Adams National Historic Site

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Excerpt from Adams National Historic Site: A Family's Legacy to AmericaIt was a rare, good fortune for the people of the United States when Wilhelmina Sellers came to the Old House in Quincy to act as Brooks Adams' private secretary and to assist in the management of his household. Mrs. Adams' health was failing, her memory was faulty, and the elaborate machinery of late nineteenth-century life, town houses, country homes, servants, horses and the new and fearful invention of the motor car were an invitation to chaos. Miss Sellers took quiet charge of the arrangements, leaving Brooks the happy illusion that he was running everything.There is no doubt that Brooks' remaining years were made happier, very much happier, by the presence in his household of such a capable person. The details of organization appall a modern mind. The twice yearly trip to and from Quincy to Boston, a distance of a dozen miles, required the effort of Napoleon preparing to invade Russia. Fresh eggs and milk, home-grown strawberries, and flowers were the expected com forts of life. So were perfect service at table, polished woodwork, good cooking, well-raked garden paths. This meant cooks, housemaids, gardeners, coachmen, and that most dangerous of metamorphoses - a coachman turned chauffeur. All this Miss Sellers managed.But unless some Proust can recapture such a past, it has little interest to modern Americans. What does have interest is the history of the Old House itself, the development of the minds that made it famous and the influence of its spaces and its artifacts on those minds, and the study of these objects as reflections of the tastes of their possessors. Brooks Adams spent a great deal of thought along these lines. What he thought and what heremembered would be lost were it not for the fortunate chance that brought Miss Sellers to the Old House. With an intelligence as sharp and retentive as James Boswell, she registered in memory the character, the quirks, and the wisdom of the last family member to inhabit the place. Through her, we are linked to a living past.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.