#Rock creek cemetery mary adams professional#

Clover documented the construction of the houses with her camera. While awaiting the completion of the house, they rented one nearby on H Street. Hooper's death, she sank into bouts of overwhelming depression. Richardson and were in the process of having a new home built on Lafayette Square, which was adjacent to the Richardson-designed house being built for John Hay, when her adored father died on April 13, 1885. In the beginning, he confessed himself 'absurdly in love,' and she spoke again and again of Henry's 'utter devotion.'Ĭlover and her husband hired architect H.H. The Adams' letters reveal their household to be a normal and happy one.

#Rock creek cemetery mary adams professional#

Her work was widely admired, although her husband apparently would not allow her to become professional and discouraged any publication of her photographs. Besides the images, Clover also left behind a great deal of information about her photography, including meticulous chronological notes she kept while working in her darkroom, listing photographs and commenting on exposures, lighting, etc., and the references in her letters. These images provide insights into 19th-century America and a woman's place in it. Her photographs, which reveal an extraordinary eye, consist of formal and informal portraits of politicians, family friends, various members of the Adams and Hooper families, family pets, and still lifes of interior and exterior locales, including photographs of Washington, Bladensburg, Maryland, Old Sweet Springs, and the Adams family homes in Quincy and Beverly Farms, Massachusetts. Familiarizing herself with the chemicals, she did all her own developing. In 1883, Clover became active in photography and was one of the earliest portrait photographers. įrom her reports written in letters, it was widely speculated that actually Clover Hooper Adams was the 'anonymous' author of Democracy: An American Novel (1880), which was not credited to her husband until 43 years later. Her gossipy letters to her father, other family members, and friends, reveal her to be a gifted reporter and provide an insightful view of the Washington and politics of the day, while the ones she wrote from Europe are not ordinary travel letters, but shrewd reflections on character and society, revealing a critical and sprightly mind.

Hooper was living at his household on Beacon Street in Boston. In 1877, they moved to Washington, DC, where their home on Lafayette Square, across from the White House, became a popular place for socializing.Ĭlover remained close to her father, writing him regularly. Upon their return, he taught at Harvard and their home at 91 Marlborough Street, Boston, became a gathering place for a lively circle of intellectuals. On June 27, 1872, Adams and she were married in Boston, and spent their honeymoon in Europe. Her father and she were living at their home in Beverly, Massachusetts, in July 1870. In 1866, she traveled abroad, where she is said to have met fellow Bostonian Henry Adams in London. She defied convention by insisting on watching the review of William Tecumseh Sherman and Ulysses S. She was privately educated at a girls school in Cambridge, which was run by Elizabeth and Louis Agassiz.Ĭlover Hooper volunteered for the Sanitary Commission during the Civil War. When she was five years old, her mother, a Transcendentalist poet, died and she became very close to her physician father. Clover's birthplace and childhood home in Boston, was at 114 Beacon Street, Beacon Hill. The Hooper family was wealthy and prominent.

Her siblings were Ellen Sturgis 'Nella' Hooper (1838–1887), who married professor Ephraim Whitman Gurney (1829–1886) and Edward William 'Ned' Hooper (1839–1901). She was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the third and youngest child of Robert William Hooper (1810 – April 15, 1885) and Ellen H. However, in letters to her friend Anne Palmer Fell, he opened up about his 12 years of happiness with Clover and his difficulty in dealing with her loss. She was also omitted from his The Education of Henry Adams. After her suicide, he commissioned the famous Adams Memorial, which features an enigmatic androgynous bronze sculpture by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, to stand at the site of her, and his, grave.Īfter Clover's death, Adams destroyed all the letters that she had ever written to him and rarely, if ever, spoke of her in public. Marian 'Clover' Hooper Adams (Septem– December 6, 1885) was an American socialite, active society hostess, arbiter of Washington, DC, and an accomplished amateur photographer.Ĭlover, who has been cited as the inspiration for writer Henry James's Daisy Miller (1878) and The Portrait of a Lady (1881), was married to writer Henry Adams.