Lewis Littlepage Redivivus: Editorial Note
Lewis Littlepage Redivivus
It is difficult to conceive of a more marked contrast in personalities and lifestyles than those that Jay and his erstwhile protégé Lewis Littlepage presented to the world. Where Jay was prudent, formal, proper, and the soul of integrity, the young Littlepage was a coxcomb, self-centered, witty, supercilious, and possessed of a roving eye and an adventurous spirit in which neither frugality nor a sense of punctilio in the payment of debts was deeply ingrained. Where Jay was thoroughly American and republican in affection and dedication, Littlepage was happy to uproot himself and serve foreign monarchs. As the young Virginian confessed to King Stanislaus II of Poland, “no prospect, certainly, that my native country presents, would ever have appeared to me worthy of being ranked for a moment in competition with the happiness and glory, of serving a Monarch, to whom gratitude and duty forever bind me.”1 The lamentable conflicts between the pair during the years of Jay’s Spanish stay were amply documented in volumes two and three of this series.2
Littlepage’s arrival in New York in November 1785 initiated an embarrassing public controversy with John Jay that reopened and exposed all the tensions and quarrles that had plagued Jay’s Spanish mission. The incident exacerbated disputes within the Livingston family and hardened and made permanent Jay’s break with his brother-in-law Henry Brockholst Livingston, who became and remained a bitter political opponent. It also inflamed Jay’s relations with French officials and fed Jay’s suspicions that the French were trying to undermine his position as secretary for foreign affairs and to obtain a more amenable and more easily influenced replacement. Jay moved quickly to defend his position and reputation.
Jay’s leaving Spain for Paris had not rid him of Littlepage and his importunities. In Spain the young adventurer had attached himself to Lafayette’s entourage during the Marquis’s Spanish mission in the winter of 1782–83, then travelled in the latter’s company to Paris. There, on 6 July 1783, Jay presented Littlepage with an accounting, waiving interest, of the funds he had advanced from 26 September 1780 through 23 March 1782. Although Littlepage acknowledged the account, amounting to over 1,000 Mexican dollars, he made no arrangements for payment. Littlepage became irate when Jay declined to support his request for the honor of carrying the Definitive Treaty to Congress. On 2 September 1783 he penned an intemperate letter on the subject in which he also accused Jay of leaving him in Spain to spy on William Carmichael. During a face-to-face meeting, Littlepage agreed to withdraw the defamatory charge, and Jay in turn burnt Littlepage’s letter in the presence of John Adams. Jay, so far as he could, avoided all further contact with his former protégé.3
The Paris chapter of the Littlepage-Jay relationship closed on a sour note: When Carmichael came to Paris to help settle Jay’s public and private accounts, he asserted that Littlepage had been playing them against each other and raised Littlepage’s charge that Jay left him in Spain to spy upon Carmichael “and had given him a cypher to enable him to convey his advices more safely and securely.” Jay assured Carmichael that this was an “impudent falsehood,” and the latter seems to have ended all further communication with Littlepage.4
Meanwhile, Littlepage left Paris in the entourage of a Polish noble family, taking a circuitous route to Poland via Constantinople. Stanislaus Poniatowski, Poland’s reigning monarch, offered him a position at court, which the young man instantly accepted, taking a leave of absence to arrange his American affairs. Late June 1785 found him back in the United States, where he seems to have persuaded his reluctant uncle Benjamin Lewis to assume ultimate responsibility for his debts. When Littlepage came to New York in November 1785, en route to Poland, he sought to reassure Jay about his guardian’s intentions, but without providing any evidence that Lewis intended payment. Jay declined to answer Littlepage’s letter.5
Littlepage also called on Diego de Gardóqui and turned over to him some testimonials, including recommendations from Crillon and Lafayette, requesting him to present them formally to Congress. Gardoqui transmitted them to Jay. Littlepage requested a congressional testimonial addressed to King Stanislaus II, in effect asking Jay to secure congressional recognition and praise for the very European military adventures, conducted largely at Jay’s expense, that Jay had so vehemently opposed. On 26 November, Jay duly forwarded the material to Congress, which referred it back to him for a report. His report of 2 December advised Congress against providing such a testimonial, arguing that since Congress “must look with an equal Eye to all such of their Citizens as may be of equal merit, they should either refuse such Favors to all or grant them to all, who on equal Ground may ask for them.”6 Planning to leave for Europe on the French packet, and aware that Congress was about to adjourn, Littlepage withdrew his request for a recommendation and asked Jay for his papers back. Jay informed him that the documents had been returned to Congress in accordance with standard procedures. Since Congress had adjourned, this left Littlepage unable to recover his documents before his departure.
This was immediately followed by notice from lawyers Alexander Hamilton and Robert Morris that they were bringing suit against Littlepage on the warrant sworn out by Jay for the debt due him. Jay claimed to have learned that Littlepage had on hand more than enough money to repay the sums owed, and that Littlepage’s statements about his uncle’s repayment were only attempts to put him off until he could leave the country.7 Jay was at least partially misinformed; most of the money in Littlepage’s hands was in fact Virginia state funds he was transporting to Europe to finance a statue of Washington.8 Littlepage was arrested, but managed, with Brockholst Livingston’s help, to post bail, lodging Virginia’s funds as collateral.9 From this point on, Littlepage bombarded Jay with insults, proclaiming that Jay was too well acquainted with the laws of his country not to know that “I cannot personally be accountable for sums advanced for me while under age, upon credit of my guardian.”10
Littlepage then threatened to let the world know how he had been misused. With “an appeal to the public” imminent, Jay stiffly declared, “I have nothing to apprehend from publication.”11 The 6 December 1785 issue of Francis Childs’s New York Daily Advertiser initiated publication of the correspondence between Littlepage and Jay. Jay followed the next day with a six-page counterblast that included disclosure of Carmichael’s revelation that Littlepage had been playing Jay and his secretary against each other for his own ends.12 Now, urged on by Brockholst Livingston, Littlepage published a rejoinder.13 Further correspondence continued for another week to the titillation of New York readers, who learned details of the disputes within the Spanish mission, and read Jay’s denial that he had given Littlepage a cipher to report Carmichael’s misdeeds. Even Sarah Livingston Jay was drawn into the fray, when Littlepage published an extract of a Carmichael letter that was interpreted as a slur regarding Sally’s influence over her husband.14
By 7 January, Childs had rushed into pamphlet form the entire previous correspondence. Jay enlisted another New York printer, Eleazar Oswald (c. 1755–95), to issue a corrected edition of Childs’s initial version in a fifty-four-page pamphlet.15
Why a man in Jay’s prestigious official position should have stooped to reply and thereby encourage the ventilation of the petty conflicts among the personalities at the Spanish mission was a question that occurred to a number of his friends, to whom Jay hastened to send copies of the published correspondence. Even so stalwart a friend of Jay as Matthew Ridley commented: “I could hardly have believed a serious Answer from Mr. Jay necessary.”16
In his letter to Jefferson of 9 December 1785 designed to counteract the impact of arrival of the publications in Europe, Jay identified one of his reasons—concern about foreign interference: “It has been remarked to me from many Quarters that the Persons who have stood behind him [Littlepage] in this Business are french men—what could have been their Views can only be matter of Conjecture—whatever may be the Sentiments of their Court respecting me I am persuaded that such Conduct will not recommend them to their Minister of whose good Sense and Respect for Propriety I entertain too good an opinion to suppose that such Exertions of Zeal can meet with his approbation—”17 In comments to others he made his allegations more explicit. To Adams, Jay announced on 2 February 1786: “The attack which produced that Pamphlet, was not only countenanced but stimulated by some of the Subjects of our good allies here. It is no Secret either to You or me that I am no favorite with them: nor have I any Reason to apprehend that they are pleased to see me in the Place I now fill.”18 In conversations with Gardoqui, Jay complained that the French consul, presumably Antoine René Charles Mathurin de la Forêt (Forest; 1756–1846), the recently appointed consul-general in New York, and other Frenchmen, along with the Dutch minister and his son, aided Littlepage. He claimed that they detained the French packet for eight days to allow Littlepage time to publish his writings and to place copies of them on the packet.19 Jay reiterated his contention that Littlepage was a tool of “more important people” in letters to Jacob Read and to George Mason Jr.20
In his letter to Adams, Jay gave a further explanation for his actions, his fear of the judgment of posterity should he die without putting his defense into the record: “I should have treated this Attack with silent Contempt, had not false Facts been urged, propagated and impressed with Industry and Art, and which if not exposed and refuted, might have appeared after my Death in the Memoirs of some of these People.” Most of Jay’s correspondents assured him of their support, and Washington, after investigating the case, registered his verdict: “Mr. Littlepage seems to have forgot what had been his situation, forgot what was due to you, and indeed what was necessary to his own Character; and his Guardian, I think, seems to have forgotten every thing.”21
When Littlepage slipped away from New York in January in the French packet Courier de New-York, he left his affairs in the hands of Brockholst Livingston, who had posted a substitute bail for him. Livingston was smarting from revelations in the published correspondence alleging that Jay, as a sign of his lack of confidence, had declined to entrust him with diplomatic dispatches when he returned to America and instead had placed them in the hands of Stephen Codman and John Vaughan. The issue of the selection of appropriate carriers of his dispatches, which did reflect on his conduct as a public official, prompted Jay to publish a notice on 16 December 1785 to the effect that a family connection rendered “a public explanation indelicate, and consequently improper.” He offered to submit the matter to the judgment of a few friends, declaring that if the verdict went against him it would “be proclaimed to the world.” Livingston asked Charles Thomson to name five congressional delegates to serve in this capacity. A hearing ensued in the presence of four unnamed congressmen at which Jay managed to refute statements of his brother-in-law.22 Jay then pressed ahead with his suit against Livingston as Littlepage’s surety demanding prompt settlement.23 Not until Littlepage returned to America in 1801 did he contact Brockholst to determine what had happened regarding the debt. Informed that Brockholst had been held liable for and paid the amount due, Littlepage made arrangements for repayment, returned to Virginia, and died shortly thereafter.24
1. Littlepage to King Stanislaus II, 6 Oct. 1785, quoted in 114. Stanislaus II (Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski (1732–98) ruled Poland from 1764–95.
2. See 2: 471–75; : 218–34. For JJ’s early concern that Littlepage would use JJ’s discontinuance of support against him politically, see JJ to Gouverneur Morris, 10 Nov. 1781, Dft, NNC (EJ: 8335); 3: 38n2. For Littlepage’s allegations against Carmichael, which JJ had him record in a letter of 15 June 1781, see , 9–11, 44–45; Daily Advertiser (New York), 7 Dec. 1785. For the background to JJ’s conflicts with his secretary, see 2: 168–74.
3. See 3: 295–96, 324, 553, 554n29; : 518–19. On Littlepage’s request to carry the treaty, see Littlepage to JJ, 16 July, ALS, NNC (EJ: 6833); JJ to Littlepage, 17 July 1783, Dft, NNC (EJ: 6834); and , 40–42.
4. Regarding Littlepage’s alleged assignment to spy on Carmichael, see 3: 553, 554n29; , 40–42. As JJ later made a point of noting, no letter from Carmichael to Littlepage postdated 14 May 1784, when JJ’s meeting with Carmichael took place, was included in the correspondence that Littlepage spread on the record. See 3: 553, 554n29; : 685; , 42n. Littlepage denied having told Carmichael that JJ assigned him to spy; upon arrival in Europe he wrote Carmichael demanding an explanation, but apparently received no answer. In 1790, during a mission to Spain, Littlepage repaid sums still owed to Carmichael and resumed friendly relations with him. 129, 139, 235–36, 246, 252.
5. Littlepage to JJ, 18 Nov. 1785, printed in the Daily Advertiser (New York), 7 Dec. 1785; , 42.
6. Littlepage to JJ, 25 Nov., and note 2, and JJ’s report of 2 Dec. 1785, below; Littlepage to JJ, 30 Nov. 1785, ALS, DNA: PCC, item 78, 14: 685; LbkC, , 2: 29 (EJ: 1819); 1 Dec. 1785, ALS, PCC, item 78, 14: 681; LbkC, , 2: 30 (EJ: 1821); 2 Dec., LbkCs, , 2: 32 (EJ: 1823); NNC, JJ Lbk. 3; JJ to Littlepage, 1 Dec. and 3 Dec. 1785, LbkCs, , 2: 30, 33 (EJ: 1820, 1824). On 3 June 1786, Littlepage wrote from Warsaw to the President of Congress requesting the return of his letters. His request was referred to CT “to take order in delivering copies herein mentioned to any person applying in behalf of Mr. Littlepage.” ALS, DNA: PCC, item 78, 14: 717; 32: 25n-26n.
7. The Daily Advertiser (New York), 6 and 7 Dec. 1785; , 42.
8. Littlepage was still as penurious as ever but was carrying to France £300 in state funds for payment to French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon. Littlepage lodged this money as security for his bail so he could leave on the French packet. After first approaching Lafayette for assistance, Littlepage made arrangements with TJ in France to have his uncle reimburse the state, and subsequently offered other financial arrangements to cover the debt should his uncle not do so. 114–15, 121–22, 127–29, 138–39; 9: 212. On Houdon, see BF to JJ, 26 Oct. 1785, above.
9. , 42.
10. Littlepage to JJ, 5 Dec. 1785, 8; for similar statements, see the Daily Advertiser (New York), 6 and 7 Dec. 1785.
11. , 43.
12. Daily Advertiser (New York), 6 and 7 Dec. 1785. For the full controversy as printed in the New York Daily Advertiser, see the issues for 6, 7, 10, 12, and 16 and 20 Dec. 1785.
13. On Brockholst’s role in encouraging Littlepage to publish his correspondence, see James Price to JJ, 13 Jan. 1786, , 52.
14. Littlepage published in his polemic in the Daily Advertiser (New York) of 10 Dec. 1785 an extract of a letter that apparently many interpreted as a slur against Sally. The letter is supposedly one from Carmichael to Littlepage, 21 Jan. 1783, in which Carmichael supported Littlepage’s military career choice asserting: “If you have nothing but the reflection of having spent gloriously a few years of your life, and some of your patrimony, at an era which others devote to debauch, or at best, the dry study of books, I hold that you have no cause to repent. You have seen more of mankind in this period, you have gained more experience for your future conduct, than you would have done in years, in the situation to which Mr. Jay would have confined you; and after all, you might have experienced the situation of Mr. Livingston and myself. Nothing surprises me in the conduct of a man, who with great parts, is guided by female caprice, female resentment, and female avarice.”
On 12 Dec. in the Advertiser Littlepage printed under an 11 Dec. date: “As I find that an expression in one of Mr. Carmichael’s letters to me which I have quoted in my publication of yesterday, is misconstrued into an indirect sarcasm against Mrs. Jay; I take this public method of declaring, that I believe the interpretation put upon it to be foreign to that gentleman’s ideas; and that it is used by him entirely in a metaphorical sense. For my own part could I have even conceived it liable to that misconstruction, not only my personal respect for that amiable and accomplished lady, but also the decorum and delicacy due to society, and the public, would have prevented me from insulting her person and sex by inserting it.”
15. See , and . A later edition was John Jay, The Whole Correspondence between the Hon. John Jay, Esq., and Mr. Lewis Littlepage: Containing, in addition to the pamphlet heretofore published, all those important publications which appeared by their sanction in the Daily Advertiser, of the month of Dec. 1785. Together with an appendix; in which are contained, the circumstances alluded to by Mr. Littlepage, respecting the conduct of Mr. Jay towards Brockholst Livingston, Esq. (Philadelphia: Printed and sold by M. Carey and Co., 1787) ( no. 20430).
Francis Childs published Littlepage’s response a year later. See 2, 29. Another version with an expanded title appeared also in 1787: An Answer to the Pamphlet (which has so much engaged the public attention) Published by the Honorable John Jay, Esquire. Containing his Correspondence with Lewis Littlepage, Esquire. This Answer is dated at Warsaw, in Poland, and Transmitted to the Printer for Publication. By Lewis Littlepage, Esquire, of Virginia, at present Chamberlain and Secretary of the Cabinet of His Majesty the King of Poland. Bonis nocet qui malis parcit [He hurts the good who spares the evil]. (Philadelphia: Printed and sold by Enoch Story, 1787) ( no. 20463).
16. Ridley to Catharine W. Livingston, 1, 19 Feb. 1786, ALS, MHi: Ridley; JJ to Catharine W. Livingston, 28 Dec. 1785, ALS, MHi: Ridley (EJ: 4717). Others felt that JJ had been ill-advised to enter the lists with Littlepage, since JJ’s “character is too well established to be called in question upon any unimportant or trivial occasion.” See Monroe to JM, 26 Dec. 1785, 8: 462–63; Lafayette to GW, 6 Feb. 1786, , 3: 543, 545n10. Virginians familiar with the cast of characters seemed especially intrigued by the incident. When Monroe sent JM a copy of JJ’s corrected Letters on 19 Mar. 1786, he pointedly remarked, “It may furnish some matter of entertainment.” 9: 506–7. George Mason Jr., having read in the pamphlet Littlepage’s assertion that rapid departure from Virginia had prevented his completing arrangements to repay his debt to JJ, reported that Littlepage was rumored to have made unauthorized drafts on persons in Europe that were protested and were probably returning just when Littlepage fled Virginia. Mason to JJ, 23 July 1787, ALS, NNC (EJ: 6940).
17. See JJ to TJ, 9 Dec. 1785, below.
18. See JJ to JA, 2 Feb., and JA to JJ, 22 Feb. 1786, below. In his public pamphlet published by Oswald, JJ also alluded to unspecified forces behind Littlepage’s actions: “There is reason to believe the Young Man’s Ebullitions have not been entirely spontaneous, nor designed to serve merely his own Purposes”. On JJ’s attitudes toward France and the perception of them by French officials, see Otto to Vergennes, 10 Jan. 1786, below.
19. Gardoqui to Floridablanca, 1 Feb. 1786, LbkC, ICU: Durrett, 57–58.
20. See JJ to Read, 16 Mar., and Read to JJ, 12 June 1786, below; Mason to JJ, 23 July, ALS, NNC (EJ: 6940); and JJ to Mason, 9 Aug. 1787, below.
21. GW to JJ, 18 May 1786, ALS, NNC (EJ: 7236); LbkC, DLC: Washington (EJ: 12659). See also Edward Rutledge to JJ, 27 Nov. 1787, 1: 228–29.
22. On the dispatches, and Livingston’s effort to defend his reputation in light of JJ’s decision not to entrust any to him, see 2: 601n31, 675–76, 680–81, 682n8; Daily Advertiser (New York), 16 and 20 Dec. 1785; , 51–54; John Jay’s Deposition against Henry Brockholst Livingston, 25 Jan. 1786, below; , 51–52. For correspondence to clarify John Vaughan’s role regarding dispatches, see JJ to Vaughan, 26 Jan. 1786, LS (EJ: 2565); Vaughan to JJ, 2 Feb. 1786, LbkC (EJ: 2585); and Vaughan to Livingston, 18 Mar. and 27 June 1786, LbkCs (EJ: 2597, 2629), all PPAmP: Vaughan.
23. See Jay v. Littlepage, Minutes, New York Supreme Court, July 1786–11 July 1787, D, New York County Clerk Archives (EJ: 13423). On JJ’s suits against Littlepage, and subsequently against Livingston, see also Robert Morris to JJ, 16 Jan. 1786, ALS, NNC (EJ: 7021); Statement of New York Supreme Court Judgments in Jay v Littlepage (July 1786); and Jay v. Brockholst Livingston (16 Jan. 1787), D, nd, NNC (EJ: 9314); AH to JJ, 3 May 1787, ALS, NNC (EJ: 5617). See also Brockholst Livingston to Susannah French Livingston, 27 June 1787, ALS, MHi: Livingston (EJ: 4731).
24. On Littlepage’s later career in Europe and ultimate return to America, see 127–372. In 1795 during a dispute with Stanislaus about compensation, Littlepage similarly threatened to publish his memoir, which included potentially damaging information regarding his activities, but was persuaded not to do so. Ibid., 354–56; Curtis Carroll Davis, “An American Courtier in Europe: Lewis Littlepage’s ‘Private Political Memoir’ (Hamburg, 1795),” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 31 (June 1957), 255–69.