ABSTRACT

In his middle sixties—fretful at what he thought of as approaching old age, angry at the world, impatient with himself—Henry Adams accomplished a great and original work, the writing of two books, Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres and The Education of Henry Adams. They were the two halves of one whole. Adams seemed quiet, set, placed and passive; near great events yet not of them. But inside him, hidden from all but his closest friends, was a turmoil of explosive thought. As for the general conditions of his living during the time that his thought grappled darkness, he moved in a fixed circuit, quietly and predictably. His big travels were over. He spent some time each year in Paris, some time in Washington. He saw the same friends in a regular rotation of the seasons.