The Art of Reform

In the midst of the American Revolution John Adams wrote to Abigail Adams that he was compelled to study politics and war so that his descendants could enjoy “the flowers of freedom,”[i] such as painting and poetry. Indeed, three generations later, John Adams’s great-grandson, Henry Adams, seemed relieved of the demands of public life. Upon his graduation from Harvard College in 1858 Henry declared that he intended to pursue “a quiet and literary life.”[ii] And, in fact, Henry never held political office like those who came before him. Nonetheless, Henry Adams found his mind occupied by the nature of the regime that his great-grandfather helped to found. As the American republic gave way to a large, sprawling democracy, the ambitions of politicians replaced the virtue of statesmen and reform was needed. Adams sought to bring about reform through his literary endeavors first as a biographer and then as a novelist. The novel offered Henry a larger canvas on which to portray the landscape of American democracy and to represent the potential for reform.

In 1877, Henry Adams and his wife, Clover, “made a great leap in the world…cut loose” from their deep Boston roots and landed in Washington, D.C.[iii] The ostensible reason for the couple’s move to Washington was so that Henry could access the archives necessary to write a biography of Albert Gallatin, the talented Secretary of Treasury and diplomat during the Jefferson administration. (Adam’s research would eventually lead to his nine-volume The History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison.) In their treatment of Henry Adams as a historian, Russell Hanson and Richard Merriman argue that Adams’s works are examples of republican historiography. “Historians are among the most important sentinels of the republic.” Writing biography would lead to reform by recalling men who had prevailed against corruption. “[S]tatesmen are presented as paragons of virtue…Leaders learn the art of statecraft from considering these examples.”[iv] In this respect, biography is similar to portraiture. Leon Edel, best known for his masterful biography of Henry James explained that both a biography and a portrait “give us appearance of the…life and a personality.”[v] Even as Henry was executing his portrait of Gallatin, he knew that biography would not be able to affect the type of reform he sought to bring about with his pen.”[vi] The nation had undergone a transformation and his portrait did not capture the forces that brought it about. Biographer Patricia O’Toole noticed that “Adams was a distiller, a seeker of essences who cared less for particulars than for large truths.”[vii] Landscapes, which take a broader view of the environment and, perhaps a greater number of people, would better capture the spirit of the time and the larger truths of American democracy. A landscape might inspire reform.   Adams painted his landscapes in his 1880 novel, Democracy.

Adams chose Washington for his novel’s setting. The nation’s capital was home the government records that Adams needed to write biography and history, but he moved to Washington for personal as much as for professional reasons. “I gravitate to a capital by a primary law of nature. This is the only place in America where society amuses me, or where life offers variety” (Letters, 326). It would be “society,” not a particular statesman, that would be the subject of his novel and where Henry placed his hopes for reform. Washington society promises to amuse Adams’s heroine, Madeleine Lightfoot Lee, too.   Madeleine’s name suggests a proud pedigree and links her to a signer of the Declaration of Independence. On the opening pages of the novel, Madeleine is restless in New York. Responding to her Boston friends, who encouraged Madeline to take advantage of their city’s intellectual opportunities, Madeline laments, “You are just like the rest of us. You grow six inches high, and then you stop. Why will not somebody grow to be a tree and cast a shadow?”[viii] And, so, Madeleine and her younger sister, Sybil, decide to spend the winter in Washington. They move into on Lafayette Square, which sits on across from a statue of Andrew Jackson. Jackson’s shadow looms large over the Adams family and over American politics. Jackson was the democratic nemesis to Henry’s grandfather, John Quincy Adams. He also introduced “the spoils system” into American politics, which led to corruption in the decades following the Civil War.

Soon after their arrival Madeleine and Sybil visit the Senate gallery. Sybil “assumed the speeches were useful and had purpose, but as they did not interest her she never went again” (Adams, 12). Madeleine, on the other hand, “listened with a little disposition to admire” (Adams, 12). Perhaps, she would find a statesman who would “cast a shadow.” It is not long before she does find a Senator to admire, Silas P. Ratcliffe, known as the Prairie Giant of Peonia. “A great, ponderous man, over six feet high, very senatorial and dignified, with a large head and rather good features” (Adams, 14). Madeleine notices “a certain resemblance to [Daniel] Webster,” giving Senator Ratcliffe “a distant relationship to the Expounder of the Constitution” and a statesmanlike quality. Before long he is one of Madeleine’s regular guests on Sunday evenings. Foreign dignitaries, a Member of Congress, a southern lawyer, and even a historian comprise Madeleine’s new circle of friends.

American politics is protean and Madeline has the sense that a vibrant democracy is not simply a matter of statesmanship and that portraiture would not offer a full account of “the great American mystery of democracy and government” (Adams, 7).   A landscape of democracy, rather than a portrait of a statesman, would better suit her purpose. When it came time to hang a painting over the parlour fireplace, Madeleine chooses a landscape. “[F]inally the domestic altarpiece, the mystical Corot landscape, was hoisted to its place” (Adams, 9). Jean Baptiste Camille Corot was among the European artists that were making a turn from Romanticism to Realism during the nineteenth century.[ix] Corot’s landscapes are marked by his use of dark and light values. He once described his method of painting, “it seems to me very important to begin with by an indication of the darkest values… continue in order to the lightest value.”[x] American politics begins with similar assumptions. It begins with the darkest values, the self-interest of those who would seek and hold political power. It seeks to channel that self-interest in order to achieve the public good, the lightest value of American democracy.

Democracy takes place just as a new president is preparing to take office. Cabinet positions and governmental jobs are being distributed to the new president’s allies and supporters. “This is the moment when the two whited sepulchers at either end of the Avenue reek with the thick atmosphere of bargain and sale…Wealth, office, power are at auction…who intrigues with the most skill? Who has done the dirtiest, the meanest, the darkest, and the most political work? He shall have his reward” (Adams, 58). Madeline and her new friends seek relief from the darkest values of political life by making a short excursion to Mount Vernon. The landscape of northern Virginia is “glowing with colour; one is conscious of walking in an atmosphere that is warm, palpable, radiant with possibilities” (Adams, 58). And, indeed, the nation that stretches beyond Mount Vernon holds great potential. The “brilliancy of the morning” leads a British diplomat to notice that Americans do not appreciate the beauty of their own country because they “require a broad glare” (Adams, 64). The conversation naturally turned to the proprietor of Mount Vernon, a statesman associated with the lightest values of the American polity, George Washington. The historian articulates the admiration Americans hold for the father of their country. “Was not this man an abstract virtue? … It is enough for us to know that he carried his rules of virtue down to a pin’s point, and that we ought, one and all, to be on our knees before his tomb” (Adams, 70). Senator Ratcliffe responds in a darker tone. “He stood outside of politics. The thing couldn’t be done to-day.” (Adams, 71). “Only fools and theorists imagine that our society can be handled with gloves or long poles. One must make one’s self a part of it. If virtue won’t answer our purpose, we must use vice, or our opponents will put us out of office, and this was a true in Washington’s day as it is now, and it always will be” (Adams, 71). The young and mischievous Miss Dare seems to confirm that the lightest values cannot be practicable for long. The happens upon a sundial, which Miss Dare claims that the sundial is broken because the light was too bright. “Don’t you see they get soaked with sunshine so that they can’t hold shadow” (Adams, 72). Soon after the party boards the boat that takes them back to the city and to the darker tones of politics.

As the “dance of democracy” (Adams, 86) continues at an ever more frantic pace, Madeleine’s own ambitions lead her to believe that she might share the Senator’s power. Her friends become increasingly alarmed. But, there is no hope that Senator Ratcliffe’s virtue will prevail. Adams offers hope for reform in “society,” the American people.

One evening a young Italian diplomat wonders if “society” exists in America. Madeleine’s quick defense of Americans against the pretensions of Europeans echoes Henry’s sense that “beyond the square, ‘the country began.’[xi] “Society in America? Indeed there is society in America, and very good society too; but it has a code of its own, and newcomers seldom understand it…‘Society’ in America means all the honest, kindly-mannered, pleasant-voiced women, and all the good, brave, unassuming men between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Each of these has a free pass in every city and village ‘good for this generation only,’ and it depends on each to make use of this pass or not as it may happen to suit his or her fancy” (Adams, 25). Reform, if it is on the horizon, will be brought about by the smaller figures who populate the landscape, rather than the statesmen who are the subjects of portraits.

The figures who emerge to thwart corruption are seemingly apolitical. Carrington is a defeated Confederate soldier, “out at the elbows” (Adams, 107), practicing law in Washington in order to prevent his mother and sisters from slipping into poverty. Sybil, on the other hand, is a New York socialite who is biding her time until she goes to Newport for the summer. “Carrington entered into an alliance, offensive and defensive, with Sybil” (Adams, 107). A Virginia-New York alliance had been important to establishing the republic and, under different political circumstances, a Virginia-New York alliance proves important to deter the corruption of democratic politicians. The alliance is formed, not in the halls of Congress or even in Madeleine’s parlour, but in the landscape beyond the [Lafayette] Square where the country begins.  Carrington and Sybil set out on horseback. They “come upon the bridge which crosses the noble river.” On the other side, they follow the “laurel-margined road, with glimpses of woody defiles, each carrying its trickling stream and rich promise of flowers” until they arrive in Arlington and make their way to former Lee home. “From the heavy brick porch they looked across the superb river to the raw and incoherent ugliness of the city, idealized into dreamy beauty by the atmosphere, and the soft background of purple hills behind” (Adams, 111-112). The distant Capitol reminds Carrington and Sybil that the landscape of Arlington cemetery began with the dark tones of American politics. The inability of statesmen to reconcile the principles on which the nation was founded with the institution of slavery led to death of hundreds of thousands and the misery of countless more. The “graves outside brought the horrors of the war so near” that Sybil couldn’t help but to take an interest in the life of her democracy. Sybil asks Carrington to share his experience during the Civil War. It was marked by the brutalities of nineteenth-century war, but also by the loyalty, courage, and statesmanship that ennoble political life.

In this landscape of dark and light values, the two relatively minor characters —two who are part of “society” in America, but are easily overlooked for their lack of political power— take the first step to bring about reform by thwarting the spread of corruption. Sybil and Carrington assess the danger that is posed to Madeleine. Sybil regrets that “Madeleine has done nothing but get into mischief here” (Adams, 113), leaving her vulnerable to Senator Ratcliffe’s political machinations. “He is always trying to tempt her with power” (Adams, 113). And, so Carrington and Sybil formulate their plans for preventing Madeleine’s marriage to Senator Ratcliffe. The alliance is successful and Madeleine rejects Ratcliffe’s proposal. “As for his appeal to her ambition, it fell quite dead upon her ear, but a woman must be more than a heroine who can listen to flattery so evidently sincere, from a man who is pre-eminent among men, without being affected by it” (Adams, 154). In the end, Madeleine displays the type of virtue that is the subject of portraiture. However, virtue is made possible by the smaller figures in the painting. They are “honest…kindly mannered…women, and all the good…unassuming men” who occupy the “tones and half-tones, colours and harmonies” of a landscape.

[i] The Letters of John and Abigail Adams (New York: Penguin Classics, 2004), 378.

[ii] The Letters of Henry Adams, Volume I: 1858-1868. Edited by J.C. Levenson, Ernest Samuels, Charles Vandersee, Viola Hopkins, Winner (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), 557.

[iii] The Letters of Henry Adams, Volume II: 1868-1885. Edited by J.C. Levenson, Ernest Samuels, Charles Vandersee, Viola Hopkins, Winner (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), 326. Parenthetical citations refer to this edition.

[iv] Russell L. Hanson and W. Richard Merriman, “Henry Adams and the Decline of the Republican Tradition” in A Political Companion to Henry Adams. Edited by Natalie Fuehrer Taylor (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2010), 22-23.

[v] Leon Edel, Writing Lives: Principia Biographica, (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1884), 159.

[vi] William Merrill Decker has examined Adams’s treatment of Jefferson and has noted that Adams compares it to portraiture. See William Merrill Decker, The Literary Vocation of Henry Adams (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 198.

[vii] Patricia O’Toole, The Five of Hearts: an Intimate Portrait of Henry Adams and His Friends, 1880-1918 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 165.

[viii] Henry Adams, Democracy, Esther, Mont Saint Michel and Chartres, The Education of Henry Adams, Poems. Edited by Ernest Samuels and Jayne N. Samuels (New York: Library of America, 1983), 6. Parenthetical citations refer to this edition.

[ix] Ernest Schyler, The Circle of Henry Adams: Art & Artists (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1970), 22.

[x] Helen Gardner, Art Through the Ages, 8^th edition. (New York: Harcourt Brace Janovich, Publishers, 1986), 836.

[xi] O’Toole, 7.