Here Saint-Gaudens formed several friendships which endured throughout his life, and here also he began to mingle more widely with the men in the great world about him, although his time was far too occupied for more than an occasional hour or two of relaxation. “My ambition was of such a soaring nature, and I was so tremendously austere, that I had the deepest scorn of the ordinary amusements of the light opera, balls and what not.” And yet, when he did play, his play was of the hardest. He was active beyond measure, and it is doubtless to the hours of hard physical exercise which he got at night in the gymnasium and the swimming-baths, that he owed the health which gave him the endurance necessary for his long hours in the classroom. Occasionally, walking trips, with one or two companions, gave well-deserved vacations—trips from which the walkers returned tired and penniless, but inspired by the beauty of nature in the pleasant French countryside and thrilled with the stupendous grandeur of the Alpine scenery.
But now, in the year 1870, the dark clouds of the Franco-Prussian War suddenly gathered. War was declared. The streets of Paris were congested with shouting, marching crowds. The enlistment places were filled with men joining the colors. To the young American the problem of his own line of action seemed difficult to decide. Everything within him urged him to enlist under the flag of France. But he was a citizen of another land, and aged parents awaited his return. He decided to withhold his decision. Once, indeed, he returned to Paris from Limoges fixed in his purpose to join his French companions; but there he found a letter from his mother, so pathetic that he reluctantly abandoned his intention, returned to Limoges, and a few months later started for Rome.
After the cold, gray months of a Paris winter, and the misery and suffering of the war, the glowing warmth and beauty of the Holy City exhilarated and exalted him. “It was as if a door had been thrown wide open to the eternal beauty of the classical.” Here, living almost in poverty, he continued the work so well begun in Paris. Here, also, he began the statue of Hiawatha, “pondering, musing in the forest, on the welfare of his people”—the first of the long list of world-recognized masterpieces which the strenuous labor of his life produced. So poor, indeed, was Saint-Gaudens at this time, that it was only through the kindness of an American, who advanced him the money to cast the figure, that he was able to complete the work. For this same gentleman Saint-Gaudens modeled busts of his two daughters, and through him he also received a commission for copies of the busts of Demosthenes and Cicero.
In Rome Saint-Gaudens also first made the acquaintance of Dr. Henry Shiff, a comrade whose friendship lasted throughout his life. Shiff was considerably the senior of Saint-Gaudens, but his deep appreciation of art and literature, and his frank, friendly nature endeared him to the young and struggling sculptor, and gave him the inspiration that is always found in the true appreciation of a loyal friend.
In 1872 Saint-Gaudens returned to New York; but his stay was brief, for he was eager to return to Italy for a few years more before definitely establishing himself in the United States. While in New York, much work was accomplished, but little of it should be included in a list of his works, for in the main it consisted of jobs of one sort or another necessary to earn the money which his living required. Here, however, he began his bust of Senator William M. Evarts, one of the foremost orators in the United States, and, during the years 1877 to 1881, Secretary of State in the administration of President Hayes. Then, also, he received a number of other commissions for busts and, of particular importance, a commission for a figure of Silence to be placed in a Masonic building in New York. It was a sudden and bewildering amount of work for the young sculptor, and it brought vividly to him, after his struggling years of poverty in Europe, a realization of the appreciation and reward which the United States so freely offered.
In 1875 Augustus Saint-Gaudens returned again to the United States, but this time to take his place as a full-fledged sculptor. Behind him were years of hard but fruitful experience. From the long period at which he had worked at his cameo-cutting he had developed a keen eye and a sure hand with his tools. From Paris and Rome he had obtained the practice which he required in actual work from the human figure, and from Rome in particular he had learned “what to leave untouched” and had acquired “an ability to choose his subjects from among the important figures of the moment, and then to give his best efforts to transforming them into vital and eternal symbols.”
On his arrival in New York he rented a small studio in an old building, and was soon intensively occupied in a life in which modeling, teaching, and studying filled the long hours, and carried on often far into the night. Dark and depressing seemed the New York winter after the warmth and color of Italy; and to bring back more vividly the memory of the tinkling, splashing fountains that played in the Roman sunshine, he would turn on the water in the little wash-basin in his studio and let the gentle sound carry his thoughts back to the gardens of Rome.
But now came two commissions which left no opportunity for thoughts of anything but the work in hand. From Governor Dix of New York came a commission for a statue of Robert Richard Randall, a wealthy citizen of New York City in the early years of the nineteenth century, who had left his fortune for the founding of the Sailors’ Snug Harbor, on Staten Island, a home for aged deep-sea sailormen. At the same time he obtained a commission for the statue of Admiral David G. Farragut,—the first Admiral of the United States Navy, and the hero of Mobile Bay,—which stands in Madison Square, New York. The importance of these commissions did much to raise the spirits and fire the ambition of Saint-Gaudens, and at the same time the constantly increasing friendships which he was forming helped him to find the happiness of congenial comradeship which his nature sought. “There is no doubt,” he has written, “that my intimacy with John LaFarge has been a spur to higher endeavor”; and there were others who gave him similar inspiration by their warm appreciation of his ambitions.
It was in the year 1877 that Saint-Gaudens took a principal part in the founding of the Society of American Artists. The establishment of this society was an important milestone in the progress of American art, for with it came a vital change in American painting and sculpture. Previously, art in the United States had been more or less burdened with conventions and a dull technique. But this stagnant state now became stirred and freshened by the flood of a new generation of artists. Such men as Saint-Gaudens, Eastman Johnson, John LaFarge, Winslow Homer, and John S. Sargent began to remonstrate against the things that were. These men and their fellows had felt abroad the new movement in artistic appreciation. It was their desire to give to America this new and virile expression, and in spite of the opposition of the conservatists of the established school,—the “old-timers,”—the new society received a welcome and became a constantly increasing factor and force in the development of American art.
A year was now spent in the modeling of a high bas-relief depicting the “Adoration of the Cross by Angels,” which was to form the principal part of the interior decorations of St. Thomas’s Church in New York, which were being designed by Mr. John LaFarge. This was important work and added greatly to Saint-Gaudens’s reputation; but only the memory of its beauty remains, for the church was later destroyed by fire.