The Mysterious Masterpiece; Stories Abound About Saint-Gauden's Monument at 100
The holly trees around the Adams monument in Rock Creek Cemetery are thick and tall, a living wall to protect the dust of the dead. The branches weep blood-red berries and cast deep shadows on a heavily draped bronze figure seated on pink granite. The statue has no name, no inscription, no message.</br></br>A hundred years ago, when the holly trees were only small bushes, Henry Adams first faced the inscrutable statue he had commissioned from Augustus Saint-Gaudens to stand over the grave of his wife, Clover - and in time, his own.</br></br>Last week, commemorating the anniversary of that date, stories about the larger-than-life sculpture were told by Burke Wilkinson, author of "Uncommon Clay: The Life and Works of Augustus Saint-Gaudens," art historian Arthur Keck and John Dryfhout, superintendent of the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish, N.H.</br></br>For six years after Clover died of potassium cyanide poisoning on Dec. 6, 1885, for reasons no one knows, Adams had voyaged over the world. Now he had come to see: Had Saint-Gaudens said in bronze what Adams with all his wit could not?</br></br>Most of those present wouldn't put their name to their remarks about Henry Adams, but there were murmurs that he never found the words to explain his feelings for his wife. He burned their diaries and letters. He did not talk about her for most of his remaining 26 years and omitted her entirely from his autobiography.