"Poor little John[850] is cutting teeth & of course is sick. He appeared to know me as soon as he saw me. He would not come to me, but he kept his eyes fixed on me as on a person he had some imperfect recollection of. I expect he has been taught to look at the picture & had some confused idea of a likeness. He is small & weakly but by no means an ugly child. If as I hope we have the happiness to raise him I trust he will do as well as the rest. Poor little fellow, the present hot weather is hard on him cutting teeth, but great care is taken of him & I hope he will do well.
"I hear nothing from you my dearest Polly but I will cherish the hope that you are getting better & will indulge myself with expecting the happiness of seeing you in October quite yourself. Remember my love to give me this pleasure you have only to take the cold bath, to use a great deal of exercise, to sleep tranquilly & to stay in cheerful company. I am sure you will do everything which can contribute to give you back to yourself & me. This hot weather must be very distressing to you—it is to everybody—but it will soon be colder. Let me know in time everything relative to your coming down. Farewell my dearest Polly. I am your ever affectionate
"J. Marshall."[851]
On taking up his private business, Marshall found himself hard-pressed for money. Payments for the Fairfax estate were overdue and he had no other resources with which to meet them but the money due him upon his French mission. "The disarrangement," he writes to the Secretary of State, "produc'd by my absence and the dispersion of my family oblige me to make either sales which I do not wish or to delay payments of money which I ought not to delay, unless I can receive from the treasury. This state of things obliges me to apply to you and to ask whether you can furnish me either with an order from the Secretary of the Treasury on Colo. Carrington or with your request to him to advance money to me. The one or the other will be sufficient."[852]
Pickering writes Marshall that Carrington can safely advance him the needed cash. "I will lose no time to place the balance in your hands,"[853] says Pickering, upon the receipt of Marshall's statement of his account with the Government.
The total amount paid Marshall for his eleven months' absence upon the French mission was $19,963.97,[854] which, allowing five thousand dollars for his expenses—a generous estimate—was considerably more than three times as much as Marshall's annual income from his law practice. It was an immense sum, considering the compensation of public officials at that period—not much less than the annual salaries of the President and his entire Cabinet; more than the total amount annually paid to the justices of the Supreme Court. Thus, for the time being, the Fairfax estate was saved.
It was still necessary, however, if he, his brother, and brother-in-law, were to discharge the remaining payments, that Marshall should give himself to the business of making money—to work much harder than ever he had done before and than his natural inclinations prompted. Therefore, no more of unremunerative public life for him—no more waste of time in the Legislature. There never could, of course, come another such "God-send," to use Marshall's phrase as reported by Jefferson,[855] as the French mission; and few public offices, National or State, yielded so much as he could make in the practice of his profession. Thus financial necessity and his own desire settled Marshall in the resolve, which he believed nothing ever could shake, to give the remainder of his days to his personal and private business. But Fate had her own plans for John Marshall and again overruled what he believed to be his fixed and unalterable purpose.
FOOTNOTES:
[741] See summary in McMaster, ii, 374.
[742] Six copies of the dispatches of the American envoys to the Secretary of State were sent by as many ships, so that at least one of them might reach its destination.