John Adams’s Dinner with the Hotspurs

As described yesterday, John Adams finally got to see the inside of his mother’s cousin Nicholas Boylston’s Boston mansion on 16 Jan 1766.

Adams had apparently heard stories of the witty analysis around Boylston’s dinner table, and he finally got to experience that.

Nicholas Boylston’s younger brother Thomas (1721–1798, shown here in another John Singleton Copley portrait) was on that night’s guest list. So was the Boylstons’ brother-in-law Benjamin Hallowell, already a high Customs officer. (Adams also noted the presence of two gentlemen named Smith, but he didn’t record them saying anything notable.)

Adams’s description of the banter in his diary began:

The Conversation of the two Boylstones and Hallowell is a Curiosity. Hotspurs all.—Tantivi.—

Samuel Johnson defined hotspurs as men “violent, passionate, precipitate and heady.” “Tantivy” was a hunting cry that for a century had been associated with British Tories.

Nick. is a warm Friend of the Lieutenant Governor [Thomas Hutchinson], and inclining towards the Governor [Francis Bernard]. Tom a firebrand against both. Tom is a perfect Viper—a Fiend—a Jew—a Devil—but is orthodox in Politicks however.

Adams wrestled with how to regard Thomas Boylston, who seemed to be on his side but was nastier than he then liked. Adams also revealed that he shared the nastiness of his society in using “Jew” to mean a betrayer.

Hallowell tells stories about [James] Otis and drops Hints about [Samuel] Adams, &c., and about Mr. Dudley Atkins of Newbury. Otis told him, he says, that the Parliament had a Right to tax the Colonies and he was a d—d fool who deny’d it, and that this People never would be quiet till we had a Council from Home [i.e., appointed instead of elected], till our Charter was taken away, and till we had regular Troops quartered upon Us.

Those were the very measures that Parliament adopted in 1774. Did Otis really speak as Hallowell described? If so, was he warning about what the London government would do, or have to do, to quell resistance? As for defending the Crown’s right to tax, Otis did occasionally make such remarks, to the annoyance of his Whig colleagues. But Hallowell wasn’t an unbiased source.  

Returning to that royal appointee:

He says he saw Adams under the Tree of Liberty, when the Effigies hung there and asked him who they were and what. He said he did not know, he could not tell. He wanted to enquire.

He says Mr. Dudley Atkins was too well acquainted with the Secret of some riots there, to be entirely depended on, in his Account, &c.

Typically, Samuel Adams was careful not to incriminate himself. And in fact he was almost certainly not involved in planning the Loyall Nine’s anti-Stamp Act protest in August 1765. I’ll discuss Dudley Atkins in a separate posting.

Back to Adams’s host:

Nick Boylstone is full of Stories about Jemmy [Otis] and Solomon Davis. Solomon says, Country man I dont see what Occasion there is for a Governor and Council and House. You and the Town would do well enough.

Solomon Davis (1716–1791) was another of Boston’s Whig merchants, like Otis originally from Barnstable. If Boylston quoted him correctly, Davis saw merit in a more democratic government for the colony, akin to a town meeting. But he was much more interested in commerce than politics.

That meal gave John Adams plenty to think about.

Solomon Davis and the Fatal Plum Cake

John and Dolly Hancock were known for hosting dinner parties in their mansion on Beacon Hill (shown here shortly before it was torn down).

According to James Spear Loring’s Hundred Boston Orators (which cribbed freely from older sources), they even built “a lofty and spacious hall on the northern wing of his mansion, extending sixty feet, devoted to festive parties, and built of wood.” That wing was removed in the early 1800s, so it’s not in this photo.

On 6 June 1791, the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company had its annual election and dinner at Faneuil Hall, a major social occasion for Boston’s elite men. That evening, Hancock hosted a supper party. Loring wrote:

Among the company present, were Col. Azor Orne, and Solomon Davis, Esq., a merchant who resided in Tremont-street, opposite the Savings Bank. He was very facetious.

A superb plum-cake graced the centre of the table. It was noticed by the guests that Mr. Davis partook very freely of this cake; and, moreover, that the silver tankard of punch was greatly lightened of its liquid, by liberal draughts through his lips. As was the natural habit of Mr. Davis, he set the table in a roar; and in one of his puns being specially felicitous, Col. Orne remarked, “Go home, Davis, and die;—you can never beat that!”

Mr. Davis, on his way home, fell dead, in a fit of apoplexy, near King’s Chapel, and his pockets were found filled with plum-cake.

Davis was a couple of weeks shy of turning seventy-seven.

Loring tended to print the most dramatic version of a story, and not always accurately. In this case, we have different details from the letters of Davis’s widow as Barrett Wendell summarized them in his article “A Gentlewoman of Boston” in the American Antiquarian Society Proceedings.

Catherine (Wendell) Davis stayed home that evening because she had received a letter from a relation “with particulars of his melancholy disaster.” So her husband went to the Hancock supper alone.

Freed from conjugal observation, Mr. Davis appears to have supped imprudently; what he drank is not mentioned, but he ate more plum-cake and fruit than was good for him. On his way home, he was seized with a fit in the street. Carried to his house, and there helped by the doctor, he so far recovered himself as to go cheerfully up stairs; but once in his chamber he was again overcome by sickness, and instantly expired. 

In addition, Amos Otis’s Genealogical Notes of Barnstable Families (1888) said of Davis, “On his way home he was taken suddenly ill, and sat down on the steps of King’s Chapel, from whence he was removed to his house in the vicinity, where he shortly after died.” So there’s the King’s Chapel detail.

Finally, one of Hancock’s successors as governor, John Brooks, used to counsel another, William Eustis, about his diet by saying, “Don’t you remember that Solomon Davis died after eating plum cake?” So even if we have no confirmation for the plum cake in Davis’s pockets, people definitely remembered that dessert as why he died.