Full House

Generous by nature, prodigal in hospitality, fond of young people, and a born man of the world, Evarts gave and took liberally without scruple, accepted the world without fearing or abusing it. He laughed where he could; he joked if a joke were possible; he was true to his friends and never lost his temper. - Henry Adams

In August of 1877 President Hayes toured Vermont and New Hampshire hoping to draw public interest away from economic collapse and the great railroad strike that had pitted militia against workers in Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Chicago. Twelve years after the end of the Civil War, the country was divided both economically and by the politics of Reconstruction; Hayes hoped the tour to mark the centennial of the events of the Revolution would also help salvage America’s fragile sense of unity. A large crowd greeted the President and his Secretary of State when they arrived in Bennington to celebrate the centennial of the Battle of Bennington. Hayes was brief in his remarks: 100 years ago it was meritorious to be a minute-man, to fight in the cause of independence. Is there not some merit in my becoming a minute-man? When Wm. M Evarts took the podium, he followed the president’s lead: I should warn you that although I am very slow to begin a speech, I am much slower to end it, and I know your only safety is in my retiring before I commence. Evarts did, however, speak at length at dinner, recalling that he was only a few miles from Sunderland, birthplace of his father. The Presidential party spent the night at the Walloomsac Inn and the next day travelled on to Windsor to commemorate the founding of the Republic of Vermont. Arriving in Windsor, the president introduced his Secretary of State, “the gentleman who conducts the correspondence with foreign governments, and who writes the high sounding words in the documents to which I have to put my signature. If you ever see my name under such documents you must bear in mind that they were written by your neighbor.” The President and his party spent the weekend as Evarts’s guests at Runnemede. Saturday was a grand day - speeches were made from the piazza, the band played, three cheers were given, and thousands came to shake hands with the President. On Sunday Evarts and Hayes attended church and then toured the abundant countryside, admiring the views of the Connecticut Valley and Mt. Ascutney from the family barouche.

Rutherford B. Hayes never really seemed comfortable as President. He did his best to heal the festering sores left over from the war, but he effectively ended Reconstruction and allowed Jim Crow’s return to the south. A stigma from the contested election hung over his four years in office despite his attempts to divert attention. William M. Evarts, however, seemed right at home as Secretary of State. He was back in Washington, living in a nice big house at 15th and K Street – two blocks from Lafayette Square. He had the most markedly intellectual face; wearing an old fashioned stock and a high velvet collar, his hair fell carelessly over his hawk-like nose, and his eyes glittered grey. Helen Evarts was still handsome and young looking despite being the mother of twelve, including two sets of twins (all pretty and some of them more than pretty and all well behaved according to Chief Justice Chase). By 1877, their own children were leaving the nest, and while Washington was the capital of a democracy and full of “over-dressed, loud-mouthed, vulgar people”, the Evarts assembled a coterie of bright young friends in the aristocratic enclave near Lafayette Square. As John Hay wrote Mark Twain, "a man reaches the zenith at forty, the top of the hill. From that time forward he begins to descend. If you have any great undertaking ahead, begin it now. You will never be so capable again." Henry and Clover Adams, John and Clara Hay, and Clarence King were a generation younger than the Evarts; in common with the Secretary of State they were all small in stature (they averaged five foot three in height) but outsized in personality. They called themselves The Five of Hearts, and they were at the top of the hill. Henry Adams had moved back to Washington in 1877 to research his biography of Albert Gallatin; thanks to Evarts, he had access to the records of the State Department. Evarts, who had enjoyed Adams so much in London, had shared his house with him when he was Attorney General while the family summered in Windsor, and Evarts had showed Adams the town, as well as his wit- “as for disgust with myself, I feel it every time I steal an idea from Evarts, who produces them naturally”. Henry had married Clover Hooper in 1872 despite his brother Charles’s warning against marrying a Hooper - “Heavens! - no – they’re all crazy as coots” - He was madly in love - “always in Clover”. Clover was from good stock, a Sturgis from Boston, and while Henry James thought Henry Adams “very sensible, though a trifle dry,” he found that “Clover has a touch of genius.” While no beauty, with a prominent nose and jutting chin, and prone to bouts of depression, she had a quick wit and an assured presence which provided a sharp compliment to the often enigmatic Adams.

She is certainly not handsome; nor would she be quite called plain, I think. She is twenty-eight years old. She knows her own mind uncommon well. She does not talk very American. Her manners are quiet. She reads German also Latin also, I fear, a little Greek, but very little. She talks garrulously, but on the whole pretty sensibly. She is very open to instruction. We shall improve her. She dresses badly. She decidedly has humor and will appreciate our wit. She has enough money to be quite independent. She rules me as only American women rule men, and I cower before her.

Henry and Clover Adams rented a large house on Lafayette Square. The Adams rode through Rock Creek Park in the morning, breakfasted at noon, Henry wrote in the afternoon, and then they poured tea at five. Childless, they fawned over their Skye terriers Boojum and Pollywog. The house was stuffed full of potted palms and Japanese vases, drawings by Rembrandt and Michelangelo, Kashmir carpets and oils by Turner and Constable. Their home soon became known as the “Little White House” and drew more admirers than the larger (and much dryer) White House across the square. Henry, the grandson and great-grandson of Presidents, seemed to have no political ambitions of his own, but was relentlessly drawn to the Capitol for the human capital it provided. He had considerable wealth, excellent taste, and a discriminating mind. Above all else he valued his friends, and he found his old mentor Evarts “very cordial and civil, and the State Department magnificently hospitable”. At a time when women could watch but not participate in politics, Clover became an accomplished voyeur. She and Henry learned the new art of photography on their honeymoon trip up the Nile, and Clover became a very accomplished photographer – her portraits of Oliver Wendell Holmes, George Bancroft and John Hay and the Adams family and the Adams dogs (Possum, Marquis, and Boojum at tea in the garden) capture a world of parlors, picnics and teas, afternoons playing banjo on the porch, and catboat sails in the bay, and great men considering their legacies to the world. The State Department became even more hospitable in the fall of 1879, when Evarts called John Hay back from Cleveland to become his Assistant Secretary of State. Hay resisted the call at first, but agreed to serve when he learned that Henry Adams was in town. Hay had been a young assistant to Lincoln during the war, had edited the New York Tribune, written some best-selling doggerel (Jim Bludso of the Prairie Belle), and married very, very well to Clara Stone, the daughter of a railroad baron. The youngest of the Hearts, Clara was at the same time their mother figure. She was a pious and robust young woman, with deep brown eyes and thick dark hair. She loved reading books aloud to her husband and her four children, and glared at Mark Twain when he came to call on the Sabbath. She was the quiet foil to the wits of the other four hearts, pouring tea and being amused by their brilliance. Clarence King was campaigning for the creation of the U.S. Geological Survey. King had been a fixture at dinners at the Union League and Century Clubs in New York, and had made a name for himself by exploring the west along the fortieth parallel with his friend James Gardiner (son-in-law of Bishop Doane). Unlike Hay and Adams, who both inherited and married well, King needed to get rich and he needed female companionship. He was, according to Hay “the best and brightest man of his generation, with talents immeasurably beyond any of his contemporaries . . . with everything in his favor but blind luck".

"Hang it," said Bonnycastle, "Let us be vulgar and have some fun - let us invite the President" -Henry James, Pandora

Evarts’s protégés were bound together by their common arrival at the seat of power at the apex of their lives. They played their private games – amusing themselves with Five of Hearts tea sets and stationery, snubbing the President, and continuously accusing each other of authoring Democracy, the roman-a-clef about a New York socialite who "for reasons that many people thought ridiculous . . . decided to pass the winter in Washington."

"What she wished to see," the anonymous author wrote, "was the clash of interests, the interests of 40 millions of people and a whole continent, centering at Washington; guided, restrained, controlled, or unrestrained and uncontrollable, by men of ordinary mould; the tremendous forces of government and the machinery of society at work. What she wanted, was POWER."