Conclusion

Abstract

Upon reaching his late seventies Addis at last found time for the interests he most enjoyed — music, literature, nature and, especially, family gatherings at Woodside. Apparently experiencing little reduction of his critical faculties, he continued his wide range of readings. In June 1936 these included Fisher’s third volume of the History of Europe, Kellerman’s Lied der Freindshaft, Bentham’s Principles of Morals and Charles Morgan’s Sparkenbroke. On the latter he commented: ‘It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. For all his cleverness and his poetic sense, it is a corrupt book, a glorification of the senses, a cowardly shrinking from the truth, that the wages of sin is death.’¹ A few years earlier, after reading a biography of Bismarck, Addis had commented: ‘I want to see a man at his best. Landing is always poking in to the dark places where jealousy and envy lurk. Bismarck is too big for him.’² After seeing Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House, Addis commented: ‘It is an impressive play, uncompromising, unsparing in laying bare human nature as seen in a marriage based on union instead of communion.’³ Comments such as these suggest that Addis remained sensitive to the complexities of human relationships and took a generous attitude toward human frailities.

‘there is nothing more helpful in the life of a great man than his weakness.’ — Addis, 1896