Democracy, by Henry Adams

Democracy by Henry Adams was the surprise, and anonymous, bestseller of 1880. It announces itself, in the subtitle, as An American Novel, and from the opening line it concentrates on the capital of the United States: “For reasons which many persons thought ridiculous, Mrs. Lightfoot Lee decided to pass the winter in Washington.”

Mrs. Lee is a young widow, bored with the emptiness of New York life. She turned to philosophy, only to be disappointed again.

What was it all worth, this wilderness of men and women as monotonous as the brown stone houses they lived in? In her despair she had resorted to desperate measures. She had read philosophy in the original German, and the more she read, the more she was disheartened that so much culture should lead to nothing—nothing.

So she took to politics. Adams is a dry, knowing narrator, who allows us to remain a little closer to his superior jokes than Mrs. Lee’s own experiences. Realist though he may be, “desperate measures” is his phrase, and the word “desperate” recurs: this is a novel of desperate courage, desperate appeals. Washington was a provincial place in 1880 and Adams made fine comedy out of that.

Democracy is, at the narrative level, fairly straightforward. We are not immersed into the consciousness of Adams’ characters. We are being told a tale—and by one who was there. It is this dry, knowing narrator who tells us later on that democracy “is the government of the people, by the people, for the benefit of Senators.” Here, then, is a novel about the state of American politics from a scion of the first American dynasty.

Henry Adams was the son of Charles Francis Adams Sr., grandson of John Quincy Adams, and great-grandson of John Adams.¹ In three generations, the Adams family had seen the republic descend from the austere ideals of the Founders to the populism of Andrew Jackson and the corruption of the Gilded Age. America in the post-Civil War era was changing fast and genteel old types like Henry Adams were no longer the men in charge.

As such, the plot turns on the question of whether the ruthless Senator Ratcliffe will be able to secure Mrs. Lee in marriage, as a boon to his ambitions for the White House. A charming and handsome young couple with plenty of money makes a very attractive political prospect. Alas, the Senator has a dark secret. Mrs Lee ends up discovering that—despite her own ambitions to be the First Lady—democracy isn’t good for her.

You can see why it was a bestseller. Not only are the sort of refined cynical attitudes about politics that remains popular among the chattering classes predominant—at one point it is said “no representative government can long be much better or much worse than the society it represents. Purify society and you purify the government. But try to purify the government artificially and you only aggravate failure”—but all this exposure of corruption seemed to be about real people. Clearly, this was the work of an insider. Adams was only revealed as the author on his death in 1921, but there was plenty of excited speculation in his lifetime. An early review in England said that there were three copies being passed around London in a state of great excitement. Could this really be the state of American democracy?

For that reason, though, you might expect Democracy to now be out of print. What was exciting for our grandmothers is too often dull for us. Who cares now about naughty Senators from 1880? The corruption of 1880 looks rather hum-drum at this distance. There is a scene when the newly elected President comes into office promising to run a clean ship only to turn around and start having all the important jobs in Washington handed out to all the cronies from his state who flock to his office. It is terribly funny, and sharply observant, but after everything we have seen these days, we can hardly clutch our pearls at the depths to which politics had sunk back then.

But the same could be said of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Tales of corruption do not need to be on the scale of All the President’s Men to merit our fascinated alarm. And in fact Ratcliffe’s crime is fairly major. But Adams’ target is the general culture of corruption. At the moment when Ratcliffe is confronted, he offers a stout defence of his actions. And Adams writes,

…had Mr. Ratcliffe’s associates now been present to hear his version of it, they would have looked at each other with a smile of professional pride, and would have roundly sworn that he was, beyond a doubt, the ablest man this country had ever produced, and next to certain of being President. They would not, however, have told their own side of the story if they could have helped it…

Adams does tell us their side and they don’t come out of it too well. Adams’ preoccupation is Civil Service Reform, which he says was “a subject almost as dangerous in political conversation at Washington as slavery itself in old days before the war.”

Adams is not a naive grump. He recognises that there is indeed a sort of ability and talent to the new way of doing politics. It is misguided, no doubt, but it is hardly a diminution of ability.

“Do you know,” said Mrs. Lee, turning towards him as though he were a valued friend, and looking deep into his eyes, “Do you know that every one told me I should be shocked by the falling off in political ability at Washington? I did not believe them, and since hearing your speech I am sure they are mistaken. Do you yourself think there is less ability in Congress than there used to be?”

“Well, madam, it is difficult to answer that question. Government is not so easy now as it was formerly. There are different customs. There are many men of fair abilities in public life; many more than there used to be; and there is sharper criticism and more of it.”

There are moments, too, when a novelistic pragmatism takes over from Adams’ idealistic intentions.

Washington more than any other city in the world swarms with simple-minded exhibitions of human nature; men and women curiously out of place, whom it would be cruel to ridicule and ridiculous to weep over.

Opinion has been mixed about this novel. Henry James read Democracy when it was published, and wrote in his letters that much of the satire was too coarse. “It is good enough to make it a pity it isn’t better,” he concluded. Certainly there are moments when Adams isn’t quite sure how he wants his narrator to work.

In 2001, in a book about Adams as political thinker, James P. Young said it was not very compelling as a novel, though interesting for its ideas. However, in 1974, Noel Perrin called it “the best political novel yet written in America.” I can’t say whether that’s true or not, but I imagine that a lot of people—whether they work in D.C. or merely take an interest in the future of the world’s last best hope—would find this novel both amusing and instructive.

I recently read it with a group of people and we all agreed: this is a compelling, interesting, and relevant novel. Despite the flaws, the human drama is strong. And the human drama of corruption never gets dull. Whatever your view of the moral matters, many readers will agree with Mrs. Lee that democracy has shaken their nerves to pieces.

It may be that what Adams understood best is what the dastard Ratcliffe says about George Washington.

If Washington were President now, he would have to learn our ways or lose his next election. 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 as true in Washington’s day as it is now, and always will be.

The novel resists this conclusion as much as possible, but some of Ratcliffe’s own pronouncements come much closer to acting as the moral of the story than Adams would wish to accept.

At the end, Mrs. Lee is as disillusioned with Washington as she was with German philosophy. She leaves. The last line is another of Adams’ wry jokes, but it leaves us in an ambivalent position. “The bitterest part of all this horrid story,” Mrs. Lee writes in a letter, “is that nine out of ten of our countrymen would say I had made a mistake.”

1. Thanks to the person who told me I missed out Charles in the first draft.