Browsing: Diary of John Adams, Volume 2

1. In the MS a single blank leaf separates the present entry and the next, which is dated 27 July 1780, the day on which JA set out from Paris with JQA and CA for Amsterdam. The Adams party had arrived in Paris from Bordeaux in the evening of 9 February. (Dana's Journal, 1779–1780, MHi, furnishes details on the last leg of their long journey; JQA kept no diary between 31 Jan. and 25 July 1780.) In Paris they stopped at the Hotel de Valois in the Rue de Richelieu, though from entries recording payments of rent in the personal accounts that follow it appears that they took a separate house attached to the hotel. This remained JA's headquarters until he left Paris in July. JQA, CA, and young Johonnot were placed in a pension academy in Passy conducted by one Pechigny, to whom payments are also recorded in the accounts that follow. Unsatisfactory as they may be in lieu of a regularly kept diary, the accounts tell us a good deal about JA's daily activities, especially his book buying. But for his attempts to discharge his public mission and to be otherwise useful, one must turn to his Autobiography (which does not, however, go beyond March) and to his correspondence. There one may see with what assiduity he read the news from all quarters of Europe and reported it to Congress. Late in May he told a friend in Philadelphia: “I have written more to Congress, since my Arrival in Paris, than they ever received from Europe put it all together since the Revolution [began]” (to Elbridge Gerry, 23 May, CtY). This may be literally true. He filled one letterbook after another; for weeks on end he wrote almost daily dispatches, on some days addressing two, three, and even four letters to Samuel Huntington, filling them with documents copied in extenso from French, British, and Dutch newspapers. Prevented by Vergennes from publicly announcing any part of his mission until the end of March, JA undertook to improve both his own time and European opinion of the American cause by concocting paragraphs and articles for publication in whatever journals would print them. The elder Genet had discontinued his Affaires de I'Angleterre et de l'Amerique (see note on entry of 3 March 1779, above), but he had ready access to the new political supplement of the venerable Mercure de France, which served as a continuation of the Affaires, and for several months JA happily fed American propaganda to it. One of his contributions, explaining and defending Congress' recent fiscal measures, had momentous {p. 435} effects, altering the coolness with which Vergennes had viewed JA for some time into anger and hostility, complicating JA's relations with Franklin, and rendering his position in Paris highly uncomfortable. The story is too long to tell here, but it is well summarized by CFA in JA's Works , 1:314 ff., see also the relevant documents in same, 7:188–203, 211–214; Wharton, ed., Dipl. Corr. Amer. Rev. , 3:827, 844; 4:18–19.

1. From Lb/JA/34 (Adams Papers, Microfilms, Reel No. 122), a folio ledger with a trade card inside the front cover reading: “A la Tête Noire, Furgault, {p. 441} Marchand de Papiers, A I'entrée de la rue de Richelieu, près des QuinzeVingts,... à Paris.” Following eight pages of accounts, which are at first in Thaxter's hand, including the caption, and afterward in both JA's and Thaxter's hands, the volume contains copies of JA's letters of a much later period, May 1814 — Nov. 1816.

2. This entry indicates that the exchange rate between the Spanish dollar and the French livre tournois was one to five, at least for purposes of common reckoning.

3. By Abbé Raynal; see Diary entry of 2 Feb. 1779 and note there.

4. Jacob Nicolas Moreau, Principes de morale, de politique et de droit public ... ou discours sur I'histoire de France, Paris, 1777–1779; 9 vols. ( Catalogue of JA's Library ).

5. Atlas amériquain septentrional contenant les détails des différentes provinces, de ce vaste continent ..., Paris, 1778. Pilote américain ..., Paris, 1779; 2 vols. in 1. Both of these collections were French reissues of English works and were published by Lerouge, under whose name they are entered in Catalogue of JA's Library .

6. This entry records JA's acquisition of two of the major works of French scholarship of the era. The first was Descriptions des arts et métiers, faites ou approuvées par Messieurs de l'Academic royale des sciences, Paris, 1761–1788; 113 cahiers, folio. JA's set, bound in 18 vols., was nearly but not quite complete, only a few parts being published after 1779. He presented it to Harvard College on 5 June 1789, and it is now in the Houghton Library. See Arthur H. Cole and George B. Watts, The Handicrafts of France as Recorded in the Descriptions des Arts et Metiers 1761–1788, Boston, 1952, for a history and appraisal of this work and a record of sets in American libraries. The second work was the Diderot-d'Alembert Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des metiers, par une société de gens de lettres, 3d edn., Geneva, &c., 1778–1779, of which JA's nearly complete set in 38 vols. survives among his books in the Boston Public Library ( Catalogue of JA's Library , p. 74); see also Harvard Library Bull., 9:235 (Spring 1955).

7. The Catalogue of JA's Library lists Les verbes francois ... en forme de dic tionnaire, by Demarville, London, 1773, but only a later edition of Thomas Nugent, The New Pocket Dictionary of the French and English Languages ..., London, 1781.

8. The Catalogue of JA's Library lists two sets of Mably, Le droit public de l'Europe ..., the first published at Amsterdam in 2 vols., 1748, the second at Geneva in 3 vols., 1776. On Mably see Diary entry of 29 May 1778, above, and note there.

9. Traduction complette de Tacite, Paris, 1777–1779; 7 vols.; Latin and French texts ( Catalogue of JA's Library).

10. Robert Estienne, Thesaurus linguae latinae in IV tomos divisus ..., Basel, 1740–1743; 4 vols., folio ( Catalogue of JA's Library ).

11. For Domat see Diary entry of 24 June 1779, above, and note 3 there. For the Voyage pittoresque de Paris and Voyage pittoresque des environs de Paris, frequently cited in notes above, see Catalogue of JA's Library , p. 73.

12. Aguesseau and Cochin were legal writers; see Catalogue of JA's Library , p. 8–9, 54. The Dictionnaire raisonné universel d'histoire naturelle, Paris, 1775, in 6 vols., was by Valmont de Bomare (same, p. 253).

13. Probably J. A. Piganiol de La Force, Nouveau voyage de France; avec un itinéraire, et des cartes ..., nouv. édn., Paris, 1780 ( Catalogue of JA's Library ).

14. [Charles Le Roy,] Traité de Vor thographe françoise, en forme de die tionaire, nouv. edn., Poitiers, 1775 ( Catalogue of JA's Library ).

15. Jean Dumont, comp., Corps universel diplomatique du droit des gens; contenant un recueil des traitez d'alliance, de paix, de trève, de neutralité, decommerce, d'éhange ..., Amsterdam, 1726–1739; 14 vols. in 15, folio ( Catalogue of JA's Library ).

16. Doubtless Thomas Digges, on whom see Diary entry of 20 April 1778 and note 2, above; also 4 Dec. 1782, note 1, below.

17. There are copies of La Fontaine's Fables choisies, mises en vers, listed in {p. 442} both the Catalogue of JA's Library and in Boston Athenaeum, Catalogue of JQA's Books. Probably one of these belonged to CA, who, as the next entry in these accounts suggests, wanted a copy of his own.

18. Described at length in JA to AA, 5 May 1780 (Adams Papers).

19. JA acquired five volumes of the Journal des sçavans ( Catalogue of JA's Library , p. 132). On this day also, according to a separate and fragmentary record of book purchases elsewhere in the present letterbook, he bought “14 Exemplaires Loix de l'Amerique,” paying 35 livres for them. This was a work entitled Recueil des loix constitutives des colonies angloises, confédéréés sous la dénomination d'Etats-Unis de l'Amérique-Septentrionale ..., Paris, 1778, compiled by one Regnier from the texts of the state constitutions and other American state papers that had appeared in the Affaires de l'Angleterre et de l'Amérique. Its curious bibliographical history has been related by Gilbert Chinard in Amer. Philos. Soc, Year Book 1943, p. 89–96. Five copies remain among JA's books in the Boston Public Library, one of them bearing MS notes in his hand.

20. “Dt.” probably means “ditto,” but JA's copy of the Annales has not been found.

21. Spelled by JQA, probably more correctly, Pechigny. He and his wife conducted the boarding school in Passy in which the Adams boys were placed. JQA wrote engagingly about his school work in a letter to his father without date [ante 17 March 1780] and in another to his cousin, William Cranch, 17 March 1780 (both in Adams Papers).

22. See entry of 30 Oct. 1778, above, and note.

23. Copies of Baretti's Dictionary of the English and Italian Languages ..., new edn., London, 1771, in 2 vols., and Beccaria's Dei delitti e delle pene, Haarlem and Paris, 1780, remain among JA's books in the Boston Public Library ( Catalogue of JA's Library ). The Grammatica here mentioned may or may not be Buommattei's Delia lingua toscana ... libre due, 5th edn., Florence, 1760, which is listed in the Catalogue.