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Browsing: Diary of Charles Francis Adams, Volume 1
Friday May 28th. IX:10.
Docno: DCA01d174
Date: 1824-05-28
Up very late this morning, so that the morning passed rapidly. I finished Mrs. Opie and read the small and short productions of Smollett1 in Aikin’s Collection. The commencement of the Ode to
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Independence is beautiful and the whole is not moderate poetry by any means.
The young lady who came here yesterday expected her brother to carry her back to Boston. He accordingly came and spent all the afternoon. Having accidentally fallen into his company, I was detained by him all the afternoon. After some conversation concerning our College institutions in which he made many inquiries and I had to tell him all the old story of the last year’s rebellion2 he compelled me in civility to walk with him to the top of the hill opposite to the house—this was a task not the most relishing to me but I did it and he talked very wisely for some time concerning the view while the day was as misty as it conveniently might be with a little sprinkling of rain. It was most excessively hot withal so that I had given up walking after attempting it in the morning but civility conquers all things.
Returning I accompanied him to the library where he professed to show a great deal of knowledge, and made some of the most awkward blunders I ever heard. He wanted to know if the Koran was not a religious book of the Jews, and if it was not very rare; who was the author of the Federalist and if that was not very uncommon; he talked of Lytteltons3 Essays instead of his Henry 2d. and made many similar mistakes in about ten minutes, making comments upon all these withal. By this I soon set him down for a shallow fellow with some assurance. I was not displeased with him as he was not impertinent and was only desirous to conceal ignorance and expose all the knowledge which he possessed. This certainly was but small whether by his own fault or that of others, [and] decides his character. I then walked in the garden with him and so got rid of him. I then went to the Office4 to write my Journal but was unable as my Uncle was in a talking humour being under the influence of this fire which he perpetually takes. We talked Politics until tea was announced when I was unexpectedly announced into a large tea room, full of company. Dressed as I was, I began to feel foolishly, but immediately recollecting it was Quincy, I put on my usual brass. Mr. Marston and family were here but went off at nine. So did Cooper and sister. I forgot to mention that Thomas went to Boston and brought his aunt and cousin Mrs. and Miss Harrod5 to spend a few days. Some other invited young ladies had a little dance on the carpet. I went to bed early. XI.
2. Intermittently there had heen student riots at Harvard, but the “Great Rebellion” of 1823 revealed both instructional and disciplinary inadequacies. The immediate cause of the riot—an “obedient black” informed on one of the “high fellows”—was unimportant; the significant fact was that the “uncom•
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monly rowdy” class of 1823 was so little inspired by the curriculum that it chose to leave college rather than see its hero dismissed and the informant rewarded. Forty-three of the rebels were expelled (including JA2, whose father pleaded with the faculty for leniency), and only generations later were twenty-five of them granted A.B. degrees as of 1823. See Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard
, p. 230–231. For the later story of reform at Harvard, see entry for 17 May, and note, above.
4. The “Office” at the Adams homestead meant the rambling frame structure close behind the family residence. This building is partly visible in some of the early views of the Old House and was used for many purposes. It was the farm office; it was at times occupied by tenants and caretakers; and for nearly a century one or more of its upper rooms held most of the immense accumulations of the Adamses’ books. At length in 1869 CFA had it torn down to make room for an extension of the kitchen of the main house and to improve the site of the Stone Library that he built soon afterward.
Cite web page as: Founding Families: Digital Editions of the Papers of the Winthrops and the Adamses, ed.C. James Taylor. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2007.
http://www.masshist.org/ff/
http://www.masshist.org/ff/