Adams Family Correspondence, volume 4
1780-12-21
I have the satisfaction of informing you that Mr. Thaxter and your Sons are now settled in
their lodgings in the same house with me. I could wish the rooms were better as well as
larger, but they think theGriffier Fagell
1 and gives great
satisfaction. I imagine your eldest must attend him a while before he attends the public
lectures on the greek, the master however can judge of that when he examines him. The
Christmas vacancy commences this day, but that makes no difference with these
private-teachers. I think with Mr. Thaxter and several others that Charles is too young to
attend any of the publick lectures yet. The Lectures on Grotius and the Law of nature are what
I imagine you wish them to attend, one is given in the forenoon, the other in the afternoon by
the same Professor. I am in hopes by Monday next we shall get fairly under:way. The gentlemen came into their lodgings but last night, and to day have been
visited by all those gentlemen who call themselves the english-Society only because they speak
our languague. The English-clergyman2 came to see
us this morning and to tell us how glad he was to have this addition to his little flock.
Tomorrow we are invited to Mr. Luzac's,3 and that
finishes our visits. I had sent me a day or two since a number of questions concerning this
University, they were written at Boston, or Jamaica-plains by I guess Mr. G.4 I have answered them as well as I could and sent them to the
gentleman who transmitted them to me, they were dated No-44vember 4th
1780. The history of this University is I find almost too intricate for a stranger to
unravell.
I believe Mr. John reather wishes me to propose to you his learning to ride. I can only say
I would not have missed those few lessons I have had for ten times the sum they cost me
besides the advantages resulting from the exercise, and the company we generally find there;
Mr. Luzac and his brother ride twice a week with us, more for exercise than instruction. We
pay, for the first 16. Lessons 30. guilders: for every 16. after 20 Guilders; and generally
take three lessons a week. I imagine Mr. Thaxter from what he already sees thinks they three
can live here for the sum, that it would cost for one at
Amsterdam, that may however not be, yet I am confident a person can live here for half the sum
he pays at Amsterdam provided he lives and takes his rooms as a student.
griffier
(secretary or “graphiary”) of the States General, a leading figure in the Dutch government
and at the court of the Stadholder (
Nieuw Ned. Biog. Woordenboek
, 3:390–391). JA
was to have important relations with him, not always of the pleasantest sort because Fagel
was a strong adherent of the House of Orange and hence of the pro-English party in the
Netherlands; see JA, Diary
and Autobiography
, 3:1, 5, and passim.
William Mitchell; see note 3 on JQA to JA, this date, above.
rector magnificus of the University of Leyden, and for many years
editor of Nouvelles extraordinaires de divers endroits, better
known as the Gazette de Leyde, a Dutch newspaper with an
international circulation. An apostle of the Enlightenment and a deeply interested observer
of events in America, Luzac was one of JA's first and firmest friends in the
Netherlands, and their friendship long survived JA's mission there. See
Nieuw Ned. Biog.
Woordenboek
, 1:1290–1294; JA, Diary and Autobiography
, vols. 2–3 passim. There is extensive correspondence of both JA and JQA
with Luzac in the Adams Papers.
Presumably Rev. William Gordon of Jamaica Plain near Boston, on whom see the editorial note and references at 1:229–230.