of figure. These checks to the standard heroic figure combine to make a "countermonument" for a woman who disliked monuments, generally. Saint-Gaudens may also have been influenced by Parisian funerary art from his stay in France. He appears to have struggled over several years with various sculptural possibilities under the guidance of La Farge, who acted as an intermediary between sculptor and client. Saint-Gaudens's name for the bronze figure is The Mystery of the Hereafter and The Peace of God that Passeth Understanding, but the public commonly called it Grief – an appellation that Henry Adams apparently disliked. In a letter addressed to Homer Saint-Gaudens, on January 24, 1908, Adams instructed him: "Do not allow the world to tag my figure with a name! Every magazine writer wants to label it as some American patent medicine for popular consumption – Grief, Despair, Pear's Soap, or Macy's Mens' Suits Made to Measure. Your father meant it to ask a question, not to give an answer; and the man who answers will be damned to eternity like the men who answered the Sphinx." In his The Education ... Henry Adams reflects on the statue and its interpreters: "His first step, on returning to Washington, took him out to the cemetery known as Rock Creek, to see the bronze figure which St. Gaudens had made for him in his absence. ... in all that it had to say, he never once thought of questioning what it meant. He supposed its meaning to be the one commonplace about it – the oldest idea known to human thought. ... As Adams sat there, numbers of people came, for the figure seemed to have become a tourist fashion, and all wanted to know its meaning. ... Like all great artists, St. Gaudens held up the mirror and no more." At the time of Saint-Gaudens's death, the statue was well known as an important work of American sculpture. Its popularity inspired at least one prominent copy, the Black Aggie, which was sold to General Felix Agnus for his gravesite. On March 16, 1972, the Adams Memorial was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. References External links Adams Memorial photos at Historic American Buildings Survey Cultural Tourism D.C. - The Adams Memorial Save Outdoor Sculpture Survey Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery - Copy of the Adams Memorial Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Master Sculptor, exhibition catalog