John Quincy Adams to Thomas Boylston Adams, 12 October 1798
John Quincy Adams to Thomas Boylston Adams
12. October 1798.
My dear Brother.
We have received and been entertained with your letters from Dessau, Magdeburg and Brunswic.—1 We hope to hear from you, to day or to-morrow, at Hamburg, where upon your arrival, you must have found abundance of letters, either to, or for you.
You ask for news; but you are now so much nearer the sources of all the important news, that it must rather come from you to us, than go from us to you.
Buonaparte, is neither dead, nor like to die— The newspapers may say about him what they will.2 That there has been great sickness in his army might be presumed, without positive intelligence— But as it is unquestionable that he is in possession of Alexandria, and of Cairo, there can be no danger of his starving, and as little of his being overcome by Turks or Egyptians, Arabs or Mammalukes.3
Here, all goes on with us according to the old routine— We have been out since you went away, only to the Princess Henry’s, and to Bellevue—4 The Princess Ferdinand desired me to request you upon your return home, to present her compliments to General Washington; for whose character she has a great esteem.
We have not been to Charlottenburg since you left us; but Mrs: A. is gone there this morning. And we have scarcely once seen any of Dr: Brown’s family; who when they come to town, have not time to call.— They miss you very much.— I have heard, but not directly from them, that William has obtained a Lieutenant’s Commission.5
We have had no letters from America since your departure— The public accounts announce the yellow fever again at Philadelphia.— I hope you will conclude on your return to settle somewhere else, and should wish it might be at Boston.
I find by letters from Mr: Murray, that Dandridge has left him, and that for the present Mr: Mountflorence serves him, as Secretary.6
God bless you! and give you a prosperous voyage!
RC (MQHi); addressed: “Mr: T. B. Adams. / Hamburg.”; internal address: “T. B. Adams.”; endorsed: “J Q Adams Esqr: / 12 Octr: 1798 / 16 Recd / 17 Ansd.” LbC (Adams Papers); APM Reel 133.
1. Not found.
2. Rumors that Napoleon and Rear Adm. Horatio Nelson had both been killed in a naval engagement had been reported in Hamburg and London since August (London Oracle and Public Advertiser, 29 Aug.; London Mirror of the Times, 8–15 Sept.; London Whitehall Evening Post, 20–22 Sept.).
3. Napoleon took Alexandria on 2 July and Cairo on 24 July. French military advances stalled, however, after British warships defeated the French fleet at Aboukir Bay in the Battle of the Nile on 1 Aug., cutting off supply lines to Napoleon’s troops. During the weeks that followed an estimated 10 to 15 percent of Napoleon’s soldiers suffered illness in undersupplied hospitals (, p. 64–66, 130–132, 154, 215, 219).
4. JQA and LCA spent the evening with Wilhelmina of Hesse-Cassel, Princess Henry, on 1 Oct. and visited Bellevue on 8 Oct. (D/JQA/24, 1, 8 Oct., APM Reel 27; , 1:91–93).
5. William Brown was described by LCA as “very young very handsome and very wild.” On a 1798 trip to England, Dr. Charles Brown met Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, and soon after the duke conferred upon William a commission in the 13th Regiment of Light Dragoons, with a one-year deferral to allow him to pursue studies in Berlin. JQA wrote again to TBA on 15 Oct. (LbC, APM Reel 133), confirming the younger Brown’s commission and reporting the deferral (, 1:60; E. H. Adamson, “Sir Charles Brown,” Archaeologia Aeliana, 19:139, 140 [1898]).
6. In letters of 6 and 28 Sept. (both Adams Papers), William Vans Murray informed JQA that his secretary, Bartholomew Dandridge Jr., would depart on 20 Sept. for London to become secretary to Rufus King. On 28 Sept. Murray reported that Maj. James Cole Mountflorence had agreed to serve as his secretary on a temporary basis. Mountflorence (ca. 1745–1820) was a native of Ireland who immigrated to North Carolina in 1778 and served during the Revolutionary War as a militia officer and quartermaster. A surveyor and land agent of western lands following the war, Mountflorence subsequently served several U.S. diplomats in Paris and The Hague from the mid-1790s until his death in Paris (, 22:526).