Clover: The Tragic Love Story of Clover and Henry Adams and Their Brilliant Life in America's Gilded Age

by Otto Friedrich

On a bleak December morning in 1885, Clover Adams, the wife of the famed historian Henry Adams, went upstairs and swallowed poison, ending her life and thirteen years of what had seemed to everyone an idyllic marriage. Henry commissioned Augustus Saint-Gaudens to cast a statue for Clover's grave, and then, strangely, seemed to turn his back on the tragedy. He did not even mention his marriage to Clover in his classic autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams.

Haunted by Adams' silence, Otto Friedrich, himself a distinguished historian and author, began a search for Clover. Through painstaking research, he journeyed back to the Gilded Age to reconstruct the life of this spirited woman who was at its center. Slowly he uncovered the details of Clover's life and heritage - an effort that took him through the voluminous Adams Papers in Boston, to the Hay-Adams House in Washington, even to the set of the television production of the Adams Chronicles. The quest was successful. Otto Friedrich has written a superb biography, sound in its scholarship and as gripping to read as a good novel.

Clover was born in 1843 into two of Boston's oldest families, the Hoopers and the Sturgises. Friedrich explores her classical education, the involvement of her family and friends in the Civil War, and the demands placed on her as the wife of Henry Adams. A celebrated hostess, Clover counted among her friends and acquaintances several presidents, visiting luminaries such as Henry James, and many other noted artists and thinkers. James, living in England, once called her "the incarnation of my native land."

Clover Adams lived at a time when a woman's destiny was prescribed by a severe patriarchal society. In writing of her life, Otto Friedrich re-creates that society - its manners, morals and the attitudes of men toward women and women toward themselves.

Saint-Gaudens' memorial statue portrays a woman whose eyes are downcast and whose head is covered with a bronze shroud "so that it throws the face in shadow." In his own way, Otto Friedrich has removed that shadow. Clover Adams is no longer an enigmatic figure whose life has been lost to us. She is flesh and blood, a woman who loved and suffered and was an admired person in an eventful time.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction

381 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Otto Friedrich was born in Boston and graduated from Harvard, where his father was a political science professor. He took a while to find his literary stride. His career took him from the copy desk at Stars and Stripes to a top writing job at Time, with stops in between with the United Press in London and Paris and with The Daily News and Newsweek in New York.

But it was the seven years he spent with The Saturday Evening Post, including four as its last managing editor, that established Mr. Friedrich as a writer to be reckoned with.

When the venerable magazine folded in 1969, Mr. Friedrich, who had seen the end coming and kept meticulous notes, delineated its demise in a book, 'Decline and Fall," which was published by Harper & Row the next year. Widely hailed as both an engaging and definitive account of corporate myopia, the book, which won a George Polk Memorial Award, is still used as a textbook by both journalism and business schools, his daughter said.

From then on, Mr. Friedrich, who had tried his hand as a novelist in the 1950's and 60's and written a series of children's books with his wife, Priscilla Broughton, wrote nonfiction, turning out an average of one book every two years.

They include "Clover: A Love Story," a 1979 biography of Mrs. Henry Adams; "City of Nets: Hollywood in the 1940's" (1986); "Glenn Gould: A Life and Variations," (1989); "Olympia: Paris in the Age of Manet," (1992), and "Blood and Iron," a study of the Von Moltke family of Germany that is being published this fall.

He wrote his books, as well as reams of freelance articles and book reviews, while holding down a full-time job with Time that required him to write in a distinct style far different from the one he used at home.

Mr. Friedrich, who joined Time as a senior editor in 1971 and retired in 1990 after a decade as a senior writer, wrote 40 major cover stories, the magazine said yesterday, as well as hundreds of shorter pieces, all of them produced on an old-fashioned Royal typewriter that he was given special dispensation to continue using long after the magazine converted to computers.

Mrs. Lucas, portraying her father as a New England moralist whose life and literary interests reflected his disenchantment with much of 20th-century culture, noted that his aptitude for anachronism did not end with typewriters. "We have five rotary telephones in this house," she said.

In addition to pursuing his eclectic interests into print, Mr. Friedrich also had a knack for turning his own life into art. When he tried to grow roses, the record of his failure became a book, "The Rose Garden" (1972). When relatives were stricken with schizophrenia, his frustration drove him to produce an exhaustive study of insanity, "Going Crazy" (1976).

Reviews

[Sarah Coller · Rating 2 out of 5]

When writing his autobiography in the late 1800s, Henry Adams, grandson of the former Presidents Adams, made no mention of his beloved wife of 13 years, Clover. Because the Adams' have gone down in history as having enjoyed an idyllic marriage before Clover was suddenly driven to suicide in 1885, author Otto Friedrich was determined to find out what went wrong.

Like many works of nonfiction that attempt to center on too narrow a topic, this book was filled to the brim with a lot of extra "stuff". One would think that a biography of a historical figure could surely fill up 350-odd pages, but there really isn't a lot of interesting information on record regarding Clover. The information presented in this book that pertains to her, personally, could have filled a magazine article. The information about her husband and others that directly affected the "tragic love story and their brilliant life" could have filled an essay. The subtitle for this book should really be something much more broad. Something like: "Clover: The tragic story of the Adams' and every person they could have had the slightest conversation with or even knowledge of during America's Gilded Age."

Since I've been on a 19th century reading rampage the last couple of years, I didn't mind so much, but there really isn't a whole lot in here about Clover, herself. The timeline switched around a lot---back and forth between different generations---so that was frustrating, especially since there were so many different Charles', Henrys, Abigails, and Adams', in general. The author also repeated information and even entire quotes, especially in the last 150 pages or so.

I didn't come away liking Henry very well. In their courting days, he seemed embarrassed that he was in love with Clover. After her death, he reminded me of someone I know well of the same age---that wandering, depressed, self-preserving person with whom every conversation is full of irritating, self-deprecating humor. The regretting personality of someone who has experienced great loss and is not entirely blameless.

Still, there were endearing moments. The Adams' seemed to have a true love and deep respect for one another. It was fun to read about their honeymoon discoveries in London: seeing "Whistler's Mother" at its debut and buying a "photographic apparatus". I also like the stories of how they worked together toward common goals, like when Clover distracted the Spanish archivist so Henry could do his clandestine research. I imagine her loss was more devastating than Henry could find words for---I suppose I shouldn't judge too harshly his lack of sentimentality.

Because her suicide was mentioned very early on, I kept looking for signs of mental illness in her character but finding none. At the beginning of her last year, even, I found it hard to believe this woman would take her own life so soon. I have a hard time believing it was only the despair of losing her father that drove her to suicide. Either there was more or the author made her out to be a much stronger and more level-headed woman than she really was.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a fair attempt at a biography of someone who probably can't be known. Henry Adams destroyed so much of his diary from their time together that we can't really see inside their marriage. On the one hand there is the implication that his novel "Esther" helped to hasten her death (since its protagonist is believed to be based on her) while on the other is ample evidence that he was kind and doting. In the end one is left with the impression that the author simply does not understand this brilliant but troubled couple.

[Mills College Library]

973.07 A215f 1979

[Lizzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know much about Henry Adams, never read The Education of Henry Adams. Most of what I know about the family is from a PBS series that aired about them in the Bicentennial year, and I remember Henry coming in to find his wife Clover dead, having drunk the cyanide she used in photography. Of course as someone with an interest in cemeteries I've seen pictures of the Saint-Gaudens statue that marks her grave.

This is a wonderful biography that tells the story of its subject while taking little side excursions to talk about the times, politics, fashions, and with small biographies of other characters in the story. We hear about the lives of John and John Quincy Adams; Louis Agassiz and his educator wife Elizabeth; Clover's merchant forbears; and many more.

Henry had been secretary to his father Charles Francis Adams Sr. when the latter was US Minister to the United Kingdom under Abraham Lincoln, and Henry became interested in studying diplomatic documents from Jefferson's administration. This took them to Europe before they returned to Washington and its politics. Again, I didn't know much about the post Civil War era or its politics but enjoyed learning about it: Grant's lack of leadership and corrupt administration; Hayes and Garfield who came to office through party splits and compromises - sound familiar? - Chester Arthur; more party splits that swung the Republicans from corrupt James Blaine to Grover Cleveland. And then a depression that ruined the Democratic party.

[Telling my mom about this brought forth a family story I hadn’t heard – I said something like “Grant wasn’t a good administrator but everybody loved him” and Ma said “Your great-great grandfather didn’t love him – he saw him stumbling drunk down the steps of the Cleveland city hall and lost respect for him!”]

Henry Adams wrote his autobiography in 1907, almost 25 years after Clover died, but he didn’t mention her at all. This omission was the seed for the biographer's interest in her. When she died, Adams destroyed his journals and all of their correspondence, but Clover wrote to her father every Sunday and there are many more letters to and from friends to fill them out. Friedrich is able to convincingly portray their personalities and states of mind at various times, and to analyze their marriage and motivations. Henry and Clover seem both to have been quirky people, plagued with depression and self doubt, but they suited each other – both intelligent and curious. Yet Henry wrote a privately published novel whose main character appears to have been based on Clover, and the protagonist speaks of how unattractive she is and how much he prefers the company of a younger, more attractive woman. After she died he pursued such a woman, who rebuffed him because he was married to someone else. But he also told a friend that there was only one woman he could have married, and he had married her, so he wasn’t interested in finding another wife. Who can understand anyone else's marriage?

(Ordered three more history books by this author from Powell’s...)

[Raymond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Legends fade, sometimes. Clover Hooper once was an American legend, a beautiful, talented, vivacious, intellectual young woman born to a family whose home was on Boston’s famed Beacon Street and who married the storied Henry Adams, great grandson of Pres. John Adams. She and Henry built a house, still extant, on Lafayette Square, opposite the White House. Clover was witty and wise, perhaps the most popular and sought-after of capital hostesses. Among several other things, Clover Hooper Adams was a photography pioneer, specializing in portraits. And then - early December, 1885, age 42 - Clover deliberately swallowed some potassium cyanide she used to develop her films and she was dead. The famed, shrouded figure in Washington’s Rock Creek Cemetery, sculpted by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, is Clover Adams’ memorial, commissioned by her husband. In a tradition of Australia’s aboriginals, after Clover’s death Henry destroyed all her letters, all her writings and notes. He never mentioned her name again. Otto Friedrich appreciated how powerful is this life story and he composed a biography worthy of his subject - “Clover: The Tragic Love Story of Clover and Henry Adams and Their Brilliant Life in America’s Gilded Age.”

[Tina Platt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up in a grocery store bin; and never felt such kinship to anyone. Her marriage to Henry Adams was childless, she was the favored child of a loving father and she fought bouts of depression. She felt less than most of her life but was a brilliant Washington hostess and friend.

[Edward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this look at the Gilded Age of the 1880's. Clover was a caustic gal with big ideas and opinions on everything.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit dry and speculative, but informative.