Louisa by Louisa Thomas Page B

no record of a miscarriage, and Kitty would become pregnant a year later.) William’s debts gave John Quincy plenty to abhor; the expense of St. Petersburg was not easy for William to bear, either, and he was not the type to let pleasure pass by. He was begging John Quincy to lend him $3,000 so that he could pay what he owed.
    Letters rarely arrived from the United States that year, and when they did, they were almost always devastating. News came that Louisa’s mother, Catherine, had died in an epidemic that had also killed her sister Caroline’s husband. They learned that John Quincy’s aunt and uncle Mary and Richard Cranch, who were taking care of Louisa’s sons John and George, both died. John Quincy’s sister (and William’s mother) Nabby had undergone an excruciating operation to have her breast removed after a tumor had been found. Nabby’s situation was, Louisa knew, “a hopeless illness.”
    At the end of March 1812 John Quincy asked Abigail to send their sons to Russia—but George and John could make the long journey, he added, only if the United States and Britain were not at war, which would make the journey aboard an American ship impossible. It was not his wish for them to come, he added, but that of their mother, who was insistent. Soon after, Louisa learned that even that hope was gone. Congress declared war on Britain in June, the culmination of a long sequence of breaches between the two countries that had been building for decades: the impressment of sailors that had prompted the
Chesapeake
crisis that had led to John Quincy’s departure from the Senate, trade restrictions prompted by the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, border issues with Canada, and the sense, in the United States, of persistent humiliations and insults from its former ruler. The declaration of war took place just a week before Napoleon’s troops breached Russia’s borders.
    All of this touched Louisa, and it didn’t. She heard the bells tollingfor Te Deums and saw the illuminations after the official reports of incredible Russian victories, reports which everyone knew not to credit too much. She read in the outdated newspapers of the conflict in the United States. Most pressingly, of course, the war meant a longer separation from her older sons, a separation that brought her near despair when she dwelled on it. But she still had Charles, about to turn five years old, and the new daughter, little Louisa, and she took solace in them. The baby was a kind of gift. Little Louisa grew rapidly, and before she was one she was speaking, saying
papa
and
mama.
“I wish you could see what a good natured little mad cap she is,” Louisa wrote to her son George. The child brought Louisa inexhaustible delight. “She plays all day long.”
    Then that child , so much loved, fell sick. Louisa was filled with the terror of losing her. That summer, 1812, little Louisa began teething rapidly. Six teeth came in quickly, and then another five or six cropped up at once. Louisa weaned her in July, just before her first birthday. In the middle of that month, the baby developed dysentery. She was already small for her age, only two feet and three inches on her first birthday. She did not have much weight to lose.
    For some weeks, she seemed to improve. But in mid-August, she was extremely sick. Louisa tried to begin breast-feeding her again, but it was too late. The child developed a high fever.
    Outside, thousands of lamps, hung in elaborate and spectacular patterns, were lit to celebrate reports of Russia’s stupendous victories over Napoleon’s Grand Army, reports most knew were false. Napoleon and his army were storming toward Moscow as the Russians retreated; many predicted Napoleon would then turn north, toward St. Petersburg. An air of crisis pervaded the city. The official optimism was set grotesquely against fear.
    Inside the house, there was only terrified desperation. On August