Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams: A Fully Realized and Complex Figure

There is a lot that could be said about Louisa Catherine Adams. She really did lead an "Extraordinary Life," as Louisa Thomas's book title claims. In the effort to keep moving this project forward, I will be offering some partially formed thoughts about Louisa Adams's life based on my notes, and in no particular order. But first, I want to praise Thomas's effort in writing this book. Louisa: The Extraordinary Life of Louisa Catherine Adams is a well-researched, beautifully written biography that presents not simply the wife of John Quincy Adams, but Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams as a fully realized human being in her own right. Thomas does not attempt to reconcile or explain away what to some may seem to be the incompatible characteristics of Louisa's life and personality. Instead, she presents Louisa as a complex, complicated, and contradictory character. The book feels a bit long and sometimes repetitive by the end, but overall gives us a well-rounded sense of Louisa's life and person.  

 

image from wikimedia commons

Just some of the notes I jotted down as I read: 

• Louisa Johnson lived a "decorative" childhood in which she was educated to become someone's wife, but she also developed a mind of her own because she was surrounded by family and friends, including her female teachers, who were smart and vocal. 
• Louisa's parents were not married until she was ten years old, which she may or may not have known about. Perhaps, if she knew something of her parents' past, it might have contributed to the uncertainty she often felt in her own engagement and marriage. 
• The letters she exchanged with John Quincy, especially during their long engagement, were full of passionate feelings both good and bad. Louisa suffered from terrible shame when her father went bankrupt just as she and John Quincy were set to wed, and in the end, she and John Quincy both chose each other – he gave her a clear out, and he would have been within his rights to leave her for the lack of a dowry. 
• After they had married and while John Quincy was serving as a foreign minister, he discouraged a public role for Louisa and yet still valued the ways in which she presented herself at court. His insistence that they live a financially modest, republican life at home, but maintain a luxurious life in court to keep up with other foreign ministers became something of a stressful balancing act for Louisa.
• When she and John Quincy left Europe for America -- her first time there, despite her father's American heritage -- Louisa struggled to meet the work ethic expected of an American white but of which she was wholly unaccustomed due to her European upbringing.  
• Louis was often separated from John Quincy and her children. Both she and John Quincy found these separations lonesome, weary, and uncertain.  Devastatingly, Louisa was not included in the decision -- made by John Quincy and Abigail -- to leave her children in the U.S. when she went with John Quincy to Russia.  Being separated for so long from her young boys was something that would haunt and anger Louisa for the rest of her life. 
• While in St. Petersburg, Louisa fund success at the Russian court, even though she thought the life exhausting.  But time in Russia was difficult for Louisa, especially dealing with the deaths of family members back in the U.S. and the loss of her daughter at just over a year old. 
• Louisa may not have been skilled at the domestic arts, but she proved herself capable while in St. Petersburg, helping John Quincy with business matters while he would travel, and especially in leaving Russia. Her trip across a continent rife with war and tensions, from St. Petersburg to Paris to meet John Quincy, traveling along with her young son and a servant or two, proved her to be beyond capable and brave. That she so often set aside these capabilities or was prevented from using them in her role as wife, illustrates the great contradiction of her personality and her life as a woman in a time when such lives were deliberately limited. 
• Social protocols in Washington were tiresome for Louisa. She caused a major stir in flouting the rules of visitation, and she often used illness as a chance to back out of duties and rest. 
• Louisa pretended not to be interested or involved in politics while in Washington, but in reality, she was essential to John Quincy's political success, especially because her social abilities made up for his lack.  
• While others criticized Elizabeth Monroe as too stately and not as openly social as previous First Ladies, Louisa admired her, had much in common with her, and maintained a similarly limited social schedule while in the President's Mansion. 
• Louisa was lonely and unhappy as First Lady. It did not help that John Quincy completely denied her any role in his work as president, even after she had proven herself capable of assisting in business in the past. Louisa both hated and encouraged John Quincy's potential political success and bid for a second presidential term. 
• Louisa was considerably happier after leaving the White House. She was especially happy and content when the family had left Washington completely. Stains upon her happiness included the death -- most likely suicide -- of her son George and the family's return to Washington when John Quincy became a Congressman. 
• Louisa lived a life of conflict and complexity, especially in terms of her thoughts on slavery and gender, which the last few chapters of the book expound upon.
• Like her mother-in-law, Abigail Adams, Louisa drew up her own will against legal statutes relating to gender at the time. 

Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams: What I Know Going In

A little. Having read a biography of Abigail Adams, I know that her daughter-in-law married her son while he was serving a government post abroad. Louisa Adams followed John Quincy Adams to various posts around Europe, including an extended time in Russia. Louisa Adams was not particularly happy in Russia, and Abigail Adams had no sympathetic ear for her grievances, believing that a woman should suffer all things without complaint.  

After reading the descriptive flap of my chosen biography of Louisa Adams, I also know that she was born in London to an American father and an English mother and that she and John Quincy Adams had a complicated marriage. A quick scan of Wikipedia confirms that she is the only other foreign-born First Lady beside our current First Lady, Melania Trump, and adds that Louisa Adams suffered from migraine headaches, fainting spells, and multiple miscarriages.  

The book I have chosen to teach me about the life of Louisa Adams is Louisa: The Extraordinary Life of Mrs. Adams by Louisa Thomas, the newest biography of the First Lady, published just last year.   

(Amazon)

James Monroe and His Beautiful, Courageous Bride

(Wikimedia Commons)

James Monroe is designated by Harlow Giles Unger as "America's Last Founding Father." I gather it is because he was the last sitting President who served in the Revolution and the last of a political generation that understood firsthand the struggles and debates that went into building the United States government. As a young man, he served and suffered injury in the Revolution. He was mentored in law and politics by Thomas Jefferson. While always meaning to commit himself to a lucrative law career, he devoted nearly his entire life to public service locally, nationally, and internationally. He sometimes struggled through scandal and hardship in his political posts, especially a post as a foreign minister in London and in the final years of his presidency when divisive party politics swelled. But he also helped orchestrate the Louisiana Purchase, de facto led the country through the War of 1812, and ruled over the Era of Good Feelings having unified the country politically and brought prosperity and peace (though sometimes tenuous until his Monroe Doctrine declaration).   

Young James Monroe, while an up-and-coming political bigwig, was awkward around the gentler sex, unable to attract young ladies because of his keen intellect and too-serious nature. That is until he met Elizabeth Kortright, who would go on to become his deeply devoted wife and First Lady. Elizabeth Kortright Monroe was different than previous First Ladies most notably because she was formally educated and thus attracted to Monroe's intellectual conversation and serious demeanor. She came from wealth and the city and married into the modest farm life of a sometimes lawyer, mostly financially struggling public servant. She also suffered from an often debilitating case of rheumatism, which forced her to severely limit the frequency and size of her entertaining and hostess duties in the President's Mansion. After a First Lady like Dolley Madison, who relished the role of hostess, it must have been an adjustment for the American public and social circles of Washington to have a less gregarious and socially welcoming First Lady. Most agreed that Elizabeth Monroe was a beautiful woman and an elegant and proper hostess, but some accused her of being too courtly and standoffish.   

Unger dismisses these attacks as the inaccurate descriptions of a jealous few who envied the First Lady's

(Wikimedia Commons)

refined and expensive taste, her beauty, and her refined manners and blames these attacks as contributing to Elizabeth Monroe's relative erasure from history. But I wonder if his praise of Elizabeth Monroe as "America's most beautiful and most courageous First Lady" (4) is somewhat overstated. Yes, she was beautiful but so have been many First ladies before and since. Martha Washington and Dolley Madison were both recognized and praised as true beauties and the lovely clothes with which they adorned themselves were purchased from personal fortunes. Elizabeth Monroe's penchant for exquisitely expensive French gowns and furniture, on the other hand, did nothing to alleviate the precarious financial situation of both her husband and the government he served, which could often not afford to pay him his due salary. Yes, Elizabeth Monroe was brave: she risked her life to save General Lafayette's wife from an unknown fate in a Parisian prison and she fulfilled her duties as a politician's wife and First Lady while suffering a chronic illness. But was she more courageous than First Ladies who came before? Martha Washington resided in Revolutionary War camps to be with her husband, and Dolley Madison risked ostracization by marrying outside her faith.   

Unger attributes Elizabeth Monroe's superlative courage to her willingness to swap a cosmopolitan life in New York for modest farm life and to brave the Atlantic crossing twice to live with her husband while he served abroad. But is it braver to leave wealth and urban life for a modest farm life (while also intermittently living lavishly in Paris, London, and the nation's capital) or to bravely step up from modest means into a more sophisticated world than one previously knew, as Dolley Madison and Abigail Adams did? Abigail Adams also accompanied her husband abroad and perhaps acted equally courageously in suffering long separations from her love when she chose not to accompany him. Furthermore, future First Lady Louisa Adams would accompany her young husband abroad in his ministry to Russia–a much more isolated an unfamiliar location than Paris or London. I sometimes wonder if the Monroes' relationship was more co-dependent than courageous. Why return to suffer the fog of London if you know it aggravates your health? Does burning your wife's correspondence in a fit of intense grief after her death suggest a deeper and more intense love than choosing to treasure and save those memories for the future? All it really does is contribute to your wife's erasure from history and means that we are unlikely to ever fully understand the true character of America's fifth First Lady.  

Side Note: I found Unger's book to be overly laudatory of both James and Elizabeth Monroe. It didn't help that he quite frequently committed the scholarly sin of attributing thoughts and feelings to a historical person without proper documentation to back up his claims. One excerpt as an example: "Elizabeth had learned to love the beautiful rolling country around Charlottesville, but she was lonely for her family and friends in New York. . .. Her eyes sparkled at the prospects of attending balls, receptions, dinners, and theater in America's grandest city [Philadelphia]." Nary a document or primary source quoted or cited in the entire paragraph. I understand wanting to add color and narrative flow to one's prose, but it is a pet peeve of mine for such ideas to be presented with little evidence presented to back them.

Elizabeth Kortright Monroe: What I Know Going In

Nothing. I really only know that there is no full biography written of her, which apparently is at least partly because she is another whose correspondence was burned at death. I know that there is a short, 35-page booklet written about her and that that is the longest piece of writing ever produced focused specifically on Elizabeth Monroe. I know this booklet exists from a Google search; I learned it was the only real biography of her life from a fellow First-Ladies blog, "Remember the Ladies": http://rachelschmoyer.blogspot.com/. I stopped reading after learning that the blogger acquired the booklet from the gift shop at Ash-Lawn Highlands, the Monroes' home, for $4. Since I have set up a rule to not spend money to complete this project, I will not be acquiring this booklet.   

Instead, I have chosen to learn about the Monroe administration by reading Harlow Giles Unger's The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation's Call to Greatness.  

Image from Amazon

There are many pages referencing Elizabeth Kortright Monroe in the index, so hopefully I will gain some education on her life as I learn about Monroe the President. I'll definitely learn a lot by reading the book, since all I really know about James Monroe is that he lived in Virginia, not far from Jefferson and Madison, and that he is largely remembered for what we call the Monroe Doctrine, which, if I remember correctly, basically said that the United States would not tolerate further European colonization of the Americas.

Dolley Madison: Presidentress and National Heroine

The remainder of Richard N. Côté's biography of Dolley Madison was generally what I expected it to be. Dolley becomes First Lady, or since that term was not yet popular, "Presidentress," and wins over the political and social society of Washington, D.C., with her exemplary hostess skills. Even after the British burned the White House in 1814 – and Dolley bravely stayed as long as she could, saving important state documents and the portrait of Washington – Dolley worked quickly to transform their new temporary residence into a space appropriate for entertaining. After her husband's presidential terms had ended and they moved back to Montpelier, Dolley missed the entertaining but learned to appreciate the peace and quiet, while filling the residence with frequent, often long-term, guests. Dolley Madison remained a well-loved figure in the national conscious her entire life and beyond. In 1849, at the ripe old age of eighty, she was an honored guest at a "fashionable levee" of President James K. Polk and was a special guest at many of Washington's biggest events throughout her final years. 

Dolley Madison (second from right) with President James K. Polk and others in 1846 or 1847.  Photo taken from: http://potus-geeks.livejournal.com/369826.html

Unfortunately, Dolley's return to Washington after her husband's death was because of sad circumstances surrounding her son Payne and the family finances. Payne was Dolley Payne Madison's only surviving child (from her first marriage) and her blind love for him contributed to his living a less-than-productive adult life that left the Madison family to pick up the pieces behind him. Bailing out of those debts left Dolley in severe financial straits after Madison's death. She necessarily sold Montpelier and moved back to Washington where she spent much of her final years trying to convince publishers to purchase her husband's papers, thereby protecting his legacy. She failed to see their publication in her lifetime and the money that did come with their eventual sale was not nearly enough to cover her debts. She ended up selling personal possessions of value and unfortunately saw little help from people who otherwise revered her: "In her last years, few of those who had the money or positions that provided them with the greatest ability to ease her life did anything to help her. These were people who had flocked to her drawing rooms and partaken of her hospitality and generosity. Now they turned their backs" (354).   

Briefly, I have to say that Côté's biography of Madison is one of the best I've read so far. It presented a relatively swift moving story that provided both context and personal details without reading like merely a narration of Madison's letters (which is how the biography of Abigail Adams read like at times). With such a massive collection of sources to work with, that is no easy feat. While I might have wanted more about the intimate relationship of Dolley and James and how Dolley might have influenced James Madison in a political sense, I would not hesitate to recommend the book.