Louisa Read Free

not entirely her own, and a mother who survived all but one of her children. She was torn between cultural and familial ideals and strong instincts that she could not ignore. She was sunk by despair and lifted by laughter.
    Her biography cannot be told like her husband’s. It is a history of feelings as well as facts, of questions as well as answers, of doubt as well as certainty. It is a record of a life, a narrative of a journey, the adventures of an extraordinary woman. And her story begins where, as a young girl with a romantic imagination, she might have assumed it would happily end: at the moment she met the man whom she would marry.

PART ONE
FRAUGHT
with
BLISS
London , 1775–1797

6
    L OUISA GREW DESPERA TE , the more so because her family’s preparations to move to the United States were under way at No. 8 Cooper’s Row. If she was not married by the time the Johnsons left, she would be going too. What hope could she have that her engagement to John Quincy could survive across the Atlantic? It hardly seemed possible when it was so hard with only the Channel between them. There was, she wrote to John Quincy, “a feeble ray of hope” that they might see each other before she sailed for America, however. The Johnsons would travel aboard one of her father’s ships, and she happened to know he had one in Holland. She would ask if the Johnsons could leave for America from there. She feared that if they did not see each other at all, their relationship would not survive.
    Her youth, her inexperience, and her lack of reassurance exaggerated her natural fears—and her family surely heightened them. Her sisters mocked her for seeming withdrawn. As an engaged woman, she was restricted in her company. Neither married nor unattached, she was not allowed to do anything that might attract reproof—even speaking to bachelors at balls. She was isolated and insecure.Considering that Catherine had intervened to pressure John Quincy when he had been in London, Catherine was probably also expressing her anxiety about John Quincy’s intentions in some way at home. Joshua, too, had something at stake in ensuring the marriage came off, more than his daughter’s happiness. His finances were under extreme pressure, which could have brought the engagement contract into danger. Joshua followed Louisa’s letter with one of his own, suggesting that the family might stop at The Hague on the way to the United States in order to restore his daughter’s happiness. John Quincy was quick to read between the lines. He responded to Joshua coldly and accused Louisa of conspiring with her father to be left behind with him in Holland while her family went to America.
    It was a cruel thing to say. He made no allowance for the idea that Louisa might miss him, or that she might want to strengthen their attachment by seeing him before a longer separation. Nor did he acknowledge that Joshua had made no explicit mention of hurrying the marriage in his own letter. But his paranoia was not completely unfounded. Joshua probably did have ulterior motives. He was in trouble.
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    J OHN Q UINCY did not know just how bad Joshua’s problems were. Joshua could not hide his debts for much longer; they were spiraling out of his control. Money had been a recurring problem for him since his arrival in England twenty-five years before. The life of a merchant was unpredictable. The system of credit and payment by bills of exchange meant that men had to be able to collect in order to pay—and sometimes they couldn’t collect. Shipping was risky in the best of times. A sunk cargo could mean ruin. Joshua was not cavalier. He had advised his partners and instructed them intelligently on how British and European trade operated. He had won business and earned respect. He did operate in the margins of his accounts sometimes, asmany merchants did, and his bookkeeping grew increasingly