Louisa Catherine Adams Finds Her Voice
Louisa Thomas 00:00
She wanted to learn, and she regretted that she had not had the opportunities that young men had, you know, to be educated, and she never stopped learning. And I love that about her.
Colleen Shogan 00:10
In February 1815, Louisa Catherine Adams and her young son braved the Russian winter and traveled from St. Petersburg to join her husband, John Quincy, in Paris. For 40 days, the family traversed Europe together, where they witnessed the ravages of the Napoleonic Wars. As the wife of an American diplomat, Adams was crucial to John Quincy's political ascent. Far more comfortable in conversation than her more reserved husband, she possessed diplomatic skills that helped shape impressions of America abroad. Yet, for Adams, greater challenges lie at home in Washington. As today's guest, Louisa Thomas tells us, Adams felt like a caged bird inside the White House. So, what can we learn from Adams's struggle to shed the restraint of formality? I'm Colleen Shogan, and this is In Pursuit, a podcast that explores lessons from America's past to write the history of America's future. Episode Seven,: Louisa Catherine Adams Finds her Voice. Louisa Thomas, welcome to In Pursuit.
Louisa Thomas 01:27
Thanks for having me.
Colleen Shogan 01:28
Louisa Catherine Adams was the first foreign-born First Lady. What was her early life like?
Louisa Thomas 01:36
She was born in 1775 in London and grew up in on Tower Hill above the Thames, and she was raised as young, pretty wealthy English girls were raised, which is to say she was raised to be married. She played the harp, she sang, and her house, which was a way station for young American ambitious men who found themselves in London, because her father was a great American patriot Joshua Johnson from Maryland was a place where they would come to pick up mail and have a dinner and be entertained by the pretty young Johnson sisters. She had a romantic view of her life and thought that her life would end in marriage in some ways, but really just began.
Colleen Shogan 02:20
So, when did she first encounter John Quincy Adams? How would you describe that early relationship, and how they met?
Louisa Thomas 02:27
She was 20 years old. He was a diplomat in Holland at the time, and he came probably to get his mail and get the gossip, and he stayed for dinner. John Trumbull actually brought him for their first meeting, famous painter, and he fell for them. I mean, I think I think he fell for them all. There was some confusion, in fact, over whether or not he was pursuing Louisa or Louise's older sister, Nancy, leading to a little bit of tension for a little while. John Quincy Adams kept one of the world's greatest diaries ever. So, we have all of this very well documented, but we have these amazing entries in which he would talk about how terrible it was that he was having such a wonderful time. He was like, "I'm giving myself to these dissipations, I'm trapped in this pleasure," which kind of reveals a lot about John Quincy Adams' character and his feelings about, about, you know, what it meant to be a young ambitious man, but he would, you know, he would come for dinner, he would come for music in the parlor, and he, a courtship began, and actually to read the diary again, it was almost as if John Quincy was often wrote in the passive voice, it was like something that was happening to him, and in fact, when he proposed, he was like, it was like the ring from Louisa's finger. I mean, it was as if the sort of the ring sort of jumped. I mean, there was sort of some confusion over maybe how much he was pursuing him and how much he felt sort of confusedly compelled into this relationship. But however it happened, it happened, and before he went back across the channel, he was engaged to Louisa Catherine Adams, and which was a very good match for her, and a somewhat problematic match for him, because certainly his parents wanted him to marry an American, and not a pretty young English lady, and in fact he avoided telling his mother for some time, and she learned about it in the paper and wrote to him rather scathingly about it, but there was.
Colleen Shogan 04:23
Was she a American citizen at that time?
Louisa Thomas 04:26
She was not. She was actually made a citizen of Maryland by an act of the Maryland state legislature, not the United States yet. So she was actually not an American citizen. This fact really informed her sense of her own identity, and in fact, some of the same tensions that I've been talking about in John Quincy, she was also kind of riven with contradiction and this sort of double sense of herself. One is this great American patriot, daughter of a great American patriot, married to a great American patriot, and the other sense of herself was that. As as English, you know, as someone who grew up in a very different society with very different mores and very different goals, and you know, and she always felt in some ways different and other and foreign, and that never changed, even as she lived most of her life in the United States.
Colleen Shogan 05:21
So she marries John Quincy Adams, and she becomes immediately the wife of a young diplomat. What does society expect from her in this role?
Louisa Thomas 05:32
Oh, she was actually very lucky, and so was he, because she was a very natural young diplomat. She spoke French, for starters. She had actually spent a period of childhood, of her childhood, during the revolution in France, and so she spoke French natively, which was a fantastic advantage, because the language the court was French, and she was pretty, and she was unpossessing, and she was kind of diminutive, and they went almost immediately after their marriage to Prussia, where she became friendly, you know, with the this kind of famous queen, and you know, and everywhere she was, she made friends, she was well liked, she seemed to have had a fairly good feel for how to navigate a very difficult situation, which is, you know, this idea of being a Republican, a small R Republican, but being not from a court representing a republic was a rather novel thing in the courts of Europe. There were a lot of rule books for it, you know, and so it was a very tricky situation, and partly I think because she was so young, and partly I think because she had a sort of natural social feel, and partly because she seemed to have been perhaps pretty innocent, actually. She, I think, she handled it very well.
Colleen Shogan 06:55
Do you think that John Quincy Adams, do you think his political ascent would have been as steep as it was, without Louisa Adams?
Louisa Thomas 07:04
You know, John Quincy Adams needed her. He was not social, he was not adept, he did not like parties, and he made a point of not liking parties, and he would sort of make a point of awkwardly being in the corner while she was the one to whom people were attracted, and that was immensely important, and he knew it. He would drop the guest list for these parties, and he just, that campaigning was not what it is now, and it largely took part in these social spheres. So it really was the space and environment that she created, in which a lot of these sort of political alliances were operated, and yeah, she was essential to that, and I think she also understood to a degree that he did not perhaps or refuse to understand that you know social relationships are critical in politics and it's not just about what ideas you have and what plans you have, you have to actually convince people not just by the sheer overwhelming force of your logic but by your ability to reach them on some human and emotional level, and she was very good at that, and he was not, and to the degree that he recognized her talent and allowed her and allowed himself to use it, he was very successful, and while he was president, he used that less and less, and she was less and less useful, and you know, coincidentally or not, so was he. It was not a good presidency.
Colleen Shogan 08:29
So John Quincy Adams becomes president, and they move into the White House. What's the condition of the White House when they arrive?
Louisa Thomas 08:37
Oh, disrepair, you know, had just been, you know, had been burned during the War of 1812. The Monroes had not really restored it to its to good condition. Parts of it had were in actual disrepair, and there wasn't a lot of money, you know. The position of the executive also at that time was not what it is now, and in fact they were criticized for even basic repairs, and she had a sense that leaders should have a more.. I mean, she had spent time in the courts of Europe, she was used to something different, and it was appalling to her, you know, that the president was supposed to live in this.. she called it a barn, drafty barn, when you know it should have been something like a palace.
Colleen Shogan 09:19
She tries to open up the White House, right, and invite people in, and she's criticized for it.
Louisa Thomas 09:23
She was criticized for that, you know, and she was sort of like her response was criticized if I do, criticize if I don't. And she was, she was right about that.
Colleen Shogan 09:31
Do you think that they had, I mean, you know, when I read about this, do you think that they had a happy marriage or not?
Louisa Thomas 09:37
I think that they had a long marriage, and that it was full of peaks and valleys, and that the valleys were very deep, without speculating, in another era they might not have survived them, but I also think that there was real love there, and real tenderness, and real attachment that comes through many, in many, many periods of their lives. Yes, but certainly at the end it was put under immense stress, both by their public nature of their lives and by the weight of the pressure that was upon them, both, you know, externally and within, from within the family. The Adamses were raised to be heroes, American heroes, also because they endured so much sadness, she had a hard time getting pregnant. She had many miscarriages, and they lost several children. That is a unspeakably sad, you know. She outlived all but one of her children, and that was speaking of tragedies, that was a almost, almost unendurable one, but she did endure it. At the end they were in some ways they were so different and they were seen as different they understood each other to be different and yet there was something almost beautifully magnetic about the way they interacted and the way they spoke of each other and one of the great sadnesses of her life was that when he died he collapsed in the capital and she was not allowed to see him, and she was undone, you know, she was bereft.
Colleen Shogan 11:08
So she couldn't see him at all when he was, he lay dying in the capital.
Louisa Thomas 11:12
Yeah, they kept her from him, and that was a tragedy.
Colleen Shogan 11:16
And that was common in that time frame. I think it was
Louisa Thomas 11:18
meant to, I can't say how common it was, but it was meant to protect her.
Colleen Shogan 11:23
Yes,
Louisa Thomas 11:23
in some ways, and it was wrong.
Colleen Shogan 11:26
And you know, a lot of women might think, well, wow, this was an amazing opportunity for her to become the first lady to be married to the president, particularly given that she had been a diplomat's wife abroad for many years, but when Louisa Adams comes to the White House with John Quincy Adams, it's not - she finds a lot of constraint when he's president. Talk a little bit about that.
Louisa Thomas 11:51
Well, there was no real formal role for the First Lady in the way that there is now. The First Lady was not given or expected to adopt a cause, let's say they were not expected or to be consulted. Abigail Adams was remarkably unique, and to the degree to which she was involved in her husband's thinking, you know, they were accepted, expected to serve a totally formal role, but in her own circumstances that was even more complicated, because Elizabeth Monroe, who she had succeeded as First Lady, had been very sick and had not been in the public eye, and so she was following someone who was even more private and reclusive than she was, and John Quincy, who had this real sense of duty, and that the way to prove one's duty was to sort of do well while being unpopular. He really hated this idea that politics was a popularity contest, and I think he was, you know, put in a somewhat compromised position because of the way the 1824 election had played out, really wanted to prove his independence, and really felt he needed to not appear to be courting favor, or in any way, and he was sort of this kind of staunch, stern at times unhappy person, and I think that the degree to which she was naturally social was was stifled, you know, and she had a complicated feeling about her role because she shared some of his suspicion of Washington society, even as you know she had a more natural place in it than he did.
Colleen Shogan 13:36
Well it must have been relief, I mean, in 1828 she wanted John Quincy Adams to win reelection, he was not going, he was not destined to win reelection. Politics had changed by that time in 1828 So, when he does lose the presidency, there must, it must have been a sense of relief for her, and maybe even him, that they are now going to leave Washington, DC, leave the White House, but what happens after he loses?
Louisa Thomas 14:04
You know, it's interesting. One striking thing is that they did not leave Washington right away. He did not attend Jackson's inauguration. Again, this questions of precedent, you know, are sort of interesting, but they actually moved to a house just north, due north of the Capitol, sort of in the countryside, but you know, not far away, and still within Washington, D.C. limits, you know, where the Meridian was, and they actually had a very, like, happy time there. I mean, it was beautiful, and there were gardens, and there were chickens, and there was a sense of, yes, very real relief, but it was striking to me that they didn't rush home to Quincy right away, you know, they were still sort of on the edge of things, and they were sort of sometimes drawn back in, and I think that she liked that. I mean, she had complicated feelings about Quincy being of it and not of it, and Washington was a more natural home for her in some ways, but they move, they do move back to Quincy, and she is getting ready. To spend out her days when she, when she learns that he is going to effectively, you know, he's going to return to Washington, return to politics, he's going to be a congressman, and she is not happy in it.
Colleen Shogan 15:13
Did he tell her? Did he, I mean, maybe mention that this was going to happen?
Louisa Thomas 15:18
They were not very good at communication, these Adams is great at writing letters, fantastic letter writers, not very good at, like, the basic nuts and bolts of, you know, good communication.
Colleen Shogan 15:33
It seems like a detail maybe you might want to mention.
Louisa Thomas 15:35
Yeah, there were a lot of details along the way that somehow slipped someone's mind, weren't shared. It was not the only one, but yes, she was. She was pretty furious. It was sort of a done deal by the time she learned, and you know, he, this was something he wanted. This is, this was his entire identity was wrapped up in this, and he knew how his family felt, and his whole family was.. it's not wasn't just her, you know, his family was against us, and that was a big source of, you know, tension for him, and he was very proud, and he believed he was doing the right thing, and, you know, I think actually history lands on his side of this one, and eventually so does she, and she does come with them, and that's one of those moments in which their relationship almost founders, but doesn't, and it writes itself, and they had some wonderful times after that too. So.
Colleen Shogan 16:25
So she returns to Washington with him, and he's in Congress, and you write that, whereas you know, of course, John Quincy Adams has great impact, being, you know, as an anti-slavery congressman, and his representation, but you also write that Louisa found her voice during this time frame. How did she do that?
Louisa Thomas 16:47
It's quite interesting. She, she became a writer, let's say. She would not have called herself a writer, but and she did a lot of writing in the years up to that, but she wrote more and more and more, and those were the years in which she wrote these memoir sketches. The best is "Adventures of a Nobody," and it's an account of her remarkable journey from St. Petersburg to Paris during the Napoleonic Wars. Louise, this is a bit of a tangent, but has a reputation of being this kind of feeble, weak, lovely lady, but if you want to know how strong she was, her husband had left St. Petersburg to help negotiate the Treaty of Ghent, and she was left alone there with her son. She was sort of left to, like, be the representative. I mean, she continued going to these diplomatic functions and meeting with the Tsar, and you know, all sorts of interesting people. And then he writes to her, and he says, "Yeah, sell everything and come meet me in Paris," and no details, like no what to do, no nothing. And so she has to do this again. Doesn't speak Russian. This is, she's not now not negotiating with people, you know, when you sell people who are speaking French, and she manages to do all this. She's not given any route to follow. This is not a time when women were expected to travel alone, and not only that, this is a this is during the Napoleonic Wars. I mean, she was being asked to cross still smoldering war zones, battlefields, and she did, and you know, she began to sleigh.
Colleen Shogan 18:18
This is without having a cell phone to help you figure out which way to go, or anything exactly.
Louisa Thomas 18:22
No instructions, no, you know where to stay, what to eat, you know where to go, like who, what to watch out for. And as she nears Paris, she learns that she's Napoleon has escaped and is converging on Paris with her, and I mean it's an incredible story, and she writes it in an incredibly compelling way, but she was also writing at that time, she was writing letters, she struck up a correspondence with one of the Grimke sisters, this kind of famous abolitionist and women's rights advocates, she's she's just in tremendous curiosity, you know, she read all the time, she was not going to call herself an abolitionist, but she really wanted to know, you know, she really wanted to reach out, and I think she read, she wrote poems, she went to Congress, you know, she was curious about the petition debates, you know, she wanted to learn, and she regretted that she had not had the opportunities that young men had, you know, to be educated, and she never stopped learning, and I love that about her.
Colleen Shogan 19:27
So, could I ask, how did you become interested in Louisa Adams? She's not a household name like Dolly Madison or her mother-in-law, Abigail. So, what sparked the interest for you to be able to go on this journey to discover Louisa Adams.
Louisa Thomas 19:44
After college, I was doing some research and fact checking for John Meacham, historian,
Colleen Shogan 19:50
also an in-pursuit author. Yes,
Louisa Thomas 19:52
He was writing a biography of Andrew Jackson, and she happened to, in her brilliantly colorful diaries, write. About several encounters with Andrew Jackson, and also, you know, and she wrote this great, like, funny satirical sketch of Washington, in which she's skewered beautifully. Anyway, so I was, I came across these diaries and letters, and I thought, like, who is this, who is this other Louisa, and her voice was totally fresh. I was so used to reading these kind of dutiful accounts of the day written by these men who were writing for their future biographers, and she was writing for herself and for her, the people you know, for her recipients, and she was funny too. And it was so refreshing to come across this really sharp voice. When I decided to write this book, I wrote a proposal. I did all this research and all this stuff, but I had not, like, you know, just there are 1000s and 1000s of Adams letters, and I had not read them all, and I had not read her earliest letters to John Quincy Adams. When I decided to do this, and when I finally, you know, embark on this huge project, reading every single letter that I could, you know, I read these early letters, and I could not believe how stilted her writing was, and how short it was. And to me, you know, I feel like you're going to be talking to so many writers who are writing about people who have these kind of incredible, you know, impacts on the world or life's journeys or things like that. And to me the most incredible journey that she went on was this kind of internal journey, it was this metamorphosis of her intellect, from someone who was this kind of flighty girl who could only write two sentences about how much she hated writing, to someone who was, you know, writing over and over, you know, her life story at a time when women were not supposed to have life stories, and that was, that was remarkable to me, you know. And people always ask me, like, oh, what was, what was her impact, or what did she do, or, you know, what was her political role, and, and there, that's all there. But for me, what makes her so extraordinary, and makes her life so extraordinary, was that journey that she went on, and the way that she was able to be this incredible lens through which to see this incredible transformative time in part through her own transformation,
Colleen Shogan 22:10
So of course in pursuit aims to find relevant lessons in our nation's past. What can we learn from Louisa Catherine Adams?
Louisa Thomas 22:20
I think that you know it's interesting, because I, as I said before, she's not maybe offering some of these sort of political lessons in quite the same way, because she's not quite a politician in a lot of the ways in which other in pursuit subjects are, but I think that her lessons are, have to do with, you know, her resilience, certainly, and her self-awareness, and her self-knowledge, and the way that she returned again and again to seek insight from, from her experience, and from the experience of others, and the way that informed her understanding of how the world worked, how Washington worked, how society worked, how United States worked, and how it fit into this larger moment in this global transformation.
Colleen Shogan 23:10
Louisa Thomas, thank you for joining us on In Pursuit.
Louisa Thomas 23:13
Thank you
Colleen Shogan 23:15
To read Louisa Thomas's essay on Louisa Catherine Adams, and to enjoy other great In Pursuit essays and podcasts. Visit inpursuit.org. In Pursuit with Colleen Shogan is a podcast by More Perfect. The series is written and produced by Jim Ambuske. Production services provided by Stand Together. Our theme music is Kleos by Charlie Ryan. Audio mixing by Curt Dahl of CD Squared. Please rate and review the show on your favorite podcast app, and tell us which Americans inspire you.
