Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 7
1837-05-19
Cloudy with mist and occasional rain. I went to the Office. Time not passed as usefully as it should be. It has been impossible for me to fix my mind firmly upon any thing for several days past. The various rumours afloat, the exciting character of the information and besides my approaching change of residence unsettle me. The story of the proclamation is confirmed, the suspension of the bonds is also confirmed, so that things are now at rest for the moment, but the news from England is more and more indicative of a commercial crisis in that quarter.1
Home, writing upon the currency but I do not get on, and I do not know that I shall not have to give it up. Not that I have not in my head the elements of a whole system, but I am so situated as to be ill able to give it currency.
Evening, to the Theatre. Three pieces—The forced Marriage, the Loan of a Lover and Twice Killed. The performers, Mr. and Mrs. Keeley—the first a sort of Comedie Larmoyante turning upon the honesty of a Lawyer, the others farces.2 Their style of acting is the low Comic and is very good of it’s kind. We returned home late very much amused.
The presidential proclamation called upon the Congress to convene in special session on the first Monday in September. Secretary of the Treasury Levi Woodbury issued notice that Custom House bonds falling due and not paid in specie would be extended until a reasonable time after the convening of the Congress. There was further disturbing news from London (Daily Advertiser, 19 May, p. 2., col. 3; 20 May, p. 2, col. 5).
Mr. and Mrs. Robert Keeley of the London theater had made their first American appearance to great applause in New York in Sept. 1836. They had introduced J. B. Buckstone’s Julie, or the Forced Marriage, a sentimental domestic comedy, to the New York stage as recently as the first of May. The Loan of a Lover by Planché and the farce Twice Killed had been in the Keeleys’ repertoire since Dec. 1836 (Odell, Annals N.Y. Stage
, 4:18, 114, 119–120, 127).