Adams: An American Dynasty by Francis Russell

Author:Francis Russell [Francis Russell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: eISBN 1-59176-057-7
Publisher: ibooks, Inc.

6

Charles Francis Adams

VOICE OF HONOR

THE CHILD’S first memories were of St. Petersburg, that gra­cious city of imperial vistas set so inappropriately yet so mag­ically in northern Russia. Within the court and diplomatic circles in which his parents moved, everyone spoke French, and this became Charles Francis Adams’s first language, the one he would always privately prefer. When his mother spoke to him in English, he answered her in French. In this polyglot cosmopolitan world he also learned German and Russian. It was a world far removed from the brick provinciality of Boston, the homeliness of Quincy. Little Charlie took it for granted that while walking with his father, John Quincy Adams, they might stop to chat with the Czar or some ambassador. At the elaborate children’s parties and dress balls to which he was invited he met the children of Europe’s nobility. He was just over two when his mother took him to a ball at the Duke of Vicenza’s dressed as an Indian chief. The diminutive Noble Savage in his feathered headdress was much applauded, and somewhat to his bewilderment was chosen to lead out a Miss Vlodeck in opening the ball.

Theaters and puppet shows as well as parties occupied the little boy’s gayer hours. His father tutored him daily, reading to him in French and English, often from the Bible. At six he went to a school for the children of diplomats where he improved his Rus­sian. Languages came easily to him, numbers less so. When, after six years in Russia, his father was sent on to England, Charlie spent two years at an English boarding school, its rigors somewhat mit­igated by his being allowed to spend one or two days a week at home. Because of his slow progress in arithmetic he was consid­ered dull, though his disappointed father thought he had aptitude enough for learning what took his fancy. America was a foreign land to him when he arrived in Quincy in 1817 on his tenth birthday. He was distressed when after three weeks his parents left for Washington without him, nor did he take to the idea of boarding in Boston and attending the Boston Latin School with John. At first he tried to stay in Quincy by pretending he had dysentery, but the sight of his grandmother’s bottles of home remedies made him recover at once. Weekends, at least, he and John could spend with their grandparents, who thought them both good boys and a great comfort. Yet even there Uncle Tom’s drinking often marred the atmosphere. During the Christmas vacation the boys visited their parents in Washington, and John Quincy took the occasion to test their progress in Greek and Latin. The results were less than satisfying. He recorded gloomily in his diary that in all likelihood none of his children would ever answer his hopes.

When John entered Harvard in 1819, his father took the thirteen-year-old Charlie back to Washington. The unfinished Cap­ital was, to say the least, an inelegant contrast to St. Petersburg, but Charlie was much happier there than in Boston.

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