"Heart's Blood"

VENTS recounted in Henry Adams's novel Esther bear a striking, indeed eerie, resemblance to particulars of his wife's last year. Detailing her father's lingering final illness, Esther describes the profound melancholy that would descend upon Marian Hooper Adams (known to her friends as Clover) following his death. Dr. William Hooper's death did not occur, however, until after the book's publication in March 1884. In 1884 Henry Adams could still hope that, like Esther, Clover would survive the trauma of her father's death. After Hooper died in April 1885, however, Adams watched his wife sink deep into depression. On 6 December 1885, during the Sunday morning hours when she had regularly written to her father, Clover Adams committed suicide by drinking cyanide.' Esther's title page bore the pseudonym Frances Snow Compton.2 The book was not in any way publicly linked to Adams's earlier successful (and anonymous) Democracy. At Adams's request and with his financial support, Henry Holt forwent its customary publicity; nor did the company send out copies for review. Adams claimed he was conducting an experiment on the reading public. A thousand copies were printed, of which just over five hundred were sold over the next decade.3 Adams even

Art · Theology · Wife · American and British Literature Analysis · American Literature and Culture · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Philosophy

• Henry Adams, scientific historian

  Freda J Fuller-Coursey•European Journal of American…•2003

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