Synopses & Reviews
Once upon a time there was a prince and a princess -- that's how the story of the Murphys should begin, said a friend of this golden pair. Handsome, gifted, wealthy Americans with homes in Paris and on the French Riviera, Gerald and Sara Murphy were at the very center of expatriate cultural and social life during the modernist ferment of the 1920s. Gerald Murphy -- witty, urbane, and elusive -- was a giver of magical parties and an acclaimed painter. Sara Murphy, an enigmatic beauty who wore her pearls to the beach, enthralled and inspired Pablo Picasso (he painted her both clothed and nude), Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The models for Nicole and Dick Diver in Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night, the Murphys also counted among their friends John Dos Passos, Dorothy Parker, Fernand Leger, Archibald MacLeish, Cole Porter, and a host of others. Far more than mere patrons, they were kindred creative spirits whose sustaining friendship released creative energy. Yet none of the artists who used the Murphys for their models fully captured the real story of their lives: their Edith Wharton childhoods, their unexpected youthful romance, their ten-year secret courtship, their complex and enduring marriage -- and the tragedy that struck them, when the world they had created seemed most perfect, in what Gerald called, our most vulnerable spot, our children. Certainly Fitzgerald, who once complained that there were no second acts in American lives, could not have envisioned the tenacity with which the Murphys struggled to hold themselves and their charmed circle together through the dark years of the thirties and forties, when death, financial ruin, madness, and war assailed it. AmandaVaill's account of the Murphys and their friends follows them through the whole arc of their glittering and sometimes tragic lives -- the first such account to do so. Drawing on a hitherto untapped wealth of family diaries, photographs, letters and other papers, as well as on archival research and interviews on two continents, Vaill has documented the pivotal role of the Murphys in the interplay of cultures that gave rise to the Lost Generation. She explores for the first time the sexual undercurrents that ran beneath Gerald's and Sara's relationships with Picasso, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald and affected the work of all three men. Most important, she evokes both Murphys, and the geniuses who had the good fortune to be their friends, with a clarity and tenderness that makes them virtually step off the page. There was a shine to life wherever they were, said the poet Archibald MacLeish -- and this book, which reads as much like a rich and engaging novel as a work of biography, shows why.
Review
"Natalie Dykstra writes of Clover Adams' striking photographs that they 'defeat distances between people and make time stand still.' Dykstra's biography achieves the same remarkable feat, bringing us close to an inspiring if ultimately tragic life, a celebrated marriage gone awry, a vanished world of privilege where the universally costly emotions of love, loss, and envy nevertheless hold sway. 'I spare you the inside view of my heart,' Clover Adams once wrote to her beloved father; Natalie Dykstra spares nothing in this eloquent and powerfully sympathetic portrait of the artist as a lady, a haunting hymn to women's ways of seeing."
and#8212;Megan Marshall, author of The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism
"What happened to Clover Adams broke Henry Adamsand#8217; heart. And, in Natalie Dykstraand#8217;s splendid retelling, it will break yours. This is a moving book, deeply researched, fast-paced, and profoundly engaging. It is not easy to write a book the familyand#160;for so long did notand#160;want written. Natalie Dykstra has succeeded in doing so, and she has returned Clover Adams to us as a living figure."
and#8212;Robert D. Richardson, author of Emerson: The Mind on Fire and William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism
"Dykstraand#8217;s contextually rich and psychologically discerning portrait of an underappreciated luminary is enlightening and affecting."
and#8212;Booklist "This compelling narrative reads as well as any page-turning novel. Highly recommended for anyone interested in women's studies, 19th-century American history, or well-written biographies."
and#8212;Library Journal "In a beautifully written and immensely satisfying new biography . . . what emerges is a clear and nuanced image of Clover that makes previous accounts seem as vague and shadowy as photographic negativesand#160;. . . Dykstra has done the legacy of Clover Hooper--and the modern reader--a great service."
and#8212;Boston Globe
"In this substantial biography, Dykstra sheds light on Clover's remarkable life and and#8230; manages to re-create a compelling story. With empathy and compassion, she gives voice to a woman nearly written out of existence."and#12288;
and#8212;Publishers Weekly "Reveals a complex woman grappling with betrayal, loss and her era's discomfort with female ambition. A startling, original portrait of a woman in a shining cage discovering the terrible strength of its bars."
and#8212;People Magazineand#160; (3 1/2 out of 4 stars) "Dykstra is the first to give Clover's artistry its full due."
and#8212;Wall Street Journal "Dykstra admires Clover's photographs, which she gracefully describes ... in them she finds the living Clover [who] was able to transform her feelings of loss and isolation into art."
and#8212;New York Times Book Review
"Tautly conceived and concisely written . . . What Dykstra brings to a fuller understanding of Cloverand#8217;s plight is a fresh and generous response to her work as a photographer. . . . Perhaps, like Virginia Woolfand#8217;s artist Lily Briscoe, Clover Adams had her vision after all."
and#8212;New York Review of Books
Synopsis
Aand#160;revelatory life of Clover Adams, casting aand#160;lens on her iconicand#160;marriage to historian Henry Adams and herand#160;fatal embrace of photographyand#160;in her last months
Synopsis
The hidden story of one of the most fascinating women of the Gilded Age
Clover Adams, a fiercely intelligent Boston Brahmin, married at twenty-eight the soon-to-be-eminent American historian Henry Adams. She thrived in her role as an intimate of power brokers in Gilded Age Washington, where she was admired for her wit and taste by such luminaries as Henry James, H. H. Richardson, and General William Tecumseh Sherman. Clover so clearly possessed, as one friend wrote, and#8220;all she wanted, all this world could give.and#8221;
Yet at the center of her story is a haunting mystery. Why did Clover, having begun in the spring of 1883 to capture her world vividly through photography, end her life less than three years later by drinking a chemical developer she used in the darkroom? The key to the mystery lies, as Natalie Dykstraand#8217;s searching account makes clear, in Cloverand#8217;s photographs themselves.
The aftermath of Cloverand#8217;s death is equally compelling. Dykstra probes Cloverand#8217;s enduring reputation as a woman betrayed. And, most movingly, she untangles the complex, poignant and#8212; and universal and#8212; truths of her shining and impossible marriage.
www.nataliedykstra.com
About the Author
Natalie Dykstra has received a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship for her work on Clover Adams. She is a Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society and associate professor of English at Hope College in Holland, MI.
Table of Contents
Prologueand#8195;xi
Part One: A New World
chapter 1: and#8220;She Was Home to Meand#8221;and#8195;3
chapter 2: The Hub of the Universeand#8195;16
chapter 3: Cloverand#8217;s Warand#8195;26
chapter 4: Six Yearsand#8195;40
chapter 5: Henry Adamsand#8195;48
chapter 6: Down the Nileand#8195;60
Part Two: and#8220;Very Much Togetherand#8221;
chapter 7: A Place in the Worldand#8195;73
chapter 8: City of Conversationand#8195;80
chapter 9: Wandering Americansand#8195;95
chapter 10: Intimates Goneand#8195;108
chapter 11: and#8220;Recesses of Her Own Heartand#8221;and#8195;117
chapter 12: The Sixth Heartand#8195;127
Part Three: Cloverand#8217;s Camera
chapter 13: Something Newand#8195;137
chapter 14: At Seaand#8195;143
chapter 15: Estherand#8195;151
chapter 16: Iron Barsand#8195;160
chapter 17: A New Homeand#8195;166
chapter 18: Portraitsand#8195;171
Part Four: Mysteries of the Heart
chapter 19: Turning Awayand#8195;185
chapter 20: and#8220;Lost in the Woodsand#8221;and#8195;192
chapter 21: A Dark Roomand#8195;199
chapter 22: and#8220;That Bright, Intrepid Spiritand#8221;and#8195;207
chapter 23: and#8220;Let Fate Have Its Wayand#8221;and#8195;214
Epilogueand#8195;223
Acknowledgmentsand#8195;231
Sourcesand#8195;235
Notesand#8195;238
Indexand#8195;300