Book Review : Uncommon Wisdom in the Life of Abigail Adams

Abigail Adams: A Biography by Phyllis Lee Levin (St. Martin’s: $24.95; 528 pages; illustrated)

Intellectually independent and refreshingly candid, an advocate of equality for women while America was still a colony of the crown, Abigail Adams seems ideally cast as a feminist heroine. By all rights, she should be firmly ensconced in the pantheon; celebrated in essays and dramas, have schools and organizations named for her, be accorded the full foremother treatment. After all, she was not only married to a President but produced one, a remarkable distinction for any woman.

An indefatigable diarist and outspoken correspondent, she was as frank in her letters as in the pages of her private journal and happily, the papers have been preserved. In spite of these impressive qualifications, this book is one of very few full scale biographies center upon Abigail Adams herself. Until now, she’s shared space with her eminent husband and illustrious offspring; with the brilliant circle of colonial statesmen who were her friends; treated with all due respect and admiration but usually as a consort and helpmeet. Levin has remedied that by devoting 16 years to a definitive study of the woman as an individual; placing her in the context of her family and her century but keeping the focus firmly fixed upon her subject.

Familiar Quotes

The familiar quotes, idiosyncratically spelled and parsed, are here in her letters to John, begging his indulgence for her sauciness “that your sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of friend.” She was an ardent abolitionist: “I wish most sincerely there was not a Slave in the province. It always seemed a most iniquitous Scheme to me.”

These notions, strongly and frequently expressed, did make an impression, eliciting from John the admission that “Your letter was the first Intimation that another Tribe more numerous and powerful than the rest were grown discontented,” but after that gracious acknowledgement, he tried to convince her that men had only nominal power. “We are obliged to go fair, and softly, and in Practice you know we are the subjects.” Skeptical and persistent, Abigail continued to plead, though her arguments for female suffrage were turned aside as unrealistic.

Comments on Ben Franklin

Less familiar and more diverting are Abigail Adams’ tart comments on Benjamin Franklin’s “valued friend,” the formidable Madame Anne Helvetius, who presided not only over Franklin’s dinner table in France but clearly over other aspects of his life as well. Throughout the evening at Franklin’s house, Abigail Adams was astonished to see the aging Madame hugging, kissing and holding hands with the American statesman; frequently throwing her arms around his neck. “If Embraces will tend to prolong his life, and promote the vigor of his circulations, he is on a fair way to live to the age of an antediluvian,” she commented to her niece Lucy Cranch, but even the Adams progressiveness had its limits. “I have not visited her,” she added, “though she is my near neighbor.”

As the wife of an American ambassador abroad, Abigail Adams necessarily made certain concessions to French customs but only reluctantly. Though she submitted to the attentions of a hairdresser, she never concealed her distaste for a society that demanded such fripperies. “To be out of fashion was more criminal than to be seen in a state of nature, to which the Parisians were not adverse.” Her thrifty New England conscience was appalled at the elaborate mourning dress required when a royal personage died, and to save the expense of a new black outfit, she did not go out in public until the allotted time had passed. Initially horrified at the skimpy costumes of the dancers in the Paris Opera and at Sadler’s Wells, she not only grew accustomed to them but actually became an aficionado of the ballet, admitting her beloved native country had nothing to compare with the lively entertainments of Europe.

Brisk Observations

Even more enlightening than these brisk observations on continental sophistication are the vignettes of 18th-Century American life; the account of the family’s vaccination against smallpox one of the most fascinating. Still risky, the procedure involved journeying to Philadelphia for the treatment, engaging rooms and attendants, and resigning oneself to days of fever and misery; an adventure undertaken only by the bravest and most enlightened. In addition to the Parisian journals, there are revelations about the Adams’ London sojourn in Grosvenor Square and the impact of life in the court of George III upon a woman who had spent her young womanhood within a few miles of a small rural Massachusetts village.

Virtually all of Abigail’s astute appraisals of the great and near-great are included; her impressions of Washington, Hamilton and Jefferson; her trials and tribulations with her sons’ and daughter’s romantic attachments, her resentment of her husband’s travels and her ultimate resignation to a life of separation from her “dearest friend and companion.” Full of wonderful, immediate dailiness, the biography rises above the humdrum to present an altogether personal account of the events presaging and following the American revolution, perceived by a woman with the ability to record and interpret her era for posterity with uncommon verve and wisdom.