Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 2
1828-04-20
Morning chilly with hail and snow. At home reading The Guards, 231a stupid novel.1 Dined at Chardon Brooks’. Nothing peculiar in our conversation. Abby not quite well. Returned home and read sometime, after which I passed the rest of the evening with Abby. It rained violently on my return.
Anon., The Guards: A Novel, 3 vols., London, 1827.
1828-04-21
Morning, bad weather. Office. No letters but news from Washington that John had got involved in a bad scrape with that hectoring bully Russel Jarvis.1 The newspapers are full of it. I regret it very much indeed on John’s account. What will be the end of it, I don’t know. Every body talks of it and the general feeling seems to be in John’s favour. Evening with Abby at Chardon Brooks’.
Resentful of the slanderous attacks which Russell Jarvis had published in the Daily Telegraph, reviving the canard that JQA as minister to Russia had “pimped” the person of Martha Godfrey, the Adams nursemaid, to the lust of Alexander I, JA2 was indignant when the newspaperman appeared at a White House reception and announced publicly to visiting Massachusetts minister Caleb Stetson “that if Jarvis had the feelings of a gentleman he would not show himself here.” Shortly thereafter, when JA2, in his capacity as secretary to the President, was carrying messages to Congress, Jarvis assaulted him in the rotunda of the Capitol, “pulling his nose, and slapping one side of his face.” See JQA, Memoirs
, 7:508; Report on the Assault by Russell Jarvis, House Report No. 260, 20 Cong., 1 sess. (16 May 1828); LCA “To my Children,” 1 May 1828, Adams Papers; Samuel F. Bemis, “The Scuffle in the Rotunda,” MHS, Procs.
, 71 (1953–1957): 156–166.
1828-04-22
Morning at the Office. Four letters from home but not one of them giving the particulars of the case, which is very galling. George proses away in a letter which was written some time before.1 My mother seems to have been much affected but thinks some good may come of it in re-uniting the family. My father’s letter is short and written evidently in considerable agitation. I wrote a reply to him which took up the morning. Afternoon reading Mr. Thomas Dibdin’s Memoirs2 by way of relaxation. Evening at Chardon Brooks’ to see Abby.
GWA’s letter is missing.
The Reminiscences of Thomas Dibdin, of the Theatres Royal, Covent-Garden ..., N.Y., 1828.
1828-04-23
Morning at the Office. Purchased a gold pencil case intended as a present to Abby on her birth day which comes on Friday. Afternoon reading Dibdin. Evening at Mrs. Frothingham’s where the individuals 232of the Brooks family were congregated. Edward and his wife, Abby and Mrs. F. with her husband and myself. They meet in this way every week. And in their quiet circle the thundering of the political world does not excite the slightest attention. Is it not better to be so? My disgust to politics seems to be growing. Returned with Abby to Chardon Brooks and from thence home.