“This is an historic scene!” a friend said. “Wilbur Wright, the first man to make a practical success of aviation, soaring over the towers of Rome. Not since Daedalus flew from Crete to Cumae and hung up his wings in the Temple of Apollo has such a thing been seen in Italy.”
A few nights later I met Wright and his sister at an Embassy dinner. Miss Wright, a breezy, sprightly girl, took pains to impress it on me that her brother Orville deserved as much credit as Wilbur for their joint invention, though for the moment Wilbur seemed to be getting the lion’s share of limelight. I put this question to Mr. Wright:
“Will you tell me just how much help Mr. Langley’s experiments have been to you?”
He gave an evasive answer; for all that, the name of Samuel Pierpont Langley of Boston will always be numbered among those pioneers who, for good or ill, have made aviation possible. Years before either Langley or Wright, Tennyson foretold it all in Locksley Hall, as the poets have always prophesied every step in human progress:
For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the World, and all the wonders that would be;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew
From the Nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue.
Washington, since we had seen it, had grown in grace and beauty beyond belief; it was now a noble city with broad avenues, spacious parks, magnificent public buildings, and palatial dwellings. In this, the second year of President Taft’s administration, the capital seemed gayer than ever before. The entertainments were far more formal and elaborate than in the sixties, when my mother visited Mrs. Eames of the famous salon. One dined out every night as a matter of course, just as in London during the season. I found a few of the old friends, Mrs. Bayard, Senator and Mrs. Cabot Lodge, Justice and Mrs. Wendell Holmes, and Uncle Joe Cannon. Some of these regretted with me the changes in the social life since the simpler days I remembered of Miss Loring’s Sunday evenings and Mrs. Bancroft’s afternoons. The changes were inevitable, of course, and only reflected those in the life of the nation. In our great cities to-day, plain living and high thinking are rare as snow in August; this does not imply that they do not exist; only one must light a candle and look for them! The growth of wealth and luxury seems even to have affected the national physique. There were fewer of the spare American type than when I first remember Washington, and more fat men among our legislators. Marking this, I became reconciled to the monstrous growth of public interest in athletics and sports. Uncle Sam, realizing the dangers of too good living, has gone into training as a matter of self-preservation!
On this visit I first realized that to-day the world is run by committees. I spent much time at the Capitol, where the best speaking was heard in the different committee rooms, rather than in the Senate or the House. The Pinchot-Ballinger controversy on the preservation of the forests and other natural resources was the issue of the hour; my journal records that I was present at many of the hearings.
More than once we were included in the group that gathered every day for luncheon at the table of Henry Adams. He lived in a large house built for him by his friend, Richardson the architect. The dwelling was characteristic of both men; it had a rare flavor, expressive of its owner’s taste and character—all for use and comfort, nothing for show—and the ample spaciousness the colossal architect put into everything he built.
Mr. Adams was that rara avis, a good talker who is a good listener as well. This in some measure accounts for the many distinguished men among his intimates; he possessed, besides, a positive genius for friendship, not often found in our hurried land, and his company was eagerly sought by such overworked men as Roosevelt, John Hay, Saint-Gaudens, John La Farge, and Cabot Lodge. Though Henry Adams accomplished more than most people, he gave the impression of a certain large leisure and of always having time for his friends. This was in part due to his having a fortune large enough to make him independent, yet not so cumbrous as to bring heavy responsibilities, and in part to the tragedy of his married life. In middle age he lost a beloved wife. All the pain and mystery of his irreparable loss his friend, Saint-Gaudens, was able to express in that shrouded bronze figure, popularly called Nirvana, that broods over her grave in Rock Creek Cemetery. No happily married person can hope to compete in the capacity of friendship with such a man as Adams, if for no other reason, because the day is but twenty-four hours long.
He was working, I think, at this time on that unique volume, “The Education of Henry Adams.” Interesting as it is, the book does not do justice to its hero, and leaves behind a curious sense of disappointment and thwarted ambition that one did not feel in the man himself. The same thing is true of the autobiography of his brother, Charles Francis Adams. Both the Adamses were men of uncommon ability, gifted far above the average of their fellows; each attained an enviable distinction in their day and generation, yet in their memoirs they seem to confess themselves woefully disappointed with life. Different interpretations have been made of this attitude of frank disillusionment, in both brothers. I believe it to have been purely temperamental.