Volume 23, Number 5 · April 1, 1976
The Adams' Fall: II
By Gore Vidal
When John Adams ceased to be president, his son John Quincy Adams was thirty-three years old and the ablest of America's diplomats. In 1791 John Quincy was in London, helping John Jay negotiate a treaty. Although John Quincy was now too grand to stoop to hypergamy, he did manage to bring into the family a new type. Louisa Johnson was the daughter of the American consul general at London. Mr. Johnson was a feckless Marylander married to an English woman. Brought up in Europe, Louisa was 'charming, like a Romney portrait,' according to her grandson Henry Adams, 'but among her many charms that of being a New England woman was not one.' Louisa did not take to Boston or Braintree ('Had I stepped into Noah's Ark, I do not think I could have been more utterly astonished'). Happily, the old President took to her. She also made John Quincy a good wife; but then great men seldom make bad marriages.
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