John Quincy Adams to Lucy Cranch, 1 June 1778
John Quincy Adams to Lucy Cranch
Paris june the 1st 1778
I having wrote Twice to your brother1 & not having yet wrote to you I now take a pen into my hand to write a few Lines to you to inform you of a Little excursion I took last.2 Mr. Lee his nephew My Pappa & I went to the theatre Calld the Italien Comedy where we had the women & the Secrets of which we See but very Little the next was Silvain in which the Scene represented on one side an old house & the other a row of trees the next was Calld the nymphs of diana in which the scene represented a beautiful place in Which Stood a Statue and in the middle of the Stage a Block for another Statue & all the actresses had on white Silk gowns with Part of them dragging behind them on the ground with a case of quivers at their Backs.3 I am &c.
LbC (Adams Papers); at foot of text: “To my Cousin Lucy.” Text is given in literal style.
1. Only the immediately preceding letter from JQA to his cousin William Cranch, Lucy’s brother, has been found.
2. That is, “last week”?
3. The dramatic pieces seen by JQA at the Comédie Italienne may be identified as follows: Les femmes et le secret, a comedy by Antoine François Quétant, 1767; Silvain, a comedy by Jean François Marmontel, 1770; and Les nymphes de Diane, a comic opera by Charles Simon Favart, 1747 (Clarence D. Brenner, A Bibliographical List of Plays in the French Language, 1700–1789, Berkeley, 1947, Nos. 10294, 8868, 6292).