John Quincy Adams Digital Diary

18. VII: The dull weather has again returned. J. A. Smith came out in a Post-Chaise and brought a copy of a notice from Lord Castlereagh to the Foreign Ambassadors and Ministers which had been brought this morning to my Office by one of the Messengers from the foreign Office. It was in French, and a notification to those of the Ambassadors and Ministers who had (Letters) to be presented to His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, from their respective Sovereigns, that the Prince would receive them for that purpose at Carlton House, this day at 2. O’Clock— Smith thought it was a notice for a Court, and immediately brought it out here.— But as I had nothing to present to the Prince from my Sovereign, I did not go. Smith mentioned a Crazy American named Pugsley who had been to the Office and was very anxious to see me— He is to call again to-morrow. He has also an irresistible impulse to see the Prince Regent to whom he has to disclose a mysterious secret. Smith returned immediately to London. General Wetherall immediately afterwards called on me to enquire from the Duke of Kent Peter Pio’s character. Pio is at Bruxelles, and is endeavouring to enter the Duke of Kent’s service.— I gave the General as good a character of Pio as I could consistently with Truth and Candour— He told me that he had been in America towards the close of the War of the American Revolution; and was on board the Vestal Frigate in October 1780. when Mr Henry Laurens was taken by her. The Vestal was upon a Cruize from Newfoundland; to which Island Mr Laurens was first carried, when taken— General Wetherall had forgotten the name of Mr. Laurens, and thought it was my father who had been taken by the Vestal— The General is Comptroller of the Duke of Kent’s Household, and lives near the Duke’s Seat at Castlebar Hill, which he invited me to go and see— He says the Duke who has now fixed his residence for some years at Bruxelles will come to England for a few days, next Month. He is now upon a visit to his Sister the Queen of Wurtemberg, at Stutgard— I walked before dinner to Ealing and Hanwell, and began dispatch 55. to the Secretary of State. Read in the Evening, the Rivals, Act 2. but my hoarseness prevented me from reading more. Sent back to General Dumouriéz the short account of Fouché’s Life, and the Memoire of Chateaubriand to Louis 18. at Ghent, with a refutation of it in the form of Notes by a Bonapartist. All trifles of a day that is past.