Michael O'Brien (5) (1948–2015)

Michael O'Brien's Mrs. Adams in Winter (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010) is the gripping story of Louisa Catherine Adams' forty-day trek across Europe in February-March 1815, from St. Petersburg to a rendezvous with her husband (John Quincy Adams) in Paris. O'Brien has meticulously retraced Adams' journey, using not only her later memoirs but also letters, guidebooks and other evidence (useful in certain cases where Mrs. Adams' memories weren't entirely accurate). O'Brien outlines the modes show more of travel, customs and traffic regulations, local currencies and scenaries LCA likely experienced, as well as providing fascinating details about where she likely stayed, who she encountered during the trip, &c.

But this is much more than a travelogue. O'Brien takes various opportunities during the trip to diverge from the narrative (sometimes at length) and look forward and back in time through Louisa's life, exploring her family history, her complicated and often difficult courtship and marriage with John Quincy Adams and the overall dynamic of marrying into the Adams family. LCA suffered perhaps even more trials and tribulations that most women of her time, living for long stretches in foreign places, in forced separation from some or all of her children and relatives, suffering through multiple miscarriages, plus the death of her only daughter. The trial represented by this journey across war-ravaged Europe with only a young child and elderly servant (plus various others at stages along the way) was only one of a great many, and she was forced to make decisions that, she knew, could easily have cost her life and that of her precious child.

The challenges and dilemmas were real: cross the ice-blocked river? push on through the night in the face of dangerous roads and possibly untrustworthy guides? Keep going or change course when faced with the sudden tumult of Napoleon's return from exile in the waning days of the trip?

In presenting the story the way he has, O'Brien took something of a risk himself, but he pulls off the gambit nicely, tempering the monotony of the road with stories of court life, family struggles, and daily existence for a spirited woman of her times.

As Woody Holton recently did for LCA's mother-in-law in Abigail Adams, Michael O'Brien does here for Louisa herself. A fine book indeed.

[Note: in the interests of full disclosure, Mr. O'Brien did much research at my place of employment, and acknowledges several of my coworkers for their assistance with the book.]

http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2010/03/book-review-mrs-adams-in-winter.html show less

This book turned up in a charity shop for 95p. I bought it because the voices of single women are often absent from historical record, and this seemed like a positive attempt to redress that. The anthology contains four diaries of single women in the deep South, spanning 1827 to 1867. The four diarists are very different women in very different situations, providing interesting contrasts. Two are in their twenties, one in her thirties, and the fourth older. The younger two are preoccupied show more with social life and travel, the older concerned with their living situations. Probably most strikingly, the younger two writers are happy, whereas the older two are not.

From a historical perspective, the most useful elements of the diaries are Jane Caroline North's travelogue, which includes a lovely description of the Niagara Falls, and Ann Lewis Hardeman's perspectives on the outbreak of Civil War. Also very striking to me is the total lack of acknowledgement, let alone questioning, of slavery. All four women have their domestic chores done by slaves, all four occasionally mention slaves in a careless, dismissive, sometimes cruel fashion. Today this attitude seems extraordinarily shocking, more so as elsewhere in their journals all four women shows signs of sensitivity, kindness, and thoughtfulness. Indeed, several question the narrowness of women's role in society. Slavery, however, appears unworthy of comment, let along interrogation. In Ann Lewis Hardeman's journal, any links it might have to the Civil War are not mentioned, although to be fair she scarcely discusses the war other than in relation to her nephews involvement.

This final journal, that of Ann Lewis Hardeman, is difficult to read. I found it very upsetting. Hardeman is deeply unhappy throughout much of the seventeen years of her journal, in a manner which could be interpreted today as clinical depression. Her entries tend to be litanies of ill-health, death, anniversaries of dead relatives, and worries for living ones. Hardeman clearly had little to console her in life other than religion. She seems perpetually lonely, sad, and unwell. She repeatedly comments over the seventeen years that she has no further purpose in life, might as well be dead, and expects that she soon will die. I was especially struck by her eloquent account of the death of her niece in 1853, which is truly heart-breaking. Her journal certainly shows the emotional toll that large families with high mortality rates suffered in the nineteenth century.

The anthology has an informative and well-composed introduction, as well as bringing attention to a segment of the population often ignored in history. I'm giving it three stars overall, however, because the longest diary is also the most depressing one. After putting myself through that, I'll need to read something cheerful next in order to recover. show less

I wanted to read this book because I’ve long been fascinated by Louisa Catherine Adams, one of the most complex first ladies the United States ever had. She was born in London and grew up there and in France. Given the nativism that is such a constant factor in American political life, this made her suspect. Her supposed foreignness was compounded by being married to John Quincy Adams, offspring of John Adams, the second president. Neither the poverty nor the plain habits of the Adamses show more could shake the public perception that the family had aristocratic pretensions. And since her husband was tapped for a series of diplomatic assignments, much of her married life was spent abroad, until he became Secretary of State in the Monroe administration. This added to the suspicion that she wasn’t sufficiently American.
One more factor ensured that hers would be a complicated life: For all his ability and admirable qualities, it wasn’t easy to be married to John Quincy Adams.
Louisa took to writing in her later years (she had always loved reading and visiting the theater). One book she published was an account of the forty-day journey she undertook in the Napoleonic wars’ waning days. Her husband had left his post as Ambassador to Russia to negotiate the peace treaty after the War of 1812, leaving his wife and their son behind. In the depth of winter, she set out to rejoin him in Paris.
This incident forms the basis of O’Brien’s book. Her account is sketchy and, as she was aware, inaccurate in many details because her diary was incomplete. O’Brien fleshes out her account. His research establishes the route she probably took from St. Petersburg through Berlin to Paris. In addition, he uses incidents of the journey to fill in the back story of her life. For instance, in Chapter Five, her uncertainty about whether John Quincy would be at the border when she entered France becomes the jumping-off point to describe the ups and downs of their marriage.
When I say that O’Brien fleshes out Louisa’s account, that’s an understatement. I admire all the research the author has done, but did he need to include everything he found out about every town she passed through and everyone she met (as well as a few she didn’t meet)? I almost bailed in Chapter One, when the account of Louisa’s experiences at the Czar’s court includes the names of every architect who built every building in the royal complex. The ostensible purpose is to speculate on “what she felt” (a phrase repeated three times in the first chapter alone), although that purpose might have been served better by describing what she would have seen, rather than citing the year each building was built. Granted, a historian should ascertain all these things, but he doesn’t need to share it all.
Still, I’m glad I read the book, although I feel it would have been more effective if the text had been trimmed by at least twenty percent.
O’Brien doesn’t overemphasize one thing the story signifies, although he does point it out. In an age when women were thought inferior to men (an assumption John Quincy shared and which Louisa didn’t totally reject), she was aware that the resourcefulness and resolve she had to display to master the challenges and dangers of this journey not only served to show what she was capable of, but of what women in general were. show less

I found this incredibly tedious. The through line of Mrs. Adams travel from St. Petersburg to Paris was constantly derailed by other stories, sometimes of Mrs. Adams life and marriage but other times of how may times they moved and to where or what kinds of monetary units were used in different areas or, most irritating, guessing what actually happened based on other traveller's experiences. That doesn't even go into diversions of no connection whatsoever to any part of the story. A show more frustrating and dissappointing read/listen. show less