ABSTRACT

IN THE LIFE of Henry Adams, Richard shows his hero oscillating between distrust of power and a willingness to use it. Perhaps, Richard thought, Adams was of two minds, “as all men must be when dealing with good and evil in the one lump.” This mingled compound presents the marriage he made with Helen Dickson. “Being with you,” he told her, “when nothing occurs to make me think our relation impermanent and your love transitory, brings to me all the unity and peace I have need of.” The relation proved impermanent and the love, if not transitory, was inseparable from hate. The marriage was real, though, both corrosive and annealing, worth “any labor and any sacrifice,” and to say it ended in failure is only to say how it ended.