Elizabeth Grenville Proby Carysfort to Louisa Catherine Adams, 10 May 1803
Elizabeth Grenville Proby Carysfort to Louisa Catherine Adams
London May 10th 1803
My Dear Mrs. Adams,
I cannot neglect the Opportunity which Mr King’s return to America gives me of inquiring after Mr Adams & You;1 & still more particularly after my little Godson; who is I hope in every respect as prosperous as he promised to be when he left Berlin.
I am likewise troubling Mr King with an inkstand of our English China; which I wish you to keep upon your writing table as a souvenir of a distant friend. After We left Berlin Lord Carysfort was named Ambassador to Petersburgh but to my great joy many circumstances then led him to decline the situation & we are once more established at Home; where however I have passed a most painful twelvemonth in consequence of the very severe illness of my second daughter who has been most desperately ill but by the mercy of God is at length restored to me. the two others are very well & all desire to be remembered to you.2 Adieu my dear Mrs. Adams; I feel very real pleasure in the bringing myself back to Mr Adams’s recollection & yours; & likewise in the being able to assure you, of my being most sincerely Yrs
El Carysfort
RC (Adams Papers).
1. Rufus King requested his recall as U.S. minister to Britain on 5 Aug. 1802 after failing to convince Thomas Jefferson to initiate negotiations for a new Anglo-American commercial treaty despite possible U.S. entanglement in the conflict between Britain and France. James Madison wrote to King on 9 Oct. that his request was granted. King and his family departed London on the John Morgan, Capt. Thomas Howard, on 23 May 1803 and arrived in New York on 30 June. James Monroe was confirmed by the Senate as King’s replacement on 11 Nov. (, 3:457; 4:5, 528, 532; Philadelphia Gazette of the United States, 1 July; New York Commercial Advertiser, 6 July).
2. Carysfort and her husband, John Joshua Proby, Baron Carysfort, returned from Berlin to England in late 1801, for which see JQA to TBA, 28 March 1801, and note 5, above. The couple had three daughters: Charlotte (b. 1788), Frances (b. 1789), and Elizabeth (b. 1792) (Rose Fuller Whistler, The History of Ailington, Aylton, or Elton, London, 1892, p. 22).