• Location: New Orleans
• Mood: amused
• Music: Foreigner-"Hot Blooded"

John Quincy Adams and the Land of Lovely Dames

On my plane ride from home to New Orleans I managed to get about two thirds of the way through Harlow Giles Unger's new biography of John Quincy Adams, simply called John Quincy Adams. I'll do a full review of it when I finish it, although I will say that some of my concerns about this author's inability to be objective about his subject are manifesting themselves, but on the other hand I like how much of his source material is from his subject's diary and letters, which in turn offers some insight into the author's conclusions.



I was amused by a section early on in the book about a time in the young man's life when a teenaged John Quincy, about 16, traveled by himself from St. Petersburg, Russia, to join his father in the Hague. According to Unger, the younger Adams didn't exactly travel in a straight line from point A to point B, and hormones may have played a part in that decision. Unger writes (at page 53):

Although eager to rejoin his father, John Quincy was enjoying his independence and took a long, circuitous route back to Holland through Scandinavia and Germany. After three weeks exploring Finland (then a part of Sweden), he reached Stockholm and, ignoring his father's exhortations on the importance of preserving his innocence, John Quincy Adams plunged into Swedish life for nearly six rapture-filled weeks.

"I believe there is no country in Europe," he exulted, "where the people are more hospitable and affable to strangers...than the Swedes. In every town, however small it may be, they have these assemblies [dances]...to pass away agreeably the long winter evenings. There, one may dance country dances, minuets or play cards, just as it pleases you, and everybody is extremely polite to strangers." Years later he recalled that "the beauty of the women...could not be concealed. The Swedish women were as modest as they were amiable and beautiful. To me it was truly 'the land of lovely dames,' and to this hour I have not forgotten the palpitations of heart which some of them cost me."

Unger goes on to state how his parents, especially Abigail Adams, were afraid that their son's mind would sway from his studies to other things. His experience in Sweden had definitely awoken some passion in the studious John Quincy. Unger later notes (at page 60):

After his experiences in Scandinavia and the long trip across the Atlantic, John Quincy was quick to note the characteristics of every attractive young lady that he met. "Miss Jarvis," he remarked in his diary, "is very fair, but Miss Ogden is a beauty...There are five or six young ladies in the family, only one is handsome." And on another afternoon John Quincy went to see the eighteen-year-old widow of the nearly seventy-year-old British officer Jacob Wheate. Lady Wheate, as he called her, "is one of the most reputed beauties in the town. I own I do not admire her so much as I expected before I saw her. She is like too many of the handsome ladies here: very affected."



Actually, in reconsidering all of the information about John Quincy's youth, it explains much of the personality and mannerisms he displayed later in life.