Adams Family Correspondence, volume 14
I received last night your favour of the 15th, the Sentiments and expressions of which are
Such as cannot fail to render your Character Prosperity and Happiness more
dear to me than ever.
An Office must be procured, and the Price or Rent must not be an Obstacle. I had rather pay for you a high Rent than you should not have an Office in Market or Chesnut Street.
Your Brothers Observations concerning the Confidence between Parents and Children require many restrictions, distinctions and Limitations. This great Relation and its Duties is a subject of too much magnitude for a Letter. The source of Revolution, Democracy, & Jacobinism in my opinion, has been a systematical dissolution of the true Family Authority. There can never be any regular Government of a Nation, without a marked Subordination of Mothers and Children to the Father. This Opinion is a Secret between you and me.— if you divulge it to any one, it will soon be known to all, and will infallibly raise a Rebellion against me. You may think I am returning Levity for Levity. But We shall understand one another more fully hereafter upon this subject.
Venere et Vino abstinuit, has been a trait in the Character of every 16 real great Man I ever knew or read of.—1 The Votaries of Bacchus and Venus never rise above Mediocrity and most commonly grovel on the ground. Minerva alone can conduct to Wisdom and her fruits. The Institution of Cyrus, & Telemachus are school Books, which because they lie upon the Shelf or the Table and are thumbed, from our Infancy at times and in parcells We suppose We have read: but very few have ever really read them. The Fable of the Choice of Hercules by Prodicus preserved by Xenophon in his memorabilia of Socrates, is a divine Morcel. Siluis Italicus has applied it to Scipio, in very elegant Latin Poetry.2 Your classical Taste will be highly gratified by a Perusal of all these.
If I were a young Man I should endeavour to find a young Wife, who would not be likely by her Fancies to send me to Prison for her debts, but I think nothing but a Necessity of going to Prison for my own debts without a Marriage of an Old Woman, though she were rich would induce me to think of it. The Conduct of Phœbe’s Husband therefore would not be an Object of Imitation for me.3
I have been young and know how tender ’tis to love. I have never dictated to my Children. Perhaps it would have been better in two Instances, if I had.— I wish them to Use a prudent Consideration, and not be led away by a very wild but a very fickle and transeint passion to take a step which they never can tread back, without being discr[…] sure that it does not lead to ruin.
With every sentiment of Kindness / I am &c
RC (MQHi); addressed by William Smith Shaw:
“Thomas B. Adams Esqr. / Attorney at Law / Philadelphia”; internal
address: “T. B. Adams”; endorsed: “The President of the U.S.A. / 17th: October 1799 / 19th: Do: Recd: / 22
Acknd: & ansd:”; notation: “Free”; and by JA: “J. Adams.”
Some loss of text where the seal was removed.
“Abstain from women and from wine” (Horace, De Arte Poetica, transl. Hugh Moore,
London, 1831, line 414).
In the “Choice of Hercules” in Xenophon, Memorabilia, Book II, chapter i, lines
21–34, a young Hercules is subjected to a succession of appeals by
female personifications of virtue and vice. In 1776 JA had
proposed that the three figures of the fable be depicted on the Great
Seal of the United States, for which see vol. 2:ix–x. Here,
JA was also referencing Xenophon, The Institution of Cyrus, editions of which
are in his library at MB
in Greek (1613) and Latin (1730); François de Salignac de La Mothe
Fénelon, Suite du quatrième livre de I’odyssée
d’Homère, ou les avantures de Télémaque, fils d’Ulysse, Paris,
1699; and Tiberius Catius Silius Italicus, Punica, Book XV, lines 18–130 (vol. 7:215–216;
Catalogue of JA’s Library
).
JA was likely referencing Phoebe Abdee, who remarried after the Jan. 1798 death of her first husband, William Abdee. Phoebe’s second husband was also named William. In a 24 March 1800 letter to AA (Adams Papers), Mary Smith Cranch wrote: “She & her Husband do very well,” although Phoebe thought her husband lacked “compassion” because he would not host friends in their house. “I do not think him to blame for this. he is willing to work & do any thing for Pheby, but not for Such a vile crew” (vol. 12:350; AA to Cotton Tufts, 15 March, below).