Hooper, Lucy (Hamilton) Jones

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HOOPER, Lucy (Hamilton) Jones

Born 20 January 1835, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; died 31 August 1893, Paris, France

Daughter of Bataile Muse Jones; married Robert E. Hooper, 1854

Born into a prominent Philadelphia family, Lucy Jones Hooper began her literary career as an extension of her social obligations. At the Great Central Sanitary Fair in Philadelphia, she helped edit the daily chronicle and presented 100 copies of her first book of poems and translations from the German. A reverse in her husband's finances, however, compelled Hooper to make her literary dabbling into a source of additional revenue. From 1868 to 1870, she was both a contributor and assistant editor of Lippincott's magazine, and a second book of poems was published in 1871.

In 1874 her husband was appointed vice-consul general in Paris. There Hooper found herself a central member of the American colony and an active participant in literary, artistic, and intellectual circles. She maintained a regular correspondence with numerous American periodicals, among them the Post-Dispatch of St. Louis and Appleton's Journal. Her column in the Philadelphia Daily Evening Telegraph, where she reported on the fashion, art, and politics of Europe, ran without interruption for 20 years.

In addition to her journalistic work, Hooper wrote two plays—one, Her Living Image (1886), with French dramatist Laurencin, and another, Helen's Inheritance, which was produced in Paris in 1888, and in New York, as Inherited, in 1889.

She also wrote three novels. The first, Under the Tricolor; or, The American Colony in Paris (1880), raised quite a stir, as various publications attempted to identify the fictional characters with living Americans. Without this element of gossip, however, the plot, which involves a romance between two insipid young people of good family but inadequate finances, is extremely dull. The characters are not allowed to develop beyond their stock roles as cruel father, flighty widow, uncultured provincial, or benevolent patron. Hooper does not have sufficient control over the tone of the book, which swings from sentimental pathos to what seem to be aborted attempts at satire.

The Tsar's Window (1881), on the other hand, is still rather engaging. The story is told primarily through the journal of Dorris Romilly, a device employed less consistently and less successfully in Under the Tricolor. While the romantic plot at times verges on the melodramatic, Dorris' confusion over the character and motives of various suitors awakens the reader's curiosity. Moreover, her straightforward intelligence, her independence, her wit, and her ability to laugh at herself all gain immediate sympathy. Without unnecessary preaching, Dorris' character provides a vigorous defense of the American system of education, which, unlike the European, allowed women to have at least a modicum of freedom. In addition, the detailed descriptions of life in St. Petersburg in winter give an authentic and interesting picture of aristocratic life in 19th-century Russia.

Sentimental themes of melancholy and death are prominent in Hooper's poems, but her poetry is most successful when she is able to maintain a tough-minded stance toward romantic clichés. A poem such as "The Duel" deftly conveys the façade of flippant bravado assumed by a man who has just killed another and is now trying to quiet his wife's fears as well as his own. The rhyming iambic pentameter line is smoothly colloquial throughout. Similarly, "Gretchen" uses a simple four-line stanza and refrain to tell the story of a young woman who drowns her illegitimate baby to maintain her spotless reputation.

Hooper had a sharp eye for contemporary issues and social mores, a sound knowledge of the arts, an honest wit, and a clear-headed intelligence. When she allows these qualities to dominate, her work still commands attention. Unfortunately, she too often succumbs to using sentimental conventions to defend the platitudes of proper moral behavior.