Henry Adams by Samuels Ernest 1903-1996

Author:Samuels, Ernest, 1903-1996
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography: general, Adams, Henry, 1838-1918, Biography & Autobiography, Biography / Autobiography, English, Biography/Autobiography, USA, Literary, Biography & Autobiography / General, Historical - General, Historians, Historiens, History, Autobiography as Topic, Historiography, United States Historiography Adams, Henry, 1838-1918
Publisher: Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
Published: 1989-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

venson; "not the faintest associations with my name, but he knew all about La Farge." The artist and the novelist were quickly drawn to each other, so that Adams found himself in the unfamiliar role of listener to Stevenson's incessant talk. Stevenson's own account of that initial meeting quickly became an international anecdote which Hay, not averse to teasing his absent friend, sent right on to Tahiti: "Now I will have to tell you,—perhaps a dozen fellows have done so—of Stevenson's account of your visit to him. Your account of that historical meeting is a gem of description . . . His is no less perfect and

characteristic. He writes to N B Two Americans called on

me yesterday. One, an artist named La Farge, said he knew you. The name of the other I do not recall.' Bear up under this, like a man, in the interest of science!"

Adams saw Stevenson many times in the succeeding weeks, and falling into the gypsy spirit of the occasion he would come to dine bringing his own food with him. As it happened they had surprised the Stevensons at the most inopportune moment of a new project. The ground was just being cleared for the building of a large and comfortable manor house. The temporary home was hardly more than a construction shanty. As his first impression faded, Adams wrote in a more kindly spirit. He was amazed at Stevenson's phenomenal energy, considering how much he had been ravaged by tuberculosis. He began to see a "certain beauty, especially about the eyes," and "came round to a sort of liking" for his wife, who "seemed more human than her husband." Occasionally they met and dined on the veranda at the American consulate and talked long about art and island politics and their friends in London.

At each meeting, Adams felt himself brought to bay, and he struggled to explain the thing to his friends—and to himself. That Stevenson should abdicate the privileges—and duties—of world fame argued some kind of lunacy. But if he thought Stevenson wanting, his bad conscience suggested that Stevenson must have found him out also. "My Bostonianism, and finikin clinging to what I think best, must rub him all over ... I dare not see him often for fear of his hating me as a Philistine and a disgrace to humanity, because I care not a copper for what interests him."

Stevenson obviously surmised nothing of Adams's elaborate struggles of taste and conscience. A little later he wrote to Henry James, "We have had enlightened society: La Farge the painter, and

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