The press was an inferior pulpit; an anonymous schoolmaster; a
cheap boarding-school but it was still the nearest approach to a
career for the literary survivor of a wrecked education. For the
press, then, Henry Adams decided to fit himself, and since he
could not go home to get practical training, he set to work to do
what he could in London.
He knew, as well as any reporter on the New York Herald, that
this was not an American way of beginning, and he knew a certain
number of other drawbacks which the reporter could not see so
clearly. Do what he might, he drew breath only in the atmosphere
of English methods and thoughts; he could breathe none other. His
mother -- who should have been a competent judge, since her
success and popularity in England exceeded that of her husband --
averred that every woman who lived a certain time in England came
to look and dress like an Englishwoman, no matter how she
struggled. Henry Adams felt himself catching an English tone of
mind and processes of thought, though at heart more hostile to
them than ever. As though to make him more helpless and wholly
distort his life, England grew more and more agreeable and
amusing. Minister Adams became, in 1866, almost a historical
monument in London; he held a position altogether his own. His
old opponents disappeared. Lord Palmerston died in October, 1865;
Lord Russell tottered on six months longer, but then vanished
from power; and in July, 1866, the conservatives came into
office.
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