The Five of Hearts

by Patricia O'Toole

  The holiday passed in a pleasant haze. Beverly seemed a “fantastic dream,” he thought. The woods bore no resemblance to the landscape he remembered, and the scores of young relatives who came to call seemed equally unreal. Still, the experience gave him a sense of completion. “I have finished with Beverly, which has been as happy a refuge for me as it was once for you,” he wrote to Lizzie. Saying good-bye to Brooks and the rest of the Adamses, Henry supposed that it was for the last time: “nobody seems to expect to see anybody again.”

  Back on H Street, life revolved around the war. Lizzie Cameron sent dire accounts of her relief work with Edith Wharton in Paris, where the refugees pouring in from the countryside had strained supplies of food and shelter beyond their limits. The United States had entered the war in April 1917, and young men in khaki and young women in Red Cross uniforms talked animatedly at Uncle Henry’s breakfast table. Ambassador Spring Rice, nearing sixty and now as bald as his uncle, came daily to vituperate against his new rival, Lord Northcliffe, who had been sent to coordinate the British war effort in the United States. Embarrassed by gossip of the friction between the two men, the Foreign Office recalled them both. Within weeks, Springy was dead.

  As the war dragged on into 1918, Adams was forced to admit that the brute force of the dynamo was pure innocence compared to the savage machinery of war. In March, a few weeks after his eightieth birthday, Germany stunned the world with Big Bertha, an artillery piece capable of bombarding Paris from a distance of seventy-five miles. “Life has become intolerable,” he told Aileen. “This is no world for an old man to live in when the Germans can shoot to the moon.”

  Lizzie was in no immediate danger, having gone to England to nurse poor Martha, who was fatally ill with typhoid fever. Worried that the Germans would train the sights of Big Bertha on England, Henry sent cable after cable begging them to seek refuge.

  On Tuesday, March 26, Big Bertha was the subject of a jolly dinner conversation at 1603 H Street. Aileen and Henry’s niece Elizabeth Ogden Adams had been reading him the war news, and he took a grim delight in the generals who boldly declared Big Bertha an impossibility one day and calmly accepted it the next. At ten, Aileen and Elizabeth took him up to bed, wound his clock, and bade him good-night. He died quietly in his sleep, lying on his side, curled into his pillows.

  When Aileen and Elizabeth found him in the morning, Aileen thought his face looked “marvellously beautiful,” with the “strangest expression of consciousness and will and intellect.” Knowing only that Uncle Henry did not want a church funeral, Aileen went down to his study to see if he had left instructions in his desk. No statement of his wishes could be found, but in a top drawer she discovered a partially filled bottle of potassium cyanide, the instrument of Clover’s suicide. And in the kneehole hung a sign, hand-lettered in red ink on white paper, which read Mme. Marthe, Modiste. Uncle Henry had made it nearly thirty years before for his first adopted niece, little Martha Cameron, who thought of the kneehole as her hat shop.

  Aileen and Elizabeth decided to place the coffin in the library, where it would stand among books and paintings and echoes of Hay and King and Lizzie and Nannie and Spring Rice. Lizzie sent a blanket of white lilacs for the bier, and through the library windows, beyond vases of forsythia and lilac, the first spring leaves on the trees of Lafayette Park made a curtain of softest green. On Thursday afternoon the rector of St. John’s Church came to conduct a brief service, attended by a few friends, and on Sunday Henry joined Clover beneath the peaceful gaze of the figure at Rock Creek. Sending the news of Henry’s death to one of his friends, Elizabeth remarked that he had closed his life “surrounded by people who would have done anything on earth to make him happy.” For a man who treasured his friends, it was an unsurpassable end.

  To a literal mind, the Five of Hearts had ceased in 1885 with the death of Clover Adams. But the extraordinary flower of their friendship bloomed until the spring day in 1918 when Henry was buried beside Clover at Rock Creek. In the last summer at Beverly, his eyesight nearly gone, Henry had spent hours listening to his nieces read the philosophy of his old friend William James. It was James, pondering the mysteries of the human mind in The Principles of Psychology, who had speculated that perhaps the greatest breach in nature was the breach between one mind and another. For all their intimacy, each of the Hearts felt this isolation as keenly as James. Love had not saved Clover from suicide, nor had it freed King from the complicated shame of his secret life. Loving another woman more than his wife, Hay too knew the sorrows, and the loneliness, of the masquerade. Clara Hay, never wholly at ease in Washington, had fled to Lake Sunapee, Cleveland, and Europe at every chance. To Henry Adams, master of irony, the separateness of human beings was unbearable—and inevitable. The tragedy of the Five of Hearts was that they could not close the breach. The glory was that they tried.

  * The gesture was a tribute to Clover as well as La Farge. The portrait became the first of her photographs to appear in print.

  Epilogue: A Legacy and a Lawsuit

  Ada Todd King had her day in court—November 20, 1933. It was a dispiriting autumn Monday, bleak and gray, forty degrees. For the trip from Queens to the New York County Court House in lower Manhattan, Ada bundled up in hat, gloves, and a dark woolen coat trimmed with fur.

  On the witness stand, Mrs. King, as she called herself, described her 1888 wedding, her travels to Washington and Newport with her husband, the servants and the large house on Prince Street, and their five children. At seventy-two, she could no longer summon up all the details of their life together, and when the judge asked the children’s birthdates, she laughed with embarrassment. “I disremember,” she confessed. She recalled only that the first had arrived in 1889, the last in 1897.

  The testimony was part of her lawsuit against the heirs of James Gardiner, the friend to whom Clarence King had entrusted his possessions before his last illness. With attorneys from the Legal Aid Society, Mrs. King was seeking $80,000 from Gardiner’s heirs. As her lawyers outlined the matter, Gardiner had abused his power as Clarence King’s trustee, taking shameless advantage of the fact that King had created no trust in writing. Mr. King had not put his wishes on paper, they added, because he feared that the disclosure of such documents would embarrass his mother and his friends, who did not “view the colored race and miscegenation in the same favorable light.” Mr. King’s course may have been a poor expedient, but he had taken it in the belief that reliance upon Gardiner’s honor offered the best hope of protecting his secret family.

  In 1933 Ada Todd King, then in her seventies, went to court in New York to press her claim for $80,000, which Clarence King told her he had left in the care of an old friend.NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

  The defendants’ attorneys moved for a dismissal of the suit. Plaintiffs “ought not to be allowed to litigate for nothing” or to slur persons of high character, they said. If Ada Todd King had truly believed herself entitled to $80,000—a sum that would produce an annual income of $4,000—why had she accepted $600 a year for thirty years from the unnamed benefactor?

  In a deposition taken before the hearing, Mrs. King had offered a simple explanation: “I did not know my rights.”

  Early in 1934, after hearing witnesses from both sides, the judge dismissed the case. While the monthly payments to Mrs. King after Mr. King’s death demonstrated his feelings for her, they did not prove the existence of a trust, the judge held. Nor did the court find that Gardiner had acted improperly in using King’s assets to satisfy the IOUs held by John Hay.

  Ada Todd King had gambled for large stakes and lost. In spite of her husband’s promises, there would be no $80,000. And without the money, she was at last forced to recognize that the blame for her life of hardship rested not with Gardiner but with Clarence King, alias James Todd, the reckless, elusive charmer who had given her lies along with his love.

  For two years of legal turmoil she had gained only one thing: the identity of her mysterious benefactor. With the money from the s
ale of King’s possessions, John Hay had established a trust fund to support King’s mother as well as his clandestine family. Clara Hay continued the arrangement after John’s death, and when Clara died, their children carried on until the litigation began in 1931.

  Acknowledgments

  First and deepest thanks go to Peg Cameron, superb friend and uncompromising editor, who improved the manuscript with scores of suggestions and challenging questions, and who was willing to discuss matters of structure, tone, and interpretation at every stage of the writing.

  Research was pure pleasure, thanks to the cooperation of Jennifer B. Lee of the John Hay Library, Peter Drummey of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Peter Blodgett of the Huntington Library, Chuck Kelly and Janice Ruth of the Library of Congress, Ann Sindelar and John Grabowski of the Western Reserve Historical Society, Tom Dunnings of the New-York Historical Society, the staff of the manuscripts and archives division of the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University, and the reference desk of the Darien (Connecticut) Library, which arranged several interlibrary loans.

  Len Fury was a valued colleague in several projects during the years it took to complete this book, and Peggy and Bob Johnson, Casey and Jeff Mesirow, Kathy Hirsch and Mark Morrow, Molly Hughes and Peter Lindgren, and Jerry Jellison and Marilyn Skelton gave me bed, board, and company during research trips to Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and California. For an extended research trip to Washington, I am indebted to Fran Hunter for finding me a place to stay and to Brooke Shearer and Strobe Talbott for the warmth of their hospitality and the opening of many doors.

  Judith Daniels, Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, Jane Howard, Chris Miles, and Paul Nagel supported applications for fellowships and grants, which led to a stay at the MacDowell Colony in 1988. Resident director Chris Barnes and the colony staff saw to every comfort, and in the peace of the MacDowell woods, I was able to sort out and write the most complex chapters of the book. Paul Nagel deserves additional thanks for his willingness to entertain the questions of a first-time biographer and his invaluable advice on key points.

  In the early stages, Ellen Gruppo assisted with library research. As the book progressed, Katina Lillios took on that task as well as the daunting labor of checking the accuracy of hundreds of quotes and footnotes. Her perseverance rescued the book from more errors than my pride cares to admit; any that remain are my own.

  A book has many fates unforeseen by the author in the beginning, and I am grateful to Beverly Cox and her colleagues at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D. C., for their willingness to mount an exhibit based on the life and times of the Five of Hearts.

  Kate Whitney put me in touch with Mr. and Mrs. James W. Symington and Mr. and Mrs. Stuart Symington, Jr., who have been generous in sharing photographs and memorabilia of their ancestors John and Clara Hay.

  Art historian Henry Adams (great-grandnephew of the Henry Adams in this book) led me to a photograph of one of John La Farge’s South Seas paintings, which Mrs. Henry A. La Farge went to great lengths to secure. She also consented to my use of La Farge family papers at the New-York Historical Society and Yale University. Faith Thoron Knapp and Arline Boucher Tehan graciously shared photographs of Surrenden Dering and Elizabeth Cameron.

  Though my quest for descendants of Clarence King yielded no clues, I thank Len Panaggio of Newport, Rhode Island, for publicizing it in a column in the Newport News. The search for a photograph of a railroad car used by Henry Adams and John La Farge on their 1886 cross-country trip also proved fruitless, but I am grateful to Harvey Turner, Don Snoddy, and Ken Longe of Union Pacific Corp. for their efforts.

  Numerous institutions generously granted permission to draw upon thousands of documents in their collections: the Adams Manuscript Trust, the Houghton Library at Harvard University, the Huntington Library, the John Hay Library at Brown University, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the manuscripts and archives division of the Yale University Library, and the Western Reserve Historical Society. My debt to these preservers of the past is profound.

  The support and enthusiasm of Elaine Markson and Sally Cotton Wofford helped me past many doubts.

  At Clarkson N. Potter, editor Shirley Wohl was graceful and encouraging in the face of false starts and wrong turns and throughout has given the book all the care and attention an author could wish for. My only regret is that her contributions are invisible to the reader.

  Last, in the course of exploring the ties of the Five of Hearts, I realized that the joy I take in my own friendships is the gift of my mother and late father, the most welcoming and loyal people I have ever known. To Henry Adams, a friend was nothing less than “a miracle.” Thanks to my parents, I share the wonder.

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  Sources

  In February 1900, shortly after his sixty-second birthday, Henry Adams mentioned to Lizzie Cameron that he had packed all her letters to him in a box with the instruction that his executors deliver them to her personally. “I thought this better than to destroy them myself, especially since they might be of use to you or Martha,” he explained; “—as for mine, I count on you to destroy them. Do not leave them knocking about, as a mash for the female pigs who feed out of the magazine-troughs at five dollars a page, to root root in, for scandal and gossip.”

  “I had no idea that you kept them,” Lizzie replied. “Why not destroy them at once. Surely it is better. As for yours, I shall do the same and I promise you that no publisher or compiler shall ever get hold of them. They shall be destroyed.”

  They were not destroyed, and the story of the Five of Hearts is the richer for it. In addition to the correspondence of Henry Adams and Lizzie Cameron, I have used thousands of other letters and primary sources, a substantial number of which have not previously appeared in print. The search for these materials stretched from the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston to the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. In between were the Houghton Library at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the John Hay Library at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island; the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut; the New-York Historical Society, the Pierpont Morgan Library, the Municipal Archives, and the Hall of Records in New York City; the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland; and, in Washington, D.C., the Library of Congress, the Columbia Historical Society, the National Archives, and the Washingtoniana Division of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Library.

  Principal collections consulted include the following:

  At the John Hay Library, the John Hay Collection. Of particular interest because of the slight use to which they have been put in the past are approximately ninety letters from King to John and Clara Hay; the correspondence between John Hay and Amasa Stone; Constance Fenimore Woolson’s letters to Hay; Hay’s letters from Europe during his early years as a diplomat; his love letters to Clara Stone; and letters to Hay about King from mutual acquaintances in England.

  At the Houghton Library, the architectural drawings of H. H. Richardson and selected letters to and from Henry Adams, Marian Hooper Adams, E. L. Godkin, Ellen Hooper Gurney, Ephraim Whitman Gurney, Clara Stone Hay, John Hay, Leonard Hay, Edward Hooper, Clarence King, and Theodore Roosevelt.

  At the Huntington Library, the papers of James T. Fields, James D. Hague, and Clarence King, including King’s youthful letters to James T. Gardiner and most of the sources for my account of King’s geological and mining activities.

  In the manuscript reading room of the Library of Congress, the papers of George F. Becker, Andrew Carnegie, Samuel F. Emmons, John Hay, and the Miles-Cameron families. In the John Hay Papers, correspondence between Hay and the friends of Clarence King sheds new light on the state of King’s financial affairs at the time of his death. The Hay papers also contain the school compositions of Clara
Stone.

  In the prints and photographs division of the Library of Congress, the collections of Wilhelmus Bogard Bryan, James M. Goode, and Frances B. Johnston.

  At the Massachusetts Historical Society, the letters of Marian Hooper Adams to Dr. Robert W. Hooper, papers of the Adams family, Henry Adams (including the H. D. Cater Collection), Adams-King, and the Lodge and Shattuck families. The Lodge Papers are silent on the liaison between John Hay and Nannie Lodge, but evidence of the relationship can be found in Lizzie Cameron’s letters to Henry Adams during 1890-91 and a box of letters from Hay to Lizzie Cameron, both of which are part of the Henry Adams Papers.

  At the New-York Historical Society, the papers of T. M. Coan, the La Farge family, correspondence between Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Stanford White, and the speeches of Carl Schurz.

  In the manuscripts and archives division of the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University, the papers of William H. Brewer, George J. Brush, Thomas Davidson, the La Farge family, William D. Whitney, and, on microfilm, the papers of William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt.

  At the library of the Western Reserve Historical Society, the Mather Papers.

  Missing from the record are most of the correspondence between Henry and Clover Adams, Henry’s diary (destroyed except for a fragment from 1888-89), nearly all of Hay’s and Adams’s letters to the rootless King, most of King’s letters to Ada Todd King, his letters to his mother, and many letters to and from Clara Hay.

  In quoting from these sources, I have occasionally made minor changes in punctuation in the interest of clarity, and I have corrected misspellings that seemed more distracting than enlightening.