American Men of Mind

by Burton Egbert Stevenson

His first commission was given him by J. Fenimore Cooper. It was a group called the "Chanting Cherubs," and when it was sent home for exhibition, it awakened a tempest of the first magnitude. Puritan ideas were outraged at sight of the little naked bodies, the group was declared indecent, and the bitter controversy was not stilled until it was withdrawn from view. Greenough wrote of Cooper, "he saved me from despair; he employed me as I wished to be employed; and has, up to this moment, been a father to me in kindness"—a singularly interesting addition to the portrait of the great novelist, famous for his enmities rather than for his friendships.

The tragedy of Greenough's life was the fate of his great statue of Washington, of which we have already spoken. He conceived the work on a high plane, "as a majestic, god-like figure, enthroned beneath the dome of the Capitol at Washington, gilded by the filtered rays of the far-falling sunlight." Perhaps it was too high, but on its execution Greenough labored faithfully for eight years. "It is the birth of my thought," he wrote. "I have sacrificed to it the flower of my days, and the freshness of my strength; its every lineament has been moistened by the sweat of my toil and the tears of my exile. I would not barter away its association with my name for the proudest fortune that avarice ever dreamed."

It will be seen from the above that Greenough's epistolary style was florid and grandiose in the extreme, but no doubt there was a foundation of sincerity beneath it. A bitter disappointment awaited him. The ponderous figure reached Washington safely in 1843, and was conveyed to the Capitol, where, beneath the rotunda, its predestined pedestal awaited it. But the statue was found too large to pass the door, and when the door was widened and the great stone rolled inside, the floor settled so ominously that it was hastily withdrawn.

It does not seem to have occurred to anyone that the floor might be braced; instead, the pedestal was set up outside, facing the building, and the statue hoisted into place. It speedily became the butt of public ridicule. Once the fashion started, no one looked at it without a smile.

Greenough was in despair. "Had I been ordered to make a statue for any square or similar situation at the metropolis," he wrote, still in his inflated style, "I should have represented Washington on horseback and in his actual dress. I would have made my subject purely a historical one. I have treated my subject poetically, and confess I would feel pain in seeing it placed in direct flagrant contrast with every-day life."

But that is exactly how it was placed, and it is the incongruity of this contrast which strikes the beholder and blinds him to the merits of the work. For Greenough has represented Washington seated in a massive armchair, naked except for a drapery over the legs and right shoulder, one hand pointing dramatically at the heavens, the other extended holding a reversed sword. It shows sincerity and faithful work, and had it been placed within the rotunda, would no doubt have been impressive and majestic. Where it stands, it is a hopeless anachronism.

This was the first colossal marble carved by an American. Fronting it on one of the buttresses of the main entrance of the Capitol, is the second, also by Greenough. It is a group called "The Rescue," and shows a pioneer saving his wife and child from being tomahawked by an Indian, while his dog watches the struggle with a strange apathy—almost with a smile. Like most of his other work, it is stilted and unconvincing; but let us remember that Greenough was the pathfinder, the trail-blazer, and as such to be honored and admired.

Greenough's fame, such as it was, was soon to be eclipsed by that of a man born in the same year, but later in development because he had a harder road to travel. Hiram Powers was born into a large and poverty-stricken family. While he was still a boy, his father removed from the sterile hills of Vermont to the almost frontier town of Cincinnati, Ohio. He seems to have had little schooling, but was put to work as soon as he was old enough to contribute something toward the family exchequer. He did all sorts of odd jobs, and soon developed an unusual talent, that of modelling faces.

Those were the halcyon days of the dime museum, and there was one at Cincinnati. Its proprietor chanced to hear of the boy's gift for modelling, and offered him employment as a modeller of wax figures. Of course Powers accepted, for this was work after his own heart, and he succeeded not only in producing some figures which resembled definite human beings, but "breathed the breath of life into them" by means of clock-work devices, which enabled them to move their heads and arms in a manner sufficiently jerky, but at the same time astonishing to the simple people who visited the museum to behold its wonders.

Emboldened by this success, the young genius produced an "Inferno," or "Chamber of Horrors," which, when completed, was an immense success—too immense, indeed, for it had to be closed because of the fearful impression it made upon the ladies, who fainted in their escorts' arms whenever they gazed upon its terrors. One is inclined to suspect that the ladies might have withstood the horrors of the sight, but for a desire to prove their extreme sensibility. Fainting was more fashionable eighty years ago than it is to-day.