Friday June the 29th 1781.

This morning brother Charles and I packed up our trunks, and I went to take leave of our riding master; in the afternoon Pappa came here but stay’d only ten minutes; we went to Mr. Lynch’s at about 4 o’clock; he asked us to go into water with him at 5 o’clock, we told him we would, we went then to take leave of Mr. Luzac.1 At five o’clock we went again to Mr. Lynch’s and went with him into water. Mr. Cook2 told us that he would go to Amsterdam with us. We got home at about 7 o’clock.

From Pope’s works (continued from yesterday).3

1. Although this is the first mention in the Diary, Jean Luzac had taken special interest in JQA and CA during their brief attendance at the University of Leyden in 1781. Luzac was editor of the widely influential Gazette de Leyde, as well as a lawyer and a scholar of history and the classics. He was on JA’s list of persons to be consulted in Holland in 1780 and became an invaluable supporter of the campaign to obtain Dutch recognition of American independence and financial support (JA, Diary and Autobiography description begins Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield and others, Cambridge, 1961; 4 vols. description ends , 2:444–445; Adams Family Correspondence, description begins Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield and others, Cambridge, 1963- . description ends 4:xiv).

2. John Cooke, an Englishman who completed his medical studies at Leyden and practiced in London (JQA, Diary, 2 Dec. 1795; DNB description begins Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee, eds., The Dictionary of National Biography, New York and London, 1885-1900; 63 vols, plus supplements. description ends ).

3. JQA copied on about the next three and one-quarter pages in the Diary the concluding two sections of Pope’s “Ode for Music on St. Cecilia’s Day,” begun in the previous entry (Pope, Works, Balfour edn. description begins The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq., Edinburgh, 1764; 6 vols. description ends , 1:71–73).

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Source Project: Adams Papers
Title: Friday June the 29th 1781.
Author: Adams, John Quincy
Date: 29 June 1781

Reference

Cite as: “Friday June the 29th 1781.,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/03-01-02-0003-0001-0021. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Diary of John Quincy Adams, vol. 1, November 1779 – March 1786, ed. Robert J. Taylor and Marc Friedlaender. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981, p. 86.]