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| Abigail Adams |
It was a dreadful time for John and Abigail Adams. While John worried about the nation and Abigail worried about John, their daughter Nabby slipped slowly into death. Little was known about cancerous tumors except that they had to be removed.
Abigail Adams: I cannot bring myself to think about it. Oh John. How we love her still. She was so moderate in her ways, so gentle in her movements. Perhaps her choice of William was the need for wild impetuousness in her life that she did not get from you John and just a bit from me. She took all the smallpox germs that were destined for our family and survived. John, do you remember saying to Nabby? “You have discovered in your childhood a remarkable modesty, discretion, and reserve. You are now, I think, far advanced in your twelfth year—a time when the understanding opens, and the youth begin to look abroad into the world among whom they are to live. To be good, and to do good, is all we have to do.”
John: I am like the elephant in its lumbering and heavy steps but the great gift of memory to the elephant has been denied me. You my dear, have the memory and the lightness of step of the ballerina. And our Nabby, bless her soul, was so much like you.
Abigail: Of my children, only Nabby remained at home, but at seventeen her life, too, was moving on. Fair-haired, pleasing in appearance, she was taller than I, more circumspect, less inclined to voice an opinion, a fine majestic girl who had as much dignity as a princess. I did worry that this description of Nabby was too reserved, too prudent.
John: In those years, our daughter turned many heads. I wonder what became of that young lawyer named Royal Tyler who had moved to town, boarding with Cranche, and was showing interest in Nabby. He did not neglect to shower attention on you as a bright young man should, Abigail. You thought highly of him; his being the son of a wealthy father, valedictorian of his class at Harvard, Tyler was handsome, witty, and well read. If he is steady he will shine in his profession," you wrote. "His disposition appears extremely amiable." Too bad we discovered some unsavory news about him that changed our opinion.
Abigail: Yes, but you changed your mind, not soon enough to give Nabby and Royal their chance because our move to England intervened.
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| John Adams |
John: I have seen it many times in my life. Death was no stranger to me. I have lost children and grandchildren and could never think of any of them without pain. Our dear Nabby has shown extraordinary courage. Her death was a release, the most magnanimous I’ve ever witnessed. I am grateful and resigned.
Abigail: John, we will never know what she thought the growth was or how she explained it to herself.
John: It’s possible that she took it as a sign that her youth had passed and changes in the skin were to be expected with the passage of time. We didn’t know what was in her mind. When we wrote to Dr. Rush and described her symptoms, he immediately understood that no delay should be allowed, that a surgical solution was needed at once.
Abigail: You say that almost as though you were trying to free us from guilt. I see no guilt, not in William, not in Nabby and not in us. She is peacefully at rest. We must accept this pain and live on.
John: Our little Nabby is gone from us forever.
Abigail: Of all of us, she was the most beautiful and the healthiest. How, dear Lord, can this happen?
John: It is a dreaded disease, my dear. It happens because we know nothing of its nature. The most learned doctor was consulted but cancer is still unknown to us all.
Abigail: If she had been a child in our arms, we would have bathed her and seen something unusual on her chest. As a woman of forty-two, she covered herself up so as not to think about what was growing there.
John: What about her husband? Would he not have noticed?
Abigail: Was it his place to tell us? I think not. Nabby was like me. We closed our eyes to unpleasant things. Besides, the cancer was below the skin out of sight. Nabby might have thought it was nothing but a beauty mark.
John: Yes, it was his place to tell us. Seeing that his wife would not, he had the obligation to tell us. William Smith failed his obligation. Too busy perhaps trying to succeed in life, he failed at everything he touched. Because he cared for so many other things, his wife’s tumor went unnoticed.
Abigail: John, you are angry, as I am but it is no one’s fault. Our Heavenly Father decided to take Nabby to His breast too soon. One day perhaps, doctors will know how to defeat cancer and one day perhaps people will pay attention to unusual pimples on the skin.
John: I would have gladly given her a dozen of my years but there is no bargaining with the Almighty. Do you remember in 1766, when Nabby was born, long before the talk of revolution, we were happy in our home. How uncomplicated it all was then!
Abigail: Do you remember all the people who died of yellow fever in Philadelphia in 1793? They died because nobody knew how to cure the disease. And Stephen Girard, braver than any doctor, cared for the sick, so unafraid of death himself. He did not run from the disease but stayed with the death and the dying. How can we explain why he did not contract the illness?
John: Forever, as long as I live, I will see her beautiful round face with dark blue eyes and complexion of fresh cream all framed with long red hair that often betrays a short temper but in her the soft patience of an angel on loan to us from heaven.
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