The Ambivalence of Henry Adams

I've tried for some years now to read The Education of Henry Adams.  I have not succeeded in doing so.  I'm trying to read it once more, and this time have read more of it than I ever have.  I'm uncertain whether I'll be successful in reading it all.



This disturbs me, as it's a work which seems to be admired by almost everyone.  Gore Vidal, whom I admire as a writer (but not necessarily as a public figure) was very fond of it indeed, and wrote that there was something of a competition on the death of a relative or friend regarding who would receive the deceased's copy of the book.



It's a curious book, often described as an autobiography but if so not one which even pretends to set forth events which took place in a more or less objective manner (to the extent that's possible).  It's instead a commentary regarding certain aspects of Adams' life and certain people he encountered while living it.  It is well written, but as a commentary, not as an effort to relate what took place.  Adams is uninterested in describing what took place.  He wants instead to tell us something of what he thought of what took place while it took place, but most of all to tell us what he thinks now about what took place and those who were there while it took place including, perhaps most of all, himself.

There's nothing wrong with the author of an autobiography being interested primarily in himself, of course.  A certain level of self-interest and self-regard is required if an autobiography is to be written.  Nor is there anything necessarily wrong with an autobiographer using the opportunity provided to opine regarding people and things in his or her past.


  What I find somewhat peculiar, though, is that Adams does nothing but opine about them.  It seems the entire purpose of the book.  What I also find striking is that Adams never seems to wholeheartedly admire, or write well of, anyone or anything.  That includes his famous grandfather and great-grandfather, and his own father.  Whenever he describes a talent or ability of a person, he invariably notes, as if to offset it, something lacking in him.  The same goes for any institution.  It has certain good qualities which he will mention, but is otherwise deficient in some sense.  The deficiencies of any person or institution, inevitably, are greater than the merits; or it seems at least that he spends more time remarking on their inadequacies than he does on their good qualities.



For example, he attended Harvard College which was good in its own way, inoffensively and efficiently preparing its students for life in the world, but provided a poor education.  His classmates included such as O.W. Holmes and the son of Robert E. Lee, but Holmes at the time was nothing to write home about and Lee, though sociable and having leadership qualities was an angry, stupid, thin-skinned drunk liable to leap at you with a knife if he thought you had offended him.  Adams' father, Charles Francis Adams, was amiable and remarkably even tempered, but dull and something of a dunce.



Life seems to have been a series of disappointments for Henry Adams, overall.  The world and all that's in it was on the whole somewhat dispiriting.  It in any case contained nothing, apparently, which Adams thinks was wholly good.  What was good wasn't quite good enough, and was in some way bad.  Nothing seemed worthy of any great effort on his part.


This perhaps is why he didn't go into public service as his ancestors on the Adams side did.  His grandfather and great-grandfather were presidents and his great grandfather was a Founding Father of his country, a revolutionary.  His father served as U.S. Ambassador of England.  He accompanied his father as a clerk, it's true, but his natural tendency seemed to have been to comment on people and things, not very approvingly, as an occasional journalist and historian.  He didn't soldier in the Civil War.



He may have been one of the first public, or even professional, full time intellectuals.  He had a kind of salon, at which he and others of like mind met and discussed significant matters.  He seems to have been especially fond of clever young women, his "nieces" as they were called.  He had an ongoing, though it seems platonic, relation with the beautiful daughter of William Tecumseh Sherman.  His wife committed suicide, and he took the trouble to destroy all her correspondence and indeed never wrote of her, even in his "autobiography", and it seems didn't speak of her after her death.  This led some to speculate that he had been unfaithful to her.



A peculiar man, then, and one given to judge others, not too kindly.  He was apparently also a notorious and savage anti-Semite.  His friend John Hay commented that he would have attributed the eruption of Vesuvius to the Jews.


It's possible his propensity to see and speak of the deficiencies in all people he knew or encountered, and any human institution he experienced, may have been the result of having a judicious mind.  But one has to wonder, reading this book, whether he was ever enthusiastic about someone or something, or whether he found fault wherever he looked, for all his life.



Intellectuals, it seems, live to criticize, and are never really content in doing anything else.  Henry Adams may have been representative of the decay of a great New England family (he never was particularly fond of Boston, either).  Or he may have been simply more astute than anyone else.  He may have relished and thrived in his disappointment and ambivalence; it may be that he wouldn't have enjoyed being content or happy, at least if it meant that he would not be inclined or able to find fault with someone, anyone.



The education of Henry Adams was apparently an education in the faults of others, and even his own faults.  These faults weren't formally taught, and so were not part of his education or that of anybody else, but simply were made evident to him as part of our existence, which he observed and wrote of, disapprovingly for the most part.