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Henry Adams

American historian (1838–1918)

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As a young Harvard graduate, he served as secretary to his father, Charles Francis Adams, Abraham Lincoln's minister to the United Kingdom. The posting influenced the younger man through the experience of wartime diplomacy and absorption in English culture, especially the works of John Stuart Mill. After the American Civil War, he became a political journalist who entertained America's foremost intellectuals at his homes in Washington and Boston.

During his lifetime, he was best known for The History of the United States of America 1801–1817, a nine-volume work, praised for its literary style, command of the documentary evidence, and deep knowledge of the period and its major figures. His memoir, The Education of Henry Adams, was published posthumously. It won the Pulitzer Prize and was named the best English-language nonfiction book of the 20th century by the Modern Library.

Biography

Early life and education

Henry Brooks Adams was born in Boston on February 16, 1838 to Charles Francis Adams Sr. (1807–1886) and Abigail Brown Adams (1808–1889). Both his paternal grandfather, John Quincy Adams, and great-grandfather, John Adams, had been presidents of the United States, and his maternal grandfather, Peter Chardon Brooks, was one of the most successful merchants in Boston. He was the fourth of five children: Louisa Catherine (1831–70), John Quincy II (1833–94), Charles Jr. (1835–1915), and Brooks (1848–1927).

Adams among the first students at the Dixwell School. He graduated from Harvard College in 1858, after which he embarked on a grand tour of Europe, during which he also attended lectures in civil law at the University of Berlin.

At the 1893 Columbian Exposition, Adams was initiated as an honorary member of Phi Kappa Psi by Harris J. Ryan. Through that organization, he was also a member of the Irving Literary Society.

London (1861–1868)

Adams returned home from Europe in the midst of the heated 1860 presidential election. He tried his hand at reading law, taking short-lived employment with Horace Gray in the firm known today as Ropes & Gray. His father won re-election to the United States House of Representatives, and Henry joined him in Washington as his private secretary. Henry shouldered the responsibility reluctantly and with much self-doubt. "[I] had little to do", he reflected later, "and knew not how to do it rightly."

While in Washington, Adams worked anonymously as the Washington correspondent for Charles Hale's Boston Daily Advertiser.

On March 19, 1861, Abraham Lincoln appointed Charles Sr. as minister to the United Kingdom. Henry accompanied his father to London, where he also became the anonymous London correspondent for The New York Times. For the next four years, Charles Sr. was kept very busy by the necessity of maintaining British neutrality in the American Civil War, monitoring Confederate intrigues and obstructing the construction of Confederate commerce raiders and blockade runners in British shipyards. Henry's writings for the Times argued that Americans should be patient with the British.

While living in London, Adams befriended many noted men, including Charles Lyell, Francis Turner Palgrave, Richard Monckton Milnes, James Milnes Gaskell, and Charles Milnes Gaskell. He helped introduce the young Henry James to English society with the help of Charles Milnes Gaskell and his wife Catherine. During this period, Adams was influenced by the works of John Stuart Mill, especially the 1861 book Considerations on Representative Government, which Adams believed showed the necessity of an enlightened elite to lead elected governments, which were susceptible to demagoguery, ignorance, and corruption. Henry wrote that Mill's writing showed, "[D]emocracy is still capable of rewarding a conscientious servant."

Washington (1868–70)

In 1868, Adams returned to the United States and settled in Washington, where he continued working as a journalist, seeking to expose political corruption and advance a vision of democratic idealism based on the values of the 17th and 18th centuries. As a result, Adams was an early critic of the excesses which would come to define the politics of the Gilded Age.

Harvard professor (1870–77)

In 1870, Adams was appointed professor of medieval history at Harvard College. He held this position until his early retirement in 1877. As an academic historian, Adams is considered to have been the first (in 1874–1876) to conduct historical seminar work in the United States. His students included Henry Cabot Lodge, who also worked closely with Adams as a graduate student.

Adams was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1875. In 1892, he received the honorary degree LL.D., from Western Reserve University.

Marriage to Marian Hooper (1872–85)

On June 27, 1872, Adams married Marian Hooper, better known to friends as Clover, in Beverly, Massachusetts. They honeymooned in Europe, much of it with Charles Milnes Gaskell at Wenlock Abbey, Shropshire. While there, exemplifying the New England civic conscience she and Henry shared, Clover wrote, "England is charming for a few families but hopeless for most ... Thank the Lord that the American eagle flaps and screams over us." Upon their return, Adams went back to his position at Harvard, and their home at 91 Marlborough Street in Boston became a gathering place for a lively intellectual circle. In 1877, the couple moved to Washington, D.C., where their home at 1607 H Street, across from the White House on Lafayette Square, became a center of social life in the capital city.

The couple had no children. They referred to themselves, along with John and Clara Hay and geologist and mountaineer Clarence King, as the "Five of Hearts."

Her suicide

On the morning of December 6, 1885, after a late Sunday breakfast, Clover went to her room. Henry left to see his dentist regarding a toothache, but while departing the home, he was met by a woman visiting for his wife. Adams went upstairs to ask if she would receive the visitor and found his wife lying on a rug before the fire, an opened vial of potassium cyanide, which Clover had frequently used in processing photographs, lay nearby. Adams carried his wife to a sofa and ran for a doctor. Shortly thereafter, she was pronounced dead.

A brief funeral service was held on December 9 at the Lafayette Square house. Only Henry, Charles Adams Jr., her siblings Edward and Ellen Hooper, and Ellen's husband Ephraim Gurney attended. Interment services followed at Rock Creek Cemetery, but the burial was postponed until December 11 because of inclement weather. A few weeks later, Adams ordered a modest headstone as a temporary marker. He later commissioned a monument for her tomb from Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who created a widely praised masterpiece, the untitled Adams Memorial, which marks the grave.

Much speculation and numerous theories have been given concerning the causes of Clover Adams's suicide. Her death has been attributed to depression over her father's death and a family history of depression and suicide. Posthumous speculation was made more difficult by Adams's destruction of most of Clover's letters and photos following her death. His memoir is profoundly silent about his wife after her suicide.

Relationship with Elizabeth Sherman Cameron

In January 1881, Adams met Elizabeth Sherman Cameron. She was the niece of Treasury secretary John Sherman and general William Tecumseh Sherman and considered one of the most beautiful and intelligent women in Washington. She had married Pennsylvania senator J. Donald Cameron, twenty-four years her senior, in 1878 in an arranged marriage which included a prenuptial agreement that provided her income from $160,000 worth of securities (approximately $5,004,000 in 2025). Cameron's six children from a previous marriage never accepted their young stepmother, and the marriage was further strained by Cameron's coarse indifference toward his young wife, his fondness for bourbon, and his reputation for political corruption, which Adams's satirized in his novel Democracy.

On May 19, 1883, Adams initiated a correspondence with Mrs. Cameron, when she and her husband departed for Europe. That letter reflected his unhappiness with her departure and his longing for her return. Adams sent Cameron hundreds of letters over the remainder of his life, recording a passionate yet unconsummated relationship. On December 7, 1884, one year before his wife's suicide, Adams wrote, "I shall dedicate my next poem to you. I shall have you carved over the arch of my stone doorway. I shall publish your volume of extracts with your portrait on the title page. None of these methods can fully express the extent to which I am yours."

Clover Adams, who maintained a weekly intimate correspondence with her father for most of her life, never referenced concerns or suspicions of a romantic relationship between Adams and Cameron. Neither Clover's family nor friends indicated that she distrusted or was unhappy with her husband. After her death, Henry preserved and cherished an unsent letter by Clover to her sister Ellen which read, "If I had one single point of character or goodness, I would stand on that and grow back to life. Henry is more patient and loving than words can express—God might envy him—he bears and hopes and despairs hour after hour—Henry is beyond all words tenderer and better than all of you even."

On Christmas 1885, Adams sent one of Clover's favorite pieces of jewelry to Cameron, requesting that she "sometimes wear it, to remind you of her."

Later life and travels

In late 1885, Adams moved into his newly-completed mansion at 1603 H Street, next door to John Hay. The adjoining mansions were the project of Henry Hobson Richardson. The house was razed in 1927 and is the current site of the Hay–Adams Hotel. From 1885 until 1888, Theodore Frelinghuysen Dwight, the chief State Department librarian, lived with Adams at his home at 1603 H Street in Washington, D.C., where he served as Adams's literary assistant, personal secretary, and household manager.

Following his wife's death, Adams took up a restless life as a globetrotter, traveling extensively, spending summers in Paris and winters in Washington, D.C. One of Adams's frequent travel companions was the artist John La Farge, with whom he journeyed to Japan and the South Seas.

Death and burial

In 1912, Adams suffered a stroke, possibly brought on by news of the sinking of the Titanic on its maiden voyage to New York City; he had purchased tickets for its return voyage. After the stroke, Adams's scholarly output diminished, but he continued to travel, write letters, and host dignitaries and friends at his home.

In the first volume of her autobiography, Eleanor Roosevelt offers a vignette of Adams in old age:

"My first picture of this supposedly stern, rather biting Mr. Adams is of an old gentleman in a victoria outside of our house on N Street. [His secretary] Aileen Tone and I were having tea inside, but Mr. Adams never paid calls. He did, however, request that the children of the house come out and join him in the victoria ... and they brought their Scottie dog and sat and chatted and played all over the vehicle. No one was ever able thereafter to persuade me that Mr. Adams was quite the cynic he was supposed to be. One day after lunch with him, my husband mentioned something which at the time was causing him deep concern in the Government, and Mr. Adams looked at him rather fiercely and said, 'Young man, I have lived in this house many years and seen the occupants of that White House across the square come and go, and nothing that you minor officials or the occupant of that house can do will affect the history of the world for long!'"

On March 27, 1918, Adams died in Washington, D.C. He was interred beside his wife in Rock Creek Cemetery.

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