Papers of John Adams, volume 19
ante 2 April 1787
I am very much mortified to loose the Pleasure and Advantage of an Excursion to Windsor, to see Mr Herschell2 in Such Company: but the State of my Family is such that I cannot justify leaving it.— Mrs Smith is in Travel and the Anxiety occasioned by this Event has made Mrs Adams so much worse, that I should be very bad Company at Windsor, and what is more decisive, it becomes my Duty to stay at home.3 You will therefore be so good as to make my best Respects
31
to Dr Priestly and Compliments to Mr Wilkinsen,4 and to excuse the Trouble given you, by Dear sir your Friend & humble / servant
RC (PPAmP:Benjamin Vaughan Papers); addressed: “Benjamin Vaughan Esq. / Jeffries’s Court.”; internal address: “Benjamin Vaughan Esqr”; endorsed: “Adams.”
London merchant Benjamin Vaughan, who arranged an array of cultural visits and tours for the Adamses during their time in London, last wrote to JA on 21 March (Adams Papers). Vaughan asked JA to edit an unidentified friend’s pamphlet describing the Corporation Act (1661) and Test Act (1673), which barred all but practicing Anglicans from holding civil, military, and political offices. While there is no record of JA’s assessment of it, Vaughan took up the theme, writing A Collection of Testimonies in Favor of Religious Liberty, in the Case of the Dissenters, Catholics, and Jews. By a Christian Politician, London, 1790.
Hanoverian William Herschel (1738–1822), who discovered the planet Uranus six years earlier, had served unofficially as royal astronomer since 1782. Herschel set up his telescopes at Windsor Castle, the summer home of King George III (
DNB
).
In his 6 April 1787 reply to JA (Adams Papers), Vaughan advised visiting the Windsor observatory during the first quarter of the moon’s phase. JA had toured the grounds in July 1786, yet he made no mention of a return trip. Later, JA wrote of his “amazement” when “contemplating the heavens through the telescopes of Herschell” (
AFC
, 7:268–270; JA, Defence of the Const.
, 3:504).
JA was reluctant to leave AA, who was ailing from rheumatism, and AA2, who was in labor (travail). JA’s first grandchild, William Steuben Smith, was born on 2 April 1787 (
AFC
, 8:6, 12).
John Wilkinson (1728–1808), of Clifton, England, was an ironmaster and industrialist who manufactured blast furnaces, cylinders, and cannon. Wilkinson supplied the steam-engine cylinders for Matthew Boulton and James Watt’s Albion Mill, which JA and Thomas Jefferson toured in April 1786 (vol. 18:250;
DNB
).