Before we left, the American monk told us to stand at the door and have one last look, first from the left archway and then from the right, to see it from every angle. I gave a good look round and then inadvertently my eyes alighted on the black robed figure. He was standing in exactly the right place, in a set attitude, motionless, well trained. All part of the picture: “Hullo America!”
We had lingered so long, that there was not half enough time left for the studio. Barnard showed us his colossal head of Lincoln, which he proposes to carve out of the rock of a hillside. A magnificent idea. We spent nearly all the rest of the time looking at his model and listening to his explanation of a great war memorial. Here, on this piece of land he dreams of building an American Acropolis. He showed us the plans of the circular walls that would be decorated with bronze reliefs, and the statues that would represent each nation and be contributed by the artist which each nation would select to represent them. “No war scenes,” he said emphatically—by which I gathered he was a great pacifist. “We have had enough of war scenes, here in bold relief would be the men and the occupations they left, and the families and the homes they went away from. In the background, in low relief, would be illustrated the idea and ideals for which they fought——”
He talked with his head towards us, but his eyes closed. Introspectively, and with hand gestures, he helped to explain and describe. His hands are strong and his fingers so short and thick that I had the impression that they had all been cut off at the second phalange.
His scheme was a gigantic one, here among other things was the garden of the mothers. Seven mothers stood sentinel against a terrace wall. They were half carved figures, showing their breasts from which the milk had flowed that had fed the man-babes. From the waist down they became one with the graves of their sons. The centre mother was to represent the Mother of all the ages. She was to hold in one hand her breast, and the other arm out-stretched as if it nursed the vanished babe. Her abdomen was to be seared and scarred with the furrows of child bearing. He was insistent and persistent about this. The idea of the mother seemed to appeal to him very forcibly——He almost awed us by his description of the warrior’s mother. He had dreamt of her, he said. He had seen her in visions in the night. He showed us the small sketch of his vision, and of her warrior son lying stretched out at her feet. Even in this small wax sketch he had put his force, his conviction, his deep feeling——It was almost frightening in its severity.
He told us, too, of the tree of peace, all bronze and enamel, with golden fruits, and this was to be transparent and illuminated. All night, every night, always, it was to be lit up like a lighthouse beacon, so that all who saw it by land or by sea would know that the light that shined was from the tree of peace.
Even if he never carried out this part of the memorial, he had an archway which in itself was sufficient and magnificent. The archway was formed by a rainbow, of mosaics, and up to the feet of the rainbow on one side came naked battalions of youths that had laid down their lives, and on the other side, reaching up as it were to the rainbow of hope, came the refugees, men, women and children.
There was much more that I cannot relate. Barnard told it to us for an hour or more, and we stood and listened and watched, silently enthralled. Every now and then Childe Hassam, putting aside his own artist’s soul, would draw out his watch and look at the time threateningly and suggestively. I pushed his watch aside and whispered to him that time for this once did not exist, nor appointments, nor meals——Could one interrupt a man’s vision by observing the time?
Lastly, he unveiled for us the marble head of Lincoln. It stood on a pedestal facing a window of which the blind was drawn. As we stood before it, the master slowly, very slowly, released the light, and as he did so the shadow from beneath Lincoln’s brow was dispelled, and his eyes seemed to have life, and to look up with all the pity and the tenderness and the human sympathy of a superman. It was not Lincoln the man of sorrows, it was not Lincoln the thinker, it was Lincoln the great understanding idealist, and there was so much of love and sadness in the marble face that I, a normal woman, had tears streaming down my face, and I was ashamed.
Mr. Galatly has brought this Lincoln head to present to the Luxembourg Gallery.
As for the soul of Barnard, and the vision, and the imagination, and the energy, and the selflessness of him—it is immense.