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PARTISAN REVIEW
Jefferson and James Madison
(1889-90),
Adams basically kept that
faith. Though he looked down on party politics, he believed in political
reform and scientific progress. In
Democracy
the narrator says that
"underneath the scum floating on the surface of politics, Madeleine [the
novel's protagonist] felt there was a sort of healthy current of honest
principle." In the
History,
Adams argues that scientific and technologi–
cal progress is more likely to occur in America than in Europe because
of the absence of class barriers. "The average American," he says, "was
more intelligent than the average European, and was becoming every
year still more active-minded."
When James was in Washington in January
1882,
he enjoyed attend–
ing Adams's salon and admired their efforts to reform American poli–
tics. In "Pandora"
(1884),
James offers a genial portrait of Henry and
Clover Adams, whom he calls Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Bonnycastle. Count
Vogelstein-the German diplomat who serves as James's point of view
in the story-notes that Mrs. Bonnycastle's husband "was not in poli–
tics, though politics were much in him; but the couple had taken upon
themselves the responsibilities of an active patriotism."
On December
6, 1885,
Clover Adams committed suicide. After learn–
ing about her death, James remarked: "What an end to that intensely
lively Washington
salon."
It
was also the end of Adams's role as a
reformer. He soon turned into a prophet of doom who liked to tell his
friends that he had "died to the world." In
1902
he wrote that "I have
long ago looked on my own life as quite finished," and in
1906
he took
great pleasure in the fact that the
New York Times
had referred to him
as "the late Henry Adams." He also claimed to be uninterested in poli–
tics. "Politically I am extinct. Domestic reform drivels. Reformers are
always bores."
Despite this remark, Adams remained interested in politics, for he
filled his letters with political and economic commentary that was col–
ored by his pessimism about the course of Western civilization. In
1893
he told his friend John Hay that "I am pretty mad about it [the current
economic crisis] . In fact, I am furious, and in no frame of mind to be
judicial or historical. I am intensely curious, too, for I think we may be
on the verge of a general collapse of the social fabric in Europe." The
United States, he said, was also in bad shape; "my dear democracy is all
in pieces."
In the
1890S,
Adams thought the main force wrecking Western civi–
lization was what he called "gold-bug" capitalism. The chief agents of this
destructive capitalism, he said, were Jews. (Adams had not always
attacked Jews; in the
History
he berated Jefferson for a scornful reference
