Chapter 5

[Alexander]

Chapter 5 discussion is open! Apologies for the delay in creating this. Discussion questions will be posted later in the week!

[Alexander]

So, I clearly didn't come up with questions this time. The holidays got the better of me. I'm kicking off the discussion with my thoughts from the chapter.

I think my favorite image from this chapter is Adams writing on his hands and knees while sailing to France again. I'm just picturing this man madly scribbling, trying desperately to keep ink from spilling while mumbling "I must write in my diary!"

I also found it interesting how quickly Adams does a complete 180 on his feelings for the Dutch. His description of how wonderful, hard-working, and industrious changes completely to be viewed as "avarice and stinginess."

When Adams is taken aback by most Dutch citizens having little knowledge of America, I had to chuckle a bit and think how familiar that sentiment is today.

Is anyone else thinking about what Hamilton was doing as Adams' events transpired?

[Patti]

I'm finally caught up! Just a few random thoughts here.

A picture is emerging for me of a multi-faceted and strong personage who was remarkable in so many ways -- he was undeniably an intellectual, a family man whose devotion to his wife was admirable, an American patriot whose commitment to the cause never wavered despite seemingly unsurmountable setbacks at every turn, a man of action who worked tirelessly to bring about the America that he and our other Founders envisioned. And for these qualities I truly admire and appreciate him.

Yet I just can't really come around to liking him, and there are (to my mind) so many little things that foreshadow negative traits that I associate with him when he is older.

One passage (and I'm sorry for being lazy and not looking it up and citing it) tells us that he formed opinions about people based on what he saw in their faces... and I suppose there's some validity to that, but not to the extent he seems to have taken it. There's also that intractability, that obstinacy that many noticed and commented on (I tended in particular to agree with the opinions of the Comte de Vergennes: "His obstinacy...will cause him to foment a thousand unfortunate incidents...") which probably only became more pronounced with age.

But perhaps it's not really fair of me to project at this point.

It occurred to me also how the fate of the Revolution and the ultimate outcomes were so often just a hairbreadth away from falling totally apart, and just how miraculous it was that they succeeded in bringing about the nation in which we live today. So much intrigue on all fronts, from Congress to the European courts!

Other thoughts: how easily Adams adapted to life in France! I would think that life among the upper circles of the French upper class would have seemed like being on another planet to him. Yet he immediately accepted and absorbed and seemed to appreciate the finer things he encountered -- in fact, I did not expect him to be so taken with the glittery life of Paris. (He tried to disguise that a little in his letters home later? And of course, started changing his mind a little later as well....yet he sees the importance of keeping up a relatively comparable appearance of elegance while he is a diplomat-- particularly in the lodgings, etc., in Holland -- the house which became our first embassy, etc.)

I recall now my favorite little anecdote from around the time he arrived in Paris and was beginning to make the social rounds. "At a dinner in his honor a beautiful young woman seated beside him had opened with a question Adams found shocking..." She noted his name was the same as the "first man" and goes on to say, "I never could understand how the first couple found out the art of lying together?" Adams thought he came off well in his answer... citing an electric or magnetic power, "by which when a pair approached within striking distance they flew together...like two objects in an electrical experiment." Hmmm. Okay, John. "Well," she retorted, "I know not how it was, but this I know, it is a very happy shock." (Baahaha!)

So I guess he had a pretty worldly side, too. One he sort of tried to mute a little in his letters home...?

I enjoyed reading about the young John Quincy (and how he would someday... blow us all away?) and about the more delicate Charles, who I guess did become a tragic figure later on.

One trait of Adams's which I identified with a bit was his tendency to go off the grid a bit (at least with family) when he was despondent or depressed because of things not going as they should. There was that period in Holland when things looked really grim and he didn't write Abigail for a while. I can relate...

Finally (because once more my logorrhea is obviously setting in -- a Hamiltonian trait, although I do not write nearly so elegantly), I did want to quote one passage Adams wrote to Abigail in a letter in which he expresses his "conflict between the appeal of the arts [in Paris] and the sense that they were the product of a luxury-loving (and thus corrupt) foreign society played heavily on his mind..."(McCullough) (Side note: This sort of made me think of his later attitude toward a certain American rival!)

The paragraph in the letter referenced here which really spoke to me was the following:

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agricultural in order to give their children a right to study paintings, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."

Wow. As a musician and a teacher of humanities, that REALLY spoke to me, and I admired him for that. And I forgave him a lot... Well, I've forgiven him for a while.

...for a while because.... yes, Alexander... I was thinking EVERY MOMENT about what Hamilton was doing during these events, from his drudging away as aide de camp, his marriage, his falling out with GW, to Yorktown, and even John Laurens's death.

And thinking about how fate will bring these two together in the years to come...

OK, enough. I see y'all rolling your eyes. But I'm out.

And even though I'm really warming up to this read, I'm going to go read something else more comfortable for a little while.