A month passed without further change, until September 5 Jackson landed at Annapolis, whence he reached Washington September 8. He came with his wife—a fashionable Prussian baroness with a toilette—and young children, for whose health a Washington September was ill suited; he came too with a carriage and liveries, coachmen and servants, and the outfit of a long residence, as though neither he nor Canning doubted his welcome.
Francis James Jackson had many good qualities, and was on the whole the only English minister of his time so severely treated by the American government as to warrant almost a feeling of sympathy. He was probably suffering from some organic disease which made his temper irritable, while his instructions were such as to leave him no room to show his best capacities in his profession. In ordinary times a man of his experience, intelligence, and marked character might have succeeded in winning at Washington a name for ability and straightforwardness; but he was ill fitted for the special task he had undertaken, and had no clear idea of the dangers to which he was exposed. Gallatin expressed the feeling of the Administration when he advised coming at once to the point with Jackson, and bringing his negotiation to an immediate close. Madison could not have wished to repeat his experience with Rose, or to allow a British minister to reside at Washington for the sole purpose of dividing American counsels and intriguing with Senator Pickering. Had Jackson been quick in his perceptions, he would have seen early that nothing but mortification could be in store for him; but he had the dogged courage and self-confidence of his time, and undertook to deal single-handed with a government and people he did not trouble himself to understand.
The President was not in Washington when the British minister drove into that “famous city,” as he called it, which “resembles more nearly Hampstead Heath than any other place I ever saw.”[87] Robert Smith apologized for the incivility of leaving him without the usual public recognition, and explained that the risk of fever and the fatigue of four days’ journey made the President extremely unwilling to return before October 1, the day fixed for Jackson’s reception. Indirectly Smith suggested that Jackson might visit the President at Montpelier, or even begin negotiation before being officially received; but the minister replied that he would cheerfully wait. Gallatin wrote to the President, September 11,—
“I do not think that there is any necessity to hurry yourself beyond your convenience in returning here. It will be as well the 10th as the 1st of October, for I am sure, although I have not seen Mr. Jackson and can judge only from what has passed between him and Mr. Smith, that he has nothing to say of importance, or pleasant.”[88]
Madison replied, proposing to set out for Washington about the 29th, but agreeing with Gallatin that in view of “Jackson’s apparent patience and reserve,” his disclosures “would not be either operative or agreeable.”[89]
Whether Jackson showed patience or activity, he could not avoid giving offence; and perhaps he did wisely to gain all the time he could, even if he gained nothing else. Unlike some of his predecessors, he understood how to make the best of his situation. He found amusement for a month of idleness, even though the month was September and the place was Washington. He took the house which Merry and Erskine had occupied,—a house that stood amid fields looking over Rock Creek to Georgetown:
“Erskine had let it go to such a state of ruin and dirt that it will be several weeks before we can attempt to move into it. A Scotchman with an American wife who would be a fine lady, are not the best people to succeed on such an occasion.
“It is but justice to say that I have met with nothing but the utmost civility, and with none of those hardships and difficulties of which the Merrys so bitterly complained. The travelling is not worse than much that I have met with before in my life, and the accommodations are better than many I have thought supportable. The expense is about the same as in England, and must be considered most exorbitant when the inferiority of their arrangements to ours and the greater cheapness of provisions are taken into account.”[90]
As the season advanced, Jackson began to enjoy his autumn picnic on the heath of Washington. He had an eye for the details which gave interest to travel. “I put up a covey of partridge,” he wrote October 7, “about three hundred yards from the House of Congress, yclept the Capitol.” He had the merit of being first to discover what few men of his time had the taste to feel,—that Washington was beautiful:—
“I have procured two very good saddle-horses, and Elizabeth and I have been riding in all directions round this place whenever the weather has been cool enough. The country has a beautifully picturesque appearance, and I have nowhere seen finer scenery than is composed by the Potomac and the woods and hills about it; yet it has a wild and desolate air from being so scantily and rudely cultivated, and from the want of population.... So you see we are not fallen into a wilderness,—so far from it that I am surprised no one should before have mentioned the great beauty of the neighborhood. The natives trouble themselves but little about it; their thoughts are chiefly of tobacco, flour, shingles, and the news of the day. The Merrys, I suppose, never got a mile out of Washington, except on their way to Philadelphia.”