A Cycle of Adams Letters, 1861-1865
THE ATLANTIC’S BOOKSHELF
edited by boston:Houghton Mifflin Co. 1920. Two vols. 8vo, 298 and 281 pp. Illustrated. $10.00.
POSTHUMOUS fame is a queer thing. Charles Francis Adams the elder seems to have eared less about it than either of his sons, but won it beyond debate through his matchless service for seven years as Minister of the United States to Great Britain. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., and Henry Adams have gained far more readers through their posthumously published autobiographies than they were ever able to secure in their lifetime through their contributions to history and literature. It is possible to maintain that both of these autobiographies have been overpraised, but they have succeeded in arousing vivid and amused interest in the Adams characteristics. Dr. Crothers would prefer to say the Adams ‘humors,’ in the old sense of that word.
These new Adams letters, arranged by the accomplished skill of Mr. Ford, deal exclusively with the Civil War period. The elder Adams and his son Henry, his secretary, were in London. Charles was hesitating in Boston, then drilling, then fighting in the South. Back and forthtly the letters for four years; a correspondence trenchant in criticism, photographic in description. and revelatory of the personal traits and mental peculiarities of three remarkable men. This revelation is all the more complete because it is unsought and incidental. The father, the ablest man of the three, is absorbed in his delicate and dangerous task of representing his country, Henry and the younger Charles have as yet no ‘character’ to be sustained and exhibited before the public; they are simply young men of unusual gifts, preoccupied with the discussion of public events and with the narration of tangible personal adventures.
The reader who already knows — or thinks he knows — the three men, and the general history of the period, finds in these volumes confirmations as well as discoveries. The elder Adams is admirable throughout: ripe and wise, resourceful, endlessly patient, always master of himself, and, though he could not know it at the time, master of the situation. His letters are simply fuller, richer light upon a familiar portrait. Flic letters of his son Charles, on the other hand, are a corrective for many impressions too hastily drawn from his autobiography. That readable volume had a certain theory of Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to maintain: there was behind him a career to be explained, palliated, or justified. In these early letters there is nothing of the sort. He is, as always, intensely self-conscious, family-conscious. But the war did him endless good: gave him action, happiness, and a measure of success, and never, in
his later books, did he compose more vigorous and brilliant pages than some of these hastily scribbled letters from Virginia. The youthful Henry Adams, it must be confessed, is already something of a Stendhal, Matching himself, analyzing the moments of action, paralyzing the springs of action. Charles administers brotherly admonitions in vain. Yet Henry is here, as always, a fascinating person, keen, whimsical, ironic, spectatorial. Only, in 1861—‘65, he was a bit too young for the Stendhal rôle.
Whatever these volumes may contribute to a new or a corrected knowledge of the Adamses, they assuredly give the reader a fresh sense of having lived personally through the period of the Civil War. whether at London or at the fighting front. They confirm the old doctrine that biography is the basis of history. Mr. Ford courageously refuses to supply footnotes or any narrative comment. He insists upon the rigors of the biographical game. His insistence is justified. The volumes are of absorbing interest. B. P.