What he could never
measure was the bewildering impersonality of the men, who, at
twenty years old, seemed to set no value either on official or
personal standards. Here were nearly a hundred young men who had
lived together intimately during four of the most impressionable
years of life, and who, not only once but again and again, in
different ways, deliberately, seriously, dispassionately, chose as
their representatives precisely those of their companions who
seemed least to represent them. As far as these Orators and
Marshals had any position at all in a collegiate sense, it was that
of indifference to the college. Henry Adams never professed the
smallest faith in universities of any kind, either as boy or man,
nor had he the faintest admiration for the university graduate,
either in Europe or in America; as a collegian he was only known
apart from his fellows by his habit of standing outside the
college; and yet the singular fact remained that this commonplace
body of young men chose him repeatedly to express his and their
commonplaces. Secretly, of course, the successful candidate
flattered himself - and them - with the hope that they might
perhaps not be so commonplace as they thought themselves; but this
was only another proof that all were identical. They saw in him a
representative - the kind of representative they wanted - and he
saw in them the most formidable array of judges he could ever meet,
like so many mirrors of himself, an infinite reflection of his own
shortcomings.
All the same, the choice was flattering; so
flattering that it actually shocked his vanity; and would have
shocked it more, if possible, had he known that it was to be the
only flattery of the sort he was ever to receive. The function of
Class Day was, in the eyes of nine-tenths of the students,
altogether the most important of the college, and the figure of the
Orator was the most conspicuous in the function. Unlike the Orators
at regular Commencements, the Class Day Orator stood alone, or had
only the Poet for rival. Crowded into the large church, the
students, their families, friends, aunts, uncles and chaperones,
attended all the girls of sixteen or twenty who wanted to show
their summer dresses or fresh complexions, and there, for an hour
or two, in a heat that might have melted bronze, they listened to
an Orator and a Poet in clergyman's gowns, reciting such platitudes
as their own experience and their mild censors permitted them to
utter. What Henry Adams said in his Class Oration of 1858 he soon
forgot to the last word, nor had it the least value for education;
but he naturally remembered what was said of it. He remembered
especially one of his eminent uncles or relations remarking that,
as the work of so young a man, the oration was singularly wanting
in enthusiasm. The young man - always in search of education -
asked himself whether, setting rhetoric aside, this absence of
enthusiasm was a defect or a merit, since, in either case, it was
all that Harvard College taught, and all that the hundred young
men, whom he was trying to represent, expressed. Another comment
threw more light on the effect of the college education. One of the
elderly gentlemen noticed the orator's "perfect self-possession."
Self-possession indeed! If Harvard College gave nothing else, it
gave calm. For four years each student had been obliged to figure
daily before dozens of young men who knew each other to the last
fibre. One had done little but read papers to Societies, or act
comedy in the Hasty Pudding, not to speak of regular exercises, and
no audience in future life would ever be so intimately and terribly
intelligent as these. Three-fourths of the graduates would rather
have addressed the Council of Trent or the British Parliament than
have acted Sir Anthony Absolute or Dr. Ollapod before a gala
audience of the Hasty Pudding. Self-possession was the strongest
part of Harvard College, which certainly taught men to stand alone,
so that nothing seemed stranger to its graduates than the paroxysms
of terror before the public which often overcame the graduates of
European universities. Whether this was, or was not, education,
Henry Adams never knew. He was ready to stand up before any
audience in America or Europe, with nerves rather steadier for the
excitement, but whether he should ever have anything to say,
remained to be proved. As yet he knew nothing Education had not
begun.
CHAPTER V
BERLIN
(1858-1859)
A FOURTH child has the strength of his weakness.
Being of no great value, he may throw himself away if he likes, and
never be missed. Charles Francis Adams, the father, felt no love
for Europe, which, as he and all the world agreed, unfitted
Americans for America. A captious critic might have replied that
all the success he or his father or his grandfather achieved was
chiefly due to the field that Europe gave them, and it was more
than likely that without the help of Europe they would have all
remained local politicians or lawyers, like their neighbors, to the
end. Strictly followed, the rule would have obliged them never to
quit Quincy; and, in fact, so much more timid are parents for their
children than for themselves, that Mr. and Mrs. Adams would have
been content to see their children remain forever in Mount Vernon
Street, unexposed to the temptations of Europe, could they have
relied on the moral influences of Boston itself. Although the
parents little knew what took place under their eyes, even the
mothers saw enough to make them uneasy. Perhaps their dread of
vice, haunting past and present, worried them less than their dread
of daughters-in-law or sons-in-law who might not fit into the
somewhat narrow quarters of home. On all sides were risks.
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