Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 6
1835-03-09
My cold instead of growing better seems to get worse. I had today a head ach joined with it which made it infinitely worse to bear, but to the Office where I was occupied mainly in bringing up Accounts of the Quarter.
The news from Washington is that Congress adjourned in an exceedingly disorderly manner.1 Instead of appropriating any sum to put this Country in a state of defence they have failed to pass the usual fortification bill. Of course the two parties who control the Houses respectively put the blame upon each other and the Country suffers. I do not know which side is the most factious, perhaps the Jackson Van Buren party the most so but by a very small intervale.
Mr. Walsh spent some time and I took a long walk so that I read nothing of Ovid. Continued after dinner the Peau de Chagrin. The young man accepts incredulously the skin and begins by a most extravagant and unreasonable wish. It is accomplished gradually by means apparently simple and natural following each other, the result of which is a great contraction of the skin. Finally he falls in love with a young woman and the consequence of his natural desires leads to his 93death. Such is the story very naturally developed. Mr. T. K. Davis was here in the evening and was amusing but I was unable to attend to him from pain. Retired early.
See JQA to CFA, 5 March (Adams Papers). CFA was not to learn until later from JQA the extraordinary triumph which he had enjoyed in the House on 2 March, the day before adjournment, when after breasting the fiercest opposition to his allegedly warlike position toward France, he succeeded in having his own resolution adopted in place of that offered by the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee by a unanimous vote of the House:
“At that instant came from the crowded galleries a burst of applause in which I believe two thirds of the members of the House joined by spontaneous and involuntary sympathy. I will not attempt to describe my feelings. You cannot perhaps conceive them. It was one of those moments which compensate for a Life of Sorrows.... I had many cordial greetings from members before I left the House. I came home, but could not close my eyes for the remainder of the Night, ‘The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth not with its joys.’ I knew the vote of that Night would be stored up for bitter retribution; but I would not give the moment of that unanimous vote, and that unbought burst of applause for all the wealth or all the power that man could heap upon me.”
1835-03-10
I arose quite cured of my head ach but suffering very severely from my cold which continues more obstinate than I ever knew one. The weather was dark and gloomy with snow falling occasionally. I finished the volumes of M. de Balzac. He has some power of description but occasionally falls into what Voltaire called galithomas.1 He has evidently read Sterne and Rabelais and is infected with the mannerism of the present French school. A straining after effect, a labour to produce pictures which is so visible as to hurt their effect. His principal merit is vivacity, in sketches of character, scenes and manners.
Office. I made my Diary and idled away the remainder of my time. My cold renders me good for nothing. Missed walk and very little Ovid. After dinner disturbed my philosophy by badly burning my hand so that I read light books to amuse the pain. Grimm. Afterwards, Lord Bacon in whose Life of Henry 7th I made great progress. He does chisel out the effigy of the monarch distinctly enough. German. But there is too great a continuity of hardness in the Physiognomical Travels for me yet to enjoy them. My German languishes.
Voltaire’s use of the word is not known to the editors. Perhaps CFA intended to write galimatias (as at 11 Feb., above) or was attempting a punning variant of it.