riders, one pointing with outstretched arm to indicate where water would
be found, while behind them were three longhorn steers, their heads and
tails raised as they scented the distant river. To cast that group in
bronze, full size, called for more money than the women could raise at a
time when drought and low prices for beef put the cattle business in a
decline. Even before the clay model was completed, messages came from
Atlanta warning the Trail Drivers to have nothing to do with Borglum.
The women seemed unconcerned. When the model was exhibited in other
cities there came lively bidding for its location. Mr. Goodnight, a
famous old ranchman, offered to pay for the casting on condition that
the monument be placed in Abilene, but the San Antonio Chamber of
Commerce was determined to keep the work where the idea originated. Only
enough money for a bronze about one-fourth life size could be raised,
and the memorial was permanently placed outside Trail Drivers Hall,
especially built for the purpose in Breckenridge Park. This was a great
disappointment to the sculptor who had planned for an enlarged group
more than forty feet long to stand under the open sky in front of San
Antonio’s auditorium.
As long as there was any hope of completing his work at Stone Mountain,
a hope that died hard, the sculptor wanted to remain in the South, where
his chief need was a roomy studio. He secured lease of space in a
machine shop near the railroad tracks to complete the model of the Trail
Drivers’ memorial, and then began to scout around San Antonio for a more
permanent location. He found it eventually in an old stone building on
the edge of Breckenridge Park which had been abandoned by the local
water company.
The genial park commissioner allowed him to remodel it. A new roof was
built with its big skylight, an ell added, windows and doorways
completely rebuilt and the interior decorated. When finished it was a
delightful place for work or play, half hidden by pecan trees that
shaded it from the Southern sun, with the sound of running water
beneath. Here several new sculptural works were modeled, but only one
was destined to stand in Texas. When it came about that Mount Rushmore
demanded all his time the sculptor gave this San Antonio studio to the
Witte Museum in the same park. Now known as the Borglum Memorial Studio,
it is used for art classes and as a meeting place for art students.
In this city the sculptor became deeply involved in several projects
promoted mostly by women, who often took the lead in civic improvements.
There were women’s clubs all over the state which invited the sculptor
to tell his ideas on the art and beautification of one’s surroundings.
The Conservation Society of San Antonio interested him in their pet
project of beautifying the banks of the San Antonio River, a lazy little
stream that threaded its way through the city. Real-estate interests
wanted to fill up the stream and use the space for more buildings, but
the women wouldn’t hear of it. In this the sculptor joined heartily, but
his ideas conflicted with theirs when it came to restoration of old
Spanish ruins.
From his experience in preserving the California missions the sculptor
was keenly interested in these San Antonio ruins, one of which, the San
Jose Mission, is especially beautiful. A copy of its rose window was
sent to the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933.
Before he arrived, its belfry tower had collapsed. Mrs. J. P. Drought,
one of the most civic-minded leaders San Antonio ever had, had at her
own expense hired workmen to collect the stones and wood blocks for the
stairs and return them to their original places. The belfry stairs,
triangular blocks of wood that unknown hands had carved out of big
trees, had been carried away as relics by Mexican families, and the same
Mrs. Drought had searched them out, one by one, and brought them back to
the mission as a real work of restoration. Meanwhile the Conservation
Society engaged a local architect to restore parts of the old church and
a granary which had almost disappeared.
Seeing what was going on and knowing that such a restoration would only
destroy the original character of the mission, Gutzon wrote an article
in protest against what seemed to him vandalism, but never published it
because he did not want to hurt the feelings of a friend who was most
active in the undertaking. Instead, he sent her the typed article with
this friendly warning: “I alone am honest enough to tell you that you
cannot restore the lost lines of a great poem, the lost notes of a great
opera, the lost parts of a great building, the lost parts of a great
painting.”
And there were other projects. There were two large musical societies in
the city, both run by women, with considerable rivalry between them. The
leader of one club came to the sculptor begging his help in building an
open-air theater in an old quarry in Breckenridge Park where she could
have performances by her Civic Opera Company. “We have no money to pay
an architect,” she said. “Won’t you design us a theater, just for the
love of art and music?”
The project interested the sculptor and he went out to the quarry to
study its possibilities. Mrs. Borglum vividly remembers one moonlight
night when she and Gutzon were accompanied by Mrs. Drought and her
guest, a professor from Dublin, Ireland, a man well acquainted with the
new Irish Theater in Dublin, who had come to Texas on a lecture tour. He
bubbled over with enthusiasm when Gutzon pointed out a little knoll
overlooking the quarry which he had already selected as a stage. On each
side of this he planned a group of columns with dressing rooms behind.
For the curtain he designed something new--a barrage of water jets which
could be turned on or off at will. When the curtain was down, colored
lights would play on the water, creating an eerie effect and concealing
the stage from the audience. All details were so carefully worked out
that the only expense to the city would be for material and labor, with
no fee for the designer, Gutzon, who would act also as superintendent of
the work. To make sure that his architectural plans were correct, he
summoned at his own expense Mr. Kimball, who had been president of the
National Institute of Architects. This helpful friend not only made
blueprints and drew up specifications but made a pretty water-color
sketch to show how the theater would look when finished.
Naturally the members of the Civic Opera and the San Antonio Woman’s
Club were delighted. In a mass they went to the City Hall when the plan
was submitted to the council. Without a dissenting vote a resolution was
passed accepting the open-air theater as the sculptor had planned it.
And that, one grieves to record, was the end of another Gutzon Borglum
dream. After a long delay a conventional design by a local architect was
“unanimously approved” by the same city fathers. The theater was built
at city expense. And the lady who had begged the sculptor to design the
theater because she had no money to pay an architect told him that the
wife of one of her leading singers was the local architect’s sister. The
lady accepted the tenor’s brother-in-law because it made her tenor
happy. “And, dear Mr. Borglum, what else could I do?” wailed the lady.
* * * * *
Gutzon was much taken with the appearance of Corpus Christi, Texas;
however, he felt the shore line was unsightly. So he hired an aviator to
take pictures of the town showing the residential portion on a plateau
high above the gulf and the crowded business district along the shore
line. He took the mayor and some other citizens on a motor trip to
Galveston and along the Gulf Coast to Florida to see how other cities
had dealt with similar water-front problems.
He built a plaster model of Corpus Christi with a fine new--and
artistic--concrete promenade along the sea front, with steps down to the
water’s edge, and exhibited it in the rooms of the Chamber of Commerce.
He designed approaches for a new bridge to replace the old drawbridge
that frequently tied up traffic for half an hour at a time. And he got a
Mr. Harrington of Kansas City, a reputable bridge builder, to design a
bridge. The cost of this improvement, he felt, would speedily be paid by
toll collected from the passing cars.
Everybody was interested in Borglum’s great enterprise. A loan project
was placed before the R.F.C., which turned it over to the W.P.A., which
started everything all over again. In the end the whole business got
into the hands of the state W.P.A. at Fort Worth, and the
water-front-bridge development was changed to a sewer project. Probably
the sewer was needed and anyhow it had not been proposed by a stranger.
Texas, the sculptor learned, was a place where big things were done
bigly; but, nevertheless, in the accustomed fashion.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
_AND SO FORWARD_
Texas owed something to Gutzon for the suggestion of the Four-City
Centennial celebration of 1936. This hundredth year that Texas had been
independent of Mexican rule had to be something unique. The sculptor
wrote a letter about his idea to Jesse Jones, the managing director,
stating that the great fair should begin in San Antonio, the ancient
Mexican capital, then proceed to Dallas and Fort Worth and end in
Houston. He outlined the historical features of these cities, listed
their natural advantages as exhibition towns and finished with an
unusual thought: “These cities will draw enormous income from the
tourist travel that the centennial will surely set in motion. For that
reason all exhibition buildings should be made permanent in character,
thus saving what might otherwise be considered an enormous total loss.”
But though many of his suggestions were carried out, and though an art
committee from each of the four cities consulted him, not one of the
more than forty monuments they built was his design. The explanation is
that each committee was hidebound by the idea of a competition with
prizes, and Gutzon would have none of that.
He worked hard for the beautification of roads in that part of Texas
where the greenery gives way to the desert. He was appointed chairman
of an advisory committee to supervise the spending of the W.P.A. and the
Federal Highway Department funds. But local rivalries kept many a town
out of funds, and the Federal Highway Department’s $5,000,000, allotted
for _road beautification_ in Texas, was demanded by an influential
highway engineer who outweighed Gutzon. All road funds, he declared,
must be under the State Highway Department’s control; and to this simple
proposition the federal government would not agree. So Texas got little,
and the beautification of Texas roads was left to Texas.
Looking back over the record of those years, one can’t but figure them
the most disheartening in all of Borglum’s life. The sculptor himself
hadn’t changed much--except for the better. He was still motivated by
his love for the big things--for the projects that would give more joy,
more comfort or more safety to humankind. But somehow none of the plans
was working out well.
Stone Mountain, as he must have known in his heart, was finished. The
head of Lee would presently be an outrageous blot on a tall cliff. He
had had no part in the Texas Four-City Centennial celebration; he had
been thrust out of any plans to beautify Texas highways. He had been
thwarted in his effort to provide a sea-front development and bridge for
Corpus Christi. He had lost the job of designing the San Antonio
open-air theater, which he would have enjoyed doing. Five times in a row
he had put out his best effort and finished nowhere.
He might have been saved a lot of trouble had he known that few
outsiders ever succeed in getting anything out of the preserves of Texas
politicians--especially those busy keeping happy a Texas tenor. But
those who knew him in San Antonio say that he showed no consciousness of
his reverses. He was gracious to the people he thought deserved his kind
words. He blasted the louts that he thought needed blasting. And on the
whole all went well. He continued to be Gutzon Borglum.
His art work was by no means neglected because of his apparent
absorption in civic improvements and expositions and music festivals.
Nor had ill repute deriving from the Stone Mountain Association’s
adverse publicity given him any lack of employment. He had not quite
finished the Trail Drivers’ memorial when he was given a commission for
the memorial to Alexander Stephens. The armchair in which Stephens is
seated was made in the San Antonio studio and cut out of marble at a
local stoneyard. The marble was the gift of the Georgia Marble Company
at Marietta.
The place of this model in the studio was immediately taken by a
memorial to General John Greenway, of Rough Rider and earlier Yale
football fame. He was a resident of Arizona, engaged in copper mining
when the First World War broke out. Though past the age limit, he bought
a uniform and, with the aid of Washington friends, got into the army.
His widow, Isabella Greenway, one of the most distinguished women in the
country, came to the Stamford studio, bringing with her a request for
the statue by the state of Arizona. Greenway had been honored as a
favorite son and chosen for a place in Statuary Hall, Washington.
Unfortunately Gutzon Borglum was in Texas. Telegrams were exchanged, and
he met Mrs. Greenway in 1928--at the Democratic National Convention in
Houston. Mrs. Greenway brought to the San Antonio studio not only
photographs of her husband but some of his clothes and favorite gear.
She knew, the sculptor said, more about her husband’s appearance and
characteristics than any person he had ever met who tried to tell him
what he wanted to know of a departed hero--and must know if he were to
complete a perfect likeness.
The bronze statue was unveiled in Washington in 1930, and Mrs. Greenway
ordered a replica to be placed in Arizona. The friendship between her
and the sculptor which began at first sight was without a flaw during
their lifetime.
From the state of North Carolina, meanwhile, came a commission for a
bronze group in memory of Carolina soldiers who led the immortal
Pickett’s Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg, a dramatic climax that
marked the high tide of the Confederacy and from which Lee’s army reeled
back in defeat, never to attempt another invasion of the North. The
sculptor had submitted a small-scale model of the group, made in his
Breckenridge Park studio at San Antonio in 1928. This was accepted and
he was busy with an improved large-scale model when the same wearisome
correspondence began, caused by some misunderstanding of the artist’s
habit of developing, that is, bettering, the original plan.
Here, for example, is a letter from Mr. Barringer, a member of the
memorial committee, written to another member, Mr. Fuller, after seeing
photographs of the large-scale model and noting with anxiety that
changes had been made from the original. He said:
It is out of the question for me to go to San Antonio to examine
the model. I am perfectly willing, however, to abide by your
judgment. I confess to being somewhat disappointed, particularly in
the expressions of the faces. They do not give promise of being as
good as those on the smaller model. Moreover, I cannot help
agreeing with the governor that the model does not seem to be
completely finished.
If Borglum will put his best into this monument, as we have the
right to believe he will do, it will be a great monument. I feel
sure of that. Such is my confidence in Borglum I know that if he
can make a good small model, he can also make a good large one.
To the sculptor this same Mr. Barringer made the following interesting
comment about facial expressions:
It was Darwin, I think, who pointed out that the sneer originated
in an unconscious effort to uncover the canine or fighting tooth.
Most men, when very angry or about to go into a fight, have a
sneering expression. I have seen somewhere the expression “a
snarling grin,” which conveys the idea very well. Might it not be
well to put on one of your faces this “snarling grin?” For it is
doubtless the characteristic of many men when they are charging the
enemy.
Gutzon was quick to welcome any suggestion for improving his work from
any interested source. In answer he wrote:
Thank you for your letter just received and also for the suggestion
you have made. I not only think it is good, but I have just the man
on whose face I would like to put that sinister expression. The man
in front must be too thoughtful, too conscious of his danger and
too indifferent to it, to have any emotional feelings. He is too
determined. The one just back of him, the boy, will express
amazement, fear--a little--but surprise and youth more. To the
bearded man next to him, the one you thought was crowding him a
little too close, I will give an expression of anger and supply the
snarling grin. Of course, the boy back of him with the flag is too
much occupied with the load he is carrying and too important to be
anxious about anything but getting forward.
Because the memorial was to stand on the Gettysburg battlefield, it was
highly important to locate it properly in relation to other incidents
and heroes of the great battle. A special site committee was appointed,
and as its chairman the sculptor had the chief responsibility. On one
visit to the field he had the happy fortune to meet Mrs. Elsie
Singmaster Lewars, a well-known writer who lived on Seminary Ridge,
another famous part of the battleground. She was familiar with the whole
historic region, knew its charges and countercharges by heart, and so
gave invaluable help in selecting precisely the right site for the
memorial.
The unveiling took place July 3, 1929, just sixty-six years after
Pickett’s Charge failed to win its objective and the Confederacy was
plainly doomed. Governor Gardner of North Carolina presided, and the
sculptor’s old friend, former Governor Angus McLean, delivered the
principal address.
A special train brought hundreds of North Carolina people to join in the
dedication of their memorial. An airplane, engaged by the sculptor,
dropped roses over the battleground and dipped its wings in tribute to
the honored dead. By that time Gettysburg had become, as it has been
ever since, a lure for tourists and sight-seers from every part of our
country. Only a year after the unveiling of the Borglum monument C. W.
McDevett published in the Raleigh _News and Observer_ a long description
of a visit to the battlefield, ending with this tribute:
It may be a quiet day at Gettysburg with only a few hundred
visitors scattered through its tens of thousands of acres, while on
other days the visitors are numbered by thousands. But the biggest
group anywhere, any time, will more than likely be found around
North Carolina’s memorial.
That was the case on a day this summer. It was a quiet day, but
there were dozens before the five bronze giants, silent dozens,
studying the master’s work in reverent admiration. They were from
Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Ohio and Maryland, as their
automobile licenses indicated. They murmured praise of the picture
in stone and metal. The men doffed their hats unconsciously. All
gazed into those faces of bronze--faces that seemed filled with
life--and paid tribute to the likenesses of men--strong,
purposeful, clean-limbed, clean-minded men--who had been their
fathers’ and their grandfathers’ foes. Borglum had imagined them
worthy foemen, indeed, and his genius had made his hands the
servant of his thoughts. Borglum carves mountains into battle
panoramas. Borglum will never carve anything to equal his Tar Heel
heroes at Gettysburg.
A year before the Gettysburg memorial was dedicated, a foreign-looking
letter, postmarked Morges, Switzerland, came to Gutzon at San Antonio.
As he was away at the time and it was Mrs. Borglum’s job to oversee his
vast correspondence, she opened this letter with some curiosity. She
uncovered a six-page autograph beginning, “My great, good friend,” and
signed, “Affectionately, gratefully and devotedly yours, I. J.
Paderewski.”
The gist of the letter was that Paderewski’s compatriots desired to
erect a monument “to the memory of Poland’s most generous benefactor,
President Wilson”; that a competition had been staged; that the first
prize had been awarded; that the prize winner’s model was “horrible”;
and that, in despair of getting a satisfactory design at home, the
committee had left the decision to the writer. The letter concluded: “My
decision is that the statue of that great American should be done only
by the greatest American artist, by the greatest living sculptor in the
whole world.”
By way of explaining Paderewski’s greeting and highly emotional
signature, one should remember how close the two artists had become in
their efforts to promote an association of mid-European republics.
Gutzon had been present when the representatives of these states had met
in Independence Hall, Philadelphia. Paderewski was the first speaker at
this convention, and in the few minutes of his oratory he was
transformed from a civilian pianist into a soaring apostle of freedom.
Professor Masaryk, who followed him with what was expected to be the key
speech, could barely speak at all. He threw away his prepared address
because, he said, Paderewski had said it all and said it better. “I have
never listened to such an inspired speech,” he said in conclusion. “I
can give no explanation other than that Ignace Jan Paderewski is an
artist.”
Paderewski’s letter to Gutzon in San Antonio begged an immediate answer
by cable, inasmuch as it was hoped to have the memorial unveiled on
Wilson’s birthday the next year. Gutzon was in Georgia on another of his
futile attempts to revive the Confederate memorial; so his wife sent him
a telegram in care of the Venables:
SIX PAGE LETTER FROM PADEREWSKI WANTS MEMORIAL TO PRESIDENT WILSON
BY QUOTE THE GREATEST SCULPTOR IN THE WHOLE WORLD END QUOTE. CAN
YOU GUESS WHO? WANTS CABLE ANSWER.
The avowal of confidence by Paderewski, even more than his offer of the
commission, was something that Gutzon appreciated. His answer was eager
and quick:
MRS. MASON GAVE ME YOUR MESSAGE. SEND PADEREWSKI AT ONCE BY CABLE
QUOTE AM DELIGHTED TO ACCEPT DOUBLE HONOR FOR YOURSELF AND WOODROW
WILSON. TIME AMPLE IF WE ACT SOON. MEANS ALSO AMPLE FOR BEAUTIFUL
MEMORIAL UNQUOTE. LOVE TO YOU ALL.
Paderewski’s response, grateful and sympathetic, settled the matter of
the Wilson statue in a few days. Because of the early date set for the
unveiling, the sculptor should first have gone to Europe to confer with
the committee and to study the proposed location of the memorial. But
the work on Mount Rushmore was getting critical and it was impossible
for him to leave. He decided to send his son Lincoln to Europe to
arrange for the casting of the bronze in Paris, Florence or Naples, and
then to confer with Paderewski at his home in Morges, Switzerland.
Lincoln, accompanied by his mother, went immediately.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
_TRIBUTE TO WILSON_
The travelers never forgot Paderewski as he met them at the Morges
station. He was standing on the runway, a little derby hat perched on
the top of his head, with his wave of hair floating out from it like a
cloud. He seemed serene and happy.
“Where are your trunks?” he asked in honest puzzlement.
And they told him that they carried no trunks, that they were staying
with him only between trains. His surprise was genuine and his
disappointment obvious.
“I expected you to stay a month,” he said. “So now you must stay for at
least a week.” He picked up the bags, though his butler factotum hovered
around anxious to help, and led the way to his old-fashioned touring
car. And they stayed at his chalet, with its wide-spreading trees, its
huge garden and its vineyard sloping down to the lake shore--they stayed
a week.