Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 4
1832-11-27
Fine morning. Mild as September. I thought I could not do better than to pay my last visit to Quincy, so after stopping half an hour at the Office, I went on. My ride was quite agreeable. And I found the Country did not look today quite so desolate. I looked over the books and regretted to find them in a very poor condition.1 Many of them are consumed by mould and those that have fresh sheepskin bindings are full of worms. The four years that they have been packed up, have been productive of more injury to them than the twenty in which all the rest were kept in the Athenaeum and in Mr. Lyman’s Warehouse.2 Returned home to dinner.
After dinner, began No. 5 upon Antimasonry. Labour in vain I fear, yet still it is labour and that is better than idleness. It makes me accustom myself to examine the minutiae of transactions and try to show them to the best account.
Evening. Read one of Marmontel’s Tales, “Il le falloit” rendering it in English aloud to my Wife. Afterwards. Slow progress in a German fable of Lessing’s.3
That is, the books recently received from Washington; see entry for 15 Nov., above.
See vol. 3:32. JQA, in replying to CFA’s letter informing him of the arrival of the books, wrote of his hopes upon the reassembly of his library: “[A]lthough I have been compelled to abandon the hope that I had cherished through a long life, of being able before its close to erect a building spacious enough to contain them all, and to give me the full enjoyment of them in my last days, I still indulge the anticipation that cooped and cabined as they are and must be, like the Soul within the Body, they will yet afford me pleasure and contribute to some useful purpose” (25 Nov., Adams Papers).
JQA’s bookplate is in the edition now at MQA of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Sämmtliche schriften, 21 vols., Berlin, 1771–1774. The “Fabeln” are in the 18th volume.