“I have myself never cared”: HA to CMG, August 22, 1877, Letters, vol. 2, 316.
[>] “Of ourselves I can”: HA to CMG, May 30, 1878, Letters, vol. 2, 338.
“springing back to their normal”: MHA to RWH, May 11, 1879, Adams.
“prose masterpiece”: Wills, Henry Adams and the Making of America, 8. Garry Wills argues that one aspect of the History that would set it apart is how Henry brought “many kinds of evidence, archival and cultural, that had not before been so deftly interwoven”(388).
“900,000,000 things”: MHA to APF, May 18, 1879, Hooper-Adams Papers, MHS.
CHAPTER 9. Wandering Americans
[>] “‘He who is tired’”: MHA to RWH, June 15, 1879, LMHA, 140.
“vastness of this London society”: MHA to RWH, February 22, 1880, Adams.
“gardens and great trees”: HA to Sir Robert Cunliffe, June 15, 1879, Letters, vol. 2, 362. Henry relayed what Clover said in his letter to Sir Robert Cunliffe.
“this English world”: MHA to RWH, June 22, 1879, LMHA, 145.
[>] “young and not pretty”: MHA to RWH, July 13, 1879, LMHA, 154; “refuge”: MHA to RWH, June 15, 1879, LMHA, 141.
about the art on display: Charles E. Pascoe, “The Grosvenor Gallery Summer Exhibition,” The Art Journal (1875–1887), new series, vol. 5 (1879), 222–24.
“joke” . . . “face of the public”: MHA to RWH, June 15, 1879, LMHA, 144. When Clover met Whistler later that summer, she was even less impressed, telling her father that “his etchings are so charming; it is a pity he should leave that to woo a muse whom he can’t win.” MHA to RWH, July 27, 1879, LMHA, 159. In 1877, Whistler sued John Ruskin for libel, after the English critic disparaged the painting Nocturne in Black and Gold—The Falling Rocket, which was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery, charging that the artist had flung “a pot of paint in the public’s face.” Whistler won the suit but was awarded minimal damages.
“pegging away”: MHA to RWH, July 20, 1879, LMHA, 157.
“sparkle and glitter”: MHA to RWH, January 26, 1879, Adams Family Papers.
“whispering gallery”: MHA to RWH, January 23, 1881, LMHA, 259.
[>] Anne felt close to her father and brother: The relationships in Anne’s family became clear when Anne had to cut short one of her visits with the Adamses because of a family emergency. “Her father and brother,” Clover confided to her father, “are the ones of all her family who are very dear to her.” MHA to RWH, February 4, 1883, LMHA, 421.
Whatever they did: MHA to APF, August, 9, 1879, Hooper-Adams Papers, MHS. Starting in August 1879, Clover began addressing Anne Palmer by another name in her letters, opening some of them with the greeting “Dear Mrs. Philippa.” She and Anne must have shared an inside joke or a story that inspired this role-playing. But when Clover’s letters were archived at the MHS years later, those addressed to Anne and those to Mrs. Philippa were put in separate files. Reading the letters together in chronological order, along with Clover’s sly references to the ruse, as when she asks Anne if “that hybrid title still pleases you,” reveal that Anne and Mrs. Philippa are the same person. MHA to APF, August 6, 1880, Hooper Adams Papers, MHS. My citations make no distinction between those letters that open with “Dear Anne” and those that open with “Dear Mrs. Philippa.”
“launched very happily”: HJ to Alice Howe James, July 6, 1879, HJ Letters, vol. 2, 249.
“intellectual grace”: HJ to William James, March 8, 1870, HJ Letters, vol. 1, 208.
“become Henry James”: Cynthia Ozick, Quarrel and Quandary (New York: Vintage International, 2001; first published 2000), 142.
“banishes”: As quoted in Edel, The Conquest of London, 413.
“wine-and-water”: HJ to Mary Walsh James [mother], April 8, 1879, HJ Letters, vol. 2, 228.
“plenty of anecdotes”: HJ to MHA, November 6, 1881, HJ Letters, vol. 2, 361.
“a trifle dry”: HJ to Elizabeth Boott, June 28, 1879, HJ Letters, vol. 2, 246.
[>] “the most complete compendium”: MHA to RWH, March 14, 1880, Adams.
“savage notices” . . . “literary reputation”: MHA to RWH, April 4, 1880, Adams. For a vivid description of James’s reaction to London, see Edel, The Conquest of London, esp. 273–75. For an explanation of the controversy surrounding the reception of James’s biography of Hawthorne, see 386–91.
“He comes in every day”: MHA to RWH, January 25, 1880, Adams.
After reading A Portrait of a Lady: Clover told her father that the novel arrived by mail, “which the author kindly set me.” She did not say whether he had signed the copy. MHA to RWH, December 4, 1881, LMHA, 306.
“It’s very nice”: MHA to RWH, December 4, 1881, LMHA, 306. Clover is quoting a quip made by Thomas G. Appleton, a wit and the brother-in-law of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, about Appleton’s spendthrift younger brother, Nathan Jr.
“half disposed to go”: MHA to RWH, August 24, 1879, LMHA, 169.
“The second act”: MHA to RWH, August 31, 1879, LMHA, 171.
[>] “a huge shop and restaurant”: MHA to RWH, December 21, 1879, LMHA, 221.
“better horses, better liveries”: MHA to RWH, September 21, 1879, LMHA, 179.
“We have quiet mornings” . . . “they seem better”: MHA to RWH, September 14, 1879, LMHA, 178.
“twenty minutes side by side”: MHA to RWH, July 27, 1879, LMHA, 159.
“one of the seven wonders”: As quoted in Hilliard T. Goldfarb, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: A Companion Guide and History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 8.
“gliding walk, like a proud”: Margaret (Terry) Winthrop Chanler, Autumn in the Valley (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1936), 35.
[>] “breeziest woman”: Town Topics, December 1, 1887, as quoted in Louise Hall Tharp, Mrs. Jack: A Biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner (New York: Congdon & Weed, Inc., 1965), 109.
“who were smiling and bowing”: MHA to RWH, January 13, 1878, Adams.
Henry James treated Mrs. Jack: See Edel, The Conquest of London, esp. 379–82, for a description of this relationship.
“without exception”: HA to CMG, October 24, 1879, Letters, vol. 2, 379.
“The sun seems to drive out” . . . “soaked in sunshine”: MHA to RWH, October 26, 1879, LMHA, 192.
“nothing to wish for,” MHA to RWH, November 9, 1879, LMHA, 199.
“like enormous lighted candles” . . . Don Quixote: MHA to RWH, November 9, 1879, LMHA, 202.
“poked about for hours”: MHA to RWH, November 9, 1879, LMHA, 200.
[>] “We are having”: MHA to RWH, November 15, 1879, LMHA, 206.
“ride was almost”: HA to Robert Cunliffe, November 21, 1879, Letters, vol. 2, 380.
“most enchanting road” . . . “did me no harm”: MHA to RWH, November 16, 1879, LMHA, 207.
“one lonely tooth” . . . “great satisfaction”: MHA to RWH, November 30, 1879, 212–13.
“Bitterly cold”: MHA to RWH, December 11, 1879, LMHA, 217. The journal Science reported that the 1879 winter was one of the most severe “in a century,” and the month of December had been the “coldest on record at Paris.” “The Winter of 1879–80 in Europe,” Science: An Illustrated Journal Published Weekly, no. 3 (April 1884): 485.
The newspapers told: “Cold Weather in Paris: Incidents of the Unwonted Experiences of the French Capital,” New York Times, January 8, 1880.
[>] “like a white frost-bitten ball”: MHA to RWH, December 28, 1879, LMHA, 222.
“Manuscripts are clumsy”: HA to Henry Cabot Lodge, December 20, 1879, Letters, vol. 2, 387.
“hard all the evening” . . . “blessed archives”: MHA to RWH, January 25, 1880, Adams.
“I hate Paris more and more”: MHA to RWH, December 21, 1879, LMHA, 221–22.
“a full feast” . . . “so much pleasure”: MHA to RWH, December 7, 1879, LMHA, 215.
“under a big”: MHA to RWH, January 25, 1880, Adams.
“the Adamses are here”: HJ to Isabella Stewart Gardner,
January 29, 1880, HJ Letters, vol. 2, 265.
“every detail charming” . . . “peace and plenty”: MHA to RWH, February 1, 1880, Adams.
“mountain of papers”: HA to Henry Cabot Lodge, December 20, 1879, Letters, vol. 2, 387.
[>] “no organized surface”: HJ to Mary Robertson Walsh James, January 18, 1879, HJ Letters, vol. 2, 210.
“gracious and agreeable”: MHA to RWH, February 22, 1880, Adams.
“lovely spring day” . . . “side to side”: MHA to RWH, February 8, 1880, Adams.
When a “Mrs. Houkey” . . . “show impatience”: MHA to RWH, February 15, 1880, Adams. Clover made no other reference to Mrs. Houkey in her letters, and no corroborating information about her could be found.
“social rapids” . . . “proportion of them”: MHA to RWH, March 14, 1880, Adams.
[>] “intellectual apathy” . . . “belief in himself”: MHA to RWH, April 11, 1880, Adams.
“burst like a bomb shell” . . . “above criticism”: MHA to RWH, May 9, 1880, Adams.
“what a gentleman”: HA to JH, October 8, 1882, Letters, vol. 2, 474.
“fields of wheat” . . . “stories”: MHA to RWH, July 11, 1880, Adams.
“one dinner in six” . . . “new impressions”: MHA to RWH, July 4, 1880, Adams.
“Of course” . . . “new impressions”: MHA to RWH, July 4, 1880, Adams.
[>] “If it proves”: HA to Henry Cabot Lodge, July 9, 1880, Letters, vol. 2, 403.
“air like champagne” . . . “enchanting”: MHA to RWH, August 1, 1880, Adams.
“sunny blue day”: MHA to APF, August 6, 1880, Hooper-Adams Papers, MHS.
“crimson moors”: MHA to RWH, August 8, 1880, Adams.
“My wife is flourishing”: HA to CMG, August 12, 1880, Letters, vol. 2, 405.
“wandering Americans”: MHA to RWH, January 18, 1880, Adams.
[>] “People who study Greek”: MHA to RWH, December 28, 1879, LMHA, 224.
“15, 361 gowns”: HA to CMG, September 11, 1880, Letters, vol. 2, 407.
“wee little early Turner”: MHA to RWH, June 29, 1879, LMHA, 149.
“a wide acquaintance”: MHA to RWH, August 20, 1880, Adams.
“more we travel”: MHA to RWH, November 2, 1879, LMHA, 197.
“Our land is gayer-lighter-quicker”: MHA to RWH, August 1, 1880, Adams.
“good American confidents”: HJ to Mary Walsh James, July 6, 1879, HJ Letters, vol. 2, 249.
“inveterate discussions” . . . “those of Europe”: HJ to Grace Norton, September 20, 1880, HJ Letters, vol. 2, 307.
[>] “As I don’t expect”: MHA to RWH, February 8, 1880, Adams.
“pleasant story” . . . “still is new”: MHA to RWH, July 25, 1880, Adams.
CHAPTER 10. Intimates Gone
[>] “too fashionable”: MHS to RWH, August 22, 1880, Adams. Jerome Napoleon, born in 1830, studied at West Point and served in the French Imperial Army until his resignation in 1871, when he returned to America to marry Caroline Appleton Edgar, the daughter of Samuel and Julia Webster Appleton. Caroline was the granddaughter of Daniel Webster.
“My wife is fairly weary”: HA to CMG, January 1, 1881, Letters, vol. 2, 416.
[>] “didn’t realize when”: MHA to RWH, November 14, 1880, LMHA, 232.
“We are really in”: MHA to RWH, December 5, 1880, LMHA, 240.
“his house charming”: MHA to RWH, January 23, 1881, LMHA, 260; “Henry hard at work”: MHA to RWH, March 27, 1881, LMHA, 279.
“The town is filling”: MHA to RWH, November 21, 1880, LMHA, 234.
“nice old fellow”: MHA to RWH, February 13, 1881, LMHA, 266.
“air is full of rumours”: MHA to RWH, January 9, 1881, LMHA, 255.
[>] “pretentious”: MHA to RWH, May 14, 1882, LMHA, 382.
“it’s a gross insult”: MHA to RWH, January 9, 1881, LMHA, 252.
a “thunder-clap”: HA to George William Curtis, February 3, 1881, Letters, vol. 2, 418.
“For us it will be most awkward”: MHA to RWH, January 9, 1881, LMHA, 252.
“one must always”: MHA to RWH, January 23, 1881, LMHA, 259.
origin of this group moniker: Patricia O’Toole speculates that the name may have been inspired by two other “playing card epithets”: Wordworth’s “the Five of Clubs” and Clarence King’s title of “King of Diamonds.” Five of Hearts, xvi.
[>] Hay first met Henry Adams: William Roscoe Thayer, an early biographer of John Hay, writes that no other person “had so profound an influence on Hay; no other kindled in him such a strong and abiding devotion” as Henry Adams. Though “very dissimilar in temperament,” Thayer writes, “their tastes bound them together—their tastes, and their delight in each other’s differences.” Thayer, The Life and Letters of John Hay, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1915), 54.
“a handsome woman” . . . “for two”: MHA to RWH, February 3, 1878, Adams.
“frivolous and solemn”: HA to Mary Cadwalader Jones, January 25, 1909, Letters, vol. 6, 215.
“really did say things”: Theodore Roosevelt reviewed Thayer’s biography of Hay in the Atlantic Monthly in 1915. Roosevelt, “W. R. Thayer’s ‘Life of John Hay,’” The Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, vol. 24, no. 94 (1915): 258.
“a touch of sadness”: John Russell Young, Men and Memories: Personal Reminiscences, vol. 2, 454.
“I am inclined”: Hay, as quoted in Michael Burlingame, At Lincoln’s Side (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2006), xiv.
“No matter how”: Thayer, John Hay, vol. 1, 330.
He later fathered: For a riveting excavation of Clarence King’s hidden married life with Ada Copeland, see Martha A. Sandweiss, Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line (New York: Penguin Press, 2009).
[>] “a miracle” . . . “better than anyone”: Education, 297–98.
“resembled no one” . . . “wherever he went”: John Hay, “Clarence King,” in Clarence King Memoirs: The Helmet of Mambrino, ed. the Century Association, the King Memorial Committee (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), 131.
“like the sun”: MHA to RWH, March 30, 1884, Adams.
“a basket made”: MHA to RWH, February 17, 1878, Adams.
“our prop and stay”: MHA to RWH, March 6, 1881, LMHA, 274.
the “first heart”: HA to JH, April 30, 1882, Letters, vol. 2, 455.
[>] “a good deal of good talk”: MHA to RWH, March 27, 1881, LMHA, 278. At some point in 1885, King would give the Adamses a china tea service he’d had made, with cups and saucers in the shape of a heart and a likeness of a clock set at five o’clock sharp.
“Is there disease”: MHA to RWH, March 14, 1880, Adams.
“too much” for Fanny: MHA to RWH, May 30, 1880, Adams.
“It’s nice to hear”: MHA to RWH, August 15, 1880, Adams; “It’s nice to have”: MHA to RWH, August 22, 1880, Adams.
“increased suffering” . . . “do nothing”: MHA to RWH, February 23, 1881, LMHA, 269–70.
[>] “I’ve been half expecting”: MHA to RWH, February 27, 1881, LMHA, 270.
“I want to go on”: MHA to RWH, February 27, 11:30 A.M., 1881, LMHA, 272.
“how Ned’s babies”: MHA to RWH, March 6, 1881, LMHA, 274–75.
“Unless I am really needed”: MHA to RWH, March 11, 1881, LMHA, 275.
“deep in history”: HA to CMG, February 10, 1881, Letters, vol. 2, 419.
“of all the experiences in life”: HA to CMG, June 14, 1876, Letters, vol. 2, 276.
[>] her garden, a “patch”: MHA to RWH, April 17, 1881, LMHA, 283.
“a bone which will take”: MHA to RWH, March 27, 1881, LMHA, 279.
telling her father: Clover reported on her voracious reading habits. For instance, she urges her father to get Anatole France’s new The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard because she thinks it “charming,” December 18, 1881, as is William Dean Howells’s recent Dr. Breen’s Practice, January 15, 1882, LMHA, 313 and 321.
“It�
��s read, read, read”: MHA to RWH, May 15, 1881, LMHA, 288.
The Five of Hearts stayed connected: On November 5, 1881, Hay wrote to Clover that he had “a few sheets of paper made for the official correspondence of The Club and send a sample by mail to you today for your approval. The New York and Cleveland branches will lunch in a few minutes at the Brunswick and will remember the Residency-Branch with affection tempered with due respect.” Theodore F. Dwight Papers, MHS.
[>] “In this ever-shifting”: MHA to RWH, March 6, 1881, LMHA, 273.
“One by one”: MHA to RWH, March 27, 1881, LMHA, 278–79.
CHAPTER 11. “Recesses of Her Own Heart”
[>] “I am much amused” . . . “Clarence King and John Hay!”: MHA to RWH, December 21, 1880, LMHA, 246–47. Though William Roscoe Thayer in his 1915 biography of John Hay would claim that only Henry “possessed the substance, and style” to have written Democracy, it would not be until 1920, two years after Henry’s death, that the publisher, Henry Holt, confirmed his authorship.
“except the authorship” . . . “thought of it before”: JH to HA, September 17, 1882, Theodore F. Dwight Papers, MHS.
[>] “Much as I disapprove”: HA to John Hay, October 8, 1882, Letters, vol. 2, 474.
“bent upon getting”: Democracy, 7. Ernest Samuels rightly states that Madeleine’s investigation “in its imaginative way” was a “very modest forerunner of The Education, a kind of interim report preceding by a quarter of a century the definitive one.” Middle Years, 70.
“witty, cynical” banter: Democracy, 23.
“babbled like the winds”: Democracy, 55.
“horrid, nasty, vulgar”: MHA to RWH, January 31, 1882, LMHA, 339.
[>] “good enough to make it”: HJ as quoted in Edel, The Conquest of London, 376. The 1880 review in The Nation said that the “main difficulty is that it attempts too much.” Review reprinted in LMHA, 484. R. P. Blackmur argues that the frame of action in Democracy is half “Grimm fairy-tale” and half “Oscar Wilde Comedy,” with neither frame completely convincing. Blackmur, “The Novels of Henry Adams,” The Sewanee Review, vol. 51, no. 2 (1943): 288.
“superficial and rotten”: Theodore Roosevelt to Henry Cabot Lodge, September 2, 1905, Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge (New York: Scribner’s, 1925), vol. 2, 189.
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