The Gap in Henry Adams’ Education

The Gap in Henry Adams' Education ELIZABETH WATERSTON Henry Adams tried to erase a twenty-year period, 1871-1891, not only from the book he titled TheEducationofHenry Adams, but also from his diaries, notes, and correspondence. 1 The gap in the Education is worth filling in, for it represents a crucial period in the development of a unique artist and historian. The events of the twenty-year period can be presented in four ways: Adams himself said, "One must either treat history as a catalogue, a record, a romance, or as an evolution." 2 First, an itemized list of dates, events, publications, and travels can constitute the approach to history via catalogues, and we can note the items deleted when he moved from life to autobiography. Second, a fuller record of Adams' story can be compiled from letters, journals, reminiscences of his friends, letters of his wife, and from the two novels which he produced during that blacked-out period. Phrase after phrase in this record will tempt the historian to speculate about the tensions implied in comments on Adams' mother, his sister, his wife, the heroines he created in Democracy, and Esther, and the friend he memorialized in MarauTaaroa,LastQueen of Tahiti. So we slip from history as record to history as romance. The romance reads at first like the simple story of a broken heart, but no follower of Adams' ironies will be satisfied to settle for anything simple. Furthermore , Adams himself as historian rejected the romantic view. He also rejected a simple evolutionary view ofhistory and finally believed that the universe is moving inevitably to randomness and chaos. This descent he felt to be connected with changes in the feminine principle: once again this crucial aspect of his vision evolved between 1871 and 1891. Four approaches, then, to the gap in the education of Henry Adams; and first, briefly, the story in catalogue form, beginning with Category One: Travels. From Boston, in 1871, on a wedding trip to Europe, Egypt, England, and back to a Harvard Professorship. After resignation from Harvard in 1877, to New York and Washington, with a side-trip in winter to Niagara Falls, that awesome symbol of relentless force. In 1879, to London, France, and Spain, and back to England for a year of historical study. From 1881 to 1885 in Washington as historian and political observer, a sojourn ended by Mrs. Adams' suicide in 1885. Across the U.S.A. in 1886withhis friend Lafarge, and on to Japan, returning to Washington in 1887.To Cuba, "home" to Quincy, and to San Francisco in 1888, and back to Washington. Finally, in 1890-1891, to the South Seas and Samoa, returning slowly via Paris and London in 1891to Washington in 1892. Here the story of his THE CANADIAN REVIEW OF AMERICAN STUDIES VOL. VII, NO. 2, FALL 1976 life,dropped at the end of chapter 20 of The EducationofHenry Adams, resumes in chapter 21. The catalogue continues, under Category Two: Publications. 1871-1876, as Editor of the North American Review and Professor of History, articles and reviews, including "Harvard College, 1786-7 ," in which that institution is reconstructed from Adams family accounts, and "The Independents in the Canvass." Bookspublished after his resignation from Harvard: Essayson Anglo-SaxonLaw, in which he first explores the relations between civil law and family structures; New England Federalism(also 1877); and Life of Gallatin, 1879. Balancing these histories, and published anonymously, two novels, Democracy(1880)and Esther (1883), dramatizing the corruption and the tensions of modern American life. Between these two, JohnRandolph (1882). A long hiatus in publishing in the years following Mrs. Adams' death. Then, two volumes at a time, the mammoth Historyof the United States (vols. I and II in 1889; vols. III and IV in 1890-91). Finally, "The Primitive Rights of Women," a lecture delivered in his Harvard days, reprinted with them in Historical Essays, also Memoirs of Marau Taaroa, published in 1892. That catalogue, like all lists, has its own suggestiveness. The fuller record of 1871-1891, contained in diaries and letters and novels, offers richer help in piecing together the developments of those lost years. We should preface this record by a re...