Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 5
1834-06-03
A fine day though cool and with a high wind from the Northwest. I went to town with Mr. Brooks in his Carriage and the children of Mr. Everett who return home. They are interesting. Nothing of any consequence. I was at the Office a little while and then went down to the Athenaeum where I passed a couple of hours in reading the English Periodicals. An Article in Blackwood upon Lord Brougham,1 evidently from one of the Bar who feels the effect of the Chancellor’s new measures. It is difficult to draw the substance out of the mass of party violence in England. There is probably some justice in the complaints of both sides. Lounged a short time in the Gallery. This brought me to about my time to return to Medford. Mrs. Frothingham’s two eldest boys went with us.
Read Mandeville after dinner, and Ovid’s Elegies. There is no delicacy in the love of these. It is all sense. Evening, accompanied Mr. Brooks to his neighbor and connexion Mr. Jonathan Brooks’. Passed an hour. He was not as lively as I have known him. Home. Read two Lectures upon Political Economy by Whately of Oxford.2
“Lords Brougham, Lyndhurst, and Local Courts,” Blackwood’s Magazine, 35:562–586 (April 1834).
CFA had borrowed Richard Whately’s Lectures on Political Economy, London, 1831, from the Athenaeum.
1834-06-04
Fine day. I went to town accompanied by Mr. Brooks. Office, and to the House from whence I strolled to the Athenaeum Gallery and reading room. I have got into such a habit of idling my time about that I can hardly sit down deliberately to read.
Coming into town I had a conversation with Mr. Brooks upon the subject of my Wife’s fortune. He seemed desirous of knowing my feelings as to his retaining it. He offered to give it outright in some invested shape—An offer which flattered me extremely as I know he would do no such thing if he was not confident both in my honour and judgment. The best way in such cases is not to try them unnecessarily. I am satisfied that an outright grant of any invested property would scarcely give me a clear income of 6 per cent interest and keep the Capital secure in the long run.1 I expressed my disinclination and the more strongly, as to make a difference between me and other daughters’ husbands would scarcely be judicious. I mention this conversation because it gratified me with evidence that my labor for years had not been in vain.
323Home to dinner. Afternoon Mandeville. Mr. Theodore Lyman called to see Mr. Brooks and took tea. Dr. Edward Warren2 and Miss Julia Gorham also came out which prevented my reading Ovid. Mr. Lyman is old and failing. He seemed anxious to recur to old scenes but his memory did not equal his will. He is eighty one.3
On the financial provisions which Peter C. Brooks had made for his daughters, see vol. 3:95.
Edward Warren, a graduate of Bowdoin, had received his medical degree at Harvard in 1829 (
Harvard Quinquennial Cat.
).
Theodore Lyman Sr., wealthy Boston merchant, a director with Mr. Brooks of the Massachusetts Society for Agriculture, and the owner of an extensive estate in Waltham, is identified at vol. 3:321 but is there partially confused with his son Gen. Theodore Lyman. His wife was a niece of the old foe of the Adamses, Timothy Pickering.