Ada Dwyer Russell (1863–1952) was an American actress who performed on stage in Broadway and London and became the muse to her poet lover Amy Lowell.[7]
Ada Dwyer Russell | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Mary Ada Dwyer[1]: 43 February 8, 1863[2]: 48 |
| Died | July 4, 1952 (aged 89) |
| Resting place | Salt Lake City Cemetery 40°46′32.6″N 111°51′28.6″W / 40.775722°N 111.857944°W[4] |
| Spouse | Harold Russell (married 1893 separated ~1895)[2]: 51 |
| Partner(s) | Amy Lowell (together 1912–1925)[5]: xl, xlii |
| Children | Lorna Russell Amussen (5 Sep. 1894–30 Sep. 1961)[2]: 48 [6] |
| Parents | |
Brief biography
Dwyer was born in 1863 to a recently baptized Mormon Salt Lake City bookkeeper James Dwyer and his wife Sara Ann Hammer.[2]: 51 [8]: 173 In 1893 at the age of thirty she married Boston-born actor[9] Harold Russell (lived 1859–1927),[2]: 51 and they had a daughter Lorna the next year. Their marriage fell apart soon after Lorna's birth and they entered a lifelong separation, though, never legally divorcing.[10] Although no record exists of Dwyer renouncing the Mormon religion she was raised in, she ceased involvement,[2]: 51 and her father was asked to resign in 1913 by top leaders after telling other Salt Lake members that same-sex sexual activity was not a sin.[8]: 428
Dwyer and Lowell
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Nearly two decades after separating from Russell, she met writer Amy Lowell in 1912 while on an acting tour in Boston for a play.[5]: xl Dwyer moved in with Lowell in 1914 and their long-term lesbian relationship, or "Boston marriage" (the term for a 19th-century romantic female relationship) would last over a decade until Lowell's death in 1925.[11] Lowell lovingly referred to Dwyer as "the lady of the moon"[12] and loved Dwyer's daughter and grandchildren as her own.[13] Unfortunately, most of the primary document letters of communication between the two were destroyed by Ada at Amy's request, leaving much unknown about the details of their life together[2]: 47 as they had to hide the nature of their relationship.[12]
Lowell's love poems
Ada Dwyer Russell was the subject of many of Lowell's poems,[14] and Lowell wanted to dedicate her books to Dwyer who refused except for one time in a non-poetry book in which Lowell wrote, "To A.D.R., This, and all my books. A.L."[15] Examples of these love poems to Dwyer include the Taxi, Absence,[2]: xxi In a Garden, Madonna of the Evening Flowers,[13] Opal,[16] and Aubade.[12] Amy admitted to John Livingston Lowes that Dwyer was the subject of her series of romantic poems titled "Two Speak Together".[17][18] Lowell's poems about Dwyer have been called the most explicit and elegant lesbian love poetry during the time between the ancient Sappho and poets of the 1970s.[12]
References
External links
- The Hervey Allen Papers at the University of Pittsburgh containing correspondence with Dwyer
Media related to Ada Dwyer Russell at Wikimedia Commons
