The Education of Henry Adams · Chapter
Twenty Years After (1892) explained
Henry Adams reflects on the twenty years since he stopped his formal education in 1871, assessing the value of his work and life.
What happens
Henry Adams reflects on the twenty years since he stopped his formal education in 1871, assessing the value of his work and life. He finds he has no complaints about how the world treated him, but questions the worth of his literary and historical efforts, noting that he and his friends Clarence King and John Hay have gained little tangible reward. The chapter describes his return to Washington, his home on La Fayette Square, and a voyage across the Atlantic on the Teutonic, where he meets Rudyard Kipling and ponders the persistent divide between American and English sensibilities.
Themes in this chapter
Education and Self-Formation
Adams redefines education as learning how to react with vigor and economy, and reflects on his own educational journey and its outcomes.
Social Class and Identity
Adams and his friends occupy a thin social class, and the chapter explores the value of consideration and status in American society.
American Exceptionalism and Europe
Adams contrasts American and English sensibilities, noting a persistent divide that he feels in the company of Kipling and other English writers.
Characters to notice
- Henry Adams
Reflects on his education and the twenty years since 1871, assessing his work and life satisfaction.
- Clarence King
One of Adams's close friends; they discuss the balance of profit and loss over the past twenty years.
- John Hay
Friend and neighbor on La Fayette Square; wrote the Life of Lincoln and shares Adams's reflections on success.
- Augustus St. Gaudens
Adams lectures him on the economics of consideration and artistic success.
- Rudyard Kipling
Met on the Teutonic during his wedding trip; brings gaiety and wit but highlights the American-English divide.
- Henry Hobson Richardson
Architect employed by Adams and Hay to build adjoining houses on La Fayette Square.
- James Milnes Gaskell
Adams visits him at Thornes in Yorkshire before crossing the Atlantic.
- John La Farge
Mentioned among the generation born in the thirties who won names.
Key passages
“The object of education for that mind should be the teaching itself how to react with vigor and economy.”
The goal of education is to train the mind to respond effectively and efficiently.
Adams's core definition of education in this chapter.
“He had no complaint to make against man or woman. They had all treated him kindly; he had never met with ill-will, ill-temper, or even ill-manners, or known a quarrel.”
Adams states he has no grievances; everyone has been kind and he has never experienced hostility.
Reflects his overall satisfaction with how the world treated him.
“The world was always good-natured; civil; glad to be amused; open-armed to anyone who amused it; patient with everyone who did not insist on putting himself in its way, or costing it money; but this was not consideration, still less power in”
Society is friendly and welcoming to those who entertain it, but this does not equate to true respect or influence.
Adams distinguishes between social acceptance and genuine power.
“Kipling could never know what peace of mind he gave, for he could hardly ever need it himself so much; and yet, in the full delight of his endless fun and variety, one felt the old conundrum repeat itself. Somehow, somewhere, Kipling and the American were not one, but two, and could not be glued together.”
Kipling's company brought Adams great comfort, but it also highlighted the persistent cultural divide between Americans and English.
Illustrates the theme of American exceptionalism and the gap between the two cultures.
