Explorer King Adventure, Science, And the Great Diamond Hoax -- a True Tale of the Old West

Introduction The Little White House In the early months of 1881, in a boxy three-story mansion on Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C., a small group of friends fell into the rhythm of meeting nearly every day at teatime for witty, often scathing conversation about the city that churned along around them. The Greek Revival structure where they met, white with a modest portico supported by Ionic columns, was known in the neighborhood as the little White House, and it faced that other more imposing White House just across the square. The smaller residence was rented by Henry Adams, whose grandfather and great-grandfather had inhabited the larger one, and by Henry's wife, Clover. The couple had just returned to Washington after eighteen months in Europe while Henry researched a history of the United States in the years when Jefferson and Madison were president. During the two winters of an earlier residence in the city, when Henry was working on a biography and a novel at a yellow house draped in wisteria a block east on H Street, Clover and Henry had stood back from Washington society, which then as now was all about job seeking and job keeping. They favored a smaller circle of friends selected for their ability to engage and amuse them. This exclusivity had caused their social stock, already fairly high given Henry's lineage, to rise; an invitation to either of the H Street houses was valued in proportion to the difficulty of achieving it. Even senators were sometimes snubbed, although Henry James probably goes too far when in his story "Pandora" he has a character based on Henry Adams say, "Hang it . . . let us be vulgar and have some fun -- let us invite the President." Adams himself said, "Socially speaking, we are very near most of the powerful people, either as enemies or friends." The inner circle within this wider group of friends consisted of one other couple, John and Clara Hay, and one bachelor, Clarence King. When they could, the five of them met each day at five o'clock during the winter of 1881, and would often share dinner and then talk well into the evening. John Hay was ending a brief term as assistant secretary of state, and Clara, the daughter of a rich businessman from Cleveland, was living in town with him that winter. Hay had first come to Washington two decades earlier as a young man, employed as personal secretary to the new president, Abraham Lincoln, and had resided in the White House until the assassination. In the intervening years he had worked in the diplomatic corps in Europe, written editorials for the New York Tribune, published several books, including a popular collection of poems, and begun a massive biography of Lincoln that would occupy him for a decade. After his marriage to Clara in 1874 he moved with her to Cleveland to help her father tend to his millions. When Hay went to Washington for the State Department job in 1879, he left Clara and their young children behind, and took a room at Wormley's, a comfortable hotel on 15th and H streets. There Hay fell in with another resident who was an acquaintance from New York, a brilliant scientist, explorer, and writer who at the age of thirty-seven had already done enough living to fill several lifetimes. This was Clarence King. He was in Washington serving as the first director of the United States Geological Survey, which had been established by Congress in 1879 after intense lobbying by King and his friend John Wesley Powell. Hay and King were soon together all the time, meeting for breakfast and attending social functions in the evenings. Before long the two of them and a third man, General Francis A. Walker, the superintendent of the tenth national census then under way, rented a house at 1400 Massachusetts Avenue, which Hay referred to as the "bachelor castle." They kept a private dining room at Wormley's, where the fWilson, Robert is the author of 'Explorer King Adventure, Science, And the Great Diamond Hoax -- a True Tale of the Old West', published 2006 under ISBN 9780743260251 and ISBN 0743260252.