Ada Dwyer

Ada Dwyer Russell (1863–1952) was an American stage actress and the longtime companion of poet Amy Lowell. Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, she was the daughter of James Dwyer, a bookkeeper who had recently converted to Mormonism, and his wife Sara Ann Hammer. In 1893, at the age of thirty, she married Boston-born actor Harold Russell (1859–1927), and the couple had a daughter, Lorna, the following year. The marriage dissolved shortly after Lorna's birth, and though the two separated permanently, they never formally divorced. While no record documents Dwyer formally leaving the Mormon faith, she ceased active participation in the religion. Her father was asked to step down by church leadership in 1913 after he told fellow Salt Lake City members that same-sex sexual activity was not a sin.

Dwyer's stage career began in New York in 1891, when she appeared in Alone in London and played Doña Julia in Don Juan. Early New York credits also included the role of Mrs. Greenthorne in Husband and Wife and Malka in The Children of the Ghetto in 1892. In 1899, she reprised the role of Malka when The Children of the Ghetto made its London debut, where she also appeared in a supporting capacity alongside Eleanor Robson Belmont. Her Broadway career continued into the following decade and encompassed productions including Liberty Hall, Merely Mary Ann, The Dummy, and The Deep Purple, in which she played Kate Fallon in 1911. In 1908, she toured Australia in Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, playing the title role of Mrs. Wiggs. Returning to the United States, she took on the role of Bet in The Dawn of a To-Morrow in 1909 and played Grandma in Blackbirds in 1912. Her stage career spanned from 1891 through 1914, when she retired from performing.

Dwyer first encountered the poet Amy Lowell in 1909 while on an acting tour in Boston, and the two entered an intimate relationship in 1912 when Dwyer returned to the city for another theatrical engagement. In 1914, Dwyer moved into Lowell's home, and their relationship endured until Lowell's death in 1925. Their partnership has been described as a Boston marriage, a term used for committed romantic relationships between women in the nineteenth century. Lowell referred to Dwyer affectionately as "the lady of the moon" and embraced Dwyer's daughter and grandchildren as her own family. At Lowell's request, Dwyer destroyed the majority of the letters the two had exchanged, leaving much of the private record of their life together lost.

Dwyer was the subject of a substantial body of Lowell's poetry. Lowell confirmed to scholar John Livingston Lowes that Dwyer was the inspiration for her series of romantic poems titled Two Speak Together. Individual poems addressed to or inspired by Dwyer include Taxi, Absence, In a Garden, Madonna of the Evening Flowers, Opal, and Aubade. Lowell wished to dedicate each of her books to Dwyer, but Dwyer declined on all but one occasion, a non-poetry volume in which Lowell inscribed the dedication: "To A.D.R., This, and all my books. A.L." Correspondence related to Dwyer is held in the Hervey Allen Papers at the University of Pittsburgh.