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Browsing: Adams Family Correspondence, Volume 11
Docno: ADMS-04-11-02-0143
Recipient: Adams, Abigail
Date: 1796-04-24
John Quincy Adams to Abigail Adams
[dateline] London April 24th: 1796.
[salute] My dear Mother.
You will find by the papers that I send with this letter, what you will perhaps know
before the receipt of it; that is that the negotiations for Peace have stumbled at
the threshold, and that a trial of one more year of War is to be endured by the contending
Nations. The Notes of Mr: Wickham & Mr: Barthelemi are considered as decisive upon this point.—1 The scarcity of provisions has suddenly disappeared both in France and in this Country.
Wheat and flour have fallen from excessive to very moderate prices. There are complaints
here of a great scarcity of money, but it will find its relief in a new loan for seven
millions and an half which is already made.
I send you likewise some late reviews which may give you the literary news, more valuable
because more durable than those of a political nature.—2 The famous Shakespeare manuscripts about which I wrote you soon after my arrival
here, are now generally considered as mere forgeries. The play of Vortigern was once
performed, and fairly laughed off the stage.
I had not an opportunity to judge of it myself as I could not attend on the Evening
of its first and only performance, but the opinion of all those who heard it appears
to be unanimous, that it is not only an imposture but a very awkward and clumsy one.—
Volumes have been written & published on the subject, and men of all sorts take now
a pride in girding at the poor proprietor of the manuscripts.
I have no letters from my father dated later than December. None from you later than
January, none from any of my friends in America of a more recent date. Still I flatter
myself I have not been forgotten. I write so much and so often that I seldom get a
correspondent of equal punctuality with myself.— From other Americans however, I collect
the information of that Country, as late as the
{ 271 }
beginning of March.3 It looks fair and promising. But our political tides ebb and flow with such rapidity
and violence that I place not the most thorough reliance on the permanency of any
favourable prospect.
I beg to be remembered affectionately to all friends, and remain your invariably faithful
Son
[signed] John Q. Adams.
RC (Adams Papers); internal address: “Mrs: Adams. Quincy.”; endorsed: “J Q A April 24 1796.” FC-Pr (Adams Papers); APM Reel 131.
1. William Wickham (1761–1840) was a British politician and diplomat. In 1795 he became
the British minister plenipotentiary to Switzerland. Wickham wrote to François Barthélemy,
the French minister to Switzerland, on 8 March 1796 asking him to respond to three
questions concerning the possibility of negotiating a peace with France via a congress
or written communications with Wickham or some other means. Barthélemy replied on
26 March that although the Directory desired “a just, honourable, and solid peace,”
it did not want to enter into a congress with Britain that would “render all negotiation
endless.” A British note of observation, dated 10 April, concluded that at that time
“nothing is left for the king but to prosecute a war equally just and necessary” (DNB; Parliamentary Hist., 32:1407–1409).
2. This enclosure has not been found but was possibly from one of the London newspapers
that provided reviews of the first and only performance of Vortigern on 2 April at the Drury Lane Theatre; see, for example, London Times, 4 April, or London Lloyd’s Evening Post, 1–4 April.
3. Probably Oliver Wolcott Jr. to JQA, 10, 17, and 27 Feb.; and Timothy Pickering to JQA, 9 March (all Adams Papers). Wolcott’s letters discussed U.S. Treasury remittances being sent to Dutch bankers
and his confidence that America would be able to pay all of the interest and installments
on its loans through 1 June. Pickering’s 9 March letter expressed regret that the
instructions for further negotiations between the British government and the United
States did not reach England in time for JQA to participate in the exchange of ratifications for the Jay Treaty.
Cite web page as: Founding Families: Digital Editions of the Papers of the Winthrops and the Adamses, ed.C. James Taylor. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2018.
http://www.masshist.org/apde2/
http://www.masshist.org/apde2/