Books: Clover's Letters

THE LETTERS or MRS. HENRY ADAMS— Edited by Ward Thoron—Little, Brown ($5).

In addition to having written that painful masterpiece, The Education of Henry Adams, Adams ought to be famed as the author of one of the least gallant letters a prospective bridegroom ever wrote about his future wife. On March 26, 1872, the young grandson of John Quincy Adams informed an English friend: "The young woman calls herself Marian Hooper and belongs to a sort of clan, as all Bostonians do. . . . She is certainly not handsome; nor would she be...