In 1939, when the democratic experiment seemed even more endangered from within and without than it is now, two figures—one fictional, the other real—came to the Lincoln Memorial in moments of high drama that transfixed America.
In Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, a film that made numerous congressmen and at least ambassador (Joseph P. Kennedy) apoplectic with its seriocomic depiction of corruption in the Capitol, young Senator Jefferson Smith comes to the memorial late at night, just after a day in which he feels his cause is hopelessly lost. There, under the watchful eyes of Honest Abe, he has an encounter that renews his resolve to battle his state’s all-powerful political machine again.
The same year Frank Capra’s classic premiered, Marian Anderson gave a stirring concert at the same spot, invited there by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt when the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow the African-American contralto sing in their hall. Many people felt, then and now, that no venue could compare in majesty and historical significance to the nation’s monument to the Great Emancipator.
Those not too busy going to malls on President’s Day might have come across—or at least thought about—the great Washington shrine to Abraham Lincoln. Somewhat fewer people might have thought about how the message and image of that immensely powerful shrine were shaped. In particular, two men played crucial roles in the words and shapes carved in that neoclassical temple to liberty and union.
Royal Cortissoz: Summoning Lincoln’s Commitment to Union, Through Words
The first was Royal Cortissoz, who, though not exactly a household name today, was influential enough in his time, as lecturer and art critic for the New York Herald-Tribune, to make the cover of Time Magazine in 1930. Chances are, you won’t know him by anything he wrote over his long career, but rather because of the inscription he wrote for this nation’s tribute to Lincoln that millions of tourists in Washington have seen: “In this temple, as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the Union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever.”
In “An Epitaph for Mr. Lincoln,” in the February/March 1987 issue of American Heritage, H. Wayne Morgan related the story behind this inscription. It seems that Cortissoz became enraged at some ham-handed editing of the inscription suggested by President Warren Harding, insisting that it be used as is or not at all. Luckily, he induced architect Henry Bacon to intercede with Chief Justice William Howard Taft, who had it carved, unchanged, ASAP.
Interesting, this involvement of President Harding, who still fancied that he knew a thing or two about stringing words together, not merely as what passed in those days as an orator (H. L. Mencken, dissenting memorably, called the style “Gamalielese,” after the President’s middle name) but because of his past as an Ohio publisher. The President wanted to tinker with the rhythm of the sentence, but he had the background—and the genuine passion—to insist on something more radical in its sentiment.
In his contrarian short bio, Warren G. Harding, John W. Dean (yes, of Watergate fame!) includes a fascinating short section on “the most daring and controversial speech of Harding’s political career”: his address to a segregated audience of white Southerners in Birmingham, Ala., in 1921. The President flummoxed his audience by coming out four-square for economic and political equality for African-Americans: “Whether you like it or not, unless our democracy is a lie you must stand for that equality.”
Cortissoz’s inscription, on the other hand, beautifully paced as it is—and certainly true, so far as it goes—ended up sidestepping the challenge that Harding flung down to Southern audiences—the same kind of challenge that Lincoln ended up posing by the end of his life. Sixty-one years after Fort Sumter, when the Lincoln Memorial opened, the one thing that the North and South could still agree on was that Lincoln stood for the Union, and that was a good thing.
There is a powerful and important way to think of the Union as the fulfillment of the hopes of liberty—i.e., as assurance that the republic would stand for majority rule, and not collapse into anarchy through the machinations of a minority.
But Lincoln—as John Wilkes Booth certainly came to realize—had come to advocate far more than that. As historians—and especially revisionist ones—never fail to point out, the Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave in the North, only those in the South, in territories the North had not yet controlled. Moreover, the President did not come out for universal suffrage for all African-Americans.
But the Thirteenth Amendment, supported by the President, ended slavery, and just before he was murdered, Lincoln suggested that African-American soldiers—as well as “more intelligent” blacks and those who had supported the Union during the war—should be given the right to vote.
In Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, a film that made numerous congressmen and at least ambassador (Joseph P. Kennedy) apoplectic with its seriocomic depiction of corruption in the Capitol, young Senator Jefferson Smith comes to the memorial late at night, just after a day in which he feels his cause is hopelessly lost. There, under the watchful eyes of Honest Abe, he has an encounter that renews his resolve to battle his state’s all-powerful political machine again.
The same year Frank Capra’s classic premiered, Marian Anderson gave a stirring concert at the same spot, invited there by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt when the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow the African-American contralto sing in their hall. Many people felt, then and now, that no venue could compare in majesty and historical significance to the nation’s monument to the Great Emancipator.
Those not too busy going to malls on President’s Day might have come across—or at least thought about—the great Washington shrine to Abraham Lincoln. Somewhat fewer people might have thought about how the message and image of that immensely powerful shrine were shaped. In particular, two men played crucial roles in the words and shapes carved in that neoclassical temple to liberty and union.
Royal Cortissoz: Summoning Lincoln’s Commitment to Union, Through Words
The first was Royal Cortissoz, who, though not exactly a household name today, was influential enough in his time, as lecturer and art critic for the New York Herald-Tribune, to make the cover of Time Magazine in 1930. Chances are, you won’t know him by anything he wrote over his long career, but rather because of the inscription he wrote for this nation’s tribute to Lincoln that millions of tourists in Washington have seen: “In this temple, as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the Union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever.”
In “An Epitaph for Mr. Lincoln,” in the February/March 1987 issue of American Heritage, H. Wayne Morgan related the story behind this inscription. It seems that Cortissoz became enraged at some ham-handed editing of the inscription suggested by President Warren Harding, insisting that it be used as is or not at all. Luckily, he induced architect Henry Bacon to intercede with Chief Justice William Howard Taft, who had it carved, unchanged, ASAP.
Interesting, this involvement of President Harding, who still fancied that he knew a thing or two about stringing words together, not merely as what passed in those days as an orator (H. L. Mencken, dissenting memorably, called the style “Gamalielese,” after the President’s middle name) but because of his past as an Ohio publisher. The President wanted to tinker with the rhythm of the sentence, but he had the background—and the genuine passion—to insist on something more radical in its sentiment.
In his contrarian short bio, Warren G. Harding, John W. Dean (yes, of Watergate fame!) includes a fascinating short section on “the most daring and controversial speech of Harding’s political career”: his address to a segregated audience of white Southerners in Birmingham, Ala., in 1921. The President flummoxed his audience by coming out four-square for economic and political equality for African-Americans: “Whether you like it or not, unless our democracy is a lie you must stand for that equality.”
Cortissoz’s inscription, on the other hand, beautifully paced as it is—and certainly true, so far as it goes—ended up sidestepping the challenge that Harding flung down to Southern audiences—the same kind of challenge that Lincoln ended up posing by the end of his life. Sixty-one years after Fort Sumter, when the Lincoln Memorial opened, the one thing that the North and South could still agree on was that Lincoln stood for the Union, and that was a good thing.
There is a powerful and important way to think of the Union as the fulfillment of the hopes of liberty—i.e., as assurance that the republic would stand for majority rule, and not collapse into anarchy through the machinations of a minority.
But Lincoln—as John Wilkes Booth certainly came to realize—had come to advocate far more than that. As historians—and especially revisionist ones—never fail to point out, the Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave in the North, only those in the South, in territories the North had not yet controlled. Moreover, the President did not come out for universal suffrage for all African-Americans.
But the Thirteenth Amendment, supported by the President, ended slavery, and just before he was murdered, Lincoln suggested that African-American soldiers—as well as “more intelligent” blacks and those who had supported the Union during the war—should be given the right to vote.
The latter might not sound like much, but remember this: In a profoundly racist society, no American President had even advocated that much. Booth knew how radical it was, and as soon as he heard it, he was hell-bent on his assassination scheme.
The America of 1922 retained a nervous, still-pinched vision of what support for the Union meant. But the notion of Union could also be thought of in the terms that Daniel Webster—and Lincoln—believed: “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!”
Daniel Chester French: The Image of Lincoln
So, there you have the words (aside from the immortal words of Lincoln himself, carved on the walls). But there’s also the image, the great and mighty statue of the seated, somber, impossibly wise President.
For an understanding of that, I suggest you journey up through the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, to the town of Stockbridge. While you’re there visiting a museum dedicated to another artist indelibly associated with Americana, Norman Rockwell, you can stop, as I did some years ago, at Chesterwood, the home, studio and gardens of Daniel Chester French, the great sculptor who specialized in larger-than-life figures who flourished in extraordinary circumstances, such as The Minuteman Monument; the mounted George Washington in Paris; and the Lincoln Memorial.
The emotions French evoked—heroism, patriotism, sentimentality—often appear to be relics of a bygone era. Yet the sight of these works summon forth more than a glimmer of recognition; they also induce stabs of wistful nostalgia and dreams of a more innocent, more reverend time. “I fear my inclination,” French confessed to a friend in 1919, “is to ignore too much the gloom and emphasize the beauty and joy of life—leaving out the snake which alas! was devised with Paradise.”
French and Rockwell shared several common traits, besides their unabashed attachment to America and to Stockbridge. Both were born in New York City but came to Stockbridge in middle age when they were already well established in their careers. Both became famous while still only in their 20s and remained famous and productive into their 70s. Both achieved their enormous success through a fierce work ethic and a Yankee sense of thrift.
Standing in the studio of Daniel Chester French, your eyes taking in the numerous models and casts he created, you sense more than simply his talent and self-discipline. No, you realize, gazing up through the skylight, that French’s spirit was likewise sunny—an ideal medium to express the optimism of a nation finally united after the Civil War and coming into its own as a world power.
By the time he bought the Marshall Warner farm in Stockbridge in 1896, French was already in the third decade of a public career that had begun spectacularly with The MinuteMan Monument (commissioned 1871). The property captured his heart for much the same reason that artists were drawn to the Berkshires before and since: for the landscape. The view of Monument Mountain, he claimed, was the best “dry view” (i.e., view without water) he had ever seen.
Besides the skylight, the most striking aspect of French’s studio is the truncated railroad track running 50 feet from a tree outside to inside the studio. With so many of his commissions involving outside statues, French needed not just the natural light that streamed from above, but a total exterior environment. The railroad handcar enabled him to put his creations out in the open to test how they looked.
The studio’s examples of models in succeeding stages of development enable you to see how French settled on his overarching conceptions before fleshing out the details of his works. First, he presented clients with a “maquette,” a plaster cast of a of a simple clay “sketch” in three-dimensional form. Once the client approved French’s concept, the sculptor progressed to larger models, each time adding subtle details. In models for the Lincoln Memorial that are on display in the studio, for instance, French added a chair, then drapery.
French, along with Augustus Saint-Gaudens, was the sculptor of choice for his time. More than 100 commissions came his way during his career. The Boston-to-Washington corridor is filled with his work.
The Boston-Cambridge area contained his statues of the Irish-American editor John Boyle O’Reilly; historian Francis Parkman; John Harvard, founder of perhaps America’s most famous school of higher learning; and the allegorical figures of Truth, Romance, Music and Poetry on the doors of the Boston Public Library. Alma Mater holds a commanding view of the quadrangle at the center of Columbia University in New York City.
The America of 1922 retained a nervous, still-pinched vision of what support for the Union meant. But the notion of Union could also be thought of in the terms that Daniel Webster—and Lincoln—believed: “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!”
Daniel Chester French: The Image of Lincoln
So, there you have the words (aside from the immortal words of Lincoln himself, carved on the walls). But there’s also the image, the great and mighty statue of the seated, somber, impossibly wise President.
For an understanding of that, I suggest you journey up through the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, to the town of Stockbridge. While you’re there visiting a museum dedicated to another artist indelibly associated with Americana, Norman Rockwell, you can stop, as I did some years ago, at Chesterwood, the home, studio and gardens of Daniel Chester French, the great sculptor who specialized in larger-than-life figures who flourished in extraordinary circumstances, such as The Minuteman Monument; the mounted George Washington in Paris; and the Lincoln Memorial.
The emotions French evoked—heroism, patriotism, sentimentality—often appear to be relics of a bygone era. Yet the sight of these works summon forth more than a glimmer of recognition; they also induce stabs of wistful nostalgia and dreams of a more innocent, more reverend time. “I fear my inclination,” French confessed to a friend in 1919, “is to ignore too much the gloom and emphasize the beauty and joy of life—leaving out the snake which alas! was devised with Paradise.”
French and Rockwell shared several common traits, besides their unabashed attachment to America and to Stockbridge. Both were born in New York City but came to Stockbridge in middle age when they were already well established in their careers. Both became famous while still only in their 20s and remained famous and productive into their 70s. Both achieved their enormous success through a fierce work ethic and a Yankee sense of thrift.
Standing in the studio of Daniel Chester French, your eyes taking in the numerous models and casts he created, you sense more than simply his talent and self-discipline. No, you realize, gazing up through the skylight, that French’s spirit was likewise sunny—an ideal medium to express the optimism of a nation finally united after the Civil War and coming into its own as a world power.
By the time he bought the Marshall Warner farm in Stockbridge in 1896, French was already in the third decade of a public career that had begun spectacularly with The MinuteMan Monument (commissioned 1871). The property captured his heart for much the same reason that artists were drawn to the Berkshires before and since: for the landscape. The view of Monument Mountain, he claimed, was the best “dry view” (i.e., view without water) he had ever seen.
Besides the skylight, the most striking aspect of French’s studio is the truncated railroad track running 50 feet from a tree outside to inside the studio. With so many of his commissions involving outside statues, French needed not just the natural light that streamed from above, but a total exterior environment. The railroad handcar enabled him to put his creations out in the open to test how they looked.
The studio’s examples of models in succeeding stages of development enable you to see how French settled on his overarching conceptions before fleshing out the details of his works. First, he presented clients with a “maquette,” a plaster cast of a of a simple clay “sketch” in three-dimensional form. Once the client approved French’s concept, the sculptor progressed to larger models, each time adding subtle details. In models for the Lincoln Memorial that are on display in the studio, for instance, French added a chair, then drapery.
French, along with Augustus Saint-Gaudens, was the sculptor of choice for his time. More than 100 commissions came his way during his career. The Boston-to-Washington corridor is filled with his work.
The Boston-Cambridge area contained his statues of the Irish-American editor John Boyle O’Reilly; historian Francis Parkman; John Harvard, founder of perhaps America’s most famous school of higher learning; and the allegorical figures of Truth, Romance, Music and Poetry on the doors of the Boston Public Library. Alma Mater holds a commanding view of the quadrangle at the center of Columbia University in New York City.
Washington, of course, holds his magisterial seated figure of the 16th President in the Lincoln Memorial. (Chesterwood visitors can see a unique counterpart to this in a garden in back, which contains French’s models for a standing Lincoln that was placed in Lincoln, Nebraska.)
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