YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

LETTERS TO A NIECE
AND
PRAYER TO THE VIRGIN OF CHARTRES

LETTERS TO A NIECE
AND
PRAYER TO THE VIRGIN
OF CHARTRES BY
HENRY ADAMS
) » *
WITH
A NIECE'S MEMORIES
BY MABEL LA FAROE

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
CTfte KitierBiae JJrcBB CambrtUffe
1920

COPYRIGHT, I9JO, BY MABEL LA FAROE
ALt RIGHTS RESERVED

PREFACE
THE letters in this volume, begun from
the South Seas, to a niece of fifteen, are
offered in all humility, and in full realization
that they probably have little literary value
compared to Henry Adams's letters to con
temporaries, and no value or interest where
there is personal praise, except to show his
wealth of heart that had to spend itself, even
upon the most unworthy.
There is no attempt to offer a complete
series of letters, but rather some ar? chosen
to accompany or illustrate parts of the article
"A Niece's Memories," — used here as an in
troductory sketch, — which in turn must sup
plement the letters.
The notes toward the end are merely such
as are written to people living in the same
town, or near by, and are intended for
those who can see, between the lines, that
'Henry Adams was in the world but not wholly
of it, and that what he has so beautifully ex
pressed in Uterary form in the "Chartres,"
and in the "Prayer to the Virgin," was not
only literature to him, but was also a part of
his unspoken life.

CONTENTS
Henry Adams: A Niece's Memories i
Letters to a Niece 29
Prayer to the Virgin of Chartres 123

HENRY ADAMS
A NIECE'S MEMORIES

s

HENRY ADAMS
A NIECE'S MEMORIES
OME old Elizabethan play or poem
contains the lines:
. . . Who reads me, when I am ashes,
Is my son in wishes. . . .
"The relationship, between reader and
"writer, of son and father, may have existed in
Queen Ehzabeth's time, but is much too close
to be true for ours. The utmost that any
¦writer could hope of his readers now is that
they should consent to regard themselves as
nephews, and even then he would expect only
a more or less civil refusal from most of them.
Indeed, if he had reached a certain age, he
would have observed that nephews, as a so
cial class, no longer read at all, and that there
is only one familiar instance recorded of a
nephew who read his uncle. The exception
tends rather to support the rule, since it needed
a Macaulay to produce, and two volumes to
record it. Finally, the metre does not permit
it. One may not say : ' Who reads me when
I am ashes is my nephew in wishes.'
[ 3 ]

HENRY ADAMS
"The same objections do not apply to the
word ' niece.' The change restores the verse,
and, to a very great degree, the fact. Nieces
have been known to read in early youth, and
in some cases may have read their uncles.
The relationship, too, is convenient and easy,
capable of being anything or nothing, at the
will of either party, Uke a Mohammedan or
Polynesian or American marriage. No valid
objection can be offered to this change in the
verse. Niece let it be."
With these words Henry Adams ^ves
definite expression, in his preface to " Mont
Saint Michel and Chartres," to that relation
ship which had long existed between himself
and the younger generation — whether nieces,
or " nieces in wish," or even young men. To
them all he was the generic Uncle, the best
friend — to whom they not only could con
fide their innermost secrets, their perplexities,
hopes, and aspirations, but also at A\hose feet
they could sit endlessly, Ustening to the most
thrilling talk they had ever heard, or were
likely to hear again. Such a combination of
heart and mind, veiled as it "was to the world,
but poured forth to the young — and to the
very young the more tenderly — could hardly
[4]

A NIECE'S MEMORIES
be apparent to the average reader of the
"Education," for Henry Adams loved to hide
himself, and invented every possible means
for doing so.
He was sensitive to the point of pain, and
shy of revealing himself to strangers. A lady
who knew him slightly, complained after
calling on him that Mr. Adams hardly said
a word to her during her call, but turned his
back and devoted himself to a small child
who happened to be there. This was most
characteristic. He did not mean to be rude,
but he probably felt a panic of reserve, and
no opening, no common language with the
stranger; and so he hid his shyness in the
child, who was to him "the eternal child
of Wordsworth, over whom its immortality
broods Uke the day," and who —
Deaf and silent, reads the eternal deep
Haunted forever by the eternal mind.
These lines, or others from the same poem,
are quoted frequently in his -writings, and in
his words the " nieces " remember them, as
if they were a running accompaniment to his
thoughts. One can recall the tenderness in
his voice as he would repeat " thou little child
— on whom those truths do rest which we are
115]

HENRY ADAMS
toiling all our lives to find." But what stranger
could guess at the humility and self-abase
ment with which he would tum from his great
thoughts and ponderous volumes, to become
an admiring and awe-inspired playmate of the
tiniest child that walked into his study. In the
comer of that study, under the book-shelves,
was a cupboard, with two doors and two com
partments ; and every child knew that there
was to be found a complete doll's house, with
each detail of furnishing chosen by the Uncle
himself. The Uncle had a genius for buy
ing children's toys, and would spend hours
at the "Nain Bleu" or the Magasins du
Louvre, choosing a combination of toys with
the care and feeling for the child's point of
view, as if he were arranging a choice bunch
of flowers.
The general reader of the " Exiucation "
may admire or criticise what the book con
tains. The "nieces" are especially interested
in what has been omitted. But here they
pause at the sacred portals of silence, and the
ground becomes delicate to tread. Twenty
years are passed over — years that were the
most joyful, as well as the most sorrowful of
the Uncle's life. The glorious years v,eve stiU
[6]

A NIECE'S MEMORIES
to come, at the end. The nieces' earliest recol
lections begin with the joyful ones.
In the Beverly woods, a footpath, strewn
with fragrant pine-needles, and bordered with
ferns and lichened rocks, led to the Uncle's
and Aunt's summer house. It was like hav
ing a private entrance into fairyland, of which
the Uncle and Aunt kept the keys and ar
ranged the scenery. They had no children
of their own, but they loved all young small
things including dogs, and the dogs played
an important part in their daily lives. Three
little long-haired terriers were always to be
seen tumbling about their feet or trotting after
them on their walks. The Uncle's absorption
in the dogs was akin to his passion for chil
dren, and he would lose himself watching
their antics, or laughing over their humorous
or pathetic traits.
At that time he was -writing his " History " ;
hours of concentration were passed in his den,
and sheets on sheets of beautifully written
pages lay beside him. One could not forget
that handwriting. Each letter seemed to be
carved rather than written, and the effect of
the whole page was that of an interlacing
C 7]

HENRY ADAMS
Byzantine design, but perfectly clear to read.
The nieces remember him as he sat at his
desk, in cool white summer clothes — his fine
head and thoughtful forehead dominated a
small frame ; his movements were deliberate
— only the scratch of his pen would break
the silence of the room, until the delicious
moment came when he would stop, and turn
to them with an irresistibly droll remark.
Often in the afternoons, the nieces would
watch — almost enviously — the two figures
on horseback vanishing into the flickering sun
light of the woods. An impression of oneness
of life and mind, of perfect companionship,
left an ideal never to be effaced.
But soon the joyful days were to pass
away. The Uncle lost the companion of his
life, and part of him was buried forever in
silence, or in what the world called "irony."
The Beverly woods never saw him again,
until in the serenity of his eightieth year he
retumed unexpectedly, to pass the last sum
mer of his life there, once more surrounded
by the nieces and nephews.
Meantime he plunged into a life of rest
lessness and travel, of searchings, question
ings, and of intense loneliness. The Uncle
C 8 ]

A NIECE'S MEMORIES
and Aunt had built the new house in Wash
ington together, but he was alone to move
into it. He could hardly bear to stay there.
Japan and the East beckoned him, and whis
pered their secrets of abstraction and of calm
to his suffering soul. It was his first glimpse
of peace, since his "life had been cut in
halves" — "infinite and eternal peace — the
peace of limitless consciousness unified -with
limitless will," the peace of Nirvana. The
Uncle seized the new abstraction, and re
turned with it, resolved to have the idea em
bodied in a Westem form of expression, that
the Westem world might understand and be
consoled by it as he had been. He gave the
idea to Saint-Gaudens, and ordered the mon
ument to be begun that was to go over his
wife's grave.
Then he started for the South Sea Islands,
with John La Farge as a companion. Over
taxed and overstrained by sorrow, as well as
by his efforts to surmount it, to Henry Adams
the year in the South Seas was a reparation
of mind and body. Sleep, which had nearly
deserted him, returned once more, as "he
wandered away and away, with Nature the
dear old nurse" — across the Pacific Ocean,
CO

HENRY ADAMS
from island to island, Hawaii, Samoa, Tahiti,
Fiji, Australia, Ceylon — and finally back, by
the Red Sea, to Europe and civilization once
again. The gentle monotony of the days, in a
perfectly even cUmate, the splendor of the
nights under the Southern Hemisphere, the
sympathetic childUke quaUty of the natives,
and the sound of the "eternal surf" break
ing on the coral reefs, as day after day he sat
and watched it through " the eternal cocoanut
trees " — aU these new sights and sounds cast
their spell upon him, and awakened dormant
instincts that for generations had lain atrophied
in the purely intellectual atmosphere of his
former surroundings.
The Uncle started out on his travels with
a paint-box, and amused himself by tr3nng
to catch the lights and colors, under the in
struction of his companion, who " would see
sixteen different shades of red in a sky " that
looked to the Uncle "just pure cobalt." A
new world of perceptions opened out to him ;
and with his companion as a constant guide,
the education of the senses began, that led
him finally to his appreciation of twelfth-cen
tury glass, and the crossing of the chasm that

A NIECE'S MEMORIES
divides the Anglo-Saxon mentaUty from the
Latin. But in the South Seas the education
was of the primary grade, beginning with pure
color, and the rhythm of movement in the
native dances. When his Samoans imitated
all sorts of daily acts or pretended to be birds
or beasts as they danced, this was more novel
to the deeply intellectual Uncle than any
mental abstraction ; but having the power to
become a little child with children, he could
appreciate and delight in these primitive traits.
Another bond he had in common with them
was that they were " tremendous aristocrats."
"Family is everything," he -wrote home,
" and a great chief is a feudal lord who owns
his village." These chiefs in the military shows,
given in honor of the strangers, seemed to
him "like Homer's heroes." And the girls
in their garlands and "tapa" cloths, sliding
down a waterfall at a picnic given them by
a royal princess, reminded him of " Greek
naiads." In Tahiti again they were guests of honor,
and were adopted into the principal clan by
the old chief ess, " grandmother Hinarii," and
given native names. In a letter he describes
the chiefess, "who is a pure native," he writes.

HENRY ADAMS
"and speaks no foreign language. She is
sixty-eight years old and refuses to sit at
table with us, but sits on the floor in the old
native way, and is a very great person indeed.
In the evenings we lay do-wn on the mats
about her, and she told us of the old Tahiti
people, who were much more interesting
than now. She told us, too, long native leg
ends about wonderful princesses and princes,
who did astonishing things in astonishing
ways, Uke Pol)niesian Arabian nights." The
Uncle -wrote down these legends, and printed
them in a private pubUcation called "Tahiti,"
thus preserving the last of the old Tahitian
traditions handed down by word of mouth.
In Fiji they were guests of Su* John Thurs
ton, the English Govemor, and found them
selves suddenly in an English country house,
having to dress for dinner. Sir John took
them, however, on an expedition through the
interior of the island among the ex-cannibal
natives, and they "saw Fiji as few white men
have ever seen it," but though the war-dances
were fine and the society very mascuUne,
they made no intimate friends and had no
special sentiment for the place as they had
for Samoa and Tahiti. So they went on their
C 12 2

A NIECE'S MEMORIES
way to Sydney and Ceylon, leaving the chil
dren of nature behind them.
Once again as he approached the East, the
Uncle's thoughts became more abstract, and
returned to their starting-point of Nirvana, as
he sat under Buddha's Bo-tree in " the ruined
and deserted city of Anuradjapura in the
jungle of Ceylon." It was here, or shortly
after, that he composed the Unes called " Bud
dha and Brahma," already published.' Ahead
of him he had the world to face, and some
kind of a solution to find for facing it, with
his buried sorrow. One can almost see the
application to his own problems in certain
lines of the poem :
But we, who cannot fly the world, must seek
To live two separate lives ; one, in the world
Which we must ever seem to treat as real ;
The other in ourselves, behind a veil
Not to be raised without disturbing both.
The puzzled readers of the " Education "
may find in these Unes much enlightenment,
and a clue to Henry Adams's life in Wash
ington, to which he was about to return. The
two separate Uves, "one in the world" and
the other "behind a veil," describe the Uncle's
' In the Yale Review, October, 1915.
C 13 ]

HENRY ADAMS
own life from here on. The "Education"
gives an account of his Ufe " in the world,"
with glimpses perhaps only to those who
knew him, of his inner shrine. The " Ufe be
hind a veil " reveals itself in the monument
in Rock Creek Cemetery, and also in the
volume " Mont Saint Michel and Chartres."
The idea of the monument has already
been suggested. Translated into Westem
thought, Henry Adams called it " The Peace
of God." Sometimes he would caU it " Kwan-
non," the compassionate Virgin of the East,
merciful guardian of the human race. After
the glory of the " Virgin of Chartres " had
been revealed to him, however, the Divine
Mother of the West blended in his mind, in
the monument, with the Virgin of the East
Once again in Washington, the sorrow and
loneliness of the Uncle's inner Ufe persisted,
in spite of the increasing richness of his outer
life and circle of friends. In some chapter of
the " Chartres " book, he has described hu
man suffering, and with such intense feeling
that one can only imagine it was his own
experience : " People v:ho suffer beyond the
formulas of expression — who are crushed
into silence, and beyond pain — want no dis-
I 14]

A NIECE'S MEMORIES
play of emotion — no bleeding heart — no
weeping at the foot of the Cross — no hys
terics — no phrases ! They want to see God,
and to know that he is watching over his
own." The Uncle often seemed "crushed
into silence " at this period of his life, even
in the midst of the gay throng that passed
through his doors. Sometimes hours, or a
whole day, might pass before he would seem
to feel that he could speak, or join at all in
the conversation of those around him. One
felt a tense, seething inner life, an unsatisfied
groping for something that even the monu
ment with aU it signified did not seem to have
completely supplied, though one knew his
thoughts were centred there. One can recall
glimpses of him on horseback — a lonely fig
ure now — winding down some path in the
lovely glades of Rock Creek — his face buried
in thought and in unutterable sadness.
His was no selfish sorrow, however, nor
was it to stand in the way of sympathy for
others. It was transformed, on the contrary,
into an exquisite human compassion for the
many who crossed his path. His range of
sympathy was wide. People of the world, or
their opposities, sought him out ; great ladies
i 15 ]

HENRY ADAMS
flocked to his breakfast-table or to dine, and
met there stately Englishmen, or an occa
sional foreigner from the embassies, or some
artist or scientist, or perhaps a Westem beauty
of crude parentage, but decked with shim
mering jewels. The Uncle would appreciate
the whole gamut of his friends, and would
touch a human chord in each. Lovers confided
in him, brides left him their wedding bou
quets, young people confessed to him their
escapades and sought his counsel, for they
knew that his forgiveness and understanding
of human frailty was unbounded.
No one who loved him reaU)'^ feared him,
though his manner might at times be alarm
ing to a stranger. His alternation of great
gentleness -with sudden brusqueness was tem
peramental and involuntary, and was part of
his fascination. It made Ufe exciting and va
ried in his presence. The brusqueness was
nearly always to conceal a ray of tenderness
that had escaped him. Once Mr. Hay had the
inspiration to have these conflicting traits em
bodied by Saint-Gaudens in plastic form. He
ordered a little medaUion to be made repre
senting the head of Henry Adams in profile,
with the body of a porcupine and the wings of
Z 16]

A NIECE'S MEMORIES
an angel, and bearing the inscription " Henri
cus Adams Porcupinus Angelicus." Though
intended as a mere joke, this little incident
may serve to assure those who have felt only
the quills of the porcupine in his writings that
the -wings of the angel were also there, as
surely as the leaden casket hid the prize. The
Uncle delighted in leaden caskets.
Equal to his sympathy of the heart was
his intellectual sympathy in the efforts or
undertakings of his friends. Whatever the
problem presented, whether artistic, or liter
ary, or scientific, he would throw himself
into it as if he had no other preoccupation;
and his enthusiasm and encouragement would
often carry the friends far beyond the pos
sibilities of their own unaided talents. His in
fluence was an unworldly one, he appealed
to them to forget the eye of the public in
their pursuit of truth, and to let success in a
worldly sense become a matter of relative
indifference. A quotation from a letter to a
young person on painting may serve to iUus
trate this influence:
"Don't be disturbed if you occasionaUy
feel a disgust for paint and drawing. You
would feel the same for the Umitations of
I 17 ]

HENRY ADAMS
sculpture, or architecture, or poetry, or prose,
if you tried as hard to express anything in
them. There is nothing new to say — at
least not in our formulas. Everything has
been said many — many — many times. The
pleasure is in saying it over to ourselves in.
a whisper, so that nobody vriU hear, and so
that neither vanity, nor money can get in as
much as a lisp. I admit that this unfits one
for one's time and life, but one must make
some sort of running arrangement on every
railroad and even in every school; and if you
are to stop five minutes for refreshments at
the Art Station, you must have those five
minutes clear, as much as though you were
a BotticeUi — I should say the same of Re
ligion, or Poetry, or any other imaginative
and emotional expression."
The Uncle was emotional himself. He was
passionately fond of poetry, and would com
municate to his listeners his o\\ti thrill over
certain lines of Swinburne, Matthew Arnold,
or Tennyson, evoking memories of his youth
and of England at the same time. The colors
of a sunset, the texture of a leaf, would seem
sometimes to stir in him " thoughts that do
often lie too deep for tears." One of the
C 18 ]

A NIECE'S MEMORIES
nieces remembers being dra-wn aside by him
out of a gay crowd, to share his lonely
watching of a crimson sunset. The chang
ing colors seemed to affect him as only the
glass of Chartres was later to do. His old
restless longing for something still undis
covered stirred in him, and as he watched
the transient glow he repeated :
... for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the westem stars until I die.
He knew that he must be off again on his
travels, in search of his " Princesse Lointaine,"
wherever or whoever she might be.
His goal awaited him in France ; but he
approached it unawares, on a joumey to the
Norman cathedrals. Though he had been
more or less within sight of them for nearly
forty years, stiU, he wrote, he had not
thought himself so "ignorant or so stupid as
to have remained blind to such things." He
had been familiar vrith England and Scot
land, and had traversed the East and almost
every other part of the globe, including
France; but France as an intimate revela
tion, as a treasure-house of art and thought,
and finaUy of the crowning inspiration in
C 19]

HENRY ADAMS
which his restless mind found rest, came late
into his life, scarcely nine years before he
-wrote " Mont Saint Michel and Chartres."
One memorable summer for the nieces,
the Uncle set up a household -with them at
St.-Germain, and taught them French his
tory "under the venerable cedars of the
PaviUon d' Angouleme, and rode about the
green forest-aUeys of St.-Germain and Mar
ly," once more with a companion. But usu
ally his summers were passed in Paris, in
study and solitude, except for the ladies who
besieged his tower of ivory, and drew him
out to direct their taste in buying things or
in sight-seeing. Sometimes they kept him
very busy, and once in a while he would
escape and disappear, cancelling aU engage
ments, and going down to Chartres alone.
EspeciaUy at Toussaint would he seek his
Virgin's shrine, to spend the November day
in the cathedral, "deadly cold and famished,"
but exhilarated by the beauty and consolation
he found there. If his thoughts \\'andered
back to the monument and his eternal sol
itary Kwannon outside of \\'ashington, at
Chartres the Virgin with her Divine Child
lifted him up with a radiant tenderness that
C 20 ]

A NIECE'S MEMORIES
he had not known before. His mind might
be exercising itself in djmamic theories and
mounting on dizzy flights, but his soul had
found a refuge in which it could stay forever.
The Virgin was the embodiment of mercy
to him. One has only to read over the de
scription of the Westem Rose of Chartres to
reaUze how he felt about this aspect of her.
" Looking carefully," he writes, "one dis
covers at last that this gorgeous combination
of all the hues of Paradise contains or hides
a Last Judgment, . . . and we are at full lib
erty to feel that such a Last Judgment as this
was never seen before or since by church
man or heretic. . . . That this blaze of heav
enly Ught was intended, either by the Vir
gin or by her workmen, to convey ideas of
terror or pain, is a notion which the Church
might possibly preach, but which we sinners
knew to be false in the thirteenth century as
well as we know it now. Never in aU these
seven hundred years has one of us looked
up at this Rose without feeling it to be Our
Lady's promise of Paradise.
" Here as everywhere else throughout the
church, one feels the Virgin's presence, with
no other thought than her majesty and grace.
C 21 ]

HENRY ADAMS
To the Virgin and to her suppliants, as to
us, who though outcasts in other churches
can still hope in hers, the Last Judgment was
not a symbol of God's justice or man's cor
ruption but of her o-wn infinite mercy. The
Trinity j udged, through Christ ; — Christ loved
and pardoned, through her. She -wielded the
last and highest power on earth and in heU.
In the glow and beauty of her nature, the
light of her Son's infinite love shone as the
sunlight through the glass, turning the Last
Judgment itself into the highest proof of her
divine and supreme authority. The rudest
ruffian of the Middle Ages, when he looked
at this Last Judgment, laughed ; for what was
the Last Judgment to her ! An ornament, a
plaything, a pleasure! a jeweled decoration
which she wore on her breast ! Her chief
joy was to pardon; her eternal instinct was
to love; her deepest passion was pity! On
her imperial heart the flames of heU showed "
only the opaline colors of heaven. Christ the
Trinity might judge as much as he pleased,
but Christ the Mother would rescue; and
her servants could look boldly into the
flames." But not only was the Virgin of Chartres
C 22 ]

A NIECE'S MEMORIES
the embodiment of mercy and purity to
Henry Adams ^— as Kwannon was also — but
in her he found in its most perfect form, the
mysterious underlying principle of the uni
verse that so fascinated him, and that had
been denied him in his o-wn human existence,
namely, the transmission of life. One can
imagine what the Child of the Virgin meant
to him, when every human child had filled
him vrith such awe.
Thoroughly established under such a pa
tronage, perhaps it was no wonder that the
miraculous happened to him, and the im
possible became possible. A severe illness
passed completely away, from which the doc
tors had pronounced there was no hope of
recovery. And six of the most serene years
of the Uncle's life were still left to him.
These were the glorious years, for they were
Uke a resurrection, and almost a step into
heaven. Two of the " nieces," now become
like daughters, stayed with him constantly
and administered to his wants Uke guardian
angels, so that he found himself no more
alone. Much of the time was spent outdoors,
walking, driving, talking deliciously as of old;
his eyes had begun to fail him, and the pur-
H 23 ]

HENRY ADAMS
suits of reading and -writing gradually had to
be abandoned. But the Uncle took this as
calmly as he took everything else now. His
great delight was in listening to twelfth- and
thirteenth-century songs, sung to him ex
quisitely by one of the "daughter-nieces."
And their study and occupation was to dis
cover these unpubUshed treasures in ancient
manuscripts, with their old notes and modes,
and add them to their coUection. Songs of
the Crusades, love-songs, or spinning songs
composed their evening concerts for an au
dience of one, but every evening before say
ing good-night, the Uncle would ask for a
song to the Virgin. With eyes half-closed and
head thrown back, he would Usten intently,
as if joining in the song or prayer himself.
The summer of the war found them in a
chateau in France, thus peacefuUy occupied.
The Uncle had constantly predicted the war,
for many years, and had left nothing of its
horrors and complications unpainted. One can
therefore imagine what it meant to his his
torian's mind when it actually burst upon the
world. At first it left him silent, and he re
fused to talk about it. But once back in Amer
ica, he watched it and spoke of it -v^ith a quiet
[ 24]

A NIECE'S MEMORIES
intensity. He wanted to Uve to see it through.
His eightieth birthday came, foUowed by the
worst moment of the war — the " dark before
the dawn." Alas! that he did not live to see
the turning of the tide! And yet his death
was such a perfect one, without a moment's
pain or illness, and surrounded by aU that he
loved best, that one could not have wished it
to be otherwise. After a day spent with friends
about him, and the evening in Ustening to his
beloved songs, he went to his room as usual.
And in the moming they found him asleep
forever, with a look of thoughtful interest —
almost of curiosity — upon his face, as if this
new journey was of more import to him than
any other he had taken. He lay there, in his
own house in Washington, on Thursday and
Friday of Holy Week; and on Easter Satur
day moming, a lovely mild spring day, at the
time of year that he loved most — "when
ever)rthing is in promise" — they laid him in
his own monument, beside his wife, who had
waited for him and for whom he had waited
aU these years.
It has been asked, " What was the real
Henry Adams?" The answers to this ques-
[25]

HENRY ADAMS
tion will be very different, often quite con
tradictory, though coming from equally good
sources. Those who call themselves agnos
tics say that he was one also. A dignitary
of the Church, intimate with him during the
last years, felt convinced that the contrary
was true, and looked to him for inspiration
and guidance.
" Undoubtedly Henry Adams was many-
sided, and his sympathy and understanding
of every point of view was so great that he
seemed to share it entirely. He never Uked
I to show that he saw farther or was any vriser
' than the person he was vrith, and usuaUy took
the attitude of being instructed. Also, his own
life was one of progression, and people who
had been particularly intimate vrith him dur
ing one phase of his Ufe may not have been
famiUar -with the other phases. Even those who
read his -writings wiU each find something
quite different in them, according to what they
are looking for.
~~ One asks, therefore, whether or not to in
terpret as an intended last word some verses
called "Prayer to the Virgin of Chartres,"
found after his death in a little waUet of special
papers. These verses were apparently -written
[ 26]

A NIECE'S MEMORIES
just after the "Chartres " book and while he
was contemplating the " Education," and were
shovm by him to only one friend, a " sister in
the twelfth century." One can understand that
he did not care to publish them during his
lifetime, for he never wished to lift the veil.
In this "Prayer" Henry Adams makes an act
of faith in the Son's divinity. He ends by say
ing in his own words what Saint John said
twenty centuries before: "In him was life;
and the Ufe was the light of men. And the
Ught shineth in darkness, and the darkness
comprehended it not." Henry Adams felt the
failure of the world to receive the Ught, but
he leaves no shadow of a doubt that he him
self perceived " That was the true Light."

LETTERS TO A NIECE

LETTERS TO A NIECE

Honolulu, Sept. 10, 1890
I WONDER when I shaU hear from you
again, and know that you are at home. I
wish you could make us a little visit here.
You never saw anything more charming than
our house, with its palm-trees and rose-gar
den, looking over the town to the ocean south
ward where we shaU soon go. The house
belongs to my classmate HartweU, whose
family is now living in Newbury Street, a
very different place. HartweU lent it to me.
We took his Japanese cook, and here we have
been nearly a fortnight, leading very lazy
Uves, and only energetic in scolding at the
occasional necessity of going do-wn to the
town to buy something or make a caU. . . .
If there is any pleasant society here, we have
not been much appreciated by it ; but as I
never go into society without being sorry for
it, I don't much object to being alone with
La Farge who is much better company than
I can meet abroad. So he and I live always
[31 ]

HENRY ADAMS
together, sleeping in adjoining rooms with the
doors always open ; breakfasting at about nine,
and then usually sketching tiU aftemoon,
dressed in Japanese kimonos, and never dis
turbed. My sketches are very funny, but I
think he -wiU take home a good deal of new
work, for he enjoys it and has nothing else
to do. Sometimes we drive off to some great
view, and work aU day. The only trouble is
that no painter that ever Uved could begin to
catch the Ughts and colors of this island. I
have learned enough to understand a little
about what can't be done, but La Farge makes
wonderful purple attempts to do it, though he
knows how absurd it is. . . . The weather is
divine. Almost always a strong northeast wind
draws down the vaUey, from the ocean only
ten miles across the island. The thermometer
rises every noon to 83° and faUs every night
to 75°. I often get up at six o'clock in the
moming and sit on our verandah tiU eight,
with only my cotton kimono on, and am al
ways surprised to find that I am perfectly com
fortable. In November the rainy season begins,
but till then the weather is always what we
see it, and I do not know whether the morn
ings or the evenings are most beautiful. . . .
[ 32 ]

LETTERS TO A NIECE

II

Samoa, 19 January, 1891
We are stiU here, and I have not yet had
any letters from you since Switzerland. Prob
ably a bundle wiU arrive from Tahiti in about
a week, but not before this letter will have to
go. Last month I wrote to your father. That
letter should reach on January 23. This let
ter should be delivered to you some cold
moming about February 20. As you look
out of your window, do you see much snow .?
Or is it a wet thaw ? Is the day sunny and
snappy ? The idea quite braces me up. I like
to brace up by deputy, and wiU appoint you
deputy. Now, this, in a very rough way, is
what I see, when I look out of my window;
or rather, out of the side of my house ; for a
Samoan house, as you know, is only a tur
tle-back on posts. As my painting is hiero
glyphic, I herewith explain that the water is
meant for sea, and that the whites are left to
indicate where the surf is breaking on the
coral reef. If I dared, I would stick in a na
tive or two, or some children playing, which
would be true to the facts, as a rule, though
just now no one is in sight, except an occa-
[33]

HENRY ADAMS
sional native strolling along the path, which
leads by the seaside, and showing his or her
red-brown back in preposterously picturesque
harmony with the purple-blue of the sea.
An idler man than your dear uncle Henry
during the last month, you would not find in
Cambridgeport. I don't feel sure that you
would find one even in Cambridge. I have
done as near nothing as possible. La Farge
is the energetic and practical member of our
firm. He works away like a serious man. He
paints, sometimes two sketches a day ; photo
graphs ; writes like a steam-engine ; and, vrith
aU that, manages to put in very nearly twelve
hours a day in solid sleep, or at least in bed.
I won't swear to the sleep. He is very weU,
in exceUent spirits, and has done what seems
to me extremely interesting work. I won't
undertake to say what it -wiU look Uke in a
New York light, but here it looks to me very
good ; much better than he did in Japan, and
very much more of it. As for me, I do noth
ing, unless an occasional letter counts. I loU
all the day in our native house, and when, at
five o'clock, the sun gets down, and the ther
mometer falls towards 80°, I take a native
canoe and paddle over the reef to see the sun-
[34]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
set. Did I send you any photograph with a
native canoe in it.? If not, I wUl stick into this
envelope a sad attempt I made to paint one,
after a smaU photograph ; but don't you show
my colored things ! If you let them be seen
by anyone, outside of you shrimps and your
papa, I wiU never -write you another line. I
let you have my pictures because you chil
dren show me yours, which is fair exchange;
but other people would think I was seriously
intending to paint, and I don't want other
people to think anything about it. The canoe
is a dug-out; the trunk of a tree, chopped
out vrith an adze, and held steady by a rough
outrigger which rests on the water. With me
alone in it, the boat is very steady, and rides
easily on any breaker that is not so high as
to flop over the edge. When two persons are
in it, especiaUy when they are large, the
canoe is not so steady, as I found oiit yester
day when I took La Farge out for the first
time. Then I could do nothing with it. The
wind and current were strong and the wretched
canoe would not head any way but broadside
to the current StiU we drifted down to the
harbor-point, to see the sunset, and then pad
dled back. Suddenly, without apparent cause,
[35 ]

HENRY ADAMS
the canoe slowly leaned over, and tipped us
both into the water. The water was not a
foot deep, and I might just as weU have
stepped out, for I always go barefoot, on the
water, vrith linen trousers roUed to my knees ;
but the mean thing did it so gently that I was
too late, and I am stiU wondering why it
should have chosen that instant, rather than
any other, to play us such a trick. Anyway, both
La Farge and I were soused in the water, and
we were just opposite the British Consulate, on
a Sunday aftemoon. Some Uttle girls, about
MoUy's age or size, who were pla)nngonthe
beach, laughed uproariously at us, and then
ran out, crying in Samoan, " Wait, Akamu"
— that's my name, Akamu, Atamu, Adam,
out of their Bible — and very soon swashed
the water out of the canoe and set us going
again, shoving us along through the water.
Their clothes consist of a bundle-handker
chief round the waist, and as the water is
rather warmer than their natural temperature,
they are in it about as much as out. So we
came ashore at last, and it was quite pleasant
to feel comfortably cool in our wet shirts, but I
cannot conceive why that canoe tipped us over
then, when we weren't doing nothing to it.
L36 2

LETTERS TO A NIECE
We stay so quietly by ourselves that we
see very few people of our acquaintance, but
at Apia, nearly a mile away, there have been
great goings-on, for our new Chief Justice,
who is to be a sort of dictator over Samoa.
As we had seen the same sort of show on our
travels, and had been the great people then,
we did not care to see the thing again, in a
crowd of very unsympathetic Europeans and
Americans, among the frame-houses of Apia;
but a number of our swell Samoan girls were
there, leading their viUages, and dancing their
Sivas. This morning one of them — Faa-uU,
daughter of Lauati, of Safotulafai in Savaii —
came to call on us. I wish you knew Faa-uli.
She is one of our favorites. She is five feet,
three-and-a-half inches high ; thirtytwo and-
a-half inches around the waist ; and her wrist
is eight inches round. . . ". Faa-uU is my fa
vorite because she has quite an animated ex
pression and quick eyes, and is fuU of fun
and go ; like all these girls, she is never with
out her duenna for propriety, and is much
more particular in that way than our girls
are; but I can never quite satisfy myself
whether they would talk much anyway. Faa-
uli's conversation this morning was just what
[ 37 ]

HENRY ADAMS
it always is Uke. She said she thought we had
gone away ; if she had known we were stiU
here she should have brought us a present.
Of course we said we wanted her, not pres
ents ; but that was not enough. She repeated
again and again that she was ashamed not to
have brought presents. Then we asked ques
tions : What had she been doing ? She had
been unweU ; nothing had happened at Safo
tulafai, but they had had some big dances
there ; native dances for visitors ; she had be
gun dancing for us, and gone on dancing
ever since. Then she wanted to know when
we were going away; and so came back to
her regret at having brought no presents.
Then she said she must go. So I gave her a
couple of colored silk scarfs, and off she went
to start by boat for Savaii.
This is a fair specimen of a Samoan woman's
conversation. I have never found one to carry
it further. Sometimes I have got them to tell
me about aitu — spirits, or ghosts — and they
sometimes make garlands and put them round
my neck, or put a flower in my hat, and
when they are wholly at a loss, the girls
often begin singing their Siva tunes and going
through the dance movements with their
[38]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
hands, which seems natural, as they sit cross-
legged on the ground, just as they sit in the
dance; but they never talk, as we under
stand talking ; and if they have what we call
minds, they never show it. They show no
curiosity about foreign countries, and no im
aginations. Their good-nature is endless, and
their spirits seem always gay; but they are
more child-Uke than any child you ever saw.
We see little of them now, and not much
of anyone except our neighbors about the
house. The Samoans have told me all they
have to say; at least all I have the persever
ance to ask; and I have stopped my attempts
to leam more. They are a pleasant people,
and to anyone in trouble they are very
sympathetic and devoted; but everything in
Samoa is the same. Even the storms, at the
top of their fury, blowing a gale and rain
ing tubs of warm water on every foot of sur
face, look soft and purpUsh, as though they
wouldn't hurt one intentionally. The islands
are velvety, and the ocean is soft, as though
it oiled itself, like the people, every day with
cocoanut oil. We have been here nearly four
months, chiefly to give La Farge time for
his work; but I am going now. We are to
139 2

HENRY ADAMS
sail for Tahiti in about ten days. This is true
heroism, for we dread the voyage. We are
sure of bad weather, and the Uttle steamer
is vile, and filled with sheep.
Some day I expect to hear from you
again, but it's no use . asking questions.
When six months pass without news, one
must take it coolly. So far our -winter has
been very successful. I hope yours has been
as good. Give my love to aU the rest of you.
I wish you would go to Washington as usual
in AprU; but you must take a cook with
you. Ill
Papeete, 9 February, 1891
I've got all your letters at last. Two big
ones were waiting for me here. After aU, La
Farge came with me, and we have been here
since the 4th. We were a week on board the
steamer, and I was even miserabler than
usual. How I do hate the ocean, and what a
lot of ocean I have got to travel ! We have
done more than six thousand miles already,
on this trip, and I expect to do twenty thou
sand more before I get back to America.
That means about four months of solid sea-
[ 40 ]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
sickness even if I manage to do it all by
steam, but here the steamers are very small,
very hot, and very slow. They go about
two hundred miles a day, and never are quiet.
Yet I don't hanker after sailing in a schooner,
which is our next fate.
Anyway, here we are, and a very out-of-
the-way place we've got into. After reading
about Tahiti since I was a child, I feel half
angry to find that it's a real place, and not
a pantomime. As yet we've seen only Pa
peete, which is a little French provincial
town, pretty as can be, but neither Pol5me-
sian nor European, and quieter than any town
you ever imagined. The natives wear clothes
and look commonplace, after Samoa. They
are, I think, a shade deeper in color, and I
rather believe them to be a little more refined
in features, and perhaps in figure, than the
Samoans ; but the difference is small, the lan
guage is much the same, and the only won
der to me is that the Samoans are so much
Uke the Tahitians, and the Tahitians still
more Uke the Hawaiians. There are lots of
funny and mysterious things about these
South Seas, How the people ever got here
is a mystery; for, even -vsith steam we were
[41 ]

HENRY ADAMS
a week coming, and a strong trade-wind,
right against us, made me seasick aU the
way. Yet they got here, and, what is more,
they got to Hawaii; and must have done it
at least a thousand years ago, when even in
Europe there were no vessels fit for such
long voyages of discovery. Then the islands
are queer and mysterious ; aU old volcanoes,
but some, like this one, so very-very old that
it seems wrinkled as Methusaleh or old Betsy.
The soil is nothing but decayed lava, strong
red in color, and the mountains are sharp
like knife-edges, so that one can sometimes
walk up their sides on a narrow platform only
three feet wide, with a sheer precipice on
each side for hundreds of feet. What could
make such sharp spurs? Not rain, for rain
levels. Something has planed away the sides
as though a knife had cut them. Then the
tides are quite uncanny, for they are always
the same; every day at noon and midnight
the tide is high, and never changes its hour.
Then the island is fuU of ghosts. I never
saw nearly so many ghosts anywhere else;
and many varieties, some of them quite un
usual. Then there are centipede fish; and
poisonous fish that are sure death to eat; and
[42]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
wonderfuUy colored fish, and more coral of
outrageous purples and yellows and reds
than you would dream of I've not begun
to find out aU the queer things here, but al
ready I feel as though it were the oldest and
most unreasonable corner of creation, and
that we are rather guilty of an impertinence
in coming here at aU. In other places some
thing always moves ; but nothing moves here,
not even the tides or the children, except to
fire off crackers on the Chinese New Year,
which is now; and where else in Christian
countries do boys keep the Chinese New
Year ! I think nothing has ever moved here
since the last volcano shut up, and that must
have been about the time that the world be
gan. Everything is decrepit with antiquity,
including your dear uncle Henry who is rap
idly getting to think himself as venerable as
the volcano. Nothing ever came here except
a few men, and they are fast getting tired
and dying out.
Of course it is pretty. Indeed it is beauti
ful. I enjoy it in a way, but I am altogether
upset by its unlikeness to what I expected.
Not that I know what I expected, but that
the result isn't like it. The difference from
[ 43 ]

HENRY ADAMS
Samoa is wonderful, yet the two places are
quite alike. This is nonsense, but true. Samoa
was cheerful even under six inches of rain ;
Tahiti is melancholy even when the sun is
brightest and the sea blue as glass. I don't
mean that the place is gloomy, but just quietly
sad, as though it were a very pretty woman
who had got through her fun and her trou
bles, and gro-wn old, and was just amusing
herself by looking on, without caring much
what happens. She has retired a long way
out of the world, and sees only her particular
friends, like me, -with the highest introduc
tions ; but she dresses weU, and her jewels
are superb. In private I suspect she is given
to crying because she feels so soUtary; but
when she sees me she always smiles like
my venerable grandmother when I was five
years old.
This is very siUy, no doubt. Miss Polly-
amiable, but just you come here and see if
it's not true. If I were La Farge I would
paint it. As I'm not, and can paint nothing
except what I don't want to paint, I give it
away to you. If you were here, you would
be as puzzled as I am about it. Neither the
residents nor the natives seem to feel at home
[ 44 ]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
here, or to understand what business they
have. There is a King, named Pomare, but
he has abdicated. We caUed on him ; he wore
green goggles ; smiled kindly, and was at the
club the next evening, very drunk and noisy.
There is a Queen, a pretty, ladylike woman,
named Marao, but she could not stand it, and
got a divorce. There is a French governor,
but he is a Martinique negro. There are two
or three thousand residents, but no one of
them seems to have a nationaUty in particular.
There are four or five thousand natives, or
whatever the number may be ; but they do
nothing except get drunk and die. They don't
even seem amused. Evidently something is
the matter with the place. It has a sort of
Rip van Winkle flavor, as you can see in the
photograph enclosed, looking up from Papeete
into the mountains. The curious peaks just
in the centre, closing the vaUey, are called
the Diadem. The second photograph shows
its shape when nearer. The Diadem is not
the highest mountain here, but it is the queer
est, and for once I think it rather well named,
as though some one were sitting in there,
and one never saw anything of her but her
crown. . . . [ 45 ]

HENRY ADAMS

IV

Papara, Taiti, 6 April
. . . Whatever under the sun can have be
come of you! No letters again! Nothing
since When ? Christmas ? I must have told
you to write to H. Adams, Crumpety Tree,
South Seas. Never mind! None of my other
letters hit me this mail, and I suppose I must
have told everyone that I should be some
where else. Not that I have the faintest recol
lection where I told them I meant to be.
Here we are stiU. Did I teU you where
we were ? No matter. We are somewhere.
Just to-day we are sta3ring vrith the head and
chief of Stevenson's clan — Tati, whose old
mother is hereditary chiefess of the Tevas.
Tati is for aU the world Uke dear old Richard
son at thirty-seven. He is half EngUsh, or
rather half English Jew ; and the larger half
native. He talks English and French faster
than I can ; and his sisters are as talkative in
English as he is. Altogether I feel at home;
as though I were staying on a farm by the
seashore anywhere else. We are a large
family gathering. We have our old grand
mother, Hinari, the chiefess, who speaks no
[46]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
EngUsh, and sits on the mats like a true
princess, refusing to join us at table. Then
comes Tati; then his sister Marao, once the
queen of Taiti, but now divorced from
Pomare, so that we are spared having him
in our party; then Beretania, or Pree for
short, the handsomest of all, but unmarried
and delicate. Then Manahini, or Manini,
commonly caUed Cheeky, a supposed variety
of Chica, a handsome gipsy girl of twenty
or two; then Norman, Arthur and Winny
Brander, three nephews rising twenty and
freezing thirty. Then Tati's huge daughter
and son from school, and Marao' s daughter,
as big as Tati's, both only twelve or thirteen
years old, but big enough to smother any of
you if they kissed you. Then a dozen or two
children, babies and dogs which seem to know
who they each belong to, but whose parent
age is mixed in my mind. Finally, Mme.
Tati who seems very shy and whom I have
hardly seen.
We have been three days together, but
break up to-day. AU the others go, but La
Farge and I stay on a day or two to let our
baggage get ahead of us, for we are to move
across to the island of Moorea, some ten or
[47]

HENRY ADAMS
fifteen or twenty miles off Papeete. At
Moorea, or Oponohu as the house or town
is called, we shall be as soUtary as Tautira,
and do much the same things. In the South
Seas one does always the same thing, which
is no thing. I have done it for a month at
Tautira, and am going to be busy at Oponohu
doing it some more. I don't caU it such hard
work as I expected, though no one can caU
it easy. At home, it would soon break me
up, but here the weather is divine, the scenery
always sweet, and the world a long way off.
About the 2 5 th we rather expect to sail away
to the westward hoping to bring up at Fiji.
Whether we shaU reaUy do so or not, I have
no notion. Unless some one takes me by the
coUar and runs me on board of some vessel,
I am just as likely as not to stay here tiU one
of you girls comes to get me. La Farge sleeps
about twelve hours a day, and wants to sleep
the other twelve. I can't put more than nine
or ten hours into staying abed ; but when up
I do less than he, and am not half as wide
awake. I feel a disagreeable instinct to do
something and a stronger antipathy to doing
it. I want to go on somewhere, and don't know
where to go. Life here is duU ; not so duU as at
[ 48 ]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
Maplewood or Beverly, but very-very stupid;
and yet I seem to pass month after month of
it without going away, and I paddle about the
reef every evening just as though I did not
know the sunset by heart already.
Poor Haapi cried aU day when we left
Tautira. What did she cry for? Haapi is Ori's
wife, our hostess at Tautira, a motherly na
tive with several children of varied ages. She
took care of us ; brought us little presents ;
made us straw hats ; and adopted us into the
clan, giving us native names. I suppose she
likes to have strange people appeal to her
imagination. I painted her native house or
hut, and tacked my picture on the waU of
our residence, where it was vastly admired by
the whole village, and will, I am sure, be sworn
to be a genuine La Farge whenever they find
out that La Farge' s pictures are more es
teemed than mine. La Farge was jealous of
my popularity, and so he set to work and
painted a big pandanus fruit dropping to pieces
so naturally that the whole village flocked to
see it, and never looked at my picture any
more. He wiU be sorry when my picture is
bought by a New York picture dealer as a
La Farge for a thousand dollars.
[49 ]

HENRY ADAMS
Still, I don't paint as weU as I did, I do
less weU all the time, since my first Uttle sketch
that I sent to you. By and bye I hope to paint
badly enough to be a professional and exhibit
my pictures, though it is very hard to leam
to paint as bad as that.
As I have no news of you, I can only im
agine it. This letter ought to reach you about
June 1, when you are deciding what to do
for the summer. Suppose you write me a
letter to tell me about it. When you have
written it, direct it somewhere. As far as I can
teU, I shall not get it, unless by accident, and
you can address it to Europe, Asia, Africa
or America, with fair chance of hitting me ;
but by way of a happy idea, try AustraUa,
Send it to the U.S. Consulate at Sydney. I
may be there by midsummer, and may be
anywhere else, but the chances are that I shaU
pass that way before autumn, unless I pass
some other way.
Love to everyone. Come to Taiti, The
climate is good, but the mangoes are over.

LETTERS TO A NIECE

Bji, 21 June, 1891
Here we are in Fiji at last, while your let
ters, I suppose, are in Auckland. I shaU not
go to Auckland, but directly down to Aus
tralia, and have sent orders to have your let
ters forwarded to Sydney where I hope to
find them about a month from now. Your
next letter had better be sent to Baring
Brothers in London, for La Farge and I in
tend to run up to Paris in October for a few
days' junket. We left Tahiti on the 5th, by
steamer, and stopped only for one day on
the voyage at the little island of Rarotonga,
arriving here on the 16th. Fiji is an English
island or a group of islands, and has a Gov
emor, Sir John Thurston, to whom I had
letters of introduction. Sir John expected us,
and brought us at once to the Government
House where he was living alone with his
secretaries. The Govemment House is a
large group of buildings on a hiU overlook
ing the coast and the harbor. The situation
is superb, and the effect of dropping sud
denly into an English countryhouse where
one dresses for dinner and has a big library
[51 ]

HENRY ADAMS
to lounge in, is startling to us cannibals who
have lived so long with natives. There is not
much here besides the Government. The lit
tle to-wn of Suva, where we are, has only a
few hundred inhabitants, mostly officials; a
few shops, and the usual cricket-ground and
tennis-court which the English seem always
to carry with them in their dressing-bags.
Very few natives Uve here, for about forty
years ago the native to-wn was totaUy de
stroyed and exterminated in one of the native
wars. So we see here nothing but English.
This is no matter, for natives are never any
good in these foreign towns, and one must
go among them in their own villages to see
what sort of creatures they are. Sir John
has already taken us on one excursion where
we passed the night in a native viUage and
had a big reception and a dance, which re
minded us of our Samoan shows. Samoa is
only about five hundred miles away, and the
groups of islands have a great deal in com
mon, but the Fijians are not so handsome as
the Samoans, and the race is more mixed
with negro blood. StiU the Fijians are a
pretty fine people, and have pleasant man
ners and tastes. The Fijian houses or huts
[52 ]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
are very handsome, even better than the Sa
moan, and have more decoration. The dances
are different. The one we saw at Rewa the
other day was a regular old-time war-dance.
A hundred men or more, in phalanx, painted
black and vermillion, with clubs and spears,
gave us a real military howler prance, to the
accompaniment of their native music, I was
very anxious to see this sort of thing, and
enjoyed it ; but I like the Samoan dances bet
ter on the whole. The chief difference is that
the women here are not as important social
successes as at Samoa. They are not nearly
so handsome, and are kept much lower. So
ciety here is masculine. The men are very
wild-looking, at first sight, for they have
huge mops of crinkly hair which they trim to
suit their ideas of personal beauty, so that
sometimes the hair falls over their eyes, and
sometimes makes a stiff wall across the top
of their heads ; but each is different, and I
find much amusement in watching the styles.
Sir John has a guard of about fifty, who do
sentry-duty, act as boat crew, or wait at din
ner; and the first effect of these mop-headed
savages in white shirts trimmed with red,
and bare legs, waiting at dinner, is very
l^S ]

HENRY ADAMS
droll. They offer you a potato as though it
were a club, and I always imagine they are
going to brain me with the claret-bottle,
ReaUy they are very docUe and childlike. This
island, Viti Levu, or Big Fiji, is quite large,
and the interior is hard to reach, but the peo
ple are now all civilised, or at least perfeotiy
peaceful, and have not eaten anyone for ten
or fifteen years. They would begin again if
they were left alone, and I have no doubt that
in another ten years they would eat each
other with as much vivacity as ever; but they
are weU off now, and contented. Next week
Sir John is to take us on a long tramp through
the interior, among the roughest parts of the
island, where we are to pass a fortnight, and
shaU see whatever there is, but except for
the fatigue of climbing over mountain trails,
aU up and do-wn, we might as weU travel up
the Saguenay, We have not a fair chance of
being eaten. I am not sure that any white
man ever was eaten; and I am rather sur
prised to find that man-eating, even when
common, was regarded as rather a doubtful
question of taste ; a sort of brag, not to be much
admired, but rather intended to excite terror,
or give an enormous idea of warlike ferocity.
[ 54 ]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
Even among the black islands to the west
ward where they stiU eat each other as a
habit, they conceal it from view, and no
white man has ever been allowed to see a
feast. Still I don't complain. The natives are
fairly savage yet, and have not lost their
customs, as the Tahitians have. They are
one generation -wilder than the Samoans. I
should have been sorry to miss their ac
quaintance, and though I know they won't
eat me, I feel better when I think they
would like to. . . . VI Kandy, 10 Sepf. 1891
Your letter of March 36 to Tahiti followed
me here, and reached me three days ago at
the same time with your father's letter of
July 30. So you see I have got all sorts of
news of you, fresh and dried.
La Farge and I have waltzed ahead, from
one island to another, tiU I have to think a
long time before I can remember where we
are, when I wake in the night. I've a notion
that I sent you a letter from Sydney. Since
then we have travelled very steadily, and
have gone about six thousand miles. We
{.Sh ]

HENRY ADAMS
came by rail from Sydney to Brisbane, and
by steamer along the Australian coast, through
Torres Strait, into the Malay Archipelago,
and past the long line of islands from Timor
to Java, tiU we stopped at Batavia, the Dutch
capital of Java. From Sydney to Batavia was
four thousand miles of delightful travel, always
in quiet water, generaUy in sight of land, and
with lovely weather, moonUght nights, and
a large, comfortable steamer. For the first
time, we enjoyed the sea, and were sorry to
finish the trip.
We stayed a week in Java, and went far
into the interior, about ten hours' travel, to
the end of the railway, a town caUed Garoet.
Java is a tremendously big island, vrith more
than twenty miUion people, and aU the land,
as far as I went, was cultivated Uke China,
even to the tops of mountains ; but I could
see nothing very interesting except the eter
nal rice-fields. The Malays there are aU
Mohammedans and had no antiquities, no
architecture, and hardly any arts. Bataria is
a big city, rather amusing, but hot and flat
and suggestive of fever as well as cholera.
We came away vrithout regret, and aU I can
really boast of valuable experience from it,
[ 56 2

LETTERS TO A NIECE
is a satisfactory knowledge of the mangosteen
and durian, the two Malay fruits which were
the object of my long journey from Boston.
The durian is, in my opinion, a fraud. I can
see nothing to recommend it. Walnuts and
very bad cheese, in a soft paste, with a horse-
chestnut inside, would be as good. Like the
aUigator pear, which is considered delicious,
the durian is to me a sad disappointment and
blight to my old age. The mangosteen is an
other story, and quite repays a week, or per
haps ten days, of seasickness. It is like a
Japanese purple-lacquered fig, with a ball of
white sherbet inside. From a sense of duty
— because I may never have another chance, —
I have eaten as many as I could. In some ways
I prefer the mango as a steady diet, but the
mango is prose, whUe the mangosteen is
poetry. Here, in Ceylon, our servant has
standing orders to provide a dozen mango
steen at each meal.
From Batavia we went up to Singapore,
two days' steaming across the equator, so
that at last we are on your side oi the line
again, after nearly a year in the southern
hemisphere staring at Alpha Centauri and the
Southern Cross. Singapore is a pretty city,
[57 ]

HENRY ADAMS
charmingly laid out, and fiUed with China
men, but hot and moist, and with nothing to
detain us. We passed two days there, and
then came on by French steamer five days
to Ceylon where we arrived last Sunday eve
ning, the 6th. No steamer sails, that we could
take, untU the 17th, so we have ten days to
see Ceylon, , , , When I get to sea again, I
will tell you our adventures.
Red Sea. September 30
The sun rose an hour ago from some Ara
bian desert behind Mecca, and -with him I too
rose from a somewhat hard bench on deck,
and went below for my bath and toilet and
coffee. Now, at seven o'clock, I am on deck
again ; the sun is weU up, not acloud in the
sky; the morning is quite cool, about 87°;
and, before it passes 90°, I can have an hour
with you.
La Farge and I made our pilgrimage to
the sacred Bo-tree of Anurajpura, the most
holy of holies, counting majorities in this
world. The trip was quite one of the most
amusing we have made. Anurajpura, two
thousand years ago, was a sort of London,
only it stood in a great plain, which makes
[58]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
the whole northern half of Ceylon, and which
at this season is always as dry as baked brick.
So they built enormous artificial lakes to store
the water, and smaU tanks, about like your
reservoir in size, to bathe in. The whole
plain, for fif\y or a hundred miles, is covered
with mounds, Uke our biggest railway fiU-
ings, to dam river valleys, and with holes for
ponds ; but now the jungle covers everything,
and the venerable people are happily dead
and departed, and one sees nothing but an
exceUent road running through a forest, dry,
dusty and burning hot. The weather report
gave 96° as the return from Anurajpura the
week we were there.
We left Kandy at noon, and at two o'clock
started from the railway terminus in the mail-
wagon, which was uncommon warm, but
went through a pretty valley down, down,
down, until the greenth of the mountains van
ished, and aU grew parched and brovm, except
the trees. We were amused, of course, for in
the east one is always amused by mere force
of habit; but we saw very little that was worth
being surprised at. Tall ant-hills, shafts three
or four feet high, decorated the roadside. Oc
casionally a squirrel, just like our striped
[59]

HENRY ADAMS
ones, capered across the leaves, A flock of
jungle-fowl flew across the road. The lovely
crow, the most amusing of birds, unless it is
our blue jay, chattered everywhere. Groups
of men — few women — more or less pictur
esquely undressed, and every shade of color
from deep black, to Polynesian tint, were
walking home from their fields. No white
men at all, except three or four govemi
ment officers, live in the whole district,
and after reaching the plain, no horses Uve
there either. We were driven in the mail-
coach forty-two miles, and reached a govem
ment inn, or rest-house, at about eight, where
we got some dinner with a curry which is
always good in those parts ; and as we sat in
the dark on the porch waiting for the curry,
the droUest little turnout trotted into the court
yard. It was Her Majesty's ox-mail-cart, which
was to take us the last twenty-eight miles;
and a real ox-cart too, but quite a gem ; two-
wheeled ; so smaU that after our traps were
stowed away at the bottom, and a mattress
over them. La Farge and I could just Ue,
side by side, with our boots sticking out
behind ; but the prettiest was the two little
humped oxen, fawn-colored, -with sweet Uttle
[6o]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
coUars of beUs. They trotted in as though they
Uked it, and at ten o'clock they trotted off
with us aU night, while we slept, or dozed,
or smoked, or looked over our toes at the
moonlight. Before dawn we reached Anuraj
pura, and I stroUed about tiU the sun rose,
to see what sort of a sun grew here. I found
it a hot one, and went to bed.
We gave two days to seeing ruins, and, as
far as concerns the ruins, it was more than
enough for my wants. The art strikes me as
pretty poor and done to order at so much a
square yard. I thought it showed my church
to be here a mercantile speculation from the
start, but perhaps it was only a mercantile
purchase. At any rate, the work looked like
contract work, taken by foreign contractors
at the cheapest rate. Sometimes the thing is
very well done indeed, but this is in single
stones, and always has the look of our own
best work; that is, of being done to order by
a mechanical workman. One hungered for a
blunder. Considering how old it is, this sort
of thing annoyed me. La Farge, who is much
less easily disturbed by disappointment than
I am, would be more charitable, and see
more to admire in it ; but to me the only
[61 ]

HENRY ADAMS
interesting remains in the place were not
Buddhist at all, but a very old rock-temple
of Brahma, where the artists had made some
really weU-felt attempts to please and honor
their favorite deity Siva — either him or some
other incarnation, I think it matters Uttie
what. I regret to say that artisticaUy, in Cey
lon, unlike Japan, Buddha is a bore ; and a big
one. More than that, he always was a bore.
Don't teU W. S. B. I ! ! StiU, Anurajpura is
quite a place to have seen; and I was glad to
sit for an hour under Buddha's Bo-tree, and
attain Perfection as he did — though La Farge,
who is very severe on me, says I didn't.
Anyway we sat there, under the tree which
is twenty-three hundred years old ; and pretty
sad, sordid, and miserable is the outiook from
that special standpoint of human perfectibiUty,
Nothing remains but a mean native viUage, a
ruined enclosure, and a yellow-robed priest
looking as vricked as Buddhist priests in Cey
lon seem alone able to do. We went round
six mUes or so of ruins, remains of at least
six huge temples with aU their costiy outfit
like a big media2val Abbey or Monastery; beau
tiful stone tanks with admirable stone stair
ways down into them ; generaUy double, one
[62 ]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
for women, and big as your classical Frog-
pond ; but built so cheaply that the long sides
have crumpled in. The best things I saw
were, to my mind, just stone doorways stand
ing in the jungle, all alone, and a family of
chattering monkeys jumping from tree to tree
across the road, before our sacred ox-cart,
in which La Farge and I, seated, like Kushna
and Siva, on red-cushioned chairs, were
dragged at a solemn walk through the woods.
We started back one Sunday evening, after
having had the dancers do a dance for us.
These dancers were all men ; low-caste, but
I did not leam what caste ; and their dancing
was wholly unlike any we have seen before.
I should rather like to see more of it, not be
cause it is particularly pleasing, but because
it is to me a new style, and I am curious to
know more of it; but I guess, from their
jumping and whirling, that it is jnore Arabic
than oriental. The dancers wore arm-plates
of brass, and other ornaments, and were not
ill-looking men. Nothing could be more na
tive, for I imagine that these particular dancers
can have come into as little contact with whites
as any Ceylonese alive. I know that we came
into no contact with whites as long as we were
[63 ]

HENRY ADAMS
in the district, for there were none to contact
on. The only extensive population seemed
to be jackals. Our little oxen, as pretty as
angels, jingled us all night back to Kikiria,
where we took tea at the rest-house at four
o'clock in the morning ; and as we sat on the
porch in the dark, we could hear nothing but
the creak of an ox-mill grinding oil, and the
almost continuous cry of the jackals from the
jungle. Really a jackal's cry is worth hear
ing; it is an ideally lost soul; a soul in pain;
creepy and wailing ; sadder than despair, and
quite clearly proof of the Buddhist doctrine
of metempsychosis, for no Christian animal
has a right to cry Uke that unless he has lost
something quite unusual.
We got back to Kandy aU right, and very
charming Kandy is. I took to moming walks,
an hour or two before breakfast which was
at half-past nine o'clock ; and in aU my short
experience of the world I have never met
walks so beautiful as those about Kandy,
They have, too, the advantage of being broad
and gravelled and cared-for, so that if a cobra
happens to be taking his moming walk at the
same time with you, you need not offend him
by treading on his tail. This is a real advan-
[ 64 ]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
tage to me, for I do not like cobras. Some
people seem to think a cobra only a snake,
and speak trivially of him ; but to me, a cobra
is what he was to the Brahmin and Hindus,
clearly a snake-deity ; and when he stands up
and flattens his neck and sways about, he
looks to me forty feet high, with a mission
to civilise Europe and America. I have never
met a wild one, and in my walks I took suf
ficient care not to do so, for the harmless
snakes here are quite numerous and big
enough to satisfy me ; but I saw enough cap
tive ones to appreciate their qualities, and I
not only understand why the cobra is wor
shipped, but I am quite prepared to worship
him myself rather than have any misunder
standing with him. I don't feel so about the
elephant, who is a dear good fellow, and when
I meet him taking his bath in a stream, and
he comes up to suggest that I might give
him a banana or a cocoanut, I never feel as
though he were a deity or his trunk a civil-
iser, though he is carved aU over every tem
ple in India; but the cobra is another story
altogether, and has a human air of condensed
venom and power such as would make the
fortune of a newspaper-editor. [65]

HENRY ADAMS
We sent for a snake-charmer at Colombo
who sat on the floor and let his cobra walk
about our legs in a way that struck me as
awkward even if his fangs were out, which
the fellow pretended they were not ; but he
was much too splendid to do tricks, and, after
intimating the clearest willingness to kiU us,
retired into his basket and shut up. The con
juror did some clever tricks, including the
mango-trick which aU traveUers teU about,
and which he offered to teach me in fifteen
minutes. I declined, preferring not to know
too much, for the trick was clever as it stood ;
the fellow's bare, skinny arms and body offer
ing no place for concealment, while we sat
round and over him, almost touching him, so
as to see every motion that was not too quick
to be seen at aU. I cannot conceive how he
did it ; but I never could see how the simplest
sleight-of-hand is done.
We came down to Colombo to take the
EngUsh steamer of the 17th, but ultimately
took the French steamer of the 21st, the
Djemnah, which should land us in Marseilles
in ten days. We have had a pleasant voyage
so far. The Indian Ocean was in very good
humor, and though I am now seasick if the
166 2

LETTERS TO A NIECE
water looks at me, I got on very well except
one day when the ship roUed once or twice.
Apparently everyone hereabouts who affects
style travels by the French Messageries
steamers, and they are certainly much pleas
anter when one is well. When ill, I think I
prefer the English. The Djemnah is not large
or fast, but we jog on, about isj^ miles an
hour, and gradually get over a good many
thousand miles. Passengers get to know each
other a little, and to dislike each other a lit
tle more. One grows used to a temperature
over 90°. We have stopped at Aden; in two
days we shaU get to the canal. Already I
look on our joumey as ended, for we are in
the beaten track.
October 8
We were stuck a whole day in the Suez
Canal. A steamer ahead of us ran aground,
and had to discharge cargo. Then we passed
Sunday at Port Said, which is a hole such as
words won't express. To-day we are just
half-way between Sicily and Corsica. To
morrow aftemoon we hope to reach Mar
seilles, and by Sunday (nth) we should get
to Paris. After four months' steady travel,
[ 67 ]

HENRY ADAMS
and fifteen thousand miles of ocean, I ought
to be glad to get anywhere; but I don't
reaUy feel puffed by the prospect. Our voy
age since leaving Brisbane has been so charm
ing that I am spoiled. Never a day when the
weather was not fair, and generaUy quite
exquisite; a sea almost motionless for ten
thousand miles; constant change, and most
of the time near , strange and fascinating
lands; for the first time in my Ufe I have
leamed what an ideal joumey is. Luckily
there is no other like it, and can't be. If there
were, I should start on it as soon as I could
get my teeth put in order. As there is not,
I must first get La Farge comfortably started
for home, and then I wiU read my letters,
and think what next. On reaching Mar-
seiUes I shall mail this letter at once so that
you may know of my safe arrival. At Paris I
shall get something from you, no doubt, and
then wiU start fresh. Love to you aU.

[ 68 ]

LETTERS TO A NIECE

VII
Tillypronie, Tarland, Aberdeenshire
Sunday, 15 Nov. 1891
When did I last write ? I have quite forgot
ten. When did you last write? I don't re
member. Never mind. I've no doubt it's
all right, and probably when I return to
London a week hence I shall find news of
you. Just now I am way way up in Scotiand,
perched high on the hiUs, and the mountains
roundabout are sprinkled with snow; rather
a violent contrast to the sort of thing you
have had from me of late, I wish I .knew
where I should be when I write next; per
haps in the south of France, or Spain. I have
very vague notions about it.
La Farge and I reached Paris a littie more
than a month ago, and I came over to Eng
land with the Camerons three weeks after
wards, while La Farge went to visit his
cousins in Brittany. He stayed there so long
that I had left London when he came over,
and he sailed, or I suppose he sailed, in the
Britannic last Thursday without my seeing
him again. I telegraphed good-bye on the
chance. The Camerons all went home on the
[ 69 2

HENRY ADAMS
4th. So I am now alone, making a few coun
try visits to old friends, and wondering what
I shall do next. My conscience teUs me to
go to India. Duty requires me to go to Cen
tral Asia. Laziness whispers to stay in Eng
land. As a compromise, I think of the south
of Europe. Pleasure suggests a run home
for the spring, to see you, ReaUy I am _wait-
ing for some one to take me by the coat-
collar and order me to foUow him,
Paris was rather amusing in a way, as it
always is, but I can't stand Paris long. The
solitude of it kills me. England is better.
London is really tolerable when the fog is
thick enough and it rains. At a pinch I can
always return there and be fairly comfort
able. Some of -you might come over and
take care of me. A few months of London
would rather do me good, and get some of
the sunlight of the South Seas out of me,
but really a good Scotch moor in November,
with plenty of rain and a cold raw wind, is
quite the pleasantest thing I know; and if
you could only see what wonderful things
dear Lady Clark gives us to eat, you would
agree with me. She has quite the nicest table
I ever saw; far better than the best French
[ 70]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
restaurant because it is so varied and every
thing so soigne, as the French say. The
Clarks are an example to me. They live up
here on the edge of the moors aU the year
round, and know everything that takes place
in the world, and read aU the new books,
and know all the new Americans, and keep
the best house, and have the best things to
eat, and aU without much money or display.
Before coming here I passed a week at my
Abbey in Shropshire. You would be de
hghted -with this. It is a very old ruin dating
way back to Norman times. The place is a
very quiet valley in Shropshire where noth
ing new has been seen for three hundred
years except a littie branch railroad which
has about three trains a day and runs through
quiet little hamlets to nowhere in particular.
The Abbey Church is a ruin -with some in
teresting bits, especially the Chapter House ;
but the Abbot's House is still preserved with
littie change, and is a pretty piece of Tudor
Gothic. Here I have been in the hab'it of
hiding myself whenever I have been in Eng
land for five-and-twenty years or more. One
of my oldest friends, named Milnes Gaskell,
is the o-wner, and I have been staying with
[ 71 ]

HENRY ADAMS
him and his wife. Lady Catherine, and their
little daughter about ten years old. The
weather was pretty bad, very dark, gloomy,
wet and cold, but we managed to be out a
great deal on foot or horseback, for they
mounted me on a pony, and I trotted about
after their big hunters through more mud
than I ever saw before, across fields and
through lanes, tiU I have got to wonder what
makes English people so very fond of marshes.
One day we had a meet of the hounds and
as my pony and her rider were not very fit
for fences, I capered about the fields tiU lunch-
time when Lady Catherine and I rode home.
We had hardly dismounted at the Abbey
gate when a lot of hounds came along and
started a fox in the ruin, under our eyes,
and killed him in the garden. He was a civil
fox, and probably did it because he knew
me to be a stranger.
Last Sunday I spent -with my old friend
Mrs. Chamberlain at Birmingham. You know
she was Mary Endicott, and was one of my
Washington girls. She is now the head of
a great house near Birmingham, and looks
younger and fresher than ever. She seems
to be very happy, and was very sweet to me,
[ 72 ]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
Her husband, remembering my taste for win
ter-gardens, showed me carefully through aU
his greenhouses, and especiaUy the orchid-
houses, which are very fascinating. He has
just what I would like to have, a sort of
tropical island connected with his house, and
fiUed with palms, ferns, orchids, chrysanthe
mums, and so on. The hothouses are warmed
by three or four hot- water boUers, and lighted
by electricity. When I am rich, I wiU build
another house on the same scheme and grow
roses and orchids aU vrinter for a Uving, Per
haps you wiU come and be gardener. The
gardeners curl the chrysanthemum petals for
dinner. You would Uke this part of the work
which is light and chatty.
Otherwise I have nothing in special to teU
you except that Lady Clark has a dear littie
terrier that reminds me of Possum in his best
days, and comes to see me in the moming
when I am dressing, and curls up in the
bed. I retum to London, next week, as I have
already told you, and wish I had something
to do there. As it is I am destined to a Paris
dentist, and dread further movements.
[ 73 ]

HENRY ADAMS

vm

1603 H Street
6 October, 1894
My dear Infant
I don't know that I gain much by calling
you infant, for you are aU as old as the hiUs,
and fit to be my grandmothers, but these
habits of childhood are as sticky as sugar,
and we never know ourselves or our infants.
How are you anyway ? Your letter the other
day gave me a sort of an idea that you are
so as to practise fair baU. Are you going to
get another licking at footbaU this year ? I
never could make out how you could be so
clever as to get licked last year. You must
have put real genius into discovering how not
to win.
At times, though, I suppose you do feel a
littie bored with victories, so I don't blame
you, as long as you're not bored by other
things, which is worse than being Ucked.
You ought to have been -with us in the Yel
lowstone country this summer. If it weren't
for the name of traveUing, I caU almost
every sort of travel pretty hard work, and
mountain travel in a region unknown to man
[ 74]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
is apt to be mighty hard work. I wonder
where you would have come out, and how
many canons you would have tumbled into.
I wanted you there to sketch for me. I was
quite sick in spirit that I could not catch a
tone of the country, for it was American to
the very snow. I was amused to find that
when I went round through Canada to see
the Selkirk glacier, it turned out to be dis-
tinctiy European — very fine indeed, but not
in the least like the American. I wanted
awfuUy to be an artist to see if I could make
anything out of the American ideal, which is
like the American woman — not suited to pic
torial or plastic art. I believe you could do it
better than I, for I am too American myself,
and have no juices.

As for your painting, it's no good except
for yourself; — or me, perhaps; — anyway,
it is a personal amusement like sleeping or
eating or playing golf, or catching trout. As
long as it gives you pleasure, it 's worth
while. The moment you conceive it as a pub
lic duty, it is a bore. And fromjhe-4n§tant
it is made a show, or a mercantile profession,
it is a horror almost as bad as a church. Art

and reUgion are-reaUy states of mind. They
~~ " [ 75 ]

HENRY ADAMS
become bric-a-brac the moment they are
made a show. They may be good bric-a-brac,
or bad ; and anyway the bric-a-brac is aU there
is to that stage of so-caUed civUisation ; but
as long as it is bric-a-brac it is dead art — or
religion — and for your personal state of
mind, either religious or artistic, you must
have it alive. I believe no one but Antony
and Cleopatra ever found amusement in catch
ing dead fish. So by aU means don't paint
unless it is a great pleasure, and bum aU you
do unless it gives you some sort of pleasure.
I do not mean pleasure of the brain — criti
cal, analytical, or generaUy inteUectual. I
mean the pleasure of a state of mind, such as
one ought to have in seeing good dancing, or
running water, or a very fresh glass of Brut
Champagne at the end of an August day
. when one is half dead of thirst.
I should send for half a dozen of you if I
knew my own mind. King as usual has gone
back on me, and is not going to the West
Indies. I shaU go alone, but when or exactiy
where, I do not know. For one or two rea
sons, I am dawdling here from day to day.
When I do go, I 've a sort of an idea of vis
iting the islands — Martinique, etc., down to
[ 76]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
Barbadoes ; then coasting the Spanish main
land to Colon at the Isthmus of Panama;
then coasting to Vera Cruz, and running
up to the City of Mexico; then returning
through Vera Cruz to Havana, and settUng
dovm for the winter at Saint lago ; but I want
first to hear from my friends the Ramsdens
at Saint lago about the house.
Leam bicycling and teach me. I am dying
to ride. IX
Pari.9, 1 Sept. '95
Two days ago, on arriving here, I got Looly's
and Fanny's letters, which gave me aU the
news in the world, or at least all I am likely
to get, for no one else writes. By the time
you get this, summer will be waning. My
own passage is taken for October 1 2, and by
the 20th I hope to be running the house at
Washington. . . .
Mrs. Lodge and I are going out shopping,
and we shaU try to find the linen that Maggy
wants. In London I bought a warehouse of
furniture and glass for her. She devours ta
bles and chairs by herds. I don't believe aU
five of you wear out as much furniture as I
[ 77]

HENRY ADAMS
do. I found some rather nice things at Greg
ory's and was extravagant, so that I wiU bust
your paw yet.
I forgot my travels. Where did I leave
off? At Tillypronie, I think, near a month
ago. I left poor Lady Clark very- very broken.
When I rejoined the Lodges in London the
to-wn was deserted and we had a week of it
-without society or gossip. I think I managed
to do all I wanted, or at least aU I had jotted
in my memoranda, but I left to the last the
decision whether you girls were to have sol
itaire pearl necklaces or ruby diadems. Of
course you are too old for diamonds, and they
are too common. Perhaps you had better
decide for yourselves next year, on the
spot. We all left London on Sunday, the 1 8th,
and, with lovely weather, crossed to Amiens
where we passed Monday in the Cathedral,
Of course I had been there often, but it is
always newer and more wonderful every
time, and it never seemed so fresh as now,
or so marvellously perfect. Then we went
on to Rouen and passed Wednesday there,
also on old ground, but interesting, and we
might weU have stayed longer. We kept on
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LETTERS TO A NIECE
then to Caen, Thursday, which was new to
me, and fuU of WiUiam the Conqueror and
his buildings. On Friday we stopped some
hours at Bayeux to see Matilda's tapestry
and another early church ; and we had time
at Saint-Lo to bag another curious early
Cathedral, stiU reaching Coutances in time
to see the sunset from the top of the Cathe
dral there.
We thought Coutances the most charm
ing of all these places, but perhaps it was
only a surprise. The Norman Cathedral there
was something quite new to me, and hum
bled my proud spirit a good bit. I had not
thought myself so ignorant or so stupid as
to have remained blind to such things, be
ing more or less vrithin sight of them now
for nearly forty years. I thought I knew
Gothic. Caen, Bayeux, and Coutances were
a chapter I never opened before, and which
pleased my jaded appetite. They are austere.
They have, outside, littie of the vanity of
Religion, Inside, they are worked with a
feeling and a devotion that turns even Amiens
green with jealousy. I knew before pretty
well all that my own Ufe and time was worth,
but I never before felt quite so utterly stood

HENRY ADAMS
on, as I did in the Cathedral at Coutances.
Amens has^mercy. jCputences^ above mercy
itself The squirming devUs under the feet
of the stone Apostles looked uncommonly
Uke me and my generation.
— On Saturday we came on to Mont Saint
Michel, among a mob of tourists. About
Mont Saint Michel I can say little because
it is too big. It is the Church Militant, but
if Coutances expressed the last — or first —
word of Religion, as an emotion of self-abase
ment, Mont Saint Michel lifted one up to a
sort of Sir Galahad in its mixture of sword
and cross. We passed two days there, in the
most abominable herd of human hogs I ever
saw at the trough of a table-d' bote, but the
castie was worth many hogs. When Rafael
painted Saint Michael flourishing his big sword
over Satan, he thought no doubt that he had
done a good bit of religious painting, but the
Norman architecture makes even Rafael vul
gar. The Saint Michael of the Mount is as
big as Orion and his sword must be as high
as Sirius, if Sirius in these days has any
Faith, which may be doubted ; and if stars
anyway are of any use, which is more ques
tionable still, both stars and swords being now
[ 8o]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
better understood, or more antiquated, than
in the eleventh century. So we bade good
bye to Sir Galahad Saint Michael, on Mon
day, with the proud thought that we could
smash him with one cannon-ball, or the gold
resources of a single Wall Street Bank, and
we rode and we rode and we hunted and we
hoUowed till we came to Vitre to sleep, and
there too we saw what is left of a very old
town, and waUs, above a green vaUey, and a
great Casde of the TremoiUes, grands sei
gneurs s'U en fut; and the old Chateau of
Mme. de Sevigne, a few mUes off, untouched,
and for all the world exactly like our Scotch
casties. From Vitre to Le Mans, with an
other Cathedral; and, last of all, two long
hours at Chartres on a lovely summer after
noon, with the sun flaming behind Saint Anne,
David, Solomon, Nebuchadnezzar, and the
rest, in the great windows of the north tran
sept. No austerity there, inside or out, ex
cept in the old south tower and spire which
StiU protests against mere humanity. I've a
notion that you saw Chartres, and know aU
about it. If so, I can drop it. If not, I hope
to take you there. Of course I studied the
windows, if only for La Farge' s sake, and
[81 ]

HENRY ADAMS
tried to understand their makers. On the
whole, as a combination of high merits, re
ligious and spiritual ; artistic, as architecture ;
technical, as engineering; for color, form,
and thought; for elevation of idea and suc
cessful subordination of detail; I suppose
Chartres is now the finest thing in the world.
At least that would be my guess ; but I've
no confidence in it ; and if you say you pre
fer Saint Paul's or Saint Peter's, so let it
be. It does not matter much now-a-days. I
beUeve a vast majority prefers the Houses
of Parliament and the State Department at
Washington. You can take your own line.
The same evening we came on to Paris,
and here we are: Hotel des deux Mondes,
Avenue de I'Opera. Mr. and Mrs. Lodge, the
two boys, and I, occupying one apartment.
We have not quarreUed or differed, and our
journey since leaving New York has been
highly successful. I hope they have enjoyed
it as much as I have. I find the Cunliffes
here, which is another joy to me. The Luces
also, our other sister, are here, and two thou
sand million Americans sitting at every cafe,
with penetrating voices proclaiming that they
only wish they were in New York. I wish
[82 ]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
they were, and I further stUl, for I love Paris
only so very littie that I would not quite
utterly destroy it, as I would destroy Lon
don ; but would leave the Louvre, and Notre
Dame, and the Cafe Riche or Vefour's. The
only real objection I have to France is that
there is no good Champagne in it. Other
wise it is a tolerable place enough, except for
the JewsaridAmeric^is^
Now I have written you a very long let
ter, and must finish my coffee and dress, or
some one will come in. Give my love to paw,
and to Martha and Hitty and Elsie and all
the other brats. X
Paris, 23 Sept. 1895
I HAVE letters from "you down to the nth,
which is fairly up to date. You will have to
answer this to Washington, as I sail on the
12th. The Lodges go south to-morrow, and
leave me here alone in this wild and wick
ed world. I shall go over to London next
week. The weather is stiU superb ; the country
parched to a cinder ; and the temperature as
high as in July. We have passed a week at
[83]

HENRY ADAMS
Tours, visiting countless ruins, and seeing aU
the things I ought to have seen thirty years
ago. The Chateaux and Castles are pretty
much given up to American tourists now,
and one is led about by a string, and herded
like a sheep, which is not conducive to roman
tic meditation, even with the help of Stanley
J. Weyman ; but anyway I should not have
taken as much pleasure in Touraine as I did
in Normandy. On the other hand I know
that you babbling shrimps would delight in
it. Some of the Chateaux, like Chaumont
and Azay-le-Rideau and Langeais, are stiU
lived in, and are charming, especiaUy Chau
mont. I saw only one first-rate bit of archi
tecture; which is the famous staircase and
court of the Chateau of Blois. This is, I sup
pose, the best thing in Renaissance that the
French did. Whenever you come here again,
you must see it, and Chaumont and Amboise.
I do not think the rest matters much. You
would be amused by Chinon and Loches, but
they are military casties, and Uke plenty of
others. Chenonceaux is now o-wned by a
Cuban named Terry, and shut up. Cham-
bord is big and heavy. For a pure worldly,
wicked, and gUded architecture, you can take
[ 84 ]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
the staircase at Blois for the best, and need
go no further. The Louvre comes next. Both
are only fragments.
On the whole, Touraine seems to me to
have had too much said about it. The whole
thing, packed together and doubled several
times in merit, would not approach the value
of any one of the great northern Cathedrals.
The country is a monotonous chalk level.
The Loire is chiefly sand-spits. The history
is revolting and the associations aU bad. Louis
the Eleventh, and Francis .the First, and Cath
erine of Medici, are not beautiful to look at.
I prefer the glass windows in the Cathedral
at Tours. When you come back to France, if I'm
not with you, hire a chateau somewhere, grow
grapes for a living, get acquainted with the
gentry, and do the neighborhood quietly as
you did the Deeside. You will find it very
cheap, and very amusing. With five or six
thousand dollars a year, you could be swells,
and if you would join the Catholic church you
would be absolutely ancienne noblesse, and
could set up as saints and at least peeresses
of France. I want Looly to try it with me. I
never saw a country better suited for out-
[ 85 ]

HENRY ADAMS
door life. It is something like Pennsylvania,
and the people are the most industrious, well-
to-do, good-looking, economical peasantry I
ever saw. I can go about everywhere on a
bicycle. You can have one of the new auto
matic carriages. We will grow our ovm fruit
and make our own wine, eat our o-wn chick
ens and get La Farge to put up a commem
orative window for us, with paw and Cousin
Sturgis, and me, and aU you five, kneeling
in a row, very smaU, in the big vrindow of
the Cathedral at Tours. On the whole I think
this the best idea I have yet had for our de
clining years. See that Looly takes it in.
In spite of aU its drawbacks, France has,
StiU, more to give one than any other coun
try has, that I know. Outside of Paris and
the manufacturing cities, life seems stiU quite
possible. The French are, to be sure, rather
too intelligent, which cannot be said of any
other people, and they understand their own
difficulties too well, which is also an occa
sional drawback to felicity ; but they have lots
of variety and still some few broken vestiges
and traditions of art. They do not get on my
nerves as the Germans and English do. Their
faults are those of children, and I can make
[ 86]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
aUowance for them. They lie, but they do
not cant, which is the infallible sign of a Ger
man race. They are stiU a littie mediseval and
unequal. Virtue and vice live together, saints
and sinners, as they did in the middle ages,
in contrast, each in its fuUest form. They
have not yet averaged down to the mercantile
level. I admit that the Boston standard is bet
ter, and quite the highest that ever has ex
isted outside Paradise ; but the mediaeval con
trasts were more amusing, and I do dearly
love a female saint. She is so quaint.
Saint Louisa would look very nicely on a
glass window. She would convert her wicked
uncle, who does nothing but rob and murder ;
and would make him build a church and feed
chickens ever afterwards.
I see nothing at aU here that you girls can
want, unless it is clothes. The fashions for
the Bois and America strike me as being ex
aggerated and vulgar as ever, but on Sun
days, in the street-cars and the Luxembourg
Gardens and the river steamers, I see occa
sionaUy pretty dresses, and sometimes pretty
women, not exaggerated, and not even painted,
as aU the women in London are, from the
Princess of Wales downward. I should say
[87]

HENRY ADAMS
that the fashions among the peuple here were
rather nice, but as I am generally vrithout
instruction on these occasions, I don't feel
sure. Everything in Paris is as dear as in New
York, and I should think no better. My linen
will come to the same thing.
XI
1603 H Street
Monday, 30 DecT
Dear Infant
Thanks for the telegram and letter. Now
winter has sho-wn its hand, and this moming
the trees are white with snow, and the ther-
mom. stands just at 32°. So you got home in
bare time. I am lonely vrithout you, and miss
having mumps or bronchitis or cholera up
stairs to give comfort to a happy home ; but
one can't expect to have aU the pleasures of
life together. One must never expect too
much, either of mumps or mugwumps, but
you can tell Looly that if she too has " that
tired feeling," and afresh stock of mumps —
or mugwumps — she had better take the next
train, like Fanny, and try a change. TeU her
that she won't see much more of her dear un
cle, who is tottering very rapidly to his vener-,
[ 88 ]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
able grave, and whose senility has at last be
come too evident for disguise, but who is more
restless than ever, and is only kept here by
chance and the dear Major in the hope he
can help to do harm to somebody. The mo
ment he sees that the Major can be trusted to
do aU necessary harm without help, that mo
ment your avuncular wreck will sink beyond
the horizon ; — so. Miss Ludovica, — hurry
up! We are beginning to boil here, already, —
or, at least, to simmer. But, as for me, I read
Byzantine history, and the early Christians.
Love to you aU. XI I 1603 H Street
12 Jan. '97
Your letter ot day before yesterday comes at
a moment when I have nothing to do that
distracts me from reflecting on the auspicious
merits of my nieces ; for, unlike your friend,
I do not see their defects if they have any,
and never can understand the advantage of
discovering faults in those one loves. The
only effect that I ever perceived from being
told my faults was to make them worse by
[89]

HENRY ADAMS
adding self-consciousness; and as all of us
Bostonians naturally suffer from self-con
sciousness and shyness as our peculiar and
besetting fault, we gain little by increasing
it. . . .
I am glad you are interested in your art-
school, though the same danger lurks there.
One learns just enough of professional meth
ods to disgust one with one's own Umitations.
The professional artist is a fraud of the worst
kind in that respect. He labors to root out
amateurishness, and yet he is himself the
most miserable of amateurs, or worse, when
he undertakes seriously to rival real artists.
Not one has a sense of color; almost none
has a sense of line; never a picture or a figure
is felt ; and in both the Paris salons you may
seek a whole season to find a work of art
that is more than clever. The greatest art
ist's greatest art is to imitate naivete, like
Puvis, or to be superhabile like Sargent, A
third-rate Rembrandt knocks the stuffing out
of aU the picture-exhibitions of Europe and
America combined.
StiU, nothing matters much, and as you
want only amusement, perhaps you will find
as much of it in the art-school as out of it.
[90]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
Anyway,' one's freshness must soon fade in
our dry inteUectual atmosphere, and faded
freshness is a very stale thing. So I suppose
we must cultivate what the world cultivates,
and try to wear our tailor-made clothes as
though they were imperial purple. Thanks to
La Farge, you will hardly forget what color
is, and when one's eye has once learned to see
color and line, one does not easily lose the
sense. Sometimes I feel even a feeble sus
picion that the times are drifting us back to
wards a certain revival of our senses. . . .
Meanwhile we go on here with more than
our usual inanities, and I have for once had a
good deal more to think about than I like.
You need not be anxious about Cuba, Of all
the elements, Cuba alone is all right. It is
not Cuba that is in danger, but Spain, and
even Spain is not in so bad a way as our own
dear Major and the republican party. Be
neath the surface here, aU intelligent men
are uncommonly uneasy about the Major's
evident weakness, and his interminable list
of failures to run even his own petty Ohio
jobs, for which the whole business of the
country is kept waiting. Neither does the
noble Olney improve matters, whose temper
[91 ]

HENRY ADAMS
has got him into inextricable scrapes, and
whose manners are not worse than his mor
als. Also, the venerable Sherman is mixing
things up with a pernicious activity almost as
destructive as his total loss of memory and
sequence. Altogether, we are aghast, and
know not where to tum. No one gives a
thought to public poUcy. No one wants to
face the responsibilities of office. Quarrels of
the bitterest sort are breaking out in every
direction, and the chance grows daily smaUer
that McKinley can control legislation or even
local feuds and bosses.
Optimist that I am, never had I thought
that things would be so mixed up vrithin
only a couple of months of election ; but for
tunately it is not my funeral, and, like Messrs.
Hanna, Dingley, AUison, Sherman, Lodge,
Reed, and Hay, I am not asking for office,
nor even for a job. I have no henchmen to
feed at the public crib. But I do not Uke the
outiook, and I wonder how long our crazy
modem society can stand up between its own
feebleness and its diseases. Perhaps you wiU
some day know, but I guess I'm out of it.
Pleasant letters from Brooks and Daisy
housekeeping in Paris. [92]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
XIII
1603 H Street
28 Jany. 1897
Your letter, my dear fellow, and your study
for the "Dance" have arrived and brought
joy, as your feUowship always does ; but I
say to you, as I say to Helen when she brings
me a sonnet: — What am I that I should
criticise, and where was I when the founda
tions of your art were laid ? Who am I that
should bind the sweet influences of Pleiades,
or teach the horse to say Ha ! Ha ! — I can no
more do the things you do for fun, than I
could teU the peacocks how their goodly
wings should be made, or instruct the ostrich
how to bring up her young ; a duty which the
Lord seems to have thought incumbent on
men of a certain age and position in the world.
(Job XXXIX, 13-18.) So I leave to the Pro
fessor on duty the task of repeating the usual
commonplaces which have worn many gen
erations threadbare, and which were the out
come of a society already beginning to rot.
Old Professor Channing before my time is
said to have criticised themes by advising the
students to begin by striking out whatever
[93]

HENRY ADAMS
they thought good. If the criticism was a bad
one, it condemned the Professor ; if good, it
condemned the natural instincts and tastes of
the students and their time. Now-a-days we
have got to the point that we must not be
elated or cast down ! Of the two common
places I prefer Channing' s, which has at least
a Puritanic and positive flavor. FoUowing
the same Une, you should not, as an habitual
thing, have green eyes or a turn-up nose, and
above all you must have blue hair.
Your study for "Dancing" certainly has
not the freshness of the open air; but that is
not your fault. It smeUs of the studio and the
lamp ; but that is why it exists. It has none
of that fine, free, careless rapture ofthe thrush
which sings because it is fun to make fun of
us. Only here and there in it I see bits which
remind me of you, and movements which
suggest yourself rather than somebody else.
As these will be things that the school wiU
inevitably condemn and strike out, I -wiU not
say what they are. Nothing absolutely annoys
me in the sketch, and although of course the
school always begins by abolishing color, —
that being the only essential element in paint,
— and thereby deprives you of your chief
[ 94 ]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
natural advantage, stiU you have instinctively
struggled to recover what you could of your
paralysed strength by using light and shade
as boldly as you dared. By and by they will
take that out of you, too, and you will do the
whole thing right, without being elated or
depressed, which is what we aU hope for in
Nirvana and Boston.
Well! Nothing matters much! If you
were to be professional, I should highly ap
prove your working close down to the con
ventional school standard, which probably
represents the nearest practicable-compromise
between art and existing_^ society, just as the
common-school stands between knowledge
and shop-keeping. As you study for pleas
ure, and will find as much pleasure in con
ventionalities as in eccentricities, the training
of the school -will be an experience, and that
is apparentiy all that life is, since society has
lost its hold on an ultimate ideal. So go ahead
by aU means and make what pleasure out of
it you can, and, if possible, leam for your
own happiness to beUeve in Harvard College
and Metropolitan Art-schools. After all, from
the point of view of true imagination and pure
art, I do not know that Titian and Rembrandt
t95 2

HENRY ADAMS
are less mercantile than Sargent and Carolus.
I find no real peace short of the windows at
Chartres and the mosaics at Torcello and
Murano. So you have a wide field to caper
in, as far as my feelings affect you.
As I am -writing not in the character of
uncle, but as a fellow-student and general
companion to owls, like my master Job, you
will do weU not to be excited or depressed
by my remarks, but read what Job's com
panions said to him, and play it's me. The
Lord can then straighten us aU out to suit him.
I seem to have Uttie news to send you
from here. Winter has at last set in solid,
and I hibernate like a cinnamon bear — not
being a grizzly or a brown, but just a poor
ornery yaller bear. As I remarked before,
Helen communicates to me an occasional
sonnet, and Hay an occasional secret ; both
of which amuse me. My Cubans have won
their fight, Canovas and Cleveland, their two
chief enemies, are now broken to pieces, and
will probably go out together, which vriU
settie the result, although the situation in
Cuba may remain as it is for an indefinite
time. My object is to make another Santo
Domingo or Colombia of it, so as to shut out
[96]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
Mr. Havemeyer and the New York and Bos
ton civilisation. Thus far we have wonder
fuUy succeeded.
Mr, McKinley is already flatter than cakes
in a pan, and the election of a Populist-Silver-
Democrat in 1900 is as inevitable as any
future event ever can be. . . .
XIV
1603 H Street
25 Marcfi, 1897
Your letter of the 14th has this moment
arrived. You were at Milan with Saint Am-
brosius, the only interesting man or thing I
ever heard of in Milan ; and, like the fool I
am, I never knew him till last summer. You
must next time go out to the Certosa, by
way of seeing real Italian work. , . .
So, you wiU be now in Rome and hear the
watch-dogs bay beyond the Tiber, and of
distant centinels the fitful cry, &c, &c, as per
Byron, who did in fact say the best things
about Rome that ever have been said. Lots
of people have talked, too, and some have
talked weU ; but of Rome, as in Rome, there
is almost nothing of the very first quality.
Even the Michael Angelos and the Vatican
[97]

HENRY ADAMS
marbles do not appeal to me as intensely as
the Slave or the Venus of Milo in the Louvre,
and Byron's description of the Gladiator is
finer than the Gladiator himself Roman
architecture is very far from the first class.
Saint Peter's reeks of money and infidehty.
The best things are always Michael Angelo
and the Campagna, and the view from the
Vatican towards the Alban hiUs. There I
find peace and space, and sense of finite fail
ure, which is the soul of Rome. For, in ab
stract, Rome merely teUs of the two first
failures of westem civilisation : one poUtical, r
the other spiritual; and the third and last —
the material or economical — is there only
in the vulgar ruin of a contractor's building-
speculation. The imperial and the papal fail
ures have a certain pathos and dignity; but
even these never catch my breath like the
pathos of Chartres and Coutances, or the
dignity of Mont Saint Michel, I feel always
as cool as Gibbon did when "in the gloom
of evening, as I sat musing on the Capitol,
while the bare-footed fryars were chanting
their litanies in the temple of Jupiter," he first
thought of writing his very Roman and cold
blooded history. ^ [ 98 ]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
But out on the Campagna thirty or forty
years ago, in May, on horseback, among the
fever-stricken peasants, and the wild-looking
waUowing buffalo, and the ruined acqueducts,
and the peculiar depth of the atmosphere
and richness of the shadows to eyes that
could then feel tones of shade, Rome was
not half bad. I envy you. TeU me how it
feels. I expect to be at Brown's Hotel in Dover
Street before night on the 21st, but direct to
Barings or the Embassy. I chance it on your
address. XV
BrowrCs Hotel, London, W.
Sunday, May 2, '97
My dear and only shrimp
Your letter yesterday was rather a relief,
for I began to fear that something was -wrong.
Of course, / am wrong — always — and ex
pect others to be so — occasionally, — but just
now I am more than usually, if possible, a
wreck, and the idea of five — no! seven —
nieces in Florence with nothing the matter
with them, overwhelms me with the weight
of the world's wickedness. I wish I were
199 2

HENRY ADAMS
with you there, for I loathe London and Lon
doners, and we could amuse ourselves pleas
antly on the Arno, That Rome and Michael
Angelo should at first knock one siUy, is
proof of sense. The world contains only one
or two great tragic motives in the historical
drama, and Rome concentrates them, as
Michael does, so that they strike any-one
with imagination almost a physical blow,
Florence is not tragic at aU, and in spite of
Dante and all the rest, never counts for a
tragic motive. It is not quite as fat and gross
as the Touraine. Boccaccio is not quite as
frankly swinish as Balzac. But Florence was
always mercantile; — never imperial or spir
itual; — and I think that was reaUy what
worried Dante. I feel it even in the mosaic
marbling of the Campanile ; and the Pense-
roso seems to me to be pondering what it
means. Evidentiy he is in a mess, and cannot
for his life understand it. So I think Michael
felt in Florence that his style of art was out
of place, as Dante's was in the earlier time.
Florence is a place to play in, Tuscany
always was peaceful, fat and sensual. You
see it in the decorations of the early tombs,
and Vergil taunts the Etrurians in the .^neid
[ IOO ]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
with caring for nothing but wine and music
and love-making. They never fought or
prayed hard even in play, and one can sit
down with the Medicis safe against pretty
nearly aU social annoyances except perhaps
an occasional dose of poison, which has al
ways been rather the correct social remedy
and substitute for the sword and nasty chop
ping of heads. Venice is stiU more so, and,
to my mind, too much so. Florence is a pleas
ant medium between the shop and the camp
and the court. It has just a fair share of all,
and just enough religion to be graceful. . . .
XVI 20 Feb'. '98
Your last letter, my dear infant, written
Jany. 24, nearly a month ago, caught me just
as we were leaving Luxor on our way up to
Assouan. This moming we started back from
Assouan and shall reach Luxor again this
evening or to-morrow moming. So our Nile
voyage is finished, as far as we set out to
go, and, long before this letter reaches you,
we shall, if nothing interferes, have tumed
our backs on Egypt, and our faces to Syria 
Of adventure, the Nile now offers about
[ 101 ]

HENRY ADAMS
as much chance as a Florida boarding-house.
One does the usual temples, and, by way of a
change, one resorts to the usual tombs. An
hour or two on a donkey makes one curious
to try a camel, and five minutes on a camel
makes one contented for life with a donkey.
^gypt interests me always, of course, but
that is because it is a kind of compendium or
Century Dictionary of History, and I get the
cosmos in a nut-sheU here. Rome fades off
into a passing blizzard; westem civilisation
becomes a rather gross misapprehension; and
even oriental enormities count only as more
or less labored variations on an originaUy
simple theme. Egypt_is an education, bul
it is a sort of education that, for Americans,
is worse than useless. No form of westem
thought can live in so dry an atmosphere. So
the American very wisely comes here to pass
his time, and carries away as littie as possible
of the education. What good can it do him
to leam that his special form of ephemeris is
on the whole not sufficientiy original or or
namental to be worth existing at all ?
So the American goes his way and disap
pears as so many other traveUing races have
done, rather more idly than the rest, and
[ 102 ]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
Egypt does him no harm. With the English
man, the case is different, and interests me
greatiy. What Cambyses did, and Alexander
the Great, and Julius Csesar, and Mahomet,
and what Saint Louis tried to do, and what
was the highest effort of Napoleon's genius
— in short, what has been the object of aU
the greatest men known in history — Eng
land in her tum has undertaken. She has
saddled and bridled the Sphinx and is riding
her at fuU speed according to the rules of
her manege. She has straddled the road to
the East, and holds her position against all
comers. She has repeated what was the great
achievement of Alexander the Great, and
has done it, after her own manner, without
producing either an Alexander or any other
man above the intellectual level of an aver
age railway president. The Englishmen who
are now ruling Egypt tell me that they have
done it against the will of their government,
forced into it by the fact that it was impos
sible to do anything else. The contrast of
mind and method is so curious that I watch
the Englishmen much as I like to watch an
ant's nest. Poor old Napoleon told his sol
diers that from the top of yonder p3n-amids
[ 103 ]

HENRY ADAMS
forty centuries looked down on them. For
once, he did not exaggerate. Perhaps he
might more exactiy have doubled the num
ber. Anyway, to-day, one more century, which
makes x-}-i centuries, looks down on Eve
lyn Baring, and sees Napoleon and Ceesar and
Alexander, aU roUed in one, a reincarnation
that would have startied Osiris, not to speak
of Pasht the cat and Thoth the monkey, into
a grin, as it does me. We have worked out
at last into the ultimate mathematics of the
Bank of England, and can stop.
This disquisition may serve to amuse you
for a minute or two, when you are sleepy.
The truth is, I have very, very Uttie to say.
SociaUy we are almost whoUy confined to
our ovm party. Hay asks everybody to din
ner, but there is nobody to come. The ven
erable President AngeU, our minister at Con
stantinople, and his vrife, came once. Ham
Fish and his wife and a Miss Smith Cliff,
came once. A Mr. and Mrs, Dawkins and
Lady Edward Cecil came once. This is aU,
and none of them were more than fleeting
joys. Whether other social pleasures are re
served to us, I rather doubt. Possibly at Cairo
we may see some one, but people are already
[ 104 ]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
flying northwards ; winter is over, or soon
wiU be, and the eternal summer-question will
turn up again for settlement by the time we
can set our feet in Christian soil once more.
As far as I know, among the travellers here
this winter, there is no one eager to love
me,
Luxor. 21st
A HOT day at last. We have been out to
ruins and tombs all the morning; Medinet
Abou, the Ramasseum and what not; sur
rounded by men and boys with scarabs and
mummies to seU ; some of them wonderfully
good and genuine, which they were at least
eager to throw at me for a few cents, but
really I do not collect mummies and a few,
very few scarabs suffice. AU the same, won
derfully good things can stiU be bought here
for little or nothing. I have been tempted
beyond resistance by Greek coins, but it is
no use to refuse Greek,
I wiU mail this letter now, for we start
again to-morrow, and may not strike a town.
Love to all.

[ 105 ]

HENRY ADAMS

XVII

IRtel Victoria, Damas (Syrie)
21 March, '98
My dear Infant
Since I last wrote, a fortnight ago, from
Alexandria, I have waited for letters which,
as seemed reasonable to expect, would reach
me here ; but the Paris maU down to the
1 2 th has arrived, without hoof or hom of a
letter for me, and so, for fear you may be
wondering whether I have started for the
desert of Gobi, I vrill begin a despatch just
to say that I am stiU hovering on the verge.
The desert is not far off, but I am. This to-wn
is still quite vrithin the baiUwick of the tour
ists, and is haunted by American females who
have all been to Jerusalem or are aU going
there, and whose knowledge of the Scriptures
is encyclopedic. It gives me quite a tired
feeling to hear them talk. The reason, no
doubt, is that I did not get to Jerusalem.
The moment I got on board the steamer, the
winds rose, and the waves -with them, and
your weary uncle, -with a hundred more peo
ple, mostly sea-sick, wholly disgusted, was
tossed about, like Jonah, and lay for a day
[ 106 ]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
off Jaffa trying to get ashore without success,
while a hundred more wretched tourists in
Jaffa were watching us, hoping to escape from
Jaffa and Palestine. In the end, I was carried
on to Beirut and Syria, and Jerusalem must
wait tiU I die and take it new. Not that Syria
is altogether the promised land as I under
stood the contract. On arriving, knowing that
Beirut had few resources, I told my drago
man that we would take the first train for
Damascus. My order was greeted with a
superior smile of contempt. For three days
there had been no train to Damascus. The
snow in the Lebanon had blocked the road.
Beirut was full of Cook's tourists trying to
get away, and storm-bound. After all, I had
no right to complain, for at least I had no
women to look after, which is the serious
part of having to sleep on a table and to feed
on salt-pork. A man can always make him
self comfortable, or nearly always; and
Beirut was comfortable enough in the inter
vals of rain, or when it didn't blow, or when
one could sit without an overcoat in one's
room. At last, on the 15th, I did get off, and,
sure enough, the snow on the Lebanon would
not have disgraced a Boston blizzard. This
[ 107 ]

HENRY ADAMS
was not so bad, but when it came to driving
four or five hours up a bare Wyoming val
ley, in a biting wind, to Baalbek, and to shiv
ering in company with a dozen New Yorkers
in a Syrian hotel, without fire or means of
making one, while outside it was freezing
hard with a high wind, we thought warm
winter climates a distinct feature of travel.
Certainly Baalbek was cold ; so is Damascus ;
and both are rainy ; but stiU I was amused,
and part of my amusement was due to the
misery of the tourists. But they are wonder
ful ! Nothing stops them. They are Uke the
crusaders. They are mostly women, and they
suffer miseries, and are dumped about like
sheep, old and young, weak or strong, but
they never flinch and never say, like the
men, that the place is a fraud, and they want
to be at home. I hear theu* nasal : " Oh ! my ! ' '
and their lectures on the superiority of this
over that, and on the mistake of Mrs. James
in going to see Bethlehem when Mrs. Jones
told her she ought to see Jericho ; but the
best lecture I have heard was a regular dress-
ing-do-wn given in my railwa3^-carriage on
the top of the Lebanon by an Englishwoman
to an elderly middle-class Englishman of ap-
[ 108 ]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
parentiy combative temperament, who seemed
to be her brother, and whom she called
Edmond. Edmond, as I thought rather ex
cusably, though timidly, had ventured to say
that he was disappointed in the look of the
country, which seemed pardonable seeing
that we were in a treeless waste of limestone
mountain, covered with about three feet of
snow. But his sister sweUed and burst.
"Edmond, this wiU become a habit! It is a
bad one. It is a cancer. You must check it
in time. / am not disappointed ! " And so it
went on, in flowing Uterary periods, for sev
eral minutes tiU Edmond was crushed, and
meekly said that he wasn't very well, and
perhaps was not in a state to enjoy travel
properly. Even this did not altogether pacify
her ; but she resorted to a long entry in her
diary to relieve her self-respect.
All the same, Baalbek interested me in a
way as much as Egypt, and my cold drive
taught me some geography; and by put
ting the temples on top of the geography,
and the map in a comer, I began to under
stand why Alexander the Great and Na
poleon Bonaparte and Thothmes the Second
and Xerxes and Mahomet and Mark Antony
[ 109 ]

HENRY ADAMS
and Godfrey of Bouillon and Richard Coeur
de Lion and Christ and Rameses the Great
and Sennacherib, and pretty much everybody
else down to Cook's tourists and my ov^n
poor piggishness, have seemed to haunt this
region, which is in truth one of the least at
tractive spots, as regards its own merits, that
I have ever struck. I will not give you a
lecture on S3TTan geography. As for the his
tory, you can get your uncle Brooks to give
you a copy of his new French edition when
it comes out. The moral is that I had a splen
did, sharp, sunny day, wandering about Baal
bek, and plenty of subject for reflection as I
went on, the next day, to Damascus, in "a
dreary rain among drearier hiUs through the
Anti-Lebanon range, until at five o'clock I
walked in to the hall of the inn at Damascus
and found Mr. and Mrs. Ham Fish, Mrs.
McLane, Miss Smith CUff, Mr. and Mrs,
Angell (our minister at Constantinople), two
French counts, a pair of French countesses,
and a couple of dozen Cook tourists, sitting
round a red-hot American stove, trjring to
get warm. So I sat down too.
They are all gone now, but I linger on,
waiting for a steamer to Smyrna, and beguil-
[ 110]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
ing the days by mouseing and pottering here
and there among the dirt and ruin of this
picturesque haunt of thieves and religions.
Moslem and Jew, Christian and Druse, Greek
and Bedawin, and fifty other races who have
robbed and murdered each other for many
thousand years, are stiU thieving or toiling
here, much as they always did ; a^^trifle dirtier
than ever, and rather meaner as their faiths
decay, but stiU curious to look at, with heaps
of local color, and, once in a while, when
it gets a little warmer, a bluish purple in
shadow. And the embroideries! and old
glass ! and old metal- work ! Oh, Lord !

[ 111 ]

HENRY ADAMS
[In this interval the uncle's letters became
more personal as to the niece's affairs, and
more reserved as to his own. The Chartres
book was written without an aUusion to it in
his letters, but a copy was sent to the niece in
Paris, on January i, 1905, with the accom
panying words :
..." I sent you a copy of the Virgin's
Miracles last week. My nieces are rather
more numerous than I supposed, and I am
now hesitating to decide whether the Pres
ident counts in the class."
Later in the year, in Paris, the foUowing
note was written in answer to one from the
niece, alarmed at the prospect of a mass to
be said for her family at Saint-Sulpice, and
at a request to be present:] XVIII
23 Avenue du Bois de Boulogne
, Tliursday {Oct. 12, 1905]
Dear Infant
Every one has colds. I am having my
nose sizzled. It's rather fun. Of course it is
quite useless, for I went to the Doctor to see
about eyes, not noses, [ 112]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
All my nurses and nieces are here now,
Mrs, Wkity Chanler and Laura; Mrs, Fred
Jones and Trix; Mrs. Cameron and Mar
tha; Mrs. Jaffrey and Nancy. My machine
is quite worn out.
Perhaps John wiU kindly stick me into his
mass. I need it more than you. I've not the
least objection to being prayed for. For that
matter I have no objection to being taken into
aU the churches there are. Why not? Any
one of them is good enough for a sinner like
me. I'm afraid the objection would come
from the Church. In aU my life I've never
met a Church willing to touch me. After all,
I have to belong to a State, under the same
conditions, and have to pay my taxes and ad
mire the Senators, My rule is to conform.
It is the only path of freedom. . . .
XIX
23 Avenue du Bois de Boulogne
Tliursday [l905]
Dear Niece
The jam has been severe, no doubt, and
StiU keeps up, though I don't object to it, if
only one could feel as though, in trying to
be civil to one person, some other person
[ 113]

HENRY ADAMS
were not neglected and as my sister Ann
says " hurt." About the nieces I don't care.
You and the others have got to stand it, and
take your gruel just as I do myself. You are
all now fit for your work, and must do it
like other people. But the country-cousins
from Boston and elsewhere, worry me much.
I was at it all day yesterday, and got my
load drenched and soaked. Duel tiU mid
night. This ends all engagements to speak
of, but it is not so much the actual as the
conditional engagements that bother one. If
the weather is good, and if my dress fits,
and if my husband is away, you may take
me out, &c, &c, if you can get tickets. . . .

XX

23 Avenue du Bois de Boulogne
Friday [November, 1905]
... I PASSED Toussaint at Chartres aU by
my lone, deadly cold and famished,, but ves
per service quite immense vrith its chang
ing 'evening lights. At moments it was so
operatic that I had to reason it out to be
real. One has seen such things only in Jew
Operas. I have been in hiding all the week, seeing
[ 114 ]

LETTERS TO A NEECE
nobody and going nowhere. If I come to
you this afternoon it wiU be on my knees,
for I am no better than Mrs. Gay.
XXI
September 2&, 1907
.". . Paris seems to me stupider in ideas
than I ever knew it before, and no one tells
me of anything to see or hear or do. Not a
book or a play or a picture or an opera or a
building have I heard of, or been told to ex
pect. The weather has tumed fine, and fur
nishes the only subject of conversation. I am
quite curious to know whether the new
batches of young students coming out now
feel the sense of novelty and activity that
the old crowd did ; and what they Uke or dis-
Uke. I am surprised, too, at noticing what an
awful blow the Church has had. Here it has
almost disappeared. Even in the Faubourg it
talks like a moribund. But in England it
shows its decline most sadly. The deceased
wife's sister has played the devil with it, and
a very large majority of EngUsh people now
want disestablishment like the French.
Things move terribly fast, I doubt whether
[ 115 ]

HENRY ADAMS
your children wiU know what a Church is,
at this rate; and you might bring them aU
up to be priests without their reaching the
first idea of what you meant — unless, in
deed, they were bom priests, and in that case
nothing would divert them. As you know, I
regret it, for all the thought or imagination
that ever existed, and all the art, had its
source there, and the world is left to trades-
unions and Apaches without it.
Let us be glad that the women help to
keep it going a little, XXII
23 Avenue du Bois de Boulogne
Tliursday, 4 June, 1908
, . . Paris is exceedingly fuU of acquaint
ances and friends. I have just retumed from
personaUy conducting the Brices and Winty
Chanlers through Normandy, which is no
slight effort, for Normandy and Brittany are
piggy and baths unattainable. Mont Saint
Michel is a hole and stye in respect of com
fort. But the weather was fine, and the au-
tomobiling perfect, and the apple-blossom^
divine like the 12 th century.
Paris verges on 100° Fahrenheit, but keeps
[ 116]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
a steady sequence of breakfast and dinners
and even Operas and Theatres, and balls and
routs. Never did I feel advancing age so
much as now when the women — like your
Miss Lazurus — no longer fear to flatter an old
man grossly, and the old man has to flatter
back in self-defence. Rendez-m,oi mes quatre-
vingt ans ! I curl up green before the shame
of it, but what does it matter if I get out in
time ! I fear only over-staying my invita
tion. _^
You must not read what you call your
book [the "Education"], because the Chartres
is good enough for you, and me too, and
the pigs aU about. The book is not meant to
be read. It was put in print to be sent to per
sons mentioned in it, to obtain their permis
sion; or to persons competent to correct it
or suggest changes. They were requested to
retum it when corrected, which they mostly
forget to do. Mrs. Chanler and Mrs. Lodge
had copies because they helped to write it,
but I don't carry a stack of volumes round
on my back when I travel, and I have had to
refuse copies to everybody for that reason.
Even the Chartres is now all given away,
and I have had to refuse — or rather to ex-
[ 117]

HENRY ADAMS
cuse — UberaUy. It is aU nonsense. No one
really reads either volume, as I can instantly
see when they talk of it. They only play pre
tend, like children, and ask for it because it is
not for sale. Don't believe a word of what you
are told. The only sensible reader I have had
is a lady who could not endure the Chartres
because it was so matter-of-fact and totaUy
wanting in sentiment. I know what she means.
Except Mme.rde Boigne who is excellent,
there is nothing new to read, as far as I can
leam. No one has helped me to anything
in the month since I arrived. I sat on Edith
Wharton's hearth-rug vrith Henry James for a
fortnight without gleaning a fi-esh straw. AU
my particular bright ladies are here — Mrs.
Winty Chanler, Mrs. Matilda Gay, Mrs.
Van Vorst, Mrs. Fred Jones — besides my
sentimental attachments, Uke Mrs. Cooper
Hewitt and not one of them has anything to
teU. The children are probably better com
pany, for they at least leam. Give them my
love.

[ 118]

LETTERS TO A NIECE

XXIII
23 Avenue du Bois de Boulogne
5 July
Mons. Ba La Farge
Aux soins de Mme. sa Mere
My dear Ba
You write a beautiful hand, and deserve
very good marks for it. I would like to come
to Corbe)nrier to see you, but I am a very, very
littie boy, only five years old, and my mamma
does not want to travel with me because I
give so much trouble. So I shall stay in Paris,
and play in the Bois de Boulogne and the
Pre Catalan if the weather only gets dry
and warm. Just now the rain makes every
thing wet and gives me colds. I have no
flowers. They all grow in the country, but I
had some raspberries and cream yesterday
to eat. And your uncle Sturgis had some big
plums, — Reine Claudes; — he said he liked
them. Be sure and paint some nice pictures at
Corbe5nrier, where you will be sure to find
some meadow-orchids or Alpine flowers to
paint, along with a few Alps. I think the
[ 119]

HENRY ADAMS
Alps are very pretty flowers in the evening
when they go to bed.
Give my love to the other boys. Ever
your affectionate Uncle Henry.
XXIV
88 Avenue du Bois de Boulogne
r Tuesday
My dear Henry
I am glad to hear that you are in a palace,
but even more to hear about the wasp and
butterfly. I know that wasps are very queer
in their habits, and some day, if you -wiU read
M. Fabre' s Souvenirs En tomologiques you -wiU
take to digging up aU the holes in the garden,
or on the roadside, to see what the wasps have
put there for their children. Perhaps you vriU
find some of the butterfly's vrings. You -wiU
have to get a littie trowel to dig vrith, smaU
enough to put in your pocket. TeU your father
to get one for you and charge it to your next
Christmas present.
Perhaps you wUl find a big black beetie in
some of the holes, -with long horns.
Of course you wiU know the mole's holes
from the wasps' and beeties'.
You can tell your mamma that I have noth-
[ 120 ]

LETTERS TO A NIECE
ing to write about except what your aunt Looly
teUs her every day.
Give my love to the other boys,
Affecly yrs Henry Adams
xxv
15 Sept. 1908
23 Avenue du Bois de Boulogne
Thank the good gods, the weather has
turned fine, and I am able to run out and
wander in the woods as though I were one
of your infants. But I find few flowers left,
and happily fewer flies. The forest of Marly
is as pretty as ever, and St,-Germain has
not changed a pebble. I was at Chartres yes
terday to see whether I myself had changed.
The day was gorgeous, and the sun too strong
for the glass, I saw nothing to correct. After
some ten years of reflection, it seems to me
I got it pretty right. . . .

[ 121 ]

PRAYER TO
THE VIRGIN OF CHARTRES

PRAYER TO
THE VIRGIN OF CHARTRES
Gracious Lady : —
SIMPLE as when I asked your aid before ;
Humble as when I prayed for grace in vain
Seven hundred years ago; weak, weary, sore
In heart and hope, I ask your help again.
You, who remember all, remember me;
An English scholar of a Norman name,
I was a thousand who then crossed the sea
To wrangle in the Paris schools for fame.
When your Byzantine portal was still young
I prayed there with my master Abailard ;
When Ave Maris Stella was first sung,
I helped to sing it here -with Saint Bernard.
When Blanche set up your gorgeous Rose of
France
I stood among the servants of the Queen ;
And when Saint Louis made his penitence,
I foUowed barefoot where the King had
been. [ 125]

HENRY ADAMS
For centuries I brought you aU my cares.
And vexed you with the murmurs of a child ;
You heard the tedious burden of my prayers ;
You could not grant them, but at least you
smiled.
If then I left you, it was not my crime.
Or if a crime, it was not mine alone.
AU children wander with the truant Time.
Pardon me too! You pardoned once your
Son!
For He said to you : — " Wist ye not that I
Must be about my Father's business?" So,
Seeking his Father he pursued his way
Straight to the Cross towards which we
aU must go.
So I too wandered off among the host
That racked the earth to find the father's
clue,
I did not find the Father, but I lost
What now I value more, the Mother, —
You!
I thought the fault was yours that foiled my
search ;
I turned and broke your image on its throne,
[ 126 ]

PRAYER TO THE VIRGIN
Cast dovm my idol, and resumed my march
To claim the father's empire for my own.
Crossing the hostile sea, our greedy band
Saw rising hiUs and forests in the blue ;
Our father's kingdom in the promised land !
— We seized it, and dethroned the father
too.
And now we are the Father, with our brood.
Ruling the Infinite, not Three but One ;
We made our world and saw that it was good ;
Ourselves we worship, and we have no
Son.
Yet we have Gods, for even our strong nerve
Falters before the Energy we own.
Which shall be master? Which of us shaU
serve ?
Which wears the fetters? Which shall bear
the crown?
Brave though we be, we dread to face the
Sphinx,
Or answer the old riddle she still asks.
Strong as we are, our reckless courage shrinks
To look beyond the piece-work of our tasks.
[ 127 ]

HENRY ADAMS
But when we must, we pray, as in the
past
Before the Cross on which your Son was
nailed.
Listen, dear lady ! You shall hear the last
Ofthe strange prayers Humanity has waUed.

PRAYER TO THE DYNAMO
Mysterious Power ! Gentle Friend !
Despotic Master ! Tireless Force !
You and We are near the End.
Either You or We must bend
To bear the mart3nrs' Cross,
We know ourselves, what we can bear
As men ; our strength and weakness too ;
Down to the fraction of a hair ;
And know that we, with all our care
And knowledge, know not you.
You come in silence. Primal Force,
We know not whence, or when, or
why;
You stay a moment in your course
To play ; and, lo ! you leap across
To Alpha Centauri! [ 128 ]

PRAYER TO THE VIRGIN
We know not whether you are kind.
Or cruel in your fiercer mood;
But be you Matter, be you Mind,
We think we know that you are blind.
And we alone are good.
We know that prayer is thro-wn away.
For you are only force and light;
A shifting current; night and day;
We know this well, and yet we pray.
For prayer is infinite.
Like you! Within the finite sphere
That bounds the impotence of thought.
We search an outlet everywhere
But only find that we are here
And that you are — are not !
What are we then ? the lords of space ?
The master-mind whose tasks you do?
Jockey who rides you in the race ?
Or are we atoms whirled apace.
Shaped and controlled by you ?
StiU silence ! StiU no end in sight !
No sound in answer to our cry !
Then, by the God we now hold tight,
[ 129 ]

HENRY ADAMS
Though we destroy soul, life and light.
Answer you shall — or die!
We are no beggars ! What care we
For hopes or terrors, love or hate?
What for the universe? We see
Only our certain destiny
And the last word of Fate.
Seize, then, the Atom ! rack his joints !
Tear out of him his secret spring !
Grind him to nothing ! — though he points
To us, and his life-blood anoints
Me — the dead Atom-King!

A curious prayer, dear lady ! is it not?
Strangely unlike the prayers I prayed to
you!
Stranger because you find me at this spot.
Here, at your feet, asking your help anew.
Strangest of aU, that I have ceased to strive.
Ceased even care what new coin fate shaU
strike.
In truth it does not matter.. Fate wiU give
Some answer; and aU answers are aUke.
[ 130 ]

PRAYER TO THE VIRGIN
So, while we slowly rack and torture death
And wait for what the final void will show.
Waiting I feel the energy of faith_
Not in the future science, but in you !
The man who solves the Infinite, and needs
The force of solar systems for his play.
Will not need me, nor greatly care what deeds
Made me illustrious in the dawn of day.
He will send me, dethroned, to claim my
rights.
Fossil survival of an age of stone.
Among the cave-men and the troglodytes
Who carved the mammoth on the mam
moth's bone.
He vrill forget my thought, my acts, my fame.
As we forget the shadows of the dusk,
Or catalogue the echo of a name
As we the scratches on the mammoth's
tusk.
But when, like me, he too has trod the track
Which leads him up to power above control.
He too will have no choice but wander back
And sink in helpless hopelessness of soul,
[ 131 ]

^ HENRY ADAMS
! Before your majesty of grace and love.
The purity, the beauty and the faith;
,, The depth of tenderness beneath; above,
i The glory of the life and of the death.
When your Byzantine portal stiU was young,
I came here with my master Abailard;
When Ave Maris SteUa was first sung,
I joined to sing it here with Saint Bemard,
When Blanche set up your glorious Rose of
France,
In scholar's robes I waited on the Queen;
When good Saint Louis did his penitence.
My prayer was deep Uke his: my faith as
keen.
What loftier prize seven hundred years shaU
bring.
What deadlier struggles for a larger air.
What immortaUty our strength shaU wring
From Time and Space, we may — or may
not — care ;
But years, or ages, or eternity,
WiU find me still in thought before your
throne, [ 132 ]

PRAYER TO THE VIRGIN
Pondering the mystery of Maternity,
Soul within Soul, — Mother and Child in
One!
Help me to see ! not with my mimic sight —
With yours! which carried radiance, like
the sun.
Giving the rays you saw with — light in
light —
Tying all suns and stars and worlds in
one.
Help me to know! not with my mocking
art —
With you, who knew yourself unbound by
laws;
Gave God your strength, your life, your sight,
your heart.
And took from him the Thought that Is
— the Cause.
Help me to feel ! not with my insect sense, —
With yours that felt aU life aUve in you;
Infinite heart beating at your expense ;
Infinite passion breathing the breath you
drew! [ 133 ]

HENRY ADAMS
Help me to bear ! not my own baby load.
But yours ; who bore the failure of the Ught,
The strength, the knowledge and the thought
of God,—
The futile foUy of the Infinite !

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A