Adding Subdirectories to Load Path

Question

Rather than individually specifing each subdirectory in my plugins directory I want to be able to automatically load them, to that end I included the following to my .emacs file

Answer 1

You might investigate the role of the subdirs.el files during startup. It is a good way get subdirectories into your load-path.

For example, much of the default load-path arises as a consequence of the files discovered by this command:
find /usr -name subdirs.el

Answer 2

You're so close...

(let ((default-directory "~/.emacs.d/plugins/"))
  (normal-top-level-add-subdirs-to-load-path))

normal-top-level-add-subdirs-to-load-path works off the current directory, which you can set via the variable default-directory - not base like you tried.