independence by Great Britain, a commission was sent to Mr. Adams as first minister to that court; and it was probable that his residence there would be sufficiently long to justify him in a request to Mrs. Adams to join him. The feelings of the latter on the subject were thus expressed before the appointment was actually made: “I have not a wish to join in a scene of life so different from that in which I have been educated, and in which my early, and, I must suppose, happier days have been spent. Well-ordered home is my chief delight, and the affectionate, domestic wife, with the relative duties which accompany that character, my highest ambition. It was the disinterested wish of sacrificing my personal feelings to the public utility, which first led me to think of unprotectedly hazarding a voyage. This objection could only be surmounted by the earnest wish I had to soften those toils which were not to be dispensed with; and if the public welfare required your labors and exertions abroad, I flattered myself that, if I could be with you, it might be in my power to contribute to your happiness and pleasure.” “I think, if you were abroad in a private character, I should not hesitate so much at coming to you; but a mere American, as I am, unacquainted with the etiquette of courts, taught to say the thing I mean, and to wear my heart in my countenance, – I am sure I should make an awkward figure; and then it would mortify my pride, if I should be thought to disgrace you.”
In spite, however, of this reluctance, she embarked on board the Active, a merchant ship, for London. Of this voyage Mrs. Adams has given a most graphic and not very agreeable picture; and nothing can present a greater contrast than her dirty, close, narrow quarters, on board a vessel deeply loaded with oil and potash, – the oil leaking, and the potash smoking and fermenting, – with the floating palaces in which the voyage is now made. The culinary department was in keeping with the rest of the ship. “The cook was 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 afterwards, 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 passengers. But gentlemen know but little about the matter, and if they can get enough to eat five times a day, all goes well.” Yet the passengers, of whom there were a number, were agreeable, and, as the wind and weather were favorable, the voyage did not last more than thirty days.
She hoped to have found Mr. Adams in London, but he was at the Hague; and “Master John,” after waiting a month for her in London, had returned to the latter place. She received, however, every attention from the numerous Americans then in London, refugees as well as others, many of whom had been her personal friends at home. Ten days were spent in sight-seeing, on the last of which a servant comes running in, exclaiming, “Young Mr. Adams has come!” “Where, where is he?” cried out all. “In the other house, madam; he stopped to get his hair dressed.” “Impatient enough I was,” continues Mrs. A.; “yet, when he entered, we had so many strangers, that I drew back, not really believing my eyes, till he cried out, ‘O my mamma, and my dear sister!’
