John Quincy Adams Twiddles His Thumbs

     . . . . John Quincy Adams is in that in-between place almost of all us have been at some time or another, or even, maybe, often. The job that has thoroughly occupied him, of which he complained so much for leaving him no time for reflection, study and writing, for over four years, is, over, and not through his own choice.  The (western and southern) voters and the senate chose Andrew Jackson to be POTUS, instead of returning JQA to the White House for a second term.

So, he's just hanging out in that house Louisa got them to purchase before, when he was Monroe's Secretary of State.  It's January, it is bitter winter.  There are storms and blizzards, and he's quite cozy tucked up in the house*, seeing the occasional agreeable visitor, reading, and working on the entry arrears of his Diaries, because being President meant he had to spend so much time in meetings and present at public affairs, deal with office seekers etc., he couldn't read and write as he was used. But now, with the weather and jobless he's able to do all these things, and catch up the Diaries' indexing, which means he's been re-reading his entries. This brings him inevitably to ... Thomas Jefferson, about whom a new multi-volume biography has recently been published. Which, JQ, who had known Jefferson since he himself was young boy, is reading.

JQ hasn't got anything good to say about Jefferson, and if anyone should know, it is him.  His father, John Adams, may have forgiven TJ for the abominable treatment TJ wreaked upon him -- and on President Washington -- but JQ most clearly has not. He suggests that someone really should write the history of Thomas Jefferson's and his boy Madison's presidencies.  His grandson, Henry Adams, will do this very thing -- using not only JQ's Diaries as primary sources, but many other primary documents and letters that JQ has carefully preserved and -- indexed and bound.

This jaundiced, occasionally bitter, but always detailed insider account of history only gets more fascinating as the Diaries go on. 

This is all the more fascinating as I've embarked on James Monroe: A Life (2020) by Tim McGrath.  JM was another of Jefferson's protege-boy-minions,  about whom I knew previously very little before JQA served as his Secretary of State. Despite the author doing his best, I am not impressed with JM, a fairly middling, at best sort,** within the brilliance of the early Independence and Constitutional circles.  JM wasn't much better at winning elections than John Adams was, nor ever possessed the intellectual fire power of Madison, nor the sheer cunning and duplicity -- or physical cowardice -- of TJ. Monroe played an instrumental role assisting TJ in the social downfall of Alexander Hamilton,*** in their long-range objective to take him out as a powerful office holder and political rival.  Monroe was just as bad as TJ with money, getting it and keeping it and making more (not that Madison was much better, once he rather ran his enormous inheritance of lands and slaves into the ground, leaving a penniless widow). What Monroe was fairly good at, comparatively speaking, was diplomacy, though he may have been given credit for a fair amount that was actually accomplished by someone else.  

We alternate reading the Diaries aloud with reading aloud Ancestral Journeys: The Peopling of Europe From The First Venturers to the Vikings (2013 - 2015) by Jean Manco.  This involves tracking the migrations via linguistic forensics.  It doesn't track via a linear narrative or chronological format, which can confuse things somewhat for the non-scholar.  But it is fascinating and illuminating.  With so much focus on language, el V is just gobbling this down with the greatest of pleasure.

There is a great lack in this book though -- nothing at all about African languages. And surely there must be some markers in the languages of the Ibercelts of Iberia of Africa, at the very least!

I am continuing alone with the massive Boundless Sea. However, I am finally getting Hillary Mantel's The Mirror and the Light, the conclusion to her Thomas Cromwell trilogy, so I'll probably be reading that this week.***

Well, the grocery delivery has arrived, now for the disinfecting  protocols -- and then finding somewhere to put it all.  This was a week for high quality fresh produce again, which takes up such an amount of space.

Moreover, it is a bright, chilly, windy day, and I feel sick to my stomach, dizzy and have a headache.  Arghh.  

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January 18th; 30 degrees.  I can go without a fire in my library, though I keep a small one in my sitting room.

(He is writing this in the library, wouldn't you just know! Good grief!  These people are so hardy; here I am complaining about feeling chilled right now in our apartment, with a chilly wind blowing and the outside temp at 61°.)

**    Moreover, Monroe's achievements such as the Monroe Doctrine we know were really John Quincy Adams's ideas and even doing, as revealed to us in John Quincy Adams's Diaries! Poor Monroe never had an original idea of his own in his whole life, at least as JQ tended to record things -- and alas, this biography kinda bears this out, at least so far.

***   As Washington's Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton created the First Bank of the US -- to which the Virginian slaveholder triumvirate of TJ, Madison and Monroe were unilaterally opposed, was very close to President Washington, and looked likely to be a serious rival to TJefferson for POTUS.

****  Still "saving" Chaucer: A European Life, for when I am without anything else that appeals.