hung up a background to give the illusion of the Austrian village.
Everyone who came to Wire Mill Road that night was in Czech costume, and
that included the Borglums and their guests. It was a gala night, and it
brought another tide of volunteers.
On another evening there was an impressive musical program. Masaryk came
with his daughter Anna and one of the Benes brothers presently to become
famous in Europe. Miss Kitty Cheatham, a singer who had made many
concert tours in Europe, was present also. She heard the massed male
chorus of the soldiers sing her composition “America” as it probably
would never be sung again. The boys were born singers, and they meant
what they sang.
Gutzon telephoned one night that he had heard important news and would
deliver it to the camp in person. So the Czecho-Slovak army stayed up
late that night. There was no radio. The late evening papers would
arrive with Gutzon Borglum. So there was nothing to do but wait. About
10 o’clock the sculptor arrived. The boys stood at attention in dead
silence. “I won’t keep you long,” he said. “But I have heard good news
and I wanted to tell it to you myself.... President Wilson this
afternoon announced that the United States has recognized the
independence of the Republic of Czechoslovakia.” The boys were
enthusiastic that night. They built a huge bonfire on the parade ground.
They marched around it and over most of the neighborhood singing and
shouting for a large part of the night.
The camp commander, a Czech, was a professional agnostic. He said it
hurt him to look at any sort of religious observance. This made things
difficult for him because the greater part of the Czecho-Slovak
volunteers were deeply religious. They were always aware that they were
going into danger, and until they came to Stamford they had always been
able to go to church when and if they wanted to. The conflict between
the commander and his troops was rapidly approaching a state of open
mutiny when Borglum intervened. He arranged to have mass celebrated in
his home whenever a contingent of soldiers was due to go abroad. Father
Kubacec would come up from Yonkers on the eve of their going, to hear
confessions. In the morning he would celebrate mass on the open terrace.
And everybody in the camp would attend except the commander.
When the first group left for the front they wanted to carry the new
republic’s flag, which, so far, they had seen only on the camp
stationery. Gutzon requisitioned one from the headquarters in New York,
but there was none there, either. So he toured the New York shops for
suitable flag material and brought it home. It was cut by a Bohemian
tailor from Chicago on the table in the Borglum dining room. Four stars,
representing four provinces, were eventually stitched to the field. The
camp commander said that very likely there was no other flag like it
anywhere in the world. He was probably right.
A hundred men marched with this flag down Wire Mill Road to entrain in
Stamford for the boat from New York. They were dressed in blue-gray
uniforms with berets of the same color. And somehow, they looked like
soldiers. Gutzon frequently wondered how many of them had survived the
war.
Every few weeks a similar pageant rolled out of the Borglum estate.
Altogether several thousand volunteers learned squad drill and the
manual of arms on Gutzon’s front porch. Several hundred were still
there on Armistice Day and went roaring to town to join in the general
celebration.
In the meantime the sculptor and some other Americans had formed an
association of independent mid-European nations. Leaders of the nations
and American aides assembled on October 25, 1918, in Independence Hall,
Philadelphia, where they drew up a declaration of common aims. This
much-bandied declaration of independence was signed by Paderewski for
the Poles, Masaryk for the Czechs and five other lesser lights for
nations in being or about to be.
A preceding Victory Meeting had been held in Carnegie Hall with Masaryk
and Paderewski as principal speakers. It was a conclave volcanic in its
enthusiasm for two nations that now have been allowed to die. It is
remembered chiefly for Paderewski’s remarkable speech.
Much of the labor of getting these ill-assorted people together for the
Philadelphia meeting was the free gift of Lieutenant John Townsend, a
young American. He had learned his Europe while living with his father
who was in the diplomatic service, and he had given his time day and
night to the campaign for the unity of the small nations. He worked too
hard and on the evening of the ceremony at Independence Hall, he
suddenly collapsed. He never recovered. Gutzon was impressed by him. To
a group of Czecho-Slovak officers he had this to say:
We can all take lesson from his shining example. He was one of the
young Americans who gave their lives to save Europe ... eager to
help, uncomplaining, self-sacrificing. He was an example of the
Western spirit that seems always to be at the disposal of the rest
of the world. I, for one, will pray to live my life in the copy of
his generous spirit.
Everybody was touched. Nobody said anything about Gutzon’s part in the
raising of the Czecho-Slovak army.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
_THE NOBLE SPORT_
And then there was the matter of The International Sporting Club. It was
among Gutzon Borglum’s most altruistic endeavors and certainly one that
can be viewed without any reference at all to his art.
It may seem to some readers that there is something of a retrogression
when an artist involves himself in a sporting club--that the whole
effort militates against his ideals of his craft. But that doesn’t seem
to be the way Borglum felt about it. Boxing was just another odd subject
that interested him and one with which he believed he could do
something. He may even have fancied himself as a fighter--and, in view
of later conduct, it seems that he did.
Critical opinion being what it is, three propositions should be noted as
a sort of prelude to what follows:
1. Many physicians agree that boxing, or, as it is sometimes called,
“The Manly Art,” is an excellent physical exercise, particularly for
those who win at it.
2. During the First World War, the United States Army made boxing an
important part of the training of two million young men as soldiers.
3. After the war an extraordinary number of returned veterans (the
estimate of the trade is 20,000) wanted to take up boxing as a
profession because they liked it, or because there was a living in it
with big money for those who reached the championship in any grade from
bantam to heavyweight.
There was no tangible evidence that the sculptor had gone very deeply
into the study of these matters. But as a man who had raised an army on
his own grounds he was one who undoubtedly would listen to any harangue
about what was good for soldiers being just the stuff for virile men who
were not soldiers. And the appeal came to him without his making any
move to ask for it.
One Sunday afternoon in 1917 there came strolling up the driveway to the
Borglum home in Stamford a stranger somewhat noticeably costumed. As he
alighted from his cab and started a leisurely march to the terrace the
Borglums were conscious of a broadly checked suit, a flaming tie, a
monocle and a bright-yellow cane. The man’s face may have shown a hint
of Irish, but otherwise he was unmistakably British and impressively
advertising it.
At the door he introduced himself as William A. Gavin of London. “But I
have come originally from old Ireland,” he mentioned. “I was taught to
love the arts at my mother’s knee. I have never forgotten the precepts
she laid down for me.... ‘A great artist,’ she always said, ‘must live
very close to God.’ And I have come here, sir, as a humble pilgrim. I
have seen some of your magnificent work and I stand in great awe of it.
I should esteem it a great privilege, Mr. Borglum, if I could go home
and tell some of my friends that I have had the chance to shake your
hand....”
Mr. Borglum invited him in.
Whatever else Mr. Gavin may have been, he was a finished worker. He has
been described by some of those who knew him best as a somewhat small,
round, dapper gentleman with an amiable manner who was stiff enough to
be nearly pompous. But he knew how to take his time.
In due course he mentioned what had given him his interest
[Illustration: LINCOLN AND GUTZON BORGLUM IN HOIST]
[Illustration: PLASTER MODEL IN MOUNTAIN STUDIO
G.B. has his hand on T.R.’s nose. Lincoln Borglum is at left]
in sculpture. “I have learned,” he said, “what the human body looks like
in motion. I know there must be strange techniques in the art that
permits the transfer of this motion to blocks of stone or metal. I can
sense it. I can see it although I cannot comprehend it. I have been able
to recognize master productions. I have never failed to see that they
were master productions--and I may say that so far I have never seen any
that move me the way that yours do.”
“And you are not an artist?” inquired Mr. Borglum.
Mr. Gavin sighed. “Ah, no,” he said. “I wished to be. As a child I
haunted the art galleries. But there were financial difficulties in the
family and I was discouraged. I have given much of my life to sports.”
“Interesting,” murmured the sculptor.
“Yes, indeed,” returned Mr. Gavin. “In a way it has been an odd
path--and not one, perhaps, that I should have chosen if I had been
given the selection. But I feel that I have done a worthwhile thing. The
strength of the nation may be said to depend upon its horses, rifle
shots, swimmers, tennis champions, boxers, and, of course, cricket
players. I have tried to make these people constantly better--and, in my
small way, I have succeeded.”
“I like boxing,” admitted the sculptor.
“I had believed you would,” said Gavin. “At the moment boxing is my own
principal interest. That is one of the reasons why I have come to talk
with you. Unfortunately few people in New York have ever seen a boxing
match. They do not know what it means to watch the effortless movement
of a pair of skilled boxers--to note the extreme precision with which
their effort is controlled.” To him, he said, such contests were the
most beautiful thing in the world--expressive of the fundamental male
instincts, inspiring. And after that he got around to the reason for his
visit.
It had occurred to him, he said, that Mr. Borglum might be of help to
him in raising the level of boxing in the United States. He had come
from England because he hoped to do what Lord Lonsdale had done over
there to get outstanding people interested in the art instead of the
heedless ruffians who now controlled it. Gutzon’s name had been given
him, he said, as that of a man whose integrity was well known to the
community and who had expressed some sympathy with the people who were
trying to make ring contests legal. If Gutzon would join his list of
sponsors, he said--and he named several highly respectable men of
Gutzon’s acquaintance--he would form an immense club, restore the manly
art and form a national association to promote it. He, himself, he
mentioned, would advance all preliminary expenses.
The sculptor joined this crusade without further pressure. Nobody
connected with him could have doubted that he would. Boxing had some of
the artistic appeal for him that it theoretically had for Gavin. He had
known about fisticuffs since boyhood, and, as his sculpture progressed,
his continuous swinging of the tools had broadened his shoulders and put
power behind his punch. Boxing had become one of the things that he
thought he might learn to do better than anybody else, and he had tried
to prove it. His friend Bob Davis had brought the world’s heavyweight
champion Bob Fitzsimmons to the sculptor’s studio just as a test.
Borglum had made a somewhat secondary showing against the champion, but
that hadn’t hurt his enthusiasm. Maybe he didn’t know as much about ring
mayhem as a champion, but he still knew as much about the theory of
boxing as anybody else. That’s what he was thinking when he signed
Gavin’s prospectus--which was quite a prospectus.
It turned out that there was a lot of business about the boxing reform
movement that Gutzon had not suspected. In September 1919 there came
into being The International Sporting Club, Inc., of New York, an
organization that was to show the National Sporting Club of London how
sports really should be conducted. According to the plan ably outlined
by Mr. Gavin, there would be 2,250 members. Each member, to get the
great movement started, was to buy a gold-debenture bond for $500 as a
sort of initiation fee. The bond was to pay six per cent annually. After
that the dues would be $100 a year.
Land was bought and plans were drawn for a magnificent clubhouse at
Lexington Avenue and Forty-ninth Street. Excavators came with suitable
tools and began to dig a hole for this great temple of sport. Members
rushed in to buy their gold debentures. The hole deepened and presently
was surrounded by a high fence to keep New York’s enthusiasts from
falling into it.
By the end of 1920 Gavin was beginning to be one of the most
talked-about men in New York. He, of course, was managing director of
the club. He was mentioned in press reports as the man in control of
“organization and development,” which seem to have been his chief
concern.
Major A. J. Drexel Biddle was first president of the organization.
Gutzon Borglum, still eager for the return of boxing, suddenly found
himself treasurer. The Army and Navy were well represented in the
membership by people who had been active in the First World
War--admirals and generals, and commanders and colonels. And there were
so many more figures from financial and social eminences that the roster
was a sort of _Who’s Who_. There was quite a sensation when this list of
magnificent members moved into the struggle to get boxing back again.
Whatever may be said about Gavin’s effort to raise the level of the
boxing industry, it is certain that the club presently began to make
some headway. Senator James J. Walker, presently to be known as New
York’s playboy mayor, led the fight at Albany and presently won it when
the Walker Bill (Chapter 714, Laws of 1921, N. Y.) was passed. But he
had a lot of amateur assistance. Biddle made an impassioned plea to
Governor Alfred Smith and later broke through Tammany obstructions to
lay the matter before Boss Murphy and demand his support.
When the bill was passed, as nearly everybody thought it would be, a
testimonial dinner was given to Gavin. Jimmy Walker declared that the
legalization of boxing in New York was due to Gavin’s skill in
organization and to his tireless energy. He read a letter to the
banqueters that Borglum, still full of crusading zeal, had written to
him:
You have recounted some of the obstacles Gavin surmounted in the
passage of the bill. They were great, no doubt, but they were small
compared with those he has encountered in the founding of the
International Sporting Club. And these are small compared with the
obstacles that stood in the way of convincing the governors of
twenty commonwealths of the wisdom and necessity of forming a
national body. It seems that boxing, which has become the black
sheep of the family of sports, and of which Maeterlinck says, “It
is not a coincidence that the nations who love boxing do not know
the knife,” is at last destined to come into its own.
Gavin went on. While the eager members were still peering through the
fence at the empty hole at Lexington Avenue and Forty-ninth Street, he
began a series of gorgeous entertainments for celebrities. At one of
them, entitled “Ladies’ Night at the Commodore Hotel,” the women leaders
of New York’s society looked at a prize fight for the first time in
their lives. Gavin was a good promoter. The homeless club staged, in
all, three bouts--Fulton _vs._ Wills, Carpentier _vs._ Levinsky, Herman
_vs._ Lynch.
Georges Carpentier, the French championship contender, was the chief
attraction and got considerably more publicity than he deserved.
Champion Jack Dempsey, who, a few months later, was to knock out M.
Carpentier, was present at the Sporting Club bout and was applauded with
dignified acclaim. With all this enthusiasm roaring through New York,
Gavin got some new ideas for his building. He arranged with Gutzon to
carve marble panels for the main room and to produce a large piece of
sculpture for the entrance. Borglum started to make models of the
specimens required ... but it is hard to find any record of what became
of them.
The third prize fight sponsored by Gavin was between Pete Herman and Joe
Lynch at Ebbets Field, and it was not much of a success. It ended in a
riot that caused the club to lose its license to promote private bouts
and something like $40,377.32 in cash. Major A. J. Drexel Biddle walked
out and trouble began to pile up.
In May 1921 some of the members who were no longer impressed by the
empty hole in the ground on Lexington Avenue formed a committee and
asked Mr. Gavin to give an accounting of the International Sporting
Club’s finances. He did so suavely and willingly. There were 1,700
members on the list, he said. That was because of his care in selection.
Some of these had paid only part of the $500 due on their debentures,
but a total of $742,000 had been paid in and quite a lot had been paid
out. The price of the building lot had been something like $250,000.
There had been a charge of $105,000 for the digging of the hole. He had
made an advance of $120,000 for steel, contractors’ fees and architects.
And then there had been some expense--about $126,000--for “organization
and development.”
There was further inquiry. Borglum became president of the club to
succeed Major A. J. Drexel Biddle, and to the end he looked upon Mr.
Gavin as a much maligned man.
It was discovered, during what remained of 1921, that Gavin had
incorporated two organizations--The International Sporting Club and The
Army, Navy, and Civilian Board of Boxing Control--which everybody knew
about, and also The International Sporting Club Corporation. The
International Sporting Club Corporation was a holding company designed
to control the real estate--and the money--of the other two. When the
membership investigating committee found out about it, it was in “an
unhealthy condition.”
In November 1921, after he had spent another $62,000 for “organization
and development,” Mr. Gavin got tired of all the mistrust and bickering.
One night he and his attractive wife quietly slipped out of New York.
They left no word of explanation or farewell. They left no purse to pay
the current bills of the International Sporting Club. The investigators
found that the membership had paid in a total of $1,013,478. Before the
report was completed they received a nice letter from Gavin saying
good-by to everybody, but they found no way to include it in the
valuable assets which consisted chiefly of the hole in the ground. They
found $149.69 in one bank. In another there was $3.52.
There were those who believed him incompetent to handle money, and those
who thought him extremely competent--in his own interest. There were
some, like Gutzon, who still believed in him. Nobody sued him; nobody
charged him with any crime; no crime was ever proved against him. The
money was spent. The members disagreed whether he had given them their
money’s worth in excitement and novelty.
Gutzon got words of sympathy from Charles Dana Gibson, Postmaster
General Hitchcock, Senator Coleman Dupont, Major General Leonard Wood
and others. But nothing came of his efforts to retrieve the Sporting
Club. Gavin was gone. The Club was gone. After a while the hole in the
ground was filled by another building, the anguished creditors ceased
their crying, and presently nothing remained in New York to mark the
regime of Gavin except the boxing act. Borglum was never quite sure that
it was worth bragging about.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
_FRIENDS AND HOME_
One of the chief errors in the life of Gutzon Borglum was his belief
that everybody loved him--or nearly everybody. As a matter of fact, he
wasn’t quite that popular. His record for a public career that lasted
just about half a century is, of course, the continuous story of a
crusader who didn’t mind the noise. He was a positive, stubborn
character who could never see why some people didn’t want his
ministrations. But it must be admitted that what he wanted to do for
human beings was all intended for their own good--and not, particularly,
his. He was interested in beauty, and in other people ... and
emphatically!
Lester Barlow, the inventor, who knew him well, said that Gutzon’s
ambition was to show that he could do anything better than anybody else,
from sculpture to tightrope walking. In a way he was right, for Gutzon
was a perfectionist with unbounded confidence in himself. If he had gone
in for tightrope walking, he would have tried to do it better than it
had ever been done before, and, possibly, would have succeeded--possibly
not. But the point that Barlow overlooked was that Borglum was always a
critic of method and never of results if the work showed progress in
technique. If a thing was better done, he never cared much how.
Many of those who knew him well thought he was a man of great humility.
He accepted criticism with great calm and respect. He was an ideal
father and husband and a pleasant, unexacting friend. That’s what those
closest to him say--which is one of the things that makes Gutzon Borglum
so difficult to understand.
There were hundreds of people in the United States who weren’t so close
to him--the ones who thought he talked only about tons of rock, and man
hours, and A-rigs, and dynamite--and many of them figured him for a hard
businessman with a Class “C” temper. That, unfortunately, is the picture
of Gutzon that he left for himself in so many parts of this calm and
pleasant land. And the worst part of it is that in many particulars it
is authentic.
Gutzon was intense in his work. He believed in himself. And when he ran
into opposition in what he considered a perfectly obvious course, he had
a devastating vocabulary and a voice like the crack of doom. He was
afraid of nothing.
It is odd, of course, that such a man could be a dreamer and a poet.
Those who stood up to him toe to toe in bitter wrangles would never be
convinced that he could see both sides of anything--that he could be
tolerant and kindly. But he was a poet, and those who put flowers on his
grave remember him for softness and gentleness.
Once he said that a man who wasn’t a great poet could never become a
great artist. He had a reverence for a child’s unspoiled outlook on
life, and when asked what was his favorite poem he frequently cited
Francis Thompson’s essay on Shelley and the lines that begin: “Know you
what it is to be a child?”
For all that he was still the man whom the hard-rock worker epitomized
with the comment that he was a good stonecutter but he didn’t talk
pretty.
He made a lot of remarkable friends, about half of whom never knew a
thing about art. They liked him personally, and when he talked they
listened. Otherwise, you can’t very well explain the financing of Stone
Mountain, and Mount Rushmore, the work of liaison between two great
political parties, the fantastic air investigation.
He knew countless people--politicians, artists, travelers, writers,
soldiers, actors, cowhands, drillers, bankers--who would turn a hand for
him if he asked them to. Quite likely he didn’t talk sweet to them
either.
“Any man, in any walk of life, has something to tell you if you’ll
listen,” he once explained. And he listened.
“It would be a godsend,” he mentioned when his bank balance was down
nearly to zero after the Stone Mountain fiasco, “if every man had enough
money so that he could do what he wanted to do.” But even then he was
never able to keep what money he got. Somebody else always needed it.
Of his conflicting characteristics his friend “Missy” Meloney, the
editor, once wrote this to him: