Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 6
1835-01-08
Thermometer below zero. Office as usual where I was so wholly engrossed by my Accounts as to be entirely unable to take up my Diary. Mr. Hurlbert the Tenant was my only visitor. I was unable to take as long a walk as usual and from Mr. Brooks dining earlier lost my time for Ovid. I made it up however in the Afternoon, and read a good deal of the correspondence of Dr. Rush. His children did right to decline the publication of his letters. For he was evidently no friend of Washington, and a member of the Gates and Conway party.1 Yet there is great good feeling in the Letters, and a general honesty which highly recommends them.
Mr. Brooks and my Wife went to Medford so that I was uninter-51rupted and wrote with more ease and fluency. Received a letter from my father2 which depressed my spirits somewhat. He is still struggling with his affairs there and appears to grow more hopeless as he proceeds. This devolves upon me the duty of considering what it is proper for me to do in the case. Shall I continue to be dependent upon him to his own ruin, when a little sacrifice on my part may contribute to relieve him.
For a modern account of the relations between Rush and Washington, see Appendix I in Benjamin Rush, Letters
, 2:1197–1208.
3 Jan. (Adams Papers). After the payment of three notes currently due, JQA wrote that slightly more than $700 remained from the $10,000 derived from the sale of his New England Insurance Co. shares, an amount not quite sufficient to pay bills presented against JA2’s estate. His efforts to sell three houses owned in Washington had been fruitless, his other resources in Washington “null.”