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Browsing: Adams Family Correspondence, Volume 4
Docno: ADMS-04-04-02-0200
Recipient: Adams, Abigail
Date: 1782-03-29
John Adams to Abigail Adams
[dateline] 29 March 1782
[salute] My dearest Friend
The states of Holland and West Friesland have resolved, 28 March to admit Mr. Adams
to an Audience.
The inclosed Papers will shew what is going on here. You will { 302 } [hear?] much more of it.1—I have yet no news of Charles's Arrival. John is well—&c.
British Ministry changed.2
RC (Adams Papers). “[I]nclosed Papers” not found.
1. The relevant passage in “the Resolutions of the Lords the States of Holland and Westfriesland,
taken in the Assembly of their Noble and Grand-Mightinesses, Thursday 28 March 1782,”
resolving “that Mr. Adams be admitted and acknowledged, as soon as possible, by their
High-Mightinesses [the States General], in quality of Ambassador of the United States
of America,” is printed in JA, Collection of State-Papers, 1782, p. 81–82.
Docno: ADMS-04-04-02-0201
Recipient: Adams, John
Date: 1782-03-31
John Quincy Adams to John Adams
[dateline] St. Petersbourg March 20/31 1782
[salute] Honoured Sir
I should have written to you by Mr. Felleisen, who will doubtless have arrived before
this comes to hand, but I did not know that he was going until it was too late to
write. Mr. D[ana] thinks that I had better not write every post; because the postage of the Letters
would soon amount to a very considerable sum.
I have lately begun to learn German, I have a master who gives me three lessons per
week, at about a Guinea a month.1 I have finished three of Cicero's Orations against Catiline and have begun the fourth.
And I have finished reading Mrs. Macaulay's history of England.
Mr. D. begs that you would be so good as to send to England for the best history of
New England that is to be got; for Hutchinson's if you think there is no better. And
that Mr. Thaxter would desire Messrs. Sigourney and Ingraham to send him a piece of
Linen of the same sort with that which he has already had. It can come in the Secretaire
or Scritoire that he has sent for, and which he says he must have by all means. He
wishes also to have sent in it all the Amsterdam Gazettes from the time we left Holland
to the first of April, when his year expires so that he may have them compleat: and
Mr. Cerisier's Tableau de l'Histoire Generale des Provinces Unies des Pays-Bas. Mr. Thaxter will be so good as to write by the Post a list of every thing that will
be sent, with their prices, because, so much per cent, is paid for the entrance of
every thing here.
We hear that you have bought a house at the Hague.
Mr. D. is every day complaining of Mr. Thaxter's negligence in not writing him the
news, especially so important a thing as the { 303 } resolution of Friesland. He says that it is of importance that he should know all
such news, and not be obliged to wait for them till the Newspapers give them; and
he wishes to know what is intended to be done as well as what is already done, as
far as may be.
The weather here, has been for some days very fine. The thermometer has been this
day at 9 degrees above the degree of freezing.
[salute] I am your dutiful Son,
[signed] J.Q.A.
P.S. Please to present my respects to all Friends.
RC (Adams Papers); addressed: “A Son Excellence Monsieur Adams. Ministre Plenipotentiaire des Etats
Unis de L'Amerique è Amsterdam”; endorsed: “Ansd. 28 April J. Q. Adams.” LbC (Adams Papers).
1.
“Master John is in high health. He does not study the language of this Country, but
he is learning German, which, I believe, you wou'd prefer before Russian” (Francis
Dana to JA, 28 March O.S., Adams Papers).
“This Morning our German master came to give us a lesson for the first time” (JQA, Diary, 21 March [N.S.]). Later entries record a few further lessons, but JQA did not pursue the study of German very long or very far at this time. Fifteen years
later, on his going as United States minister to Berlin, he became proficient in the
language and an American pioneer in the study of German culture. See Walter John Morris,
John Quincy Adams, Germanophile, Pennsylvania State Univ. doctoral dissertation, 1963,
microfilm edn., University Microfilms, 1965.
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, 2015.
http://www.masshist.org/apde2/
http://www.masshist.org/apde2/