Henry Adams, the middle years by Samuels Ernest 1903- . cn

Author:Samuels, Ernest, 1903- . cn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Adams, Henry, 1838-1918
Publisher: Cambridge, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
Published: 1958-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

Schuyler and he had browsed in a Japanese art dealer's shop, hunting bronzes. Richardson and he had called on President Cleveland. "We must admit," he said of their new neighbor, "that, like Abraham Lincoln, the Lord made a mighty common-looking man in him. I expected it and was satisfied. He was very quiet and said little." However, the President's serious-minded daughter talked deferentially with him about George Eliot's biography.

There were recurring alarms, so that Adams bolted "forward and back like a brown monkey" between Washington and Cambridge, feeling thoroughly useless and unwanted. On a return journey he bumped into King on the train. King, on his way to Mexico and the dubious Sombrerete mine, was just home from Europe and full of his experiences with Turner, from whom he had bought a canvas from the same series as their own "Martigny." Adams busied himself with everything but history though he was pleased to allow Mrs. Bancroft to read the new volume because she was "by all odds the most intelligent woman in Washington." 10

For the first time Adams watched the delicious overture of spring along the bridle paths without his wife's companionship, but he reported Nature's progress to her with the loving detail of a Thoreau in Walden woods. "April 10, 9 a.m. . . . The day was fine though cool (Therm. 44°), and I took my first three-hour spring excursion round by the dog-tooth violets and Rigg's farm. A few maples showed a faint flush here and there, but not a sign of leaf is to be seen, and even the blood-root and hepatica hid themselves from my eyes. A few frogs sang in the sun, and birds sang in the trees; but no sign of a peach-blossom yet, and not even the magnolias and Pyrus Japonica [flowering quince] have started." Like a true Thoreauvian he carefully checked Nature's performance against his journal record of other springs. "In 1878 the magnolias were in full flower and killed

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