Louisa Catherine Adams Finds Her Voice

Why did Louisa Catherine Adams feel like a bird trapped in a cage during her time in the White House? Colleen Shogan talks with Louisa Thomas about Adams's dangerous journey from Russia to Paris during the Napoleonic Wars, her complicated marriage to John Quincy, and the freedom she found in writing. 

Featuring Louisa Thomas, Staff Writer, New Yorker. 

Read Thomas's essay on Louisa Catherine Adams at Inpursuit.org 

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Louisa Thomas: 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: 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 rate the history of America's future. Episode seven,

Louisa Catherine Adams finds her voice. Louisa Thomas, welcome to

In Pursuit.

Louisa Thomas: Thanks for having me.

Colleen Shogan: Louisa Catherine Adams was the first foreign-born

First Lady. What was her early life like?

Louisa Thomas: She was born in 1775 in London and grew up 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: So, when did she first encounter John Quincy

Adams? How would you describe that early relationship, and how

they met?

Louisa Thomas: 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 he fell for them all. There was

some confusion, in fact, over whether or not he's pursuing

Louisa or Louise's older sister Nancy, leading to a little bit

of tension for a little while. John Lindsay Adams kept one of

the world's greatest diaries ever. So we have all of this

very well documented. 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 what it meant to be a young ambitious man. But he

would come for dinner, he would come for music in the parlor, a

courtship began, and actually to read the diary again, John

Quincy was often wrote in the passive voice. It was like

something that was happening to him, and in fact, when he

proposed, it was like the ring from Louisa's finger jumped. I

mean, there was some confusion over how much he was pursuing

him and how much he felt 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, 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. 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, was she a American citizen

at that time? 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 in 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 as English as someone who grew up in a very

different society with very different mores and very

different goals, and she always felt in some ways different, in

other and foreign, and that never changed, even as she lived

most of her life in the United States.

Colleen Shogan: 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: 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

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 they went almost immediately

after their marriage to Prussia, where she became friendly, you

know, with the this kind of famous queen, 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. The 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 weren't

a lot of rule books for it, 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 natural social feel, and partly

because she seemed to have been perhaps pretty innocent.

Actually, I think she handled it very well.

Colleen Shogan: Do you think that John Quincy Adams'

political ascent would have been as steep as it was without

Louisa Adams?

Louisa Thomas: 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. Campaigning was not what it is now, it

largely took part in these social spheres, so it really was

this space and environment that she created, in which a lot of

these 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 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. While he was president, he used that less and

less, and she was less and less useful, and coincidentally, or

not, so was he. It was not a good presidency.

Colleen Shogan: 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: Oh, disrepair had been burned during the War of

1812 the Monroes had not really restored it to good condition.

Parts of it had were in actual disrepair. There wasn't a lot of

money. 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 that the president was supposed to live in this. She

called it a drafty barn when should have been something like

a palace.

Colleen Shogan: She tries to open up the White House, right,

and invite people in, and she's criticized for it.

Louisa Thomas: She was criticized for that, and her

response was, 'Criticize if I do, criticize if I don't. She

was right about that.

Colleen Shogan: When I read about this. Do you think that

they had a happy marriage or not?

Louisa Thomas: 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 in

many, many periods of their lives, 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 externally and from within the family. The Adamses were

raised to be 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

unspeakably sad, you know. She outlived all but one of her

children, and that was almost unendurable, one that 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 Capitol, and

she was not allowed to see him, and she was undone, she was

bereft.

Colleen Shogan: So she couldn't see him at all when he was, he

lay dying in the capital.

Louisa Thomas: Yeah, they kept her from him, and that was a

tragedy,

Colleen Shogan: and that was common in that timeframe. Is I

think it was meant

Louisa Thomas: to, I can't say how common it was, but it was

meant to protect her.

Colleen Shogan: Yes, right, right,

Louisa Thomas: in some ways, and it was wrong, I. 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, she finds a lot of constraint when

he's president. Talk a little bit about that. 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 to be consulted.

Abigail Adams was remarkably unique to the degree to which

she was involved in her husband's thinking, you know,

they were 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 do well while being

unpopular. He really hated this idea that politics was a

popularity contest, and I think he was 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 in

any way, and he was sort of this staunch, stern at times unhappy

person. And I think that the degree to which she was

naturally social 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 she had a more

natural place in it than he did.

Colleen Shogan: What must have been relief, I mean, in 1828 she

wanted John Quincy Adams to win reelection. He was not destined

to win reelection. Politics had changed by that time in 1828 so

when he does lose the presidency, it must have been a

sense of relief for her, and maybe even him, that they are

now going to leave Washington, D.C. leave the White House, but

what happens after he loses?

Louisa Thomas: 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, questions

of precedent, you know, are sort of interesting, but they

actually moved to a house due north of the Capitol, sort of in

the countryside, but not far away, and still within

Washington, D.C. limits, where the meridian was, and they

actually had a very happy time there. I mean, it was beautiful,

and there was 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. They were still 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 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. Did he tell her? Did he, I mean, maybe

mention that this was going to happen? They were not very good

at communication. These Adamses great at writing letters,

fantastic letter writers, not very good at like the basic nuts

and bolts of good communication. It seems like a detail maybe you

might want to be. Yeah, there were a lot of details along the

way that somehow slipped someone's mind, weren't shared.

I was not the only one, but yes, she was pretty furious. It was

sort of a done deal by the time she learned this was something

he wanted. 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, no, his family was against us, and that

was a big source of tension for him, and he was very proud. He

believed he was doing the right thing, and I think actually

history lands on his side of this one. 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 she returns to Washington

with him, and he's in Congress, and you write that, whereas John

Quincy Adams has great impact being as an anti-slavery

congressman, but you also write that Louisa found her voice

during this time frame. How did she do that? It's quite

interesting. She became a writer, let's say, she would not

have called herself a writer, 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 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, just left to be the

representative. I mean, she continued going to these

diplomatic functions and meeting with the Czar and 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, no what to do, no nothing, and so she has to do

this again. She 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

during the Napoleonic Wars, I mean, she was being asked to

cross still smoldering war zones, battlefields, and she

did.

Colleen Shogan: This is without having a cell phone to help you

figure out which way to go, or exactly,

Louisa Thomas: No instructions, no where to stay, what to eat,

what to watch out for. And as she nears Paris, she learns that

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. 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 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, 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

to be educated, and she never stopped learning, and I love

that about her.

Colleen Shogan: So, can 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: After college, I was doing some research and fact

checking for John Meacham, historian,

Colleen Shogan: also an In Pursuit author. Yes,

Louisa Thomas: 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

she wrote this great, 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 other Louisa? And her voice was totally fresh. I

was so used to reading these 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

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 those research. 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

embarked 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, I feel like you're going to be talking to so many writers

who are writing about people who have these incredible 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 internal

journey, it was this metamorphosis of her intellect

from someone who was this flighty girl who could only

write two sentences about how much she hated writing to

someone who was writing over and over her life story at a time

when women were not supposed to have life stories and that was

remarkable to me and people always ask me like what was her

impact or what did she do or you know what was her political role

and that's all there but for me, what makes her so extraordinary,

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: 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: I think that, as I said before, she's not

offering some of these 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 have to do with her resilience, certainly, and her

self-awareness, and her self-knowledge, and the way that

she returned again and again to seek insight 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, global

transformation.

Colleen Shogan: Luisa Thomas, thank you for joining us on In

Pursuit.

Louisa Thomas: Thank you

Colleen Shogan: to read Louisa Thomas's essay on Louisa

Catherine Adams, and to enjoy other great In Pursuit essays

and podcasts, visit in pursuit.org In Pursuit with

Colleen Shogan is a podcast by More Perfect, The seres is

written and produced by Jim Ambuske. Production services

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