Nothing could be more graphic than the diary which she kept on this voyage. It consumed three months. Summer merged into winter before the little wave-and-wind-beaten bark touched that then inhospitable shore. The first American Minister to Russia, Mr. Adams lived in St. Petersburg for six years, “poor, studious, ambitious and secluded.” Happily for him, his wife possessed mental and spiritual resources, which lifted her above all dependence on surface or conventional attention from the world, and made her in every respect the meet companion of a scholar and patriot.
In the wake of furious war, through storm and snow-drifts, through a country ravaged by passion and strife, she traveled alone, with her only child, from St. Petersburg to Paris, whither she went to meet her husband. Here she witnessed the storm of delight which greeted Napoleon on his return from Elba. Mr. Adams was appointed Minister to the Court of St. James, and after a separation of six years Mrs. Adams was re-united to her children.
In 1817 Mr. Monroe, on his accession to the Presidency, immediately appointed John Quincy Adams Secretary of State, when Mrs. Adams returned with him to Washington. For eight years she was the elegant successor of Mrs. Madison, who filled the same position with so much distinction. No one was excluded from her house on account of political hostility—all sectional bitterness and party strife were banished from her drawing-rooms.
As the wife of the Secretary of State, Mrs. Adams gave a famous ball, whose fame still lives in Washington. “Mrs. Adams’s Ball” lives in history as well as in the memories of a few still living. It was given January 8th, 1824, in commemoration of General Jackson’s victory at New Orleans. It was announced in advance by the newspapers, and on the morning before its occurrence its splendor was anticipated and celebrated by the following lines written by Mr. John Agg, who has passed into oblivion, although his early poems in his native England were said to have been taken for Byron’s, and although he was one of the first of newspaper correspondents and the first short-hand reporter ever in Washington.
The ladies referred to in the following lines were among the most celebrated beauties of their day, many of whose descendants still live in Washington.
MRS. ADAMS’S BALL.
[From the Washington Republican, Jan. 8th, 1824.]
Wend you with the world to-night?
Brown and fair, and wise and witty,
Eyes that float in seas of light,