Adams Papers Digital Edition

Diary of John Quincy Adams, volume 1

20th.

25th.
21st. JQA

1785-01-21

 21st. Adams, John Quincy
21st.

Paris. Dined at Mr. Jeffersons. Captn. Paul Jones1 told us the Marquis de la Fayette was arrived.2 Vrais Principes de la Langue Française, Synonimes François de M: l'Abbe Girard. 3 Abdir, a new piece was announced for to day at the French Théatre, but is put off to next Wednesday.4 Mr. Blanchard cross'd from Dover to Calais in an air balloon, the 7th of the month, accompanied by Dr. Jefferies.5 They were obliged to throw over their cloathes to lighten their balloon. Mr. Blanchard met with a very flattering reception at Calais, and at Paris. He and his companion, have been applauded at the Théatres. The king has given him twelve thousand livres, and a pension of 1200 livres a year. All that has as yet been done relative to this discovery, is the work of the French. Montgolfier, Pilâtre de Rozier, and Blanchard will go down, hand in hand to Posterity.

 1.

Jones was in Paris as congressional agent to recover prize money due officers and men of three ships. Shortly after his arrival in Dec. 1783, Franklin augmented Jones' authority to include the prize money due to any American ship formerly under his command. Jones' negotiations with the French minister of Marine concluded in Oct. 1784, but payment was long delayed (Samuel Eliot Morison, John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography, Boston, 1959, p. 336–341).

 2.

Lafayette was returning from a short, sentimental, and successful tour of the United States begun the previous August (Gottschalk, Lafayette , 4:83–138).

 3.

Gabriel Girard, Synonymes françois . . . nouvelle édition . . . augmentée . . . de notes, par M. Beauzée, 2 vols., Paris, 1769, and his Les vrais principes de la langue françoise, 2 217vols., Paris, 1747. These are both in JA's library at MB. A copy of Synonymes françois, Amsterdam, 1766, with JQA's bookplate is at MQA; there are also three copies of Les vrais principes, two in JA's library, and another at MQA, but none bears JQA's bookplate.

 4.

Abdir, Paris, 1785, by Edme Louis Billardon de Sauvigny, was first produced the following Wednesday, 26 Jan., then reduced to three acts on 31 Jan., when JQA saw and described it (Brenner, Bibliographical List ; Journal de Paris, 26 Jan.).

 5.

François Blanchard (usually called Jean Pierre), the French aeronaut, and John Jeffries, the Massachusetts-born loyalist and physician to the Adamses when they later lived in London. After an initial experimental flight together on 30 Nov., Blanchard and Jeffries made their historic crossing of the Channel on 7 Jan., landing in the Forest of Guines, near Calais (Hoefer, Nouv. biog. générale ; Mary Beth Norton, “America's First Aeronaut: Dr. John Jeffries,” History Today, 18:722–729 [Oct. 1968]; AA to Mary Smith Cranch, 25–27 Feb. 1787, MWA).