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 l'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
{ 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.