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‘Clover Adams’ by Natalie Dykstra

BOOK REVIEW

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

February 05, 2012|By Suzanne Koven

Clover Adams composed a photo of three women, one facing away, which Natalie… (CLOVER ADAMS )

On a dreary Sunday morning in December 1885, Henry Adams, historian, novelist, grandson of John Quincy Adams, and great-grandson of John Adams, returned home from a dental appointment to find his wife dead. Marian Hooper Adams, known as Clover, had drunk a vial of potassium cyanide, which she’d used in photography, then a popular hobby among members of the upper classes.

For more than a century since her suicide, Clover Adams has been better known for her death than her life. Two questions, in particular, have preoccupied biographers of the Adamses and scholars studying the Gilded Age: What made lucky Clover, the beloved daughter of a Boston Brahmin, friend to countless notables from William Tecumseh Sherman to Henry James, and hostess of the most prestigious salon in late 19th century Washington, fall into such despair at the age of 42? And, even more curious, why did her husband never mention Clover or her suicide in “The Education of Henry Adams’’?

In a beautifully written and immensely satisfying new biography, Natalie Dykstra demonstrates that these two mysteries surrounding Clover’s death are, in fact, much less interesting than the woman herself. In “Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life,’’ Dykstra compassionately and painstakingly portrays Clover as a daughter, friend, wife, reader, writer, and - most importantly - an artist. What emerges is a clear and nuanced image of Clover that makes previous accounts seem as vague and shadowy as photographic negatives.

Dykstra, an associate professor of English at Hope College in Holland, Mich., opens the book in an unexpected way. Rather than taking the obvious tack of beginning with Clover’s tragic death, Dykstra starts with a scene two years earlier, in the fall of 1883. Clover had started taking and developing photographs in spring and decided, one November day, to stage a picture of her three Skye terriers sitting at a table set as if for a tea party.

It would seem a silly scene, the frivolous occupation of a bored and wealthy woman, if not for the telling details Dykstra supplies: Clover was trying out a new lens; she made meticulous notes about her technique and her assessment of the result: “extremely good.’’ A few hours later, armed with camera, tripod, and other equipment, Clover was at Arlington National Cemetery photographing graves of the Civil War dead.

Clover Adams, Dykstra argues, was no mere dilettante. In fact, she points out, the “dogs at tea’’ picture was likely a “send-up of the social convention [Clover] occasionally found tedious’’ - in other words, a satiric commentary on her own glamorous circle.