Clover Adams
Page 33
“a favorite haunt”: Democracy, 5.
“to the tips of her fingers”: Democracy, 164.
“gave her unchristian feelings”: Democracy, 11.
like something Clover would say: Clover’s Aunt Caroline Sturgis Tappan also suspected her niece was the author. MHA to RWH, February 14, 1882, LMHA, 339.
“religious sentiment” . . . “self-abnegation”: Democracy, 99.
“not known the recesses” . . . “outside the household?”: Democracy, 182.
[>] “A weekly instalment”: HA to Justin Winsor, June 6, 1881, Letters, vol. 2, 428.
“the social and economical”: HA to Justin Winsor, September 27, 1881, Letters, vol. 2, 438. The letter enumerates Henry’s key interests: “I want to find out how much banking capital there was in the U.S. in 1800, and how it was managed. I want a strictly accurate account of the state of education, and of the practice of medicine. I want a good sermon of that date, if such a thing existed, for I cannot find one which seems to me even tolerable, from a literary or logical point of view.”
“my eyes ache”: HA to CMG, July 9, 1881, Letters, vol. 2, 429. HA published John Randolph in 1882 and immediately wrote a draft biography of Aaron Burr that, for whatever reason, was never published.
“to their doll cemetery”: MHA to APF, May 30, 1881, Hooper-Adams Papers, MHS.
[>] “We found the house”: MHA to APF, October 28, 1881, Hooper-Adams Papers, MHS.
“road to Damascus”: MHA to RWH, December 18, 1881, LMHA, 312.
“make all one can”: MHA to RWH, January 1, 1882, LMHA, 319.
“life is like a prolonged circus” . . . “Medicus”: MHA to RWH, January 26, 1882, LMHA, 334.
“I really was so driven”: MHA to RWH, January 30, 1882, LMHA, 334.
“beware of ‘partisan’ politics”: MHA to RWH, February 12, 1882, LMHA, 345.
[>] “a fatuous fool” . . . “wild toot”: MHA to RWH, January 31, 1882, LMHA, 338.
“we shall at this rate”: MHA to RWH, January 15, 1882, LMHA, 321.
“a lady’s handwriting”: MHA to RWH, January 31, 1882, LMHA, 339–40.
“Sir Joshua’s pretty”: MHA to RWH, June 18, 1873, LMHA, 120.
“They are not first-rate” . . . “very large”: MHA to RWH, January 31, 1882, LMHA, 339–41. Paysages is French for “landscapes.”
[>] Mr. and Mrs. Groves: Thomas Woolner to MHA, April 9, 1882, Theodore F. Dwight Papers, MHS.
“genuine Sir Joshuas” . . . “look the other way”: MHA to RWH, February 14, 1882, LMHA, 348–49. The provenance information in a 1999 catalogue for a Christie’s auction reads: “According to Galloway family tradition, [Samuel] Galloway and [Sylvanus] Groves agreed to exchange portraits of themselves and their wives; by descent to Mrs. Anne Sarah Hughes, great-granddaughter of Samuel Galloway, 1877, who took them to Washington and sold them in 1882 to Mrs. Henry Adams . . . Exhibited: Philadelphia, 1876 (Mr. Groves 1093, Mrs. Groves 1094, both lent by Mrs. A. S. Hughes).” Christie’s Important Old Master Paintings, Auction 29 January 1999, New York, New York (London: Christie, Mason, and Wood, 1999). See also David Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings, Text, and Plates (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 171, 229–30.
she found herself feeling drained: In one letter that Clover wrote to her father that spring, she said, “I’m as sleepy as a cat this Sunday morning and as stupid as an owl, so you’ll have a sorry letter.” MHA to RWH, March 5, 1882, LMHA, 358. She concluded another by apologizing that “my mind is as dry as a biscuit today.” MHA to RWH, April 2, 1882, LMHA, 370.
“an unwise appointment”: MHA to RWH, March 12, 1882, LMHA, 364.
“had nearly died”: HA to CMG, May 2, 1882, Letters, vol. 2, 454.
“in these ‘bare ruined choirs’”: MHA to APF, March 12, 1882, Hooper-Adams Papers, MHS.
“Every fool becomes”: MHA to RWH, May 14, 1882, LMHA, 382.
“during the months when colic”: MHA to APF, June 19, 1882, Hooper-Adams Papers, MHS.
“nightly toothache”: MHA to RWH, October 29, 1882, LMHA, 394.
“It’s quieter here”: MHA to APF, July 11, 1882, Hooper-Adams Papers, MHS.
[>] “nothing . . . disturbs history”: HA to CMG, June 25, 1882, Letters, vol. 2, 461.
“bored by our summer”: HA to Sir Robert Cunliffe, November 12, 1882, Letters, vol. 2, 478.
(“like Boston”) . . . “tooth finished”: MHA to RWH, November 26, 1882, LMHA, 403.
“an explicit account”: Henry James, French Poets and Novelists (London: Macmillan and Co., 1884), 154.
“glad you’re reading”: MHA to RWH, December 24, 1882, LMHA, 410.
“How are you getting on”: MHA to RWH, December 31, 1882, LMHA, 412.
“bravely acted out”: Margaret Fuller wrote of George Sand that she needed “no defense, but only to be understood, for she has bravely acted out her nature.” Margaret Fuller, Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, vol. 2 (Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Co., 1852), 197.
[>] “open to all experiences”: James, French Poets and Novelists, 173.
“left out on the whole”: James, as quoted in Leon Edel, Henry James: The Middle Years, 1882–1895 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1962), 169.
As much as she found tending: See Anna Howard Shaw and Elizabeth Garver Jordan, The Story of a Pioneer (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1915), 154, who write: “Of Abby May and Edna[h] Cheney I retain a general impression of ‘bagginess’—of loose jackets over loose waistbands, of escaping locks of hair, of bodies seemingly one size from the neck down. Both women were utterly indifferent to the details of their appearance, but they were splendid workers and leading spirits in the New England Woman’s Club.”
“Porcupinus Angelicus”: John Hay to Augustus Saint-Gaudens, April 12, 1905, as quoted in Thayer, The Life of John Hay, vol. 2, 60–61.
[>] He said one should treat: Abigail Adams Homans, Henry’s niece, remembered that Henry used to express this sentiment. HA-CK Papers.
CHAPTER 12. The Sixth Heart
[>] “I make it a rule”: HA to CMG, December 3, 1882, Letters, vol. 2, 484.
“Birds of Paradise”: HA to CMG, May 18, 1884, Letters, vol. 2, 540.
[>] “Then hate me when thou wilt”: Stephen Booth, ed., Shakespeare’s Sonnets (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977), 79.
“interlined with purple hills” . . . “nicest men in town”: MHA to APF, February 21, 1883, Hooper-Adams Papers, MHS. On Langtry, see HA to Sir Robert Cunliffe, November 12, 1882, Letters, vol. 2, 478.
[>] “a strong face” . . . “35 cents”: From Harold Dean Cater’s notes taken on March 15 and 16, 1945, for his book Henry Adams and His Friends, published by Houghton Mifflin Company in 1947. HA-CK Papers. Cater interviewed Lady Elizabeth Lindsay, the second wife of Sir Ronald Lindsay, who had first married Elizabeth Cameron’s only daughter, Martha, in 1909.
Photographs taken of her: There are five portrait photographs of Elizabeth Cameron taken by Frances Benjamin Johnston archived at the Library of Congress; none are dated. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC–USZ62–124320–124322, LC–USZ62–1891, LC–USZ62–88494.
“a dangerously fascinating”: As quoted in Arline Boucher Tehan, Henry Adams in Love: The Pursuit of Elizabeth Sherman Cameron (New York: Universe Books, 1983), 10. Tehan does not name this source.
“as fresh and beautiful as ever”: Sherman, quoted in Tehan, Henry Adams in Love, 19.
“Beauty and the Beast”: As quoted in Tehan, Henry Adams in Love, 29.
[>] They’d rap their umbrellas: MHA to RWH, October 30, 1881, LMHA, 294.
“Miss Beale and Mrs. Don Cameron”: MHA to RWH, November 6, 1881, LMHA, 296.
“If it were not”: HA to JH, March 4, 1883, Letters, vol. 2, 494.
“I adore her”. . . “show her kindness”: HA to JH, April 8, 1883, Letters, vol. 2, 497.
“my dear little friend”: HA to CMG, June 10, 1883, Letters, vol. 2, 505; “She is s
till very young” . . . “as I have”: HA to James Russell Lowell, May 15, 1883, Letters, vol. 2, 500–501.
[>] “Our feelings overcame us”: HA to EC, May 18, 1883, Letters, vol. 2, 501.
“tea every day”: MHA to RWH, November 6, 1881, LMHA, 296.
“a somewhat ghastly tea”: MHA to RWH, March 18, 1883, LMHA, 430.
“We’ve had no gaiety”: MHA to RWH, April 1, 1883, LMHA, 435.
“a greater grief”: Eleanor Shattuck Whiteside to Mrs. George C. Shattuck, October 26, 1886, George Cheyne Shattuck Papers, MHS.
[>] “So give me a marriage”: MHA to RWH, May 6, 1883, LMHA, 447.
“not laughed since you went”: MHA to APF, February 8, 1883, Hooper-Adams Papers, MHS.
“and so on & so on” . . . “test his affection”: MHA to APF, April 6, 1883, Hooper-Adams Papers, MHS.
“various artists”: MHA to RWH, April 8, 1883, LMHA, 437.
“very poor” . . . “Philadelphia artist”: MHA to RWH, April 15, 1883, LMHA, 438.
[>] “five pretty” . . . “of attention”: “The Society of Artists: Some of the Features of Its Sixth Annual Exhibit,” April 8, 1883, New York Times.
“pretty and nice” . . . “costume”: MHA to RWH, April 15, 1883, LMHA, 440.
“The dogs are well”: HA to MHA, April 10, 1883, Homans Collection, MHS.
“Henry says he’s glad”: MHA to RWH, April 15, 1883, LMHA, 441.
“my husband”: MHA to APF, April 21, 1882, Hooper-Adams Papers, MHS.
“A blessed rain”: MHA to RWH, April 22, 1883, LMHA, 441.
“It has taken me one week”: MHA to APF, April 21, 1883, Hooper-Adams Papers, MHS.
“I long to see”: MHA to APF, September 8, 1882, Hooper-Adams Papers, MHS.
[>] “nothing but photography”: HA to EC, June 26, 1883, Letters, vol. 2, 507.
Part III: Clover’s Camera
[>] “Isn’t it odd”: Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West, December 25, 1935, The Letters of Virginia Woolf, 1932–1935, vol. 5, ed. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautman (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), 455.
CHAPTER 13. Something New
[>] “We’ve been riding”: MHA to RWH, May 6, 1883, LMHA, 446.
“How I wish”: MHA to RWH, May 6, 1883, LMHA, 446.
“great success” . . . “distance”: MHA to RWH, May 13, 1883, LMHA, 448–49.
[>] “Mr. Pumpelly to tea”: MHA to RWH, April 22, 1883, LMHA, 442.
The two prints she saved: MHA, May 6, 1883, album #8, 50.50 and 50.51. Marion Langdon was the daughter of Harriett Lowndes Langdon, whose second husband, Philip Schuyler, was a friend to the Adamses. Clover thought her a “perfect beauty.” MHA to RWH, March 18, 1883, LMHA, 432.
“politics is at the bottom”: MHA to RWH, April 1, 1883, LMHA, 436.
“as a ‘dude’” . . . “not print”: MHA to RWH, May 27, 1883, LMHA, 451–52.
[>] “new machine”: MHA to RWH, May 20, 1883, LMHA, 451.
Photography itself: The Philadelphia Photographer noted in 1882 the rapid growth of amateur photography in this country. The process has been going on for a number of years, but not to any very great extent until, say, within the last year. A great impetus was given to it, of course, by the ability on the part of manufacturers to produce a first-class emulsion plate; and when it was made known by manufacturers of apparatus that such a plate existed, and that apparatus could be had at a reasonable price, the thing took amazingly.” The Philadelphia Photographer, vol. 19, no. 228 (December 1882): 371. Clover may have used wet plates at first. Of the seven glass negatives at the MHS, three are clearly made by Clover—one of a woman at the beach, which Clover made a print of and put in her album, and two of Henry, one of which she included in her album. The other four glass-plate negatives, three of landscapes and one of a figure in the doorway of a small house, may have been taken by Clover. On four a thumbprint is clearly visible in the upper left-hand corner of the plate, where it had been gripped while being doused with light-sensitive chemicals. Marian Hooper Adams Glass-Plate Negatives, Photo collection 6.2M, MHS.
“have always been employed in”: Margaret Bisland, “Women and Their Cameras,” Outing: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine of Recreation, vol. 17 (October 1890): 38.
[>] “amateur photography”: Henry Clay Price, How to Make Pictures: Easy Lessons for the Amateur Photographer (New York: Scovill Manufacturing Co., 1882), 66. The distinction between amateur and professional photographers has a complicated history that involves economic class, roles of men and women, debates about science, and changing art markets. See especially Jennifer Green-Lewis, Framing the Victorians: Photography and the Culture of Realism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996); Paul Spencer Sternberger, Between Amateur and Aesthete: The Legitimization of Photography as Art in America, 1880–1900 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001); Melissa Banta, A Curious and Ingenious Art: Reflections on Daguerreotypes at Harvard (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000). For a history of photography and women after 1885, see Suzanne L. Flynt, The Allen Sisters: Pictorial Photographers, 1885–1920 (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2002); and Trading Gazes: Euro-American Women Photographers and Native Americans, 1880–1940, ed. Susan Bernardin, Melody Graulich, Lisa MacFarlane, and Nicole Tonkovich (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003).
“those whom we love”: Oliver Wendell Holmes, “Sun-Painting and Sun-Sculpture; with a Stereoscopic Trip Across the Atlantic,” Atlantic Monthly, vol. 8, no. 45 (July 1861): 13–29.
“absent loved ones”: Mrs. Henry Mackarness, The Young Lady’s Book: A Manual of Amusements, Exercises, Studies, and Pursuits, 4th ed. (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1888), 214. An earlier edition was published in 1876.
“assist in the ordering”: John Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies (New York: Wiley, 1886), 137. Kirsten Swinth argues that the link between the arts, refinement, and a woman’s social duty intensified in America after the Civil War, as an increasingly industrialized economy seemed to coarsen an earlier vision of American life. “Women began to include the protection and cultivation of art and culture among their duties.” Swinth, Painting Professionals, 17. See also Erin L. Pipkin, “‘Striking in Its Promise’: The Artistic Career of Sarah Gooll Putnam,” The Massachusetts Historical Review, vol. 3 (2001); Erica E. Hirshler, A Studio of Her Own: Women Artists in Boston, 1870–1940 (Boston: MFA Publications, 2001); Sarah Burns, Inventing the Modern Artist: Art and Culture in the Gilded Age (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996). For a history of the aesthetic movement, popular during the 1870s and 1880s, see Mary Warner Blanchard, Oscar Wilde’s America: Counterculture in the Gilded Age (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998); and Roger B. Stein, “Artifact as Ideology: The Aesthetic Movement in Its American Cultural Context,” in In the Pursuit of Beauty: Americans and the Aesthetic Movement (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rizzoli, 1986).
[>] It would take Alfred Stieglitz: For a discussion of Camera Work and the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession located at 291 Fifth Avenue, better known simply as 291, see Katherine Hoffman, Stieglitz: A Beginning Light (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 213–32.
“There has been some discussion”: The Photographic Times and American Photographer, vol. 13, no. 149 (May 1883): 207. A photography equipment salesman went further, observing that “the mechanical part of Photography, with modern Dry Plates, is very easily acquired, and presents no serious difficulties to any. It is practiced by very many ladies all over the country . . . It promotes digestion, gives one a taste for healthy exercise.” A Classified and Illustrated Price-List of Photographic Cameras, Lenses, and Other Apparatus and Materials for the Use of Amateur Photographers (Philadelphia: W. H. Walmsley & Co., 1884), 4.
“a new and small machine”: MHA to APF, June 2, 1883, Hooper-Adams Papers, MHS.
The photography manual: Captain W. De Wiveleslie Abney, A Treatise on Photography (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1878).
[>] “as soon as the se
lf”: Edward Mendelson, The Things That Matter: What Seven Classic Novels Have to Say About the Stages of Life (New York: Pantheon Books, 2006), 219.
CHAPTER 14. At Sea
[>] “No society this week”: MHA to RWH, May 27, 1883, LMHA, 452.
“beautiful and swift”: MHA to EC, July 26, 1883, Adams.
Henry, four years into: See Edel, Middle Years, 221.
“You can never tell what you want”: HA to Daniel C. Gilman, March 2, 1883, Letters, vol. 2, 493.
“the thermometer”: HA to CMG, June 10, 1883, Letters, vol. 2, 504.
[>] beloved English watercolors: Henry listed this catalogue of artists, writing that they took the art “with us from town every summer.” HA to Robert Cunliffe, August 31, 1875, Letters, vol. 2, 234.
“On Friday” . . . “tea at 8”: MHA to APF, July 23, 1883, Hooper-Adams Papers, MHS.
“husband is working”: MHA to EC, July 26, 1883, Adams.
“I’ve gone in for photography”: MHA to Clara Hay, September 7, 1883, Adams.
photographed Pitch Pine Hill: MHA, n.d., album #8, 50.56.
[>] three of her older nieces: MHA, August 19, 1883, album #8, 50.75.
The image links: See Erica E. Hirshler, Sargent’s Daughters: The Biography of a Painting (Boston: MFA Publications, 2009).
Francis Parkman, the American historian: MHA, July 29, 1883, album #8, 50.58 and 50.59. Parkman was in the midst of writing his multivolume work France and England in North America, which confirmed his reputation as a leading American historian.
[>] “disbelieves in democracy”: MHA to RWH, February 24, 1878, Adams.
“ideal woman” in America: MHA to RWH, November 30, 1879, LMHA, 213.
photographed Henry’s youngest brother: MHA, July 30, 1883, album #8, 50.61.
portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Adams: MHA, July 30, 1883, album #8, 50.60.
[>] Mrs. James Scott at Manchester Beach: MHA, August 8, 1883, album #8, 50.63 and 50.64. The beach got its current name—not in wide circulation until the 1890s—because walking across its white sand produces a singing sound. Sarah Cash, “Singing Beach, Manchester: Four Newly Identified Paintings of the North Shore of Massachusetts by Martin Johnson Heade,” American Art Journal, vol. 27, no. ½ (1995–96): 95.