A Traveled First Lady: Writings of Louisa Catherine Adams

by Louisa Catherine Adams, Margaret A. Hogan (Editor), C. James Taylor (Editor), Laura Bush (Foreword by)

Overview

Congress adjourned on 18 May 1852 for Louisa Catherine Adams’s funeral, according her an honor never before offered a first lady. But her life and influence merited this extraordinary tribute. She had been first the daughter-in-law and then the wife of a president. She had assisted her husband as a diplomat at three of the major capitals of Europe. She had served as a leading hostess and significant figure in Washington for three decades. And yet, a century and a half later, she is barely remembered. A Traveled First Lady: Writings of Louisa Catherine Adams seeks to correct that oversight by sharing Adams’s remarkable experiences in her own words.

These excerpts from diaries and memoirs recount her early years in London and Paris (to this day she is the only foreign-born first lady), her courtship and marriage to John Quincy Adams, her time in the lavish courts of Berlin and St. Petersburg as a diplomat’s wife, and her years aiding John Quincy’s political career in Washington. Emotional, critical, witty, and, in the Adams tradition, always frank, her writings draw sharp portraits of people from every station, both servants and members of the imperial court, and deliver clear, well-informed opinions about the major issues of her day.

Telling the story of her own life, juxtaposed with rich descriptions of European courts, Washington political maneuvers, and the continuing Adams family drama, Louisa Catherine Adams demonstrates why she was once considered one of the preeminent women of the nineteenth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674048010
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	03/04/2014
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Margaret A. Hogan is an independent scholar and former editor of the Adams Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society.

C. James Taylor is former Editor in Chief of the Adams Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Table of Contents

Foreword Laura Bush xi

Introduction xv

Note to the Reader xxiii

1 "All Was Joy and Peace and Love": Youth 1

2 "An Object of General Attention": Prussia 34

3 "Had I Steped into Noah's Ark": United States 86

4 "The Savage Had Been Expected": Russia 144

5 "The Memory of One, Who Was": St. Petersburg to Paris 187

6 "The Wife of a Man of Superior Talents": Washington, D.C., 1819-1820 216

7 "I Am a Very Good Diplomate": Washington, D.C., 1821-1824 265

8 "This Apparent Fate": Retirement 326

Epilogue: Henry Adams on Louisa 362

Chronology 367

Acknowledgments 375

Index 377

Editorial Reviews

01/20/2014
These selected writings from the wife of sixth U.S. president, John Quincy Adams, provide insight into an oft-overlooked period of early American history as the then first lady chronicles her life alongside her husband. Much of the collection is excerpted from diary entries, memoirs, or various autobiographies begun by Louisa, and though there are no records of her writings during her husband’s presidency, she wrote extensively on the time she spent as the wife of a U.S. foreign minister in Berlin and St. Petersburg during the early 1800s. This collection does not entertain as much as shed light on the issues and concerns of a female public figure in the 1800s. Readers might find Louisa’s intense chronicling of her moments of sickness repetitive, but there are noteworthy moments, her depictions of President Thomas Jefferson as “the ruling Demagogue of the ” and his Vice President James Madison, “a very small man in his person, with a very large head,” for instance, add a refreshing and personal shading to their history. While the humanity found within these pages sparks empathy—she often worries over her own attractiveness or her place in American politics—much of the collection simply drags on without much purpose. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Here’s history at its best! Louisa Catherine Adams’s shrewd eyewitness accounts document pivotal moments in the country’s formative years. Often laugh-out-loud funny, the writings of this intelligent, insightful woman also provide fascinating context for the career of John Quincy and his contemporaries.

Cokie Roberts

This graceful collection of the personal papers of Louisa Catherine Adams, the only first lady to have been foreign-born, is a treasure. Broad in scope but intimate in detail, Louisa’s account of her tour through the courts of Europe and the byways of accomplishment and loss that distinguished the Adams family shines and startles with wit and a woman’s heart wanting to freely ‘breathe its sorrows.’ Henry Adams would write he knew ‘nothing’ of his grandmother’s ‘interior life.’ Fortunate readers will know much more from her bracing words that bring early America to vivid life.

Natalie Dykstra

A fine new sampling of Louisa’s writings… Louisa Adams was highly intelligent, well educated, and well read. She was a talented writer, as her diary and letters—most notably the correspondence she maintained with her father-in-law, after the death of his wife Abigail—reveal.

New York Review of Books - Susan Dunn

Highly readable… The book also features a delightful foreword by Laura Bush… ‘Narrative of a Journey from Russia to France’ is the most hair-raising section in the entire collection… It is a story of unimaginable discomfort, absent-minded servants, questionable characters threatening in desolate places, impudent officials, weary soldiers, and filthy lodgings. Above all, it is the tale of a fragile, rugged, determined woman pulling off an adventure as daunting as those of the ragged soldiers she passed.

Janet Tasseln Spectator

Allow[s] Louisa to emerge as a subject herself. In the process, she also becomes newly convincing as a source, especially in connection with her husband’s complicated, grinding ambition, a quality she discerned beneath his cloak of rectitude.

New Yorker - Thomas Mallon

Highly readable…The book also features a delightful foreword by Laura Bush… ‘Narrative of a Journey from Russia to France,’ is the most hair-raising section in the entire collection…It is a story of unimaginable discomfort, absent-minded servants, questionable characters threatening in desolate places, impudent officials, weary soldiers, and filthy lodgings. Above all, it is the tale of a fragile, rugged, determined woman pulling off an adventure as daunting as those of the ragged soldiers she passed.

American Spectator - Janet Tassel