known Wilson fairly well; they had traveled the Atlantic in the same
ship. Wilson had given him a degree at Princeton. They had seen much of
each other when Gutzon was working on the decorations for the dormitory
built by the class of 1879. And they had been close, though hardly
harmonious, during the Borglum investigation of the aircraft scandal.
However, to amplify his own impressions of Wilson’s characteristics, the
sculptor wrote to several men who had known the President: Professor
John Grier Hibben, the new president of Princeton University; William
Allen White; President Coolidge; and several senators. He asked them to
say frankly what characteristics he should portray.
Wilson was then, as he still is, a subject of controversy. Gutzon got
some amazing answers. President Coolidge thought he should be depicted
as a kind of Abraham Lincoln. Senator William E. Borah thought that his
features should express humanitarianism and said, “The Versailles Treaty
was a cruel, destructive, brutal document. The only touches of humanity
it contains were put there by Wilson.” And a senator who shall be
nameless said, “I feel incapable of making a suggestion along this line.
If I undertook to do so, I’m afraid I should bear in mind that a man who
is untruthful, no matter how exalted his position, should not be deified
in sculpture or otherwise.”
Gutzon decided to represent Wilson slipping out of his Academic robes
and standing alongside a martial female figure of Poland on the capitol
steps. Poland, helmeted, was defending herself with a sword. Forced back
she stood at bay under the President’s extended arm. It was a
composition of great charm and historic truth. But it required more
simple sentiment to be popular in Poznan, Poland, where it was to stand.
Paderewski’s message of regret, contrived after he had looked at the
photographs of the model, was a shock. He wired:
DEEPLY IMPRESSED. MAJESTIC GREATNESS OF YOUR COMPOSITION TRULY
WONDERFUL. PRESIDENT’S FIGURE SPLENDID, SUPERB, INSPIRED. POLAND’S
ENCHANTING IN VIGOR AND YOUTH. ENTIRE CONCEPTION EXTREMELY POETIC
AND BEAUTIFUL. HOWEVER AM AFRAID PLACING POLAND’S FIGURE WOULD
CREATE SERIOUS TROUBLE AND ADD TO EXISTING POLITICAL STRIFE. MANY
MEMBERS OF PARTY NOW IN POWER, WHO HAVE BEEN FIGHTING ON WRONG
SIDE, WOULD SURELY INTERPRET YOUR IDEA AS HOMAGE TO AND TRIUMPH OF
THEIR DISASTROUS POLICY AND WOULD AROUSE INDIGNATION OF VAST BUT
TEMPORARILY PARALYZED MAJORITY. CONSEQUENCES MAY BE FATAL. ARTIST
MYSELF, KNOW WHAT IT MEANS TO PART WITH CHERISHED IDEAS, TO MODIFY
PLAN CONCEIVED IN LOVE AND MATURED BY LONG MEDITATION. AND YET AM
FORCED, PRO BONO PUBLICO, TO ASK SACRIFICE IN ELIMINATING POLAND’S
FIGURE ALTOGETHER. PRESIDENT’S FIGURE, NO MATTER HOW EARNEST, WILL
PLEASE EVERYBODY AND HURT NOBODY. HIS NOBLE GESTURE WILL SEEM
BENEDICTION GIVEN TO INVISIBLE SYMBOL OF REBORN COUNTRY FOR NEW,
HISTORIC LIFE. THAT GESTURE COULD BUT ENHANCE, INTENSIFY DEEPLY
RELIGIOUS, ALMOST APOSTOLIC CHARACTER OF HIS IDEOLOGY. PLEASE
FORGIVE AND LET ME KNOW THAT I HAVE NOT OFFENDED YOU. SORRY TO SAY,
CANNOT BE IN AMERICA BEFORE OCTOBER. MY BANK CABLING TEN THOUSAND
DOLLARS. AFFECTIONATE REGARDS TO YOUR DEAR WIFE AND BOY.
So here was another crushing blow to Gutzon. To him it was like asking
Beethoven to eliminate one of the movements of the _Fifth Symphony_. But
he accepted the verdict with grace. And so he cabled Paderewski.
From Morges Paderewski had sent to the sculptor a group of photographs
of the ancient square of Poznan where the statue was to be placed.
Gutzon studied them closely to estimate how much light would strike his
figure. Later, after wearisome correspondence with a Mr. Rucinski of the
Official Council of Building Department, it was decided to move the
memorial to the newly created Wilson Park.
Off and on, all winter, the sculptor worked on the model in his San
Antonio studio. When completed it was generally acclaimed as a great
portrait of the President. It had in it the idealism and the spiritual
quality that the sculptor could give it. But he was never reconciled to
the loss of the figure of Poland. He felt that the monument lacked
something beautiful and significant that he could have given it.
Gutzon took his whole family abroad for the unveiling of the monument in
1931. It was his first visit to Europe in thirty years. Because he had
to attend to its erection and the preparation of the pediment, they were
several weeks in Poznan. One of the most interesting, and rather tragic,
denizens was an old countess who had recently returned to her ancestral
home. The place was more than a thousand years old, several miles out
of town, and was on exhibition certain days of the week because of its
historic interest.
The countess had been in exile for many years, and told an exciting tale
of escape when the Germans came to her home. According to the tradition,
the family fortune had started with the levying of tribute on travelers
at a near-by crossroads. But most of it had been taken away by a similar
process of collection. Little was left to her now. One day she invited
the Borglums to “high tea,” and as the family sat around the ancient
table eating raspberries off priceless china, they could hear the voices
and steps of sight-seers in an adjoining room. The exhibition fee
undoubtedly eked out her scanty income.
Gutzon took a great liking for this aged lady in her rusty black gown
and pathetic shoes. He hired a car and invited her to the opera. His
attentions and the unusual experience gave her great delight, and she
was sparkling.
During her exile she had cared for the Polish children in Paris. Now she
was anxious to insure religious instruction for the large number of
Polish orphans there. It hurt her to think, she said, that their bodies
were well nourished and their souls were neglected.
As the day of the unveiling drew near, it became known that Paderewski
would not be present. This seemed evidence enough that there was
something rotten in Poland. The man who had been Premier; who, more than
anyone else, had brought the world’s recognition to Poland after the
World War; who had made possible the return of territory snatched fifty
years before by Germany; the man who had given most of the money for the
nation’s tribute to Wilson--this man alone wasn’t going to be permitted
to see the honoring of an American president whom he loved.
Large numbers of Polish-Americans came to share the tribute to Wilson.
Three hundred priests had come from the United States, every one
carrying a wreath of artificial flowers representing his district at
home. The flowers, piled about the base of the statue with the fresh
wreaths of local patriots, made an impressive display.
On the morning of the unveiling day Mrs. Woodrow Wilson arrived with her
niece and a group of men representing the United States. Among them were
Robert Underwood Johnson, ambassador to Italy, and Bernard Baruch, who
had taken the opportunity to visit the early home of his parents not far
from Poznan. Mrs. Wilson went through the ordeal on the arm of General
Mosciki, President of the Polish Republic, and she bore up well despite
interminable speechmaking.
The crowning event of the program was a banquet at the old Royal
Schloss, which at times had been occupied by Kaiser Wilhelm. After that
there was a reception for a thousand or more, with General Mosciki
presiding.
At dinner Mrs. Borglum was seated next to a delightful Pole whom she had
met before. She asked him why there were so few at the table when she
could hear the throng waiting for the reception in the next room. He
seemed surprised that she shouldn’t know. “But Madam,” he said. “There
are only twenty-four plates in the old Emperor’s dining service.” And he
turned over a plate to show the label “W. Rex” stamped on the bottom.
Paderewski sent this telegram to Gutzon:
TODAY ON THE SOLEMN OCCASION OF THE UNVEILING OF YOUR NEW
MASTERPIECE, MY HEARTFELT THANKS TO YOU, AND MY MOST AFFECTIONATE
GREETINGS. YOUR PEERLESS ART HAS ENABLED MY COMPATRIOTS TO POSSESS
AND PRESENT AN ENDURING PROOF OF THEIR EVERLASTING GRATITUDE FOR
POLAND’S FREEDOM AND INTEGRITY TO AMERICA AND HER NOBLEST SYMBOL,
PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON.
And what happened to this noble Wilson monument? When Hitler’s troops
came plowing through Poland at the beginning of the Second World War it
was pulled down and, presumably, turned into ammunition.
* * * * *
The Borglums had several other chance encounters with Paderewski. On one
occasion he was to give a concert in Abilene, Texas, and invited Gutzon
and his family to see him. He was in a private car and the three met him
for dinner after the concert. The evening was delightful--at any rate it
was delightful to Paderewski and Gutzon. They talked all night until the
car was coupled to an outbound train. And then Paderewski invited them
to ride on to the next stop.
Gutzon had an immense faith in Paderewski. One day in Washington during
the First World War, he stated his theory to Secretary of the Interior
Franklin K. Lane. “One of these days,” he said, “you people will realize
that imagination and disinterestedness are powerful factors in the
building of a state. I believe Paderewski is capable of rebuilding
Poland and of rebuilding Europe if the occasion demanded. He is capable
of any sacrifice, and he has the mind and soul to keep him going.”
“You artists always talk in big terms,” said Lane. “So far I am with
you. But there’s a great practical side to nation building.”
“Don’t you think Paderewski has that, too?”
“Yes,” said Lane, “and that’s why I’m interested. That’s why he’s
succeeding. They tell me he’s abandoned music and set aside his entire
fortune to arm Poland and place her on the side of the allies. Just as
certainly as I’m sitting here, this great artist is going to be the
liberator of modern Poland. This artist!”
“Yes,” commented Gutzon. “That’s what I’ve been telling you. He’s an
artist.”
When the next great crisis came for Poland, there were no great artists
to deal with it--only politicians.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
_FOR THE PARKS_
It is one of the amazing things about a sculptor that the more work he
does and the more recognition he gets, the more his friends demand that
he stick to his proper business. And it is probably just as amazing that
the sculptor doesn’t want to and seldom does. Somebody, commenting on
the varied activities and interests of Gutzon Borglum, quoted a bit of
apt philosophy: “I am a man; nothing human is alien to me,” which was
Borglum’s estimate of the situation, all right. The constant urge to Art
was something, he thought, that made his friends seem normal.
He might have been an aviator had his reflexes been faster at the time
the Wright brothers made their test flights at Kittyhawk. His studio at
Stamford was big enough to be a fine air laboratory, and for years it
was cluttered with an odd assortment of things that were going to make
flying better ... and quicker, and cheaper, and easier and safer.
Gutzon was one of the observers of Orville Wright’s first sustained
flight at Fort Myers when the inventors were trying to prove the value
of their plane to the United States Army. He saw “a little mechanism
that looked like the wreck of a covered wagon” travel around a half-mile
course for sixty-seven minutes. Then, after an enthusiastic greeting to
the pilot, he and Orville, Colonel Bromwell, Captain Squier and
Lieutenant Selfridge rode into town aboard a streetcar. As a
representative of the Aeronautical Society of America, he saw the
collapse of the plane the next day and the tragic death of Lieutenant
Selfridge.
Still he went on. He became acquainted with Alexander Klemin and his
wind tunnel. He was greatly interested in Major Ocker’s development of
blind flying. He invented an airplane brake which, with modifications,
was the type used in the Second World War.
In a speech before the Aeronautical Society at the Astor Hotel in New
York early in 1904 he outlined his plans for a “cylindrical type of
machine with the engine in the pointed nose directly behind the
propeller and winglike fins to steady the flight.” He demonstrated what
he meant with two little models that flew gracefully over the audience.
He said:
Consider the bird struggling with the power of a water freshet. The
model for the aeroplane should not be the bird, but the fish. The
only fish that can move in stormy water is the trout, and the
trout, I am convinced, gives us an unbeatable design for an
airship.
There is something in that speech to remind one of Cellini’s departures
from art, and the activities of Da Vinci when he was looking most
clearly at the patterns of a future life. But his friends weren’t
impressed. Mrs. William Brown Meloney of the _Herald-Tribune_ and _This
Week_ magazine, with whom he carried on a ceaseless correspondence, gave
him a sharp rebuke and told him that art needed him more than the
airplane business. And he sent her this prompt answer:
Dear Missy: You regret as many of my friends do that I am not
eternally astride a ton of clay, constantly modeling. On the other
hand, the insistent application of a man’s mind or his body to one
activity creates lopsidedness.
I was hardly out of my teens before I discovered that it was only
men of varied interest in life, men of varied capacities, whose
minds survived middle age....
I mean the sort of men who can turn from the study of an orchid to
the building of a fortress, to mending a sewer, to designing a
fleet, to colonizing a continent.
Gutzon spoke a lot. He liked public speaking and he was good at it. Any
good cause was his cause, and, inasmuch as he never seemed to be looking
for any personal reward from his public fighting, he made a lot of
friends in unexpected places.
He loved children and he was disturbed by New York’s lack of room for
them. He remembered his own childhood--so much of it in the fresh, open
air--and he campaigned vigorously for playgrounds or parks or unplanned
pieces of the outdoors that would give them a chance to stretch their
legs. He began to write on such subjects for the newspapers and spent
most of his days in wordy controversy. He wrote largely on political
subjects and was rated among the country’s foremost essayists on the
subject of world peace. His peace article, “An Essay on Economic
Boycott,” was one of twelve selected from 20,000 for publication in the
book “Ways to Peace.” It was widely reported in the newspapers, widely
discussed, and carried abroad by President Wilson when he went to make
his futile treaty of Versailles.
The park controversies pleased Gutzon for two reasons. He thought they
might bring about a little better living for the children. And they
might promote a general love for flowers--bring a new generation into
the open air and give it a consciousness of nature. He loved growing
things--green trees, soft grass and the smell of aromatic shrubs. He
never forgot his chase to capture the moon in Fremont.
In his early life he wished to be a horticulturist. Years afterward he
found at the door of his New York studio an opportunity to practice his
green thumb and at the same time to put his play-spot theories into
practical development. In 1907 he was invited to join the board of
directors and serve on the executive committee of the Metropolitan Parks
Association which became the Parks and Playgrounds Association of the
City of New York. His membership was one of his special interests for
twenty years. He was appointed chairman of a subcommittee which later
became an independent body looking after the affairs of Central Park.
Gutzon was highly pleased with his work as permanent chairman. Forty
years had passed since the country’s two pioneer landscape artists had
made one of the most famous parks in the world from some rocks and a
swamp in the middle of Manhattan Island. They had brought in hundreds of
tons of soil and thousands of rare trees and shrubs. They had laid out
driveways for carriages and winding paths for pedestrians. They had
provided lakes and playgrounds for children. In 1907 Samuel Parsons, the
landscape architect under Mayor Green, was begging uselessly for better
park equipment and a new watering system. The sculptor felt that he had
been cast in the right role. An appropriation of $100,000 for improving
the water system was passed that year.
The sculptor gathered the curses of the old school of artists when he
joined the parks association to keep the Academy of Design from putting
up a building in Bryant Park. He won a taxpayer’s suit against the city
in 1911 to prevent the slovenly extension of Riverside Drive in the
Washington Heights region. In 1918, in a similar action, he prevented
the building of an unsightly pumping station in Morningside Park. And
routine park business, outside of the courts, amused him continuously
because it was so full of trouble.
In 1910 Mayor Hylan appointed Charles Stover, who had worked under the
direction of the park association, his Commissioner of Parks. Stover
promptly turned the park into a playground, principally by digging
swimming pools and wading puddles wherever there was room for them. He
came into direct opposition with Parsons the landscape architect. They
quarreled. The commissioner held up the architect’s salary on the ground
that he was absent from his office too much.
Gutzon entered the fight with a letter to the New York _Sun_, pointing
out that the new commissioner had “not rotted enough manure to fertilize
a ten-acre lot, nor mustered enough courage to contract for a single
manure pit.” He reminded his readers that “Last year a $100,000 high
pressure water system remained absolutely idle for the lack of a little
hose, and $100,000 worth of property was allowed to go to ruin.” He
arrayed himself against a movement to impeach Stover and put his own
report on the needs of the park before the Board of Estimate and
Apportionment. With him on the committee was a fine array of
talent--Jacob Schiff, Francis Lynder Stetson, William J. Gibson, George
W. Perkins, Charles L. Burmeister and some others. They got a respectful
hearing.
The sculptor submitted with his report sixty samples of Central Park
soil that had been analyzed by the U. S. Department of Agriculture. The
budget committee gave him hearty approval and allotted enough funds to
save the park.
During the years Gutzon served on its board of directors, many important
questions were discussed by the Parks Association, such as what to do
with the old Arsenal building, what about additions to the Metropolitan
Museum, what about monuments and statues, what about Riverside Park and
the New York Central Railroad tracts. He deplored the usual attitude of
the Association which in its zeal to “save the park” objected to almost
every new proposal, regardless of merit. He took most of his indignation
to the newspapers.
In 1922 he fought for the request of the National Sculpture Society to
hold an open-air exhibition near the Metropolitan Museum, although he
was not a member of the society. The Association opposed him. He
declared in the New York _Times_:
The charm of Central Park lies in the development of its original,
natural contours. The National Sculpture Society should be allowed
an area of fifty to one hundred acres and there place their exhibit
to suit the natural conditions, precisely as they would place it if
it were permanently located. I feel certain if some such plan is
inaugurated, it will be successful....
And he took an active part in the city’s big stir about the proposed
development of Riverside Park in connection with the New York Central’s
right of way along the Hudson River front. It was part of his plan that
“The park from the Drive, with its river glimpses, should be the most
tempting in Manhattan, and every walk into it should possess a separate
individual interest.” And so in February 1917 he wrote to Mayor
Mitchell.
The First World War put a stop to many of the plans of the park
designers. Mayor Mitchell went into a training camp in Florida and was
killed in an airplane crash. Gutzon resigned from the Association in
1922, but he listened to the plea of George Gordon Battle, the
president, and reconsidered. He remained active for many years.
One of Gutzon’s last appearances in New York was in 1939 at a dinner
party given by “Missy” Meloney. Present were the new Park Commissioner
Robert Moses, and Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. He was surprised to see
them and obviously pleased.
“I’ve been anxious to see you fellows,” he said as he sat down. “I’ve
been wanting to tell you about my new plan for the development of
Central Park.... Now what I’ve had in mind is this----”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
_THE CZECHO-SLOVAK ARMY_
Many people on the Borglum visiting list figured that Gutzon was a
Czecho-Slovak merely because he ran a Czecho-Slovak army on his front
lawn in Stamford. He wasn’t, of course, but nobody got any evidence of
that from the highway.
The sculptor’s interest in the Czecho-Slovak cause came about in a
purely natural manner. For some years he had had working with him, on
and off, a young Austrian sculptor’s assistant named Micka (pronounced
Michka) and Micka had some odd ideas about the European war. There was
need for reapportionment of some parts of Austria, he mentioned. And
presently he began to talk about an independent republic that was to be
formed by a group of Bohemians and Slovaks.
Gutzon was interested in this, as he was in all new republics that were
brought to his attention. He looked into the matter and shortly found
himself in spirited correspondence with its leaders. The republic
makers, he discovered, called themselves Czecho-Slovaks, and with them,
as a sort of motivating influence, was Thomas Masaryk. The cause seemed
to be popular. Large numbers of these foreigners who had found security
and freedom in the United States were now volunteering to go back and
fight for their countrymen in Europe, and, since the draft law had not
yet gone into effect, nobody stopped them.
Masaryk was mostly in Washington trying to get the United States to aid
his cause. There Borglum met him and helped him to get a $12,000,000
appropriation from the U. S. Treasury. The two then collaborated in
writing a constitution for the new Republic of Czecho-Slovakia. In
Gutzon’s files was found a parchment-bound copy of this document with
Masaryk’s signature on it, together with a letter expressing the
leader’s gratitude for Borglum’s help.
That’s how it came about that the sculptor offered a part of his
property in Stamford to serve as a military post. The land was vacant,
there was plenty of space, and there the Czech volunteers could be
trained while they waited for transports to carry them across the
Atlantic. As headquarters Gutzon donated an old farmhouse. The
volunteers built their own barracks and cleared a parade ground across
the woods.
The first recruits to arrive at the camp looked a little confused. As a
military force they were a lonely lot. The United States had nothing to
do with them. They were under command of the French and were to be sent
to a French sector when they reached the front. But there wasn’t any
French control of them in this country. Whatever military control they
had was purely theoretical.
The Czecho-Slovak organizers in New York and Washington were pleased by
the patriotism of the men who volunteered to fight. But, once they had
expressed their satisfaction, they forgot all about the army. It was
easy to send passage money to worthy young men all over the country and
move them on to the camp in Stamford. As a result of this carefree
policy, most of the business of handling the volunteers fell
automatically to the Borglum family.
Frequently a batch of recruits would be sent from New York without
advance notice or arrangements for provisions. The Borglums would then
have to scour the neighborhood to borrow blankets and appeal loudly to
the Red Cross for a quick food supply. Once in 1918 when the painter
George Luks was spending the summer with Gutzon he and the sculptor
painted posters which were sold at auction to raise funds for the camp.
The boys needed some adequate kitchen materials, such as a stove, knives
and a collection of pots and pans.
The Czechs, after a little pushing by Borglum, put on a sort of pageant
which showed an attack on an Austrian village by a band of the new
republic’s troops. It was realistic, and press reports said that it was
very thrilling.