John Quincy Adams to John Adams, 16 May 1801
John Quincy Adams to John Adams
Berlin 16. May 1801.
My dear Sir.
Mr: Welsh proposes to return home by the way of Amsterdam, and will be the bearer of this letter— With it, I enclose the 4th: number of the Gazette, and copies of former letters to yourself and to my dear mother.1
I wish I could promise myself a more speedy departure than that which I anticipated in my last Letter to you; but we can no longer form a hope of my wife’s immediate recovery— There is I persuade myself no danger in the weakness which remains upon her; but she is unable to walk, and even to stand— Impatient as I am to get home, I cannot force the nature of things, and must content my self with the hope of being released from this place by the beginning of July.— My child is very well.
I have been packing up my books and the baggage I have determined to take with me— The little library that I have collected here, bears no comparison with that I sent home, from Lisbon— It consists chiefly of german books; a language in which some of our countrymen think there is nothing like elegant or useful literature— As the Parisian fine lady of whom Montesquieu tells, could not conceive how it was possible to be a Persian.—2 My principal difficulty with regard to my books will be to find a place that will contain them, but I must not perplex myself about lodging them, while I know not where to lodge myself and my family.
I am ever dutifully your’s
A.
RC (Adams Papers); internal address: “John Adams Esqr.” FC-Pr (Adams Papers).
1. JQA’s secretary Thomas Welsh Jr. left Berlin on 16 May, planning to visit The Hague before sailing for the United States from Amsterdam. He departed in early July, probably aboard the brig Amiable Matilda, Capt. Depeyster, which arrived in New York on 31 Aug. after 58 days at sea. Welsh arrived in Boston on 8 September. The enclosures have not been found, but the first was the 16–30 April fourth installment of JQA’s twice-monthly gazette of events in Europe (FC-Pr, filmed at [April 1801], Adams Papers; FC-Pr’s, APM Reel 131). In it he described diplomatic negotiations following the Battle of Copenhagen, Napoleon’s dispatching of an envoy to Russia, and the progress of war in Europe (JQA to William Vans Murray, 19 May, FC-Pr; New-England Palladium, 28 Aug., 8, 11 Sept.; New York Commercial Advertiser, 31 Aug.).
2. Montesquieu, Persian Letters, Letter XXX.