On the Fourth of July, 1826, ninety-year-old President John Adams passed away, seated in the wing chair of his office upstairs at his home, Peacefield.
“Jefferson still lives,” were his last words. But, unknown to Adams, the younger Jefferson had also passed away that morning.
The day was the 50th anniversary of the first reading of the Declaration of Independence, the nation’s Jubilee. The deaths of these two seminal leaders on such an occasion seemed a portentous coincidence.
The Quote Behind It All
But at the height of his action and vitality, in 1780, Adams was in Paris, the sole American minister charged with negotiating peace, bent on helping the revolutionary cause. He and his wife, Abigail, are renowned for their copious and loving correspondence, and it is a quote from one of his letters to his wife that framed our school year just ended.
It is how we began our first school morning and closed our last day. And in between we memorized and discussed and generally mulled over Adams’ thoughtful quote.
We being my youngest daughter, last homeschooled offspring of six, and I.
‘I Must Study Politicks and War …’
May 20, 1780, Adams writes that he has enjoyed strolling in Paris’ Tuileries Gardens, and they are full of marvelous statuary, that would be his delight to describe to his wife, but that he does not have time. He must concentrate on the negotiations and war strategy at hand.
I could fill volumes with Descriptions of Temples and Palaces, Paintings, Scultpures, Tapestry, Porcelaine, &c. &c. &c.—if I could have time. But I could not do this without neglecting my duty. The Science of Government it is my duty to study, more than all other Sciences: the Art of Legislation and Administration and Negotiation, ought to take the Place, indeed to exclude in a manner all other Arts.
Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, post 12 May 1780 [electronic edition]. Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive. Massachusetts Historical Society.
Adams goes on to say, and this is the part we memorized:
I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study (Painting and Poetry) Mathematicks and Philosophy.
My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.
(erasure in the original)
The Order of Things
It’s interesting that Adams changed his mind mid-sentence and pushed poor old painting and poetry back a generation.
This quote fascinates and informs me.
The layered story of generations, from war to established growth, to the finesse and privilege of the arts.
A Story Closer to Home
My father-in-law, Robert, lived and was raised in Geffken’s Bar in Canarsie, New York. The bar that would later feature as part of The Goodfellas story—the place where the heist was planned—and would go on to be mob-owned after my father-in-law’s widowed mother was given an offer to sell that she could not refuse.
As a child, he wondered what he’d have to do to escape that life. He did not want to follow all the males in his family whose alcohol-related deaths came early.
He chose education as his escape route. He went on the study at NYU as an undergrad, graduate, and Ph.D. student of metallurgy. He then worked for IBM, from the 1970s until retirement, and was responsible for many advances in the microchip industry that oversaw the demise of yes, the typewriter that I so love.
I admire my father-in-law’s tenacity and faithfulness in raising his young family of five kids while doing all the above. His was the generation that won a sort of war, that first layer, establishing a freedom on which the kids could build. Isn’t this partly the American story for which John Adams fought?
That my husband got an English Lit degree (and, traveling to England to study, met a young English woman longing to go to the US) did not go over so well with one who’d clawed their way out of the bar. How ‘useless’ are the humanities?
But as Adams foresaw, the war is won for the freedom that follows.
My husband, the poet, is now also the CPA who learned the prosaic art of forging the next layer but keeps a hand on his pen. And whose strength as an accountant rests on his ability to communicate.
“I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy.
My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy ... in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.”
I wanted to press home to my daughter—whose love of Latin and whose poetry and writing aspirations are being honed in that hard-won third generation—that the space is hers to take, the freedom hers to enjoy to the full.
We also considered the preeminence of the arts. They are not an add-on. They could be said to be the pinnacle and the point of all that struggle. I passionately believe that the humanities are essential. A practical education or one in the humanities? Are the humanities in fact the ultimate education? Plenty to discuss, spurred on by this scribbled thought from Adams in the midst of war negotiations.
A Visit to the John Adams’ National Historic Park
During the year, we of course visited Adams’ home, sketchbooks in hand, as well.
John Adams’ birthplace, Quincy, Massachusetts
Next door to John Adams’ birthplace is the house he lived in as an adult and the birthplace of his son John Quincy Adams. The humble birthplaces of the second and sixth Presidents of the United States.
John Adams practiced law from his house. Here, his desk, where in 1780 he drafted the Massachusetts Constitution, the world’s oldest functioning written constitution and on which was based the 1787 Constitution of the United States.
A mile-and-a-half from the birthplaces, the later home of both Presidents, known as Peacefield.
My favorite part of the Adams’ homestead: the separate stone library. Inside two stories of books with a gallery around the upper floor reached by stairs. Winged armchairs, a fireplace. One can only dream …
The wide shelter of the main house porch, where you wait for the tour to begin. A ticket gets you admission to a timed tour of all three houses.
(Click to enlarge images below)
We have been sketching our way around the historic sites of Eastern Massachusetts. Leaves from the yellowwood tree planted in 1829 by John Quincy Adams to commemorate the death by drowning of his son that year.
My daughter photographed me sketching … with the phone camera on food mode. Ha ha.
The winged chair in the far corner is where John Adams breathed his last, July 4, 1826, on the nations’ fiftieth anniversary.
The gardens as laid out by Abigail Adams, box hedges, dahlias, roses, and more.
The library floor (center) contains a deliberate reversal. The Arab mason did not want to create something perfect, the prerogative of Allah.
Sketch of Peacefield by Adams’ granddaughter, Abigail Adams Smith, around 1820, when the elderly statesman was in his 80s. Abigail Adams Smith lived in the Old House from 1818 to 1829. The Stone Library, with its 12,000 volumes, was not built until 1873 by a later generation concerned with the fire hazard of the wooden home. The family’s great treasure, they considered, was their books.
Learn More
David McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, John Adams
Peruse another library associated with John Adams—the Boston Public Library, Copley Square, is the only public library in the US that is also a Presidential Library. Visit the Special Collections department (glass elevator near the Boylston Street entrance, up to 3U) to see over 3,000 volumes collected by Adams in his lifetime. Or browse the collection online: John Adams Library at the Boston Public Library. Adams’ books contain a rare and rather entertaining amount of annotation.
John Adams’ schoolboy copy of Cicero that he carried in his pocket and took out while plowing his father’s fields in Quincy, Massachusetts
A Typewriter Story?
And is there a typewriter connection in all this? Of course there is!
Adams’ biographer, David McCullough, is well known for his use of a Royal KMM, the enormous desktop heft of American engineering that he used for all the manuscripts in his writing career. My daughter and I happened to see it when McCullough’s machine was in for repair at Cambridge Typewriter.
Sadly, David McCullough passed away last summer, just a few weeks before our visit to the Adams National Historic Park. To honor his memory, I thought it was time to buy a KMM of similar vintage and see what that was all about. I was especially encouraged by Joe Van Cleave’s terrific review of the KMM.
I did indeed find a fabulous machine—for sale on Facebook Marketplace for just $20 in Quincy, Massachusetts—a short walk from Adams’ birthplace. Perfect.
All spruced up and clean, it is now one of my go-to writing machines. More on that machine in another post. Stay tuned, as they say.
What is Your Need at the Moment?
In which generation do you dwell and what is your need at the moment?
For basic warfare to cease? The next layer of needs to be met? Or are you in the privileged position of order and the space to create?
I understand the chaos of the former and seasons of need. And, despite current relative abundance, I still sometimes manage to stymie myself and squander the potential of now.
But this quote from John Adams dashed off to his wife amid the stress of war and an attempt to wrangle peace, helps me appreciate the freedom to write, create, and make the most of such a hard-won privilege.
Is it time for you to step out and enjoy your own hard-won space?
To take a step forward in whichever layer you find yourself is an act of courage to be applauded.
Thanks for reading
And thanks to CJ Palmisano for kicking around the ideas in this post and encouraging me to finish!