Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 5
1834-04-16
Morning fine but cool. I did intend to have started at once for Quincy but by going down to the Office and a few interruptions my 296time fell short so that I could only postpone to the Afternoon. Mr. Degrand called in upon business and one or two others upon various applications. Received a letter from my Mother mentioning the breaking of the Bank of Washington and the loss which would probably take place to the family—My brother being an owner of Stock in it.1 Thus goes the world.
I rode to Quincy in the Afternoon, found the place looking much as usual—More done however, than I had expected. There was something a little cheerless in the appearance however, and I felt a failing in my interest in the place which is somewhat novel and surprised me. Perhaps it is not worth while to go far in quest of the causes of it. Gave directions and returned home by eight o’clock.
Mr. I. Barney, of Baltimore called in and spent the evening. He is here on a visit of a few days. He claims to be an old acquaintance, though I never respected him much.
In reporting the failure of the Washington Bank, LCA gave Mrs. JA2’s loss as $2,000; Walter Hellen’s as “all or most of his inheritance”; and JQA’s as “considerable” through his ownership of Franklin Insurance Co. stock, a creditor of the bank. She also reported the closing of the Farmers and Mechanics Bank of Georgetown and the Bank of Alexandria (to CFA, 12 April, Adams Papers).
1834-04-17
Very warm. I went to the Office. Occupied in various Accounts and lounging in the Insurance Offices reading Newspapers. The accounts are that the Patriotic Bank has stopped payment at Washington making the fourth in the District. The panic there seems to be general. Yesterday Kirk gave me a Note for $50 of the Union Bank of Georgetown which I sent on to be redeemed, today. It was a piece of imprudence in him. The people generally are the sufferers by a state of things like the present, through their ignorance. The better informed can guard against and take advantage of the distress.
Home, dinner. Afternoon, read the History of Maritime discovery and began Ovid with his first heroic epistle Penelope to Ulysses.1 Evening quietly at home. Read part of Belinda, and German—Herder’s sentimental mythology.
A copy of the Heroidum epistolae, London, 1735, is in MQA along with three sets of the Opera of Ovid, 3 vols., London, 1815; 3 vols., Paris, 1762; and 5 vols., Oxford, 1825, two of which (1815 and 1825) were CFA’s. His extensive reading in all the varieties of Ovid’s works during the following months suggests that he was using one of the editions of the Opera.